‘one can destroy one’s self or another with all the appearance of profound cosmic compassion’

oh dear a row has broken out among horsemouth’s friends - well he says friends, some he hasn’t seen in years. both sides he feels great affection for as the people who led him up into the world of theory.

at the heart of it are a number of questions,

firstly - should you sit down in a room with fascists (or even should you sit down in a room with people who sit down in a room with fascists)?
secondly - what is the nature of this left project? is it clear and doctrinaire, like the old left? or chaotic and experimental, like the new left?
finally - does it have demarcations and breaks or does a chantal mouffe style of radical engagement rule over everything.

in 68 marx falls and a whole series of philosophers emerge blinking into the sunlight to improvise clever dickens ways of doing radical philosophy - they find their homes in cultural studies departments and art history departments. in these departments they become a kind of orthodoxy - does this really matter that much? probably not.

but capital adopts the artist critique of capital - that it’s evil and standardised rather than oppressive and exploitative - and the machines happen, we become watched over by machines of loving grace. all of this theory has it’s moment in the sun (but the skies are already darkening).

big things, as greta thunberg would remind us, go on. an extinction event to which we are all invited. the entire european/ enlightenment project lurches to its darkside (tell the congolese about its upside) - history ends and barbarism returns and capital’s instability drags us down into mass poverty. the machines cannot save us even as they radically change us (and we give them to our children with barely a second thought).

ok firstly should you sit down in a room with fascists (or even should you sit down in a room with people who sit down in a room with fascists)?

 no, you should avoid them like the plague. horsemouth was never keen on the whole laibach/ futurist/ industrial aesthetics thing - it’s a deeply problematic history. just don’t do it, says horsemouth, be frank zappa not the church of satan.

horsemouth grew up within anarcho-punk which was very puritanical -he understands anathema. 

secondly - what is the nature of this left project? is it clear and doctrinaire, like the old left? or chaotic and experimental, like the new left? well you need both. hmmm. horsemouth misses the hippy left. 

thirdly - horsemouth doesn’t know yet. the philosophical niceties he’s not up to commenting on.

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on april 13th (in exactly one month's time)
but technically a saturday
put that date in your diaries
musicians of bremen play live