The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Sun Jan 21, 2018 8:29 pm

American Dream » 11 Nov 2017 06:36 wrote:I've been thinking of the endless TV Series Amerika lately, due to the Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS") thread.

I can't stop thinking about the drugged out nights at the clubs where it is revealed that the "rebellious" kids who are happily tripping out are actually pawns in a bigger game, as it is revealed that the evil occupying commie gubbermint is actually providing all the drugs, in order to manipulate the kids.

See, I can't stop thinking of TIDS and my nagging suspicion that the State let all that acid flood out in the 60's in order to spin the worldwide rebellion towards self-absorption and ineffective activity generally. Then I suspect that acid house and MDMA were let loose on the brink of the falling of the Wall so that everyone would stop hating people from the other side and instead, have a great big party....




https://youtu.be/K-fjT7QBpQ8


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Its been a while since I posted here (I still lurk a little bit but not much,) but I wanted to comment on this.

In the UK one of the responses to the rise of techno, raves and MDMA use was the Criminal Justice and Public order act of 1994. (Among other things) It was a political attempt to repress rave culture because of the perceived threat it posed to the State and the social order. It used to be something some of the UK members of this site were all over. The use of MDMA pretty much stopped football hooliganism in its tracks in the early 90s, which is a good thing. It also influenced racist, white nationalist skinheads in ways they didn't expect and led to many leaving the movement. There are probably some links to info about that on this site somewhere.

Another side effect of that movement was the way backpackers started traveling everywhere, building links between western and non western cultures. That didn't stop until post 9/11 and WoT and its associated bullshit changed the way people around the world saw Western kids.

Yes it was "everyone partying" but thats not necessarily a bad thing. I've read an interview with an 80s skinhead/hooligan who said specifically it was very hard to violent at the soccer after spending the night doofing on eckies with rival supporters the night before. Especially if you'd seen each other wearing your rival teams jumpers while pinging like crazy - in love with the universe and everyone in it. It changed everything for those people.

Have a good time partying with someone and its alot harder to go to war against them. But that's not always a bad thing. In Australia it wasn't the rave scene that stopped activism but the flooding of the market with heroin during the 90s. Lots of people who were active became junkies or dead ex junkies very quickly and that was the end of that.

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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Sun Jan 21, 2018 8:56 pm

I should be clear that I think it can all be true- I'm not "anti-drug" when it comes to acid, ecstasy or bud. DMT scared the shit out of me but that doesn't mean I would want to take it away from anyone else. I think there could have been a flood of LSD emanating out of the San Francisco Bay Area in part because shadowy forces were struggling against the anti-War movement, a flood of Ecstasy in Europe because equally shadowy forces wanted a gentler end to the Cold War. None of that means that drug-induced illuminations are nefarious- just that these substances can be used to help spin things in a certain direction.

I have no regrets over my own experiences and I gained much from them, but I really don't know of any truly "Holy Mafia" on a large scale- the dynamics of the marketplace and drug enforcement tend to subvert the great ideals that Leary spoke of as organized crime becomes bigger and hence more vulnerable. I do support People Power and the freedom to alter consciousness at will, and generally what we could call "life drugs" as opposed to death drugs, of which there are many...
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Fri Feb 09, 2018 8:18 am

https://brooklynrail.org/2018/02/field- ... Felix-Baum

Inside the "Muslim Factory": NEDJIB SIDI MOUSSA with Felix Baum

by Felix Baum

At the very moment when capital has universalized itself to the highest degree, forcing the whole of humanity under its yoke and hence into an involuntary community, knitting people together by far-reaching chains of production, the world market, the World Wide Web, and impending disasters on a global scale, universalism seems to be in decline. To be more precise: What is in decline is the universalism rooted in the Enlightenment and later reformulated as the project of universal human emancipation, to be accomplished by a “class with radical chains … which has a universal character by its universal suffering” (Karl Marx).1 With the decline of both the old workers’ movement and the New Left, the politics of identity has more and more marginalized this perspective. It is said to never have been anything but a smokescreen for the dominance of white men from the West, projecting their arbitrary values on the rest of the world.

In Europe today, these issues come to the fore most prominently around questions of immigration and Islam. Here, a shift of focus can be observed from immigrant workers to cultural and religious “communities.” As Kenan Malik has shown for the British case, in the 1970s “Black” was a very inclusive category relating to the social position of those parts of the working class not born in the country and forced to struggle not only against a racist state and overexploitation by the bosses, but also quite often with nationalist attitudes within the “native” working class. It had very little to do with “ethnic,” let alone religious identities, but marked a social difference to be overcome by common struggles. With the decline of workers’ struggles in the 1980s and the displacement of social issues by cultural ones, this class category slowly gave way to the creation of numerous distinct “communities,” defined by the diverse national origins of immigrants and in line with the general proliferation of identities beginning in that period. Though surely hard to swallow for conservatives at the time, this kind of multiculturalism was anything but an oppositional program; it constituted a deliberate policy by local Labor governments, fostering new middle-class “community leaders” as mediators between the state and their ethnically defined “peers” and accelerating the decomposition of the class category “Black.” As Malik notes, those on the left embracing multiculturalism no longer “argued that everyone should be treated equally, despite their racial, ethnic, religious or cultural differences,” but instead “pushed the idea that different people should be treated differently because of such differences.”2 Today, Britain has become multicultural to the degree of leaving certain legal matters (of certain groups) to be settled by sharia courts: a post-assimilationist self-management of supposed “communities” not exactly constituting a progress, in particular from the perspective of women.

