TOTW: Debate

This last week there was a debate between two public intellectuals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGRC5AA1wF0

Should we do something like that? If we do who would we get to debate that would actually be interesting to a lay audience?

What would they debate?

There are 66 Comments

1. john zerzan and crimethinc: how to stay anarchist while talking to normies
2. cindy milstein and aragorn!: class as it's expressed today, an anarchist perspective
3. dominique and john zerzan: natives and indigeneity
4. klee and ria: the role of activism

“Should we do something like that?”

A debate could be fun and interesting. Would you like to do it? You are free! There is no should!

“If we do who would we get to debate that would actually be interesting to a lay audience? What would they debate?”

Hmm, lay audience likes debates? Uhh, lay audience watches presidential candidates debate...hmm...

Hello, I am lay audience now -sniffs- I solicit debate from you.

Peter Gelderloos vs William Gillis- about that written spat they had.

Peter Gelderloos vs Kristian Williams- about that written spat they had.

David Graeber vs Kevin Carson - on anarcho-liberalism, and mutualist economics

Aragorn! vs Bill Not Bored vs Mackenzie Wark vs Julien Coupat - 50+ years of recuperation of the Situationist International

if one can do it better than the format of joe rogan’s podcast, by all means. his supposedly open debate platform leaves him completely vulnerable and unable to weed out bad actors.

JBP is one of those self-important bad actors who inundates the listener with gish gallop, and maintains that somehow every critic just misquotes him and takes him out of context. he’d previously been avoidant of debating/engaging with any openly marxist figure. see what former lobster cultists have to say: https://www.reddit.com/r/enoughpetersonspam

i do hear a number of unrelated podcasts bring up the book ‘bullshit jobs.’ maybe not the sexiest place to start, but it’s a starting place no doubt. a lot of people are beginning to wonder what will become of our jobs and finding a way to pay to exist once the metal slaves (robot is czech for slave) take our spots...and no one has anything to offer so far but a gesture toward UBI. there’s no real plan b for humans. something to consider (and what we’ve been dreaming and scheming about for a long time).

"gish gallop" Do people know what this is? I feel like a lot of the youtube demagoguery relies on people not knowing what this is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

Some of @news' more legendary trolls favoured this tactic (emile). Mystical guru cult leaders love this tactic too.

SirZiggles vs Kevin subcultural weenie Keating!

THUN DER DOME THUN DER DOME

My ideal anarchist prize fights:

1) Bellamy Fitzpatrick vs Kevin Tucker

2) Iain McKay vs. Stefan Molyneux

3) Alexander Reid Ross vs. Keith Preston

That being said, I suggest that you give up on having a "lay audience" being interested in any of these debates. We're all just too esoteric and weird for them to give a fuck.

It simply means inward. I think anarchy becoming an insular thing could be good if it get it's discursive house in order.

A debate I've wanted to see for years is Wolfi vs RMS (Richard Stallman). They both have such singular frameworks for seeing the world, but via completely unrelated fields, that I think it would be hilarious to watch them even try to figure out what it is they're disagreeing on so vehemently.

wolfi vs stallman - i love it!

get someone from TRADOC or FBI arguing why and how US will win forever and always vs any @ willing to dispute that, or conversly the former scaremongering about the dangers of insurgents and terrorists, and the latter easing their worries and arguing how @ are nice people really, and pose no threat, so they should turn it down a notch

According to Luis Manuel Gonzales Mata, a spy in the employ of the Franco regime: "Agents, when they have no further information to report, invent some; when there are no more outrages to be prevented, they provoke some; when there is no longer any extremist organization to infiltrate, they set some up."

I dunno if this happened or if I’m making it up, but I recall there was once a boxing match that was nihilist v. ancom.

you're correct, it was at a motorcycle club. Rydra vs insurrecto commie guy

i kinda remember the way the anecdote goes is that something interrupted the fight or something happened that it was cut short. was it that they got bored or that no one was watching? or was it part of the joke?

maybe i’m just divining all this, maybe i’m crazy, maybe i’m making it up

"...for example, one can now arrange a debate in order to carry out a pieing."

