Boots Riley recounts his introduction to radicalism. Subscribe to Bad Faith on Patreon to support our work and instantly unlock our full premium episode library: / badfaithpodcast
I'm just this side of broke but this episode made a Patreon supporter of me. I'm encouraged by some of the left media emerging these days, and I think this whole project is one of the best. Fantastic interview. Boots is underappreciated as a thinker and even as an artist.
Those left media will never help you better your situation, but they will make sure you give them your money. All they will do is make you stay there or be in revolt, and wait for handouts while the rest of the world advances (or until you guys make it all plunge down in resentment).
@@TheControlBlue everything you cherish was brought to you by so called leftist activist: holidays, labor rights, wage standards, civil Liberties etc.... Sounds like you have no idea what your talking about
@@TheControlBlue right.. I apologize, I assumed you were like most people... Who want fair safe working conditions and an equitable society... You must be one of those oft rumored rugged individual entrepreneurs....A boot strappping cowboy; simultaneously taming wild terrain and dutifully attending to your personal and familial needs with only your sweat, relentless hard work, and genius ....🙄🙄🙄 Sorry to have assumed you might appreciate basic living standards...my mistake... 🤡
Excellent. Just don't become a Trotskyist, and recognize that the bourgeois class has the most well-organized and deeply-entrenched propaganda machine ever created to spread its messaging, and meanwhile, to distort the messaging of the working class. America has a stupid, ill-informed, misdirected and heavily-infiltrated Left.
@@Bert-Kay Why should he read about the gulags? Lenin described the system of the Soviet Union as "State Capitalism". Blaming Marxism for Capitalist crimes is either ignorant or deceitful. Which are you?
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 oh I got you hook line and sinker bud. You think I care about Lenin or whoever you bring up. You have a morally unjust argument. There are no “made up facts” that can justify such political nonsense. Reality is you are a pseudo-anarchist disguised with a false veil of good with the idea of “Marxism”. It all hypothetical because it never actually works. Capitalism has been improving the world for centuries now and you cannot keep up in a modern day workspace/market and are upset. So continue reinforcing your own narrative
Love Boots' description of how agency bubbles up when someone is ready. It's that sense of "I can actually do something about this, if I can find the other people who care about it."
@@Bert-Kay Sadly you don't seem to have figured out that Boots grew up in the states. Or was that a lame pathetic reference to a subject you obviously are ignorant of?
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 ill teach you, the gulag was the tragic result of communist soviet rule that ended the lives of 20 million people. You seem to be ignorant on the subject, you should look it up. you look foolish
@@Bert-Kay Now I'll learn you sumthin'. Marx, who is the subject of the comment and video, was dead before Stalin was even born. It takes a special kind of stupid to blame a dead man for something that happened over 30 years after he died. You however seem to be that kinda special
@@Jessupz second this. always confused when someone identifies as a leftist but not a communist. also confusing when someone identifies as socialist but is appalled that you would call them a communist? anyway yea if you fw boots then you would fw marx engles lenin mao and all those dirty commies
@09:40 Brianna really hits on what has been missing from left wing politics for around 30 /40 years in the west in general, that is to say Class politic, class identity, class conciousness. The path to true liberation from capitalism is working class politics based in material conditions and economic relations. We need to build our notions of identity primarily on this
Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Free market capitalism is a beautiful merit based system. That said what we have now is not that at all. I think there is some form of happy medium. Don’t you?
@@Bert-Kay no not really, capitalism consolidates power into fewer and fewer hands. Free market capitalism does this quicker than regulated capitalism. It is an ideology that is based on individual freedom, but by its own logic inevitably becomes a dictatorship of the rich. If you allow money to become conectrated in to the hands of few, their class interests coalesce and the power their money grants them gives them undue and undemocratic influence over society at large. Capitalism results in the dictatorship of the capitalist class, whether regulated or not.
@@Bert-Kay also ask yourself this, how is a true meritocracy possible? To achieve a true meritocratic society, we would need everyone to start from a position of ABSOLUTE equality, otherwise the myriad of inescapable inequalities that the natural world puts up on us in addition to those that the systems we have created put on us would make it non meritocratic.
@@TCt83067695 I just find a lot of the things I've heard her say to be half-baked and/or disingenuous in a way which makes them useless or harmful to the left
@@JordanSullivanadventures I don't think it's that she's shallow, in fact some of the things she pushes are pretty complex such as the Jimmy Dore medicare for all forced vote, but she doesn't seem to have a great grasp on the real world or how people think. She's kind of the Marianne Williamson to Sam Seder's Bernie Sanders, you know what I mean?
