Based Safety vs. Cringe Propaganda #35

This Week in Based and Cringe

In need of the joys of mindless entertainment, I saw The Batman the weekend of its release. Matt Reeves’ interpretation of the Batman mythology was…. Well, it was pretty good. There are a laundry list of complaints I could make about it, sure: bizarrely light on narrative despite its three-hour run time, the obviously pandering “white privilege” line delivered by Zoe Kravitz as Selina “Catwoman” Kyle, Paul Dano’s Riddler appearing maskless on camera just once, and more. But I don’t even think I have the energy to be critical about something like this anymore. I’m exhausted by the world that I’m in. I’ve been called a “Putin spy” by more anon accounts than I could count this week (one of which sent a death threat along with the accusation), and a “Nazi” by even more so, for having the bare minimum accurate assessment of the NATO actions that led to the war in Ukraine. It’s fine. That’s what you get for being honest about what you see right in front of you. It just zaps you of vitality but it’s not the worst thing in the world. People are brainwashed cowards. It is what it is.

So, despite its faults, The Batman is a visually stunning, postmodern gothic, pop art epic comic book film that succeeds in, at least, being the best first film in a Batman trilogy ever (it’s better than Batman Begins, worse than The Dark Knight). It’s abundantly clear to me that the only forward-thinking big budget cinema we will ever see anymore will be those films that manage to do something interesting within the confines of a comic book franchise. Todd Phillips executed this reality brilliantly with Joker – essentially an arthouse genre thriller that managed to make a billion dollars. The Batman is less sophisticated than that, and I wish that The Batman boldly went for an R-rating in the same way that Joker did, but there was so much to enjoy about it I think I’ll just shut the fuck up.

My tendency to bite off more than I can chew is impacting my output. I would say sorry but I’m not sorry. I’d be more sorry if you were all paying subscribers, but sadly most of you cheap fucks are consuming the freebies. I get it – this economy and such. But don’t complain to me about lack of content. I’m writing a novel and have taken a columnist job at a soon to launch new publication. The former is a result of my artistic thirst and the latter is for exposure, prestige and money. Yin. Yang. I am proud of both, and look forward to expanding the audience ever further. I don’t want to be bastardized to the niche “transgressive fiction” or “surrealist journalism” (if those sections even exist) or whatever sections of the bookstore. I want to be a great writer of our time. This requires crossing over to new audiences. Thank you to those that have been with me since I started this whole thing. Thank you even more to those that see it fit to pay me for the content that I labor over. Peace be with you.

BASED SAFETY

Rejoice! The brilliant “podcast” that functions more like a radio play in the vein of War of the Worlds but about contemporary politics, psychological warfare and the schizoid sociopolitical landscape, Ghost Jail, returns from a lengthy hiatus with its ninth episode. Themed around “Science,” none other than yours truly has a skit that begins at 25:38. Celebrating the show’s return, GJ founder and co-creator Berto stops by the SP audio misinformation arm System of Systems for a robust discussion on the show, pop culture, Kanye and manga.

Samuel Corwin, a writer who is currently penning a biography on Safety Propaganda’s patron saint and Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey, appears on Contain to discuss the life and art of his biographical subject. Fun aside: I was interviewed by Samuel as a younger writer “influenced by” Parfrey and can’t wait to see how the book turns out. Writer and friend of SP Mónica Belevan collaborates with Urbanomic publisher Robin Mackaye on this dizzying audio piece that the duo entitles The A-Death 'Phenomenon'. I rejoice as I check my email and see that The Perfume Nationalist has finally dedicated an episode to Peter Greenaway, the only heterosexual male artist to define a homosexual transgression better than the fags ever did. One of my favorite black metal bands, the ever-fried and hypnotically minimal Ride for Revenge, is interviewed for a second time by Bardo Methodology. In this text, the group’s founder and ever prolific artist of black metal and extreme experimental music Harald Mentor discusses the group’s late 2021 album Feed the Infamy.

Moving on to world affairs, CJ Hopkins publishes a text that clearly outlines the absurdities of the mainstream media’s depiction of the Russia-Ukraine conflict – a media that pretends that there were no warnings of this tragic outcome, and that Putin has no motivation in warfare besides his own monomaniacal rage and petty grievances. Wake up, retards! You live in a world full of competitive militarized nation-states! You know what war looks like and the complicated events that lead to them. Grow the fuck up. The philosopher John David Ebert has predicted violent consequences for Ukraine ever since NATO started arming the country’s border and has even more insight here, in which he attempts to parse Putin ideologically via Spengler. Elaborating upon this point, Ebert joins Alex Bienstock and I on Stock’s System of Systems side project “Collectin’ Scalps w/ Stock”. Moreover, Australian writer Matt Fresta introduces the fourth issue of his excellent Rango Tango zine, which features both an interview with and an article by me, and also joins SOS to talk about the magazine, his friendship with the iconic late Aussie rock critic Brendon Annesley, and the fantastic rock n’ roll legacy of Australia.

CRINGE PROPAGANDA

Leftoid journalist Natalie Shure has made a stunning, shocking, gut-wrenching observation: AOC isn’t actually a revolutionary freedom fighter but possibly just a Democratic Party mouthpiece! What a brave, bold, and rigorous political critic we have in Ms. Shure! Hyperallergic bitches about museums again, this time in listicle format. I can’t imagine the kind of person who long for museums to be louder and more obnoxious. Have you ever gone to a museum, saw a family with three screeching children running around and touching masterpieces, and thought to yourself: “Wow, I wish museums had a little more of this going.?” Yeah. Me neither.

Apparently the #StopAsianHate movement is at a “crossroads,” according to the Intercept, and while it’s left unsaid one has to assume this pivotal moment in the astroturfed activist group’s timeline might the result of its failure to acknowledge the fact that the anti-Asian violence we’ve seen of recently has demographically absolutely nothing to do with white supremacism. Some Russian guy more than obviously on the C.I.A. payroll pens this op-ed that of course the NYT is happy to publish arguing that Russian citizens should be feeling guilty about their leaders’ military actions in Ukraine. This similarly full retard point is echoed by Simon Ostrovsky on Red Scare. So apparently now I should lose sleep and get on SSRIs in contrition for the million Iraqis my own government murdered? Fuck this. I hate these people.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this VICE writer Paul Blest, but he’s one of the worst people in all of media. A meek middleman. A not-so-sly con job. Every single one of his articles reads like it’s one of those hysteric emails I get from Democrats asking for money. Here, he’s doing that thing where journalists say, “X bad people like Y thing or person and therefore Y thing or person is also bad,” in regards to Tucker Carlson’s nothing short of courageous and principled anti-war coverage of Russia-Ukraine. Good thing Paul Blest will always be an underpaid loser and Tucker has the biggest audience in all of broadcast media because otherwise I might think Blest’s sniveling tactics could work. And here we have more of the same coming from the Claire Lehmann mediocrity factory Quillette: Cathy Young writes off the ACCURATE coverage by both right wing (Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens) and ultra left (Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate) sources pinning the lion’s share of the blame for the conflict on NATO’s shoulders as “horseshoe theory.” The war in Ukraine is proof that left liberal parties mean nothing that they say. Everyone that disagrees with them is, of course, a Nazi. But self-described national socialists fighting a war alongside them? That’s just courageous men with a few bad apples. You can’t unsee this shit once you see it.

Illustrations:
1. art by Graham Lambkin
2. Ride for Revenge