Hinterland - America's New Landscape on Class and Conflict

[Anonymous No.15852911]

Anyone else read this? Thoughts?

It is about the decay of the countryside and outer suburbs of America (the "Hinterlands") caused by the new globalized economy, about the far rights activity there and a bunch of other stuff. The writing is sort of scattered, but it is very interesting.

[Anonymous No.15852924]

>>15852911
>Anyone else read
no

[Anonymous No.15852932]

>>15852911
Is this a a reference to Inland by Gerald Murnane?

[Anonymous No.15852943]

I'll post an excerpt:

>Economic activity shapes itself into sharper and sharper peaks, centered on palatial urban cores which then splay out into megacities. These hubs are themselves encircled by megaregions, which descend like slowly sloping foothills from the economic summit before the final plummet into windswept wastelands of farm, desert, grassland,and jungle—that farthest hinterland like a vast sunken continent that met its ruin in some ancient cataclysm, populated now with broken looking people sifting through the rubble of economies stillborn or long dead.

ngl, I kinda like his writing

[Anonymous No.15853348]

bump

[Anonymous No.15853417]

>>15852911
no but i live in texas and everytime i take a road trip you must pass through these areas, jarring a good and also bad way.

[Anonymous No.15853466]

>>15852932
I don't know, what's that about?

[Anonymous No.15853480]

>>15852943
Interesting excerpt, do you have anything on "the far rights activity there"?

[Anonymous No.15853573]

>>15853480
sure

>The Crisis is maybe most visible in the desert because the Crisis makes deserts. And it is these deserts that make the militias—or at least that make them an actual threat. The grim potential of these new Patriot parties arises via their ability to organize in the vacuum left by the collapse of local economies. It’s easy for city-dwellers to dismiss the militias as simple far-right fanboys playing soldier in the Arizona desert, but that’s because the real deserts are largely invisible from the metropolis—they are simply too far beyond its walls. The progressive narrative, embodied in an entire sub-genre of think piece that we might simply call Tax Collector Journalism, therefore tends to treat these issues as if nearby ruralites just “oppose taxes” and therefore bring such funding shortfalls upon themselves. A slightly more sinister variant argues that, by backing candidates that reject increases in property tax, small, often out-of-county Patriot groups actually construct the crises facing these rural areas.

[Anonymous No.15853633]

>>15853573
>But these positions are nonsensical when we consider the fact that the collapse of revenues drawn from the land via extractive industries also means a declining property value for these lands and therefore a diminishing base of property taxes to draw from, all accompanying the disappearance of any commodity tax from timber sales, for example. To claim that this crisis was somehow “created” by anti-tax conservative ruralites or by small, relatively recently developed anti-government groups simply ignores that the basis of tax revenue is in industrial production, whether taxed at the level of capital, commodity sale, land ownership, or wage income. Less industrial output means either fewer taxes or a higher share of tax-to-income for most residents. Increased property taxes likely cannot be afforded by small landholders, for whom employment is sparse—and therefore the progressive’s alternative of increasing property taxes is simply a program of dispossession for small landholders. It is no wonder, then, that these smallholders align themselves with ranchers, miners, and even larger corporate landowners (all of whom will be paying the largest lump sum in taxes) to oppose such measures.

[Anonymous No.15853648]

>>15853633
>It is here that the class basis of the far right begins to become visible. With new members joining the Patriot Movement drawn from a generation less convinced by the old militias’ narratives of racial supremacy, the ideological focus of such groups has instead turned largely to issues of land politics. Visions of race war have been replaced by a (nonetheless racially coded) prophecy of oncoming civil war that pits diverse, liberal urban areas against the hinterland. It is easy to seize upon the more conspiratorial aspects of these fears (such as the claim that the UN is set to invade the U.S., with the help and preparation of the federal government) in order to dismiss these movements wholesale, but doing so tends to obscure the fact that these groups are responding, however incoherently, to their experience of the Long Crisis and the new geography being created by it. The results are inevitably grim and occasionally made visible in sweeping acts of political devastation, the urban liberal weeping at the shore of a blood-red ocean stretched between California and New York—an expanse somehow invisible until 8 November 2016, the 18th Brumaire of Donald Trump.

[Anonymous No.15853657]

>>15852943
I hoping Coronavirus helps to rebalance that situation. Such geographic concentration is not good for anybody.

[Anonymous No.15853699]

>>15853648
>In reality, the far right’s political base is not defined by sheer xenophobia and idiocy, and their political analysis, though sprinkled with occult themes and mystical logic, is not entirely hollow. To take a common example, the idea of George Soros secretly funding the most violent aspects of things like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter is a common trope, and it is only the more extreme version of a widespread perception that urban elites use forms of government patronage (in particular welfare and affirmative action) to buy the loyalty of minority groups and thereby turn them against “working people” who have no access to such patronage. Progressive critics often point out the ways in which this theory and many affiliate conspiracies mimic the anti-Semitic narratives of the old militia movement, drawn from the historic far right. But what this critique misses is the simple fact that these conspiracies approximately, if incorrectly, describe structures of power so pervasive as to be mundane to most people.

[Anonymous No.15853719]

>>15853699
>The Democratic Party does (obviously and publicly) fund “radical” projects as a method of co-optation (rather than radicalization, as the right would have it) in its constant cultivation of a strong, radical-in-garb-but-centrist-at-heart base among labor unions,NGOs, local governments, and any number of “community” organizations claiming to represent particular minority groups or simply “people of color” as a whole. This patronage is not evenly allotted to the urban poor, however, and it largely does not come in the form of “welfare” as the far right argues, but instead as grants, campaign funding, charitable donations, and services provided by churches, ngos, or local governments—much of which is allotted to the upper-middle-class segments of disadvantaged populations, rather than those most in need. This method of co-optation and recruitment is therefore part of a real alliance built between the liberal upper segments of dispossessed urban populations and the particular fraction of elites who fund the Democratic Party. This is the
Democratic Party machine. There is nothing conspiratorial about it.

Those were the last 5 out of 8 paragraphs of the chapter called Deserts. Hope you found it interesting.

