DagSeoul: Positions, Populations, Punk, Poetics

dagNotes: Notes On Whiteness, White Power, Capitalism & Anti-Capitalism

dagseoul:

Bear with me fleshing out some language.

This is the mistake they* make: that whiteness is a quality we can sense, that it’s in some significant way material. That we can examine it and eradicate it without transforming society. It’s talked about like it’s a simple sin, a mistake, a form of revisionism, or an act, sometimes rising to a crime. We use words like transparent and opaque. We excuse its appearance as careless at best, mistaken at worse. We outline it as if it were a structure, like an organized cell.

Whiteness and White Power are now you see it now you don’t like part of a tacky magician’s act: white power is the reappearing thing itself, whiteness the object pulled out of a hat. Or, the result of birth. As in, I was born this way. What can I do about it.? A matter of rhetoric. Or worse, I’m not white. I’m free from guilt. I can do no wrong. Or, the not-white other who can actually claim he’s the hope himself for change simply for being not-that and nothing else.

White power isn’t material. It’s culture. It’s in the spirit of place: Great Britain, America, Europe. It hovers above the wreck of The Enlightenment. It infuses western religion with a sense of dominion over human being. It’s power is an idea that people have faith in but cannot utter. It’s a refusal as much as it is testimony or plan. It resists its own narrative but calls on the narrative of its individual constituents for proof of their allegiance to a man-made purpose. Seek self-help. Confess your sins. Do it alone.

Whiteness is powerful in the same manner Capital is self-valorizing. It’s the result of doing being. We let it happen because it’s how we tell the story of Nature organizing human action. It’s History itself. We shouldn’t romanticize it, manipulate it, look at it as a tragic formation of ideas. It’s not the debris in the rear-view mirror. It’s always already forgotten. It’s essential to character and habit.

Yet, it’s a wreck after all. A mess. On the other hand, it’s an order of being that instills within individuals a sense of duty to individualism that profits community regardless of location and direction. It’s purpose without purpose. It’s a dumb notion of Freedom based in the liberty to freely exploit. Dumb because it ignores the essential goal of its labor: to destroy everything first and then myself. It’s dumb because it ignores all science that it relies on in favor of the imaginary representations of reality in fanciful ideological formations. One wouldn’t be too mistaken to infer that individuals’ labor in white capitalist societies is to prove the value of its ideological assumptions about individual labor in white capitalist society.

White power is the will to expend everything first at the expense of Myself. (It’s always My Self in relation to others.) Forget the stupid medieval notions of the sin in the king’s hoard—the old king who takes everything for himself condemning his realm to rot and ruin and finally becoming the festering dragon protecting its useless treasure. The capitalist’s goal is nothing less than a barren landscape heaped with useless gold coin. (Ron Paul, I’m thinking of you.) The white power mad capitalist has nothing to protect. His goal is nothing less than the purposeful extinguishing of all natural resources for nobody but himself.

I often wonder how anyone would think it’s possible for me to do everything I want for myself and benefit others by so doing. The notion that such human action is possible must be based in the idea the Nature as it organizes us will infinitely provide resources to expend. It’s patently stupid thought.

This is the end of Ron Paul’s notion of Liberty, of Hayek’s Liberal Social Order. It’s the Republican reason for stalling government to promote corporatism. It’s the hope behind Obama’s neoliberalism. It’s not “Yes We Can” after all, it’s “Yes You Should Have Some, Too”.

Fleshing out the character and habit of whiteness is one manner to better understand white power. We can see it, in a way. White power, on the other hand, is a part of the practice of contemporary capitalism. No matter where you find it, what’s most conspicuous about it is its whiteness-for-itself. Capitalism uses white power as a kind of warrant for the free market (like I’m a free man,) as if its promotion were the point all along, and by simply doing things in the free market is to not be a slave.

