Class War & Media
Speak to Capitalists in a Language They Understand
Morning Comrades!
Lately I have been sharing more in depth pieces in these emails, which I enjoy writing and as I was sitting down at my desk on Tuesday for this email my mind wondered, having no real bone to pick at today. On the one hand, sure, I am exhausted after blasting through a 90 minute live talk with a friendly crew of podcasters in LA last night - more about that later - and on the other hand my brain was, or rather currently still is pre-occupied with some plants in my study struggling due to not having seen sunlight for the last few months, what to eat for lunch, laundry and paying bills. It happens, but to make up for this, there are a number of pretty intense, both in the positive and negative, stories to share and chat with you today. The point of this is to draw your attention to stories that are happening but are being drowned out, despite being important to highlight, so, in real talk, like a BL RSS feed of old. I am also still working on a larger piece about Gaddafi that I hope to share with the patreons of this newsletter by Thursday, debating a new T-shirt design for this weekend - let’s see about that, and and and.
Oh and while I still have your attention, if you are interested in supporting me with a monthly contribution, the button below is your friend. It’s 10$ a month, of which I see 8$ I believe and apart from my unrelenting appreciation you get an extra email a week, early bird links to any and all drops as well as a discount code.
On Axel Springer
Normally I don’t divulge into German Current Affairs for a plethora of reasons but this one, despite just scratching the tip of the proverbial iceberg, is important, one for the international implications, secondly, as an example of one of the most damaging, patriarchal media empires in the world and thirdly, well, hell, having a chat about the insanity that takes place in this country for a change.
There is not enough space to explain the cultural significance of the Axel Springer Publishing House in Germany and German post-war history, but to note, they are the most powerful media house in Germany, equal in their international influence to the Murdoch Media Empire and are truly, one of most despicable bastard companies around, responsible for countless cases of pain and suffering.
Established in 1946 by its eponymous founder, the publisher became an anti-Communist bulwark during the cold war and was bombed by leftwing militants ( aka the Red Army Faction) in 1972. Today, the company harbours global ambitions. After losing out to Nikkei in the race to buy the FT in 2015, Axel Springer acquired Insider Inc, the publisher of Business Insider, and now owns a host of other digital news and classified sites. Their entire existence is based on upholding the Capitalist, Patriarchal, Christian, North-Atlantic relationship that made West-Germany, initially and for the past 30 years, unified Germany, it’s weird US counterpart in everything insidious. Their main paper “BILD”, is essentially the UK’s “The Sun” counterpart, often surpassing them with their racism and misogyny. If there is one topic the entirety of the German Left does agree on, is that the publishing house deserves to be burnt to the ground. Talk about unity and all.
That for background, the story here is that last year the Editor in Chief at Bild was hired for being the sexist, racist dickhead that he is - after we had a #metoo moment here involving the company, after a NYT ( of all papers ) piece highlighting the corruption, manipulation and threats issued by the company. Obviously, with their international ambitions, AS did buy Politico recently for example, eyes are turned towards them and this FT piece goes even further into exposing their outdated power.
It is important to note that FT is just as conservative as Axel Springer and attempting to help to bring down this powerhouse seems to be more self-serving than anything else but I do find it important enough to bring up here. Germany and it’s power structures are deeply conservative, racist, sexist and capitalistic, despite what you may have heard. Axel Springer is the mouthpiece and at the heart of this nature and exposing it deserves attention.
The Fuckening over at Meta and Spotify
This made me chuckle on Monday, I mean, don’t threaten us spoiled Euros with a good time now Zuck! On a more serious note, this will, of course, not happen but serves to illustrate not only how badly Meta depends on Surveillance Capitalism to function, the brocore bullying nature of Silicon Valley and even highlight the corruption at the heart of the European Union. Long story short is here that Meta wants all data of its users stored in the US to circumvent the stricter EU data protection laws. With Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s ex-defence minister at the helm of the EU though, Zuckerberg will find a corrupt enough politician in the EU for this threat to remain just that. I of course would welcome this shit show of a company to follow through with this threat, but I am not holding my breath.
Seemingly, the whole exposure of Spotify being just another techbro bullshit firm isn’t going anywhere and again, I am definitely here for it. No point in talking about Rogan or the superficial “free speech” defence rants from his fan base ( rather read Roxane Gay’s piece, again, in the NYT - I’ll quote this later because it is behind a paywall ) but rather, let’s focus on the giant and continuing hole Daniel Ek, Spotify’s CEO, is digging himself. He issued a long winded, but meaningless, explanation in regards to the whole story that I will spare you, as it sounds just as bad as any talk Zuck would give, throwing together meaningless catch phrases from twitter’s trending posts to any potential investors. The above article dissects it well enough, and the below article does an excellent job going through the actual economics of Spotify. Again, the point of this is to get you thinking about Spotify and where you want your money to go.
On Alternative Real World Economics
Whenever we speak about post 1989 Socialist/Communist economies the first country that comes to mind is obviously China. This article here, written by Tran Dac Loi who is the vice-president of the Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation, examines a different and equally interesting success story about Vietnam. It’s one thing to throw these examples around when you’re shit-posting on idiots online but another to go through these reports to figure out the realities as told from within, and this is what this article does extremely well.
Initially embarking on a path of centralization and industrialization modelled on its allies in Eastern Europe, by the mid-1980s it had become clear that this policy was causing more harm than good and producing massive bottlenecks in development. In an attempt to overcome these bottlenecks, the Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) held in December 1986 introduced a series of reforms known as “Doi Moi” that permitted mixed forms of property and ownership and encouraged individual initiative in the economy, in pursuit of what the government calls a “socialist-oriented market economy”.
The results speak for themselves: in the last 30 years, Vietnam has advanced from one of the least-developed countries in the world to a booming middle-income economy with strong prospects for future growth, while poverty has declined dramatically. What does Doi Moi entail? Where has it succeeded, and where has it struggled?
On Real Time Action
I often have a conversation with a dear comrade here about how so many actions that genuinely benefit people without any transactional value behind them happen outside the so-called organized leftist groups, and this is a wonderful example thereof. Andie Cropper and Rod Grimmer from England, got together and started a sort of GoFundMe Campaign to turn an empty bank building into a non-commercial community centre and honestly, it is exactly that type of Direct Action that not only is what is needed but will people to realize what can can be done. Furthermore, making it happen will always trump debating it - as much as I enjoy that and I am not discounting the need for discussion but changing the material realities of your community for the better outside of a capitalistic value system is at the heart of this revolution. What the above to get inspired!
Fuck Yeah Good Times
I wanted to end today’s email on seemingly irrelevant but totally relevant good bits for your day.
First up, and this is one for the music fans, especially fans of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, aka me, the other day their forever thought to have been lost demo tape from 1994 was uploaded to YT- only 33 tapes were made and it was never digitalized, until now. For us nerd fans of this band, this is akin to some rando casually geotagging the location of Atlantis but here you go:
In other exciting music news, Kae Tempest released new material, whom I consider to be one of the most powerful artists of our generation:
In case you hadn’t seen it yet, here is Episode 5 of Hot Shots with yours truly.
That’s it from me for today. Thanks for your time and attention, until tomorrow, I remain yours, without compromise,
V.