#MORE CORPORATIZED BULLSHIT

[msclaritea]

Adobe Film And TV Fund To Support Underrepresented Creators And Filmmakers – Deadline

EXCEPT Adobe, highly corporatized, will be partnering w/other corporatized orgs, one of which is the Hollywood NAACP Bureau, run for a year by another Hollywood insider, Kyle Bowser, who among other things, worked for NBC FOX HBO and warner bros AND oversaw the Scientology-linked show In Living Colour. What's also interesting is how much the words 'diversity' and 'inclusion' are used by both Adobe and Bowser, but they never talk about what kind. I'm just going to say it. This is just another avenue for the Cult of Scientology and Hollywood Gay Mafia to add more people to their little army. Don't doubt for one minute that being QUEER is going to be the default. Might as well warn young heterosexual creatives not to bother with the Nuclear Family-hating Hollywood.

[kytsuine-blog]

...yes, I have, and I'm 24. And for some reason I just wrote an essay in the tags about it.

Tag your age if you wanna bc I was just thinking about how I have used floppy disks before (I'm 25 and used them in elementary computer lab) but my 22 y.o. brother hasn't which is so weird to me like 3 years isn't a long time at all to me

[artbyblastweave]

Question based on the fascinating Wild Talent's Axes post. Why do you think most adaptations of High Blue settings change them into lower Blue settings?

I think there's basically two reasons for that.

Reason one is that I think that on some level the executive-suite-level aversion to looking too silly or wacky and scaring off unfamiliar audiences was, at the time that it reigned supreme over all of these creative decisions, unfortunately just kind of correct. You're doing Spider-Man, alright, you can kind of bank on the audience's ambient knowledge of Spider-Man to buoy along the question of "How and why Spider-Man" and maybe "How and why Green Goblin." You bring in enemies outside of that paradigm, you bring in wizards, vampires, aliens, now you gotta explain those things too, you gotta spend bandwidth on that. There's a real murky middle ground here between a cynical fear of looking too silly, and a genuine scope and focus problem- how much value added is there in pulling away from the core mutant stuff to start mucking around with the Shi'ar or Cyttorak or Belasco or Dracula? I don't think it's a coincidence that I don't hear people bringing up the fact that there were aliens in Dark Phoenix.

The Suicide Squad(s) are actually a really good example of this issue. Suicide Squad, while very bad, was actually a very high blue movie, to the extent that it actually fucked with the pacing when they kept turning to the camera to introduce new origin stories, to the point of creating a tone-and-theme clash with the previous two movies where this stuff was mostly framed as much rarer and more disruptive. The Suicide Squad was equally high-blue, but also much more deliberate and naturalistic in conveying that this was a superhero setting rife with weirdos. Naturalism is a watchword with this kind of thing.

Which brings us around to issue two, right, which is that, as much as I love the high-blue bullshit of the golden and silver age, you're huffing glue if you think those settings became like that due to some deliberate creative ethos. They needed to meet monthly deadlines and they were writing for small children, it was the corporatized version of making up a bedtime story off the cuff, and over time the nonsense simply accumulated. Later writers take that precedent and run with it to do interesting and valuable things, but if you're creating a classic high-blue superhero setting from scratch these days it's almost always a form of emulation. Approached without clarity of purpose, it can make for weird or bad or messy writing!

Ultimate Spider-Man is an example of a comic adaptation that bleached the blue, and that decision- to tie all of Spidey's villains to a common origin- resulted in a really strong story. Stronger themes, stronger character dynamics, stronger worldbuilding and stronger, cohesive political messaging. Objectively the correct decision for the project they were going for. Tightening the blue can let you do things- it lets you sift through and find the strongest shared points between the disparate elements of the mythology, assemble them into something thoughtful and directed.

[max1461]

I had this realization the other day that we're living in an incredibly dynamic era. Ok, I'm not sure I really believe in that kind of thing—how do you determine the "dynamism" of an "era"?—but like, go with me on this. You see those pictures or whatever of Russian soldiers (I think?) with anime waifus on their tank, right. And it's like...

