"We sainted St. Tammany (King Tamanend III) because he embodied moral perfection and every divine qualification that a deity could possess. I hold him in higher esteem than the saints of the Roman Catholic Church. He'll forever be the patron saint of America.”― George Washington
I.So, we’ve observed a significant rise in the new right, as well as a more extreme right. It’s fitting to describe these movement as populist and reactionary.
A prime example is Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, which is a nationalist and right-wing populist group in France.
Here's a graph from the Financial Times that illustrates this shift:Anyway, I recently read an essay by Slavoj Žižek, "The "Worsting" of France” that brings in a Jacques Lacan seminar or Worse, that got me thinking.
Here's the point I want to focus on:"Lacan’s point is that when such an authority is gradually undermined, it tries to redeem itself by way of “worsting itself” – the focus of Lacan’s line of argumentation is this process of “worsting,” or, as he puts it in verbalizing the term “pire,” “ça s’oupire,” “it makes itself worse.”"Zizek connected this to our current populist right movement occurring in the US..."The struggles we are fighting today, from the populist Right to Cancel Culture, are mostly such morbid symptoms – or, as the late Lacan would have written the word, sinthome, a condensed form of ideological (racist, sexist…) enjoyment. Are figures like Donald Trump not exemplary cases of the “worsting” of a political leader? The (appearance of) dignified authority is replaced by an obscene paternal figure openly making fun of itself, resorting to dirty sexist jokes and racist innuendos – the populist Right is immanently “popu-Lust” (Lust is German for pleasure), it allows you to indulge in your lowest racist and sexist pleasures brought about by humiliating the hated Other."Alright enough background…let’s get to my point: the so-called “new right” is little more than a band of trolls. They fancy themselves revolutionaries, yet their so-called rebellion is just a parroted echo chamber of outdated notions and perceived forbidden thoughts, all because Daddy (the Lacanian Father) said no. This isn’t some genuine uprising against authority; it’s a reactionary tantrum, devoid of a coherent ethos, nothing but a series of innuendoes and indulgent nonsense.
This movement isn’t about pushing for meaningful change. It’s a hollow display of political identity, defined solely in opposition to external authority. They revel in the spectacle of breaking taboos, flaunting their political incorrectness as if it were a badge of honor.“Look, look, look guys, over here I’m being shamed. I said a naughty word.”It’s a pathetic performance, really.
Now, I’m not against challenging taboos—in fact, I advocate for it in many cases. I want a leftist populist who can use crude, shocking language to establish a real connection with the base, someone who can stand apart from the hypocrisy and elitism of the political establishment.
Okay now that I’ve criticized the right enough (This is a must otherwise the liberals will go through their subconscious moral checklist and dismiss me…I’d be dead on arrival)…let’s get into my real critique.II.So, more about populism…enter Dime Square the heart of the Dirtbag Left. A mostly dead movement now.
Imagine what people from the Dime Square era would be like if they weren’t bored elites with old-money liberal parents from New York, and if their idea of rebellion wasn’t merely saying offensive things and “ironically” holding racist positions. The Bernie bro Dime Square crowd positioned themselves as the anti-liberal left. However, when more scrutinized and pushed, they revealed themselves to be a more transparent breed of liberal.
The true irony here? These populist movements kick off as provocative and performative rebellions, only for them to recognize and be recognized as the very beast they loathe. The Dime Square crowd saw themselves as rebels against the liberal elite, only to realize they were simply a more honest version of that elite—one that seeks individual liberation without the burden of shame or the need to perform. They acknowledged that much of their cause was for aesthetic purposes, aiming to achieve personal liberation.
This scenario isn't unique. It's a glaring example of a broader trend: movements born in opposition to the status quo eventually expose themselves as mere reflections of that same status quo. What begins as rebellion degenerates into performance—a superficial distinction that leaves the underlying structures untouched, the status quo unscathed.III.Rebellion has morphed into a bastardized and performative addiction for clicks, views, and attention.
