#But then again their idea of anarchy and an attack on the country would involve queers getting bodily autonomy so

[chartreuxcatz]

hm. I just realized how weird it was that every year in school we had to have a moment of silence on 9/11 to remember the victims, and everyone took it really seriously. But when we had a designated time set for going outside and having a few minutes for the Parkland shooting victims our teacher told us “I don’t want to see any of you leaving my class for that. You don’t even understand what you’re protesting.”

Not that I would have known where to go for it anyway. They didnt really tell us where outside we would be gathering.

I wish i had stepped out that day anyways.

We have a god damn school shooting every fucking day in this country and I couldnt even take 17 minutes one fucking time to mourn with my classmates because the gun owners would’ve felt attacked.

[honkster]

Yay meta

:)

1. Ranboo compared to the other anarchists of the server.

2. C!Tommy’s mental health.

3. C!Dream as an immortal insane god.

4. Ghostbur’s resurrection.

5. Who betrayed who Techno vs Tommy edition.

A bit of an after-thought - everyone on the SMP is traumatized. Absolutely everyone, no one is handling everything in a mentally healthy way. That’s why it’s meaningless to try to say what’s wrong and what’s right, that’s why it’s all morally grey - everyone is doing things because of their own warped perception of the world, the right and wrong blur when everyone thinks that they’re right and everyone else is wrong. Trying to justify someone’s actions with logic and moral righteousness is inherently time-wasting, because everyone is acting how their feelings let them at the time.

Saying who’s right or wrong, trying to figure out villains and good guys <<< Analyzing characters by their actions and trying to understand WHY rather than SHOUD THEY HAVE.

Probably a bit of a backwards way to say that I don’t care if Tommy or Techno are wrong in their argument - L’manburg was destroyed, Tommy thinks Techno is bad. That’s the end of that story, stay tuned for what Tommy’s gonna do now.

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#1

There is just a very huge difference between Ranboo and the other two anarchists of the server.

Ranboo, while being strong in his beliefs, is a non-violent person. Yes he’s stacked, yes he could fight, but he chooses to stay on the sidelines and just watch the action unfold. He’d rather listen in to people and then make conclusions about their actions and decide on things by himself. He’s hard to sway, Quackity may have softened his viewpoint slightly, and I genuinely hope that Ranboo follows through with that and decides that teams and groups is something that kind of needs to happen before the idea that all conflicts are a personal thing between two people can actually make sense. People are stronger together, especially those that don’t have good gear or pvp skills. The weaker people, the ones lower in the food chain, don’t have that many options for getting their point across. The server is already dominated by the strongest, most skilled, most geared people, and those are the people that matter, when it comes down to it.

Quackity is very much a unique case. He has managed to do with four people what L’manburg and all of its inhabitants didn’t manage for the longest time. He is very much a main player.

The other two anarchists are both very violent. Dream was always like that, he hasn’t shown a crumb of being able of change or considering a different opinion (extreme delusions or just extreme self-confidence? Either one makes him a prick), but Techno actually had an arc where he made the entirely wrong conclusions.

I don’t think I’ve talked about the Butcher Army much.

So Techno blew up Manberg, threatened to take down any government that sprouted up and then dipped. He made his little cottage, he went on a retirement arc, so on and so forth.

But then the Butcher Army formed.

And their one target was the pig.

And they went out of their way to track him down, to prepare to kill him, they arrived there and threatened him, and they said that it’s time for Techno to pay for his crimes, and they reacted how anyone else would when being attacked – they attacked too. They took his horse to get him to stop, they brought him up for execution, they didn’t manage to kill him, but they switched targets once they realized that they can’t actually kill him while literal god is on his side, helping him.

The conclusion there wasn’t that government is evil and abuses its power. It’s that violence is paid forward with violence.

It doesn’t really matter that Techno misunderstood. Either way he would’ve returned to good old Blood for the Blood God Technoblade, but I fear that this event reinforced his very wrong belief that government is the source of ALL problems on the server.

If he would say that government is the cause of MAJOR conflicts that wouldn’t happen if government didn’t exist, yeah! Yeah, I agree with that actually. But he’s saying that EVERY conflict is because of government.

The disc war was not because of government.

The Pet War was not because of government.

Most of the rivalries of the server are not because of government.

Tommy was not… Actually (yeah Tommy was exiled because of government and the fact that the sentimentality for L’manburg seemed very important at that point. Things shouldn’t be more important than people, people you can’t just replace. But…) Dream specifically when he went after Tommy targeted L’manburg. If the country didn’t exist, Dream probably would have gone about it another way, probably one more difficult, but he wouldn’t have involved all these people whose only connection to one another is a flimsy city built on stilts. I still hate how Techno refuses to acknowledge that Dream WAS the cause of Tommy’s exile, not government.

But what if Techno was big brain?

Yeah, things shouldn’t be more important than people. Is that what he’s suggesting? That government favors power over giving up land/buildings/countries for their people, knowing that if they lost their country they would no longer have power?

That would be very interesting!… If his actions actually indicated this.

Techno didn’t chunk error L’manburg because he thought those buildings gave power to someone over another. He did it out of revenge, claiming that it still lined up with his anarchist beliefs and that he was doing good. Techno released withers, the most destructive and hard-to-kill mob available to the server, he stalled while Dream essentially set up nukes above the city. They didn’t do this out of kindness and want for the people to have freedom, they KILLED the people that they were so “graciously” “saving”.

Technoblade and Dream are both violent anarchists who misunderstood what the word means. They don’t seek order in the chaos, they don’t seek a peaceful anarchy, they just want blood.

Which makes me very worried for Ranboo. I don’t think that he will get influenced by the two, if the two ever come back together to stir up shit again. I don’t think Ranboo is going to believe Technoblade when he says that government is the cause of ALL problems, because Ranboo doesn’t just hate the factions of the server. He has said that Dream is the reason for a lot of conflict on the server, he understands what Dream is up to. If he will agree with Techno at the beginning, he certainly will find issue in Techno considering Dream a worthy ally.

I just hope that Techno LISTENS for at least once in his life.

(But I won’t be too sad if it’s Phil Ranboo manages to convince. Might actually be easier to get through to anarchist pig Blade that way…)

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#2

I worry for c!Tommy’s mental health.

I know this probably is never going to get addressed rather than that one tiny little plot point where he got exiled for no reason but being as resilient as Tommy is, so constantly himself without apology, so constantly in everyone’s faces and just out there so much, so purposefully annoying just because it’s entertaining for him… I don’t think he’s alright.

The many times he has been beaten down, how many times people have battled him and won, how many times he’s told to shut up and just take it – it makes you wonder how come he hasn’t just given up by now and toned it down so people stop hating him.

Yeah, he’s resilient. Yeah, he’s annoying that way. But I seriously doubt that he can take all that he takes and still be perfectly okay.

One insult means nothing. One time can be just a made up thing to make you pissed off.

Same thing twice? Someone’s just mocking you.

Three times? Wow okay these guys must all be friends and they gossip about me!

Four times?… Hey how big is your friend group exactly?

Five times?…

Six times?…

Seven?…

How about 20.

No matter how ridiculous something that someone noticed about you may be, if repeated enough times, you almost sub-consciously start to believe it. Lots of people notice this – hey I can also notice it!

C!Tommy being annoying on purpose, saying that it’s just entertaining for him… Doesn’t that sound like a really depressing thing to enjoy? Something that garners you so much attention you literally get exiled?

And the fact that, even during Dream enforcing the exile, even when he escaped, when he appeared in Techno’s house and huddled under it like a raccoon, he was still so painfully annoying you just want to punt him?… Does that really sound like just a funny pastime for him and not a defense mechanism against all of the shit people put him through, something that he does out of habit because even though it gets him in trouble a lot of the time, it’s also the only way he can actually react to events and people threatening him, cause what is he gonna do, actually threaten them and get them to leave that way?

I dunno this may be dumb… I may be projecting slightly… Wondering where all of his resilience comes from when actual good things that happened because of him versus the bad things that people constantly blame him for… Sir where do you get that strength and how can I sell my soul for it?

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#3

Oh I’ve written characters that think of awful, violent things as fun…

I actually really like those characters.

I don’t know why I always make them the most traumatized, split-personality, abused and manipulated victims-turned-absolute-monsters.

No wait I do know why.

BECAUSE IF YOU THINK THAT CAUSING PAIN TO OTHERS IS A FUN TIME AND YOU WANT TO DO IT AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN JUST TO SEE THEIR EXPRESSION OF PAIN, THERE IS SOMETHING SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH YOU.

Dream’s no different. We haven’t seen much of him, other than his motivation and the fact that he goes the wrong way about thinking of means to get to the end. He hasn’t revealed a traumatic past or any real reason why he targets only one person if torturing everyone on the server would probably be way more “fun”.

But he is called god.

And THAT lines up with one of my favorite things to talk about!

Immortals :D

You see the whole concept of a god or an immortal being is at its core something we shouldn’t comprehend. Death and the fact that it will happen can be counted as a reason for a lot of our motivations, so how does it affect one’s thinking if one of our core reasons for life is erased?

I can dump a whole philosophical essay here but I feel like it is highly unnecessary. Dream, as an immortal god on the server, has access to stuff that many people have to grind hours of their life for. This twists his perception of the value of certain items, and also certain actions. The fact that he cannot die also affects that perception, and in his long life he has probably had the same thoughts a lot of immortals have – few things are meaningful in life, few are worth sacrificing things for and few are just as immortal as they are.

This, of course, can cause a little thing called an existential crisis, and it can break an immortal, especially if they were once human and most definitely mortal. We don’t know for sure what Dream is, but assuming either scenario makes his pursuit of fun and drama valid.

If he was once a human and by some dark magic gained immortality, his want to see how humans react to things being destroyed, or how humans fold under torture, may be a twisted way of analyzing himself, trying to understand how he could be a part of them, trying to reconnect with his old self, attempts to return to the mortal plane, there are many options but all firmly lead into “this is just a fun experiment for him”. How people throw mentos in a bowl and pour coke over it just to see an explosion. That’s Dream with the SMP.

If he was always a god, then it gets even more interesting (and thematically relevant!). He never understood these creatures that run around and desperately try to prevent death while simultaneously causing so much of it. If Dream doesn’t understand mortals and death as a concept, then his view of them, based on what he’s seen of the SMP, is that humans SEEK violence, and drama, and pain, and harm. They purposefully create meaningless things to then give them meaning and then feel pain over them. He is utterly confused by humans, but he also understands them quite well.

Taunted, insulted? Retaliate with force.

A country that demands peace? Blow it to smithereens.

A sentimental thing that you could literally replace within a fraction of a life, a little thing of pride that you were able to acquire?

It can control people.

And he seems to understand THAT concept of humanity perfectly well. The want for power, the seeking of control, the simple want to somehow be above your equals, somehow stand out and be admired.

Dream grasps that concept so well he might as well be human.

I don’t know if this humanity side of Dream will be his hubris, if the weakness he acquired from humans – sentimentality over objects that can very easily be replaced and mean nothing in the grand scheme of things – may actually come back after he so rudely pushed it away.

