[Caution, leftist infighting/snide remarks below]
spoiler
I’m confused, doesn’t worsening material conditions count as political utility in his eyes?
Edit:I normally wouldn’t have an issue, since it’s actually pretty sane, but I literally thought to myself today “it would be funny if BE said Kirk’s death was a bad thing because adventurism will make things worse.” I was joking. I’m starting to hypothosize that economists [both accelerationist and reformists] are actually simps for the status quo
They were gonna do it anyway. I don’t think it even accelerates things.
I’m not gonna pretend that Chuck dying won’t accelerate our decline into martial law, but I’m not gonna pretend to be sad about it. He’s not Jesus and he’s not MLK.
I also get suspicious of people who make noise about fighting the power and being super radical while parroting mainstream fash talking points and pearl-clutching liberal hysteria. Enough people are telling us to be sad/angry over whiteboy podcaster #92 getting merced that we don’t need to bother saying it with them. Just let us have this win.
I don’t think we’re accelerationists but my group chat is tired of the status quo. Whatever, dude, none of us expect to retire in peace.
I feel like you can get more out of your life than just shooting one conservative politician.
No one is advocating shooting politicians. We just recognize that as the material conditions worsen, political violence will increase and that the response of fascists is going to be oppression and state violence especially against minorities and the left.
We’re not cheering it on but we’ve been aware of the possibility for years. It is whatever.
Is this him trying to state the obvious so people forget the “bad takes” (transphobia) he’s been spouting recently?
Or is he aware that people are pissed off at him and he says something obvious that contradicts what he normally says to cause conflict and engagement?
First of all, Charlie deserved it.
However gotta admit, my first thoughts were along these lines. It took me to see the reactions of the right wing pundits in my country to go full party mode just to spite those fuckers.
Man BE is on a streak of bad takes lately its kinda sad.
I dont understand this position. Does anyone really think the far right just, wasnt going to do anything before? Like they were waiting for something like this to happen? As if Trump wasnt already deploying the national guard in major cities? Like come on, the ruling class does not act out of petty revenge, and by this logic there is no actual action communists can take because anything can serve to provoke the far right.
And werent people saying this same thing about Trumps failed assassination last year? And nothing happened
Too many Americans are scared of things changing and want to just put the blame on whatever. They want to cling to the idea that the path we are on could somehow be avoided if X Y or Z didnt happen. If this event somehow changes what you think the future holds then you havent been paying attention.
It’s funny because the dudes a hardcore accelerationist when he talks about the west burning but then when things accelerate and he isn’t the one making all the comments he gets stuck up his own ass about it. At this point his ideology isn’t communism, it’s his own ego. He HAS to be contrarian to let us all know how dumb we are and how smart he is.
At this point his ideology isn’t communism, it’s his own ego.
He more or less confirmed that explicitly.
Its sad but true. Hes gotta be a contrarian. He went from making high effort content of genuine academic quality in terms of research and analysis to just being against what everyone else is. I still think he has some good things to say every now and then but he took the ragebait too far and thats 90% of his politics now
It’s not that they weren’t going to do anything before. It’s that this lets them say “You see? I told you the left is out of control! They attacked us for no reason”. It solidifies the position. It gives them stronger grounds to do what they planned to regardless.
They were always going to do that anyway, in the absence of a real event they would have made some shit up
Isn’t this more credible than some qanon shit? After all, we are talking about it too
If they really needed it, they wouldve staged a shooting of this caliber. Theyve done it before and theyll do it again
Doesn’t matter at all whether it’s credible, they will do exactly what they were always planning to do
You’ll have to run that back for me. Are you saying the political aparatus is so powerful it can do whatever it wants with equal effectiveness of method? Or the public across the board being so stupid it doesn’t make a difference whether something is real or not? Or something else?
Yes
Are you saying the political aparatus is so powerful it can do whatever it wants with equal effectiveness of method?
I assume this. In the end the yugoslav civil war didnt start because a random dude lied about putting a bottle up his bum.
This is a completely unmaterialist take. This has absolutely 0 material effect on the situation. Stronger grounds to do what they wanted in the eyes of whom? Libs who werent gonna do shit either way? Conservative who were gonna eat up whatever they say regardless? Genuinely what is materially affected? This is a position based on the vibes of what sounds like should be true, not a realistic material analysis of the situation
Unmaterialist?
Yep, its based on a vibe or the idea of ‘solidifying their position’ when there is absolutely no material gain the right has from this, if anything they lost one of their main propagandists (which granted is only an issue for them in the short term, if even that). Their position is not ‘solidified’ and their grounds are not ‘stronger,’ the resources at their disposal, the propaganda they wield, and the industry they command is the same regardless if this guy is dead or alive. Hell Trump, Vance, Shapiro, everyone on the far right could die tonight and it would not significantly strengthen or weaken their long term political power, it would only cause short term confusion
Your position is solely based on vibes of what sounds like should be correct. This is something people implicitly accept as true without any critical thinking. It feels correct, its what everyone else is saying, and it aligns with how historical development is traditionally understood so it checks off the bias box as well. But make no mistake, this is an idealist view of the world. You absolutely cannot strengthen material power and material goals through ideals alone. Rhetoric does not create material power.
But lets just say that yes, youre correct. That his death really will somehow strengthen the far right overnight (as if they didnt already have the backing of the bourgeoisie with little challenge) and werent already deploying the national guard to major cities. Lets say such a thing not only is possible but even significantly beneficial to the far right as you describe. Would they not just orchestrate a similar event themselves to create the justification anyway? If they really needed it then theyd just do that. Ergo, Kirks death means nothing, because otherwise it wouldve been someone else and the outcome is identical. Because this was the trajectory regardless, and no ideals, rhetoric, sense of petty revenge can change that. No one man can change that by being dead or alive.
