Guns Don’t Kill People, Settlers Do: The Second Amendment and the Myth of Defense

By Oliver Baker

"Our nation was built and civilized by men and women who used guns in self-defense and in pursuit of peace." - Ronald Reagan

"If you are coming to the idea of resistance as a resolute no to the Empire, then armed self-defense is as much a yes to liberated life as the yes of community gardens." - Ashanti Alson

Many of the households where I grew up in rural Missouri have at least one good hunting rifle in their collections of firearms. Every November, most families here-usually the father and son, but sometimes the father and daughter-will go deer hunting, not only for sport but also for the meat it provides households. They will often say hunting is the reason they own firearms.

Several years ago, I was invited to go target shooting at the property of a long-time acquaintance. He was proud of his expansive and comfortable set-up: he owned several dozen acres of land in the country with a nice three-bed, two-bath home and a stable income to support it all. His property, in other words, allowed him to be a gracious host for friends, neighbors, and acquaintances looking to shoot guns, improve their marksmanship, and build community and comradery.

When I arrived, there were 15-20 men armed to the teeth, strutting around with ARs slung tightly around their chests and handguns of various calibers holstered on their belts. Their wives were inside preparing food and tending the kids. As the men-some dressed in army surplus gear, others still wearing their work clothes-blasted away at various targets, the property owner began talking to me about why he loved his home(stead) so much. It was, in his words, "out in the sticks, good and far away from all of that inner-city mayhem." After showing me a sample of his extensive gun collection, spread out before everyone on the tailgate of his truck, he continued his white-to-white conservation with me:

"Yeah, I have all this firepower because I gotta protect my property and family when, you know, shit hits the fan, and all them inner-city people dependent on government hand-outs are left high and dry and start coming out here where the pavement meets gravel looking to loot food and other things."

It was clear he wanted me to understand that he had guns to defend against, in his eyes, Black people coming to loot his home in the event of a "societal collapse," and that he'd be ready with an arsenal of firepower to repel them. That is, gun ownership for him was about using violence to defend his property-as-whiteness from racialized populations whom he recognized were deliberately excluded from the formal economy and corralled in inner-city ghettos. His guns were the lynchpin for maintaining this line between the "good guys" like himself-the productive worker, the property holder, the respectable law-abiding citizen-and a zombified surplus population marked for death. This metaphor is telling: of all the firearms he showed me that day, he was most proud of some recently purchased specialty ammunition with the tagline: "Supply yourself for the Zombie Apocalypse." Guns and zombie rounds animated the fantasy of defending whiteness by mowing down a racialized surplus humanity on the gravel roads of rural Missouri.

I heard this fantasy many times growing up in such hyper-masculine spaces, in which it is taught that the man of the house has to be prepared to defend his home(stead) from perceived criminal (racial) threats and maintain order in his home . True men are providers and protectors; anything less, and you're an emasculated loser. In this way, the property holder was simply being a good patriot and male leader by preparing for the moment when, in his eyes, he would use guns in self-defense against the racialized poor. From this perspective, all the patriots out there that day sharpening their firearm skills claimed to be doing so for reasons of self-defense. Each saw himself as a Josey Wales , John Wayne, or Dirty Harry, or (more recently) anAmerican Sniper or Rick Grimes, neutralizing racialized criminal threats encountered on the Indian frontier or spilling out from the Black ghetto.

People will often say hunting is the reason they own firearms, but the underlying structural reason, whether acknowledged or not, has more to do with white settler fears of racial rebellion. Indeed, the NRA-the most politically influential gun organization-isn't powerful because it has a lot money to spend, but rather because it markets gun ownership as a means of reinforcing white settler sovereignty. Gun ownership is about staving off the loss of the white settler's power, honor, and privilege, which the global economy no longer respects and the state, it is believed, tramples in its accommodating of the marginalized. Despite the rhetoric, gun ownership has never been about hunting or defending democracy against authoritarianism, which white settlers are ready to embrace if it maintains their power.

In other words, the fear of the dispossessed challenging their subjugation drives gun ownership and gun culture among white settlers in the United States-not hunting, a tyrannical government, or, as I argue, reasons of self-defense. American gun ownership has its structural roots in the desire to uphold and reproduce colonial and racial hierarchies and to maintain the power and benefits received from such hierarchies, putting guns in the hands of white settlers with fantasies of nostalgic redemption through violence. Make America Great Again, indeed.

At its core, then, gun ownership for white settlers is about using tools of violence to defend the political category of white settler sovereignty, which is to say, using guns to harm, kill, or terrorize colonized and racialized people in order to keep them unfree-as their freedom means the dissolution of these categories of power and honor. Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's recent book Loaded (2018) argues that the history of the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms was fundamentally the state-granted right of settlers to arm their households and form voluntary militias in order to seize Native land and/or police enslaved Black people. Gun ownership today maintains what Dunbar-Ortiz contends was the founding vision of the settler state to distribute its monopoly of violence to its settler-citizens in order to carry out campaigns of dispossession and secure white property against threats of rebellion:

"Settler-militias and armed households were institutionalized for the destruction and control of Native peoples, communities, and nations. With the expansion of plantation agriculture, by the late 1600s they were also used as 'slave patrols,' forming the basis of the U.S. police culture after enslaving people was illegalized."

In fact, joining a militia was less of a right than a requirement of settlers; in some cases, particularly at the state level in the South preceding the Constitution, service in the militia or arming one's household was required by law. Dunbar-Ortiz explains this history:

"European settlers were required by law to own and carry firearms, and all adult male settlers were required to serve in the militia. Militias were also used to prevent indentured European servants from fleeing before their contracts expired, in which case they were designated 'debtors.' [. . .]. In 1727, the Virginia colony enacted a law requiring militias to create slave patrols, imposing stiff fines on white people who refused to serve."

These state laws fed into the Second Amendment to enshrine the imperative of gun ownership at the federal level. Requiring participation in counterrevolutionary violence was thus written into the law directly. Today this duty to defend settler dominance continues not through state laws requiring militia membership but through informal gun ownership. The Second Amendment deputized settlers to use violence to steal land and people-in short, to expand empire.

Building on Dunbar-Ortiz's analysis of the Second Amendment, I want to suggest that we understand gun ownership as a material practice through which white settlers engage directly in the work of counterrevolutionary violence that consolidates and maintains U.S. liberal democracy. It is a way of strengthening settler democracy that promises empowerment and redemption. Firearms are the tools and symbols of a larger counterrevolutionary policing that binds settlers together despite contradictions of class in their mutual support of upholding colonial and racial hierarchies. Through gun ownership of today-what was, earlier, participation in militias-the white settler defends the state that in turn ensures his sovereignty and superiority.

In this way, the settler state depends on deputizing its settler-citizens to be the police of dispossessed populations, just as the settler relies on the state upholding his rights of property, or his "pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness." This is why gun ownership is seen as fundamental to liberal freedoms. The Second Amendment is upstream from the other amendments precisely because counterrevolutionary policing maintains the public order of civil society in which liberal freedoms can flourish.

There are three conclusions, then, I would like to discuss that follow from the claim that Second Amendment-sponsored gun ownership in the United States is counterrevolutionary violence harmonizing intra-settler relations. The first is that self-defense belongs to the oppressed and never to the oppressor. From a structural prespective, there is no such thing as white settler self-defense. The second is that gun culture from the 1960s onward serves as an important site at which settlers organize politically across class and gender lines to protect whiteness in response to marginalized peoples' demand for freedom and neoliberalism's attack on labor. The third is that the practice of community self-defense among those targeted by colonial violence radically undermines the ideology of white victimization through which counterrevolutionary violence is legitimated.

Guns and White Victimization

Perhaps the best example of how counterrevolutionary violence is coded as white settler self-defense is the now iconic Gadsden Flag. From its inception during the American Revolutionary War to its revival and proliferation in right-wing gun culture in the years following 9/11, the Gadsden Flag, with its image of a rattlesnake and phrase "Don't Tread on Me," illustrates how the effort to maintain white settler power in the face of marginalized peoples' demand for freedom is branded as self-defense. The coiled rattler signifies a defensive and victimized position, but one that is deadly if provoked. The Gadsden Flag serves as an important symbol for those identifying as patriots, law-abiding gun-owners, and defenders of the Constitution because it supports a larger ideology that holds that white America is under attack by minorities (and the federal government taken over by minorities in the post-Civil Rights era) whose commitments to equality have turned into the discrimination against, exclusion of, and attacks on whiteness.

Some of the earliest versions of the Gadsden flag, as many patriots will mention, is Benjamin Franklin's drawing of the colonies as a snake divided into sections underwritten by the ultimatum of "join, or die." Yet the tyranny the colonies were fighting against wasn't simply taxation without representation, but more broadly the right to expand its own empire rather than remain merely another exploited colony-to form a state strong enough to defend the colonists' pursuit of wealth from Native and Black rebellion. Indeed, Jefferson makes this clear in the Declaration of Independence when he argues that the Crown had prevented the colonies from clearing the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains of "merciless Indian savages" and encouraged slave insurrection in the colonies.

The rattlesnake represents a white settler body politic that feels continuously threatened and anxious about defending its power over conquered and subjugated populations. It claims to take up a position of self-defense when this position is actually one of stopping the efforts of marginalized people to free themselves from structures of violence. The fetish of Franklin's coiled rattler as the iconography of settlers coming together through counterrevolution suggests there is unity and strength precisely through this position of shared white victimization. If disjointed by cleavages such as class or gender, they will be overrun by the dispossessed, but if unified in their mutual opposition to the dispossessed, white settlers will flourish despite such intra-settler contradictions.

This fear of insurgency-from-below justifying the use of counterrevolutionary violence helps explain the emergence and proliferation of right-wing gun culture in the years following the 1960s to the present. As theorist Sylvia Wynter has argued, the global anti-colonial rebellions of the mid-20th century that empowered and inspired national liberation struggles in the United States sent shocks throughout the white-settler body politic. These rebellions ended in the settler state granting concessions to colonized and racialized groups in the form of civil rights legislation, the dismantling of legal forms of racial apartheid, and the overall turn away from overt, codified forms of white supremacy to new forms of colorblind racism. Black, Brown, and Native militancy terrified settlers, compelling concessions as a means to pacify their militant struggle.

It was these attempts of federal government to conditionally include marginalized groups that led white America, using a zero-sum logic, to feel betrayed and abandoned. As a result, white middle- and working-class settlers gave up defending the welfare state as long as it was also going to include nonwhites. In this moment when the state seems to accommodate nonwhites-an act that failed to respect, in the eyes of white America, the colonial and racial divisions binding together settlers-gun ownership became much more meaningful for white settlers looking to hold the line of these divisions where the state had, it was believed, given up doing so.

During Obama's presidency, this fear that the state had abandoned white settlers by catering to marginalized people had a resurgence. Gun purchases were at an all-time high and patriot community-building became widespread, which is to say, gun ownership and patriot communities were seen as necessary measures for saving the original and founding vision of a white settler republic from a federal government that was believed to have sided with the very people whose demands for equality would unravel the sovereignty and power of white settlers.

Militias such as the Oathkeepers and Three Percenters emerged during these years and embodied the view that it is the job of "true patriots" (white male settlers) to save white America from a state that has gone rogue in its perceived embrace of "open-borders" multiculturalism. The Constitution and the Second Amendment are sacred for such groups because they authorize freedom-loving citizens to form militias to restore the founding colonialist vision of the United States.

For all the wrong reasons of preserving their power, such groups actually have a perceptive understanding of the Second Amendment as a law authorizing counterrevolutionary violence. For them, guns are not about hunting or even self-defense, but about the right to ensure colonial and racial rebellion is controlled and that state power is recaptured in ways that it abandons neoliberal multiculturalism for more direct forms of settler-colonial white-nationalist capitalism. Indeed, it is not surprising that Oathkeepers and Three Percenters show up to police Black rebellions or put down antifascist counterdemonstrations. They see themselves as an extension of the police, the National Guard, and border patrol. Like the KKK of yore, these militias, filled with current and former police and military, believe they fulfill the original function of the state-under the Obama years seen as liberal and weak-in putting down racial rebellions. Gun culture, then, serves as a symbolic yet very material compensation for the state's support of neoliberal multiculturalism and the dismantling of welfare capitalism. Just as credit is offered in place of decreased wages, gun culture supplies compensatory ammunition to bolster the value of whiteness in the face of deindustrialization, increased intra-settler inequality, and globalization's attack on U.S. nationalism.

Arming the Police, Arming White Supremacy

It is important not to forget that support for counterrevolutionary violence extends far beyond patriots and right-wing gun culture. Liberals who call for gun regulation but fully support the police and military and their work of upholding mass incarceration at home and imperial violence abroad support the same structures of violence celebrated by the gun-nuts such liberals love to disparage and against whom they define their commitments to nonviolence. The difference is a choice between a monopoly of state violence in repressive state apparatuses or the distribution of state violence among individual settlers and citizen militias. In other words, patriots believe the violence should be democratized and liberals believe it should be concentrated in the hands of state institutions. While one wants to stand alongside the police and military, the other wants the bloody work to be accomplished without getting their hands dirty. Avowed and disavowed to varying degrees, both support counterrevolutionary violence to protect settler democracy. In this way, liberals, despite their pacifist posturing, are not any less supportive of colonial violence than their gun-nut counterparts because they call for a strengthening of the settler state and a disarming of the populace, which will only make marginalized people more vulnerable to killings and incarceration.

This is a view that has the audacity and class privilege of asking marginalized people targeted by state violence, and its extended forms of vigilante violence, to appeal to the same state for protection. While patriots take up actual weapons to target marginalized people, liberals weaponize gun control policy to the same ends of putting people of color in body bags or cages. The only gun control that would reduce gun violence would be disarming the police, the military, domestic abusers, and anyone with ties to white nationalist and misogynist political groups, along with demilitarizing schools and campuses. Whether they are appealing to the Second Amendment or asking people to trust the authority of the police and military, white settlers on the Left or Right demonstrate that the violence they commit, fantasize about committing, or have no problem with the police and military committing for their protection is necessary for their redemptive vision of liberal democracy. It matters not if this vision is a return to when liberal democracy more forcefully upheld colonial and racial hierarchies, or some future point at which this violence and policing ensures genuine equality of opportunity for people believed to be formerly colonized and enslaved.

