#and find a euphemism that uses black humour instead

[une-sanz-pluis]

the accounts of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester's deaths are like:

"we don't know how he died. Some said he just got really sad and just died, just like how Henry IV and Edward IV said Richard II and Henry VI got really sad and just died. Some said that he was smothered between two featherbeds, just how Edward II and Thomas of Woodstock were probably murdered. Others still said it involved a hot spit going into a place no hot spit should go just like the very famous and very untrue account of Edward II's death."

And when you finally stumble on a new one it's like

"Yeah, they drowned him in wine. Just like how George Duke of Clarence is said to have been killed."

[whipped-for-kpop-fics]

Pup

You can find the Halloween request post  here :3

Thank you for the request @namjin-fangirling-again​, I hope you like it, even if it’s not particularly cracky but it’s still funny(at least in my eyes)   Request; “  werewolf. Jungkook. Make it extra fluffy and crack ”

Jeon Jeongguk x reader Genre; Fluff and humour. Werewolf au Warnings; Adult language and topics . JK’s dick is mentioned multiple times because i have no self control Word count; 1.5k

Summary; Every full moon you lock Jeongguk in a cell ready for his animal side to take over his mind and body.  But little does he know that he’s not the big bad wolf he thinks he is.

---

The full moon; the lifeforce and also the bane of every werewolf. 

Even though werewolves have been able to switch between wolf and human form at will for centuries now, the full moon still reigns over their bodies and forces them to be in wolf form. In the city, it's a nuisance but nothing terribly bad, most city wolves tend to simply spend the moon hours in their homes watching TV or sleeping it off. Those in the country have it easier; most meet in groups to run and play, take advantage of their wolves natural abilities. But there's a select handful of werewolves that are still affected by the moon like their ancestors; these unfortunate souls lose all grasp on their humanity the moment the full moon makes an appearance and are only aware of themselves again once the sun rises the following morning.

Jeon Jeongguk is one of those poor unfortunate souls and you are the only one that has seen him during these hours in a long time.

"Can't you just leave me here this time?" He complained as you chained the cell he was inside shut. Despite what Hollywood says; werewolves cannot break through thick metal chains during moon hours, they've never been able to either. Though there was that one time Jeongguk snapped his steering wheel a couple of months ago in the midst of a traffic jam leading up to moon hours. But that was purely a mix of stress at the thought of potentially being caught outside once he lost his humanity and his big ol' veiny arms thanks to his daily gym sessions. (We won't go into how hot you found his strength at that moment because that's another story entirely with a different rating and subject matter).

"I'm not leaving you here all night alone." You scoffed settling in your usual beanbag opposite the barred door of his cell and pulling the blanket at your feet around you. "You're lucky you don't feel the cold as much, it's fucking freezing in here."

"You say that every month." He chuckled laying down on the futon with one bare arm behind his head.

"It's the truth. We pay all that money for this room and they can't even install a heating system? We've been robbed, Guk."

"Whatever you say, babe."

You just hummed through your pout and took a few moments to take in his naked muscled form on display for your eyes and your eyes only - it was actually so that he didn't wreck his clothes when the shift happened but you liked to pretend it was all for your viewing pleasure. "How you feeling?"

"Fine, got a while left yet." That had you perking up in your seat. Sensing your movement, Jeongguk looked over at you unimpressed. "No."

"What? I didn't say anything!"

"Every single month you complain about being cold and then ask me to warm you up." He deadpanned.

"As you should, you're my boyfriend." You huffed dramatically.

"We're not having sex this close to moon hours,"

"But..." The look he gave you made you slouch sulkily into your blanket. "It would be fine."

"I'm not risking it. If my timing is off and the moon rises while you're in here... I don't want to even think about what I'd do to you. I love you too much to risk your safety just to get my dick wet."

"I've never felt unsafe around you during moon hours."

"You've never been around me during moon hours without these bars between us." At least, that's what he thought.

*

You didn't need a window to know when the full moon was beginning to make its appearance, all you needed was Jeongguk's groan of displeasure and you knew.

You straightened up from slouching against the wall playing on your phone to peer over at where Jeongguk was curled up with his arms bracketing his head. As much as you knew he wasn't in any pain during the transformation, you knew he hated every second of it. For the first few minutes, he always without fail tried to fight the change and grasped at his humanity in his mind but it never worked. His animal counterpart always rose up, taking over his mind first before too ruling his body.

