Will Shetterly's Blog, page 58

On Antifa and my 20-year-old revulsion with black bloc tactics

For people who are new to discussions about Antifa and black bloc tactics: Antifa is short for anti-fascist. It does not refer to a formal group like the Weathermen or Students for a Democratic Society. It refers to groups who share the same ideology. "Black bloc" is also not a group: it refers to dressing up in black and wearing masks to make it harder to be accountable for illegal actions

The killing in Charlottesville obscured the magnitude of the alt-right's failure

At the end of July, the Southern Poverty Law Center posted this in Neo-Nazi Misfits Join Unite the Right | Southern Poverty Law Center: Over the weekend, the country’s largest neo-Nazi group announced plans to attend an alt-right rally next month in Charlottesville, Virginia, which is expected to draw thousands of extremists. The actual turnout? The best estimates I've seen were around 500. The

An unnecessary, incomplete, and probably inept defense of Adolph Reed

The identitarian left has ignored Adolph Reed since 2009 because they believe "lived experience" trumps all and no one can deny that Reed has lived his life as a black man. So they said nothing about him and hoped he would go away. Inconveniently, he didn't. So now they're attacking him. In the facile White Marxism: A Critique of Jacobin Magazine, Uday Jain offers examples of the people he

Mark Fisher on Class Reductionists

I reread Exiting the Vampire Castle and was struck by this (italics mine): I’ve noticed a fascinating magical inversion projection-disavowal mechanism whereby the sheer mention of class is now automatically treated as if that means one is trying to downgrade the importance of race and gender. In fact, the exact opposite is the case, as the Vampires’ Castle uses an ultimately liberal

The Mobbings of Mark Fisher, Freddie deBoer, and Leftists who Criticize the Identitarian Left

I can't say for sure that Mark Fisher killed himself because he was mobbed by the identitarian left, but I suspect it, and I'm not alone in that. I can't say for sure that Freddie deBoer broke because he was mobbed by the identitarian left, but... I can't say for sure that the leftists I see suffering online (whose names I will protect) are suffering because they were mobbed by the

Leslie Lee III on class reductionists

"If any class-reductionist leftists actually exist they would still be 100 times more helpful to black people than neoliberals." —Leslie Lee III

The shortest history I've ever written of Privilege Theory

A comment I left at Facebook: Privilege theory comes from Kimberle Crenshaw's fusion of bourgeois feminism with Derrick Bell's Critical Race Theory, which comes from the black churches. Privilege theory ignores the working class because its believers want bourgeois women and people of color to have all the privileges of bourgeois white men. Here's a more complete post: The Problem with

Paul Robeson rejects identitarianism

"Here was the first understanding that the struggle of the Negro people, or of any people, cannot be by itself. That is, the human struggle. And so ... my politics embraced also the common struggle of all oppressed peoples, including especially the working masses. Specifically the laboring people of all the world. And that defines my philosophy. It’s a joining one of ‘we are a working people, a

Shetterly's Free Speech FAQ

NOTE: This FAQ is about the principle of free speech. There's a little about the law, but if you want to research the legal limits of speech in the US, try the ACLU's Defending First Amendment Rights. 1. How old is the idea of free speech? At least 2500 years old. In 399 BC, Socrates said, "If you offered to let me off this time on condition I am not any longer to speak my mind... I should say

Google memo outrage reveals the dream and flaw of left-identitarianism

One of the better pieces about Damore's memo, Sabine Hossenfelder's Backreaction: Outraged about the Google diversity memo? I want you to think about it. notes: The bigger mistake in Damore’s memo is one I see frequently: Assuming that job skills and performance can be deduced from differences among demographic groups. This just isn’t so. I believe for example if it wasn’t for biases and