We don’t know enough about this guy. We can make some conclusions, sure, but uh… The simple fact that he causes chaos for fun means that whatever we may think the reason for his motivations is, we will probably fail to understand him as long as we think logically.

C!Dream is an absolute prick. I want to punt him.

But I won’t until he explains why he chose to be a bad copy of the Joker with immortality sprinkled on the fucked up cake.

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#4

Wilbur is coming back into the plot!

Not that Ghostbur isn’t important to the plot. His character is just stagnant because in order to give him proper char development you need to address some very serious mental issues and that’s not exactly something the SMP does often. (Most serious I’ve seen it is Tommy’s exile arc and maybe Fundy’s adoption stream)

So they’re bringing back Alivebur. What could possibly go wrong?

Everything. Literally everything.

I talked about it once, how if Ghostbur’s character wants to reach peace – finish his arc – firstly he has to confront his trauma. At the same time I said that if he was brought back to life, it could hinder his already done little progress of adapting to ghost life and probably reset him. Very certain conditions would have to be met in order for Ghostbur to gain something out of being brought back to life, and a lot of those conditions lean on Alivebur coming back as a certain “version” of himself, which cannot be predicted simply because there isn’t a resident ghost expert on the server. No one knows how these idiots work.

The worrying thing is that they are most definitely bringing back Alivebur. There wouldn’t be need for this plot otherwise. So they will definitely succeed, Alivebur will definitely be brought back, and he will be important to the plot.

What can we theorize about knowing those things?

Mmmm… Isn’t it weird that Ghostbur said he wants to quit being Ghostbur after L’manburg was destroyed? Is it a want to stop ignoring bad things that are happening, since he knows he is going to forget this and move on and he doesn’t want to keep escaping anymore? That’s a good motivation.

Or is it because Ghostbur is like the old spirit of L’manburg, both connected to it physically and mentally? Would Alivebur want L’manburg back, considering that was his only goal in his life, to destroy it, or is he finally going to feel fulfilled that it is over and his obsession with it can die?

I dunno! I have no idea what part they want Wilbur to play in the upcoming plot. It’s very unclear if Wilbur is going to be a side character that moves the plot in little ways or if he’s going to become the main character again or if, and this is probably my most likely theory, the resurrection fails at first and it leads the whole gang, with Ghostbur up front, down weird paths that somehow end with Dream.

(Cause we all know that guy is not going to just write himself out of the plot if he can instead continue being the villain)

It all feels like it’s going to connect, finally. All of the main people from the past getting back into the spotlight in a very convoluted plot to get one of them back into the land of the living.

Don’t really know though. Wondering how resurrection works, that’s all. Knowing that info, may be possible to make a better theory.

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#5

There is no one right in the “Tommy betrayed Techno” vs “Tommy realized Techno is not a good influence on him” argument. Neither one is right, but neither one is completely wrong. Neither character is in the right, or in the wrong, and it doesn’t really matter who’s right or wrong in this scenario, fact is it happened and the people reacted how they did.

There is only one thing to say about Techno and Tommy, and probably the only thing I’m kinda feeling very strongly about.

Sometimes the refusal to be swayed to another side or believing in yourself gets you called selfish.

That’s both about Techno and Tommy.

And a lot of other people on the server.

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Here’s a cookie for reading all of that. I can also bake your favorite muffin if you want :3

[thephilosopheroftheboudoir]

Grim History

Severino di Giovanni: Anarchist Bombs and Anti-fascism

      The time period between World War I and World War II saw the rise of anarchism and fascism, two of the modern era’s most dangerous political movements. Italy was one of Europe’s hotbeds for radical extremism and as migrants went abroad in search of work and to escape poverty, they brought these ideologies with them. Argentina became one place where the two philosophies clashed with the anarchist Severino di Giovanni on the advanced guard, instigating the violence.

    Born in Abruzzi to an impoverished family, Severino di Giovanni later claimed that the constant hunger pangs and fear of starvation would be the primary motivation for his interest in anarchist revolutionary politics. Anarchists of that time believed all people were naturally equal and blamed the mechanisms of government, economics, and private property for the social disequilibrium that resulted in some people having so much food they could never possibly ear it all while others were condemned to a life of scarcity, malnutrition, and the soul-destroying search for adequate means of survival. Therefore, a world without government would be a world of equality and peace. After growing up so poor, Giovanni emigrated to Buenos Aires, got involved in trade unionism, and embraced the convulsively liberating theory of anarchist violence.

    Fascism was also on the rise in Argentina and many Italian fascists had also emigrated to that Latin American country. Upon his arrival, di Giovanni immediately began attending meetings with anarchist groups who planned to fight against the fascists who believed in enslaving the masses of industrial workers for their own capitalistic gain. In 1925, the fascists of Argentina held a public celebration in honor of the Italian king Victor Emmanuel III’s accession to the throne. Many prominent politicians and public figures from both Argentina and Italy were present along with a cadre of Black Shirt thugs, present to maintain order in the crowd. When the orchestra began playing the Italian national anthem, Severino di Giovanni and his companions began throwing anti-fascist leaflets in the air and shouting “Assassins! Thieves!” The Black Shirts beat them up and sent them on their way.

    That same year, the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti took place in America. The two factory-working anarchists were accused of detonating a bomb that killed several people. The prosecution’s case rested on the fact that the two men had been caught with Italian language anarchist newspapers. The lawyer also argued that their Italian ancestry proved their guilt since, in the eyes of many Americans at that time when anti-immigration sentiment was at fever pitch, Italians were fundamentally incapable of civilized behavior. The judge was also well-known for having extreme anti-immigrant views. The defense claimed that the newspapers were planted by the police but the judge refused to allow that claim to be admitted as evidence and abruptly ended the trial. The jury found Sacco and Vanzetti guilty and sentenced them to death. A mistrial was declared but the judge refused to reopen the case, citing his dislike of Italian people as the cause. Eventually, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. The case has since been seen as an example of American racism, xenophobia, and an unhealthy fear of immigrants. In the trade union and anarchist movement, it was seen as a rallying cry for revolution.

    Severino di Giovanni had started his own newspaper called Culmine. It was a left wing political paper dedicated to labor issues; he quickly took up the cause of Sacco and Vanzetti and furiously published a storm of articles denouncing the injustice of the trial. Many of those articles made their way to newspapers in America. Di Giovanni was deeply impressed with the Galleanist idea of “propaganda of the deed”, a term signifying the use of public political actions to serve as an example for inspiring further political action. Severino di Giovanni had decided to take action.

    The campaign started with a bombing of the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires; the front of the building was demolished. The Argentinian police sought help from the fascists in the Italian embassy who captured di Giovanni, imprisoned him for five days, then released hum after torturing him the entire time. Di Giovanni and two of his friends then blew up a statue of George Washington and, later in the same day, set off a bomb at the office of the Ford Motor Company. The next day they blew up the house belonging to the Buenos Aires chief of police; he just barely escaped being killed because, without any knowledge of the impending attack, he had left his home and walked down the street to buy a pack of cigarettes. No doubt, ling cancer must have later accomplished the task that the bomb had failed to do.

    Di Giovanni’s bombings continued into 1927 and 1928. The next targets were an American owned tobacco warehouse and branches of two American banks, Then di Giovanni and his two friends, the Scarfo brothers, killed a whole bunch of fascists when they bombed the Italian embassy; it was the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentinian history.

    Severino di Giovanni’s propaganda of the deed turned out to have a polarizing effect. Some anarchists and unionists began accusing him of making their movements look reckless and evil. Others fell in love with his campaign of terror. Fighting broke out between the two sides  until the publisher of an anarchist newspaper got assassinated. Some blamed di Giovanni for the murder but evidence seemed to point to other members of the anarchist community. Di Giovanni decided to end his bombings in order to make peace between the fighting workers.

    In 1930, a military coup overthrew the government of Argentina. Severino di Giovanni married and settled down but eventually left his wife for a fifteen year old Italian immigrant named Fina, the sister of his two best friends, the Scarfo brothers. The couple went into hiding and di Giovanni found employment at a printing press. The police found out where he was working and raided the shop. The attempted arrest resulted in a gunfight; one officer died and the other got injured. Di Giovanni escaped. On a later date when di Giovanni was with Fina, the Scarfo brothers, and several other friends, the police again showed up and a firefight broke out. Di Giovanni was captured and Fina was arrested then set free because of her age.

    Severino di Giovanni was executed by firing squad in 1931. He shouted “long live anarchy”, in Italian of course, before eight bullets pierced his body. His wife was shot a few hours later. The fascists eventually lost World War II. Both anarchism and fascism fizzled out and faded away as capitalism and communism took over. Those two sleeping dogs were not left to lie. Both anarchism and fascism began to re-emege as political ideologies starting in the 1960s. Without any chance of ever becoming a functioning political system, both still have an enormous potential to inspire destructive and murderous violence.

Vollman, William T., Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom, and Urgent Means. Ecco, 2003.

https://grimhistory.blogspot.com/

[20xbetterthanu]

Another Something I Wrote

 okay so i wrote this last year for a prompt at school. I got a 100, but I like to believe that my writing has gotten better since then. Anyways, i just wanted to show you guys. 

Lucas was not surprised when he woke to darkness. He was disappointed, of course, because along with the termination of electricity, many of his favorite things would cease to exist: YouTube, Twitter rants, his internet friends would never talk to him again. Ice cream would be impossible to come by, and he would have to leave his house in order to complain to his friends about his adolescent troubles. So yes, Lucas was disappointed when he woke to the eerie darkness that always came with a power outage. But no, he was not surprised. Unfortunately, this one would not be temporary. The sense of finality was closing in on him, suffocating him slowly. 

With a shuddering breath, Lucas stepped onto the floor, his bare feet pressing into the carpet. The room was warm, warmer than it had been the night before, when the AC unit still worked. He shuffled through the dark, eventually making his way to a window. He threw the curtains open, grateful for the sun. He slipped out of his pajamas, which weren’t even proper pajamas. He was clothed in a black t-shirt and basketball shorts, his standard spring through summer sleeping clothes. Abandoning his previous outfit on the floor, he changed into a pair of jeans and  baby blue button down. He looked in his small mirror, running a lazy hand through his chestnut hair, making a pointless attempt to style it. He sighed at his reflection, staring into his own blue eyes. 

“You are a mess. You are a mess, your room is a mess, and your entire life is a mess of respective disorders within themselves,” he whispered to himself. He repeated the words over and over again, as he did every morning. He didn’t know whether he believed them or not, but he said them. His reasons were revealed when he walked into the living room, his mother on the couch, unconscious. 

“Anne Louise Freeman,” he said. No response. “Mother,” he repeated. He grabbed a pillow that was lying on the floor and smacked her with it. She groaned. He rolled his eyes. “You know the lights are out, I mean, you should have. They sort of warned everyone before it happened, but you may have been too intoxicated to actually comprehend what they were saying.”

Anne Louis Freeman didn’t miss a beat. “I couldn’t hear over your constant nagging. You sound like a parent.” She took the pillow she’d been attacked with and hugged it to her chest.

“One of us has to be the parent, Anne, or we’d both be screwed,” Lucas replied, screwing the lid back on her vodka bottle. He thought to put it in the freezer, and then realized that it’d be pointless. The freezer would soon melt away, and Anne Louise Freeman would have to drink her Vodka warm. The thought made Lucas smile.

