Posted on 03/22/2016 8:24:23 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Bhaskar Sunkara is very eager not to turn into one of the bosses he wants to overthrow. So he's lugging copies of Jacobin, the socialist magazine he founded, up the stairs himself.
The magazine's issue release party was held at a Spanish-language Episcopal church-slash-progressive community space in Bushwick. Sunkara and Neal Meyer, who runs Jacobin's remarkably popular reading groups, are the only people there to set it up. No event staff, just them.
The modesty of the event undersells it. Jacobin has in the past five years become the leading intellectual voice of the American left, the most vibrant and relevant socialist publication in a very long time. And in 2016 it's bigger than ever, thanks to Bernie Sanders, who's making his millions of supporters curious about what democratic socialism actually means. That's an opportunity that Jacobin is seizing to great effect, even if Sanders isn't far enough left for their taste.
The Sanders campaign "could begin to legitimate the word 'socialist,' and spark a conversation around it, even if Sanders’s welfare-state socialism doesn’t go far enough," Sunkara wrote earlier this year.
Sunkara started publishing copies of the magazine in his George Washington University dorm room back in 2011, when he was all of 21. The financial crisis appeared to have given socialism and Marxism another inning, and Sunkara wanted an outlet that took socialist theory more seriously than existing outlets like the Nation. Jacobin took off; it now boasts a print circulation of about 20,000 and has gained about 400 more subscribers a week since Bernie started his ascent in November. Jacobin's success is a sign that even if Bernie fades, there's still a constituency for socialist ideas — a fact that could turn out to be much more important than the Sanders campaign itself.
An interesting read to see how upside down and inside out the logic of the left is.
The fact that the zine uses the name of a murderous political regime is all one needs to know. Imagine a rightist magazine calling itself Fascism.
I;ve never even heard of this asshole. So you’re telling me after all this time a super libtard has something new to say about a putrid movement called socialism?
“It’s written to be read by laypeople rather than academics. It’s funny, timely, and bracing; its best pieces aren’t just arguments, they’re provocations. Just look at some of their headlines:”
“Burn the Constitution”
“Seize the Hamptons”
“Gimme the Loot” (a sympathetic piece on piracy)
“Against Charity”
Well that's because we haven't yet played "Cowboys and Communists."
Another great dorm room idea.
Smoke some weed, give away other people’s money.
Yeah....that’s the ticket.
Play it out to the conclusion, kids.
It always ends up with people screaming in horror and pain.
Play some computer games instead.
Fascism has zero to do with “the right”. The furthest right is complete lack of government, absolute freedom, anarchy. Authoritarian control is and always has been the domain of the left. Whatever name you want to attach to it. Until the left rebranded Fascism because it didn’t want the association. Quit propagating their talking points please.
Jacobin clubs served as debating socitites where politically minded Frenchmen aired their views and discussed current political issues. Many members of Jacobin clubs were also deputies and used the meetings to organize forces and plan tactics. The most notorious deputy connected with the Jacobin club is Robespierre.
Marat was also aligned with the Jacobin club, and this association caused his death. Charlotte Corday, his murderer, targeted Marat because she thought that he represented the worst of the Jacobin movement (Dowd, 115).
The club supported and participated in some of the most shocking events of The Revolution. Members of Jacobin clubs were among the mob invaded the Tuileries on August, 10, 1792. They also supported the execution of Louis XVI. Druing the Terror, local Jacobin clubs turned the provinces into nightmares of fear and destruction as members took it upon themselves to be agents of the Terror, and sent thousands to the guillotine (Dowd, 129). The clubs were also strictly anticlerical, and during the Terror some clubs wages a crusade against the church, imprisoning priests and looting churches (129).
The Jacobin clubs were closed soon after Robespierre was killed in 1794, but not before they became synonymous with revolutionary fervor and fear.
Except Fascism is close to Socialism. It is not close to Free Enterprise.
There will always be the gullible and naive parasites who will favor a fantasy utopia where they can either destroy the producers that they envy so much, or can be supported by them.
Fascism is just another brand of Statism, so not a great analogy, but I get what you mean.
And so, to contemporary practitioners, being a leftist is largely a lifestyle choice. Not a representation of rationale analysis of what's best for a people's economic and social well-being. It's an activity. A game. An intellectual exercise in using the devices of rational thinking to pretend to perform rational thinking, while actually, and sometimes knowingly, simply being mischievous for mischief's sake. Practiced from a position of a well-fed and clothed person in a wealthy society, it is a safe, fun, harmless (to one's self) cool hobby. It's cool pretending to be Che Guevarra or Robespierre.
Marat was the loathsome precursor of monsters like Stalin and Pol Pot. Charlotte Corday is an immortal heroine of Liberty.
“Well that’s because we haven’t yet played “Cowboys and Communists.” “
“Snipers and Socialists.”
That works too.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.