Mending the Antisocial
Confronting navel-gazing, nihilism and rejection of progressive patriotism.
Socialism as a Culture
Material conditions drive the forces of change. Education guides the intellectual work. But there is also psychosocial work to be done to evolve our cultures.
What use is being the most well-read Marxist, if culturally we are still navel-gazing liberals and conservatives, unable to connect the masses? Similarly, how do socialists expect to unify the masses under a new vision of community and land stewardship, without creating a new patriotism to support this?
If you find yourself agreeing with messages from the official White House social media account, that is not a green flag. It means their propaganda has worked. “You can either be a Communist, or you can be a Patriot” is not only historically inaccurate, but a false dichotomy meant to preserve supremacist patriotism centered around capital. The White House doesn’t want citizens to realize there is nothing patriotic about capitalism. Patriotism, the love of country, has always truly belonged to the communists. Stuffing Elon Musk’s pockets, or that of any other billionaire more concerned about mitigating human water consumption than data centers, is the most anti-social, anti-patriotic thing one can do. It doesn’t serve the land, or its people. It’s a distortion. What weight would the current distortion of patriotism hold, if citizens began to question what is truly patriotic about people facing rising insecurity and new homeless encampments sprouting.
Let’s be clear that patriotism is not the same as nationalism. Patriotism is the love of country and its shared values, while seeing it as a flawed place that needs commitment to fix. Nationalism is a culture of ethnosupremacy and superiority, and often demands blind loyalty to the state.
In Brazil, the left is taking patriotism back from the right under slogans of sovereignty. “Brasil com S”, or “Brazil with an S”, and the reclamation of the Brazilian flag from the Bolsonaristas is a way to convey a Brazil free from US imperialism. This strategy is effective because it vividly exposes the contradictions of the inverted false patriotism of the right who serve foreign private interests over public national ones.
Marxist political analyst and prominent dialectical materialist, Michael Parenti, argued in Super Patriotism that there is nationalist supremacist patriotism, and a progressive patriotism. Mao said similarly. He also argued that patriotism doesn’t ever go away, therefore it can be fanned and co-opted by the wrong people at any time. History validates them. We’ve seen the manifestation of the nationalist patriotism in the West many times, the MAGA movement being the latest. What will Americans finally do about this patriotism that won’t go away?
Redefining patriotism is not as shallow as changing flags, symbols, or the names of things. A nation can do all that, and still be the same. Many former colonies, which became neo-colonies in Africa, describe the deception in the day they got their own flag, but were still colonized. Analyzing nationalism or decolonization on the basis of optics alone doesn’t paint a full picture. There are parties in the US that wave the American flag, then go on to lead ‘Death to America’ chants in Iran at Khamanei’s funeral, and then there are parties who avoid using it, but cower at supporting real resistance to US imperialism. Who are the American nationalists here, protecting US interests more? There are politicians all over the West that sew disunity, funnel people back into two-party politics, and then others firmly against this. Again who are the real nationalists here protecting status quo interest?
En masse, settlers don’t decolonize themselves. Colonized people decolonize themselves. Native Americans are devastatingly only 2% of the American population in the US now after a legacy of genocide and ethnic cleansing by the Europeans who settled there. Today, Native Americans should self-determine and hold meaningful leadership. Their reality doesn’t end there, as they exist in relation to everything else around them. Whatever else is done on that land; whatever pollution enters their rivers, impacts them too. The US is also a nation of migrants now, from all over the world. The melting pot identity of the US could benefit from a cohesive equalization of ethnicity materially matched by equal opportunity and development that benefits all citizens: no supremacy. Which would also mean prioritized resources to uplift impoverished native reserves and other poor neighbourhoods. This is a deeper form of reparation than any immaterial symbolic gesture, or abandonment.
The current system prioritizes class and racial supremacy. There is a way to do that, for real: communism. Patriotism can become a tool for uniting people under this new vision, for real.
Marxist-Leninists understand that factionalism and balkanization is anti-proletarian internationalism. It is a bourgeois nationalist tactic that divides the working class, squanders revolutionary potential, and makes socialist economies inefficient. It is a historically hostile process that fuels ethnic wars, poverty, and destabilization. Balkanization would not bring clean drinking water to reserves, nor would it protect natives from nationalists. It would be to no ones benefit but the US ruling class to weaponize balkanization and ethnic tension to prevent the masses from unifying against their removal from power. Sadly in this day, because of how divided and antisocial Americans have become, both the left and right would blindly and foolishly eat this up.
