"Critics" and theorists in any artistic field don't really exist anymore. They were always a rare breed but it seems they have been replaced by regime adjacent ideologues.
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The tiresome kind of Monty Python provocation, vulgarity and obscenity to pull down all the things that made for a boring but stable society. I allow them some leeway given the number of ex-Nazis who were allowed to live normal lives and run West Germany after the war when they should've been hanged.
The Windrush myth is not very potent at the moment but I fear it will become so, a bit like 'Juneteenth' in America. There are overtones of pagans having Christianity forced upon them, but at least we have Caravaggio and St. Paul's Cathedral. The woke have steel, glass, antiretrovirals and the abortionists' forceps.
The most annoying thing is that it is clearly such a lie. The idea that the imperial capital needed illiterate Jamaicans "to help rebuild after the war" when the country was awash with men who had seen years of hard service is obvious bollocks to anyone with half a brain.
The comparison breaks down because the woke have no central event or figure. Christianity converted Rome because its central tenets are civilising. They gave an end to constant inter-tribal violence, revenge and barbarism. The idea that a God would sacrifice his son to pay for Man's sin is anathema wheras wokeism lacks mercy of any kind. Look at 'cancellation' for bad language or the 'wrong' thoughts! They celebrate degeneracy and infertility: homosexuality and castrating men who think they are women. There is simply no life there. I think wokeism is more of a cult.
"Performance art": an oxymoron meaning some sort of public spectacle instigated by someone with no real talent for performance and no real talent for art.
I'm only a casual industrial fan (Front 242, Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, obviously Ministry) but reading about Laibach makes me very excited to give them a go. It's exactly the sort of wink-wink trolling I love, sounds way more subtle than Death in June (who I also love)
Interesting to compare the reception of the Windrush passengers with freed slaves escaping the south to Northern states. Both weren't well received, but race seems to have been one of the lesser factors, with things like mannerisms and accents being much more of an issue - contradicting what we are currently told was the case.
"with things like mannerisms and accents being much more of an issue"
And so true here, in the US. Someone once wrote that Satan's greatest triumph was convincing people that those who spoke with a Southern accent were dumb. That said, contemporary Black (American) "speech" and mannerisms are an insult to the English language and to America, in general.
The CIA launched protests in the name of “democracy” in Hong Kong?
Just because one is desirous of an action doesn’t mean one originates and controls it. .
The USA is in partnership with militant Islam? Is that so? Or does it just opportunistically intervene on the same “side” from time to time?
Speaking of Afghanistan, Iran has supported militant Sunni groups and Sunni warlords there. Does that mean Iran is uniformly a “partner” with Sunni militants?
When the line from plausibility to extrapolation is crossed, and always in the predictable direction (confirming someone’s own biases), conspiracy theories cease to be entertaining.
1. Do yourself a favour and check out who the leaders of the protests were in Hong Kong, and where they received training and financing. Search engines will help with this.
2. Please research how jihadis get into those places, who finances them, and who arms them.
Neither of these are conspiracy theories. They are cold, hard facts.
I am familiar with the history (Frank Anderson’s obit is great reading). It is not the basic facts that are in dispute (that the US and Britain armed Afghan rebels who were supported by Pakistan and the Saudis). Note the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” was very frequently a guide star during the Cold War and in this case both Iran and Russia were enemies and Pakistan was a “enemy of my enemy”. There were no shortage of brutal “friends” (enemies of enemies) who the US supported from the 1950s-1990s during the Cold War- from Asia/Africa/Latam/Mideast to former Yugolslavia, including your ancestral homeland.
What I dispute is the narrative woven from that basic set of facts and the extrapolations from the facts. Cold War strategy was opportunistic - full stop. To say the US is in long-term partnership with allies of the moment and of a place, or even that “militant Islam” is a coherent entity that one can partner with - I disagree.
There were a lot more people in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo on the US payroll than there were in Hong Kong.
I suppose the breakup of Yugoslavia was simply a CIA front operation unsupported by the people and would never have happened without CIA initiation and control?