I suppose this is why to be anti-white power, to be anti-fascist, to be an environmentalist, to be anti-racist, to be feminist, is necessarily to be anti-capitalist. To say otherwise is to accept white power, to embrace white ideology and its absurd ideological framing of societies.

*”They” are capitalists: liberals, progressives, activists. Of course, conservatives, corporatists and fascists.

(via dagseoul)

dagNotes: Notes On Whiteness, White Power, Capitalism & Anti-Capitalism

dagseoul:

Bear with me fleshing out some language.

This is the mistake they* make: that whiteness is a quality we can sense, that it’s in some significant way material. That we can examine it and eradicate it without transforming society. It’s talked about like it’s a simple sin, a mistake, a form of revisionism, or an act, sometimes rising to a crime. We use words like transparent and opaque. We excuse its appearance as careless at best, mistaken at worse. We outline it as if it were a structure, like an organized cell.

Whiteness and White Power are now you see it now you don’t like part of a tacky magician’s act: white power is the reappearing thing itself, whiteness the object pulled out of a hat. Or, the result of birth. As in, I was born this way. What can I do about it.? A matter of rhetoric. Or worse, I’m not white. I’m free from guilt. I can do no wrong. Or, the not-white other who can actually claim he’s the hope himself for change simply for being not-that and nothing else.

White power isn’t material. It’s culture. It’s in the spirit of place: Great Britain, America, Europe. It hovers above the wreck of The Enlightenment. It infuses western religion with a sense of dominion over human being. It’s power is an idea that people have faith in but cannot utter. It’s a refusal as much as it is testimony or plan. It resists its own narrative but calls on the narrative of its individual constituents for proof of their allegiance to a man-made purpose. Seek self-help. Confess your sins. Do it alone.

Whiteness is powerful in the same manner Capital is self-valorizing. It’s the result of doing being. We let it happen because it’s how we tell the story of Nature organizing human action. It’s History itself. We shouldn’t romanticize it, manipulate it, look at it as a tragic formation of ideas. It’s not the debris in the rear-view mirror. It’s always already forgotten. It’s essential to character and habit.

Yet, it’s a wreck after all. A mess. On the other hand, it’s an order of being that instills within individuals a sense of duty to individualism that profits community regardless of location and direction. It’s purpose without purpose. It’s a dumb notion of Freedom based in the liberty to freely exploit. Dumb because it ignores the essential goal of its labor: to destroy everything first and then myself. It’s dumb because it ignores all science that it relies on in favor of the imaginary representations of reality in fanciful ideological formations. One wouldn’t be too mistaken to infer that individuals’ labor in white capitalist societies is to prove the value of its ideological assumptions about individual labor in white capitalist society.

White power is the will to expend everything first at the expense of Myself. (It’s always My Self in relation to others.) Forget the stupid medieval notions of the sin in the king’s hoard—the old king who takes everything for himself condemning his realm to rot and ruin and finally becoming the festering dragon protecting its useless treasure. The capitalist’s goal is nothing less than a barren landscape heaped with useless gold coin. (Ron Paul, I’m thinking of you.) The white power mad capitalist has nothing to protect. His goal is nothing less than the purposeful extinguishing of all natural resources for nobody but himself.

I often wonder how anyone would think it’s possible for me to do everything I want for myself and benefit others by so doing. The notion that such human action is possible must be based in the idea the Nature as it organizes us will infinitely provide resources to expend. It’s patently stupid thought.

This is the end of Ron Paul’s notion of Liberty, of Hayek’s Liberal Social Order. It’s the Republican reason for stalling government to promote corporatism. It’s the hope behind Obama’s neoliberalism. It’s not “Yes We Can” after all, it’s “Yes You Should Have Some, Too”.

Fleshing out the character and habit of whiteness is one manner to better understand white power. We can see it, in a way. White power, on the other hand, is a part of the practice of contemporary capitalism. No matter where you find it, what’s most conspicuous about it is its whiteness-for-itself. Capitalism uses white power as a kind of warrant for the free market (like I’m a free man,) as if its promotion were the point all along, and by simply doing things in the free market is to not be a slave.

