Sep 23rd – 30th – A Week of Political Commentary During the Fall of An Empire
Been a long week, and reviewing it reminds me that I post way to goddamn much. I want to reflect and expand a bit on the ideas, and use this as a space to release drafts of longer thoughts. Read in no particular order, just watch the pretty videos if u want but please do enjoy, comment what you think and ofc if not already, subscribe if you are not already. At the end is a conglomeration of my videos this week.
This week I got put under an incredible amount of fire for my wild take that heckling war criminals is … good. I also has hundreds of Caleb Hammer fans deny his political role in some form of “soyboy you are looking to deep into his homophobic language and deeply unhelpful content”. And finally I spent a long time this week trying to outline some common myths about facsism and how I think yall should understand it.
So the three pieces are expansions and clarifications, with the postive response to the nonsense defending of Kamala, a simple structure of why Caleb’s content feeds right wing narratives, and a primer on how to start thinking about facsism in a tactical productive, though perhaps unsophisticated, manner. These are drafts to some extent, but I hope they are helpful.
Why Protest Kamala Harris –
TLDR: yes kamala had power and did crime with it. No protesting her is not wrogn morally (protesting war criminals nvr is) or tactically (it sets a good political line for our liberation + helps build the infrastructure for further work). If you dont think its a good use of ur time, do different work, but don’t pretend the people doing it are doing harm.
We should protest and heckle anyone who has every committed a war crime and not received justice for it. This is a very simple maxim, and yet when applied to our former Vice President, I get 20+ stitches saying leftists are the reasons fascists are in power. Counterpoint: Israel is a fascist state, so supporting it is empowering fascists.
I do wanna give a fully written response so the positioning is clear and we can hopefully move on to more productive uses of all of our time.
“She’s not a war criminal she was just VP” –
Stupid almost not worth addressing. The second in command of a administration is of course complicit. Himmler was complicit, Goebbels was complicit. gtfo.
“Why are you protesting her and not the people in power” –
This actually seems to often be in good faith and a genuine not understanding of why these protests are happening. Very simply – we do protest trump. the whole world is protesting trump. pretty much always, but you and I can agree not enough. So the strong version of this criticism (“You have much more smoke for kamala than trump”) is simply wrong, trump gets attack so much more.
“Any energy used protesting Kamala is better used against this admin”
This weaker version is still possible, and logically makes sense, those protestors literally COULD be going against trump. This misunderstands the relationship between one protest and another. Anti-imperialist protests against the dems are the very movements that developed into the infrastructure of the antifascist protests against the republicans. They are synergetic, not zero sum. The best example of this is if you literally track the activists doing anti-ICE work, about 1 year ago most of them were working in some form of pro-palestine work. Pro-Palestine work is necessarily anti-all imperialists, and thus in some form protesting the imperial actions of the democrats. In the same way oppression boomerangs to the metropole of the empire, the tactics for liberations boomerang too. ALSO the individuals protesting kamala had thier family literally killed by the Biden/Harris Admin, that is not just a token of energy that could be used anywhere, the grievance is specific and the harm is personal.
“We need to work together to beat fascism”
Great then work with us. Show up to the antiICE actions, help support mutual aid an direct action in ur community, stop calling the cops on people bc trump told u they are terrorists. I am HAPPY to work with war criminals, even though I think u should be in jail, hell i even voted for u. Are you happy to work with us? Is you being upset at a protestor who says mean words to you more important that fighting fascism? bc when u shun us bc of it, even though ur welcome in our spaces… it seems to suggest it is.
This feels like a more than fair summary of why u should get out and heckel any war criminal you see. its an act of democracy, of liberation and is just generally fun. Go watch the video of george w bush having a shoe thrown at him and tell me its not fucking hilarious.
Caleb Hammer and Personal Responsibility as Right Wing Propaganda –
TL:DR ; he is political and it is bad politics. This is obvious from the political consequence of what he is saying and displaying. it being hidden is part of the propagand. he could be not bad if he recognized and combatted this.
Every inevitably frat bro in my comments yelling at me that every person that signed up to be verbally abused on Calebs shows deserved it because they need to take some “Personal Responsibility“ and gave ever more ridiculous ways people spent their money to demonstrate the lack of this apparent virtue. These are the same people yelling at me that it is not in fact political. How they do not see the hypocrisy is beyond me. So lets run through this as clearly as possible:
Are His Actions are Political and Of what Flavor-
All Actions are political. But in a more specific sense, when you display emotion, publicly and intentionally, you are suggesting necessarily your reactions are justified, acceptable and either neutral or productive. When you make editorial choices about who to bring on, you are responsible for the narrative that develops whether ur intention or not. Caleb Hammer habitually highlights people making poor financial decisions who are in the situation where if they did not they would make a livable or even quite generous salary. This naturally makes an archetype of people struggling financially in this country, as people who could make better decisions who are choosing not to.
It is then not a far leap to see how if that is your archetype for struggling people in america, then your solution is focused on punishing them or rewarding them properly to change their behaviour, rather than giving them more money, because they will just blow it. I know more than two logical conclusions feels like reaching, but it should be obvious that this then naturally translates to policys that focus on infantilizing and “training” people out of poverty rather than simply giving life saving and necessary support to people that are.
This is not even getting into demeaning degrading or embarrassing these people publicly. If you do that, u are suggesting it is socially or politically justified to do that. This takes the archetype of an impoverished person in america and performs what he things should be done to them: the “tough love” of verbal abuse.
