Editor’s note: welcome back to Film Sessions; a monthly feature on NIDC in which I share, analyze and expand on a relevant video created by someone on the left wing of YouTube.
Hello my friends; happy, um, November I guess. After taking a month to kind of re-establish my bearings and fire up a new blog, I'm back in the swing of things early with a new essay-length Film Sessions post on ninaillingworth.com. Today we're returning to important discussions about whiteness, and the corrosive nature of low-key white supremacist ideology in online left spaces; with an assist from a creator never-before featured in our study rotation. Join me as we examine John the Duncan's new video about why decolonization is not genocide, and Vaush is not a credible source of left wing analysis; this month in Film Sessions.
Editor's note: welcome back to Film Sessions; our quasi-regular 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.
So what kind of questions are we talking about answering here? How about things like "just who the fuck is Nick Fuentes," or "where did this goddamn muppet come from," and why does this discount Matt Gaetz-looking dipshit matter at all?" Although I don't want to spoil too much of the video, let's offer up some back of the napkin answers to these three basic queries:
To describe Fuentes accurately but still in the broadest possible strokes, it would be best to refer to him as an extremely fucking online fascist provocateur who seeks to repackage white nationalist ideas and eliminationist conspiracy theories for a conservative audience; an audience he is able to reach because, I shit you not, he's got a stock broker's haircut and wears an ill-fitting, off-the-rack suit. While our featured video does a good job of running through some of Nick's greatest reactionary hits, you can also read more about him in this Southern Poverty Law Center report, as well as numerous other outlets that track online fascists.
In other words, even by the extremely permissive standards of the "defend free speech for nazis" brigade online, Fuentes isn't a victim of political repression so much as a guy engaged in criminal acts of inciting violence; which means this isn't a civil liberties issue at all, and pretending otherwise ultimately makes one a party to those acts - at least from a moral perspective. Even setting aside the fact that Fuentes probably isn't on the no-fly list, the hard truth here is that whatever harm preventing this muppet from stepping on an airplane causes to political freedom in the United States, is more than offset by the harm reduction accomplished by simply not defending and legitimizing a shithead like Nick Fuentes with "civil liberties" arguments on his behalf; especially from the "left." Frankly I'm inclined to believe it's probably alwaysa bad idea to cry tears of outrage for fascist criminals who sincerely want to kill you for political reasons, but as always your mileage may vary.
Editor’s note: our Six Things I Think feature is a type of post I use when I want to cover a lot of ground about a multi-faceted topic very quickly. Although you don’t strictly *have to* click on every citation link in this essay, you might want to at least read the headline articles, and watch the embedded videos, as they each frame the discussion immediately underneath them.
Ok, so I'm definitely aware I've been away for almost a week but I'm hoping by the time you click on the link to this article, you'll understand why - it's pretty, extensive.
What is it? An extremely detailed, multi-media Deep Dive post explaining why Boogaloos are fascists, Jimmy Dore is no leftist, and online pinkos have a crypto-reactionary infuencer problem.
Finally I guess I should warn you that I wasn't exactly thrilled about having to spend 9,000 words explaining to pinkos who don't read theory, why we don't make alliances with fascist militias; it's funny, but I'm not pulling punches out of respect for your faves, and there's quite a good deal of profanity in the piece. I literally do not care if this makes folks mad because going along to get along with reactionaries and fascists is no way to do leftism.
You can check out by clicking on the header below:
Editor's note: you know what the academics say; all play and no work make Jill a very droll conversationalist - after a couple of shorter videos you could watch without a notepad, we're back to the grindstone with a serious political theory discussion to start the new year. Now that we're no longer posting these film sessions on Facebook, I took full advantage of the opportunity to properly source this post, so you might want to click on the links; although I have included some of the most important ones under "Additional Resources" at the bottom of the article.
Finally, I'd like to throw a shoutout to "Prof. Denim" on my Discord server who pointed today's video out to me a little while ago; it's always easier to get by in life with a little help from your friends.
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Alright then lads, welcome to 2021; where the world is still on fire, Captain Trips still stalks the land like a wheezy grim reaper, and due to logic based primarily around the lack of early American road maintenance and the declining horsemanship of aging squires - Donald Trump is still president for roughly another eighteen and a half days. Of course, baring an extremely unlikely (at this point) chud uprising, the winds of change are blowing us towards a neoliberal triumphalist Palooka Joe Biden presidency. Which leaves the question, is that an improvement for the American labor class? Well, it's complicated, but in as few words as possible, the answer to that query is almost certainly "no," and today we're going to start to unpack why.
For a more nuanced look at neoliberalism then, let's again turn to lefty Youtuber Tom Nicholas and his delightful cultural studies video series "What the Theory." I'm not going to lie, when I saw that Tom built this tight twenty-six minute video around the work of two of my favorite analysts (David Harvey, author of "A Brief History of Neoliberalism" and Naomi Klein, author of "The Shock Doctrine") I couldn't resist writing up a film study about it eventually.