“Go away, boy. Don’t you have a girlfriend or something?” Lucas shook his head. “Boyfriend?” Another shake of the head. “Well, I wouldn’t care. You never seemed completely straight, maybe that’s why your father left. He thought you were gay. He told me.” And while Lucas knew her words weren’t true, that even if his father did think that, he wouldn’t have said it out loud. But she still made him angry. And no, he wasn’t straight, but she couldn’t blame his father’s leaving on him. He was eight. What could he have done that made his father leave? Nothing. She was the reason Shawn Timothy Freeman had left. Not him.

Lucas exhaled heavily through his nose. “No, he left because you’re a drunk lunatic.” His words came out harsh and mean, and his mother’s face fell slightly at his comment. “I didn’t—” he began, but she cut him off with the raise of her hand. 

“You did. Don’t apologize. You meant it, Lucas. Anyway, go out and explore the world without electricity. See if it’s the equivalent of hades.” 

In a way, their small town without electricity looked the same from the outside. Nothing had really changed on the outside. Just the inside. The veins of the city had stopped flowing blood, and soon the heart and the brain would become under-oxygenated, and the body would collapse. The city would fall apart, as would the country, and the thought kind of made Lucas smile. He liked to watch things fall apart. 

Metaphorically, he was a cell. His town was a tissue, made up of all the other people and jobs. His state was an organ, made up of all the counties and cities and people that helped it function. His region was an organ system, made up of surrounding states and cities and counties and water and electricity and gas. And the country was an organism. The death of a single cell would not take the organism out. The organism lost cells every day, thousands of them. Nothing would happen when those cells died. Except a new one would replace it, and eventually that cell would no longer be remembered, and it would be as if it was never there. A tissue was harder to replace, but even still, the body can live without it, unless it’s a vital tissue, one that lives in the heart or the brain. An organ was much more difficult to lose, and the body would take a great amount of time recuperating, if it could. Unless it was an organ like the brain. One could not replace the brain. Every organ can be replaced, except for the brain. And an organ system is irreplaceable. The body would deteriorate rapidly, or slowly, until there was nothing left. And then the organism would die. An organ system died that day. Lucas wondered how long it would take for the organism to die. Rapidly? Slowly? Somewhere in between?

He kept walking through the streets, his eyes low, examining the cracked sidewalk beneath his beaten up Adidas. He eventually found himself at his friend’s house. Alex Laura Tillerson was sitting on the porch, her hair falling into her face.

“You know, I had a following. And now it’s all gone. I had fifteen thousand subscribers. And they’re all gone. My purpose in life has vanished into the wind,” she said. Lucas could barely hear her. She was shaking her head, over and over again.

“Alex.” He sat next to her, their knees touching. “Alex, look at me. Look at me. Your purpose in life wasn’t to make weird Glee edits and post them online. Trust me, that wasn’t it. You have a greater purpose, and it doesn’t need the internet to be fulfilled.”

“You say that to me, but you wouldn’t dare say it to yourself. Your entire life revolved around the internet,”she groaned. He put a hand on her shoulder. 

“Well, I have no talent outside of posting weird comments in the forums,” he said. 

“That’s not true, you can draw. Like—amazingly. All my viewers loved that picture of Kurt.” To be honest, Lucas didn’t know who Kurt was, he just drew the picture that Alex had texted him. He was bored, so he drew it.

“Well, how useful is that going to be when there’s no one to look at it now?”

“You’re right. All you’d have is your mom and me and Harry—hey, Harry.”

Harold Faulkner-Fords was walking up Alex’s driveway, his perfect hands in his perfect pockets that were attached to his perfect jeans that hugged everything perfectly and Harry was perfect and sweet baby Jesus, Harry was perfect. Alex nudged Lucas.

“Hello dearest, pleasure to be in your company today,” Lucas mused. Harry smiled, sitting next to Lucas. Alex smirked at the two of them. 

“Lucas, I am sad to inform you that the electricity has gone out, therefore there will be no more late night texting sessions. Nor will we be able to drive at night without some form of light. Nor will I walk with my boyfriend at night, because it’s not safe in the daytime with electricity. I’m not going to survive the Real-Life-Purge with you. I love you but I’m running,” Harry said in a faux British accent. 

“Yeah, yeah. All your saying is that you’d be willing to come over tonight?” Lucas looked at Harry. Alex practically squealed.

“Not like that you pervert,” Harry said, reaching over Lucas’s lap to push her knee.

“Well, two romantically involved humans in the dark with nothing but each other to keep warm…” Her voice trailed off.

“We’re leaving. Enjoy your power outage.” Lucas stood up to leave, holding his hand out for Harry to take it.

“Yeah. Whatever. Bye.” 

His house was exactly the same as he left it. His mother was on the couch, her vodka bottle reopened. Lucas tried to ignore her, even as she stared at him and Harry. 

“Harry, so nice to see you, darling,” she slurred. Lucas rolled his eyes. Harry elbowed him. 

“Nice to see you too, Ms.Freeman.”

“You know why the lights are out? I’d ask my son but he doesn't really like me.”

“I don’t know why, exactly. I just know that they are.” 

“Yeah, well. Enjoy your time together. I knew you were lying when you said you didn’t have a boyfriend, Lucas.” She took a swig, not even bothering to mix her drink.

Lucas groaned, pulling Harry to his dimly lit room. They sat on the bed, for a moment, quiet. Then Lucas said “You know, the lights being out is really depressing. How am I supposed to survive without the internet?” 

“You’ll live. Don’t Alex this situation. She’s in the midst of a mental breakdown.” 

“Yeah, but eventually everything is going to fall apart. Everything is going to fall apart and everything is going to die. Everyone is going to die. We’re all going to die because we’re all going to rob each other blind and beat each other up and the world is going to fall apart and for some reason that idea makes me happy. But I’m really going to miss the internet. There will be complete anarchy, but the internet is my priority. I sound really dumb.”

“You sound completely accurate, and stupid all at once,” Harry said, taking his hand. He turned to face him. “The internet is something you’ve grown dependent on. But now, you don’t have it. You’re going to miss it. But on the bright side, you have me.”

“I do have you. You’re right,” Lucas smiled.

“I’m always right,” Harry said, and then he kissed Lucas.

Lucas really liked kissing Harry. He liked the way Harry’s lips felt. He liked that Harry always put his hand on the side of Lucas’s face. He liked the way Harry always managed to push him backwards, just a little bit. He liked Harry. No, like was an understatement. He loved Harry. He loved Harry, he loved Harry, he loved Harry. 

So he decided not to think about the impending demise of them and their society, and he decided to think about his boyfriend and his boyfriend’s lips and how he let Harry push him all the way back this time.

When Lucas woke up his room was black. Harry’s arm was draped across his bare chest, protective and secure. Lucas quietly slipped out of his embrace, trying his best not to wake him. He succeeded, Harry slept like the dead. 

He found the shorts from the night before, when the lights were still on, and slipped them on. He didn’t bother with a shirt. He could see a dim light in the living room from the hallway. Anne Louise Freeman was sitting on the couch, in the same spot she had been in that morning. Lucas wondered if she had moved since that morning. Hopefully.

“I see you looking at me. Come here,” she said. Lucas groaned inwardly, but obeyed, shuffling into the dark living room and sitting in the chair on the side of the couch.

“Yes, Anne?”

“I know what you guys did in there,” she muttered. Lucas was thankful for the lack of lights. His blush wasn’t evident. He could try and deny it.

“What are you talking about?” He asked, not looking at her.

“You ever done it before?”

Did she think she was going to get a response?

“Okay, don’t tell me. Anyway, I don’t know why you think it’s okay to do that in my house but—”

“Okay—hold on—you—I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU! You drink yourself to sleep every night, moping around about a man that left ten years ago. Neither one of us has seen him since. You know, other kids have normal parents. Even the single moms, they care, you know? They care and they don’t drink them selves to sleep and if they do, they drink in their bedrooms, not on the couch where their kid can see them and be emotionally scarred for the rest of their life. You know, the first time I saw you there like that I thought you were dead. And I was so scared. I was so scared. I thought you were dead, mom. I screamed and I shook you and I did everything I could to wake you up because you couldn’t have been dead. You couldn’t die, because you were my mom and I NEEDED YOU. I NEEDED YOU AND I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD,” he took a shaky breath. He was crying. “And sometimes…it’s like you are. You are dead. You’re dead inside and there’s nothing I can do about it. There’s nothing I can do about it and I might as well stop trying to wake you up because there’s no use. Why should I even care? It’s not like you care about me.”

Anne Louise Freeman looked at her son for a long moment. Finally she spoke. “I do care about you, Lucas. You just—you’re so—I don’t know. I love you, Lucas. I love you. I love you so much I just—I don’t know how to—you remind me so much of him, you know? You’re actually really mean—don’t look at me like that—he was mean, too. You’re smart, like him. You can draw and you can do all these things and you just really remind me of him and I know it’s not an excuse. But for the love of God, please don’t think I don’t love you.”

Lucas looked at her. Her response was weak. But so was she. “Okay,” he whispered. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not mad at you.”

“Okay. I understand that. But keep your fondling to yourself. The lights are out. I haven’t gone deaf.”

“Yeah yeah. Whatever,” he said. He started to stand.

“Lucas?”

“Yeah?”

“You know, things are going to change. People are going to get crazy, and I don’t know what’s going to happen, but whatever happens, I love you.”

Lucas deliberated on his response for a moment. “I know. I love you too, Mom.” He smiled, and went back to his room. Harry was sitting up in the bed. “You’re supposed to be sleeping,” Lucas said.

“Yeah, well, I couldn’t miss that sweet bonding moment.”

“Shut up and go to sleep.”

In the days to come, the country would devolve into chaos. Alex would move away, seeking refuge at her grandmother’s farm. Harry would lose his mother and his little brother, two days apart. They were all he had. The buildings would all be looted, and the cities would be dark. The organism was collapsing. Too many cells were dying. Tissues were deteriorating. Organs were malfunctioning. Organ systems were breaking down. The Organism was dead. Lucas and his mother would survive, along with Harry. Harry would live with them in their new home. They settled, abandoning the violent city for simple country life.

Lucas sat on the porch with his mother and his boyfriend. He turned and looked at them. They were all quietly looking out into the night. The stars were bright, brighter than they’d ever been when the lights were on. 

“You know, something good came out of the lights blacking out,” he said.

“What?” Harry said.

 “You can see the stars,” Lucas replied, tipping his head back and closing his eyes.

