Editor's note: the Picture Show is a short-burst analysis feature over on my (always free to read) Patreon Blog, exploring the world of lefty YouTube videos you can enjoy in twenty-two minutes or less.
In our latest edition of In the Aggregate, I mentioned in passing that I wanted to do something a little different with my still relatively new Picture Show segment. In light of the fact that it's pretty hard to righteously analyze a good pinko YouTube video in four hundred words or less, I ultimately decided to just start a new feature entirely. Shorter, more conversational, and more opinion-based than my Film Sessions essays, I hope to publish these informal blogs semi-regularly over on my (free) Patreon; which has a platform feature designed specifically for sharing offsite videos online.
In our inaugural stand-alone Picture Show blog, we're looking at the climate legacy of colonial capitalism and the disproportionate burden in combatting climate change currently borne by the Global South. Using a short, but informative video by Our Changing Climate as a basis for discussion, I explore the important concept of Climate Debt and why reparations from the imperial core, to the hyper-exploited developing world, are a necessary feature of both positive justice and any viable plan to prevent a climate apocalypse. Finally, I offer a few thoughts on how we might pay for all this in a fair and equitable manner for the labor class in both the imperial core, and the developing world.
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.
What Is Crypto-Fascism?
As I briefly alluded to in the latest edition of In the Aggregate, chasing down and debunking the deceptions, dog whistles, and coded language inherent to all fascist propaganda efforts is an exhausting, if still wholly necessary exercise. This type of antifascist effort is necessary because fascists lie relentlessly and habitually. Furthermore, debunking these lies can be exhausting because fascist propagandists spend seemingly half of their waking lives finding new and convoluted ways to lie, or at least evade detection while promoting fascist ideology and political activities.
Why would they go through all that trouble? Well, consider the situation from the odious perspective of the fascist "intellectual" or content creator for just a moment. Ultimately your goal is to build power by uniting politics with violence, and you accomplish that by recruiting more and more fascists, while eroding democratic structures. This is however, no simple task. Given fascism's history of racking up truly astronomical body counts through mass violence and genocide, as well as the fact that its adherents typically end up dead in a muddy ditch once a fascist regime eats itself, it's actually pretty hard to just come right out and say "hello, we're the nazis!" If you do that, people might stomp you out before you achieve any of your goals.
The obvious solution to this problem is to lie about, or otherwise obfuscate your ideology, and especially your long term political goals. Unfortunately for the fascist propagandist however, this activity creates its own set of complications. After all, if you lie too well, the reactionary lumpen you're trying to recruit may literally lose the plot. This ultimately requires you to communicate your ideas and intentions in a coded, almost encrypted way, that obviously signals to brainwormed fascist thugs you're on the same side, while simultaneously generating plausible deniability in what might be called "respectable discourse." This is then the essence of what we call "crypto-fascism."
The key then becomes understanding the coded camoflauge various fascists use to promote and propagate their ideology. This is unfortunately complicated by the fact that there are a dizzying number of hate groups, propagandists, and fascist "intellectuals" working on new ways to express these ideas all the time. The good news for anti-fascists however, is that virtually all of these obfuscations must conform to certain themes and ideas inherent to the fascist worldview; if you learn the themes, you can break down the code in real time. I'm confident that today's highlighted video can help us get a better handle on understanding this type of fascist bafflegab.
There are also however, a great many intellectually-stunted thug reactionaries who are quite demonstrably not the brightest individuals in America. This means that the crypto part of their crypto-fascist obfuscations cannot afford to be particularly complicated; otherwise the pinheads who ultimately join groups like the Proud Boys wouldn't understand the appeal. I'd personally describe the Proud Boys' ideology as "bog standard neo-nazi garbage that crudely substitutes the word 'nationalism' for 'fascism' and the term 'western culture' for 'white people' to spread reactionary and hateful ideology." These guys are literally "Fascism for Dummies", and their ideology represents a sort of lowest common denominator in American fascist thought. This in turn makes them an ideal training subject case for folks who're learning to recognize crypto-fascist ideology in the wild as it were.
In today's feature presentation, our presenter does all the legwork by taking you deep inside the guts of the Proud Boys organization. Examining both investigative journalism, and the words of the Proud Boys themselves, Thomas guides us on a journey to answer a plethora of important questions about who these reactionary thugs are, and what they ultimately represent. Who started the Proud Boys, and why? How does the gang's crypto-fascist code work? What do they really mean by "western chauvinist?" How are the Proud Boys able to utilize token minorities to hide their fascist nature? Who is Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, really? Who actually leads the Proud Boys? Why is the gang inextricably tied to the Trump movement? Given their legal troubles, are the Proud Boys finished, and if not, why are they still dangerous?
For the answer to these questions, aspiring scholars of fascism, fascist politics, and crypto-fascism are encouraged to check out "The Violent Rise of the Proud Boys" from Renegade Cut by clicking on the header or the video box below:
(Unfortunately, this video is age restricted on YouTube; likely because in describing the Proud Boys, one is unavoidably required to mention fascist political violence. I assure you, there's nothing particularly adult about this video - to watch just click through "watch this on YouTube" in the box above.)
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.
Over the past couple weeks however, Chapman has released consecutive, interrelated video essays about climate catastrophe as it pertains to capitalism, and its handmaiden imperialism respectively. In response, I'm going to change up our format a little bit here on Film Sessions and group these two videos together with a third, slightly older video about why the origins of our climate crisis don't actually matter to our survival as a species, into a single analysis essay. To facilitate organized reading, I'll put my analysis under each embedded video and then lump all the additional resources and citations into a footer at the bottom.
As always you can check these presentations out on YouTube by clicking the headers above each video, or simply watch inside the embedded boxes below.
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.