Look at the Dime Square crowd—once self-proclaimed leftist rebels, now waddling over to the right, chasing the digital applause. They crave the spotlight, the thrill of outrage, the masochistic pleasure of online ridicule. Their rebellion isn’t a fight for change; it’s a sordid spectacle, a shame fetish performed for an audience that loves to jeer.
No, I want to see a real leftist rebellion against Daddy. Why? Because the right has masterfully framed themselves as the resistance to global elites. Their agenda? Opposition to environmentalism, immigration, LGBTQ rights, all while championing patriotism and cultural identity. They’ve shifted extreme views to the center, positioning themselves as the defenders against the elites and “globalists.”
I don’t hold the left fully accountable for this mess; I hold the liberals as mostly the real culprits. The American liberal is lost in a cycle of moral masturbation, an endless loop of expressed shame—not guilt, but shame tied to their self-constructed identity. They’re caught up in hyper-individualist self-critique, obsessed with not offending anyone while parading their moral superiority. Their fixation on identity and narcissistic cultivation of a performed political persona has left them impotent in the face of real political challenges.
The liberals performance of moral pornography has set the stage for disenfranchised individuals to be exploited by populist narratives. Their emphasis on personal responsibility, individual identity, and self-optimization has left many vulnerable to promises of restored community and belonging by opposing perceived external threats like globalists and multiculturalism. The new right has seized this, redirecting frustrations towards these convenient scapegoats.
This obsession with performative rebellion has plunged politics into a mire of stagnation, where self-image and public shame eclipse collective needs and class struggle. Liberals, consumed by their fetish for identity creation, have handed the right a golden opportunity to masquerade as the true revolutionary force, railing against the supposed inertia of liberal globalism and multiculturalism.
Liberals must snap out of their narcissistic daze and recall what it truly means to be a leftist. It's not about crafting a spotless moral identity—that's a hollow pursuit (and irrelevant, please get over yourselves). Your public displays of shame are pointless theater. The focus needs to shift—urgently—to forging alliances with groups that understand the roots of real revolutionary movements. Rebellion isn't about self-flagellation or self-aggrandization(done by way of the moral Olympics) for digital applause; it's about uniting for tangible, radical change.
Leftist revolutionary movements have nearly vanished, swallowed up by the new right. The left, lost in a maze of identity politics, is fixated on pronouns, language policing, and curating a Marxist or communist veneer without grasping the core tenets of the theories they pretend to espouse. They’d rather do the performance of protest than the performance of voting in their local elections. Everything has become an aesthetic. This superficial engagement has left them rudderless, an easy target for the new right, who have deftly exploited the left's ideological disarray and lack of focus.
The left's obsession with surface-level aesthetics and moral posturing has rendered it impotent, allowing the right to seize the mantle of rebellion and revolution. It’s a tragic irony—those who once championed the cause of the downtrodden are now floundering in a sea of self-righteousness, while the new right surges forward, wielding the banner of change and defiance.IV."The new Right’s program varies around four main motifs: against “excessive” environmental worries, against immigrants, against LGBT, and for strong patriotism. But the Muslim fundamentalists are also against “excessive” ecology, against LGBT, and against multiculturalists who perturb their ethnic or cultural identity. The conclusion that imposes itself is that the new Right populists are our Muslim fundamentalists. However, liberal multiculturalism, the common target of our new Right and Muslim fundamentalists, is also hypocritical, not just in the sense that Western multiculturalism is not really open to Others. Superego here: the more open to others, the more guilty. What makes Western liberal leftists hypocritical is precisely their fake self-critical stance which makes them constantly assert their own guilt."To reiterate with sharper clarity: liberals often wallow in shame rather than genuine guilt. Their performative acts aim to morph this shame into guilt, desperately trying to present themselves as true allies. But what we need is a collective mission deeply rooted in class consciousness. Only through understanding our shared struggles can we transform this shallow shame into authentic guilt.
