Notices by AnarchoNinaWrites (anarchoninawrites@oliphant.social)

@Judeet98 @deilann Not much trouble at all, given that like I said in this very thread, you can just drop it into an online translator.

My timeline features people posting in German, Finnish, French, and Spanish, somewhat regularly and I'm really not seeing the problem. Even when there's no translate button, if I want to know what the tweet says, I can just cut and paste it into a translator online.

This is not a real argument, or at least it's not an argument about language.

I've commented on the unhealthy media ecosystem that's built up around reporting every absurd thing noted billionaire fascist supervillain Elon Musk says on more than a couple of occasions, but this essay by Paris Marx on Disconnect is a much more thorough, and historically conscious examination of the subject:

https://www.disconnect.blog/p/the-medias-failure-on-elon-musk

The author of course starts with the incessant churn of clickbait articles that allow Musk to exert outsized effect on the public discourse at any give moment, no matter how often that fascist mutant gets caught in a lie. From there however, Marx focuses on what he describes as "a two-decade-long informal partnership between Musk and the media" that survives Musk's antagonism, and the media's antipathy towards his most (and *only* his most) reactionary positions, because both entities are dependent on the largely fictional "genius innovator rich guy" character they have mutually created around the brand "Elon Musk."

To demonstrate this, the author offers a rough, back of the napkin history showing Musk purposely cultivating media engagement and celebrity, then leveraging that notoriety into access to more money, before ultimately becoming "too big to fail." At every turn Musk is enabled not only by the media, but by star-struck investors, and even the United States government; all the while continuing to build Elon's self-crafted mythos, free of charge, even as serious evidence of his duplicity, reactionary positions, and objectively criminal labor practices continued to emerge in the public sphere. While it's true, as Marx notes, that even corporate media coverage of Musk has begun to change, the lateness of the hour, and the continued existence of the "stories about Elon" clickbait machine, suggest that the damage has in fact already been done.

It's really only in his conclusion, that I have any real qualms about the author's article here. In good faith, and all sincerity, Marx closes by urging the media to remember their failure in covering Musk, and stop trusting tech executives; in other words, don't create more mythical creatures like Elon Musk. I would however argue that since the people he's talking to work for corporate media outlets owned by billionaires and wealthy investors, their desire to create a Randian Prometheus out of every rich muppet who claims to be a genius, is a feature of capitalist journalism, not a bug. After all, he who pays the piper, calls the tune, and the class sympathies and solidarity of billionaire muppets who own everything in our society, are readily demonstrated in our society by the process of myth-making around billionaire tech executives, described in this very article. Besides, clearly all the "right sort of people" are still making piles of money; even if we all know Elon's a fraud.

#Media #Musk #Tech #RecReads

Fascinated by the white women suddenly discovering systemic racism.

Let's just ignore the fact that the march was a #SearchtheLandFills action, I'm relatively lucky.

By the time I got to 55 division, I had @crockett swoop in to drop off a t-shirt and two more friends come sit with me.

One even leant her privilege by COMING INSIDE THE STATION with me, and we STILL DIDN'T get them to take the incident report, even after showing the video to the Desk Duty cop.

#whiteNonsense

https://www.ninaillingworth.com/2023/08/25/mini-theory-blog-lets-start-at-the-end/

The other day here on Mastodon, I briefly talked about the transnational, or post-nation state of being the uber rich in our society operate in, while offhandedly mentioning that they maintain their own council, and social structures, even while operating out in the open. I think these facts are important to keep in mind, when trying to understand why you're on a boiling planet, surrounded by a ruling class that clearly intends to keep doing extractivist fossil fuel capitalism, even if the world burns to ash. Unfortunately, if you're not familiar with the open structures of power, influence, and control the billionaires who own everything pay to maintain and employ, all of that can sound very much like a conspiracy theory; and surprise, the billionaire-owned corporate media isn't likely to help you figure that out.

