(I apologize in advance if talking about the podcast is discouraged. I don’t know if that’s a joke or if most hexbears feel that way). But anyway, next month marks the two-year anniversary of George Floyd’s awful murder. Listening to the show in the summer of 2020, and later reading some stray commentary on this site, it seemed like the podcast kind of whiffed it on the protests. But idk, is that fair to say? I believe they participated in some marches in NYC, but I also remember Matt saying that “defund the police” was dead-on-arrival as a slogan, because cops will always be around as long as capitalism exists. I also remember there being a pretty rancid take about “working class” cops in a Taibbi episode, as well as an episode that dunked on a racial sensitivity/workplace training book. Fair enough about the capitalism opinion, and the book, which was no doubt written by a rich neolib that lacked any material analysis. I understand that CTH is a news commentary/comedy/dirtbag show co-hosted by white people, so it’s not going to be the best resource on racial theory. I also understand that a big part of CTH is entertainment. But I’m curious if you have thoughts about Chapo’s reaction to the 2020 protests. And thanks for sharing them.
At the height of BLM protests their scepticism about the movement’s ability to change anything outside of destroying a couple of statues was considered outrageous, but now, looking back, seems like they’ve been vindicated.
I will say this as someone who was theoretically on the ground in Minneapolis, is that the movement lacked any real coherency or organization with labor or other leftist movements. It had the strength of being grassroots and spontaneous, and the weakness of being grassroots and spontaneous. While I wouldn’t say it was a bad thing, it certainly wasn’t going to be a change in the status quo and the narrative around it was far too disjointed to have a meaningful impact on anyone but the local community members involved, many of whom are arrested with extraordinary long sentences hanging over their heads. It was a good call very grounded in historicity and actual analysis, something they learned from the loss around Bernie.
Overall having Taibbi and Amber on was weird choice and I wasn’t a big fan, but I mostly just skipped that.