Culture Wars 3.0
Legality, CRT and Fascism, A World Without Hunger, Sexual Revolutions and the Future of Online Advertising.
Morning Comrades!
Initially I was going to write this special report on Colonialism, Libya and Gaddafi seeing that NATO’s invasion was 10 years ago and a hot take on the centennial of Dadaism and its relationship on Marxism - and that might still happen- but after scouring my usual outlets of information a few pieces of “current events” moved me to shift this emails focus. It’s a little reactionary and actionable today.
Earlier in the week I shared the “Tracking Biden From the Left” project and we are going to have another look at what is going on with the increasing implosion of the democratic perception the US maintains on itself and the rest of the world.
Long story short, the Republican Party, since Reagan truly, not Trump, let’s not make it that easy, has been involved in a multi-level, successful, cultural assault on reality that follows a Gramscian logic of hegemony. Its strategy for assaulting reality from below as well as above is something to behold, the sheer amount of money involved from the Capitalist Class of the US is mind-boggling and at the very least should convince even the most centrists reader of this newsletter that a democracy as it is propagated, does not exist. On the contrary, the US has for the last 40 years been readying itself towards a tech-fascist kleptocracy, utilising far-right fascist and pseudo-christian radical minorities to enable a full take over of Capital over Humans. That’s your most basic class and materialistic analysis of the status quo.
The latest piece of this cultural war is the inclusion of Critical Race Theory in the US infotainment narrative, the stoking of fear and the subsequent political response from the likes of the above pictured Governor of Florida. Fact is, it’s not just that deluded fascist but a whole number of states within the Union that now move towards trying to ban the teaching of CRT in US schools - something that never actually happened - but more importantly, framing this idea as something even more sinister. As a citizen of Germany and someone deeply invested in the study of fascist power structures, historically and currently, these constant moves by the Capitalists puppets send nothing but shivers down my back.
The NSDAP, the German Nazi party achieved its fascist dictatorship through legality.
Important to remember that part.
Coming back to the US though, Today, Republican state legislators are proposing legislation to restrict what teachers can say in their classrooms. This trend started in 2021 — ten such bills have already become law — but has dramatically accelerated in the first few weeks of this year. A new report by PEN America found that in the first three weeks of 2022 "71 bills have been introduced or prefiled in state legislatures across the country" to restrict the speech of teachers. A particularly aggressive government effort to limit speech is underway in Florida, led by Governor Ron DeSantis (R). A bill championed by DeSantis prohibits any school or private business from engaging in instruction or training that makes anyone "feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress" on account of their race.
Critics say the focus on white guilt precludes any candid discussion of American history. "This isn't even a ban on Critical Race Theory, this is a ban on Black history," State Senator Shevrin Jones (D) said. "They are talking about not wanting White people to feel uncomfortable? Let's talk about being uncomfortable. My ancestors were uncomfortable when they were stripped away from their children."
To wit, the bill explicitly requires teachers to lie to students. It requires teachers to define "American history…as the creation of a new nation based largely on the universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence." At America's founding, of course, the principles stated in the Declaration of Independence were not universal. Black people, women, and other groups had few if any rights.
Similar moves are also happening in both Arizona and Missouri where, combined well over 20 current pending bills are waiting to be heard that specifically forbid the teaching of CRT in schools, restricts freedom of speech to a degree that makes my bones shake and includes provisions to severely punishes those that disobey these laws.
Now, these are pending laws to be debated. Whether they pass or not is a whole different story. That’s not the point though. The Republican Party in the US - and please do not read this as an endorsement of the Democratic Party - is dominating the public discourse through their media networks, through their parliaments and is using the same tactic any fascist organization has done in the last 100 years. Stoking up imaginary fears and enemies, pushing a romanticized ideal of the past under threat that requires protection and working the legal framework to see how far they can enable the kleptocracy their masters want. It’s wild to witness in action to be honest after spending two decades reading about the same line of events that resulted in our history here in Europe. The playbook currently being used in the US is eerily similar to that used in Italy in the 1920s as well as Germany in the 1920s/30s with results that everyone knows about. I realize that for a majority of people this play was initially brought to their attention during the Trump years and getting rid of him was understood as a solution to stopping this take over. The reality is, in any Capitalist System the urge for total control by any means necessary, historically, has always resulted in a Fascist Takeover, using the same playbook, applied to their unique cultural setting and mostly succeeded.
