mostly edge, mostly no point

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This is a hastily written follow-up to yesterday's opinion piece You Don't Build A Movement By Making Youtube Videos, Son. In the absence of comments, I will assume that article was perfect in every way, and in my hubris will create something even worse, with Misfits puns. The section on Riley Grace Roshong was, in hindsight, much angrier than it needed to be, and I also forgot to complain about the big man himself (Density).

Also, I should probably go into that “eat the rich” d i s c o u r s e in more detail, just to provide context, or something. Like, it's such a benign thing to start d i s c o u r s e over.

Like some unholy beast, I rise, if only to complain about the internet for two hours and then die again.

THEY CALL US WALKING CORPSES, UNHOLY LIVIN' DEAD

Okay, so let's set the scene, eh? It's the fourteenth of October, 1793, and you're standing in a public square in the Paris Commune (the first one) during the aptly named Reign of Terror. Now, your first concern is whether or not you're going to live through the year (this Robespierre guy is taking the whole “revolution” thing a bit too seriously) and Pierre Gaspard Chaumette is giving a speech to everybody, in which he makes reference to the late Jean-Jacques Rosseau.

“Rousseau était peuple aussi, et il disait: Quand le peuple n'aura plus rien à manger, il mangera le riche” he says. [1]

In english, it's something along the lines of, “Rosseau, who was one of the people, said: When the poor have nothing to eat, they will eat the rich.” Oh boy, if only Chaumette could see the future...

That's essentially it. No big dogwhistle for the immediate execution of anyone earning above a certain paygrade, no call to violence, nothing. In its original context, “eat the rich” was simply a declaration of the obvious: when the poor have nothing to eat, they will “eat the rich”, which in this context means take all their stuff and hand them over to old boy Robespierre for some uh, Enhanced Shaving Techniques. However, luckily for us, Robespierre has been dead for about two centuries, so nobody has to worry about French guillotines anymore.

Now, with this in mind, let's go back to the future.

“Eat the Rich” is now something of a funny meme leftists share on twitter and scream out In Real Life. It's our slogan now, you see. It's our declaration that when the working poor have nothing to eat, they will take it from the rich, “eating” them. It's not meant to be taken literally, like, not even Rosseau or Chaumette meant it literally. You would have to be incredibly foolish to take the phrase “eat the rich” literally. We are not cannibals, we don't want to literally “eat the rich”.

And it's a harmless slogan primarily because the “eating” part doesn't come until “the poor have nothing left to eat”, which, I might add, is coming soon, but the time is not yet upon us. Do Weird Internet People have a thing against the working poor seizing what is rightfully theirs? I thought half of them were meant to be “socialists”, not posturing Liberals. But then again, they are Weird Internet People after all.

“Eat the Rich” is what you say to declare your opposition to wealth inequality, mostly, the inequality that created the working poor and The Rich in the first place. The meaningless decadence of the modern bourgeois prick, with the five storey mansion who makes more money in sixty seconds than any of us could dream of making in a lifetime. It's not just saying that rich people are only bad when they act out against the working poor, that's infantile, it declares that the rich are in an of themselves bad.

They create the working poor. That's how capitalism works, after all. Half of these people are “socialists”, I would've expected them to understand that.

THEY HAD TO LOCK US UP, PUT US IN THEIR YANKEE HELL

Back to the Empanada. Something he said in his video really resonated with me: that a lot of these content creators stick to comfy reformist electoral politics because it's what reels in more new viewers. And I started thinking about that. And it made sense after a while. Very rarely do any them go into anything... radical. Now that can be for a variety of reasons: mainly being that “radical politics” is hardly... legally sound? Going on YouTube and screaming DEATH TO THE RICH, DISMANTLE THE STATE, GUNS GUNS GUNS is probably not the best idea, in hindsight.

However, Shaun manages to remain somewhat radical by not declaring his intent to murder the bourgeois owner's class every five seconds, and so do others such as dreaded tankie Hakim. The aforementioned Weird Internet People do, for the most part, stick within the limited confines of reformist electoral politics, because it's comfy, it's easy, it “wins” Liberals over, and it requires less thought power to discuss 24/7, if at all. The fault lies on all sides.

Social Democrats, for the most part, have been disappointing. A hundred years ago, they had something going for them, but then it all fell apart, like a boring house of cards, tumbling down until all that's left is a centrist going “yeah nah, too much effort mate.”

This “coalition building” with the Liberals, if it can even be called that, is infantile. Many things are infantile, this included. As RGR's behavior has displayed, trying to “coalition build” with internet Liberals is as productive as cutting down a tree with a herring. Liberals, RGR included, don't care about meaningful change. Liberalism exists solely to reproduce material conditions that create the working poor and keep them that way. Such has been history, such is how the world is today. Homeless people living in Manilla aren't helped by RGR shilling for Liberalism, in fact, her shilling for Liberalism will only make their situation worse.

