I was not expecting Brace to all but namedrop the Kaiserreich mod of HOI4. Which is pure cope and fanfiction by anarcho-syndicalists but also a significantly more plausible scenario than the A24 Civil War movie.
I was listening to this at the gym and my earbuds fell out and it played at full volume and everyone pointed at me and laughed especially the bad bitches
@@2003jackb If you're doing long term cardio, you tend not to need high burn music, and can just consume something you find intellectually stimulating.
@@horserage Yeah that's fair. I don't really do long term cardio, but I know if I ever did a marathon I'd need a break from the music at some point lol
Hearing Brace bring up the eggs are dairy argument again but in 720p with perfect audio quality must be what people felt like when they saw the guy walking around in a pepe costume irl
@@mtcuppers my mates are normies too. It’s good to be a normie. I keep it on the downlow but I am unfortunately *not* a normie. I’m consumed by hatred for Capital 24/7 and think about how Marxism-Leninism applies to the present constantly. I’m aware that bringing this up all the time though makes me look like a freak, and not in a cool way
@@markedgecliff7412 behind all those isms , are the same people. There is no such thing as supporting your preferred side , more like preferring a brand of many that are all owned by a mega conglomerate
I think the actual answer to the stuff Brace is talking about early on is that many/most of these people essentially have this liberal mindset where simply "having the right answers" is the end goal and a sort of victory. So these people seek out "the correct identity," and view that as inherently worthwhile somehow. It's a similar mindset to the ones liberals have when excitedly calling out the lies Republicans say or whatever. There's a feeling that "something is being accomplished" through carefully honing their worldview and arguments. Edit: All that being said, it's important to keep in mind that there are a lot of literal teenagers online. Younger people tend to be heavily invested with curating their identities in general, and sometimes this manifests as weird political stuff.
Yup that’s true, it’s literally virtue signaling and not action. Most people are interested in feeling superior not making sacrifices for the greater good
I love brace because I grew up as like a serious like hard drug addict super involved with the diy punk/crust/powerviolence type of scene and went into drugs really deep and ended up in jail repeatedly before I actually started to get back into skating and reading and shit. I had to level out the skating with being super into politics again to make sure I don’t start getting laid or a successful job or anything like that.
I'm never gonna encourage addiction to hard drugs, but it's undeniable that anyone with a longtime serious drug problem will know things about society and history that other people won't. Whether they know what to MAKE of it all, c'est autre chose
@@theelastog1580 I mean, he was literally helping american geopolitical interests by fighting with the YPG against the Assad regime in Syria.... I'm no fan of Assad and his quasi-nazbol endeavors but you ought to be delusional to think that fighting for Kurdish rebels that help weaken the assadist regime isn't directly benefitting American and by extension, western interests in the middle east.... it's like 80's Afghanistan all over again, but instead of mujahideens it's leftist militants... Brace is literally a pawn of the state department.
@@GuildistGuevara right but as usual there's no real reason to think the *CIA* was actually involved, because the US is great at indoctrinating its citizens tbh. just because an American idiot did something stupid for American interests unfortunately doesn't mean the CIA was involved lol
Semi tearing up at the sweetness and optimism of Brace’s last mention: (rephrased) “It’s up to us to try to be there for other people and make others (and yourself) into human beings that can withstand the weird social pressures and psychic assaults that’s we’re constantly under and emerge as a bastion of humanity and normalcy… that is also disciplined and organized enough to destroy the United States government.” So based
There is no disciplined and organized left in the United States. Our so-called socialist party, the DSA, cannot even get on the same page internally and publicly hold a position critical of Israel, the US government's proxy terror regime currently committing genocide The Western left is beyond saving unless there is a dramatic collapse of material conditions. The only hope presently is the Global South and further collapse of NATO and other G7 affiliated organizations through pressure by national bourgeois forces (who are admittedly not socialists) in Russia and Iran capable of standing up to the West
@@Rosecrucian Also as much as it is lame to defend my favorite nerd podcaster asshole, Brace is pretty far from LARP. The dude was a volunteer soldier in the revolutionary YPG during the Syrian CIvil War and has been a labor organizer in the past. I wouldn't call that LARP.
Kudos to Josh for being such a good interviewer. Podcasts try to force in jokes whenever they can and jump from topic to topic fast. Even quality staff like Novara are atrocious when it come to interviews. You really manage to calmly and precisely coax out your guest's thoughts without breaking up the flow.
this genuinely was one of the first conversations on contemporary leftism i have seen in a while that didn't contain all of the same recycled takes i have seen a million times. super refreshing, caught a sub from my joshua!
