Comrades I have to report this attitude is... Getting worse and not just young folks.
I teach composition in the university. The major journal for our profession, College composition and communication, just published an article with this astounding claim:
. In the context of higher education, the presence of AI has intensified atmospheres of surveillance on college campuses (see McIntyre), including a reliance on AI detection software, a requirement of showing process work (i.e., showing document history in Google Docs), and an in-class restriction of computer devices
Folks, asking a student to show their work is now surveillance. Btw, I should say, instructors demanding Google docs history are obviously gone too far (I write in markdown), but asking a student for process work as some kind of panopticon in a writing class where the goal should be understanding the writing process, not the final product is a totally cracked claim.
No worries. I'm mostly influenced by the account of more anarchist led movements in Brazil from Vincent Bevins' If We Burn. Basically, I really appreciate the local efforts and ways that direct action can foster change, but in Bevins' account at least, those protests and actions, without a turn to more structured ML approaches, basically just opened the door for Bolsanarism. Now, this is just a journalistic account so YMMV but it really feels like there's certain hinge points in movements where you need to use representation, authority, and for lack of a better word, power and violence to both continue to achieve goals and prevent cooption.
Again, I have tons of respect for anarchist approaches and have nothing against them as tactics and even a strategy in local contexts. However, (and this is just me vibing, I have less theory for it), it feels like there's a point where a movement gets to a size where you can't just rely on mutual aid and decentralized approaches without opening yourself up to wreckers in a really dangerous way.
I don't want to dismiss it - direct action and mutual aid build org cohesion, preserve our members, and allow for us to produce meaningful changes on a small scale.
But the only way that change happens at scale is when those smaller pegs cohere into the mass movement that can go beyond just shutting down one node in the system of death. And that's going to require the takeover of current institutions of power (e.g. the military, police, etc) to both push the movement further and/or preserve it.
I'm sure electoralists might chime in here, and I don't want to entirely dismiss it but electoralism should be aiming to take over and use those institutions of power as well (e.g. the chapo take about using ICE to arrest and try everyone involved in the trump admin).
Needless to say, the only way we survive as a movement or species is through solidarity. But these are tactics for survival, and without an eventual turn to usurp the state monopoly on violence I sadly feel that's all they'll ever be.
A general strike is obviously a great goal but even that, absent inaction from the military or a revolutionary vanguard, would just eventually lead to the use of police/state forces to compel work through violence, no?
I basically agree with everything here. The comparison is just that it can't be the structural approach or goal. Obviously it can and should be done, but with recognition the real goal is to (in the case of charity) make it obsolete. I suppose it's almost the reverse with mutual aid (a 'withered state'), but in that case I think it's because at least as long as imperial forces are driving society no amount of mutual aid is "enough". Even well intentioned direct action, absent a mass movement, won't stop it.
However as you note, connected to a workers org makes these things more powerful and useful strategies of resistance. However they aren't the be all end all, and in the near term I want state distribution of resources. I think
's take at the end of bullshit jobs is instructive here where he frames ubi as a way to expand the state to allow for more flourishing of creativity and mutual aid. Ubi, a jobs guarantee, healthcare, housing and food would make for a world where further mutual aid can be celebrated and cultivated, but I want a world where those things are ensured by some state apparatus
I'm not a teleological Marxist (e.g. communism will necessarily grow from capitalism), but I do think my utopian society is closer to anarchism than any AES. However I fully believe AES and state centralization is the only way to get there (and once we have global communism the state can finally wither away).
But that's just my take and I really do respect our comrades who do direct action and mutual aid. Those are important and meaningful individual actions one can do now, but ultimately I diverge in that I think you can't win against the great Satan through individual action. It's the same reason charity is 'good' but I don't actually fight for it on a systemic political level.
I'm fine with nuking this thread. It's not really /c/theory discussion. I am not up on wisconsincom but it's really just site spam rather than actual theory reading.
Funny thing: my life MIGHT have been able to have been better. I managed to land a FT job that paid 2.5x what I was getting. Had my partner and I been able to stay in our shithole apartment 1 or two years we might have been able to put together enough savings to get a down payment.
However our old lady landlord died who hadn't raised rent in 10 years died and her son sold the place. So all that income basically went to pay rent at a new place 2.5x more than what we were paying. So it's been. Barely keeping up with cost of living, getting by, but not thriving.
