In the Aggregate: Critical Overload
Editor’s Note: In the Aggregate is a regular round-up feature here on NIDC, that showcases and expands on my social media analysis from around the web.
Steering Towards Clear Water
Well, after just over a month of learning to write while suffering symptoms of long Covid, I think I’m finally starting to get my bearings. Although it’s getting easier to write essays by the day, I’m still doing a lot of content creation on social media. As I mentioned in the last edition of In the Aggregate, I don’t particularly want to lose all of this stuff into the timeless digital ether, but I don’t want to drown out my formal writing by posting all of it here on NIDC either. So today I’m back with essentially a “best of” post collecting my favorite bits of that social media content from the past couple of weeks, all in one place.
As always, most of this material comes from my blog, or one of the four social media sites I use regularly; Twitter, Mastodon, Facebook, and now Instagram. I’ve edited some of it, expanded on other parts, and there’s some completely new bits for folks who follow literally every social media account I have. You shouldn’t have to click on any of the links inside this article to understand what I’m talking about, but as usual, people who do will find reference material and additional articles to read. Finally, please note that I’ve dropped the Longform Corner and Picture Show sections from this post; I’m thinking of doing something else with them and this article is already pushing six thousand words.
With all that out of the way, let’s play Debbie Doomer and peer deeply into the darkest heart of our shared capitalist death cult together.
I think it’s safe to say that the last three weeks have been a pretty bad time to be a “norms and standards” or “it can’t happen here” liberal. I know I’ve been pounding the drum about why liberal anti-fascism is ineffective at best, and perhaps even an oxymoron in its own right, but this is ridiculous. Pick your poison; do you want to talk about the Biden administration’s shameful inaction in the face of clear evidence the GOP organized a fascist coup attempt on January 6th, or the Democratic Party screwing the pooch against a fascist hedge fund executive pushing neo-Hooverism in Virginia? The mid-terms aren’t even here yet and this is already a rout in progress.
At this point, whether it’s a question of complicity, fecklessness, or cowardice is largely irrelevant; the center-right Democratic Party establishment and those who insist we place our faith in them are leading us all on a death march towards fascist totalitarianism on a boiling planet. You can kindly shove Godwin’s Law up your backside; the parallels between the elite “centrist” response to Americanized fascism and what went down in Weimar Germany are now becoming far too alarming to ignore. We are literally already in the fascist moment; and liberals are still waiting around for the magical politics referee to punish the right.
Say it with me so everyone can hear you in the back; you don’t beat fascism by ignoring it, that’s how fascism beats you. You beat fascism by stomping it back into the shadows, wherever and whenever it may appear. That’s anti-fascism; what the Democratic Party is doing looks a lot more like appeasement to me, but your mileage may vary.
Threads of War
So, I’m thumbing my way through Andrew Cockburn’s new book (The Spoils of War) and I’m again struck with the idea that the reason I don’t talk about foreign policy very often is because I just generally don’t process or tolerate make believe very well. The book certainly goes into this, before exploring the politicization and capitalization behind internal Pentagon decisions and politics. But ultimately the problem also exists on a macro level; most Americans have an objectively false understanding of why we fight wars.
And really, you almost can’t blame them; from their history books on through the nightly news, they’re constantly fed a stream of propaganda designed to manufacture consent for empire, which includes both current colonial occupations and future conflicts. I mean, that isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s Chomsky. But even on the left there’s this idea that the military and the state are engaging in the goal of building and maintaining an empire; essentially for its own sake. This is not strictly true and it clouds a lot of analysis.
The truth is that we fight wars for corporations, and to make rich guys richer. Furthermore, this analysis applies on both a micro level like Cockburn mostly talks about, and on a macro level that extends beyond just foreign policy and into the media, politics, and Wall Street. That’s not a metaphor. One of the eye-opening moments in my life came while reading the “boring economics” chapters of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” because it showed me the invasion of Iraq was as much about creating an investor’s paradise as it was about the oil.