I suppose this is why to be anti-white power, to be anti-fascist, to be an environmentalist, to be anti-racist, to be feminist, is necessarily to be anti-capitalist. To say otherwise is to accept white power, to embrace white ideology and its absurd ideological framing of societies.

*”They” are capitalists: liberals, progressives, activists. Of course, conservatives, corporatists and fascists.

peace. gold. love. assholes.

libertarians-and-stoya:  Statists are minarchists through full totalitarianism.

proof this kid gets everything from Ron Paul Revolution sites and mises.org, and then poorly paraphrases it.

(Source: carnerdlian, via libertarians-and-stoya-deactiva)

She’s truly radical.

paul-ryan-girl:

that conservatives think liberals are wrong. Some are ill-informed and wrong, some are highly informed — but still wrong.

Liberals think that conservatives are either evil, insane, or stupid. Liberals “cannot believe” that we exist. Liberals “honestly cannot comprehend how a woman could vote for Romney/Ryan.”

Let me tell you this. If you honestly cannot comprehend how the other side can believe what we believe, then you are seriously mischaracterizing our position.

Do you really believe that half the people in the country are evil, insane, delusional, and stupid?

To all of you who “cannot believe” there are blogs (many!) supporting/admiring Paul Ryan: wake up. Conservative women love him because he is articulate, intelligent, CONSERVATIVE (unlike what we’ve had to vote for these last few elections), and educated. He has a plan. He is positive. He is running on his ideas, not just against the other guy.

Also, he just happens to be super hot.

That is all.

Radical certainty is a bitch. Psychotics aren’t concerned with what is real; psychotics are concerned with certainty. Lacan wrote in his work on the psychoses that a psychotic doesn’t necessarily believe in the reality of her hallucinations. A psychotic believes she is certain of them.

Paul-Ryan-Girl believes Ryan is courageous because he’s so full of shit, because he’s boldly not concerned with real conditions of existence, because he’s dedicated to a narrative about his bullshit, because he’s certain that his representation of reality is there and should be addressed: I am certain of this, regardless of what you think about it, and I’m going to work to do something about that.

Paul Ryan and Ron Paul share this radical certainty and their sycophants afford it to them. Shit, I’m likely going to have to endure some Ron Paul fan insisting that he’d end all war any second now if he were only in charge. As if being POTUS permits an individual and his certainty free reign to do what he wants.

We get it, you’d vote against your best interests to spite yourself and others because you’re certain of something you can’t articulate and other people don’t see but makes you feel so strongly about supporting a guy and his bunk notions about economic policy. You must be proud of yourself.

CONVICTION! WOOHOO! 

TAXES HURT JOB CREATION!!!

(via followformoresp00kygulag-deacti)

Ron Paul Poops

Remember that time Ron Paul used the phrase “honest rape” and a libertarian created a tumblr blog to defend him from criticism. Fuck Yeah White Conservative Men, Their Misgoyny, & the Internet Archive!

It’s all about regulation for these “libertarians”. And for a specific reason: to cultivate an artificial landscape of private properties for exchange in a capitalist market. The Pauls’ manifesto gives that right wing notion that “freedom isn’t free” a new sense.

The Pauls apparently have no idea the internet is not a natural resource. They appear ignorant that it’s entirely created by the government and succeeded only as a result of the proper functioning of many highly regulated public resources. Certainly, corporations and Capitalists have found ways to exploit the public resource for profit, but the result of their exploits has not been a more general liberation, something free for all.

I suppose we can note that The Pauls are oblivious of history, which should come as no surprise. Their manifesto is merely stocked with stale arguments aimed at liberals (love the citing Reagan and Jefferson, two Internet users, right?) that illustrate how stale their claims about property have become and how illiterate and ignorant they and their followers are re: technology. Completely out of touch.