The change from beginning to end never took more than five minutes; once his wolf was in charge the physical changes happened almost in a blink of an eye.

"Jungoo!" You cooed flinging the blanket off of your body to crawl over and unlock the gate. A pair of amber eyes peered at you, unfocused at first due to the change but in moments recognition set in and you had a lapful of wolf. Well, lapful is a bit generous honestly.

At any other time, Jeongguk's wolf was a fully grown majestic creature with sleek deep brown verging on black fur. But during moon hours Jeongguk's wolf was...well...a puppy. A tiny little ball of fluffy chocolate brown and you were the only one that knew about it.

"Hey puppy," Your hands rubbed over the little wriggling form on your thighs, scratching and rubbing his tiny body while he yipped and panted excitedly at the attention. "Hm, what shall we do today?" He barked at you, an almost squeak of a sound that had you cackling. If Jeongguk knew what happened to him during moon hours he would never look you in the eye again, he'd be so embarrassed of the fact his most instinctual form was a baby, an adorable little wolf pup that never left your side even to eat. Though to be honest, pretty much all of your friends knew that he loved to be babied and looked after, especially by you and would always choose you over anyone else even before you started dating. So it wouldn't surprise anyone to find out but he sure as hell would never live it down.

Just like all other full moons since the first one with Jeongguk three years ago, you spent the whole time playing and cuddling with his ickle wolfie, and moon hours are the only time that phrase isn't a euphemism- he had begged you to stop calling his dick 'ickle wolfie' multiple times but you always refused.

Before you knew it, your alarm was going off telling you that the sun was due to rise at any moment. "Better get back in there, Jungoo." You sighed wiping the pizza crumbs off of his muzzle. He looked up at you and whined sensing what was coming. "I'll miss you too, little one but we'll be able to play again together before you know it." He made vaguely distressed crying sounds the whole time you carried him into the cell and placed him gently onto the futon. He tried to clamber back into your arms but you quickly backed away after pressing a kiss to his fluffy little head. "Stay still, Guk will never let me come with him again if he wakes outside of the cell." The pup watched you back out of the cell and lock the door before he ran over to the bars and yipped at you.

Jeongguk woke like he did every sunrise after moon hours, curled up against the bars with your hand stroking through his hair. He made a sort of grunting sound signalling he was back to his normal self and earned a hair ruffle in return that had him swatting your hand away. While he reorientated himself you got up and removed the lock and chain from the door to return it to its home on the wall.

A sudden exhale left his lungs when you plopped down onto his naked lap and cuddled up to his chest.

"Did you feed me pizza again?" He questioned after figuring out what the taste lingering on his tongue was.

"Puppy loves pizza."

"You love pizza." He chuckled finally wrapping his arms around your waist to hold you tight.

"And you love me which means puppy loves me therefore by default, puppy loves pizza."

"Really wish you'd stop calling my wolf a puppy."

"The cutest puppy ever."

"Whatever you say, babe." Jeongguk laughed and pressed a kiss to your head so you straightened up instead of leaning on his shoulder.

"So, I'm still cold." You grinned mischievously while wiggling your eyebrows suggestively at him.

"You feel pretty warm to me." He teased, sliding his hands underneath the t-shirt and hoody on your torso to touch the warm skin of your waist.

"I'd like to be a lot warmer. And naked. And attached to you by our genitals." Jeongguk burst into laughter at your wording, something beyond fond and loving in his eyes as he admired your serious expression.

"You say the weirdest shit, sweetheart."

"Hm, I do but it works for you. I can feel ickle wolfie rising his head to play!" You sniggered wiggling on his lap.

"Pavlovian response to sunrise after moon hours. You've trained me to be ready for sex. You never should've taken that psychology course with Joon-hyung."

"Shut up and get me naked, wolf boy."

"Whatever you want, I live only to please you, my love!" Was his dramatic and very sarcastic response even if he was already lifting you up as he got to his knees ready to throw you onto the futon and give you exactly what you wanted.

[thingsreadinthedark]

Current reads and updates!