No matter how ridiculous someones spending, you will never convince me they have done something immoral. And even if they had, it will never be more immoral than the billionaires frivolously spending the money we made for them. By choosing to highlight them, and by berating them, he is creating the model interaction between you and poverty: not one of camaraderie and mutual aid, but one of individualist and infantilizing charity
“But don’t all financial shows do this” – How to do this right?
Yes and thats a problem. I recognize that stupid ppl with potential is the most interesting content, but that does not absolve them from political consequences. And it does not mean u cant do this content, u just have to do it consciously. The simplest way to do it is to verbally recognize what you are doing, admit it is not representative, don’t suggest financial advice as the only and unique change, be actively political because you already are. But he is not doing this, and so my critique stands.
Why does this Bother Me So Much –
Because these politics hurt people. This media builds the political concepts that are used to justify denying food to “welfare queens” or “Tough love” policies that trade giving diapers to new mothers for job training. We don’t in fact live in this fantasy world where people are poor simply because a random guy did not yell at you for an hour and centering that gives people an excuse to ignore the solutions. And when people are convinced this is the biggest problem, they justify worsening the real problem: people not having enough money to budget in the first place.
Fascism – My Practical Primer
TL:DR, when talking about fascism there is a lot more “yes, and”’ing rather than “um, actually”’ing. Be deeply interested in what they believe and where its coming from, because it displays their weakness and exactly how to beat them … again.
You may have noticed i am supremely bad at spelling fascism, I have it misspelled in multiple captions and i simply will never spell it correctly. That does not prevent me from recognizing them when i see them. They are the motherfuckers with swastikas on their arm, doing the heil and talking about a storm. But what do they actually believe? what are their policys and platform?
I am not going to to do an academic write up analyzing fascism, its not my field and its not my expertise. But i do wanna do a summary of how I approach fascism, because i think it may be helpful.
How to Think about Fascism being Multiple things –
As with all concepts its kinda a loose amalgam of ideas and things that are all equally true. Take this stapler:
it is equally a tool, and a weapon, and red and a capitalist construction and a cultural icon. All of these things completely and entirely describe the physical thing in front of us.
Fascism is equally a helpful word to refer to a lot of things. It is the strategy the wealthy use to direct working class politics away from the contradictions of capitalism (leftist defintion for more see1). It is also equally an actual real political movement that happened in the 1920s-80s (shoutout franco really holding out for the group). It is also an actual set of political theories that pre-date and differ from their implementation (ref Georges Sorel or Mussolinis og works). Further the modern understanding of it as a set of Authoritarian ultra nationalist policys is accurate and helpful.. though tells you very little about why and how those came about.
Finally it is very much a thing alive and well in americas political sphere, not really the same movement or theories or occupying the exact same place in leftist analysis (though it does look damn close).
My point is this is not a precise term, and it is an incredible important one primarily due to the place in the political popular imagination. Being able to pin someone with the label fascist is very (though unfortunately diminishingly) powerful. But which of the above definitions do you need to fufill to have that effect? In my experience of cynical instrumentalist rhetoric’ing, any of them.
How to use this understanding – Be as nimble and “Bad Faith” as the fuckers
How to Label them:
Fascists will always hop between these definitions to deny it“no no, i am not a fasicst, i hate mussolini but find Giovanni Gentile helpful” , so you should feel equally comfortable hopping between them , “well not only are both of them properly seen as fasicsts, but you are occupying the same position of them in the political world, diverting class consciousness to hyper-nationalism and bigotry” or when helpful “well you may not like the policys of mussolini but you are advocating the same policys as franco”. These different definitions exist on different levels of abstraction from the material policys, to the cultural context to the economic and political “why”. Positioning modern action, policys and movements in any of those contexts is sufficient to use the slur “fascist” , which contrary to popular belief is not used nearly enough. So if your goal is to convince non-fascists the person in question is a fascist, use any of them.
How to Understand them
If your goal is to undermine fascism overall, build a theory of change and of action to undermine it in america right now I cannot suggest enough reading up on historical fascism, what they believed and what they thought they were doing. Once you do, the relevance cannot be overstated, the themes and aesthetics and sometimes one to one the policies are just right there. Look into what the modern people on stormfront and at this point the white house are saying.
And by the way, the similarities are not only due to some esoteric marxian class and material analysis (though it definitely is also that) but modern day white supremacists, facists and racists are ALSO learning from history. they are obsessed with history and what their mythological leaders did. They are modeling and dogwhistling on the basis of what old nazis did, but that also means they have the same weakness’.
So yes, theory on this important, and yes fasicsm is also an actual set of policys and actions and yes I personally agree fasicsm is imperial capitalism falling in on itself. That is a helpful and true understanding. But when dealing with these nazis right now, the specific national myths, wierdo cult shit, and internal understanding will allow us a specific, nuanced and effective understanding to undermine them.
This is not a game of calling names, its a moment of being scared shitless bc its literally back from the 1930s. Learn it from the same place they did, understand it in the context of the fall of empire, and fight it fuckin tooth and nail.
As I said, I can’t summarize the long and varied history of the worlds biggest assholes. if you want a good LONG podcast series to understand these vibes I cannot suggest enough Cool Zone Media’s Weird Little Guys (Molly Conger pls notice me :)).
I hope this was helpful, and if you would like to support my work across platforms please do consider joining as a paid subscriber! If you do not want weekly updates or articles, feel free to subscribe to only the monthly one, I am trying to create a more censorship resistant network in case meta or tiktok inevitability dont appreciate my work LOLLL.
Administrative and Links –
All my videos in one place, please enjoy this deeply odd podcast :
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/australia/rem-fascism.htm
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