Even setting aside the age-old physical struggle to open markets at bayonet point however, people rarely seem to understand that war is only expensive if you’re the one paying the bills. If you’re a weapons contractor, a logistics company, or a Wall Street investor who pays no taxes, its all profit. In other words, “we” are not all in this together. Someone is getting paid to build and supply bases. Someone is getting paid for the bombs we drop. A different someone gets paid to rebuild our new shadow colonies, and all the while investors in all those companies get paid too.
Cockburn’s book argues the U.S. military generally sees war as a bad thing because it gets in the way of all the individual fiefdom building. I’d agree with him, but the caveat here is that an endless bombing war seems to make all the worst people richer, and the Pentagon whole-heartedly supports that.
The real dark magic however doesn’t reveal itself until you put all this warmongering for profit into the context of a corrupt neofeudalist plutocracy like ours. Because the same guys making bank from wars, own the media that report the wars, and the politicians who declare them. Furthermore, the fact that the guys who profit from the wars own the media and the politicians, also means they own the folks primarily responsible for holding someone accountable for waging disastrous and inhuman wars. Funny how that works out, isn’t it?
If you put it all together, you end up with a kind of closed loop of corruption that pretty much always ensures the entire Pig Empire establishment will support a war; pretty much any war. Even for the investor class, smashing the war button is all profit and no downside. The crazy part is that this isn’t new, and it isn’t much of a secret. As far back as the 1930’s, Smedley Butler was writing that being the highest ranking soldier in the American army had effectively made him a “gangster for capitalism.” We’ve fought wars for plantation owners and coffee companies.
Look, I assume the people reading this aren’t rubes, so I don’t need to tell you America doesn’t fight wars for human rights. But it feels like most people don’t even realize that “winning wars” or the “national interest” are mostly irrelevant fairy tales that benefit the machine. The fact is the capitalist class “wins” every war we fight no matter what happens in the field. And if you ever wonder how it is that a country like America can have been “at war” for essentially its entire existence, the answer is that it’s our biggest slush fund for the ruling class elite.
As long as the same guys that profit from the wars continue to own the media that reports on the wars, and the political class that declares and ends the wars, absolutely none of this will change. That’s what I really mean when I say “Pig Empire.”
A Pretty Pinko Postcard
Well; it’s all jumping off and the shit has really hit the fan for the “it’s not fascism” brigade; including crypto-reactionaries fronting left. Enough incontrovertible evidence that the chud riot on January 6th was an organized fascist coup attempt that reached the highest levels of the Trump administration and the Republican Party, is now out, that the mainstream establishment is having trouble ignoring it. Although not too much trouble, it would seem.
Friends, I don’t want to say I told you so, but I told you so. This is a done deal and there’s no room to debate anymore, it’s right there in black and white. Trump, the GOP, and rich nazis did it. Any time you can get both Adolph Reed Jr. and Max Boot to sign an open letter saying “yup, this is fascism” – things are getting real; and real weird. Whether or not cowardly neoliberals can be bothered to do anything about it doesn’t change the fact that it happened, and the riot was clearly a fascist coup attempt.
Never forget however that all of this was predictable; folks like me straight up predicted it. How did we see it coming? Simple, it’s because fascism isn’t something being done to America, it’s something America embraced foundationally from the very beginning; even before there was a word for, well, fascism.
Nina-Bytes
Fossil Fuel CEOs Will Testify About Role in Climate Denial Before Congress
As announced on October 13th, Congress is hauling in the CEO’s of four major oil companies, and two powerful lobby groups, to testify (presumably under oath) before the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Environment. The group, which includes executives from ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell Oil, the American Petroleum Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, will specifically face questions about the industry’s role in supporting climate change denial. The hearing, which is scheduled for October 28th, probably wouldn’t have happened without the threat of a potential subpoena; although subcommittee chair Ro Khanna was too polite to do more than imply as much in the media. The obvious question here however is, what exactly is Congress hoping to learn?
