Socialism |OT| The Dawn of a Red Era

Mezentine · Feb 8, 2018

House_Of_Lightning said:
If "Group A" controls "Thing A", and has expectations of "Group B" before "Group B" can acquire "Thing A", then "Group A" has privatized "Thing A" and has assigned an exchange value to it. Meaning "Thing A" is a commodity.

If there is privatization, and there is exchange value and commodities as well as an authority that both protects the commodity and establishes its value, then there is a State.

This is a Capitalist relationship.

Its a mercantile relationship, not nessecarily a capitalist one. Control of scarce commodities goes way back, again usually between geographically distinct groups, such as the advantage the Greeks had in the production of olives. I'm asking how much we trust even socialist communities to not approach relationships with strangers as transactions. Precisely my concern is how good we will actually be, in practice, at providing Venezuela with everything they need unconditionally without asking "and what will you do for me?"

House_Of_Lightning · Feb 8, 2018

Mercantilism is Capitalism.

Mezentine · Feb 8, 2018

House_Of_Lightning said:
Mercantilism is Capitalism.

I just mean that people trade goods. Has capitalism been the dominant mode of power for the last two thousand years then? I think we're operating on different definitions

There's a good piece (from The Atlantic, yes) about how the idea that trade started with the barter system is largely bullshit, and that in early human civilization the "gift economy" consisted of freely given aid between people. But, crucially, it still recognizes that the gift economy existed within villages and communities, and that between communities or with strangers people still engaged in transaction: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/barter-society-myth/471051/

When barter has appeared, it wasn't as part of a purely barter economy, and money didn't emerge from it—rather, it emerged from money. After Rome fell, for instance, Europeans used barter as a substitute for the Roman currency people had gotten used to. "In most of the cases we know about, [barter] takes place between people who are familiar with the use of money, but for one reason or another, don't have a lot of it around," explains David Graeber, an anthropology professor at the London School of Economics.

So if barter never existed, what did? Anthropologists describe a wide variety of methods of exchange—none of which are of the "two-cows-for-10-bushels-of-wheat" variety.

Communities of Iroquois Native Americans, for instance, stockpiled their goods in longhouses. Female councils then allocated the goods, explains Graeber. Other indigenous communities relied on "gift economies," which went something like this: If you were a baker who needed meat, you didn't offer your bagels for the butcher's steaks. Instead, you got your wife to hint to the butcher's wife that you two were low on iron, and she'd say something like "Oh really? Have a hamburger, we've got plenty!" Down the line, the butcher might want a birthday cake, or help moving to a new apartment, and you'd help him out.

On paper, this sounds a bit like delayed barter, but it bears some significant differences. For one thing, it's much more efficient than Smith's idea of a barter system, since it doesn't depend on each person simultaneously having what the other wants. It's also not tit for tat: No one ever assigns a specific value to the meat or cake or house-building labor, meaning debts can't be transferred.

And, in a gift economy, exchange isn't impersonal. If you're trading with someone you care about, you'll "inevitably also care about her enough to take her individual needs, desires, and situation into account," argues Graeber. "Even if you do swap one thing for another, you are likely to frame the matter as a gift."

Trade did occur in non-monetary societies, but not among fellow villagers. Instead, it was used almost exclusively with strangers, or even enemies, where it was often accompanied by complex rituals involving trade, dance, feasting, mock fighting, or sex—and sometimes all of them intertwined.

House_Of_Lightning · Feb 8, 2018

Mezentine said:
There's an good piece

Mercantile Capitalism wasn't really a major thing until the 16th or so century, but has a history all the way back to the 9th century. But along those years that it shared the stage with Feudalism, Slave Based Economies, Hydraulic Despotism, and, as the Atlantic article describes, Primitive Communism.

House_Of_Lightning · Feb 9, 2018

sphagnum · Feb 9, 2018

Now that's what I call ideology.

kristoffer · Feb 9, 2018

I legitimately chortled

sphagnum · Feb 10, 2018

Numbers aren't great but it's encouraging to see a shift.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, 76 percent of new union members in 2017 were younger than 35. That's pretty significant, considering that workers 34 and under make up just 40 percent of the country's total workforce.

...

Younger workers have always been less likely than older ones to be unionized. This is still the case—roughly 8 percent of workers under 34 are union members, compared with around 13 percent of workers 35 and older. Yet nearly 1 in 4 new jobs among younger workers in 2017 was a union job. Recent polling suggests that today's young workers increasingly identify with organized labor. Last year, Pew Research found that 75 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds (including 55 percent of young Republicans) have favorable views of unions—a rate far higher than that of any other age group.