Meanwhile in France, though often regarded as the “assimilationist” counter-model to multicultural Britain, Islam has become the main marker of difference within the population. With striking parallels to the British case, those from postcolonial Northern Africa are increasingly regarded as a “community” tied together by their supposed belief. The riots in the banlieue of 2005, debates about the veil and laicism, and, not least of all, the jihadist attacks of 2015 have given the issue enormous publicity. The more traditional left as well as radical and libertarian milieus engage in fierce arguments about the relation between anti-racism and class, the critique of religion and what some call “Islamophobia,” conflicts that sometimes even reach the point of physical confrontation—in November 2016, for example, a public meeting in Marseille defending the libertarian critique of religion was violently disrupted by “anti-racists.”

It was against this backdrop that in 2017 Nedjib Sidi Moussa published an essay on the confessionalization and racialization of the social question titled “La Fabrique du Musulman (The Muslim Factory).” Published by the small radical press Libertalia, it has found considerable resonance. In November 2017, I met the author in Paris for a conversation.

Felix Baum (Rail): In your book, you describe how in France categories such as “immigrant worker” or “North African worker” have more recently become increasingly replaced by the category “Muslim.” What are the main driving forces of this process?

Nedjib Sidi Moussa: In this small book, which is not an academic work but a political essay, I look at the last ten to fifteen years in order to demonstrate some of the mechanisms of what I call “the Muslim factory.” The main protagonists of this factory include the state and civil associations; they range from the far right to the radical left [gauche de la gauche]; there are those described as Muslims and those who stigmatize them. However, I mostly focus on the debates within the radical left, not because they are the most important protagonists in this story, but because that’s my political family. In theory, the radical left should be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

The Muslims produced by this social factory are not necessarily believers, they don’t necessarily practice Islam, go to the mosque, eat halal etc.—they are rather a kind of sub-nationality, similar to the Muslims in ex-Yugoslavia or those in Lebanon at the time of the French protectorate. They are seen as having intrinsic cultural references that set them apart from the majority population in France. Already in the 1990s, parts of the state showed an interest in creating some institution that would “represent” the supposedly Muslim population, and in 2003 the Conseil français du culte musulman (CFCM) was created. Its role is to act as an interlocutor for the state, to “manage” this group via religion. It is worth noting that in French Algeria the Muslim religion was administered by the colonial power, in total contradiction to the principle of laicism, which applied only to metropolitan France, not to the colonies. The CFCM is a new communitarian institution of representation among others (such as the Conseil représentatif des associations noires de France, CRAN) and involves a power struggle among various Muslim federations seeking to control as many mosques as possible in order to be accepted as legitimate interlocutors by the French state.

Rail: From what I’ve read it seems that many people of Maghrebin origin in France are not too religious in fact. How do they relate to this process of subsumption under the category “Muslim”?

NSM: In France, to speak of “Muslims” is also a way of talking about immigration from the Maghreb, most importantly Algeria, without saying so. It is undeniable that behind this category is hidden a vast diversity. There are those who have become more and more religious; they demonstrate their religiosity and are hence the most visible, like the Salafists. But what is most visible is not necessarily what is most pertinent or threatening. Among people of Maghrebin origin, there are also atheists, and not all of them come from atheist families—sometimes they have detached themselves from religious traditions and then they face a double exclusion: On the one hand, it is extremely difficult for them to talk to their families about their atheism, their total lack of faith and religious practice, and on the other hand, in French society at large they are associated with a religion which is no longer theirs. And then there are many who in fact believe and practice their religion, but in very different ways—they drink alcohol from time to time, for example, or don’t practice Ramadan; they maybe pray, but not in the mosque. They reject any kind of religious authority and hence the CFCM. They don’t want to be part of this power struggle over representation.

Rail: If we compare the first generation of immigrants with today’s situation, could one say that religion has gained significance and to that extent the “Muslim factory” is also a reciprocal process, in which the construction of the “Muslim” identity is reinforced by an actual upswing of Islam?

NSM: One of the consequences of the Iranian revolution of 1979 has been to stimulate radical currents referring to Islam, which has caused a loss of influence of laicist, socialist, and nationalist forces that had so far been dominant not only in Northern Africa, but also in the European diaspora. This effort has progressively gained ground within the immigrant population, changing not only religious practices, but also political relations. So we are talking about a different immigrant population than in the 1950s or 1960s. Also in the sense that whereas their parents could still have the illusion or the actual project of returning to their country of origin, this option doesn’t really exist any longer, due to economic and political reasons, but also due to their integration. They are born in France, but not really considered as fully French, and sometimes they don’t consider themselves so. This has caused an “overinvestment” in the question of religious identity, manifesting itself in the ways people speak, consume, dress and so on.

Rail: What exactly is the role of the radical left in this story?

NSM: The radical left, which of course comprises a whole number of traditions and perspectives, plays a role via certain initiatives in the banlieue and other quartiers populaires in which we find a large population of Maghrebin origin, as well as via initiatives against police violence or against the state of emergency that was put in place after the riots in the banlieue of 2005, as well as after the terrorist attacks of 2015. In this context, certain Trotskyist, libertarian, and other militants form alliances with forces that have nothing whatsoever to do with the revolutionary tradition, but are in fact forces of reaction. However, those leftists regard them as representatives of the immigrant population, of eternal “postcolonial” subjects, with grave consequences. For instance, some representatives of leftwing organizations took part in various events against “Islamophobia” with Participation et spiritualité musulmanes (PSM) these past few years. PSM is a group linked to the largest Moroccan Islamist movement Al Adl wal Ihsane. PSM demonstrated in the French streets against same-sex marriage along with right-wing and homophobic collectives. That should disturb any French left-wing activist; the Moroccan democratic left recently reiterated that there can’t be any alliance with Al Adl wal Ihsane. What about internationalism? I give you another example illustrating the malaise of French leftists with the “Muslim Question:” Turning their backs on the traditional slogan “No gods, no masters” some libertarians published in 2016 an appeal against “Islamophobia” stating that one could be “believer, observant, or veiled AND libertarian.” As if a double standard operates depending on your background…

Rail: You devote considerable space in your book to the “Parti des Indigènes de la République,” even though you state that their real significance in immigrant neighborhoods is extremely limited. Who are these “indigènes” and why are they so important in your account?

