Based Safety vs. Cringe Propaganda #3

Based Safety
Geoff Shullenberger interviews the brilliant Peruvian writer, art critic and design theorist Mónica Belevan for his Outsider Theory podcast; also check out Mónica’s excellent Covidian Aesthetics Substack project for cultural criticism, tarot magic, and one of the most fascinating creative voices on the rise. The director of the Fred Hampton biopic Judas and the Black Messiah – which amazingly didn’t dilute Hampton’s based communism for compatibility with today’s reductive BLM activist ideology – Shaka King spoke to GQ about his film, Hampton’s politics, and the “black excellence industrial complex.” Communia brilliantly deconstructs both sides of riot ideology: “Firstly expressing opinions per se is a powerless move against the opinion-producing industry… its only chance at being heard is to become instrumentalized.” Writer Emily Segal discusses chaos magick and the corporatization of psychedelia for AQNB. DC Miller attempts to understand the purpose of all of these lies and smokescreens. Matt Taibbi writes a hilarious takedown of Marcuse. Gary Saul Morson pens a beautiful ode to Dostoyevsky and his ethics and morals. Finally, my former column on noise music and philosophy for The Quietus has been resurrected by Mute Presence.

Cringe Propaganda
The psyops get less subtle every fucking week. First, Charlie Warzel demands we do less critical thinking so we can “prevent” getting bogged down in conspiracy theory. Next, Columbia professor Carl Hart discusses his casual heroin use, and says the addiction is much easier to control than people think, so I guess we can already expect that Big Pharma will start justifying the Opioid Epidemic by blaming people for their poor self control, yes? Libcom writes an absolutely horrifically biased hit piece distorting the views of academic Catherine Liu. Hyperallergic presents a guide to museums for them morally absolve themselves, and predictably it includes “diversity quotas.” More on this point, Coco Fusco wants to “decolonize the museum,” which we know means essentially nothing. In his interview with Anna and Dasha, Adam Curtis’ theoretical incoherence becomes stunningly obvious and impossible to ignore. In a review for Vulture, we see how the race reductive activists of today just have no way to understand the politics of Fred Hampton, a Black Panther who even would stand with white supremacists to stress the solidarity of the working class against the true enemy, The Bourgeois State.

Illustration by Adam Lehrer