...

https://www.motherjones.com/politic...isis-now-theyre-unionizing-in-record-numbers/

House_Of_Lightning · Feb 10, 2018

Interesting thread:

Let's Put an End to 'Horseshoe Thoery' Once & For All

https://www.resetera.com/threads/le...eshoe-thoery-once-for-all.22354/#post-4392214

And here's my response:

https://www.resetera.com/posts/4392214/

Horseshoe theory is both true and false. As a false idea there are stark and significant differences between Capitalism and Socialism.

However in regards to the statement above, there's not much of a difference between Stalinism and Fascism. Both are movements that seek to liquidate perceived "nonessential" or otherwise sectors of an economy to achieve a specific economic and cultural goal. Both operated on the idea that a specific set of constituents were the legitimate power holders of society and that this electorate's political opposition were fully expendable through violence and liquidation for political crimes. In both societies the State was was used as the ultimate mediator between labor and private life to ensure that economic and cultural goals were reached and maintained, that authoritarian and totalitarian hegemony were a necessary tool to discipline society that was no on board with these political ideals.

As far as the modern day bourgeois democratic state, what are the "supposed" "Left" and "Right" parties but both capitalist oriented managerial political cliques that aim to use the organs of the State for their own ideal end? Both require the State to prop up their preferred constituent and are willing to use State violence as a disciplinary action. Both parties are politically unwilling to use the totality of the State, but then again, we're not in a period of extreme societal collapse that prompts it.

Regardless, both wings of society operate the same, use the same tactics, envision the same political outcome.

At the end of the day, Horseshoe Theory is a problematic statement because it is also used to show contrast between entities that significantly more alike than not, it is often used when comparing "Apples to Apples" instead of actual contradictions or concepts that are the negation of each other.

Horseshoe Theory is wrong when applied to Socialism v Capitalism. It exists in the subset of Capitalist Political Movements and their extremism and how these relate to the non radical sectors of Capitalist society.

sphagnum · Feb 10, 2018

It's a nice analysis, but on the other hand, memes.

House_Of_Lightning · Feb 11, 2018

I left off one important similarity between Stalinism and Fascism: Both were Capitalist.

Mezentine · Feb 12, 2018

Oh god, some of the North Korea takes on Twitter. Guys, the people don't own their labor, at all. It is actually an oppressive dictatorship. There's nothing worth defending there (aside from the people obviously)

EDIT: Bah I'm in a particular sort of mood today. I'm not normally an "American democracy rah rah" kind of guy, but it's hard not to be annoyed at the types who are (rightfully) horrified at the efforts of the GOP and the Tories to destroy democratic mechanisms to entrench power for the purpose of creating a (more) xenophobic and unequal society, but turn around all like "oh we can't have opinions about how other nations conduct their affairs, it's not our place". Motherfuckers, what do you think autocratic regimes stand for? It ain't compassionate humanism

House_Of_Lightning · Feb 12, 2018

Tankers gone tank

Mezentine · Feb 12, 2018

House_Of_Lightning said:
Tankers gone tank

Yes but also this feels like its more than just the standard Tankie crowd. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. I'm not going to make it a whole thing, just venting for like...thirty seconds. But it feels like anti-imperialism sometimes slides over into "the nations of the world shouldn't concern themselves with each other" sometimes

Bonen no Max'd · Feb 12, 2018

I see why Trump and Macron get along so well now

It never ceases to amuse me that Macron was the Great Centrist Hope before turning out to just be a conservative. At least Trudeau is good at the nice PR.

House_Of_Lightning · Feb 12, 2018

I think the general "Left" anti imperialist line is severely flawed and is a remnant of Stalinism/Khrushchevism. It ultimately favors one form of Capitalism over another and does so from an outdated perspective on the concept of Imperialism without regard to the nature of modern day Global Capitalism.

Mezentine · Feb 12, 2018

I think that its the most pointed critique of American interference abroad, both historical and contemporary, and its valuable in that sense since like, no-one else in the US wants to touch that topic with a ten foot pole.
But its maybe the area of modern progressive/socialist/communist thought that most feels like a lot of people going "everything is bad currently and...uh...???"

Like, even people who normally are fine staking out controversial opinions still can't quite bring themselves to commit to "Assad's use of chemical weapons is no-one else's business". No-one has any clue what global politics in the 21st century actually should look like, we just know a lot of ways that they shouldn't

House_Of_Lightning · Feb 12, 2018

Partly because most of Western humanitarian efforts have been as disastrous as the problem.

