logicp_writings/collectivist_theology/Protest.md

Protest and Paranoia

Reading from the Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education.

"Traditional mainstream approaches to education tend to imagine the history of policy as a series of incremental steps leading gradually towards improved attainments and ever greater degrees of equity and social inclusion. Critical perspectives, however, view policy very different.

CRT views policy not as a mechanism that delivers progressively greater degrees of equity, but a process which is shaped by the interests of the dominant white population. A situation where genuine progress is won through political protest and where apparent gains are quickly cut back."

That is actually the name of the book. People defend by saying that CRT is not in education while defending that CRT should be a part of education.

It's not even the distortion or hypocrisy, it's an outright lie so they can keep doing what they're doing, so they can generate a race-based red guard to tear apart society. They want to be able to create the conditions so that we have another summer of 2020 with the young people taking a side of whatever protest shows up. They have to ingrain these racist ideas into the kids - racial critical ideas - racial critical consciousness so that they are ready to go bezerk and to defend people going bezerk again and take their side etc.

When another fruitful incident comes along. But that's not the point. We're not talking about this approach, but what we're talking abotu in this episode is, in fact that there is a clear juxtaposition / comparison or contrasting between traditional mainstream approaches to whatever, and critical perspectives.

We can say what we like about traditional mainstream approaches, whether or not they are always looking for greater degrees of equity and social inclusion. I don't think they actually ARE going after equity. People generally believe that we should maybe do something to make up for genuine disparate access, whether due to a physical difference, actual discrimination, etc.. People in traditional mainstream approaches to societal inclusion or reform would generally agree that there is a limit. When there is actually an injust behaviour, that we should do something about it, ideally removing the barrier. But in the case of a physical behaviour, like a phyhsical disability which challenges access, then there's only so much that you can do.

We like to be open to the idea of an equity program where we put extra resources into people who are limited in some way.

"Ever-greater degrees of equity" - I don't think so, unless we mean equality of access, which it doesn't It means equality of outcome, parity against current demographics and making up for historical injustices, redistribution on the greatest scale. The father of social equity theory wrote in a paper in 1990ish describing his seminal 1968 paper on the issue (recorded and put)

Equality is that citizens A and B are equal, Equity is adjusting share so that citizens A and B are made equal.

Traditional perspectives use "incremental steps" to gradually improve conditions. They contrast this with Critical Perspectives - How do they characterize this? They say it's all about power dynamics. Policy is not a mechanism which delivers progressively greater degrees of equity, but a process which is shaped by the interests of dhte dominant white population.

Paranoia and conspiracy theory that dominant white population, or bourgeoisie are erecting a system to purposely exclude others. Paranoia at the heart of the Critical Theory perspectiev.

A situation where genuine progress is won through political protest and where apparent gains are quickly cut back.

The critical perspective is protest. Their motivation is paranoia and their method is protest. It's all that they have,really. They believe that the only way to make progress is through protest against the power.

Let's put legs under this mindset so it can be more visible. They've been espousing this for at least a half century. It has been rife throughout communist thinkign all along, but what we want to point out is that this ist he heart of what's going on with "Communism doesn't know how".

Communism Doesn't Know How

They don't know how to achieve their goal, regardless fo teh goal. Communism, racial justice, gender justice, climate justice, vaccine justice, health justice (a real and huge one - continuation of Health Equity). Medical lysenkoism.

The only thing that these Critical Perspctives bring tot the table is protest. Disrupt, Dismantle and Destroy.

This creates a weird circumstance because all they are is destructive, btu they are very rhetorically savvy. They create the appearnce tha thtere is something else going on that's not just destruction. By tapping into that, they're able to trick people, but people see through it at the same time.

They perceive throughout their literature and speak of a certain-coming backlash. When they try to implement something, they say "what happens when you apply this is that yoyu encounter resistance". So much of the literature is devoted to overcoming resistance.

Counter Revolution and Revolt - Marcuse 1971 - after the radicalism he inspired in the 60s had started to fall apart. A sense of uphoria when his movement was taking off, but in 1972 he realizes that normal society has pushed back and things aren't going to go the way he wants.

The radical refusal to protest appears in the way in which words are grouped and regrouped. Freed from their familiar use and abuse.

This is exactly what we were talking about in the essay written by James at Christmas about Pseudorealities. Constructing linguistic pseudorealities to get people to play in .

Marcuse explicitly says it in Counter REvolution and Revolt. The essay by Joseph Piper on Pseudo realities. Abuse of power 1971

Piper was looking at stuff in the 60s and saying "they're abusing language on purpose".

Refusing Protest

In 1972, Marcuse said "the radical refusal to protest appears in the way words are grouped and regrouped. Freed from their familiar use and abuse.".

Because they believe that the power - by this point in the late 60s/early 70s critical theory has post modern ideas creeping into it. Awakening? Negative Dialectic adorno - similar to Derrida's deconstruction. Coalescing of a newway of thinking about language nad knowledge and ideas among Critical Theorits.

Language is already always being abused to maintain power. This in a sense the heart of post modern heart. critical theorists though tthey had to use specialized language and they had to free words from their familia ruse and abuse to do something different.

The radical refusal to protest appears in the way in which words are grouped and regrouped. Freed from their familiar use and abuse. Alchemy of the word - the imgae, the sound - creation of another reality out of the existing one. Permanent imaginary revolution. Emergence of a second history within the historical continuum. Permanent aesthetic subversion - this is the way of art.

Alchemy

Everything James has been saying - alchemy of the word - Hegel - Alchemical approach. Marcuse's work - seeds of the utopia are contained within this imperfect present - if we can just alchemically free them, then we can have a different reality.

Alchemy of the word the image the sound creation of another reality out of the existing one. Permanent imaginary revolution - emergence of a second history. 1619 Project?

This is all they have to offer. People don't want it when they perceive it, so they have a weird feedback loop in their literature where they know people don't want this - Robin d'Angelo knows people don't like it when they teach it. Diversity experiments on people - people didn't like it - overcoming resistance - Critical Whiteness aros to give people a White Identity to overcome resistance to Critical approaches to identity based in race.

Because of this, they predict with paranoia that there will be a backlash - but since their theory blinds them and limits them to their analysis so badly - protest is all they have - so they analyze this as people resisting something good because they have entrenched benefit or complicity or benefit that they don't want to give up and don't want to lose.

