How to assimilate Marxism and make it serve reactionary, nationalist, bigoted, exclusionary, and anti-working class politics. A 9 part thread with pictures.
1. Dig up ideologies developed by shady ex-Leninists who’ve embraced Right-Libertarianism, nationalism, class collaboration, xenophobia, reformist capitalism, and use anti-”PC” rhetoric to base-build with reactionaries and far right parties, but pretend it’s Marxist.
2. Find convincing thought leaders to promote this ideology while hammering at the liberal left. Lump together cartoonish neoliberal left views with anarchists, libcoms, and all other socialists outside the group while bolstering far right politics as “working class” and normal.
3. Appear in high profile left publications/podcasts, pushing them Right on the pretense of providing “class analysis” even as you promote capitalist borders as a mechanism of labor control, push capitalist development, center electoral politics, and promote red brown alliances.
4. Push reactionary recuperations of radical critiques. In print, on Fox News, podcasts, blogs, etc., repeat the mantra that all to your left are “liberals” and the far right are potential allies. Wear down resistance to the now unrecognizable appropriations of left ideas.
5. Present the new hybrids of far right, center, and left ideas openly and act as if this has always been what true socialism was about, even as your messaging starts to resemble a shooter’s manifesto’s mish mash of ideologies that can’t hold together.
6. Increase the dissemination of your reactionary ideology across the political spectrum, tailoring to right, left, and centrist audiences as needed.
7. Meet all criticisms by accusing those making them of being mentally ill, hysterical, or incapable of “nuance.” Alternatively, insist that they have never produced any critiques of your politics and that you only wish they would so you had someone to debate.
8. Once you’ve smeared those to your left as “radlibs” and those to your right as “liberals,” close ranks and exclude them from the new “true socialism.” At this point it’s safe to drop the pretense of being Marxist, socialist, or on the political Left. You’ve won.
That's it. The first tweet was part 1 of 9 so there are 8 numbered theses. Thank you!
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I'm starting a thread in response to this person insisting Dave Chappelle's SNL monologue was not anti-Semitic. It's a partial critique but this is twitter. It will be 16 tweets long if it all fits properly, after this initial screen shot. I may also respond after in the thread.
Starts with denouncing anti-semitism, but it’s a joke. He’s just instructing Kanye how “you buy yourself some time.” Because the threat of Jews cancelling you is real, is what he’s saying. 1/
Next comes “never say ‘the’ and ‘Jews’ in sequence. Why? He’s “never heard someone do good after they said that.” Again implying the Jews got them. 2/
If we do get to an era of post-capitalist communal living I hope the councils will be very good about the livability of buildings. "Little" things like sound insolation so you don't get ptsd from neighbors stomping upstairs or cranking their techno mixing over a full PA.
Even when the noise is done without malice it can be extremely stressful. My current building is very good but when I lived in the Tenderloin there were major problems. Usually there is no one who will take it seriously or address it.
For people who've never lived in old buildings, they might not know the floors/ceilings can be extremely thin. It often comes with low income living.
Matt Bruenig doesn't understand the distinction between what Marx wrote about the price of simple-labour-power and how wages are actually determined. Since his tweets are auto-deleted ever so often I supply the screenshots in the thread below.
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3/8 (see following tweets for expanded images of embedded highlighted texts)
Doug Henwood + some of his friends have a record of being unable to sniff out bad faith actors. Heidi Matthews, Doug, and Ben Burgis (a few days ago!) are happy to go on the right wing Libertarian now more openly fascist Thaddeus Russell's show. They should have known better. 1/
Just a taste of some of who Russell feels the need to platform. 2/
Before Red Scare, Greenwald, Aimee Terese, Bruenigs, Chapo, Spiked, Catherine Liu, Elena Lange, Heartfield, Nagle, Lee Fang, and other weird right wing faux leftists, there was Larouche. He sold SDI to Reagan, worked with nazis, and wanted to be a paid agent of a security state.
He had a physical army of reply guys and a a cult which attracted political analysts. They published a regular newsletter purporting to contain useful information pertaining to national security. Many government officials were conned or threatened by his confederacy of dunces.
Like many modern day "left" populists, his roots were in Marxism. He developed dialectical theories that devolved into racist and nationalist conspiracy theories. His syncretic ideology attacked modernity, counterculture, and especially the left while positioning to dominate it
Matt Taibbi's Thanksgiving review of Zinn's PHOTUS is atrocious. It's Zinn, he says, not previous generations of historians like the Dunning School or Cold War scribes like the ones Taibbi misses, who spin "fairy tales" for "3 year olds" who need "binary" good vs. bad stories.
Zinn's book centers class struggle, women, indigenous, slaves, Blacks, socialists, anarchists, Civil Rights workers, etc. What a terrible crime. Taibbi's main analysis here is to call Zinn a libtard while celebrating the "Let's Go Brandon" spirit of the Founders/Constitution.
Taibbi ties Zinn's book to the imagined woke-scolds shaming his holiday enjoyment over some trifling genocide in the past. The implication is that Zinn's book paints us all as guilty descendants of racist Founders, but his book actually highlights righteous untold struggles.