Based Safety vs. Cringe Propaganda #9

This Week in Based and Cringe

BASED SAFETY
FINALLY! Something to look forward to! One of the greatest American fiction writers of the last 30 years, and one who has never given one iota of a fuck about political correctness or tastefulness, the mighty Dennis Cooper, is about to release his first literary novel since 2011’s The Marbled Swarm. I Wished, as it’s called, will be published in September by Soho Press. Cooper speaks with writer James Nulick about the project, and more. “The fact that it was a novel about me made it really challenging since I don’t feel a natural inclination to write about myself. But doing that was exciting, not scary. Of course I frequently thought, What if this doesn’t work?” says Cooper.

Congrats to new mama Anna K (and papa Eli Keszler)! The Red Scare gals converse about Anna’s heroic child rearing on this week’s episode. Aimee Terese interviews author Catherine Liu for What’s Left in regards to Liu’s rather late and mostly now useless critique of the PMC in her new book Virtue Hoarders (an engaging and clarifying conversation in terms of the differences between their politics). Elena Lange dissects the left’s insistence on mystifying the wage relation with various intersectional theories OR the truly moronic use of the term “racial capitalism” (including this extra shitlibbed one by Charlie Post). At Caesura, Peter Cole discusses the late, great man Harold Bloom’s new posthumous collection, Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles: The Power of a Reader’s Mind Over a Universe of Death, and writes a tender remembrance of the pioneering literary critic, whom Cole knew personally. Super based Finnish artist Jukka Siikala (a painter and a filmmaker that has collaborated with noise and black metal musicians like Mikko Aspa and has a truly bitchin’ book out on Infinity Land, now out of print unfortunately) explains his process and creative philosophy on the Anechoic Chamber podcast. “Post-comrade” Angelicism01 makes his debut on American Greatness to look back at the performative political nonsense, impotent rage, barbecuing, and death tolls that characterized the disaster that was CHOP, and looks at how the psychopathologies of the left helped Biden get elected (you know those “abolitionists” be SERIOUS when they burn working class ‘hoods to the ground to get the writer of the crime bill elected–that is, serious about doing propaganda for the left side of capital, of course!). DC Miller writes brilliantly about “the crisis actor,” and how the very notion of a crisis actor is testament to a fragmented, hallucinatory reality. Michael Tracey hilariously BURIES some loser journalist who tried to fuck with him. Brooklyn-based sculptor Win McCarthy — an artist I don’t know much about, but I find myself aesthetically drawn to the work — is profiled by Mousse. Speaking of artists, the brilliant pioneering post-Internet artist and “based and red-pilled girl boss” Petra Cortright does an episode with me on my podcast baby System of Systems to express some good old fashioned art world discontent!

And though I swore I’d never link to a Pitchfork article in the “BASED” section of this aggregate column, I do want to save some space here to pay respects to a fallen transgressive artist and warrior poet. DMX, however successful financially, was widely misunderstood by the “serious rap critics” of the 1990s. He was in a strange in-between zone. He had the provocative humor of someone like ODB, but the sense of pop that Jay-Z was famous for, so people don’t know quite what to do with him critically. But I see DMX as the rapper who brought the “horrorcore” aesthetics of Geto Boys, Gravediggaz, and Three 6 Mafia to a much broader audience due to his preternatural command of hooks, and Swizz Beats’ mega-addictive production. Can you imagine a dork like Kendrick Lamar ever rapping, “I got blood on my dick, cuz’ I fucked a corpse?” I think not. At one point, DMX was regularly bailing on his VMA performances at the last minute, it was so classy! He didn’t give a fuck about industry bullshit! He was authentic, real, and singular in his vision. DMX was a BASED KING!

CRINGE PROPAGANDA
One of the least self-aware radlibs on Twitter, Mike Crumplar, writes a truly brain wormed article about racism as “jouissance,” trying to show us how much Lacan he’s read, or something, and also doing another one of those Beijer-esque “post-left” smears. Who cares, right? Well, when you find out that Crumps is the heir to a massive security state fortune (Raytheon, I believe, fact check me if incorrect), it’s hard to read his work as anything other than security state propaganda. Oh-so-serious Marxoid thinker and Zero Books publisher Doug Lain has astroturfed Silicon Valley hippie-dork and failed congressional candidate Shahid Buttar on to discuss, whatever, cancel culture and shit. To be clear, this is like having David Duke on to discuss why “white hate” is bad. It’s crazy, what the fuck you doing Doug? It appears that the NY Times’ “Modern Love” column has embraced “The Great Reset” and generic sociopathic behavior in this batshit insane tome by writer Haili Blassingame. The Quietus treats the utter mediocrity that is English math rock band Black Midi — a kind of liquid modern bastardization of every trend in experimental rock over the last 30 years — like the band is the fucking Velvet Underground for chrissakes (comparing them to titans like Magma and Swans, etc.)! Eileen G’ Sell uses one of the most boring snoozefests of a film to come out in one of the worst years of all time for American cinema (2020), Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal, to write about (SHOCKER) identity politics (it’s a Hyperallergic joint so what else would you expect, really?). The Jacotards act like they’re surprised that Keir Starmer is a neoliberal ghoul who hates them (he basically said as much a year ago, no?). Chapo Trap House, stewing in their now obvious political impotence, invite shitlib Warren supporting ambulance chasing “journalist” Ken Klippenstein on the show to discuss… Who cares? He sucks.

And last but not least, AOC sicks the feds on a journalist who criticized her deplorable politics on Israel and Palestine. Even the most fuckwitted leftists are now posting, “Has AOC sold out the left?” videos, as if there isn’t a huge amount of us who told these people years ago that she was a sociopathic careerist who despised them. Oh well!

Later!

Illustration by Adam Lehrer