CIA vs. the RADICAL LEFT
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- čas přidán 7. 12. 2021
- Sartre, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari all hit the streets in May 68. Their names were also written down in the notebooks of American intelligence agents. This video is a look at the CIA's surveillance of the French intellectual left and the threat it no longer poses to "a newly made-over fascism."
Read the report here: www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/...
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imagine being a CIA agent and being sent to Deleuze lectures
luckiest/unluckiest C.I.A. agent ever
Imagine being sent to Deleuze's lectures and not being effected. Only a soulless predator wouldn't be.
@@dr.mikeybee you mean like a CIA agent?
One can hope that isn't the case necessarily, but it doesn't hurt to make the point. Remember, these are our neighbors. We should try to respect and understand them.
The CIA agent would be like: well this doesn't do fuck all to the powers that be, my job is done here
I studied philosophy in school, so started subscribing to channels like these because of my personal interests. After I graduated, and spent many years unemployed and under-employed, I got a job in labor union and community organizing.
To say that radical theory, as it is written about in these books and discussed among grad students, is useless for line of work that I'm in is probably an understatement.
I do hope that people know there is some dense-ass radical theory happening in trade union campaigns and in trailer parks in KY tenant organizing campaigns that is fucking incredible. Folks in labor and tenant union drives are conceptualizing their work, in real time, and it is very impressive.
While the people in universities are out there shitting the bed (or doing whatever in the hell it is they do), workers are out here winning union drives and tenant campaigns amid some unbelievably difficult political conditions.
Just a reminder for the philosophy types to listen every now and then to get schooled up on theory from tenants and workers out here actually doing the work rather than the online circle jerks. (I acknowledge the irony of posting about this online)
Your comment touches on one of the things I've been trying to warn people against. Chauvinism. Caring more about their philosophical understanding of theory, and intellectual high ground more than the material world they need to be organizing in. I'm infinitely more frustrated by people who spend the whole of their time trying to debate online than with leftists who have different beliefs than mine, but are doing the real work of organizing and building revolutionary structures.
Is it more important to criticize people in a completely different country who aren't doing Marxism the right way, or to unionize your local grocery store and bars? Should we spend all day infighting, or start a free breakfast program to improve the material conditions of our community?
Where can I read about this? (I also recognoze the irony, being a bedshitting philosophy student)
US/Canada students are busy fighting for they pronouns
Workers are very likely to end up coopted or appeased. You can´t just say "oh they´re out there working and not reading so they are the ones who do the right thing". They are fighting against a huge capitalsit machine that has loads of experience in dealing with workers movements. Intellctuals are the ones who can recognize this constellatiom and are capable of researching it systemtically, unlike workers. An alliance of intellelctuals and workers is needed. That being said i have studied sociology and not philosophy, that is itself much more down to earth and practical if done right. I do believe that left academics have to be more involved in research of important things rather than endless theorizing or worthless capital-oriented and opportunisitc scientific diarrhea. I know what types of people you are critisitzing but this is a false dichotomy.
@@lenas6246 Thanks for the thoughtful response.
My point was that workers can, and do, "recognize this constellation." I'd hazard a guess, that workers are more likely to understand this than intellectuals are, but that's just a speculative hypothesis.
The workers at Kellog's have been rejecting 2-tiered wage systems. That came from conceptualization and experience with wielding and confronting power.
Sure, there are times that intellectuals and workers can (and do) effectively join together. From experience, in practically trying to build alliances like that, the bigger problem tends to be the intellectuals and not the workers. It is common, but by no means absolute, that the intellectuals take an attitude of detached superiority in these coalitions and presume that workers have nothing of distinctively theoretical value to add to the conversation.
My contention is both: that's false as well as the exact thing that tends to make it difficult and unlikely to build a successful coalition of intellectuals and workers.
I went a little further to dunk a bit on the variety of French postmodern stuff as particularly useless, but that's more anecdotal and indicates the kind of crap that I think is often lacking in rigor.
Moreover, I absolutely think it is false to say that workers aren't "reading." We absolutely are. The League of Revolutionary Black Workers use to read Marx to each other on assembly lines in Detroit. Don West, a communist organizer and co-founder of the Highlander Center, started an independent and DIY press (the Appalachian Movement Press) of/by/for workers to use theoretical writings and historical engagement to embed these understandings within organizing campaigns.
