Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

i mean, that dude exists. i've picketed with him.

oh, they mean self-styled "organizers," not legit organizers, i guess.

when your local fast food strike is made up of a dozen SEIU employees holding down second jobs as fry cooks so they can go on strike you meet a lot of that dude.

and i'm not saying that sort of thing is without merit etc etc

again, just like despairing pain of recognition here

oh, they mean self-styled "organizers," not legit organizers, i guess.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Thursday, September 19, 2013 3:29 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also yes

i thought like three of them were funny cuz of what hoos says. the solidarity one hurt a little. the north korea one doesn't make a whole lot of sense; north korea is not the 30s ussr and in my experience the western left is not under any illusions about it. that's the only one that really felt like outsider reactionary hostility to me tho. they are indifferently drawn.

in my experience the western left is not under any illusions about it.

ha

wish this were true in my experience

guy i produce a program for has been known to post ~support anti-imperialist DPRK against capitalist running dogs~ links

this one made me lol just for non-sequitur

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kPmk4LNoF1o/UgkYkUqkhDI/AAAAAAAAAAM/Vb-a9S0ClGU/s640/001.png

haha was half expecting you to say that re: dprk. still neglected to knock on wood.

The Agency of Left Sects and table w/ Trot, Stalinist, anarchist are truthbombs.

every article i've read is just full of the kind of hyperbole (ALL THOSE WHO ACCEPT TIPS ARE SLAVES!!) that the authors no doubt picked up from all the French theorists they've been skimming.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Thursday, September 19, 2013 11:07 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to be fair to jacobin that article had lots more to do with the author (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Svenonius) than the general tone of the mag.

the 'nation' thing really smarts because you get this sense it likes to pretend to play nastier and lefter and smarter and younger and more r-r-radical and etc except then you have an editor going off and being a boring columnist for in these times on the side and etc.

I like some of what I've read in Jacobin but I can't tell exactly what they're going for other than "we're smarter"

everyone is so afraid to have a program these days

did everybody read the jacobin editor's "letter to The Nation"

http://www.thenation.com/article/174476/letter-nation-young-radical#axzz2fMtlXfTd

jacobin def have a program

i mean, more than any mag i know. we're smarter maybe a part of it but that doesn't describe it entirely

critique of social-democracy and left-liberal policy solutions from the left, opposition to neoliberal education reform movement (charter schools, privatization) and recently concrete engagement in ctu strike, democratic socialism (influencing democratic party from the left by running candidates in primaries), harnessing technology & automation to bring about post-work socialist utopia, left unity. all of these are positions are consistently supported every issue. and i would even say rather than picking up ideas from french theorists they're riding the critical theory kickback by having dudes like vivek chibber criticize postcolonial theory from an old school marxist pov

jacobin magazine

basically, grad school leftism

can u elab on that?

aving dudes like vivek chibber criticize postcolonial theory from an old school marxist pov

are those all things that left wing ppl in grad school are well-known supporters of

given the criticism from left academics sympathetic to poco that interview got, i'm guessing that position's not representative

same shit, different side

...

laughed at a couple of these but tbh i found myself going "wtf is the joke?" at most of them. drawing is shitty and incompetent even by the low standards of "badly drawn internet comic strip."

a lot of stuff in jacobin comes off as pretty callow and snotty, but they have run some pretty excellent stuff. would still rather read them than the nation or really pretty much any other explicitly 'left' publication -- at least jacobin hires ppl who can write.

"hires"

oh ffs whatever you think of the politics the nation has much more competent writers purely from the standpoint of writing-as-craft, and the baffler puts both to shame.

who cares tbh

well i care because i find the bad writing alternately hilarious and maddening and i like to think about quality of writing a fair amount.

it also helps to distinguish between wrong ideas and actively stupid ideas.

(the latter being more prone to only be expressible in actively stupid prose)

i guessi just think criticizing a text "from the standpoint of writing-as-craft" is a pretty stupid idea. most things i've ever read in all three were competently written

competent is a great bar to set for something you seek out to read voluntarily when you could be doing other things with your time

dude... lol

anyways your critique is lacking in specifics wanna provide some examples

also to the extent you're criticizing something _only_ as a text, is there anything but "the standpoint of writing-as-craft"

the nation doesn't have the establishment jr. vibe of jacobin. that counts for something.

jfc where do u come up with this shit

(xp)

jfc where do u come up with this shit

― flopson, Thursday, September 19, 2013 5:27 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dunno ask the guys at jacobin i bet they learned all the references in grad school, lol

you're coming off really butthurt rn for no explicable reason... what's the bfd?

just two bros, zinging, nbd

...idgi

there needs to be a comic about this exact argument

what's with ppl hating on grad school btw? like why is "grad school" considered an adequate dismissal of something?

fuckin ivory tower intellectuals with their smooth hands

this thread = great moments in leftism

oh lol xp dan m said that

what's with ppl hating on grad school btw? like why is "grad school" considered an adequate dismissal of something?

― flopson, Thursday, September 19, 2013 5:40 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my problem isn't with ppl going to grad school, its with ppl who either metaphorically or literally have yet to graduate.

more seriously (and this is really gmil-level-picayune-crap) i think i went from viewing jacobin as something interesting and occasionally irritating to something irritating and occasionally interesting after they wrote that terribly bratty dumb response to frank's piece in the baffler on occupy (i think we even discussed all that way up itt). they really went to the wall defending the idea that somehow their exaltation of 'class warfare in the onion's sex house' was more 'progressive' and 'open to radical potential' or whatever than frank's more historically validated cynicism w/r/t the relationship between enjoyable cultural things and actual change in society. and i mean, not just that, they went to the wall defending a zillion silly things. and they _also_ missed the point of frank's 'grad school' criticism. it wasn't that i started agreeing with jacobin more or less after that article, just that i found their attitude a million times more insufferable.

This is kind of a xp to the Best Music Writing thread, but usually after S17 / May Day actions, a ton of people filter from Zuccotti to Blarney Stone a few blocks away, and I was sitting one table over from D4phne all night and really wanted to ask if she was using Kickstarter money to buy those beers. Thought it would be waaaaay too creepy to bug her about, tho.