Bronx-Man · Feb 12, 2018

Bonen no Max'd said:
I see why Trump and Macron get along so well now

It never ceases to amuse me that Macron was the Great Centrist Hope before turning out to just be a conservative. At least Trudeau is good at the nice PR.

People were calling that way before he got elected. Sucks, but thank god it's not Le Pen in office.

House_Of_Lightning said:
Partly because most of Western humanitarian efforts have been as disastrous as the problem.

An objective fact.

Mezentine · Feb 12, 2018

Okay so I delved into a bit of the Twitter discourse more and I understand what was going on with the North Korea conversation today. Namely that some people's position is that discussion of North Korean human rights abuses contributes to US propaganda justifying military action. This is barely about socialism at this point but whatever, this is the place I brought it up I guess

I disagree with that on two points:
1. I think its a really bad idea to even incidentally provide cover for human rights abuses by saying that we can't talk about them. This sort of stuff should never be normalized and we shouldn't signal that its acceptable. And yes obviously this includes all of the shit that the US and other western nations get up to, believe me.

2. I also can't recall a time I've ever heard conversation about military action in North Korea, from Trump, or Obama, or Bush, or anyone, discussed in terms of "we have to because they starve people and throw them in prison"? Its pretty much exclusively centered around the nukes. "The US state wants to use North Korean abuses as a pretext for war" just falls flat for me, since they just seem to use the missiles.

House_Of_Lightning said:
Partly because most of Western humanitarian efforts have been as disastrous as the problem.

This is another one of those problems that no-one has any sort of vision for how to solve though. Like, if you ask me, clearly reparations in some form are due to a huge chunk of the world as a result of colonialism. Setting aside getting colonizing nations on board with even doing such a thing, how do you make sure the results don't just enrich a small handful of elites or empower autocrats? The way that it almost always seems to go when even a fractional effort is attempted.

None of the options seem good.
"Just let the world develop now without further interference" - okay but a handful of nations have major material advantages as a result of several centuries of exploitation, and others struggle to even feed their populations

"Redistribute wealth from colonizing nations to those who were exploited" - okay but this has never gone well in the past and, arguably, is a significant contributor to the exact set of messes we currently find ourselves in

"Let people from impoverished nations immigrate without friction to wealthier nations" - Okay but a lot of people all over the world don't want to leave their homes where their ancestry has lived for hundreds or thousands of years and that's not unreasonable

There doesn't seem to be any good idea for how things should be or even how they could be. We're drowning in models and theories and literature about how to organize a community to be socialist, or communist, you can't throw a brick without hitting a dozen websites that outline, in detail, this or that movement's ideal vision for the organization of wealth or labor, but "what can a global community look like" is this huge gaping hole

House of Lightning I know that you're pretty staunchly against prescriptive theorycrafting, but this doesn't feel like a problem that's going to get solved by the proletariat of the world finally just organically mobilizing.

Bonen no Max'd · Feb 12, 2018

Mezentine said:
2. I also can't recall a time I've ever heard conversation about military action in North Korea, from Trump, or Obama, or Bush, or anyone, discussed in terms of "we have to because they starve people and throw them in prison"? Its pretty much exclusively centered around the nukes. "The US state wants to use North Korean abuses as a pretext for war" just falls flat for me, since they just seem to use the missiles.

Surprised you can't make the connection on this one. While none of the North Korea hawks are advocating military attacks because they're interested in the well-being of North Koreans (and are going to justify action on natsec grounds), the human rights abuses are necessary to highlight to justify maintaining and escalating the conflict. By portraying North Korea as an irrational and oppressive regime opposed by the virtuous United States, it turns the conflict into a morality play which justifies further actions.

Iraq was also invaded initially on natsec grounds but it wasn't realist ideas about security that were exclusively used to sell the war. There's a reason no one in the government is highlighting Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses, right?

Mezentine · Feb 12, 2018

Bonen no Max'd said:
Surprised you can't make the connection on this one. While none of the North Korea hawks are advocating military attacks because they're interested in the well-being of North Koreans (and are going to justify action on natsec grounds), the human rights abuses are necessary to highlight to justify maintaining and escalating the conflict. By portraying North Korea as an irrational and oppressive regime opposed by the virtuous United States, it turns the conflict into a morality play which justifies further actions.