I think Briahna is cute and charming, but her big value, her giant talent, is her Socratic dialogue, her dialectic. But when she's responding to someone like this she really becomes a great beauty.
So if i pay you money, you will give me the tickles of a better edit, that includes his reply? Communism can be a very useful tool, but also, a terrible master, "Tankie"🥰
Fuck that yall getting the confederacy 2 only way you'd get communism is thru a communist confederacy, the south shall be the south fuck the party any party, but straight communism nuh uh get in line tankie, johnny reb gets first place in civil war 2 because we aint changing nothing else cept the elites and the flag and the border will ship you commies off to Marxist approved american cities like anywhere that ain't the south
Can people name some successful examples of communist nations that are still in existence today, with better, or comparable human rights, freedoms, living standards etc - than other nations of today? Because, "theory" is one thing, but reality is another. Seems to me, that those that champion any extreme ideology, especially ones that we can historically examine, with accurate data - see that they were flawed, produced horrific death counts etc - and yet, still think the ideology is worthy of their time etc, may need to re-think their approach.
@@MCLogikILL I'm not doubting that another ideology, and/or another nation would have their own propaganda - but, photographs, testimonies & the obvious fact that if it were a "better" system, there'd be more of it - would indicate otherwise, wouldn't it?
@@neildunford241 their haven’t been any communist countries yet. Their have been communist parties, who led socialist revolutions. For instance, the Soviet Union, even 3 decades after the revolution, was still proclaiming how they need to “fight to get to socialism”. Only in the 50s, did Khrushchev say they had finally “achieved socialism”. China now calls it’s society “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. NONE of those societies ever called themselves communist because they were clear that they hadn’t reached it. That being said, if China hadn’t had a socialist revolution, they’d be one giant Haiti, with Britain or the US as it’s master- with the most of the country living in shacks etc. same with the country with the best living conditions in the Caribbean- socialist Cuba. These are the realities.
@@Bert-Kay According to the UN, in capitalist countries- 9 million per year have died of hunger since the end of the cold war. I take your 20 million, and raise it 9x32= 298Million deaths from simply hunger under capitalism in the last three decades, let alone the 10s of millions that have died in capitalist wars for profit, and then going back only 50 years before the russian revolution- 70 Million that died due to the transatlantic slave trade that jump-started modern capitalism. You only care about death when it's an argument to not get rid of economic exploitation it seems. And no actual historians say 20 million died in gulags- 20 million might have gone to the gulags (which is a lower percentage of the USSR population than the percentage of the US population that went to prison in the US at the time- and US prisons during that time were documented to be worse than gulags were), possibly 20 Million died under Stalin over the years, but that number is including areas that sided with the Nazis that the Red Army fought and killed. Because ACTUAL COMBAT happened in the USSR, they are able to conflate numbers by wording it in misleading ways.
Cuba doesn’t have communism, they don’t claim to. Only anti-communists claim that Cuba is communist. They had a socialist revolution and a little country, small as rhode island has been fought against by the largest power in the world for decades, having to spend an inordinate amount on protecting themselves from military attacks, embargoed into shortages etc. that being said- they have so many things that are better than what we have here.
@@FunkFight1the leading political party is the Communist Party of Cuba... Nevertheless, read about the gulag my friend. Might change your weak arguments for communism. People are to fundamentally different to be treated like cattle. And always results in massive violence and loss of life. It’s all over history. But history doesn’t serve any bias just the facts. 20 million dead Russians disagree with your point of view. Communism is a tough orange to peel. And when you do and you take a bite, it’s exceptionally sour.