Did Big Oil collectively lie about fossil fuels and climate crisis? Unquestionably, yes! We’ve caught them doing so. Did these same companies fund climate science denial propaganda? Absolutely! Once again, we caught them red-handed. Furthermore, none of this is new information; I was reading about it myself in books like Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate” in 2014, and Oreskes and Conway’s “Merchants of Doubt” way back in 2010. Frankly, these people have never stopped lying about fossil fuels and climate crisis!
The fact that these executives and their predecessors are not already in prison for what amounts to mass murder, is one of the most galling injustices of our time.
If you’re asking me in a vacuum whether it’s better to have these hearings, or to not have them, when discussing the objectively genocidal activities of oil executives over the past five decades, my answer is that having them is better than nothing. As many in the media have already noted, there are significant potential parallels between this situation and the 1994 Congressional hearings that ultimately brought Big Tobacco down to size; or at least into court, to get sued. Maybe someone talks too much. Maybe someone gets caught spouting obvious lies under oath. I’m not so cynical I’d pass up a chance to fuck with Big Oil and see if they panic. But I’m not getting my hopes up either.
The reality here is that we already know who is responsible for the climate crisis. We already know fossil fuel companies knew what they were doing. We know they purposely mislead and deceived the public. Even if nobody in power will admit it, we know they’re responsible for the deaths of millions already; with perhaps billions more on the horizon. There’s no mystery here for the subcommittee to solve; no secret to expose on live TV. It’s not a lack of knowledge preventing society from holding these folks accountable, it’s a question of money, power, and political will.
Let’s be very clear now. We don’t need a hearing, we need to start making arrests; and Ro Khanna doesn’t have the power to make that happen. These folks have openly destroyed the world with absolute impunity for forty years; telling obvious and outrageous lies to protect their profits. It’s not a secret, everyone, including everyone in government knows; yet they’re allowed to continue unmolested. That isn’t going to change because of this hearing. Until oil executives start going to jail for what they’ve done, there’s no reason to expect anything to change at all.
A Florida Anarchist Will Spend Years in Prison for Online Posts Prompted by Jan. 6 Riot
Well, if this lengthy write up by Natasha Leonard over on the Intercept isn’t enough to make your blood boil, I don’t know what it would take to do so. You should read the whole story, but to summarize; a Florida judge just sentenced an anti-fascist to almost four years in federal prison for tweets calling for “armed defense against possible far-right attacks on the state’s Capitol.” As Leonard points out, this is obscenely bonkers for several reasons.
First, in the wake of the January 6th Capitol Hill coup attempt, and a widely-publicized FBI warning about possible armed protests by right wing extremists at state capitols, the man (Daniel Baker) had every reason to believe such an attack might happen. Additionally, Baker didn’t threaten anyone individually, and took no significant action on the tweet. Finally, the pre-trial and post sentencing total of forty-four months is far longer than most of the fascists who actually tried to overturn an election on January 6th will receive.
Yes dear reader, you read that correctly; the guy got more time for tweets than armed fascists are getting for trying to hunt down and execute a Vice President.
This story exists at the nexus of so many aspects of the American fascism problem that it’s hard to know where to start unpacking them. We’re talking about a judiciary and a Justice Department riddled with reactionaries, authoritarians, and fascists; and I don’t just mean the ones Trump appointed either. Throw in litigators and fascist-friendly police eager to buttress corporate media claims of a (false) moral equivalency between fascist violence, and those who oppose it. Then you top it all off with a liberal political establishment more than happy to purge the left to appease fascists in right wing politics. Please keep in mind, this is Palooka Joe’s Department of Justice now; Merrick Garland works for him, not Trump.
Look kids, there’s a reason I’m constantly telling you to watch what you say on social media, and stories like this are that reason. The machine doesn’t need anti-terrorism laws to send leftists to jail for speech in opposition to fascism; they’re doing just fine already. It’s not an accident when Democrats talk about unity with fascists. Biden doesn’t keep blathering on about “anarchists” because he’s confused. Liberal antifascism doesn’t extend any further than “Orange Man bad,” and if they can knife the left to get the GOP to go back to a neoconservative normal, so much the better; it solves two problems for bougie centrists at the same time.
