Idk I think it's kinda true. Meme sourced from here: https://twitter.com/RadagastTBrown/status/1348797382176235521
Oh great i'm always down for a good cottage core struggle session.
I've been calling the queer anarchist version "commune core" instead because that's really what it is. The driving force for it is always "I am tired of living in a society that hates me and being alienated from the products of my labor, I want to live somewhere with a bunch of my queer friends where we will be self-sustaining so that we won't often have to interact with or be perceived by cishetero patriarchal society, and where we can more easily defend one another from reactionaries that would love the opportunity to hunt us for sport when society collapses far enough that they can do it openly without repercussions."
I'm not into it as an 'aesthetic' but it is the best small-scale solution to most of my climate catastrophe and societal collapse related fears: I don't have the space or the resources to adequately support or ensure the safety of my friends and community in a city like the one where I live, and I know that I can't trust the current society not to throw us under the bus given the opportunity — particularly when resources are scarce — because they've done it a thousand times before.
The het version, cottage core, while stemming from the same alienation that occurs under capitalism, is generally less community oriented and more self-centered.
The het version, cottage core is generally less community oriented and more self-centered.
(that woman from The Office) it's the same picture
Queer commune-core explicitly centers the community aspect, as I outlined in my post.
Are you just pointing out that "less community oriented and more self-centered" is redundant and unnecessarily repetitive?
Communes aren't neoliberalism but the modern 1st world version is basically hippie libshit.
"Commune" used to mean something different, that's why I am talking about modern communes. Now it means going into the countryside to do hippy shit, which doesn't fix anything.
"Commune" used to mean "we'll take over this city and organise it democratically". Now it means "I'm gonna take my buddies and camp next to that creek".
There was capitalism before. It's just that commune used to mean something else, and it was part of revolutionary activity, whereas now it isn't, it's just a lifestyle choice pretty much and a way of retreating from society instead of changing it.
living in a society
Imagine living in a society?
Bottom Text
Joking aside, though, I just want to feel connected to my work
Yeah, rural New England sent a telegram and they want their racist safe spaces back.
The racist femboy thing has already been drowned out by just general popularity of femboys.
The racist femboy. I really do just live in a bubble of normie adults. I need to branch out.
As someone with an interest in pre-modern history, this is the worst thing about it. I just think that the buildings look cool and I'm constantly fascinated by the ingenuity and resourcefulness of people who had to do almost everything by hand. While the chuds may or may not like that stuff, they also think the absolute power of ancient rulers and their noble castes is something to aspire towards. I certainly find those aspects of history interesting but I'm glad they're mostly in the past where they belong.
Plus they believe, rightly or wrongly depending on the issue, that past societies represent their idea of an ethnostate, where no one with a gender identity or sexuality that doesn't conform to their ideas of the world existed, where the patriarchy was more absolute, and everyone feared god, etc. The same bullshit as hearkening back to the fifties or the antebellum South or workers siding with fascists, it's a world that never was and the chances are that even if you happen to be dominant in some ways, you'll still be some poor ass farmer or factory worker eking out a living and not one of the slaver kings.
I am an old man. I have no idea what the fuck any of this means and it's amazing. Fine work.
i dont know what a moodboard is (a cork board with big mood paraphenalia tacked to it??) and ive never actually heard the word cottagecore but its meaning from the context seems to be log-cabin rustic aesthetics.
:bean-think:
edit: the nazis can have my lightup keyboard and thighhighs when they pry them from my cold dead fingers tho
I had just assumed that "cottagecore" was grindcore, but with Mumford characteristics. So basically Finntroll.
its the [manifest destiny traditionalists reviving "white mans burden" re: environment] that points me towards cowboy-lumberjack fetishism.
but it probably has music too, soo...
wailing about pickup trucks and dead dogs, but metal, intensifies
Oh no! Not the dozens of racist femboys and fashy cottage core enthusiasts!
I hate that I'm in this weird online zone where I'm not happily oblivious to aesthetics, but I typically first find out about them by tweets like "Guys, We Need To Talk About How Dark Academia Promotes Bad Mental Health Habits"
what is an ecofascist exactly - like give me an example of a specific one
edit: thanks everyone, i think im getting the picture.
Anyone who says "humanity is the virus" unironically, usually meaning poor or brown folk
Anyone who is more concerned with overpopulation than with consumerism, basically.
"Yes, earth is warming, and the quickest way to.fix that is to kill off lots of people who don't look like me."
In essence.
Summary of the post-WW2 German ecofascist movement here. Rudolf Hess is an example of an earlier German ecofascist.
People call every eco-adjacent thing they don't like ecofascist, but google Pine Tree Party for a somewhat active American example of actual honest to god fascist moment with eco characteristics.