As such, I think it's a fascinating stroke of luck, that Cory Doctorow just published an informative essay offering a more detailed examination of this very subject, albeit in a somewhat different context, on his Pluralistic blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/launderers-enforcers-bagmen/#procurers

This piece is ultimately built around reading and discussing a recent academic paper called "Transnational Uncivil Society Networks: kleptocracy’s global fightback against liberal activism," written by Alexander Cooley, John Heathershaw and Ricard Soares de Oliveira. The paper itself documents and examines how a collection of institutions, and institutional actors, openly manages the retention of wealth, procurement of power, and laundering of reputations, for the global uber rich. This highly-respected functionary army also works tirelessly to actively counter the efforts of those seeking justice, equality, and accountability; employing methods that range from dishonest, to coercive and often blatantly criminal. Finally, and most importantly, the paper demonstrates that literally none of this is actually a secret.

As always, I strongly encourage you to read the article itself; the piece is a little heavy on new jargon, but the terms are explained clearly in Cory's essay, and can be summed up by the idea that we're talking about the millionaires, who work to acquire, maintain, and exercise power for billionaires, as the planet boils. These are not shadowy figures, but bankers, public relations experts, wealth managers, corporate executives, accountants, lawyers, real estate brokers; and without their help, the billionaire fascist kleptocrats currently trying to burn your children alive, to keep doing capitalism even as we run out of planet, would simply not be able to exercise, or retain power.

This examination then, goes onto the pile of publicly documented examples we have of a wealthy, openly reactionary ruling class, "conspiring" together to maintain and exercise power, very much in the open. These examples of course include think tanks, lobby groups, SuperPacs, propaganda placement in for profit media, donor networks, regularly scheduled international conferences, celebrity galas, open funding of Astroturf political movements, campaign finance donations, bill mills, and so on. Although Doctorow's piece highlights two examples of the global rich who are not from the Anglosphere, we have documented evidence all over the place that this type of behavior is by no means foreign to Western billionaires; simply examining the rich guys and corporate actors who funded Trump's attempted fascist coup in Amerikkka would readily demonstrate that much.

Look folks, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and then buys a lobby firm to help give ducks all the power in our society, I'm pretty comfortable calling it a duck. It's not a conspiracy theory to say a few hundred billionaires own pretty much everything in the Pig Empire. It's not a conspiracy theory to say those same billionaires wield vastly outsized influence in our politics, our governance, and our discourse; they buy propagandists, politicians, and megaphones in the open, for precisely that purpose. Furthermore, it is not a conspiracy theory to point that these same, again, several hundred billionaires, all spend a lot of time associating together, and working together in the open, to maintain and exercise power; that's literally just life under capitalism in a class-based society, functioning as intended.

These are the folks, with real power in the Pig Empire. These are the folks really running our society, as anyone who has ever tried to effect meaningful change at the ballot box in a Pig Empire country will tell you. So when you want to know why "the powers that be" are setting the world on fire, rather than ending fossil duel consumption, these are the people who ultimately have to answer that question. That's not my opinion, that's just how class warfare and capitalism actually work; especially now, at the moment that either capitalism goes, or a planet that can sustain billions of lives does.

#Fascism #Capitalism #climatecrisis #NinaBytes

I broke my editor by requesting they stitch bad writing together like Doc Frankenstein; so everything is in the wrong order today and the website will likely have to wait. I'm not mad, it's only a biorhythm I've been training myself on the past 3 days...

*pouty face*

I kid, but yeah if you decided "editing and links are important to me" - the website is running behind today; nothing I can do, for once it's not me. Although actually it might be, since trying to fix three examples of my work into a cogent essay is why my editor is incapacitated.

Fine, one last thing before I go back to work; there's a REALLY good article on Truthout today I want to talk about... first however, and I want to be clear that I'm not speaking to the author of that horrible creatures article, OR the guy who shared it; I'm talking to you folks whose fundamentals are bad enough to buy the common reactionary propaganda idea that "these kids never forgive anyone/they don't allow people to grow and learn/cancel culture is about social death." So let's talk about three reasons why this is nonsense:

A) first of all, none of these people ever grow. They demand forgiveness, without atonement; in many cases they do not even apologize for the reason they got "cancelled" or asked to leave collectives/scenes. Typically they retreat to the internet to write blog skreds about how everyone else is Hitler and they are still right. There are plenty of anarchists, who used to believe reactionary things; there are even antifascists, who used to be reactionary thugs - it's possible to come back, but it's on YOU not everyone else, to make that happen. I myself used to say nice things about Glenn Greenwald because my fundamentals SUCKED; it's not been a problem because I admitted *I* was the problem, and got better. You should fucking try it sometime.