The dichotomy isn't a logical description of of camps, but a reflection on my experience in trying, and often failing, to build these coalitions. From what I've seen: the biggest barrier is the intellectuals are usually assholes who dismiss workers and presume that we can't think and theorize. We read, we experiment, we strategize campaigns, learn from them, put them in practice, and share our findings. To challenge that we are talking about 2 and only 2 camps where this dynamic shows up ignores how shitty journalists and Hollywood writers are at writing stories ABOUT workers, instead of listening and learning about what's going on.
That's a massive problem, because it treats "research subjects" in very condescending ways as if the work of social research is treating workers like animals in the zoo. Any social science program will spend weeks talking about research methods and spotlighting this kind of dynamic. I live in Appalachia and can totally attest to the carloads of "academics" who show up and act like they are on safari. We hate these people. And for good reason.
There are obviously notable exceptions to this: Angela Davis, Mike Davis, Ted Allen come to mind from the trained intellectual camp. I also think they are few and far between.
I'm challenging the false presumption that academics, especially those employed by (or working in) universities, have a monopoly on knowledge production. They don't.
I take the very existence of the Highlander Research and Education Center in east TN, the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum in WV, and Root Cause Research Center in KY to definitively dispel that notion.
CIA: Leftist theory has divided and leftists spend more time arguing with each other.
Me: I have never been so offended by something I 100% agree with.
The CIA-fu is strong
This is why the CIA is a leftist organization.
I often find myself being more interested in niche political theory and philosophy books than those on current public policy issues. I prefer to engage with abstract concepts, because they envoke my imagination and creativity, whilst on the other hand I have become disillusioned with practical solutions to political issues as I will probably not see any significant progress in my lifetime. However, this type of engangement with leftist politics is futile and will only lead to a left of anonymous individuals who lack any solidarity and thus hold no serious power or threat to the current order. This video has remined me that I can't just sit on my intellectual and moral high ground for the rest of my life if I want to make real tangible change. Real activism is not fun and aesthetic but still necessary.
So much this... there is this meme that lefties will read 3 books but won't talk to theor neighbour
This is exactly my sentiment. It is a great irony that many of us fall into that solitary scholar type deal when it comes to theory while our whole ideology is one of the mass movements, emancipation and ultimately collectivism. If we do not build a real-life collective that struggles for its goals we are doing exactly nothing at all. The pessimism and futility is partly our fault due to inaction and weakness against the dictatorship of the ruling classes being intricately webbed in an almost total cultural hegemony.
There _can_ be an aesthetic to activism and/or protest: either dress in Red, Black, or both, depending on your particular (and I do mean particular) politics.
_I think_ that seeing a very large group of people dressed in Red is more frightening to our owners and rentier class than a bunch of folk without uniform; I think that it makes us look like we’re serious and have specific demands, etc. I’m not the fashion police, though.
@@jeroenboom8 It doesn’t have to be. I remember the summer of 2019, during the riots and protests against the pigs, libs, and fash. When I was in the streets with my comrades.
I learned a LOT more from those times than from almost everything that the books, podcasts, videos (sorry), and online journals could teach me. I learned about true solidarity when it was dangerous, when we had something to lose, when we were being shot at with pepper balls, when we were face to snout with the enemy.
I also learned who was really down, and who was just yapping- which maybe was the most important lesson, TBH.
This is why I read Anti-Oedipus while going to mutual aid events for the unhoused. Actually feeding and building that solidarity between classes and backgrounds. I am reading the theory with its joyous affects but also DOING SOMETHING!!!!! I am also super grungy and have only an engineering degree. I literally have never met these grad students who study Foucault Or Derrida etc. I literally just read this shit in more a punk way and use what is useful to make change and leave the rest (in Deleuzian fashion). Mind/Body or thought/action are one and the SAME.
DO socialism where you are. Organize your workplace. Fill strike coffers. Provide mutual aid. Feed people.