“Yeah. Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

[bryanharryrombough]

There are still a few things which bring a naive sense of shocked astonishment to me whenever I experience them -- a church service in which the rituals of Dark Age superstition are performed without any apparent sense of incongruity in the participants -- a fat Soviet bureaucrat pontificating about bourgeois decadence -- a radical singing the praises of Robert Heinlein. If I were sitting in a tube train and all the people opposite me were reading Mein Kampf with obvious enjoyment and approval it probably wouldn't disturb me much more than if they were reading Heinlein, Tolkein or Richard Adams. All this visionary fiction seems to me to have a great deal in common. Utopian fiction has been predominantly reactionary in one form or another (as well as being predominantly dull) since it began. Most of it warns the world of 'decadence' in its contemporaries and the alternatives are usually authoritarian and sweeping -- not to say simple-minded. A look at the books on sale to Cienfuegos customers shows the same old list of Lovecraft and Rand, Heinlein and Niven, beloved of so many people who would be horrified to be accused of subscribing to the Daily Telegraph or belonging to the Monday Club and yet are reading with every sign of satisfaction views by writers who would make Telegraph editorials look like the work of Bakunin and Monday Club members sound like spokesmen for the Paris Commune.

Some years ago I remember reading an article by John Pilgrim in Anarchy in which he claimed Robert Heinlein as a revolutionary leftist writer. As a result of this article I could not for years bring myself to buy another issue. I'd been confused in the past by listening to hardline Communists offering views that were somewhat at odds with their anti-authoritarian claims, but I'd never expected to hear similar things from anarchists. My experience of science fiction fans at the conventions which are held annually in a number of countries (mainly the US and England) had taught me that those who attended were reactionary (claiming to be 'apolitical' but somehow always happy to vote Tory and believe Colin Jordan to 'have a point'). I always assumed these were for one reason or another the exceptions among sf enthusiasts. Then the underground papers began to emerge and I found myself in sympathy with most of their attitudes -- but once again I saw the old arguments aired: Tolkein, C. S. Lewis, Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov and the rest, bourgeois reactionaries to a man, Christian apologists, crypto-Stalinists, were being praised in IT, Frendz and Oz and everywhere else by people whose general political ideals I thought I shared. I started writing about what I thought was the implicit authoritarianism of these authors and as often as not found myself accused of being reactionary, elitist or at very best a spoilsport who couldn't enjoy good sf for its own sake. But here I am again at Stuart Christie's request, to present arguments which I have presented more than once before.

During the sixties, in common with many other periodicals, our New Worlds believed in revolution. Our emphasis was on fiction, the arts and sciences, because it was what we knew best. We attacked and were in turn attacked in the all-to-familiar rituals. Smiths refused to continue distributing the magazine unless we 'toned down' our contents. We refused. We were, they said, obscene, blasphemous, nihilistic etc., etc. The Daily Express attacked us. A Tory asked a question about us in the House of Commons -- why was public money (a small Arts Council grant) being spent on such filth. I recount all this not merely to establish what we were prepared to do to maintain our policies (we were eventually wiped out by Smiths and Menzies) but to point out that we were the only sf magazine to pursue what you might call a determinedly radical approach -- and sf buffs were the first to attack us with genuine vehemence. Our main serial running at the height of our troubles was called Bug Jack Barron written by Norman Spinrad, who had taken an active part in radical politics in the US and used his story to display the abuse of democracy and the media in America. He later went on to write a satirical sword-and-sorcery epic, The Iron Dream, intended to display the fascist elements inherent to the form. The author of this novel existed, as it were, in an alternate history to our own. His name was Adolf Hitler. The book was meant to point up the number of sf authors who were, in a sense, 'unsuccessful Hitlers'.

Many Americans came to use NW as a vehicle because they couldn't get their stories published in the US. Thomas M. Disch, John Sladek, Harvey Jacobs, Harlan Ellison and others published a good deal of their best and at the time most controversial work in NW -- and Heinlein fans actually attacked us for 'destroying' science fiction. Escapism this form might be, but it posed as a 'literature of ideas' and that, we contended, it wasn't -- unless The Green Berets was a profoundly philosophical movie.

Another example: in 1967 Judith Merril, a founder member of The Science Fiction Writers of America, an ex-Trotskyist turned libertarian, proposed that ' this Organisation would buy advertising space in the sf magazines condemning the war in Vietnam. I was around when this was proposed. A good number of members agreed with alacrity -- including English members like myself, John Brunner, Brian Aldiss, Robert Silverberg and Harry Harrison were keen, as were Harlan Ellison, James Blish and, to be fair, Frank Herbert and Larry Niven. But quite as many were outraged by the idea, saying that the SFWA 'shouldn't interfere in politics.' Okay, said Merril, then let's say 'The following members of the SFWA condemn American involvement in the Vietnam War etc.' Finally the sf magazines contained two ads -- one against the war and one in support of American involvement. Those in support included Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, Ann MaCaffrey, Daniel F. Galouye, Keith Laumer and as many other popular sf writers as were against the war. The interesting thing was that at the time many of the pro-US-involvement writers were (and by and large still are) the most popular sf writers in the English-speaking world, let alone Japan, the Soviet Union, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, where a good many sf readers think of themselves as radicals. One or two of these writers (British as well as American) are dear friends of mine who are personally kindly and courageous people of considerable integrity -- but their political statements (if not always, by any means, their actions) are stomach-turning! Most people have to be judged by their actions rather than their remarks, which are often surprisingly at odds. Writers, when they are writing, can only be judged on the substance of their work. The majority of the sf writers most popular with radicals are by and large crypto-fascists to a man and woman! There is Lovecraft, the misogynic racist; there is Heinlein, the authoritarian militarist; there is Ayn Rand, the rabid opponent of trade unionism and the left, who, like many a reactionary before her, sees the problems of the world as a failure by capitalists to assume the responsibilities of 'good leadership'; there is Tolkein and that group of middle-class Christian fantasists who constantly sing the praises of bourgeois virtues and whose villains are thinly disguised working class agitators -- fear of the Mob permeates their rural romances. To all these and more the working class is a mindless beast which must be controlled or it will savage the world (i.e. bourgeois security) -- the answer is always leadership, 'decency', paternalism (Heinlein in particularly strong on this), Christian values...

What can this stuff have in common with radicals of any persuasion? The simple answer is, perhaps, Romance. The dividing line between rightist Romance (Nazi insignia and myth etc.) and leftist Romance (insurgent cavalry etc.) is not always easy to determine. A stirring image is a stirring image and can be ,employed to raise all sorts of atavistic or infantile emotions in us. Escapist or 'genre' fiction appeals to these emotions. It does us no harm to escape from time to time but it can be dangerous to confuse simplified fiction with reality and that, of course, is what propaganda does.

The bandit hero -- the underdog rebel -- so frequently becomes the political tyrant; and we are perpetually astonished! Such figures appeal to our infantile selves -- what is harmful about them in real life is that they are usually immature, without self-discipline, frequently surviving on their 'charm'. Fiction lets them stay, like Zorro or Robin Hood, perpetually charming. In reality they become petulant, childish, relying on a mixture of threats and self-pitying pleading, like any baby. These are too often the revolutionary figures on whom we pin our hopes, to whom we sometimes commit our lives and whom we sometimes try to be; because we fail to distinguish fact from fiction. In reality it is too often the small, fanatical men with the faces and stance of neurotic clerks who come to power while the charismatic heroes, if they are lucky, die gloriously, leaving us to discover that while we have been following them, imitating them, a new Tsar has manipulated himself into the position of power and Terror has returned with a vengeance while we have been using all our energies living a romantic lie. Heroes betray us. By having them, in real life, we betray ourselves. The heroes of Heinlein and Ayn Rand are forever competent, forever right: they are oracles and protectors, magic parents (so long as we obey their rules). They are prepared to accept the responsibilities we would rather not bear. They are 'leaders'. Traditional sf is hero fiction on a huge scale, but it is only when it poses as a fiction of ideas that it becomes completely pernicious. At its most spectacular it gives us Charlie Manson and Scientology (invented by the sf writer Ron Hubbard and an authoritarian system to rival the Pope's). To enjoy it is one thing. To claim it as 'radical' is quite another. It is rather unimaginative; it is usually badly written; its characters are ciphers; its propaganda is simple-minded and conservative -- good old-fashioned opium which might be specifically designed for dealing with the potential revolutionary.

In a writer like Lovecraft a terror of sex often combines (or is confused for) a terror of the masses, the 'ugly' crowd. But this is so common to so much 'horror' fiction that it's hardly worth discussing. Lovecraft is morbid. His work equates to that negative romanticism found in much Nazi art. He was a confused anti-Semite and misanthrope, a promoter of anti-rationalist ideas about racial 'instinct' which have much in common with Mein Kampf. A dedicated supporter of 'Aryanism', a hater of women, he wound up marrying a Jewess (which might or might not have been a sign of hope -- we haven't her view of the matter)Lovecraft appeals to us primarily when we are ourselves feeling morbid. Apart from his offensively awful writing and a resultant inability to describe his horrors (leaving us to do the work -- the secret of his success -- we're all better writers than he is!) he is rarely as frightening, by implication, as most of the other highly popular writers whose concerns are not with 'meeping Things' but with idealised versions of society. It's not such a big step, for instance from Farnham's Freehold to Hitler's Lebensraum.

I must admit I'm not following a properly argued critical line. I'm arguing on the assumption that my readers are at least familiar with some of the books and authors I mention. I attack these books because they are the favourite reading of so many radicals. I attack the books not for their superficial fascination with quasi-medieval social systems (a la Frank Herbert). Fiction about kings and queens is not necessarily royalist fiction any more than fiction about anarchists is likely to be libertarian fiction. As a writer I have produced a good many fantastic romances in which kings and queens, lords and ladies, figure largely -- yet I am an avowed anti-monarchist. Catch 22 never seemed to me to be in favour of militarism. And just because many of Heinlein's characters are soldiers or ex-soldiers I don't automatically assume he must therefore be in favour of war. It depends what use you make of such characters in a story and what, in the final analysis, you are saying.

Jules Verne in The Masterless Man put some pretty decent sentiments in the mouth of Kaw-djer the anarchist and his best characters, like Captain Nemo, are embittered 'rebels' who have retreated from society. Even the aerial anarchists of The Angel of the Revolution by George Griffiths have something to be said for them, for all their inherent authoritarianism, but they are essentially romantic 'outlaws' and the views they express are not sophisticated even by the standards of the 1890s.

H.G. Wells was no more the 'father' of science fiction than Jules Verne. He inherited a tradition going back some thirty or forty years in the form he himself used and several centuries in the form of the Utopian romance. What was unusual about Wells, however, is that he was one of the first radicals of his time to take the trappings of the scientific romance and combine them with powerful and telling images to make Bunyanesque allegories like The Time Machine or The Invisible Man. Wells didn't have his characters talking socialism. He showed the results of capitalism, authoritarianism, superstition and other evils and because he was a far better writer than most of those who have ever written sf before or since he made his points with considerable clarity. Morris had been long-winded and backward-looking. Wells took the techniques of Kipling and preached his own brand of socialism. Until Wells -- the most talented, original and intelligent writer of his kind -- almost all sf had devoted itself to attacks on 'decadence' and military unpreparedness, urging our leaders to take a stronger moral line and our armies to re-equip and get better officers. By and large this was the tone of much of the sf which followed Wells, from Kipling's effective but reactionary With the Night Mail and As Easy as ABC (paternalistic aerial controllers whose rays pacify 'the mob') to stories by John Buchan, Michael Arlen, William Le Quex, E. Phillips Oppenheim and hundreds of others who predominantly were following Kipling in warning us of the dangers of socialism, mixed marriages, free love, anarchist plots, Zionist conspiracies, the yellow peril and so on and so on. Even Jack London wasn't what one might call an all-round libertarian any more than Wells was when he toyed with his ideas of an elite corps of 'samurai' who were actually not a great deal different to how Soviet Communist Party members saw themselves, or were described in official fiction and propaganda. The quasi-religious nature of sf (which I describe in a collection of pre-WWI sf Before Armageddon) was producing on the whole quasi-religious substitutes (a variety of authoritarian socialist and fascist theories). A few attacked the theories of the emerging dictators (Murray Constantine's Swastika Night, 1937, seemed to think Christianity could conquer Hitler but is otherwise a pretty incisive projection of Nazism several hundred years in the future). By and large the world we got in the thirties was the world the sf writers of the day hoped we would have -- 'strong leaders' reshaping nations. The reality of these hero-leaders was not, of course, entirely what had been visualised -- Nuremberg rallies and Strength Through Joy, perhaps -- but Kristellnacht and gas ovens seemed to go a bit too far.

