@kittenlikeasmallcat yeah, one of the worst habits of the left, (leaving off any direct social or political issues) currently seems to be this obsessive reflexive discarding of anything that could possibly be associated with something reactionary, leading toconstantly ceding cultural ground to the right and fascists leading aesthetic conversations/propaganda rather than openly contesting space and reworking terms

Thinking about the origins, and hopefully coming up with some way of turning the tide, one thing that occurs to me is that so much of the deeper forces of capital and liberal civil society exist to severe the connection between the meaning and the gestures of the left, particularly in cultural expressions - its hard to do fucking anything without capitalism and normative society recuperating it.

The right does not have this same problem. Its easy for fascism to take up secrete parties, black blocks mutual aid, underground music and culture, etc- stopping them requires combat. Its very easy for the right wing to go from commercialization into recruitment for actual fascism, and its very easy for subversive fascism to openly declare its aims.

I think one of the only people/writing I have seen try to address this, in part, is the #altwoke manifesto (not that I agree with all of it, but it has insight)