Addressing the Elephant in the Room

Contrapoints spends so much time on toxic parts of the internet reading the posts of people who are primed for fascist radicalization, she's conflated them with everybody else.

Most people who want to sprout broccoli for their sick loved one because they can't afford to buy tons of organic fruits and vegetables, they're not going to be primed for alt-right attacks, but they sure are primed for Eco-socialism.

Her white cis het $$ target's viewpoint, and the other's with money vying for respectability in this Ponzi scheme of an economy, they are not primed for leftism.

She has no objectivity and her work has this ugly nihilist slant. It's disappointing because she clearly is able to connect with her target audience and inoculate them from different aspects of right wing rhetoric, but she stops there, leaving people feeling impotent and outraged, without any sense of direction.

Feeling hopeless they attack other leftists for not "doing enough". It's gross. Then we're stuck dealing with these outraged nihilistic people. The ones calling themselves leftists while they criticize and undercut the movement with their arrogance. WE are forced to teach them harsh lessons about equality, because we understand that without it there is no radicalization, it just morphs back into the dominant culture.

That's what's radical. The cooperative power structures. If there's any studying that has to be done, it will be learning and unlearning how to do that coming from this insanely authoritarian society we're reared in.

Contrapoints isn't even able to verbalize this next step. She just shrugs her shoulders, it's very nihilistic, which frankly is very alt-right. That's not a blanket statement about Contra, it's something she has in common with her fan base. Until she has the courage to even consider what an egalitarian future looks like, she won't be able to radicalize her audience past Social Democrat Liberals. Who knows, maybe she is one?

In the end she conflates leftism with anti-fascism and now there are anti-fascists who are undercutting and trivializing leftist organizing. That is a HUGE problem and she's perpetuating it along with Chapo Trap House and all kinds of leftubers. I have yet to see a single video from any of them demonstrating what co-operative organizing looks like, what kind of alternatives to institutions are possible. NO? Not one!

Can they not conceive of it? They are anti-fascists and they think that automatically makes them perfect egalitarians who resent "purity tests". Or maybe you don't yet understand what the point of all this is, you just know that fascism is bad.

Their fan base talks about "actual leftism in real life" but again, are they not able to even talk about what organizing looks like beyond signing up for some membership in some bureaucracy laden institution, what are you offering them? There's no vision or hope of anything better, just more authority.

I don't know what it would look like, but it would be good to have different kinds of conversations, and more international conversations. I'm talking beyond words into the visual, beyond the borders our languages draw when we talk to each other.

Solarpunk is a very hopeful message and there's never a point where I've felt "there's nothing I can do", there's always something. It's very special and very creative, there's a vitality to it.

Anti-Fascists are being paralyzed with nihilism, when the antifa flag symbolizes anything but.

Maybe this is the first time that the fascists and liberals have successfully alienated anti fascists and active leftists from one another, but it's happened.

I think Solarpunk is a good bridge for these people back to positive action.

I read from @tulsi@sunbeam.city

"The revolution is providing

food (fresh and local) housing (warm and personal) healthcare (holistic and kind) energy (clean and reliable) communication (open and private) transportation (global and efficient) safety (personal and community) and more besides

for everyone, for free, for ever"

Let's share what that looks like, :sunbeam: and all the baby steps in between

I'm still learning and I think it's time we show the anti-fascists what co-operation, mutual aid and education, including learning how to co-operate at all, looks like. It's hard when talking to them via text forces people to engage with their nihilistic verbal attacks. They seem very entranced by visuals though, it's almost hedonistic. Most of the praise for contra comes down to the "experience" of watching her and the feeling it gives.

What would be a hedonistic solarpunk media experience I wonder?