At least the American pulp magazines like Amazing Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories were not, by and large, offering us high-profile 'leadership': just the good old-fashioned mixture of implicit racialism/militarism/nationalism/paternalism carried a few hundred years into the future or a few million light years into space (E. E. Smith remains to this day one of the most popular writers of that era). John W. Campbell, who in the late thirties took over Astounding Science Fiction Stories and created what many believe to be a major revolution in the development of sf, was the chief creator of the school known to buffs as 'Golden Age' sf and written by the likes of Heinlein, Asimov and A.E. Van Vogt wild-eyed paternalists to a man, fierce anti-socialists, whose work reflected the deep-seated conservatism of the majority of their readers, who saw a Bolshevik menace in every union meeting. They believed, in common with authoritarians everywhere, that radicals wanted to take over old-fashioned political power, turn the world into a uniform mass of 'workers' with themselves (the radicals) as commissars. They offered us such visions, when they attempted any overt discussion of politics at all. They were about as left-wing as The National Enquirer or The Saturday Evening Post (where their stories occasionally were to appear). They were xenophobic, smug and confident that the capitalist system would flourish throughout the universe, though they were, of course, against dictators and the worst sort of exploiters (no longer Jews but often still 'aliens'). Rugged individualism was the most sophisticated political concept they could manage -- in the pulp tradition, the Code of the West became the Code of the Space Frontier, and a spaceship captain had to do what a spaceship captain had to do...

The war helped. It provided character types and a good deal of authoritative-sounding technological terms which could be applied to scientific hardware and social problems alike and sounded reassuringly 'expert'. Those chaps had the tone of Vietnam twenty years earlier. Indeed, it's often been shown that sf supplied a lot of the vocabulary and atmosphere for American military and space technology (a 'Waldo' handling machine is a name taken straight from a Heinlein story). Astounding became full of crew-cut wisecracking, cigar-chewing, competent guys (like Campbell's image of himself). But Campbell and his writers (and they considered themselves something of a unified team) were not producing Westerns. They claimed to be producing a fiction of ideas. These competent guys were suggesting how the world should be run. By the early fifties Astounding had turned by almost anyone's standard into a crypto-fascist deeply philistine magazine pretending to intellectualism and offering idealistic kids an 'alternative' that was, of course, no alternative at all. Through the fifties Campbell used his whole magazine as propaganda for the ideas he promoted in his editorials. His writers, by and large, were enthusiastic. Those who were not fell away from him, disturbed by his increasingly messianic disposition (Alfred Bester gives a good account of this). Over the years Campbell promoted the mystical, quasi-scientific Scientology (first proposed by one of his regular writers L. Ron Hubbard and aired for the first time in Astounding as 'Dianetics: The New Science of the Mind'), a perpetual motion machine known as the 'Dean Drive', a series of plans to ensure that the highways weren't 'abused', and dozens of other half-baked notions, all in the context of cold-war thinking. He also, when faced with the Watts riots of the mid-sixties, seriously proposed and went on to proposing that there were 'natural' slaves who were unhappy if freed. I sat on a panel with him in 1965, as he pointed out that the worker bee when unable to work dies of misery, that the moujiks when freed went to their masters and begged to be enslaved again, that the ideals of the anti-slavers who fought in the Civil War were merely expressions of self-interest and that the blacks were 'against' emancipation, which was fundamentally why they were indulging in 'leaderless' riots in the suburbs of Los Angeles! I was speechless (actually I said four words in all -- 'science-fiction' -- 'psychology' -- Jesus Christ!'- before I collapsed), leaving John Brunner to perform a cool demolition of Campbell's arguments, which left the editor calling on God in support of his views -- an experience rather more intense for me than watching Doctor Strangelove at the cinema.

Starship Troopers (serialised in Astounding as was most of Heinlein's fiction until the early sixties) was probably Heinlein's last 'straight' sf serial for Campbell before he began his 'serious' books such as Farnham's Freehold and Stranger in a Strange Land -- taking the simplified characters of genre fiction and producing some of the most ludicrously unlikely people ever to appear in print. In Starship Troopers we find a slightly rebellious cadet gradually learning that wars are inevitable, that the army is always right, that his duty is to obey the rules and protect the human race against the alien menace. It is pure debased Ford out of Kipling and it set the pattern for Heinlein's more ambitious paternalistic, xenophobic (but equally sentimental) stories which became for me steadily more hilarious until I realised with some surprise that people were taking them as seriously as they had taken, say, Atlas Shrugged a generation before -- in hundreds of thousands! That middle-America could regard such stuff as 'radical' was easy enough to understand. I kept finding that supporters of the Angry Brigade were enthusiastic about Heinlein, that people with whom I thought I shared libertarian principles were getting off on every paternalistic, bourgeois writer who had ever given me the creeps! I still can't fully understand it. Certainly I can't doubt the sincerity of their idealism. But how does it equate with their celebration of writers like Tolkein and Heinlein? The clue could be in the very vagueness of the prose, which allows for liberal interpretation; it could be that the ciphers they use instead of characters are capable of suggesting a wholly different meaning to certain readers. To me, their naive and emblematic reading of society is fundamentally misanthropic and therefore anti-libertarian. We are faced, once again, with quasi-religion, presented to us as radicalism. At best it is the philosophy of the Western applied to the complex social problems of the twentieth century -- it is Reaganism, it is John Wayne in Big John Maclean and The Green Berets, it is George Wallace and Joe McCarthy -- at its most refined it is William F. Buckley Jr., who, already a long way more sophisticated than Heinlein, is still pretty simple-minded.

Rugged individualism also goes hand in hand with a strong faith in paternalism -- albeit a tolerant and somewhat distant paternalism -- and many otherwise sharp-witted libertarians seem to see nothing in the morality of a John Wayne Western to conflict with their views. Heinlein's paternalism is at heart the same as Wayne's. In the final analysis it is a kind of easy-going militarism favoured by the veteran professional soldier -- the chain of command is complex -- many adult responsibilities can be left to that chain as long as broad, but firmly enforced, rules from 'high up' are adhered to. Heinlein is Eisenhower Man and his views seem to me to be more pernicious than ordinary infantile back-to-the-land Christian communism, with its mysticism and its hatred of technology. To be an anarchist, surely, is to reject authority but to accept self-discipline and community responsibility. To be a rugged individualist a la Heinlein and others is to be forever a child who must obey, charm and cajole to be tolerated by some benign, omniscient father: Rooster Coburn shuffling his feet in front of a judge he respects for his office (but not necessarily himself) in True Grit.

An anarchist is not a wild child, but a mature, realistic adult imposing laws upon the self and modifying them according to an experience of life, an interpretation of the world. A 'rebel', certainly, he or she does not assume 'rebellious charm' in order to placate authority (which is what the rebel heroes of all these genre stories do). There always comes the depressing point where Robin Hood doffs a respectful cap to King Richard, having clobbered the rival king. This sort of implicit paternalism is seen in high relief in the currently popular Star Wars series which also presents a somewhat disturbing anti-rationalism in its quasi-religious 'Force' which unites the Jedi Knights (are we back to Wellsian 'samurai' again?) and upon whose power they can draw, like some holy brotherhood, some band of Knights Templar. Star Wars is a pure example of the genre (in that it is a compendium of other people's ideas) in its implicit structure -- quasi-children, fighting for a paternalistic authority, win through in the end and stand bashfully before the princess while medals are placed around their necks.

Star Wars carries the paternalistic messages of almost all generic adventure fiction (may the Force never arrive on your doorstep at three o'clock in the morning) and has all the right characters. it raises 'instinct' above reason (a fundamental to Nazi doctrine) and promotes a kind of sentimental romanticism attractive to the young and idealistic while protective of existing institutions. It is the essence of a genre that it continues to promote certain implicit ideas even if the author is unconscious of them. In this case the audience also seems frequently unconscious of them.

It was Alfred Bester who first attracted me to science fiction. I'd read some fantasy and Edgar Rice Burroughs before that, but I thought that if The Stars My Destination (also called Tiger! Tiger!) was sf, then this was the fiction for me. It took me some years to realise that Bester was one of the few exceptions. At the ending of The Stars My Destination the self-educated, working class, 'scum of the spaceways', Gully Foyle, comes into possession of the substance known as PyrE, capable of detonating at a thought and probably destroying the solar system at very least. The plot has revolved around the attempts of various powerful people to get hold of the stuff. Foyle has it. Moral arguments or forceful persuasions are brought against him to make him give PyrE up to a 'responsible' agency. In the end he scatters the stuff to 'the mob' of the solar system. Here you are, he says, it's yours. Its your destiny. Do with it how you see fit.

This is one of the very, very few 'libertarian' sf novels I have ever read. If I hadn't read it, I very much doubt I should have read any more sf. It's a wonderful adventure story. It has a hero developing from a completely stupefied, illiterate hand on a spaceship to a brilliant and mature individual taking his revenge first on those who have harmed him and then gradually developing what you might call a 'political conscience.' I know of no other sf book which so thoroughly combines romance with an idealism almost wholly acceptable to me. It is probably significant that it enjoys a relatively small success compared to, say, Stranger in a Strange Land.