There's a couple parts to this. The first part is that, due to the internet I suppose, people from all parts of the world, from countries that used to be largely closed off from communication with one another, etc., are now sharing in one big cultural discourse. We're all talking to each other more than we ever have been. The second part is that this discourse is decentralized, right, it's not governments facilitating this communication and choosing the topics, and it's not big centralized media institutions, it's just whatever random pop culture stuff happens to catch people's fancy. And not even the most sanitized, corporatized, mass-market pop culture stuff either. It's anime girls! It's "cringe"! It's pulp! It's horny! How very human that that's the sort of media that unites us in conversation, right—stupid horny bullshit. It makes me kind of proud.

So, then, the last part that really made this realization hit me is that the anime girls are on a tank. This is not good but it is important. It's not just that we're all having a big stupid conversation about stupid pulpy media. No, it's like... people who are fighting and killing and dying, doing real things in the world, making history in a very tangible way, are spending their time conversing on the internet about anime waifus. And presumably they're acquiring some portion of their motivation and sense of self from these conversations, as we all acquire from all our social interactions in at least some small part.

So that's really the crux of it, right. A few years ago I did kind of buy into this idea that, ok, "human history" is over. History is still going, but it's now the history of institutions, of complex economic agents, of math made flesh, human agents working for inhuman ends. And the time of human history, of diplomacy conducted via marriage and family ties, of blood feuds, of the personal loyalties between a lord and his vassals... I kind of thought all that was over.

But, for better or worse, these Russian guys with anime waifus on their tank made me realize that perspective is bullshit. The age of human history is not over. There are, you know, there are... young stupid angry horny men are out there, shifting international borders, shaping the world, because they are young and stupid and angry and horny. And this particular example is negative, but there are also young stupid angry horny men (and women, and others) out there doing good things, great things, because they are young and stupid and angry and horny. I thought that might be over, but it's not. Do you see? Human history lives!

[singsongraptor]

If liberals and white leftists were really about that master's tools, master's house bullshit, they could have and should have been gassing people up to vote third party. To organize and put forward candidates at all levels, to campaign and outreach.

A metric fuckton of people are so fucking tired of Dems and their cowardice, corporatism and impotence, so they sit out voting rather than voting for the nuclear waste on the other side of the aisle, but rather than saying "hey, there's more aisles, let me show you those" these weak-willed, lazy, privileged punk asses would rather scream for More Status Quo, because we all know they're just gonna sit back and refuse to "push them left" with the Dems.

It's not about making things better for them. It's not even about stopping the fascism. It's your classic "saying the right things is just like praxis" even though they're absolutely NOT saying the right shit either.

Of course third party "can't win" y'all make every effort possible to not only not try but actively sabotage the way out.

[elendsessor]

the other day i was reorganizing my room and stumbled across a copy of korokoro (specifically volume 466) i got at a culture fest back in 2019 and goddamn this shit’s interesting. there’s a lot of content (mostly promotional manga and the like targeted at children) but some of the advertisements are what really make me wish this was how online stuff was set up instead of bland corporatized shit. i want online magazines and for announcement blogs from companies to be this fun and this interesting like they are in actual published monthly stuff like korokoro.

quickly wanna apologize for the shit quality of these photos i couldn’t really stretch out the pages or anything.

this was actually how i figured out beyblade was still popular long after i remember it being cool on my side of the pond. that and yokai watch took up a majority of the volume’s contents.

even on a primarily beyblade related page you cannot escape the reminder of the bullshit that is legitimately obtaining momonyan in yw3.

yokai watch was at some point uber popular in japan as i’m sure is common knowledge amongst the fanbase but the amount of shit in here is absurd to me. i knew it got big but man it got BIG big.

there’s also some more beyblade content and some advertisements for a lot of 3ds games that are pretty obscure. actual acknowledgement of boxboy should be appreciated and the existence of monster hunter stories is a reminder of just how massive the monster collecting genre was at some point.

while i didn’t want to show much of the manga side i did want to acknowledge pokemon here since i remember the sun and moon hype days so well this actually hit me in the nostalgia feels. love all the little four panel gag stuff. pokemon horizon also was what i remember motivating me to buy this nearly 4 years ago since it looked cool. if there’s a translation available for horizons in general i would love to read it.

marketing should be creative goddammit and korokoro from what i can tell hit the mark.