[Anonymous No.15853729]

>>15853633
Is it actually true that rural land value has been declining in real terms? It's obvious that job prospects have been concentrating in the urban areas since the dawn of the industrial revolution, but I haven't seen evidence that the 'hinterland' real estate market is collapsing.

[Anonymous No.15853790]

>>15853573
>>15853633
>>15853648
>>15853699
>>15853719
This is somewhat reminds me of the honorable Charles Bowden and what he wrote about.

[Anonymous No.15853797]

>>15853699
>Progressive critics often point out the ways in which this theory and many affiliate conspiracies mimic the anti-Semitic narratives of the old militia movement, drawn from the historic far right.

I would rewrite that as:

>Establishment critics often point out the ways in which this theory and many affiliate conspiracies mimic the anti-Semitic narratives of the old antiglobalization movement, drawn from the historic far left.

Soros is threat to the Left, not the Right. He blatantly subverts anticapitalist movements by flooding them with cash, taking over the leadership, and introducing divisive identity politics, thereby rendering them impotent and dysfunctional.

[Anonymous No.15853837]

>>15852911
Nothing is more attractive to most than to present to others that they "would want to live out in the countryside", since it acts as a denial of the current culture which makes one appear more cultured than one actually is. Sometimes the trend of the current fashion culture is to deny that very fashion culture, even. Therefore, even if "the countryside" does "come back", it will "come back" specifically as a fashion-trend as it has been fully coded as a model and a difference into the very system it pretends it is escaping, and therefore support the urbanization that it supposedly opposes (or at least signifies it opposes).

[Anonymous No.15853839]

>>15853719
Thanks for posting anon. I'll check it out.

[Anonymous No.15853898]

>>15853657
It no longer matters where one lives, since nothing too relevant to the fashion system happens on that level anymore. That is to say, the age of New York, of the "big apple", of the great "geographic concentration", is over. It has been replaced for the faster and more compact medium of the network. No longer geographic concentration, but digital concentration. And location is now only something to connect yourself as model to, to relate yourself to, to consume: "I live in Los Angeles", "I live in New York"!

[Anonymous No.15853911]

spengelr already predicted that it would be mega cities vs rural areas

[Anonymous No.15853939]

>>15853898
Sounds like some kind of Nick Land wankery.

[Anonymous No.15853961]

>>15853911
The rural areas have already lost, since they are clamoring for value in the very system that they are opposed to. Thay is to say, the "rural" has already been coded into a model which people distribute, share, relate themselves to, and consume, and this model which is comprised of indicators also has value based on the relation that these indicators have to trends and fads. Nothing essential can any longer come from this facile opposition which is nothing more than a fashion war, since the victory from either side will support the system. There is no radicality in the rural, only indicated radicality in the rural.

[Anonymous No.15853980]

>>15853898
You can't bypass geography that easily. Companies and governments need to maintain a presence in certain areas to ensure some warlord doesn't cut off the supply of some thing needed to run your virtual world. Otherwise any jackass could come along and cut the power lines on a whim.

[Anonymous No.15853994]

>>15853939
I don't see any relation to Nick Land there beyond the word "digital" signifying to you his cyberpunk philosophy.

[Anonymous No.15854032]

>>15853980
Yes, so you keep those "rural" areas centered around a heavily resourced and protected area with hospitals and such. This is already what is happening (and what happened), anyways, in most (pseudo-)rural areas. Again, it simply does not matter very much anymore.

[Anonymous No.15854072]

Does he come up with any predictions/prescriptions?

[Anonymous No.15854140]

>>15853994
Same imagined far-future outlandishness.

[Anonymous No.15854160]

>>15853961
The problem with rural fags is that they are too stupid to understand their own interests. They keep voting for the very people accelerating their destruction.

[Anonymous No.15854183]

>>15854072
>>15854072
>A number of theories have arisen to try and account for how these features might be combined in some speculative future evolution of current struggles. Clover condenses a number of loosely fitting theories about “communization” into a clear argument for “the commune,” defined by its ability to facilitate self-reproduction while also “absolutizing” the antagonism of the riot. The Invisible Committee offers fleeting glimpses of something similar, though too shrouded in smoke and flowery
French prose to be entirely visible from our present vantage point. Many anarchists offer yet another sketch, founded this time
on an “autonomy” that tends to conflate small-scale moments of self-reproduction in squats and occupations with the nationalist or proto-nationalist enclaves of populist movements in the global countryside. Frederic Jameson, meanwhile, represents a popular strain of academic Marxism in opting for the older language of “dual power,” founding the reproductive and extensive capacity
of future struggles on the reinvented institution of the “universal army.” Despite their myriad shortcomings and many different vocabularies, all of these theories share the recognition that the evolution of the riot is a process of building power within the interstices opened by the Long Crisis.
>Personally, I don’t understand the compulsion to mine history for words that might describe what’s to come. The fact is that the approaching flood has no name. Any title it might take is presently lost in the noise of its gestation, maybe just beginning to be spoken in a language that we can hardly recognize. There will be no Commune because this isn’t Paris in 1871. There will be no Dual Power because this isn’t Russia in 1917. There will be no Autonomy because this isn’t Italy in 1977. I’m writing this in 2017, and I don’t know what’s coming, even though I know something is rolling toward us in the darkness, and the world can end in more ways than one. Its presence is hinted at somewhere deep inside the evolutionary meat grinder of riot repeating riot, all echoing ad infinitum through the Year of our Lord 2016, when the anthem returned to its origin, and the corpse flowers bloomed all at once as Louisiana was turned to water, and no one knew why. I don’t call people comrade; I just call them friend. Because whatever’s coming has no name, and anyone who says they hear it is a liar. All I hear are guns cocking over trap snares unrolling to infinity.