On the topic of patriotism, the Western Left still devolves into idealist moralizing and empty virtue signaling because they are forgetting to center people at the root of their performance. What is the point of being a socialist if it’s not improving the material conditions for people? This is similiar to how there is no urgency felt in mobilizing to stop a war and genocide based economy, compared to faraway purist ideals.
This distorted virtue signalling did not fall from the sky, it is a byproduct of liberalism. Western Leftists still concern themselves with how morally pure and correct they appear, not how effective or even actually correct they are. This is antisocial to its core, centering the self and not collective impact or urgency. Culturally, liberalism is a self-centered worldview that placates personal liberties and the self as a driving political force above a collective. Most liberals and conservatives in the West are highly enmeshed in this. Nearly anyone can craft a perfectly moral and idealist speech; that does not warrant us clapping like seals for. We should be having sober and materialist conversations about how to resolve tangible issues within our reach like poverty and lack of clean water on reserves, or the disregard for indigenous autonomy when they reject pipelines on their soil.
Our antisocial tendencies are also fueled by the weaponized distortion of identity politics, propagated by both liberal and conservative culture wars. “Woke” and “Anti-woke” are mirrors to eachother. Both are willing to derail social movements by centering themselves over locking in on greater objectives. Both overfixate on identity and language. Both lack the greater social awareness and embodiment needed to prioritize fighting imperialism and capitalism. Both also tend to exist in an illusive world that is mostly young and online. The movements we are trying to build are meant to exist in real life, helping workers and families. Our culture must not tail either of these chronically online groups and their antisocial, narcissistic tendencies.
Western Marxists would do well to seek supplementary sociocultural knowledge outside of European Marxism. Trump fears communism and Islam for very similar reasons, valuing a life beyond our own navel-gazing and beyond death being some of them. There are lessons from the Islamic Resistance on mending our individualist, antisocial culture, and even many anti-capitalist principles baked into Islamic finance itself. The US tried to break the Islamic Republic of Iran, and undoubtedly made its population stronger and more unified. Iran now also controls the Strait of Hormuz and will be collecting fees indefinitely. The pro-resistance, communal and cultural influence of Shia Islam for generations has helped support Iran’s steadfastness, foresight, and mobilization. We should be note-taking, because our movements are lacking the critical collective embodiment still needed in our hangover of liberalism.
The most-well read Marxist in the West, still doesn’t have that dog in them. Liberal societies placation of the individual as the central driving political force has reached such extremes it has become antisocial and detrimental to not only ourselves, but the world around us. There seems to be no limit to how much we will tolerate while being able to compartmentalize, and lacking an undeniable collective duty beyond ourselves to mobilize. Nihilism is a byproduct of this that must also be rejected wherever it comes up. If only the Self is centered, it can be rationalized that nothing really matters beyond it, both when it comes, and when it goes.
Where we’re at culturally right now, people talk a big game for folks who wouldn’t be able to handle living in a more planned economy due to an inability and willingness to move more like a school of fish. A planned economy means restructuring for long term goals, which is what we would need to do for effectively tackling climate change for example, not just follow the whim of a market or reacting to selfish private pocket interests.
China just removed some, not all, but some arts and humanities degrees that weren’t leading to jobs and contributing to unemployment rates. Many liberals in the West gasped in horror and immediately saw this as terrible, when it is actually is a state’s job to resolve unemployment, not fuel it, nor selfishly allow universities to take people’s tuition money knowing damn well they’re gunna be screwed after. Degrees should match with jobs. It’s dysfunctional when it doesn’t. People go into lifelong debt for their studies, then don’t even wind up getting to live their art anyway. Those who are lucky can pursue another study and career.
”We just need to fund the arts more.” This has become an empty slogan that sounds sensible in theory. Butfunding the arts doesn’t solve the issue that someone also needs to want to receive the art for that to also be a functional societal arrangement. Not everyone is a good artist. We live in societies, not just a world of individuals. In the US there’s an epidemic of unemployed artists who don’t feel driven to pursue anything else, then lean onGoFundMe links. This is dysfunctional.
In a more planned economy, industries that serve luxury capitalism, rich-people playground-stuff, would also have to be reexamined. I was a stripper for 5 years in my 20’s, and almost every woman around me and their dog were also sex workers to afford life. I have no shade for these industries from a moral POV, and people in them deserve utmost safety. But I’ve also soberly reflected that a more planned economy would not lean on Israeli-owned OnlyFans and strip clubs for bored rich men who don’t know what to do with all their heaping cash.
