News and Discussions about Reddit
Welcome to !reddit. This is a community for all news and discussions about Reddit.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules
Rule 1- No brigading.
**You may not encourage brigading any communities or subreddits in any way. **
YSKs are about self-improvement on how to do things.
Rule 2- No illegal or NSFW or gore content.
**No illegal or NSFW or gore content. **
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-Reddit posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
:::spoiler Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
view the rest of the comments
Zizek is a sexpest obsessed with comparing everything to rape and his followers are a cult of personality. This is a very strange one to include in your list of non-echo chambers, particularly as he and his audience are political partisans just like the first three you criticised.
The inclusion here seems more like snifffff ideeeology, as he would say.
I admit my inclusion is ideology- I am trying to subconsciously convert people to Stalinism. You will be the first to get sent to the gulags.
On a more serious note, it's obviously partisan but it's not click baity and it's a small community that's actively moderated. Posts are kept on topic so the focus of the sub doesn't get too broad and lead to the phenomenon in question.
For a sub that got wrecked, check out /r/chomsky
Before 2016 it was a place to post long form articles, interviews with Chomsky, nuanced discussions, etc. Afterwards it was placed on some astroturfing list and now it's just a generic center left Twitter screenshot type sub. Get similar content as /r/politics or /r/whitepeopletwitter
Which brings me endless amusement to find out when most people on the sub actually hate Chomsky's belief in freedom of speech or his opinion of the Ukraine war
I don't think the Chomsky sub going to shit matters much given the Epstein connections now tbh. Left needs to move on from him just as much as zizek
I think you focus too much on the messenger and not enough on the message, which is ironic that you complain about cult of personality. Manufactured Consent would be just as valuable even if Epstein write it himself.
Have you read any works by either Zizek or Chomsky? I don't ask this in a "gotcha" attempt. I'm genuinely curious if you have, and if yes what specifically do you take issue with? I'm a fan of both although Chomsky hates Zizek. I think Chomsky has done a massive public service cataloging and broadcasting US War crimes, while Zizek is a bit more theoretical
Should the left say the same about Stalin?
Serious question. I want to know if you apply this logic consistently or if you see an issue with it now.
Of course I have this is a strange question to be asking unless you think I'm a teenager new to the left or something, these people are very entry-level cringe-leftism 102 stuff, they were good gateways into various things for their time but nothing more radical because to be so would be to lose the platform and "prestige" they both covet provided to them by capitalists. Neither of them have made significant contributions to the left that were not made first by other people, Chomsky's most known work Manufacturing Consent is just a rehash of Parenti's work Inventing Reality, while Zizek on the other hand is focused on philosophy of ideology and media literacy rather than action.
You have these backwards. Zizek is not theoretical, Zizek is philosophical. Theory can be applied as action, that is not what Zizek does.
Would you mind posting some good authors or thinkers to move forward from Chomsky please? I'm only familiar with him and would like to broaden my knowledge. I see you mentioned Parenti so I'll look them up.
Can do. Some suggestions:
Blackshirts and Reds is your starting point with Parenti.
You should look into Vincent Bevins. His Jakarta Method is a serious wakeup call about the use of mass murder against the left around the world and what last resort capitalism is willing to go to.
Vijay Prashad should also be on your list. He wrote Washington Bullets and continues to be extremely valuable and influential in the left today. He's also a really fucking good speaker, like Parenti.
Oh and anyone who considers themselves to still be a socdem (rather than an anticapitalist of some sort) should read Imperialism in the 21st Century by John Smith.
Chomsky & Herman didn't "rehash" Inventing Reality. Parenti didn't provide a model by which the propaganda system operates. Concentration of media ownership, advertising revenue, and reliance on government sources are methods by which Chomsky'a model operates whereas Parenti focuses on the ideological underpinnings - essentially trying to debunk the myth of liberal bias in media.
These are similar topics but they are not rehashes. I think Chomsky's has more value personally and there's a reason it has had a much broader impact on the left and society as a whole.
I also personally prefer Chomsky's matter of fact style.
Having said all that, like I said - my question wasn't an attempt at a gotcha. You just never know who you're talking to - I don't trust people just because they say things confidently. You do seem well read so I respect your opinion.
As for Zizek being philosophy- that's a given. His works are theoretical though, and I don't really want to argue the semantics. Zizek has a lot to say and I think he's right that we need to be reinventing leftist ideology for the 21st century.