[tomsawyee]

the online left isn’t ready for it but at some point we should probably have that conversation about pathologizing the harms of our modern engagement-obsessed corporatized internet as “idk literally all of us have adhd”

we are already neck-deep into multiple generations being fed constant streams of infinite stimulation that only get less and less effective as our brains need more and more at every moment just to hold our attention. there’s scholarship on it, but it never gains traction because we’ve couched it as some kind of pseudo-partisan “The Olds want us off the damn phone” bullshit. it’s getting better, but it’s still not great.

infinite scrolling is rotting our brains. binge watching and algorithm slurry and FYP and buttery smooth “Convenience” and and and the monopoly of our attention is the greatest wrong of our digital age. while neurodivergence is poorly understood both medically and socially, it is our obligation to ourselves to take a step back when something (our ability to maintain focus) feels like it has drastically changed and find the common denominator. or just flick past this because it’s longer than three sentences.

[papirouge]

I think the Americans are scared deep down of protesting like the French because many are just lazy and don’t want to be too uncomfortable by protesting. The French are based in that despite the hard shit and the tragedies, shit gets done. The Americans push back a bit, get scared when getting pushback by the elites and cling to their guns without using them to go back to their homes to whine at how awful their country is. Their country is huge and and if millions can come together to protest they can do it but they just won’t. I see it as they are only looking out for themselves deep down. They don’t care about others. They aren’t and probably won’t ever be “United” and fight together. That country is doomed to collapse probably soon so if any Americans reading this want to leave, I don’t blame you. Just don’t infect other countries with your bullshit.

Americans should start protesting because walking for hours is good for health and they'd be less obese. Being regularly chased by the police is good exercise, you work your endurance AND cardio🏃🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️💨🚓. Now you know why the french are so skinny🤍🇫🇷

Yeah I always clowned American conservative/libertarians flexing their guns and mUh fRrEdOm but ultimately still getting finessed by a geriatric man out of his mind lmao.

If those men were that courageous you'd think they already done yet another Capitol stunt but right now they're busy crying & shaking behind their computers, saying about how the Left™ is coming for them, how the Capitol was a pSyOp to get every pAtrIoT arrested......but ALSO, it wasn't no big deal because the Capitol doesn't represent the American people anymore - and other copium nonsense...

And yeah the problem of individualism is a huge problem preventing Americans to resist effectively against governments. The USA is a veery young country too so its people have yet to build a sense of community ship beside the flag and the Bible - who never stopped good White Americans from treating other people as second class citizens if not barely humans flr most of its History ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ I cringe big time whenever I see ppl fawn over the concept of the USA, the "land of the free".... when its own founders had slaves 🤡

Social class awareness is what makes people break free from the bondage of corporatism. The USA have yet to have an ideologue like Karl Marx or Jean Jacques Rousseau to peak the masses.

Every french kid has to read "Le Contrat Social" of Rousseau during highschool ; that's why french citizens are wired to understand social class self awareness. Which ultimately make them more prone to fuck shit up when they feel their 'class' threatened.

I also always said that religion was relevant on that matter too. France is Catholic. I am not Catholic but I always said that Catholics knew how to do shit when it came to help the poor, organize mass scale social initiative, etc. Everytime I see Christians seething against giving money to the poor it's Protestants.

Here in France we have Caisses de Grèves (which can be translated as "Strike Pool") were ppl can donate money and then the money is distributed to all the people striking / missing days of work which take a tool on their finance. Lately, one donor gave 30 000€ !!! So even rich people have solidarity with strikers. Because social class awareness also helps rich people to be aware of their responsibility (use their privilege to help lower class people). OG Rousseau did the work centuries ago to slap some sense into the bourgeoisie, and now modern french citizens reap the benefits of his ideas. That's the perk of living in such an old country 🤍🇫🇷

....But when I look at American (Christians), they are often very contemptuous with this kind of initiative. Or they'll be like "I hope this money isn't going to lEftisTs !!" or even stupid shit like "handing stuff for free is the beginning of Communism"......but what they don't understand is that those leftist are socially closer to them than those millionaire they're white knighting online.

