Based Safety vs. Cringe Propaganda #7

This Week in Based and Cringe

BASED SAFETY
The amazing Angelicism introduces both his RETARDS and “RETARDS” lists, and though I am disappointed that I didn’t make the first list, I can’t help but agree with his excellent assessments of mankind and artistic worth. DC Miller detects a connection between the orientations in belief surrounding “social justice” and the ancient Aztecs after California has passed a state law giving the go ahead to an Ethnic Studies model curriculum for high schools developed chiefly by R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, “an activist pedagogue influenced by Robin Di Angelo” (the irony that the wokest state in the country is also the one most riddled with economic inequality and other contradictions should, as always, be lost on no one).  Freddie DeBoer has a nice piece on charter schools and how untrustworthy the data produced by charter schools is (also glad that Freddie seems to be doing better and is writing great stuff again). Sam Kriss attempts to understand the plight of Meghan Markle, while also not letting her off the hook for her cynical shenanigans. BOMB Magazine interviews one of my favorite writers to emerge from the fringes as of recent, Jordan Rothacker, whose new sci-fi dystopia The Death of the Cyborg Oracle is available now. Artist Keith Tillford and Reza Negarestani join the Urbanomic podcast to discuss their new collaborative comic book Chronosis. Art historian T.J. Clark writes a beautiful piece about the greatest artist in the history of mankind (arguably) Hieronymus Bosch. You can watch Zac Davis and I eat hummus and drink soda in my kitchen while we discuss NFTs with the lovely guys of the Break the Rules podcast.

CRINGE PROPAGANDA
If you’ve ever made fun of “the left” on twitter, or critiqued it in any way, perhaps you were barraged with annoying replies from the pseudonymous Jacobin writer Carl Beijer. It’s possible that you argued with him a bit, but just gave up, because you realized he was going to post until you were exhausted. If you had a feeling that this person was a lot dumber than he let on, well god damn were you right!! Carl here joins apex shitlib and “he who believes in Russiagate” Sam Seder and, Carl explains to Sam, a millionaire, that Seder is……. a proletariat, or something (also, we’ll say, Carl really has a voice for posting). AOC is interviewed by DSA and takes the mask all the way off, telling socialists critical of the Democratic Party that they’re bad actors, and that she’s oh SO OVER “class essentialism” meaning class politics (to avoid reading this nonsense, WSWS does a good recap). Unsurprisingly, The Quietus celebrates British knowledge workers doing the ol’ labor LARP, and then hits us with a double whammy, with a takedown piece of Fassbinder – you know, one of the most brilliant film artists in the history of cinema – because he was such a meanie and a big bad bully (which everyone already knows and loves Fassbinder anyways because art doesn’t require you to be a nice person FUCKKCKCKCKC!!!!!!). Some goofy writer named Alexis Nedd writes about a theoretical racialized pay gap amongst the fictional superheroes of The Avengers and I’m sure in his little bubble he’s quite proud of himself for coming up with such a concept (“Avengers theory” is really becoming its own kind of cringelib cottage industry). Finally, the lib lizard king interviews Bernie. It might make you feel good to see that Bernie is “uncomfortable” with Trump’s social media ban and internet censorship at large (a taste of the ol’ Bernie), but then he immediately squanders that good will and follows his dumb protegé AOC, going on to launder consent for the Democrats’ repressive and reactionary agenda. Bernie’s defeat is total. His movement is little more than another arm of a brutal bourgeois state. Reject it all, baby!

’Till next time, later!

Illustration by Adam Lehrer