This is correct! It's funny to me that a lot of people on here take the message to be, we need to return to ML theory. I think that even misses the point. Focusing on concrete action like organizing the workplace is exactly right.
Or get a job.
@@stuarthicks2696 and unionise!
This was one of my favorite videos yet. I'm 42 years old and a first year grad student. I've been largely self-taught and absorbing all the critical theory in my classes takes some getting used to. It's not that I don't find it valuable, because I definitely do, but there is something so Vital about making these ideas digestible for people who don't necessarily have the time or will to wade through the jargon. If there's something I've learned in my extreme old age, it's this: No one cares what you think--only what you do.
Policy is everything. Action is everything. Real solidarity is everything.
Keep doing what you do, PP. It's wonderfully helpful to people like me.
I suggest you look into Gabriel Rockhill's recent work on the global theory industry
“Well, as one judge said to another, ‘Be just. And if you can’t be just, at least be arbitrary.’” -Burroughs _(Naked Lunch)_
Burroughs. Seriously underrated!
@@svodcat7524 love his work with the lemurs
Burroughs fans! Always been a big fan myself, and recently I went on something of a binge, reading a load of books by him I never had a chance to before. "As one judge said to another, 'be just, and if you can't be just, be arbitrary'" has become one of my favourite quotes.
@@dunningdunning4711 I recently found this 3ish minute clip on spotify of Burroughs describing his "cut-up" method and its ability to allow to the future to seep out of the present. Really eerie and fascinating stuff you'd probably enjoy!
@@jackri7676 Cheers for the rec, mate. :-)
Spotify has a load of spoken word albums by Burroughs - Spare Ass Annie being the classic.
"or talk about reading theory" -shots fired
hit a little close to home for me lol
This was a pretty good episode! _Plastic Pills_ is one of the best shows on TV right now imo
Right up there with Succession
Roses are red
So are we
Overthrow the bourgeoisie
An excellent analysis along with a very important conclusion. Really great video 🙏🏼
I think Plastic Pills is secretly saying: "it's the season for love and understanding. Merry Christmas everyone."
Oh so that's the secret meaning of "More Radical!"
People need tools not lectures. They need to be conveyed these ideas in a way immediately relevant to them.
I think guattari was so frustrated because unlike the rest he was kind of a jank "intellectual" and was far more politically active but was alienated himself in his attempts to translate political work into academic work. Thats why everyone thinks he's so weird. Doesn't help his own field alienated him from the public discourse too.
Disability I think offers a legitimate underrespected avenue because it is directly related to labor but we will see.
There are significant interconnections between academic disability theory and disability rights activism, but it's extremely diverse and hard to figure out where to begin.
The camera sweep of tissues, Foucault, and lotion. SO PERFECT.
Putting the discussion here in the context of the CIA report really does hammer home the conclusions. Excellent.
Einstein said it best "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."
You can be radical without being esoteric. People are literally only esoteric because they're too scared to be as radical as they really are. Or because they have to generalize enough to avoid getting locked up.
I'll have the anarchist word soup please.
One of the best videos I've ever seen watched it multiple times over the past few months
This was very eye opening. Thank you for sharing.
Hey Pills,
I've been listening to the podcast for about a year but just recently subscribed to your channel. I just wanted to say thank you for your content. Really inspiring to this auto-didact.
i feel very much on a similar path. excellent work, introspection, and analysis. what a bizarre year 1968 must have been
Thank you, I subscribed.
This was the first video I saw on your channel, and I think the conclusions should be a shift to a willingness to work with many different organizations with different views to achieve a common goal. In the U.S., the fight for high-quality state-paid healthcare seems like the first fight we should start.
Acknowledge that if everyone had healthcare right now, with the current healthcare system, doctors and hospitals would be overwhelmed (and the care for anyone who has insurance at present would get worse than it already is). The fight for universal healthcare has to include subsidies for students going into the medical field, not only free tuition, but also stipends for people who need them. It also has to include a demand for building more healthcare facilities (need experts to go over statistics to determine how many and where).
A fight for something like this might wake up the sleeping giant that we are.
We have other interests, but I think the relatively arcane differences between regular communists (called Stalinists by many others), Marxists, Trotskyists, anarchists, and any other schisms on the left should be set aside to win the masses to our common goals.