[Anonymous No.15854193]

>>15854072
>A number of theories have arisen to try and account for how these features might be combined in some speculative future evolution of current struggles. Clover condenses a number of loosely fitting theories about “communization” into a clear argument for “the commune,” defined by its ability to facilitate self-reproduction while also “absolutizing” the antagonism of the riot. The Invisible Committee offers fleeting glimpses of something similar, though too shrouded in smoke and flowery French prose to be entirely visible from our present vantage point. Many anarchists offer yet another sketch, founded this time on an “autonomy” that tends to conflate small-scale moments of self-reproduction in squats and occupations with the nationalist or proto-nationalist enclaves of populist movements in the global countryside. Frederic Jameson, meanwhile, represents a popular strain of academic Marxism in opting for the older language of “dual power,” founding the reproductive and extensive capacity of future struggles on the reinvented institution of the “universal army.” Despite their myriad shortcomings and many different vocabularies, all of these theories share the recognition that the evolution of the riot is a process of building power within the interstices opened by the Long Crisis.
>Personally, I don’t understand the compulsion to mine history for words that might describe what’s to come. The fact is that the approaching flood has no name. Any title it might take is presently lost in the noise of its gestation, maybe just beginning to be spoken in a language that we can hardly recognize. There will be no Commune because this isn’t Paris in 1871. There will be no Dual Power because this isn’t Russia in 1917. There will be no Autonomy because this isn’t Italy in 1977. I’m writing this in 2017, and I don’t know what’s coming, even though I know something is rolling toward us in the darkness, and the world can end in more ways than one. Its presence is hinted at somewhere deep inside the evolutionary meat grinder of riot repeating riot, all echoing ad infinitum through the Year of our Lord 2016, when the anthem returned to its origin, and the corpse flowers bloomed all at once as Louisiana was turned to water, and no one knew why. I don’t call people comrade; I just call them friend. Because whatever’s coming has no name, and anyone who says they hear it is a liar. All I hear are guns cocking over trap snares unrolling to infinity.

[Anonymous No.15854226]

>>15854193
these paragraphs may seem disconnected from the others I posted, but keep in mind that the author also writes about the Ferguson riots.

>While the near hinterland is more suburban, it’s not the suburbia of the old middle class dream. In Europe it is often where immigrant workers live, working either in large logistics hubs or commuting to the urban core to work. In Africa and Latin America the near hinterland is often like the typical slum cities of the US. In the US, there has been a “demographic inversion” in many areas, which has seen “the transformation of old postwar suburbs into the primary settlement zones for new immigrants and for those leaving expensive urban cores.” This in turn generates new ghettos which bring new forms of resistance, like the 2014 rioting in suburban Ferguson, Missouri (18-19). Neel sees the near hinterland as a likely center of coming social upheavals.

[Anonymous No.15854283]

>>15854193
>>15854226
I have mixed feelings on this as a conclusion. On the one hand, I am eternally frustrated by thinkers who point out a number of problems and then don't attempt to extrapolate or listen to the proposed solutions to come to a conclusion. It strikes me as intellectual laziness.
On the other hand, he's entirely right. Existing paradigms of language for radical movements are inaccurate, they are based in historical moments that have passed and are par with pathologizing your opponents.

I also have this feeling of dread, like he says
>guns cocking over trap snares unrolling to infinity
It's this perpetual buildup of factors like a fucking jack-in-the-box that just keeps spinning and playing its fucking music and just won't pop. I'm terrified that at some point it will kick off, but I'm more terrified that it never does. That this is how things will be for decades if not centuries, and we're on the slow downward spiral of a civilization at its end.

[Anonymous No.15854337]

>>15854283
Honestly the way he writes feels lovecraftian, it's incommensurable dread. I've heard about Southern Gothic, but this may as well be Midwestern Gothic.

[Anonymous No.15854390]

>>15854337
Nothing is more lovecraftian than Burgerpunk. When you get yourself past the level of looking at some line of fat people in motorized scooters and going "ha look they fat", the example are the picture of horror. The homogenization and commodification of the human soul is incomprehensibly terrifying.

[Anonymous No.15854436]

>>15854390
Heh, I hadn't thought about burgerpunk. This book could actually work as a theoretical basis for that movement.

[Anonymous No.15855504]

>>15854140
I'm not talking about the future, idiot. What I am saying is already true.

[Anonymous No.15855520]

>>15852943
awful dilettante pretension for midwits, get to the fucking point

[Anonymous No.15855555]

>>15855504
But it's not. Nobody gives a shit about NY vs LA except the people who physically live there.

[Anonymous No.15855593]

>>15853797
>Soros is threat to the Left
You're delusional. His son has pictures of himself on instagram doing the black power salute. Soros and his family literally believe all this stuff. They aren't doing it to D&C. They believe they are helping.

[Anonymous No.15855622]

>>15855593
Your post only reinforces the point I made, brainlet.

[Anonymous No.15855655]

>>15855622
It doesn't reinforce anything. Identity politics was originally introduced into the west by communists, not liberals and not capitalists. This is just leftism playing itself out yet again, with idiots like yourself having to make no true scotsmen arguments about how "real leftism" doesn't include identity politics.

[Anonymous No.15855701]

>>15855655
So you think IdPol actually strengthens the power of the working classes? Wow. I don't believe it but, hey, a ray of optimism is always welcome.

[Anonymous No.15855717]

>>15855655
>Identity politics was originally introduced into the west by
By... could it be? ... By the enemies of the west? Because they wanted to undermine the west? Could it fucking be? Use your fucking head for once, dumbshit.

[Anonymous No.15855752]

>>15855701
Since when has the left backed the interests of the working classes? 1920?

[Anonymous No.15855797]

>>15855717
>>15855701
It has nothing to do with D&C. They thought they were helping. No matter how much you gaslight, identity politics is inherently tied to the communist project. It's no coincidence that the most rabid wokescolds on twitter have hammer and sickles in their profiles.

[Anonymous No.15855816]

>>15855797
>It has nothing to do with D&C.
"Dilation and curettage"? Speak English, schizo. Or go back to >>>/x/.

[Anonymous No.15855860]

>>15854160
Wrong they understand their interests quite well. No one in electoral politics has the back of the rural working class.

[Anonymous No.15855928]

>>15855555
I agree. You've clearly misunderstood what I've said.

[Anonymous No.15855930]

>>15855860
If they en masse joined the (theoretical) party of working people - the Democrats - they would drown out the voices of the 'woke' SJW IdPol nutjobs and we could overthrow the rule of the ruling class degenerate bankers who rule the world. But no, they would rather vote for who most vociferously condemns the cultural "other" of the day. That's why they are where they are. And why they will ultimately disappear demographically. Sad.

