r/ContraPoints

Natalie now has two kitties! ♡♥

I've just left this comment replying to her new Patreon video, thought I would also share it here lol:

As a lifelong Democratic Socialist Basque Spaniard raised here in Spain in a Democratic Socialist household, I actually completely disagree with your take that the American Left is more dysfunctional than the European Left, or at least than the Spanish Left:

You pretty much exclusively focused throughout this video on the online American Left. But there’s also the institutional Democratic Socialist-leaning American Left operating within the Democratic Party & represented by Bernie, AOC, Zohran, Abdul El-Sayed, Ilhan Omar, Troy Jackson, Peggy Flanagan, Angie Nixon, the new wave of DSA Right candidates that have been winning primaries all across the country… & to me the political faction within the Democratic Party that this institutional American Left represents looks anything but dysfunctional, in fact I’m extremely envious of the American Left for having an institutional Left as effective & functional as this & really wish we had something like this here in Spain.

But sadly we don’t: in the last five years or so the obscene levels of brutal infighting within the institutional Left caused by the tremendously toxic, sectarian & extremist drift of Podemos, a left-populist political force that rose in 2014 to become the leading force within the space of the Spanish Alternative Left, have led to the complete utter demise of the Spanish institutional Left, it’s beyond depressing, to the extent that I barely pay attention any more to Spanish politics because I just can’t stand everything that’s happened & instead devote most of my energy to following this new rise of the institutional American Left which I find tremendously inspiring & encouraging (or at the very least MUCH MUCH more inspiring & encouraging than the complete demise of everything we spent so many years building that we’ve suffered here).

First of all, let me say that she remains pretty much the most coherent, honest and lucid political voice of my generation. Uncontested.

Now, I wanna open a discussion about what I identify as one of the main points of divergence within the left (internet-tribal divisions aside): Whether or not a better world is possible. Or the extent to which it can be better.

I think she's never been so clear about where she stands on this, which, turns out, is pretty pessimistic: At the end of the day you're still "working at a factory", which sucks no matter what ideology your boss subscribes to.

Now, while being in full agreement about needing to make an impact in the real world, here and now, I'm also a big believer in cultivating an ideological horizon. A Utopia. A lot of smarter people than I have pointed out how the left's inability to articulate a compelling alternative since the fall of the Berlin wall is one of the major reasons it has struggled to compete electorally across the world.

A liberal might say, we are gonna make the world better, we're gonna put worker protections in place, tax the rich, publich healthcare, yaddayadda. But ultimately these are all compromises.

I have all these worker protections, but the people you're protecting me against are still there, holding all the cards, thinking up novels ways to skirt regulations and exploit me. You're taxing the rich, but they're still rich, and we're still meat at their buffet. You're giving us a nice welfare state... until you lose an election and the right wingers take it away.

Indeed, we are living in the aftermath of the liberal utopia. Post-great depression, liberals had it all, they built the things, there was prosperity... aaand it was still not enough for the rich. They slowly eroded away the welfare state, concentrated power, and paved the way for a return to feudalism essentially. This guy recently did a fantastic breakdown of the history of this decades-long project of the right, with a focus on media consolidation, the Overton window, etc. Well worth the watch.)

(little brag here, but I've been describing the ideology of the elites as "techno-feudalism" or "neo-feudalism" for years now, and only in the last year, with Thiel, Musk, etc. going more mask-off, have I seen these terms finally cropping up in articles.... pretty chuffed with myself)

So the question is: What would be different the second time around? Why must we be locked into class warfare forever...

Well, like I said, I'm a believer, I don't think we must and I don't think we will be. Neither do I think we will run for a different set of chains, as in some imagined authoritarian communist dystopia. And this is the core of the matter here. How to convince someone of a possibility? Of a crazy possibility like a non-authoritarian socialist utopia?

>Skeptic: Can you name me a single viable example of a society which has existed without a government? >Graeber: Sure. There have been thousands. I could name a dozen just off the top of my head: the Bororo, the Baining, the Onondaga, the Wintu, the Ema, the Tallensi, the Vezo...

>Skeptic: But those are all a bunch of primitives! I’m talking about anarchism in a modern, technological society.

>Graeber: Okay, then. There have been all sorts of successful experiments: experiments with worker’s self-management, like Mondragon; economic projects based on the idea of the gift economy, like Linux; all sorts of political organizations based on consensus and direct democracy...

>Skeptic: Sure, sure, but these are small, isolated examples. I’m talking about whole societies.

>Graeber: Well, it’s not like people haven’t tried. Look at the Paris Commune, the revolution in Republican Spain... Skeptic: Yeah, and look what happened to those guys! They all got killed!

>The dice are loaded. You can’t win...

-From Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber.

So yeah, I don't know exactly how I came to believe a better world is possible. And convincing others is even harder. Learning about all these "partial" achievements, like the ones Graeber lists there, certainly reinforce my beliefs, but I think I must have had some preexisting "seed" belief.

I could talk about speculative fiction that helps us imagine different worlds, like Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed. (Le Guin was in the tangent shortlist by the way, so let's definitely make that happen for next time, people!!) By I don't know if fiction can ever be convincing, because they can always claim that the author has in some sense twisted their reality to prove their point. Even in a strikingly grounded and beautifully human text like The Dispossessed.

So yeah.. I don't know! Somebody please drop the answer to "how do we shine the light of a beautiful utopian future into other peoples' souls" in the comments below, please.

Available on Patreon.

...liberty

I bought an Anita Bryant vinyl. It was like $1. It was preowned, so none of the money went to Anita or her family (she died in 2024, btw side note that her granddaughter is married to a woman).

I saw it in the store and I’ve always wanted a keepsake from one of Contrapoints’ videos that wasn’t a book. I haven’t touched the vinyl itself in case it burns my gay skin upon contact.

Does anyone have anything else like this? Content where you don’t condone the creator, and your purchase hasn’t funded them, but you for some reason want?

Maybe this is personal masochism; I also (as a Jew) own a copy of Mein Kampf.

I donated a much larger amount to my local LGBT+ centre for my sins, and brought Anita along for the walk. I could feel her presence looking up at me, burning in a hot vat of orange juice.

I love the aesthetic of her room. The lighting really enhances its dark, sophisticated, yet intimate atmosphere. I want my entire home interior to have a somewhat similar vibe to this someday. I think this is called "Dark Academia"?

It’s a cozy Friday night 🙏🏽💜
I hope we can get another Subnautica stream in the future!