B) nobody actually OWES you forgiveness. If you did shitty things, there's a chance some people are just not gonna forgive you; in my experience this sort of scales with HOW shitty, violent, and dangerous the reactionary things you did were. The correct response to this is to shrug, apologize again, and go on with your life. The correct response is not to try and convince every other pinko in your scene that the person still upset at you is cancer and should be driven out; the latter response, suggests that you have not actually changed.

C) you literally have no fucking clue what social death is. None. Zilch. Zero. You folks are talking about being kicked out of scenes, activists groups, and social networks, because you did a reaction. Nobody killed you. Nobody erased you. Nobody chased you out of public life with threats of violence. You have not been "un-personed" - you have been "unfriended" and the fact that you do not know the fucking difference, is part of why you're here.

Kthanx. Going back to work now.

@CynAq I can think of no reason to disagree with this analysis; I also don't remember hearing that phrase used in good, or meaningful ways. In fact, I think I've used it, and still agree that this' dogshit, ambiguous, and very easy for the fash to repurpose. I suspect you are simply right.

@julieofthespirits yeah, okay, that definitely tracks. Especially knowing what I know about how the publishing industry has changed so much towards pushing costs on the authors. I feel you and I think you're right.

Mastodon, I'm bringing this one to you first.

Earlier this week the New York Times claimed to have partially corroborated some of Jamie Reed's allegations against a clinic for transgender youth in St. Louis.

Their story did not back up the assertion that they corroborated Reed's claims. I know that because I looked at every single one of the 69 claims. #trans #transgender #news #journalism #Newstodon #bias

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/jamie-reeds-allegations-are-not-even-partially-confirmed

Why is everyone who writes a book I like so terrible? Okay I mean not EVERYONE, but so many of them.

Don't answer, I know; it's because in reactionary hellworld a certain type of person tends to be the one whose voice can travel in the culture, and even when you enter ostensibly left-wing spaces, this reactionary cultural dynamic still tends to replicate itself - I heard about these folks' books, precisely because they're amenable to SOME reaction, and therefore, cooptable within a reactionary capitalist culture.

I just hate the dynamic. It's not that I don't understand it; it just pisses me off.

@coffeepine I mean, almost poetic in a way; more than I'd deserve at that point, for sure. I'm touched.

@coffeepine definitely gotta get me out to the sea; they can dig up a shed floor.

"There but for the grace of having *checks notes* read theory written in the past fifty years, go I..."

Love to start the day by getting mad about something that only matters to a small slice of the people in my life and that something is also so fucking gross I feel like I need a shower.

Listen, if later on in life I start talking like a 4Chan incel, I absolutely expect you people to do the right thing here. Two behind the ear, look at the camera weeping like Nino Brown in New Jack City. We both know there's no coming back from a brainworm that big and putrid.

@SnoozyRests Well, I suspect that's because they knew if they ADMITTED directly who they were talking about, there would be hell to pay.

This bit speaks volumes tho:

"Horrible Creatures are those who have a list, who know who is good and who is evil. Horrible Creatures are those who swell and elate when destroying their competitors. Horrible Creatures are those who have no patience for mistakes, who make no allowance for the time it takes people to grow and learn and improve because they themselves, already perfect, have never had much consideration for such processes. Horrible Creatures give more importance to definitions and categories than to feelings and conditions; they are more attuned to status than to reciprocal relations."

@oliphant @coffeepine Pretty sure that's a feature, not a bug; since if he had just come out and said "this is Vampire Castle" in 2019, he would have been told to go fuck himself.

@coffeepine @oliphant the intention is to mobilize reaction inside anarchist circles to chase away the "Horrible Creatures" he believes has hurt him; while casting that in the guise of being about necessity of successful revolutionary praxis.

It's Ben Burgis/Jimmy Dore shit with better words.