Community Self-Defense

While it may be easy to oppose right-wing white victimization and liberal support for state violence, it's still very hard for many to accept the premise that marginalized peoples, those targeted by such violence, have the right to use any means necessary to defend themselves and their communities. Yet we have to see, as Malcolm X made very clear, that the only people who have the moral authority to lay claim to the use of force as a means of self-defense are the people targeted by colonial violence in first place. The struggle to get free, gain control over one's life, and have a say in the governing of one's community is always a struggle of self-defense rather than aggression or provocation. The meanings of self-defense in settler society are purposely inverted to legitimate counterrevolutionary violence and to discredit the self-defense actions of communities struggling to get free.

Robert Williams emphasized this point over and over again while organizing armed community self-defense to protect the Black community against KKK violence in Monroe, South Carolina in the 1960s. In Negroes with Guns , Williams explains:

"The Afro-American militant is a 'militant' because he defends himself, his family, his home and his dignity. He does not introduce violence into a racist social system-the violence is already there and has always been there. It is precisely this unchallenged violence that allows a racist social system to perpetuate itself. When people say that they are opposed to Negroes 'resorting to violence' what they really mean is that they are opposed to Negroes defending themselves and challenging the exclusive monopoly of violence practiced by white racists."

When a relationship between people is asymmetrical, meaning it is structurally impossible to rectify or reconcile, the violence that defends this power imbalance appears legitimate while anything that would take power away from the oppressor or build power for the oppressed registers as illegitimate and irrational violence.

With the same force, then, that we can acknowledge the illegitimacy of the notion of white settler self-defense, we should recognize the legitimacy of marginalized peoples' right to self-defense. As theorist Chad Kautzer argues, "our understanding of self-defense must, therefore, account for the transformative power of self-defense for oppressed groups as well as the stabilizing effect of self-defense for oppressor groups." What this looks like is, on the one hand, disempowering, delegitimizing, and disarming institutions of white settler violence such as the police, patriot, and other white-nationalist gun culture groups, and on the other, using a diversity of tactics to create and maintain community self-defense networks among marginalized communities. Community self-defense, as a theory and praxis, can help produce identities, relationships, and habits necessary not only to deter and prevent violence and build/protect power, but also to delegitimize the ideology of white victimization so crucial to white settlers' use of violence to defend their power. This framework reveals who is fighting a war of counterrevolution and who is fighting a war of liberation, whose fight is legitimate and whose is illegitimate.

In this way, community self-defense helps clears the way for matters of seeing where allegiances lie in a war that has been ongoing for over 500 years. For those picking up a gun to defend property that sits on stolen land and that has value through an economy built by and through stolen people, it becomes clear they are arming themselves to kill and die for colonialism and anti-Blackness. For those calling for peace between the oppressor and oppressed, community self-defense forces their hand, exposing where their allegiances actually lie: in support of colonial and racial violence. For those told that their struggle to exist, to be free, to control their own lands and bodies is irrational and illegitimate, they prove through community self-defense that it is irrational, let alone careless, to think that the structures of violence holding them captive or targeting them for elimination will be destroyed through peaceful negotiation and compromise.

This was originally published at Pyriscence .

Oliver Baker is an Assistant Professor at Penn State University.

Orientalism and the Cultural Constructions of Modern-Day Mass Tourism

By John Nightengale

Orientalism is the most extreme form of cultural imperialism as it completely restructures the colony culture. Orientalism is arguably one of the most important theories in post-colonial study. This essay will unpack and explain the nuances of the theory first developed by Said in his famous work "Orientalism," published in 1978, then later expanded upon in "Culture and Imperialism," published in 1993. In short, Said sought to explain how, through the relationship between knowledge and power, cultural representation was used to create the discursive binary between the "east" and "west" which placed the west as superior (Gilbert-Moore, 1997). The construction of knowledge was a form of cultural hegemony which facilitated the colonising of the mind, which is argued to be a prerequisite for colonial control (Burney, 2012). While formal colonisation has ended, it is argued that Orientalism is still widely seen in modern time. The second part of the essay will explore how the tourism industry has been plagued with culturally constructed narratives that seek to homogenise host countries through repetitive reduction (Bruner, 2005; Anderson, 2005; Shivani, 2006). By exploring discourses, the binary and otherness present in tourism is akin to that of colonial times (Carrigan, 2011; Bruner, 2005).

Said follows a post-structuralist model in an attempt to dismantle the binary established by imperial discourse; he tries to highlight the power structure that establishes the Occident as superior to the Orient. Said drew upon theorists of his time to construct his theory. One key theorist he drew inspiration from was Foucault; in particular his study of power (Gilbert-Moore, 1997; Lester, 2003). Foucault said that power and knowledge are intrinsically linked in that the creation of knowledge was an exertion of power (Foucault, 1991; Lester, 2003). The "Orient" was constructed through the systematic learning, discovery and practice from the west (Said 2003; Burney, 2012). Here it is seen through an imagined geography, the east was produced through travel writing, novels and poetry, which sought to bring the east into a realm of understanding (Abdul Janmohamed, 1985; Mostafanezhad, 2013). What is important to remember is that only the west was producing knowledge, the east was not able to produce literature and art about the west. This illustrates Foucault's idea that knowledge is power, in which the west has more power and therefore is producing more knowledge, thus directly demonstrating the dominance of the west over the east. The example Said (2003) gives is, Cromer referring to the Orient as "lethargic and suspicious", and "devoid of energy and initiative". This was the only representation that the people in England received of the Orient at this time (Said, 2003). This creation of "false knowledge" along with other examples of literature and art contributes to the social construct of the "east", in which meaning is ascribed onto people and place (Crang, 1998, Ashcroft, 2008). It is seen that the "real east" is reformed into the "discursive east", meaning that the east is now conformed into the imagination of west, in which the "discursive east" will always be the submissive (Moore-Gilbert, 1997).

The second key concept that Said draws from is Foucault's theory of discourse. In discourse, power is both constituted and exercised through the flow of knowledge and representation to produce objects of truth (Moore-Gilbert, 1997; Lester, 2003). Here it is seen that what is the truth, or rather the constructed knowledge, can be linked to who has power, in that, power controls what narratives are formed or blocked (Young, 1995; Bruner, 2005). Rather than the discourse forming and reforming knowledge through passive powers, it is seen that knowledge was first constructed by specialists, often bourgeoisie men, then the knowledge becomes fact and is later reinforced by society (Said, 2016; Lester, 2003). This explains how the view of the Orient as timeless and unchanging was upheld; the idea was produced and reproduced within the Western mind (Crang 1998; Burney, 2012). Western discourse representations of the Orient have been homogenised and totalized reducing the Orient to tropes and stereotypical tropes being produced as "western knowledge" (Moore-Gilbert, 1997). This in term reinforces the binary between the Orient and Occident (Said, 2003).

Orientalism through the construct of knowledge and Orientalist discourse has resulted in the binary between Orient/Occident; creating the contrast of developing/developed, promiscuous/noble (Ashcroft, 2008). Kissinger wrote of binary opposition which viewed the Orient as "lagging" behind due to the Orient retaining a pre-Newtonian view of the world as " internal" whilst the superior Occident views the word as "external" (Kissinger, 1966; Crang 1998; Erikson and Murphy, 2017). Through the production of knowledge through literature, the Occident was placed as dominant over the east, placing the western world at the centre and the Orient in the periphery (Maddox, 2014). Cromer said that Orients "acts, speaks, and thinks in a manner exactly opposite to the European"; this illustrates how the binary was represented at the time (Said, 2003). The process of ordering is said to control all aspects of the discourse (Wodak, 2005). Gramsci adds to this, with the theory of cultural hegemony, which explains how dominant ideologies are controlled by the hierarchal class to maintain control (Lears, 1985, Crang, 2013). This is done by assigning the subordinate the role of subject which in turn creates "docile bodies" which conform to normalisation (Foucault 1998; said, 2003; Woodak, 2005). The creation of the subordinate also removes their ability to speak. This silencing effect is seen by the spread of popular writing of the era which "writes out" the Orient (Aitchison, 2001). In doing so, this reinforces the Orientalist discourse as the "true east" narrative is blocked and western knowledge prevails (Young, 1995).

This cultural hegemony is an extreme case of imperialism which colonised the mind of the Orient. Creating the viewpoint of the west as superior compared to the subordinate and silenced east led to the creation of thought, in both the Orient and Occident, that the east needs to be colonised and controlled (Lears, 1985). It is widely accepted that the process of Orientalism allowed the colonisation of the east. This is expressed by a quote from William Blake "Empire follows art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose" (cited in Said 1993).

Orientalism is seen today in tourism, the power dynamics in the representation of the "east" mimic that seen in colonial times. Before delving into the theory, it is important to acknowledge that tourism in the modern day is laden with power inequalities from its first appearance. Mass tourism was spurred on by neoliberal organisations post-World War Two as a way for welfare states to develop (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2006; Carrigan, 2011). International financial institutes offered exploitative loans in exchange for adopting tourism development strategies (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2006). Britain helped establish the "Atlantic Charter" which sought to develop the Caribbean tourism industry, however with vested interest as the UK traded 50 destroyers for a 99 year lease on seven Commonwealth islands (Carrigan, 2011). The tourism industry is also plagued with a "leakage" in that money is commonly siphoned off from the host state following a similar pattern to colonial times (Carrigan, 2011).

It is seen that tourism seeks to commodify culture by packaging "the other" for consumption by the west (Behdad, 1994; Jamerson, 2017). This commodification of tourism is spurred on by western corporations by the production of knowledge about the host country (Mostafanezhad, 2013). What is important to understand here is that the tourist destinations are always written about, not written by; and in doing so the "native" population is silenced. Using the Caribbean as an example, their image is created through western lenses by western corporations and tourists who define the islands by comparing the differences between "east" and "west" (Shabanirad, 2015). This is done by the tourist's gaze which explains how images and stereotypes of the country are distorted and homogenised by tourists to bring the world of "other" into comprehendible reality, much like Cromer in colonial times (Katan, 2012, Urry and Larsen, 2011). This distorted reality is furthered when portrayed in the media due to repetitive reduction, seen in travel writing such as "Lonely Planet" and review sites such as "TripAdvisor" (Andreasson, 2005; Simpson, 2005). On a larger scale companies reproduce this "distorted reality" through brochure discourse by using the same rhetoric phrases and imagery to sell the destination (Carringan, 2011). Holiday destinations often evoke an image of idyllic landscapes, inscribed with emotions and feelings; this is a result of imagined geographies of the place caused by the culturally constructed narratives (Hottola, 2014). This is a result of advertisements summarising an entire nation's culture into a set of descriptors (Hottola, 2014). In doing so, it plays out a "racist fantasy" in which the "east" is homogenised and given the role of inferior; seen as feminised and backwards in relation to the western world (Carringan, 2011). A prime example of this is Thomas Cook, who advertise "Africa Holidays" as cultural experiences in which you'll be "greeted by tribal elders" and "experience life the way locals have lived for generations" (Thomascook.com). This echoes the narrative that Africa is primitive and backwards, positioned beneath the west.

Many tourists seek an "authentic experience" which Mkono (2012) critiques as upholding the "Eurocentric grand narrative". Seen through Bruners (2005) theory of "questioning gaze" travellers question if constructed sites and performances are true representations of the culture. However, by seeking "authenticity" the tourist is merely projecting their pre-understanding of place (Maddox, 2014; Bruner, 2005). Tourists that search for authenticity uphold an imagined geography of a romantic, unspoilt place which is "frozen in time" and in doing so they "define India according to their own needs" (Korpela, 2010). This upholds a binary between India and the west, which defines India as ascetic compared to the consumerist west (Maddox, 2014). The creation of binary through tourism places the west as the "norm" and defines India in comparison to the west, in that it views Indian culture as a retreat from the normal, hectic western life. In doing so they deny agency of the local population by ignoring their modernity (Philip, 2009; Korpela, 2010; Maddox, 2014).

So far, it has been seen how writing and media have created a binary between the consumerist west and the homogenised east. In order to fully illustrate Orientalism in tourism, it is important to understand how the writing and portrayal of the east affects actions of the host country and the tourist. This can be explained by exploring how narratives have produced a discourse, which in turn gives meaning to space and establishes accepted practices and norms (Bruner, 2005; Carringan, 2011). Firstly, it is seen that cultural hegemony occurs within tourism; host countries often find themselves forced to adopt the culture imposed upon them (Lears, 1985). Looking at Bali, the country is dependent on tourism and therefore upholds the enforced stereotypes (Carrigan, 2011). Secondly, through media, tourists are exposed to the imagined geography of the place, which affects their expectations of the place, which in turn affects how they experience the place (Gregory, 1999). For example, tourists are controlled where they go when they travel within a place. Travel writing "stages" places constructing them as culturally significant and in doing so signposts tourists from sight to sight. (Gregory, 1999)

To conclude, Said's theory of Orientalism highlighted the power structures that create the binaries responsible for positioning the west as dominant over the subaltern east. It was seen that through literature, narratives were created by the Occident about the Orient, which resulted in the creation of "western knowledge" which was imposed upon the Orient through cultural hegemony. Using Said's theory, this essay has highlighted how the same practices used in imperial discourse are being used in modern mass tourism. Through advertising, travel writing and reviews, cultures in host countries have been homogenised and limited to a set of descriptors. It can also be seen that this practice is intrinsically linked with power through the vested interest of IFIs and corporations based in the west. Lastly, it is important to highlight power structures so that they can be dismantled.

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Decolonial Resistance in Hip Hop: Re-Colonial Resistances, Love, and Wayward Self-Determination

By Joe Hinton

Although many forms of black expressive culture contain elements of political resistance, hip hop is a form that has been recognized by numerous scholars for its unique, complex, and nuanced forms of offering political discourse. As Damon Sajnani notes, the origins of hip hop are inherently political, specifically rooted in the politics of the "decolonization of local urban space". Hip Hop today, the most popular genre in the United States (if not the world), is quite disconnected from these political roots in a radical anti-colonial politic built through creating livelihood out of structure-based psychological pain.

What is the nature of resistance in hip hop, and what do scholars have to say about its current status? Many note that hip hop has been co-opted by a white-controlled market and has been manipulated so as to promote limited narratives of Blackness, many of which are derived from minstrel tropes. Sometimes, these tropes can be manifested as partial resistances to white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal settler-colonialism. Sometimes, when they rely on European notions of political resistance that are either inherently capitalistic or statist/nationalist, they reify colonial structures and are thus re-colonial. Sometimes they flip the narrative of oppression or expose it for what it is, as Tricia Rose notes, but do so in a way that constitutes a solid first step to resistance but does not completely answer the question of how one wants to exist and live in a world beyond the reality of this oppression.