@@Bert-Kay less of a percentage of the population of the USSR were in gulags than the percentage of the US currently in prison. Furthermore, the conditions of the gulags were progressive at the time- in comparison to the prison conditions in the US. For instance, you could visit your family, etc. some of the things they allowed in the gulags at the time (choosing an education to get while you were inside for instance, is something that was only taken up by the US later). On top of that- the US was running actual concentration camps in California for Japanese people at the time. The percentage of people that died in the gulags was comparable to the amount that died in the US (not including CA concentration camps). These gulags also existed during wartime in which there was actual combat happening nearby, so that is also a factor. This is not to say there weren’t problems and abuses, but they weren’t worse than the US’s prisons. You should actually read some non-US propaganda about the gulags. And- according to many current polls in the former Soviet countries- conducted by capitalist newspapers- all of them have about 70% of people who wish socialism was back. And how many die of hunger EACH YEAR under capitalism? According to the UN 9 million people each YEAR since the 80s at least. So in the 100s of millions. How many have died from wars of capitalist imperial aggression? 100s of millions. How many died in the capitalist transatlantic slave trade (ending only 70 years before the events you’re attempting to mention)? 70-80 million. How many have died under capitalism to treatable diseases that they couldn’t afford to obtain healthcare for since world war 2? Hundreds of millions. Get your priorities straight.
@@FunkFight1 long winded for youtube comments no? stop trying so hard. without capitalism you wouldnt have a computer to type your regurgitated thought vomit into. your path is clouded my friend.
I'm just this side of broke but this episode made a Patreon supporter of me. I'm encouraged by some of the left media emerging these days, and I think this whole project is one of the best. Fantastic interview. Boots is underappreciated as a thinker and even as an artist.
Those left media will never help you better your situation, but they will make sure you give them your money.
All they will do is make you stay there or be in revolt, and wait for handouts while the rest of the world advances (or until you guys make it all plunge down in resentment).
@@TheControlBlue everything you cherish was brought to you by so called leftist activist: holidays, labor rights, wage standards, civil Liberties etc.... Sounds like you have no idea what your talking about
@@Ray_More Who told you I cherish those things?
@@TheControlBlue right.. I apologize, I assumed you were like most people... Who want fair safe working conditions and an equitable society... You must be one of those oft rumored rugged individual entrepreneurs....A boot strappping cowboy; simultaneously taming wild terrain and dutifully attending to your personal and familial needs with only your sweat, relentless hard work, and genius ....🙄🙄🙄 Sorry to have assumed you might appreciate basic living standards...my mistake... 🤡
@@Ray_More Your apologies are accepted.
boots' music made me feel confident in being an open communist and wearing it on my sleeve and thats why he'll always be the goat to me
Excellent. Just don't become a Trotskyist, and recognize that the bourgeois class has the most well-organized and deeply-entrenched propaganda machine ever created to spread its messaging, and meanwhile, to distort the messaging of the working class. America has a stupid, ill-informed, misdirected and heavily-infiltrated Left.
Read about the gulag.
@@Bert-Kay Why should he read about the gulags? Lenin described the system of the Soviet Union as "State Capitalism". Blaming Marxism for Capitalist crimes is either ignorant or deceitful. Which are you?
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 oh I got you hook line and sinker bud. You think I care about Lenin or whoever you bring up. You have a morally unjust argument. There are no “made up facts” that can justify such political nonsense. Reality is you are a pseudo-anarchist disguised with a false veil of good with the idea of “Marxism”. It all hypothetical because it never actually works. Capitalism has been improving the world for centuries now and you cannot keep up in a modern day workspace/market and are upset. So continue reinforcing your own narrative
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 laaawhhoooo-zaaaher xD see you at the stock exchange!!!!
Love Boots' description of how agency bubbles up when someone is ready. It's that sense of "I can actually do something about this, if I can find the other people who care about it."
Wonderful to hear Boots origin story. I wish a van full of girls showed up at my house. I'd have become a Marxist years earlier than I did.
Sadly, there were no vans full of girls at the gulag. Just pits...
@@Bert-Kay Sadly you don't seem to have figured out that Boots grew up in the states. Or was that a lame pathetic reference to a subject you obviously are ignorant of?
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 ill teach you, the gulag was the tragic result of communist soviet rule that ended the lives of 20 million people. You seem to be ignorant on the subject, you should look it up. you look foolish
@@Bert-Kay Now I'll learn you sumthin'. Marx, who is the subject of the comment and video, was dead before Stalin was even born. It takes a special kind of stupid to blame a dead man for something that happened over 30 years after he died. You however seem to be that kinda special
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 XD your logic is flawed. keep working at it maybe try again in four years
Oh YES theres more!
I thought the same thing when I opened up UA-cam!
