FOR COMICS WHO DEFINE THEMSELVES AS RATTLING STATUS QUO CAGES THE RAPID REVERSAL OF SOCIAL LIBERALISM PRESENTS SOME CHALLENGES ~ Rob Ray ~ For many years, Bill Burr has been one of the most recognisable and well-liked performers on the US comedy circuit, specialising in “Bostonian common sense” observational humour with a confrontational (and thus often controversialist) theme.  In recent years this was, generally, more enjoyed by the right, who lapped up what had been an expanding cloud of garrulous anti-woke takes culminating in the soullessly inert film outing of Old Dads in 2023. Having a genuinely successful everyman-brand comic poking at their favourite loose-tooth topic was considered an industry win on par with Dave Chappelle’s embrace of transphobia back in 2021. But this year has seen a switchback. While he’ll almost certainly keep banging away at tired anti-feminist tropes, as has been his wont for many years, Burr has also completely outraged the right by expressing a baseline of class consciousness.  When this most recent turn began is easy to pinpoint. In the wake of December’s Luigi Moment, he made it very clear whose side he was on across multiple platforms and interviewers, to hilarious effect as his hosts visibly cringed.  “Free Luigi” he bellows at Jimmy Kimmel, and as the host tries to bat it away you can see the cogs turning. This is a line that doesn’t just draw a laugh, it completely wrongfoots Establishment media types, causing those moments of chaotic scrambling that he has thrived on (content warning for that Philly gig) throughout his career. Since that lightbulb moment we’ve seen him start throwing down on billionaires and the right in a way that, to be fair, does reflect some of his persona from back in the day but which has, like South Park (which I’ll get to) been shocking to what was once a “Bill tells it how it is and libs can’t cope” right-wing crowd. Burr himself has spoken about the level of backlash and how the trad media, in particular, reacted to his new direction, noting of CNN’s coverage:  “How fucking gross was that? Those fucking assholes on CNN sat around acting like they actually were confused or surprised by the reaction that people don’t like CEOs and then them sitting there like they were gonna get down to the bottom of it.  “It’s like, these CEOs are behaving the way they are because guys like you are not doing your job because you’re not journalists. Not CNN, or Fox. You’re sucking the corporate cock, and you’re looking the other way, and then when an athlete says something or a soap opera star Tweets something, or some guy is hoarding hand sanitiser in their fucking garage you act like that’s the reason the country’s going to shit.”  Not a bad take there sweary Chomsky, you only missed out that they very much are journalists of the mainstream variety – systemically so. It may not be in any written job description that they’re there to frame and protect the status quo, whatever it may be, but as Noam himself once told Andrew Marr: “If you believed in something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.” In recent days, Burr has expressed surprise at how the Republican faithful have been behaving since he started openly including class content in his work, with prominent talking head Ben Shapiro (an unwittingly funny man on occasion) having declared him woke, and MAGA diehards mailing racist pictures to him and his wife.  While continuing to be disparaging about left opportunism (and whilst I’m with him on that, it’s notable that he hasn’t stopped being a dick about women or performing for Saudi royals), Burr has quite clearly decided to lean in on “fuck the lot of them.” There’s an element in this of a fellow, used to the relatively tame denunciations of lefties, finally learning “the difference” when it comes to repressive tactics used by an empowered right. Which brings us to South Park. PARKER’S PEN IS SHARP, BUT NOT THAT SHARP At the time of writing there have been three episodes of the new Series 27 – and what a political uproar they’ve caused, presenting a startling volte face on the show’s positioning during the Biden era.  Episode one has an almost self-critiquing feel in the form of Cartman’s existential crisis, as he nominally gets everything he’s been asking for, taking away his position as the school’s resident edgelord. When everyone is expected to be an obnoxious bigot cynically using Jesus as cover for their behaviour how can he maintain his uniqueness?  