[libertarian-druid-ny-separatist]

Eh, calling bullshit on your ideology. I get if you think that Bushnell's supporters are huffing "copium" but, sadly, well, your ideology has done more to obliterate the environment than any other. And no, no amount of Bwut the USSR!!! copium isn't going to really cover for that. They industrialized with less waste than the West. Sorry, man, druids and dollars are incompatible. I get if you need to make up shit about 'corporatism' and other no true scotsman stuff in order to stay sane, but, well... lol.

My dude, do you think the government just invented solar and wind power on their own? Yeah, completely unregulated markets have done damage in the past, the free market has advanced green tech immensely farther than governments could, otherwise we'd be seeing green innovation out of China, who still uses mostly coal power.

Glad you at least recognize that Bushnell threw his life away. If you'd like to talk more, my anons are open as are my dms since clearly you don't want to say this publicly.

S'all good, no judgement. But at the end of the day, no socialist nation can exist without at least having capitalist elements. The more that exist in it, the more you see a chance at success, whereas under a pure socialist economy, everyone struggles equally except those at the top who don't struggle.

[wheretheeternalare]

with the heavy caveat that it is slightly soulless (though really most corporate jobs are) - amazon corporate pretty much has what you’re describing. i’ve been with them about 3 years and right now i’m working hybrid out of one of the corp offices, M-F 8 hr shifts, 2 days in office and 3 days at home, with the ability to come in more as wanted or needed. Depending on the team or role you still have to talk to people but because it’s all regional it’s over slack/email, never really face to face or over phone, and with a lot of free time for personal projects (or slacking off). on slower days i’ll usually bring my knitting to work and stick on an audiobook which is pretty common. def not perfect but it fits the bill for what i need (e.g. ‘leave me alone with my spreadsheets and music and i’ll get back to you when my project’s done’)

oh interesting! that definitely does sound like the kind of structure I want, although I have to say that I have also found that I need to at least somewhat agree with the mission of my workplace to really get along. not saying this to shame you because yeah all corporate jobs are pretty much equally soulless, just that I definitely had a better time working at a library and a museum than I’m having working for a university, which is ostensibly something I agree with principles-wise but is actually hugely corporatized/tied up in bureaucratic bullshit. but I will keep this in mind bc I also like to get paid a living wage and libraries and museums aren’t known for that lmao

[tehjleck]

stupid corporatism, the problem is that we know that's bullshit. We know you're just freaking out because you spent money on all these buildings thinking you'd force us all to spend 1/3rd of our lives inside making you more money.

[rametarin]

please stop doing this

Some Dude: “American Liberals and conservatives are the exact same thing.”

Also Some Dude: “I am so tired of people conflating socialists with communists! They’re not even remotely similar!”

wish even half of you that felt like they were the exact same would stop platforming the democrats/democrat party, and grow some gonads to actually A.) have some integrity and join the actual pro-socialism parties B.) actually join the American communist parties C.) go green, where the other people that are actually crypto-socialists/communists can continue pretending to be ecologists in the interest of ecology and not advancing policy, are living.

But I understand. Being what you are is, “bad optics right now,” probably due to, “CIA propaganda,” or whatever bullshit that takes the onus of responsibility from being associated with a violent, conspiratorial and totalitarian culture of usurpers away from defeating your own arguments.

Since a great deal of you unironically use the fact the US has HAD slavery and concentration camps historically as a reason why things can’t be fixed or modified to be better, they HAVE to be destroyed and replaced in order to not have the stigma or guilt of a thing anymore, it’d make sense you don’t want to speak up and declare what you really are and vote in the appropriate parties. You whom fly the god damned red and black and yellows would have to willingly associate with every bit of imperialism-in-all-but-name that was the Soviet Union, and any Socialist Republic that bore those colors, used those symbols and spoke those memes and slokans. So, given actual history, the famines, the pogroms of the supposed “anti-classist, anti-discrimination, anti-barbarism” parties and movements that turned into piles of pestilence, famine and pyramids of dead skulls don’t want your symbols associated with that.