The Return of the Poop Standard

e-schatology:

daisysnotebook:

Call me an oppressor and I’ll call you a thief.

Or maybe I won’t, because I at least try to understand how you grew up and why you’re hostile to the thing that oppresses you and your family.

I AM A FUCKING THIEF. 

(via what-was-e-schatology)

Ron Paul is surely the most embarrassing candidate. Calling people fake while he yaps about Planned Parenthood killing babies. Who’s fake?

It’s not like we expect anything different from Gingrich, Santorum, or Romney.

anticapitalist:

Self-proclaimed strict constitutionalist and freethinker Rick Crawford told reporters Monday he is supporting Ron Paul in the 2012 Republican presidential primaries because of the way the candidate looks people directly in the eye, doesn’t mince words, and tells it like it will never, ever be in a million years. “Ron cuts right through the fat and doesn’t sugarcoat anything when he talks about policies that would be absolutely impossible to implement, like abolishing the federal income tax, eliminating Medicare, or putting the nation’s currency back on the gold standard,” Crawford said as he pounded a hand-painted “Ron Paul 2012” sign in his front lawn. “He’s not afraid to give Americans no-nonsense straight talk about his completely delusional fantasy world. That’s why I’m part of the highly unlikely Ron Paul revolution.” Sources close to Crawford’s family said his wife supports Mitt Romney because of the way he tells it like people want to hear it.

This isn’t even satire. It’s a great depiction of reality.

The Ron Paul Revolution!

akagoldfish replied to your post: Now I’m getting responses that MLK and Ron Paul want the same thing.

Remember that libertarian who said Malcolm X was Ron Paul’s personal hero? heheheh

White Ron Paul Fan Debate Strategy:

1. They’ll claim you don’t know history and you illustrate they are incorrect.
2. They’ll argue you don’t know how to read a dictionary and you illustrate they  are incorrect; or, they’ll argue you have taken Ron Paul out of context and you illustrate they are incorrect.
3. They’ll compare Ron Paul to a civil rights leader like Martin Luther King, Jr., and you laugh at them in disbelief.
4. They’ll give up and call you a faggot. End of debate.

Ron Paul says, only people who experience racism are racists

enios51 quotes Ron Paul

“Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals … By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called “diversity” actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racists [sic]…we should understand that racism will endure until we stop thinking in terms of groups and begin thinking in terms of individual liberty.”- Ron Paul

Who needs the racist newsletters when Ron Paul says shit like this. This may be the most convoluted and ideological construction of what it means to be an individual I’ve ever seen. If we think about ourselves as individuals, racism can’t exist.

Fuck you, bigot.

(via darkjez)

A HOOT

anticapitalist:

Ron Paul Would Erase Billions in Research Spending

laliberty:

Personally, I don’t find it appropriate to put a gun to my neighbor’s head and rob him in the name of “science research” (even assuming it was properly spent, which would be tremendously generous to the lumbering and corrupt bureaucratic apparatus that is government).

And then the nonsense about individual preferences because, you know, according to Mises, we’re all consumers.

CHOICE! OR ROBBERY!

You can’t make this shit up.

dagNotes: …for your next Contra Ron Paul tumblr experience

Anonymous asked you:

Give me the best argument against Ron Paul. (I absolutely loathe him I just can’t seem to organize my thoughts to dish out a decent argument)

I’ve written a lot about this since last summer. For my long-time readers, this will be a bit of a review. For newbies, these are my core claims that you can use when talking about Ron Paul. I’ve written a lot more about crass libertarianism, but this would be the stuff that applies most directly to Paul’s beliefs.

1. Ron Paul, Ideologist

Ron Paul likes to use what he called at a recent debate a “bushel of common sense”. He often talks about freedom in folksy rhetoric. Paul argues “Who needs the government babysitting them?” After all, life in the free market is about risk and individuals should be able to look out for themselves. Paul panders to Americans’ obsession with privacy and paranoia about surveillance.