A big deal was made about their portrayal of Trump in this episode, framed as an insultingly phoned-in cut and paste of their Saddam Hussein character, and the switch by PC Principal from politically correct to power Christian is suitably on the nose about people falling into line with a new status quo. The follow-up episodes however are in many ways more interesting. South Park’s portrayals of non-whites have always felt like their most “have your cake and eat it” setup, offering a knowing wink for liberals (the black child is called Token Tolkein, haa) and racism played for surrealism in ways that aim to satisfy both subtext and text-only audiences. But writer-director Trey Parker’s sense of unease about the treatment of Latin Americans in ‘Got A Nut’ is made clear (along with his specific disdain for Kristi Noem) in ICE’s portrayal as a completely brainless entity, recruiting the lowest of the low to charge around picking up anyone who’s the wrong shade of brown regardless of how angelic they might be.  For a man whose longtime political position has been a sort of wishy-washy libertarian-inflected centre-rightism (personified in Season 7s ‘I’m A Little Bit Country’ where he suggests America needs left to say one thing while right does the necessary) it pitches as a call for more discernment. This has always been the weakening element of Parker and Stone’s contrarian streak, which they have leaned on for decades now as their ticket to immunity from criticism. It’s likely responsible for taking a bit of the sting (thus far, with the exception of Noem) out of their parodying of the Republicans even while they remain far more viscerally brutal than most liberal critics (who would not, for example, be likely to present JD Vance as a sort of boggle-eyed Igor parody of Tattoo from Fantasy Island). While their fans may harp on about them going after everyone equally it’s not really true  – they aren’t solely contrarian. Nor could they be. Nothing is completely apolitical, let alone South Park.  They were clearly happier and more inventive going after the demon woke than they are going after Trump and co, similar to Burr when presenting himself as “beyond” left and right these days (when in reality he just has a not uncommon mishmash of ideas from both). In each case their satire ultimately roots itself in a Blunt Blue-Collar Bloke identity politics that is, broadly, more comfortable with the right’s social traditionalism than the perceived strangeness of progressivism.   But contrarianism has its demands, one being that the dominant force in society is always the ultimate target. So the likes of Parker and Burr are having to deal with a rapid polarity change taking them out of their usual comfort zones which will, for perhaps the first time, actively and even dangerously challenge their willingness to commit to the bit. IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT FUNNYMEN Burr and South Park are perhaps the most prominent comic presences in this position, but they are reflections of a far larger question mark for both their industry and society more generally.  For the last 30 or so years in the US (and UK) the status quo has tended towards progressive values, meaning the idea of rebellion from the right had currency, which made the whole tweedy, miserable business seem a bit more sexy. And it was actually relatively easy to be a contrarian against liberal pressure – perhaps you didn’t get invited to all the parties. The far-right, from Trump himself to Farage now, have capitalised on that notion. But with Trump, and indeed Starmer’s Reform-chasing Labour, rightist repression is now back in the mainstream, from Jenrick to Cooper, and attacking people’s hard-won freedoms. As predicted by the anarchists and our fellow travellers, the beneficiaries of this social shift are quite willing to be far more aggressive than our “intolerance of intolerance.” They are just intolerant, violently so. But the good news, I suspect, is that while red-faced John Bulls and yeehaw plastic-cowboy Texans are still talking about themselves as rebels they’re already behind the cultural times. They’re in power. The politicians, the media, and most of the money revolves around their ideals.  You can’t be a rebel when you have all that. The post Contrarians in a time of right hegemony appeared first on Freedom News.

