Merry Christmas

I'm going to be heading off in the next couple of days. Hopefully, I'll have internet reception where I'm going, but I can't make any guarantees. If not, have a merry Christmas and a happy new year, and I hope you get to spend it with friends and/or family.

In the meantime … let's talk about social media censorship. … Yes, again.

In the past month, virtually every channel I follow for political coverage, has either had a video taken down, or received a letter from YouTube informing them that questioning the results of the election will not be tolerated, and they risk being kicked off the platform if they engage in such behaviour.

Seems a bit drastic, doesn't it?

We've just had four years of bullshit about Russian hacking. Before that, it was Obama birther-ism. And I think we all remember Bush v Gore. That's twenty solid years of people debating whether the sitting president was legitimate or not. At this point, I'd say it's basically just baked into the system.

Oh, and in case you're thinking that all of the channels being threatened are pro-Trump—nope—some of them are lefties who are pissed off that the Democrats seem to have gotten away with having the Green party struck off the ballot in a bunch of states on some sort of bullshit bureaucratic grounds.

By the way, can I just mention how much it rankles me that a handful of fuckin' Yank corporations are dictating what Poms, and Canucks, and Aussies get to talk about. As someone who's old enough to remember when we legitimately had big government in this country—you know, before Labor sold us out and got on board with this privatisation bullshit—can I just reiterate that anybody pushing American libertarianism because they're worried about government overreach can just fuck right off. Having lived under both systems, I will take oppression by big government over oppression by big corporation any day … ESPECIALLY if the corporation in question happens to be a fuckin' foreign multi-national.

By the way, in case anybody was wondering about my personal opinion on the legitimacy of the presidential election, here it is …

There have been accusations of fuckery in every election, and primary race, at both state and federal level, for decades now. In the 2016 primary, the Dems clearly cheated to keep Bernie out. It was egregious enough that when they eventually got dragged into court, their defence was literally, "We're a private organisation, so it's our business whether or not we cheat in our own primaries." What some people might have forgotten is that the Republicans tried to pull a whole lot of fuckery in order to cheat Trump out of the nomination too. Remember when they tried to suspend voting in certain states and just hand the delegates to Ted Cruz?

At this point, I basically just view America as a sort of giant third world country, that happens to have an unstoppable military and the ability to print the world reserve currency. Built into this view is the assumption that the entire political system is corrupt at every level, and that probably, the closest thing you're going to get to a fair election is when the cheating on both sides cancels itself out. Speculation beyond this point is useless.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Looks like I'll be heading North again for Christmas. In the meantime, there's still a lot I have to get done. Feeling a bit like the proverbial chook without her head. Imagine this will get worse before it gets better.

By the way, has anybody noticed that the so-called Christmas sales are a bit shit this year?

Who The Fuck Is Aimee Terese?

I've mentioned before that, while there's dozens of informative, entertaining, down-to-earth podcasts coming from the fringe right, there's absolutely fuck-all coming from the fringe left. I've tried subscribing to "The Red Scare" a few times now, but sadly, for every good episode there's at least two which are absolute dreck, and I always end up dropping it within about a month or so. Most of the others I've tried are even worse.

A while ago, I discovered Angela Nagle, an Irish author and lefty academic whom I thought was rather good. She hasn't got her own show, but regularly does guest spots. And as I was trolling through /pol/ a few weeks ago, looking for things to listen to, I found a link to an appearance she'd made on a podcast called "What's Left".

What's Left is the vehicle of Aussie political pundit Aimee Terese. I'd never heard of Aimee, but it seems she's some sort of big-wig Twitter celebrity, so maybe I'm in the minority here. Anyway, it turns out she's the daughter of Lebanese migrants, has a squeeky little voice that makes her sound like a six-year-old kid, and is a "proper" Marxist™. She's also the least interesting part of her own show.

If you go back to the early episodes, Aimee had a co-host called Benjamin, and these episodes are almost unbearable. Usually, they will start off by giving a fairly sensible critique of some social problem; then they will talk about how every idea for improving the situation is dumb, because proper Marxists™ believe that the solution to every problem is to tear everything down and replace it with socialism, and true socialism™ can only work in an all or nothing scenario; and then they will usually end the episode with a spray of impentrable, theoretical, Marxist™, gobbledegook.

Fortunately, Ben left in March of 2020, and was replaced by a bloke called Oliver. This was a vast improvement. Oliver appears to live in the real world, and has done his best to drag Aimee over as well. If you do go back and listen to old episodes, I suggest you start with the one called "The Hot Takes Industry".

As good as Oliver is, he's still not the best part of the show. If you want to skip right to the good stuff, I suggest you start with the episodes that mention Angela Nagle and/or Malcolm Kyeyune in the title. Ange, I was of course already familiar with, and I'm happy to see she's something of a semi-regular in the later episodes. Mal on the other hand, is a brand new discovery for me.

Apparently, he's a half black Swede, who's a member of one of Sweden's "far right" parties. You might remember that I mentioned once before that, from what I've seen of far right politics in Europe, it seems to look an awful lot like the left-wing politics I grew up with here in Australia; that is to say, it rejects both laissez-faire libertarian economics AND globalised, liberal, multi-cultural, social policy. Anyway, he really ads a lot to the show, and in one episode, even comes dangerously close to calling Aimee out on her bullshit when she starts spouting off about having "a true worker's revolution™". Good stuff.

I know I've been saying for months that I'm going to post an in-depth criticism of woke-leftism, and I still plan to. I've had the thing 90% finished for ages now. Maybe this can hold you over until I get my arse in gear.

https://soundcloud.com/whatisleftpod