Some Comments on Plagiarism

 

Found the image on this page, the credits for the image are as follows "Paper Trident / iStock / Getty Images Plus"

Big news on YouTube (YT), drama has ocurred that has effected several channels that I've watched on occasion. The main actors are Hbomberguy (Hbomb), with an important follow-up video by Todd in the Shadows (Todd), the main topic is misinformation and plagiarism and the main target of the criticism is another YT I've watched headed by James Somerton, the channel has the same name as its owner. I haven't James's video because the channel has taken down every video. 

If you spend a lot of time on YT then chances are good you'll know the gist of this already, but if not I'll briefly explain. Todd has a channel on YouTube that reviews music, while James Somerton and Hbomberguy are what's called video essayists, which is just what it sounds like, essays in video format. 

Both videos are quite long Hbomb's is just under four hours, though James becomes the focus in the back half, the first part is a collection of other YT channels that muddy the information waters. I previously saw a rough draft of the first part some months ago, so I skipped that part in the finished video. They are both thorough and there isn't much in the way of padding, there is some minor griping in both videos, but they mostly document serious acts of foul play, and it's clear that the minor complaints are brought up out of personal frustration and anger and not out of malice for malice’s sake. I do recommend watching them not just for context on this blog but for general viewing. 

Since both do such a good job of documenting James's many misdeeds I'm not writing this to add to them, the case is pretty well solved, I am writing this for a couple of reasons that are somewhat related. I'm a little saddened to learn about James actions, I watched his videos and was a bit of a fan. I'm openly Queer and have been looking for more queer information and content, Queer stuff isn't exactly obscure, but it is niche, gay media that isn't pornography isn't banned exactly, but it often gets stuck in a grey area where it is accessible if you put in some work to find it and can pay more, and books tend to be harder to find online, and you have to resort to out of print second or third hand copies or blogs that quote heavily from them or upload scanned pages. There's been more progress in giving queer material more mainstream exposure, but it can still be quite tricky. 

I've turned to podcasts and blogs and YT video creators. James was a big fish in a small pond, his channel was doing very well with 200,000+ subscribers and videos often in the 100,000s to a million views range. You could avoid him, but you'd have to use a plugin that lets you block certain channels. The videos had a slick look to them, they came out regularly and in large quantities, and often related to topics I had at least some interest in. I wasn't a hardcore fanatic, though I was paying just enough attention to his channel that I can confirm that parts of Hbomb's video about James deliberately trying to fire up his fan base to side with him in his feuds with others was a thing. I saw the comments and community posts where he claimed he was being attacked, didn't know the context of them at the time, I just thought it was another example of toxic interactions with others that online platforms encourage. Which, with hindsight, was correct, just not in the way I thought at the time. Another thing that James used to do that was overlooked by the two big videos is that James wasn't shy of emotional statements of vulnerability that may or may not have been true, I have no grounds or place to comment on his personal life, but, in the aftermath of the revelations I suspect were used to further manipulate his audience. I certainly felt sorry for the guy.

I can also confirm that James was very sloppy at citing sources, his videos gave the strong impression that everything he was saying in them were his own ideas or the results of his own investigations, or of someone he was collaborating with. And I can tell you first hand that he was effective at spreading misinformation, I found Todd's video harder to watch of the two because there are several points where he fact checks bits of the videos that I believed from watching those videos. I did not believe James's Gay Nazi comments which shocked me when I saw them in Todd's video because I'm already quite knowledgable on that subject, and because I was intimately familiar with the source for that video, Richard Plant's The Pink Triangle. I transcribed the damn thing as a way to help more people find out about as at the time I could only get a second hand book and the web was full of Christian right wing sites promoting the Pink Swastika, a tract of propaganda that tries to paint the Nazis as a homosexual movement. Furthermore, I can't be certain, but the part where James says the SS was full of homosexuals probably comes from the Pink Swastika, I know the Pink Swastika makes that claim and Pink Triangle does not, and I can't think of a creditable source that also makes that claim. 

I said I wouldn't join in the pile on, but that did, well, provoked some feelings. If you're curious why I didn't pick up on it at the time, I watched that video once and when I tried to watch it again to pay attention it had been removed.

Anyway, I'm going to borrow Hbomb's trick and now pivot entirely to a different subject, and that is plagiarism and the Situationist International.

 

 

Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.

The above text is thesis 207 of the Society of the Spectacle, by Guy Debord and the Situationists.  It was plagiarised from Isidore Ducasse, according to the English translator of this Situationist text. Debord has committed plagiarism, and it's sort of amusing that he plagiarised a thought on plagiarism. But, to me, the interesting part is that neither Debord nor Ducasse are talking about plagiarism. It's a statement about building off of the work of others and a rejection of the auteur and the belief that ideas are the property of one individual alone. If the thesis an advocacy of anything, it's the necessity of copyright infringement and a damning criticism of intellectual property as an obstacle to human expression and progress. 

I'm going to take that thesis again and bold the parts that point to my interpretation.

Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.

This is the act of adaptation and experimentation, by changing it and removing falsehoods and substituting a new "right" idea you have added your own work and altered it. Technically, plagiarism could still be present if you took credit for the whole thing including the original idea, but that isn't represented in the thesis. Going back to James Somerton and applying this thesis, we see that James does embrace many an author's phrase and makes use of their expressions, but I don't think he erases false ideas and replaces them with better ones. As Todd and Hbomb have shown, the opposite is usually true when he makes changes and inserts his own ideas. So, oddly, I think we've discovered a definition of plagiarism that James Somerton's work doesn't fall under. Perhaps a rebranding to 1950s French inspired anti-art is in store for James Somerton's future?

Generally speaking Debord and the Situationists were guilty of actual plagiarism on occasion, the thesis itself is an obvious example though there is a brief and opaque acknowledgement of where Debord got the idea within the User's Guide. As a group, they were openly contemptuous of art as a concept within capitalist society.

It is in fact necessary to eliminate all remnants of the notion of personal property in this area. The appearance of new necessities outmodes previous “inspired” works. They become obstacles, dangerous habits. The point is not whether we like them or not. We have to go beyond them.

A User's guide to Detournement 

 

But, most of the criticism and evaluations of this that I've seen associate the concept of detournement. Detournement is not just a pain to spell (I find saying it out loud helps) it's the official name for the Situationists most famous activity. The films, paintings and photographs that they altered are all examples of this. It's arguably the Situationists lasting contribution, there are still small groups and individual artists experimenting with the style and there are faint echoes of it in current internet meme culture. Yes, most examples of Detournement I am familiar with take pre-existing imagery and then change them to alter the meaning of the image. But they aren't passing themselves off as the owners of the original works, and I'm of the opinion that many of them don't work unless you are somewhat familiar with the original work and so not likely to think that Debord et al. were the original photographers. If you're not familiar with the original work, or it's one of the materials made by Situationists that were mostly or entirely original, then they often just come across as weird imagery.

Plagiarism is taking others work and passing it off as your own, that's largely not what the Situationists were doing, and when they did that it reads to me as a part of their attempt to reject art and its conventions in totality, a task in which they failed, "Situationist art" and the "Situ style" is quite recognisable, the production of the User guide itself helped codify Situationist art styles and conventions. 

For example

As soon as I saw this on an image search I knew it was an original work by one of the British Situationists, and the link took me to the John McCready archive, which is a collection of British Situationist material. You can definitely plagiarise the Situationists, I wouldn't recommend it as you'd be caught pretty quickly, but it is definitely something that can be ripped off. And they are often parodied and given homage in mainstream works that aren't remotely interested in breaking the depoliticised working class out of their prisons of everyday life. Oh, and you may have noticed that this image has watermarks on it, in addition the search engine warned me that this image may be copyrighted. 

To add to the misery, detournement have also become commodities. The Situationists were a deeply flawed bunch, they were very astute in criticising much of the apparently revolutionary microgroups and reformist tendencies, but they reflected much of what they criticised and while extremely knowledge about art and its conventions often fell into the same traps, if you look up the Situationist International now many of the admirers view them as a clever curiosity, what revolutionary potential they had is just gone.

