Now Is The Time Of Monsters
Gramsci, Truckers, the CIA, Colonialism 3.0 and Post-Covid
Morning Comrades!
Today’s theme is loosely based around a quote that is based on a personal quote by Antonio Gramsci, who, aside from Marx is the second pillar to my PhD. The full quote, whose English translation is attributed Slavoj Žižek, goes:
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.
Before we get into that, here is your first playlist from Tidal!
Plenty of thoughts about using Tidal for a week and in some ways it is better than Spotify, in some ways admittedly it is lacking, lacking specifically in the social aspect. You cannot follow my account like you did on Spotify and automatically get notified when a new playlist gets uploaded for example, and I don’t have a way around that yet. For the time being keep an eye out for the links in these newsletters and I will also link these regularly through our telegram group. So far so good though, it took a few days for their algorithm to kick in and start recommending tunes and I have no complaints about that just yet. It’s a good playlist. Let me know how you get on with this, I’m curious.
Coming back to Gramsci, and our current state of being, as perceived through this individual and a continuing attempt to feel the state of the collective. The original quote from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is: La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi piú svariati. This more clearly translates to: The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
For simplicities reason we have collectively agree to use Žižek’s translation but I do always add the original translation from the 1940s in here to add more context. When it comes to political philosophy I find that this analysis of his (Gramsci’s) world nearly a 100 years in Italy encompassed the state we have found ourselves in, post 9/11, best. It is a time of monsters as the old world we all knew before that seminal date is gone and over the last 20 some years has irrefutably been destroyed, with Covid simply being another “shock” in the decades long shock doctrine of the Western Capitalists. For clarities sake, I don’t think the pandemic was planned, absolutely not, however, the resulting destructive measures are and they are in line with the shock doctrine post 9/11.
As brilliantly put, we haven’t formulated, let alone put into action, a world after this, we are stuck in a permanent reactionary circle of destruction that is determined by monsters. Precisely why this work here, this community and other are so vital, because the time of monsters will end and what we do today, what we imagine, teach, do and work towards will determine what that world look like.
With that, here are some stories to show you the monster, because unlike any scary good night story we live in a time when the monsters have names, addresses and we can name them.
Making Sense of Canada's Trucker Protests
News from Canada doesn’t reach this far often, but this has, as these types of protests are now reaching Europe. I didn’t pay much attention to these protests at first, again, mostly because have them here and we quickly learned that these “anti-corona” protest are thoroughly organized by some of Europe’s most extreme right wing fascists, both structurally and financially. When the news from Canada hit I thought that this obviously was copied there until major news orgs started talking ( as they do here ) about these protests as if they were a grass-root entity with legitimate claims. It only took a few days of good ol’ elbow grease investigative journalism to realize how wrong that assumption is, how deeply involved Facebook is, once again, and that the same straw men financing the radicalization via groups like QAnon are behind this insanity. This, like so much else, is a small radicalized group of people that have been manipulated via Facebook and the mainstream news, to help their legislators in government are utilizing the misconception of this being bigger and realer than it is to further push for draconian, corporate friendly fascism.
The above links to a fascinating thread of said investigative journalism that directly ties FB back to this level of manipulation - as we have so often talked about here in regards to the likes of Ben Shapiro and the support he receives from Meta etc. WIRED also ran a good informative piece on the above and yes, it it worth your time:
The Canada trucker protest is, in effect, two protests. One run by a small group of people seemingly disowned by the wider Canadian trucking industry and another run by some of Facebook’s most successful operators. What was a protest against a work requirement has become something far bigger thanks to social media—and in particular thanks to America’s far right. “The narratives align globally,” says Amarasingam. “You have the anti-mandate, anti-lockdown, anti-quarantine component of the response to Covid that has had two years to grow and gel. That’s what the trucker movement is. It’s latched onto a broader angst and anxiety.”#
Neocolonialism 3.0
This little piece of information barely made this weekend’s news cycle amidst the old trope of triggering a war to cover up total political failure, which, you know, cynical old me just thinks is awfully convenient for that racist old bastard currently in the White House. If the invasion of Afghanistan, the total destruction, the absolute lack of achievement nevermind the to decades of crimes against Humanity weren’t enough, after the US and it’s NATO partners left the country, again, because it appeared to have been a savvy PR move, they are now not only stealing all their resources but keeping them and giving them to people for “eeehhyy 9/11” performative retroactive justice, when the real perpetrators still sit in Saudia Arabia, but meh, oil. Not that this move is a new level of colonialism by the US, England has done the same to Venezuela and their Gold Reserves and so on. Nevertheless, this is some sort of evil that I am lacking words for at this. Worth keeping in mind though.
Not The CIA, Again!?
You could fill books with the official admission by the CIA about all the truly, anti-democratic, brutal, murderous and criminal bullshit that agency has been up to without ever having to dive into any conspiracy theories. Most of the time these lunatics will and have admitted publicly to some of the craziest criminal shit you and I couldn’t think of, and yet, here we are, again.
If the Patriot Act wasn’t enough to discredit the USA as a democratic country ( a small thing in a long list of “things” that discredit that corporation ), in a again revelation that didn’t really make the news cycle for long, because, eehhhh RUSSIA, two US senators have raised concerns that the Central Intelligence Agency is AGAIN spying upon unwitting Americans.
The agency has "secretly" conducted warrantless surveillance through a newly disclosed programme, Senators Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich alleged. In a letter to intelligence officials, the two Democrats called for declassifying details of the programme. Government data collection has been the subject of much controversy in the US. Officially, the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) have a foreign surveillance mission and domestic spying is prohibited by the CIA's 1947 charter. But in 2013, a programme of data collection using extensive internet and phone surveillance by American intelligence was disclosed to the public by Edward Snowden, an NSA contractor-turned whistle-blower.
Can anyone truly say they are surprised? I’m not, but hey, also worth knowing and keeping an eye on. For more information, read the official statement here.
Back To Normal?
Ever since this damn pandemic started a lot of the capitalist narrative has been centred around the “return to normality” in some for or other. For the same amount of time plenty of people like myself have been screaming that “normal” was the fucking problem to start with and if anything has become clear over the last two years is that there is absolutely no way we are ever returning to a pre-pandemic reality. Now, I can expand on that again, from a philosophical / historical POV but a wonderfully articulate Professor took to twitter and laid down some Science - you know, the real deal, not what the bro’s call research on Youtube. Prof. Christina Pagel is the Director at the Clinical Operational Research Unit at University College London ( this is "good as it gets in regards to medical science in Europe ) and her thread about what’s coming and how to deal with all of it shone a light on my weekend.
Haven't listened to the playlist yet - loved no. 127 though. Regarding following you, is it something to do with what you are registered as? I just have you listed as 'User' Playlist created by user. Do you need to register as an artist potentially? You could then possibly host podcasts on there also?