Two appearances for the public: look like a pragmatic worker (on weekends, Fred Hampton), and look like someone to take seriously (MLK, Malcolm X)
The whole "I wanna look however I want!" thing is straight up idealism when it comes to rhetoric and politics, do you think you're going to command respect from people working two manual labor jobs looking like you woke up at 1PM hungover and wearing an oversized videogame shirt
"But dirtbag left!" That shit was never for organizing or actually acquiring power, that was just a coping mechanism for disaffected American almost-leftists, doing coke and having edgy humor isn't enough
crust-punk/hippie/edgy-middle-class-student thing we’ve got going on now
A bit murkier, but related: I've felt for a while that the witch/satanist stuff that I occasionally see grafted onto left-wing aesthetics would be off-putting to most people.
Although at the same time I'm not sure what "worker-core" is supposed to be. Like, there isn't really a unified worker aesthetic given how many kinds of people comprise the working class. I think the main thing is probably just looking approachable?
It's rightfully off-putting because it's childish, it was childish in the 80s/90s and it's childish now
It's contrarianism against American Protestantism and mainstream culture, there's no deeper framework of norms and behavior and tradition, all modern 'witch/pagan' stuff was streamlined if not entirely made up from the 1800s onwards by the equivalent of fantasy authors, and the rest of it is orientalist bullshit of chakras and karma with no real relation to Hinduism or Buddhism, add in some New Age anti-medicine bullshit to complete the picture
If religion is the opiate of the masses, why the fuck should leftists tolerate magical thinking of hexes and astrology?
It's the more passive, lib version of evangelicals and their "prayer warrior" bullshit
Not that I disagree with the rest of the comment, but this is constantly misquoted - it's not so direct in the non-truncated version.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
It's more talking about how religion is a reflection of material conditions.
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Two appearances for the public: look like a pragmatic worker (on weekends, Fred Hampton), and look like someone to take seriously (MLK, Malcolm X)
The whole "I wanna look however I want!" thing is straight up idealism when it comes to rhetoric and politics, do you think you're going to command respect from people working two manual labor jobs looking like you woke up at 1PM hungover and wearing an oversized videogame shirt
"But dirtbag left!" That shit was never for organizing or actually acquiring power, that was just a coping mechanism for disaffected American almost-leftists, doing coke and having edgy humor isn't enough
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A bit murkier, but related: I've felt for a while that the witch/satanist stuff that I occasionally see grafted onto left-wing aesthetics would be off-putting to most people.
Although at the same time I'm not sure what "worker-core" is supposed to be. Like, there isn't really a unified worker aesthetic given how many kinds of people comprise the working class. I think the main thing is probably just looking approachable?
It's rightfully off-putting because it's childish, it was childish in the 80s/90s and it's childish now
It's contrarianism against American Protestantism and mainstream culture, there's no deeper framework of norms and behavior and tradition, all modern 'witch/pagan' stuff was streamlined if not entirely made up from the 1800s onwards by the equivalent of fantasy authors, and the rest of it is orientalist bullshit of chakras and karma with no real relation to Hinduism or Buddhism, add in some New Age anti-medicine bullshit to complete the picture
If religion is the opiate of the masses, why the fuck should leftists tolerate magical thinking of hexes and astrology?
It's the more passive, lib version of evangelicals and their "prayer warrior" bullshit
Not that I disagree with the rest of the comment, but this is constantly misquoted - it's not so direct in the non-truncated version.
It's more talking about how religion is a reflection of material conditions.
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deleted by creator