They have a perfect self-satisfying spiral of not being able to understand what's happening as they go on to alienate people and piss them off while ruining things for everyone. Becomes a greater program of despair.

But they've learned over 50 something years of trying to apply this (1970?) they've learned ways to turn it into a Cult-indoctrination. Disrupt dismantle and destroy.

Equity Task Force (Washington)

2020 Office of Equity Taskforce final proposal to Governor of Washington.

(Jay ENslay in 2018 commissioned an equity task force to bring an office fo equity to the state of Washington) Ben Boyce captured a video about an equity task force meeting - trying to define equity and wanted to define it literally as "disrupt + dismantle". They argue about if that's too naked. If they tell the story too clearly. If it gives away th egame. They propose a crazy long paragraph with 2 sentences of fluff, equity is disrupt and dismantle, 2 more sentences of fluff, etc. They put subjective nonsense in their definitions - huge red flag. That's not a definition. To enable a community to flourish to the greatest degree for the largest number of people ever with the least possibility of problems ever. Worse than filler words. Like having a knife that you'e wrapped in layers of cotton so they don't realize they're about to get stabbed. But they were explicitly putting the knife there in plain english - disrupt + dismantle.

Final report of the task force proposal - the definition they talked about doesn't appear in the final report - someone had enough sobriety to stop taht.

But it does appear many times - the word disrupt appears many times throughout the document, as well as dismantle. And at one poitn they appear in tandem. Section called principles of success for the equity task force report. The first principle of success: disrupt and dismantle systems of institutional racism and oppression. A principle of success? Complicated in terms of how they imagine things are going on.

Their thought must have been "How do we create greater neo-socialism in the state of Washington?" - disrupt and dismantle institutions of oppression.

Elimintating racism and oppression requires revolutionary change - 2020 office of equity task force final proposition to the governor of washington. Installed by legislature signed by governor

First principle of success is disrupt and dismantle.

"Elimintating racism and oppression requires revolutionary change. The office of equity's work must be transformative (communism?) it must disrupt and dismantle historical systems of institutional racism and oppression throughout every sector and layer of government.

Agencies must systematically identify the harm and exclusions built into our current systems and take immediate action to undo these inequities."

(They want to install the dictatorship of the antiracists. Everyone in wokeland is a tool of institutions and systems that are trying to take things over. The individuals hardly matter. Kendy's just another face on the same idea. Their goal is to have exactly the same kind of institutional control. They must systematically go through and organize everything and take immediate action to change. How? It begins with the first principle) Disrupt and Dismantle. All they bring to the table is protest and that anlaysis is rooted in paranoia. The essence of communism doesnt' know how - it's simple and straightforward they don't know how to make the world that they want - they just believe that if they protest enough, they can make "genuine progress" towards a magical situation.

Complainers

What they do understand very well, better than the right and centrists and genuine liberals - they understand that if they seize power, they can force it. The way that they do this is by bellyaching and problematizing. Showing up and complaining. We must recognize that they know that, besides linguistic alchemy, that the only way to that they can maek any headway on this vision that they have (a pipe dream) is by seizing and claiming and taking power, and not giving it back. The scandals that are required to remove a school board member with an angry parent base around them. Thousands of parents showing up to complain and unable to do anything.

The justice department then comes out and, through fishy circumstances, and ends up naming parents as domestic terrorists, instead of giving tehm the power to have say over what happens in childrens' institutions.

This is a crappy program, and nobody wants this. This causes them to go into a circle of paranoia and then more protest and then more paranoia. The paranoia is really there in the protest - we're going to get genuine protest, and then they're going to take ome of our progress away from us. This is the entire basis for critical race theory's idea of interest convergence ((the first big idea of CRT by Derek Bell - his thesis which parallels other ideas at the time (Marcuse talking about forces in society to maintain hegemony) it feels like a lot of this stuff is rewritten into the racial context. )) Paranoid view called INterest convergence - Brown vs Board of education - really it was just in the white interest, they didn't desegregate schools to help people get education - it was because white people had to make themselves look better.

Bell

If you look into Bell and read his arguments about Interest Convergence - he says it extremely plainly - "White people want to make themselves look good" in terms of - there is a movement at the time by communist regimes to make America look bad for its racial segregation - using the idea of Workers of the World Unite - the communists were claiming to be true antiracists - looking to other nations (Vietnam) and part of the propaganda campaign - look at how ba dAmeric ais racially segregated - Communism has answered racial segregation Workers of the WORLD Unite.

Bell's argument was that we desegregated our schools to defeat communism in America. White people in power wnated to stop third-world nations from going communist. So in order to do that, they had to desegregate schools to defeat Communist propaganda. A pro-communist argument in the development of Interest COnvergence while he put down the progress that virtually everyoen in the country who isn't a critical theorist is proud of. Represented in the step taken of Brown vs Board of Education. The first solid step to desegregate the schools. But not just white people trying to take advantage, but trying to make themselves look bad so that third world countries don't go communist.

All these protests of the 60s (in Bell's view - Critical Race Theory - introduction - a telling history of CRT up to the point of its being published - "We had all these vibrant protests of the 50s and 60s, Civil Rights movement, great society programs, civil rights and voting rights passed, affirmative action" then people started to think "we don't need to keep doing this forever. In our zeal to make up for the sins of our past, we've overdone some things nad want to walk it back" - We protest, we get stuff we want, the evil society walks it back. He may have had a paranoid personality disorder.The cynicism and paranoia in his analysis follows that same model - all we ahve is protest. We must create a ratchet to keep incrementally making progress in spite of the pushback. They never let us try proper communism.

As it turns out, by the way, this point that James wnats to stick wth is that protest is all they bring to the table - it's very clear in this structure. They think that power is firmly entrenched so that the only thing they have available to them is to complain in subversive ways and then the power will figure out intelligent ways to strike back. Paranoid personality.

Communism

The communists - What do they do? The leftists give them the revolution, the Antifa characters, thent he revolution passes and what's the firs thing these totalitarians do. They take the radicals, line them up and shoot them. The radicals that gave them the revolution. Why?

Two reasons (Yuri told us):

1. they know too much
2. tehy're useless - all they do is protest. All they do is agitate and break down the existing system.