Leaving aside the very worthy but to my mind journalistic The Dispossessed by U.K. Le Guin, it is quite hard for me to find many other examples of sf books which, as it were, 'promote' libertarian ideas. M. John Harrison is an anarchist. His books are full of anarchists -- some of them very bizarre like the anarchist aesthetes of The Centauri Device. Typical of the New Worlds school he could be described as an existential anarchist. There is Brian Aldiss with his Barefoot in the Head vision of an LSD 'bombed' Europe almost totally liberated and developing bizarre new customs. There are J. G. Ballard's 'terminal ironies' such as The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash and so on, which have brought criticisms of 'nihilism' against him. There is Joanna Russ's marvellous The Female Man. So little sf has fundamental humanitarian values, let alone libertarian ideals, one is hard put to find other examples. My own taste, I suppose, is sometimes at odds with my political views. I admire Barrington J. Bayley, whose stories are often extremely abstract. One of his most enjoyable books recently published is The Soul of the Robot which discusses the nature of individual identity. Charles L. Harness is another favourite of mine. The Rose, in particular, lacks the simplifications of most sf, and The Paradox Men with its sense of the nature of Time, its thief hero, its ironic references to America Imperial, is highly entertaining. I also have a soft spot for C. M. Kornbluth who to my mind had a rather stronger political conscience than he allowed himself, so that his stories are sometimes confused as he tried to mesh middle-American ideas with his own radicalism. One of my favourites (though structurally it is a bit weak) is The Syndic (about a society where a rather benign Mafia is paramount). Fritz Leiber is probably the best of the older American sf writers for his prose-style, his wit and his humanity, as well as his abiding contempt for authoritarianism. His Gather, Darkness is one of the best sf books to relate political power to religious power (this was also serialised in Astounding during the forties . John Brunner, author of the CND marching song 'H-Bomb's Thunder', often writes from a distinctly socialist point of view. Harlan Ellison, who for some time had associations with a New York street gang and who has identified himself for many years with radicalism in the US, writes many short stories whose heroes have no truck with authority of any sort, though the conventions of the genre sometimes get in the way of the essential messages of his stories. This has to be true of most genre fiction. Ellison's best work is written outside the sf genre. Philip K. Dick, John Sladek, Thomas M.Disch, Joanna Russ...

To my mind one of the best examples of imaginative fiction to ear in England since the war is Maurice Richardson's The Exploits of Engelbrecht, written in the forties and recently republished by John Conquest (available from him at Compendium Books). These 'Chronicles of the Surrealist Sportman's Club' are superbly laconic pieces, concentrating more original invention into fewer words than almost any writer I can think of. They outshine, for me, almost anything else remotely like them, including the stories of Borges and other much admired imaginative writers. Richardson goes swiftly from one idea to the next, using a beautifully disciplined prose. He has the advantage of being a great ironist and I find that more palatable. Such a style can become one of the most convincing weapons in the literary arsenal and it often astonishes me how cleverly Kipling influenced generations of writers by disguising his authoritarian notions in that superb matter-of-fact, faintly ironic prose. Many writers, not necessarily of Kipling's views, have used it since. We find a debased version of it in the right-wing thrillers and sf novels of our own day. It is probably this 'tone' (employed to suggest the writer's basic decency and commonsense) which enables many people to accept ideas which, couched differently, would revolt them. Yet what Heinlein or Tolkein lack is any trace of real self-mockery. They are nature's urbane Tories. They'll put an arm round your shoulder and tell you their ideas are quite radical too, really; that they used to be fire-eaters in their youth; that there are different ways of achieving social change; that you must be realistic and pragmatic. Next time you pick up a Heinlein book think of the author as looking a bit like General Eisenhower or, if that image isn't immediate enough, some chap in early middleage, good-looking in a slightly soft way, with silver at the temples, a blue tie, a sober three-pieced suit, telling you with a quiet smile that Margaret Thatcher cares for individualism and opportunity above all things, as passionately in her way as you do in yours. And then you might have some idea of what you're actually about to read.

Michael Moorcock, May 1977, Ladbroke Grove

[drawingconclusions]

Whoever scheduled November elections adjacent to October 31st must have also noticed the political strangeness that seems to coincide with Halloween. Whether it’s cause or effect, I’m not sure, LOL. With all the talk of impeachment in current events, I figure I’d provide my opinion on all this, and I’ll try to be as brief as I can. 1) If there really was evidence of impeachable wrongdoing in the transcript of Trump’s July phone call in question, then Adam Schiff wouldn’t have invented & read a fake transcript during the recent Congressional hearing. His attempts at a “parody” as he called it left most of us wondering what kind of circus the House intelligence committee has become. And it’s quite strange how Schiff had previously met with the “whistleblower”, apparently gave him or her advice, and then lied about his contact. I'm starting to wonder if any witness tampering took place there. 2) Unfortunately, many in the liberal media have repeatedly breached the public trust with false narratives, half-truths, & lies that it has come to the point that I believe the opposite of what they supposedly report. If they say that there’s nothing to investigate with regards to Joe & Hunter Biden’s actions, I’m pretty sure there is something there that isn’t quite on the level. If they say no one should be looking into the origins of the Russia Collusion hoax & that to do so is for Trump to seek revenge on his political adversaries, then I’m convinced that there are serious wrongdoings committed by those involved in the origins of the Mueller probe that need to be investigated and prosecuted. If they say there is an impeachable offense in Trump’s actions, you’ll have to forgive me if I take your words with a grain of salt. More than a few grains, actually. Yes, liberal media, there are consequences to telling lies on a daily basis, and all those times you’ve cried wolf to advance your own political agendas or liberal bias has left you with almost zero credibility. I really hope people start getting their news from better sources. 3) Again, I take issue with Adam Schiff’s handling of this entire matter (and Nancy Pelosi is also in part responsible). If there really was a case against Trump for impeachment concerning the phone call to the Ukrainian President, Schiff & Pelosi would eagerly show the American public all the available evidence. But instead, they’ve chosen to hold hidden hearings with possibly biased witnesses in a basement, afterwards revealing only selective, piece-meal bits of what transpired there. As others have astutely commented, that’s completely un-American. Anyone who is accused of a crime deserves due process and the chance to call their own witnesses & to cross-examine those who are making the accusations. Proverbs 18:17 (NIV) says “The first to present his case seems right until another comes forward and questions him.” Let the American people hear and see the testimony by all of the witnesses, even that of the so-called “whistleblower” (who suspiciously was a CIA agent who had worked for Joe Biden and who had no firsthand knowledge of the phone call). Hold a vote in the House of Representatives to truly authorize this half-baked impeachment process and to allow Republicans to cross-examine witnesses and to call their own witnesses. Also, newspeople on both sides of the aisle are referring to the latest polls to see whether there is support for impeaching Trump, but since when in America do we prosecute someone based on a poll? If there’s evidence of wrongdoing, hold a legitimate process to investigate it. Otherwise, anyone who has given false testimony or made a false accusation needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. While you’re at it, release all of the transcripts of phone calls to foreign leaders made by Obama, Bush, and Clinton. I’d like to know if they ever made any kind of quid pro quo statements during their dealings with other governments. For all the hypocritical self-righteous talk of “resistance” by liberals, I don’t believe for one minute that they’re interested in much more than advancing their own broken agendas. And I really don’t believe you’re trying to somehow save the world from Trump, targeting him exclusively because you consider him such a threat. The liberal left has degenerated so much that they would likely attack any conservative in his position in just the same way. If you will recall, the left are the ones who consider speech to be violence, who adopt a fascist mindset of seeking to (even sometimes violently) silence those who disagree with them or hold an opposing worldview, and who believe if you vote a certain way then you’re deserving of death threats. Granted, some on the right are sometimes as intolerant of those who disagree with them, but this has got to change. We will always have certain issues we disagree on, but we have to find a way to come together. I repeat again, unity doesn’t imply conformity of thought on every single matter. To think how much we could have accomplished as a nation in the past few years if we hadn’t been given over to petty and nonsensical squabbling… Unfortunately, I’m really starting to wonder about the ability of Democrats to lead. I’ve always believed in a two-party system, as healthy & fair competition usually works for the benefit of the people. But the extremes I’m seeing on the left have led me to wonder if certain Democrats are better suited for running for candidacy in socialist Venezuela or communist China. (Oh, but that’s right, they don’t have free and fair elections in places like China or Venezuela. It’s mind-boggling to me how some politicians and businesses like the NBA idolize governments like the one in China, which is another reason why I don’t support facial recognition programs by law enforcement. While they may currently have the proper checks & balances in place, it wouldn’t take much for one of those communist/socialist fans to quietly strip away all those protections and use the technology to track conservatives or those whom they disagree with. But I digress.) After all this, you may call me a Trump apologist (or something more colorful). I don’t mind. I didn’t vote for Trump (or for Hillary) in the last election, and I don’t support everything Trump says or does, but you have to admit he has done good things for our country, including successfully managing the economy and hunting down ISIS. So to Democrats I have to say, you have lost my vote for this upcoming election as a result of all this. In conclusion, on September 17th I used the phrase “quid pro quo” in one of my posts, and two or three days later, this whole Ukraine phone call quid pro quo thing erupted. Perhaps a few of you considered my words to be some kind of subliminal code to the deep state to pursue all this. Let me be clear about two things. First of all, I don’t use subliminal code in my posts here (Although that may be a novel idea to try: “Please leave a bi-monthly box of cookies at the following address…”) Sure, sometimes in my posts I don’t name those I respect or thank those who have been kind to me, because I realize the times we’re living in and I’m aware that a few deranged people will use that information to attempt to harm them or track me. And sometimes I discuss an issue without naming specific individuals, in part because it can have broader applications than just one or two people. But if I have a major problem with Trump or his administration, I would be much more direct and call them out on here for it, instead of using somekind of backroad sabotage attempt using hidden language. Secondly, I’m not a friend of the deep state agencies. Years ago, I called out the intel agencies for their broad collection of metadata on U.S. citizens, and in the past few years, I’ve called out the FBI for their suspected FISA abuse and other criminal involvement in regards to the origins of the Mueller probe. I’m sure there are good people in the FBI, CIA, and other deep state agencies, but it’s obvious there are serious problems with in these organizations as well. I previously called for a life sentence in jail for any who intentionally violated the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens without cause, and I’m not backing down from that. As I’ve said before, yes, I believe there should be mercy in applying justice when it will not be abused. But these people have been granted a broad range of powers over the population and they’re supposed to be the best of us. Unfortunately, in some cases, we’re discovering quite the opposite is true. You might think that I’m signaling I’m about to lead some kind of revolt against society. Again, not true. I’m a Christian, and I cannot support anarchy. I’ll strive to be a law-abiding citizen even if these people don’t get it right, especially if they don’t get it right. But that doesn’t mean I can’t call for justice when such widespread corruption abounds.

[itsfinancethings]

President Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to rally at the White House, inviting a potentially dangerous mix of protesters after people angry about the death of an unarmed black man in Minnesota police custody skirmished with the Secret Service on Friday.

He threatened “the unlimited power” of the U.S. military to clamp down on demonstrations, tweeting from Air Force One as he traveled to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for the launch of a SpaceX spacecraft. The military is “ready, willing and able” to assist, Trump said earlier.

Crossing State lines to incite violence is a FEDERAL CRIME! Liberal Governors and Mayors must get MUCH tougher or the Federal Government will step in and do what has to be done, and that includes using the unlimited power of our Military and many arrests. Thank you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020

In a series of tweets early on Saturday, Trump also seemed to revel in the potential for violence outside the White House, warning that Friday’s protesters would have been met by “the most vicious dogs” and “most ominous weapons” had they dared to breach the fence around the property.

He depicted Secret Services agents as eager to battle the demonstrators, and later issued an appeal to his supporters to assemble: “Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???”

The professionally managed so-called “protesters” at the White House had little to do with the memory of George Floyd. They were just there to cause trouble. The @SecretService handled them easily. Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser rebuked the president in her own series of tweets, calling him “a scared man. Afraid/alone” and saying she stood with people peacefully protesting the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis this week.

Those demonstrations were not altogether peaceful, though. The Secret Service said in a statement that it arrested six people and that “multiple” personnel from the agency were injured when protesters assaulted them with “bricks, rocks, bottles, fireworks and other items.”