And yet many of you that’d openly wave a hammer and sickle flag, think a statue of Lincoln erected and financed by freed slaves is too spicy to have without declaring, “LINCOLN WAS A WHITE SUPREMACIST” everywhere. That the United States can never clean the blemishes of its history and that that’s an argument as to why it needs to be snuffed out as a concept and paved over with a Year Zero and something else in its place.

Instead, you spineless fucking interlopers continue to commandeer the democrats. There’s been some headway by the russo-supremacists to commandeer the republicans by tricking some of them into thinking Putin is the cure to the worst of your shit, but by and large the republicans remain more entrenched in religious moralism or plutocratic corporatism and “small government statism,” which one way or another prevents the worst of your intrusions. Yes, the republicans and them doing that present their own sets of problems. They’re different problems from the ones you represent.

You know it suits you better to pretend to be liberals when it suits you, using the term and stretching it, hoping to make it synonymous with you- and you’ve managed to succeed, for the most part. Except; you that aren’t liberal, but pretend to be liberal for ideological convenience sake; the mask has been slipping, of late. You’ve seen that this vessel has taken you as far as it can go.

And I’ve been enjoying seeing this. The holes opening up, exposing the parasite or predatory mimic pretending to be the real deal. You are not liberal. You are anti-private property and pro government (”society,” that you dub a government declaring itself to be the voice of society) control over natural resources and employment opportunities.

I look forwards to seeing some of you actually arguing openly and honestly from the actual parties and stop trying to railroad another party towards your values and goals by pretending to be liberals. And you’d best do it quickly, because between liberal ownership of self, free market capitalism and the advancement of science and technology from both private and public outlets hurriedly bringing us towards an era of affordable miracles and quality of life improvements that just 30-40 years ago WOULD have required megawealth to even imagine, there’s not going to be much of a difference between the opportunities for a wealthy person and a middle classed one, much longer.

Then you’ll be back to trying to rally ‘comrades’ with bluster and insistence that everybody stop imagining the situation just between what’s fair for individuals and instead demanding we imagine some game rules where the rich are a nefarious and inherently evil force unto themselves while ‘the poor’ (those that aren’t rich) are inherently victims of their exploitation and oppression. Assigning malice to things not on the basis of the actual malice of actual assholes doing actual asshole things, but characterizing people as assholes because they have things, and someone whom has poor is automatically a victim because he’s not rich.

When stripped of your cover, and no longer given the benefit of the doubt, and denied the ability to play off peoples unfamilarity of your snake oil, you’ll eventually have to argue for what you really believe. And what you really believe is shit. Even the parts that sound good, are mere cover used to declare would be the positive outcome of your shit systems.

That’s why people will conflate the two systems and not care about the difference. One system will see the crimes of another, and alchemically transmute itself to claim it’s not affiliated with the other, that that behavior is characteristic only of the other guy, and they must be mistaken for presuming you the same. While you in fact engage in the same crimes.

Meanwhile, you cannot argue a secular liberal constitutionalist republic that can and has historically been a limit to social hegemony of religious authority, a federated and regulated secular system has been essential in filing down the much of the worst kinds of trade abuses by cartels and organizations, isn’t worlds different from a fucking religiously fascist ethnostate. American liberalism bears little resemblance to American conservatism outside the fact both to varying degrees and populations have and respect the right to private property, and use capitalism. When those are the only things you care about, your ideology may as well be the only religion you see as valid, and everything that is not your faith may as well be paganism when it’s not the antithetical Satanism to your beliefs.

[barrymccaulkinem]

i think i get so worked up about this anti ai art bullshit bc 1, obviously, youre trying to kill art and fully corporatize it. but maybe more importantly, 2, falling for such a baseless moral panic scares me. it says to me all its going to take is someone phrasing something some new way and boom, youre joining the anti trans moral panic. youre not thinking critically, you are seeking confirmation.

that post which seems to be fueling a lot of this, on tumblr at least, is as bad an argument as every anti trans or antisemitic talking point. look at the "evidence." those featured details cherrypicked for comparison could have been drawn by another real person, the only similarity is that they also have colors and shapes.

