podcasts

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2918161

Will, Hesse and Chris interview Alex Cox, director of Repo Man (1984), Sid and Nancy (1986), Straight To Hell (1987), and Walker (1987).

One of my favorite podcasters rants about everything that's wrong with the world and inches closer to a materialist understanding of why that is. Hoping that someday Gabrus will be a Hexbear.

His guest is fun up until the very very end, when he talks up some Sandler movie he watched recently that sounds zionist and awful, but Gabrus immediately pulls the ripcord on the interview when that comes up, so it's literally the very tiny end of an otherwise entertaining episode ranting about the evils of capitalism.

I have been listening to People's History of Ideas, which is a podcast on the Chinese Revolution. In ep 28 he covers a moment that in the 60s/70s was framed in a way that was probably correct politically, but was a bit of a lie. And how that correct decision for the moment, bolstering the cult of personality, unfortunately in the long term was part of what helped the capitalist roadsters discredit Mao.

The problem here is that there is no evidence for this account, and plenty against it. Simply put, Mao was not at that Congress. And by Mao’s own account, he did not get involved with peasant organizing in Hunan until the May 30th Movement broke out. Now, Han Suyin may not have been consciously lying. She did not have access to all the materials that have made modern scholarship on China possible, and she relied heavily on interviews with people in China. So it is quite possible that she was told this by a party historian or leading party cadre who wanted to paint the history of the Chinese Revolution in this light.

This is an example, one of many, I’m afraid, where the political imperatives of the moment, as understandable as they may be, even in retrospect, have left the history of communism as written by those sympathetic to socialism as sort of cartoonish (in the portrayal of revolutionary leaders as infallible heroes) and, in some essential points, basically false or untrue. I personally think the world would be a better place today had capitalism not been restored in China, and I do think that whoever at the leading levels of the Maoist wing of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1960s decided that it would not be possible to quickly educate tens of millions of people about the economics of socialist construction and their relationship to a larger project of human emancipation, that person was basically correct. However, their answer to that problem, the amplification of Mao’s cult of personality, has in itself been a factor which has been used to discredit the project of socialism globally.

So, an unintended consequence of the imperatives of the moment, in this case during the Cultural Revolution in China, but there are other examples which can be cited as well in the history of communism as written by those sympathetic to socialist aims, an unintended consequence is that much of the history written with momentary imperatives in mind contain easily demonstrable falsehoods and unrealistic pictures of leaders and the revolutionary process in general. In the longer term, this has made it much easier for the opponents of equality and freedom to discredit the work of supporters of socialism. After all, when one can point to one demonstrably false claim in a book, it serves to undermine the credibility of everything else that person has written. And we can see that in the long run, that lack of credibility has made it more difficult for humanity to get back on track with finding a path for ending capitalism.

Just a fascinatingly nuanced perspective and one we should all keep in mind. I've been thinking about this a lot recently, how the idea of unforced errors supposes that some errors are forced. That we have to make errors at times that are genuinely correct in the moment and needed to happen, but have bad outcomes down the line. The point is to adapt

• 41 - Camo
• 40 - LSD
• 39 - The Ford Pinto
• 38 - Fashion
• 37 - Art Nouveau Architecture
• 36 - Golf
• 35 - Bodyline
• 34 - Legionnaire's Disease
• 33 - Photograph
• 32 - The Monongahela Ghost Bomber
• 31 - Japan Airlines Poop Plane
• 30 - Dowsing for Bombs and Drugs
• 29 - Frank Furness, Architect
• 28 - Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
• 27 - The Ford Edsel
• 26 - The JFK Assassination
• 25 - How to Die in a Swordfight
• 24 - Nazi Superweapons
• 23 - The NCAA
• 22 - The Crusades
• 21 - The Penn Station Rant
• 20 - Bad Bike Infrastructure
• 19 - NASCAR
• 18 - Formula One
• 17 - Geoengineering
• 16 - The Museum
• 15 - Country Music
• 14 - The Cathedral
• 13 - The Bradley Fighting Vehicle
• 12 - The Philadelphia Eagles
• 11 - The Steam Locomotive
• 10 - Group B Rally
• 09 - The Process
• 08 - Beer
• 07 - Technicals
• 06 - Too Many Floors
• 05 - College
• 04 - Protestantism
• 03 - The SA80 Rifle
• 02 - Liam's Van
• 01 - Groverhaus

We've picked some of the finest automotive news stories for you, and isn't it funny that they all prove the ruthlessness, short-sightedness, and unsustainability of capitalism?

Also: each of us are selling a car. Email carsandcomrades@gmail.com if you want to buy a Camaro, a Saabaru, a Blazer, or a Ranger.

(INB4: "And yet you participate in capitalism. Curious! I am very intelligent.")

Main topic at 49:29

Email us with tips, stories, and unhinged rants: carsandcomrades@gmail.com //

Our social media links etc: www.linktr.ee/CarsAndComrades //

Music by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard: www.kinggizzardandthelizardwizard.com/polygondwanaland //

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2802965

Will and Hesse are joined by Eddie from the Extended Clip podcast to talk about two films by RW Fassbinder: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) and In a Year with 13 Moons (1978).