Almost done with Men Without Women which was another fantastic book of short stories by Haruki Murakami! I think I have a few stories left and it overflows with his unique writing style, it’s pensive, humourous and profound in Murakami’s typical style

My Mother’s House is wild. I started reading it yesterday and I think I’m maybe 10% in… it’s a unique story I like that Haiti plays a role in the story. This house is murderous. One of my BOOKCLUB homies put this on my radar awhile back and so far it’s good and engrossing

Decided to give Colson’s Harlem Shuffle another chance at my eyes. It’s good. It’s getting better, I’m almost done and this Linus character is something else. It really makes me wonder how many Black folks in the 50s/60s were burned by the thoughtless actions of their white friends at the turn of the Civil Rights Era.. The story dipped low 65% in the book, but managed to climb the fuck back up at 80%. The story started to pop back off again and I’m curious how this ends at this point. That’s how I started reaching The Archer a few days ago, I got real sick of reading this book so I took a break and had something else, but this one is worth the return right now…

I started For Brown Girls (with sharp edges and tender hearts) a couple months ago because I got the book released to me on Netgalley.. I didn’t read it tho. Sometimes I find the Netgalley formatting too hard/distracting to really get into. However, this book has been released to the public now so I picked up a copy to jump into it since it was so graciously shared with me on Netgalley and I was interested in reading it… Homegirl doesn’t disappoint - Prisca Dorca Mojica Rodriguez is a Nicaraguan-American and so far she has eviscerated the United States for the culture of Volunteerism/Missionary type shit they do in countries that they have a direct hand in creating economic and political strife in. She also sends a hug to black and brown diasporic communities in her intro, it’s beautiful. Second chapter is about the fucked up ways that colorism is perpetuated in the diaspora, especially in her Latinx experience, where this colorism is used to break their linkages to their Indigenous Latinx communities. I love the way that her brain works, how detailed she is, how she centers herself and by doing so centers all of us, Black and Brown folks. I appreciate this book soooo much and I’m only on Chapter 3.

Today I also read the intro to Black Boy Out of Time by Hari Ziyad, bitches get a lot of reading done over 3-4 hours, child!

I didn’t really get as deep into this book as I wanted..

There was a LOT of and I mean A LOT of praise heaped on this book in the opening pages and that was dope to see.. lots of reputable people saying nice things. I know a lot of people don’t read the praise given to authors at the beginning of books, instead choosing to jump right in, but I love those segments where people get their flowers. It also gives me an idea of the circles they’re running in and what people actually like about the person. You can also smell out the euphemisms. I hope to read some more of this book soon. Like look at this high ass praise — they compared this author to James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. I haven’t ever read this person’s work, so this is a selling point to me, but I will be looking at this work with a more critical eye to see if I get the same feelings arising in me once I read this book..

Lastly, I’ve been reading The Power of Nothing to Lose for a minute, probably about a week or two — it’s really good. The author gets into people and situations who change/impacted the world because they felt that they had nothing to lose as they were pushed to the limit or they just had enough of the same old same old, or they just weren’t or were challenged or they weren’t about being told no. I just read a segment on Rosa Parks and Montgomery Bus Boycott and it was illuminating, not any new information, but I do like the lens that these authors are using to walk through these unique historical moments, including current historical moments. The next segment is on that dumb orange fuck, and how he tried to kill people by telling them to drink bleach during this godawful global pandemic. The author is employing a unique approach to telling these stories, this book is kind of a cash grab, but it’s good. Catch the full book cover, it’s good:

I like to get lost in the weeds. I know I been saying that I would attempt to finish some of the other things that I started at the beginning of the summer and now it’s fall, legit first day of fall, but It’s all good.. we making it work and we having fun. I get bored, I read something else. I get curious, I read something else. We keep going..

[eddycurrents]

Border Town #1 & 2 “Número Uno: Bienvenidos a Hell” & “Número Dos: Máscaras”

Writer: Eric M. Esquivel | Artist: Ramon Villalobos | Colourist: Tamra Bonvillain | Letterer: Deron Bennett

Published by DC Comics / DC Vertigo | 5.9.2018 & 3.10.2018 | $3.99

The Sandman Universe titles notwithstanding, Border Town was heralded as the flagship of the new DC Vertigo relaunch and refocus. When you look at the content, it’s easy to see why, even outside of the obvious quality of the story being told. 

Border Town encapsulates a lot of the verve and substance of the early Vertigo breakout projects, incorporating bits of the supernatural, mythology, humour, and the human experience in a mature and thought-provoking way.

