In this video blog, the question of why the left has seemed to lose touch with the working class is taken up as Douglas Lain responds to Nagle and Tracey's essay "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce: The Collapse of the Sanders Campaign and the “Fusionist” Left." Lain argues that, rather than being a symptom of a commitment to a neoliberal "woke" culture, the disconnect between the contemporary social-democratic left and the working class is best understood as a product of the development of capitalism and the struggle for socialism and its defeats. The question of revisionism is tackled as Lain discusses Max Horkheimer's essay, "The Sociology of Class Relations," Sam Moss's "On the Impotence of the Revolutionary Group," and the significance of the Philadelphia Flyers' mascot 'Gritty.' The entire essay is available on our blog: https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/blogs/zer0/why-are-leftists-freaks-(a-response-to-michael-tracey-and-angela-nagle)/ Relevant Essays First as Tragedy, Then as Farce: The Collapse of the Sanders Campaign and the “Fusionist” Left" - by Nagle and Tracey https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2020/05/first-as-tragedy-then-as-farce/ The Sociology of Class Relations by Max Horkheimer https://nonsite.org/the-tank/max-horkheimer-and-the-sociology-of-class-relations The impotence of the revolutionary group - by Sam Moss https://libcom.org/library/impotence-of-revolutionary-group-international-council-correspondence-moss The essay written for this video will be published on Medium and added to this description later today. Support Zero Books on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/zerobooks Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SubZeroBooks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZeroBooks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/zer0books Zero Books Manifesto: The modern world is at an impasse. Disasters scroll across our smartphone screens and we’re invited to like, follow or upvote, but critical thinking is harder and harder to find. Rather than connecting us in common struggle and debate, the internet has sped up and deepened a long-standing process of alienation and atomization. Zer0 Books wants to work against this trend. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oDA4S343IE

Today in the Zer0 Books archives we're going back to the early days of Zer0 Books in looking at one of their key influences in theory media. We're going to be looking at the legacy of Semiotext(e), an imprint that brought theory out of the academy and into the avant-garde as well as refocusing the theoretical discussion upon current and key movements of the time. Just to give a few examples, radical psychiatry, Italian Autonomism, the Terrorism question in the divided Germany of the 70s and 80s, as well as putting out volumes from groups such as the Black Panthers in the 90s and the Invisible Committee in the 2000s (to the present day). Behind all of this was the editorial styles of writers such as in the Sylvère Lotringer, who sadly passed away in November of last year. Joining us in this archaeological escapade is founding Zer0 Books author Owen Hatherley, who helped start off the Zer0 Books catalogue with his text Militant Modernism in 2009, covering everything in social modernist design from Brutalism to Reichian Sexpolitics. His second publication with Zer0 was 2011’s Uncommon, a historical class analysis of the band Pulp through the landscape of post-industrial England. Owen joins us in the archives today to discuss his reflections on Lotringer and Semiotext(e) from his article on how they “made theory cool” in Tribune Magazine, where Owen is also the cultural editor. We talk about the early Zer0 Books blogosphere and its cultural context, how to communicate radical theory beyond the confines of the artworld and the academy, and the necessary weirdness of a radical political imagination. Owen Hatherley on Zero: https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/zer0-books/authors/owen-hatherley Owen's other recent work: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3789-clean-living-under-difficult-circumstances https://repeaterbooks.com/product/red-metropolis-socialism-and-the-government-of-london/ Support Zer0 Books on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/zerobooks Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SubZeroBooks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZeroBooks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/zer0books ----- Other links: Check out the projects of some of the new contributors to Zer0 Books: Acid Horizon Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/acidhorizonpodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/acidhorizon Merch: crit-drip.com Profane Illuminations Twitter: https://twitter.com/profaneshow The Horror Vanguard Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/horrorvanguard Buddies Without Organs Website: https://buddieswithout.org/ Xenogothic: https://xenogothic.com/ ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDc3Pjy9eCk