during the course of occupy, it became progressively more apparent that the chapter i was involved with was dominated by law enforcement. we had a few talks about this - it was understood that at least one of us was a cop, and nobody was disillusioned by it. there was a general understanding that we would refrain from attacking each other, and i tended to shrug it off because i didn't expect to break any laws...

i understand that this is the wrong argument, except in situations where there's ambiguity, and i sort of fall into that fairly badly. i adopted a position very early on that i didn't want stupid thugs thinking i was up to things i wasn't, so transparency was in my interest - not because i don't value my privacy, but because i felt my safety might be under threat if i wasn't open about what i was doing. it only takes one dumb cop for somebody to lose an eye or a head (or end up in jail on bullshit charges that require a human rights trial to sett straight, as it may be).

so, i just talked freely and didn't think much about it.

but, as time went on, and i got to know the characters better, it became more and more obvious that almost all of them were cops. supposed strangers seemed to know each other fairly well, even. and, people would come in and out of the group with stories that didn't pass smell tests.

but, more suspicious than anything else was the nature of a large number of the arguments that started appearing. for a bunch of supposed anarchists, they sure often sounded like statist collectivists.

i think there were maybe one or two other people involved that weren't cops...and they tended to get attacked and expelled by the clique of cops fairly quickly, which seemed to be the point. as such, i'm not entirely sure why they let me hang around, other than that i appeared to be in a different category of some sort.

i'm getting the same feeling as i'm sorting through the kind of standard group of fake leftist youtube sites, from zero books & jacobin to some of the more obvious theatre, like jimmy dore (do you think this guy gives a fuck about anything except his bank account?). these were old feelings when initially attached to democracy now and the young turks, but it's taken some time for them to come back with this newer wave of channels. but, it's basically the same bullshit - for a bunch of self-identified leftists, they sure seem intent on attacking and marginalizing anything that might actually lead to any sort of popular resistance. i mean, i'm as anti-cool as anybody, so i can readily relate to the cynicism, but it seems almost methodical - there seems to be some entity in the background that's trying to undo the contemporary left, with the apparent intent of reconstructing it along even more pliable grounds.

and, they all have the same handful of guests on over and over again, which are the talking heads intended to push the project - it's just like network television in that sense.

this isn't the first time i've expressed my disappointed in the quality of the discourse on youtube (that sounds silly, but it's still a million times better than tv, and i have some reason to be disappointed for that reason), but it just seems to keep coming and coming - every time something seems sincere on the surface, it exposes itself over time. it's constant, and the only exceptions are the people that get attacked and spat out.

i keep pointing out that we live in the era of orwell, and that most of us would never be able to figure it out, if it were actually true. but, i remember reading articles about exactly what i'm describing happening in china, which only differs from north america in this respect in terms of transparency - we can figure out what they're doing in china if we read the right foreign sources. we have no idea at all what they're really doing over here. the mentality appears to be that dissent is some kind of mental illness, and what critical thinkers need is to be healed of their disease - and taught to love big brother, in the end.

so, the takeaway here is probably to remind you to remember that all of the critical defense mechanisms you built up over however many years of watching bullshit on tv shouldn't evaporate when you start watching vloggers on the internet - these people remain propagandists, are generally working under state control and are still trying to cure you of your illnesses. and, they will brainwash you into statist compliance, if you let them...

i'll be focusing more seriously on the harvard science lecture series this week.