"it'll go back to normal where it will be weird to be a socialist" Not my experience at all. Seems to me more people than ever are absolutely disgusted by the duopoly and the genocide. Normies are going left in a big way imo. Your analysis couldn't be further off. The contradictions are intensifying and we poor people are really coming to consciousness I think.
I think both takes are right in their own way. I can tell you among my friends and acquaintances it's about a 50/50 split between those who have been pushed further left and those who are becoming increasingly annoyed by and hostile to the leftists in their spaces. The latter group is pretty genuinely angry at the people around them who do not want to fall in line with the Harris hype and vote blue, I've had some of those people outright tell me that Palestine for example is a sacrifice they're willing to make to ensure their comfort and relative protection at home. Many, many people who claimed to be amenable to socialism just within the past year or so have done a 180 and committed harder to outright liberalism than they ever did before. Turns out that aesthetics are effective on millenials especially, and when you need to believe that things will get better for you and your in-group badly enough, you're generally willing to overlook just about everything that would contradict that outcome in reality. If anything I think those inclined to continue moving left will become much more ideologically committed, and the split between us and the radlibs will only continue to become wider and more bitter as time goes on.
@@Hmoney0 it ain't happening imo. The american century is over, players in the world are forming power independent of the American empire. The order of the day and probably the coming decades in the imperial core is gradually increasing austerity I think.
Almost everyone in my family and even some of my friends will randomly say stuff like “oh i heard they’re making kids trans now” or like specific to india “oh muslims are doing xyz horrible thing” In my experience which mostly has to do with middle class and upper class ppl they have moved rightward in a major way
I completely disagree with the idea that we should be wary of friendless people joining the movment. Wary, sure, but shutting down and out and getting all conspiratorial about it isnt 'normal'. It's in contradiction with everything Brace was saying about online interaction being deteiment, our society is currently trying to atomize everyone. So grit your teeth and try and be nice to the weirdos, as its literally social reeducation and is necessary to build strong, reliable, members of the working class. The most popular union events we organized were social events, low stakes, no marching or organizing - come out and have a beer or something. It's literally the most normal thing you can ask someone who's lacking a friend, and doesnt come preloaded with ideology or workplace politics that may or may not interest them. Because, if you want to be practical, we don't need every supporter to be an organizer - but we want everyone in the unit to think they have a friend in us, and that were organizing for them.
Exactly. I know a lot of these elder millennials who got an early start organizing are leery of socialist orgs being used as social clubs or dating pools for the isolated, but that's literally how a lot of orgs drew in much of their membership and support in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This Cool Kid exclusionary attitude about it is fortunately something I've never actually seen anywhere except among online left celebs - another form of LARPing in and of itself. Call me crazy but I think we should be willing to encourage anyone who wants to live in a more just world, not simply people we think aren't cringe.
@@lana-jg4ho sorry I said “rapper” I meant to say sexual predator. I meant to put the “”s around it but I guess I didn’t. Actual rappers are cool. But not the kind with one p that are on the registry.
I read every single column that Brace Beldon wrote for MRR. So needless to say i was pretty surprised later on when i found out he had developed solid beliefs and was interested in political ideas.
It's a powerful experience to watch this podcast and realize how much Brace has done for my transition from annoying Gen X anarchist burnout to annoying Gen X socialist burnout
"It's important to not just come from a place of complete resentment and hatred. I love humanity. I love progress. I want to make the world a beautiful place to live in." ❤
HOI4 mods have created a wealth of fringe political stances, alt history fictions, and expanded My Little Pony lore. All that from a game about building factories that make tanks.
On the discussion of socialism in mainstream discourse, I kept being reminded of this idea, but I don't remember who said it. Someone said that Republicans kind of set the stage for someone like Bernie in a strange way, because they continued to call President Obama a "socialist", using this supposedly "dirty word" to make people distrust him and his policies. But what happened, is that a generation of younger voters (or even younger people who couldn't vote yet, but still liked him), heard that and basically said, "That's what socialism is? I like that!" Then, when someone like Bernie comes around, they've already made that positive association. I'm not sure I totally agree with it 100%, but I do think it's interesting and that there may be a drop of truth in it.
Awesome discussion. This really highlighted some crucial pitfalls in political organization and identity. How often will new episodes be released? I’m really looking forward to the next one!