Loved this video. Super informative!
for a second there at the beginning i thought you had the Tenet soundtrack and I got so hyped. but i stayed hyped and watched the rest of the video. great work as always.
Another great video. You have a great channel and I appreciate your authenticity.
God, I love this channel. Intellectually stimulating and educational, but also entertaining-- and yet, not to the detriment of its substance.
ngl, Im digging through an interesting rabbit hole, this was a very interesting video to find, and a very cool first video of yours to stumble into
Great episode, lived in Portland, Oregon in the 90's. My experience with the left mirrored the same trajectory of disillusionment. Still fascinated with niche political ideas, yet in sliver of what can be actuated in the US, it is hard to see any sort of practical application. It is like particle physics in the stone age.
grea video, as always. and very important topic. thanks
Plastic Pills is back!!!!
Dude, thank u! Thank u for putting soo much work into something so relevant!
The pessimism of the reality can't win over the optimism of the will!
Great video!!
Mannnnnnnnnnnnn !!! being french , thank you sooooooooooooooo much for this ! I can tell you that NO "intellectual" can say that in France today ( thank god, Frances Stonor Saunders isn't french ) . We still have some great young ones who can still think properly ( grégoire chamayou is one ) , but I think we won't be able to learn the lessons of that time ( of my lifetime ...) for a long time ! thank you so much
Great episode. Loved every bit of it.
great videp, very intriguing, something I always think about but never found teh answer to.
"this is like fighting in an alley way behind the marketplace of ideas" hahahahahah omg
Great work! Deleuze's comment at the end sounds a lot like the phrase Zizek has borrowed from Melville' Bartleby: I would prefer not to.
Thank you.
Really do enjoy your content.. Thank you.
Mahe Ohna ✌️ Favour ALL
"The revolution won't be televised."
Banger post Mr pills
Fantastic case study - thanks for this!
Thanks so much for your video!
When you are in the middle of realizing that your protest politics have been half-cocked and you need to act towards mutual aid and policy alike to get shit done.
This is depressing in the healthiest way I think.
And here we sit in our ideological ivory towers of intellectual superiority and made it a sport, a game we play to reassure ourselfs of our own political and cultural worthiness.
I admire your spirit. Would love to have a conversation at some point in our lives. Though I can't pay for the privilege on patreon though ^^° broke lefty...
Greetings from Germany.
Thank you
It would be nice to look to Perry Anderson's critical analysis of western marxist and its mid-late XX century intellectualist deviations, and of the demise of french critical culture. Thanks for the vid!
This is amazing
Breh - you're one of the most to the point educators from the scene on here actually bringing up interesting and relevant subjects rather than engaging in endless drama or chasing trends. Your channel deserves to be huge for real.
One of my favorite videos by Pills. I have enjoyed the cope that radical theory has brought me via a sense of better understanding processes, change and language but ever since I started studying it I always felt it "lost the plot" having read Marx, Engles, Lenin, Stalin and Mao first. I am thankful I did read them first as I think I would just be aimless and lost if I dove into CT first. This video puts an historical perspective on all of that, great video. Solidarity, comrades.
I was waiting for this whole day
What’re you planning to do now?
@@dethkon philosophize the philosophy
@@dethkon and do nothing
@@kentokickot595 Hey, me too! Well I’m also going to the music store later, then having drinks starting at 5. Anyway, what are you reading? I’m probably doing Bataille today, but maybe some more Deleuze. Or actually, I might do Whitehead! Too many texts out there, you know what I mean? Lol
@@dethkon yeah lol!
amazing video
I think this is your best work
Because you couldn't understand the older episodes
@@ROHIT-jt8lz Someone didn't watch the video. e_e Nice one-upping there, buddy.
Very good Video
That's such a dope shirt. Is that still in your merch store?
This is an absolutely superb video
so the intellectuals became part of the spectacle? yikes.
grabriel rockhill has written about this issue a lot. maybe you can have him on?
great vid!
Where can I buy that shirt? Love your channel.
Does anyone know of any good books breaking down May 1968 from a historical standpoint?
May ’68 and Its Afterlives by Kristin Ross is really good!