[Anonymous No.15855970]

>>15855930
Electoral politics cannot win real material concessions for the working class, especially not now in the age of neoliberalism. The 'woke' crowd is simply a method for the ruling elites to wage class war. Elites no longer have need for social democratic style politics, they've been able to disuse working class organization enough via cultural liberalism. The woke crowd house deliberately been a tool to divide working class power and distract from the material concessions previously able to be gained via the Democratic party. The Dems themselves do not care, for every rural worker who leaves the party, they gain two professional class voters. Ruling classes can only be overthrown in revolution, not in bourgeois democracy.

[Anonymous No.15856023]

[Anonymous No.15856055]

>>15855930
Posts like these are probably why they don't join you. Putting "woke" in scare quotes as if to weaken it, talking about cultural condemnation as if the left wing doesn't do the same against their enemies 24/7 in the media and colleges, and punctuating talk of near-genocide with an ironic Trump meme.

Like the other anon said, it's incredibly obvious to non-retards that commies who whine about SJWs are as woke as the SJWs and have no problem buying into it while pretending that they aren't peddling identity politics. You guys are either clueless about how you appear to others, or gaslighting because you know what is happening and agree with it. There's no doubt in my mind that even if there were some sort of alliance to take down the elites, you people would slaughter every non-rich person who disagrees with you after you take power.

[Anonymous No.15856079]

>>15856055
Most leftists you see today are all professional class kids who want to adopt an edgy aesthetic while protecting their own class interests by being on the left and disrupting working class organizing.

[Anonymous No.15856101]

>>15856055
Take it back to >>>/x/.

[Anonymous No.15856106]

>>15856055
Dilate, tranny.

[Anonymous No.15856107]

>>15856079
>Most leftists you see today are all professional class kids
I've seen far more service industry kids adhere to anything more than the leftist aesthetic, maybe a handful of teachers and social workers (i.e. professionals that are maligned in the larger society). Anyone more successful or more established just puts the BLM sign on their lawn and forgets about the politics in favor of watching the latest show on HBO, Disney+, etc.

[Anonymous No.15856123]

>>15856079
>...being on the left and disrupting working class...
Sorry, I know you mean well, but that doesn't make any sense.

[Anonymous No.15856133]

>>15856107
>i.e. professionals
That’s the point he was making, goofball. And 98% of this is being carried by the lawn-sign people, have some respect for the revolutionary vanguard.

[Anonymous No.15856138]

>>15855752
0/10 bait.

[Anonymous No.15856156]

>>15856107
That's because there's been a massive amount of elite overproduction. I bet the vast majority of those service industry kids come from wealthy/upper middle homes and went to a 4 year college. Too many people being trained for jobs/positions in life that are already filled. Leftism allows for them to signal the values of the elite, while satisfying any tendency towards radicalism their economic downward mobility produces.

[Anonymous No.15856158]

>>15856133
Those professionals are a rarity in a broader movement. The lawn-sign people are who >>15856079 was discussing, but these people are larpers, not leftists.

[Anonymous No.15856179]

>>15856158
Oh, eat me out. It’s all professionals, all the way down. Unimaginative millennial managers and their “”politics.””
>>15856138
Nice clicheed response, fagola.

[Anonymous No.15856180]

>>15856123
Yes, historically the American left has been where the American working class has organized from. This is no longer true, with your average American leftist advocates for things that are dramatically anti-working class. However, many of the old organizations of labor are still officially left, thus it becomes important to maintain the facade of still being pro-working class.

[Anonymous No.15856187]

>>15856158
There is no large actually left movement in the US. It's just all neoliberal/anarchist posturing as pro-working class. I meant specifically activist types you'd see in DSA, they have professional class backgrounds and almost always have gone to college.

[Anonymous No.15856197]

>>15856156
I'd tend to agree that numerous service workers of leftist inclination went to college, but I guess far too much of what we've been saying is anecdotal. I'd also tend to agree that too many jobs that require a four-year degree are filled (and maybe needn't be filled at all). However, while there is some level of cultural capital available to those who express leftist talking points within certain discourse communities, the elite (in America, anyway) isn't leftist. The elite is neoliberal. I think the real issue we'll see in the coming decades is whether those stay persuaded by leftist ideas ever effect any real change or if all their energies are rendered into soft aesthetics by an elite that renders all transformative politics into hashtags and t-shirt slogans.

[Anonymous No.15856201]

>>15856180
Nah, dude. Unrestricted immigration and outsourcing are pro working class, they just keep voting against their interests because they’re stupid rednecks, unlike me, their Leftist Ally.

[Anonymous No.15856208]

>>15856197
Leftism is a subsidiary of neoliberalism. Sorry to say it, but it’s a franchise.

[Anonymous No.15856216]

>>15856187
I have ambivalent feelings regarding whether anyone is truly pro-working class in America, but I think I'd tend to agree with you.

[Anonymous No.15856228]

>>15856208
I disagree in absolute terms, but I think I'd likely agree that leftist aesthetic fertilization is a product of neoliberalism, and so all current American leftists are just neoliberals (likely without realizing it).

[Anonymous No.15856233]

>>15856228
Thank goodness absolute terms don’t really apply.

[Anonymous No.15856235]

>>15856228
>fertilization
Fetishization, obviously

[Anonymous No.15856237]

>>15856158
>but these people are larpers, not leftists.
take your meds

[Anonymous No.15856238]

>>15856197
You're missing my point. I'm very well aware that US elites manage a liberal capitalist country, thus want more liberal capitalism. What I am saying is that the American left today is 100% controlled by US elites, who've directed it into pure concern over culturally liberal issues, rather than actual working class material interests. They still pose as radicals (progressives, socialists, anarchists, communist, etc.), but are in fact just the same neoliberals as anyone else. See AOC for a very clear example of this. In this way, any working class organization is disrupted before it even begins.

[Anonymous No.15856254]

>>15856216
The question would be who. I think Sanders was for the most part, but the professional class leftists perfectly derailed that in his 2020 campaign, he's from a bygone era anyway. Tucker arguably is as well, but in the same sort of sense FDR was, an elite who wants to stabilize the system.

[Anonymous No.15856260]

>>15856238
Yep. This is the correct answer. If you’re angry at it, think before spouting a media-bestowed cliche.