34:45 that's actually an interesting point about the professional managerial class. It might present itself as leftist and proletarian but there is a certain need to justify its importance as big brain managers while betraying the interests of working class people working in manufacturing. It's the entfremdung of each other if you will.
anarchism isn't everyone voting on everything. anarchists are ok with delegating tasks to experts, committees, etc. as long as it's transparent, voluntary, able to be recalled/amended. that life would just be 11 hours of meetings a day where everyone has to agree on every minute detail is a despair-mongering myth. you can see this in places like revolutionary catalonia during the spanish civil war. they effectively organized a universal healthcare system that treated millions in the middle of a war. a major lesson communists (including anarchists, as the vast majority of anarchists are communists) need to take from the 20th century is that unfortunately anarchists accurately forecast the futility of trying to seize & wield state power. for the purposes of communism & not something like a bourgeois revolution the state is fundamentally a counter-revolutionary force. it's an apparatus that exists to enable a small group of people to control everyone else & always seeks to monopolize its power & perpetuate itself. workers have to build their own truly democratic organs of power. it is entirely possible for us to live a different way
One of the fundamental issues with this perspective is that it completely ignores the issue of "how to deal with counter-revolutionaries/reactionaries." It's the sort of thing that can only work (and even then, only temporarily) if you're off the radar of the bigger capitalist powers and they aren't interested in opposing you. The most generous way I can think of to describe modern anarchists is "what if you took a person with left-wing values, but had them derive all their assumptions about the world and history from US/Western media and culture." So you have the same basic values, but with someone who just naively buys into so much stupid bullshit that their end conclusions are dumb as hell
I'm not going to dignify the other stupid asshole in this thread with a response but yeah, Brace's issue is that he's an old bay area punk and anarchism in the US has long suffered from its over association with the punk subculture and its hyperindividualist outlook that lends itself to antiorganizationalism. The issues he raised were all addressed by the platformists a century ago, and their answers are more or less where the movement should orient itself. As far as anarchism's list of sucesses vs those of Marxism Leninism goes, I'm open to debate that but only over Big Macs in Beijing.
Enjoyed the discussion, thanks! You might consider having Rathbone on, would be a perfect fit with his journey in music, media, culture and politics. Thanks again
I’m 38. DSA for me I feel like was the only place a normal person could go to see what direct democracy looked like, at a time our national and even local municipal/city politics could not have looked bleaker. It was kind of amazing: I’d never participated in anything like it before then, in 2016
Get an actual working class person on here. Brace understands the politics of working class struggle, but very little in this discussion spoke to me. We need to build the sinews between people like him and proletariats
@@AlisonCauldwellafaik Brace comes from money though, I don't think he's a bad dude but if you've listened to enough of the podcast and heard him talk about his life it's clear he's had a lot of certain privileges. Broke parents don't have the money to send their kids to trouble teen camps...
at the end you guys talk about how leftists should not alienate themselves from normal people or society, but in the very next breadth talk about you dislike people becoming interested in socialism to... make friends? not defeating the fringe subculture allegations lol.
well that was depressing. some harsh truths for the left in this. personally, i spent a lot of my twenties LARPing and doing punk shit, but even now that i’m almost 30, going to meetings and shit feels basically the same. it’s all a fucking circle jerk. i’m kinda becoming one of those people who’s just totally disaffected by politics now.
@@lana-jg4ho The simple fact is that not all social/societal conflicts can be resolved via some form of peaceful action. Modern people living in liberal democracies like the US tend to treat it like some axiomatic fact of reality that it should always be possible to peacefully organize your way to the future you desire (because our media/propaganda tells us this), but this is transparently silly if you stop and think about it for two seconds. I'm pretty sure you'd agree, for example, that it's impossible to peacefully organize a solution to Israel's treatment of Palestinians. There is literally nothing a Palestinian in Gaza could peacefully do to fundamentally change their situation for the better (at least not without accompanying direct fighting). Or, say, Nazi Germany at the time (for an extremely obvious example). History is full of circumstances where the people holding power will directly fight to continue holding it. But most people in our current society (including me, and probably including you) probably aren't willing to seriously risk their lives. Partly because life is still relatively tolerable for many people, and partly because we know that there simply aren't enough people for such a thing to succeed. The only thing anyone can really do is try to create connections with other people, in the hopes that, at some point in the future (when more people actually are unfortunately driven/forced to take more direct action), it can help facilitate/guide things. I don't think it's helpful for people to lie to themselves, though.
@@BenkaiDebussyyup that’s exactly right. Learn from history to prepare to provide some guidance for serious mass unrest. The revolution will not be won without the majority of the working class. I would personally recommend the RCI, as an organization that has no illusions about this.
