Interrogating social media
this essay periodically makes the rounds, which I periodically reread. it usefully analyses and accurately describes the structure of various platforms, inherent dysfunctions and subsequent distortions. distorted social media posts periodically recirculate.
twitter in particular, with character limits inheres argumentation, empties out substance into sloganeering and creates 'unethical exchange' precisely because developed reasoning, detail and nuance constricted.
>Marxist methodology of study and a Marxist argumentation come into direct and antagonistic contradiction with the format of these social media sites.
__The Shock Circus and the Oppression Olympics__
the author calls this process bad propaganda as online personalities outdo each other in edginess. (I'd add that as posters outdo each other it devolves to ultraleft).
'Shock circus' manifests itself in sexualizing politics.
Most notably in anarchist circles. They're always on about licking, deep throating, fellating and on and on 'the boot'. It's an unarguable, disturbing cliche.
The 'oppression Olympics' manifests in deferral to
lived experience. Lived experience online most often weaponized toward anticommunism, Online personalities compete for attention, positive or negative with suffering competition.
__communism is white__
a lie repeated over and over by people who detest ML ideology. The lie becomes truth, devolves to anticommunism and ironically, purported antifascists pave the road to fascism.
(also applicable to the mythical red fascism and red-brown alliance)
>mythical “whiteness” is only used to whip up guilty emotions and cannot stand as an actual critique, since race does not determine political viewpoint and race science is denounced by Marxists. What is insinuated is far more devious, charges of “all white” implicitly claim that these organizations either bar people who are not white from joining (making them white supremacist organizations) or that they just consciously refuse struggle alongside the most oppressed sections of the masses, and focus exclusively on white struggles (again white supremacy)—in both cases this translates to arguing that an anti-fascist movement is the real fascist movement. The so-called internet left has come around again to agree with the internet right.
__Online ideological slapfights as entertainment__ undisciplined and unserious, instantly gratifying
>those who battle for entertainment like digital gladiators are most often not organized at all, not trying in the slightest to put their political ideas into practice, which is the only place they can be improved or comprehended correctly.
__Posts as psuedo-polemics__ brand building, individualist, born from consumer choice
>Criticism in the form of a tweet is seen as on-par with a thought-out polemical approach to theoretical struggle, and as its equal, it demands immediate and collective response. Even if this tweet is made to closed groups they can engender rumor that this or that Party or organization “refuses to engage with criticism”, one more reality has gone out to lunch for these people. Their own individual position presented with the least amount of diligence and effort deserve an immediate address, of course, the small group of online spectators cannot be disappointed and their binge cannot be interrupted by real material organizing concerns.
much more within:
https://struggle-sessions.com/2018/07/03/interrogating-social-media/qhttps://redd.it/hlwlbl@r_communism