[pakeithpsy]

How about you use that ad money to fix your barely functional mobile site? Or maybe not cover up the content I'm trying to look at with shitty messages begging me to re-enable ads that cover up the content I'm trying to look at?

I can't take this fucking bullshit anymore, every single website is impossible to use now because these incompetent greedy asshats care more about money than having a functional, user-friendly layout. This shit is exactly why people use adblockers and instead of actually putting in the effort to make your site better so people would actually be willing to monetarily support your site, you make everyone's life a living hell because your billionaire CEO can't stand the thought of being ten cents poorer from ads that are obnoxious at best and outright harmful at worst. Capitalism and corporatism were goddamn mistakes.

[rotationalsymmetry]

I’m trying to come up with fake pride discourse and all I’m coming up with is real bullshit (ie bullshit discourse that people actually argue) and real things worth worrying about. Like how language tends to center western concepts of sexual orientation and gender, and how pride isn’t necessarily accessible to people who have issues with mobility and/or crowds and loud noises, and the perennial corporatization and cops thing.

Ok lemme try one more time: clothes should be banned at Pride because historically clothing is used to signify cultural and class distinctions, so a truly egalitarian society requires abolishing clothes.

How’s that?

[t4t4t]

Such a distrust has solid foundations, not only in the criminal management of the pandemic, but more generally in a matter of fact which comrades of ours who succumbed to the blindest scientism [14] now deny: in a capitalist society, medicine operates according to capitalist logic. Do antivaxxers draw absurd conclusions from this premise? Yes they do, but the premise doesn't disappear because of that.

For all these reasons, we refuse to discard the views of those who don't want to vaccinate, even if we made a different choice; nor do we consider those people, as many "leftists" seem to do, our enemies any more so than the ruling class that put us all in this situation. 

Obviously, when antivaxxers spew bullshit and spread fake news and conspiracy fantasies, we refute them to the extent that we're able to do so, as Wu Ming 1 did in his book La Q di Qomplotto [The Q of Qonspiracy]. What we won't do is join those who incite crowds against the "No Vax" scapegoat. We oppose this hate campaign, which only serves to absolve the government and the bosses.

Once again, one needn’t be against vaccines to grasp a basic fact: to focus only on the vaccine as if upon the arrival of the cavalry has contributed to repressing the structural causes of the pandemic, its impact, and its management under the sign of emergency which has for some time formed the logic of contemporary capitalist governance. Our health care system was progressively dismantled, corporatized and rendered unfit to withstand any critical situation, but when the vaccine arrived, no one spoke of reversing course on this dismantling of the system. 

You mentioned La Q di Qomplotto, a book in which one of you, Wu Ming 1, dissects “conspiracism” in search of its "kernels of truth." Can you briefly explain this concept, and how it applies to the pandemic situation? 

In the massive and transversal diffusion of conspiracy fantasies — including fantasies on the subject of vaccines — we identify the expression of a malaise, a discontent, a confused awareness that capitalist society is unlivable, dehumanizing, alienating. These are what we refer to as "kernels of truth," and they're both of a more general and more specific truth.

Even QAnon has some truth at its core: the system is indeed monstrous, and the Democratic Party in the US really does serve the interests of a loathsome elite. The fact that from these premises and intuitions, rather than arriving at a consistently anticapitalist consciousness, instead generate a belief in a secret society of bloodsucking pedophile satanists who keep millions of children enslaved underground is a huge problem but, again, the kernels of truth don't disappear because of that. We could describe QAnon as an unconscious allegory and unintentional parody of anticapitalist critique.

By kernels of truth we mean general premises, truncated intuitions, vague discontent, poorly elaborated outbursts of anger brought about by the sickness of living in capitalist society. And if we can find them in QAnon, a fortiori we can find them in antivaccinism. They're the same kernels from which the best strands of an anticapitalist critique of medicine developed in the past, from Ivan Illich to Franco Basaglia and Franca Ongaro Basaglia, from Michel Foucault to the German SPK15, from Félix Guattari to British antipsychiatry.