@@GOOMASTER69 doesnt really fit with what brace tried to say, but it was a policy where upper-class urban teenagers had to live and work on rural farms to get familiar with underprivileged life
It is foolish to think of any leftist revolution happening in the west. Look at the conditions under which socialist revolutions occurred in the past: they were almost all due to severe poverty, war, or foreign occupation: Russia, China, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, ect American lifestyles are leagues above this. Almost no one is going to throw this away. Material conditions will get worse... yes... but absent black swan event I don't see majority of Americans truly suffering like the third world. Sorry but Americans are stuck being the bad guys and obstacle to any socialist movements in countries where conditions exist or will exist for revolution.
No one into politics like to think about optimistic things, but we can't rule out the possibility of technological progress improving material conditions across the board and rendering entire grievances illegitimate. Cold fusion is just one example. There are alot of people working very hard every year to make it happen. We can't act like we know exactly whats on the horizon technologically. Its extremely strange how some people on the left hold on to 19th century ideas about what a revolution has to look like.
Mr. Belden simultaneously being the most and least normal person alive is something we should all aspire to
love to see my friend in high res 1080p instead of the weekly hour long voice calls i have with him
Ready for weekly 4k
Can you recommend some of your favorite episodes. I've preferred episodes where guests come on
@@QueefMcGeesHouse the octopus murders are good and jfk series is classic style apple pire
@@benquesada-d7s*classico
@@benquesada-d7s thanks bae
It's a sign of a great interviewer to bring out new stuff from someone most of us have listened to for hours at this point.
"Hours" lol (but yes, your point stands)
I was not expecting Brace to all but namedrop the Kaiserreich mod of HOI4. Which is pure cope and fanfiction by anarcho-syndicalists but also a significantly more plausible scenario than the A24 Civil War movie.
@@discountchocolate4577 Did you hear A24 is doing the Kaiserrech mod movie?
I was listening to this at the gym and my earbuds fell out and it played at full volume and everyone pointed at me and laughed especially the bad bitches
Why would they? A good lifter would see a man enriching his life and lift with him.
I can't fathom not listening to music when working out, but you should totally own it
@@2003jackb If you're doing long term cardio, you tend not to need high burn music, and can just consume something you find intellectually stimulating.
@@horserage Yeah that's fair. I don't really do long term cardio, but I know if I ever did a marathon I'd need a break from the music at some point lol
@@2003jackb Or long form music, like how payday soundtracks work.
best line of the entire podcast "you're autistic?" "yes."
Also good: "Lenin writes in plain English."
How did he not give brace shit for this
wasn't ready for seeing brace in this fideltiy
Brace yourself for that 4k
Too hot to handle
Ginger beard is wigging me out
it's cray-seeee
Noticing a troubling trend, Brace loves hanging out with handsome and incredibly buff men
Concerning. Looking into it.
@@michaelthemanmalloy im also looking into handsome and incredibly buff men
feels like stolen valor when a male podcast host is handsome
was this filmed in heaven
You are in the house of Elrond. And it is ten o'clock in the morning, on October the twenty-fourth, if you want to know.
Soon. Also it's my birthday@@randyhendrickson4735
They are both dead
Hearing Brace bring up the eggs are dairy argument again but in 720p with perfect audio quality must be what people felt like when they saw the guy walking around in a pepe costume irl
he's right
wish they would've kissed but Brace is just too damn straight
I am currently larping as a loving but cold abuela, come- taste my delicious homemade Molé
Man I haven't had molé in a while
Damn, this was my grandmother 😢
Agua de Sapo?
come, comé mi mole
@@diamondsprince shhh hijo esta bien
Watching on a 50” television is like having a full-sized Brace right here in the room with me.
Increidble podcast, as someone who is a socialist but only has friends who are normies I love how grounded in reality this was
Thank you Brace Boldenski for inspiring me to start my politically motivated youtube channel!
Lovely that you call your friends normies
@@mtcuppers my mates are normies too. It’s good to be a normie. I keep it on the downlow but I am unfortunately *not* a normie. I’m consumed by hatred for Capital 24/7 and think about how Marxism-Leninism applies to the present constantly. I’m aware that bringing this up all the time though makes me look like a freak, and not in a cool way
Same!
@@markedgecliff7412 behind all those isms , are the same people. There is no such thing as supporting your preferred side , more like preferring a brand of many that are all owned by a mega conglomerate
I think the actual answer to the stuff Brace is talking about early on is that many/most of these people essentially have this liberal mindset where simply "having the right answers" is the end goal and a sort of victory. So these people seek out "the correct identity," and view that as inherently worthwhile somehow.
It's a similar mindset to the ones liberals have when excitedly calling out the lies Republicans say or whatever. There's a feeling that "something is being accomplished" through carefully honing their worldview and arguments.
Edit: All that being said, it's important to keep in mind that there are a lot of literal teenagers online. Younger people tend to be heavily invested with curating their identities in general, and sometimes this manifests as weird political stuff.
