#i hate western leftists so fuckin much

[hussyknee]

batmanisagatewaydrug: "If you're still enjoying Harry Potter you should be used as a bowling pin"

This from one of my favourite fandom blogs. I am so tired of losing all respect for people I like and look up to. I guess one of the upsides of this stupid discourse is the amount of so-called leftists showing exactly what their ethics and principles are worth.

Either you believe that hyperfixations, special interests and escapism in general are value neutral or accept that you're an ableist thought policing dickbag willing to make acceptable targets of vulnerable people for the crimes of the rich and powerful.

There are no exceptions. None. Unless you believe Global South people whose entire countries are being destroyed by brands like Nestle matter less than Global North trans people. If you're not going after people who drink Coca Cola you can shut the fuck up about Harry Potter fans who aren't even giving JKR any money.

#i hate western leftists so fuckin much #your imperialist privileged dickbaggery is hanging all the way out your ass #ableism #transphobia #harry potter #global south #transformative fandom #thought police #purity culture #no ethical consumption under capitalism #performative activism #knee of huss

[anarchistettin]

I don't think it's that mysterious that MAGA / incel / hitler youth shit is so damnably interesting to young white-acculturated men. It makes more direct sense than the draw of any kind of comparable left movement in western nations.

It'd be unnatural for them to gravitate toward an ideology whose proponents regularly state that they'll never be able to be anything other than an enemy to their own hearts' true desires.

It's hard to argue that younger white men in leftist spaces don't still tend to lean toward base-level westernisms like antisemitism, sexism, racism. Voting dem didn't seem to change them categorically, in 2020.

it's a pretty rare individual of any sort that voluntarily stays where they're hated, even rarer sort that doesn't feel any pull at all toward a space where you're not only forgiven, but told that the evil shit you pulled wasn't actually evil at all, it's what God likes, or it's Natural Law or whatever other easily-sold-pap is on the lure. of course young white men resist leftist political ideas. they'll continue to! and feel like they have to. They're fuckin 14 or some shit. Hell, they're up to 20. They're 30 now!

the consequence of accepting leftist ideas is never, ever getting laid, ever. nevermind "again": EVER. They're fuckin 14 or some shit -

I mean, you can judge it or argue about it on a philosophical level, but you aren't going to convince most animals that they should actually be totally fine with never ever getting laid ever.

They aren't ace. They aren't queer. They aren't stealth-queer or foolingthemselvesbi. They're high-energy mammals with some 2.5 million years of evolved instinctive nnnnnnneeeeeeed to get laid. Logic and ethics aren't on the menu yet. Nothing else is. No amount of hating them for it will do anything but provoke those 2.5 million years of strategy. It's unfolding around us all the time.

I sure ain't saying "you gotta fuck a dude to get him on board". I'm just saying MAYBE belief in a strong biological sex-based morality is still a really bad plan all the way around.

it sucks that only people who already sorta kinda agree will ever see it but shit: the way y'all talk about the boys pretty much ensures where those boys aren't going to turn for relief from modern pressures or a feeling of having a meaningful life.

look at all those men on xitter that rush to reply to whatsherfaceshitherpants's critics, whenever possible, within seconds. On some level they believe that shatherself will have sex with them if they white knight her at a lucky juncture. They're not thinking "her politics are reprehensible, unsupportable by history or science, and she is regularly cruel to people that lack her level of power or privilege". They're thinking "a Lady that Looks Like That Will See Me Knighting, and, one day, Fuck Me". They aren't mistaken about that. They aren't fooling themselves. It's a strategy that works.

