M-L-M Mayhem!

My recent participation in an event about how anarchists and maoists can work together ––in Hamilton, in the really neat anarchist Tower collective space––has caused me to think of Nietzsche in a non-Nietzschean manner.  As many of my normal readers will be aware, I have particular problems with Nietzsche and a very low tolerance for those (usually philosophy undergraduates or self-proclaimed "intellectuals") who think that Nietzsche is the colloquial "cat's pyjamas."  Because I supposedly have a degree in a discipline that gives me some sort of "authorative" right to speak of Nietzsche––because I, you know, teach him from time to time in a post-secondary setting with the requisite degrees––I do like telling his fans to screw off with dismissive posts about what I generally argue is his reactionary politics.  Even still, due to recent events and hours of reading time, I found myself thinking through some of Nietzsche's categories in a somewhat prod...

My review of Aaron Leonard and Conor Gallagher's Heavy Radicals   has been posted at Marx & Philosophy Review of Books .  Not to let the cliched cat out of its proverbial bag, and thus spoil the review, this book, despite its problems, really proved that, as I've argued elsewhere, we have more to learn from the New Communist Movement than the New Left because the former was not only seen as a larger threat to state security but was  bloody significant.  This book also makes it clear that this high-tide of struggle imploded because of the reasons that I've indicated in the past , and that the internal is more of a determinate than the external.  So let's be somewhat critical about those claims of "micro-Leninisms" that the more namby-pamby elements of the NCM spent all of their time producing, rather than functioning as on-the-the-ground organizers (although, yes, there's something important to be learned from Proletarian Unity's critique, but then...

The cult of the princess, with all of its feudal and patriarchal aspects, is so intrinsically tied to the socialization of little girls that my daughter was already consuming it, despite the fact that both my partner and I haven't been feeding it to her, because contemporary gender socialization is what it is. Meaning, it's fucking immanent. Thankfully, I had something of a breakthrough several days ago when my discovery of an unopened "Wonder Woman" bendable toy––a gift from one of my daughter's aunts––coincided with my daughter's decision to, in the midst of her claims about being a princess (which means, for some reason, nothing more than wearing dresses) suddenly declare herself a "super hero", pretend that a kitchen towel was a cape, and run about the kitchen/living room.  And yes, before you say it, I am aware that Diana is the princess of Themyscira (I used to be a comic geek, peoples, thanks to a dad who read me his original Daredevil comic...