I know quite a bit about Hong Kong (having worked there, managed teams there and having friends there dating back 40 years). Many of the people I know protested and almost all supported the protests. I don’t know anything about Yugoslavia (except via hearsay/stories from the Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Serb, Serbian, Croat and Kosovar refugees I employed in the UK in the mid-1990s as well as great stories/vignettes from you). But the idea that US money or involvement tarnishes the legitimacy of a movement is not an unfamiliar refrain (extremely popular with Marxists going back 60 years), though one I have rarely sung.
I cannot exclude the possibility that your theories could be right, but I doubt it. You probably feel the same about me- fair enough.
Note I am not necessarily defending US policies. America’s Mideast policies are incoherent whilst I think the US and UK should have done more to punish China after it effectively abrogated HK’s basic law in 2020 (as if Covid weren’t reason enough).
I'm interested to know: are there similar operations in the West by our enemies that are equally successful? I remember vague rumours about the Chinese egging on the American race riots of 2020 via the internet.
The problem with the Hong Kong protests was that they didn't know where to stop. That is typical for US led color revolutions: concessions are never enough; there will always be new demands.
That put the Chinese government in an impossible position. If they kept giving in they would end up with demands for Hong Kong independence.
It's a problem for any neomarxist organization (in the US and otherwise) - there's no real limiting principle anywhere. Any concessions lead immediately to new demands. Look at feminism, gay rights, etc.
Many a globalist certainly was the certainty of fast and free money to the globalists, who like Stalin went to all the political meetings. Stalin BTW the better man, I did not say good, I said man.
Islam as sometimes ally, sometimes enemy. This is so basic to statecraft especially where there are Muslims , you are attributing laws of gravity to the Great Turbo (TM), making us The Great 👳🏻♂️ 🇺🇸 Turban.
(In the spirit of Christmas, you must forgive your fellow Catholic his congenital ☘️ levity) ☺️
AQ as US ally is...forgive me, you are merging your villains too far.
You are mixing the understandable fascination with Turbo America + Balkans ghosts.
1+1 does not equal 11. I’m sure you’re sincere, its just not real.
The Afghan mujahadeen were not AQ. AQ hated us, AQ hates China, frankly it is difficult to find someone or something that AQ loves other than Muslims who agree with them. I am speaking of AQ.
However it’s quite the CIA and USA way to buy and flip enemies, this is hardly our invention. We certainly seem to have engaged yet again with the disreputable in Syria in a Holy Neocon war against Assad, but given the events this year I think we may have been after Russia on the margins all along. I now know that we have been marching towards Russia since Bosnia 95/96. Douglas MacGregor recently confirmed he was told that in DC in 1997, we’ve been after Russia all along.
To this end there is no ally we will turn away, even Nazis.
In defense of hiring Jihadi, Let me point out we the soldiers and the CIA were not allowed to exterminate them, or even keep them in prison, the best alternative is to buy them, they are actually often enough a business at the tactical and operational level and always need ready money. Quite serious, in Mosul D’aesh was just a business. That was also my impression of Iraq.
"To this end there is no ally we will turn away, even Nazis."
LOL Adolf's yuuuge mistake was, that being a great orator and motivator, he was diplomatically-mentally challenged
One of the many many many many lessons of WW2 is what NOT to do in diplomacy and realpolitik when going to war, e.g., NOT procuring a nice alliance, and alienating or challenging every single major power on the planet, besides a semi-major power 9000 km away that is of little practical use for you...
Hiring actual or potential enemies to do your dying is seriously smart. Fucking over regions boilng with resentment and rancour is a no-brainer too.
War against Assad was simple: primarily to remove him because Bashar refused to allow a natural gas pipeline from Qatar that Washington wants, but also to finally remove a Russian ally. Energy trumps everything in the Mid East. The US military liked the campaign against Assad since it was payback for Bashar allowing Iraqi insurgents to use eastern Syria.