I am not a communist, but I have nothing but respect for Boots Riley. He's a powerful voice for the left.
he is also a brilliant filmmaker
A misled fool
@@jiveAt5 dont sign your posts
You should consider being a communist
@@Jessupz second this. always confused when someone identifies as a leftist but not a communist. also confusing when someone identifies as socialist but is appalled that you would call them a communist? anyway yea if you fw boots then you would fw marx engles lenin mao and all those dirty commies
"you've got to write a play by noon"
??? what kind of quality are you expecting with that timeline? XD
I love the brutalist images in the background.
@09:40 Brianna really hits on what has been missing from left wing politics for around 30 /40 years in the west in general, that is to say Class politic, class identity, class conciousness.
The path to true liberation from capitalism is working class politics based in material conditions and economic relations. We need to build our notions of identity primarily on this
Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Free market capitalism is a beautiful merit based system. That said what we have now is not that at all. I think there is some form of happy medium. Don’t you?
@@Bert-Kay no not really, capitalism consolidates power into fewer and fewer hands. Free market capitalism does this quicker than regulated capitalism. It is an ideology that is based on individual freedom, but by its own logic inevitably becomes a dictatorship of the rich.
If you allow money to become conectrated in to the hands of few, their class interests coalesce and the power their money grants them gives them undue and undemocratic influence over society at large. Capitalism results in the dictatorship of the capitalist class, whether regulated or not.
@@Bert-Kay also ask yourself this, how is a true meritocracy possible?
To achieve a true meritocratic society, we would need everyone to start from a position of ABSOLUTE equality, otherwise the myriad of inescapable inequalities that the natural world puts up on us in addition to those that the systems we have created put on us would make it non meritocratic.
@@TheLaxLuther bla bla bla im tired bro you still going on about this?
@@Bert-Kay ???
Hopefully he doesn't get Blacklisted like the Hollywood 10.
Wait, how did I miss this?
we;re gonnna go to the beach but first we're gonna support the watsonville cannery strike XD
I'm going to write this on a T shirt
Love this!
Matewan is the best movie I've ever seen depicting union organizing in the raw. Great watch.
Absolutely!! It's one of the greatest movies I have ever watched, and I constantly recommend it to everyone.
for me is THE CORPORATION DOCUMENTARY.
Totally agree! Matewan was a masterpiece on what i took to bring the union movement into not only W. Virginia but the US in general
Finally saw his movie, genius.
Whether you agree with his political views or not no one can deny how good The Coup actually sounded and were seriously underrated
The Coop-meister
Whoever that guy is that introduced boots to communism is a hero
Boots Riley rules, glad he came on the show even if I'm not a fan of BJG
You're not a fan of BJG? Why?
@@TCt83067695 I just find a lot of the things I've heard her say to be half-baked and/or disingenuous in a way which makes them useless or harmful to the left
@@thatyoutubechannel9953 who do you think is a more "in-depth" figure you prefer?
@@JordanSullivanadventures I don't think it's that she's shallow, in fact some of the things she pushes are pretty complex such as the Jimmy Dore medicare for all forced vote, but she doesn't seem to have a great grasp on the real world or how people think. She's kind of the Marianne Williamson to Sam Seder's Bernie Sanders, you know what I mean?
Humbled his intro has to do with fighting for my people.
The Funk keeps growing like a fungus.....
I think Briahna is cute and charming, but her big value, her giant talent, is her Socratic dialogue, her dialectic. But when she's responding to someone like this she really becomes a great beauty.
Get this guy on the #forcethevote. Keep him relevant.
So if i pay you money, you will give me the tickles of a better edit, that includes his reply? Communism can be a very useful tool, but also, a terrible master, "Tankie"🥰
I red salute Riley and hope for a communist utopia once again.
Again? When has there EVER been a communist utopia? History ONLY records the murder of millions.
Dystopia!!
Fuck that yall getting the confederacy 2 only way you'd get communism is thru a communist confederacy, the south shall be the south fuck the party any party, but straight communism nuh uh get in line tankie, johnny reb gets first place in civil war 2 because we aint changing nothing else cept the elites and the flag and the border will ship you commies off to Marxist approved american cities like anywhere that ain't the south
Can people name some successful examples of communist nations that are still in existence today, with better, or comparable human rights, freedoms, living standards etc - than other nations of today?
Because, "theory" is one thing, but reality is another.
Seems to me, that those that champion any extreme ideology, especially ones that we can historically examine, with accurate data - see that they were flawed, produced horrific death counts etc - and yet, still think the ideology is worthy of their time etc, may need to re-think their approach.