Iraq was also invaded initially on natsec grounds but it wasn't realist ideas about security that were exclusively used to sell the war. There's a reason no one in the government is highlighting Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses, right?

Oh believe me I know and understand why no-one in the government highlights Saudi Arabias issues, I guess I just don't see them highlighting North Korea's either? Maybe I just had this one specific blind spot but I don't recall any suggestion that we "had to go back to Korea and clean up" until they were specifically able to frame it as "because they want to chuck missiles at us"

Bonen no Max'd · Feb 12, 2018

Mezentine said:
Oh believe me I know and understand why no-one in the government highlights Saudi Arabias issues, I guess I just don't see them highlighting North Korea's either? Maybe I just had this one specific blind spot but I don't recall any suggestion that we "had to go back to Korea and clean up" until they were specifically able to frame it as "because they want to chuck missiles at us"

I think this is just a blind spot, I feel like North Korea's human rights abuses have been talked about a lot. I definitely knew it was a fucked up place as an apolitical teen when I certainly couldn't have told you about, say, Myanmar.

Mezentine · Feb 12, 2018

Bonen no Max'd said:
I think this is just a blind spot, I feel like North Korea's human rights abuses have been talked about a lot. I definitely knew it was a fucked up place as an apolitical teen when I certainly couldn't have told you about, say, Myanmar.

Oh yeah sorry don't get me wrong, I was very aware of how bad things were over there, but I never had the sense that anyone thought "we should do something about it" (something that actually made me angrier when I was younger). Hell, I feel like "we need to do something about Assad gassing people" got more official play than "we need to do something about starving North Koreans". North Korea largely just didn't seem like a thing the US State Department cared about spinning a narrative for

I'm going too deep down this rabbit hole on what is basically some Twitter banter, so I'll stop here unless anyone wants to keep engaging on this topic, I just found myself very annoyed that North Korea apparently needs us to stop talking about its well documented abuses as part of some grander geopolitical strategy.

Lafiel · Feb 13, 2018

North Korea is pretty fucked as a country, but I think people should be conscientious of the power imbalance between the United States and North Korea and a lot of what North Korea does is not necessarily irrational and the "left" should be definitely opposed to any escalation of conflict, esp since it could have some seriously terrifying implications for all of us.. not just North Korea.

Also I feel a lot of liberal analysis of North Korea actually fails to address why North Korea is the way it is today and how ultimately their paranoia of the United States is 100% justified in the context of the fact their country was bombed to the ground by the US.

sphagnum · Feb 13, 2018

NYT seems like it's trying to live up to the phrase "Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds."

Mezentine · Feb 13, 2018

Politico

What

Bronx-Man · Feb 13, 2018

This is the most embarrassing day for American journalism I can think of in a long time.

manchego obfuscator · Feb 14, 2018

Mezentine said:
Politico

What

Sorry, I've been playing Assassin's Creed for the past few hours. What did they do, run an article endorsing indentured servitude or someth

Mr.Mike · Feb 14, 2018

manchego obfuscator said:
Sorry, I've been playing Assassin's Creed for the past few hours. What did they do, run an article endorsing indentured servitude or someth

Yes actually.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/13/immigration-visas-economics-216968?lo=ap_d1

House_Of_Lightning · Feb 14, 2018

My solution to NK is to flood them with kindness and aid and remove the imperative that is the ruling dynasty.

Lime · Feb 14, 2018

https://thenib.com/black-and-red?t=recent

House_Of_Lightning · Feb 14, 2018

That's a pretty bad comic.

Lime · Feb 14, 2018

Best piece on US liberal ideology I've read in a while:https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n04/pankaj-mishra/why-do-white-people-like-what-i-write

Feel free to share it or create a thread if you likewise find the many truths in it

sphagnum · Feb 14, 2018

Lime said:
Best piece on US liberal ideology I've read in a while:https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n04/pankaj-mishra/why-do-white-people-like-what-i-write

Feel free to share it or create a thread if you likewise find the many truths in it

This was a really good piece. I'm glad he holds out hope for Coates' potential continued evolution and is able to see the value he contributes - a lot of the time it seems like socialists on Twitter etc. just immediately write him off because "He's a liberal!!!"

House_Of_Lightning · Feb 14, 2018

I've never heard of him, but the article doesn't paint him as an interesting or particularly progressive person outside of what is the popular rote "woke" "radical" Liberalism that people try and pass off as progressive.