Yup that’s true, it’s literally virtue signaling and not action. Most people are interested in feeling superior not making sacrifices for the greater good
On Lenin: "because he writes in plain English."
The closeups of Brace are needlessly sexual
That’s just Brace being brace, dude
Needless you say
Needlessly?
most surprising information i learned from this interview is that Brace is not autistic.
He’s said the only mental illness diagnosis he’s ever had was substance abuse disorder which I find hard to believe but also totally see
just not diagnosed
"my biggest problem is I'm not autistic" felt that
I love brace because I grew up as like a serious like hard drug addict super involved with the diy punk/crust/powerviolence type of scene and went into drugs really deep and ended up in jail repeatedly before I actually started to get back into skating and reading and shit. I had to level out the skating with being super into politics again to make sure I don’t start getting laid or a successful job or anything like that.
lmao
But did you join the armed forces to serve our country?
Like DIY drug addiction and jail sounds like really important to achieve, congratulations.
I'm never gonna encourage addiction to hard drugs, but it's undeniable that anyone with a longtime serious drug problem will know things about society and history that other people won't. Whether they know what to MAKE of it all, c'est autre chose
Did you, like brace grow up the inheritor of an immense fortune?
I am not larping, I am manifesting my niche leftist ideology 💅
bro literally ran off the fight for the same, he just ashamed now
@@molochfrolics8443 He also realized that he was just a CIA pawn. Maybe he still is?
@@buck_swopetruly curious, how was he manipulated by the agency ?
@@theelastog1580 I mean, he was literally helping american geopolitical interests by fighting with the YPG against the Assad regime in Syria....
I'm no fan of Assad and his quasi-nazbol endeavors but you ought to be delusional to think that fighting for Kurdish rebels that help weaken the assadist regime isn't directly benefitting American and by extension, western interests in the middle east.... it's like 80's Afghanistan all over again, but instead of mujahideens it's leftist militants...
Brace is literally a pawn of the state department.
@@GuildistGuevara right but as usual there's no real reason to think the *CIA* was actually involved, because the US is great at indoctrinating its citizens tbh. just because an American idiot did something stupid for American interests unfortunately doesn't mean the CIA was involved lol
Semi tearing up at the sweetness and optimism of Brace’s last mention:
(rephrased)
“It’s up to us to try to be there for other people and make others (and yourself) into human beings that can withstand the weird social pressures and psychic assaults that’s we’re constantly under and emerge as a bastion of humanity and normalcy… that is also disciplined and organized enough to destroy the United States government.”
So based
There is no disciplined and organized left in the United States. Our so-called socialist party, the DSA, cannot even get on the same page internally and publicly hold a position critical of Israel, the US government's proxy terror regime currently committing genocide
The Western left is beyond saving unless there is a dramatic collapse of material conditions. The only hope presently is the Global South and further collapse of NATO and other G7 affiliated organizations through pressure by national bourgeois forces (who are admittedly not socialists) in Russia and Iran capable of standing up to the West
Neither of these men are married or have children, this is just more LARP.
@@Rosecrucian A lot of people in their 30s aren't married or have children...?
@@Rosecrucian Also as much as it is lame to defend my favorite nerd podcaster asshole, Brace is pretty far from LARP. The dude was a volunteer soldier in the revolutionary YPG during the Syrian CIvil War and has been a labor organizer in the past. I wouldn't call that LARP.
Same
Kudos to Josh for being such a good interviewer. Podcasts try to force in jokes whenever they can and jump from topic to topic fast. Even quality staff like Novara are atrocious when it come to interviews. You really manage to calmly and precisely coax out your guest's thoughts without breaking up the flow.
This changed my life and got me laid.
Brace 'The greatest common denominator' Belden
The Gay Pussay Eatah
this genuinely was one of the first conversations on contemporary leftism i have seen in a while that didn't contain all of the same recycled takes i have seen a million times. super refreshing, caught a sub from my joshua!
You forgot to refer to him as a veteran. Thank him for his service.
I'd like to say I'm not part of the online larp but I'd also like to not lie to myself
At the end of the day LARPing is fun and we all do it for a reason. Treat yourself, in moderation
Beautiful production. I particularly appreciated the shot of the people walking outside and the angle of both of you with the box
hasbara budget is insane
Brace is anti-israel
Sooooo pumped for this pod
"Of course there is the anonymity of online. No one knows I am role-playing Pol Pot online" CIA: Am I a joke to you?!
