exmarx posted:

exmarx posted:

PRESIDENT LADYCOP posted:

It never ceases to amaze me that people think Nagle is arguing in favor of racism rather than pointing out one the origins of working-class racism and what to do about it (make it so that the global economy isn't hosed in such a way that everyone must flock to the rich imperialist countries, and make it so people who do migrate aren't being exploited and undercutting the wages of local labor).

Badger of Basra posted:

everyone should stay where they are born, except for me, an irish phd who gets to travel freely to the us and the eu

PRESIDENT LADYCOP posted:

Yeah, it's almost like brain drain and mass emigration are problems that require solutions at the national and international level rather than the individual.

Badger of Basra posted:

this still presupposes that the good and natural thing is for people to stay where they are born, and not to move

really queer Christmas posted:

I just finished the French Revolution series, you can definitely tell he's still pretty liberal because of how squeamish he got over the terror. when he covered Kosciuskos revolt and mentioned that 20,000 poles died in a single day because of the Russians wanting revenge compared to 16K Frenchmen dying over the entire span of the terror... I got my answer on how bad it really was.

it's still a good series and I'm looking forward to starting Haiti next week. also, you should really give a listen to citations needed OP, they're absolutely fantastic.

quote:

Like in his previous battles, when he had ordered his men to spare non-combatants and the evacuation of townspeople,[12] Suvorov issued an order on 3 November 1794 that included special instructions regarding the treatment of enemy civilians, "Do not enter houses; spare any enemy asking for quarter; do not kill unarmed men; do not make war on women; do not touch youngsters".[13][14] However, after the battle spread to the streets[15] and the insurgents hid in civilian houses,[16] vowing to fight to the last man,[17] the Russian troops, against the orders given by Suvorov prior to the battle, started to invade the houses held by the insurgents and killed a number of townspeople in revenge for the slaughter of the Russian Garrison in Warsaw...

CountFosco posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Praga#Massacre

Yes, these two situations are entirely similar.

PRESIDENT LADYCOP posted:

It never ceases to amaze me that people think Nagle is arguing in favor of racism rather than pointing out one the origins of working-class racism and what to do about it (make it so that the global economy isn't hosed in such a way that everyone must flock to the rich imperialist countries, and make it so people who do migrate aren't being exploited and undercutting the wages of local labor).

Bedshaped posted:

Has anyone actually read the Nagle book?

Was wondering if there's loads of foreboding for her increasing alt-right congeniality. She appears to be heading down the 'Tim Pool Rabbithole'.

Badger of Basra posted:

y’all are gonna lose your minds when the revolutions guy says that maybe the Soviets did something bad once

420 Gank Mid posted:

Kill All Normies is extremely forboding of someone who doesnt quite understand anything thats going on and learned everything they know on 4chan and accepted a great deal of it uncritically.

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:

it's pretty good as an anthropological study of the lovely tribe in question

as literally anything else it's godawful and somewhere along the line she got the idea it was something else.

MizPiz posted:

Has Nagel done anything besides making leftist posters thirsty?

Serious question

Dr. Killjoy posted:

she could have interviewed goons and made a far better thesis based around the “failson”

quote:

This general perception feeds the weird victim mentality of magazines like Quillette, which they use to lend a bogus nobility to their various articles peddling right-wing pseudo-history and defending scientific racism. It is what has allowed the comedian Andrew Doyle to receive what must be, judging by the amount of coverage he has received recently in the British press, a pretty hefty advance for a book ostensibly authored by “Titania McGrath,” a sort of cack-handed parody of an online left-wing commentator — exactly the sort of person middle-aged men like to imagine is telling them they're not allowed to say whatever they want any more. And it is what led Angela Nagle, who used to be seen as being “of the left” before she started hanging out with alt-right YouTubers and voicing anti-immigration rhetoric in conservative magazines, to declare in Kill All Normies that “the politics of transgression” was no longer the purview of the left, but rather a resurgent and dynamic right.

