Anti-fascist activity has existed for about one hundred years. Yet, many people, particularly in the United States, have little to no idea about what it real...
I immediately take a massive dislike to his pseudo-objective stance in how he defines what things “are” (according to what he prefers them to be) because it’s grossly anti-intellectual and it’s extremely disingenuous.
You can’t tell me that his definitions were accurate or comprehensive, or anything more than wearing his political bias on his sleeve.
Then he wraps up his ideological soapboxing in so much yakking that it does exactly what it intends to do - to bamboozle people with a sort of slow-burn Gish gallop until they just kinda get lost, shrug, assume that it’s right, and figure that it must be profound because its tortuous logic is so verbose that there must be so much there (it’s just that I’m not catching everything since I’m not understanding every point, I don’t have time to break down and consider each claim, and so his conclusions slip in through the back door under the assumption that they are more or less correct.)
Consider this sort of stream-in-the-background pseud shit to something like Mao’s writings which are extremely succinct, often numbered, and the key points are repeated, all-caps, and are a very clear logical progression. You wouldn’t be able to distill RC’s videos down to that sort of level, not even down to Lenin’s style of writing, because it’s mostly chaff and little else. It relies so heavily on assumptions and normative ideas and the ignorance of its audience that it drives me to distraction because ultimately it’s (small-e) exploitative imo.
Yeah the video is waaay too long and strays far away from the original topic but tbh I like that he’s upfront with his bias and spells it out right in the beginning. Honestly I think it’s fine, these sort of videos are what strayed me away from liberalism even though I don’t fully agree with them now. Like, his definitions aren’t communist but they’re not anticommunist either so whatever
Like, his definitions aren’t communist but they’re not anticommunist either so whatever
I disagree on this point.
He doesn’t outright say it, which is part of his rhetorical game where he never says “I disagree with the antifascism of Stalin and Antifascistiche Aktion” and then proceeds to explain why he disagrees with the tactics of either. He just ignores their existence and proceeds to define them out of antifascism entirely.
Why would he need to make such rigid, inherently anti-communist definitions unless he’s trying to shift the goalposts away from communism and towards anarchism/LibSoc-ism?
My issue is that it would be like posing as making a definitive list of all the forms of socialism and only listing the libertarian socialist interpretations; that’s deceptive, disingenuous, and although never explicitly anti-communist it’s still extremely anti-communist implicitly because propaganda works as much by emphasis as it does by de-emphasis and he’s relying upon his audience sharing his biases or being historically illiterate rather than making his case or just saying “I don’t like how the KPD did antifa because…”
I’m confused, did we watch the same video? He does mention Antifaschistische Aktion explicitly at 1:00:53 and also mentions the role of Germany’s communists in it and he very much agrees with them. And though he doesn’t talk about AES states (a big oversight admittedly) that’s because the video is pretty much exclusively about the rise of fascism in the US & how it’s similar to early 20th century Europe (which is universally agreed to be fascist af).
I immediately take a massive dislike to his pseudo-objective stance in how he defines what things “are” (according to what he prefers them to be) because it’s grossly anti-intellectual and it’s extremely disingenuous.
You can’t tell me that his definitions were accurate or comprehensive, or anything more than wearing his political bias on his sleeve.
Then he wraps up his ideological soapboxing in so much yakking that it does exactly what it intends to do - to bamboozle people with a sort of slow-burn Gish gallop until they just kinda get lost, shrug, assume that it’s right, and figure that it must be profound because its tortuous logic is so verbose that there must be so much there (it’s just that I’m not catching everything since I’m not understanding every point, I don’t have time to break down and consider each claim, and so his conclusions slip in through the back door under the assumption that they are more or less correct.)
Consider this sort of stream-in-the-background pseud shit to something like Mao’s writings which are extremely succinct, often numbered, and the key points are repeated, all-caps, and are a very clear logical progression. You wouldn’t be able to distill RC’s videos down to that sort of level, not even down to Lenin’s style of writing, because it’s mostly chaff and little else. It relies so heavily on assumptions and normative ideas and the ignorance of its audience that it drives me to distraction because ultimately it’s (small-e) exploitative imo.
Yeah the video is waaay too long and strays far away from the original topic but tbh I like that he’s upfront with his bias and spells it out right in the beginning. Honestly I think it’s fine, these sort of videos are what strayed me away from liberalism even though I don’t fully agree with them now. Like, his definitions aren’t communist but they’re not anticommunist either so whatever
I disagree on this point.
He doesn’t outright say it, which is part of his rhetorical game where he never says “I disagree with the antifascism of Stalin and Antifascistiche Aktion” and then proceeds to explain why he disagrees with the tactics of either. He just ignores their existence and proceeds to define them out of antifascism entirely.
Why would he need to make such rigid, inherently anti-communist definitions unless he’s trying to shift the goalposts away from communism and towards anarchism/LibSoc-ism?
My issue is that it would be like posing as making a definitive list of all the forms of socialism and only listing the libertarian socialist interpretations; that’s deceptive, disingenuous, and although never explicitly anti-communist it’s still extremely anti-communist implicitly because propaganda works as much by emphasis as it does by de-emphasis and he’s relying upon his audience sharing his biases or being historically illiterate rather than making his case or just saying “I don’t like how the KPD did antifa because…”
I’m confused, did we watch the same video? He does mention Antifaschistische Aktion explicitly at 1:00:53 and also mentions the role of Germany’s communists in it and he very much agrees with them. And though he doesn’t talk about AES states (a big oversight admittedly) that’s because the video is pretty much exclusively about the rise of fascism in the US & how it’s similar to early 20th century Europe (which is universally agreed to be fascist af).