Maybe Dali and Stirner, people with vision, but most anyone else is boring.

anon vs anon

right here, right now baby!

Stirner gonna kick 3 billion religious anon asses outta the stadium yo !!!
Dali gonna make 1 million Kadashians look like a peasant rally yo !!

Anti-intellectual drama queen debate before presidential election to dumb down and enthrall middle Muhrica ->> Kim gonna swallow Cher wit her comrade bootie dog !

Nope, everyone is an anarchist in the arena and lots are drawn to see who debates who. Sudden death elimination debate! Wouldn't that be a blast?

But seriously, has anyone actually heard Wolfi or Zerzan give a talk? At least Žižek & Peterson have stage presence. I'm not sure there are anarchists who could hold an audience, not any more, since most of our interactions are mediated by social media.

holding an audience is authoritarian and the spectacle.

i’d hope anarchists prefer conspiring in cozy nooks, rather than mesmerizing on a stage.

they’re both present on stage, but they’re not charismatic.

they’re both dull blabberers. zizek of the fast talking kind, peterson of he slow talking kind.

their styllistic and cosmetic differences are not even so stark as to present an interesting contrast.

Maybe a TED Talk type of platform for anarchists would be worthwhile. An Emma Goldman level orator probably couldn't emerge today, but it might be possible for most people to be passionate and interesting for 20 minutes.

plaform? uhh are you a platformist? funny to see a platformist talking about wanting to listen to Ted talk. he in jail tho. you wanna do it like Sean Swain does?

i can be passionate and interesting for 20 min ; )

Aragorn v Ramsey Kanan: Should your books fall apart after a year.

Gordon Ramsay is good at insulting angrily. someone pit him against somebody.

YES!!!

I wish Ramsey Kanaan's dirtbag business scams would fall apart after a year. Or less.

Lil Stirner Girl gonna vogue walk over any heavy manboy revolutionary!

Iain McKay vs. John Zerzan or one one his followers

make the debate exclusively the questions from the audience section, and the audience is only comprised of hostile hecklers, and the debaters only reply to them in increasingly crude, grotesque, agressive, and absurd one liner comebacks, zingers, or laconic phrases.

Aragorn VS ARR

Anarchists particularly, and with good reason, often cannot beyond agreeing definitions with non-anarchists because both see the world differently... that's the tragedy of trying such initiatives. I have to say I really enjoyed Aragorn!, Nettle and Dominique on AnarchyBang regarding post-left, snark etc. The two hours did not suffer from few callers either. Aragorn! held back on his snark and was actually worth listening to, so let's have less snark and more Aragorn! please. It is unacceptable that Aragorn!s stuff has been attacked several times. This has to be condemned. I am looking forward to the next episode on activism. I am currently listening to Bookchin's Lifestyle Anarchism and I have to say, he makes a lot of valid points with where 'anarchism' is today. Aragorn! said himself that numbers of anarchists are dropping in North America and he has witnessed the lack of underpinning knowledge today's anarchists have (if we call even call them anarchists?) Given the current nightmare (global nightmare), anyone would think that anarchism and anarchists would be significantly on the rise but numbers are dropping...why? I have posted to ANews on several occasions congratulating Brett of Rev Left Radio for his respect of others and the work he and people connected to Brett are now putting out via Rev Left Radio podcast, and the Red Menace with Alyson: taking the form of education, walking newbies and those interested through Marxist-Leninist texts and being non-sectarian in his approach is helpful too... with little or no snark. I think AnarchyBang could do something similar: have phone calls based on anarchist texts for one thing? Post-Left critique has its many uses too but it doesn't translate much further than the individual and I know of no significant unions of egoists to mount anything tangible, not even a whimper of a threat...just memes and podcasts and lots of snark! Are we lifestyle anarchists? I think there is some merit in what Bookchin says.

