Llituro [he/him, they/them]
Currently working through Understanding Media by McLuhan. It’s a very Western perspective, but I think media studies are really important for figuring out how to apply Gramsci in the internet age to overcome the cultural hegemony.
If you have trouble getting back into it, I’ll recommend reading his essay E Unibus Pluram, which is a concentrated look into what entertainment is doing to our brains. It’s not nearly as far reaching and the novel is a masterwork, but if you’re mostly interested in the media studies aspect, there is definitely more accessible work that’s available.
People in the US don’t understand the ways that the US is authoritarian and genocidal. The average lib or conservative alike is well trained in being able to casually wave away events as disgusting as murdering the indigenous peoples to steal their land, slaveowners writing about the inalienable freedoms of man and building a country on slave power, Japanese internment, etc. We got all this here manufactured consent. I’m not going to sit here and say I don’t trust the word of Chinese citizens. Just that capitalist systems are great at manufacturing consent and it seems insane to me to suggest that China isn’t doing that as well. And it makes it really difficult to evaluate what is actually going on there when the American media is manufacturing sinophobic consent here and Chinese media is manufacturing their own consent there.
Woody Guthrie is obviously a favorite, the New Lost City Ramblers did at least a few union songs, like “Join the C.I.O.” If you’ve never gotten into folk punk, which isn’t Old Time music at all but is incredibly anti establishment in a fun way.
Ok libs, who wants to educate me on the CCF. Because as a Russian Foreign Interference Agent™ I want to know what they do.
What my mother-in-law thinks communism is.
I like Jason Isbell pretty well, does that make me more of a lib, just asking for a Twitter argument with people who think I’m an Antifa super soldier.