That is not to say that there aren’t tried and trusted ways and means to oppose this but becoming aware of the fact, that irrespective of whom you vote for, this always the end game here. It is also the reason for this platform’s staunch support, involvement and advancement of anti-fascist work. Whilst the communist mindset does involve working towards significant cultural and economic change, the anti-fascist work is mostly reactionary to this threat- granted, both wings of this reality are largely actionable, but anti-fascist work exist in response to this threat of capitalism. It’s all part of the big picture and whilst it is important to keep taps on these bastards, let this serve as a motivational reminder of the bigger picture.
Part of this work most definitely is centred in and around the materialistic approach that aims to improve the material conditions of every people, including the ability for self determination that pre-mandates safety, shelter and food.
World hunger, which had declined from 2005 to 2014, has begun to rise since then; world hunger is now at 2010 levels. The major exception to this trend has been China, which eradicated extreme poverty in 2020. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)’s 2021 report, The State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World, notes that ‘nearly one in three people in the world (2.37 billion) did not have access to adequate food in 2020 – an increase of almost 320 million people in just one year’. The UN’s World Food Programme projects that the number of those who are hungry could nearly double before the COVID-19 pandemic is contained ‘unless swift action is taken’.
Scientists inform us that there is no shortage of food for the population: in fact, the overall supply of calories per capita has increased across the world. People are hungry not because there are too many of us, but because peasant subsistence producers all over the world are being forced off their land by agribusiness and pushed into city slums, where access to food is dependent on monetary income. As a result, billions of people do not have the means to buy food.
In short, in a world of plenty that is nevertheless run by a select few with an idea of profit over people we now produce more food than ever, certainly enough food to feed everyone twice over yet, we do not, for the sake of money. That needs changing and immediately. The above text lays a program to tackle this and for everyone to get involved.
Laurie Penny
Laurie Penny has a new book coming out, entitled “Sexual Revolution - Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback”. Aside from being an incredible insightful author and publishing one of my most read substack’s, this book couldn’t come at more timely moment.
In our era of crisis, collapse, and reactionary tyrants, we are also witnessing a productive transformation: profound and permanent changes in how we define gender, sex, consent, and whose bodies matter. It's a time of creative disobedience, of reimagining ways of organizing care, reproduction, and the work of building and sustaining the human species. These changes threaten the social and economic certainties that form our world; they threaten existing power structures, and they undermine the authority of institutions from the waged workplace to the nuclear family. No wonder the far right is fighting so hard. A shakeup in sexual and gender relations is a shakeup in political, economic, and social life as well. The stakes could not be higher.
Based on Laurie Penny's celebrated, Ellie-award nominated Longreads series about rape culture, Sexual Revolution is the culmination of years of journalistic research, written for a broad audience, drawing on the work of Shulamith Firestone, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Silvia Federici, Wilhelm Reich and Michel Foucault. This is a hand grenade of a book, a manifesto of social change, and a story of how feminism can save the world.
The Future Of Online Advertising
Yes, they are listening, exploiting and manipulating you and we need a radical change in advertising, if we need it at all but that’s my short version on a topic that I have been involved with for the past 20 years. The friends at Autonomy went a few steps further and produced not only an analysis of the reality of online advertising but imagined a different future. As with mostly everything, every discussion within scientific utopianism is centred around the question of ownership and this report goes a long way towards that. Again, a wonderful actionable resource as this was most recently presented to the European Parliament and again is open to your involvement.
I will leave you with a not-so-subtle reminder to listen to the third episode of Hot Shots and, more importantly as I will be recording a new episode on Thursday afternoon, to send me any topics you want me to rant about.