Videos from Friday’s demonstration showed protesters chasing journalists from the park and throwing objects at officers wearing riot gear, and Secret Service officers responding with pepper spray.

Contrary to Trump’s assertion that Bowser “wouldn’t let the D.C. police get involved,” the Secret Service said the city’s police and U.S. Park Police were also on the scene of the protests.

Call for Restraint

Bowser called a press conference on Saturday to discuss the situation. “I call upon our city and our nation to exercise great restraint, even while the president tries to divide us,” she said.

Trump told reporters he had “no idea” if his boosters would assemble on Saturday night at the White House.

“I heard that MAGA wanted to be there — that a lot of MAGA was going to be there,” Trump said as he departed the White House, using the acronym for “Make America Great Again.”

Washington on Friday entered “Phase One” of its reopening from coronavirus stay-at-home restrictions. Large gatherings of people are currently prohibited.

Trump also tweeted that “ANTIFA and the Radical Left” were stoking protests against Floyd’s death, a day after saying he understood the “pain” that demonstrators were feeling. “Antifa,” short for anti-fascist, is sometimes used to describe militant left-wing activists.

It’s ANTIFA and the Radical Left. Don’t lay the blame on others!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020

Attorney General William Barr made a brief televised statement to make similar comments, tying the protests to “groups of outside radicals and agitators exploiting the situation.”

“It is a federal crime to cross state lines or to use interstate facilities to incite or participate in violent rioting. We will enforce these laws,” Barr said. He took no questions.

Minnesota officials, including the state’s Democratic governor, echoed Trump’s suggestion that organized agitators were exploiting anger about the death of Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed black man.

“The situation in Minneapolis is no longer in any way about the murder of George Floyd,” Governor Tim Walz said. “It is about attacking civil society, instilling fear and disrupting our great cities.”

Video showed a white police officer in Minneapolis kneeling on Floyd’s neck to the point the arrested man could no longer breathe. The officer, Derek Chauvin, was arrested Friday and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

In Washington, demonstrators gathered in a park across from the White House around dusk on Friday, briefly causing the compound to be locked down. It was just one of a string of protests around the country, from Atlanta to Oakland, California.

Safe Inside

Trump said he “watched every move” of Friday’s protests outside the White House, and couldn’t have felt more safe.”

Had protesters breached the complex’s fence, they would have faced “the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons,” Trump said. “That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least.”

….have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least. Many Secret Service agents just waiting for action. “We put the young ones on the front line, sir, they love it, and….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020

Bowser said in her briefing that Trump’s reference to attack dogs was “no subtle reminder to African-Americans of segregationists that let dogs out on women, children and innocent people in the South.” She called the comments “an attack on humanity.”

Friday night’s protests came on a day after Trump appeared to threaten violence against certain demonstrators, tweeting overnight that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

The phrase echoed a remark made in 1967 by a white Miami police chief when announcing tougher policing policies for the Florida city’s black neighborhoods. In a rare reversal, Trump later said his tweet wasn’t intended as a threat, but merely meant to discourage looting that has historically coincided with violence.

Trump also said he’d spoken with Floyd’s family and that he understood the hurt and pain of demonstrators.

“We have peaceful protesters, and support the rights for peaceful protesters,” Trump said Friday. “We can’t allow a situation like in Minneapolis to descend further into lawless anarchy and chaos.

[day0one]

Trump Suggests ‘MAGA’ Fans Gather, Makes Military Threat 1 hr ago

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to rally at the White House, inviting a potentially dangerous mix of protesters after people angry about the death of an unarmed black man in Minnesota police custody skirmished with the Secret Service on Friday.

He threatened “the unlimited power” of the U.S. military to clamp down on demonstrations, tweeting from Air Force One as he traveled to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for the launch of a SpaceX spacecraft. The military is “ready, willing and able” to assist, Trump said earlier.

In a series of tweets early on Saturday, Trump also seemed to revel in the potential for violence outside the White House, warning that Friday’s protesters would have been met by “the most vicious dogs” and “most ominous weapons” had they dared to breach the fence around the property.

He depicted Secret Services agents as eager to battle the demonstrators, and later issued an appeal to his supporters to assemble: “Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???”

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser rebuked the president in her own series of tweets, calling him “a scared man. Afraid/alone” and saying she stood with people peacefully protesting the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis this week.

Those demonstrations were not altogether peaceful, though. The Secret Service said in a statement that it arrested six people and that “multiple” personnel from the agency were injured when protesters assaulted them with “bricks, rocks, bottles, fireworks and other items.”

Videos from Friday’s demonstration showed protesters chasing journalists from the park and throwing objects at officers wearing riot gear, and Secret Service officers responding with pepper spray.

Contrary to Trump’s assertion that Bowser “wouldn’t let the D.C. police get involved,” the Secret Service said the city’s police and U.S. Park Police were also on the scene of the protests.

Call for Restraint Bowser called a press conference on Saturday to discuss the situation. “I call upon our city and our nation to exercise great restraint, even while the president tries to divide us,” she said.

Trump told reporters he had “no idea” if his boosters would assemble on Saturday night at the White House.

“I heard that MAGA wanted to be there -- that a lot of MAGA was going to be there,” Trump said as he departed the White House, using the acronym for “Make America Great Again.”

Washington on Friday entered “Phase One” of its reopening from coronavirus stay-at-home restrictions. Large gatherings of people are currently prohibited.

Trump also tweeted that “ANTIFA and the Radical Left” were stoking protests against Floyd’s death, a day after saying he understood the “pain” that demonstrators were feeling. “Antifa,” short for anti-fascist, is sometimes used to describe militant left-wing activists.

Attorney General William Barr made a brief televised statement to make similar comments, tying the protests to “groups of outside radicals and agitators exploiting the situation.”

“It is a federal crime to cross state lines or to use interstate facilities to incite or participate in violent rioting. We will enforce these laws,” Barr said. He took no questions.

Minnesota officials, including the state’s Democratic governor, echoed Trump’s suggestion that organized agitators were exploiting anger about the death of Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed black man.

“The situation in Minneapolis is no longer in any way about the murder of George Floyd,” Governor Tim Walz said. “It is about attacking civil society, instilling fear, and disrupting our great cities.”

Video showed a white police officer in Minneapolis kneeling on Floyd’s neck to the point the arrested man could no longer breathe. The officer, Derek Chauvin, was arrested Friday and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

In Washington, demonstrators gathered in a park across from the White House around dusk on Friday, briefly causing the compound to be locked down. It was just one of a string of protests around the country, from Atlanta to Oakland, California.

Safe Inside Trump said he “watched every move” of Friday’s protests outside the White House, and couldn’t have felt more safe.”

Had protesters breached the complex’s fence, they would have faced “the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons,” Trump said. “That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least.”

Bowser said in her briefing that Trump’s reference to attack dogs was “no subtle reminder to African-Americans of segregationists that let dogs out on women, children and innocent people in the South.” She called the comments “an attack on humanity.”

Friday night’s protests came on a day after Trump appeared to threaten violence against certain demonstrators, tweeting overnight that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

The phrase echoed a remark made in 1967 by a white Miami police chief when announcing tougher policing policies for the Florida city’s black neighborhoods. In a rare reversal, Trump later said his tweet wasn’t intended as a threat, but merely meant to discourage looting that has historically coincided with violence.

Trump also said he’d spoken with Floyd’s family and that he understood the hurt and pain of demonstrators.