Killing the powerful without any need to worry about morality
Making a world that doesn't treat people like cattle for the powerful.
IDK, killing monsters is cool?
Still the issue is that this is all interpretive! There's no necessity for a narrative where a particular group is annihilated must be fascist.
I should note here that the annihilation of a class (in real life) need not be deadly (separating killing from violence). But would not the fantasy of exterminating capital owners (those with high magical power) slot in equally well? Again to be fully clear - in our little metaphor there's no need to kill the child (the Chinese proved this). But, to torture the metaphor, if a former child of a billionaire backslid on their reeducation, wouldn't more forceful measures be necessary?
However again, this is all kind of moot - the fantasy of annihilating the powerful doesn't necessarily have to be fascist, classist, or anything in particular. We can leverage interpretations however we wish. What's important is that we take up the fight against just saying "yeah it's fash" without the author either coming out as fash or more complete proof (especially since there's plenty of good shit in the story that aligns with left politics). Why cede the ground so easily when the leap the fascists make (e.g. it works because my opponents aren't human) is one that even the most libbed up idiot would disagree with. Simply pointing out the demons are closer to the aliens from independence day goes a long way to diffusing the fash critique. This doesn't mean it's perfect but it's like, again, make them show that they really don't see their enemies as human. Revealing the fascist as a fascist against the text seems way more useful than writing the text off. They aren't worth capitulating too (they like starship troopers for the wrong reasons after all)
It's fantasy. Ontologically evil creatures can exist.
It would be like if the utility monster were real. Does that mean we should accept it under human ethics? It's a sentient being, so we need to accept it's claim to our unhappiness?
Not every villain needs to have a complex backstory for why they're sympathetic and actually human. Great example: the Disney Cruella remake. The character is more fun as a literal human demon who wants to make a dog skin coat. She doesn't need to be a humanized person.
Obviously when tropes combine (looking at JKR and the goblin bankers) that's a different thing. But the fact that many of the Demons are ATTRACTIVE is part of why we should recognize them as (if anything) analogs to fascists.
To think through this: is it "problematic" that certain creatures in nature use aesthetically pleasing colors to trap prey? Is this somehow something we should "humanize" rather than recognize the cold calculation of nature at work (and perhaps, as communists/marxists, work to fight against the logic of nature and fascism's evil cooption of it. After all, don't we believe that men make history, but not as they please, and thus are beyond mere "nature").
The key difference between the fash cooption and the reality of the story is that the demons are not human. They're angler fish/carnivorous plants that use language. This idiot's take (the OP image) obviously assumes the inhumanity of his subjects and that's all you have to do to undermine every Frieren bad take. Simply put, the real "analogy" is if you went to go make friends with a starving tiger in the wild. It doesn't see its actions as good or bad - it's "beyond" good and evil not because they're niezschean ubermensch but because they're simply nonhuman. Now, this doesn't mean we should kill every nonhuman entity in the world (though cattle ranchers would do so with wolves, evil fucks). We can recognize ecosystems and our role in it. But it's a fantasy story, and should be taken on its own terms until it gives reason not to (and again, if every demon started looking like a JKR goblin or something, then I would immediately reverse my position).
The pure joy of the Charleston scene (and its physical comedy as they dance closer to the edge), or the fact that every little character in Bedford falls matters - there's so many great little bits in the film.
It helps it has good politics as well, but it's the way that it creates a world that you inhabit for a few hours - how could it not be popular
I think this really is it. A sex worker (to use one example )can become part of a mass movement, but if they do so outside of literal armed conflict their participation doesn't actively compromise the system. They can, by joining an organization, perhaps participate in solidarity and eventually acts of praxis and violence, but opposed to workers shutting down factories it really is night and day.
If every sex worker were organized it would be a better world. But compared to organizing every McDonald's worker (where their mass withholding of labor would be noticeable at scale and strike terror in the heart of the average burger lander), it's less potent organizing when you're talking about destroying the system.
I should be clear - this is not to be the Taylor Lorenz straw man about disabled people. Instead, it's a recognition that to capitalism, the disabled (when without work) are not "worth" what a productive worker is. They can provide visibility, solidarity, and participate in violence, but they don't ever have the potential to threaten the system the way an organized working class can. If every disabled person marched tomorrow there might be headlines, but absent solidarity from labor nothing would fundamentally change
Yeah I still love coffee because of the flavor, but cut my intake from like 30oz a day to a far more reasonable 16-ish.