Thematically, it’s also a series about that lurker at the threshold, the unknown just behind that liminal boundary, so it makes sense that it would serve as the doorway into the new DC Vertigo.

The first issue introduces us to one of our main point of view characters, Frank, as he and his family move to the town of Devil’s Fork, Arizona. He’s a fairly typical teenager, looking to more or less fit in, rebel against his parents, and punch white supremacists in the face. Complicating this is a bizarre little chupacabra, who is appearing as things that people fear, and eating people around town.

The second issue expands more or the mythological and folklore-based creatures residing in Mictlan, as we find out that the chupacabra from the first issue is a bit of a misfit of its own. It also gives a hint as to what’s happening to Blake since getting bit, and reforming a bit of a new Scooby Gang of Frank, Julietta, Aimi, and Quinteh even after they claimed to have gone their separate ways.

Frank is an interesting protagonist, if flawed. 

Through his point of view, we get a fresh look at Devil’s Fork, a quick run down of the numerous flaws of Arizona as a state, and that fish out of water quality of moving to a new town. You get a sense from him that he is fairly progressive, but there’s a violent streak in there. Kind of conflicting natures between someone looking to conform and someone looking to rebel. In essence, a teenager trying to find his place in the world.

I find how Eric M. Esquivel is developing Quinteh more interesting. In the first issue he’s somewhat the silent, misunderstood brute archetype, with it even being pointed out, but not necessarily confirmed, that he may be developmentally disabled. The second issue makes you wonder more if it’s just anxiety, as there’s a very nice story from his mom to help him overcome stress in social situations, and no particular irregularities in his speech patterns. I also quite like the parallel between his luchador mask and the ritual headdresses from Aztec culture.

Blake, a straight edge Nazi skinhead--which seems like a bizarre combination--, is set up as the early antagonist. He’s about what you’d expect from a racist playing at being a tough guy. That when it comes down to it, he’s a coward. He is changing, though, as hinted at in the second issue and it should be interesting to see what kind of monster he becomes.

The other characters are interesting, but still need some fleshing out. They feel like real people with interesting quirks. I particularly like Frank’s mom’s boyfriend, Nick. He’s obviously set up as a foil for Frank, and someone to rebel against, to blame for Frank’s current predicament, but he’s not particularly a “bad guy” for what little he appears so far. He’s kind of obnoxious, and holds some questionable views, but he comes across as someone at least trying to support his family.

I wonder about those creatures of myth and legend in Mictlan, though. We’ve only got the main characters interacting with the chupacabra so far, it’ll be interesting to see what develops further. With Frank and the kids ducking into La Curandera’s shop, and her hinting at something bigger, I wonder if this is going to take on more of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer approach in the future. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing further issues and arcs centring around these other beasties. La Llorona and La Lechuza have some fairly well-known transitions into English storytelling, but I’d love to see all of them developed.

The art in Border Town is incredible. Ramon Villalobos and Tamra Bonvillain are creating a unique and impressive visual array with this series, ranging from the ordinary kids to the weird supernatural creatures.

I really like Villalobos’ artwork. His style is in roughly the same school as Frank Quitely, Chris Burnham, and Martín Morazzo; highly stylized, but with an impressive range of character expression and design. The human characters are appealing and unique, especially when it comes to Quinteh and his luchador mask, but where he really shines is the supernatural aspect. The designs for the chupacabra, Mictlāntēcutli, and the other residents of Mictlan are very impressive. The variety and detail that go into the reflections of fears embodied by the chupacabra’s appearance is both humorous and interesting. I especially got a kick out of the “urban teenager” and Bane panels in the first issue.

Though using fairly normal, grounded hues for the human characters, there’s also a somewhat otherworldly glow that Bonvillain is applying to the world. The skies are often purple for night scenes and there are some very interesting choices for pinks, greens, and blues in backgrounds and in the characters that make it feel just slightly unnatural. It manages to enhance the overall feel of the story, making you feel something’s just a little bit off. This effect becomes even more pronounced in Mictlan when even stranger colours come to the fore.

Deron Bennett’s lettering is also quite nice. Particularly what I’d call the “Halloween font” for Mictlāntēcutli’s dialogue. It’s hilariously over the top and perfectly fits the grandstanding for the character.

There are a couple of problems, however, that arise in the book.

