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Ghosts of Anti-Fascism Past

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Ghosts of Anti-Fascism Past

Tag Archives: Obama

The Tyranny of Adverbs and Twits.

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Posted by Jonathan Mozzochi in Essay, Rant

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Antifascism, Bong Joon-Ho, Donald Trump, fascism, Google engineer, Instagag, Jeffrey Epstein, Noam Chomsky, Obama, Snapcrap, Snowpiercer, Zizek

 

Literally used now more than ever.

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Way back in 2012, Joe Biden was criticized for using the adverb ‘literally’ nine times in one speech. How quaint. I recently listened to a level 5 Google engineer use it nine times in the space of two minutes.

This particular soulless quant had another annoying habit: He would begin every other sentence by restating my name, “Jonathan, I understand what you are saying…” If such feigned familiarity is coupled with a light touch on the arm, I feel free to reach for a knife. Most people who do this are trying to overcome skepticism and inculcate credulity. As a mnemonic device, it is annoying at best; more often it is cloying and insincere and a sure sign to distrust, even despise someone.

Honestly? Like. Literally. Actually.

While I don’t miss Obama much, I do miss his particular elocution, that patient, preternaturally calm, baritone voice and the halting ‘ums’ and ‘uhs’ that stitched together his verbal output. By today’s standards, those pauses are pleasant by comparison. They don’t have any pretense; they are space fillers that allow him to think. While I have many disagreements with what he said, I could always understand it. He was thoughtful and nuanced to a fault; dithering on the golf course while fascism made a comeback. But in this he was not alone, nor particularly exceptional. Plenty of socialists, for instance practically the entire seven-year history of Jacobin Magazine and Blog, join him in this regard. But back to those adverbs.

With Trump, it is as though every wealthy, entitled, and neurotic teenager has suddenly been given carte blanche to release their own unfiltered insanity. While I think the parallels here can be overstated (Trump as a teenager) there is still something to it. Will Trump bomb Iran or just berate the housekeeper? Will he begin in earnest the rounding up of undocumented families or just do a stint in rehab?

His verbal diarrhea is pockmarked with superlatives such as ‘winner’, ‘terrific’, ‘tremendous’ and of course, ‘great’ and ‘greatest’. It’s as though his mother, or au pair, never stopped telling him how special he was, even when he was caught eviscerating the neighbor’s cat. Good boy.

If Trump were a pornography category it would be ass-to-mouth, mouth-to-ass, with all those A-list ruling class enablers from both political parties, across every imaginable capitalist enterprise, sucking and fucking to form one giant, unending, gangrenous human centipede, just like the horror film. Jeffrey Epstein is in there somewhere.

Today it seems that adverbs, and certain nasty ones, in particular, have mounted an attack upon the nonviolence of ums and ahs, completing a scorched earth assault on the quiet dignity of anodyne place fillers so as to replace them with crutch words that, whether used correctly or incorrectly, amount to obfuscation and disorganization–i.e., bullshit. These lexical tics impulsively resorted to by the verbally disabled add emphasis where none is needed, assert drama where there is only triviality, state the obvious rather than the nuanced, and (my favorite) suggest strongly that everything said beforehand was a lie (honestly?…). The standard Trump teenage verbal diarrhea disaster asserts a recklessness with meaning that can only be regarded as aggressive stupidity. This is the hallmark of the powerful, the invulnerable, the masters of the universe who say and do as they please without repercussions, and is the hidden in plain view secret behind Trump’s attraction to some people. We have heard it again and again: Trump ‘says out loud what we can only think to ourselves’. My own take on this is that Trump says out loud, in ways some people would never even hazard, the despicable ideas that belong in the basement. They generally stay there because someone will kick your fucking ass if you say them out loud elsewhere, which is as it should be, but, alas is no longer.

The terrifying ephemeral nature of Twitter is the dominant mode of communication for this viral and noxious hate speech. But together with the sheer hatred and assault of such verbiage, there is something else underway: where everything is equally dramatic, nothing is important. Aside from links to longer written work, this platform, like instagag and snapcrap is useless for leftists. The ‘twit’ in Twitter is there for a reason. Those who are prolific in these mediums are the same shallow dipshits who prosecute juvenile intra-leftist fights. Tankies vs. insurrectionists, statists vs. anarchists, etc.

No complex thoughts or arguments are possible here, only half-ass hashtags, silly memes, and depraved gossip. Chomsky once remarked that in order to engage an audience about ideas which break with orthodoxy one must spend some time setting the groundwork to do so–you need at least 15-30 minutes to tear down presumptions that prohibit ‘out of the box’ thinking. If you are not afforded the opportunity to do this you sound insane. This fact alone means the instant ambush culture of social media and the talking heads that wallow in cultish Marxisant Zizekian nonsense ensures no such thinking is possible within such a format. Zizek and his ilk thrive there because they are full of shit. That’s why Chomsky didn’t go on cable news programs or engage in celebrity debates. Chomsky has all the more integrity because of that. More leftists, certain antifascists, in particular, need a reminder on this point. Otherwise, you are just engaging in a debate on their terms. The only corrective to this sorry state of affairs is aptly provided in the wonderful allegory of revolution that is the film Snowpiercer, by Bong Joon-Ho. If you get to the front of the train, don’t listen to the conductor, don’t even allow him to talk–cut his tongue out and remember: Kronole is a bomb, you idiot!

