BASED SAFETY
I’ve been avoiding writing this column. It’s, for one thing, far more time consuming than one probably imagines. Sometimes, I wipe out entire afternoons knocking this out, all with looming writing deadlines and podcast responsibilities beckoning. But even more than the time suck of it all, I’m finding having to keep up with and maintain my place in this strange niche culture a bit revolting. Perhaps it’s the summer, which has been beautiful, or the MDMA I’ve been periodically consuming, but I find my piss and vinegar to have waned a bit. I went to an old friend’s wedding over the weekend in Big Indian, New York. It was joyous and free. The crisp nature was so serene that I didn’t even experience hangover after copious consumption of alcohol and drugs. Apathy and personal contentment has, to an extent, subsumed my righteous furor. I like to dance. I’m bizarrely a very good dancer. But I’m going to talk about internet culture now. Get fucking ready!
Angela Nagle memorializes the great Australian art critic Robert Hughes, “The Man Who Wouldn’t Take a Side,” who she finds is tragically unknown despite being something of a mainstream figure during his lifetime and a host of a popular modern art television show The Shock of the New. Nagle laments a contemporary culture AND art world that would no longer have any place for a sensible, sharp, and ideologically neutral thinker like Hughes. Katherine Dee pinpoints Tumblr as an origin point for the ideology of wokeness, following up the aforementioned Nagle’s spot-on Kill all Normies from 2017. I don’t agree with all of her points but I have no doubt that a lot of its analysis is correct. Jana Surkova has a provocative conversation about “pro-ana” and other female centric taboos with an account by the name of @godposting for her I Hate Fiction podcast.
While not new content, I’m revisiting the now defunct noise blog Terror Noise Audio. Its writing is actually good and I miss it. An epic if a bit overwhelming debate transpires between Aimee Terese and Logo Daedelus on the Break the Rules podcast where the two defended their stances on feasible routes towards communism. Logo is a supporter of the Chinese model, which I disagree with but nevertheless I found myself interested in many of his positions, while Aimee negates it all with her commitment to a Bordigan left communist position. I don’t believe that China is pursuing a classless society in any meaningful way, but Logo is a lot smarter than I thought he was. Nina Power writes about life, death, and Ernest Kahane. And, in a truly beautiful guest column for Covidian Aesthetics, @ghostofchristo1 chronicles the existence of the post-covid ghosts.
CRINGE PROPAGANDA
Less an expression of cringe than an expression of my personal petty grievances, it’s hard not to feel a bit slighted by Dean failing to mention Safety Propaganda amongst his musings on relevant Substack’s. Especially when some of those Substack’s were clearly influenced by this one, and even more so because he includes Alice from fucking Queens, one of the biggest DSA/leftoid apologist accounts on the internet, on that very list. I probably am too vulnerable in this tangent, showing you my innate insecurity and self-doubt. I’d like you to push that out of you mind now, and go back to thinking that I am unbreakable, untouchable, and undeterred (note: this is not an attack on Dean, I don’t think Dean is altogether cringe, this is an expression of my own petty narcissism and fragile ego, which is very cringe).
Another photographer glamorizes trauma through self-portraiture and gets thrown accolades for the efforts. Shayla Love is concerned about the marketization of the philosophy of stoicism, which is funny considering that VICE hasn’t had any problem marketizing niche ideologies in the past. They are, of course, very concerned though when said ideology isn’t one that demands you be a narcissistic pussy every day of your life. HBO releases an Obama documentary that is “critical” of Obama’s legacy, but is actually just more crypto-apologetics about his abject failures as a leader and status as a hallow shell of an End of History politician. Obama is imperialist scum. That’s the plain truth. Hyperallergic probably thought this take was edgy but that take hasn’t been edgy since 2010 when the bank bail outs already happened. Jeremy Corbyn, speaking of hallow shells, writes about the climate crisis as a “class issue” and like, yeah, but it’s not going to ignite proletarian revolution or anything. It will, however, empower new NGOs and manager bureaucracies. Yippee!
So, the Biden admin makes good on its promise to exit Afghanistan and predictably botches the job disastrously. The Taliban controls Kabul once more, and we’re probably sending troops back over. Square one. Ridiculous. And this is just me doing paranoia ranting so don’t take me too seriously here. But something about this feels all too fantastical. The supremely spectacalized images of violence and chaos in the city evoke Baudrillard’s hyperreality. It just seems so perfect, and so fake. Do we really know that western intelligence operatives (MI6 and CIA alike, who have both cut deals with Taliban in the past) didn’t stage at least part of this? Isn’t it peculiar that this allows the US government to both prove its loyalty to its own oath of exiting the country while justifying going right back in? Would that not be an astounding example of the Baudrillardian perfect crime? I’m not writing with certainty, I’m just profoundly skeptical of everything that I see. The correct position here is: we should not be in Afghanistan. There is no justified warfare under capitalism. We simply cannot trust our leaders to be acting out of commitment to morality or noble values. It’s imperialism. Always. Fucking. Imperialism.
I don’t know anything, really, but I do know that there is plenty of EVIL GOIN’ ON!
Illustrations
1. Adam Lehrer
2. Hideo Yammamoto