The subordination of medicine to the search for profit, the morbid relationship between medicine and capital, the dependence of medico-pharmaceutical research on big corporations, the increasing bureaucratization and depersonalization of care, the lack of confidence in the health care system after a long string of scandals... These are, or would be, our issues, anticapitalist issues, but we'll never intercept that discontent — and by extension, we'll never shift it in more sensible and fruitful directions — as long as we refuse to see it and remain content to treat those who express it as our enemies. In doing so, we reduce ourselves to gatekeepers of the system, defenders of the status quo, and we leave the field open to grifters and fascists. 

Then there are kernels of an even more specific truth, those concerning the political management of the pandemic: all the lies told by the government, all the terror and sensationalism, all the blatant disinformation that accompanies the vaccination campaign.

...

Appendix: On Post-Pandemic Climate Activism

by Wu Ming 1

We have to be more and more careful about how we fight for the climate. What Andreas Malm writes in his How To Blow Up A Pipeline is right: a big problem of the climate movement is that it's been too respectable, too "modest," too loyal to a certain imperative, too compliant to rules it didn't give itself autonomously. After the Covid emergency, there's a risk that it will become even more so. 

From the diversionary management of the pandemic, and especially from the deficit of critical response to such management, the ruling class learned a whole host of lessons. We, on the other hand, have learned far too few.

The offloading of responsibility from the ruling class downwards was already a practice before, with the emphasis on individual consumer choices (at the expense of collective action and systemic change), or with forms of regressive eco-taxation such as the increase in the TICPE fuel tax which sparked the Yellow Vest protests in France.

Now the enemy knows that the offloading can be more effective thanks to a mix of authoritarianism, paternalism and narratives of contrition and atonement inoculated into the social body. Emergency as a method of governance works best if I, the citizen, internalize a sense of guilt and convince myself that I must do penance "for the sake of others,” obey power "to save others,” even adopting behaviors "as a memento to myself" and "out of respect for others.” This is what justified the domestic confinement and the demonization of all outdoor activities while factories continued to operate, the obligation to wear a mask outdoors even though contagion in those situations is almost impossible, the curfew that "does not have a scientific reason, but serves to remind us that we have to make sacrifices" (the virologist Antonella Viola said that on November 4th 2020), the Green Pass with all its incongruities... Il faut, once again, défendre la société.

The "society" that we should defend by discipline and obedience is capitalist society, that is, the Economy. This big "phony cooperative" of which we are all members-employees is like the protagonist of Fabrizio De Andrè's Ballata dell'amore cieco [Ballad of Blind Love]: to prove that you love her you have to castrate and immolate yourself, tralalalalla tralallaleru. What's new is that they now ask you to do so for the climate. For "sustainability." Because "transition has costs'” and you have to pay them. You have to pay them because it's your fault and therefore, honey, “if you love me, cut the four veins in your wrists.”

This is also why those who denounce the "dictatorship of health" are wrong: they believe that the point was the content of the emergency, while the system continues to experiment with its form. Once the outcome has been achieved, once the system has regained its homeostasis18, it can move beyond the pandemic-centered narrative. In Italy, where the aftermath of virocentrism persists more than elsewhere, this "gap" is still hard to notice, but it will happen here too.

Now, we know very well that during the pandemic emergency it was the younger generations that were most singled out, blamed, infantilized and browbeaten into respecting the rules. The same people who, in great majority, are present in movements around the climate. When the sirens of capital sing the songs of ecosacrifice, they will need earplugs like those of Odysseus.

A song that can have a thousand covers and rearrangements, depending on the cultural substrata: ecofascism, ecostalinism, Protestant ecofrugality, ecocatholicism with echoes of the Counter-Reformation, ecorighteousness focused on "ecorespectability" and so on.

We should all meditate on Mario Draghi's declaration, as it was reported by Italian newspapers on September 21: "The climate emergency is like the pandemic.” At the level of system homeostasis, this means: we will manage the climate the same way thay we managed the pandemic, i.e. by passing off all the blame on you — and many of you will be only too happy to take it on.

-Bologna, October 25-28 (notes added November 4-5, 2021) 

Translated by Wu Ming