So they get shot.

This is the same thing that'll happen to critical race theorists if this stuff goes through. Digital imprisonment is probably the plan. You need a super digital passport to leave your house and participate in society. Live your miserable life under house arrest until you die, and then lose your power. They'r playing a generational game at this point.

Antifa and BLM won't have a great time after the revolution.

This mentality goes back to Marcuse - he is the father of the new left. These people are th edescendents of the new left. Some mutation in the thought - concept creep or whatever you want to pin it on - we live in Marcuse's world, and it's tiring, but lets read his views on protest.

Liberation

The essay on liberation 1969. 1-dimensional man his is Magnum Opus, but the most important piece for us to read is The Essay on Liberation. (even more than repressive tolerance) (this was influential on the new left, who set the stage - radical professors who trained generations of radical children, who are now the professionals in academic elite society etc): This is the aggressiveness of those with the mutilated experience. With the false consciousness and the false needs - a victim of repression who, for their living depend on the repressive society and repress the alternative. (Context - he's talking about how the stablized society is filled with aggression because it isn't getting rea liberation, so it tamps down on its libido to do productive work etc. Teh society that functions is filled with people who are ragingly aggressive - aggressive against communism (the alternative) The general stabilized society that ejoys and wnat sto maintain the Amreican or Western system of freedom. They have a mutilated experience. The heteronomous interests - the power people and capitalists have swayed you to maek you think that life is this and that, but it's all a consumer treadmill hat drives them crazy. Yo ucan't think about what you really want because Coca Cola put a commercial on in front of you. A false consciousness. You think you have a good life, but you are unaware of your own servitude to the capitalist machine. You have false needs, like that coke. Marcuse really hates the idea of poor people having a nice life. Having your basic needs met, and being able to enjoy a nice cold coca cola with your feet kicked up watching the cars go by? He hates you for taht -y ou shoudl be a revoultionary in his cause. They are the victims of repression who, for their living) For their living, depend on the repressive society and repress the alternative. Their violence is that of the establishment and takes its targets, figures which rightly or wrongly seem to be indifferent and to represent an alternative. But while the image of the liberatarian potential of the advanced industrial society is repressed and hated by the managers of repression and their consumers, it motivates the radical opposition and gives them it its strange unorthodox character. (He says that the liberatarian - society has become sufficiently productive and well automated to eliminate most of labour (1969?) and since we dont 'need labour, people don't need to be chained to the industrial society. Liberatory - communism. If you could get the soviety structure or socialist structure upt ot he level of productivity of capitalism - so you could have an advanced economy that is high tech - or if you could pull the capitalist impulse out of capitalists where you already have that productivity, you could find the answer to "Communism that works". If requires having less stuff if you are capitalist, and becoming more productive if you are socialist. The Chinese, when they opened their markets under Deng Shao Ping - they pioneered the idea of communisfascism which blends these thigns together in the Marcusian way that we're discussing. That's the liberatarian potential - we can have communism because our technology isg ood enough now.)

That is repressed and hated by the managers of repression (capitalist class - bourgeoisie) and their consumers. (a fusoin between the capitalist class and the consumer class. Those who oppose and hate the idea that we could be free, ifw e just accepted the alternative. This potential motivates radical opposition and gives it it strange unorthodox character. Very different from the revoultion at previously stages of history, this opposition is directed against the totality of a well-functioning, prosperous society. A protest against its form - the commodity form of man and things - against the imposition of false values and of false morality. This new consciousness and the instinctual rebellion isolate such opposition from the masses and from the majority of organized labour. The integrated majority. And make for the concentration of radical politics and active minorities. Among the young, middle-class intelligentsia and the ghetto populations. Liberation becomes a vital biological need. )

And so this is it. the architect of the movement is Herbert Marcuse - the intellectual engine behind the world we live in today. What did he say? The opposition to this repressive society that he sees in the free world requires opposition against the totality of a well-functioning society - a protest against its form. Against the very form of a well functioning, prosperous society. Why? Because capitalism has to be torn down. It can't be a wellf-unctioning prosperous society - it needs to be torn down and made bad enough so that people crave liberation as a vital biological need.

You have, in the ghetto populations, and in the young middle-class intelligentsia (radicalizable college students he is psychologically abusing). You can radicalize dumb college kids and disaffected ghetto populations and they already have a vital biological need for liberation (preposterous and the central irony of the woke movement - entitled rich bastards at Yale screaming about halloween costumes and saying you nee to provide us with a home. Every college student who throws a gigantic tantric at an elite university with parents who make untold money and have untold social capital. Wisconsin U Madison a rock had to be moved because it crearted an uninclusive environment. Remove it for 50 grand)

Biological imperative for protest

Biological need for liberation from - what? From their entitlement? From their cushy-ass lives that don't have meaning? From their not being knowing what to do with themselves? Elites in a world they positively don't understand? What vital biological need is he talking baout in this young middle class intellgentsia who are spoiled shits in elite colleges?

What he's saying is that he's driving those people insane, rather than teaching them to be the future leaders in elite instutitions, he's saying that we should radicalize them. A protest against the very form of a well-functioning society. That' sall this movement is. The neo-marxist movement which became identity-political. Identity-Marxism as an off-shoot of neo-marxism.

This exact thing brings nothing else to the table except protest - if you jibber and break and disrupt and dismantle and destroy enough, then you get something but society will take it back away again. They drive you nuts so that you become radical enough such that this is an involuntary, biological need.

A huge protest against the very Form (platonic form?) of a well-functioning society. The Great Refusal.

One-Dimensional Man - a whole chapter dedicated to THe Great Refusal. The protest against that which is. The protest (that's all they have) against THat Which Is? THe system? everything? Life? Existence? The system is the deity of the postmodern religion - power dynamics and systems.

If you see it as a deity, it's a protest against the order of the world (God). It's the same thing Marx was doing when he wsa protesting openly against God. His mission.

Refusal

The Great Refusal - Protest against existence and society.

The exact word for word from Marcuse "The Protest Against That Which Is".