Going back to that thesis for the third and final time.

Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.

I disagree that this is plaigarism, but I fully agree with its intent. Progress does demand working with ideas that are not your own and allowing others to work with those that are. Copyright and the treatment of art and information as property that can be withheld dictated and traded is not only a personal failing of individual bad actors, its a direct attack on human interaction and intellectual and cultural development. This is what I get from thesis 207, Society of the Spectacle and much of the Situationist legacy is difficult to pin down into unambiguous statements of intent so I wan't say that my reading is the reading of it. I have read many of the works of the Situationists, mostly the French and British ones, but I have not digested everything they put out so these statements on the Debord and his small circle of friends are not to be taken as set in stone, they're what I think based on my experiences.

To tie these two threads Situationism and James Somerton together I will finish up with this thought. Plagairism and copyright infringement are not the same thing, but they are related. James Somerton wasn't just ripping off other writers for giggles, he was monetising them as well, the work of others became "his" and so he was entitled to exploit it for money and influence. So, yes, capitalism should be abolished and while we're at it let's through social hierarchies in the bin too, and create a perfect and harmonious communal society were labours are shared, and we'll never have to worry about the scourge of plagiraism again.

A Memorial for Twitter

 

 Well, it looks like Musk may finally have killed twitter, with rate limits causing yet another exodus to new pastures and some old ones. Currently, the site is still chugging along like an old car that's in danger of shaking itself apart at every bump and pothole. Will it collapse for good this time? I don't know, I think its wheels will keep spinning for a few more "genius" reforms from the new management, though what made the site a place I wanted to spend more time than was healthy is slipping away.

I was one of those odd individuals who enjoyed twitter, but I was never starry eyed about it. Musk has been a disaster for Twitter, which was to be expected really, the man has been a disaster with everything he's touched as far as I can tell. But even back in the BE (Before Elon) era the site had many problems. As a platform for discussion it's always been terrible, the character limits kill attempts to demonstrate nuance and balance, sure you can add another tweet adding context or a generous concession, but you're lucky if a tenth of the people seeing the first tweet bother even glancing at the second. It seems like it was designed from the beginning as a mechanism for group think, interactions showing support the like/fav, the retweet and the comment space are only useful for telling its algorithm you want more content like that which overtime limits the diversity of the feed. And conversely the best way to highlight negativity or opposition is the quote tweet mechanic which is an effective means of broadcasting heretics to your supporters for attacks and hostility.

Despite its structural drawbacks, I found the site very useful. As a sort of newswire service I found a lot of information that is ignored by the large institutional media, Anarchists in Ethiopia, feminists in Japan, radical Union campaigns and direct action protests throughout the UK etc. And over time was able to connect with some interesting people from around the world. And in addition, there was also a very interesting phenomenon that I was able to take part in. Twitter with its international audience and usage as an information service led to an organic network of translators. News and blogs that appeared in one language were often boosted by followers who spoke more languages and would translate it. The unusually large Esperanto speaking user base were very good at this, and I played a small part translating information into English for a wider reach. It did also help that I learnt to stop rolling in the mud of twitters negative sides, instead of multiple thread arguments I'll just share some contrary information and then mute the thread, either they'll take it on board or they won't, let nature take its course.

And having used Twitter quite a bit from 2017-now, I can say with certainty that in my experience the service was taking small steps to address some of its worst problems. Its reporting system became more comprehensive and precise, so reactionary bigots, bullies and stalkers who knew not to swear in plain text or use the slurs most well known in the USA were increasingly getting caught. There were still many right wing celebrities using the platform to boost their outreach, but little by little the line crossing was getting too much and a few of them were being shutdown. And that process accelerated during the COVID pandemic since many of them pivoting to vaccine conspiracy talk.  I don't wish to oversell these steps, none of the well known problems with Twitter were solved completely, but for a time it looked like a process of correcting some of the worst parts of the service had begun. 

Then Elon Musk bought the company and quickly reversed what limited progress had been made. On the 28th of October last year, management changed hands at the blue bird headquarters. And things quickly turned to shit. I don't subscribe to the Great Men theory of history, but even I've been taken aback by just how much malign influence a hands-on tech CEO can achieve. The far right celebrities? Well they're back. You found our service to be a useful way to find out about important examples of activism? Well, too bad for you sunshine, we're banning them to make room for the Christian fundamentalists and the "national conservative pundits". The report system that had a chance of keeping up with the mutations of harassment? Practically toothless again. You use Twitter as a news aggregator? Well, here's ads for cryptocurrency scams in the middle of threads to break them up. Musk spent much of the early days of the takeover complaining about bot accounts, well as far as I can see he's made that problem much worse, my account has just over a thousand followers, a minnow in the sea, and yet even my account has been swarmed by fake account follows, and my direct messaging system filled with spam accounts. 

During his short stint as captain of the S.S. Bluebird, he's steered the ship from one crisis after another. And while so far the ship has managed to smash into those rocks without piercing the internal hull, and we can enjoy some schadenfreude at the massive dent to Musk's reputation as both a genius and a savvy businessman, the net result has been a series of exoduses varying in size and a frustrating and increasingly poor experience for those who remain. The rate limit fiasco is just another chapter in what is shaping up to being a very long catalogue of incompetence. 

At the present time, Twitter is still online, and I still have an account, but I'm in the prepping stage for a move. The previous crises lead to some moving to other alternatives, but not that many. Musk's financial lifeline dealing with the plummeting value of the company was his assets in other companies, which he's been selling off in bits and pieces to cover the numerous money holes he's dug for himself. His lifeline in social media terms has been the lack of an alternative Twitter. We use the term social media as a collective label for what in reality is a loose collection of very different services with their own strengths and uses. Twitter was unique, at least at that size and potential reach. It was never as big as some would think given its prominence in journalism and mainstream media, just count how many news stories are broken via a tweet on an average news report for an example of this. But it's still used by lots of people in most of the world. So, while in theory users pissed off with the way things are going to have many places to set up shop, in practice it's not that easy. Facebook, Tumblr etc, just don't scratch the same itch, and they all have their own issues and demographic clashes.

There have been Twitter alternatives for some time, under the old management right wing types who found even the light touch moderation of Twitter unbearable split off onto a dozen right wing alternatives, but they're small, explicitly politically partisan so have no chance of scoring big advertisers and are run and controlled by a tiny group of thin-skinned wannabe führer's, so they haven't grown so much as stagnated or collapsed into infighting. Now, though, Twitter is facing some competition on at least two fronts. The old management have been working on a new Twitter called Bluesky, and Zuckerberg's Meta is pushing something called Threads.

They both look like Twitter clones, and many of the latest crop of Twitter exiles have set up accounts on one or both of these services. This should worry Musk since if either or both get traction he's no longer in charge of the only game in town. Personally, I think both aren't very good, in the interests of transparency I must be up front and disclose that I have no account on either platform, Bluesky is invite only, at the moment and while I know people who can give me an invitation, I didn't see the point in going through all that rigmarole before I know if the service will take off, my plan has been to wait for it go public and let others fight for the clout that comes with first one in the pool. And as for Threads, I left Facebook years ago, and haven't been impressed with any of Zuckerberg's products since then, a Twitter under his benevolent gaze did not excite me at all.

So much of what I've heard about these sites is second hand, but I think I was right to be sceptical, both services have issues that do not appeal to me at all. I think what Bluesky and Threads show us is that as bad as Musk's tenure has been, it isn't exceptional. Musk isn't doing anything beyond his position of owner of the company, he's just terrible on the job, I suppose it's like the difference between using a shotgun or a sniper rifle to take out a threat in a crowded room. They're both tools designed to kill people and both will get the job done, just that one's clumsier and messier than the other. 

It's early days for both these alternatives, they might get better if there's enough pressure for it, but I won't be holding my breath. Though if Twitter does collapse, or I finally reach my breaking point, I might find myself setting up an account on one of them. 