If freedom is “taking your own risks,” then freedom for Paul has nothing to do with the libertarian sacred cow, Liberty. Instead, freedom is nothing more than being free from others. Liberty becomes a rhetorical object embodying this being with(out) others.

Not only is Ron Paul a capitalist ideologist. He’s an aristocrat with a compulsion to cultivate the traditional white power structure. His folksy common-sense rhetoric is cover for his ideology and the tradition within which it cultivates its ground.

I write “ideologist” in combination with the tag “libertarianism is stupid” for many reasons, but each reason rests with(in) the most stupid thing libertarians like Ron Paul discuss: regulation. (I believe this is why he is nothing more than a common Republican.)

If what I’ve illustrated in many posts about Paul, anarcho-capitalism, and American libertarianism is true, that for capitalist libertarians Liberty is the ability to be more or less free from others, then this social and political movement, from capitalist anarchists to fascist objectivists, is about nothing less than insuring the only regulations are the ideological apparatuses that aggressively compose citizens as free individuals who must be free from others. The libertarian ethos is focused on regulating society to compose citizens as free individuals who should be free from others. Capitalist libertarians believe that citizens in the free market are status-seeking individuals whose social action is being-free-from-others. Therefore, people are more or less free from others dependent upon their status. Inequality is built into capitalist libertarianism as a necessity. Inequality is the sine qua non status-seeking could not exist.

In nature, an individual is never being free-from-others. In markets, a consumer is never consuming free from others. In society, a citizen is never living free from others. This free from others is an ideological construction. In other words, it is imaginary. As such, the capitalist libertarian representation of life is a highly regulated representation of reality that relies on ancient and aristocratic notions of the city and citizens. (Want a little homework, read Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics.) It’s the old order of wealthy and privileged elites who wish to define the best we can be via a highly idealized vision of past orders.

I believe libertarianism is willfully ignores the core of its own complex ideological structure calls out for a very narrow construction of what is intended to be seen as a free and public discourse community regulated to reflect an ideal version of nature, market and society that has never existed. It’s not that they believe their own representations of reality as the only reality that’s problematic. That’s just common fundamentalism we cope with in free societies and often marginalize as anti-intellectualism. It’s that libertarians wish to force everyone else to live according to their rules. So much for liberty and freedom, right?

Anyone who denies social and shared goods exist separate and distinct from economic goods, as capitalist libertarians do, is a very dangerous kind of fundamentalist. Libertarians are tricky because they use the anti-intellectual knee-jerk response to the words “liberty” and “freedom” to offer cover for their elitism. They’ll argue, we live in a capitalist market economy that’s ideally free. But what “free” means in the capitalist free market is free to exchange goods and services. As we all know, the money economy rather unjustly limits freedom in all communities to those individuals who have more money than others. Even Adam Smith had to handle this ethical problem of unjust social standing he referred to as unearned ambition. Libertarians deny unearned ambition.

Capitalist libertarians have no ability to cope with the unjust money economy. They hold equality in contempt. In addition, they conflate the money economy with nature via a constructed term FA Hayek called the spontaneous social order. He wanted to not use economics. He wanted to write about the catallaxy and catallactics. He claimed it was to resist common sense associations of economics with the pragmatics of household economics. Once you’ve read Hayek enough, you learn that he’s actually attempting to create a new way of looking at nature and society that justifies a market based on unjust exploitation of labor and unjust distribution of the majority of wealth to the Capitalist class. The catallaxy demands inequality is natural and just. Catallactics became a system that viewed all individuals as either business owners or consumers.

Why do I hate Ron Paul? He refuses to talk about these things. And his fellow libertarians can’t talk about these things. None of them are willing to discuss the merits of their foundational texts. Ron Paul wants you to read his shitty propaganda that is nothing more than watered-down Hayek and Von Mises.