Liberals aren’t going to help you fight fascism; they’re more likely to throw your ass in jail for threatening order. That’s just the bald truth of it, I’m sorry to say.
Biden’s DOJ uses a Trump tactic: Federal prosecutors label Black Lives Matter protesters terrorists
In an odious sort of sequel to October 18th’s blog post, I’d like to share this opinion piece by Rachel Barkow over at the Daily News. Maybe I’m just not the brightest light on the porch, but liberals are going to have to answer a simple question for me on this one. Namely, which part of stopping the fascists is whatever the fuck is happening in this story?
Don’t think for a second that I’m exaggerating here; this is some Bull Connor bullshit right here. Sentencing these two as “terrorists” for throwing a Molotov at an abandoned police car, while not perusing the same “terrorism” escalator in a case that involved burning a police vehicle, but had nothing to do with protesting for racial justice, makes it clear that this prosecution is purely political. The Department of Justice is cutting deals that reduce a fascist coup attempt to misdemeanor charges, but they’re trying to put a couple of racial justice activists with law degrees away for decades.
U.S. Billionaires Got 70% More Wealth Under COVID. They Didn’t Deserve Any of It.
A little over a week ago, I published a blog that briefly touched on the historically unprecedented levels of financial inequity in our society. In that post I theorized that this phenomenon was both a contributor to, and side effect from, our society’s ongoing transition to a state of capitalism I, and others, have been calling neofeudalism. In this Jacobin article by Luke Savage, we get a glimpse of what that actually looks like in the context of an ongoing class war during a pandemic; and it’s predictably infuriating.
Using data from an Institute for Policy Studies report, Savage reports that the combined wealth of America’s billionaires has risen by seventy percent during the pandemic. This includes the minting of a hundred and thirty one new billionaires; creating a situation where just under seven hundred and fifty people “now own almost 70 percent more wealth than half the country combined.” Although Savage doesn’t mention it, the report also notes that this comes during a pandemic when eighty-nine million people in the U.S. have lost their jobs. “We’re all in this together” my shiny pink ass.
Explosive Report Says GOP Congress Members Helped Plan Jan. 6 Capitol Attack
Well my friends, it’s good to know that during my recent illness-related absence, I really didn’t miss anything important in the ongoing Pork Reich putsch storyline. You know what’s coming next, right? I promised myself I wouldn’t do this twice in one week, but I feel like events have forced my hand here. In the immediate aftermath of the coordinated fascist coup attempt in the U.S. on January 6th, 2021, I published an essay explicitly laying out the key details of what just happened. From that essay:
"This was a planned insurrection, attended by (ex) members of the military and American law enforcement, aided by Capitol Hill Police and the Department of Defense, funded by rich fascists, inspired by right wing media, as well as an openly fascist Republican Party and the goddamn president of the United States; this wasn’t harmless, people literally died and members of Trump’s fascist mob clearly had designs on committing politicized acts of violence against their perceived enemies."
As confirmed by every new piece of evidence revealed since, I was right. This was a planned coup attempt and the plotters do indeed reach into the highest levels of the Republican Party and the private sector. Of course its easy to say in hindsight that this was obvious, but frankly that wasn’t a popular opinion in either the mainstream media or the online circles I was writing in at the time. Now, this October 25th article by William Rivers Pitt over on Truthout, really just puts the icing on the cake.
Pitt’s report (which isn’t paywalled) draws from two recent blockbuster stories in the mainstream media; one at The Washington Post, and the other in Rolling Stone. The first story reveals that a key team of Trump advisors, lawyers, and other conservative minions rented a space in the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. to use as a “war room” in ongoing efforts to overturn the 2020 U.S. election. Why did someone rent a “war room” if this was a political protest that spontaneously got out of hand? You’ll have to ask Republicans; who are clearly lying because they’re guilty of trying to run a coup to keep Trump in power.
