People are always complaining about those danged liberal universities, especially places like mine where we even have “liberal” in the category label. But I always wonder where they get these ideas, because in general students are here to learn, rather than push an agenda, and we keep them busy with things like math. The only exception is, that if you’d been here last year, you would have noticed our bulletin boards were flooded with student-selected Libertarian crapola…”Taxation is Theft” posters, and paeans to capitalism generously provided by right-wing think tanks. It was weird, because it wasn’t at all representative of overall campus sentiment, but was what our tiny minority of raving right-wingers were promoting (see also the Morris North Star, which seems to be happily defunct now).
This year, though, it’s a little different. I was brought up short when I passed a bulletin board and saw this posted:
Awww. The little leftist ragamuffins are getting emboldened. This makes me so happy.
It comes from an organization called crimethinc.
CrimethInc. is a rebel alliance—a decentralized network pledged to anonymous collective action—a breakout from the prisons of our age. We strive to reinvent our lives and our world according to the principles of self-determination and mutual aid.
We believe that you should be free to dispose of your limitless potential on your own terms: that no government, market, or ideology should be able to dictate what your life can be. If you agree, let’s do something about it.
Honestly, most of the noise on campuses gets made by the radical right — see also recent events at Berkeley — so it warms my heart to see that some of our students are finally waking up and making a few quiet protests. Bravo!
My favourite part is when someone from the Morris Fart paper writes about CrimeThinc as if they have a headquarters.
It hasn’t happened yet, but it will.
the interesting thing about this is that there is no stalinist government any where that can be accused controlling this.
as has been stated it is a rebel alliance ( is there some movie series about a rebel alliance some where?) which I am pretty sure has a “target” of authoritarianism. It is probably not much of an astroturf organization/ movement.
though artists like chuck d sound like they have a similar views and have been giving them voice for some time now.
uncle frogy
Only if you adhere to concepts like evidence, facts, logic, and rationality. Otherwise, it’s all due the Benghazi e-mails on Big China faking climate change.
CrimethInc. has been around for close to 20 years, I know some of them personally, they are anarchists so no stalinists involved, no Soros bux. /s
They have always been very into the visual arts, making great posters forever. One of my favorites came out just after 9/11 – it had a big picture of the twin towers in flames, with the title “Your government can’t protect you” and a few paragraphs of text explaining why. The Asheville faction of Earth First! had rented out a booth at a local sustainable/organic convention at the ag center and we printed off 300 copies and stuck them on our table next to the rest of the zines and merch. The reaction of the passers by was amazingly uniform, they usually looked shocked at first, then started reading, nodded their head, folded it up, stuck it in their pocket and walked off. We gave all of them away in a couple hours and I had to go print another stack.
Their latest book is called “No wall they can build” it’s about the border control system and was written by a long time activist with the ‘No more deaths’ campaign in Arizona. He’s a great story teller, it’s easy to read and I highly recommend it.
They also have a podcast which can be accessed via itsgoingdown.org
Is it just me, or has this place become a lot more friendly to revolutionary socialism in the last 10 months or so?
Nope, same old progressive liberalism. Just have the Dump as Prez makes it seem more radical. I went to college in the late 60’s. I know revolutionary socialist rhetoric. I don’t hear that from the posters.
Maybe not “revolutionary,” but I’ve noticed a swing toward liberal socialism on the part of many US liberals, of late, especially in the area of publicly funded health-care.
Well, that is the cheapest way to go for the best results. We only need to look to Europe for that. Forbes article on results, Wiki on costs. But then, the real question many folks should ask, do senior citizens on Medicare complain about their coverage compared to younger folks with high deductibles, copays, and approved supplier lists?
Personally, I think Medicare can be improved to cover all expenses including pharmaceuticals, I have to buy supplemental insurance for part A deductibles, part B (doctor’s visits and testing), and part D (meds). As a volunteer driver for ElderCare, it seems that almost all of those I drive have money problems, which health care costs is a factor. I haven’t heard meds vs. food yet, but its still month one of my driving experience…
Nerd of Redhead #8:
You’ll get no argument from me. I just wish someone could persuade Jeremy friggin’ Hunt, secretary of state for
stealth-privatisation of the NHShealth, that it’s true.Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls wrote:
Yeah, but your reps will just lie about it, confident that your feckless news media won’t challenge them, just like they do about Canada’s medicare system. This story made the rounds in Canada yesterday: Toronto doctor helps sell Bernie Sanders’ single-payer plan: here’s what you need to know
Just about ever word of that is a lie. Some Canadians go to the States for healthcare, but it’s for elective procedures and generally only by the wealthy who refuse to spend time on a waiting list with the rest of us. There is no monetary limit on the number of surgeries that can be performed in a year (it’s the U.S. private medical insurance industry that does this), and no one calls it medicine up here. There are problems with the Canadian system (waiting lists on elective procedures can be long), but despite that very few would give it up for the U.S. one.
Also from the article linked above:
Eh, don’t really care for their solidarity with those who burn down scientific research facilities at Universities.
It’s called “rehashed communist propaganda”, and not very original at that.
mirrorfield: I just assumed that anyone with a passing familiarity with leftist thought would get the reference. I figure the poster’s designers thought the same way. So I’d call it a timely modernisation of a snappy, on-point piece of communist propaganda. I mean, it’s still true.
mirrorfield@12,
The poster you link to is the work of anarchists (possibly anarchist communists, but not communists in the sense usually given to that term).
Slight correction to my #14: actually, looking more closely, that version looks like a “Wobbly” (Industrial Workers of the World) production – revolutionary trades unionists, anarcho-syndicalist in orientation.
@7
Publicly funded healthcare, and social insurance schemes in general, aren’t socialist.
They are smart capitalism.
Halcyon Dayz, FCD #16:
So a social insurance scheme isn’t socialist. Uhuh.
I’m actually surprised that government supplied health care isn’t supported by the rethugs, since having companies pay for their employee’s medical insurance, means they aren’t as competitive on the world market, since almost all of our trading partners have government paid health insurance.
Nerd, I figure it’s down to dogma, plain and simple. The market is god, and Milton Friedman is its prophet.
Daz @17:
National Socialism isn’t socialist. Uhuh! Funny old words.
Rob Grigjanis #20:
Okay, fair point. I still fail to see how social insurance schemes aren’t socialist though. Take the NHS; publicly funded by a flat-rate, PAYE tax and free at the point of use to any citizen. How is that not socialism? (Just to be clear, I do not use the term pejoratively.)
Daz @21: I don’t much care whether you label a particular policy as socialist. Personally, I don’t; ‘socialist’ is something I associate with a government, not a policy. But mileage varies, etc. I was reacting to your apparent dismissal of what I thought was an important point made by Halcyon Dayz; that smart capitalists can implement policies consistent with socialism to keep the plebs quiet.
Socialism is the negation of capitalism.
A social market economy (AKA Rhine Capitalism) makes life easier for capitalists, no plebeian mobs for one…
Don’t forget that it was under the arch-conservative Bismarck that the world’s first version of “socialized” medicine was implemented.
One of the comments, by a character in a book I just finished reading, I thought was all too accurate: “Liberal in the classic dictionary sense means adherence to the idea of maximizing personal freedoms. According to some politicians though it is, ‘Anything we don’t happen to like.'” Seems like it defines the problem very succinctly, especially since super-capitalists seem to think the right to rob everyone else blind is a “personal freedom”, that is mostly, and must be made even more devoid of all consequences.
The present law forbidding Medicare from negotiating prescription drug prices would be a really obvious place to start.