2. Liberty is a crass libertarian-ism Ron Paul can’t resist uncritically using every time he opens his mouth.

Liberty, for crass libertarians, is a rhetorical tool. It’s a static object.

Liberty reflects what any individual observing it sees as any thing, process, and/or state of being that makes one feel free of obligation, duty and responsibility—these three often being most responsible for citizens’ anxiety and dread in public.

Liberty is a rhetorical tool designed to make one think about freedom while being educated about how to behave in a capitalist market.

Liberty looks like it has roots in a historical tradition of republicanism and democracy and sounds in tune with capitalism. They appear to go hand in hand.

Liberty is, however, a shape-shifting placeholder for one’s desire to be free from others while laboring with them. It justifies one’s own slavery while excusing others’. Liberty, therefore can be seen as a Capitalist’s ideal form of Cooperation.

Liberty reminds people of an idea they think they share. But the idea was constructed to look old, treasured, lost and recoverable. Liberty has been designed by capitalist economists and libertarian theorists to appear just out of reach. If you have not the liberty you want, it’s because you haven’t worked hard enough, or because the government is keeping you down.

Liberty is part of the white power tradition in the United States. This is the construction of liberty that Ron Paul implements in his rhetoric. Its contemporary roots are in Hayek’s Construction of Liberty and Ludwig Von Mises’s works about human action. Its part of the western tradition with classical roots dating back to Aristotle, in my opinion.

When listening to a political leader, public official, and/or community organizer using Liberty to organize any effort, think twice before trusting him. (Him is appropriate here. Liberty is part of white masculinity. It’s almost always heterosexist.) They’re working in a tradition of white power, imperialism and capitalist economic theory—theory that justifies unearned poverty, war and slavery of others—that justifies the unearned ambition of the wealthiest members of society. Ron Paul is, no matter what he argues, a statist.

3. Don’t let Ron Paul and his fans ignore this. On Crass Libertarianism Wealth Redistribution:

When you talk to a capitalist about taxes and government spending, inevitably the capitalist will want to begin speaking about wealth. A common conversation is that we, as in our government acting on behalf of citizens, should promote (spend on and invest in) wealth creation not wealth redistribution. Never mind that the claim is unreasonable. Business owners, entrepreneurs, employers do not create wealth. Wealth is a capitalist word that is supposed to be a synonym with value. Wealthy people do not create value. We know how value works, but wealth, you know, is the root in wealthy. So, wealth and the wealthy go together. Right? It’s just common sense. Right? Don’t get pulled into a discussion with such shitty use of common sense and language. Resist this shit. When arguing with Ron Paul fans, insist they define their concepts. They won’t be able to and will have to show their hand: that they don’t give a shit about liberty and equality. They care about the capitalist order.

When you hear wealth, you should always insist the conversation returns to labor and value. That’s the most important thing. Capitalists do not want to talk about value. Capitalists want to argue that wealthy people create demand. We know that spending creates demand, but again, capitalists will not want to talk about spending. Capitalists will not want to talk about money in the hands of the poor is much more stimulative than money in the hands of the rich. Why? Well, for example, capitalist libertarians like to believe that 1$ wealthy people spend is worth more than 1$ poor people spend. It’s that simple. It’s an absurd debate to get into. Always insist the conversation turn to labor and value. Bring the conversation from spending, debt, and wealth back to the basic relationship between the employer and employee.

You’ll discover that libertarians aren’t capable of discussing value and labor because they typically don’t know what they’re talking about. They haven’t done their homework. They’re simply repeating propaganda.

"Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When [white men] accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, [white men] have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government [by white men]. Subservient [white] societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long."

Ron Paul (via LA “Andrew Sullivan is a leftist” Liberty)

I fixed the quote so that it would more correctly reflect Ron Paul’s actual views. We know he doesn’t believe women deserve the same liberty as men. And he sure as shit doesn’t give a shit about liberty for people of color.