David cautes ‘68
Great video and conclusion. It is so related to what is happening in our up and coming presidential elections in Chile right now. I also couldn't help thinking of a point Yuval Noah Harari makes in Homo Deus, where he says what makes the huge difference in a successful and a failed movement is how well organized they are, I guess intellectuals have never been very good at organization because of tbeir egos, that is a big assumption, but it could be the case.
Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote a good political science book on the student protests of the 1960s, and it's failures put some of the final nails in the coffin to marxism and international communism. Called "Between two ages: America's role in the technocratic era".
Now this is depressing.
Just subscribed
My Favorite vid after your Deleuze Nietzsche one.
All the energy of this radical left as such can today be found in current ecological thought. The figure that proved to be the bridge to this ecosophy is Felix Guattari and the text is The Three Ecologies. Guattari's turn to ecology and importantly also seeing the potential of technology is an under appreciated remnant of 68.
Top tier vid
Can you recommend a good Critical Theory reader? (And maybe while there also a good Frankfurt School reader?)
Such a sad state for an ideology that prides itself in mass movement of people for a greater good. When looking at how it got to this place though, it does seem kinda inevitable. I’m not nearly well read up or intuitive to envision how this conundrum could possibly be overcome to form a genuine, leftist resistance to capital but I have hope one day that vision will be realized.
big love.
Tight
Good stuff!
I like the lotion next to all the theory books
Agree 100%. So where is the forum for relevant debate/critique? I think CZcams (or more broadly our modern social media soaked panopticon) would be a solid platform for broadcasting ideas but how do we do it in a significant way, with personae that have a talent for narrating complex issues.
Have you checked out Carefree Wanderings channel?
That I would say is doing it right.
@@svodcat7524 I will. Pills, Epoch, and a few others do really solid work simplifying complex ideas but they have the knowledge and following to push philosophy forward. Pill's critique has me wondering when/if philosophy streamers will push their own Project/Theories and join the fray with the source material. Further, exploring those projects in traditional ways would be a mistake for all the reasons explored in this video.
My thoughts for taking intellectual philosophy to the masses:
I could see a typically moderated debate between streamers doing well on CZcams and it could show philosophy being brainstormed into loose theory over the course of a week then cut into a 1-3 hour length in approachable. language.
it would be great if you would put subtitles, for people who do not hear well. auto generated are good, but maybe review them..
wow this channel is really fucking epic
Aha and the Israeli defensive force using tactics inspired by D&G's A Thousand Plateaus as well
wut
Where am I can find more CIA documents?
Should have talked about Fanon dying in the room with a CIA
I just want to convince people of their own collective power in a public vegetable garden
Just came back to watch this today because its genius or reinforcing, or both, bot not none
Make lesdons from the CIA/KGB a series, pls
The truth is ugly. Most members of the working class have been completely disintegrated from each other and completely integrated into capital. The result is not simply capitalist realism, the inability to imagine a world outside of capitalism. The result is an inability to desire such a world if it could be imagined. How do we maintain the posture of collectivism in the face of a world that has no desire to be won? Struggle has become quixotic, as opposed to futile. This doesn't mean we shouldn't struggle...just, when we do, it feels like a really fucking bad joke.
theres good reason why i always say im in central left and not radical left,
i believe in the power of making compromises as long as human rights arent at risk, im also not into ethical competition and i prefer practicality and locality when it comes to making a change like being in organizations that help people,
theres many different ways to make world better like charities etc.
but raging online might not bring the needed changes😅
This will be interesting
Eventually dad will pass away from his drunken behaviour....
"[Radicalism] is not something to brag about. If you're going to be proud of something be proud of being reconciliatory because that would have made a difference here." Awesome quote
Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not after you 😁
hell yeah dude
Anyone think that identity politics has been emphasised to discredit the otherwise based left?
Who was translating these bodies of theory for the CIA? Are there theories as to who was complicit within US academia at the time? Maybe it's explicit and it was just omitted from the video for irrelevance.
Thank you for sharing this excellent video essay.