Your take is fairly unmaterialist and ignores class struggle in favor of individualism and vibe based idealism
Hurts my feelings you presume to understand my position or suggest I’m not thinking critically. ☹️It’s not “what everyone else is saying”.
There is no such thing in science as “identical” to an arbitrary degree of certainty. You can take a meter and divide it in half n number of times and take a measurement. You won’t get the same measurement twice. It’s the infinity of real numbers.
Consider kirk’s death to be a perturbation of the larger system that is our society. That perturbation is not identical to an arbitrary degree of freedom as the ben shapiro perturbation or the jordan peterson perturbation. Society may, and most likely will, go to the same equilibrium point.
What you call “the trajectory” is not identical for different initial conditions. The final position may or may not be. Throw two balls with the same velocity at 30 degrees above the horizon and 60 degrees above the horizon. They will both land in the same place, but the one thrown at 30 degrees gets there sooner.
But in reality, you can’t land in the same place regardless. You may say that it is the same because it is “close enough”, but for the sake of material consideration that may be what “the same” is. It lands somewhere where it destroys the “the same” amount of property.
If however you are approaching this thermodynamically, this system will begin in a state of low multiplicity and evolve to the state of high multiplicity. Entropy. For all intents and purposes, the final system is the same regardless of they way it evolves. But the way the gas expands, its internal properties, and its interaction with the environment are different.
Consider two expansions which could be considered to be analogs to this polical scenario. The adiabatic and the iso thermal process. The public being the gas and politicians et al as the environment. In the adiabatic case, there is no interaction with rhe environment. The gas cools as it expands. The temperature decreases. The isothermal case requires heating to maintain the same temperature. However, both processese do the same amount of work if they begin and end with the same volume.
The final consideration is the efficiency associated with chaining these processes together. The most efficient cycle is what is known as the carnot cycle. It incorporates 2 isotherms and two adiabats. While non physical, it establishes the *maximum possible efficiency". No cycle can be more efficient. I’ll leave it as an exercise to reader explain how this relates to the condition of material.
While there may have been very little critical thought in any of this, we’ve succeasfully established the meaning of “identical”, different initial conditions leading to “the same outcome”, entropy, work, and effiency. Identical to what everyone else said. It was close enough 😉
Presumptive I’m not thinking critically ☹️. My point is that there is no such thing as identical to an arbitrary level of accuracy. Were I to presume what you mean, you are say
This guy is such a joke. only Vaush has cratered quicker in my personal discovery to block journey and BadEmpenada only lost by, like, a week. Crazy.
Thought this would be a good time to share my Bad Empanada soyjak.
If the Reichstag hadn’t burned, the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened, historians agree
If only all those minorities hadn’t made the nazis so angry…
the nazis wouldn’t have dared to cross these boundaries 😔
We don’t even know who was the person who shot Kirk or put fire in the Reichstag. It could even be one of the right wingers, thinking the guy wasn’t fascist enough.
And while Nazis and Magas may use anything to justify their goals, it’s not like they would cease doing any kind of violence they are already doing even if no bad event happened to them.
I used to agree with almost everything the empanada man had to say, but he’s been slipping lately. “Look long enough into the YouTube drama factory and it looks also into you”, I guess
I fully agree. I remember back when BE used to say he didn’t even want to voice his own videos because it would turn him into too much of a publicly involved figure. Today’s BE is unrecognisable by comparison where he wants every last dumb though to be a spectacle.
Living proof that Twitter is a cognitohazard
deleted by creator
I wouldn’t say I “upheld” him, I think I agreed with him on a lot of things but disagreed with some of his takes. He was an extremely staunch ten toes down supporter of Palestine at a time when most of leftube wasn’t even thinking about it for example, which I thought was really commendable. But lately he’s been getting worse and worse.
he’d good at attacking the US/western hegemony but he’s also really good at shitting in his own mouth
He is heedlessly contrarian and stumbled upon the correct belief about palestinians and how jewish and/or isntreali voices are centred over them, even in left discourse. Of course this doesnt mean his framework is beneficial to replicate.
stumbled upon the correct belief about palestinians
I think his positions on Palestine were arrived at perfectly logically and through study tbh. He was releasing videos on the topic years and years ago. Agree to disagree I suppose.
I not sure if we changed or if Empanada changed. I noticed a decline when the Gaza genocide started which turned into a free fall when he decided to get into drama slop.
Acting like people can’t comprehend that things can be worse is pretty funny, ngl.
Like imagine if I posted on lemmygrad and was like, “I know it’s a bit hard for you people to understand, but the working class is a thing.”
This isn’t even a take or analysis lol, it’s just an internet personality over-inflating their own sense of awareness compared to others. “I better get online and say this, nobody will think of it otherwise.”
wdym, stepping on a feather, and stepping on a nail are both the same thing - since you both times step on something - thats why it causes the same pain! And thats communism
if only those dudes didn’t lite fire to the reichstag, nazi germany wouldn’t have existed 😔
What the utility in saying this? I mean yeah, no shit, things can get worse but they actively have been getting worse for a very long time now. Right wingers being genuinely scared is a good thing. You should be scared to hold hateful beliefs
no you see, we shouldn’t be moving at all, that way we won’t notice our chains and if we don’t notice them it means they don’t exist.
he’s been getting more and more terminally online
When he talks about “things getting worse than they are already”, he’s talking about getting banned from imperial social media and losing his ability to monetize posting. That’s the thing we should be so scared of that we should cling to the status quo.
I know he has some relevancy, but he’s a transphobic and ableist fuck, I don’t think we should be caring much about him or his takes.