[lbo-talk] POC opposition to Occupy

// ravi ravi at platosbeard.org
Sat Nov 19 17:12:41 PST 2011


On Nov 19, 2011, at 11:45 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Nov 2011 12:11:26 -0500
> "shag carpet bomb" <shag at cleandraws.com> quoted:
>
>> "OWS is not against the system, OWS is the system because WHITENESS
>> and IMPERIALISM are at the heart of the problem.
>
> Shag, I'm glad you're reading this stuff so I don't have to. What
> a sad sick muddle. The grievance as property -- so very American.
>

A lot of that brown indignation that shag posted seems almost comical, but this bit, the response from OWS (assuming it really is some sort of semi-official response), is quite ignorant libertarian fantasy and equally comical, I would say:


> Why no authors of color on the Primer List?
> • No reason whatsoever. We wanted to be blind to the “color”,
> religion, gender, culture, socio-economic status, etc. of all the
> authors, as content is king for this site’s objective. While the
> messenger must always be considered, the message/information trumps
> priority of the writer’s personal background. Many authors of all
> creeds will be included in the future, surely. Not because of the
> color of their skin, but the content of their writings.

Back to the brown indignation: I think Dean is right when she critiques (IIUC) the tendency to shy away from speaking for others. That tendency is, in my opinion, part of the amoral pose, as if politics is a science that can be settled empirically and with symbol manipulation. At the same time, these sort of blog posts illustrate the flip side of the problem: the elevation of personal angst to “people of color” issues. Ironically enough, these “fuck you OWS” rants seem conceptually congruent with Dean’s own “this is not my revolution”.

—ravi



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list