Essay on Liberation (1969) - The Refusal: For the world of human freedom cannot be built by the established societies. No matter how much they may streamline and rationalize their dominion. A society which works is dominion because it requires a lot of people to do things sometimes that they don't want to do. Like go to work, or do something difficult, work on a day they don't want to. Leaving their sensuous life to be responsible. That's a problem for Marcuse. Contained responsibility - freedom and liberty are not the same concept - Liberty is a two-sided coin with freedom on one side and responsibility on the other. Btut he doesn't want that, he just wants the world of human freedom - Liberation instead of Liberty.

The world of human freedom cannot be built by the established societies. No matter how much they may streamline and rationalize their dominion. Their class structure, the perfected controls required to sustain it. To generate needs, satisfactions and values which reproduce the servitude of human existence. This voluntary servitude, voluntary in as much as it is interjected into the individuals. (you are a servant to the capitalist society, a slave to the system, and you think it's voluntary and that it's your own choice, but it's only voluntary because it's been interjected into you. Brainwashed into believing that you have to participate. You are unable to see the alternative - the communism.)

This voluntary servitude which justifies the benevolent masters can be broken only through a political practice which reaches the roots of containment and contentment in the infrastructure of man. A political practice of methodical disengagement from and refusal of the establishment - aiming at a radical transvaluation of values.

Protest against that which is - is a political practice which reaches the roots of containment and contentment in the infrasturcture of man. You have to be made discontent. A political practice of methodical disengagement from and refusal of the establishment aiming at a radical trasnvaluation of values.

Such a practice involves a break with the familiar. Routine ways of hearing seeing feeling understanding things so that the organism can become receptive to the potential forms of a non-aggressive, non-exploitative world.

(The structure of capitalism is inherently aggressive and exploitative - you have to work)

The functioning of society depends on your work. No wonder how remote from these notions the rebellion may be. No matter how destructive and self-destructive it may appear. No matter how great the distance between the middle class revolt and the metropols and the life and death struggle of the wretched of the earth - common to them is the depth of the refusal.

(Critical Theory exists to create a protest against everything that is, and to refuse the entire society methodically. that's the point. that' sall this movement has to bring to the table - routed in paranoid conspiracy theories, here we have the great capitalist masters are this huge conspiracy theory are interjecting values into you. You can't possibly like your own life - you can't actually enjoy your own freedom - go to work, do a good job, even though it's nto always fun, because stuff has to get done. Come home, proud of yourself maybe with a little bit fo money, a little bit of discretionary income, so that you might enjoy your life. There's a rebellion against this, it's false consciousness etc )

It doesn't matter how destructive or self-destructive this movement might appear, it's necessary because it speaks to the depth of refusal, that they're willing to cut off their nose to spite their own face. This is the middle class revolt in the life and death struggle in the wretched of the earth.

It makes them reject the rules of the game that is rigged against them. The ancient strategy of patience and persuasian - the reliance on the good will of the establishment - its false and immoral comforts and its cruel affluence.

Paranoia

So you have to refuse the entire society. All the critical theory movements bring to the table - routed in paranoia and conspiracy theories about how society works - the idea is that they have a visionf or the world - a utopia - and they believe that if everyboy went along with their stupid plan, they don't know how they're going to get there, but it would work becuase we'd have to change how we think about everything, and we'd become communists and everything would be great - this is their will, and people are rejecting their stupid plan which isn't even a plan, because they want to keep their privilege - they want to keep their entrenched power - they want to keep their access to being able to repress other people. They cannot possibly comprehend that they actually have a terrible program - a program of paranoia nad protest - which doesn't work.

And so paranoia and protest intensify. And intensify again - to the point where you get a great refusal. Society is agiant conspiracy against people like you. All you can do is expect to meet resistance that you have to find ways to overcome and then the only thing you can do is just completely refuse the entire society, protest against it and act like a lunatic.

So all you see from the critical theory movement is total emphasis on protest against everything - the words Marcuse to describe it - protest against everything that is - there are no positive solutions. They are not share about this, either - people look at the woke movement and think "oh they found all these problems, let's solve them" They don't want to solve these problems - there is no mechanism in their theory provided to solve the problems. All they can do is refuse the existing society and you could say, just to be generous, yeah we should refuse racism we should refuse. We used to be racist, we should refuse it. But that's not what they're talking about - the logic of entire logic of society. Kendi says this now that to be truly antiracist you have to be anticapitalist.

The Critical Theorists are all saying that. It's all down to this vision. No positive solutions, only negative thinking. This is what Marcuse referred to it as "negative thinking".

Maybe not an entire chapter dedicated to the "Great Refusal" in One-Dimensional Man. There is a chapter, however, on Negative Thinking - and the idea - how does he describe Negative Thinking? The defeated logic of protest. Everything comes back to protest, for these people. Negative Thinking is the engine. If you go back to Alchemy, negative thinking is supposed to become positive because they believe that there is a seed of a perfect utopian society inside our society. If you peel off the outter layer of crap - if tyou problematize and protest and pull back the problems, then that seed of gold will not only be freed, but will blossom and turn the entire mundane base metal of society into that gold. The alchemical idea that the perfect society is contained within our wretched society, and what we have to do is to fight the order of existing society and rip off everything we don't like. That's why you have to protest what is.

What this does, when you get people hooked on it (according to Marcuse) - people clamoring for a new life.

Essay on Liberation - People are going to be clamoring for a new life as they come to understand it. What kind of life? We are still confronted with the demand to state the concrete alternative. The demand is meaningless if it asks for a blueprint of the specific institutions and relationships which would be those of the new society. They cannot be determined a priori. They will develop in trial and error as the new society develops. (People are going to hate capitalism, we're going to radicalize them, it's going to become a vital need that they have a new life.)

What does it look like? We can't do that, that demand is meaningless if it asks for a blueprint of specific institutions and relationships.

It can't be determined a priori, they will develop in trial and error. This is the thesis of communism doesn't know how. They don't have positive solutions, the essence of negative thinking, they don't have positive solutions, they just have protest, protest everything. The defeated logic of protest. This i swhat we're describing now, the negativet hinking is just that.

The demand to state alternatives is meaningless (we can't actually tell you what it looks like, we just don't like what we have now). If we could form a concrete alternative today it would not be that of an alternative. The possibilities of the new society are sufficiently abstract that is removed an incongruous with the established Universe to defy any attempt to identify them in terms of this Universe. (key idea in Critical Theory - the point of critical theory (Max Horkheimer) is specifically that: you can't possibly describe what a better society in the terms of the current society. The existing terms are bad - this is why Marcuse saying we need to develop a new language. In Counter-revolution Revolt he says we need to use the alchemy of new language to divorce words from their usual meaning and do something completely different. Because the existing terminology and world itself is already so corrupted that we can't possibly picture what we want. The alchemy analogy: describe Gold in terms of Lead. You can't do it.)