According to Nagle, in the 1960s “transgression” was enshrined as a virtue by left liberals, who sought to profane and dismantle every stuffy hang-up and crusty preconception of a dully moralistic conservative establishment. Left-wing politics was thus lent a subversive thrill, joyfully energizing a vibrant counter-culture. But nowadays, what is stuffy and crusty is the PC left, who in Nagle's view are driving a young people to the right by moralizing about every little thing that, in the name of equality or compassion, we must or must not say.

By contrast, spaces like the /b/ board on 4chan, associated with the Pepe-posting culture of online Trump supporters, are the inheritors of a tradition which Nagle insists “can be traced” from the Marquis de Sade through Nietzsche and the surrealists to bell hooks: glorious niches of liberation, in which posters are free to shrug off the constraints of “imposed morality” and laugh at whatever the hell they want to, from suicide to disability. Thus /b/ ripples with what Nagle identifies as a “carnivalesque” laughter, “the laughter of all the people... universal in scope... directed at all and everyone, including the carnival's participants.”

But of course: the problem with this theory is that it is flatly and obviously false: a fantasy painted by a writer whose book is primarily interested in punching left, despite the MacGuffin of it purporting to be about understanding the right. Yes, some people identified with the “online left” can be heavy-handedly pious at times: but “the left” is also a spectrum that runs the gamut from the British Labour party to the IWW to crudely humorous podcasts like Chapo Trap House, which for better or worse can hardly be accused of sanctimonious moralizing.

[...]

In the case of 4chan, this is particularly striking: the “transgressive” behavior and language which Nagle identifies with /b/ precisely serves to demarcate the limits of a particular community. “/b/ is the guy who tells the cripple ahead of him in line to hurry up,” runs an anonymous poster's manifesto, as quoted by Nagle. “/b/ is the first to get to the window to see the car accident... /b/ is the best friend that tags along to your first date and cock-blocks throughout the night. The decent girl you're trying to bag walks out on the date, /b/ laughs and takes you home when you're drunk, and you wake up to several hookers in your house who /b/ called for you.”

If someone went on /b/ and did not act like the other posters do, did not use language in the way that they do, did not call everyone and everything by homophobic slurs, refused to hound the grieving families of teenage suicide victims, then they would simply not fit in. Thus /b/'s laughter cannot be what Nagle claims it is: the carnivalesque “laughter of all the people.” /b/'s laughter is only — as should have been obvious to everyone to begin with — the laughter of /b/. And if you wanted to share in it, as a member of the /b/ community, then you'd have to be careful not to transgress /b/'s norms. (More recent news, which broke after I’d written the bulk of this article, suggests to us that what communities like /b/ ultimately induce in the world at large is not raucous laughter, but mute horror.)

MizPiz posted:

"She doesn't support racism, she's pointing out that it's existence is justified specifically because the left aren't infallible actors who've already created the perfect socio-economic system"

PRESIDENT LADYCOP posted:

She never claimed racism was justified. She claimed there are material conflicts between different segments of the working class and that the left must address those conflicts, not just stick our fingers in our ears and shout "RACISM!!!" when they are brought up, because if we don't the right is perfectly willing to to address them with racism.

420 Gank Mid posted:

the material conflicts between those "different segments of the working class" are caused by white supremacy though


addressing the racism at the root of these problems is the literal opposite of sticking your fingers in your ears.

Grevling posted:

They're caused by the global system of capitalism which can be completely color blind when it's convenient. Racism is one way of making people accept the horrible injustice of the system, not the cause of the injustice.

420 Gank Mid posted:

the material conflicts between those "different segments of the working class" are caused by white supremacy though


addressing the racism at the root of these problems is the literal opposite of sticking your fingers in your ears.

PRESIDENT LADYCOP posted:

So, like, if somebody objects to having their job outsourced to a different country

420 Gank Mid posted:

lmao, hell of a euphemism

PRESIDENT LADYCOP posted:

I'm gonna level with you, I have no idea if you think the word "outsourced" is dumb or if you think opposing the free movement of capital is racist.

420 Gank Mid posted:

Human beings are not capital, fascist.

PRESIDENT LADYCOP posted:

If you think it's racist for organized labor to oppose a corporation closing a factory in one country and re-opening it in another because the cost of labor is cheaper in the latter country, you're the kind of woke neoliberal Nagle is criticizing.