The first is the use of language. In the first issue, Quinteh is referred to with a slur used against the developmentally disabled. On Twitter, Esquivel has responded that it’s uttered by the “bad guy”, and that it is meant to portray Quinteh’s regular experience, which in itself is valid, but it still normalizes the ablest insult. It doesn’t matter if it’s being uttered by an antagonist or villain, it still uses the term in a negative and derogatory fashion.

Similarly, in both first and second issues, “pussy” is used to mean coward. In both cases, they’re spoken by a protagonist, so it can’t even be relegated to a bad act by a “bad guy”. This one is a bit more nebulous than the first since etymologically “pussy” in this regard isn’t problematic, however, most people don’t know the diminution of pusillanimous. Instead, they conflate it with a euphemism for female genitalia. Despite not logically making any sense to call a coward a vagina, it’s still perpetuates that meaning to many.

Which ties into the second potential problem of an undercurrent of toxic masculinity bleeding into the work. It’s very clear that some of the worst of it is an exhibited trait from the various antagonists in the series, like Blake, Frank’s mom’s boyfriend (though I don’t necessarily think of him as a “bad guy”, just not necessarily the brightest bulb and in the beginning a foil for Frank’s social unrest), the MAGA idiots at the beginning of the first issue, but it’s also exhibited by Frank himself.

Like with the use of “pussy” as an insult, Frank glorifies violence, and follows through with an assault on Blake. While this could certainly be considered justifiable given Blake’s attitude, and could be interpreted as a pleasing thing to the audience seeing it as a racist’s comeuppance, it’s undermined a bit by Frank’s further insult of Blake’s group being “White Powerpuff Girls”. While it is a clever pun, it further reinforces that idea of women or girls being an insult.

Given the care that Esquivel takes in the first issue to delineate how one should take pride in all of their ethnic heritage in their speech, not breaking it down by percentages like a “Half-Mexican”, it seems weird that this kind of machismo would be present. Maybe it’s intentional. Maybe it’s as is alluded to in the second issue another “mask”, another tough guy act that will be addressed, but all of this can be off-putting to some. I’d give Esquivel the benefit of the doubt for this being something to be addressed further in to the story.

Overall, I quite like this. 

The story so far is a nice mix of relevant social issues and supernatural adventures that reminds me a bit of an updated Buffy, but with a more irreverent sense of humour and pulling some of the kids’ problems to the forefront. It’s less about the supernatural right now, more about the coming-of-age aspect, though I feel like that’s going to slightly change. I do wonder how I’d feel about Frank being a “chosen one”.

And the art is fantastic. The storytelling from Villalobos and Bonvillain just makes the book come together. The characters, designs, and action elevate the book incredibly.

I’d recommend this to people who like a bit of humour with their horror, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Wynonna Earp, or even something like Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files. Lapsed early Vertigo readers should also find something to like in Esquivel and Villalobos’ use of mythology and folklore to help explore the human condition.

Extra: There is a nice panel with a number of Easter eggs that ties together some Vertigo and DC mainstays. The most obvious being Dream’s mask, Doctor Occult’s talisman, a variation on Doctor Fate’s helmet, a poster of Constantine and Zatanna, Wonder Woman as a Virgin Mary stature, a Black Mercy plant, and more if you want to point out some of the other things on display. It’s a nice homage to what’s come before and places Border Town in the wider context of the DC/Vertigo history.

d. emerson eddy has a copy of the Lurker at the Threshold. It doesn’t have anything to do with this, but just wanted to mention HP Lovecraft. Who, despite being problematic in his racism and misogyny, still wrote some pretty great horror. Even if that one apparently is mostly August Derleth.

[shutdownld50-blog]

No Platform for Land: On Nick Land’s Racist Capitalism and a More General Problem

We invite the New Centre for Research and Practice, if they are to retain any credibility as a critical institution, to end their course taught by Nick Land (ongoing through March and April 2017). That students have paid for this course is not a problem they should be burdened with; a refund, whole or in part, would be the appropriate recompense.

 Nick Land promotes racism, in its eugenic, ethnonationalist, and cultural varieties, and yet he continues to be feted in art and theory scenes. As the crisis lurches into the Frog Twitter presidency, the New Centre for Research and Practice hosts Land for a suite of eight seminars; Urbanomic, the experimental small-press, announces a reprint of Fanged Noumena, the Land collection that hooked-in his philosophy fan club; and an academic conference is advertised, in terms all too flattering, on Land’s ‘ferocious but short-lived assault’.

