On platforming and genocidal war criminals

Yesterday I came across a clip of Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s new show called “Gutsy”, which is ostensibly about highlighting what various “gutsy women” have accomplished. In reality it’s a self-serving propaganda series aimed at laundering the Clintons—its producers and hosts—as brave progressive feminists who are fighting against fascism and “online disinformation” and all sorts of other evils. This is why hardly anyone will watch it, even among the Clintons’ most devoted blue MAGA fans. There is nothing new there, there is nothing interesting, it’s terribly produced, it’s the equivalent of a Trump cult-docuseries that hails him as a saint-like genius, with the only difference that that will reach a much broader audience as he still has a devoted significant cult-following and a hate-following to boot, whereas among Democrats and the broader public the Clintons are mainly perceived as non-entities or just reviled, with her approval ratings staying low after her presidential run. This is why politicians running for elections stay as far away from her as possible so as not to hurt their chances: it’s a terrible brand that sucks down everything it comes into contact with. It’s also why her new show only has a miniscule amount of ratings of 567 on IMDB, and it’s at an abysmal 3.6 rating currently. Not even her most devoted following could give enough of a shit to go on the page and give it a high rating to help her. It’s just total non-interest.

Now the reason this is important to keep in mind is because that clip I mentioned from the show was a segment with video essayist Contrapoints, who over the years has made a lucrative career for herself as a radical leftist social and cultural commentator (she has made video styling herself as an anti-capitalist, for example), although more recently adopting a New Deal liberal “social democrat” kind of politics, which in the context of the US is still pretty far on the left, including of the Clintons. In her election video she said she would vote for Biden, but then critique his administration. Of course the first part happened but the second didn’t, as with all these “anarcho-Bidenist” video essayists, who instead went on to do what everyone knew they would do and I noted at the time: defend the Biden administration against critiques from the right and say that it’s essential to do so because another election is coming up, and then another, and then another, etc. etc., so you just end up becoming a Biden Democrat, but with a thin veneer of being actually more to the left and edgy and radical than a typical Biden Democrat. That’s essential for the brand, you have to present yourself as “fighting the power” somehow.

I don’t particularly care what these video essayists adopt as a political project because it’s primarily motivated by their class status and material conditions anyway, as I detailed in a thread in response to Contra’s terrible “Envy” video wherein she presents any kind of revolutionary politics as being rooted in jealousy of the underclasses of their superiors (which is also why they engage in “cancel culture”). This is of course a perfect narrative to inoculate oneself from any kind of criticism, because it all just emanates from the unwashed masses being jealous of you so they want to “cancel you”. This magically turns any critique into some psychopathological defect on the part of those who are doing the criticizing—“they are Puritans! They don’t understand this person’s genius! They want an echo-chamber! They’re just jealous!”—which gives the fans an easy out whenever they’re confronted with any kind of criticism of their fav creator, irrespective of its contents. Of course this “cancelling”, presented as some horrific evil act, has had zero impact on these people’s class status, as they continue to rake in millions a year from making one or two videos. If you feel this is unfairly ascribing these positions to an underlying (albeit in this case a material, class-based) motivation, then I assume you have the same problem with Contra doing the same, albeit in her case without any material, class-based analysis.

Back to the Clinton Girlboss propaganda docu-series: the segment I saw was with Contra, an except of which you can see here:

☀️👀 @zei_squirrel

doing a friendly chat with hillary clinton, a war criminal who is directly responsible for countless deaths abroad and at home, while making a career as an edgy radical left video essayist is incredibly hilarious

After that part they go into Contra’s living room and have a tea while they talk about how terrible online disinformation is, and how Contra has developed a way to deal with it that goes beyond just making “logical” arguments. Chelsea Clinton then says that accountability is important, but both Clintons agree with one aspect of Contra’s anti-“cancel culture” position, the most banal and uninteresting, namely that you shouldn’t totally discount a person’s humanity just because they have a bad belief about something (this again is so banal and everyday that it’s irrelevant: no one discounts an entire person’s humanity just because they disagree about some niche political or social issue, especially if they know them and they are otherwise kind, good people).

The irony is of course that this is the same Hillary Clinton who during her Presidential run made the terrible and totally unnecessary political mistake of narrowing her political appeal and enthusing the opposition by coming up with the ideal-typical embodiment of “cancel culture” in the sense just described with her category of “the deplorables”, in which she put in at least half of Trump supporters (of course this vagueness meant that pretty much every Republican came to identify with it, and proudly so).

And what about the “Bernie Bros”? Did Hillary have much empathy for their humanity when she described them as socially stunted basement dwellers?

Or how about when Chelsea Clinton gleefully joined in on a disgusting smear-campaign against Ilhan Omar, calling her an anti-Semite for her criticisms of the Israel Lobby and the genocidal Israeli Apartheid state?