The second report is even more explosive and damning; it’s not every day you hear that a sitting Congressman offered Trump supporters blanket pardons in the event of a successful fascist coup after all. On October 24th, Rolling Stone reported that two January 6th (coup) organizers have described “participating in “dozens” of planning briefings” ahead of the coup attempt, with multiple Republican members of Congress and Trump White House staffers. As Pitt notes for Truthout:
"The report describes two January 6 protest insiders who claim they worked “back to back to back” with several Republican House members — Representatives Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert, Mo Brooks, Madison Cawthorn, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert and Marjorie Taylor Greene — and their senior staffers, who they allege were “intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent.”
Now this list of names is interesting for two reasons. First, it looks awfully similar to the list of people I (and others) insisted Biden’s Department of Justice should immediately arrest back in March of this year. Furthermore, the list includes the name of Lauren Boebert; who actively live-tweeted out the location of the Speaker of the House during the coup attempt. Clearly, the Congresswoman from QAnon was quite busy in the post election period.
Of course none of this is particularly shocking, but it does all add up to a conclusion so obvious even the American political class can’t ignore it; January 6th was a premeditated attack on the U.S. capitol to overturn the results of the election. In other words, it was a coup attempt; and since it was conducted by fascists, it was a fascist coup attempt. Will the fact that everyone knows that now change one single thing about how this plays out? Maybe, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for justice if I were you.
Jokes aside, I didn’t post this blog just for sweet “I told you so” action. This is serious, and the coup is clearly not over. As a rule, reactionary putsch attempts have to be stopped, and fascists have
to be confronted. You don’t beat these people by giggling nervously and ignoring them; that’s how they beat you. Refusing to go after billionaire fascists and their in-pocket politicians after a coup attempt isn’t just cowardly, it’s suicidal.
Lock ’em up Merrick, or god help us all come 2024.
The ‘Sensible’ Climate Compromise Is Not Sensible
Look, I’m not trying to be a killjoy here, but sooner or later as a society we’re going to have to talk about flavors and levels of self-deception in the fight to prevent climate catastrophe. Take for example this well-argued October 27th article by Alexander Sammon over on The American Prospect. As you may have heard, Joe Manchin and Big Oil are current eviscerating Biden’s environmental agenda in real time; an agenda that was already a milquetoast liberal compromise fantasy, quite frankly. Discussing the now-gutted climate crisis mitigation measures in the Build Back Better Act, Sammon notes that the Biden climate strategy currently centers around tax credits to two technologies; nuclear energy and carbon capture, utilization, and storage or CCUS.
As the author points out however, there’s a pretty big reason why that’s a terrible idea:
"So alongside the remaining clean-energy and electric-vehicle tax credits, beefed-up support for nuclear and carbon capture is what Joe Biden is going to take to Glasgow’s COP26 climate talks as proof of the United States’ willingness to tackle climate change head on. The inconvenient problem is that those technologies don’t exist, at least not in any meaningful way. In the name of compromise, Build Back Better is now forgoing proven, cost-effective technologies for unproven ones, because that, evidently, is less ideological."
Sammon then goes on to demonstrate that we’re lightyears away from producing enough nuclear power to meet our energy needs despite plenty of pre-existing subsidies, and that CCUS technology is basically a pipe dream that rewards the worst carbon-spewing supervillains to boot. Finally, Alex really brings home the bacon by pointing out that betting all your chips on fantasy ideas instead of investing in clean-energy solutions we’ve had for decades, is itself a form of climate science or climate change denial.
That last point is key when talking about why we’re failing to stop the climate apocalypse; what I’ve taken to calling the “neoliberal flavor of climate science denial” is an issue that deserves more regular discussion in our society. When we talk about climate science or climate crisis denial, most people think of astroturf campaigns by fossil fuel companies, or the unhinged ravings of reactionary right wing politicians. It rarely ever occurs to people to consider whether acknowledging climate catastrophe, and yet refusing to take meaningful action to prevent it because your donors profit from the situation, isn’t also clearly a form of denial?
And therein lies the problem I have with this piece. I’m not trying to pick on Alex; he’s absolutely correct that doing only a fraction of what is required to stop climate catastrophe is its own form of denial. Which unfortunately means writing an article that doesn’t acknowledge there’s no way to stop climate catastrophe without getting rid of capitalism, is also its own form of denial. Sammon is certainly not alone in this; just this morning I read a piece by a left leaning academic who admitted we’re all barbeque unless we get rid of capitalism, but proposed we forget about trying for now because it’s impossible. Clearly, the denial runs deep.