In my eyes, the only types of resistant expressive culture that can actually spur Black liberation must create alternative visions that denounce resistances that rely on other closely related forms of oppression and toxic psychologies. Building off the ideas of Cornel West, Zoe Samudzi, and William C. Anderson, these visions must be centered in both collective love and individualist, wayward, and deviant lifestyle choices. By wayward and deviant, I mean prone to reject the boxes imposed by American culture and its depictions of Blackness. I draw on the idea that Black and indigenous people in the United States exist liminally, not as citizens. This means that as the state is functioned to precipitate our extinction and/or suffering and to prevent our full integration into the benefits of society, and that our existence as colonial subjects, regardless of socioeconomic advancement, renders our status perpetually ambiguous and subject to a constantly uncertain chaos and threat of violence that reinforces a spiritual feeling of collective subordination. This chaos can be overcome by a moment of creation and establishment of what the state deprives us of and excludes us from: self-love. Hip Hop originally sought to achieve this, but it has been co-opted by the market and the limited narratives it promotes, with some notable exceptions. Once based in love, and dedicated to the creation of love-based communities, these forms of culture can help spur mobilization against white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal settler-colonialism (WSCPSC) to defend ourselves against it and eventually overthrow it; or, more immediately, find a way to create communities that employ social rules and customs that promote Black and indigenous love, rather than relying on the false promises of liberal reformism and partial resistances.

Although it remains true that hip hop has been co-opted by a powerful white media establishment, it also remains true that hip hop is an inherently resistant genre in that it constantly engages with the "politics of having fun," a framework that can be perceived as seemingly apolitical, but is actually quite focused on the psychological effects of socio-political hierarchies. Where songs can be differentiated in their political efficacy is the degree to which they promote a liberational Black politic. As Cornel West notes, a truly liberational Black politic is committed to fighting racism at its root: capitalism. And is also determined to end all associated forms of oppression that result from capitalism and colonialism: homophobia, sexism, ableism, and transphobia. Within hip hop, although the 80s and 90s featured a number of artists for whom the legacy of Black Power reigned eminent, the modern mainstream genre is primarily full of either market-driven resistances, partial resistances, or their associated re-colonial resistances.

Partial resistances vary as to the terms to which they reify colonial resistances, but most do to one extent or another. N.W.A's "Fuck tha Police" emphatically decries the historically biased and anti-Black prosecuting tendencies of the City of Los Angeles quite creatively while also reifying the colonial oppression of gay people by using homophobic slurs. The sexual domination narratives promoted by Cardi B and Nicki Minaj take a step towards a less subordinate position for Black women and do promote positive narratives that Black women can be proud of their sexuality, but also reify the objectification and exploitation of the Black female body by offering limited options for how a famous Black women is to present herself and her body. This is not to say that other options are not presented by other Black females; to do so would be myopic. I am rather emphasizing that the female rappers with the most prominence do not fit these narrow images, coincidentally; they are approved by a white-controlled media elite that has never shied away from aligning Black female exploitation and lucrative profits. In the wake of the death of Nipsey Hussle, an LA rapper known for his generosity and devotion to community uplift, Jay Z exclaimed that Black people should look to gentrify their own neighborhoods before white people can. Given that gentrification is fundamentally aligned with the same ideologies of settler-colonialism and economic exploitation that hip hop was founded on alleviating and eliminating, suggesting such a notion is especially re-colonial. All of these are examples of when artists in hip hop use their platforms to promote the advancement of an oppressed group, but somehow reify a hierarchy that exists to make Black people and Black women suffer.

Then how can hip hop be completely resistant and neither partial nor re-colonial? As Sajnani notes, the diasporic nature of Black nationalism is an effective liberational alternative to the pain of WSPCSC, a nationalism distinct from its European analog. This nationalism has been referred to vaguely by scholars such as Bakari Kitwana, specifically to his conception of a Hip-Hop Generation, and was cited positively by West in his analysis of Morrison's Beloved. Many arguments regarding Black self-determination usually rely on this statist conception. Sajnani's analysis of the Black national bourgeoisie, of which Jay Z is a prominent member, is particularly revealing. He claims that partial resistances are often performed by prominent Blacks as a means to receive compensation from the white cultural gatekeepers while Black exploitation is upheld by the national order. To Sajnani, to support the American Dream is to ignore economic stratification, which in the US is always a racial topic. Black capitalists, especially in hip hop, engage in the rhetoric of the American Dream quite regularly, relying on a misguided bootstraps ideology. But even if Black capitalism can't be a true form of resistance to WSPCSC, can diasporic nationalism constitute a more complete resistance? As Zoé Samudzi and William C. Anderson propose in their powerful novel on the anarchism of Blackness as Black as Resistance,

"attempting to reclaim and repurpose the settler state will not lead to liberation, and it will not provide the kind of urgent material relief so many people desperately need, though electing empathetic officials sometimes can arguably mitigate against harm. Only through a material disruption of these geographies, through the cultivation of Black autonomy, can Black liberation begin to be actualized."

As such, a legitimate response to WSPCSC must not consider the future of Blackness as reliant on a statist solution. Although Sajnani's support of a somewhat re-colonial nationalism, no matter if distinct from European nationalism, is misguided, his emphasis on "resisting the appropriation of Hip Hop and elaborating its original mission" (I would replace appropriation with misappropriation) is quite relevant to establishing a liberatory Black politic through hip hop. What is the next step?

While resistance in Black politics today often calls for criminal justice reform instead of radical restructuring of the industrial-prison complex, 2018 saw some powerful forms of resistance enter the mainstream, most notably Childish Gambino's "This is America." Gambino's Grammy-award-winning song and video effectively criticizes the current state of hip hop and minstrel tropes. As Frank Guan notes, "It's a tribute to the cultural dominance of trap music and a reflection on the ludicrous social logic that made the environment from which trap emerges, the logic where money makes the man, and every black man is a criminal." Gambino's work helped bring a critical element of reflection into the mainstream of pop and hip hop: that the limited, minstrel-reproducing narratives of Blackness in popular culture contribute to past and present forms of social subordination. It is a crucial step towards finding a liberatory politic and is quite close to a complete form of resistance. Where it falls short however is along two fronts: an explicit embrace of a collective love ethic, and a moment of creation that accepts the reality of Black liminality and becomes devoted to a deviant determination of one's self that allows for the complexity of Blackness to live freely and waywardly, away from the psychological boxes imposed on us by WSCPSC.

I have come to learn that hip hop has an extremely high potential for being politically resistant to WSCPSC, but it is going to take a lot of work to return it to what it once accomplished. Very few forms of hip hop are directly engaged with a love ethic nor with an explicitly deviant rejection of WSCPSC based in self-determination. Two legacies of Black expressive culture will serve as my examples for such a cultural politic in this section: Toni Morrison's Beloved, as cited and analyzed by West, and the work of Prince, a genre-less Black artist whose influence on and connections to hip hop are understated. These forms of culture are committed to examining how Black people can create their own worlds under oppression, and even as they strive for radical changes, they are pragmatic and understand that a complete rejection of WSCPSC would constitute a violent revolution. As such, they utilize Black art as a means of peaceful resistance and alleviation of colonial pain, as hip hop once did. West noted that Morrison's Beloved was an active buffer against the pain of Black nihilism derived from WSCPSC, stressing that "Self-love and love of others are both modes toward increasing self-valuation and encouraging political resistance in one's community."

Black literature's emphasis on self-love and reflection must be replicated in hip hop. Prince understood that "Transcending categories however is not synonymous with abandoning ones' roots." After his death, Alicia Garza, a BLM founder noted that he "was from a world where Black was not only beautiful, but it was nuanced and complex and shifting and unapologetic and wise." Prince does not allow the chaos of Blackness (as constructed by WSCPSC) to render him a slave to reifying some form of colonial oppression, rather he recognizes that "it's about being comfortable in an unfixed state while improvising the topography of your life and music as you go along." Such a mindset and perspective are directly derivative of African religious culture. Thus, a liberational politic must be Afrofuturist. It must avoid the categorical labels offered by WSCPSC because of how much they limit us and function to constrict us. Perhaps a contemporary example of such a wayward, liberational politic comes in Saidiya Hartman's Wayward Lives: Beautiful Experiments, in which she reimagines the deviant and radical lifestyles and love-ethics of early 20th century upper-middle-class Black women. When Black people have the socioeconomic privilege to be able to transcend the limits of WSCPSC's social construction of race using a collective Black love ethic and staying true to the root cause of Black uplift, a promotion of a more plentiful array of types of Black existence can proliferate. And the commodification of Black art can start to dissipate, pushing more and more colonial subjects to reimagine their humanity away from internal colonialism.

This is the future I see for hip hop, one that returns it to its political roots. I understand that the pull of the market is strong, and that hip hop's decolonial future will require some serious changes in cultural discourse. Hip hop must return to its basis as a means of cultural self-defense, of engaging with the politics of having fun in a way that is more cognizant of decolonial motives. Taking down WSCPSC will require both explicit and implicit resistance, most of which will be anti-capitalist. Black expressive culture and its dynamism, specifically with regard to hip hop, have extreme potential for creating radical Black communities in the United States that are neither re-colonial nor based in the European need to monopolize violence, and embrace the duality of Black liminality, the complex nuances of double consciousness, and consider Blackness on one's own determined set of terms.

Notes

Berman, Judy. "'This Is America' 8 Things to Read about Chidish Gambino's New Music Video." New York Times, May 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/arts/music/childish-gambino-this-is-america-roundup.html.

Gordon Williams, James. "Black Muse 4 U: Liminality, Self-Determination, and Racial Uplift in the Music of Prince." Journal of African American Studies, vol. 21, no. 3, Sept. 2017.

Rose, Tricia. Black Noise Rap Music and Black Culture In Contemporary America. Wesleyan University Press, 1994.

Sajnani, Damon. "Hip Hop's Origins as Organic Decolonization." Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society, 2015, https://decolonization.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/hiphops-origins-as-organic-decolonization/ .

Samudzi, Zoe, and William C. Anderson. As Black as Resistance. AK Press, 2018.

Sehgal, Parul. "An Exhilarating Work of History About Daring Adventures in Love." New York Times, Feb. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/books/wayward-lives-beautiful-experiments-saidiya-hartman.html.

West, Cornel. "Nihilism in Black America." Race Matters, Beacon, 1994.

Black Feminism and the Rap/Hip-Hop Culture: I Don't Want the "D"

By Asha Layne

"I was born to flex (Yes)
Diamonds on my neck
I like boardin' jets, I like mornin' sex (Woo!)
But nothing in this world that I like more than checks (Money)
All I really wanna see is the (Money)
I don't really need the D, I need the (Money)
All a bad bitch need is the (Money)"

- Cardi B

With the advancement of technology, more specifically social media platforms, the plight of women of color has been widely discussed thanks to the Me Too and Say Her Name movements which challenged and revolutionized the thinking of dominant culture. Of profound importance, the inclusion of Black women and women of color in these social movements contested the sweeping generalizations of 'traditional' feminism. This would later lead to a widespread rejection of popular feminism ideologies, thus making way for a new wave of neo non-conservative ideologies on feminism.

This deviation between traditional and non-traditional feminism can be traced back to the Women's Liberation Movement in the late 1960s. During this period, the conditions and concerns of White middle-class women took center stage and addressed issues that inhibited their (White women) ability to live fully free lives rid from patriarchal oppression. This perspective would continue to serve as the backdrop on a series of feminine-related issues such as equal pay, sexual harassment, sexual violence, and violence against women. Not surprisingly, given the US's racially contentious history, it (Women's Liberation Movement) shamelessly ignored the different culturally-significant spaces that Black women (and women of color) occupied, leaving Black feminists to repeat Sojourner Truth's riveting question: "Ain't I a woman?" This essay explores the evolution of Black feminism through the lens of female rappers, who I argue add to the discourse of feminism, and more specifically Black feminism.

As a theoretical construct, feminist theory claims of being woman-centered historically has ignored the narratives and standpoints of women of color. Despite the popular question, "What about the women?" that has long served as the impetus behind the development of feminist theory, the answers to this question have traditionally focused their attention solely on the experiences of White women. Anchoring this sentiment is the emergence of Black feminism and Black feminist thought, which both sought to place the experiences of Black women at the center of its analysis, therefore offering a starkly different knowledge from that of mainstream feminism. According to Collins (2000), Black women in the United States can stimulate a distinctive consciousness concerning their own experiences. Collins, like other Black feminist scholars, understood that this knowledge produced by the narratives of Black women would transform how feminism is defined and understood by Black women (and women of color). Similarly, Kimberle Crenshaw also understood that the experiences of Black women could not be explained by race and gender alone but should also include the intersecting identities that shape their identity as a Black woman. This is best demonstrated by Black women (and women of color) in the rap/hip-hop industry.

Female rappers have (and continue) to take a melodic stance to verbally disseminate information on social issues and struggles that women of color face, such as: white supremacy, sexism, self-esteem, misogyny, patriarchy, sexual harassment, and gender-based violence. One can hear this in the music of both contemporary and non-contemporary female artists, who by applying Collins's theoretical framework share their narrative through standpoint theorizing. Standpoint theorizing is a sociological feminist framework which explains that knowledge of women's experiences is best understood from their social positions in society. In Yo-Yo's 1991 debut hit, You Can't Play with my Yo-Yo she explores what it means to be a woman in a male-dominated environment. She raps:

"If you touch, you livin in a coffin (word to mother)

I'm in the 90s, you're still in the 80s right

I rock the mic, they say I'm not lady like

But I'ma lady, who will pull a stunt though

I kill suckas, and even hit the block

So what you want to do?"

In listening to the words of female rap/hip-hop artists, the audience is able to recognize the nonconventional form of activism which has added to both the discourse of Black feminism and the music industry. In the above lyrics, Yo-Yo also explains that as a female in a male-dominated industry, gender often takes precedence over race and consequently adds to negative experiences Black female MCs in the industry often grapple with. Women of color in the rap/hip-hop industry have inarguably exemplify Collins's concepts of: standpoint theory, outsider-within, and matrix of domination, sidestepping any mention of scholastic sources or prominent experts in the field. One can easily identify these acts of black female activism in the rap/hip-hop industry in the work of contemporary artist, Cardi B. This is particularly well exemplified in Cardi B's debut album, Invasion of Privacy. In her song Be Careful, which explicitly examines infidelity and the double-standard concerns it raises, she raps, "I could've did what you did to me to you a few times. But if I did decide to slide, find a nigga fuck him, suck his dick, you would've been pissed." In Money, Cardi B colorfully explains that money and not a man's penis will meet her needs. She raps, "I got a baby, I need some money, yeah I need cheese for my egg." This album unapologetically proclaims that despite her (un)popular gender non-normative approach that she will be heard and respected regardless of anyone else's opinion. Therefore, demonstrating that, just like her female rap/hip-hop predecessors, she too unconventionally exemplifies black feminist activism.