480p is the highest resolution this man has ever been viewed in before this
The Al-qaeda cave camera they use over at macrodosing was the closest. this new cam allows listeners to really get into the apolitical mindset
Such a rockabilly thumbnail
New to you Joshua, but what a great interview. Definitely excited to see more
It's so amazing the glow up Brace has since the punk days running into him at the AT house
I'm also a 37 year-old autist leftist who likes DnB so I'm glad I found this channel lmao
AuDHD 37 year-old leftist checking in too lol
Dave N' Busters?
@@spencer8218Drum and Buster's
@@spencer8218 dick'n'balls
Dick and Balls
"I think my biggest problem is that I'm not autistic" hahahahahahahahahaha ok Brace
This was absolutely amazing. Thanks so much for doing this
Ah yes, the gourmand
Delectable
Crazy to see my asset in video form! We usually just have scheduled phone calls
Great convo thanks lads
As I clicked the like button I heard a little “brace sound”
HEHAWW
its a good gong
@@roastbeefy0weefy ah a fellow democrat
I'm so proud of you Joshua, I've been a long time viewer,
Incredible interview. Deeply insightful on both sides.
I wish Brace and I hung out on weekends or after work some weekdays
you can watch him play Deus Ex but you're not allowed to talk to him
Wtf.
‘Nick Fuentes, gay Mexican!’ 😂
🤣🤣
Glad brace didn’t talk about gay sex the entire time like the last interview I saw of him
"it'll go back to normal where it will be weird to be a socialist"
Not my experience at all. Seems to me more people than ever are absolutely disgusted by the duopoly and the genocide. Normies are going left in a big way imo.
Your analysis couldn't be further off. The contradictions are intensifying and we poor people are really coming to consciousness I think.
I think both takes are right in their own way. I can tell you among my friends and acquaintances it's about a 50/50 split between those who have been pushed further left and those who are becoming increasingly annoyed by and hostile to the leftists in their spaces.
The latter group is pretty genuinely angry at the people around them who do not want to fall in line with the Harris hype and vote blue, I've had some of those people outright tell me that Palestine for example is a sacrifice they're willing to make to ensure their comfort and relative protection at home. Many, many people who claimed to be amenable to socialism just within the past year or so have done a 180 and committed harder to outright liberalism than they ever did before.
Turns out that aesthetics are effective on millenials especially, and when you need to believe that things will get better for you and your in-group badly enough, you're generally willing to overlook just about everything that would contradict that outcome in reality. If anything I think those inclined to continue moving left will become much more ideologically committed, and the split between us and the radlibs will only continue to become wider and more bitter as time goes on.
I mean eventually it will when material conditions improve enough for long enough but we aren’t anywhere near that
@@Hmoney0 it ain't happening imo. The american century is over, players in the world are forming power independent of the American empire. The order of the day and probably the coming decades in the imperial core is gradually increasing austerity I think.
LARP
Almost everyone in my family and even some of my friends will randomly say stuff like “oh i heard they’re making kids trans now” or like specific to india “oh muslims are doing xyz horrible thing” In my experience which mostly has to do with middle class and upper class ppl they have moved rightward in a major way
I completely disagree with the idea that we should be wary of friendless people joining the movment. Wary, sure, but shutting down and out and getting all conspiratorial about it isnt 'normal'. It's in contradiction with everything Brace was saying about online interaction being deteiment, our society is currently trying to atomize everyone. So grit your teeth and try and be nice to the weirdos, as its literally social reeducation and is necessary to build strong, reliable, members of the working class.
The most popular union events we organized were social events, low stakes, no marching or organizing - come out and have a beer or something. It's literally the most normal thing you can ask someone who's lacking a friend, and doesnt come preloaded with ideology or workplace politics that may or may not interest them. Because, if you want to be practical, we don't need every supporter to be an organizer - but we want everyone in the unit to think they have a friend in us, and that were organizing for them.
@@c.andrew3944 we basically need anyone who isn’t a cop, a fascist or a rapper
@@nopasaran191gshagahaha why no rappers??! 😂😂
@@nopasaran191But if you can win over cops, fascists, or rappers then that's a colossal step in the right direction, no? That's building a coalition.
Exactly. I know a lot of these elder millennials who got an early start organizing are leery of socialist orgs being used as social clubs or dating pools for the isolated, but that's literally how a lot of orgs drew in much of their membership and support in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This Cool Kid exclusionary attitude about it is fortunately something I've never actually seen anywhere except among online left celebs - another form of LARPing in and of itself. Call me crazy but I think we should be willing to encourage anyone who wants to live in a more just world, not simply people we think aren't cringe.
@@lana-jg4ho sorry I said “rapper” I meant to say sexual predator. I meant to put the “”s around it but I guess I didn’t. Actual rappers are cool. But not the kind with one p that are on the registry.