Remove from an incongruous with the establishe Universe to defy any attempt to identify them in terms of this Universe. (We can't even understand what Utopia would be.)

Henry Giroux: The Utopia is actually a set of possibilities for a better, more democratic (communist) society.

Marcuse again The question cannot be brushed aside by saying that what matters today is the destruction of the old, of the powers that be, making way for the emergence of the new. Such an answer neglects the essential fact that the old is not simply back, that it delivers the goods, and that people have a real stake in it. (The system works, and we can't completely abolish it, we have to do something a bit different - too simple to just disrupt and dismantle) there can be societies that are much worse, there are such societies today, the system of corporate capitalism has the right to insist that those who work for its replacement justify their action. But the demand to state concrete alternatives is justified for yet another reason. Negative thinking draws whatever force it may have from its empirical basis. The actual human condition in a given society, and the given possibilities to transcend this condition, to enlarge the realm of freedom.

(This is not empirical. This is how Marxists use the words empirical or scientific - you are going to impose your theory on something and call it science. This is what they've done from the beginning. Scientific socialism of Marx. Another negative thinking project - the actual human condition in society as analyzed by marxists and given possibilities to transcend.) In this sense, negative thinking by virtue of its own internal concepts positive. (Negative thinkign is positive).

Oriented toward and comprehending a future which is contained in the present. (Alchemy).

And in this containment, which is an important aspect of the general containment policy pursued by the established societies, the future appears as possible liberation. It is not the only alternative.

(So he hasn't given a concrete alternative, and this would not be the only alternative - it's not guaranteed that we get liberation, whereas Marx thought capitalism would collapse and inevitably go into a socialist state that would ushes in the communist utopia. Inevitable. The neo-marxists do not believe this, especially post WW2 (MArcuse refers to as the post-fascist era). The post-fascists do not believe this - they believe that capitalism will collapse, and they will either be rescued (Sustainability) by Socialists, or it will devolve into fascism. Those are the only two options - capitalism is CERTAIN to cllapse, and it will lead to socialism or fascism, and thus being antifascist is asking for an authoritarin communist society.)

It's not the only alternative. The advent of a long period of "civilized" barbarism, with or without the nuclear destruction, is equally contained in the present. (civilized barbarism means the continuity of the current system, which is a clear and present danger)

Critical roots

Negative thinking and the praxist guided by it is the positive and positing effort to prevent this negativity. (The Critical Theorists rae saving the world from nuclera calamity, by ushering in a liberated Socialism)

The concept of the primary initial institutions of liberation is concrete enough.

Collective Ownership, Collective control and planning of the means of production and distribution (step 1 - communism). This is the foundation, a necessary but not sufficient condition for the alternative. It would make possible usage of all available resources for the abolition of poverty (goal of Marxism), which is the prerequisite for the turn from quantity into quality - the creation of a reality in accordance with the new sensitivity and the new consciousness (intersectionality is a piece of a broader new sensibility or sensitivity or new consciousness and the broader idea is sustainability). Begins with communism, involves abolition of poverty, and recreates reality in accordance with a new sensitivity (radical, critical consciousness).

Notice how it doesn't describe what is to be created, and that's because they have nothing but negative thinking.

Negative thinking: the defeated logic of protest. Not unique to Marcuse (Theodore Adorno, who didn't get along with Marcuse. Adorno took Marcuse to task for trying to radicalize students instead of educating them. This created a schism and Adorno ended up getting thrown out. They were going to go full born and attempt a revolution, but Adorno got cold feet, so they kicked him out)

Adorno's idea: One cannot cast a picture of utopia in a positive manner (you can't say what it' sgoing to look like, because the existing logic is too all-encompassing. You can't think outside of the box at all, because you can't get outside of the box. You'll only see outside of the box until you're out of the box, and this can only happen through abolitioning the box.)

Horkheimer: The critical theory which I conceived later (compared to Marx, which had a shortcoming) is based on the idea that one cannot determine what is Good. What a good and free society would look like, from within the society in which we now live. We lack the means. But in our work, we can bring up the negative aspects of this society that we want to change.

Again and again, we keep coming back tot his one point - other than a paranoid conspiracy theory, motivating them that everybody is against them for the wrong reasons and their stupid program. As opposed to being against them because they have terrible ideas that lead to totalitarians.

Handbook of Critical Race theory and education - the entire program in the critical perspective is one where genuine progress is only achieved by protest that is then walked back by the existing society (paranoid conspiracy). This is exactly what we hear in the 2020 Office of Equity Task Force in Washington. Disrupt and Dismantle systems of institutional racism and oppression. Eliminating racism and oppression requires revolutionary change.

The office of equity's work must be transformative, it must disrupt and dismantle historical systems of institutional racism and oppression throughout every sector of government. Agencies must systematically identify the harm and exclusions built into our current systems, take immediately action to undo these inequities (we don't know what a better system looks like, but we know that every level of government we can work to bring up the negative aspects of this society that way want to change. Protest that which exists so we can gain power, so that we can try communism and hope it magically works. That's all they have to bring to the table. Their objective is a total protest against everything that works, until they can use that protest to gain enough power to take control of things, because their genuine belief is that if enough people believe in them, they can put enough into their ideas, then what we can do is usher in a system which isn't oppressive any longer. (with enough people occupying positions of power))

Recap:

The view from Marxism in terms of what does capitalism to socialism to communism look like? Marx saw these as the last 3 stages of history. Has a plan/purpose to get to communism. The end of history.