House_Of_Lightning · Feb 14, 2018

In Jay Z's words, 'Rosa sat so Martin could walk; Martin walked so Obama could run; Obama is running so we all can fly!'

cultofpersonality.mp4

Mezentine · Feb 14, 2018

"Distortion by proximity" is absolutely a thing, and one that explains a tremendous amount about industries like Hollywood and Washington-adjacent political writing. I think Coates absolutely "bought into" the particular vision of Obama described, hell we have all of the writing that shows it.

But the author is losing me just a bit with the brief foray into aligning the Tea Party, Occupy, and Black Lives Matter as "anti-elite". Different groups have dramatically different definitions of who the elites who need to be torn down are.

Good piece overall though

House_Of_Lightning · Feb 14, 2018

Exactly. It's less anti elite and more replacing one elite with another.

lmcfigs · Feb 14, 2018

Apparently Jordan Peterson was so triggered by Zizek's criticism that he was trying to pick a fight with a fan account that only tweed quotes.

House_Of_Lightning · Feb 14, 2018

What criticism?

sphagnum · Feb 14, 2018

House_Of_Lightning said:
What criticism?

He wrote on article on why Peterson is stupid but how liberals' failures give him an opening for an audience.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...g-why-left-wing-alt-right-cathy-a8208301.html

Subsequently Peterson got mad at the wrong Twitter account:

https://mobile.twitter.com/shujaxhaider/status/963820282527014917

sphagnum · Feb 15, 2018

As Adam Johnson, a contributing analyst for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, told me, a November study he conducted found that the "New York Times has dedicated 21 columns and articles to the subject of conservatives' free speech on campus, while only three covered the silencing of college liberals or leftists."

...

The Anti-Defamation League reported that incidents of white supremacist propaganda on U.S. campuses more than tripled in 2017. Groups doubling down on campus propagandizing include explicit neo-Nazis like the Florida-based Atomwaffen Division, as well as associations like Identity Evropa, known for couching its unabashed racist message in thinly veiled panegyrics to protecting Western culture and posters bearing Michelangelo's David.

"The 'alt-right' is a movement of mostly young white males," Carla Hill, senior researcher for the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, told me. "They realize that for any movement to truly grow, they must reach young minds, and this segment of the white supremacist movement has been focused on doing that."

The potential gravity of this surge was then underlined by a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, titled simply, "The Alt-Right Is Killing People." More than 100 people have been killed or injured since 2014 by perpetrators believed to be influenced by the racism and misogyny that defines the so-called alt-right, the center found. More than 60 people were killed or injured in "alt-right" violence last year alone.

...

The Anti-Defamation League reportedseparately in November that white supremacists and other far-right extremists were responsible for 59 percent of all extremist-related fatalities in the U.S. in 2017, up from 20 percent in 2016. While it's too soon for much dispositive social science on the link, it's difficult to consider all this data outside of the Trump era in American politics.

OVER A YEAR ago, there was no shortage of coverage predicting this sort of uptick in racist violence. The possibility of it occupied the liberal commentariat as Donald Trump's presidency loomed as an unlikely aberration. Opinion pages in late 2016 ran dozens of pieces wondering whether a Trump regime would be a truly fascist one, warning of emboldened white supremacy and neo-Nazism.

...

Even as bigotry and racist violence have dug into their footholds over the course of the last year, many of the same liberal publications once seemingly obsessed with the threat of fascism have devoted more energy to decrying the students and staff organizing to expunge hate from their midst.

At New York Magazine, for example, centrist ideologue Jonathan Chait decried the "repressive methods and slogans" of leftists chanting, "Shut it down!" New York Times neoconservative Bari Weiss tweeted in horror that it was "amazing to watch leftists turn free speech into a right-wing issue." In a New York Times op-ed, the president of the University of Oregon, Michael H. Schill, said the campus "crusade" against fascism was "misguided."

After the right-wing "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, descended into violence, including the killing of a protester by a far-right rally-goer, Trump came under heavy criticism for blaming "both sides." Yet the mainstream media has too frequently adopted an almost identical stance when it comes to the balance of coverage between left-wing and right-wing demonstrators. In the month following the rally, America's six top broadsheet newspapers ran 28 opinion pieces condemning anti-fascist action, according to FAIR, but only 27 condemning neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and Trump's failure to disavow them.

The Anti-Defamation League's November report evidences the flaws in this "two sides" position. The group found the far right was responsible for 71 percent of domestic extremist killings in 2017, but only 3 percent of killings were attributed to "left-wing extremism" — and even reaching this figure meant the Anti-Defamation League lumped together "anarchists and black nationalists."