I read every single column that Brace Beldon wrote for MRR. So needless to say i was pretty surprised later on when i found out he had developed solid beliefs and was interested in political ideas.
It's a powerful experience to watch this podcast and realize how much Brace has done for my transition from annoying Gen X anarchist burnout to annoying Gen X socialist burnout
"It's important to not just come from a place of complete resentment and hatred. I love humanity. I love progress. I want to make the world a beautiful place to live in." ❤
1:50 what was yr screamo band josh
This was great. Helped remind me to avoid or not lean too hard into some cringe and counter productive tendencies.
Guess I found my new favorite podcast
Why is this not filmed in a basement
Brace Belden talking about HoI4 mods is not on my bingo card today but here we go
I hadn't heard the word NazBol in like 6 years 😂
HOI4 mods have created a wealth of fringe political stances, alt history fictions, and expanded My Little Pony lore. All that from a game about building factories that make tanks.
Brace Belden: America's sweethart
Wait this means Nick Mullen and Catherine Liu are in the same cinematic universe
Such a raw transition at 43:24
Very informative. I love learning!
I love boobies
On the discussion of socialism in mainstream discourse, I kept being reminded of this idea, but I don't remember who said it. Someone said that Republicans kind of set the stage for someone like Bernie in a strange way, because they continued to call President Obama a "socialist", using this supposedly "dirty word" to make people distrust him and his policies. But what happened, is that a generation of younger voters (or even younger people who couldn't vote yet, but still liked him), heard that and basically said, "That's what socialism is? I like that!" Then, when someone like Bernie comes around, they've already made that positive association. I'm not sure I totally agree with it 100%, but I do think it's interesting and that there may be a drop of truth in it.
Awesome discussion. This really highlighted some crucial pitfalls in political organization and identity. How often will new episodes be released? I’m really looking forward to the next one!
34:45 that's actually an interesting point about the professional managerial class. It might present itself as leftist and proletarian but there is a certain need to justify its importance as big brain managers while betraying the interests of working class people working in manufacturing. It's the entfremdung of each other if you will.
gretchen beldin is my favorite podcaster
this is great, instantly followed. admittedly a little taken back at first with Brace in 1080p
Hell yea great interview
sorry to say but the sexual tension here was insane
Brace Beldan is the suburban hero Bam Margera never could be
those chairs look so uncomfortable
It's just larping all the way down.
Haircut looks great Brace
anarchism isn't everyone voting on everything. anarchists are ok with delegating tasks to experts, committees, etc. as long as it's transparent, voluntary, able to be recalled/amended. that life would just be 11 hours of meetings a day where everyone has to agree on every minute detail is a despair-mongering myth. you can see this in places like revolutionary catalonia during the spanish civil war. they effectively organized a universal healthcare system that treated millions in the middle of a war. a major lesson communists (including anarchists, as the vast majority of anarchists are communists) need to take from the 20th century is that unfortunately anarchists accurately forecast the futility of trying to seize & wield state power. for the purposes of communism & not something like a bourgeois revolution the state is fundamentally a counter-revolutionary force. it's an apparatus that exists to enable a small group of people to control everyone else & always seeks to monopolize its power & perpetuate itself. workers have to build their own truly democratic organs of power. it is entirely possible for us to live a different way
One of the fundamental issues with this perspective is that it completely ignores the issue of "how to deal with counter-revolutionaries/reactionaries." It's the sort of thing that can only work (and even then, only temporarily) if you're off the radar of the bigger capitalist powers and they aren't interested in opposing you.
The most generous way I can think of to describe modern anarchists is "what if you took a person with left-wing values, but had them derive all their assumptions about the world and history from US/Western media and culture." So you have the same basic values, but with someone who just naively buys into so much stupid bullshit that their end conclusions are dumb as hell
I'm not going to dignify the other stupid asshole in this thread with a response but yeah, Brace's issue is that he's an old bay area punk and anarchism in the US has long suffered from its over association with the punk subculture and its hyperindividualist outlook that lends itself to antiorganizationalism. The issues he raised were all addressed by the platformists a century ago, and their answers are more or less where the movement should orient itself. As far as anarchism's list of sucesses vs those of Marxism Leninism goes, I'm open to debate that but only over Big Macs in Beijing.
Oh, hey . . . this is the guy from the True Anon podcast!