[Anonymous No.15856266]

>>15855970
First off, thanks for providing some interesting content to chew on.

>Electoral politics cannot win real material concessions for the working class
Sure, but ideally electoral politics can at least seal the final deal on political processes that began decades ago from the grassroots up.

>especially not now in the age of neoliberalism.
It does seem a lot harder now.

>The 'woke' crowd is simply a method for the ruling elites to wage class war.
Yes, I would say it is a method for the ruling elite to divide the demographics of the classes they are at war against.

>Elites no longer have need for social democratic style politics
Really? SocDem Euro politics is definitely in a different place the more third-world global capitalism grows...

>they've been able to disuse working class organization enough via cultural liberalism.
If you mean that they have subverted the left with divisive identity politics, yes I agree.

>The woke crowd house deliberately been a tool to divide working class power and distract from the material concessions previously able to be gained via the Democratic party.
Agree totally.

>The Dems themselves do not care, for every rural worker who leaves the party, they gain two professional class voters.
The DNC and their donors may think that, but reality is about to slap them in the face.

>Ruling classes can only be overthrown in revolution, not in bourgeois democracy.
You are probably right. But I go back and forth.

[Anonymous No.15856276]

>>15856156
>Leftism
>elite
Try again, Cletus.

[Anonymous No.15856290]

>>15856276
Thanks for the meaningful contribution. What’d I miss on John Oliver’s last program, by the way, I like to keep up on events.

[Anonymous No.15856295]

>>15856238
Ah, that's what you've been on about? I don't disagree with that.

[Anonymous No.15856313]

>>15856290
Lol. Sorry if I went too far, anon.

[Anonymous No.15856319]

>>15856313
Stay in your lane, homo.

[Anonymous No.15856321]

>>15856319
Dilate, tranny.

[Anonymous No.15856325]

>>15856276
>>15856313
>"we totally won't kill the white parts of the working class bro, enter into an alliance with us, we are all about class until we aren't"

[Anonymous No.15856331]

>>15856321
Have sex, incel.

[Anonymous No.15856334]

>>15856325
>>15856331

[Anonymous No.15856341]

>>15856276
Seems like an awfully anti-working class attitude there.

[Anonymous No.15856343]

>>15856321
But in all seriousness, what’d John Oliver have to say?

[Anonymous No.15856346]

>>15856290
Keep voting against your own economic interests, dumbfuck. You only helping your enemies.

[Anonymous No.15856357]

>>15856343
Never heard of him. Perhaps you can inform the class what he said, you elite cock-sucking crack-smoking trustfunder?

[Anonymous No.15856359]

>>15856201
>>15856346
How’s it feel to be a living caricature?
Are you wearing clown shoes and a red nose? Be honest.

[Anonymous No.15856360]

>>15856346
>it's possible to vote for your economic interests in 2020 America as a working class person

[Anonymous No.15856367]

>>15856357
Nothing wrong with smoking crack. And what’s with this blatant homophobia? Yeesh, someone get this guy a MAGA hat! Haha!

[Anonymous No.15856368]

>>15856359
Explain how you shouldn't be gassed immediately, you sick tranny fuck.

[Anonymous No.15856374]

>>15856368
Yep. I’m a tranny because I think leftists are silly? I guess? Take your meds, dude.

[Anonymous No.15856376]

>>15856367
Post your address so that the common people here can greet you.

[Anonymous No.15856378]

>>15856346
>"vote for me and my side you dumbfuck cletus, if you knew what was good for you, you'd ally with the guy who says other people are the enemy, i.e. me, the guy who also treats you like an enemy"

[Anonymous No.15856388]

>>15856374
>Yep. I’m a tranny
At least you admit it. But why do you have to despoil this thread with your degeneracy though? Seems like the author cited in the OP may have been on to something. Oh well.

[Anonymous No.15856411]

>>15856378
How much are they paying you? Whatever side you're on, the glowniggers are overpaying you.

[Anonymous No.15856540]

bump

[Anonymous No.15856594]

Looks interesting, thank you.

[Anonymous No.15856681]

>>15853417
The sprawl here is absolutely atrocious and kind of refutes his point. I actually the idea of economic post-apocalyptic megaticities surrounded by thousands of miles of empty wild lands dotted with a few industrial monoliths of concrete and steel.

[Anonymous No.15856697]

>>15853417
The sprawl here is absolutely atrocious and kind of refutes his point. I actually like the idea of an economic post-apocalypse of megaticities surrounded by thousands of miles of empty wild lands dotted with a few industrial monoliths of concrete and steel. top funnel natural resources to those urban centers.

[Anonymous No.15856787]

>>15853898
That's only true if you have the option to work from home. Try telling some Scot-descendant in somewhere like Wheeling, West Virginia (once the wealthiest town in America) that their decision to live there doesn't matter because they can just earn money from "the network".

The issue is that America was once a mass producer and exporter of various goods and resources. There is literally no reason for there to be large towns in isolated valleys / hollows of West Virginia, other than coal and related industries. These industries caused massive population booms, the formation of towns, industrial giants building houses and libraries etc to attract workers. When coal no longer became profitable, then the coal mine shuts, as does the local engineering firm which provided gears and tools etc for the mine, as does the local diner and cafe which fed the miners, etc. It becomes a welfare town where the most ambitious and those with the academic support and ability leave to find their fortunes elsewhere, while others compete for minimum wage and government jobs, while others fall prey to the vices caused by a lack of economic prosperity (drugs, crime, welfare lifestyle etc).

If this were an isolated incident in a particular region and a particular industry (say, coal mining) then it would make sense for the bulk of that population either independently or through government assistance to either move to another region where similar industries are prospering (e.g., manufacturing, factories, steel industry etc), or the region itself could hope to attract new industries which could benefit from a huge unemployed workforce ready to work for low pay. However the collapse of American manufacturing and production is not isolated to one region, but is an almost nationwide issue caused primarily by a globalised economy whereby a corporation can shift its base of production from Pennsylvania to Mexico, Taiwan or Malaysia without much of a second thought, and with the tacit approval of the government (NAFTA, as I understand it, encourages such relocation to Mexico, etc). Additionally, mass immigration from places like Mexico and central America means there is more competition for fewer jobs, which itself leads to a kind of pauperization of the working class, where both employer and prospective or actual employee knows there is abundance of available labour and so any attempt to improve working conditions or pay is precluded.