Guilt must be anchored in a genuine sense of collective responsibility, akin to the emotion and awareness of class consciousness. This true guilt can fuel sincere, effective political engagement, moving us beyond the reactionary rebellion against the omnipotent 'Daddy' figure of power. Collective guilt weaves a stronger bond to our shared mission, intensifying our commitment to allied causes and driving the relentless pursuit of liberation. This is the bedrock of political revolution.
Enough with the performative shaming and moral masturbation. The left’s hallow core has only emboldened the populist right, who craft scapegoats to justify their oppressive agenda against a more genuine liberation. If the left doesn’t pivot, the consequences will only become worse, and the rise of the new right will steamroll over the very ideals they used to champion.
...smooting their rough edges and making them all seem the same as me. Serving up capitalism's "multi-cultural" agenda. Bore me later!
A Byung-Chul Han inspired death of "otherness." A Slavoj Zizek inspired "coffee without the caffeine". A life lived both virtually AND vicariously, and therefore, bereft of the "danger" of achieving any real understanding. But hey, at least its' "relatable"...
The year in film: 2023 had plenty of films for ‘everyone’, but what does that tell us about the state of filmmaking today?
Once the hot-pink hysteria in July surrounding Greta Gerwig’s Barbie died down, there remained one central question: who was the film for? Was its entry-level feminism acceptable because it was a film for children, learning about the world’s ills for the first time? Or was it speaking to an older generation of people leaning into their nostalgia and who might be better equipped to understand its more adult references? Perhaps part of the film’s problem was its attempt to do both. Ultimately, it didn’t matter – Barbie, grossing over $1 billion at the box office, was a film for everyone.
In fact, 2023 had plenty of films for ‘everyone’, an unshapen, homogenous mass of a public audience targeted by mainstream filmmakers through broad narrative themes and non-specific references. Films were praised for their ‘universality’, their ability to take personal stories and strip them of all their intimacy so that as many people as possible could relate to them. This is a business tactic; ‘Not only the social value of something but also its economic viability depends on how shareable it is’, wrote Jeremy D. Larson in his 2019 New York Times essay ‘Why Do We Obsess Over What’s Relatable?’. As a result, films were underwritten and characters were underdeveloped: in Celine Song’s Past Lives or Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, two independent successes of the year, viewers learn little about the central characters other than how they have (very broadly) been shaped by (the equally very broad concepts of) love or loss. Claims that these questions of identity are part of the films’ design, and not unambitious writing cop-outs, are spurious.This year’s horror favourite, Talk to Me by brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, also struggled to break out from the grief-as-metaphor bracket, even if it managed more effective jump scares and creepier imagery than other recent horrors. Films like Close by Lukas Dhont or Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale dialled the emotional manipulation up to one hundred, as if squeezing by hand the tears from audiences’ eyeballs. But hey: if it makes you cry, it must be good. These films all took from their audiences without giving much back, leaning into the notion of audience self-recognition as effective storytelling. They forwent specificity in favour of scope, asking viewers to project their own experiences and feelings onto a blank canvas narrative. Many of these films also capitalised on representational politics, posturing as ‘specific’ by centering marginalised identities while denying characters anything more than facile treatments.
