1. As Spider-Man leaps to top of box office charts, worth remembering so popular a character was created by a true eccentric. Steve Ditko, the primary creator, shunned the spotlight (unlike credit-hog Stan Lee), living in overlapping covert worlds of fetish porn & libertarianism
2. As I discussed earlier, from 1958-1968 (which encompass years he created Spider-Man) Ditko shared a studio with Eric Stanton, a specialist in fetish art. The two artists influenced each other & a fetish flair shaped Ditko's character design. jeetheer.substack.com/p/the-sexual-s…
3. During the years where he collaborated with Stanton and co-created Spider-Man (not just drawing the art but plotting stories, designing characters & providing first draft of dialogue), Ditko became Ayn Rand devotee. Which reinforced the fetishist proclivities.
4. Ditko's Randianism is usually talked about in terms of Mr. A and other characters he did for small-press (stories he owned & which were not commercial). Those do provide stark black & white morality of productive heroes versus parasites Image
5. Spider-Man is usually not seen as so bluntly Randian, but if you read the Ditko created stories closely, what comes through is an emotional libertarianism: not so much an economic doctrine but a vibe: the lone individual genius besieged by unappreciative society. Image
6. This emotional libertarianism (sense of being unappreciated, scorned, disdained by the unthinking mob while possessing secret gifts) is the true appeal of Randianism, more than the cod anti-statism (which is superstructural). For more on Ditko & Rand: jeetheer.substack.com/p/podcast-spid…

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More from @HeerJeet

18 Dec
There's a lot of talk of post-liberalism but surprisingly not much discussion (as far as I've seen) of Matthew Rose's A World After Liberalism, a really good intellectual genealogy. Reading it now and learning a lot. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/978030024…
Rose's book shrewdly traces to post-liberal Right to the Conservative Revolution in Germany of the 1920s (Spengler, Schmitt, Heidegger), an intellectual variant that overlapped with but was distinct from the Nazis. That's a useful frame.
Post-Liberal Right is confusing because it includes a bunch of wildly conflicting traditions (Catholic theocrats, neo-pagans, neo-confederates). But perhaps best understood not as a doctrine but a situation: the right that confronts decolonization & end of global white rule
Read 6 tweets
17 Dec
1. As a parent of three kids who love super-heroes I'm all for tact in keeping Spider-Man all ages. Romance yes, by all ages romance! But there's a paradox here because of the very outre sexuality that went into Spider-Man's creation.
2. Between 1958 and 1968, Steve Ditko, Spider-Man's primary creator, shared a studio with Eric Stanton, an artist who specialized in fetish art for, um, discriminating collectors. The two men would assist each other on art. Spider-Man was created in 1962, in the midst of this.
3. Ur-Spider-Man was brought to Marvel in 1962 by Jack Kirby (who already created insect heroes like Ant Man & The Fly). Ditko tasked with doing character and substantially reinvented, especially costume & origins.
Read 6 tweets
9 Dec
1. Last week @EoinHiggins_ & I talked about @ggreenwald, which provoked this tweet. I took it as a challenge & sat down with Greenwald to "say this to [his] face." Image
2. In the even, Greenwald and I had a spirited discussion that took up the history of "America First" (from Charles Lindbergh to the Birch Society to Pat Buchanan to Trump) as well as anti-immigrant nativism (from Henry Adams to Tucker Carlson).
3. If I had to find a theme in our conversation, I'd say Greenwald really wants to bend over backwards to give Trump & Carlson every benefit of the doubt as putative advocates of anti-interventionism & pro-worker policies. I see no reason to accept their rhetoric at face value
Read 4 tweets
1 Dec
Oh like you never broken serious ethical codes to help out a sibling keep a high powered position when they've been under multiple accusations of sexual harassment and also through their incompetence seem to have caused thousands of unnecessary deaths.
I think we have to make a distinction between being willing to help a family member out and working to keep a family member keep a job they shouldn't have. The two are not the same and indeed are at odds. Sometimes you help your family by easing the path of resignation.
There can be ethical tensions between family and society, although I think this case isn't quite it for reasons I suggested. For a better scenario, there's Springsteen.
Read 4 tweets
27 Nov
1. As Ghislaine Maxwell's trial starts, worth remembering the man in her life who had mysterious wealth, was an asset for multiple intelligence agencies, loved to secretly record those who visited him, and died under murky circumstances (suicide? murder?): Robert Maxwell
2. Robert Maxwell: born in abject poverty in a shtetl in Czechoslovakia in 1923, family destroyed by Nazis, distinguished military service, reinvention in England & rapid rise to wealth as a publisher, business fraud, dead naked body off of yacht (jumped, fell, pushed?)
3. Robert Maxwell had 9 children of whom the favorite was Ghislaine. Maxwell's last days on earth were spent aboard the yacht called The Lady Ghislaine. Ghislaine herself doted on her dad, and learned from him the art of making herself useful to a difficult, capricious man.
Read 4 tweets
25 Nov
1. This tweet and the accompanying article got a lot of attention when it came out, but we should be clear that they are merely stating a long held orthodoxy on American right: that some forms of fascism are benign & preferable to anti-fascism.
2. I'd say going back to 1930s (or perhaps 1930s) the dominant mode of conservative thought has been that figures like Mussolini & Franco are useful bulwarks against working class militancy & anti-fascism (because it involves an alliance with left) is itself dangerous.
3. Philio-fascism or fascist fellow travelling is pervasive on right and was especially strong from circa 1935-1975. It went into slight abeyance with rise of "human rights" & pro-democracy talk as anti-communist tool, but has come back with vigor in last 10 years.
Read 7 tweets

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