#dworkin turned you into MAGA recruiters #MAGA will get them laid. you should probably take some time to think that over. #ignoring stats is a favorite game of leftists and dipshit magas alike - but it can't hold a candle to the simple simple joy of hate

[chikkou]

hi anya! not the same anon. someone posted a good google docs resources in ur replies but wanted to make sure u saw: docs.google /document/u/1/d/1_ef5kHPvQRkR_cgGlJvMZY0EWGiy8MXZAOvLQxKDHgI/ // also a good question to ask is why does the west want to care about muslims now? when have they ever cared in the past (i.e: islamophobia, sanctions)? ...whose interests does it serve for the media to report about them?

ok after doing a quick skim through of this (because it is STUPID long) i find its veracity highly questionable. none of the sites linked to are what i would call credible, and a couple of them are literally just blog posts ppl made with, again, incredibly suspicious or straight up nonexistent sources. on top of that, several of the news articles were either from pro-ccp sources (thegrayzone ones in particular) or were direct from the ccp (by way of chinese media/news outlets) themselves. admittedly i only thoroughly looked through the first two categories, and skimmed the rest, but all that alone is enough for me to consider this claim basically false

im definitely noticing a rise in anti-chinese xenophobia, both in everyday life and in american politics, and i wont deny that western news outlets likely arent spreading these stories for altruistic reasons. but to straight up deny the reality of the internment camps in china is perplexing to me, and also quite similar to what both the U.S. and germany did with their respective concentration camps during wwii. unless ur a tankie - and if so ur in the wrong fuckin place cause i hate tankies LMAO - theres literally no reason for any leftist to back the chinese government or its system of governance, because its not communism or anything close to it. its imperialist capitalism wrapped up with a red bow. 

i know ur not the same anon but u should probably consider doing a bit more research into where your info is coming from before taking a hard stance on anything. both pro-ccp and chinese news outlets/websites have an obvious bias and a reason for why theyd want to obscure the truth about these camps. it doesnt take much critical thinking to put that together. im always skeptical of western news outlets too, especially when it comes to foreign affairs, but i think its kind of irresponsible to accept that the conflicting info MUST be correct simply because it exists. keep that in mind for the future

#anya's anons

[zenosanalytic]

People What Aint From Round Here Is The Problem...

So I just watched Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood and I have THOUGHTS:

Ive read a few reviews&ruminations on this film at this point and I can’t believe that none of them got(or at least, mentioned explicitly) the primary thesis of this movie, spcl given that Tarentino flatly states it out the mouth of his primary protagonist within, like, the first 15-20mins of the film: “...most important thing in this town is when you’re making money you buy a house in town. You don’t rent... Hollywood real estate means you live here. You’re not just visiting, not just passing through. You fuckin live here.” i.e., the most important thing in Hollywood, to Hollywood, is the people FROM Hollywood; Everyone else is just a filthy, trouble-making tourist or profiteer who is “Passing Through” and “Doesnt Get It” and  “Is Fucking It Up”(It being the film industry), and probably “Secretly Hates Movies”. There are places and aspects of this movie that are basically a Nativist Angeleno rant, written by a life-long Angeleno film-nerd-turned-film-maker, against Hollywood’s critics(and his critics which he just totally conflates with the former), and probably non-Angelenos(and non-Californians?) in general.

There are two ways to read this thesis: Straight and Subverted/Satirized.

The evidence for reading it straight is pretty plentiful. Lots of reviews have puzzled at where the line connecting the constant hippie-bashing, the weird focus on knocking Polanski’s Polishness & preference for shooting in London, and the inexplicable pot-shot at Bruce Lee is, and I think this is it. “The Hippies” are repeatedly presented as a corrupting force: digging through trash, living in squalourous filth at the Spahn Ranch dragging members of “Old Hollywood” like its owner into it with them, selling drugs, and using sex to “control” men. And attached to this is presenting “The Hippies” as foreign; not only from another place, but refusing to assimilate with the LA way of life and hostile to it. The Manson family are the only explicitly identified “Hippies” in the film(other than, possibly, the one who sells Cliff an acid cig). The only “positive” portrayals of Bruce Lee in the film are silent ones of him teaching anglos kung fu, which has some fairly obvs and well-understood Implications.

