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Serious time. I thought it was someone being dumb, but I now see a pattern of "woke" left people trying to discredit the Dirtbag Left as fascist or cryptofascist, and it's important we all understand exactly what's going on here and why. It has three levels to it. 1/
On the surface level this is simply class politics versus unmoored identity politics. To be clear, identity matters, and intersectional feminism is a thing I believe in, but without including class analysis at its core it becomes hollow, a tool for rhetorical oppression. 2/
The Dirtbag Left use humour that is at times off colour and occasionally tone deaf, and it does this intentionally, to break from the empty suits of this hollow "corporate idpol" and signal to people that they're about substance, material class realities. 3/
The message, which most people get loud and clear, is "Our movement doesn't demand semantic or ideological purity, it demands action. It is capable of self criticism; we don't take ourselves and our words too seriously. But we do take the substance seriously." 4/
It continues, "We are not going to scold you for being insufficiently woke or not having the right take, but we are going to ask what you're doing and who this benefits. This is how we judge, and expect to be judged." 5/
This is, if course, kryptonite to corporate identity politics, which is all about signalling good intentions to mask malfeasance in action ( or inaction). It's also kryptonite to a certain brand of Left figure who haven't actually, you know, done anything. 6/
Whether intentionally, because they're comfortable in their liberal lives and want to feel good about themselves without changing anything, or unintentionally, because it's people who've bought the bullshit and think tone is more important than deed, it doesn't matter. 7/
This view, the Dirtbag Left approach, upends status hierarchies on the Left because it drills down to the root of the issue: material conditions matter more than words. To those who only have words, who build their status on words, this is a deep threat. 8/
They therefore fight back the only way they know how, rhetorically. But because they ultimately don't engage with concepts in terms of their material basis, they aren't in touch with the real meanings of the terms they use. 9/
So @CHAPOTRAPHOUSE and @trashfuturepod are "fascist" not because they advocate fascism or advance its cause, but for rhetorical proximity. They sound like the fascist populists, they are cavalier with language like them. So they are them, right? 10/
Absent material analysis and actual, firm ideology, anyone can be anything rhetorically. Which is the whole thing the Dirtbag Left criticises. 11/
But this takes us to the second layer, which is about rhetorical control of narrative. The Dirtbag Left's approach to messaging and analysis of messages is a threat to liberal institutions. Specifically, they threaten the courtiers and hand maidens of power, in two ways. 12/
First, they threaten the entire enterprise of control. How can people have the wool pulled over their eyes if they ask about what's materially happening and ignore the words? If they interrogate the class interests of the speaker? If they examine actions over rhetoric? 13/
Second, and more urgently to them, the Dirtbag Left threatens the very real gravy train and web of patronage and power attached to the liberal institutions that control rhetoric. 14/
Journalists and organisers and political campaigners only get paid if they are regarded as having specialist skills, as being able to maintain control of the public by manufacturing their consent to the agendas of their paymasters. Their grift is threatened. 15/
And so liberals who are part of the status hierarchy and well compensated for their service to power are threatened by this, as it could render them useless to power. Therefore they are happy to take and amplify the criticism made by corporate idpol Leftists. 16/
Which leads us to the final layer. Their paymasters are happy to pay them to do this for, again, two reasons. First is that it does threaten the current method of control, so shutting that down is equally beneficial to them. 17/
But more importantly, the Dirtbag Left approach to politics cuts across line of division and invites in people who otherwise would be marginalised. People who never learned how to perform, how to signal, how to appear. Other people, who see through corporate idpol. 18/
In short, the Dirtbag Left is a threat because they speak the language of ordinary people, are welcoming to them, and can reach out to them. They have the same criticisms of empty suits. They translate the concerns of the Left into practical, material needs and demands. 19/
Keeping people divided because of rhetoric, class and cultural shibboleths, is the root praxis of control. And the Dirtbag Left is effective because it can bridge divides, and is succeeding. Small steps now, threatening big leaps later. 20/
And so these three levels: rhetorical battles for personal status, for material benefit, and for power. All three groups - empty idpol Leftists and liberals, corporate managers, and the powerful elite - converge in their desire to squelch this. And so they will try. 21/
And the thing is, none of these actors need understand this. They might object in all righteousness on aesthetic grounds, out of class biases, or because they're genuinely convinced the Dirtbag Left is proto-fascism. It doesn't matter what they think they're about. 22/
Ultimately, actions are more important than words, and deeds trump rhetoric. That's the whole point. The organiser who gets people to knock on doors but has an occasionally insensitive joke is more valuable to change than the person deeply versed in woke rhetoric. 23/
The person who motivates thousands of listeners to get involved in pursuing material change, who reaches out to the marginalised, who informs their view of the world... they're more necessary and more powerful than someone who does little but never fucks up pronouns. 24/
So when someone's accused of being bad, a fascist, look at what they've actually done. Look at what they've supported, politically and materially. Look at what they've profited from and done with those profits. Then compare and contrast to their accusers. 25/
I absolutely have criticisms of @CHAPOTRAPHOUSE and its members, but their political actions and jokes aren't part of that. Same goes for most others on the Dirtbag Left. And you don't have to like them or find them funny to figure out what they're about. It's not fascism. /End
tl;dr @willmenaker and @cushbomb are total fascists and are actively financing a final solution to the @ByYourLogic problem, which is why he hangs out with them all the time.