Enjoyed the discussion, thanks! You might consider having Rathbone on, would be a perfect fit with his journey in music, media, culture and politics. Thanks again
ohhhh Joshua being autistic actually makes much sense, his niche research focus is some of the best out there rn
these are such great questions. high hopes for the show
I’m 38. DSA for me I feel like was the only place a normal person could go to see what direct democracy looked like, at a time our national and even local municipal/city politics could not have looked bleaker. It was kind of amazing: I’d never participated in anything like it before then, in 2016
Get an actual working class person on here. Brace understands the politics of working class struggle, but very little in this discussion spoke to me. We need to build the sinews between people like him and proletariats
i mean he did work at a brewery and led a successful effort to start a union
@@AlisonCauldwellafaik Brace comes from money though, I don't think he's a bad dude but if you've listened to enough of the podcast and heard him talk about his life it's clear he's had a lot of certain privileges. Broke parents don't have the money to send their kids to trouble teen camps...
those chairs look so uncomfy
at the end you guys talk about how leftists should not alienate themselves from normal people or society, but in the very next breadth talk about you dislike people becoming interested in socialism to... make friends? not defeating the fringe subculture allegations lol.
Great first guest
That last minute was key 🔑 👌
My favorite Fed finally appears in 4K
Get Bevins on the show, wanna hear you two talk
I need more of this kind of discussion around how to relate more to my workplace and how to make organizing more appealing
i think you first need to relate to your coworkers in general
I thought brace was like, 5’ 1”, Im impressed, he’s actually HUGE!
Brace is so great. Thank you.
God this is so terminally online it’s insane
this podcast is going to do well
thats my podcaster!
well that was depressing. some harsh truths for the left in this. personally, i spent a lot of my twenties LARPing and doing punk shit, but even now that i’m almost 30, going to meetings and shit feels basically the same. it’s all a fucking circle jerk. i’m kinda becoming one of those people who’s just totally disaffected by politics now.
same, but there must be another way. we quite literally cannot give up, and I really disagree with Brace
@@lana-jg4ho The simple fact is that not all social/societal conflicts can be resolved via some form of peaceful action. Modern people living in liberal democracies like the US tend to treat it like some axiomatic fact of reality that it should always be possible to peacefully organize your way to the future you desire (because our media/propaganda tells us this), but this is transparently silly if you stop and think about it for two seconds. I'm pretty sure you'd agree, for example, that it's impossible to peacefully organize a solution to Israel's treatment of Palestinians. There is literally nothing a Palestinian in Gaza could peacefully do to fundamentally change their situation for the better (at least not without accompanying direct fighting). Or, say, Nazi Germany at the time (for an extremely obvious example). History is full of circumstances where the people holding power will directly fight to continue holding it.
But most people in our current society (including me, and probably including you) probably aren't willing to seriously risk their lives. Partly because life is still relatively tolerable for many people, and partly because we know that there simply aren't enough people for such a thing to succeed.
The only thing anyone can really do is try to create connections with other people, in the hopes that, at some point in the future (when more people actually are unfortunately driven/forced to take more direct action), it can help facilitate/guide things. I don't think it's helpful for people to lie to themselves, though.
@@BenkaiDebussy Yup this is why MLK is allowed to be a hero
DSA meetings I'm guessing?
@@BenkaiDebussyyup that’s exactly right. Learn from history to prepare to provide some guidance for serious mass unrest. The revolution will not be won without the majority of the working class. I would personally recommend the RCI, as an organization that has no illusions about this.
Yo where did he get "the countryside sourrounds the city" thats good shit
Looks like it may be some sort of mao-ist qoute??
@@GOOMASTER69 doesnt really fit with what brace tried to say, but it was a policy where upper-class urban teenagers had to live and work on rural farms to get familiar with underprivileged life
@@GOOMASTER69 Maoist third worldism
This was gold
Brace Belden, one of my fave people of all time!
There was a Dean Preston attack ad at the beginning of this video. Lol.
Was not ready for the Hearts of Iron mention
Banger first episode
It is foolish to think of any leftist revolution happening in the west. Look at the conditions under which socialist revolutions occurred in the past: they were almost all due to severe poverty, war, or foreign occupation: Russia, China, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, ect
American lifestyles are leagues above this. Almost no one is going to throw this away. Material conditions will get worse... yes... but absent black swan event I don't see majority of Americans truly suffering like the third world.
Sorry but Americans are stuck being the bad guys and obstacle to any socialist movements in countries where conditions exist or will exist for revolution.
Nah
@@matthewjohannes3509brilliant reply
No one into politics like to think about optimistic things, but we can't rule out the possibility of technological progress improving material conditions across the board and rendering entire grievances illegitimate. Cold fusion is just one example. There are alot of people working very hard every year to make it happen. We can't act like we know exactly whats on the horizon technologically.
Its extremely strange how some people on the left hold on to 19th century ideas about what a revolution has to look like.