Re: [Marxism] Amber A’Lee Frost and Anna Khachiyan: the two dingbats who bonded with Spiked Online | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On Thu, Jul 11, 2019 at 4:38 AM A.R. G via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > * > Granted I'm not sure that CTH people (like Amber) are among those who are > witch-hunting for anti-Semitism but it seems to be a running theme. People > who complain about "snowflakes" are often the biggest ones. > Whatever else you think of them, they definitely don't do that, making great sport of people like Bari Weiss and Meghan McCain for doing so, and having guests from the UK Labour left talking about the smears against Corbyn etc. In general as I've noted here before if you've listened to the show to some extent for some time it's obvious they've moved more towards interviews with left activists and commentators and not coincidently moved away from puerile irony/edginess. I certainly don't agree with all they say and note a definite tendency to economism/workerism which seems to be a trend within DSA. This economism it seems is a partly understand reaction to, as black feminist and now Sanders media chief Briahna Gray (and former CTH guest) put it a couple of years ago, while being a lot more nuanced than the subjects of this thread, "how identity became a weapon against the left" wielded by powerful liberals, https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/09/how-identity-became-a-weapon-against-the-left. Amber seems more economistic than the others, though usually far less crassly than comes across in this article. The main problem seems to me to be no differentiation between rich and powerful hardened liberals like Clintons and Pelosi who *are* exactly like these "dingbats" say, and millions of ordinary people with mixed consciousness. Perhaps they were misrepresented to some extent though if so you've got to wonder what they expected. Anyway I find CTH entertaining and one interesting take on politics and culture in the US (and elsewhere: e.g. I've never heard the reclusive and eccentric graphic novel genius Alan Moore speak until his recent interview on the show). I tried listening to Red Scare once and did find it tedious edginess-for-the-sake-of-it. Something else I find interesting about the comments about "hipster Brooklyn" podcasts is that one important inspiration for them is a long-running show by a pair of non-college educated, blue collar stoner dads from Columbus, Ohio, called Street Fight Radio. CTH quite directly, having "met" as online guests on this show. More specifically of interest was a recent discussion they had with Patton Oswalt one focus of which was more irony and edginess had become overused and was now often poisonous for the left https://soundcloud.com/streetfightwcrs/street-fight-with-patton-oswalt. Also of relevance and of a bit more weight than these largely comedy-oriented podcasts was this discussion with Doug Henwood about his experiences in DSA, including criticism of economist tendencies such as those influenced by Aldolph Reed, whom Henwood seems a lot more critical of now https://www.blubrry.com/jacobin/44236868/the-dig-doug-henwood-on-dsa/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Amber A’Lee Frost and Anna Khachiyan: the two dingbats who bonded with Spiked Online | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Of course the biggest contradiction with the "anti-woke" and "anti-SJW" hipster shtick, whether it's from "leftists" or the alt-right, is how backward it is. For the most part, the people on the Left who are smeared with these accusations of essentially being "uppity" whiners are people who are raising issues of actual inequality, while those who are pointing their fingers are often the ones fabricating claims of oppression. SpikedOnline, for example, is part of the left anti-Semitism witch-hunt. If there is anything on the Left that embodies the imagined problems of people complaining over nothing to seem "progressive," then "left anti-Semitism" is it. Granted I'm not sure that CTH people (like Amber) are among those who are witch-hunting for anti-Semitism but it seems to be a running theme. People who complain about "snowflakes" are often the biggest ones. Amith R. Gupta On Tue, Jul 9, 2019 at 4:38 PM Tristan Sloughter via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > POSTING RULES & NOTES > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > * > > The claim of a epidemic of women "voluntarily removing their reproductive > organs" really stood out to me too. > > They've somehow taken their opposition to corporate feminism and turned > into Phyllis Schlafly warning about the dangers of feminism. > > Actually, their attacks on MeToo also remind me of Schlafly... > _ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/amithrgupta%40gmail.com > _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Amber A’Lee Frost and Anna Khachiyan: the two dingbats who bonded with Spiked Online | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * The claim of a epidemic of women "voluntarily removing their reproductive organs" really stood out to me too. They've somehow taken their opposition to corporate feminism and turned into Phyllis Schlafly warning about the dangers of feminism. Actually, their attacks on MeToo also remind me of Schlafly... _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Amber A’Lee Frost and Anna Khachiyan: the two dingbats who bonded with Spiked Online | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On the Fourth of July, Amber A’Lee Frost and Anna Khachiyan, who are part of the Brookyn hipster Sandernista milieu, allowed themselves to be interviewed by Spiked Online as representatives of the “anti-woke” left. Despite the fact that the Koch-funded Spiked is hostile to the left, interviewer Fraser Myers lobbed softball questions at them that were softer than the kind Charlie Rose to lob at Bill Gates or George Soros. How and why such seemingly clashing worldviews can converge is something worth examining. It might be said that contrarianism is shared across the board but there’s more to it than that. First a word or two about Frost and Khachiyan. Frost was a FB friend a while back but I can’t remember much about her social media profile. She is a free-lance journalist who has written for some very good magazines, including Baffler. She also contributed an essay to a Rosa Luxemburg collection in 2013. But for most people, she is best known for being part of the Chapo Trap House crew that is commonly referred to as the “dirt-bag” left, a term coined by Frost herself. In one of six articles Frost has written for Current Affairs, she defended the use of vulgarity because it is “a tool for fighting the powerful”. She even has a kind word for Trump whose vulgarity “is appealing precisely because it exposes political truths,” something I admit is lost on me. full: https://louisproyect.org/2019/07/09/amber-alee-frost-and-anna-khachiyan-the-two-dingbats-who-bonded-with-spiked-online/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com