[Anonymous No.15856794]

The simple fact is that there is actually no longer any real need for an unskilled but hardworking person to exist, unless he is willing to toil away for minimum wage in one of the boom-and-bust industries that the author here mentions, and even then he is just biding his time until automation replaces him. The working class man can no longer hope to buy a home, let alone sustain a family on his meagre, insecure wage. It is no surprise that so many such men appear to many as less mature, masculine and self-respecting than the working man of sixty years ago who could at least expect a home and a family by the age of thirty provided he was willing to answer the call to work, even if he was rather uneducated or only suited to manual labour. That same man today is living with his mother in Youngstown, Ohio and drives past the discarded monuments to industry alongside the side of the road each day on his way to work at Dollar Store, and is grateful to have the afternoon off so he can attend the funeral of his cousin who just OD'd after relapsing in his opioid addiction. His autistic younger brother is there are the funeral having a tantrum because the boys' single mother tried to take away his iPad in church, and after the service he sees his 37 year old female cousin who he used to have a crush on crying in her car before driving back to her tiny rented apartment in Cleveland where she lives alone and spends her evenings looking for a suitable date on Bumble.

[Anonymous No.15856847]

>>15853837
Good post. I imagine a lot of remote workers will begin to move out to rural locations in the next decade, and there will be a new slew of articles and Youtube videos comparing various rural areas in terms of broadband connectivity, how to increase broadband speed in your "cabin in the woods" (actually a restored 19th century colonial), and a sort of competitive online culture will emerge where rich white 32-year-old men will have a Youtube thumbnail of themselves with an open mouth clasping their cheeks in disbelief with the video title "HOW fast is my broadband in Birlington, VT?!?".

The corollary to that is probably more complaints about poor roads ("do you *know* how much money I contribute to local government services!?") which will in turn create more drive-thru towns with no pedestrianised, slow-going culture. Additionally, the "diversity" of the local restaurants will no-doubt increase as articles will run headlines along the lines of "Meet the owners of the first ever Lebanese restaurant in Maine!", etc. And then naturally the articles will follow the current trend of complaining that Maine is too white, that "as an Indian-heritage engineer looking to escape the rat race" Maine isn't as welcoming and ethnically diverse as it could (should) be.

That said, America is a huge place so maybe it's my schizophrenia talking.

[Anonymous No.15856937]

>>15852911
Anyone here subscribe to Netflix? Check out the recent "Unsolved Mysteries" (2020) episodes #2 ('13 Minutes'), #4 ('No Ride Home'), and #6 ('Missing Witness'). That will definitively tell you everything you need to know about rural America. Especially #4.

[Anonymous No.15856938]

>>15856787
>If this were an isolated incident in a particular region and a particular industry (say, coal mining) then it would make sense for the bulk of that population either independently or through government assistance to either move to another region where similar industries are prospering (e.g., manufacturing, factories, steel industry etc), or the region itself could hope to attract new industries which could benefit from a huge unemployed workforce ready to work for low pay. However the collapse of American manufacturing and production is not isolated to one region, but is an almost nationwide issue caused primarily by a globalised economy whereby a corporation can shift its base of production from Pennsylvania to Mexico, Taiwan or Malaysia without much of a second thought, and with the tacit approval of the government (NAFTA, as I understand it, encourages such relocation to Mexico, etc). Additionally, mass immigration from places like Mexico and central America means there is more competition for fewer jobs, which itself leads to a kind of pauperization of the working class, where both employer and prospective or actual employee knows there is abundance of available labour and so any attempt to improve working conditions or pay is precluded.
Outsourcing is just one part of the decline of manufacturing in the western world, a perhaps even bigger factor that everyone seems to ignore is that increased mechanization and automation led at the same time to nearly all industries massively shedding workers while increasing their productivity exponentially:
For illustration:
Production at the Ford plant in Cologne in 1953 compared to 1970 (starts at 7:05):
https://youtu.be/eaYdH1ziLAc?t=424
>daily production 1953: ~150 cars
>daily production 1970: ~1300 cars
Canning of beer at a brewery in my hometown back in 1976:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wBAB0re-Mw&t=17s

[Anonymous No.15856981]

>>15856938
Agreed, and I did mention it briefly in my second post but thanks for the videos also.

The question is, what can be done with the masses of people who aren't suited to academic work (i.e., to pursue white collar professions) and who are competing in a race to the bottom alongside immigrants and machines in terms of wages etc?

[Anonymous No.15856987]

>>15856937
I too get my worldview from Netflix my fellow redditor.

[Anonymous No.15857069]

>>15856987
Thanks bruh

[Anonymous No.15858863]

bump

[Anonymous No.15858981]

>>15855593
You're a fool to conflate Soros' son with Soros. His son is a halfwitted trust-fund baby while Soros is an intelligent investor. There's a reason Soros still runs all of his funds personally at age 88

[Anonymous No.15858991]

>>15856794
Books for this feel?

[Anonymous No.15859767]

>>15856697
well i lived in denton for a while, which is basically on the north edge of dallas sprawl, and you are instantly confronted with scenes like the book cover if you drive north, everything is downtrodden until you come into contact with colorado. have you been to amarillo or cities around there? it is extremely depressing, there are so many remnants of manufacturing

[Anonymous No.15859799]

>>15856794
Damn...