NSM: The indigènes go back to a manifesto launched in 2005, a key year for this story, with a wave of riots in the banlieue in the autumn, and earlier that year a heated debate about efforts by the government to create a more positive portrayal of France’s colonial history—basically out of electoral considerations, to flatter the harkis and pieds noirs, i.e. French people who had lived in colonial Algeria and relocated to France after 1962, and who form an important part of the electorate in certain regions. In addition, there was an unprecedented controversy over the ban of religious symbols in public schools, which was primarily associated with the Islamic veil. The manifesto lumps together very diverse phenomena—social issues, urban marginalization, colonial legacy, racial discriminations, conflicts in the Middle East, etc.—and is thus very confused, blending progressive with reactionary elements, which is why already back then it was criticized by the Trotskyist philosopher Daniel Bensaïd, but also by libertarians and other militants. Out of this manifesto, which received many signatures and gained quite a bit of attention within the radical left and intellectual circles, emerged the movement and finally the Parti des Indigènes de la République (PIR, created in 2010), with the more progressive elements being more and more eliminated, leaving only the reactionary individuals. The reason why I attach such an importance to them despite their lack of any social basis in the banlieue is simply their incommensurate visibility in the media; the fact that they are treated as the most radical or innovative force that is supposedly the voice of the banlieue, of immigrants, of Muslims. Significant parts of the radical left opened their journals, websites, and militant spaces to them—an alliance against nature at first glance. The book Les Blancs, les Juifs et nous (published in 2016 by Houria Bouteldja, PIR’s spokeswoman) found a disproportionate echo in these times of confusion. 3

Rail: What exactly are the reactionary elements of their discourse?

NSM: Their discourse has evolved over time. To give just one example, which is significant in my view: In 2003, fighting the ban on religious symbols in public schools, Bouteldja presented herself as a “non-believer” in an interview with Le Monde, even though already then she expressed her support for the Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan. In 2016, she concludes her book with the expression “Allahu Akbar.” Whether opportunist or sincere, this is a form of Islamicization. So much for their evolution. On the other hand, since their beginnings, it has been programmatic for them to reject “mixed marriages” as detrimental to the good morals of the respective communities. So a black man should marry a black woman, an Arab another Arab—of course, we are talking about heterosexual marriages here, because the indigènes clearly seem to have a problem with homosexuality, especially for these subaltern groups. Then there are declarations which tend to confound anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, combining a radical hostility towards Israel with a general suspicion towards Jews. And finally, a revalorization of Islamic culture and religion, of the Islamo-Arab past as cultural references, in a way that excuses machismo, for example. There is a cult of the family, of the past, of roots and identity—something that is clearly opposed to the project of emancipation, of revolution, or even the Enlightenment.

Rail: The indigènes are clearly a very extreme example, but as you show in your book, there are plenty of people on the left willing to enter rather doubtful alliances with the mosques. The standard justification for this is the presumed existence of what they call “Islamophobia.” The issue seems fairly complicated: On the one hand, there is e.g. Trump’s immigration ban and a certain kind of right-wing populism in Europe that specifically targets Islam as a religion that has no place in Europe; on the other hand Muslim clerics exploit this situation to silence any critique of their religion. Do you reject the term “Islamophobia” as such or merely its instrumentalization by reactionary clerics?

NSM: No doubt one significant part of the extreme right is now “Islamophobic” in the sense that they attack Muslims—actual and supposed ones—and are obsessed with “Islam,” which they criticize more than other religions. But there is another part of this far right which is more “Islamophile,” both today and historically. Fascism, for example, was “Islamophile,” trying to reach out to Muslims: Benito Mussolini was declared “Protector of Islam” in Italian propaganda. I devote one chapter of my book to these different currents in the French context, noting for instance how the far-right writer Alain Soral played a key role with controversial comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala.

One reason why I don’t use the term “Islamophobia” is the fact that certain religious institutions like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)4 use it to exert pressure on Western governments and international organizations to criminalize any critique of their religion, as is already the case in “Muslim” countries, where the critique of religion is not only censored, but can carry the death penalty. In her book Jeux d’ombres sur la scène de l’ONU (2010), the French anthropologist Jeanne Favret-Saada highlights the influence of the OIC on the diplomatic scene.

The struggle of certain fractions of the radical left against “Islamophobia” is sometimes sincere, but in my view it has also led to certain confusions and misunderstandings. For some activists, it means simply fighting discriminations against actual or supposed Muslims. If that was all, it wouldn’t worry me too much, though one could ask whether hatred against Muslims or anti-Muslim racism might be more appropriate terms. However, there are also currents who engage in what the Syrian Marxist Sadiq Jalal al-‘Azm has termed “Orientalism in reverse,”5idealizing Islam and Islamic culture and refraining from any critique of its problematic aspects, since this would supposedly be against the oppressed, the proletarians, the quartiers populaires. “Maybe they are simply different from us,” that’s the idea behind it, because some of these activists consider themselves “privileged,” being white, petty-bourgeois, and educated (which is true for some in Paris, but clearly not for all radical activists in France!). They refuse to criticize Muslims or the Muslim religion in order to demarcate themselves from the extreme right, but they end up playing the game of reactionary clerics. Initiatives like the Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France (CCIF) include in their definition of “Islamophobia” attacks not only against individuals, but also against institutions. There’s an enormous ambiguity here: Attacking a woman wearing the veil or discriminating against actual or supposed Muslims in terms of employment and housing is not at all the same as thing as criticizing religious institutions, mosques, or the religion as such.