I thought it wrong headed at the time and now realize it was part of our Great Insane Game against Russia, however “payback” was due. No sympathy, Syria exported terror to all its neighbors and us for decades, Syria not responsible but Hamburg cell Syrian.(9/11)
With you 100%. The foreign policy 'experts' always regarded Syria highly because of the cautious and calculating policy of Hafez Al Assad...but Bashar has not inherited enough of that caution IMO.
Fucking with Uncle Sam is one thing but supporting armed force against Americans in the field was a truly insane and unnecessary gamble.
When the suicide bombers started up in Lebanon they were recruited from the ranks of the desperate...students who had failed their exams in Beirut or girls who had gotten pregnant and could not face the shame of returning home. The bombers (drugged up, naturally) did their thing and were lionised for it. Marcel Khalifa (a Lebanese singer) did a song about them which was a particular hit in Syria, extremely popular. The Syrians learned the one about not asking for whom the bells toll the hardest way possible.
"Critics" and theorists in any artistic field don't really exist anymore. They were always a rare breed but it seems they have been replaced by regime adjacent ideologues.
Thanks, I did not know that. since I loathe and despise The Sound of Music, I going right over to YT to check it out!
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Leave a comment if the mood strikes you to do so (be nice!), and please consider subscribing if you haven't done so already. We are now testing out the chat feature on both Apple and Android phones. Learn more here - https://niccolo.substack.com/p/fisted-by-foucault-subscriber-chat
Who is Rammstein provoking anymore? It's music my mom listens to.
Good for Laibach!
The look and sound, not the provocative nature.
Well, Rammstein used to trade in provocation, in a more normal era.
The tiresome kind of Monty Python provocation, vulgarity and obscenity to pull down all the things that made for a boring but stable society. I allow them some leeway given the number of ex-Nazis who were allowed to live normal lives and run West Germany after the war when they should've been hanged.
that video is tres Borat
One of those lads around the 1980s Mladina sphere was Janesz Jansa, recently Slovenia's PM. Spent months in jail for publishing Yugoslav Army secrets.
(Nic knows this of course, but his readers might not.)
The Windrush myth is not very potent at the moment but I fear it will become so, a bit like 'Juneteenth' in America. There are overtones of pagans having Christianity forced upon them, but at least we have Caravaggio and St. Paul's Cathedral. The woke have steel, glass, antiretrovirals and the abortionists' forceps.
The most annoying thing is that it is clearly such a lie. The idea that the imperial capital needed illiterate Jamaicans "to help rebuild after the war" when the country was awash with men who had seen years of hard service is obvious bollocks to anyone with half a brain.
liberals, behaving increasingly like zealots from early Christendom, need foundational myths to justify their beliefs, dogmas and nonsense
The comparison breaks down because the woke have no central event or figure. Christianity converted Rome because its central tenets are civilising. They gave an end to constant inter-tribal violence, revenge and barbarism. The idea that a God would sacrifice his son to pay for Man's sin is anathema wheras wokeism lacks mercy of any kind. Look at 'cancellation' for bad language or the 'wrong' thoughts! They celebrate degeneracy and infertility: homosexuality and castrating men who think they are women. There is simply no life there. I think wokeism is more of a cult.
Exactly why this comparison always irks me. The theological basis of Christianity is completely incompatible with any of tenets of "wokeism"
nah
Christianism won NOT by having better arguments than the pagans
But by being more INTOLERANT and radical than them.
Who destroyed the temples of worship of whom?
"They gave an end to constant inter-tribal violence, revenge and barbarism. "
Ja wohl...
The religious wars in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries want to say HELLOOOO James
BTW, early Christians were fanatical and zealots
They endured persecutions and being thrown to the lions
Heathens? they submitted after half a century of Christianism as a quasi-offical religion
Bigger fraud: Marina Abramovic or Sam Bankman-Fried?
I don't know anything about performance art so I will have to say SBF by default.
I will offer my own definition:
"Performance art": an oxymoron meaning some sort of public spectacle instigated by someone with no real talent for performance and no real talent for art.
Cheers!
a band whose sound they lifted from greedily --> a band whose sound they greedily lifted.