Notice how I have not even mentioned Hillary and Chelsea Clintons longstanding support for genocidal wars, and in the case of Hillary her active involvement in them as Senator and then Secretary of State. She destroyed Libya and brought slave markets back to it, which she still fully supports despite knowing that happened. I won’t now rehearse the entire litany of Hillary’s war crimes, but it includes millions of dead in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Palestine. Add to that her support for foreign imperialist wars before her active political career as Senator in 2001, and it you get into the tens of millions, but the former suffices to indict her for genocidal war crimes at The Hague. Add to that the countless Americans, primarily black and brown, who were victims of her “super predator” push for “tough on crime” massive expansion of the prison-industrial complex and destroying of even the meager welfare system that existed at the time as First Lady, and you have a list that runs so high into the tens of millions of lives destroyed that you can’t even properly keep track of it anymore.

It’s important to stress this: Any other political figure from a non-Western country who had done anything even remotely close to this, say a Castro, Chavez, Maduro, Putin, Ahmadinejad, anyone from China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, designated as Official Enemies by the State Department, is treated as an evil Hitlerian-Stalinist pariah by everyone in the Western media and political class, which filters through to other content creators like Contra. It would not even enter into their minds to consider participating in a documentary that is positive toward any of these figures. That’s considered insane. If you give the argument that you can spread your message to a larger audience the response will be “what the fuck are you talk about?! That person is worse than Hitler!”

You don’t even have to stretch it that far. Even a figure like Corbyn or Melenchon or some other “controversial” person (as again designated by the Western elite media and political class) would be beyond the pale for most of these people exactly for that reason. This is why AOC shunned Corbyn after doing an event with him and getting backlash over it from some media class hacks: “it’s not a good look.”

What is a good look? Participating in the grotesque propaganda docu-series of genocidal war criminals who have killed more than can be counted. Because they’re normalized by the same media and political class, there is no stigma around associating with them, in fact it boosts your social standing when you do so because it signals that you’re a “serious person” and not a “crank”. Very important if you want to boost your media career, which is of course the primary motivation involved here as it’s the only one that makes sense.

The “I’m actually using this platform to help spread my leftist political message” is absurd for all the reasons I have already outlined, and will sum up again:

• That “platform” is totally irrelevant and marginal and you don’t reach any broad audience with it (and you renounce that standard for other platforms with other figures as noted just now, so it’s not a principled standard in any case but purely self-serving).

• You didn’t even talk about your supposedly “left political project” in any way while you were on that platform, instead only helping to launder the reputation of the hosts—the Clintons and specifically Hillary’s genocidal war criminal status—as respectable progressive fighters against “online disinformation” and fascism. Another irony here incidentally is that Hillary has openly endorsed, in recent years, adopting fascist policies to scapegoat and expel refugees so as to placate fascists, and is also a notorious TERF who said just recently that trans rights should be thrown under the bus because she believes it’s an electoral liability, but congratulations on helping her position herself as a brave fighter against “fascism” on her show. Of course the absurdity of her branding herself as a fighter against “disinformation” speaks for itself.

So even the logic of “we need to make maximum use of platforms afforded to us to spread our message, irrespective of the nature of those platforms”, to which I am somewhat sympathetic with some caveats I’ve highlighted before, is itself horribly violated beyond recognition. There is no principle involved here, some brave stand against the sins of “purism” and “echo-chambers” that anyone critical of this is guilty of indulging. No, it’s just a purely self-serving desire to promote one’s own brand and in the same process help launder the brands of genocidal war criminals. That’s it. There is no underlying principled political project involved here.

And if you like the content this particular video essayist produces, then fine, like it, enjoy it. Here’s a novel idea: you can even disagree with her doing this particular thing, while still enjoying the rest of her content and thinking it’s good. I still think some of Contra’s earlier videos were good, and all her videos are well-produced. She is clearly a talented writer and producer and intelligent. I particularly like her use of Wittgenstein as part of her arguments relating to trans issues.

That’s one aspect of the critique of “cancel culture” that I hinted at before that’s so absurd: forget denying someone’s humanity over doing something that one believes (for good reason in this case, as I have outlined) is bad, but you can even still enjoy and support and like other things they do. Again this is so banal that it’s almost embarrassing to have to point it out, but whenever someone’s fav content creator is criticized, especially someone who has devoted so much time into inoculating themselves from any criticism by presenting it all as emanating from some sort of psychopathological jealousy morphing into “the desire to cancel”, they keep throwing around these accusations as a defense of them. “OMG why are you cancelling this person! This is an evil act!”

Calm down, your fav did something shitty, I and others pointed it out and gave detailed reasons for why, and that’s that. You can still be a patreon to them and stan them. It’s not the end of the world.