The long-read articles thread.
1This, on a parent coaching his young daughter's football team, is lovely.
at war with bellends
Re: The long-read articles thread.
2As it was the anniversary of Corrales-Castillo this past week, it's only right to link to one of the finest pieces of modern boxing writing - A Day's Sail.
at war with bellends
Re: The long-read articles thread.
4Wait, I'm sorry, this was on the ZX Spectrum?A_Man_Who_Tries wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 2:11 am Unbelievable, and truly fascinating.
https://if50.substack.com/p/1992-silverwolf
"There's a felling I get when I look to the west"
"When the meaningful words. When they cease to function. When there's nothing to say."
"When the meaningful words. When they cease to function. When there's nothing to say."
Re: The long-read articles thread.
5The Morality of Revolution: Urban Cleanup Campaigns, Reeducation Camps and Citizenship in Socialist Mozambique (1974-1988)
Dissertation on the labour camps set up by the marxist-leninist guerilla force and later ruling party FRELIMO, particularly the underlying philosophy of the penal system and the nation building project.
I've read about a third so far and it's fascinating and aligns with many of my suspicions.
Basically after independence the government set about removing those social elements identified as corrupting and a hindrance to the casting-off of colonial rule and the construction of the new nation.
Drinking, vagrancy, prostitution, adultery and revealing clothing were some of the offenses liable for punishment. Bars and music venues were closed down.
Labour (as in all communist states) was considered to have a correcting function, a way of curing criminal or anti-social tendencies.
(Not that different from old Europe and its workhouses, in other words.)
Discipline, temperance, austere living; these were the desired virtues of the new citizen. For this reason the countryside was considered the ideal existence, and the cities a corrupting influence.
Noteworthy is that the party leaders were all brought up in protestant missionary schools. These missionaries also gave voice to what they perceived as the fallen state of the local population, in a sympathetic-yet-condescending way.
(Isn't "sympathetic-yet-condescending" kind of how social conservatism in Europe visavi the working class was expressed? Even within the labour movement itself you find this.)
Earlier generations of pro-independence intellectuals had been very preoccupied with trying to "fit in" with the colonial rulers, to adopt what they pereived to be their higher values and more civilized behaviours - if they managed to do this, so they reasoned, they would be accepted as equals.
(Frantz Fanon writes about this in "Wretched..." I think.)
Clear parallels to eugenics thinking (championed as we know by many US progressives and European social democrats).
Amusing excerpt from internal party politics:
And apparently there were MGTOWs in the 1930s as well:
Dissertation on the labour camps set up by the marxist-leninist guerilla force and later ruling party FRELIMO, particularly the underlying philosophy of the penal system and the nation building project.
I've read about a third so far and it's fascinating and aligns with many of my suspicions.
Basically after independence the government set about removing those social elements identified as corrupting and a hindrance to the casting-off of colonial rule and the construction of the new nation.
Drinking, vagrancy, prostitution, adultery and revealing clothing were some of the offenses liable for punishment. Bars and music venues were closed down.
Labour (as in all communist states) was considered to have a correcting function, a way of curing criminal or anti-social tendencies.
(Not that different from old Europe and its workhouses, in other words.)
Discipline, temperance, austere living; these were the desired virtues of the new citizen. For this reason the countryside was considered the ideal existence, and the cities a corrupting influence.
Noteworthy is that the party leaders were all brought up in protestant missionary schools. These missionaries also gave voice to what they perceived as the fallen state of the local population, in a sympathetic-yet-condescending way.
(Isn't "sympathetic-yet-condescending" kind of how social conservatism in Europe visavi the working class was expressed? Even within the labour movement itself you find this.)
Earlier generations of pro-independence intellectuals had been very preoccupied with trying to "fit in" with the colonial rulers, to adopt what they pereived to be their higher values and more civilized behaviours - if they managed to do this, so they reasoned, they would be accepted as equals.
(Frantz Fanon writes about this in "Wretched..." I think.)
It's interesting to think about this in the context of nation-building. This bourgeois/protestant fixation with defilement, in the form of foreign influence - the corrupting influence of the colonial power on the nation; the corrupting influence of the city on the countryside; the corrupting influence of international finance on "productive" work...Swiss-Presbyterian missionary Henri-Alexandre Junod (1863-1934) was one of the main proponents of this vision. Like most of his contemporary colleagues, Henri Junod was convinced that the effects of industrialization in southern Africa were destroying the picturesque aspects of native life and fostering moral decay. Along with their imperialist wars, he claimed, European civilization brought “vices, curses, debasing influences, and immoral customs that paganism itself had never known.” Besides the scientific aims of its ethnographic material, his monumental two- volume book, The Life of a South African Tribe (1912/1913), is a moral treatise on how to guide the “heathen natives” in their inevitable transformation in face of the challenges of modern industrialization, or, in his own words, a “remedy” for the “native problem.” Junod’s volumes are filled with lamentations of the negative influences of modernity on Africans, chief among them alcoholism, prostitution, the breakdown of family units and disrespect for social hierarchies. Junod argued that the missionary enterprise in southern Africa had to be devoted to saving the “natives” from degeneracy and a fall from grace.
