Four Weekend Livestreams & a Fundraiser Update

5 comments

1. Francis XB says:

   October 23, 2021 at 9:32 am

   Friday, October 22, Greg Johnson joined Academic Agent and Endeavour on Academic Agent’s YouTube channel to discuss Carl Schmitt’s The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy.

    

   You discussed people who prefer to be comfortable rather than taking action. When trying to get people mobilized for activism you get some standard “bourgeoisie” responses:

   “Where do you find the time for activism?”

   “I could lose my job!’

   “I have a family and have to protect them!”

   “An election is coming up, wait until then and we can vote our way out!”

    

   There are all sorts of responses which the activist can make to these statements, but such rarely works. You are dealing with much deeper seated attitudes. Here is what can be effective:

    

   Good leadership: the activist goes out and does things which are exciting and/or cutting edge. Make yourself the cool kid and others will follow. Like attending an anti-lockdown protest. Like strolling about town and posting flyers. It can be something as simple as flying a Gadsden flag while driving down the highway, or chanting at a sportsball event “Let’s Go Brandon!” These actions give your average “bourgeoisie”  the opportunity to participate in something perceived of as transgressive at low cost. Once they have crossed that line, they are willing to take things further.

    

   Good goals: give people the opportunity to do something which fulfills their own interests. Someone wants to be a videographer? Invite them to film a protest march and then put the video online. A graphic artist? Recruit them to do online memes. A performance artist? Next time there is a demonstration, give them a slot to do some street theater.

    

   Good organization: people have legitimate concerns insofar as they can lose their jobs or see their family come under attack by the Regime and its lackeys. So activists need their own fronts for legal advocacy, employment placement, putting people into the streets to defend a home under attack, etc. This sort of thing can be difficult for the Dissident Right these days, given the level of Regime repression. But the current parent pushback against school boards over masking and indoctrination requirements shows what can be done.

    

   Finally, there are non-political things activists can do to get people out of that comfortable-consumerist mindset and stimulate that warrior spirit. Like working out at the gym instead of watching the telescreen, going to the rifle range with some guys & gals, trekking the local wilderness or just the mean streets of your own city.

    

   Be that cool kid!

    

   1. Stephen Phillips says:

      October 23, 2021 at 12:05 pm

      All great ideas !

       
2. Francis XB says:

   October 24, 2021 at 1:38 am

   OK, I went to see Villeneuve’s Dune on its opening day. My Critic-Guild comments…

    

   The Good.

   The leads were either White or White presenting. The Atreides had a classical look to them per family ancestry and they are shown as heroic archetypes. There’s a fashy aesthetic to the uniforms (almost impossible to escape in a Dune movie!). The Sardaukar rally on Salusa Secundus evokes (what else?) the Nuremberg Rallies. The occasional touches of mysticism like the vision of Lady Jessica covered in writings give an inkling of a metaphysical universe beyond consumerist materialism.

    

   Some of the best scenes were the small ones, like where Paul is hanging out with the troops and discussing the contents of a Fremen Kit. There’s the explanation of the crysknives, a major point from the novel neglected in prior film versions. Some of the extraneous subplots from the book, like the Harkonnens setting up Jessica as a false flag, were dropped thereby saving screen time. And the bagpipes, a nice touch of continuity with ancient European military tradition, along with the glimpses of officers reading what appears to be the Orange Catholic Bible.

    

   The Bad.

   Most of the characters do not appear to do anything to move the plot forward. Duke Leto walks into a planet-sized trap with no sense of urgency. The Baron gets orders from the Emperor to abandon Arrakis and then reoccupy it which he duly carries out without any of his own plots within plots. The only character from whom I could get any agency is Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), who imparts some practical training to her son Paul.

    

   Numerous minor and not so minor characters walk on to say a few lines … Thufir, Gurney, Shadout Mapes, Beast Rabban, Piter de Vries … but we never find out what they are about before they are assigned to obscurity. Even a major antagonist like Baron Harkonnen is largely a one dimensional figure who enjoys eating chicken and the occasional oil bath. Stilgar, who is supposed to be the great big Fremen warrior-honcho, comes off as the kind of character you’d see played by John Rhys Davies in an Indiana Jones ™ movie, lounging about a hookah bar and feeding one liners.

   David Lynch got a lot more out of his characters even though his Dune had less running time than Villeneuve’s. Also, what happened to Feyd-Rautha?

    

   The Ugly.

   The opening narration just had to use terms like “oppressors” and “outsiders.” We get the point. And later on we are told by a groundskeeper-of-color that the palm trees around the Arrakeen residence are not “indigenous” and, yes, these outsiders are soaking up enough water for 100 of the oppressed Arrakoids. Several African characters are introduced: the Shadout Mapes, Dr. Kynes, Jamis. Yet they get bumped off a scene or two later! We can read into this what we might.

    

   Changing Dr. Kynes from a male to (black) female character might be irksome, given the rigid “sex roles” of Herbert’s imperium, but the doctor appears to respect the Atreides (no feisty sassy third worlder here!). And Kynes’ final scene cleverly reworks material from the book to set up the later sandworm ride.

    

   The only speaking Asian character is that of Dr. Yueh, who betrays the Atreides in pursuit of his own ends. One would think that there would be plenty of Asians in space, given that China today has its own space and eugenics programs, while NASA seems more interesting in checking off its diversity boxes.

    

   Finally…

   What really bugged me about the movie is that Villeneuve added little to the Dune universe, no overarching zeitgeist. David Lynch had one vision (archeo-futurist), the SciFi Channel another (much more Machiavellian), and Jodorowsky was going over the edge of space (psychedelic space warriors) in his greatest movie never made.

    

    

    

    

    
3. Nikandros says:

   October 24, 2021 at 12:35 pm

   Hope a Trevor Lynch Dune review is coming.  Personally, I loved it even with the diversity hires.

    

   1. Greg Johnson says:

      October 25, 2021 at 1:22 am

      Yes, it is coming on Monday at Unz.

Comments are closed.