The Zürich Interviews - Aimee Terese: Fucking Bitch
Why the Left is shit, why Chapo is even worse, the Function of Big Naturals, Manlets, being an immigrant, and more
“Why doesn’t she shut up?”, is the common refrain heard from many alongside “she never shuts the fuck up”, when the subject of Aimee Terese presents itself. Co-host of the What’s Left Podcast, political observer and critic, Marxist, would-be lawyer, Red Bull poster girl, and Lebanese-Australian 36D cup filler, Aimee is a very polarizing figure in contemporary social media discourse. With a rabidly loyal fanbase matched only by an insanely-charged hate camp, she spits out buckets of venom for those that she considers to be fake, fradulent, self-interested, or sellouts to the US Democrats and capitalism in general. We sat down with this top-heavy class warrior for the first in our Zürich Interview Series and asked her why she refuses to shut the fuck up.
Susan Sarandon has big tits. You have big tits. What does this mean?
It means we cause trouble. Admittedly mine are REAL, whereas Susan, I believe, had an augmentation in recent years? I remember she crossed Piers Morgan a few years ago, much like ‘literally a communist’ Ash Sarkar. It's frustrating how banal the supposedly “edgy” poltics of leftist women are, like imagine thinking triggering the libs amounts to a politics that's meaningfully different than theirs! No, the narcissism of small differences is the juice on which lib discourse is fuelled, especially if you add boobs, boobs and bombast, and there you go. That's it. See also AOC.
The greatest day of my life was January 15, 1919 when the Garde-Kavallerie-Schützendivision captured both Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg in Berlin, shot them both, and tossed Rosa's corpse in the Landwehr Canal. Yet you champion her as some sort of freedom fighter. Why is this? Why is she important today and not just a historical curiosity?
No, nobody is really a freedom fighter. I liked her writing and I think she was very insightful at times. She made a necessary and proven correct (in my view) contribution to Marx’s Theory of Capital Accumulation and thus, imperialism, most of which was vindicated after her death. But certainly she and the aspects of the SPD who didn't get cucked by war credits totally failed and got jailed and eventually killed. So fetishising them as historical figures to emulate is asinine and I don't go for that at all. I'm very allergic to hero worship, it feels like fantasy, fantasia. Harden up bitch! Nobody is coming on a white horse to save you, get it together…at least politically anyway. A lot of people want a hero. I don't see a hero coming, and I don't want to be a credulous fool who falls for anyone who comes along and whispers sweet nothings. Honestly feel rather foolish for giving the Bernie possibility the time and effort that I did. But it was a useful learning curve so you know, no regrets or whatever.
How do you reconcile being a Marxist in an era where Capital has largely smashed Labour? How can the change you seek to effect come to pass with Organized Labour so thoroughly annihilated?
It's very difficult because I find leftcom analysis the most similar to my own, but I get the fuck off the train everytime they excitedly speak of revolution. I think a revolution in the mode of production is required before anything will get significantly better for most people. I think capitalism is in a decadent epoch: totally brutal, totally destructive, ready willing and able to commodify not just physical work, but people's emotional and spiritual core. This worries me greatly. But I think waving banners in the streets is asinine and have no time for it. Such spectacles tend to be almost always useful to the powers that be, rather than any form of challenge to them. To be honest the only thing I can do is to try to be forthright and honest with my analysis of the class forces producing the political phenomena of the present, to try to help people understand, and to hopefully see a bit more clearly. I think helping people demystify the fog of capitalist ideological conditioning has to hopefully be worth something, in the long run. That's what I tell myself anyway!
You, like me, are of immigrant stock in the Anglosphere, and outside of the USA. You and I often get criticized for our takes on America and American politics yet we both understand why it is critical for non- Americans to focus on events there. What is your reasoning as to why this is important?
I think the physical, geospatial boundaries of “Imperialism” as we knew it in the twentieth century have largely been liquified. Especially in the digital era. Australia is five minutes behind America in the way we are governed. If it happens in the US, it's never long before it is taken up here. It's absurd to pretend that a world power such as America, whose cultural imperialism knows no bounds, isn't of keen interest to those in periphery states, subject to it!
The Left is Shit
What the fuck is wrong with the American Left?
They're vicious, brutal, cruel sadists. They will commodify every last remaining element of humanity, call it "empathetic" & anyone who dares to dissent will be charged with a hate crime. The left of old, the labour left, never was what you think it was, and even if it were, it no longer exists. The actually existing left, the left of *today*, are the most well organised, well integrated, unambiguously anti-working class political faction in American life.