Tanz mit Laibach is a banger. Thanks for sharing. I had never heard of them.
They fall in nicely with Nitzer Ebb, Einsturzende Neubaten, and Front 242.
I'm only a casual industrial fan (Front 242, Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, obviously Ministry) but reading about Laibach makes me very excited to give them a go. It's exactly the sort of wink-wink trolling I love, sounds way more subtle than Death in June (who I also love)
Death in June has some great stuff, yes.
Interesting to compare the reception of the Windrush passengers with freed slaves escaping the south to Northern states. Both weren't well received, but race seems to have been one of the lesser factors, with things like mannerisms and accents being much more of an issue - contradicting what we are currently told was the case.
"with things like mannerisms and accents being much more of an issue"
And so true here, in the US. Someone once wrote that Satan's greatest triumph was convincing people that those who spoke with a Southern accent were dumb. That said, contemporary Black (American) "speech" and mannerisms are an insult to the English language and to America, in general.
Agreed, Ebonics is oafish.
The CIA launched protests in the name of “democracy” in Hong Kong?
Just because one is desirous of an action doesn’t mean one originates and controls it. .
The USA is in partnership with militant Islam? Is that so? Or does it just opportunistically intervene on the same “side” from time to time?
Speaking of Afghanistan, Iran has supported militant Sunni groups and Sunni warlords there. Does that mean Iran is uniformly a “partner” with Sunni militants?
When the line from plausibility to extrapolation is crossed, and always in the predictable direction (confirming someone’s own biases), conspiracy theories cease to be entertaining.
1. Do yourself a favour and check out who the leaders of the protests were in Hong Kong, and where they received training and financing. Search engines will help with this.
2. Please research how jihadis get into those places, who finances them, and who arms them.
Neither of these are conspiracy theories. They are cold, hard facts.
I am familiar with the history (Frank Anderson’s obit is great reading). It is not the basic facts that are in dispute (that the US and Britain armed Afghan rebels who were supported by Pakistan and the Saudis). Note the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” was very frequently a guide star during the Cold War and in this case both Iran and Russia were enemies and Pakistan was a “enemy of my enemy”. There were no shortage of brutal “friends” (enemies of enemies) who the US supported from the 1950s-1990s during the Cold War- from Asia/Africa/Latam/Mideast to former Yugolslavia, including your ancestral homeland.
What I dispute is the narrative woven from that basic set of facts and the extrapolations from the facts. Cold War strategy was opportunistic - full stop. To say the US is in long-term partnership with allies of the moment and of a place, or even that “militant Islam” is a coherent entity that one can partner with - I disagree.
There were a lot more people in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo on the US payroll than there were in Hong Kong.
I suppose the breakup of Yugoslavia was simply a CIA front operation unsupported by the people and would never have happened without CIA initiation and control?
I know quite a bit about Hong Kong (having worked there, managed teams there and having friends there dating back 40 years). Many of the people I know protested and almost all supported the protests. I don’t know anything about Yugoslavia (except via hearsay/stories from the Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Serb, Serbian, Croat and Kosovar refugees I employed in the UK in the mid-1990s as well as great stories/vignettes from you). But the idea that US money or involvement tarnishes the legitimacy of a movement is not an unfamiliar refrain (extremely popular with Marxists going back 60 years), though one I have rarely sung.
I cannot exclude the possibility that your theories could be right, but I doubt it. You probably feel the same about me- fair enough.
Note I am not necessarily defending US policies. America’s Mideast policies are incoherent whilst I think the US and UK should have done more to punish China after it effectively abrogated HK’s basic law in 2020 (as if Covid weren’t reason enough).
I'm interested to know: are there similar operations in the West by our enemies that are equally successful? I remember vague rumours about the Chinese egging on the American race riots of 2020 via the internet.
Well any number of Muslim governments have long encouraged their most unsavoury troublemakers to leave for the West.
The problem with the Hong Kong protests was that they didn't know where to stop. That is typical for US led color revolutions: concessions are never enough; there will always be new demands.
