this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

So many superhero-villain stories seem to follow this weird-ass pattern: the villain will show a sizable amount of class consciousness, but somewhere along the way will randomly break character and kill a humongous number of people for no fucking reason.

The Riddler from Batman 2023 is such a textbook example. He kills corrupt officials to reveal Gotham's deep corruption and rot, which is objectively a good thing. However, once Batman starts going after him, he randomly floods all of Gotham, just so the writers can show he's 'insane'.

In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the Flag Smashers are practically communists at the start who wanted to preserve the unity and cooperation of the world after the Snap, instead of having everything revert to the capitalist hellhole it was before. Of course, during one of their raids to get medicine for refugees, they randomly decide to blow up a warehouse with workers still inside. They eventually all get arrested or killed for being 'terrorists'. In the end, the problems they fought to solve simply get voiced by Falcon, who uses his status as an elite black soldier just to tell a senator to "do better".

In Black Panther, Killmonger becomes king of Wakanda so he can provide vibranium weapons to Africans around the world. By doing so, he wants them to fight back against their oppression, doing exactly what the Soviet Union did. Of course, he's considered crazy and has to be defeated. In the end, T'Challa decides to solve Africans' oppression by building some shitty schools around the world.

In each of these, the villian's cause is righteous, but they are either portrayed as crazy or are made by the writers to do something random and crazy. Every single one of these is perfectly formulated to show the proles that they can't take matters into their own hands because 'they'd go crazy'. Instead, we should wait for an enlightened Lord (Batman, Iron Man, etc.) to take pity on us.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Man, that Flag Smasher 180 really pissed me off. They were 100% in the right and then randomly blow up the building for no reason.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago

It's called 'The Swerve', and it's not just limited to superhero stories. Here's a short essay exploring it further: https://redsails.org/the-swerve/

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

I think they do it by purpose. Bane had a similar thing going on for a bit in The Dark Knight Rises, but he was more anarchist than anything before he decided to blow up the entire city.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 5 days ago (2 children)

r/antiwork was explicitly anti-Marxist the last time I checked lmao

Only radlibs allowed!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 days ago (3 children)

If that sub is radlib then what is /r/workreform?

[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

I remember /r/antiwork in its heydey, it was building towards class consciousness and people were bitching and memein less, rumblings about organizing more, before it got broken up. I had heard of but never knowingly experienced FUD happenin in real time until after that FOX interview when so many of the loudest voices demanded a break to /r/workreform. I loved the energy of that place before it got fedfucked.... Like really thought it had a chance to be something real. Thinking about it now, i think it was a bigger blow to me than i gave it credit at the time, i started my search for a reddit alternative then.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I had a similar experience. Why can't reddit just die already...

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago (1 children)

if reddit dies there will be nothing to put at the end of a google search to make it work

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Reddit did to the internet what China did to manufacturing. But China did it better.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

what do you guys mean, i thought it started as a bunch of people who literally wanted to contribute nothing

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

You fell for the Fox News propaganda. They chose the most nutty mod they could find to misrepresent the subreddit. Yes in its barebones infancy the subreddit was truly “anti-work” but that was for an incredibly short amount of time and when it was sub 50k users. Realistically the majority of the subreddits history is what joad is describing.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

It's a good example of why it does matter how leftists present themselves -- "if people take issue with our group as-is they were never going to get on board anyway" is poor reasoning. Choosing to go with "anti-work" had at least three problems:

  1. Gives bad-faith critics like Fox a perpetual layup;
  2. Attracts at least some people who really just don't want to contribute, which feeds back into 1 and also impedes trying to do anything meaningful; and
  3. Takes a good impulse (alienation from one's labor) and channels it in a frankly childish direction ("I don't wanna") instead of towards class consciousness, education, and action
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

I agree generally, but I think it's a bit easier said than done sometimes, especially when dealing with the absurd soundbite level of things in modern high speed internet land. Anti-work in the face of a culture that glorifies burning yourself out for nothing kinda makes some sense; out of context, it just sounds unrealistic and silly, but in context, it can be interpreted as an opposition to the glorifying of labor for no other reason than because it's labor. There are those who will take it too far, or be a poor representation, but that's the case for any way you frame it. You can say work reform, but reform is often associated with capitulation in the context of dealing with a dictatorship of capital, so now you might get a less bad faith interpretation from critics, but might also be more apt to attract libs who are advocating nothing more than joining a union and not raising class consciousness meaningfully.

I do think it's worth experimenting with these kind of things and seeing what has what kind of impact. I'm not saying don't try because it's hard. But just that it's more a matter of tradeoffs than a purely helpful way of doing it with no drawbacks. And at some point, you have to just be ready to explain a coherent and consistent position beyond a couple of words, which is going to be more important and stabilizing in the long-term.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

I was around for when it was exploding, and that sub-50k user period was what I thought they were alluding to.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

If I remember correctly, that sub was started by an investment banker or something. Just an absolute joke.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Did any of the mass shooters who targeted black churches, synagogues, mosques or that mall where black shoppers were targeted get tried as terrorists?

[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 days ago (1 children)

do cops terrorizing black people get charged with terrorism?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago

they get a medal

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago

I love the way this contrasts with the corrupt official thats getting executing in China. It demonstrates what a dictatorship of the proles vs what a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie equate to in practice. The best way to determine who holds power is to look at who receives the hammer.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 days ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

I'm da jokah baby jokah