Patricia Hill Collins's Black Feminist Thought explains that race, gender, and class are oppressive factors that are bound together. In relation to rappers, the commodification of female rappers in the industry and the hypersexual images of Black female rappers speaks to not only this intersection of race, class, and gender but also to the systemic cultural nature of exploitation that is inherent not only to the industry but also within dominant American culture. In both spaces (the industry and American culture), masculinity is directly related to power and violence, and reminds us of the pervasiveness of the White perspective in social institutions. In White-Washing Race, Brown et al. (2003) explains that the White perspective is not the product of salient characteristics, such as skin color, but of culture and experiences. The lyrical narratives shared by female rap/hip-hop artists demonstrates how women of color actively grapple with the many issues, concerns, and questions they experience culturally, socially, and politically.

Is the emergence of the outspoken, gender-bending, highly independent, and sexy female artist a new phenomenon for women of color? Collins highlights how the role of Black women always contradicted the traditional role of women in mainstream society. Collin states, "if women are allegedly passive and fragile, then why are Black women treated as "mules" and assigned heavy cleaning chores" (2000, p.11)? The placement of Black women as 'objects' and 'tools' for production under capitalism is intrinsic to the social, political, and economic arrangements of power in the United States. Black feminism deconstructs the established systems of knowledge and arrangements of power by showing the masculinist bias that frames these arrangements of power from a cultural lens.

The radical changes exhibited in the bodies of work of contemporary female rappers engenders the thesis of Black feminism through frequent displays of gender non-conforming behaviors while embracing the beauty of being uniquely deviant. No longer are women of color minimizing or editing their unique experiences, behaving in gender-conforming ways, or are ashamed of being labelled a 'bitch' for the sake of being accepted by mainstream culture and appeasing their male counterparts. Contemporary Black female rappers, similar to classic rappers such as MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, and Roxeanne Shante, continue to redefine not only gender identity but Black female identity in patriarchal structures.

Both gender identity and Black female identity are socially constructed through interaction and socialization. Following the tenets of symbolic interaction, gender and racial identities emerge out of social interactions which helps to define an individual's self. The formation of self is unique to women of color because of the location and situation they occupy in many faces of oppression. The marginalization, exploitation, and feelings of powerlessness are all too common in the tropes of women of color. Therefore, the gender-social identification of women of color does not examine solely "doing gender" but instead considers key factors that obfuscates women of color from "doing gender."

Women of color in the rap/hip-hop industry continue to demonstrate the spirit of Black feminism through nonconventional methods. Today, Black female artists (and women of color) have changed the way we define women's empowerment. The popularity of female MCs embodying androgenic characteristics through feminine appeal supports the narratives of many women who have mastered the proverbial quote, "think like a man." To condemn the hypersexual behaviors and language used by Black female artists is to ignore the historical truth that Black women (and women of color) were never defined by the traditional standards of being a 'woman.' Black female MCs have and will always continue to redefine what 'doing gender' is from a cultural standpoint, therefore adding to the Black feminism discourse.

Bibliography

B, Cardi. (2018). The invasion of privacy. CD. New York: New York. Atlantic Records.

Brown, Michael K., Carnoy, Martin, Currie, Elliott, Duster, Troy, Oppenheimer, David. B., Schultz, Marjorie, M., and Wellman, David. 2003. White-washing race: The myth of a color-blind society. Berkley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.

Collins, Patricia Hill. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

Yo-Yo. (1991). Make way for the Motherlode. CD. New York: New York. EastWest Records America.

Black Metamodernism: The Metapolitics of Economic Justice and Racial Equality

By Brent Cooper

I'd been thinking about this idea for a while before a redditor asked the very pointed question: Are there any black metamodernists? I didn't really have a complete answer yet, which is 'yes and no.' It's a complicated question, and it doesn't seem like many are rushing to answer it. Mostly no in the explicit sense like Hanzi , of developing the "metamodern" concept and advancing a program beyond the discourse of the Dutch school . But yes in many other ways, both explicit and implict.

Black to the Future

For starters, there is one obscure but direct source for 'black metamodernism,' in Transatlantic dialogue: contemporary art in and out of Africa , 1999 (limited to a snippet view). Art history professor Moyo Okediji described contemporary African-American art in terms of metamodernism as an "extension of and challenge to modernism and postmodernism." Without access I cannot offer a thorough review, but the point is clear; black metamodernism exists and was another one mostly missed.

The book jacket lists a number of black artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat. He is considered a type of black metamodernist described as 'returnee artists'; "African-American artists who return from Africa with a new awareness of their identiy that affects their work." (from Monni Adams book review ). This concept could certainly apply to Malcolm X or Dave Chappelle as well, who were forever changed and radicalized by their pilgrimages to Africa. I think metanoia, a fundamental change of mind, plays such a role in metamodern sensibility. All of this seems to align with metamodern critique, art, praxis, and values, and yet we do not hear much about a black metamodernism today.

Martin Luther King has already been accurately characterized as metamodern by Alexandra Dumitrescu, who thinks "he might have been a metamodernist avant la lettre ," and I couldn't agree more. King had a vision so progressive that it is only just being fully realized (actualized) today. The dream was cut short by his assassination, for which the white establishment is necessarily implicated. Even though he's gone and from a different era, his actions and ideas resonate now in a crucial way because they are still not achieved, so it's a battleground issue (conservatives try to co-opt and re-write MLK). And if we are going to mention MLK, perhaps we should also include Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Fred Hampton and countless other black activists ahead of their time, as implicitly metamodern.

Cornel West could be a metamodern thinker, pictured above, but he has never used the term, and this distinction matters, given its history at this point and his ability to wax on postmodernism. As I addressed in Gonzálezean Metamodernism, West is a good candidate to embrace the discourse, not only because he is invoked by González in that context, but because more broadly black theology is at the root of Hispanic liberation theology, and West is a cutting edge philosopher of sorts. Now is as good a time as any to (re-)introduce black metamodernism, as it builds on the turn González proposed for Hispanic Americans. Black people too are metamodern aliens in the postmodern promise land.

In Whose (Meta)modernism?: Metamodernism, Race, and the Politics of Failure (2018), James Brunton asks the right question, but also misses the source material I've mentioned. He draws his theory from Vermeulen and van den Akker, and David James and Urmila Seshagiri (2014), as well as many black poets, but he is yet another scholar 'missing metamodernism' in the broader sense I describe, and Okediji 's black metamodernism specifically.

This is a call to action to implicit black metamodernists, many of whom I discuss here, to cross over, to represent, and join the paradigm shift explicitly; my inspiration for metamodernism has in part already come from many of them. Wolfgenghis_Khan wants you; and so do we. I have written just two other articles about race/ black issues; one about black abstract art (where Basquiat is mentioned), and one about how racism is "abstracted " (made obscure), particularly by white racism against black people in the US. These are facets of my approach to metamodernism, and how abstraction can reveal or obscure the nature of racial politics and discourse. And in those I also have missed much of what I describe in this article, so it is all (re)combining into a broader black metamodernism.

Green Metamodernism

In terms of metamodern theory itself we can consider Nordic or Dutch as varieties of green metamodernism. The are green by being or having moved from the left beyond the liberal status-quo, but also green in the sense of being inexperienced or naive. To be sure, they are brilliant, but green (new, fresh) compared to their metamodern forebearers who have been missed. In the dominant Dutch School (art/ history/ culture) mode, the artist Reggie Watts is considered metamodern for his mind-boggling and heart-warming sincere absurdism. Donald Glover is metamodern too, as described here (2014), and here (2017), not least for his meta-humour in the metamodern show Community. Also, here is very comprehensive site, Metamodernity and Because the Internet , dedicated to the study of Donald Glover/ Childish Gambino and metamodernism. And this is all before his song/video " This is America " (2018) made a profound statement about race. After, we can understand him better through a lens of black metamodernism.

Green metamodernists generally do not theorize race directly or explicitly, although Hanzi has deconstructed the alt-right at some length . The general aversion is probably in part because the importance of the subject is generally implied as metamodernism is ostensibly about synthesizing and transcending both the postmodern critique (which includes the intersectionality of race, gender, class, etc) and its target, modernism. Race just becomes a smaller but still important detail in a broader context of meta-theory, planetary crisis, and metamorphosis (systems-change). But race theory is also peripheral in part because these metamodern epistemic communities are mostly white people who are tacit allies.

On the other hand, 'black metamodern' discourse has not been maintained or linked up with contemporary metamodern discourse. So the problem is two-way. This crossover should happen for two reasons: 1) by metamodernism not addressing it, it appears racialized, ignorant, or biased, and 2) by black discourses not combining with the broader paradigm shift, it remains disempowered and marginalized by the anti-postmodern and white nationalist political climate.

Metamodernism, from its Dutch and Nordic schools of origin, appears to have a eurocentric and white bias, though they have a global orientation and sensibility, as well as tacit understanding and concern about systemic racism. As we've seen in all versions, metamodernism doesn't ignorantly deny the merits of postmodern critique, or abandon social justice that conservatives and centrists have written off, nor does it embrace the full excesses of SJW culture and what has been termed 'grievance studies' literature by some determined IDW-adjacent academic hoaxers - The whole problem there is that they don't realize that all academia/ scholarship has similar problems (even their own fields, which aren't social science), but they are singling out and mocking social justice while social justice isn't being achieved in reality.

But metamodernism hasn't yet provided a clear or viral enough answer for the postmodern impasse. Or at least we've tried, and few have paid attention. Meanwhile, the new centrism of the Intellectual Dark Web has filled the void (or rather spoke over the Other) with anti-postmodern and anti-social justice diatribes that actually inflame systemic racism (which they deny exists). Those on the left who have already united against the IDW would do better to understand their moves as metamodern, and generate greater collective coherence as such.

The IDW would have you believe progressivism is a lost cause, yet they stand in the way, provide no alternative, and tune out the people actually working on those problems. The IDW remain do not engage with actual leftist politics, let alone black sociology. I offered a broad critique of the IDW over a year ago , trying to pre-emptively assuage the culture war, much of which still holds up. The IDW have gotten worse in some respects, have been critiqued harder, and now is quickly crumbing and becoming obsolscent, giving rise to a new emergent discourse.

There is also the odd (right-wing) person who is fond of metamodernism, but interprets it for their own ends without really understanding it. They support Trump. They like Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt. They are against immigration for personal (identity) reasons. They have no interest in the thorough critiques of any of these things. They, of course, have also been missing the metamodernisms as I have described in this series, but also in the contemporary sense that comes from Dutch and Nordic versions, because there's nothing in those sources to inspire right-wing ideology. On the contrary, they demand a much closer read of history, theory, and social consciousness.

In general, metamodernism is post-political, beyond the left-right spectrum, and refers to the era we are in (and so does hypermodernity). But along a particular axis of issues, metamodernism as a movement and sociological theory is uniformly aligned with the leftist movement today, as it is expressed throughout this series (vis-a-vis technology, liberation theology, black socialism), and some of my other writings. This doesn't mean conservatives aren't welcome to participate and contribute - they are - but it means zero tolerance for ignorance about what postmodernism actually means, and regressive dogmas about climate change or social justice. In the Dutch and Nordic versions, metamodernism assumes the viability of a socialist steady state, not surprisingly because they are from successful ones, and are relatively successful in such societies. The idea is to provide that to everyone, and it's not a pipedream.

Metamodernism, by all available standards, reflects a progressive culture towards a cosmopolitan post-capitalist demilitarized vision of society that will mitigate climate risk, not an ethnonationalist hyper-capitalist militarist denialist prophecy of social control that will accelerate and exacerbate collapse. The choice is starkly contrasted, and the latter is called hypermodernism, not metamodernism. With this in mind, I see no right-wing person actually theorizing metamodernity, coherently at least, but there is still a need for a course correction in green metamodernism by black metamodernism.

Back in Black Metamodernism

My role here is not to be an expert on black metamodernism per se, but to defer to the real experts in their fields and to help widen the space of the new discourse. Outstanding black scholars are not in short supply, but are still fighting an uphill battle against a white-privileged status-quo. Many are immensely wise, strong willed, and influential, and yet lack the clout they truly deserve. Their critiques have not reached far enough to affect the needed change. And the lack of convergence through metamodernism has not helped either.

Notable black thinkers/ activists/ leaders include Cornel West, Charles W. Mills , Tressie Mcmillan Cottom, Michelle Alexander, Ta-nehisi Coates, Michael Eric Dyson, Benjamin Dixon, Mansa Keita, Bill Fletcher Jr., Wosny Lambre, Briahna Joy Grey, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Presley, Kwame Anthony Appiah , Patricia Hill Collins , Kimberlé W. Crenshaw , Angela Y. Davis , Henry Louis Gates, Jr. , and many more . Could this be a cross section of black metamodern thought? Many of them have theorized or criticized postmodernism as well, so it would not be a stretch to entertain metamodernism, especially with these added perspectives (Borgmann, González, black, in addition to Dutch and Nordic strands).

This negligence of black metamodernism is part of the wider pattern of Missing Metamodernism  - even amongst black scholars. They could perhaps be forgiven for not dropping everything and devoting themselves to Dutch or Nordic metamodern developments, but they also have a precedent with 'black metamodernism,' so we hope they will learn and develop it with us and speak up. Take up this meta- mantle and converge with metamodernism more broadly, to develop a new paradigm.

Much of the public discourse is not lacking in racial awareness, evidenced by the following TED talks, but it's a broader question of some (white) people's interests and attention spans. And the mainstream media is still deeply filtered and divisive over race issues. My purpose here is just to share some of what's out there, so that it can't be ignored or missed by those interested in metamodernism. And so it can't be denied by the centrists and right-wingers that want to preserve some mythical abstraction of white Western civilization. The point is that black culture was metamodern before some industrious white people rediscovered metamodernism.

