Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

good to know. Looks like the second half is behind the Patreon paywall and I shan’t be doing that. I’ll wait til it’s available by other means

the cushvlog audio feed is the best ever (or at least most reliable/consistent) content to come out of the entire dirtbag left imo

lol Jamie Peck on Majority Report is like one of those conservatives on the View or whatever. She has to start every thought with, "Well, as a Marxist I..."

the long TrueAnon interview w/ Mike Davis is some really heavy shit. Do not listen if you can't handle a heavy dose of (totally reasonable) pessimism.

― the typo doer (Simon H.), Sunday, October 4, 2020 5:58 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

This has inspired me to listen to my first ever spoken word podcast (I'm kind of a pessimism stan). It was mostly very interesting and informative, but as someone with a background in enviro sci, some of it did verge on the alarmist, eg comparing the destructive power of wild fires with nuclear attacks. It was kind of clear to me that this is the perspective of a historian dabbling in ecology, the grounding in the evidence could have been stronger.

Personally I'm more curious about the socialist analysis though, I'd be interested if anyone here wants to riff on that a bit more, with a particular focus on how we can take immediate and effective steps to get there from here.

how we can take immediate and effective steps to get there from here

this is the question everyone is pulling their hair out trying to answer. the orthodox marxist answer (held by Davis and others, including me) is "form a workers' party/movement and wield the collective power of labor". but what that looks like / how it functions / how can it even *begin* to be formed in hyper-alienated, hyper-atomized 2020 is a general area of inquiry that seems to have as many distinct answers as there are people asking it.

Viborg, you might really like the Regrettable Century, done by a group of “revolutionary pessimists.” I’ve had them on my show before, too

https://podtail.com/da/podcast/the-regrettable-century/

I feel like there’s a lay pipe/ lay cable joek at the beginning of The Boys that’s instructive here

oops

wrong thread

#onethread

The old forms of the left are moribund and the new forms are stupid. We're making a podcast that talks about the need to organize a dialectical pessimism and develop a Marxist salvage project capable of putting up a good fight as the world burns around us. A clean, honest, and unsentimental melancholy is required; we've cultivated one and would like to share it with you.

oh wow this sounds extremely up my alley

Can't believe you people spent 24 hours making fun of @Harlan and nobody posted the Boss Baby picture. pic.twitter.com/pmw7U6EIew

— Respectable Lawyer (@RespectableLaw) October 9, 2020

Dark World Will Menaker

— MF ZOOM (@chemtrailblazer) October 9, 2020

Brutal... but accurate.

Q likely being run by father-and-son pornographers is one of those things that just makes too much sense

psyched about the ep title referencing a moderately known dischord band of my college years

I actually saw them live in a college basement, in fact

ep is p good so far. In the past I've felt a little like they didn't take weaponized conspiracy theory seriously enough -- sort of viewing it as just part of the great psychedelic american parade of crazies and not recognizing their deliberate political uses and the danger of that. Seems like they get a bit more into that here.

chrus is a better moderator/host than Will lol

chrus? really, autocorrect?

Was not surprised to hear liz, brace and the guy from the blowback podcast rep for the BBC mini-series versions of the Le Carré books

Producer Chris was a college radio DJ and has an obsession for the early 00s NYC scene, so he knows far more about music than the rest of them put together, except maybe Amber

I hope they review the new D'Souza joint

Viborg, you might really like the Regrettable Century, done by a group of “revolutionary pessimists.” I’ve had them on my show before, too

https://podtail.com/da/podcast/the-regrettable-century/

― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Thursday, October 8, 2020 11:37 PM

Thanks! I've got it bookmarked for when I have a nice chunk of time set aside to digest some of their fare. Gotta ration out my podcast consumption dontcha know.

Thanks also to Simon H for the thoughts (and I should really check in here more often, regrets). It seems to me that any significant revolutionary movement at this point would have to weave the three strands of economic justice, social justice, and environmental justice; rarely have I seen them woven effectively, but then I'm just a big pessimist.

Can I ask if any of y'all are on Twitter, or if you can recommend any accounts particularly worth following? (Not sure if this is a faux pas.)

...Obviously I've had too much coffee today. So here's a good example of how not to integrate justice issues effectively:

THIS is the PETA #SuperBowl ad the @NFL apparently didn’t want you to see and pressured @FOXSports to snub.

It envisions a world where respect is the right of every being and pays homage to Kaepernick and movements rejecting injustice. https://t.co/kD1osnKhuX #EndSpeciesism pic.twitter.com/clXzU79aZV

— PETA (@peta) January 31, 2020

What the fuck did I just watch

xp brisk_god is the only good Twitter account now

saw some clips from the briejoy/virgil vs chomsky thing on whether to boycott biden, because i like to inflict pain on myself

wait was it actually "vs"

Me and @briebriejoy argued with Noam Chomsky for an hour on the latest episode of @BadFaithPod. We won the argument. Listen here: https://t.co/ATPFCi0TyS pic.twitter.com/T34a5hkp3R

— Virgil Hexas 🦇🦇🦇 (@virgiltexas) October 12, 2020

oh for heaven's sake leave the old man alone

you would need to pay me at least a thousand dollars to listen to this

don't need to watch that when I can just read ILX politics threads

lol at Chomsky quietly dunking on Virgil and BJG and them claiming victory

I'm never going to listen to that pod or try to keep up with the Twitter discourse but I have doubts that "we won the argument" is serious.

yeah it's an obvious joke

It’s a dumb joke

given how so many twitter comments are like "CHomsky is dead to me now"--I'm not sure if peope are getting the joke

people are not getting the joke

which is a little too irony-poisoned to be funny anyway

not sure if that means what i think it means but i posted it anyway in the spirit of what we're talking about

it's funny/weird to me that of all the chapos, Virgil is apparently the one staking out an ultraleft position on this, given his love of horserace wonk shit. Matt's take (assess the stakes incl ballot measures and the like, vote appropriately, but don't ascribe undue levels of meaning) typically much more sensible.

Noam OTM

pic.twitter.com/jpRYAo0GfE

— Mangy Jay (@magi_jay) October 12, 2020

rightward shift of the democratic party

like, from 1972?

... yes?

given how so many twitter comments are like "CHomsky is dead to me now"--I'm not sure if peope are getting the joke

Which is more likely, these (as ever) vague unnamed masses saying that because of what Noam said, or because of one sentence in a tweet advertising the episode?

Is the Democratic Party of 2020 further right than they were in 2000, 2010?

About the same. Did you notice the likely President?

Agree Noam otm there but... Mangy Jay def not otm if they don’t think the Democratic Party has moved right on economic concerns in my lifetime

Grey is also OTM about leveraging votes and the endless parade of YOU CAN'T DO IT NOW enabling the worst impulses of the Democrats. The question is when to do it - most people seem to agree this isn't the time but you shouldn't write off the possibility of ever leveraging votes.