Their only function now is to be the guerilla marketing team for Silicon Valley, the de facto shock troops of neoliberalism 2.0. They depoliticise everything, relentlessly, to deny their political enemies the ability to contest their politics on political terms. That's how the left does politics now. All mystification, all the time, This allows the tech oligarchs get on with business in peace & quiet. They are addicted to obfuscation. Perpetual plausible deniability. Everything is personal—nothing is political. But effectively this positions them as capitalism's marketing team. They're on the frontier of smothering the contradictions with bullshit utopianism. It's catastrophically cruel.
The entire left, including everyone critical of the left from inside the left, exists within or adjacent to, Democratic Party machinery. There are no exceptions. Those on the fringes are the most useful gatekeepers and apologists.
One of your favourite targets is Nathan J. Robinson. Why is he not stuffed into a locker but allowed free reign to parade around as a Reddit-tier 'Steampunk Dork'?
Because the left are bugmen who occupy every position within the culture and the discourse, presenting themselves as different “varieties” of “thinker” but they're all just shills for the Democratic Party. So they may jokingly mock Robinson, whom I personally refer to as the Plantation Riddler, but at the end of the day they know their fates are tied together. So it doesn't matter how hopped up on Proudhonist Utopianism they are! They will all defend and promote one another, and toe the party line. I do find Nathan particularly odious because his magazine made it's name by publishing challenging and unorthodox writers in its early years, only for Nathan to systematically throw them under the bus when the witch hunters came along and it came time to enact DNC party discipline. Angela Nagle being the best example, but also Freddie DeBoer and Emmett Rensin. He's an absolute weasel, but the truly fucked up part, the most infuriating part, is that being a cowardly little worm, while presenting oneself as quirky, dorky, vulnerable, is actually how you strengthen yourself on the left! It's how you indoctrinate people into relating to you emotionally, and ignoring all of your mendacious and capricious political manoeuvres. I find this extremely distasteful.
Another favourite target of yours is Elizabeth Warren. You sounded the alarm on her which led to you being banned from Twitter. Was Warren always a false flag op to entice the left to join the Democrat Plantation?
I think the sad truth is that the left were always/already Democrats. They were millennials politicised and then disappointed by Obama and they didn't care that she was a lying neoliberal scumbag, because she yelled at billionaires and made all the right noises that woke activists wanted her to make. I do think she was always in league with the party. This isn't even a secret. She was originally ushered into Washington from Harvard by Obama and Harry Reid.
She had Hillary staffers on her team, had raised millions from billionaires in 2019 which she rolled into her 2020 campaign fund, all while presenting herself as a supposed “anti-corruption/grassroots” candidate. She had a Sillicon Valley tech billionaire, Karla Jurvetson, pay for her access to the DNC voter rolls in 2019, and I tried to raise the alarm about that, and then of course post primary we learned that the same megadonor started and funded the last minute Superpac to the tune of $15 million. That kept her in the race past Super Tuesday, just enough time for all the other candidates to drop out and endorse Biden. So yeah, I mean I think the fact that the DNC had so many candidates running was not a mistake. It was a divide and conquer strategy. They were all loyalists, and ultimately their presence in the race, for as long as they remained in, prevented Sanders from building the momentum that would be required to win. He would have had to be running against one or two candidates much earlier in the process to be able to build a strong enough base to have had any chance of winning. So yeah from day one her presence was the primary obstacle to his being able to do that. By the time it got to early this year, even before the first votes had been cast, it was very clear that he hadn't built a strong enough coalition to win.
Why are the Chapo guys so repulsive to you, and not just physically?
Because they are lackeys for the DNC at the very same time as they feign permanent objection to it. I joke about the American left being bratty subs to the Democratic Party, but it's not really a joke. They're successful in virtue of the ideological service they provide for the liberal establishment, helping build a media machine for the new generation of platform capitalist Silicon Valley bugmen, much like the daily show was for yesterday's libs. But because their posture is one of feigned remove, of permanent ironic detachment, of rhetorical ‘non support’ for the politics they actually materially and ideologically support, it means they're in a position of perpetual denial. It's just such a disingenuous load of shit. I do object to people depoliticising what they're doing, because it makes it impossible to critique. That's what they do; dehumanise the enemies of the Democratic Party, poison the well, but then deny they're doing anything political whatsoever. And then the implication is anyone who engages with what they're up to is like a conspiratorial person taking them wayyy too seriously man. They're just a “comedy” show after all!
Many are predicting that Chapo going for Biden will be the end of them. I think you will agree with me that Bernie is now done. Where does his constituency go from here?