In The Dangers of Whitewashing Black History, David Ikard recounts the story of his son in Grade 4, who was taught that Rosa Parks was frail old black women, diminishing her life-long struggle and the story of social justice behind her. David wanted to confront the teacher, but because of his experience with the "white fragility" of some people, he knew that might be a bad idea. So he instructed his son to learn the true history, which he did, and his son gave a speech debunking the myth. The teacher apologized to student, and subsequently retaught the Rosa Parks lecture. This is why Rosa Parks wrote her autobiography, so she could tell her own story, David said, but it still so easily becomes whitewashed. In 1950s, lynching was normal. MLK's house was bombed twice. Rosa parks was not an 'accidental activist.' These facts are often submerged by a more sanitized narrative.

Then there was a book draft David reviewed for his brilliant white professor "Fred" (not his real name) while he was a graduate student. Fred was writing a history of the civil rights movement, David explains, "specifically about a moment that happened to him in North Carolina when this white man shot this black man in cold blood in a wide-open space and was never convicted." David saw a problem in a particular personal story of how Fred talked with his black maid (which already has racial undertones in itself).

1968, MLK had just been assassinated, Fred is 8 years old, and his maid is crying and he asks why. "It'll be okay" he says… "Didn't Jesus die on the cross for our sins?" and 'maybe things will work out.' The maid, despondent as she was, tempered herself and gave little Fred a hug and a cold Pepsi. For Fred, it was proof people could cross racial lines to overcome adversity; that love could conquer all; he did a good thing. David called bullshit. The story wasn't about the maid, it was a selfish story about Fred naively thinking he was helping. The whole episode was clouded by the fact Fred was technically her employer, so she couldn't get mad at him. After being called out, Fred then realized that he misread the moment.

And there is many more TEDx that challenge basic misconceptions and expose systemic racism: Black Self / White World - lessons on internalized racism | Jabari Lyles | TEDxTysonsSalon (2017); White Men: Time to Discover Your Cultural Blind Spots | Michael Welp | TEDxBend (2017); Let's get to the root of racial injustice | Megan Ming Francis (2016). Not to mention the ample books and documentaries out there.

From the Intellectual White Web to Black Lives Matter

The more you know, the less ignorant you are, but some people can't be bothered. From the current smorgasbord of trashy thought leaders, Jordan Peterson is probably the most obtuse white person one can picture. He is tacitly against identity politics and racism, white supremacy, and white nationalism, while not having a clue how they actually operate in the world and through his own discourse. The Peterson paradox is being able to unironically praise MLK in one sentence and condemn his core values (like democratic socialism ) in another without an inkling of cognitive dissonance.

Imagine being so functionally ignorant of systemic racism that you lecture about how 'white privilege is a marxist lie' at Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC (2018), behind a picture of Abe Lincoln, as if that means something in this context. It is scholarly dereliction to be so ignorant about those concepts, to say the very least. And then to cry crocodile tears when Michael Eric Dyson calls you out as a "mean mad white man." And then for your demagogic bile and self-help slop to fuel the xenophobic incel rage of white nationalist shooters. And then to get even angrier that you have incessant critics, as if don't they have something important to explain to you. And then you give a high school book report of The Communist Manifesto to Zizek. But at least you've made over $1M in the past year and are now doing a business scam thing with Kobe Bryant and George W. Bush , and chumming with far right politicians who want to purge humanities teachers. So much for classical liberalism. Fear not mean white man, have a cold Pepsi, we know you're doing your best, just like "Fred" was with his maid.

At the end of the day black metamodernism is not just about the 'black' modifier; it's not self-interested minorities with narrow identitarian priorities, like their white majority racist counterparts. Many black scholars do not dwell on race, they are well rounded, but rather race is forced upon them because of their skin color and place in society. Some become experts by choice, others by circumstance. The dream is for racial equality and economic solidarity, not black supremacy, but white anxiety keeps murdering this dream, keeping the nightmare (whitemare?) alive and well in America.

"Black Lives Matter" (BLM) is actually a proportional response to the criminalization of drugs, profiling of minorities, and being incarcerated or killed by racist or paranoid cops. Whether the cops are overtly racist or subconsciously is beside the point, because they are still racist in effect and consequence. Opponents of BLM generally miss the point, only seeing a black power grab, but that itself is a racist interpretation based on ignorance, fear, and (social) media distortion and polarization. The reality is, as Brunton described it;

"The Black Lives Matter movement argues that we need to recognize precisely the opposite of what the movement's hashtag declares that is, historically, white patriarchy has failed to treat black lives as though they matter. American liberal democracy has failed to provide the rights and privileges of citizenship to a large portion of the citizenry, and the election of a black president has failed to usher in a post-racial society." - Brunton, Whose (Meta)modernism?: Metamodernism, Race, and the Politics of Failure (2018)

Like with MLK, this progressive (black) metamodernism includes the racial struggle, but is about the larger quest for socio-economic and even environmental justice. As such, black metamodernism is not reducible to a shallow form of identity politics. To avoid this caricature, the first task is to consolidate the new subfield as metamodern, as could be done for each path in (ie. Borgmann, González, etc…). The second task is to re-integrate back into a broader more inclusive notion of metamodernism to address the meta-crisis of hyper-capitalism. This series tries to advance both tasks in a small way.

Furthermore, it's all about climate change now, the anthropocene, and (quite certain) global existential risks that humanity are creating. There is this overriding sentiment that if 'we're all going to die' then might as well do the right thing now. And as you can see (below), black metamodernists are already ahead of this curve, which is why we should already be united under one paradigmatic umbrella.

The Black Socialists of America were on the podcast New Models - Episode 12: BLACK SOCIALISTS (Z, Busta, Keller, @LILINTERNET ). They describe how they founded it response to how Cornel West was attacked by "black liberals" for critiquing Ta-nehisi Coates, and realized there wasn't a real platform for Black American socialists, anti-capitalists, leftists, etc. At 7:30, they start to get into it;"I don't want to slam postmodernism too hard here but…" Needless to say, they are beyond postmodernism, and have a thoughtful critique that could be described as metamodern.

The Michael Brooks Show (TMBS) invokes black sociology often (consider the work of the Association of Black Sociologists on twitter too), especially with the frequent guest Bill Fletcher Jr . Brooks is so committed his twitter bio says "Member of the Yacubian Left," a nod to the theory that an ancient 'black scientist' created white people through eugenics. On TMBS 91 " Wonkery Won't Save Us & Green Imperialism ," Brandon Sutton (The Discourse podcast) was recently on to brilliantly break down systemic racism and the neoliberal agenda (May 21, 2019). Sutton is also cautious about cancel culture and performative wokeness that run the risk of undermining their goals. TMBS has been critical of Kanye's politics and black activism (vis-a-vis Trump), from black perspectives. Briahna Joy Gray (former Intercept editor and now Bernie's press secretary) is a regular guest too.

Michael Brooks and guests have been the most incisive critics of the IDW, because they already have this implicit metamodern awareness, as noted in Gonzálezean metamodernism. To be sure, black metamodernists would go after the mostly white Intellectual Dark Web, not join it like Candace Owens, Coleman Hughes, or Thomas Sowell to be instruments for a racist status-quo. See ' Coleman Hughes is bad for the discourse ', and this vid , and James B. Stewart, Thomas Sowell's Quixotic Quest to Denigrate African American Culture (2006). Hughes and Sowell, despite whatever intellectual merits, are truly not grounded in racial reality, and are certainly not metamodernists, but reactionary modernists.

Last Light on Black

There is still so much more to explore in this potential subfield than I have not covered here. I have just scratched the surface of black metamodernism, as with the other articles in Missing Metamodernism. Afrofuturism seems pretty metamodern. The movie Black Panther was a critical and commercial success; perhaps a black metamodern film in a metamodern franchise. A black writer named Germane Marvel has authored a couple Medium posts on metamodernism which seem to offer fresh philosophical musings about it; Meta Something? , followed by Meta Nothing? Research in Black Feminist Science explores how "the intellectual endeavors of marginalized black women have historically represented radical challenges to structures of knowledge and systems of oppression."

Some more artefacts of black metamodernism to consider include Get Out , The Legacy of Black Reconstruction, by Robert Greene II , Bernie's Plan for Racial Justice, by Meagan Day , The Boondocks (TV series) , and Into the Spiderverse . And through the internet over the past couple years I have connected with a few black people in Africa and elsewhere interested in metamodernism, but without having a proper African version of it. I think now it is safe to say there is one, and it can be developed more.

Conclusion

I hope I have established a solid precedent for what I suggest by a broad 'black metamodernism'; a shrewd awakening and reality check for what Charles W. Mills calls 'white ignorance,' among many other things, that metamodernism has not hitherto immunized against. Social justice still demands resolution, despite what the (pseudo-)intellectual posturing against it would tell you. The ample literature on structural racism may seem to shout through the matrix of postmodernism, incomprehensible to the new center, but we are listening. In a time when racial tensions are still high and systemic racism persists around the world, particularly against people of color in the United States, not to mention the scourge of white nationalism and dastardly race/IQ pseudoscience, we cannot make excuses for the absence or negation of a black metamodernism that was always present.

Furthermore, postmodernism and social justice are under constant attack for the wrong reasons, while questionable postmodern (gibberish) scholarship is still being produced, normatively for the right reasons, but at the limits of critique. For many of us in the culture war, this is the whole point of a metamodern intervention; to cut through the bullshit and end the culture war itself (along with actual war), while also reforming the research and education paradigm towards these ends. Who but (black) metamodernists could most aptly advocate for this?

→ Read Part 1: Missing Metamodernism
→ Read Part 2: Borgmannian Metamodernism
→ Read Part 3: Gonzálezean Metamodernism

Brent Cooper is founder and Executive Director at The Abs-Tract Organization , a Canadian think tank.

Decade of the Animals: Eco-Horror and the Cinematic Lessons of the 1970s

By Sean Posey

When Michael Myers donned the Captain Kirk mask in the 1978 classic Halloween (yes, that's a mask of William Shatner) he helped change horror movies forever. For most of the next decade and beyond, the horror subgenre of the slasher film dominated drive-ins, multiplexes and video store shelves.

But before Halloween surged at the box office, another now almost forgotten horror genre made waves by combining the environmental anxieties of the era with giant, murderous rabbits, vengeful dogs and bloodthirsty frogs, among other angry critters. The "Nature Strikes Back!" films of the 1970s ran the gamut from schlock masterpieces and haunting classics to the downright unwatchable. However, these films are also part of a time capsule - giving us a glimpse into an era when a building environmental crisis seemed to provoke real soul searching. What were we doing to animals and the natural world? What might they in turn do to us?

In the opening of her seminal 1962 book "Silent Spring," Rachel Carson describes an idealized American town where nature and man are still in balance, at least for a time. Foxes and deer frolic amidst orchards and fields of grain, and a general bucolic feeling pervades. But soon "a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community," Carson writes. In particular, the birds disappeared. "It was a spring without voices."

She was writing about the chemical industry and the destructive effects of pesticides on animals and the environment. "Silent Spring" played a key role in ushering in the environmental movement, which gained strength as the 1960s progressed. But in the film world, in an unplanned coincidence, Alfred Hitchcock answered Carlson's question: "The birds... where had they gone?"

The Birds hit theaters less than a year after "Silent Spring" debuted, and it quickly captured the nation's imagination. The site of something so benign as the common avian viciously turning on man terrified audiences and helped redefine horror. But it wouldn't be until the 1970s that the "eco-horror" film fully blossomed.

The 1972 cult classic Frogs, which ushered in the era's eco-horror films, replaces Hitchcock's birds with an unlikely assortment of reptiles and amphibians - all bent on extracting revenge on a polluting Florida patriarch and his unlikeable family. In the film, Jason Crockett (Ray Milland) is a cranky millionaire intent on wiping out the frog population in and around his private island so that he and his clan can properly celebrate the Fourth of July.

A wildlife photographer named Pickett Smith (Sam Elliott), who is working on a story in the area and encounters the rampant pollution, tries to dissuade him from launching his own private war on the local frog population, to no avail. "I still believe man is master of the world," Crockett tells him.

But the amphibians and reptiles are one step ahead of the game. Guided by the omnipresent frogs, which never seem to directly attack anyone themselves, a bevy of snakes, lizards and even an alligator snapping turtle wreak death and destruction on the dullard cast members. Smith leads a small contingent off the island, where it appears that a mass animal uprising is under way. Crockett refuses to leave and is trapped in his mansion as hordes of frogs - in all of their croaking wrath - descend on him.

Frogs was released the same year DDT - which was applied over Florida for years in a quest to eliminate fresh and saltwater mosquitoes - was banned. The first Earth Day had been held two years previous. "Environmentalism, much like the anti-war subculture, started to influence not only activists and the newfound socially aware, but also the style and consciousness of the new eco-horror films," writes Lee Gambin.

After Frogs, the eco-horror genre gathered steam. Perhaps the most unintentionally funny film to follow was Night of the Lepus, which premiered only months after Frogs. It opens with a news broadcast reminiscent of the TV segments from Night of the Living Dead. But instead of warning of the walking dead, the broadcaster informs the audience of the growing problem of invasive species in Australia and the American Southwest - namely the rabbit. This was a real-life problem, and the issue of invasive species was one of the most readily recognizable environmental topics of the time. Interestingly enough, the broadcaster compares rapidly multiplying rabbits to the human population explosion, a popular intellectual to subjects after Paul R. Ehrlich's 1968 book "The Population Bomb" debuted.

As the film opens, a beleaguered rancher (Rory Calhoun) enlists a group of scientists to help tame a scourge of rabbits in Arizona. They attempt to use an experimental serum in order to scramble the animals' breeding cycle, but one of the scientific team's children switches an injected rabbit she's fond of with one in the control group. When the rabbit makes it back to the wild, it helps breed a group of oversized killer bunnies.

The director used close-ups scenes to depict "giant rabbits" in miniature sets, and in scenes where they attack up close, actors in fuzzy bunny costumes were used. Never again will you hear rabbits referred to being "as big as wolves and just as vicious." And never again will you see a character grimacing in horror as he watches a caravan of adorable but murderous rabbits appear in his rearview mirror. But beneath the bargain-basement special effects is a message about humanity's harmful tampering with ecosystems and the deleterious effects of introducing invasive species.

Oddly enough, despite featuring a fearsome animal munching on unsuspecting bathers, Jaws, released in 1975, isn't much of an eco-horror film. As entertaining and suspenseful as it is, there's a never a concrete reason given for the great white's assault on Amity Island. If anything, Jaws is more about masculinity and the relationships between men than it's about man's relationship with animals and the environment. Nevertheless, it helped spawn numerous '70s films about how tampering with animals and the natural world will bring down nature's wrath, including Piranha (Then... you were shocked by the great white shark - Now... you are at the mercy of 1000 jaws!), Tentacles (It's turning the beach ... into a buffet! ) and Grizzly (Not since JAWS has the terror been like this!).

