Roger Waters has faces more backlash for simply opening his mouth on any given day of the week for the last forty five years than this fella has over the last week. It’s illegitimate to pretend like there hasn’t been a organized and concerted effort by elites controlling all forms of popular media to quell the left’s point of view for over 50 years. Where’s the lefty viral artists?
Pawn Stars Rick: “Best I can do is a Grimes.”
Where’s the lefty viral artists?
they were all found in burning cars
she thinks that people like the song despite the bigotry, when they obviously like it because of the bigotry. this isnt even a far right song, its an average conservative song. there are millions of conservatives in usamerica its moronic to think that the left needs a “response” to a regular ass racist song. if anything all the usamerican left cares about is propaganda.
I get what she’s trying to say, as goofy as this hog song is, it did it’s job and people are eating it up. The left will never reach the masses with pro working class art, that stuff is going triple tinfoil and reaching nobody when you compare the numbers.
All I see is 🌽🌽🌽
Am I reading something different than everyone else here? Because I completely understand what she’s trying to get at.
Leftists are dismissing the song because its early interest was astroturfed. This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because it has actual interest among people now, because of the astroturfing. How do we combat this problem? Just because we dismiss the song as astroturfed right-wing propaganda doesn’t mean the listeners are. The right is changing minds with content like this, and it’s problematic for us.
“It can’t be viral because it was astroturfed” isn’t a helpful assessment, because the song absolutely is viral now. It even came up in my feed on a music community. I clicked it because it looked like it would be up my alley based on the title and thumbnail (I enjoy folk music that shits on capitalists) and I only realized it was that song once I got to the line about people “milking welfare.” The astroturfing may have raised the song up the hill, but at a certain point it had enough views and such to carry it based on momentum.
What I think the author is trying to say is that the right is succeeding here, and largely leftist media fails to make the same impact. Probably because we don’t have the same connections that allow astroturfing that the people who pushed this song do. But that does leave a meaningful question: how do we reverse this trend and get people interested in leftist topics through arts and culture? How do we promote the material we have already created?
I’m reading the same thing. I think people are upset because they want her to be wrong, but the reality is that if there a revolution in the US, Germany, or UK today, it would undoubtedly result in an openly and unrestrained fascist government. The reason leftism isn’t going viral has nothing to do with astroturfing and everything to do with a lack of an effective propaganda strategy given current material conditions. It’s possible that there IS no such strategy to be found. In this case, CJ is demanding something impossible, but the correct response is not to say she doesn’t get it but rather to actually do the work of attempting to develop a strategy or a theory. I think people are far too hopeful that Western leftists can actually get something revolutionary done.
I think a simple part of the problem is that fascism “has it easy” when it comes to messaging: they get to scapegoat easy targets, and appeal to populism. We do not have the luxury of such easy-to-consume messaging. This is also why our memes get made fun of for being wordy or hard to understand, whereas right-wing memes can be easily distilled to “haha minority bad.”
We’re also fighting against decades of entrenched liberal propaganda in each individual we try to reach, whereas fascists get to build upon that foundation.