Damn. This is a devastating wake-up call for those of us on the political left. Those of us, who are late to the party, were just beginning to wake up to the 20th century radical theory, after struggling with the difficult 19th century texts, such as Marx's Capital. These are readings few engage with beyond the university campus. And, now, Plastic Pills drops this revelation on us. It seems obvious, after the fact, that policy not ideas is what really shifts the status quo. But the left has had a lot of soul-searching to do, having had to deal with the widespread conflation of communism with authoritarianism, and other pro-capitalist propaganda. In the US, the left has had to deal with the Red Scares; McCarthyism; FBI programs, such as COINTELPRO. In the UK, the left had to deal with the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee. And, like in the USA, the UK's most repressive agencies were reserved for non-white leftists, as with the UK's Black Power Desk. And, most saliently, the CIA had launched a global war against the left, which likely continues to this day. (cf. "Jacobin: The CIA's Secret Global War Against the Left", lumpenproletariat dot org, 26 DEC 2020) The CIA, of course, was watching the leading leftist intellectuals closely, especially in France. Now, documents reveal the CIA decided the French radical theorists were on a path of infighting and sectarianism, which could only lead to atomization. This is like a gut punch to realize that all of our current and future study of 20th century radical theory is not as subversive as we may have hoped. The truth hurts; but it also liberates. And we have yet to see what future anti-capitalist, antifascist movements will accomplish as radical theory becomes more widely understood.
We still need Plastic Pills to keep sharing these valuable lessons for the left, to grow and develop our intellectual capacities. It seems this elixir is still brewing. The left has learned a lot, but mainly in academia. Now, we just need to translate the lessons from the leading leftist intellectuals from technical jargon to working-class vernacular. We don't want to become mired in highfalutin discourse. But we also need to help expand and elevate the consciousness of our alienated working-class brothers and sisters. And we need catalysts, like Plastic Pills, Epoch Philosophy, Jonas Čeika, et al. to provide space for community-building. We must keep building bridges, as the capitalist state seeks to further alienate us from each other. And as Jeff Mackler (AssangeDefense dot org) recently said at a Free Assange! rally at the Oakland Grand Lake Theater: 'Form groups! You're not going to be able to figure it out by yourself!'
It seems the job of the political left is far more difficult than the job of the political right because the political ends of the right can be affirmed by manipulation and deception, by simply encouraging individualism and self-preservation instead of mutual aid, whereas the left is obliged to educate, empower, organize, and mobilize. It seems we have stalled in the educate phase, a pre-power stage. In the US, the left has also been decimated. Contrary to corporate media propaganda, the Democrat Party is not part of the left, as they consist mainly of center-right and right-wing politicians.) For the most part, the left doesn't operate in the evil, manipulative ways we see play out, for example, in Trump Nation, with front groups and hierarchical structures of complete obedience from below and complete authority from above. In the US, we seem to be following a path toward totalitarianism, which reflects elements from Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism as well as elements from Adorno & Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment. Meanwhile, the left has been experimenting with horizontalism and more democratic structures, which promise to increase egalitarianism, but are far more complex and fragile forms of organization than the vertical, hierarchical structures of organization favored by the right. And the political right has so much more money than the left, which, again, does not include the Democrat Party institution. What the left has are ideas, which can galvanize solidarity and people power.
So, now, we see just how atomized we have become on the left. But this is probably true for all western societies. So, our challenge is to find common ground. Machiavelli reminds us there are two ways to affect political change: force or laws. The choice is yours. Pacifists must never lose sight of this reality. We must defend human rights and freedom from the totalitarian impulse. Ideas are important only insofar as they inform action, insofar as they help mobilize the left into action. In the US, this tells us what remains of the left must break the stranglehold of the two-party dictatorship. which is a right-wing dictatorship operating under a false left-right paradigm. We must get ranked-choice voting, abolish the electoral college, get proportional representation in Congress, abolish the antidemocratic Senate, restore publicly-funded elections, overturn Citizens United, and so on. And the left must champion these issues as a single-prong of a multi-pronged approach. The Cuban Revolution succeeded because of the synergy between student movements, elecroral politics, and all dimensions of popular resistance to the U.S.-backed dictatorship. Electoral politics is only one pathway to freedom, neither panacea nor poison. But electoral politics mustn't be surrendered to the bourgeois, to the liberals, and to the political right.
