Angela Davis has had weird and shitty liberal takes for decades iirc. I don’t say this to diminish any of the good work she did, but this is a perfect case in point. Caitlin Johnstone just published a piece critiquing this exact bullshit, explaining how people in the West criticizing the targets of Western imperialism are literally doing the CIA’s work for them.
Davis may as well go on the Sam Harris podcast now and talk about how Islamic fundementalism is the real threat while the US and Israel literally bombs their country, like it’s 2001 again.
edit: I thought it was just a related take, but no – Johnstone was calling out the shitty Guardian letter, specifically
I can’t believe Jim Davis, creator of the beloved cartoon characters Nermal and Lyman, would say such a thing.
I’m glad you’re also into this show.
Did you watch The Chair Company?
Just started it, liking it so far!
Are you into Nathan Fielder’s stuff at all? I feel like they have very different styles but still attract a similar audience.
I haven’t gotten to The Curse yet, but I have seen a lot of Nathan for You and The Rehearsal
I like to joke that before I got to high school, I was a little Nathan Fielder
Watching the second season of The Rehearsal while traveling was pretty funny. I was really staring a lot of pilots down.
What’s this? I’m from the time when Garfield had a darkish backrooms-like series on Youtube.
I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson
Very little Garfield content, only in one episode.
is that jim davis lol
It’s the guy who tried to kill Jim Davis
i can’t believe it
It does look kind of like Jim Davis, but it’s definitely the guy who tried to kill Jim Davis
deleted by creator
i haven’t seen the show, i just thought the joke was that jim davis is playing his own killer
Even though he’s not credited for it, he’s apparently comedian Don Blocker according to internet sleuths
They picked pretty well
No, material does not cease to be useful even after the author has spiraled into liberalism or otherwise reactionary takes.
Frankly, I find this tendency of amongst the western left to be quite juvenile. How do you read anything at all if it requires 100% agreement with the author?
There is no need to denounce good things that came from people who are on some fuck shit. Resist the need to disavow everything tied to a person the moment they say some shit you cannot support. Just acknowledge the asterisks and move on.
I have seen Black radicals denounce Davis as a careerist who used her proximity to the BPP despite never actually being a Black Panther to cash in on leftist cred.
Another name that caught my eye is Walden Bello. He was part of the Communist Party of the Philippines back in the day, now he’s a weird flavor of demsoc and kind of a wrecker (he accused Ka Joma of wanting to assassinate him). This piece is on-brand for him, but anyway that was another notable name.
Ngl I should probably get a wood stove.
I don’t know who that is, but I often use my pirated copies of cockshots books as references, that someone may be wrong about some things, does not invalidate other positions.
That being said, that letter is disgusting, everyone who signed it should be redacted.
Let’s raise the difficulty level: what about Noam Chomsky?
Yhea, that he is a pedophile doesn’t make the parts of his work I agree with any less true. Hell the other day I posted a Herbert Spencer quote in the news mega, to sort of make the point that if you feel sad for the dead American terrorists, you have worse takes than this guy.
I think it is politically ill-advised to publish this letter in a major western newspaper during a time of extreme imperial aggression against Iran, however I don’t find the content of the letter particularly objectionable, it certainly focuses more on acknowledging the imperial aggression than the domestic repression.
I also don’t think this is going to sway anyone in favor of an extremely unpopular war. The tone offers no justification for intervention on behalf of the prisoners, just sympathy.
Once again, I wouldn’t do it right here (in the guardian) and right now (in summer 2026), but otherwise it’s fine.
it certainly focuses more on acknowledging the imperial aggression than the domestic repression.
It genuinely does not do that… by my count every single paragraph talks about the domestic repression, only like half of one talks about the current imperial aggression against Iran. It then talks about US and Israeli colonial violence but only in the explicit frame of equating it to the internal repression of the islamic republic.
The US and Israel are not the same as Iran.
Saying “we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism” in the current moment is nothing short of CIA shit IMO
This part in particular bothered me:
On the other side, you face the aggression and violence of the very imperialist and Zionist forces the Islamic Republic purports to stand against.
purports to stand against
Purports what? Who out there is standing firmer against imperialist and zionist forces than Iran and its allies? Fucking clowns…
The whole point is to discredit anti-imperialism as a movement by forcing otherwise empathetic people to prioritize their progressivism over their anti-imperialism.
This would be like raising concerns that plenty of queers work for Lockheed Martin whenever the topic of queer rights became particularly pertinent. Let’s just throw all gays under the bus because plenty of them are racist shitbags.
This type of propaganda is one of the most insidious because it presents two marginalized groups as inherently juxtaposed, when in reality they are both engaged in similar liberation struggles involving serious contradictions imposed upon them by the world around them.
Very much agree, thank you for saying it.
https://hexbear.net/comment/7408098
Good comment on this from the news mega a couple days ago, in addition to the Caitlin Johnstone article mentioned elsewhere in this thread
Hmm I guess my read of it wasn’t particularly thorough, I probably shouldn’t have commented without giving it a critical eye.
however I don’t find the content of the letter particularly objectionable, it certainly focuses more on acknowledging the imperial aggression than the domestic repression.
Spirit vs. letter.
The content might be benign in a vacuum, but in the context of an imperialist war with the goal of extending the subjugation of all people in the global south…any “both sides” garbage only serves the goals of the imperial hegemon.
We all fucking get that the situation for oppressed peoples in Iran is far from ideal. With the 24/7 anti-Iran propaganda that exists right now, there is absolutely no fucking point in speaking out against it at this time.
It is precisely bullshit like this that causes reactionary anti-equality sentiment to take hold amongst those who are ostensibly anti-western or anti-imperialist. Queer people and women everywhere will be hurt by this pathetic false equivalence…in addition to millions of others who will be sacrificed to further imperial extraction if Iran falters.
Western “leftists” and especially those of the compatible left need to fucking learn when their voice adds nothing of value to the conversation. You do not need to have an opinion on everything and everyone.
Instead of using their performative ass “solidarity” to condemn a bulwark against imperialism, they should devote their thinking to how they can materially improve the situation for those most marginalized in Iran without throwing the entire population to the wolves.
It would be a different story if these were private remarks within a trusted cadre of Marxists. However, they chose to publish this in the Guardian. Libs are the primary audience and all this shit does is encourage them to see the primary enemy as less bad when compared to a highly imperfect force resisting imperialism.
I fully agree, and it turns out that I didnt really even do a good job with my reading comprehension when I originally looked it over (i haven’t read it again), so it’s all the worse.
Why would an honest good faith petition about human rights be published in western mainstream capitalist-state media? We can’t separate the contents from the context and it’s pretty obvious this is regime change op slop that can’t be divorced from its place?
Regardless it doesn’t really matter. The point of this is to ensure the dwindling western lib left compatible academia remains disciplined by waving around their demigods. Rockhill remains vindicated, the creation of celebrity ‘theorists’ is counterinsurgency.
Hey, how active have these people been about scholasticide in Gaza?