But there’s also good evidence for reading it as subverted and satirized. Both Tate and Dalton are NOT from California, let alone LA, and Booth’s origins are left unclear. Dalton’s the only one of them explicitly id’d as being from elsewhere(Missouri), but Tate’s easy to google and she was a military kid who grew up all over the place. When Dalton returns from Italy, that sequence and his look in it are VERY reminiscent of the scenes introducing Polanski at the beginning of the film. The side-characters around Tate, perennially shown in a positive light, are also non-Angelenos. Doing Spaghetti Westerns revitalizes Dalton’s career, despite his disdain for Italian cinema. Tate and her crew, while not explicitly ID’d as “Hippies” and often shown in Mod and other fashion styles, are also presented in “Hippie” fashion, shown listening to “Hippie” music, smoking the “Hippie” Reefer(Im sorry, but Comedy Demanded this phrasing and I am Devout u_u), and implied to be living a polyamorous “Hippie” life.

It really is difficult for me to say which predominates. On the one entirely metaphorical hand, the ways in which Dalton’s Angeleno chauvinism are subverted and mocked are fairly obvs, but on the other emh, the film is FILLED with LITERALLY GLOWING nostalgia for this pre-Hippy, pre-Lefty, pre-70s, Conservative and Republican California&Los Angeles. Dalton’s focus on property-ownership&the film industry in the opening thesis could easily be seen as resolving these subversive contradictions to allow for a straight read(ie: Tate, Booth, and Dalton are “Hollywood People” who’ve both bought real-estate in LA, and who’ve grown up in film or film-adjacent fields and choose to center their adult lives in the film industry). So much, in fact, that I kinda started to wonder abt QT’s politics while watching it. And, if it WAS satirical, then what’s the point of the knock to Bruce Lee and focusing criticisms of Polanski on his Polishness and shooting in London? Is that just meant to characterize Dalton and Booth as nativists and racists?

It really cannot be said enough that there are REALLY MORE APPROPRIATE CRITICISMS to make of Polanski than 1)begin Polish, 2)possessing boyish effeminacy, and 3)preferring to shoot movies in London instead of LA. Which are this movie’s only problems with him(though it also takes the time to show him bitchily smoking a cigarette in an evening gown while being rude to a dog). Obvsl I dont object to villainizing an ACTUAL REAL LIFE VILLAIN like this shitstain, but I DO object to being asked(albeit gently) to participate in this film’s understated nationalist bigotry.

It’s possible that Cliff’s turning Pussycat down during the drive to the ranch was intended to be this but I highly doubt it. And if it was it’d be misrepresenting Polanski’s misdeeds enormously, considering that Pussycat, the too-young girl, is the sexual instigator in this film. Polanski liked to manipulate, drug, and rape underaged girls(he pulled the same shit with models in Europe before getting busted for it in LA, btw, then continued doing it after fleeing back to Europe); really not the same situation.

There’s another irony in that, while the film goes out of its way to call Polanski “boyish” and imply that makes him feminine and that this is Bad, there’s also a subtle under-current that... Tarentino sees himself in his youth the same way? He’s certainly never been short like Polanski and Jay Sebring are/were, QT’s 6 1, but the actors he cast to play them and the description made of the pair in-film are more than a bit reminiscent of how Tarentino looked&was discussed in the press back in the 90s when he was starting out. AAAaaand the film explicitly calls that Tate’s “Type”; leaving me with the question: would Tarentino be able to stop himself from implying a dead starlet would have been attracted to him? I leave the answer to your imaginations, Dear Readers u_u

Having said all that it IS a really good film, which I liked, I dont think it’d be very hard to set aside this political stuff while watching, the driving sequences are especially emotive&exhilarating, and there’s some seriously great acting in it. IDK if I’d say I liked it more than the recent Emma movie, tho.

I feel like each of the trio, Tate, Dalton, and Booth, were meant to symbolically Embody LA/Hollywood/California? Like Pitt especially seemed to be channeling movie characters and CJ from GTA: San Andreas throughout his performance, while I couldnt help but think of Ronald Reagan watching DiCaprio(spcl given the character’s likely politics). So there’s this sense in which the film is a fantasy of “Old Hollywood”, embodied by these three, Vanquishing its “Enemies”, represented by The Hippies(moralizing, pretentious, gross leftist) and potentially Polanski&Lee(foreign film ppl who refuse to integrate into the LA scene). Again, given the political history of Cali after this era, this embodiment raises some questions for me abt the film and QT’s politics(particularly in re: misogyny and feminism).