Still, there is some positive news. The other commonly cited Twitter alternative is Mastodon. If you have a Twitter account, you're probably sick of hearing about Mastodon. In simple terms it's essentially Twitter, a short messaging service where you can react to other users messages, contact them, share your thoughts and photos and videos and links. But it's open source and decentralized, so there isn't one all powerful body making decisions for the entire user base. Open source and decentralisation have become ugly buzzwords for internet marketers, but in Mastodon's case the old usage, multiple users working to build something together, still rings true. 

Mastodon has been around for a while, it's where many of the earlier waves of Twitter exiles popped up before. So why hasn't it taken off before? Well, it sort of has done, just at a slower pace, but there are some barriers to entry. First to create an account instead of going to Mastodon.com and clicking sign up you have to pick what's called an Instance to join and create an account there. Instances are like private clubs they have their own rules admins and even special features, all of which should be available to check before you join. Once you've picked an Instance its usually pretty simple to set up an account, and there are even dedicated apps like Tusky on smartphones now to make it easier.

Another barrier is the absence of algorithims, in my expereince algoritihims are things you only notice by there absence. Much of the content social media sites like Twitter use algoritihms aggresively not just to shove adverts in your face but to deliver content to you too. If you've ever wondered why you aren't seeing content from accounts you follow even though you know they're still active its because the algoritihm isn't showing you their stuff anymore. The absence of an algoritihim to me is a positive, it gives you freedom to build your own feeds and make your own judgements. But, on the otherhand this can be daunting at the start since the point of social media services are to show you things you want to see and give you opportunities to engage with them. So at the start Mastodon can be very sparse, you'll have an Instance feed (the content produced by other users on that Instance) and the Federated feed essentially the global feed of all users on the main network without a filter for your preferences. So, it takes awhile and some active searching to find users posting stuff that you like and value and find interesting. Hashtags aren't just for spamming messages on Mastodon they're actually useful. So, usually what has happened is that many setup accounts on Mastodon, find the transition awkward and don't stick around.

Though over time Mastodon has grown organically, the Fediverse which is the name for the main federation of Instances now registers over 13 million users, and recently registered over 2 million active at the same time. It took awhile for me to build up a feed but at present I actively look through the feeds several times a week, find things I like most times, and have chatted with others. Still not using it nearly as much as I used to use Twitter, but I hope the trends continue in a positive direction. In addition, although Mastodon clearly used Twitter as its main inspiration there are other quality of life improvements. For example, you can't quote tweet or quote toot as its called over there. This limitation has done a lot to limit aggro behaviour. And two or three Twitter exoduses ago several Instances were setup by tech savvy reactionary types, and in addition to clogging the federated feed their userbases started harassing other users. The response was quick, since their admins wouldn't reign in the behaviour other instances defederated, essentially a group wide block, so those Instances can't see our activity and we can't see theres. On Twitter targeted harassment is ignored and the accounts being targetted have to play a game of whack-a-mole or adopt a third party block list, and third party applications are increasingly being throttled by the new direction the site is going. And the system has been integrated into several others including video and music streaming.

So, looks like I'll be giving my meagre support to Mastodon, I'd like to see a better internet not dominated by six blokes who seem to be going through a permanent mid life crisis and a never ending game of asset hoarding. I can be found here.

Taking the L; Notes on Lefty Pol

 

A recent chit chat on a forum dredged up a bit of history. The subject was leftypol an image board I haven't thought about in years. Nevertheless, hearing the name got the juices flowing, it helped that many of the participants shared their history including some former moderators. I discovered leftypol around 2016-17 when I encountered some of its users on other sites. Leftypol is, or was an explicitly leftwing offshoot of Pol (politics) an infamous subboard on the equally infamous imageboard 4chan. 

I was surprised to hear that leftypol was still a thing, but was not surprised to hear the former moderators lament its decline into a hardline reactionary niche filled with "Anti-western hegemony" with western and hegemony being polite terms for any and all kinds of social tolerance. Like many such sub communities the board's decline lead to many fractures and splits, with at least one splinter being set up by several ex-moderators in an attempt to recapture the glory days. 

Its really difficult to find concrete data given the subject matter, the appeal of imageboards is that they're anonymous, difficult to search and navigate through. They also have a habit of going offline for long periods only to resurrect on a similar but different domain address or were squatted by a competitor. I found a wiki for imageboards that dates the creation of leftypol in 2014 and that's the only date I can find, and I can't find anything about the board before that year so its probably correct. 

So, I believe I found out about the board during its peak, there were references to it on the politically active "normal" web, and some of minor internet personalities were open about being active on there. As a veteran of several dead communities I understand the appeal of revival, but after some reflection I think maybe let it go. I did check out the board a bit, it had a very good library of text books, but it was always quite rotten. Asking a question was just an invite to insults, usually insults laced with slurs and threats of violence. 

Of the board posters I knew, well, most seemed young and had a lot of baggage, unhappy is how I'd term most of them. Some were still quite sociable, I didn't bother associating with the openly abrasive for very long. The board's culture was extremely misanthropic, a lot of cynicism in the hostile attitude sense, the term "irony poisoned" fitted quite well, and everything had to be turned into a hostile and sarcastic joke. The lefty part of the pol manifested in a strange sort of pissing contest as to who was more hardcore and truly a radical, this seemed to be the case regardless of chosen ideological tendency. Indeed, despite the lefty moniker they always seemed to have a problem dealing with atypical reactionary movements and personalities.

When I first came across users of the board I was surprised that they seemed to largely free of the sectarianism that pervades most other left political webspaces. But, soon I gathered that subgroups were there, just that they organised on different lines. A lot of them reminded me of school cliques. A lot of them had personal issues (I know that because oversharing was pretty common) and I don't believe leftypol was a positive space for them and their attempts to come to terms and move beyond them.

Of the groups I came across I largely stopped interacting with them, of those I stayed aware of many dropped out, either just on the sites like twitter and discord etc. others stayed online but dropped out of politics for new hobbies, or stayed into politics but openly embraced esoteric new right philosophers and the far right in general. Of, the latter there was some cloaking with words of respect for their "character" or ability to think beyond the "neo-liberal hegemony" before just openly embracing naked racism. Looking back I think there were some warning signs, there was always a presence for what could be called anti-establishment reactionaries. Particularly if they were academics so gave the supporters a veneer to hide behind, the "you just don't get it" style of argument.

I don't think this is anything unexpected if you're familiar with how imageboards work. They're anonymous (well, more anonymous than is typical) but that also means you can't build a coherent community around it. It has to go off site, I'm not surprised some of its more active users moved onto other sites where they could build a brand around themselves or seek out interesting people to connect with. 

The internet as a whole hasn't been kind to image boards, I find it surprisingly that they still attract at least some young people to them. I never really cared for the image boards, but I was pretty active on the Bulletin Board System (BBS) sites back in the day. I did frequent an image board called Bookchan though. Bookchan, which was so obscure the fan wiki I found background information on leftypol doesn't even have a reference to it nevermind an entry, but back in the mid 2000s it was a really convenient way to find e-books. You saved a suspiciously large jpeg, usually the book cover, then re-saved it by changing the extension and then you got a word doc or a pdf. At the time this was a really great way to get hold of books. Then file sharing and torrent sites became popular and better to use which took a lot of the popularity, and then clandestine site networks like z-library came along, and the web as a whole improved with bandwidth and connection speeds increasing to the point that nearly any site could host e-book files pretty easily, and that was it for Bookchan, its time had past. I think the same has happened to leftypol.

The appeal of leftypol beyond the library of texts which was quickly spread was its meme content. And, I enjoy memes, I didn't enjoy any of the memes that came from leftypol though, they seemed less like jokes and more meanspirited insults and desperate attempts to settle scores that meant nothing to an outside audience. But I've seen that eslewhere they can be useful in agitation, especially as an introduction. But, there are problems with them. Memes alone can't accomplish much in terms of action, nor in education, I'm not really surprised that around the same time (2017-23) we've seen an explosion in the number of youtube channels, podcasts, webcomics and a new wave of competition  bloggers, on platforms like Medium, to move beyond that. And, while I wouldn't say that development has been a net positive I do get it as a sort of memetic evolution. And yes, I have opinions on the famous "Breadtube"and its spawn, maybe I'll be bothered to finish my thoughts on them some day.