The last 3 stages of Capitalism

The workers become aware of their alienation. Aware of the exploitation of their surplus value being scooped up by the capitalists for their own enrichment, and therefore in some sense stolen from the labourers. Based in Marx's take on the labour theory of value. All value is created by the labour to do work. The working class becomes an awakened proletariat that realizes this and seizes the means of production nad establish a dictatorship of the proletariat that ushers in a system where the working class organizes into a political force that seizes and owns the means of production and becomes the state. Why? The general background assumption from Marx was that once enlightened people who know about exploitation and alienation are in charge, they are not going to reproduce that with other people - they know how terrible it is. They have a better perspective. Marxian theory - epicycles explain the phenomenon of people becoming corrupt once they have power. The logic of the existing system (what Critical Theory gets into) infiltrates into the next system, thus corrupting what would otherwise be a renewed system. You didn't do it right, that's why Russia didn't work out. The oppressed were so used to being oppressed that all they understand is oppression. Once they become powerful they transform into oppressors.

If you put properly enligthened people in positions of absolute power, they will usher us into a place where the program that they're instituting becomes spontaneous. But if you awaken people to a new consciousness, Critical, Class, Race, Sex - put those awakened people in positions of power as a dictatorship of the antiracists or proletariat, they will not reproduce oppression with the right formula, and the program is going then to become spontaneous - true communism or Justice.

The new morality interjects into people - Kendy - if you force antiracism on people for long enough, people will become antiracists. Social conditions until they are automatic. And then the socialism era ends, because the state becomes redundant - you don't need to force people to do what they're already doing, because it has become naturalized and normalized.

The enlightened people, having seen this transformation, will relinquish their power to allow Communism to complete its transformation. Racial justice and racial equity are spontaneous. This is why they don't believe any court outcome is specifically a form of Justice. Justice is when we reach racial equity.

As Faith

These are the articles of faith of Communism.

Their only method that they have is total protest against everything that functions - the things that are functioning, colourblindness, equality, capitalism, etc these things which are functioning are teaching people that the system is working, and doesn't need to be overthrown.

Protest is all they bring to the table, born out of paranoia that the system is a self-perpetuating monster.

Horkheimer: the problem with Marxist theory is that advanced capitalism really works. Allows the worker to build a better life.

Rebellion

We need a total rebellion against a prospering society. A plan for tearing down. Rock-solid proof that their entire program is tearing shit down. The negative thinking will become positive in the sense that the perfect society is contained within the existing society, if we just tear down all the rot (alchemy).

What does this look like?

"If now, in the rebellion of the young intelligentsia - the right and truth of the imagination (if you radicalize college students) become the demands of political action if surrealistic forms of protest and refusal spread throughout the movement this apparently insignificant development may indicate a fundamental change in the system. If things get weird, it might work. The political protest assumign a total character reaches into a dimension which, as an aesthetic dimension, has been essentially apolitical. The political protest activates in this dimension precisely the foundational organic elements. The human sensibility which rebels against the dictates of repressive reason, and in doing so invokes the sensuous power of the imagination (counter enlightenment themes of Russeau). The poltiical action which insists on a new morality and a new sensibility as preconditions and results of social change occurs at a point at which the repressive rationality that has brought about the achievements of industrial society becomes utterly regressive, rational only in its efficiency to contain liberation (preventing Communism. Creating a stable middle class and creating trusts but it's all to contain communism)"

"Beyond the limits and beyond the power of repressive reason now appears the prospect for a new relationship between sensibility and reason. The harmony between sensibility and a radical consciousness. Rational faculties capable of projecting and defining the objective material conditions of freedom, its rea limits and chances. But instead of being shaped and permeated by the rationality of domination, the sensibility would be guided by the imagination, mediating between the rational faculties and the sensuous needs. (They don't just have protest and paranoia, they also have reimagining. Reimagine. Washington State thing has something about disrupt dismantle, reimagine and rebuild. Break everything so that we can reimagine. Sensuous needs? Savages made to live in cities - sensual and instinctual savages. Marcuse reproducing Russeau. Imagine things as we go. We'll build the plane while we fly it.)"

"The same trend of production and consumptions which makes for the affluence and attraction of advanced capitalism makes for the perpetuation and struggle for existence (you have to go to work to keep things going. There's a point at which we're doing enough and we shouldn't to create new needs, create more stuff peopl emight enjoy, more ability for people to pursue their personal happiness, because it's false needs. It's perpetuating the struggle for existence. A complicated health system might not be what we need. Think of all the people that will have to work, and how expensive it is, and all the jobs of people doing crap they don't realy want to do which makes the world sicker.)"

Stop production at that level and things will work out great?

You don't need that

"The growth of the so-called discretionary income in the United States indicates the extent to which income earned is spent on other than basic needs. (Fuck you for having a nice life and being able under a free society to pursue meaning where you want in a new way, and way you want, in wanys inconceivable a few generations ago. You want to win an olympic medal in javelin? you can learn on YouTube. You have more paths to meaning than anyone has ever had in previous lives. The whole society could be diagnosed as having decision paralysis about meaning in life. That' swhat liberation is supposed to be about -t o have all these possibilities - but he's also complaining on it, because you should be miserable so you can be a revolutionary for his cause. Coffee was a luxury, but now you need your starbucks. )

"Former luxuries become basic needs, a normal development which under corporate capitalism extends the competitive business of living to newly created needs and satisfactions. The fantastic output of all sorts of things and services defies the imagination. (You have more ways to be comfortable and happy and enjoy your life and pursue meaning and find something that's valueable and special to you which defies the imagination but it's terrible because we're restricting and distorting meaning in the commodity form.) Through which capitalist production enlarges its hold over human existence, and yet precisely through the spread of this commodity form, the repressive social morality which sustains the system is becoming weakened. The obvious contradiction between the liberating possibilities of the technological trnasformation of the owrld, the light and free life on the one hand, and the intensification of the struggle for existence on the other (thre is no intensification of the struggle for existence -0 that's what they're ruining by making us all serfs again) generates among the underlying population taht diffused aggressiveness which unless steered to hate an fight the national enemy (total protest, war on everything that works)"

"To the degree to which th erebellion is directed against a functioning and prosperous democratic society it is a moral rebellion gaainst hte hypocritical aggressive values and goals, against the blasphemous religion of the society against everything it takes seriously , everything it professes while violating what it professes."

Hate for our society and protest of everything that is is what this crazy ideology which has been spreading across countries can offer.