Also DiCaprio is totally going to get pitched a Reagan biopic off of this role and I sincerely hope he has the good sense to turn that shit the fuck down.

Circling back to the ranting at his critics, this movie was definitely and consciously a response to them. Like: up until the last 5-15 minutes of the film, and aside from a handful of too-lingering too fetishistic too on-the-nose creep shots of the female cast that Tarentino simply could not stop himself from making, OUATiH is precisely the sort of “Serious” film Tarentino’s critics have been saying he should make for decades now(of course he did Jackie Brown, which was that and which he blew Completely out of the park). And then there’s that bloody, gross-out, exploitation-movie ending. I dont actually think it was as bad as many critics were saying it was? For some reason I was thinking there was gonna be a massacre of the ENTIRE Manson family, which would have been totally out of left-field. But it WAS clearly a stinger of a major tone-shift thrown in as a Fuck You to the ppl who’ve called out his violent and exploitative preferences throughout the years. As for me I generally like his movies and think he’s a great filmmaker but he absolutely does go too far sometimes.

Rick Dalton, in an evening-gown, with a mixer full of iced-margarita in one hand, getting all up in the face of the driver of a loud exhaust-spewing jalope in his PRIVATE STREET was TOTALLY Tarentino himself :| By which I mean NOT ONLY that That’s ABSOLUTELY the sort of cameo he would have given himself 30 years ago and if it made any sort of sense at all in the film(which here it wouldnt have, obvsl), BUT ALSO that I feel 94% confident that Tarentino has actually done that at least once in his lifetime :| :|

I think the monologue&interactions T gives Bruce Lee leading up to the fight were probably more insulting to him than the fight itself. Contrary to popular discussion, it isn’t Pitt’s character totally trashing Lee, he gets in one good throw after Lee repeats a successful attack at his request(which I doubt Lee would have ever done from what little I know about him; not being predictable in a fight was his whole Deal), but rather an even duel between them(most of the fight is just the two blocking each others’ attacks). I dont think the film was trying to say “Lee was full of hot-air”, if it wanted to say that it’d have shown him getting trounced instead of showing him knock Booth down then trade him blow for blow, but more “Lee was pretty arrogant and a bit pretentious”.

OK, that’s abt all that I can think of right now: thanks for reading ^v^

#Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood #Quentin Tarentino #Long Post #Cinema #zA Reviews #Movie Reviews #zA Commentary #zA Opinions #analytic posts

[sylvieusedhyperbeam]

the left going forward; corporate media

 all right so

i’ve heard a lot of thoughts about where the left can go forward from here.  and i’m not just talking about the election in november (in fact, that’s not even on my mind right now as i write this).  and while i feel like the first real steps forward from this point on should be the left focusing on local elections, trying to reach out and inform communities of the cause (waking apolitical people up with the possibility of a further extended coalition is never a bad thing), there’s a huge obstacle that we really need to figure out.

and that is, of course, corporate media.

anyone new ‘round here

now for anyone new here, corporate media isn’t just some ‘leftist twitter bubble conspiracy theory!!!’ as some centrists would have you believe.  

when the near entirety of a country’s news stations, outlets and papers are owned by six corporations, and when said corporations donate money to a political campaign?  yeah... i hope you can see the problem there.  a news station owned by a company donating money to a politician probably isn’t going to give fair or neutral coverage throughout that particular election.  

for more information on this, i’d suggest a reading of Manufacturing Consent by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky.

now that being said, it’s safe to say that corporate media becoming effective free super-pacs for these establishment picks are... a pretty huge problem that we need to figure out going forward.  

