- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/4377571
Check out c/breadtube for more left video content and discussion.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/4377571
Check out c/breadtube for more left video content and discussion.
There is one correct response to someone whose life is a struggle who has identified that it’s wealthy people in the northeastern US who are responsible: “Yes, brother. Let’s fuck 'em up and fix things, I can help.” Anything other than that shows that you honestly don’t have a lot of sympathy for their situation, which opens the door wide open for the right to fake sympathy from their side and continue taking the bulk of the votes from the people they’re fucking over.
The video directly addresses this, commenting about why regardless of the singers prsonal views, the song is being championed by conservatives and criticized by leftists.
The video describes the rural/urban divide and dicusses how it was explained by Marx and Engels long ago. In doing so, the creator emphasizes the difference in material situations and interests. It explains false consciousness and why the reactionary focus on blaming the poor on welfare is counterproductive for actually solving the issues that the singer is describing. The creator does this not to say that his level of income makes him right, but to highlight the common reasons for this difference.
Where does it do this? I watched a few minutes of the video, and did a quick search over the transcript just now, and saw nothing of that. That would change my opinion of the video a bit; what’s the timestamp where he talks about it?
That may be, but I couldn’t get past the creator shitting on the rural side of the divide to be able to even make it to that place. The very beginning “a sort of folksy twangy right-wing blue collar government bad taxes bad being 5’3 bad type song” rubbed me the wrong way, since the creator is not at all ignorant about the distinction between right-wing talking points and genuine justified poor-working-white-person anger at the system.
There are a lot of songs that are sort of ignorant-modern-conservative in their message, and they’re not popular like this one is. This video also says stuff like “I think the song’s success has a lot to do with the vague white appeal of its messaging,” which is a master-class in how to subtly bring an 100% implication of racism into the issue while having total plausible deniability on the idea that that’s what he was saying. When he started singing the lyrics himself in a mocking tone of voice I completely tapped out.
Try flipping it around: Say that someone wrote a really hard-hitting song about how unjust it is that police in the US commit ready violence against black people, and that song got really popular. Then say that someone from the right made a Youtube video singing the lyrics in a mocking tone of voice and talking about how he thinks the real message of the video is that people should be able to shoplift and not get punished for it. Would you like that video or agree with its message?
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. He may not agree with me 100% but he does 90%. When you’ve got a problem this large that affects this many people we can’t start excluding allies because they don’t subscribe to the groupthink 100%.
Yeah, 100%. He talks about welfare in a way I don’t agree with, but I put that in the same bucket as I do someone on the left who thinks that every single policeman is some kind of wife-beating dog-shooter. That’s your view, and I don’t agree, but we’re still allies.
A huge part of the problem is this country is that the right wing getting fucked by the man, and the left wing getting fucked by the man, like to battle with each other instead of with the man. I think the man creates a huge amount of propaganda that induces that situation, for obvious reasons, but that doesn’t mean we need to feed into it (which again is why this whole video infuriates me.)
I disagree pretty hard on this. Oliver Anthony and my views on corruption at the federal level don’t align whatsoever, even if we ultimately end up with nearly the same conclusion. He spends more time blaming people on welfare for the struggles of other working-class people without providing a reason why they’re responsible. And where he could spend time deriding politicians for accepting corporate buyouts to strengthen their iron grip on the working class, he simply says politicians ignore the working class because they’re too busy visiting Epstein island. Which, while not wrong, ultimately ignores that politicians are corrupt due to corporate buyouts - a consequence of capitalism. It’s a song - sure, maybe nothing’s literal. But I don’t consider Oliver Anthony’s views and my own views to be compatible, even if we end up with near the same conclusion.
Additionally, I would urge others to not feel like they must accept others’ viewpoints just because they end up near the same place, because co-opting the language and causes of the left is a legitimate tactic the far right uses to gain legitimacy. Think of how TERFs co-opted the feminist movement to make their hatred of trans people sound like it’s coming from a place of “feminist consciousness.” Songs like “Rich Men North of Richmond” do the same thing, but they’ll make it sound like a burning hatred of “the undeserving” (coming from the pot shots at people on welfare) comes from a place of class consciousness.
Well said. Punching down while pretending to be punching up