Tim

The mealy mouthed walking back of formerly radical progressive politics - or faux stances like Beyonce or Taylor Swift - is frankly weird.

Personally been disappointed by Radiohead over Israel & Simon Pegg & Nick Frost...but yes silence is deafening.

This is why I was scoffing at the whole Beyonce FEMINIST thing when all those dreadful handwringing broadsheet thinkpieces came out back then...and Bey stans were all 'you're just a bigot!'

A billionaire can't be a feminist, not when you sit on a table and break bread with the Trump family*? But the dodginess and capitalist compromise was there WAY before then.

And where is she now? Hmm?

*Yes that actually happened btw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGjM44xI_3k

#uspol #ukpol #celebrity #beyonce #taylorswift

The Epidemic of Celebrity Cowardice (with Gianmarco Soresi and Caroline Kwan)

YouTube
Apr 4 at 6:04amWeb
Show threadTim3d ago

The same can be said of Taylor Swift, whose work I like more, and respected her support. Even Lady Gaga to some extent.

Taylor decided to regress into being the Ultimate Homecoming Queen™ and America's Sweetheart™ dating an American Football player.

Very predictable and safe.

Show threadTim3d ago

So I repeat:

A billionaire cannot be a feminist or a radical.

Not in this capitalist patriarchal heteronormative society they can't.

Billionaires exist of exploiting people somewhere, and guess who those tend to be?

Show threadTim3d ago

Matt talks about identity politics, and something that I was struggling with in the 00's and 10's and took me a long minute to work out.

As he says without class analysis it doesn't take you very far.

I was quite anti idpol as a separate thing for a long while, and got called names for it - but the strategy to me was off.

Not the cause, the cause is 100% on point. More the execution.

But BLM, trans rights and other movements, their activists laser focused on JUST that, ignoring the superstructures of class and other intersections...and it lead - to be brutally blunt - to some really bad activism.

It's like they never did the background homework? And that lead in part to this backlash cos you can't play with the big guys, billionaires and the patriarchy and expect to win without the ideological tools.

Or build networks - a lot of older socialist became basically TERFs.

That would not have happened if the argument had been properly won.

Show threadTim3d ago

To be clear, things are better now, folks do get that class is the superstructure that identity politics hangs off of, that they aren't separate.

You cannot have real change without changing the entire system.

But back then it was bizarre seeing people really not get that.

Admittedly they were the same kinds of people who think ethical consumption can be a thing, that came from a middle class background *cue smokescreen* and "why don't you support my new Community Company?"

Yeah those folks.

Not really grassroots in effect, more into selling tshirts!