"The unorthodox character of this opposition, which does not have th traditional class basis, and which is at the same time a political instinctual and moral rebellion, shapes the strategy and scope of the rebellion, it extends to the entire organization of the existencing liberal parliamentary democracy. Among the new left, a strong revulsion against traditional politics prevails. Against a whole network of parties, committes and pressure groups, on all levels, against working within this network and with its methods. (The deep state?) This entire sphere and atmosphere is invalidated, nothing that any politicians representatives or candidates declares is of any relevance to the rebels. They are not professional martyrs. They prefer not to be beaten or to go to jail, but to them this is not a question of choice. The protest and refusal are parts of their metabolism. ANd they extend to the power structure as a whole. The democratic process organized by this structure is discredited to such an extent that no part of it can be extracted which is not contaminated. Total protest against everything.

Moreover, using this process would divert energy to snail-paced movements. For example, electioneering with the aim of significantly changing the composition of US Congress might tkae 100 years, judging by the current rate of progress, and assuming that the effort of political radicalization continues unchecked, and the performance of the courts from the lowest to the highest doesn't mitigate a given trust in a given democratic constitutional setup. Under these circumstances, to work for the imrpovement for the existencin democracy easily appears as indefinitely delaying attainment of the goal of creating a free society. (We're going to have a revolution, it's not going to work, all we have is protest against everything that works, we can't use incremental methods we can't go slowly, it's all too slow, everything will be a catastrophe)

"Thus in some sectors of the opposition the radical protest tends to become antinomian,anarchistic and even non-political. A defiance of God. Here's another reason why the rebellion often takes on the weird and clownish forms, which get on the nerves of the establishment, and the face of the gruesomely serious totality of institutional politics, satire irony and laughing provocation become a necessary dimension of the new politics. The contempt fro the deadly esprit des serieux which permeates the talkings and doings of the professional and semi-professional politicians, appears as contempt for the values which they profess while destroying them."

Clownish forms

So, satire mockery be clown world, the joker, that's what they're bringing to the table. Total protest against everything. Clownishly, no seriousness.

"The rebels revive the desperate laughter and the cynical defiance of the fool as a means for demasking the deeds of the serious ones who govern the hall. (you can compare that rant to the Critical Theory introduction in Stefancic where they say that traditional civil rights approaches are not to be used in Critical Race Theory, because they embrace incrementalism and step by step progress. Instead, ou need to have revolution. You need to have total refusal of the existing structure by giving these people that want to refuse it power to rewrite everything according to their theory. Queer theory is the same thing, but on steroids. A total refusal of the idea of categories at all. Sex, gender, categories rae unstable and you can move around in them. Total rejection, war on normality. The idea of normal is its own repression. If you had to summarize Queery theory to one concept, it's that the idea of something being normal is oppressive. It posits queerness as an identity without an essence. It's all just a huge protest. Clownish forms that annoy the establishment. You can tell that not only does it protest the normal in every possible way, but it does so in a blatantly disingenuous way. It's not creative or artful, it's just garbage. But more than that, it's blatantly not real. It's not even protest - it's rebellion. Rebellion, as am atter of fact, whne you rebel against something, you are shackled to the thing that you are rebelling against. You have to go in the opposite direction of the thing. If you are rebelling against your parents, you are still bound by their ideas, you're just doing the opposite of them. If you're rebelling against the idea of there being rigid male and female categories, you're going to flip over - a male who says they're female. Reproducing the stereotypes in the extreme. Rejecting the idea binary, you're going to try and look like a lumpy potato with as short and colourful hair as possible. Look as much as a human potato as you can, because potatoes don't have genders. You are going to seriously lean into the stereotypes in this kind of weird clownish rejection of them. DIsingenuous in the fact that they break the idea of categorization with obsessive categorization. Self obsessed narcissists would fascinate themselves with this for hours. Hudnreds of genders and sexualities. Hundreds of romantic orientations that are parallel to the sexualities. Lithrosexual Lithromantic. Trisexual triromantic. It's so stupid. Endless categories and categories.

Genders that are based on anything that is not male or female. Something not sceen as a traditional gender - xenogenders whih are prtending that your gender is a dog or anything that's not masculine or feminine. Anything outside. Anything that's not traditionally seen as a gender. Hierarchies - Space genders (stupid words for these things), within space genders there's like nebula genders, star genders, within star genders you can have blue supergiant gender vs red supergiant gender vs white dwarf gender - look up Xenogenders. There are categories and categories, even though they're all against categories and categorization - all they do is categorize in stupid clownish ways. Fluidity is the rejection - the key - star gender today, female tomorrow, a tiger after that - you're fluid, that's queerness. It has no essence. It changes.

What they're really doing is picking some type of a stereotype and leaning way into it. That's rebellion. That's all they have to bring to the table - a sloppy, lazy uncreative rebellion. Lots of alchemical words that don't do anything except satisfy their egos and confuse people into not rejecting them outright like they should.

So, this isn't a productive project, that's the big point. Just clownery and protest with no positive vision. They think (this is unpopular) the reason people don't appreciate it is because people want to entrench power dynamics. Intead of the fact that they're just not offering anything worth having.

People don't know what they have

This is why Vivek Ramiswami - wrote Woke Incorporated - is right that diluting their piss-poor values to irrelevance is a key component (the solution in hsi words) - we have to offer a positive vision of humanity and life, again. For the moment they have to be offered on postmodern terms, that dilute all of this idiotic, narcissistic protest.

People are rebelling because they don't have something that they want to keep, basically. What this results in is them predicting that people won't like this, and saying "this is resistance" and paranoia - the second thing they bring other than protest. They believe the system is rigged against them, instead of just supposing that they might be wrong. (Principal Skinner). The entire society is wrong, and I am right.

This has been overcome and made their work as effective as it is because they're figured out how to conduct cult-programming to mitigate resistance. 1970s - Judith Katz 1978 - White Awareness (diversity manual for professional settings - Robin D'Angelo basically stole some of this stuff. The cited material which becamet he infamous smithsonian AfricanAmerican history/culture museum - the upside down brown pyramids near teh Washington monument - Hideous building - the book mostly talks about what to do when encountering resistance. They know people don't want to be called racist (especially when it's not true). People will reject their program, in spite of the advocates thinking it's the greatest thing ever - because they're in a cult.)