Yes he's absolutely done, in retrospect it's clear that any possibility he had was extinguished in 2016. His candidacy in 2020 was a make work farm for Ivy League graduates, one that transferred $220 million dollars from working class people to launch the careers of a new generation of Democratic Party political consultants and media lackeys. His constituency is loyal to the Democratic Party. They're SuperDemocrats. The entire left, as it currently exists, manufactured consent for Joe Biden. Sure they feigned reluctance, as though they didn't REALLY want to, but ultimately they did, because they were never going to do otherwise. They were always already Democrats.
Deep Inside Aimee
You are rumoured to be the daughter of a Lebanese Phalangist Death Squad Commander. Is there any truth to this?
No comment ;)
Are you the Doctrinaire Marxist Nassim Taleb?
I enjoy him very much. We disagree on plenty of course, but there are so few *characters* in public life these days that I think those who do exist should be cherished. He's a treasure.
There is nothing more mysterious than blood. Paracelsus considered it a condensation of light. I believe that the Aryan, Hyperborean blood is that – but not the light of the Golden Sun, not of a galactic sun, but of the light of the Black Sun, of the Green Ray.
I have no idea what's happening here. Are you a vampire? Bloodwise, I have the extra compatible one, type O, I used to donate blood regularly in college for that reason. I have never been easily put off by blood and gore. Honestly, I think one of the few things where men are consistently more squeamish than women is in relation to needles.
You are open about your love of Apu, the 'Baby Pepe'. What does he represent to you? Is it semiotically telling you to bear a son who will be a Class Warrior?
I think there's a very real, and visceral, emotional rawness present in Apu. I was always so struck by the absurdity of the liberal left insisting a cute frog that communicates a sense of inclusion and camaraderie between members of a culturally shunned group, was actually a hate symbol. Like it was such a bald faced lie, and such a blatant way to denigrate entire groups of young people online who didn't conform to the arbitrary, ever shifting strictures of woke gatekeepers. I was also very cognisant not to inadvertently do that thing, where leftists take cultural signifiers from edgy or transgressive outsiders, commodify them, but continue to gatekeep acceptable online culture in such a way as to maintain rigid boundaries against the people from whom they're pilfering content. This tendency, of leftists exploiting the creativity of right wing subcultures happens all the time, and nobody talks about it. And yet they're the same people whining about “cultural appropriation” when a young woman in Kansas wears a Chinese prom dress!
Regarding politics, I want to do what my Dad did, which was to encourage us to be critical thinkers, to be curious, but not credulous. I had no idea who he even voted for until I was an adult. He was very deliberate about not indoctrinating us in that way. I think it's genuinely quite repugnant the way liberals deploy children as political objects of virtue, to make their political arguments for them. I want my kids to be switched on and figure things out for themselves, rather than indoctrinating them, or employing them in service of my own agenda.
Let’s play out a political scenario: The Government in Canberra has fallen. Demonstrations rock Sydney, Melbourne and Woolloomooloo in New South Wales. Australian shitposters are churning out content at a pace never once thought possible. You hop on your Kangaroo and lead a radical labour strike in Sydney demanding free Victoria Bitter for miners in West Australia. A handsome man in a Lenin cap approaches you with love in his eyes. But he is only 5'10". Wat do?
LOL! I’m sure I'd make polite conversation, but I'm totally allergic to leftist men and short guys, so it wouldn't be likely to go anywhere too exciting!
Being that you’re an Aussie, it is obligatory to ask: What does Mel Gibson mean to you?
One time in middle school my friend's mom was driving us home from netball, and she pulled up next to a car at the intersection and had a long conversation with the driver, a male, maybe mid-late 40s. He looked familiar and I couldn't place why. When we drove away, she explained he was one of the lead actors in Gallipoli, which we had coincidentally watched in class recently. His co star in the film was Mel Gibson, one of his break out roles. Does that tell you much about Mel Gibson? No probably not, but it's what I think of when prompted so there you go!
Aimee, the correct answer is that Mel Gibson is the most handsome man in the world who will one day not only be canonized by the Catholic Church, but will sit near Jesus Christ, up in Heaven. Thank you for your time, Aimee. It has been a pleasure.
мој деда је убио твог деду у блеибургу, ти хрватски псу
O Aimee, Aimee of the big naturals, you must repent, for you have angered the ancient gods, the gods of flesh and bone and sinew. You have dodged no ordinary question, but the most important of questions, the question of the mystique of the blood. You have turned away from your forefathers, and hid, and thus you have sinned. Repent for the wall is nigh.
Nic, you must press. You must press deep inside Aimee. You must make her squirm. Six feet, three inches, eighty-four IQ.
God wills it.