Thread by @mutual_ayyde, THREAD: if you're surprised by k-pop fans going after cops, let me [...]

THREAD: if you're surprised by k-pop fans going after cops, let me posit a theory for why it makes logical sense

one of the most frustrating moves by leftists is to assume that fascism is purely economic, that it is some mutation of capitalism

this is wrong and smart reactionaries will correctly point out how opportunistic this is

OG fascist intellectuals were open about being opposed to both liberalism AND socialism. Both the leveling nature of working class demands and movements AND the wealth/disruption generated by markets + the fact both were (in theory anyway) globalist in nature

I think a far better explanation is that reactionaries are fundamentally opposed to movement away from a particular state of affairs

But maintaining this requires control

What makes control hard? High variety (i.e. the number of possible states a system can take). More variety = more options to exit from oppressive situations / more avenues for attack

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(cybernetics)

And of course high variety makes situations increasingly difficult to define. Which in turn cripples the power of institutions

The violence that likely pushed many people to breaking point was about suppressing this variety
https://libcom.org/files/David_Graeber-The_Utopia_of_Rules_On_Technology_St.pdf#page=45

(also some people pointed out how libs went from praising the protests to condemning them in like 48 hours

no duh without the police working you can't do liberal technocracy lol)

This finally brings us back to culture. While information age capitalism has failed to live up to the hype of its breathless proponents, information age *culture* is doing pretty well

And as you've probably noticed it is *very* high variety

So here's my hypothesis. Kids, especially those from marginalized backgrounds (black kids like kpop apparently?), who are subconsciously aware of these dynamics to some degree

Now this does not make these kids radicals! Big difference between spamming a police app and actively pursuing political goals

But the underlying desires they have for self-expression and self-creation involve increasing variety and that WILL come in conflict with authority

These desires lurk within much of internet culture. Memes are an obvious example - they result from the democratization of creative tools

again, this doesn't mean the people who make them are consistent!

ofc memes are used by reactionaries. Might have been decisive in getting Trump into the white house

but even then I'd say this is a sign of trying to keep pace with the new environment as opposed to consistent, geniune innovation

e.g. trads posting architecture or paintings or staged photos of "normal" families are clearly not embracing the range of whats possible instead focusing on a particular identity that is cobbled together

Matt McManus is good on this https://areomagazine.com/2018/09/02/how-post-modern-conservatism-emerged/

for this vision to win out meme culture must die (or at least be severely restricted)

k-pop stans on the other hand can exist in a society in which everyone else is not a k-pop stan (despite community toxicity)

anyway this means that culture is a serious battleground this century, especially since it is inseparable from big existential questions that absolutely motivate people AND underlying production processes like peer production or 3d-printing (e.g. cosplay)

tl;dr politics is going to look *extremely* colorful

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