Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Film Sessions: And All The King's Men

 


Editor's note: Film Sessions is a weekly feature here on Media Madness in which I share, analyze and expand on a relevant video created by someone on the left wing of YouTube. Please note: this essay contains numerous citation links that are not included in the "Additional Resources" section below (because there are a f*ck lot of them) - you can click, or not click on the hyperlinks, but don't b*tch to me about "sources" because they're in there. 


Hello friends; it's certainly been a hot half-minute since we talked, hasn't it? As I mentioned in a recent Facebook Update; I've spent the better part of the past couple weeks sick in bed, battling some complications in my life as a dissident, and morosely ruminating on how to fight the spread of reactionary thought in communities native to the extremely online "left." In between fever-induced bouts of rage posting on social media, I've also spent a lot of time thinking about the last essay-length journal I published before life forced me to take a couple of weeks off: "Unity with Fascists Undermines Liberal Antifascism" over on my (always) free Patreon blog. I don't want to re-hash the entire piece in this space, but I think the essential gist of it can be summed up with the following quotes:


"There is a deep, culturally ingrained, and institutionally reinforced lack of accountability, and craving for normalcy (for capital accumulation, but I digress) at work here among our ruling classes that fundamentally makes them incapable of fighting fascism, even if they wanted to. This perspective is so entrenched, it even makes just acknowledging that the Republican Party as a collective entity, has adopted fascist political techniques and theories wholeheartedly at this point, impossible."

"I could obviously keep going, but I think the picture should be clear to you by now; all the rich fascists behind not only the coup attempt on January 6th, but also the entire fascist movement that propelled Trump to the White House, are going to walk away from this free and clear, without suffering any consequences. Hell, except for some very dumb people who made the FBI's job too easy for ignorant pigs to screw up by posting evidence of their crimes all over social media, even the street chud rioters will mostly escape punishment for this."

 "The liberal establishment has made a choice to make Trump (who is again, clearly guilty of inciting an insurrection attempt, among other crimes) a singular scapegoat for the larger fascist thread in our society; a thread that ultimately made the Trump presidency possible in the first place. They've made that choice not only because they lack the courage, conviction, and desire to engage in proper antifascism, but also because they really do want to get this over with and go back to f*cking over poor people over six martini lunches with their sh*theel fascist friends "across the aisle" and I'm sorry, as much as nobody who owns a West Wing boxed set wants to hear this, people can smell the bullsh*t in that position.

You can say "this is not normal" and "we must protect our democracy" until you're blue in the face; the fact that rich liberals are eager to go back to bipartisan power sharing with rich nazis who just organized a coup attempt, lends an air of unreality and make believe to the entire proceedings that is only broken when someone like AOC shouts out "hello, they tried to have us murdered" and no amount of babbling on CNN is gonna change that. Either it's fascism, or it's not. Either it's an existential threat to our democracy, or it's not. And when the entire sum total of the liberal establishment’s response to a full f*cking Seven Days in May fascist coup attempt (with attempted political assassinations, widespread institutional support, and even clearly some backing from the Pentagon,) is to expel Donald f*cking Trump from the magic kingdom without dessert, and then go back to brunch? The message you're clearly sending is that it's not fascism, and it's not serious.

And mark my words, that is a mistake that will come back to haunt us all."


Okay, so obviously I'm not happy with the sick joke that was the impeachment process, but I think it's important to note that the issues I explored in that essay are definitely about something much larger than impeaching the swine emperor. Neither, quite frankly, was I talking about anything so irrelevant as revenge; although I do find it quite remarkable that the only time the larger American establishment (including affluent liberals) loses faith in the value of "punitive justice" is when affluent crackers and fascists are involved. Rather, the focus of that piece was the larger societal need to identify the vast portions of the "mainstream" right wing establishment that funded, encouraged, participated in and provided cover for the fascist coup attempt on January 6th in D.C., to catalogue their crimes against what passes for our democracy, and to literally chase them out of public life and especially, positions of power and authority. This work is of course vital because if you allow rich fascists to attempt to overthrow democracy without any sort of reprisal, these people (who included not only elected GOP officials, billionaire CEOs, and media minions, but also members of the bar, appointed officials, the military establishment and law enforcement officers) get the idea they can continue trying to overthrow democracy - and history has proven with horrifying clarity that practice makes perfect, in this regard. 