 Is it that these institutions and projects are wittingly racist? No, they strike us more as Land’s ‘useful idiots’, enhancing the reputation, credibility, and reach of a far right racist while imagining his presence in their scenes furthers different agendas. Sure, they make the odd noise against his racism, when challenged, but it peeves them to do so, their hackles rise; racism is an irritant, the assumed radicalism of their projects seemingly absolving them of mundane responsibilities to investigate further, to reflect on their role, to cut Land loose. Instead, their cutting-edge philosophy morphs into liberal commonplace as they deflect opposition to the content and aims of Land’s racism and the means of its circulation and traction into abstract defense of the free play of ideas, of ‘reflect[ing] the landscape of contemporary thought’, of ‘working with controversial thinkers’. One wonders if this kind of philosophy reaches any point at which the content of an idea provokes critical opposition?

 It is suggested that lack of critical attention to Land’s racist scene allowed it to proliferate unchecked, that, as the New Centre puts it, ‘the political left’s dismissal of right accelerationism and neoreactionary thought [i.e. the Land camp] is one of the many reasons as to why we are seeing an unchallenged rise of fascism and white nationalism in Europe and North America’. Quite so, they are right to highlight this lapse of attention. Though they have missed the logical conclusion of their observation: that we should critically oppose all the means by which far right racists rise and gain credibility, including when the means locate themselves on ‘the left’ or within experimental philosophy.

 We are accused of not reading Land, of a failure to understand him, but the only defense we can see of those who are yet to cut loose from Land is that this failure of understanding lies with them. So let us clarify a little with some brief exposition of Land’s far right racism. We hope it will also be of use to others concerned about the spread of the far right under cover of esoteric philosophy.

 Nick Land advocates for racially based absolutist micro-states, where unregulated capitalism combines with genetic separation between global elites and the ‘refuse’ (his term) of the rest. It’s a eugenic philosophy of ‘hyper-racism’, as he describes it on the racist blog Alternative Right, or ‘Human Biodiversity’ (HBD). Here, class dominance and inequality are mapped onto, explained, and justified by tendencies for the elite to mate with each other and spawn a new species with an expanding IQ. Yes, this ‘hyper-racism’ is that daft – and would be laughed off as the fantasy of a neoliberal Dr Strangelove if it didn’t have leverage in this miserable climate of the ascendant far right. Regarding the other side, the domain of the ‘refuse’, Land uses euphemism to stand in for the white nationalist notion of a coming ‘white genocide’: ‘demographic engineering as an explicit policy objective’, ‘steady progress of population replacement’, is the racial threat he describes on the bleak webpages of The Daily Caller.

 It is claimed Land has a superior philosophy of capitalism (‘accelerationism’ – you’ve heard of it – the topic of his New Centre course). But like the Nazis before him, Land’s analysis of capitalism produces and is sustained by a pseudo-biological theory of eugenic difference and separation: the redemptive productive labour of well-bred Aryans, for one, the escalating IQ of an inward-mating economic elite for the other. There’s no ‘philosophy’ here to be separated from Land’s far right ‘politics’; the two are interleaved and co-constituting. ‘More Capitalism!’ has always been the essence of Land’s supposedly radical critique, from his early philosophy at the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) to now. Hence it’s little wonder that his philosophy is inseparable from the racism that has always accompanied capitalism as an integral dynamic – from chattel slavery and the blood-bath of colonial expansion, to the passive slaughter of migrants in the Mediterranean and Black populations at the hands of the police, their mundane exposure to death calibrated to the crisis of the labour form. Land’s oh so virulent assault on the ‘Human Security System’, as he framed it in CCRU days, thrilling those who thought him the transvaluation of all values, is revealed to be the latest in a long and monotonous line of tropes that would disqualify the life of particular humans – the working class, minorities, and other ‘refuse’. For hyper-racists can rest assured, the elite’s ‘Human Security System’ is to be bolstered, by capital accrual and the proliferation of hard micro-borders.