White Fragility

Robin d'Angelo doesn't seem to be citing Katz, but is familiar with the Katz approach. The claim of the book/paper clearly was implementing a program extremely similar to the one advocated by Judith Katz, and people were rejecting it, and White Fragility was the tool (Kafka trap) that she invented to overcome resistance. The whole point of White Fragility is white people are going to resist this. Talks about it in her book, and with herself in her confessional style. White people resisting is White Fragility - overcome it by accusing them of something unfalsifiable - White Fragility.

One piece from White Fragility: "If you are reading this, and you are still making your case for why you're different from other White people, and none of this applies to you, stop and take a breath. Now, return to the questions above and keep working from them. To interrupt White Fragility, we need to build our capacity to sustain the discomfort of not knowing, the discomfort of being racially unmoored, the discomfort of racial humility. Our next task is to understand that the forces of racial socialization are constantly at play. The inability to acknowledge these forces inevitably leads to the resistance and defensiveness of White Fragility. To increase the racial stamina that counters White Fragility, we must reflect on the whole of our identities and our racial group identity in particular, and for white people this means first struggling with what it means to be white."

Cult

This is cult programming. What's happening is (all contained in this paragraph) vulnerability is being introduced into the situation. People are being accused of possibly being complicit with racism and are stressed. She says: Stop. Take a breath. Now go back and try again.

And then she says you have this problem that needs to be interrupted.

1. Introduce vulnerability
2. Give pathway out of vulnerability through doctrine

Complicit in racism. Feel vulnerable? Follow my instructions. Go back and do it again. Do it better. You have a disease and here's the thing you can do to overcome it. The path out, through doctrine. We build your capacity to sustain your discomfort of not knowing. You can do it! You can become better - keep practicing! The discomfort, you have to be able to learn to sit with the discomfort. Be humble. Accept what we are saying.

Step 2: understand the forces of racial solution are at play. It's not totally your fault! See, now, all of a sudden, you have a pathway out of the moral responsibility. You're a racist, but it's not your fault. Forces of racial socialization are constantly at play. The doctirne is giving the way out from the vulnerability. The inability to acknowledge these forces inevitably leads to resistance and defensiveness of white fragility. If you don't want to participate, it's because you have the disease. So the only way out is through cult doctrine, and Robin is clear on this.

Worthy of endless criticism as it only gives one way out - total agreement with the accusation and that you must humiliate yourself, in the Puritan sense. This is how you increase racial stamina! Reflect on things the way we tell you. Struggle with what it means to be White.

in the 1960s it was just a protest movement that offered protest and revolution, btu they figured out how to build a cult indoctrination on it so people are caught in a cult of destruction. THey have no positive vision - you're not in the program? You're bad!

This is where they break any possibility of meaningful resistance: you have to be somewhere who sees it in our way!

Is everyone really equal? Critical Social Justice considerations - defensiveness. Another dynamic in this scenario is a defensiveness the students feel when the instructor points out the lack of diversity. This defensiveness signals that the ideology of individualism has been challenged in our dominant groups. We are not socialized to see ourselves as group members, and it's time to take umbrage at the suggestion that this aspect of our identity matters. To feel defensive at the suggestion that our race or class or gender is relevant to our life experiences. To point out the relevance of our group membersghip ius to challenge a privilege to which we often feel entitled. The privilege to see ourselves and be seen by others outside of social groups. This is a cult indoctrination, and the point is to turn people into people who believe the system works this way so they'll want to protest against it, because that's all they have to offer. Protest and paranoia.

Student's defensiveness: they are coming from a good/bad binary. They don't think about things in a complicated-enough way.

1. Something wrong with demographics of class
2. Point this out
3. Defensiveness in that they're not as open to discussion as they could be.

The defensiveness sends an unwelcoming message to anyone else in the room who may want to engage constructively with the issue. Of course, we do not mean to imply that the dfensiveness is not normal or temporary, but defensiveness in this context is an indication of a dominant world view, and it functions to protect that world view rather than to expect it. So we need to indoctrinate you to protest against the dominant world-view.

From a Critical Social Justice perspective, defensiveness should be an indicator to us that we're falling into the good/bad binary. Some aspect of our dominant group position is being challenged. In this way, we can use our defensiveness as an entry-point into deeper self-awareness (that's how they cultivate a cult commitment).

DIE training (Societal/Civlizational destruction cult):

1. Do something racial -> confess your racism, accuse someone of racism, talk about racism
2. If they don't like it, they are told to interrogate their feelings of defensiveness - a signal of fragility (brown fragility?)
3. Moral extortion arranged as a cult-indoctrination tool which converts people into protesting against the fabric of society after convincing them they are otherwise complicit in the oppression inherent in that society.

Destroy civlization so a utopia can be borne of it. People resist it because it's inherently destructive, and people don't like destroying things that work. So use the conclusion that those who don't want this are wrong because they are complicit in the system, and they have to be brought into a cult-like indoctrination program that capitalizes on feelings of defensiveness and feelings of vulnerabilities manufactured around these issues (bigotry, injustice, inequity) with a pathway offered out through the doctrine.

At the bottom of this is a program that offers nothing. All it does is make worthless protestors who offer no positive vision. So it's no surprise that once they're in positions of power, all we see is collapse, failure, corruption. Disrupt and dismantle is the precusor to ? Definitely not reimagining anything. There is no better world born out of destruction, the conception of a better world comes from creation.

Conclusion

What's the solution to this? People don't want constant protest and revolution, but what they need is exactly the thing that this erodes. They need something that they can believe in: a vision for a future that they actually want, which is incrementally based off of the existing system, that achieves it by cleaning up corruption. People like the system, but not the corruption, so this is a key component for procedure for incrementally improving the system towards an idealized conception of society which works better than the one we have now.

Much of the rot has been brought in on the back of Critical Theories which offer nothing. We need to articulate the vision for the future and its related values (truth, excellence, merit) which people more naturally admire.

We can start this where Identity Politics starts: imagine a fork in the road with 2 paths from that moment - the moment of identity politics - we can either go one way or another. They decided to fracture by identity, and we decide not to fracture by identity. Instead, we unify and appeal to common humanity.

• common sensibility,
• common currency,
• common basis for truth,
• common basis for communication (social media platforms as common carriers),
• getting rid of repressive tolerance,
• getting rid of bigotry and exploitation,
• getting rid of corruption,
• putting things in common terms, not alchemicalized terms which are divorced from their actual meaning.