WITHOUT THE PROMISE OF A PEOPLE NEAR REVOLT, DEMONSTRATIONS THAT INCONVENIENCE NO-ONE CAN EASILY BE BRUSHED ASIDE ~ Sourdough ~ On June 14 across the US and several other countries, protests took place under the title of No Kings. Organised by the 50501 movement in opposition to the Trump regime, UK events took place under the conciliatory title No Tyrants. The protests were a thoroughly peaceful affair, with great care taken not to upset the movement’s broad appeal in vague opposition to Trump and his policies. Compared to the crackdown on protests for Gaza, and the violent suppression of recent mass actions against ICE in Los Angeles and elsewhere, No Kings remained curiously unmolested. Turnout was widespread, with estimates of 4-6 million in attendance. Yet it all came and went to little effect—the protests were more performance than substance. For all the numbers there was zero movement, no demands. Without a second thought of the dissonance, protesters waved the stars and stripes of the regime that oppresses them, deports their neighbours, and steals their futures—while democratic party organisers handed out fliers to vote in some supposedly upcoming election. There was immense fraternisation with the police. Even the messaging in opposition to monarchy was muddled. For all the mass demonstration of people’s power, it was enfeebled, unsure of itself. Operating as it is now—a weakened cry from within the system, propelled and backed by the democratic party—No Kings protests are scarcely likely to accomplish anything. Quite telling is the absence of these new swathes of protesters from anything to do with resisting the genocide in Palestine. After allowing Gaza and its inhabitants to be the testing ground for state repression, they are now displeased to find its results back home. The plan for protests on July 4 protests, American Independence Day, consisted un-ironically of the usual celebration activities. Even as the fascist regime encroaches across all realms of life, liberal resistance still takes the form of a barbecue. It is easy to see why. As permitted opposition, both figuratively and literally, the group behind No Kings, 50501, supposedly emerged from the grassroots on Reddit before being propped up by previously existing liberal pressure groups such as Political Revolution, Indivisible, and the remnants of the 2017 Women’s March. Building on the momentum of previous mobilisations such as the widespread Hands Off protests, No Kings continues the feckless and spineless tradition of liberal ‘activism’: an absence of values concentrated into appealing to the widest number of people possible. Defanged from infancy, 50501 and movements like it offer a chance for those uncomfortable with truly confronting power to glimpse a return to the comfortable, playing into the narrative of peaceful progress without truly threatening power. But what is a protest if not a threat against power? A protest is the greatest threat there is, it is a promise of a people near revolt. When there is no threat behind a protest, when it ceases to inconvenience anyone, it can easily be brushed aside. By proudly professing unconditional non-violence, violence is left within the sole domain of the state, which commits it every day to maintain its control. Refusing to disrupt property lets the capitalist system know that the people are forever their property. Refusing to fight lets the fascists know there will be little meaningful resistance to their carefully propagated chaos. Consequently, the vast majority is kept eternally ashamed and embarrassed to express its outrage through any material method, as if mere appeals to power would work. There is no respect to be won from the state. There will never be a protest peaceful enough for it. Power only respects other power, and when such vast displays of people’s power are focused into exactly nothing, it rests easily and securely. Rather than allowing us to petition the existing structures of power for concessions or reforms, protests should be an opportunity for the people to flex their collective power. By allowing the state to set the rules of resistance through the lens of an ever-shrinking legality, we ensure our opposition is controlled into no opposition at all. It is not enough to resist or be against something. Liberals are opposed to Trump but they are for scarcely little. The world they propose is almost no different to that of fascists, albeit with social niceties left intact. We have to stand for something, not just against something. By declaring our principles, by declaring boldly our fight for liberation, it will become all too clear who we stand against. Liberals hold no future beyond the past, so it is left to us to build something new. We are not fighting against Trump the individual, we are fighting for a stateless, classless, moneyless society in which humanity can be free. We must work to demonstrate an alternative for the people who declare there is no alternative. Any movement seeking to resist fascism must take direct action to disrupt it, as well as demonstrating what a better world can be like. No such world can be built within the constraints of the system. To threaten power is to move beyond its possibilities. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: No Kings protest in Dallas, Texas. Brenden M. Rogers, Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 The post A protest is a threat appeared first on Freedom News.