 

Why do so many leftist webspaces succumb to reaction?

I've touched on this topic briefly above but wanted to address it here, as I think it is both important and not unique to leftypol. Apparently, leftypol is now firmly in the "to hell with all the rest, my best friend is anti-west" camp. Open and sincere cheering on of brutal regimes that are in disputes with the American government and ridiculing and sneering at all things and people commonly associated with the term "western values". This isn't unique nor even that rare. All of the active political discord groups that didn't just die of inactivity went this way when I jumped ship, a popular lament on reddit is that all the big lefty subreddits seem to be controlled by conspiracy theorists and time travellers from the Communist Party of Soviet Union in 1952. Revleft a very old forum which if I recall correctly was set up by the Socialist Equality Party, a small Trot party in the US but had some popularity was soon used as the butt of many jokes about the worst people around who chose to use communist party symbolism. And a lot of the discourse or gossip about the Breadtubers and podcasters is about just how many of them seem to have really taken a strange turn over the past couple of years.

Its a very common problem, and one I've wondered at for some time. I don't have a definitive answer with a detailed plan of action to prevent it, but I do have some thoughts and sketches. Most of the victims of these declines have one factor in common they were all "left unity" or at the very least big tent style spaces. We can see this was the case for leftypol by looking at its cute little logo. It has Soviet inspired laurel reef borders, a red star with an A in a circle, red and black on the framing so Anarchist and non-anarchist communist references, and that thing in the middle that looks like an observatory is actually a bunker, which references Enver Hoxha the dogmatic dictator of Albania who has been attracting a small number of fans on the web like flies to a corpse. 

The discord servers were also supposed to be welcoming to all, one had a checklist function where users could make public their influences, from the typical, anarchism, marxism, democratic socialism, all the way to Ba'athism and left nationalism. That one had most of its mods leave to set up rival servers, most of which were exposed via leaks for everything up to inappropriate behaviour to openly pushing fascism. The main server having lost most of its active moderation soon stagnated to the point the classic texts of fascism were being shared openly. That was a more extreme example, though others usually tolerated supporters of brutal regimes that are actively oppressing their own populations and this meant that for the sake of the "community" criticism of those regimes no matter how they were framed had to be curtailed. 

In the reddits since they tend to be too active to effectively control all discussion and tone a popular tactic seems to be for users to work their way up into the moderation and admin positions and then start banning users who share content that is believed to be in opposition to their ideological views, citing whatever rule was in place to deter fighting. While this never gets rid of all the dissenting views it does over time shift the exposure and prevalence to other groups. 

There is a less conspiratorial explanation too. The reactionary groups, cheerleaders for the Chinese state, and the denialers of the real history of the Soviet Union, the working class conservatives, are quite numerous and so overwhelm the smaller voices. Though that wouldn't explain the success of the fringe reactionary types. I suppose it could be a case of two factors working independently for the most part that have the same effect. In my experience most of the marxist-whatever reactionaries are also open conservatives, even the ones who are from minority groups. The only difference I can see is that their are two types, one who will deny until their last breath that their chosen idols ever did anything wrong in general and to vulnerable groups in particular, and the other type who loudly agree that these things happened and are continuing to happen and that's great. Haven't seen much infighting between the two.

As to the why that so many reactionary misanthropes are attracted towards the political left on at least some superficial level? Well, I don't believe most of these people are truly anti-capitalist. They're anti something, of course, but I think a more accurate label that covers most of these individuals would be anti-status quo, or contrarian. The current way of things, what's often lazily could the "western world" isn't great for many of others. There are lots to criticise and plenty that could be changed for the better. The world we live in is obviously capitalist, that is often boasted about. But, and here's the crux of the matter (well I think it is anyway) the western world is more than an economic system, it also includes a style and logic to government, (representative, plural, electoral) and often the word Western has become a synoym for many cultural views and social attitudes. Officially the West is now Gay friendly, it treats women as equals, it views racism as an embarassment and promotes tolerance between the religious faiths and is open to extending the same degree of openness to political creeds provided a few red lines (mostly revolving violence) are not crossed.

To be blunt, this is all bullshit, the Global North/Western World, does a pretty shitty job of fulfilling any of these claims, the most you can say is that if you pick a nation in the Western camp and another that's not, (good luck coming up with a way to distinguish that isn't arbitrary guessing) the one on the western side of land might, do better than the other in some of those fields, maybe. Regardless of reality though that's the belief lots of people all over the world have. Especially those who have made being pro and anti status quo a core part of their identities. 

This is guess work, but based on my observations, I've been running into Stalin profile pictures and usernames that are obscure references to the anniversary of a massacre that definitely never happend (winking emoji) to notice some trends. In the late 2000s to the early 2010s, the vast majority of lefty social media users were openly pro Queer, or at least keen to signal positive attitudes toward Gay people. The trickle of positive legal and civic reforms were giving some celebration. However, the types who strongly associated with the old dead empire in Eastern Europe were busy dammning with faint praise. A lot of them were quick to tell you how East Germany had decriminalised homosexuality before West Germany and that the Soviet Union was the first country on earth to do so. Now, if you paid attention you would have some questions, first the Soviet Union wasn't remotely the first nation to abolish legal penalties for same sex activity, it had been beaten by multiple nations over a century earlier. And second, the experiences of homosexual citizens of both nations were open about how hostile and repressive the authorities were to them regardless of legal formalities. 

But after a few years the tone changed. The amount of celebrations decreased, meanwhile the appearance of "Leftists" who were openly homophobic or alarmed about Transgender "ideology" became more and more common. Either there numbers were growing, or they had found the opposition to their reactionary views to be too weak to bother hiding anymore. Personally, I'm of the opinnion that as the governments and the institutions (the press, education, entertainment industry etc.) of the "Western World" were finally forced to make concessions and then made a big fuss about how enlightened and "evolved" (thanks Obama) they were to be a contraian rebel against society shifted from pro-gay increasingly toward anti. After all, the two great forces, or poles as some of them prefer, in opposition to the "West" are the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, with honourable mentions for the Islamic Republic of Iran and North Korea. On one side you have (on the surface anyway) a pro LGBTQ "Love is love" and on the other you have bans on Gay "propaganda" and public hangings. Now nuance would do a lot for the critical part of the "critical support" way of thinking, sadly nuance is in short supply.

And to show its not just about personally bigotry, I'm currently seeing a similar pattern in regards to the issue of drugs. Back in my youth and until about three years ago, The most common view on drugs was that prohibition didn't work, caused far more misery than doing nothing and was a cyncial tool in which powerful organisations, especially American organisations, used as cover for increase policing and targetting of vulnerable people and communities. Any alternate point of view was so rare it was extraordinary. In the current year though? Well, from what I've seen its still the mainstream opinnion, but as more states especially Canada and the USA take baby steps towards ending the drug war the opposite opinnion that draconian punishments and strong law and order is actually a perfectly sensible way to tackle substance abuse, is getting more common.

As to why so many contrarians cloak themselves in the debris of the Cold War, that was the last time this "global order" was challenged to an extent. Apart from them you have the Islamic fundamentalists and the Axis in WWII. And I'm sure I'm not alone in seeing sympathy for both of them online.

Overall I think the desire to have a big tent made up of groups that are mutually exclusive and antagonistic is an exercise in collective misery doomed to failure and often condemns what were once useful spaces to stagnate and rot, leaving only empty shells.

Passive Income and digital sweatshops

 Dan Olsen released a video investigating a niche internet grift revolving around the appeal of passive income. 

I had never heard of the Mikkelsen twins or Urban Writers, the principal villains of this particular scam method. But I had to keep pausing the video because much of it felt so familiar. As amateurish as a lot of the Mikkelsen twins pitch comes across the appeal is obvious, passive income is great. Everyone who isn't a lifestyle coach scam artist will admit working hard for low pay isn't great. Aside from physical and mental tiring you also have to wrestle with feelings of inadequacy and wastefulness. So getting money for a long time after you've stopped putting effort into it has its advantages.

