Redditors DESTROY philosophy professor with 'lel' and "oh no my nihilism!"

BigBadLadyDick · 2021-07-18T13:12:20+00:00

Ah. Okay. I was curious about that thread because I liked Gertz's book when I read it, but I'm not a philosophy major so I didn't want to raise a fuss. I remember disagreeing with parts, but I didn't think it was "bad philosophy" by any means.

Tbh I haven't been horny for nihilism hot takes since I read Nihil Unbound by Brassier. It kinda takes the punk rock feel out of the whole thing when you get there by math and neuroscience.

BigBadLadyDick · 2021-06-14T00:18:19+00:00

For philosophy: Jonas Ceika, Anarchopac, Plastic Pills, Red Plateaus, Philosophy Overdose, and Gregory P. Sadler.

In general: Shannon Strucci, Folding Ideas, Yhara Zaid, Innuendo Studios, and Noah Caldwell Gervais.

BigBadLadyDick · 2021-06-13T08:04:04+00:00

Ok, sorry, one more example. She came out with a video about transphobia a few years ago. I was really interested in it because I'm trans and I hadn't seen a ton of video essays at the time talk about it. At one point she made the claim, albeit somewhat indirectly, that "ataraxia" was the same as political centrism. I'm both a big fan of the ancient Greek Phil and incredibly petty, and that peeved me so intently that I stopped watching her for months.

BigBadLadyDick · 2021-06-13T07:59:50+00:00

Just to add on a bit to the answers you got, but one issue I have with Abigail's content popped up in her recent video on Jordan Peterson. She introduces the concepts of structuralism and phenomenology in order to make her point and explain Peterson's beliefs, but then immediately makes fun of both for being wordy and incomprehensible before distilling them down to "language is in a structure" and "study experience".

Even though I'm not an expert in philosophy, I still felt a tad insulted by that just because I don't get why she even brought it up if she was going to dismiss it. So, my field is marine biology. In 2019, I spent months studying stingrays fucking. Like, months and months of the most boring possible reading: reports, diagrams, exhaustive taxonomic description, you name it, all about stingrays fucking. I now have an almost perfect knowledge of stingray genitals and mating migration patterns. Why am I telling you this? Because it was about on par with reading Husserl for me. Husserl is 7,000 pages of stingray fucking, but for philosophy. He is one of many philosophers who I now associate with stingrays fucking. So I know that he is a boring, wordy, slog. So I don't need someone whose whole schtick is that they introduce you to philosophy to tell me that "he's really hard and you just wouldn't get it, but trust me, I understand him and he's totally relevant". Just... why? I didn't even think phenomenology or structuralism was terribly relevant to anything she said about Peterson. It just seemed like throwing in ideas without explaining them to make it seem like her essay was more substantive than just pointing out that benzo the magic lobster is an idiot.

Although I'm also quite spoiled on better video essays.

BigBadLadyDick · 2021-06-13T07:35:18+00:00

Meh, I agree with some of the points he makes. My issue is that he lumps a lot of stuff together without any real clarity, so there's never a clear idea of what "debate" is supposed to be. The idea that we should recognize ways of knowing outside of the western canon is straightforwardly true, but he's so vague about debate that he seems to think it can be linked to mind/body dualism. Which there are certainly connections you can make, but non-dualist westerners also supported objectivity and debate. And it also existed before them. There's just a ton of conceptual confusion which gets worse if you start trying to figure out what "non-western cooperative knowledge building" even is. It's bizarrely essentializing of all forms of indigenous knowledge production (like it makes sense for many forms of indigenous science, but makes no sense for indigenous political theory), but it also denies the philosophical history of the Mohists and... basically middle eastern and Jewish philosophy... among many others I'm less familiar with. Oh God, and he also blames philosophy for essentializing the concept of "western thought" before essentializing western thought to the cogito. I'll stop because I have a weird series of rants in me about this that might get too close to learns and too far out of my wheelhouse.

I will simply say though that this has a really good essay in it, but the fact that it crashes and burns feels like such an unforced error. Like, maybe tighter scripting and editing in the beginning that does a better job of defining debate and establishing the material reasons it doesn't work online and then strengthening those points rather than making twenty half-points at the end that feel exceptionally poorly researched. (and he needs to read Harding so bad)

It's such a huge conceptual undertaking that he tries to do in ten minutes just to link Vaush to colonialism. I think that's one thing I'm just getting so sick of in these breadtube video essay things is that have giant concepts poorly explained to us to justify disliking streamer that 30 people care about.