Of course, as that very same essay pointed out, there are structural, economic, political and class reasons that absolutely none of that will happen; particularly since the circumstances of American history have conspired to leave a feckless Democratic Party obsessed with bipartisan imperialism, austerity and looting, at the helm of any (purely theoretical) "de-fashing" of the halls of  power. Given this reality, the historic whitewashing role of bipartisan government investigations in America, and the fact that Mitch McConnell (an man who should be removed from the Senate for his role in protecting the swine emperor) is already turning the proceedings into a culture war football, I can't much say I have high hopes for the so-called "January 6th Commission" either. In the present political, social and class war climate, it seems very clear that the embedded fascist element in our ruling class establishment aren't going anywhere, anytime soon. In light of these seemingly foregone conclusions, the general ineffectiveness of liberal antifascism, and the fact that even a process-obsessed muppet like Majority (sorta) Senate Leader Chuck Schumer is already declaring the subject an issue for "the court of public opinion" - it then behooves us to catalogue these crimes and assign blame ourselves for two reasons:


  1. The dim possibility that the political climate in the Pig Empire will change sufficiently enough to support a widespread effort to drive fascists and fascist collaborators out of public life and particularly positions of authority.
  2. The near certainty that since nobody has bothered to punish rich fascists for supporting a literal coup attempt, those same affluent reactionaries and violent chud minions are just going to try again - and it might be a good idea to know who is going to back the neonazi chuds when that moment comes up again, in advance.


All of which, brings us to this week's video; Who To Blame For The Capitol Riots (Non-Trump Edition) by Cody Johnson and the rest of the gang at Some More News. In this extremely granular, one hour presentation, Johnson (and his obnoxious puppet Warmbo) offer up an exhausting, but not necessarily exhaustive compilation of powerful, important, and at least publicly respected people, all of whom should be resigning from office, disbarred, or otherwise leaving public life immediately, as a result of their involvement with, support for, or known associations with violent right wing extremist groups who just conducted, a literal fascist coup attempt. Astoundingly, this rogues gallery also includes several elected officials who should actually be in jail right now for some combination of election interference, inciting a riot, or actual f*cking sedition; most of which are straight up felonies, and all of which carry heavy jail fines and lengthy prison sentences. Taken together these reactionary, fascist abetting politicians, propagandists and provocateurs include, but are not limited to:



Naturally, the degree to which each of the people listed above are criminally or even civilly responsible for the fascist coup attempt on January 6th, 2021, varies wildly. The degree to which all of them are morally and socially responsible is however indisputable, and more than enough to dictate that none of these folks should be allowed to craft laws, make legal arguments before the court, or be treated as an expert source of trustworthy information for the public at large, ever again. Whether it's because they're in a jail cell, or as a result of extreme social and professional shunning - none of these people should be on my television after what just happened here and in the ensuing fallout, from again, a literal fascist coup attempt. 

Unfortunately, at this point I'm required to note that Who To Blame For The Capitol Riots (Non-Trump Edition) is not by any stretch of the imagination, a perfect video. At sixty-one minutes, it's more than a little too long and all over the place; while still simultaneously failing to mention all the rich lobbyists, SuperPACs and billionaire Lex Luthor types who are equally if not more responsible for both the rise of fascism in America and the attempted coup on January 6th, 2021. Furthermore, the dreadful puppet adds virtually nothing to the proceedings and while I typically grin and bear the life-sustaining advertisements YouTube creators are inclined to include in their otherwise free videos, the fact that Warmbo stars in the ad, is borderline unbearable (40:25 to 42:32.) Ultimately however, I can't really blame Johnson for a bit that didn't land, or for struggling to encompass virtually all of the people responsible for our present predicament, when I myself took even larger shortcuts and focused on an even smaller group of conspirators in public office in my last essay. Given the sheer size of the fascist creep in America, we're going to have to start somewhere and Cody's presentation is as good a place as any to do that. 

You can check out the video on YouTube by clicking the header below, or just watch in the embedded window:






Additional Resources
































Bonus Content

Given that I've literally just spent the past two and a half weeks either lying sick in bed, or trying to figure out which of the many fascists who hate my roommate are gang stalking my house, I feel a little bit behind the eight ball here in terms of content production. Under normal circumstances, it's entirely possible I'd save this wonderful video by The Serfs for a separate post. I am however including it here for two reasons:


Alright then, so what are we looking at and why is this video called "The Event (what happened and who is responsible)" anyway? It's a short clip compilation video featuring right wing YouTube and television personalities (including Steven Crowder, Ben Shapiro, Tim Pool, Tucker Carlson and others) peddling Trump's election conspiracy theories, or otherwise attempting to incite the fascist coup attempt that occurred on January 6th, 2021, in Washington, D.C. 

As for the vague title of the presentation, I believe this is a result of YouTube having flagged the Serf's previous video about this subject as somehow actively peddling the conspiracies and lies featured in these compiled clips; which would be pretty absurd in its own right, but approaches the Kafkaesque when you realize that YouTube continues to leave the very same batsh*t right wing videos these clips were taken from on their site! While this is certainly a farcical example of the Orwellian way Big Tech companies are ultimately feeding the fascist creep, I'm also inclined to suggest that you will find no more obvious example of the social, and economic inertia impeding any efforts to purge fascism from the American establishment, than the story behind the making of this video; which sort of brings us back around to the essay I quoted at the beginning of this article - albeit, in the most round about way possible.

As always you can check out this video by The Serfs on YouTube by clicking the header below, or just watch in the embedded window:






Additional Resources













nina illingworth


Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

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…”


  


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