Bookchin, more like pff not a good book...chin...
You know why uhh Bookchin was so much a hater of lifestylists? It’s cuz he was jealous cuz he had no life and no style (and he tried his best to be snarky too them, to bad he sucked at things, like writing and not dying).
He was just another grumpy conservative old man.

Bookchin simply had an irrational hatred of the more Stirnerian niche associated anarchists and the historical tradition they belonged to. If you come out of organization leftist discursive habits with a particular strategic admiration for Trotsky then you will not like any kind of individual anarchism under any circumstances. His lifestyle tag was really attacking anyone with a critique of everyday life and deeper criticism of leftist reification.

I also don't view this current contraction of anarchism as a bad thing. A new age, zeitgeist and context is needed just like the shot in the arm that far right ideology is currently getting. As I keep saying, what is needed is a formative return to the salon with pre-political intellects that start at a more philosophical core. Anarchy at it's best is more a philosophy then a politic. The old IWW syndicalist structures did not define 1968, neither will 1968 structures define what will come at about 2048 or thereabouts.

Get a salon going and fine the new age of thinkers not rooted to an old decadent milieu.

wtf is a salon? isn’t that like a beauty parlor where they style your hair?

I thought it was like, a place where you drank fancy-ass booze and swapped gossip while pressing the back of your hand to your forehead all dramatically?

interesting read, that wikipedia link. it’s a good one.
i always suspected you were from that time. what i don’t understand is how heaping doses of aristocratic pompousness would help in this circumstance.
isn’t that the main difference between a salon and an online chat room, or this comment section?

… are you saying we lack aristocratic pomposity?! Cuz if so … >:(

The underlying idea is people get together and talk about ideas in ways that are unencumbered by any sort of elective procedure. The current milieu model does not do that. Radical milieus tend to be the tertiary stage of radicalism after the salonic stage(think the letrists or the beats and their original get togethers) and then the revolutionary insurgent stage(1968-77). The alt right went through this before it's raw political manifestation with things like the dark enlightenment people like Nick Land Moldbug Jonathan Bowden ect. After the altright fades they will probably create their tertiary state niche media milieu structures that are equivalent to to left and non right radical structures in the 80s and 90s.

A new formative intellectual period is what anarchy needs.

Its that certain style which Oscar Wilde radiated, like vogue but with a sharp politically aware nous, and a good sense of visual aesthetics. A walking talking masterpiece, a living work of art which I pursue. The best politics are the internal rivalries of one's own nature in its battle against culture's invariable philistine assault upon just being oneself.,.

did you two ever get together? cuz it seems you should. set yourselves up a salon for two in the meantime.

start a podcast called “the salon”, get enough listeners, invite them to a meeting, live out your dream. or set up an “event” on facebook or instagram. don’t forget the cheese cubes and sparkling cider.

I think SE's referring to the living room chatter where he used to excel at with his twisted tongue, bombastic talk, before he got called out for being a major asshole.

like, a real living room? In the real world?! gtfo of here! Ziggles is just a creepy little brain in a jar.

Interesting question Would be more engaging to me if famous people from the past could debate. Heading out to the Holodeck to check it out :-)

Would love to see Young versus Present Day Aragorn! debating each other, Or one can Watch the Life of Brian debate -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoM46jRJnHM

Serious suggestion...

Pissing in the wind: Hopeful Revolution or Cynical Insurrection
Chapo Trap House vs post-left critics

I think it'd be entertaining to see the Chapo crowd on the receiving end of critique. They have a large audience and are less insufferable than the authoritarian or morally concerned left.

Brilliant! What happens when irresistible snark collides with immovable snark? I would put pants on for this shit!

Better still, the 21st Century mode, a pouting contest :▪

Raoul Vaneigem vs Noam Chomsky vs Ben Morea vs some other old person, quick while they're still alive!

dangerous ideologues will make gulags out of the inescapable tragedy and suffering of life because of their group identity and maoist pronouns, and no one is talking about it!

Wolfi vs Steve Bannon, Zig Zag vs Faith Goldy, Bob Black vs Wayne Price, Ron Sakolsky vs Johnny Rotten

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