So, while I was surprised watching the pitch get elaborated on reflection a scam that offers you the reward of passive income with zero effort, completely passive income if you will, well that's bound to attract a few individuals. It's pretty maddening to watch, but I can say from experience that this method is unlikely to work, especially now that a very big platform has publicly exposed them. 

I have some experience with working in the internet gig economy freelancing for anonymous clients using job boards that operate very similarly to Urban Writers. There were sections of the video, the part outlining the pay and conditions for the ghost writer and what it feels like to write a book yourself were unpleasant to sit through because they were very accurate to what I went through.

The response so far has been very positive, though I've seen some questions and reluctance to believe that parts of pipeline can be realistic. Artificial Intelligence programs have been getting a lot of buzz lately especially the bots that make digital artworks from prompts, some have suggested that this could explain how the writers are able to live and work on such terms. Which simply isn't feasible for a number of reasons. We're still a long way off from AI created books that are coherent much less passable, the market sites like Amazon and Apple don't care about sloppy prose and run on sentences but they do have some standards for publishing. Furthermore the intellectual sweatshops like Urban Writers couldn't survive without a large pool of desperate writers to churn out the goods. If AI could provide product to the standards a client desires then there wouldn't be much need for middlemen groups like Urban Writers, just buy or license the software and make as many low content Search Engine Optimised trash you want.

The reason these intellectual sweat shops work is simply because there's a large pool of eager or desperate people who are vulnerable enough to be open to the few crumbs thrown their way. Writing, even technical and copy writing require passion as careers. It may seem like light work if you only take into account the time spent physically using a pen, keyboard or typewriter, and assume a payment equivalent or better than average salary at the end. But as Dan's video makes clear, this is not the case, there is research time, editing, planning, and for many writers myself included time spent in a sort of mental stalling phase where you cannot easily move into any of the phases. And I can attest that Dan is correct when he states that even much of the time that's not supposed to be devoted to the writing task, breaks, other chores etc, is often time still spent obsessing over the book or dealing with anxiety or frustration over the work. I'll add that even when I've finished a project and it's been submitted, I often spend a few days in a sort of limbo where the lack of a project makes me feel restless. So it requires a lot from you, and this is probably why writers in fiction are often presented as high strung, self absorbed, fragile, and erratic individuals as that can be what's visible from the outside.

As to why this makes writers so vulnerable to these types of content farm outfits, well that's more structural. Publishing is a small world and thanks to monopolies its becoming even smaller. At the time of writing Penguin and Random House are battling in the courts for the right to merge with many celebrated authors giving evidence to the opposition as they fear the merger will severely impede their abilities to make a living and pursue a career. Just imagine what its like for someone starting out or on a much lower rung. And that's in fiction, novels are the main money and fame making area of publishing, if you're a poet, a short story writer or a non-fiction writer there are even fewer options to take. I remember when I left university I was told that a non-fiction book selling over 3,000 copies would be placed in the best seller category.

If you're not already a big name you need to build up a body of work, this is very difficult in non-fiction publishing. From personal experience the few publishers for that aren't very hospitable to original research that isn't attached to an author who's already established in a relevant field. It can even be frosty to authors who have been published but there has been a long gap between the last accepted submission and the present. Feast or famine was the advise I was given about publication, if you want to make a viable go at it you have to publish early and regularly.

These attitudes freeze out a lot of graduates and passionate amateurs. If your desperate for work, any work these shady companies can be the only game in town at least at the start. I tried to support myself in this field after graduation and my applications met with silence. I managed to get several gigs as a freelancer for several websites that were just a bit above modern clickbait mills, and some contracts on job board sites very similar to how Dan described Urban Writers system. Dan's assumptions on the emotional state of someone having to depend on such a system were spot on. I spent all day and chunks of the night grinding out assignments with limited research, and I was still making the equivalent of welfare. And that was when every other part of the arrangement was working fine, which it rarely did.

After walking away from it I wrote about the experience, looking back on that piece now I think its the most pessimistic bit of writing I've ever published. Since that time there have been some changes, the level of oversight on the self publishing market has improved a little, and some of the worst offenders have gone bust, though a few have rebranded, and overall the market has become dominated by a few big players. I still could not in good conscience recommend this system to anyone wishing to start out or make a living out of it.

Behold! Tis lord Odesk, benevolently giving labour to
the grateful scribe

In more positive news, there is now a union for freelancers which back when I wrote digital economy was something I didn't think was possible. Its international though currently its main presence is in the USA and Canada, expansion has been slow but is happening. It has also been relatively successful in two areas, its become a method for freelancers to share experiences and information about conditions in the industry which is vital to stopping the most egregious examples of exploitation which rely on a company interacting directly with an inexperienced individual, and has had some success with campaigns targeting specific employers. 

I still freelance occasionally when time permits me, but now I mostly stick to submissions for magazines, journals and websites I've had previous dealings with. I've also started using platforms like amazon to host some translation and non fiction work. These platforms offer an alternative for authors of niche material, but a path to riches they aren't for most. Passive income is pretty good so long as you put some effort in and don't cook up a scheme that exploits others. Personally, I think the major bottleneck comes after creation. If you've worked on a book, collection of poems, audiobook, song, art, video etc. then these platforms will make your work more available to a potential audience. But it's the promotion or the lack of it that gets in the way of pivoting to this as a viable career. I was not surprised to learn that Dan's book sold one copy in its lifespan as he didn't do any promotion and because of the pseudonym kept a lot of distance from it. I wish he had kept it up after publishing the video so we could see how much even that limited and deprecating plug thirty minutes into a video did for it. 

You either have to buy advertising, which takes a low/no cost option and turns it into a high cost one, and a high cost for a gamble. Or word of mouth, and the issue with word of mouth I find is that getting people to buy something is the easy part, and I find that quite hard, its getting those customers to rate, review or even mention what they've purchased that is the truly difficult task. My sales to date across all formats, including discounts is around 400, my ratings and reviews have been less than ten. Haven't had any refunds or e-mailed complaints and the few ratings and reviews are positive, but that isn't a firm foundation for a retirement plan.

And I'm not alone here. A common question in forums for authors is "how do I get more reviews?" and I've none more than one talented artist who put a lot into a project that was selling relatively well, that burnt out because of a lack of response from the audience. It goes back to passion really, earning a living is a necessity in our times, but the feelings of failure and lack of impact can eat away at a creative type. So, if you enjoy something letting the people who made it know goes a long way.

In conclusion, well done Dan, support artists and of course

Buy my book!

Interview with Augusto Masetti from 1964 now translated into English

 

Awhile a go I discovered the late Stuart Christie's massive anarchist film archive and spent many hours digging through it. Unfortunately while its a great resource very few of the entries have explanations as to what they're about so if it isn't immediately clear from the film or you don't speak one of the dozens of languages the content is in some of them can be very strange and obscure.

For me one of those videos was a short 2 minute video called Augusto Masetti, its a short black and white interview with an elderly man in Italian. The only information was the year of recording 1964, searching the name I found multiple sources all in Italian, but my limited experience and machine translators I found out that in 1911 when the Italian army was about to send troops to occupy Libya Augusto Masetti shot and wounded his superior officer and when being detained and investigated it was found that he had an anti-militarist pamphlet on him and was an Anarchist. He became a sort of celebrity with defence committees setup across Italy to protest in support of him and rally opposition to the military adventures of the Italian state. 

I also found an upload of the video on youtube, and the uploader had some interesting things to say in the comments. 