[Anonymous No.15859871]

>>15856794

[Anonymous No.15860201]

>>15859767
>>15853417
>>15856697
I will just leave this pic here.
>>15856981
I know, it just far too often develops solely into rants blaming outsourcing.
>>15856787
>The issue is that America was once a mass producer and exporter of various goods and resources. There is literally no reason for there to be large towns in isolated valleys / hollows of West Virginia, other than coal and related industries. These industries caused massive population booms, the formation of towns, industrial giants building houses and libraries etc to attract workers. When coal no longer became profitable, then the coal mine shuts, as does the local engineering firm which provided gears and tools etc for the mine, as does the local diner and cafe which fed the miners, etc. It becomes a welfare town where the most ambitious and those with the academic support and ability leave to find their fortunes elsewhere, while others compete for minimum wage and government jobs, while others fall prey to the vices caused by a lack of economic prosperity (drugs, crime, welfare lifestyle etc).
>If this were an isolated incident in a particular region and a particular industry (say, coal mining) then it would make sense for the bulk of that population either independently or through government assistance to either move to another region where similar industries are prospering (e.g., manufacturing, factories, steel industry etc), or the region itself could hope to attract new industries which could benefit from a huge unemployed workforce ready to work for low pay. However the collapse of American manufacturing and production is not isolated to one region, but is an almost nationwide issue caused primarily by a globalised economy whereby a corporation can shift its base of production from Pennsylvania to Mexico, Taiwan or Malaysia without much of a second thought, and with the tacit approval of the government (NAFTA, as I understand it, encourages such relocation to Mexico, etc). Additionally, mass immigration from places like Mexico and central America means there is more competition for fewer jobs, which itself leads to a kind of pauperization of the working class, where both employer and prospective or actual employee knows there is abundance of available labour and so any attempt to improve working conditions or pay is precluded.
This hits awfully close for my city and area. We used to have like half dozen coal pits and some serious industry producing wires 60 years ago, but the last pit was closed down in 2014 after a long decline(coal mining in Germany had already become uneconomically way back during the 60s but kept artificially live for decades with subsidies) and the wire industry employs nowhere as many as it once did and the remaining industry has shrunk rather drastically.
>t. anon from the Ruhr area (Germany's rust belt)

[Anonymous No.15860222]

OK then, this represents the third non-standard theory I've heard regarding why the flyover states are full of nazis. To recap:

1) The Jehu theory (after Postone) - Continued increases in machine-facilitated productivity have eroded the ability of commodity producers (especially agriculture, but also mining and manufacturing) to produce value, which has rendered the large population that worked in those industries increasingly superfluous. Fiat currency was introduced and progressively devalued to control production and keep the economy afloat (what Jehu idiosyncratically refers to as 'fascism'), but this 90-year delaying tactic is nearing the end of its efficacy.
So midwesterners are nazis because that's what happens to the poor assholes that get cut loose from a sinking capitalism.
The solution is an immediate and deep reduction in the working day, with an eye to decoupling labour and consumption entirely. Communism is what happens when value (and by extension prices and wages) hits zero, value production has hit essentially zero, so all we need to do is to formalise/recognise the condition that already exists on the ground. UBI and various other measures are pointless, at best they're obscuring the facts on the ground and at worst they're delaying the inevitable.

2) The Greer-Tainter 'Catabolic Collapse' theory - Peak oil didn't stop being a thing just because we stopped talking about it, and collapse isn't the rapid bloody process that the apocalypse fetishists thought it would be. Catabolic collapse manifests as a slow 'cancellation of the future' (to borrow a phrase from Fisher), driven by the inexorably rising cost of energy extraction. Bit by bit, society is less able to spare the energy to administer itself. Like a person freezing to death, it starts at the extremities and moves to the core. Support to rural areas slows, then stops. No new infrastructure is built, and what already exists stops being repaired. The areas furthest away from the imperial centre are forced to manage their own affairs, a material circumstance that drives a thousand petty nationalisms. Without a new source of energy, these petty nationalisms get reified as the unifying state lacks the energy to resist dissolution. Rome turned into feudal Europe after they had to go too far afield for new slaves, and it's happening to us while we crow about how technologically advanced we are for doing fracking, a technology that was known about but considered too expensive for decades.
So midwesterners are nazis because the entire oil-fueled global order is collapsing and the roof's hitting their heads first.
The solution is a new source of energy that has at least the EROEI that oil used to. Terrestrial renewables are right out, their EROEI's too low - they won't stave off collapse, they'll just characterise the literal neo-feudalism that follows the eventual collapse.

[Anonymous No.15860231]

>>15860222

And now 3) Neel's 'Hinterland' Theory: Capitalism's crises (specifically crises in the profitability of rural and suburban industries like resource extraction and manufacturing) have concentrated all of the wealth in the cities and sent all of the commodity production overseas. Very well-characterised by this snippet:
>and therefore the progressive’s alternative of increasing property taxes is simply a program of dispossession for small landholders
So midwesterners are nazis because they're being ideologically led by the last of the kulaks, just now being dispossessed by economies of scale in agricultural production.
The solution will grow as an extension of the riot, as people who have fallen into society's ever-widening cracks are forced to make a living there, like a scaled-up version of the mole people societies that live in the tunnels and drains of the metropoles. Though the details are still hazy, a decisive Thing is looming out of the inky blackness that has settled around our view of the future. The rumblings that this Beast makes in the tenebrous depths of The Next Little While are reflected in the themes of the literature being produced by many contemporary sections of the Left. Formal general strikes and 'parties' with 'programs' won't cut it, they're relics of a time when not so much solid stuff had melted into air.

[Anonymous No.15860367]

>>15859767
I used to drive back and forth between Denton and Lubbock regularly. Once you get outside the metroplex, there's simply nothing. Couldn't even call it depressed or downtrodden because there was simply nothing there.

[Anonymous No.15860448]

>>15853648
i've recently been thinking about how ironic it is that right wing pro-civil war posters have embraced che guevera's vision of guerilla war

[Anonymous No.15860464]

Sam francis tried to weaponize the so-called middle-american radicals which he saw as a temporarily/locally unassimilated/unexpected by the managers class of disenfranchised working class whites, who still have strong family and community values capable of forming the core of a political movement

That was his idea in the 90s, I don't think he expected it would work but it's basically the same strategy that got Trump elected. In his late work he shifted more toward a schmittian policy of combining racial and economic populism to form a kind of national socialism as a resistance against internationalist/neoliberal managerialism.