"I get that we need to save the planet, so you should start with taking out the Lacandones! They're the ones cutting down the forests, not me!" (Lacandones are one of several Mayan peoples in Chiapas, and some of them are linked to the Zapatistas. I've had people say this to my face)
"it sucks that a subculture which is about going green and reconnecting with nature, which was first pushed by young queer women especially, is now being adopted and overrun by ecofascists. (older people may recall that this is not dissimilar from a problem in the punk subculture.)"
Tbh I kinda hate that I'm Jesse here :') I don't wanna be down with the kids
Hot take: anti-modernist stances like "reconnecting with nature" always have an intrinsic reactionary value. You can see the same pattern in the 20th century with German romanticism paving the way for German ultranationalism and naziism. I think no German goverment put as much ecological legislation out as the government of Adolf Hitler. The whole "reject modernity" is a right wing point.
There's a huge movement in indigenous spaces of reconnecting with nature as a means of reclaiming and reinvigorating indigenous culture though. "Returning to tradition" means something very different for the colonisers vs the colonised.
This is my main gripe with the left values test too. Nationalism is just defined as being proud of your culture and where you come from, which is VERY different depending on if you come from an imperialist culture vs if you come from one where your culture is currently being colonized. Sometimes it's just about survival and not dominance.
I don't wanna reject our anarcho-primitivist comrades :(
Tbh I find a lot of the nature rhetoric off-putting as well. Maybe it's different depending on what country you're in. Over here I associate stuff like cutesie plates with geese on them with rural reactionaries, yknow, the grandchildren of those who voted for the Anschluss and feel no shame about it. On the other hand I think it's worth fighting for "reconnecting with nature" to not be associated with fascist shit. Actually putting your phone down and taking walks in the countryside is pretty dope lol.
Edit: Less about aesthetics and more about serious political stuff - I'm convinced that Austria is gonna slide happily into ecofascism in the next few decades, as will a lot of Europe, and I'm not looking forward to it.
Redditors identity more with the friends of Jeffrey Epstein than indigenous people, can you think of a reason why?
nah, access to nature is a genuine part of a healthy society and if i could give everyone in the world more opportunities to spend time in it i would. you can't call me reactionary because i like to climb into a canoe occasionally lmao
first pushed by young queer women especially
This isn't really true. Rural Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont have had the "reconnect with nature and go off grid" libertarians and racists for decades, if not centuries. There's a reason those sections are deep red on the electoral map. The current fad is being popularized by young queer women, for sure, but it's been a thing racist white flight folks have been doing seemingly forever.
peasants fleeing to the land to escape urban repression has an even older tradition than that, and i think the back to the land movements of a few decades ago are reflection of that
the main thing is that nowadays land is expensive, so people who have a desire for a lot of space to themselves, and the ones that can live that way, are probably going to be more reactionary because of their material conditions. most that i meet though are the hippie type with decent politics
I think people wanting to reconnect with nature has been a thing since at least the Industrial Revolution at least. Like we can say Marie Antoinette, with her fake farm, was kinda cottagecore. In fact her thing of frolicking with sheep and servants dressed up as farmers and then going home to a palace at the end of the day is arguably closer to the current cottagecore trend than whatever libertarians in Vermont are up to.
I find cottagecore interesting because my initial reaction to it was that it's extremely off-putting for the same reasons others have mentioned, but at the same time I can see where the appeal comes from. I don't think it's from the same place as the off-the-grid apocalypse dudes.
a subculture which is about going green and reconnecting with nature,
radlib greenwashed capitalism is being ruined by fascists who are honest about what they actually support
It's one-part Tiny Home, one-part Romanticized Survivalist
I think it illustrates a certain latent recognition among young people that quality-of-life standards are falling and our infrastructure hasn't been built to endure the long haul. But because everything has to be bound up in aesthetics, we're going to turn "living cheaply" into "instagram reality".
Like so much else in a capitalist state, doing this well either requires a super-abundance of free time or enough money to fake it. So, only really useful for the unemployed, the professionally online, and the Marie Antonito types. For everyone else, it's just looking less miserable than you feel.
The reports of them stealing it are highly exaggerated, come join me and your other comrades in the thigh high revolution
As a bald man, I'm equally upset at how everything from American History X to Jeff Bezos makes me feel like a fascist for shaving.
I love me some aesthetics, with the full consciousness that its very easy to forget the reasons behind the existence of a given aesthetic. I love cottage-core as an idea, even though I like the practical activities rather than the clothes style more.
In any case I think it touches on a desire to live a simple un-alienated life, and that is great, but we have to be careful that this is not conflated with the whole trad thing, since trad has many common touchpoints.
I get the feeling this whole thing is more about: "consumer identities" and their skewed perceived relations to political alignment than "aesthetics" It's like saying furries tend to be more liberal minded. Fandoms pigeonholing themselves into believing they have anything political going on.
Then following the thread of causality; If "femboy" is the "aesthetic" in this case: Are they racist because they are femboys? Or could there be something else in this demographic that makes this stereotype come true?