Intervista del 1964 ad Augusto Masetti, l'anarchico che nel 1910 aveva sparato al suo colonnello inneggiando all'anarchia e contro la guerra di Libia. Durante i giorni della 'Settimana Rossa' del 1914 fu preso come simbolo della lotta antimilitarista. (Questo video - come gli altri sul tema settimana rossa - è stato recuperato da un'unica cassetta vhs (prima Betamax) lasciata da Sergio Zavoli alla biblioteca di Alfonsine, e mai usata dalla RAI. La cassetta era ormai abbandonata in biblioteca da 40 anni e a rischio smagnetizzazione. Su sollecitazione di Luciano Lucci fu riversata da Betamax a VHS, e poi il Lucci stesso ne fece una versione digitalizzata e messa su youtube.) 1964 interview with Augusto Masetti, the anarchist who in 1910 had shot his colonel in praise of anarchy and against the war in Libya. During the days of the 'Red Week' of 1914 it was taken as a symbol of the anti-militarist struggle. (This video - like the others on the red week theme - was recovered from a single vhs cassette (first Betamax) left by Sergio Zavoli at the Alfonsine library, and never used by RAI. The cassette had now been abandoned in the library for 40 years. and at risk of demagnetization. At the request of Luciano Lucci it was transferred from Betamax to VHS, and then Lucci himself made a digitized version of it and put on youtube.)

Which was interesting but didn't help me understand what the video was about. My very weak knowledge of Italian meant I was sure the first question at least was about his time as a soldier and the shooting of thee officer, but that was it apart from a few words about Professors and a song and family.

I turned to the subreddit r/translator for help, and within a few hours user Jordanj got in touch and gave me a transcript in Italian of the conversation and then an English translation.

So mystery solved, and in the interest of preservation I've used both to create subtitle tracks for the video and will reproduce them here as transcripts.

Video Link

Interviewer: Good morning, Mr. Masetti.

Masetti: Good morning.

I: Sorry to bother you.

M: No need.

I: Would you mind coming here a moment, on the balcony?

M: Sure.

I: Here under the light, so we can see you well.

M: But remember I don't want [money].

Me, I'm available for the [king].*

I: What happened at the Salvini barracks in Bologna? Can you tell us?

M: We were 300 soldiers, lined up in three rows, and 8 officers were on the stage, among which was the superior officer, the lieutenant colonel Stroppa, who was making the speech, where he said we all have family, girlfriends, and you know friends, but right this moment we only have our nation to defend... and at that moment, I put my [rifle] on the shoulders of the [second] - I was in the middle, in the middle row - and then I shot once. I was going to recharge, so they jumped on me... officers, and so on.

I: And the lieutenant colonel was only wounded...

M: Wounded, yes, till the shoulder, here. And the bullet deflected, and wounded an unlucky fellow of a soldier right under there.

I: Now, I'd like to ask you, Mr. Masetti. Yours was a an act of folly, but were you indeed crazy, like they were saying?

M:... there's 36 hours I have no recollection of. From the evening of the 29th till the 31 of the morning. Something I've always said and I'll have to always say, because it is so.

I: But, do you feel guilt for that act or not?

M: No, no! How can I feel guilty? Can you feel guilty for something you don't know about (/remember doing)? They were saying that to me In Reggio Emilia too, those professors. "Well, you must feel sorry for [???]." "Me? Why should I feel sorry?" "So you're proud of it?" "No to that too! I can't be proud of something I don't know I did!". And that's how things were, you know.

I: Were you aware that all over Italy, pro Masetti committees were being established?

M: ... Not right away, no, I didn't know right away. I learned it some days after, when the professor... Sacossi and Pedrassani, they were saying "There's a lot of support for you out there". And I said "I know nothing about it, [if there is,???] I know nothing, no one was bringing me anything. They only came the evening, some... middle-class people, you know, outside, to say hello from the window... and then they'd sing a song they made up themselves...

I: How did the song go?

M: Ah, they said "At the cell number 9 the soldier Masetti is being locked up", but then I don't remember anything else of all that stuff.

* I don't fully understand this but Masetti was making a pun the words he uses for King and money sound very similar. "Ma ricordatevi che non voglio [rei]!  Ci sono per [il re] io."

Interviewer: Buongiorno Signor Masetti.

Masetti: Buongiorno.

I: Scusi se la disturbiamo.

M: No.

I: Le dispiacerebbe venire qua un attimo, sul balcone?

M: Si.

I: Venga al sole, si faccia vedere.

M: Ma ricordatevi che non voglio [rei]!

Ci sono per [il re] io.

I: Come andarono le cose alla caserma Salvini di Bologna? Me lo vuole raccontare?

M: Eravamo in 300 soldati, sfilati in tre fila, e 8 ufficiali erano sul palco, il quale l'ufficiale superiore, che era il sergente colonello Stroppa, fece la morale, dove disse che tutti abbiamo la famiglia, abbiamo la fidanzata, abbiamo insomma gli amici, ma in questo momento qua non abbiamo altro che la patria da difendere... e io, in quel momento li', misi il fucile sulle spalle del secondo - ero in mezzo io, nella fila di mezzo - e poi sparai un colpo. Quando ritornai a caricare, allora mi saltarono addosso con... ufficiali, e cosi' via.

I: E il tenente colonnello rimase soltanto ferito...

M: Ferito, si, fino alla spalla qui. E la palla divio', e andette a ferire un disgraziato di un soldato che era li sotto.

I: Ora io vorrei chiederle, signor Masetti. Il suo fu un gesto folle, ma lei era pazzo come si disse, o no?

M: ...io ho 36 ore che non ricordo niente! Dalla sera del 29 fino al 31 della mattina. Cosa che ho sempre detto e che dovro' sempre dire, perche' e' cosi'.

I: Ma lei e' pentito di quel gesto o no?

M: No, no! Posso mica esser pentito? Come fate a esser pentito di una cosa che non sapete? A me lo dicevano anche a Reggio Emilia, i professori la'. "Beh ti dispiacera' pure della [comesono]..." "Io? Cosa vuole che mi dispiace?" "Allora hai piacere?" "Ma neanche! Non posso mica aver piacere di una cosa che non so di aver fatto". E cosi' andavano le cose, insomma.

I: Lei sapeva che in tutta Italia si stavano costituendo dei comitati pro Masetti?

M: ... Subito no, subito non lo seppi. Lo seppi qualche giorno dopo, quando il professore... Sacossi e Pedrassani, mi dicevano "c'e' un gran movimento per te fori". E io dissi "Non so niente", [gh'era la ren se gava] non sapevo niente, nessuno mi portava niente. venivano solo alla sera, dei... borghesi insomma, dal di fori, a salutarmi dalla finestra... E poi cantavano una canzone, che avevano inventato loro...

I: Come faceva questa canzone?

M: Ah, dicevano, "alla cella del numero 9 sta rinchiuso il soldato Masetti", ma io poi non mi ricordo piu' niente di quella roba li'.

The Documentary the Queen tried to bury resurfaces - The Royal Family

 

Back in 1969 the BBC and the Royal Family got together and decided on collaborating on a behind the scenes style documentary on the lives of the Royals and there work in the Palace and duties as representatives of the British state. It was a major success attracting 30 million views, however it also caused the Queen to panic and use her powers and connections at the BBC to have the film suppressed and stored in the royal archives, it was taken off the air in 1972 and the only way to see the film was to get permission from the royal family (well their staff in reality) effectively consigning the film to obscurity. Until this month when it was leaked onto the web.

Its worth quoting from the wiki page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Family_(film)

"Royal Family (also known as The Royal Family[1]) is a British television documentary about the family of Queen Elizabeth II. It originally aired on BBC One and ITV in June 1969.[2][3] The film attracted over 30 million viewers in the United Kingdom. The Queen later had the documentary banned, and it has not been shown again on TV since 1972, and access to the remaining copy was severely restricted. Despite this, in early 2021 it was leaked, and published online.[4]"

Royal Family has been accused of revealing too much about the royals. David Attenborough – at the time, controller of BBC Two – warned Cawston that his film was in danger of "killing the monarchy".[8] The film critic Milton Shulman wrote "every institution that has so far attempted to use TV to popularise or aggrandise itself has been trivialised by it".[15]

A review in The Times concluded that Cawston's film had given the nation "an intimate understanding of what members of the Royal Family are like as individual people without jeopardising their dignity or losing the sense of distance".[19] The journalist and broadcaster Peregrine Worsthorne remarked "Initially the public will love seeing the Royal Family as not essentially different from anyone else … but in the not-so-long run familiarity will breed, if not contempt, familiarity".[12]

In later years, some blamed the film for a growing lack of deference towards the monarchy. However, William Heseltine had no regrets, calling it "a fantastic success".