So many eco-horror films were made in the '70s that sub-genres soon emerged, including films dedicated to deadly domestic animals. Before Cujo became a household word, 1977's The Pack introduced man's best friend as a murderous foe. In the film, a swift tourist trade is part of the backbone of a small fishing island during season, but well-heeled visitors from the city have a bad habit of leaving their recently adopted dogs behind when it's time to return to their regular lives.

The film follows one such canine that's abandoned by a departing family before joining a pack of wild dogs living in a derelict building. When a readily available food supply runs out, the dogs come for the island's human population. The Pack shows that humanity's disregard for animal life doesn't stop at wild fauna.

A group of trapped tourists who are part of the main cast are depicted as either clueless or venal. It's left to a scientist, played by Joe Don Baker, to save the group. However, Baker's character also sympathizes with the attacking animals, and at the film's end, after the main pack has been destroyed, he saves the helpless abandoned dog we've been following throughout the movie from being killed by a vengeful tourist. In The Pack, man's carelessness and disregard for the animal world extends even to a subspecies that's been his companion for at least 14,000 years.

In 1974, F. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina of the University of California found that chlorinated fluorocarbon gases, then found in everything from aerosol spray cans to refrigeration units, were seriously damaging the ozone layer, which helps block ultraviolet light from the sun. That environmental emergency was used as the central conceit in the 1977 film Day of the Animals, which incorporated a real-life environmental emergency to a greater degree than most eco-horror films.

The central plot involves a group of hikers ascending a mountain in Northern California just as a mysterious psychosis begins to effect wild animals in the area. The higher the altitude they ascend to, the more animals begin to act strangely, until finally, they attack. What's driving them? The hole in the ozone layer is allowing in ultraviolet radiation that in turn is causing the animals to kill, though in a karmic twist, they only target humans.

The cast consists of an assemblage of telling archetypes: a Navajo Indian who is the first to sense the rift in the natural world, a racist and misogynistic advertising executive (Leslie Nielsen) who himself goes crazy, and a New York socialite (with no love for nature) who berates her put-upon son. In the town below, news reports reveal the connection between the ozone hole and attacking animals. "God sent a plague down on us because we're just a bunch of no-good fellers," one of the yokels exclaims.

Mountain lions, bears, wolves and snakes (left over from Frogs?) proceed to chomp, tear and dismember the hiking expedition and the nearby town as martial law is declared and troops in environmental suits move in. But the animals themselves also soon die and the "shift in the ozone level" normalizes, according to news reports.

The film's pre-credit sequence announces that this is a scenario that "COULD" actually happen. As silly as it is (and as awesome as a shirtless Leslie Nielsen challenging a bear to a wrestling match is), Day of the Animals is an earnest film that's a time capsule from an era when a pending environmental crisis could be counted on to at least inspire some political action. CFCs were ultimately phased out under the 1987 Montreal Protocol.

Probably the best of the many '70s eco-horror movies is the Australian classic The Long Weekend. Focusing on an estranged couple seeking to rekindle their relationship over a weekend getaway to an isolated seashore in the bush, the film is much more of a psychological horror picture where the danger is never fully shown. The screenwriter gradually reveals the deep rifts that have eaten away at the couple's relationship as the tension builds, one that is echoed by the rifts between man and the natural world. As the two fight, litter, spray insecticide and, in the case of the husband, shoot a dugong (a kind of sea cow), animals and the landscape around them begin to grow hostile.

"My premise was that Mother Nature has her own autoimmune system, so when humans start behaving like cancer cells, she attacks," screenwriter Everett De Roche said in a 2012 interview. No one animal (a mutated bear in 1979's The Prophecy or worms in the case of 1976's Squirm) is responsible for the mayhem that ensues.

It's as if the environment itself wants to do away with the couple. In a way that few other films of its kind succeed in doing, The Long Weekend gives the viewer the sense that the ecosystem and all the animals it supports are attempting to strike back against humans.

This is reflected in the atmospheric soundtrack. A long, slow death rattle punctuates parts of the film, almost as if nature itself were crying out in agony and outrage. The Long Weekend is not only one of the best eco-horror films of any age, it's also a grim warning from the end of a decade where the environment, albeit briefly, seemed to take center stage in the cultural and political world.

By the 1980s, eco-horror films were on the wane. Dystopian productions such as the Mad Max series - also classics of Australian cinema, like The Long Weekend - figured strongly in a cinematic decade more concerned with nuclear annihilation and urban collapse than ecological crises. Films such as Escape From New York, Blade Runner,The Running Man, The Quiet Earth and Night of the Comet cashed in on the new trend. In more recent years, The Day After Tomorrow and The Road have been among a spate of films with an even grimmer outlook than the '70s eco-horror genre.

The idea of animals taking revenge against man now seems quaint. Indeed, we are currently going through what scientists call the Sixth extinction or the Holocene extinction. Approximately 20 percent of all species on Earth face extinction - a number that could increase to 50 percent by the end of the century. It wouldn't make much sense to produce a film like Frogs today as amphibian populations have been in decline for the past 20 years, according to Science magazine. A third of amphibian species are currently at risk of extinction with chemical pollution being a large contributor to their plight. Perhaps the Jason Crocketts of the world won in the end?

The eco-horror films of the future might feature poisonous jellyfish, sea snakes and other creatures that could expand their natural ranges as ecosystems change due to global warming. Or perhaps now we've come to realize that man is the most dangerous and terrifying animal of all. Rising seas, desertification, chemical pollution, scorching temperatures and other disasters (e.g. California wildfires) - all linked to manmade climate change - now seem to be nature's way of dealing with us. And that's a reality more horrifying than any screenplay.

"A Free Palestine from the River to the Sea": The Nine Dirty Words You Can't Say (on TV or Anywhere Else)

By Bryant William Sculos

No Justice, No Peace

It is not uncommon for a mainstream media commentator to be fired for a bigoted or violent comment on air-or off air. As far as I know, there was never a person specifically fired for advocating non-violence and the equal treatment of a group of people. I'm sure untold thousands have never been hired in the first place because of these views-but that's not the same as having those kinds of views being known and then later fired for articulating them for the hundredth if not thousandth time. That was until November 29, 2018, when CNN fired paid commentator (and Temple University Full Professor) Marc Lamont Hill for articulating a nuanced position of peace and justice through non-violence in Israeli-occupied Palestine. Hill called for the equal freedom and dignity of the Palestinian people, a people long violently oppressed and attacked by a colonizing power.

These facts are not in question. What is in question is whether Hill, at the end of the invited speech delivered at the United Nations to commemorate the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, also invoked a dog whistle for the extermination of Jews and the eradication of Israel. Despite the complete inconsistency of this interpretation with the previous twenty minutes of Hill's speech (and everything he has probably ever said and done), this was hardly enough to prevent the far-right wing media circus and pro-Israel/Zionist lobby, which dominates the U.S. media landscape and the whole of the two major political parties and their pundits, from unleashing on Hill. Within hours, it was widely believed that Hill was a virulent anti-Semite. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Hill has repeatedly stated and explained in multiple statements since.

A rigorous and righteous critique of Zionism is not identical to a hatred or even criticism of Jews or Jewishness. There is plenty of evidence and argumentation from Jews themselves that unquestioning support for Israel itself does a disservice to the Jewish tradition and Jews worldwide, as well as those in Israel. This argument was made most recently by Cornel West in his defense of Marc Lamont Hill.

The words in question are "a free Palestine from the river to the sea"-the latter four ostensibly being the genocidal dog whistle, a phrasing used by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas (both organizations have been previously criticized by Hill for their use of violence in various contexts). If Hill's detractors had displayed any knowledge of anything about his politics, activism, or even the previous 99.9% of the U.N. speech, their outrage would be less disingenuous. If his detractors could show why his final statement, interpreted as a call for mass violence, was in any way consistent with any part of the rest of the speech or Hill's political or intellectual perspectives, they could be taken seriously, at least on a superficial level. This simply is not the case.

Furthermore, I contend, it was not the last four words that people had a problem with; it was the first three: a free Palestine. A free Palestine for a free Palestinian people. Free and equal Palestinian people. This is the true source of the grievances, which led to Hill being fired from CNN-and since, Hill has been targeted by Temple University for possible censure and/or firing, despite the fact that Hill has an endowed chair and the ostensible protection of tenure (to say nothing for comprehensive free speech rights, which since Temple is a public university, are fully guaranteed by the oft-referenced and little-read U.S. Constitution).

While it is unlikely that Hill will be fired or forced out, the relatively recent cases of George Ciccariello-Maher (formerly) at Drexel University and Steven Salaita (formerly) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign show that there are no guarantees for public critics of white supremacy, global capitalism, U.S. imperialism, and Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid. The most critical topics in need of vociferous dissent are the ones being most aggressively censored.

I'm less specifically worried about Prof. Hill losing one of his side jobs than I am about the multitude of others who share and express his views who will never be given a job, either on cable news or in academia. The chilling effects-especially for early-career scholars, teachers, and journalists, who are the most vulnerable to sanction-are palpable and devastating, the results of which will surely harm millions if not billions around the world, not least of all the Palestinian people.

Apples, Bananas, and the Last Human Voice

The tragedy of Prof. Marc Lamont Hill's firing from CNN is worse for its broader implications. Hill was the only consistently leftist voice on cable news - yes, ALL of cable news. He has been a long-time critic of police violence, structural racism, U.S. imperialism, and economic injustices in the U.S. and around the world. He has accepted both the label socialist and Marxist at times, and his arguments on TV and in his books are broadly consistent with those traditions-though they rarely involve the jargon typically associated with those traditions. He chooses his words carefully, but his meanings are rarely unclear. He has stood for working people, the poor, the oppressed, the colonized, the degraded, and the murdered.

He was the only cable commentator to oppose Hillary Clinton from the left. He was browbeaten by other CNN commentators and analysts. His appearances weirdly were fewer and further in-between. Hill refused to change his position on U.S. imperialism, and if one is a critic of U.S. imperialism, one cannot go on TV and call for people to vote for her. Putting aside debates about lesser-evilism and its dangerous pitfalls, going on TV to advocate for an imperialist would have ingratiated Hill with CNN and his Democratic Party consultant colleagues. More people have complied than haven't. He refused.

CNN has always been a network that turns war, death, murder, and injustice into spectator sports for profit. It has always been a network more comfortable paying neo-fascists, bigots, and regressive morons than it is with paying thoughtful left critics. CNN claims to be a "facts first" network. They run ads equating bananas with falsehood and apples with truth. Some are clever; most are not. Marketing criticisms aside, CNN continues to disgrace and debase itself with this decision. As I write this, Rick Santorum, a man who believes that gay and transgender people are inherently mentally-ill and criminals, that climate change is a hoax, that women should not have reproductive rights, and that none of us deserve affordable quality healthcare, is still employed at CNN, appearing regularly on its prime-time shows. But Marc Lamont Hill called for violence (in a speech about non-violence)? He must be purged! Talk about being fucking bananas.

It was already a tragedy nearing its end that there was merely one regular left voice on cable news. With the firing of Marc Lamont Hill, the process of recessing all the truly radical critics from regular appearances on mainstream airwaves is complete. While young people tend to get their news and information from "non-traditional" media, where there are thankfully far more left voices, what happens in the mainstream media, which is still consumed by the majority of Americans, still matters a great deal.

CNN didn't make this choice out of principle. Hill's appearances were seemingly increasingly irregular as he refused to play into the dominant narratives that hyper-focused on President Trump, so it was easy calculus for them. Avoid any semblance of anti-Israel (and by some perverse twist of illogic, anti-American) sentiment and fire Marc Lamont Hill. They did it for PR reasons. They did it for profit. I'm sure they are satisfied with their decision.

Though perhaps they should rethink that: Fox News' host, and rat sphincter wearing human skin, Sean Hannity, was giddy discussing Hill's firing-and of course took several moments to connect an egregiously mischaracterized version of Hill's comments to the entire "insanity" of CNN and its unprofessional anchors who are "too opinionated." The irony was lost on him completely, and the meaning of Hannity's and Fox News' celebration of Hill's firing was likely lost on CNN as well.

Sorry, Not Sorry

With all of that said, despite his righteous and radical declaration of freedom, equality, peace, and justice for the Palestinian people, Marc Lamont Hill penned an apology for The Inquirer. He apologized not for standing with the Palestinian people. He apologized not for opposing Israeli-Zionist settler colonialism. He apologized not for suggesting that the violence of the colonized was not equivalent to the violence of the colonizer. Instead, he apologized for triggering the misinterpretations of his comments that led to the outrage and subsequent firing.

There is one crucial flaw in this apology however, beyond it being completely unnecessary and equally understandable for all those familiar with Marc Lamont Hill. He has a profoundly generous and magnanimous reputation. The problem with the apology is that it is articulated with a factual inaccuracy baked into Hill's words (a factual inaccuracy he is no doubt aware of): the outrage that led to his firing and the now-informal inquiry by the Board of Trustees at Temple was not a good faith misinterpretation. It was not accidental. It was not a "natural" reaction to his supposedly genocidal words at the U.N. The misinterpretation was intentional from the start, and the outrage was exaggerated for political purposes. The people attacking Marc Lamont Hill-including CNN-are not rightly offended by a scholar and activist's "poor choice of words." His choice of words was perfectly fine. The outrage that Hill's words spawned were because of their normative content; because of whom they were delivered to defend and support: the Palestinian people-as well as the entity they were deployed to criticize: the Israeli state.

Any genuine offense that was created by Hill's words were undoubtedly not from Hill's words themselves, but rather from the feigned offense of others intentionally mischaracterizing Hill's words for political effect. His most recent book Nobody is a testament to his scholar-activist credentials and deeply felt compassion and care for the oppressed and exploited in the world. No one-nobody-could read the actual words in that book and genuinely think that this author would ever defend the extermination of a people (not even cops). There are undoubtedly millions of people who could intentionally misread what he wrote, and he has no need to apologize for those intentional misinterpretations any more than he should have apologized for the intentional misconstruing of his comments on Israel and a free Palestinian people.

By apologizing as he did, while certainly representative of Hill's humility and selflessness and certainly clarifying for those on the left who may not have heard the original speech, I fear some of this ill-motivated criticism may have been unintentionally legitimized. The accusations of anti-Semitism were not offered in good faith in any way and treating them as good-faith misinterpretations threatens to offer a glean of honesty that neo-fascist Zionism will continue to abuse. Marc Lamont Hill shouldn't be blamed for this possible outgrowth of his apology; he was responding to an existential threat to his ability to make a living-and perhaps some perceived genuine misinterpretation that I simply refuse to believe exists.

