On Roderic Day

Roderic Day

Feb 26, 2021 (src)

Please understand what Jacobin and NovaraMedia are: capitalist propaganda for lefty audiences.

Stop apologizing and making excuses for them. Stop trying to both-sides this, to salvage this. Unsubscribe today.

"Modern" Tendencies - Jul 30, 2022 (src)

An interesting thing about studying theory instead of just being born again every Thursday is that you can see how, far from fresh, many of these "modern" tendencies are just remakes:

• Maoists are Proudhonists
• PatSocs are Dühringites
• SocDems are Kautskyites

Labour Demands in NA - Nov 4, 2022 (src)

The nascent strike wave in North America will only really become fearsome and achieve full maturity when the labour demand morphs from

"Give us our fair share, capitalists!"

to

"We don't need you, you're parasites. Get out of the way."

I've done a great deal of criticizing the syndicalist cult of self-management, insofar as Westerners sneer at poor nations developing through state capitalism.

This criticism has a dual, though.

Advanced capitalist economies are basically fully ready for self-management.

Nov 7, 2022 (src)

This is wrong, and wrong in an important way.

If you believe propaganda is the driving force of the status quo, America has never been stronger.

If you believe it's a mere alibi, and that class stability depended on material concessions, America has never been weaker.

(quotetweeting Hampton Institute (@HamptonThink) here) Anti-communism in the US does not come from "free thinking."

It comes from the most extensive and long-lasting government propaganda/psychological operation in history.

Disagreeing about whether America's biggest strength is its propaganda power isn't a "mere quibble."

It radically reshapes how you interpret the current situation and how you respond to it!

Consistent materialists cannot attribute infinite power to "propaganda machines."

Media Lists

Her faves - Jun 29, 2020 (src)

the miracle in milan (1951), heartwarming af

northern lights (1978)

heaven's gate (1980)

the working class goes to heaven (1971)

missing (1982)

state of siege (1972)

salt of the earth (1954)

the strategy of the snail (1993)

the wind that shakes the barley (2006)

the battle of algiers (1966)

i am cuba (1964)

burn! (1969)

romero (1989)

rome, open city (1945)

born in flames (1983)

the act of killing (2012)

the gospel according to st. matthew (1964)

if.... (1968)

the rest that occur to me are well-known enough that i won't bother repeating them, but ultimately jodi dean is right:

Every movie is about class struggle.

MediaList - Mar 2, 2021 (src)

I'm always ranting about how bad most media is, how bad politics cannot be isolated since they corrode theme and plot and aesthetics, making most stuff unwatchable.

So I'm gonna just list media I enjoyed. Some may be mega-hits everyone's heard of, some not.

search kw: MediaList

Kundo: Age of the Rampant (2014) - Korean film about revolutionary bandits.

The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) - Irish film about revolutionary independence guerrillas.

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) - Origin story of famous revolutionary Che Guevara.

Rang De Basanti (2006) - Story of a group of friends in India changing as a result of preparing to play the part of revolutionaries in a documentary.

Bacurau (2019) - Incredibly interesting story about a town in Brazil.

Black Sails (2014-2017) - An allegory of the Russian Revolution set in the Pirate Republic of Nassau.

Sing Street (2016) - Nice story about a bunch of Irish kids starting a band.

Mangal Pandey: The Rising (2005) - A local leader in India leads the 1857 mutiny against British rule.

Spartacus (2010-2013) - About the slave revolt in Rome.

Snowpiercer (2013) - A very metaphorical take of a revolution from the back to the front of a train.

Cambridge Spies (2003) - Dramatization of the story of Cambridge rich kids who used their elite status to deeply infiltrate US/UK institutions on behalf of the USSR.

The Battle of Algiers (1966) - Rebels resist the French occupation of Algeria.

Virunga (2014) - A documentary set in Congo about people resisting and exposing a disgusting UK-based oil and gas company Pharos Energy/SOCO International.

Ping Pong: The Animation (2014) - A bunch of kids in Japan contemplate the meaning of life via ping-pong.

Let The Bullets Fly (2010) - A rogue bandit, a weasel imposter, and a crook mobster collide in 1920s China.

A World Without Thieves (2004) - A bunch of master thieves wage a secret competition aboard a packed train in eastern China.

True Blood (2008-2014) - Very uneven, but I still really like it. Supernatural camp in Louisiana, featuring violent anti-vampire mobs chanting "Make America Human Again" in... 2012?!

Your Name (2016) - This movie cycles through a lot of genres, and may seem out of place here, but it's got one vignette in particular about Doing The Right Thing that works on me every time.

Great Teacher Onizuka (1998) - Bike gang leader tries to fulfill dream of being a teacher, but it's a challenge.

Anne with an E (2017-2019) - A girl gets adopted in Canada, and has to either learn to fit in or transform things around her to fit in with her.

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