That put the Chinese government in an impossible position. If they kept giving in they would end up with demands for Hong Kong independence.
It's a problem for any neomarxist organization (in the US and otherwise) - there's no real limiting principle anywhere. Any concessions lead immediately to new demands. Look at feminism, gay rights, etc.
Interesting Windrush background. thanks
Answer to riots; Riot back.
Call it a level playing field and the marketplace of ideas, the idea being reciprocity.
I don't short companies. I short people
Many a globalist certainly was the certainty of fast and free money to the globalists, who like Stalin went to all the political meetings. Stalin BTW the better man, I did not say good, I said man.
Islam as sometimes ally, sometimes enemy. This is so basic to statecraft especially where there are Muslims , you are attributing laws of gravity to the Great Turbo (TM), making us The Great 👳🏻♂️ 🇺🇸 Turban.
(In the spirit of Christmas, you must forgive your fellow Catholic his congenital ☘️ levity) ☺️
AQ as US ally is...forgive me, you are merging your villains too far.
You are mixing the understandable fascination with Turbo America + Balkans ghosts.
1+1 does not equal 11. I’m sure you’re sincere, its just not real.
The Afghan mujahadeen were not AQ. AQ hated us, AQ hates China, frankly it is difficult to find someone or something that AQ loves other than Muslims who agree with them. I am speaking of AQ.
However it’s quite the CIA and USA way to buy and flip enemies, this is hardly our invention. We certainly seem to have engaged yet again with the disreputable in Syria in a Holy Neocon war against Assad, but given the events this year I think we may have been after Russia on the margins all along. I now know that we have been marching towards Russia since Bosnia 95/96. Douglas MacGregor recently confirmed he was told that in DC in 1997, we’ve been after Russia all along.
To this end there is no ally we will turn away, even Nazis.
In defense of hiring Jihadi, Let me point out we the soldiers and the CIA were not allowed to exterminate them, or even keep them in prison, the best alternative is to buy them, they are actually often enough a business at the tactical and operational level and always need ready money. Quite serious, in Mosul D’aesh was just a business. That was also my impression of Iraq.
"To this end there is no ally we will turn away, even Nazis."
LOL Adolf's yuuuge mistake was, that being a great orator and motivator, he was diplomatically-mentally challenged
One of the many many many many lessons of WW2 is what NOT to do in diplomacy and realpolitik when going to war, e.g., NOT procuring a nice alliance, and alienating or challenging every single major power on the planet, besides a semi-major power 9000 km away that is of little practical use for you...
It seems warlords always have this problem, Napoleon being another exemple.
Hiring actual or potential enemies to do your dying is seriously smart. Fucking over regions boilng with resentment and rancour is a no-brainer too.
War against Assad was simple: primarily to remove him because Bashar refused to allow a natural gas pipeline from Qatar that Washington wants, but also to finally remove a Russian ally. Energy trumps everything in the Mid East. The US military liked the campaign against Assad since it was payback for Bashar allowing Iraqi insurgents to use eastern Syria.
I thought it wrong headed at the time and now realize it was part of our Great Insane Game against Russia, however “payback” was due. No sympathy, Syria exported terror to all its neighbors and us for decades, Syria not responsible but Hamburg cell Syrian.(9/11)
How.Funny.Is.It.Now?
With you 100%. The foreign policy 'experts' always regarded Syria highly because of the cautious and calculating policy of Hafez Al Assad...but Bashar has not inherited enough of that caution IMO.
Fucking with Uncle Sam is one thing but supporting armed force against Americans in the field was a truly insane and unnecessary gamble.
When the suicide bombers started up in Lebanon they were recruited from the ranks of the desperate...students who had failed their exams in Beirut or girls who had gotten pregnant and could not face the shame of returning home. The bombers (drugged up, naturally) did their thing and were lionised for it. Marcel Khalifa (a Lebanese singer) did a song about them which was a particular hit in Syria, extremely popular. The Syrians learned the one about not asking for whom the bells toll the hardest way possible.