To be fair, most of the information surrounding communist countries has been produced by the CIA as well as literal Nazis.
@@MCLogikILL I'm not doubting that another ideology, and/or another nation would have their own propaganda - but, photographs, testimonies & the obvious fact that if it were a "better" system, there'd be more of it - would indicate otherwise, wouldn't it?
@@neildunford241 their haven’t been any communist countries yet. Their have been communist parties, who led socialist revolutions. For instance, the Soviet Union, even 3 decades after the revolution, was still proclaiming how they need to “fight to get to socialism”. Only in the 50s, did Khrushchev say they had finally “achieved socialism”. China now calls it’s society “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. NONE of those societies ever called themselves communist because they were clear that they hadn’t reached it.
That being said, if China hadn’t had a socialist revolution, they’d be one giant Haiti, with Britain or the US as it’s master- with the most of the country living in shacks etc. same with the country with the best living conditions in the Caribbean- socialist Cuba.
These are the realities.
@@MCLogikILL wasnt it Hillary Clinton that killed the 20 million In the Gulag? Or do I have some facts backwards?
@@Bert-Kay According to the UN, in capitalist countries- 9 million per year have died of hunger since the end of the cold war. I take your 20 million, and raise it 9x32= 298Million deaths from simply hunger under capitalism in the last three decades, let alone the 10s of millions that have died in capitalist wars for profit, and then going back only 50 years before the russian revolution- 70 Million that died due to the transatlantic slave trade that jump-started modern capitalism. You only care about death when it's an argument to not get rid of economic exploitation it seems. And no actual historians say 20 million died in gulags- 20 million might have gone to the gulags (which is a lower percentage of the USSR population than the percentage of the US population that went to prison in the US at the time- and US prisons during that time were documented to be worse than gulags were), possibly 20 Million died under Stalin over the years, but that number is including areas that sided with the Nazis that the Red Army fought and killed. Because ACTUAL COMBAT happened in the USSR, they are able to conflate numbers by wording it in misleading ways.
communism never wors, check with Cuba, we need a labor movement, NOT communism
Cuba doesn’t have communism, they don’t claim to. Only anti-communists claim that Cuba is communist. They had a socialist revolution and a little country, small as rhode island has been fought against by the largest power in the world for decades, having to spend an inordinate amount on protecting themselves from military attacks, embargoed into shortages etc. that being said- they have so many things that are better than what we have here.
@@FunkFight1the leading political party is the Communist Party of Cuba... Nevertheless, read about the gulag my friend. Might change your weak arguments for communism. People are to fundamentally different to be treated like cattle. And always results in massive violence and loss of life. It’s all over history. But history doesn’t serve any bias just the facts. 20 million dead Russians disagree with your point of view. Communism is a tough orange to peel. And when you do and you take a bite, it’s exceptionally sour.
@@Bert-Kay less of a percentage of the population of the USSR were in gulags than the percentage of the US currently in prison. Furthermore, the conditions of the gulags were progressive at the time- in comparison to the prison conditions in the US. For instance, you could visit your family, etc. some of the things they allowed in the gulags at the time (choosing an education to get while you were inside for instance, is something that was only taken up by the US later). On top of that- the US was running actual concentration camps in California for Japanese people at the time. The percentage of people that died in the gulags was comparable to the amount that died in the US (not including CA concentration camps). These gulags also existed during wartime in which there was actual combat happening nearby, so that is also a factor. This is not to say there weren’t problems and abuses, but they weren’t worse than the US’s prisons. You should actually read some non-US propaganda about the gulags.
And- according to many current polls in the former Soviet countries- conducted by capitalist newspapers- all of them have about 70% of people who wish socialism was back.
And how many die of hunger EACH YEAR under capitalism? According to the UN 9 million people each YEAR since the 80s at least. So in the 100s of millions. How many have died from wars of capitalist imperial aggression? 100s of millions. How many died in the capitalist transatlantic slave trade (ending only 70 years before the events you’re attempting to mention)? 70-80 million. How many have died under capitalism to treatable diseases that they couldn’t afford to obtain healthcare for since world war 2? Hundreds of millions.
Get your priorities straight.
@@FunkFight1 long winded for youtube comments no? stop trying so hard. without capitalism you wouldnt have a computer to type your regurgitated thought vomit into. your path is clouded my friend.
@@FunkFight1 enjoy the cattle prode, MOOOOOOOOOOOO