I don't know why I need to reiterate this, but I will anyway: we are socialists, which means we want socialism, not socialism democracy, not liberalism, not some liberal “democracy” with a better social security net, say it with me now, SOCIALISM. It's not “when the government does stuff”, it's when the workers own the means of production directly and control the government. You don't get that through Liberalism, in fact, Liberalism produces the opposite outcome.

Should've just said that in the last article with less swear words, now that I think about it.

CAN'T HAVE NO DIRTY DEAD

This is, in my opinion, the Liberal Mind-Prison in action. The Liberal Mind-Prison being that one that traps and limits your thoughts to the incredibly limiting purview of Liberal ideology. Change is too hard, the most you can get “”“realistically”“” is mild reform. Noooo, you need slow incremental change, all the working poor suffering under our current system must continue to suffer for the Greater Good! I'm sure we've all had enough of smug Liberal pricks trying to condescend to us about how we just need to “work harder”, or how change has to be slow.

Slow, incremental “change” is more beneficial to an affluent Liberal twitch streamer than to the working poor. Do you think RGR or Density actually give a shit about workers? Of course they don't, you imbecile! People don't “embrace” Liberalism and The Market because they care about working people in their own country and abroad, they do it because it benefits them specifically, and it isn't overly conspiratorial or speculative for me to suggest that these Liberal content creators peddle this garbage because it benefits them materially.

To reiterate a previous point, many of these content creators are themselves business owners, and run their respective channels/platforms like one would run a business. This is why RGR's habit of embarrassing herself on twitter has been nothing more than a cynical PR move on her part. Why else would she go out of her way to disavow a portion of her own community just to win over a new one? It's cynical, and I know I've said “cynical” a lot in these pieces, but I just need to emphasize how mindless these decisions are. When you're a content creator, every little thing you do can either make the number go up, or go down, and (quite reasonably) they want those numbers going up. Being a Liberal makes the number go up faster than it does by being a principled anti-capitalist.

The insufferable gaze of Capital has struck once again. Once more: content creators are not political activists, they are content creators, and shrewd ones at that. “But,” you might say, “RGR talks to legislators!” Sure. Whatever. That's cool, but how is that a criticism against any of us? It's not like everyone can talk to a legislator (I think I only have once, and not for some Liberal twitch stream) let alone get them to do something. Politicking is complicated, and politicians are bastards. Come back to me when a politician has actually done something between Miss Twitch Streamer asked them to, or because they were genuinely influenced by some twitch stream with less viewers than they have constituents.

I can say this from speculation (with reasonable backing), but politicians don't give a shit about content creators regardless of how many geeks watch their twitch streams. There is no politician shaking in their boots because Vaush did a take down stream, or RGR said something mean about them. Why? Because again, political movements aren't built through youtube videos. The Alt Right wasn't build by youtube videos, it leaped from a foundation of Neo-Nazi organizations from the 70s and 80s, as well as pre-existing infrastructure which allowed for reactionary conservatives to organize politically. Socialists don't have that. Conservatives and Liberals do, to varying degrees.

These people are also insufferably America-centric. From Liberals like RGR and Destiny I can understand, but Vaush, Xanderhal etc? They're meant to be “socialists” (according to their own description), where's the internationalism? They act like the January 6 attack on Capital Hill was something the entire world should've been cowering in fear over, as if the fall of America would lead to the destruction of the entire world order. Pure idealism. Although, if I'm being honest, I don't want any of the Weird Internet People talking about Australian politics, because I can assume they'd all just side with Layber anyway. Not cool.

I WANT YOUR SKULL, I NEED YOUR SKULL

Political movements aren't build through youtube videos, and if I'm being honest, the Weird Internet People are preventing any meaningful movement from being built anyway. My advice? I have none. I'm a weirdo sitting at my desk at seven in the morning typing out a poor excuse for an “article” laden with Misfits puns, I'm probably not the first person you should go to for advice on how to build a political movement. But I can offer nice sounding words, if that helps.

Politics is what you do, not what you are. You can call yourself a Marxist-Leninist or an Anarchist-Syndicalist, that's the easy bit, the hard bit is actually fucking doing it, you imbecile. You've called yourself a socialist. So what. Am I meant to be impressed? I'll be impressed when you actually put your ideas into action, as much as you can, when possible. Don't just watch twitch streams and “debate” politics on discord all day, actually get out and talk to people, real people, not content creators operating with a profit motive to keep you watching their twitch streams and youtube videos.

Set aside your pre-conceived misconceptions about politics and meet people outside, join an organization (if you're Australian, visit the ORGS page), just do something other than watch these buffoons argue about two hundred year old slogans on their twitch streams. And for the love of God, abandon Liberalism! Liberals do nothing but pour gasoline into a hot burning fire, while pretending that it's more pragmatic than grabbing a fire extinguisher.

Do you have to murder every Liberal you encounter? No. Do you have to completely ignore them in situations where tacitly working together would be beneficial? No. But do you have to kneel before them and worship them as political messiahs? Also no. If you call yourself a socialist, prove it, instead of just saying that you're one, demonstrate how you are. If all you do is read books, you're a walking bookshelf, and for the most part, walking bookshelves are useless.

Something something hack the heads of Liberals and put them on my wall.