Seems really exciting and damming, "killing the monarchy" and its not even my birthday. Unfortunately the BBC is still actively trying to shutdown the spread of the film, uploading it to youtube quickly results in a takedown and the more well known alternative streaming platforms are also not particularly safe. Fortunately they haven't got to them all, its up on the Eye

https://archive.org/details/royal-family-1969_202101

And can be downloaded, I strongly recommend you do so if you're interested in seeing it, in case of further action. This film has been the victim of over 40 years of grudges from some of the most powerful people in the British establishment after all. 

Anyway with all that said it may be a surprise to read that having watched the film in its entirety there isn't really anything that on first glance would explain the hostile attitude by the authorities to the film. There is no smoking gun scene where the Royals and the Queen in particular being openly evil or transparently corrupt. There are scenes of luxury and opulence that to me make them look bad, but nothing special, and most of it like the jewels from India are openly flaunted to create a sense of splendour and majesty. There's also footage of a Royal visit to Brazil which means the royal family were hobnobbing with a military dictatorship. That could potentially have been damaging and controversial but the royals hosting or visiting brutal despots isn't exactly rare and the doc fails to even mention the political situation in Brazil, its just another opportunity for photos and crowd cheering. Large sections of it seem indistinguishable from the mountains of pro royal guff that gets recorded and broadcast on a nearly daily basis here.

But I do get why they tried to bury the film. While it doesn't demonise them it does possible the next worst thing and normalises them. Instead of being depicted as sober and wise benevolent stewards of the nation and their subjects, which is what the royal family want everyone to see them as, they come across as bureaucrats dedicated to their jobs, and do to the circumstances of their surroundings a bit pompous and at times whiny and very, very out of their depth, to the point they struggle to understand how the world works in the 1960s. God knows how much hand holding they need nowadays. 

There's a section very early on that introduces Prince Phillip to the film and he struggles to understand how to proceed with a royal visit to a school (in Cambridge naturally) even though he's reading the typed out instructions that are walking him through it stage by stage. He has to contact a servant on a special intercom system and have him talk him through it and he still doesn't sound sure of what they want him to do.

And the Queen isn't much better, she sounds lost and confused in most interactions even with her long time staff and some visitors of high rank. Nearly every conversation even between themselves comes across as awkward and stiff. There is also a strong focus on many of the ceremonies that surround the palace and the other royal estates, again there isn't much out of the ordinary from the countless other fawning films that the royal's approve of in terms of content, its trooping of colours, garden parties, royal visits and royal audiences etc. Would is different and actually caught me by surprise when I first watched it was how matter of fact and dry it was about the whole thing. There's no attempt to romanticise any of it, its happening the narrator explains in detail how it happens and an explanation from why it happens and why its done the way it is, which most of the time is just "Queen Victoria did it this way so we're still doing it like this".

What stood out to me was an early example of a royal audience with the poet Robert Graves, the whole thing is given a sort conveyor belt feel, then after that its on to a garden party that's planned and operated just like hundreds of other garden parties like it every year. Another highlight is a montage of royal visits that cuts quite aggressively between Prince Phillip, the Queen and Prince Charles, all of them essentially just looking at things (cows in Ulster, military Jets, oil rigs, etc) and occasionally making inane conversation. Its clear they either have no understanding of most of these things or just don't care, which to me struck me with strong sense of pointless going through the motions. 

And then there's the servants. If this film had a thesis statement it would be the Royal Family an archaic institution adapting to life in the 20th century. There is plenty of evidence that most of the Royals are struggling with that but the biggest sign that the adaptation is working well is the servants. We see a lot of how the serving staff perform their duties and its extremely incongruous. Most of them work in ways hard to distinguish from modern office staff, manning phones, preparing reports, arranging appointments etc, but on top of that they're still burdened with protocols and customs that date back many decades because they were decided by Monarchs long dead. Like the Page of the Backstairs (yes really, that is a job and its official title) his job is to deliver to the Queen state papers, while on a Royal Yacht he and other crew on deck must wear soft shoes and use hand signals to preserve their masters quiet. How are these state papers delivered to a yacht at sea? By helicopter, a big noisy Navy helicopter.

Its largely this pattern from start to finish, there's no real major moment of damage its just little moments cutting into the royal propaganda, like the segment where a secretary as part of his duties presents the Queen with a certificate for a state honour (gallantry I think) and while she signs it the secretary gives her a quick summary of the achievements of the recipient and she makes vague noises of admiration. Its clear she has no idea who these people are, but these are the people we are officially supposed to celebrate and admire for their great deeds. I imagine that stung a few people who were proud of holding various medals and honours.

So alas its no bomb at the foundations of the crown, but it could chip away at it quite a bit. And if both the BBC and the royals are still dedicated to suppressing it, watching and sharing it can't hurt. 

Falling Down the Rabbit Hole with Cinema Nippon

 

Recently I watched a presentation on Anarchism in Japan recorded before the COVID-19 lockdown. During the presentation the speaker referred to a small group of Anarchists from the famous Japanese student protest movements that paralysed much of the country through extreme rioting and campus occupations. Collectively they're known as the Zengakuren and there coloured helmets, banners and pole weapons are quite infamous.

They used coloured helmets as a way of distinguishing between themselves, different groups used different colours. Because aside from agreeing on what they were against, capitalism, militarism, American military presence, the Imperial system, the fascist generation etc, they were deeply divided along ideological lines. Zengakuren students who identified with Anarchism wore Black Helmets. So I started trying to look up Zengakuren Black Helmets, this didn't turn up much, except for a strange video called アナキズム

Strange is an understatement, I found this video uploaded to several sites and all from an account with the same Nietszchean name Azsacra Zarathustra (AZ). The comment sections are disabled and there is no contact information besides a facebook so contacting him to answer some questions looks like it won't happen. Anyway the video itself is bizarre, there's an opening "Production credit" for NihillihiN (yes that extra capital N is deliberate) and then cuts to an interview of a group of Japanese young people. Sadly it is unsubtitled and my spoken Japanese skills are almost non existent so I have no idea who they are or what they are saying. We then get a slow zoom in on a wounded Japanese young man smiling, and then the title card flashes up アナキズム, then we get a collage of clips of clashes between the police and Zengakuren factions while a Japanese song plays in the background. Halfway through the collage of petrol bombs and baton charges the song ends and another Japanese song starts, this one is sung by a woman and it seemed eerily familiar to me at the time. Then when that song ends there is a cut to credits in Japanese and English, I couldn't read the Japanese but the English bits thanked among other people Edwin O. Reischauer who was a United States diplomat to Japan and was injured when a Japanese rightist stabbed him. He died in 1990, so I think the credit is something of a joke, oh and the song playing over the credits is I Put a Spell on You by Creedence Clearwater Revival. And just before it ends it credits a A Z and one other initial for editing and closes out on a stylised A with the year 2017 written underneath. 2017 is the date the video was uploaded onto the various channels. 

So very strange indeed, I had more questions then answers. I was able to find out that アナキズムis a way to write Anarchism or Anarchy in Japanese, and that AZ is into esoteric nihilistic philosophy with an orientalist fixation. I needed help, and fortunately I knew where to turn, I've been a follower of Cinema Nippon  a review channel for Japanese cinema for some time and have assisted them with research on two of their videos. I hoped they could help and they did. Unfortunately it still wasn't enough to get to the root of the video, and left us with even more questions than before.