Can you hear me in the back? If you’re for preventing climate catastrophe and averting a mass extinction event, you’re against capitalism. You can’t scream “I refuse to acknowledge this” at a boiling planet and pretend you’re on the right side of this issue. There is no halfway position here; there’s no acceptable compromise between killing the planet for profit and saving the people, no matter what “reasonable center” you start working from. It’s capitalism, or the planet, and the rich guys have clearly made their choice already.
So the question I pose to the left-leaning media, who I agree with on so many other issues is simple: which side are you on? I’d choose quickly my friends; before capitalism gets around to deciding you’re an acceptable sacrifice too.
Twittering Masses
To be honest with you, I still don’t know if the above statement is a prediction, a conviction, or merely a hope; but I do know I mean it with all my heart. As I’ve written elsewhere, the ongoing labor strike wave in America (dubbed Striketober in the media) represents just about the only good news I’ve heard recently in our collective struggle against oncoming neofeudalism. Despite unsurprisingly atrocious coverage in the corporate media, the message that labor can organize to protect itself from capitalist predation is echoing in the discourse for the first time, in a long time. This is particularly inspiring to me as an anarcho-syndicalist who believes strongly in the power of the general strike.
Naturally, it’s not all gum drops and lollipops in the battle against the bosses however. The capitalist backlash against organized labor is already in motion, which is why I implore everyone on the left to continue showing solidarity and offering critical support to unionized workers and those attempting to organize; except cops, because they’re fucking scumbag class traitors with fake unions. Striking against corporate power comes with very real costs, and continuing the strike wave depends on critical support networks in labor class communities; solidarity isn’t just an idea, it’s a tactic.
The neofeudalist plan to atomize and isolate hyper-exploited workers depends on keeping the rest of us divided; together, the labor class cannot be subjugated. Let’s start doing more “together” and end this second gilded age before these mad billionaires kill us all.
Common Threads (of Reaction)
After watching mainstream “liberal” media waste a couple of days trying to blame a loss to a fascist hedge fund executive, by a neoliberal bagman Clintonite who pretty much ran on being “not Trump” in an election without Trump, on the “woke” left, I can’t say I’m sad to see them turn their attention towards the role scaremongering about critical race theory played in the Virginia governor’s race.
But just because these pinheads are talking about an issue, doesn’t mean they understand it or the nature of the threat. I don’t know how many more articles liberal influencers are going to write about what critical race theory actually is, and why Republicans have no idea what they’re talking about before they grasp that it’s completely irrelevant; for the sake of their editors and my blood pressure however, let’s hope it isn’t too many more.
As is standard with most reactionary culture war totems and fascist conspiracy theories, the facts about critical race theory don’t matter in the slightest, and the outrage CRT generates is actually a conduit for white Volkish rage and paranoia about a Black uprising. This is what happens when you inject local culture war political fights with organized Bircherism and fascist conspiratorial ideology. You’re trying to fight emotion-based Klan politics with citations from the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw like crackers care.
You folks have got to be kidding me right? The reactionary right’s war on CRT isn’t just an echo of prior culture war disputes and suburban school board fights during the time of desegregation; this is the local political manifestation of the new red scare, a modernized and updated Hooverism or McCarthyism that allows the right to wash openly white supremacist ideology into mainstream political discourse.
I’m not exaggerating here, and literally none of this is a secret. The critical race theory controversy was cooked up by a cracker reactionary propagandist named Christopher Rufo; a man who openly admits redefining CRT as a catch-all term to encompass anything that makes white wingers with dicks upset. This in turn was explicitly conflated with Marxism by fascist muppets like James Lindsay, funded by right wing dark money, and weaponized to win elections by the equally fascist Republican Party.