 That Land’s chosen people are internally homogeneous global classes of high ‘socio-economic status’ and not exclusively ‘white’ should not be the distraction he intends; the physical and psychological violence of racism has its own sorry architecture, but it has always closely partnered with the production and perpetuation of class privilege and pleasure. And inevitably, more traditional racist tropes of fear, hatred, and ridicule of Black people and Muslims, of ‘cucks’ (as the alt-right call those who would live without ‘race’ boundaries), feature with enough regularity in Land’s blog and Twitter (Outside in, @Outsideness, @UF_blog) that his ideas can merrily slop around on social media with the full gamut of racisms.

 Take an example, posted on the day Land gave his third seminar at the New Centre, as if to rub their noses in it. On 19 March he tweeted favourably to a rabidly racist blog that explained German crime rates as the result of the supposed innate propensities of ‘races’ (and not, as anyone with a critical philosophy of capital knows, a result of racism, insecurity, and poverty); ‘Blessings from the Maghreb’, Land captioned it, with a wit worthy of Nigel Farage. Another chimed in to this dreary taxonomy of racial types with the observation that the Chinese ‘are impeccably well behaved’, to which Land’s response: ‘90% of my racism is based on that fact’. Don’t be mistaken to think the latter is some kind of light-hearted humour, for Land adopts – and teaches his junior interlocutors by example – a calculated ambiguity to his racism, all the better to broaden the milieu within which his odious ideas can circulate unchallenged.

 Then there’s Land’s broader neoreactionary scene. For instance, he converses with Brett Stevens on Twitter as interlocutor, not opponent, and the two spoke as part of the ‘neoreaction conference’ (Stevens’ description) at LD50 in summer 2016. Stevens is a self-declared white nationalist whose ideas influenced Anders Breivik and who, in turn, praised Breivik’s murder of 77 people for, in Stevens’ eyes, being an attack on ‘leftists’: ‘I am honored to be so mentioned by someone who is clearly far braver than I,’ Stevens wrote of Breivik. ‘[N]o comment on his methods, but he chose to act where many of us write, think and dream’.

 It is surely apparent from all this that any appeal from Land or his advocates to ‘free speech’ is a dissimulation, willed or accidental, that aides his efforts to extend the reach of his racism. It’s only those at the greatest remove from the violent impact of racism who don’t see that ‘free speech’ is repeated by the alt-right to such a degree – always front and centre in their profile – that it has become integral to their reproduction and dissemination. As ever, the art scene and liberal media have trouble seeing what’s right in front of their eyes. Look at Frieze’s recent effort, the magazine’s will to promote ‘free speech’ taking the form of a stacked ‘survey’ about the anti-racist shutdown of LD50, with an unbalance of three to one of those unable to fathom why it’s ill advised to give far right racists and their apologists a free pass through east London, the art world, and the university.

 It has been said that we should learn from Land’s purportedly well-honed critique of the cognitive ecosystem of ‘the left’, the rather limited view that those who would overcome the violence, exploitation, and tedium of capitalist society are all just whingers. But the readiness of people to be impressed by this point suggests they may already be on the slippery slope to the right. For it would take little effort to find a wealth of critical work from radical theory and practice – from feminism, post-colonial theory, anti-racism, queer theory, Marxism, critical theory, communism – on the limitations of our scenes. That has always been a feature of radical currents, the ‘ruthless criticism of all that exists’, where ‘all’ includes the standpoints from which that critique is made (in contrast to the drab inviolate principles of the far right: bourgeois individuality, race, nation). Undoubtedly, this critical capacity needs honing. Sustained critical and experimental engagement with this conjuncture and our limitations is sorely wanted, for there is much worse in the world today than Nick Land. But part of that critique should be opposing the presence of Land and his ilk in experimental scenes, rejecting the idea that we have anything to learn from these narcissistic, racist identitarians – nothing except how they came to proliferate so unopposed.

 And that is a lesson for the future too. As the crisis deepens, we will be seeing more of these far right ideas disseminated under cover of ‘controversy’ and ‘free speech’; right wing ‘solutions’ camouflaged with leftist flavours; reactionary conservatism masquerading as techno-futurism; left wing scenes adopting right wing metaphysics; fantasies of social collapse arming the status quo, etc. Not that we’ll have to look too hard. Nick Land openly  declares his racism, and yet critical institutions continue to promote him. Can they ride out opposition to Land and sail again on philosophical waters untroubled by the realities of class exploitation and racism? Perhaps, but it’s unlikely. Instead, we invite them to ditch their positive association with Land, before their credibility is tested beyond repair.

 SDLD50