ASH SARKAR’S DISCUSSION OF IDENTITY POLITICS IS COMING OUT DURING A LIBERAL POST-BIDEN “REASSESSMENT”, WHICH SOME WOULD SAY IS 10 YEARS TOO LATE ~ Anonymous ~ Ash Sarkar, of Novara Media and “literally a communist” fame, has written her first book, Minority Rule, whose central thesis employs a double meaning of the book’s title, describing how the right have weaponised identity politics to mobilise the ‘white working class’ majority against minority ethnicities and ‘cultural elites’. By claiming these minority groups are seeking to take control of society, the real minority rule, that of the rich and powerful, is allowed to continue unfettered. Could this finally mark the beginning of the end for liberal identity politics? Maybe. Hopefully. The book is a bit of a mishmash of ideas and themes, but it is broadly successful in weaving a narrative under the ‘minority rule’ paradigm. While its overall analysis may have some value in influencing ‘public discourse’, there’s not much new for those of a radical persuasion. It has a fairly bland Marxist, materialist positioning to its politics, somewhat lacking in significant depth or insight. Ash spends too much time bemoaning the state of mainstream media and parliamentary politics, and includes far too many personal anecdotes and name drops. These shortcomings are likely driven by the unfortunate yet understandable imperative of producing a marketable book. However, there is one area where the book provides genuine value, which will remain the focus for the rest of this review. It launches a scathing yet intelligent and nuanced assault on what it terms ‘liberal identity politics’. Mainly covered in the first chapter, the following quote paints a picture of Sarkar’s critique: “It’s time to be brutally honest about something that’s been happening on the left: we have absorbed the tenets of liberal identity politics. We have nurtured a culture that’s deeply individualistic, where to be seen as a victim, to be able to claim a marginalised identity position, gives you social capital. That capital, unlike its monetary equivalent, isn’t transferable outside left- and liberal-leaning environments. It doesn’t prevent you from experiencing discrimination, injustice and even violence in the world outside. But within left and liberal-leaning spaces, victimhood – a close friend of lived experience – gives one a perch from which to speak with authority.” ‘Radlib, ‘ idol,’ and ‘identity politician’ are terms familiar to many involved in radical movements, but they are usually used in private conversation rather than public forums. As Ash points out, this is due to fear of social ostracism, leading to a culture of uncritical thinking that has allowed the curse of liberal identity politics to linger on for so long. As Sarkar is at pains to point out, it’s not about rejecting identity as a political focus, it’s just about doing it right and removing the liberal framing. This is the crucial point so commonly ignored or dismissed. Critical discussions around identity are not a way of sidelining struggles against oppression, they are absolutely vital to them. However, the depth of penetration of liberal thinking will inevitably mean that some paint the book as doing just that. Sarkar’s analysis of the key elements of liberal identity politics may be slightly off the mark, but it does highlight some of its major failings. It identifies how a common pattern is at work, where an important insight or concept is adopted but then uncritically applied, eventually becoming an unchallengeable dogma. The concept of lived experience is an excellent example of this, which the book covers in some detail. Sarkar describes how personal firsthand knowledge of the world is a valuable source of information and has played a vital role in struggles against racism and sexism. Yet under the doctrines of liberal identity politics, it has become an “unassailable form of moral authority”, leading to absurd claims being left unchallenged. The situation is ripe for exploitation, not just from those seeking recognition and social capital, but also those willing to intentionally manipulate it towards reactionary ends. The result of the highly individualised, competitive nature of liberal identity politics is divisions along lines of oppression that act as a barrier to solidarity and class consciousness. It is a diversion from necessary radical societal changes and, ironically, hinders struggles against identity based oppression. Obviously, a short book review is not the place for detailed discussion on the politics of identity and its relationship to class. Nevertheless, one important point to note is how things often go from one extreme to another, particularly in discourses around identity and class. In dismantling liberal identity politics, it’s essential not to simply replace it with another overly reductive approach. When challenging the supremacy of individual experience for example, there can be a tendency to slip towards forms of materialist class reductionism, which the book is guilty of at least to some extent. Objective ‘material realities’ and subjective experiences of the world are fundamentally interrelated and should be treated as such. There are some other praiseworthy aspects of the book that deserve a mention. There’s a pretty good discussion on the nature and complexities of gender, race and class. No mean feat when tackling such enormous subjects in a few pages of text. There are also some interesting reflections on how the right in the UK has shifted its predominant preoccupation with class from denigrating ‘chavs’ to championing the white working class. This is all described using an approachable and easy to read writing style, which includes some satisfyingly droll commentary and choice use of profanity. Hopefully, the book will spark discussion and embolden critical thinking around the complexities of identity and how they play out in our movements and political strategies. There have been many attempts to critique and take down liberal identity politics over the years, but it has proven a resilient opponent. Given how committed some are to its philosophy, it likely won’t go down without a fight. However, with the global rise of the far-right and authoritarianism galvanising attention, things feel different. Maybe the time has at last come for us to get our house in order, banishing liberal dogmas and giving the issue of identity the thoughtful, nuanced examination it deserves. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ash Sarkar, Minority Rule. Bloomsbury Publishing (Feb 2025) ISBN:  978-1526648334 £18.99 The post Book Review: Minority Rule appeared first on Freedom News.