This is why it is largely pointless to troll celebrities and engage in the shadow boxing preferred liberals and conservatives. The questions determine the parameters of possible answers. Liberals and conservatives, establishment types, and pols consumed with issues and policies are congenitally allergic to our thinking and action. Are they concentration camps? Is Jeremy Corbyn an antisemite? Was Brett Kavanaugh qualified for the Supreme Court? Is there a U.S. presidential candidate other than Bernie Sanders worth two shits? Did Jeffrey Epstein receive preferential treatment for his predations? If you debate these questions, you have lost before you begin because there is no debate. To debate what is obvious is the death of debate. It is to die a dithering death, full of thoughtfulness and nuance, that amounts to nothing. It won’t stop fascism or overcome capitalism. Enough already. Try a long-form essay, FFS, and mind your adverbs

END

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‘Open’ vs ‘Closed’ Borders: A False Binary

03 Saturday Nov 2018

Posted by Jonathan Mozzochi in Essay

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almost mercy, fascism, immigration, Mexico, Obama, Open source, Racism, refugees, socialism, troika, Trump

In the mutilated discourse called ‘immigration’ the false binary of the ‘open’ or ‘closed’ border is often posed absent any discussion of the colonial and imperialist wars that shape these vast movements of people. Whenever one speaks of attacking the legitimacy of fortress Europe, the United States’ militarized border with the global south or the complex of security barriers that isolate the state of Israel, one is immediately said to be in favor of ‘open borders’ and then the resultant chaos such a calamity would bring. I am opposed on principle to the way those borders structure and deform human life–creating categories such as ‘migrant’, ‘immigrant’, ‘refugee’, ‘asylum seeker’, ’emigrant’ and my favorite, with all its racist and colonial baggage, ‘expat’. But even when one takes the high road and insists on ‘asylum seeker’ rather than ‘migrant’ the trend of upholding this vast movement of people as the problem remains.

The ephemeral exigencies of American electoral politics play only a minor role in this. Obama deported–what is that number?– 2.5 million souls? We must explode this absurd binary of open and closed borders. The European Union does not represent ‘open borders’ but rather the Troika managed regulation of human labor and bio power which must meet the demands of capital–austerity and restricted movement for the many, flexible and brutally disciplined labor markets to prop up the few. When ‘borders’ are discussed as ‘facts’ that cannot be challenged, as ‘reality’ or a feature of the ‘national question’ which must be observed and accepted, lest one engage in ‘aspirational’ politics, or wishful thinking, the door to fascism gets propped ajar as it cannot be with a political program of socialist internationalism, rooted in solidarity. To effectively fight fascism we must attack the very foundations upon which borders are maintained. But not all borders, just those that are essential to neoliberalism and fascism alike. The anarchist slogan of no borders is correct, it just needs better focus.

The only way to break free from the straitjacket of ‘migration’ as an ‘issue’ and the endless racialized taxonomy that goes with it is to stand steadfast on the principle of internationalist solidarity. The perimeter and internal borders that structure our lives are essential to both neoliberal and fascist domination. Any analysis or discussion that begins by accepting as legitimate that which is illegitimate simultaneously upholds a right to regulate human labor and bio power through its endless categories of fully or lesser humans. This process turns our gaze from the juridical, material and political constructs of borders to the question of whether those intent on breaching those borders have a right to do so–whether they have a good reason to ask for asylum. But it matters not at all why people from the global South are moving north, only that that are moving north and that there are people helping them do so. At this historical juncture the most radical and far reaching act a revolutionary within the global north can take is to materially support that flow of humanity, not only because it is the right thing to do, not only because it is a good thing to do, but because it is the first necessary detonation of a 21st century socialist revolution–it is both a signal that it is underway as well as the concrete expression of the direct action needed to bring it about.

It will only be through the successive development of the Four Loci Of Attack (or something like it) and their expression as a concatenation of mutually reinforcing events that any one locus comes into being; that these agents of history become classes for themselves. Each social class cannot come into being separate from the other three.

Border attacks need manse occupations. The next complimentary phase will be housing and rent protests–mass non violent direct action aimed at palatial estates, penthouses, resorts, yacht and golf clubs. Anywhere the elite live, reproduce and recreate.

From the NYT

“But Mr. Trump’s dystopian imagery has clearly left an impression with some. Carol Shields, 75, a Republican in northern Minnesota, said she was afraid that migrant gangs could take over people’s summer lake homes in the state.

“What’s to stop them?” said Ms. Shields, a retired accountant. “We have a lot of people who live on lakes in the summer and winter someplace else. When they come back in the spring, their house would be occupied.”

Oct. 22, 2018

My response, from the film Almost Mercy:

Exactly…

One day we will look upon these fortresses as so much concrete and steel that had to yield to the far more powerful force of human freedom. Walls are never a guarantor of freedom, but a singular impediment to that freedom.

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