“We have peaceful protesters, and support the rights for peaceful protesters,” Trump said Friday. “We can’t allow a situation like in Minneapolis to descend further into lawless anarchy and chaos.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Open a corporate media website on any given day and you will find someone, somewhere blaming social media for something. No claim is too absurd. Last week, journalist Sean Williams, who writes for the New Yorker, New Republic and Wired, tweeted us in a state of high anxiety: I just want you to know you’re ruining the national dialogue and pushing more people towards right wing populism. Really. Quite a claim for a project that began in Southampton’s Giddy Bridge public house over a pint and a packet of cheese and onion. We replied: Two guys with no resources, relying solely on donations, critiquing global, multi-billion-dollar media corporations? That’s crazy. All our support is on the left – people like John Pilger, Noam Chomsky and Jonathan Cook, who reject that idea completely. Beyond even ruining ‘the national dialogue’, social media are, of course, blamed for a tsunami of ‘fake news’ undermining democracy at every level. The irony of the fake news claim is that the corporate media’s refusal to analyse, or even mention, its own record of spreading fake news is a prime example of how it functions as a system, not merely of deception, but of imposed insanity. Consider the work of Andrew Rawnsley of the Observer, garlanded with British Press Awards Young Journalist of the Year (1987); What The Papers Say Columnist of the Year (2000); Channel 4 Political Awards Book of the Year (2001); Channel 4 Political Awards Journalist of the Year (2003); House Magazine Awards Commentator of the Year (2008); Chair’s Choice Award at the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards (2015). Lamenting Trump, Rawnsley wrote in the Observer last month: The United States has shrunk from its traditional role as exemplar of democracy and global champion of it. Rawnsley, of course, has been a high-profile political commentator throughout the period when Iraq, Libya and Syria have been ‘championed’ by the West. Regime change was ordered in Syria after the ‘exemplar of democracy’ had brought ungovernable chaos to Libya, which was ordered after regime change had brought ungovernable chaos to Iraq. The fact that regime change has been attempted again in Syria, even after these twin calamities, says much about the brutality of Western power. Indeed it suggests that social collapse removing organised opposition to US machinations in the region is a deeper aim beyond even regime change. Rawnsley is notable among political commentators for being laughably wrong when laughing at others for being laughably wrong. He wrote in April 2003: The war in Iraq would undo Tony Blair, they cried. It would be his Suez on the Tigris, they said. Wrong. It would be Vietnam crossed with Stalingrad. Wrong. To win the war, the Anglo-American forces could only prevail by inflicting casualties numbered in their hundreds of thousands. The more extravagantly doom-laden predictions had the deaths in millions. Wrong.1 By August 2011, even Rawnsley had to acknowledge the ‘searing experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq,’ above all the ‘horrors of Iraq’ with its ‘slide into bloody anarchy’. Remarkably, this revised opinion appeared in an article that lauded the ‘liberation’ of Libya and mocked everyone who had been, once again, wrong: We were told that it would be impossible to get a UN resolution – and one was secured. We were told that Arab support would not stay solid – and, by and large, it did. We were told, as recently as 10 days ago, that the campaign was stuck in a stalemate which exposed the folly of David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy in pursuing the enterprise. So much for the wisdom of the conventional. This was a ‘relief’ for all ‘who hold that democracies sometimes have both the right and the obligation to take up arms against dictators’. And after all – as in Iraq in 2003, at least in Rawnsley’s mind – the price had been impressively low: The number of civilian casualties inflicted by the airstrikes seems to have been mercifully light… You might call it intervention-lite. And thank god, because ‘the ideal of liberal interventionism could probably not have survived another humiliation’. As the above suggests, one of the more dramatically dissonant cognitive collisions in the ‘mainstream’ involves the way elite journalists simultaneously affect world-weary, seen-it-all cynicism and post-Pollyanna naivety. Imagine the impact on Rawnsley’s romantic worldview, if he read last week’s report from Bloomberg business news: In another sign the sector is stabilizing, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc have agreed to annual deals to buy Libyan crude. Newly reopened fields ‘will increase the North African country’s crude output by 57,000 barrels a day’, although production remains well below the mouth-watering level of 1.6 million barrels a day reached before NATO’s war to oust Gaddafi in 2011, described in the West as a ‘no-fly zone’. This follows equally heartening news from BP Middle East in Iraq: ‘Rumaila oilfield achieves 3 billion barrel production landmark’. Achievements include: Production increased by more than 40% since BP joined partnership to redevelop Rumaila oilfield in 2010 Oil production rate highest in 27 years Around $200 billion generated for the Iraqi economy. The results are impressive. As Boris Johnson would say, ‘all they have to do is clear the dead bodies away’. In 2015, the press reported that Sir John Sawers had joined BP’s company board as a non-executive member. In 2003, Sawers was the British Government’s Special Representative in Baghdad assisting the establishment of the Coalition Provisional Authority as the transitional government during the occupation of Iraq. A year earlier, Sawers, then ambassador to Egypt, had sent a memo that urged the government to ‘clearly and consistently’ state that its goal was regime change in Iraq, and asked ‘how would we provide for stability after Saddam and his cronies were killed’. He added: ‘All these are much more important questions than legality.’ This ‘gaffe’ did no harm to Sawers’ career. In 2009 he was made head of MI6. In lamenting Trump, Rawnsley offered a gesture in the direction of truth, noting that ‘America’ – he meant USAmerica – ‘was always extremely imperfect in this role’ of championing democracy around the world. The same could be said, with equal merit, of Genghis Khan. An example of the ‘imperfect’ record was supplied by Julian Borger of the Guardian. Also lamenting ‘the chaos of the Trump White House, Borger wrote of Obama: Meanwhile, the administration was criticised by both left and right for keeping US forces out of the Syrian civil war, leaving the field to Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers, who flattened entire cities. British and US forces also destroyed entire cities in Iraq and Libya without the word ‘flattened’ being used by Borger. It is true that the corporate ‘left’ criticised Obama for not launching an all-out attack on Syria – former Guardian columnist Paul Mason deemed the decision a ‘Disaster!’ – but authentic left voices rejected as nonsense both the criticism and the claim that the US was thereby guilty of ‘leaving the field’ to Assad and the Russians. The US was always very much involved. In June 2015, the Washington Post reported: At $1 billion, Syria-related operations account for about $1 of every $15 in the CIA’s overall budget… US officials said the CIA has trained and equipped nearly 10,000 fighters sent into Syria over the past several years — meaning that the agency is spending roughly $100,000 per year for every anti-Assad rebel who has gone through the program. There was much more besides, of course. The US supplied 15,000 anti-tank missiles to Saudi Arabia, which the US knew were intended for the Syrian ‘rebels’. The Washington Post observed: The U.S.-made BGM-71 TOW missiles were delivered under a two-year-old covert program coordinated between the United States and its allies to help vetted Free Syrian Army groups in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad… So successful have they been in driving rebel gains in northwestern Syria that rebels call the missile the “Assad Tamer,” a play on the word Assad, which means lion. In March 2017, it was reported that Raytheon, which makes the TOW missile, had seen its stocks triple since 2012. Western liberal commentators have ceaselessly raged at claims that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons and indiscriminate ‘barrel bombs’. We are unaware of any who have dared imagine how the US government would respond to thousands of foreign troops fighting on the US mainland using 15,000 anti-tank missiles supplied by a foreign superpower to kill thousands of US troops, seriously threatening to overthrow the government. In 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were vaporised without US national survival ever being at stake. Borger cynically used ‘criticism’ to suggest that a mere claim was indeed the case: ‘Meanwhile, the administration was criticised by both left and right…’ Similarly: Obama came under great criticism over Syria; for declaring that the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons would be a “red line” for US military action, and then failing that test by not striking after a mass-casualty chemical attack in August 2013. In fact, Obama ‘came under great criticism’ for imagining that he had the right to declare a ‘red line’ at all, and then for falsely claiming he had conclusive evidence that Assad had ordered a mass-casualty chemical attack. Borger’s use of ‘criticism’ gave the impression that he had covered the full range of views, for and against, when, in fact, he had filtered out the criticism that mattered. These endless reassurances of benevolent Western intent – ‘we’ sometimes get it wrong, but ‘we’ do support freedom where ‘we’ can, and cannot stand idly by while people suffer – are absurd, embarrassing, but lethally effective. People like to believe well of their governments and the claims are largely uncontested, repeated all over the media, and thereby seem to be based on some kind of reality. The terrible consequence of this, however, is that it allows politicians and journalists to appear credible when they claim ‘humanitarian concern’ about events taking place in countries on the West’s list of Official Enemies. Anyone challenging this alleged benevolent concern is instantly shouted down as a brutal cynic, as an ‘apologist’ for the target of Western ‘intervention’. The deeper point here is that the refusal of corporate media to discuss this corporate media contribution to fake news means its discussion is itself fake. And not just fake – to ignore the crucial contribution of corporate fake news to the destruction of whole countries is insane. Blanking obvious, key aspects of reality truly is a form of social insanity. Rawnsley’s amiable face has been smiling out at readers, without challenge, for decades – until now. Thanks to social media, readers are at last able to see some rational dissent – the imperial corporate commentariat is now naked. One of the up-sides to social media that the ‘mainstream’ cannot even discuss. Iran And Those Damned Progressive Stalinists At the end of 2017 and early 2018, protests took place in a dozen cities across Iran, including the capital Tehran. Long before anyone in the West had any real idea who or what was driving them, liberal commentators painted a black and white picture that demanded Western progressives support the protests. Paul Mason wrote: The people on the streets are from the youth, the lower middle class and the working class, and not mainly the salaried upper middle class… The slogans moved quickly from economic discontent to calls for the overthrow of the regime. The demos spread without any clear leader or programme; on the basis of all previous mass revolts in history that indictes [sic] widespread economic discontent and subcultural dislocation which the regime’s intelligence services didn’t pick up. Mason helpfully noted that the Revolutionary Guard ‘have not yet been given orders to inflict mass slaughter’. Despite the clear, recent examples of the West fomenting violence in Libya and Syria, Mason made clear that any dissent from his view was shameful: Putin, Assad, Hezbollah and all their cheerleaders in the alt-right and Stalinist left are already trying to smear the protests as pro-imperialist. The revolt shows, once again, that Stalinism is not a dead issue in the progressive movement, and that its remaining advocates want only an authoritarian “anti-imperialist” regime to support… ‘The global labour movement, unions, social democracy, human rights NGOs and radical left should try to support the progressive elements on the demos… The Fox News slander that the left is “not supporting” the revolt is largely unfounded. For Mason, it was actually ‘slander’ to suggest that leftists were not instantly supporting protests that no-one yet understood. He concluded by repeating the smear: Most of the surviving far left groups in Britain have put out critical support statements, though the usual Stalinist/Assadist suspects, especially in the USA, have been all too willing to slander the revolt. Are we supposed to forget that in Washington in 2003, the fashionable phrase was, ‘Baghdad is for wimps, real men go to Tehran’? Are we to forget that former CIA agent Richard Cottam said of the overthrow of the democratically elected Musaddiq in 1953: …that mob that came into north Teheran and was decisive in the overthrow was a mercenary mob. It had no ideology. That mob was paid for by American dollars and the amount of money that was used has to have been very large?2 Human rights activist Peter Tatchell also presented a black and white view of events: #Iran: 10 dead in further protests. Iran’s president says people are free to protest. So why are peaceful protesters being beaten & arrested? #Tehran jails students, trade unionists, ethnic minorities, LGBTs, Sunni Muslims, democrats & leftists. SHAME! Ken Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, tweeted: 20 already dead as Iranian hardliners try to quell protests by lethal force. The problem was the ‘hardliners’ – there was no question that the picture might be more complex. On Twitter, Adam Johnson of FAIR reported of one US think tank: in past 72 hrs radical pro-regime change outfit FDD [Foundation for Defense of Democracies] has had op-eds in NYTimes, Washington Post, NYPost, Politico and WSJ on Iran, repeating in each one the same tired, pro-intervention talking points. Johnson commented elsewhere: ‘The exact ideology of those protesting in Iran isn’t 100 percent clear—they seem to represent a mix of groups and grievances’. And yet Johnson described the protests as made up of ‘workers and young people taking to the streets’. Were less innocent agencies also involved, as was certainly the case in Libya and Syria? As Johnson noted, he did not know. Writing for InsurgeIntelligence, Nafeez Ahmed reported: Iran’s unrest has mostly been driven by a convergence of domestic ecological, energy and economic crises. The [US] State Department has sought to exploit these crises to undermine the legitimacy of the regime, by funding opposition groups as well as anti-regime broadcasting to the tune of tens of millions of dollars a year. Ahmed noted that one State Department funding document ‘refers to a project to use Iran’s growing water crisis to drum up public anger against regime “mismanagement”. To date, US government records show that the Trump administration has spent over $1 million, at least, since 2016, on financing anti-regime activism within Iran.’ Ahmed continued: Since 2006, successive US administrations have invested tens of millions of dollars a year on “democracy promotion” efforts in Iran, serving as cover for longstanding “regime change” aspirations. Unsurprisingly, these efforts appear to have borne fruit: Much of the media programming funded by the State Department has focused on glorifying the reign of the Shah of Iran, the brutal US-UK backed dictator who was deposed by the 1979 revolution. The propaganda appears to have worked, with many participants in the latest protests calling for the Shah’s exiled son, Reza Pahlavi, to return to power in Iran. Projects include ‘Iran-specific US broadcasting services such as “Radio Farda (‘tomorrow,’ in Farsi) [which] began under Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), in partnership with the Voice of America (VOA), in 2002.’ Based in Prague, Radio Farda broadcasts 24 hours a day and has 59 full time employees. Its budget is approximately $11 million per year. USAID and State Department records reveal that the Trump administration provided at least $1,146,196 to various opposition NGOs in Iran, from 2016 through some of 2017. Ahmed noted: For context, this is considerably more than what Russian-linked actors reportedly paid Twitter, Facebook and Google combined to influence the American elections (a maximum total of around $447,100). None of this means that the protests in Iran were not genuine expressions of popular discontent – the Iranian people do have real grievances. The point is that given the Western record of fuelling violence, of promoting regime change and social collapse for selfish gain – goals rooted in ‘much more important questions than legality’ – Western progressives should, of course, respond with extreme caution. As Noam Chomsky told the Financial Times in 2013: Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don’t agree with, like bombing. Above all, given the West’s habit of supporting militant factions in hopes of using its near-monopoly on high-tech violence to control outcomes, progressives should probably never support violent attempts at regime change. As we have seen in Iraq, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, doing so opens the door to almost unlimited suffering. * Rawnsley, ‘The voices of doom were so wrong,’ The Observer, April 13, 2003. * Quoted, Mark Curtis, ‘The Ambiguities of Power’, Zed Books, 1995, p.93. http://clubof.info/