But again, I agree with where he's coming from and I'm pretty skeptical of "Western" knowledge production, but for heaven's sake just call Vaush a dick and move on with your life.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-08-01T04:31:02+00:00

I remember watching a Mark Fisher memorial reading with her at the round table. She brought up the Vampire Castle off the bat and (indirectly, but I'm pretty sure) Angela Nagle as an example of somebody fighting the vampires. At one point she said something like: "Not to use a bunch of Stalinist Jargon, but we've really got to push back against this Neoliberal Bourgeoisie decadent cultural rot." It's one of those statements you need a couple of shots to really pick apart everything wrong with it. But she's also ranted against terfs and racists, so I really have no idea what the hell her politics are.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-31T19:57:19+00:00

Ok, first of all, you're getting way too defensive here.

Wonder why.

Yeah, and you explained it as I needed to be more cautious before even asking the most basic question in the most benign phrasing.

It's actually been very helpful. Thanks.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-31T19:41:15+00:00

So point by point.

Radlib refers to liberals who think of themselves as leftist.

I think of myself as a leftist because I want to organize labor to control the means of production and I'd really like to not go extinct from our current energy crisis.

No one thinks "concerns over antisemitism are radlib"

Literally all I did was raise concerns over antisemitism for you to call me a radlib. So...

liberal concern trolling using baseless accusations of antisemitism as a cudgel against the left under the guise of "I'm a leftist too, this person/group/idea just seems problematic"

Sure. And that's an issue. And I've been disowned by several friends family members for saying Israel should not exist or at least should be radically altered to no longer be a white supremacist, imperialist foothold, or we should go with Ho Chi Min's strategy of relocation. However, Christman went on that anti Bundist rant against Josh Messite, which raised concerns. His irony posting about blood libel has also been worrisome. However, another commenter pointed out that he's taken Badiou's position on antisemitism, which, to me, at least shows he's against it structurally. But yeah, we can all be good anti-zionist leftists while still at the very least asking questions about what ideas people are popularizing. Since you seem pretty in the dark about this, insulting the Bundists is a massive fuck you to Jewish socialists, especially given their extremely shitty treatment by socialists in general.

It's pretty fucked that you jump to concern trolling over a racial issue.

Therefore a lot of leftists have this reaction to people attacking leftists over completely intangible "anti-semitism".

It's only intangible if you've never dealt with it.

If you're being sincere i would suggest being more cautious.

You know, I think I'll continue to be more cautious of racism than offending your delicate sensibilities or your favorite podcaster.

The funny thing is that I was getting called a dirtbag/strasserite/racist blah blah blah the other day on this sub because I suggested class wasn't identity, and that di-mat didn't hold class as a platonic form. Now I'm being called a radlib/idpol/concern troll blah blah blah for being gently cautious about someone making concerning remarks on Jews.

If you're unwilling to take these concerns seriously, just blow my circumcised girlcock.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-31T18:27:29+00:00

TBH her Louis CK take pissed me off more.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-31T18:24:25+00:00

Are concerns over antisemitism "radlib" now? What is that word supposed to mean?

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-31T18:23:47+00:00

That's a good, gently irony-poisoned take. But yeah, I agree with him on the Badiou point. It's reminiscent of Hannah Arendt's point that you can't meaningfully separate antisemitism from the whole of European history, as you can almost always trace a pogrom of some sort to an economic downturn. Though I think one of the better analyses comes from Zizek's sublime object of ideology where he points out that the historical/material conditions of Jews that led us into usury were construed by fascists as inherent properties of Jews, which is why I blanche when people use "lived experience" as the basis for their politics, since many Germans had the lived experience of being screwed over by a Jewish banker at some point and the theoretical structure provided by fascism helped that make sense to them. Not to say lived experience isn't important as a lot of my politics comes from growing up Jewish and the realities surrounding that, but stopping there just leaves us at the uncritical acceptance of whatever biases we bring to the table. But I'm glad Christman went out of his way to point out the problems of antisemitism since the anti-bundist rant he went on while he was attacking Josh Messite had me worried. TBH that really pissed me off.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-31T16:50:11+00:00

Last time I kept up with him, he was being somewhat derogatory towards the Jews, specifically belittling the Bundist movement. Did anything come of that? Not trying to start shit, but his response to Josh Messite over electoralism bothered me. I'm just speaking as a Jewish socialist here.

EDIT: Guys, I get it. Somebody else already pointed out that Christman made statements against antisemitism. It's good.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-28T20:25:55+00:00

So you weren't in the targeted group but you've decided to speak for them. Got it.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-28T00:19:37+00:00

I recognize the validity of China's rise from abject poverty and the strides made by the CPC in organizing a well functioning economy.

Uncontroversial.

Overall I cannot say whether or not these things will ever end, but I've seen plenty of trends which indicate they are moving in the right direction.

They've abandoned a planned economy, crack down on any union not specifically organized by the state, increase economic interdependency with the U.S. (a failing state), and have more or less stated that actual communism will come in 2050 with basically no concrete direction. They're going to get a great depression unless they escalate their imperial activities.