For Palestinians, Not Palestine

This is just one contribution to an ongoing and undoubtedly continuing discussion about the Palestinian people's right to exist as living beings with dignity, respect, and equaliberty, but it is important to emphasize here that there should be no defense of nationalism implied, interfered, or articulated. While anti-colonial nationalism is preferable to imperial bourgeois nationalism, it is a political dead end nonetheless. In the context of Israel-Palestine, while the discursive move of asserting the right of the Palestinian people to be citizens of a democratic nation-state is assuredly a positive and productive move insofar as it challenges US and Israeli capitalist imperial power, the liberation of the Palestinian people (and the working class people of Israel, many of whom do not support the far-Right Likud Party or the heinous war crimes of the Israeli state) will only be accomplished with aggressively solidaristic internationalism. Demanding political, economic, cultural, and social equality and freedom within all relevant political structures that affect the lives of Palestinians is not inconsistent with a ruthless critique of the modern state system and all of its attendant injustices.

This speaks to the final tragedy of the firing and ongoing assault of Marc Lamont Hill. It was precisely for his passionate, thoughtful, informed words of solidarity and support for the freedom of all people, especially the Palestinians, that he is being punished. While we must match his act(s) of solidarity with the Palestinians with our own words and deeds of solidarity with him and against his detractors, I don't think it is too bold of me to suggest that Marc would want us to put doubly more energy into supporting the cause of peace with justice and freedom for all peoples, which his own passionate support of has precipitated this absurd circumstance.

Bryant William Sculos, Ph.D. is the Mellon-Sawyer Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and, beginning in January 2019, will be Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Worcester State University teaching in a variety of areas of global politics. Bryant is also an occasional adjunct professor in political theory at Florida International University. He is a member of Socialist Alternative-CWI in the U.S. and regular contributor to The Hampton Institute, New Politics, Public Seminar, and Class, Race and Corporate Power - where he also serves as Politics of Culture section editor.

The Rising Wave of Fascist Terror: Notes on Its Organization and Disruption

By Josh Sturman

The week of October 21st saw three high profile, fascist terrorist attacks. The first of these was an unsuccessful attack on (purportedly) liberal political leaders: pipe bombs were sent to several prominent Democratic Party politicians , including former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The next two were more successful and explicitly racist in nature. On October 24, a terrorist failed to gain access to a Black church near Louisville, KY, then crossed the street to a grocery store and murdered two Black shoppers . The following Saturday, October 27, a terrorist entered a synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA and opened fire, killing eleven Jewish worshipers . This week of terror was followed by a high-profile attack the following week in Tallahassee, FL, when a misogynistic attacker murdered two women in a yoga studio on November 3.

We must not doubt that all of these attacks were fascist in nature. Each attack targeted a type of person on which fascist, extralegal violence is traditionally inflicted: the perceived left, subordinated races, and women. At least one of the terrorists, the Pittsburgh shooter, was tied to the fascistic social media site Gab , a refuge for right-wing extremists banned from Twitter and Facebook.

These four attacks, like all acts of terrorism, served a double function. On the one hand, they serve to inflict immediate harm on the "enemies" of fascism, whether these enemies be political opponents, such as "left-wing" politicians, or people whose free existence is a fundamental threat to the fascist project, such as Black people, Jews, and women. On the other hand, the attacks serve to create a climate of fear, a climate eventually intended to scare opponents of fascism out of exercising their freedom.

Students of the American fascist movement will recognize that all four of these attacks fit into the long-time white supremacist strategy of "leaderless resistance." First proposed by Louis Beam in 1983 , the strategy marked a departure from the attempt to build popular institutions such as the Ku Klux Klan towards the reconstitution of the movement into one in which "all individuals and groups operate independently of each other, and never report to a central headquarters or single leader for direction or instruction." The adoption of leaderless resistance as a key organizing principle encouraged fascist activists to act without directly consulting one another, instead interpreting the public proclamations of fascist leaders by themselves and acting as they see fit. It took and continues to take advantage of the widespread authoritarianism, racism, and misogyny embedded in American culture, gambling that these ideas can be activated in independent activists through the piecemeal diffusion of fascist propaganda, thereby creating a general social attitude of support for and fear of fascists without relying on the establishment of a major institutional presence dedicated to supporting the fascist cause.

To date, the largest successful act of terrorism carried out on the basis of leaderless resistance was Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols' bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 , which killed 168 people, including many children. Other high profile terrorist attacks carried out on the basis of this strategy other than those mentioned above include Frazier Glenn Miller's attack on a Kansas Jewish Community Center in April, 2014 , Elliot Rodger's rampage through Isla Vista, CA the following month , and Dylann Roof's massacre of Black churchgoers in July, 2015 .

One major advantage of this strategy for fascist organizing (which is emphasized by Beam) is that the decentralization of activism keeps movement leaders safe from activist criminality. Popular institutions are easy targets of government suppression because such institutions link everyone from foot soldiers to the institutions' upper echelons through the institutional hierarchy. As a result, taking down someone at any level of the hierarchy can lead to the imprisonment of all members on conspiracy and collaboration charges and a resultant disorganization. By keeping white-supremacist cells as small as possible, the leaderless resistance is able to avoid large-scale suppression by either the government or anti-racist and anti-fascist movements through a separation of propagandists and theorists from terrorist activists. Strategies developed publicly by fascist ideologues can be taken up by individuals or small cadres who serve as martyrs without the ideologues facing repercussions greater than public censure.

Another advantage of leaderless resistance (which goes unmentioned by Beam) is that very few of those engaged in the strategy need to be cognizant of their participation. Only a handful of ideologues need to be intentionally focused on shifting the Overton window - the limits of acceptable discourse - for efforts to be successful. A small but dedicated group of theorists and propagandists making a concerted effort can move fascist concepts into the mainstream. Once this is accomplished, mainstream politicians and media outlets are able to whip up racist, misogynistic, anti-leftist, and anti-liberal hysteria to the point where lone-wolf terrorists are bound to emerge. Knowledge of this phenomenon helps explain why aforementioned terrorist Frazier Glenn Miller , who previously maintained ties to the white supremacist terrorist cell The Order , spent the first several decades of his life propagandizing through the KKK before picking up guns, as well as why former terrorist Don Black has abandoned his paramilitary activities in favor of running the influential white-supremacist website, Stormfront. When fascist ideologies penetrate mainstream society, some number of people will be brought to the point of "leaderless" violence regardless of their familiarity with white-supremacist tactics.

In light of the above, it is clear that fascist media platforms like Gab and Stormfront, as well as "fellow-traveler" forums like 4chan and 8chan and offline institutions like Stormfront book clubs, are crucial aspects of the success of leaderless resistance. These platforms and others like them play several roles. First, they serve as spaces for the development of fascist theory, locations where committed activists can further fascist doctrines and where inductees can receive indoctrination. Second, they serve as repositories for mainstream figures to draw ideas from, either directly or through layers of distillation as concepts are taken up and filtered through mainstream platforms like Twitter, once the Overton window has moved. Third, they serve as vehicles for the highest levels of agitation, pushing those on the edge of terrorism to engaging in leaderless resistance.

Despite the importance of these right-wing spaces, explicitly and implicitly fascist forums are not a sufficient environment for the production of lone-wolf fascist terrorists in and of themselves. As indicated above, they remain reliant on fascist ideology mainstreaming itself through public figures for the strategy to be fully successful. Wittingly or not, these public figures make their own contribution to acts of terror carried out in the name of leaderless resistance. Most obviously and as previously noted, anti-democratic, racist, and misogynistic statements from prominent politicians and media personalities contribute to fascist agitation. They also both create and reflect public support for terrorist activities. Racist statements from Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson therefore contribute to the spread of racist propaganda and indicate to fascist theorists that large segments of the public are supportive of (aspects of) the fascist cause. Even more crucial than statements are actions of material support. Presidential pardons like those given to prominent racists Dinesh D'Souza and Joe Arpaio demonstrate that elites and the public are willing to support them (to a degree) not only rhetorically, but concretely. Media narratives downplaying or dismissing the threat of fascism, such as the widespread claim that the bombs sent to Democrats were an elaborate hoax designed to discredit the Republican Party , provide space for fascists to move in public without fear of social exclusion, let alone retribution.

What is most important to note throughout in an examination of leaderless resistance is that while the strategy has led to a relatively non-institutional fascist movement, it has not led to an unorganized one. Fascist leaders, theorists, and propagandists are linked to fascist activists, including terrorist activists, through formal, predictably operating channels. Fascist ideology, tactics, strategies, and "commands" are declared in explicitly fascist venues such as Stormfront, Radix Journal, or the National Policy Institute Forum. They are then conveyed to larger, "fellow-traveler" locations like 4chan, where they are picked up and placed on larger, politically neutral sites like Facebook and Twitter, and then heard from the mouths of politicians like Donald Trump, media figures like Tucker Carlson, and celebrities like Kanye West. At each stage of transmission, the ideology and commands are available to be heard by activists, at louder and louder volumes at each stage, some of whom inevitably begin leaderless resistance, thereby reliably producing the results sought by those who initiate the process. Additionally, each stage provides the initiators of the process with feedback on methods of refining the content and distribution techniques of their propaganda as they can see which ideas are and are not transferred and the degree to which ideas are distorted as they pass from one place to another. What ultimately links all the locations is the shared epistemological framework the concepts produce and maintain as they are transmitted, a fascist framework initiated by a small cadre of fascist activists for the purpose of agitating leaderless acts of reactionary violence.

The threat of fascist insurgency must be taken seriously. The recent attacks prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that fascist violence is both immanent and rising. Moreover, the above analysis demonstrates it is a highly organized movement. It must be challenged. There are several areas of social existence in which this can be done.

First, fascist space in the range of acceptable discourse must be eliminated. Allowing any space for fascist propaganda is, as discussed above, a key hinge of the fascist leaderless resistance strategy, without which the production of fascist terrorists and activists cannot operate. Actions taken by major corporations and private citizens alike to remove fascist media platforms from the web, as well as successful struggles to prevent fascists from propagandizing on college campuses , mark the most significant contributions of recent vintage to this effort. Unfortunately, it is likely that such actions are too little, too late. Now that mainstream, widely-followed political figures and media outlets have adopted fascistic rhetoric, fascist discourse has probably saturated mainstream culture to a point where simple "no-platforming" is no longer a viable strategy. At present it seems the far-right has opened the Overton window for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, such actions demonstrate widespread disapproval of fascism, racism, and misogyny that may serve to demoralize and demobilize fascist activists in the long term. Such actions may also serve to disrupt fascist organization in ways that cannot be accurately valued at the present moment.

More important than closing the discursive space in which fascists operate is taking away the material base of fascist activists. Since the base of dedicated fascist activists is relatively small, crippling that base is both simpler than closing the Overton window and an effective way to smash the beating heart of fascism. Several strategies have been successfully employed to this end. Once again, major corporations have reluctantly, and perhaps ironically, played a part in the fight, with prominent payment processing and fundraising companies taking adverse actions against major fascist organizations , though they have often not gone far enough. Other effective actions have seen fascists lose their jobs and face difficulty at their universities . Attacking the material base of fascist operations disrupts fascists' ability to participate in activism by increasing the cost of such participation or simply overwhelming them with the difficulty of maintaining their everyday existence. Additionally, it can serve to prevent the process of fascist organization from beginning when it is the originators of fascist theory who are attacked. This said, assaults on the material base have limited effectiveness in combating fascist terror carried out by already radicalized activists. The leaderless resistance strategy intentionally relies on terrorists to commit to, plan, and carry out attacks over relatively brief time periods, thereby avoiding detection (and consequently resistance) until the time of the attack. Furthermore, because most terrorists die or go to jail in the course of their action, attacking their economic base is of limited effectiveness even if their motives are suspected ahead of time. It takes few resources to stage a terror attack when the attacker does not intend to live after the fact. For these reasons, depriving key fascists of a material base does more to stunt the movement over a longer period of time than to prevent bloodshed in the near future.

Another, and possibly the most, effective means of fighting fascism is to socially isolate fascists. Isolation destroys fascists ability to evangelize. It prevents the transmission of fascist ideology from one part of the leaderless organization to another, thereby limiting fascists' numbers and preventing the spread of radicalization. Moreover, disrupting social ties among fascist activists using methods like infiltration creates paranoia and lack of trust in the fascist community, effectively preventing inter-fascist solidarity. These strategies can even disrupt leaderless resistance, since confidence in community support and the agitation of friends can lead to individuals undertaking terrorist actions. Yet even attacks on the social lives of fascists face obstacles. The biggest of these challenges is the internet, which serves as a space for geographically and physically isolated and communally shunned fascists to come together. Moreover, fascist internet spaces are easily reconstituted after disruptions . Even more importantly, anti-fascist organizers must be cognizant their efforts serve to isolate only the most committed fascists. Isolating members of the general public with some authoritarian, racist, or misogynistic tendencies is both impracticable given the reach of these tendencies in American culture and risks stigmatizing the naive who would, if treated with care, abandon fascist leanings in favor of liberal and leftist positions.

Fascism must also be fought through a transformation of left and liberal institutions. Activist organizations must add a function of machine politics to themselves at the same time that the machine political operations in existence must begin to organize direct actions. The fascist right has already perfected this strategy through organizations such as Focus on the Family and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). These organizations keep activists mobilized and furthering the fascist agenda in periods between election cycles, while ensuring a base for right-wing politicians in election periods. The role of far-right mainstream politicians in promoting fascist terrorism and agitating the fascist base, and the government's ability to suppress both fascist and left-wing movements as it likes, is too important to cede in the anti-fascist struggle. However, mobilizing simply for elections requires enormous effort and resources to reestablish electoral organizations every two to four years. By adding machine aspects to anti-fascist organizations and activist aspects to machine organizations, the most important work, that is, direct action, can be accomplished while a grip on the formal levers of political power is maintained.