This is why I don’t use the term. The struggle around its definition has been decided: it is in the sense I just described that it has been diffused throughout society. I regret that the useful contributions of British-Indian intellectual Kenan Malik (who criticizes the term “Islamophobia”) have not been translated into French.

Rail: But what about the state? Would you say that certain state policies, e.g. the widespread police violence, are specifically directed against Muslims? After all, those leftists and anti-racists who defend “the Muslim community,” creating the bizarre coalitions we’ve talked about, would claim that the state pursues anti-Muslim policies.

NSM: If today in France there exists a violent form of racism, it’s a racism mostly directed against workers from all backgrounds, against the poor and the jobseekers, against undocumented migrants. One may call me a “classist,” a “workerist,” but that’s a reality one cannot mask. It is the clearest form of discrimination, of violence, in this country today because a ruthless capitalism rules the world and colonizes all aspects of life.

Rail: And this is also being directed against “proper,” i.e. “white” French workers?

NSM: Yes; skin color, presumed religion, or “culture” do not play a central role here, contrary to the opinion of some gatekeepers obsessed with identity. And it doesn’t seem sociologically accurate or politically fair to oppose the “white” workers to the others because they globally challenge the same issues and share the same fate, even though they face powerful divisive forces. Secondly, I really don’t think that in France today the Muslims—actual or supposed ones—are persecuted or discriminated against as Muslims by the state. I really don’t think their situation is comparable to those of the Jews in the 1930s (and anti-Semitism is still a real problem here).

Rail: Such a comparison would obviously be crazy.

NSM: Yes, but nevertheless it’s in the minds of some anti-racist and radical leftist activists. If it were true, the correct political response would be to escape from France or to wage war against the “French regime.”

Rail: If we leave aside such a comparison, what about the whole discourse around the veil, the attempts to ban “burkinis” and such?

NSM: It is undeniable that, within the general marginalization of workers, those of immigrant background—from the Maghreb and other former colonies—are specifically targeted. And since 1905,6 French laicism has evolved in ways that have breached the separation between the state and the church, to the benefit of the Catholic Church, which is still the dominant religion in France and has, unfortunately, not lost all its privileges. So when we talk about the “Muslim factory,” we must not forget that we do so in a Catholic or post-Catholic context. Certain measures that have been taken in the name of laicism, but in reality weren’t necessarily laicist, have fed into the convulsions around “the Muslim question,”, no doubt. But at the same time, I cannot see a systematic and massive discrimination against Muslims because of their religious practice. It’s rather a question of origin. For example, studies clearly show that people of Maghrebin background face more difficulties on the housing market. This kind of discrimination goes back to the colonial history, to the war in Algeria, and the labor immigration. It’s clearly not about religion.

Rail: One can learn a lot from your book about the social actors running the “Muslim factory,” but, as some critics have pointed out, you say less about the general transformation of society which has allowed for this whole process. In more concrete terms: Doesn’t the end of full employment, the decline of the large factory, in which there was a “mixed” workforce, and the emergence of a more family or “community” based economy among the immigrant population play a role here?

NSM: It’s a small book which does not claim to deal with all aspects of the problem; it focuses—maybe too much—on the “subjective” dimension, on certain discourses and practices. Of course we can’t understand the “Muslim factory” in disconnection from the economy, from the more recent mutations of capitalism. The emergence of this figure called “the Muslim” goes hand in hand with the disappearance of the figure of “the worker” from public space. But I don’t think that the working class, exploitation, wage labor, etc. have disappeared. What we have seen is factory closures and relocations of production. In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the large factory could function as a factor of “integration,” by means of a common struggle against exploitation, against the boss—the same boss—by organizing within or outside the unions. This framework doesn’t seem to exist anymore, at least in France. The point is not to idealize this past. But when we read e.g. articles from Socialisme ou Barbarie from the 1950s, it is clear that the problem of racism arose in the factories (due to the nationalism of the main workers’ organizations), but this didn’t stop people from common struggles against exploitation.

I often read Guy Debord’s notes on the “immigrant question,” written in 1985 and sent to the Algerian post-situationist Mezioud Ouldamer. This very interesting text echoed the debates following the Marche pour l’égalité et contre le racisme. Debord wrote: “We have made ourselves into Americans. It’s no surprise that we should experience all the miserable problems of the U.S.A, from drugs to the mafia, ‘fast food’ and the proliferation of ethnicities.”7 To respond to this pessimistic but realistic analysis three decades later, and without fueling any “anti-American” resentment, I would say that the main task of revolutionary activists in New York, Algiers, Paris, Istanbul, etc. should be to revive a genuine internationalism: anti-capitalist, anticlerical, and anti-racist, definitely.
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Thu Apr 05, 2018 8:33 am

Ode to America

Image

From William Hawes

Comments on US Left Radicals, with Respect

I also sense a split between two strains of Leftist radical thought in the US: the activist/socialist Left and what one might call the counter-culture/spiritual Left. Turns out, each has much to offer the other.

The activists/Marxists will be instrumental in breaking the passivity, new-age hedonism, and tendency to harp on conspiracy theory of the spiritualists. Organization and discipline on the strategic and tactical levels are in short supply, and here socialists have a lot to contribute to the conversation.