Clear parallels to eugenics thinking (championed as we know by many US progressives and European social democrats).
Amusing excerpt from internal party politics:
Oh do I know...Having analyzed the political and moral behavior of Uria Simango, characterized by counterrevolutionary action, opportunism, ambition, corruption and irresponsibility, the Central Committee concluded that he does not have the qualities to be a member of Frelimo and decided to expel him from our organization.
This mode of condemnation became the new trend in the party’s lexicon and political culture. A heavily moralist, puritanical, belittling, and often ambiguous language
And apparently there were MGTOWs in the 1930s as well:
Macandya found it difficult to get a “civilized” girl to marry him in KaMpfumu (the local name for the district of Lourenço Marques). He went to Johannesburg several times to earn the money for lobolo, but the women he found fell short of his expectations. The first one could not write, so he “ended up forgetting her” while in the mines in South Africa. The second one could write, and he was “so in love” with her. But when he returned, he brought meat and asked her to prepare beef. He was shocked to learn that she did not know what beef was. He left her and went to the Swiss Mission “to find” another potential wife. The girl he found at the mission was educated, but was not prepared to handle the duties of housekeeping. He concluded that the girls of KaMpfumu were “spoiled” (va bolile), and therefore the men of Mozambique had no country to call their own.
born to give
Re: The long-read articles thread.
6I Tried to Be a Communist
Account of writer Richard Wright on his brief experience in the US Communist Party in the 1930s.
Account of writer Richard Wright on his brief experience in the US Communist Party in the 1930s.
I found myself arguing alone against the majority opinion and then I made still another amazing discovery. I saw that even those who agreed with me would not support me. At the meeting I learned that when a man was informed of the wish of the party he submitted, even though he knew with all the strength of his brain that the wish was not a wise one, was one that would ultimately harm the party’s interests.
It was not courage that made me oppose the party. I simply did not know any better. It was inconceivable to me, though bred in the lap of Southern hate, that a man could not have his say. I had spent a third of my life traveling from the place of my birth to the North just to talk freely, to escape the pressure of fear. And now I was facing fear again.
born to give
Re: The long-read articles thread.
7If you find his view interesting you might want to check a book called "The God That Failed". It's essays written by people who fell out of love with Communism.
"There's a felling I get when I look to the west"
"When the meaningful words. When they cease to function. When there's nothing to say."
"When the meaningful words. When they cease to function. When there's nothing to say."
Re: The long-read articles thread.
8Yeah I know about that one. Thought it was just some cold war crap. Seems to not really be the case. I'll look it up.
born to give
Re: The long-read articles thread.
9Well you hit the nail on the head but it got a little bent going in. The problem with its time of publication is it served as a work that politicians and Red Scare advocates used as ammunition to fuel the flames of regarding all socialistic ideals and prinicables into a nice little box that should be burnt. Arthur Kostler contribution really was damming but most of his work is bull shit in my opinion ( Darknes At Noon gets a pass.) I am not sure but I am almost positive McCartey quoted it during his inquisition but I am sure he never read it since he was perpetually drunk his whole life. Sounds like some one had a semi intelligent intern. Honestly I read it when I was 19 and a few weeks later I was no longer a party member. I’l always be a socialist In the concept Toney Blair described as “The Third way” . Between that book and the horror stories my relatives and their friends would tell me their live in Poland and Prauge. There must be a way where there is a free market economy and adaquit social programs to help people. I grew up in Cicero IL and I know that people would not be selling drugs and robbing if they knew that the had food, a place to live, access to eduction for their children, continuing education for them selves, and some safety net so that if they do get sick they are not a slave to medical debt for decades. The book might have done more harm than good. In 1998 I heard both arguments, n 2021 I have hear both arguments. Worth reading. And if you hate your copy I’ll buy it from you. I can never have enough books.
Forgive me, it's late, I'm rambling and not spell checking.
Blame the guy who posted his story about his RME sound card. really got me worked up. In a good way.
Here, fuck this book,
Get a copy of Anthony Burgess's "Earthly Powers"
"There's a felling I get when I look to the west"
"When the meaningful words. When they cease to function. When there's nothing to say."
"When the meaningful words. When they cease to function. When there's nothing to say."
Re: The long-read articles thread.
102016 Edward W. Said London Lecture by Naomi Klein published in the London Review of Books. Best thing I've read by Klein.
Let Them Drown
The Violence of Othering in a Warming World
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n11 ... them-drown
Let Them Drown
The Violence of Othering in a Warming World
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n11 ... them-drown