Barbie achieved this on a narrative level (America Ferrera’s speech, anyone?) but it also raised interesting questions around mass experience and participation in its status as a cultural phenomenon; the collective conversation around the film and its release-weekend partner, Oppenheimer, monopolised the film industry for weeks and boosted the box office, albeit momentarily. The ‘Barbenheimer’ whirlwind was both extremely contemporary – a product of organic social media virality and sheer meme-power – and age-old, given that both films were effectively traditional ensemble blockbusters with audience-commanding directors and big-studio backing. But did Barbenheimer really bolster confidence that an appetite for cinema still exists? Could it be replicated with any other two films if enough people tried? What was crucial was the legibility of both Christopher Nolan and Gerwig as current filmmakers and their stories as cultural products, especially in the case of Barbie. After all, Barbie dolls are probably as ubiquitous as love or loss – it’s all commodified in the end; and so the mass entertainment and smaller indies meet, both capitalising on emotion.The sustainability of success following these mass-market studio releases remains to be seen, and certainly there needs to be more than one or two cinematic hits per year to ensure a lasting post-COVID recovery. Yet, even if either of these films can light the spark, they will only further a regressive habit: selling audiences on stories they will understand, and ignoring the need to foster a culture of cinematic conversation and conflict beyond these. While these criticisms of universality and relatability may seem like petty gripes at a narrative level, the through-line to something more insidious in the industry is all too apparent. This was a year marked by industrial action, as both writers and actors railed against grossly unfair contracts and studio exploitation. A key facet of the SAG-AFTRA strike was their opposition to the use of AI in creating digital replicas of actors, to be used as studios desired without prior consent. As movie narratives become more generic and superficial, so too do their means of production. Is a film industry where trope-laden, ‘universal’ stories get played out by a catalogue of AI-generated performances really that far-fetched, when even recent independent films too have begun to feel so engineered – deliberately or otherwise? After all, this is art as ‘content’, for which there is an increasingly insatiable appetite – how can as many people as possible respond to a piece of culture and thus justify the churn of subpar media output? How can cinema become as bland as possible to ensure maximum reach? ‘We exit the movie theater to a bright realization: our films are exactly as overlit as our reality. As our environment has become blander, it has also become more legible – too legible,’ wrote the editors of n+1 this year in ‘Why Is Everything So Ugly?’.
An anomaly: Todd Field’s Tár, a twisted psychodrama about a celebrated conductor, certainly was not a film for ‘everyone’. But how wonderfully so, given the range of opinions and ideas the film spawned. It felt like the kind of mid-budget movie the industry has been sorely missing, a divisive word-of-mouth hit with ideas and provocations. May December, directed by Todd Haynes, was an equally provocative triumph, a deliciously funny and tragic critique of performance and artifice through the relationship between an actor and a woman at the centre of a tabloid scandal.These were matched, perhaps, by Martin Scorsese’s certainly not mid-budget Killers of the Flower Moon, which recounts the murders of members of the Osage Nation in the 1920s over oil rights. It was divisive for its handling of an incredibly sensitive history alongside the conundrum of who is allowed to tell certain stories. Though, given Scorsese’s stature as a filmmaker, it was hardly a gamble for producers and distributors. A narrative gambit at the end of Killers sees the director take aim at the notion of mass entertainment and his own implications in it – the sensationalisation of true crime, in particular, and the ubiquity of morbid curiosity in today’s audiences. May December was similarly interrogative of this while Tár’s cancel culture commentary also pointed the finger, even if who it was pointed at was up for debate. Conflict was part of these films’ design and they were all the more interesting for it.
The question of who films were made for, then, was inextricable from that of who they were made by. Storytelling, as a practice, was examined through both content and form; the Osage Nation were involved across the production of Killers, allowing for an important emphasis to be placed on their knowledge, their detailed understanding of their own history; in Haynes and Field’s films, the question of finding narrative ‘truth’ in the stories, or lives, performed by others was integral. These films used storytelling as a metatextual device to reach for the fascinatingly illegible, for the ideas that confuse us in their opacity or haunt us in their proximity to something close to a personal truth. Theirs was a focused kind of emotion and empathy, while leaving space for the rough edges we know of real life. Too many other films this year demanded mass understanding while studios demanded the mass submission of a workforce; both were efforts to smooth out the landscape of cinema until its artistry disappears. But if filmmaking can reject mass appeal as a business model, this pink period might be followed by a purple patch.
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Patch over my psycho-politicized and therefore increasingly anxious internal stream of consciousness with some good old fashioned nostalgiac comfort food... or some Retro-TV will work.
Ahhhhh... Now I feel better!