As for the counter-culture/spiritual types, they have much to teach the social justice activists and socialist/communist organizers and academics as well. In a very practical sense, those in the counterculture who have “dropped out” are doing a great service by not contributing tax money to our war machine. Those who squat and occupy public land responsibly should also be applauded, not ignored, by the academic Left. The growing movement in permaculture and homesteading also is uniquely absent even in alternative media (is too much patchouli and yoga a repellant for otherwise intrepid journalists?).

There is also an idea as old as time, summed up by the saying “Man does not live by bread alone”. The constant focus of some on the socialist Left on only materialistic problems and solutions (exemplified by some Marxist and lefty economists, among others) and inequality does not give enough weight to questions of inner life in modern society.

Many of the activist/socialists cannot even be counted on to support full drug legalization. Additionally, many ignore the issue of, or are scared at speaking out in favor of, the responsible use of cannabis and psychedelics, even though study after study confirms their beneficial effects. Of course I’m not trying to inflate the heads of the credentialed experts, as any hippie on Haight-Ashbury or Rasta in Kingston could have confirmed this 50 years ago.

Speaking of the 60s, 50 years ago the French managed to scare De Gaulle out of the country, with an alliance of students, workers, feminists, artists, Leftists, and citizen protestors. Union workers in the US should be supporting high school students’ calls increased legislation to halt gun violence, as well as college students’ call to end student debt, creating free higher education for universities and community colleges, etc.

Then there are people who fit neither category, including environmentalists, peace activists, anti-nuke and GMO protestors, dissidents, anarchists, etc. For many here, the Greens are simply not anti-capitalist enough, and the socialists do not put enough emphasis on environmental concerns and ecology.

I have offered a respectful critique of one of the main Left parties, Socialist Alternative, in a previous piece, especially their call to “democratize the Fortune 500 companies”, instead of breaking them down to human-scale anarchic cooperatives and inherently questioning the nature of the consumer goods and production model, which contribute to pollution, misery, disease, alienation, and global warming. Also, their call for a living wage without structural transformation of the industrial system falls flat, for reasons mentioned above.

Last year, Alan Jones wrote a pretty epic essay dismantling the faulty thinking going on in the leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in an essay here.

What is needed among radicals is more guts, and more imagination. We need more people like SPUSA 2016 presidential candidate Mimi Soltysik who called for the military and the police to be disbanded in the LA Times.

What is necessary is to become more grounded in speech and action. Technological utopianism has to be replaced by scale-appropriate bioregional and eco-centric Earth-based production techniques. To accomplish this, we will need to reorient our culture and pay respects to the main keepers of this wisdom, the First Nations of Turtle Island, the land we know as North America.


More: https://godsandradicals.org/2018/04/05/ode-to-america/
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Sat Jun 16, 2018 8:12 am

WHAT IS THE AMERICAN FREEDOM PARTY?

The “Third position” in the AFP precursor party moniker refers to an ideology that advances ethnic/racial nationalism as an alternative to both socialism and capitalism – the former criticized for egalitarian and multicultural goals and the later for placing profits and individualism over racial solidarity. National Socialism is such an ideology.

Boasting offices in six states, Croatia and Canada, the American Freedom Party has continued the racist politics of Freedom 14, declaring in its platform that,

“White Americans should push back!…We need a Nationalist Party interested in defending our borders, preserving our language and promoting our culture…Return to Americans their traditional right of freedom of association, including freedom in racial matters, along with the abolishment of all forms of government- and corporate-mandated racial discrimination and racial preferences, such as affirmative action, quotas, and all forms of ‘sensitivity training.’”


Despite the veneer given to American Freedom Party by the academics and lawyers involved in the group, AFP leaders and the speakers at its conference tie the group to a variety of white nationalist tendencies that includes advocates of racist paramilitarism and those who glorify racist violence.


More: https://www.irehr.org/2018/06/14/what-i ... dom-party/
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Fri Jul 06, 2018 10:32 am

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Last edited by American Dream on Fri Jul 06, 2018 6:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby Elvis » Fri Jul 06, 2018 6:03 pm



Is there some reason you didn't include the text from this mish-mash? Was it to hide this?:

It’s common sense in liberal and Left circles that ideas like “9/11 Truth”, the theories that Barack Obama’s birth certificate was forged, or that the victims of the Sandy Hook or Parkland school shootings were “crisis actors”, are wild fantasies either made up by the bigoted and ill-informed to justify their prejudices, or else false narratives being deliberately fed to such people (for profit or political gain) by unscrupulous media operatives such as FOX News or Alex Jones’ InfoWars.


AD, you've been asked not to post articles that so grossly disparage research of deep-state involvement in 9/11. I understand that you do this to make a larger point, but at RI we do not call 9/11 research "wild fantasies made up by the bigoted and ill-informed."

Do you want to delete the post, or do you want me to do it?
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby Iamwhomiam » Sun Jul 08, 2018 2:05 pm

What sense does it make to ask AD to delete his posting if you're leaving a link to it? How about you disappear your critique too, if you truly want to censor such material from offending certain sensibilities?
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby Elvis » Sun Jul 08, 2018 2:39 pm

Iamwhomiam wrote:What sense does it make to ask AD to delete his posting if you're leaving a link to it? How about you disappear your critique too, if you truly want to censor such material from offending certain sensibilities?


Because calling attention to it is enough. I believe that SRP, after his warning, would have suspended AD for it (I haven't asked him). I don't want to be heavy-handed, but no matter what I do or don't do about it, someone will be unhappy.

Personally, looking over brockley blog, I think it's probably a shill for the CIA, cloaked in class warfare jargon, but that's beside the point of the page's execrable and offensive "conspiracy theorist" slur.