...

To be generous, the media focus on the free speech canard could reflect the reasonable assumption that readers already know emboldened white supremacy is bad. To be less generous — and more realistic — liberal and centrist media institutions don't care as much about white supremacy as they claim to. White supremacy has never stood at odds with the American status quo. Its rise on college campuses is a disgrace, but in itself is not a disruption.

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/alt-right-campus-free-speech-adl-splc/

Mezentine · Feb 15, 2018

So the obviously cynical explanation, that the mainstream media and mainstream pundits sympathize with Nazis to the point of defending their right to free speech...doesn't feel quite right, but isn't entirely wrong. I suspect more than a sympathy for white nationalism (which, to be clear, there is a fair amount of) there's a "distortion by proximity" going on here. Pundits see other pundits being shouted down, protested off campus, and go "well I don't want that to be me". Their general occupational identity as "people who say words and have crowds listen" transcends their broader political identity.

However the larger problem here is that the harassment, campaigns of intimidation, and silencing of more progressive and marginalized voices doesn't get nearly the same amount of attention, and that may be a larger reflection of the way in which those voices don't get attention, period. They don't get book deals, they don't get headline worthy speaking engagements, they don't get their own cable shows. They get an interview or two on a cable show, they get self published works and a Twitter following. And so when the right tries to silence them there's less eyeballs on what's even happening.

And in parallel with that the ultimate problem with the news media remains that, as a for profit industry, it is ultimately incentivized to show wide swathes of people what they want to see, and what a lot of them want to see is condemnation of "antifa" and "black lives matter"

Oh boy, "distortion by proximity" is going to become one of my new favorite phrases isn't it? It perfectly ties into my now developing highly topological framework for thinking about social relations (by framework I mean "all these thoughts in my head that sort of link up")

lmcfigs · Feb 15, 2018

Guys, I'm so happy about Slavoj Zizek and Peterson thing - you don't even know. Both Stefan Molyneux and Peter Rollins (who I deeply respect) have hour long reactions to a pretty shitty article. Like Zizek put no effort into it and still gets a reaction.

sphagnum · Feb 16, 2018

lmcfigs said:
Guys, I'm so happy about Slavoj Zizek and Peterson thing - you don't even know. Both Stefan Molyneux and Peter Rollins (who I deeply respect) have hour long reactions to a pretty shitty article. Like Zizek put no effort into it and still gets a reaction.

Top tier trolling by Zizek.

manchego obfuscator · Feb 17, 2018

Seeing some very... provocative takes on Black Panther from black leftists on Twitter. Not sure I should comment too much as a white person who hasn't seen the film yet, but I'm definitely looking forward to reading a broader discussion of how the film depicts black liberation, the CIA, etc.

Mezentine · Feb 17, 2018

Black Panther is about as...radical as they could manage to get away with with a big budget Hollywood movie, is probably all I'm qualified to say on the matter. Which is to say that it says more than I expected to, while nevertheless not being able to say enough for some people.

With that said, there are a couple moments where I felt like I could see the characters/the script/the director/whatever creative process you want to credit having to reign itself in slightly. Specifically

how Killmonger's crusade is not just to arm black people for a war of liberation but a war of African supremacy, which felt almost like they had to frame it as such because if it was just a war of liberation he becomes much more reasonable sounding

sphagnum · Feb 17, 2018

manchego obfuscator said:
Seeing some very... provocative takes on Black Panther from black leftists on Twitter. Not sure I should comment too much as a white person who hasn't seen the film yet, but I'm definitely looking forward to reading a broader discussion of how the film depicts black liberation, the CIA, etc.

Are the reactions more about Killmonger or T'Challa? Or behind the scenes stuff, like how it's a movie made by a white run company to make a profit while portraying itself as socially important when we all know Perlmutter and co don't care?

Mezentine · Feb 17, 2018

Ugh I swear "Russia stuff" brings out the worst in literally everyone. I need to wait for online discourse to stop being universally insufferable again

EDIT: I know he's not popular in more progressive circles for some valid reasons (and some not) but MovieBob's take on the Black Panther thing and the larger issues of mass entertainment as a product of corporate machinery pretty closely echoes my own: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVgNSLpiM2E

Short version: there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, but that doesn't mean that we can't take what we consume and let it inspire good things within us regardless. I really would recommend the video, its one of his best (minus some questionable moments at the end)

Socialism |OT| The Dawn of a Red Era

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