So, for everyone that talks a big game about planned economies, some who even say zero tolerance for any markets (in my view China has proven markets can be socialized too, in this stage of transition) start having real, material conversations about what that really means and if you are actually ready.
Are we culturally socialists yet?
I agree with the overall article. I strongly agree with the argument that patriotism is not an inherently right wing phenomenon but by ceding that ground, one ensures it is a space wholly occupied by the right.
I also agree on the emphasis of creating a motor for actual change. To start racking up quantitative metrics and results offline, over endless pontificating.
I disagree with this section:
“Both also tend to exist in an illusive world that is mostly young and online. The movements we are trying to build are meant to exist in real life, helping workers and families. Our culture must not tail either of these chronically online groups and their antisocial, narcissistic tendencies.”
This was in the section about ‘woke & anti-woke’ discourse etc.
This a similar phenomenon. Due to the origin of the internet and who currently owns the largest platforms, who currently surveil us, etc. We are conditioned to cede the ‘online’ space to the right, the same as with ‘patriotism’. Where inherently the online is treated as an abstraction, it’s a distraction/diversion, it’s the source of mental illnesses, it’s an escape, etc.
This is part of a coordinated campaign, imo, to push First World citizens offline, where they are more easily controlled.
The Imperialists openly speak about wanting to consolidate more and more of the internet, and widen and strengthen their ability to monitor and control us in the Imperialist States. They prefer us being offline, and antagonistic to embracing online organizing, so they can better facilitate this.
The Pandemic period changed the sociality in these Imperialist States. It forced offline citizens into the online, which had been a much more uneven development prior. This made ‘online’ superfluous. Everyone in these States is ‘online’ now. Workers, small business owners, some unemployed homeless, the wealthiest figures, etc. (Almost) everyone. We all scroll.
And this is when terms like ‘touch grass’ and ‘terminally online’ began to be boosted and proliferated. Once these States’ citizens were brought deeper into online community.
When many of the citizens of these States, who may have strayed from posting, masked their mental illnesses, etc. finally embraced the online fully in this period, a mass campaign began to discipline them.
Their ‘offline’ ills became associated with ‘online’ socialization.
The milieu that dominated the space of online thought, descended on these folk and worked to repress certain ideas and views and bring them in line. The internet was ‘under attack’ by people’s conspiracy, people’s superstitions, etc., people’s questioning of previous online movements they were just now encountering. Then they were condemned as reactionary forces.
And this lingers on as a psychological operation still yielded fruit. Where they have us performing these religious rituals of condemning the online as sin, and professing how little we indulge and how we are healthier for it, etc.
The online is where the eyes are in the Imperialist States, it’s where the people are, it’s where significant cultural exchanges are occurring. It’s the space for real education, organizing, etc.
The goal, imo, is bridging online & offline into a funnel. Embracing and mastering the online info war, as a form of guerrilla info warrior, and then bridging this into offline movement building. Not one being drastically more important than the next, but both enmeshed.
By relegating the online to a space of ideas and idealism and the offline to a space of the concrete material reality, we make a mistake that benefits Them.
The online is real, it is concrete, it is our nuclear weapon, it is our hypersonic missiles, etc. And it bridges people across the planet. It helps connect dissidents across the incredibly controlled and inward offline Imperialist States, into a greater social sphere. And this can be used to build powerful movements offline that are reinforced by online social engagement, then reinforced by offline engagement shared online, in perpetuity. Creating a system of motion and progression.
The online & offline are not engaged in a dialectic where harmony cannot be found. Both can coexist and reinforce each other. But They want us to put these spaces at odds and commit free labor of telling people for Them, to ‘disconnect’ to ‘restore sanity’ etc.
I think you would agree with this perspective, I offer, given this article, as your main emphasis is moreso to become an active participant offline and disengage in purity testing. Seeing everything as a tool for revolutionary action offline versus wholesale cutting off certain spheres over verbiage and ideas themselves, if fruitful in practice.
I’ve written better about this ‘offline’ ‘offline’ Pandemic etc. stuff elsewhere, I should transplant it and post it on Substack 😅.
Also, I’m interested in this reclamation of patriotism in Brazil by the Left, you wrote a little about, with the ‘S’ iconography etc. That’s a very interesting (sus) nation with its own issues in their ‘Left’ 🤣. But I trust your perspective, if you vouch for this movement you were referencing, have you produced any educational content on this I can find? Or is there any resources an English speaker can consume to better understand this growing left (communist) Patriotism against the right Bolsonaristas?
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