What would you do?
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Sun Jul 08, 2018 2:52 pm

You would be censoring a huge amount of content were every mention of those words to be banished from this board.
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby Elvis » Sun Jul 08, 2018 3:07 pm

American Dream » Sun Jul 08, 2018 11:52 am wrote:You would be censoring a huge amount of content were every mention of those words to be prohibited across the board.


You know perfectly well that the issue not the mere mention of those words. If you can't make a point without ridiculing 9/11 theories and those who posit them, or without qualifying an article that does so, you'll get flak. I have no desire to suspend you or delete your posts; I only hope you'd please show some respect for the RI readership and not characterize them as "cranks" by uncritically posting such rubbish.
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby Iamwhomiam » Sun Jul 08, 2018 3:25 pm

Elvis » Sun Jul 08, 2018 2:39 pm wrote:
Iamwhomiam wrote:What sense does it make to ask AD to delete his posting if you're leaving a link to it? How about you disappear your critique too, if you truly want to censor such material from offending certain sensibilities?


Because calling attention to it is enough. I believe that SRP, after his warning, would have suspended AD for it (I haven't asked him). I don't want to be heavy-handed, but no matter what I do or don't do about it, someone will be unhappy.

Personally, looking over brockley blog, I think it's probably a shill for the CIA, cloaked in class warfare jargon, but that's beside the point of the page's execrable and offensive "conspiracy theorist" slur.

What would you do?


I thought you would understand I would do as I asked you to do, were I of the same mind and of the same opinion. While I understand somewhat that the 911 Truth movement was co-opted and used for disinformation, I never followed that drama and have always felt it was an inside job, whether or not outsiders' planes brought the towers down, which personally, I doubt caused their collapse.

I should have added that after deleting your post, as I suspected you would, (but didn't), that I would also delete my comment, leaving the supposed offense unknown to all future thread visitors, there being only three consecutive deleted posts.

I can read and discount what I find find false among many things I feel true. But I don't have the understanding you and others here do about the misdirection by propaganda about the cause of 911; I never got deeply involved in researching its cause.

Also, I meant no offense. I just thought it was a bit silly for you, the mod who just asked a poster to delete a post, to link to the very article they posted. Oh, I did appreciate your posting Brittanica's accurate definition of conspiracy theory.
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby Elvis » Sun Jul 08, 2018 4:38 pm

Iamwhomiam wrote:Also, I meant no offense. I just thought it was a bit silly for you, the mod who just asked a poster to delete a post, to link to the very article they posted.


No offense taken; I'm just trying to do the least harm y'know? Rather than arbitrarily enforcing my own interpretation of board policies, I'd prefer to get people to think about what they're posting.
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:42 am

Image

Adam Smith to Richard Spencer: Why Libertarians turn to the Alt-Right

Elliot Gulliver-Needham
University of Oxford student with a lot of opinions about politics
Feb 22


If you’ve paid attention to politics on the internet as long as I have, you might have noticed a worrying and confusing trend: traditionally libertarian figures transitioning into alt-right supporters. I’ve followed the ‘classical liberal’ faction of the internet since about 2014, the year I started becoming interested in politics. I was watching Christopher Cantwell before he became known as the ‘crying Nazi’, when his chant was ‘taxation is theft’, not ‘Jews will not replace us’. I remember Stefan Molyneux when he was debating whether we should have a government, not whether government should be used to promote eugenics.

This fascinating transition from the libertarian right to the authoritarian right has been mirrored in just about every single alt-right figurehead. Think Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, Alex Jones, and Tim Gionet (known as ‘Baked Alaska’). The latter used to identify as “a carefree, easygoing libertarian” who “firmly opposed the war on drugs, and championed the cause of Black Lives Matter”. But now, he’s being banned from Twitter for promoting white supremacy and ranting about how Jews control the media. The creator of the Right Stuff, a Neo-Nazi blog that hosts such unsavoury podcasts as the ‘Daily Shoah’ openly acknowledges this, saying “We were all libertarians back in the day. I mean, everybody knows this.” Jeffrey Tucker wrote “They’re doing to libertarianism what they did to Pepe the frog, or Taylor Swift — to co-opt it. They know that no normal American is going to rally around the Nazi flag, so they’re taking ours.” But what exactly makes these people so vulnerable to conversion to the alt-right?

“We were all libertarians back in the day. I mean, everybody knows this”



The History
To understand why libertarians are so susceptible to white supremacist ideas, we have to look at the history of it, specifically within the United States. The fact is that libertarianism has always been a refuge of racism and implicit support for authoritarianism, despite direct contradiction to their supposed ideology. Throughout history, the men who are considered the cornerstone of the right libertarian philosophy supported brutal dictators. Look at Mises’ support of Mussolini, or Hayek and Friedman’s backing of Pinochet. It is clear that the these people have always been willing to put aside ideology for what they see as an end that justifies the means, even in such morally abhorrent cases as supporting Apartheid in South Africa or the Confederacy under the pretence of ‘states rights’. This lingering white supremacy in the libertarian movement carried on beyond the mid twentieth century, into the ideologies of Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell. Rothbard himself wrote that “The proper strategy of libertarians and paleos is a strategy of ‘right-wing populism” Essentially, that means appealing to the racism held within the right of American society (not dissimilar to what we see in Donald Trump).

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Richard Spencer introducing Ron Paul in 2007. Yes, that Richard Spencer.