But, then, I'm probably missing something, which you can help me see. I may be wrong. I may be right. In any event, we're searching for truth. We're working to cultivate wisdom within a community of cultivating wisdom to expand our consciousness, our cognitive capacities, our potential for revolutionary change.
Damn. This was a welcome wake-up call.
Meanwhile, if you don't work you don't eat.
Work. Eat. Act for justice. Form groups. Solidarity.
Let's face it, the woke ideology of the intellectual left that now holds sway over the educated elite in the Western world is dumb, self-destructive, and completely infantile.
@@freeman8914 come with me, I can destroy it in one blow hahea
You should check out the reading lists by Hakim.
Trying to come up with something banal so that I can get my phd.
Cuál es la razón de ser más radical, a dónde se dirige con tales acciones? Una constante tienen todos los filosofos mencionados y es que no tienen grandes ilusiones respecto a una transformación revolucionaria, porque los caminos que se hicieron con esos propósitos terminaron convirtiendose en cárceles, en persecuciones, censura, en dogmas. Repetir el discurso de que en nuestras manos está el poder es apelar al argumento más débil de nuestro tiempo. En nuestras manos sólo está el hambre, la desesperanza, la depresión y la ansiedad. Lo que sea que surja de ello, dificilmente tendrá una forma "radical".
Sigma: the CIA employs schizoanalysis
Pretty good video. I am fascinated by the immobility of the Left and it's something I think about all the time when I see Leftist discourse on social media. No matter how popular it is, no matter how radical they sound, where are the results? Where's the political organization? Where's the mobility? Academic journals and Twitter memes don't count. I think the New Left is what started this schism and after half a century people somehow haven't improved. Today, it feels like everything has only gotten worse and more decadent. It was only a year ago that 20 million people protested for racial justice and against the police state. One year later, not a single material policy has changed and no systemic overhaul has occurred. We're stuck and we're not willing to admit it.
Indeed. So, what do you propose as a way out of this political rut?
In the US, it seems the Democrat Party functions as a black hole, which disappears all sincere leftist opposition. Leftists, either drop out of electoral politics, seeing it as a pointless bourgeois endeavor, or they try to 'reform the Democrat Party from within' or to 'push the Democrat Party to the left'. Yet, this has been a failed approach since the McCarthyist witchhunts. But this is the consciousness of the masses within Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter formations. But all we see are superficial identity politics posturing from Democrat Party politics, as their neoliberal policies enable the same anti-working class capitalist imperialism desired by the Republican Party.
I imagine a similar false left-right paradigm is operant in most western nations.
It seems all activists must expose and challenge the false left-right paradigm within their respective nations. It seems like a mistake to surrender parliamentary or electoral politics by only acting outside of establishment politics.
@@philmessina476 I don't believe there is any political solution. Kind of a depressing perspective to have, yeah, but I don't see any feasible way out of this. As long as the system is hegemonic nothing will fundamentally challenge it other than violence, which most people are understandably not interested in. The most we can do is wait until the system inevitably implodes and then fill in the vacuum, but even that is ambiguous. Engaging in electoral politics is like entering a funeral home and most political activism is sanctioned by the state anyways.
@@Hboybatman I agree with you; violence is virtuous when it becomes instrumental to taking back our rights. The left's activism is only seen on social media. digital activism or virtual activism, as zizek calls it, doesn't count. we live in a posthuman world ruled by biopolitics and the majority isn't even worried about that.
All true.
Awesome video!! I hope the consequent dismissal of postmodernism and wokeness is more well received among millennials than the appeals of Chomsky
omg whst are we supposed to do
omg, Sartre was right about my genx disconnect ??!
I mean, I'd say this relates to every generation since the Boomers. Except maybe GenZ... they really aren't taking this shit. About half of them are as apathetic as the rest of us, but, on average, I'd say they have a better nose for bureaucratic bullshit and asinine policies than anyone else. Give it a few more generations and we might actually implement real change that sticks just from the passage of time -- and that's if shit doesn't start hitting the fan sooner. Climate change and its inevitable effects on policy, for example, isn't going to wait that long.