1. I think a lot of critical confusion over recent Tarantino films comes from mis-genre-ing them. What if Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon A Time in Hollywood aren't historical films. What if they are science fiction?
2. Both films (spoiler alert) take well-known historical events and give them a very different ending than the one that happened. Both are, in effect, set in a parallel reality, like Dick's Man in the High Castle.
3. The point of alternative history, at least when it's done well, is to cast some light on real history, to present a thought experiment that highlights what made the historical event what it was. Similar to how utopias & dystopias both function as social critique.
4. An alt-history precursor to Tarantino is Philip Jose Farmer's "Sail on, Sail on" which is set in an alternative world where medieval science is largely true. Story ends with Columbus sailing off the edge of the the world. That's the cognitive estrangement Tarantino achieves.
1. "What a minute," yo might ask, "Isn't Milei a self-proclaimed libertarian, even an anarcho-capitalist who who wants to abolish the state? How can he be using police power to repress free speech & protests?" Well, the history of anarcho-capitalism has the answers.
2. The term anarcho-capitalism was coined by Murray Rothbard, this elfin looking guy, tweaking an earlier formulation by his friend Karl Hess (a Goldwater speechwriter turned anti-war activist). Rothbard was a pioneer in coopting language of anarchy for authoritarianism
3. Rothbard was politically all over the map, at various points allying himself with Robert Taft, Joseph McCarthy, Ayn Rand, William F. Buckley, New Left historical revisionists like William Appleman Williams, the Maoist Peace & Freedom Party, the Koch bros, Pat Buchanan
1. Fun fact: New Criticism was an outgrowth of a group called The Fugitives or Southern Agrarians. Their governing ideology was a celebration of hierarchical & traditional societies like the pre-Civil War south & pre-industrial Europe. Guess what they thought of Blacks & Jews?
2. This is a complicated story but the New Critics were Southern white reactionaries who idealized pre-industrial life & Christian hegemony, whitewashed slavery, and embraced formalism in criticism as a way of exalting an idealized order untouched by historical change.
3. It's kind of hard to place the New Critics in terms of contemporary politics because they were both anti-socialist and anti-capitalist, seeing industrialization as a falling off. And their critiques of capitalism & industrialization have real force & value.
I've literally been reading racists right-wingers (notably Samuel Francis and Pat Buchanan) since Yglesias was in kindergarten. It's a big part of the work I do. Yet I somehow manage to avoid praising them as interesting parts of the discourse even as analyze their work.
The key thing here is that Yglesias thinks of the revanchist & racist right as part of his universe of discourse, people who are wrong on some stuff but worth engaging with. By contrast, for him left & left-liberals beyond the pale.
"He's clearly quite racist! But...." There's always a but.
1. Oppenheimer, Barbie and the contradictions of German-Jewish whiteness: Notes for an essay. (Jack Kirby will make a cameo here).
2. What's the real thread unifying the Barbenheimer phenomenon besides the coincidence of an opening date. I'd say both films are about the fraught experience of the children of immigrants in putatively melting pot society.
3. J. Robert Oppenheimer: of German-Jewish descent, huge success in his field, brought low by national security establishment. Ruth Handler, creator of Barbie, of Polish-Jewish descent, huge success in her field, brought low by IRS.
1. While researching Young Americans for Freedom I came across what is, I think I can say this confidently, the worst music every sung by humans: the ersatz folk songs belted out by young rightwingers in 1960s in a desperate attempt to copy the folk revival.
2. This music is evidence of the strong anxiety created by the rise of the counterculture & New Left, which the right felt had to matched by an counter-attack. Janet Greene, for example, was often touted as the right's answer to Joan Baez.
3. This story has it all: White Christian Nationalism, neo-Nazis, domestic terrorism, the GOP, and a ventriloquist dummy. Hard to imagine any terrorism worse than the music though.
1. The obvious reason why this strategy of "progressive policy" denuded of class solidarity wont work is that the rich have intense class solidarity, which is why liberal rich are always outgunned in numbers & intensity by right-wing rich. For every Soros there are 100 Kochs.
2. You often hear this in liberal & even left-liberal circles: "why can't liberal billionaires fund X" (X being a left counterpart to Fox News or The Federalist Society or ALEC. The answer is there are very few liberal billionaires & they are generally committed to status quo.
3. There's also this. The rich who involved with center-left politics tend to have agendas that are the opposite of pursuing "progressive politics" (unless you have the most anemic possible progressive agenda).