i’ve seen the suggestion of ‘not making the media hate us’ get floated around, but uh... lmao yeah, good luck with that.  long as you stand for people, and as long as you threaten their bottom line, it ain’t gonna happen.  they will ALWAYS hate you.  the coverage will get friendly and fawning once you’re no longer a threat to them, and ONLY once you’re no longer a threat.  that’s when they start gaslighting the left, insulting them for ever thinking there was a bias (lmao we’re in that phase right now where CNN and MSNBC have nothing but good things to say about Sanders now, it’d almost be funny if it weren’t so goddamn infuriating).  so yeah, tl;dr you can go ahead and try to be more media-friendly, but... i just don’t see it happening.  if you ain’t corporate friendly, you ain’t in the club.  period.

just to reassure anyone reading this, no you’re not crazy, there WAS an incredibly insane bias and they’re going to try their hardest to gaslight you into thinking otherwise.  don’t take their bullshit.  never forget.

as for my take on it, i can only think of a few suggestions.

one will have to be labeling/branding.  it sucks that western countries never recovered from the Red Scare and that it’s all but calcified unfettered capitalism at the expense of the labor/working class, but unfortunately, that’s the reality (it’s also why i was facepalming at leftists constantly pushing Russiagate while not realizing how easily that’s going to be flipped on us come 2020 but whatever, hindsight and all that).  

i think one of Sanders’ mistakes was running entirely on the label of socialist.  like i said, western countries never recovered from the Red Scare, you have to go with something more friendly to the culture.  you can’t connect the dots for them if they’re too scared by the word ‘socialist’ to look at the picture.  maybe instead of socialist, run on New Deal Democrat?  it’s ‘less scary’ and potentially creates an inroad with older voters.  like it or not, you have to sell your ideas in an appealing package before you can expect to see any results.  

number two, i think we just need to stop giving a fuck about the spin the media tries to put on us.  like, stop going on the constant defensive and jump to offense.  i think it was another mistake in the Sanders campaign, they spent way too much time on defense, and Bernie didn’t spend enough time drawing contrast between himself and Biden.

and for the sake of context i’ll go ahead and add that this didn’t come without personal shortcomings on Bernie’s end, either. fawning endlessly over Biden, saying Biden was a decent guy that could totally beat Trump, that shit was just politically stupid beyond belief.  i love Bernie to death, but playing nice this time around cost him when he was already on a harrowing path.

but in all fairness, i think Bernie played so nice with Biden BECAUSE he knew that he was talking to, effectively, Biden’s super pacs whenever he was on MSNBC and CNN.  like i get it, he’s trying to play chess, but sometimes you gotta flip the fuckin board over and call it when your opponent is smearing feces all over the pieces.  

running that train of thought, hell, MSM loves ratings a shit ton more than they value journalistic integrity, so maybe sharp-tongued contrasts and statements about the other side will draw attention gradually towards the core issues.  drama sells.  discussing issues invites them to put spin on you, and yes it’s total bullshit, but what people forget about MSM is that they HAVE to make money off of everyone somehow. ‘Senator Jones Has Mathematically Sound Plan for UBI’ doesn’t sell.  ‘Soviet Union Loving Commie Tries to Sell Commie Ideas’ does.  

like, it sucks that the idea of surviving the turgid sea of shit that is neoliberal media is to play their game to an extent and rattle the cages, give them a bit of red meat to bite into here and there, but i honestly think it was a huge part of Trump’s formula.  he kept on giving them red meat to bite into, he stirred up drama, he said outrageous shit in order to draw attention before he utilized that attention to bash into Hillary.  

and like it or not, people listened.  

so yeah, i think going more offensive and drawing contrast rather than being on defensive would work better to our advantage.  we’re not going to get anywhere playing nice.  we’re not going to sell the issues by apologizing for believing healthcare is a human right, or constantly apologizing for shit they’ll go dig up to pin on you (like a stupid off-color joke made in a blog twenty years ago).  it sucks, but it’s the world we live in.  focusing more on offense (and trying not to think about how we’re providing the bread and circuses for these assclowns) might be a better path.

IDK these are just my thoughts and my coffee is gone so time to go take care of that shit.

#thoughts #blogging i guess #one day my tumblr will have something other than political shit on it #until that day #also goddamn it i'm so done with all this pollen what the shit