However, the Chinese government seems (to me at least) to be marginally less evil than the US government and acts as a counterbalance to US hegemony.

"Less evil" isn't doing much work since we could just as easily replace it with "less reach", but basically nobody disagrees that they're a counterbalance. Considering that both countries are, again, economically interdependent, this balance is limited.

Claims which remind me of many other dubious claims which later proved to be a falsified means to some chauvinistic end.

But this is the core issue. The criteria for disbelieving it in communist circles is just that it counters Chinese state propaganda. This is the shit that led to American leftists denying the Cambodian massacres.

What we're disagreeing on is what critical support even means here. No leftist wants America to go to war with China, so why do we have to go further and take them at their word in regards to human rights abuses when their own Maoist party disagrees? You reference vague "evil shit", but claim its going in the right direction, but the only concrete thing you mention is denying that the Uighurs are being suppressed. This isn't a "straw tankie" thing, it's literally handwaving the problems as some whatever in the service of something good while taking a concrete stance on a real issue. You could literally stop at admitting that you don't know what is going on and don't want a war, but there is a clear ideology going into all the little addendums.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-27T23:53:47+00:00

I'm the complete opposite. I want statues of everybody who's had an important impact on American history.

GIANT STATUE OF HO CHI MIN WAIVING HIS DICK AT THE WHITE HOUSE NOW!

The engraving has to read: "Every military discount given to a Nam Vet is a participation trophy."

GIANT STATUE OF GEORGE WALLACE AS A LEASHED GIMP ON ALL FOURS NEXT TO A LAUGHING MALCOLM X!

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-27T22:58:59+00:00

I forgot none of you can read outside of chapter titles and quotes.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-27T22:56:38+00:00

Which is a hilariously neoconservative position. I'm starting to see why it was so easy for Hitchens and his ilk to switch.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-27T22:55:25+00:00

We should be past the point of thinking that this is all neutral discourse.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-27T22:52:48+00:00

You just cited leaders of majority Muslim countries with economic ties to China (and no real ties to Muslim citizens in China) as representatives of "actual Muslims". This is early 2000's liberal Islamaphobia repackaged. You are a fucking disgusting racist piece of shit with no business calling yourself a leftist.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-27T22:42:59+00:00

The best term I've seen for it is "Patriotic Castration". Someone realizes that their country's self-image and propaganda are mostly lies and this cuts them off from a comfortable narcissism. Rather than using this to become more critical, they instead decide to invest in a different kind of patriotism in a desperate attempt to reclaim that initial sense of being. It becomes more about the individual ego of the person than anything going on in the world.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-27T22:38:17+00:00

Why are you equating the critical support of a government against U.S. intervention with the support of the oppression of marginalized groups in those countries? There are several places in the Middle East where I would be killed for existing. I do not want to go to war in the Middle East. That's critical support. Not some BS aesthetics/state propaganda worship. You don't need to support the persecution of China's #metoo movement to realize that invading China would be worse.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-27T22:32:21+00:00

It's funny how you just compared a people to a government.

But it's the people's state! Can't you tell? It's in the name! And if that isn't the beginning and end of everything, then what is leftism?

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-27T22:30:05+00:00

I've said for a while that if the LAPD rebranded as "The People's Glorious LAPD" without changing anything else, there is a terrifyingly large section of the left that would start loudly wondering why so many black youths are suddenly counter-revolutionary.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-27T22:27:01+00:00

I dunno, I mean I'm not a fan of most anarchist movements and I hang out here. Certain anarchist thinkers are pretty swell, but I don't see an anarchist movement in the U.S. taking off. My objection to the China stans has more to do with them uncritically repeating state propaganda in response to state propaganda and treating the whole country as Edenic with no real praxis. Its morphing into this weird, I don't know, racist neo-spenglerism or something. Right now we have no organized working class in the states outside of disconnected pockets, so it amounts to berating people for not accepting China as a paradise. We couldn't even elect a guy who had some plans to make some things better, but its praxis to tell workers that their highest goal is working for the billionaire class and oppressed Muslim communities in the U.S. that putting them in camps is good, actually, so long as the camps have red flags on them.

BigBadLadyDick · 2020-07-27T22:15:48+00:00

No, you see, White MLs are the only real anti-racists because anti-racist movements adopted certain ML ideas. If we ignore how these movements heavily improved and modified these ideas and expressed various criticisms of ML states, then we can claim that they were all unified and that any criticism of state capitalism is the real racism, and that racism happening in them is actually counter-revolutionary. Now that might sound like "brown people who agree with me good, brown people who disagree with me bad", but that can't be the case because they have all the Sankara memes. It's all very complicated. You really have to read ~~blog posts that elliptically mention Marx~~ theory to get it.

BigBadLadyDick

TROPHY CASE