You’re right on the money. His service in Americas war machine and as a Merc, and his iffy (at best) stance on that which seems to mostly basically just be ‘we shouldn’t do Iraq again’ is the biggest issue and never gets addressed.
But even if you want to focus on the tattoo, even ignoring his lie about not knowing what it meant (he posted about knowing what it meant on Reddit before running), it shows that A) he’s a dipshit who thought it wouldn’t come up or be used against him and B) despite talking about socialism he doesn’t give a shit about solidarity or public service because keeping his edgy souvenir from his killing tours was more important than the fact that very obviously the people he claims to represent would be (rightly) concerned, offended, or threatened by the fact this guy sports Nazi ink.
As for Jacobin…
Basically all these radlib rags or news orgs go that way. I’ve even contributed to one or two in the past. There’s a fundamental tension between trying to build a business - call it profit or call it circulation / market share / visibility - if you want to work in the same media circles and ecosystem as mainstream media. There are too many stances and arguments and uncomfortable facts that are just verboten. So if you want grow a subscriber base with libs or get your contributers on television news shows you have to moderate your content.
Even if you don’t sell out your ideals completely, you’re now in a situation where readers/viewers who you may have even helped radicalise move past you quickly and they don’t need to moderate their views to get on television or whatever because they’re just ordinary people. So the readers/viewers that are arguably your own success story are quickly to the left of you or at least more ideologically commited than you appear to be. And so they leave and you push harder for that liberal exposure and the process repeats and intensifies.
And that’s even assuming you’re actually moving people left successfully in the first place, rather than just failing and running towards the money.
This reminds me of several professors I had in college, one in particular. As a USAian from red country, they were the farthest left people I ever met, and I enjoyed having my beliefs challenged by them, but as quickly as I was helped past some ideological blinders by them, I came to see that they weren’t interested in actual leftism in any way. I’m still not sure if it was because the topics were verboten, or if their actual opinions are just locked to the leftmost edge of the Overton window.
Overton window isn’t real. The purpose of higher education is to reproduce the superstructure and replace the upper percentage. To give it all an air of legitimacy and postulate the endorsed truths as facts - intellectuals are allowed to „think wider“ but still needs to arrive the forgone endorsed truths.
Professors are also usually from bourgeoise backgrounds. So Marxism is more an abstract idea, intellectual challenge or an niche coffee shop one frequents to feel more cultured - than actual restructuring of their relationship to capitalism.
You’re right on the money. His service in Americas war machine and as a Merc, and his iffy (at best) stance on that which seems to mostly basically just be ‘we shouldn’t do Iraq again’ is the biggest issue and never gets addressed.
But even if you want to focus on the tattoo, even ignoring his lie about not knowing what it meant (he posted about knowing what it meant on Reddit before running), it shows that A) he’s a dipshit who thought it wouldn’t come up or be used against him and B) despite talking about socialism he doesn’t give a shit about solidarity or public service because keeping his edgy souvenir from his killing tours was more important than the fact that very obviously the people he claims to represent would be (rightly) concerned, offended, or threatened by the fact this guy sports Nazi ink.
As for Jacobin…
Basically all these radlib rags or news orgs go that way. I’ve even contributed to one or two in the past. There’s a fundamental tension between trying to build a business - call it profit or call it circulation / market share / visibility - if you want to work in the same media circles and ecosystem as mainstream media. There are too many stances and arguments and uncomfortable facts that are just verboten. So if you want grow a subscriber base with libs or get your contributers on television news shows you have to moderate your content.
Even if you don’t sell out your ideals completely, you’re now in a situation where readers/viewers who you may have even helped radicalise move past you quickly and they don’t need to moderate their views to get on television or whatever because they’re just ordinary people. So the readers/viewers that are arguably your own success story are quickly to the left of you or at least more ideologically commited than you appear to be. And so they leave and you push harder for that liberal exposure and the process repeats and intensifies.
And that’s even assuming you’re actually moving people left successfully in the first place, rather than just failing and running towards the money.
This reminds me of several professors I had in college, one in particular. As a USAian from red country, they were the farthest left people I ever met, and I enjoyed having my beliefs challenged by them, but as quickly as I was helped past some ideological blinders by them, I came to see that they weren’t interested in actual leftism in any way. I’m still not sure if it was because the topics were verboten, or if their actual opinions are just locked to the leftmost edge of the Overton window.
Overton window isn’t real. The purpose of higher education is to reproduce the superstructure and replace the upper percentage. To give it all an air of legitimacy and postulate the endorsed truths as facts - intellectuals are allowed to „think wider“ but still needs to arrive the forgone endorsed truths.
Professors are also usually from bourgeoise backgrounds. So Marxism is more an abstract idea, intellectual challenge or an niche coffee shop one frequents to feel more cultured - than actual restructuring of their relationship to capitalism.