A broad-based coalition of leftists and liberals must agree on common terms for fighting the fascist threat. Fascism is able to gain power quickly in a fractured political environment, where factionalism and infighting keep anti-fascists of all varieties fighting with each other and away from anti-fascist organizing. While a revolutionary left consensus may be the ideal tool for mobilizing against fascism, it is not a necessary one. Common terms enable different tendencies in the anti-fascist struggle to fight a common enemy how they see fit while remaining in solidarity with those with whom they are not in total agreement. "We must," above all and in the words of Assata Shakur, "love each other and support each other." We must help each other grow and stand in solidarity, instead of indulging in petty personal disputes in the face of growing fascism. We must resolve differences with respect for one another and without forcing our comrades to abandon deeply held beliefs that, while contrary to ours, do not harm the anti-fascist struggle. The fascists are well organized and "we have nothing to lose but our chains."

Josh is a bike messenger living in Appalachia. He received his MA in philosophy from Duquesne University and is a member of the IWW and DSA. He has been active in the labor, anti-racist, and anti-fascist movements since he was 18.

Trump's Lost Sons

By Sean Posey

Accused mail bomber Cesar Sayoc reportedly spent much of the past 10 years living in a van in southern Florida. According to those who knew him, he drifted through life - working odd jobs at a pizza shop and a strip club. He seemed to have made little impression on the world.

On the day of his arrest, cable news and social media lit up with images taken of his van. Festooned with the stickers depicting images of President Trump - and his political opponents, who appeared with gun sights superimposed on their faces - the vehicle served as a seemingly made-to-order meme. But who is Sayoc?

During an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Sayoc's family lawyer, Ron Lowy, provided some revealing insight into the man. Sayoc had apparently never been political before Donald Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy in June 2015. After that seminal moment, Sayoc gave himself over to the Trump movement.

Trump has been "reaching out," in Lowy's words, to "outsiders" just like Sayoc, "people who don't fit in, people who are angry at America." Trump is telling these people they "have a place at the table," Lowy explained. "This was someone lost," he said of Sayoc. "He was looking for anything, and he found a father in Trump."

Sayoc is not alone. Most famously, Kanye West adopted Trump as a kind of father figure. In October, West travelled to the Oval Office to meet the President. During a rambling speech to the press, he explained his attraction to Trump and the "Make America Great Again" slogan that so memorably defined the President's campaign.

"I love Hillary," West said. "I love everyone. Right. But the campaign, 'I'm with Her' just didn't make me feel, as a guy, that didn't get to see my dad all the time. Like a guy that could play catch with his son. It was something about when I put this hat on, it made me feel like Superman. You made a Superman," he told Trump.

Many depicted West as a lost soul for having to find a father figure in someone like Trump. But America today is filled with lost boys and men. Most of them, however, are not multi-millionaire rappers.

In previous decades, these are men who would have been working in factories, serving in voluntary associations, starting families or going off to college. Many are, like Sayoc, (described as "a 14-year old in man's body" by Lowy) only marginally attached to the work world.

Since the early 2000s, the labor force participation rate of you men without a bachelor's degree has declined more than any other group . Other disturbing statistics about the plight of American males are a regular feature of articles with headlines like "We're Losing a Whole Generation of Men to Video Games."

These are males who are moving from what should have been a place in mainstream America to the very margins. The decline in church attendance, the disappearance of civic life and the splintering of the family has left many men seeking something beyond even the material. The number of children living with two parents, for example, has declined over 20 percent since 1960. Yet in the past two years stand-in father figures have emerged.

Jordan Peterson, previously an obscure Canadian psychologist, recently rose to fame as a kind of guru for struggling men. He estimates that 90 percent of his 1.5 million YouTube subscribers are male. Part of Peterson's appeal is his broadside against what he terms "cultural Marxism" and politically-correct, postmodern society, which he says ignores the needs of young men. Yet he also mixes the kind of critical guidance that one would expect from a father or a mentor, but it's directed at an audience that perhaps has never heard anyone who they felt really spoke to them. This is also something you can hear from those who identify with Trump and feel he speaks to them.

It's not just Kanye West who has adopted the MAGA hat as a kind of warrior's helmet or mark of American traditionalism. A group known as the Proud Boys, which formed as Trump's campaign took off in 2016, has adopted the MAGA cause. They're causing growing consternation among many on the left as their members engage in street brawls across the country with liberal protesters and members of antifa, a loosely organized group of leftist militants.

The Proud Boys bill themselves as a modern day version of the kinds of clubs and fraternal organizations whose decline Robert Putnam documented in his book Bowling Alone. The Proud Boys are a "men's club," according to founder Gavin McInnes. They have two hard and fast rules for membership: you have to be biologically male and you have to declare yourself a "Western chauvinist."

"I think the Proud Boys, and I think Donald Trump, for the most part, drives people who have been disenfranchised by the public because they don't fit in," said Proud Boy Andrew Bell Ramos during an NBC Left Field story on the group in 2017.

"Most guys my age are basically just interested in sitting at home, masturbating, eating Cheerios and playing video games, smoking weed and trying to avoid responsibility," Ramos explained in another segment on SBS Dateline. The NBC segment shows the Proud Boys bonding over a bonfire, getting tattoos, venerating the role of the housewife, and expounding upon the superiority of the Western world. It isn't your average Knights of Columbus meeting.

"What's it like to be a male chauvinist in 2017? Probably a lot less lonely thanks to these guys," NBC journalist Aurora Almendral somewhat naively explained. They almost assuredly do provide a sense of belonging for some alienated men, but at what cost?

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the Proud Boys a "hate group." Founder Gavin McInnes has been involved with alt-right websites such as Vdare.com, and a skinhead group called the 211 Bootboys joined the Proud Boys in assaulting protesters after McInnes spoke at the Metropolitan Republican Club in October. "I cannot recommend violence enough," he has said . "It is a really effective way to solve problems."

The Proud Boys are an outgrowth of the alt-right and the land of the "red-pilled." The expression "red-pilled" is borrowed from the imagery of the 1999 film The Matrix. In the film, Neo, the putative hero, is offered the choice of taking either a blue pill or a red pill by the mysterious figure, Morpheus. Though he isn't aware of it, Neo is trapped in a simulation called the matrix.

"You're here because you know something," Morpheus explains. "What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad." If Neo takes the blue pill, he returns to his virtual reality life. If he takes the red pill, as Morpheus explains, he'll discover "how deep the rabbit hole goes."

In the film, the matrix is "the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." Not long after the onslaught the Great Recession, the term "red-pilled" began to be adopted by a very loosely organized group of white nationalists, "men's rights" activists, reactionary conservatives, antifeminists and a host of other groups coalescing in far-right circles on the internet who became collectively known as the alt-right.

To them, the liberal order is the world that has been pulled over their eyes. And for many, it's Trump who is red-pilling more and more of the "normies" among the general public.

A recent analysis of 30,000 Twitter accounts of users who "self-identified as alt-right, or who followed someone who did," found that Trump is "the glue that binds the far right together." And young men (including the Proud Boys) are now an increasing presence at Trump rallies.

"Identity has become the coin of the realm in American culture," writes Angela Nagle , "but one that's not accessible to the heirs of white male hegemony." Although it isn't only white males , as Sayoc, West and others confirm. This is something Trump seems to recognize. His word and deeds are attracting the lost, the damaged and the economically disenfranchised men in America.

These men are searching for meaning and belonging in a country that has long been "Bowling Alone." Some might stop at Jordan Peterson; others will take the red pill. And it's likely that Trump, not Morpheus, will be the one who guides them down the rabbit hole.

The Lonely American

By Sean Posey

In 2015, psychotherapist Traci Ruble started a "community listening project" in San Francisco dubbed "Sidewalk Talk." The project sends trained volunteers to meet strangers on the street and listen to them discuss their problems and concerns. In a promotional video, Ruble is shown with her fellow volunteers, asking people if they'd like to sit for a talk. "You want to be listened to? It feels good!" Sidewalk Talk has apparently caught on and is now in 29 cities across the country.

Are there large numbers of Americans so bereft of friends and confidants that they have only strangers in the street to confide in? There apparently are. New studies are showing that Americans are increasingly lonely, isolated, and unhappy. Unmoored from one another and from a (fading) sense of community. More and more of our fellow citizens are going through life alone. This has devastating consequences for individual health and portends a troubled future for the American experiment.

According to a recent Cigna study involving 20,000 adults, loneliness in America has reached "epidemic proportions." "Most Americans," the report states, "are now considered lonely." When asked how often they feel like no one knows them well, 54 percent responded that they sometimes or always feel that way. Nearly half of respondents report feeling sometimes or always alone. The numbers are even more disturbing when broken down:

"We also see that roughly one in four respondents rarely/never feel as though there are people who really understand them (27%), that they belong to a group of friends (27%), can find companionship when they want it (24%), or again feel as though they have a lot in common with others (25%)." Only 53 percent of American have daily "meaningful in-person social interactions," according to Cigna.

Loneliness and social isolation, both "actual and perceived," have direct consequences on one's health, according to a 2015 study published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. The effects of loneliness on mortality are the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day, which makes prolonged loneliness a bigger individual health risk than obesity.

Loneliness is also connected, perhaps not surprisingly, to mental disorders. According to the National Institute of Mental Health , nearly one in five adults have a mental health condition. Mental health issues are now one of the fastest growing causes of long-term absences from work. More disturbing still is the connection between loneliness and suicide, which recently hit a 30-year high in America. Even the opioid crisis, a main contributor to the country's declining life expectancy, has been connected to the loneliness epidemic. These deaths are increasingly classified by researchers and the media as "deaths of despair."

The World Happiness Report 2017, compiled by a group of independent experts for the United Nations, recently delivered even more bad news for Americans. The introduction to the report (written by John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, and Jeffrey Sachs) states "Happiness is increasingly considered the proper measure of social progress and the goal of public policy."

The top countries on the list rank highly on six key factors, the report explains: "healthy years of life expectancy, social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble), trust (as measured by a perceived absence of corruption in government and business), perceived freedom to make life decisions, and generosity (as measured by recent donations)." Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland are the happiest nations. The US, on the other hand, finished in 19th place. Rising levels of corruption and "declining social support" are listed among the primary reasons for America's dismal placing.

While the phenomena of decreasing happiness and increasing loneliness are finally getting notice, much of the blame is often placed on recent developments in the country's history, including the rise of neoliberalism (understandable) and the election of Donald Trump as president (equally understandable). However, historical roots and recent developments alike seem to constitute important elements of the country's failure to develop a meaningful sense of community and attachment among its citizenry.

American culture is often described - rightly - as highly individualistic. Despite the Puritans and their quest for " a city upon a hill," as John Winthrop so memorably put it, the first immigrants to the New World often arrived seeking material, not spiritual, prosperity. "Even in the sixteenth century," writes historian Leo Marx, "the American countryside was the object of something like a calculated real estate promotion." This was a "business civilization," as historian Morris Berman refers to it (something Calvin Coolidge echoed during the 1920s when he said, "The business of America is business").

The peerless observer Alexis de Tocqueville saw this during his travels through the country in 1831. While de Tocqueville admired much of the American character, he understood the downside of the relentless individualism that permeated every aspect of social and cultural life: "They owe nothing to any man, they expect nothing from any man; they acquire the habits of always considering themselves as standing alone, and they apt to imagine that their whole destiny is in their hands."

Americans proved to be relentless seekers; first moving beyond the Royal Proclamation line that the British issued to separate their colonies from Indian lands; and then, finally, fulfilling "Manifest Destiny" and closing the frontier in the 19th century. The existence of the frontier in American life nurtured a "dominant individualism," according to historian Frederick Jackson Turner - one that failed to disappear with the frontier itself.

War, however, proved to be a force for increasing civic mindedness, and it provided a boon for voluntary associations - trends that no doubt helped combat the social isolation which certainly accompanied the settling of the country. According to historian Theda Skocpol, the five largest civic associations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries formed between 1864 and 1868.

Robert Putnam found similar evidence for an increase in civic mindedness among the generation shaped by World War II. In the seminal book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Putnam calls the generation that fought the war the "long civic generation," also known as the "Greatest Generation." According to the Cigna study, they're the generation least affected by the epidemic of loneliness. On the other hand, Generation Z (those born between 1995 and 2010) reported the highest levels of loneliness. The civic connectedness and civic mindedness of the Greatest Generation simply did not last. "The [generational] changes are probably part of a larger societal shift toward individual and material values and away from communal values," Putnam writes in Bowling Alone.

There's evidence to support his assertion. In Bowling Alone, Putnam cites a Roper study from 1972 that asked adults to identify essential elements of "the good life." Approximately 38 percent chose "a lot of money," but an equal percentage chose "a job that contributes to the welfare of society." By 1996, the percentage of people who chose making a lot of money had risen to 63 percent. According to current research, 71 percent of millennials place a similar emphasis on making money.

But much like other Americans, outcomes for the wealthy compare poorly to those of their peers in other countries. For example, according to a 2007 study in the Journal of the American Psychological Association, the "richest, healthiest Americans" are as a sick as the poorest citizens in Britain. What's the reason? The study's author, Sir Michael Marmot of University College London Medical School, gives two reasons: Americans worker longer hours, are more stressed than their counterparts in other wealthy democracies, and Americans are apparently more likely to feel "friendless and isolated."

This pervading sense of loneliness and disconnection, while felt particularly by the young, cuts across class, gender and race, according to Cigna. The rise of social media is sometimes blamed for an increase in feelings of loneliness and isolation, but its use did not figure as a major cause of loneliness in the study.

For much of the past century, some American artists and intellectuals have pointed fingers at the country's culture - or what passes for culture - as being at the root of societal anomie. In 1950, playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder stated that a lack of a codification of ideals was making American life difficult to process. Americans, he said, were always on the move - a "very un-European" manner of life.

Famed sociologist Philip Slater delivered perhaps one of the most pointed critiques of American life in his 1970 book, The Pursuit of Loneliness. He declared the human desire for engagement, community, and yes, dependence, were frustrated at every turn by American life. "Americans have created a society in which they are automatic nobodies," he writes, "since no one has any stable place or enduring connection."

And it hasn't only been liberals who have echoed such criticisms. Michael Hendrix writes in the National Review, "Americans conceive of themselves as individuals isolated from others in such a way that it becomes an imperative for them to form their own meaning for their own lives." Clearly, many Americans aren't forming a meaning for their own lives, at least not alone. The dismal statistics tell us as much. But as we have seen - with some exceptions - this is a problem as old as America itself. A country where individuals are adrift and leading lives without meaningful, connective and nourishing attachments is a country with a grim future indeed. And the problem is now accelerating, as levels of loneliness and disconnection rise among the millennials and Generation Z.

How will the country solve its most vexing problems when Americans are no longer capable of holding onto even the most elementary attachments to one another and their surrounding communities? We might find out, too late, that a society of atomized individuals is no society at all.