Kicking off the lesson by noting that neoliberalism is the "guiding economic, political, and social ideology in much of the world," Nicholas unpacks the (highly) theoretical underpinnings of the neoliberal ideology, touching briefly on concepts such as the primary importance of economic relations between humans, the idea that greed is good because self-interest drives progress and of course Smith's ridiculously overemphasized (and purely hypothetical) "invisible hand of the market." This then pairs with a brief discussion about the misleading use of the word "liberalism" in "neoliberalism" by noting that the term neoliberalism has its roots in the classical liberalism of the 18th and 19th centuries, and is thus primarily concerned with economic freedom for the rich (and capital itself.)
Of course, given what I'm coming to realize is Nicholas's "soft leftism," it's not all gum drops and lollipops. I think that while mentioning both Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, this video lets them off far too lightly for their pivotal role in cementing the neoliberal agenda in America and the UK; ditto for former U.S. President Barack Obama who inexplicably doesn't come up much. Similarly, key neoliberal leaders on the mainstream right (such as David Cameron, George H.W. Bush, and his even more repugnant son) are afforded seconds of screen-time at most.
More importantly however, and despite clearly having read both Harvey and Klein's seminal works on the violence of neoliberal rule, I was utterly baffled not to hear even a reference to Karl Polanyi's extremely accurate observation that the contradiction between economic freedom, and personal freedom under neoliberalism is inherently unstable and would logically seem to lead to a police state against the poor, if not outright fascism. Pursuant to this, as much as I like Nicholas's work here and I think it's a great introduction to Pig Empire neoliberalism in the imperial core, how anyone can read The Shock Doctrine and use it to make a video about neoliberalism that literally doesn't even mention Augusto Pinochet, is quite simply mystifying.
Despite these problems however, Neoliberalism: From Ronald Reagan to the Gig Economy is, on the whole, an excellent foundation on which we can build future discussions about neoliberalism; and as such I encourage readers to check it out today:
Editor's note: well, it's been an interesting past couple of days for me to say the least; if you're wondering why I'm not on Twitter, please check out my latest article on ninaillingworth.com - have yourself a merry Christmas indeed. In light of the week I've been having and the fact that we're all still living through a nightmare, neofeudalist, Captain Trips holiday season, I thought I'd pick a video for this week's film session that is both viscerally satisfying and not particularly taxing on the memory banks; hopefully you enjoy this one as much as I did.
Well, despite the fact that I’m having one of the crappier weeks of
my professional life, I have managed to continue picking my way
through left wing YouTube channels and video creators in the middle of all the chaos. In today’s film session, I’m going to highlight
a sixteen minute feature on a channel called Thought Slime. The
creator behind Thought Slime first came to my attention when I was
researching an article about fascism and looking for reliable citations about the crypto-fascist street gang, the Proud Boys.
Although I only ended up using that video for a couple of citations,
I remembered this person’s excellent (if perhaps a bit stripped
down) work, and decided to check out their channel when I was poking
around for more content to familiarize myself and my audience with.
Although I really
don’t know that much about this creator that you can’t find on
their Wikitubia page, and I must admit the delivery is at times a
little dramatic, this video appealed to me because it opens by
focusing on an area I’ve studied and one of the more inexplicably
monstrous decisions by established American power in living memory –
the wholly unnecessary bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the
closing phases of World War II; conducted primarily for the purposes
of intimidating the Soviet Union and opening up the era of “mutually
assured destruction” in what we know today as The Cold War.
Much to my delight
however, it turns out this was only the beginning of the discussion
and the focus of the video is actually an issue I write about
constantly, even though it seems to alienate many of the folks around
me – the fact that rich people are absolutely fine with killing
every last one of us for pennies on the dollar, while trying to enact
out unhinged Lex Luthor-esque fantasies about running to Mars, rather
than surrender one single iota of power, influence or ability to
exploit their fellow man for profit. On this issue, Thought Slime and
I could not be more in agreement (which perhaps makes sense, since
we’re both apparently anarchists) and it is refreshing to find
someone, anyone else, willing to say this out loud; I am absolutely
chuffed about the mere existence of this video.
In addition to World
Wars and nuclear annihilation, Thought Slime also touches on the
fossil fuel industry, a coronavirus response that looks like eugenics
and how the election of Donald Trump caused them to question
fundamental assumptions about how the world works, eventually leading
our host to anarchism (and me to a couple more Youtube creators to
add to my “check em out” list.) The end result is a highly
entertaining attack on rule by elites, the power of the state and
Piers Morgan eating something called a “Santa’s Yum Nut” - and
for a sixteen minute video that also features a brief side discussion
about Indigenous Christian Anarchism in Taiwan, that’s probably the
most you can hope for.
If I do have one
quibble however, it’s that Thought Slime clearly uses “the state”
and “elite rule” to mean precisely the same things and that’s a
fine rhetorical position to adopt, but probably could have been
explained better to an audience that is unlikely to have read most of
the books on the wonderful reading list the creator shows at 8:11.
Naturally, as an anarcho-syndicalist myself, I’m not looking to
eliminate the state so much as eliminate the difference between state
power and people power – in essence, through an aggressively
participatory democracy, to make the common people, into the state
itself. Obviously however Thought Slime and I both clearly agree that
elite rule has gotta go and thus, I had no real problem with how they
were using the terms interchangeably – and including my favorite
Rudolf Rocker book on the reading list certainly warmed my heart to
see.