I still have some hope for that plan but the neoliberals are so dominant that the collapse of their retarded order will be painfully slow, and they will simply transition to being oligarchs and warlords and once again use the working class as a stepping stool on their way. The universities and media and culture are filled with useful idiot retard leftists whose solutions to political disunity are ":D LEFTISM = INTERNATIONALISM, ACCELERATE THE DISUNITY :D" because it's too painful for them to deprogram their liberal-left brainwashing that "leftism=bein' nice" and being anti-immigration or pro-national solidarity = not bein' nice so they can't do that. As this stagnant situation continues the cities fill up more and more with mixed-race lumpenproles with levels of retardation Marx and Engels never could have even imagined, they have the minds of children.

At this point we need three things: 1. continue the momentum of the populist resurgence and play the Gramscian game, 2. pray for cataclysms that further splinter the already brittle superstructure of the neoliberal world order / their fake leftist pets, and 3. probably the most useful, take any opportunity to expropriate and dislodge the managerial/"expert"/rentseeker/financier class, to confuse and disorient them, to prevent them from passing knowledge of how to fuck the working classes (expert knowledge of how to work the system, game the crooked courts, dodge taxes, create/hide money, etc.) down to their children in an unbroken succession

[Anonymous No.15860507]

>>15856847
i doubt it, upper echelon remote workers who need to politic their way up the office food chain will force their way back to work, while the rest fall out of the middle class when they're suddenly competing with remote working low-cost asians of various kinds. the second group will have to stay near urban centers for welfare services and the fleeting work opportunities it provides. if the last few decades of consolidation have emptied out the small cities and the countryside don't expect that trend to reverse

[Anonymous No.15860530]

>>15860222
1 and 3 sound the same and 3 is just 1 and 2 but a greater focus on oil

[Anonymous No.15860596]

>>15854283
The only solution for any given problem in America is the end of America itself. Not even memeing, the only place on the planet that would not benefit from a breakup of the US into multiple individual sovereign states is Israel.

[Anonymous No.15860610]

>>15860201
What are employment prospects like today in your region?

Do most young people go to university and end up moving to the city etc?

[Anonymous No.15860795]

>Lots of millennials I know on normie social media have been memeing about how awful 2020 has been. Honey, you haven’t seen the half of it. Year on year, this decade is going to get worse. These riots have coincided with corona-chan’s ushering in of a work-from-home revolution. Work-from-home has been possible for at least a decade, but companies have been reluctant to adopt it. It not only cuts into the power of HR, it also keeps the companies and workers paying taxes in areas with lots of hungry blacks. Until now. Work-from-home is here to stay. It’s inertia. With the riots, there is even less reason to live and work in a city. Then, there becomes no reason for major corporations to be headquartered in cities. Corona-chan along with looter-chan will near-entirely push out the tax base that feeds the vast termite nest of africans that infests the major cities. There are federal EBT cards and federal housing projects, but with no grocery store (burned), Famine will ride on the heels of Pestilence.

>Every major city will look like Detroit within the next decade, while the suburbs and rural areas flourish. I see a future of intentional communities of WFH tech bros thriving behind a bristling hedge of redneck AR-15’s while the cities quite literally crumble to ruins. Men go to the cities for pussy, but women go to the cities for high-status dick. Detroit is not a hip or stylish city to live in, and neither is Baltimore. After a time lag, women will follow the men out to their new communities, the most successful of which will be too far away to dump buses of blacks from the now-ruined inner cities on, in the same way that while they forced Somali refugees on Maine, they could not dump Boston’s refuse on them. This will result in a massive “flyover country” boom and population decentralization, while major urban areas become depopulated no-go-zones.

>It has been a decade since America put its own astronauts into space, and Elon Musk just did it, his rocket rising as cities burned below. Is there any greater symbol than this for where we are? Decentralization will cause the Left to lose institutional power. The institutional Left does not want this, but the younger, harder Left does. They want civil war, want Haiti and Rhodesia, and as their formal power slips with the loss of the cities, they will do their best to accelerate towards civil war and political violence shielded by activist judges. Trump will win in 2020, and if decentralization continues, a Trumpist will win in 2024. Absent these Trumpists’ use of extrajudicial force to seize political power, the remaining Democrat cities, run by people like AOC and Omar, all Little Africas, will engage in domestic terrorism and then hot civil war once they are desperate and angry enough to attack places where people have guns. This will happen between 2035 and 2040.

[Anonymous No.15860837]

>>15860795
kek this is terrible

[Anonymous No.15860838]

>>15860795
Outside the major cities, America is a miserable wasteland. Nobody would chose to live in the boonies.

[Anonymous No.15860872]

>>15860795
>Decentralization will cause the Left to lose institutional power.
No, the opposite. Democrats are currently underrepresented in DC relative to population because they are so tightly clustered in big cities. Once they spread out, their representation will start to match their numbers, which means complete dominance of the political system.

[Anonymous No.15861065]

>>15856794
why do we have 40m Mexicans here to do "unskilled hard work" then?

[Anonymous No.15861082]

>>15861065
I think you know who is responsible.

[Anonymous No.15861114]

The reality is that there's no reason for so many people to live in the hinterlands in a normal country - it's just that things like planning laws make it problematic to do so, and of course the Black Question is an eternal issue. Just as American cities approach livability we get a race riot that basically ruins it.

[Anonymous No.15861593]

>>15860507
Would be more interested to see the struggle for power after the fall, so to speak. old money wasp+jews? hapa technocrats in california/nyc? maybe they'll ally with each other and intermarry. who knows. but surely, they would one nice city or two for their enjoyment - would that even be possible? or would they just go to europe/asia/singapore? thats what that inverstor dude, jim rogers did

[Anonymous No.15862643]

>>15861065
Anon the hard truth is that what's happening to us will happen to them to just like it already happened to black people. The nigger is the future man, and his color won't necessarily be black.

[Anonymous No.15863500]

>>15861065
Because the work is still needed, and always will be. Native working class was far too expensive.

[Anonymous No.15864791]

>>15863500
>Because the work is still needed, and always will be.

This is complete bullshit, we don't need them. All the illegals do in my area is mow wealthy boomers lawns those lazy kikes could do it themselves and the other ones just run taco trucks. They also leave shitty Mexican beer bottles all over the nice park when there's trash cans FUCKING EVERYWHERE. These people are parasites and have to go back.

[Anonymous No.15864805]

>>15864791
A working class is always needed, I'm speaking from the elite perspective, they simply didn't want to deal with the power of American organized labor anymore.