While bougie navel-gazing liberals on late night TV were having a good laugh about dumb hicks not knowing what words mean, the burgeoning American fascist movement worked on recruiting middle class suburbanites by transforming the phrase CRT into a shorthand for all the racist shit they think, but no longer feel at liberty to express in daily life. Mind you, it’s hardly surprising a corporate “liberal” media that happily uses the far right’s derisive definition of “woke” to demonize progressives would miss these facts.
Frankly I don’t think affluent liberal “thought influencers” particularly care either way; latent white supremacy and racialized grievance politics deployed by fascists don’t affect them very much, after all. If however they’d like to stop losing elections to made up cracker conspiracies and repurposed jargon, it might be a good idea to stop playing Scrabble with nazis and start focusing on what’s really going on here. A new, old, politically empowered fascist takeover in America.
Quickshot Quotation
It has been nine months since Joe Biden was inaugurated and his party gained control of both the House and Senate. Despite this, America is still a corrupt, planet-murdering, imperialist dystopia where we keep kids in cages, police punish sharing but not fascism, and poor people die so billionaire supervillains can make a few extra pennies on their stocks next quarter.
In light of all that, this week I’m sharing a quote by Assata Shakur that is without question the single truest thing ever written about American liberalism and American liberals. Are you confused when liberal actions fail to match their lofty left-ish rhetoric? Are you puzzled by the liberal commitment to racialized and gendered structures of oppression while they claim to oppose racism, patriarchy, and privilege? Do you ever wonder why the suburban “Vote Blue No Matter Who” set is calmly having brunch while Biden coddles fascists and guts even moderate assistance programs for the poor in his ever-shrinking budget bill?
Well wonder no more! The answer is simple; it’s because the rise of politically empowered fascism and revanchist violence doesn’t really affect them in an immediate material manner, but sharing with the victimized and exploited, certainly does. This is what folks who’re actually on the left mean when they say liberal activism and politics are conditional and performative; no bougie liberal is going to sacrifice any of their economic advantages, to generate a positive justice for the marginalized. Hell, as Assata notes, they’re just as likely to turn on you for suggesting a need to enact positive justice is still required; after all, that would imply liberal incrementalism didn’t solve structural racism when LBJ passed the Civil Rights Act.
Obligatory Begging for Subscriptions
Whelp, this is a little awkward. It’s been just over ten months now since Big Tech nuked my popular Twitter account; on Christmas Day no less. While I obviously don’t have any proof, I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that shutting down my account was intimately related to my (then) recent decision to start writing more about white supremacy and crypto-reactionary infiltration of left wing spaces. In the time since, I’ve worked hard to rebuild my presence on social media, but it’s safe to say the results have been mixed. I need your help, because quite frankly I’m drowning in a see of shadow bans, choke throttles, and algorithmic censorship.
There really is no dignified or interesting way to beg for subscribers, so I’ll just get right to the point. If you enjoy reading my work, and you want to keep enjoying it, I need you to subscribe to my websites, and follow my social media accounts. I also need your shares, your retweets, your word of mouth recommendations, and yes gentle reader, even your favestars. I need your help teaching the digital spiders that run the internet that content from Nina Illingworth isn’t something you can just bury under a cone of silence; and I simply cannot do this alone.
The good news here is that I don’t need any of your money. Everything I write (even on Patreon) is always free to read, and for reasons related to class solidarity and anti-fascist education, always will be. Although you can find links to literally all of my content in my signature at the bottom of every post, and on the Contact Page of this website, I’ll list all the ways you can follow my work below for completeness. Please note that the @ASNinaWrites account on Twitter is in fact not me; it’s a professional promotional account run on my behalf by someone much more polite than I am.
NinaIllingworth.com
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Which one should you subscribe to? If you’re asking me buddy, I’d try them all. Although I’m pretty much always moving content around, each node of the larger NIDC platform includes unique content just for subscribers to that account. Never miss a single word, meme, or postcard again; sign up for free on as many of the above services as you’d like.
Thank you in advance for all your help. And on that note, I’m going to get started on my weekend; I’ve got some hardcore cat mommy cuddles to catch up on.
- nina illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog
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“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”