Here's what was found 

• AZ probably was the creator of the video (the two production cards at the start and end threw me at first) and edited together disparate clips 
• The Japanese credits were just listing archive sites where we think he found the clips, like "Manichi News Archives" and "record of incident at Yasuda Hall No 1" which weren't very helpful.
• The Japanese above Edwin O. Reischauer says something like "Heart of Japan" which neither of us understand, unless its a reference to his stabbing or as his role as diplomat and cultural commentator.
• One of the credits is just  無 which is a character associated with Buddhism and other spirituality philosophies and usually represents "Nothing" or "Oblivion" 
• The first song is a 1970s pop song by a group called Garo, and the song is Gakuseigai no Kissaten, Student Street Cafe or alternatively Coffee House of University Quarter.
• After the second song is an alternate version of the same song, only this time its credited to Hatsune Miku, which explains why it sounded so familiar and on hearing it again it definitely has a Vocaloid sound to it. 

Sadly there was no listing for the interview segment at the beginning of the video, which is unfortunate since I feel that was the key to understanding just what the point of the whole thing is. Having to guess based on the video and what I've seen of AZs other interests it looks like he's a fan of esoteric nihilism with a strong fixation on the "orient" he's really into Hindu and Buddhist culture and I'm guessing the appeal of the Zengakuren for him lies in a fixation with rebellion and death. Looking through his work he isn't a fan of national anarchism and likes regular anarchism and believes the two are incompatible which honestly surprised me, but I don't really understand what his objections national anarchism are. English isn't his first language, he appears to be Russian, but beyond language barriers there's very little coherency to any of his blog posts. One thing that became clear was that he often takes concepts and then changes them slightly to give the veneer of authenticity, he uses a lot of Nietzsche terms in ways Nietzsche wouldn't or couldn't, he ripped of the surrealist Theatre of Cruelty concept with his own Theatre of Cruelty NOH, and what NOH means is not explained. The NihillihiN from earlier, if you put that term into a search engine the only results are AZ blog sites that talk about a very strange and confused nihilist theory AZ is the author of. 

I'm grateful to Cinema Nippon for their help here, while I'm still lacking on information on the Black Helmets and I don't think アナキズム has much for me I appreciate the strange ride we went down together and I kind of like Gakuseigai no Kissaten.

An Introduction and Some Thoughts on Kolektiva and Alternative Video Platforms

 

Why Youtube?

Youtube is so ubiquitous that my spell checker keeps reminding me every time I don't capitalise the t, I don't really think I need to explain the company and its services to anyone who regularly uses the internet its become so big and omnipresent. The problems with youtube are also quite well known, shady companies exploiting the copyright system to the fullest, extremist groups and paedophiles exploiting loopholes to network, advertise and groom, intrusive advertising (I've turned off all data personalisation and I regularly get bombarded with adverts for cults) abusive and toxic comment sections, targeted abuse and harassment etc. There are also other issues with the platform that are less well known because they're much harder to prove unless you're on the receiving end. Channels and videos locked into private for violating somekind of community guideline, but the system won't tell you what guideline or what exactly was causing the issue, blacklisting from the powerful algorithms that account for over 90% of audience exposure, removal of features that certain niche channels like content for disabled viewers depend on, or marking LGBTQ content across the board as adult only regardless of what the actual content of the video is. The constant headaches and bottle necking and threats of takedowns, strikes and bans has caused many to lament that there is no alternative to the behemoth. 

Alternatives  

Of course there are alternatives, thousands of them, the problem is many of them have their own drawbacks or are actively trying to ape youtube and replace it. One of the alternatives I've been interested in for a few years which I feel has promise is Peertube. Peertube is a bit hard for me to explain but they have helpfully made several easy to understand videos explaining it in many languages.

  

https://kolektiva.media/videos/watch/9c9de5e8-0a1e-484a-b099-e80766180a6d

Most of it is beyond comprehension honestly, but that's mostly for people wishing to set up their own server, if like me you just want to watch videos and maybe set up an account and upload and share than its pretty straight forward, just find a server you like and go through the sign up process. Over several years I've been on a few servers and some have died or become abandoned, but overall the indications are healthy, its regularly updated, more features have been added, its more stable and the number of servers being setup, the number of videos and the number of views are also going up as the service grows in popularity. When I first started using Peertube even the introduction video on the web page of the team that developed it had just over 10,000 views, now I've encountered videos with just under a million. Its also open source and decentralised so more tech savvy types can customise and network a lot more effectively. It also has the ability to download videos and torrent them built into the webplayer which greatly helps preserving material. Its proved an attractive model for two groups of Anarchists that have years of experience making video content to educate and propagandise online. 

Presenting Kolektiva 

https://kolektiva.media/videos/watch/bcb4bbfa-c39d-4fd2-96cf-bc4747d2d9d9 

Welcome to Kolektiva, an open-source platform for hosting anarchist videos from around the world. Our goal with Kolektiva is to help increase communication and material solidarity across borders and linguistic divides. If you are interested in getting involved - whether through hosting your content with us, or helping out with translation - please contact us at kolektivamedia@riseup.net.

 Kolektiva went public four months ago and was setup by two groups Sub.Media and Antimidia, both of whom have been around for a long time and have video content of extremely high production value. Curiously both have very little traction on youtube. You might think this is because there's not much appetite amongst a mainstream audience for anarchist videos and investigative reporting on Canadian military and police attacks on indigenous communities, but the recent explosion in popularity of the "Breadtube" a collection of amateur leftist youtube personalities shows that isn't the case. I've also been subscribed to Sub.media for years and have done all of the algorithim pleasing things, liking, faving, sharing etc, but they've never popped up in my recommendation feeds. And looking at the viewing figures for new releases on their Kolektiva and youtube channels they tend to get about a tenth of the views on Kolektiva, keep in mind this is on a new platform that most people including the core intended audience don't know exists. I also thought it was strange how most of Sub's videos ended with requests for viewers to subscribe to an e-mail list to ensure they were notified of new releases. So it does seem like the group's misgivings about youtube and the other big social media companies are well founded. 

Our goal with Kolektiva is to provide a new digital platform for anarchist and anti-colonial filmmakers, collectives, and movements around the world. To share action reports, news, analysis, short films, documentaries, and other video content, with a global audience. In a time when far too much radical media content is held hostage to the algorithms of tech capitalists like facebook, google and twitter, Kolektiva will be a free, open-source alternative built on the PeerTube framework and hosted on secure servers, run and maintained by anarchists. Another important goal of this project will be to help facilitate the translation of videos into multiple languages as a way of sharing our different perspectives, stimulating increased interaction and cooperation, and breaking down the divisions caused by state-imposed borders, travel restrictions, colonial occupations, and the poison of nationalism.

 I've been using Kolektiva for about two months, and so far I've seen positive signs of growth and progress on all of these goals. There is already a lot of diverse content on their from short films, punk music, lectures and documentaries, to animations and footage of street battles and protest successes. Much is either not available on other sites or is buried. Its features also make it easier to translate content, two of my uploads now have French subtitles and I've seen groups like Antimidia release more content with subtitles and narration in other languages. And as the server federates with more servers and the word is spread increasing the userbase and viewership views and sharing of content has been steadily increasing. Hopefully this will continue, and I enthusiastically recommend them to any casual reader of libcom.org and sites like it. https://kolektiva.media/ 

 Its not a Youtube replacement, and I doubt it ever will be, even Antimidia and Sub.media the two groups most responsible for its creation still maintain youtube channels, and I do as well, but I'm finding it to be a viable way to back up content and share it with an audience. I don't think I'll have to mute comment notification there anytime soon. So yes this may be a bit optimistic and dangerously close to advertising (though alas unpaid), but I've been on youtube for over 10 years and it has steadily grown more and more hostile an environment and a business as its gone on and the recent changes to American users, which means that it will now be putting even more adverts on the platform and essentially declaring user autonomy to be dead, its only going to get worse. 

 Oh and a quick note on adblockers, they're great I use them all the time, but they're not infallible platforms like Twitch and youtube are putting more resources into countering them, and sadly a growing number of adblock plugin developers are essentially selling out and deactivating them on sites that cut them a deal. By all means keep using ones that still work, and consider switching to an open source one for greater longevity and effectiveness, but ads are only a fraction of the problems using the modern internet and the services provided by big tech and software corporations.