LIBERALS CONTINUE TO PROVE THE WILLING, IF SNARKY, FOOT-SOLDIERS OF FASCISM ~  Sourdough ~ Political reality is changing at ever-quickening speeds, it seems: the newly emboldened and ascendant fascists in the United States and abroad are making a continuing effort to produce one calamity and crisis after the next, creating a perpetual stream of never-ending sorrow and bad news. It is a perpetual assault on the psyche of resistance, whipping up the reactionary base with grand promises of the immaterial and symbolic to their great excitement. With the glacial pattern of the neoliberal order firmly wiped away to be replaced with the cult of action, one can only imagine this mass production of spectacle will only increase in speed and scope to maintain the current fervour. This is the bullshit factory, and this never-ending deluge is no doubt to the benefit of the fascists, who have always gained from the suspension of critical thinking and general confusion, allowing them to provoke their foot-soldiers and adherents into a permanent hateful euphoria. Amidst all this, the sole remaining project of the liberal order is to find a rational basis for this fascist terror that is now about to befall us. They weave hidden webs of complexity into fascist thought, developing their justifications for them in their opining for it to make any logical sense. This search for logic in absolute nihilism defies the central feature of fascism as an ideology itself: that of the inherent lack of a political strategy or thought. This seems to be the hardest thing for the liberal to grasp about fascism, its sheer irrationality. Even at the end of things they are left pointing their fingers to happily and obediently inform their curated opposition among the bourgeoisie that what the fascists are doing is illegal, unable to grasp that the law has always been a single and simple flexible mould for capital’s extraction. The fascists mass produce irrationality, begging for someone to waste the time necessary to thoroughly dissect even a piece of it, allowing their argument to legitimise itself in the wider debate. Thus liberals continue to prove the willing, if snarky, foot-soldiers of fascism. The photochemical smog from the fascist’s bullshit factory will choke the world, but nobody among the entire liberal camp will contest their right to operate it. This has been proven quite succinctly already in their response to the enduring genocide in Gaza or any other intermittent crime perpetuated around the world by the bourgeoisie. The liberal’s argument against fascism is solely that it lacks civility, for they do not disagree with fascism’s program until its consequences have already come home to stare them in the eye, if even then. They demand a rational basis for terror, not an end to terror. They make the few snappy remarks they are allowed and try their best to prove that they can extract the final frozen drops of profit for the rich in a much more dignified and calm way. They may never understand fascism because they are both its embryo and enabler, the handlers of reaction. Fascism cannot be countered by trying to understand it. It resists analysis because it is nothing but the bluntest tool of the bourgeoisie to beat humanity wit in their times of greatest crisis. It is a purely irrational force of accumulation. Fascism is not something to be fought through debate or logic but by any means necessary; its violence will never be matched with words or any number of pens. Fascism can never be negotiated with, try as the liberals may. The liberals seek a truce with a raging inferno that threatens to consume the planet, feeding it even as it rampages and burns them alive. The time for reforms and measures of words has passed, and fascism and its master capital must be ruthlessly opposed on all fronts. There is no truce with capital’s entropy, no truce with the inferno. We must sidestep the bullshit and spectacle along with all hopes of reform to build a better future, against all gods and against all masters. The post Irrational terror & the bullshit factory appeared first on Freedom News.