We can see this again, with strands of white supremacy throughout Ron Paul’s two presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012, perhaps the clearest place where internet libertarianism flourished. Paul was the favoured presidential candidate by libertarians, and if you spent a lot of time on websites such as Reddit in 2012, you almost certainly saw massive amounts of support for him. Of course, while not everyone who supported Ron Paul was a racist, he was surrounded by racists and they had a strong place in his campaign, including future alt-right leader Richard Spencer. But it wasn’t until the collapse of New Atheism that right libertarianism would reach the peak of its internet success.

New Atheism was the primary shelter for teenage white middle-class men around 2010 (and I’m ashamed to confess I was one of them). Reddit was originally one of the biggest places on the internet for New Atheism, with /r/Atheism being one of the biggest subreddits on the site. Over time, it transitioned from hating religion to hating ‘Social Justice Warriors’, supporting Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, and fighting for libertarian issues like legalisation of marijuana. Just as we can draw a direct line between Right Libertarianism and White Supremacy, we can do the same with New Atheism and the Libertarian movement. We just need to look to YouTube to see that ‘rational skeptics’, like TheAmazingAtheist or Sargon of Akkad, transitioned from New Atheism to Classical Liberalism to the Alt-Right (here’s an interesting inside perspective on that here). All of these communities carried over a similar audience, the previously mentioned white middle-class demographic, mainly on platforms such as YouTube or Reddit. Indeed, it could be argued that part of what made New Atheism so popular among this demographic was not only the counter-culture rebellion against traditional societal values, but strands of islamophobia. Obviously, both of these traits are core components of the alt-right. So, with the transition from New Atheism to right libertarianism, the alt-right had a clear target for conversion and recruitment.

“The YouTubers had to give their audience something else besides religion to fight because it became boring, and so what they chose was Social Justice Warriors and feminists”



The Similarities
As hinted at by its historical development, libertarianism is particularly appealing to white middle class men. It seems fairly obvious why; this group is perhaps the most privileged in our society, and sees little reason for a change in the societal order in place. Similarly, the alt-right and all levels of far-right politics hold exactly the same goal, though admittedly they aim to achieve them through different means. But when the advantages start to erode, that’s when they are forced to turn to more reactionary, authoritarian ideologies. Immigration is an ideal example for this, since under a libertarian ideology, immigration should not be restricted in any way. Borders are one of the major constructs of the state, and we shouldn’t be restricting the right of people to choose where they live. However, if you actually talk to libertarians, very often you’ll find that they are far more against immigration than their supposed ideology would suggest. The same rhetoric around the ‘undeserving poor’ is used both towards people on welfare, and immigrants who are apparently coming to live on welfare. This is also due to the idea that immigrants will vote for left-wing parties more (which they do), and then lead to a stronger welfare state. Time and time again, libertarians have shown to be willing to abandon what they would claim as their core principles to uphold the societal order, which places them at the top.

To understand this fully, I think it’s essential to separate the similarities between the alt-right and libertarianism into two categories; the emotional aspect and the ideological aspect. The emotional similarities between the two groups allows libertarians to become sympathetic to the alt-right, then the ideological aspect allows them to become fully integrated.

Emotional Similarities
The emotional similarities of these two groups can best be understood as the language and attitudes that they both share. To begin, both groups are primarily opposed to the same thing: Social justice. When watching a libertarian and a neo-fascist complain about feminism, it’s almost impossible to tell the two apart. It’s very rare to see a classical liberal attacking the alt-right or racists, instead feeling far more comfortable targeting the left. Both use the same language and buzzwords, with words like SJWs and western values constantly being tossed around in both spheres. This makes it incredibly easy for the alt-right to reach out to libertarians; they’re both already literally speaking the same language. Socialists control the media? Swap ‘Socialists’ out for ‘Cultural Marxists’ and you’re halfway to becoming the new Richard Spencer. Hillary Clinton was clearly the social justice candidate in 2016, and Trump was against it. If you’re somebody who bases their entire ideology around opposing social justice, you’re going to be drawn towards the candidate who describes Neo-Nazis as ‘very fine people’.

The rhetoric that libertarians consume acts as a lubricant for transitioning to the alt-right, especially around free speech. The concept of free speech is held in such high regard in libertarian circles, that when a leftist suggests that giving Nazis a chance to advocate for genocide isn’t a good idea, the libertarian is forced to defend the Nazi so as to stand up for their ideas. Obviously, the alt-right aims to limit free speech when they eventually come to power, but since they are yet to achieve power, they just don’t mention it. Instead, they absorb free speech as a rally cry, using it as a method for advocating their ideas. This links to the broader problem of the alt-right, that since they have yet to come to power, they’re able to hide some of their ideology that would be most disturbing to libertarians, such as anti-drug policies and mass surveillance. Instead, they’re concerned with free speech, immigration, and progressivism.


Continues: https://medium.com/@elliotgulliverneedh ... 9747a44db9
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Re: The Right Hand Of Occupy Wall Street

Postby American Dream » Mon Oct 22, 2018 8:45 am

Corbynism: A Critical Approach

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Capitalism, the authors stress, is an organic whole. Capital is a social relation which, by its very nature, defines and structures the totality of society: “The capital relation is not something imposed from the outside but runs through the whole of society itself.” Capital and labour are certainly locked in an antagonistic conflict — the class struggle. But at the same time: “Labour and capital are two sides of the same coin. They are not two separate ‘worlds’ brought together through force or trickery.” Capitalist and worker are subject to “a bond of mutual but coerced interdependence.” Value is not “the property of a given thing in a given space or time.” It is not “a thing which is somehow injected into an object during the labour process.” And it is not something “’captured’ by capital as a pre-existing form of value.” Rather, value is “a relationship existing between things, constituted across time and space.” It is “a particular social relation between objects which comes into being at the moment of their successful mediation.” Labour “relates to value only in and through its social mediation.”

