Based Safety vs Cringe Propaganda #15

This Week in Based and Cringe

BASED SAFETY
I’m a week away from the harshest deadline of my life. I’m strung out on caffeine and nicotine vape juice. Insomniac as fuck, I couldn’t catch a glimmer of sleep last night. But do I let you down? Do I make you wait an extra week for the based and the cringe? I would never. Because I need you as much as you need me.

Giorgio Agamben, philosopher and our greatest critic of what Barrett calls “mask fascism,” writes about Covidian society’s erasure of the human face AND the human death. In the rare attention worthy Bookforum publication, Joshua Cohen chronicles both Burroughs and Sontag’s theories of language as a virus, and searches for a prophecy. Geoff laments the ignorance of Foucault’s most prescient warnings at the historical moment when we most need to heed them. Also at American Affairs, the ol’ Swede of controversy Malcom Kyeune argues that almost nothing can prevent a populist movement from being imploded by its own internal grifters. And to that, I say, as James Hetfield once did: “YOU KNOW IT’S SAD BUT TRUEEEEEEUUUUUUUAGHHH!”

After a brief hiatus, Mónica’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties” column is back, and her writing remains sharp, complex, and dizzyingly beautiful. In this piece, she discusses the glitches of deep fake Biden: “That Biden and Co. are hounded by optical fancies is a feature, not a bug; something demonstrated by how these trompe l’oeil have a sustained need to be seen-to.” The once canceled Marxist writer and literary critic Sam Kriss (who did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG) discusses my favorite Dostoyevsky novel, Demons: “Kirillov has liberated himself from every other will in the universe—­including God’s. He has nothing to forgive, and nothing to love.” Kriss maintains a lovely turn of phrase. Though you know I do so much hate giving The Quietus any credit, the site still manages an interesting piece from time to time, as is the case with this history of the iconic post-punk band Swell Maps by Duncan Seaman. Swell Maps ranks along with The Fall and PiL as one of my favorite bands of that entire seismically exciting period in rock n’ roll music, and Seaman provides an excellent historical footnote to the project, including the aesthetic antagonisms that existed within it. Just published, Elena Lange theorizes the “nihilist leftist” (I’m sure you can already picture a nihilist leftist in your mind right now) as “the highest stage of leftist existence.”

In based podcasting, Angela Nagle reminds us that she’s the most consistently excellent podcast guest on Red Star Radio. In typical self-promotional vulgarity, I go on Deep Rex to discuss some of my favorite paintings and novels: Ballard, Burroughs, Bacon, Blake, Kippenberger, Lautreamont and more. Finally, Angie Speaks is on System of Systems this week with Ben and I. CHECK THAT SHIT OUT!

CRINGE PROPAGANDA
The masters above must have sent out a memo last week, because the media hacks have come out full force looking to smear the truly nonexistent thing that is the post-left. Now, when I first heard there was a site called Washington Babylon, I thought: “Oh cool! Kenneth Anger reference!” And given the Anger reference, I assumed the site would be a deep dive of sorts into the decadence and vulgarity of Washington elites, much like Anger did in Hollywood Babylon to movie business elites. I’d read that! But of course that’s not what it is. What it actually is, is a site dedicated almost entirely to branding Glenn Greenwald and other perceived left heretics as “fascists,” of course. Among those heretics, is apparently yours truly. These people are so weak that a guy who writes about art, noise, and drugs for a living is worthy of a takedown. And they even say I’m just a “failed artist,” so what gives? Why can’t these types just get over the fact that we don’t agree with them? I think there’s some useful embedded subtext in all of this.

Gene Seymour writes about Barry Jenkins (a prestige filmmaker of the neoliberal Hollywood elite) and his adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s (the prestige novelist of the neoliberal literary elite) Underground Railroad. First of all, Seymour wonders if the viewing public is “ready,” for this story of American slavery, as if it’s the first time we’ve ever seen this kind of content. Second of all, Seymour treats this surely mediocre prestige streaming series (they’re all mediocre) like it’s fucking Rivette’s Out 1! Jenkins has only made two films. Moonlight fell apart in its third act, and his Baldwin adaptation of If Beale Street Could Talk was an almost unwatchable Lifetime TV movie of unbearably tired clichés and ludicrously overplayed melodrama. Is Jenkins truly our great film artist? Is this the best we can do?

Leftists are still out of ideas so they need more things to abolish. This week, it’s museums. In a slow week at his propaganda mill Current Affairs, Nathan keeps the clicks coming by jerking off to the idea that aliens might exist somewhere. Just that hard hitting leftist analysis, baby! Leaked documents show that the Alphabet Workers Union, slightly infamous as “the woke union,” is predictably populated almost entirely by some blood in the water shark motherfuckers. Ben Bourgeois, brain stuck in 2008, challenges Jordan Peterson to one of his “logic for the left” battles of wits and nobody cares because the world has moved on and both the IDW and the Bernie left are dead and gone. Pretty astonishing that in the days of the woke rebranding of the NY Times, Bret Stephens is still allowed to publish his authoritarian, Zionist, neocon justifications for the genocide of Palestinians (some contradictions just don’t go away). Also at the fake news paper of record, Talmon Joseph Smith addresses the most brutal criticisms of BLM and last summer’s riots. Why, he asks, did nothing actually change? But of course he does so while reaffirming the underlying premises of the movement that keep the grift going. Typical progressive libtard stuff really.

And we’re out. Back to my manuscript. Nothing but love, nothing BUT LOVE!

Illustration by Adam Lehrer