Based Safety vs Cringe Propaganda #19

This Week in Based and Cringe

BASED SAFETY

It was just minutes ago that I learned there was another “suicide.” This time, it was Antivirus software programmer John McAfee, who had just been ruled to be extradited back to the United States from Spain. It was alleged that McAfee failed to file taxes from 2014 to 2018, despite making millions promoting cryptocurrencies. Well, let the conspiracies commence crypto-warriors. I’m absolutely positive that there’s no way McAfee killed himself, so run wild with it. Get weird. It’s just another day in liquid modernity.

The lovely downtown e-girl and psycho talented poet Honor Levy is on Contain with Barrett and Sierra discussing Operation Valkyrie and cellectuals accounts on Instagram (no, please don’t make a SafetyPropagandaCellectuals accounts). The writer, pop and art critic, and friend of SP Harry Tafoya hangs out with Zach on the I’m So Popular podcast discussing based homo Larry Kramer. Best bud and noisemaker Zac Davis joins me on System of Systems to celebrate the OG butt rock wanksta SoCal junkie himbo and RHCP frontman Anthony Keidis and his incredible memoir Scar Tissue. I am on Gio and Lev’s show Break the Rules again discussing mostly art, but also other stuff, and while on the topic – this episode with Aimee is also terrific. Sorry, I’m a podcast superstar at this point and there’s still more appearances to be had. The Estonian beauty Jana hosts me on her Hate Fiction podcast where we discuss the death of the rock star while she hangs on my every word as I dazzle her with takes on Darby Crash and Lou Reed. Likewise, had an excellent time on the Pleasure Helmet podcast discussing heroin, literature, and my upcoming book, out this fall on Hyperidean Press.

Open up this issue of Lamp by Lit and skip to page 66 to read about the party boy, performance artist, and degenerate friend of SP Alex Bienstock who dazzles the journalist with his humorous idea warfare tactics. I was supposed to have a text in the this new issue of Gruppe Magazine (this text, actually) but, alas, the editors spiked it at the last moment because my writing is “too aggrieved.” Of course, when I hear “too aggrieved,” I mentally translate the critique as “too based.” But, whatever, I’m not petty. It’s a damn fine art magazine with stunning imagery, and published by the brilliant Berlin-based artist Julian-Jakob Kneer, a pal of mine. Very worth purchasing if new content on the OG based commie edgelord Swiss installation and performance artist Thomas Hirschorn sounds cool to you. It sounds cool to me!

On the based politics front, Platypus publishes a text by Pamela C. Nogales on the problems that plagued and eventually destroyed the Occupy movement from within – namely, libtards and anarchists leading its charge. Greenwald has a laugh at the expense of broadcaster, libtard, and Tucker Carlson career booster (only cool thing she’s ever done) Rachel Maddow after a court finds the MSNBC host not liable to pay out fines for her claims that right wing broadcast network OAN is funded by the Russians, because Maddow is “doing opinion.” I’d love some of Greenwald’s traffic, by the way. We do all right on here, given that I’m a marginal writer and podcasting dope, but DAMN! Over 400 comments on every post. IM—1776 editor Mark Granza profiles the Dutch politician, right populist, and noted Houellebecq appreciator Thierry Baudet and applauds the politician’s brutal critiques of the pandemic measures and their ushering in of a very new control society (climate change lockdowns are coming, no doubt.)

I have just learned and am devastated to hear of the passing of Welsh experimental rock group Datblygu’s David R. Edwards. Low-key one of the strangest and most disorienting groups to emerge from the Scottish new wave scene in the 1980s, Datblygu veered between post-punk, minimal wave, and even sounds far more expansive and bizarre. David released innovative music until the bitter end, and last year’s Cwm Gwagle was among the best of 2020 and the group’s entire career. REST IN PEACE!

CRINGE PROPAGANDA
I don’t have the slightest clue how this Dan Hicks piece made it print (ArtReview editor JJ Abrams is typically deeply skeptical of art world activist initiatives) but it did: the writer here bitches and whines about a statue of a slave trader that has made it back to a museum after being thrown in a river last year (I guess now that BLM’s grift has been widely exposed we have to go back to the statue debate, like fucking clockwork).

Trauma peddling “noise” musician Lingua Ignota is evolving extreme music by sounding like another Chelsea Wolfe (a mediocrity herself) and pouring water on herself in her new video for the song “Pennsylvania Furnace” from forthcoming record Sinner Get Ready. I’m not at all into this blogosphere friendly extreme music scene (the nexus of Lingua Ignota, Thou, and the like), but whatever. At least Lingua can sing. Why am I such a hostile prick?

The flame war between Jimmy Dore and The Young Turks has been entertaining; given that Jimmy Dore has integrity and Cenk and Ana Kasparian most definitely don’t, it seems Jimmy is winning. Jimmy is a little out of touch, of course, and doesn’t quite understand the depths of the problems with the left (the cynicism and depravity is a feature, Jimmy, not a bug), but watching fat Cenk and evil Ana wave around a fake #metoo accusation is just too much. These people are sick! Matt Taibbi discusses their flameout here, too. Funny shit! Eric Adams probably wins the NY mayoral race, and the American left of course refuses to understand why the city went with the pro-cop firebrand (like the fact that their retarded riot campaign to defund the police last summer has resulted in an explosion in violent crime and homicides nation wide, with a 64 percent increase in shootings in New York specifically).

Drew Millard asks if the excess of the post-Trump era is just an obscuration of the “same old inequalities,” (I suppose that’s cretin speak for the Marxist term “political economic contradictions”) and reading it I wonder if someone would just smack him and ask him if that’s really a question that needs answering. The Intercept publishes a story by the cowardly tiny man Ken Klippenstein (the type of guy who thinks dunking on boomer republicans on Twitter is edgy) that argues the “US is targeting socialists as extremist groups” with a “leaked document.” But, as Zaid Jilani shows, the “leaked document” is actually an 11-year-old public record from the Obama admin. America’s socialists have less interest in revolution than they do in passing legislation guaranteeing blue haired feminists NGO jobs and other meaningless measures, so it’s highly unlikely the state department wants to “target them.” On the contrary, these socialists and the state department are playing for the same fucking team, baby!

Otherwise, life is good. They’ll say I’m a liar, they’ll say I’m sick, why put your trust in me? Well, “WHY PUT MY TRUST IN YOU!”

Illustration by Adam Lehrer