The “site” of that mediation is global: Value does not exist outside of “the totality of labour in society as a whole, on a scale that is not national but global. … Labour (is) the universal form of mediation.” Consequently, capitalism is irreformable: “Without a foundational transformation of the system of socially mediated labour itself, all strategies must eventually convene on the continued validation of value.”

While it might have been more helpful if such theoretical considerations had been developed at the start of the book — rather than halfway-through and at various points thereafter — they do provide a means to understand, and critique, the “semi-coherent set of ideas” which Corbynism constitutes. In the Corbynist world view capitalism is not a universal system of socially mediated labour. It is a small number of bad people who ill-treat a large number of good people. This is summed up in the vacuous slogan “For the Many, Not the Few”, inherited from the Occupy movement’s division of the world into the 1% and the 99%. The slogan is also quintessentially Blairite. It was Blair’s new version of Clause Four of the Labour Party constitution which promised “a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few.”

Overlapping with this personalised critique of capitalism are the equally populist slogans of a “rigged system” and “greedy bankers”. For Corbyn and Corbynism, the wealth and power of the elite 1% are to be explained by their cheating and their “rigging” of the system. And it is the greed of this 1% which causes economic crises: “Speculators and gamblers crashed our economy in 2008 … (their) greed plunged the world into crisis.” Greed At one level, the ruling classes can indeed be accused of greed and of cheating and rigging the system. They are not moral paragons. But at a more basic level, they have no need of either. It is capitalism itself which, because of what it is, creates and reproduces social and economic inequalities, and which bears within itself the germs of its own crises.

The political strategy which flows out of Corbyn’s moralising personalisation of capitalism is not one which seeks to challenge the workings of capitalism but one which seeks to remove the pernicious influence of the 1%. Thus, a Corbynist Labour government will “tear down the vested interests that hold this country back.” It will “take on the cosy cartels that are hoarding this county’s wealth for themselves.” It will “call time on this rigged system, because power is in the wrong hands.”

Ironically, all this amounts to a defence of capitalism: Tear down the power of the 1% and put an end to the cheating – and the result would be a capitalism which supposedly serves the many, not the few. This personalised conceptualisation of capitalism also effortlessly flows over into conspiracy theories about the rule of the 1%, the “establishment”, and the “elite”. And from there, harking back to ideas common in nineteenth-century labour movements, it is only another step to antisemitism.

Most theories of contemporary left antisemitism present it as the product of misunderstanding the nature of Israel and Zionism. Bolton and Pitts seem to argue the opposite: Personalisation leads to conspiracy theories, which lead to antisemitism, which leads to a particular – antisemitic – view of Israel and Zionism. Personalisation also dovetails into the Corbynist misunderstanding of the nature of value, seen as something inserted into the objects of production by the worker but then captured or stolen by the greedy capitalist. The political consequences of such an approach are dire. On the one hand, it shifts the essential contradiction within capitalism from production (where the exploitation of human labour takes place) to distribution (because that it where the capitalist realises the fruits of his theft). In the Corbynist world view, what therefore needs to be challenged is not the capitalist process of production (i.e. what makes capitalism capitalism) but how the output of that productive process is divided up.

According to Corbyn: “Wealth creation is a good thing. … It is a co-operative process between workers, public investment in services and, yes, very often innovative and creative individuals and businesses. Wealth creation is a shared process. The proceeds must be shared too.” On the other hand, it underpins the pro-Brexitism, or pro-Brexit leanings, of the broader moment around Corbyn.

Whereas Corbynism stands for “keeping” value where it is supposedly created – whether it be Britain, or Preston, or wherever – the European Union stands for internationalism and globalisation. Standing in the tradition of Tony Benn, Corbynism therefore yearns for the reactionary utopia of “some socialist form of nationalist sovereignty which will allow workers to ‘take back control’.” But in an “irreversibly global society”, such a project is doomed to “inevitable failure”.

As Bolton and Pitts point out, this hankering after a restoration of an illusory national sovereignty is at odds with Corbynism’s supposed anti-imperialist credentials: “It risks replicating in contemporary form the antagonistic and expansionist political-economic backdrop of nineteenth century imperialism.” It also leads into a profound hostility to migrant labour and freedom of movement of labour. Like similar populist movements in other countries, Corbynism now denounces freedom of movement as a plot by the 1% to push down wages. Migrant labour is also criticised as part of the mechanism whereby “value” drains away from Britain and is exported abroad (to the home countries of migrant labour).

The irony of this is not lost on Pitts and Bolton: “In the 2017 election the man who was elected precisely on the basis that he would not cede to pressure and impose ‘controls on immigration’ fronted a manifesto … (which) in real terms was the most right-wing policy on immigration the party had seen in generations.”. And the fact that so many of Corbyn’s supporters did not even bat an eyelid in response says something about the nature of the movement which has emerged around Corbyn Bolton and Pitts rightly devote substantial sections of their book to identifying not just the apparent similarities but also the ideological common ground between Corbynism and right-wing populism, as epitomised by Trump.

If the system is “rigged” against the majority of the population, if ordinary hard-working people are (literally) robbed of the fruits of their labour, and if the 99% need to “take back control”, the question which arises is: who is rigging the system, robbing workers, and exercising control? Corbyn’s answer is: greedy bankers, stock-market spivs, and Brussels bureaucrats. But the answer could just as easily be Trump’s: foreigners, Muslims, Mexicans, liberal intellectuals, establishment politicians, and the mainstream media. (In fact, a number of those categories also fit in with Corbyn’s explanation of the “rigged system”. And vice versa.)


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