Francis Q, Online
Chris Cutrone of the Platypus Affiliated Society recently published an essay for the “post-liberal” magazine compact in which he defended Trump’s expansionary rhetoric calling for the annexation of regions like Canada, Greenland and the Panama.
To put it bluntly this essay, and its defenders, are, at best, extremely fucking stupid. That may seem harsh. Thankfully I can justify this position. The first and most straightforward piece of evidence that this is extremely fucking stupid is that the article gets several things simply wrong.
For example:
• Cutrone claims that “Canada, then, remains the frontier of the counterrevolution after both American revolutionary wars”
• That Trump calling for “Making Greenland and Canada American is part of this initiative. Trump declared the Gulf of Mexico to be the Gulf of America” and that “This is not imperialism, but a reminder of the Empire of Liberty that Thomas Jefferson declared the mission of the new United States. It is an evergreen promise. America is revolutionary or it is nothing.”
• That “all of America’s opponents … have been and remain slave states.”
• That “the United States does not desire to rule but only to free people and places”
• That Xi Jingping’s refusal to go to Trump’s inauguration was because he did not want to be “reminded of the vitality of American democracy”
• That Trump “represents the ‘hope and change’ that was merely a marketing slogan for Obama before him. “
• That Trump “Trump’s character, which is bombastic but not empty. Where others have been complacent to let spaces lie unutilized, he has set to building.”
To me these statements are self-evidently bullshit, narratives on par with that put out by Praeger University videos. Given that Cutrone gives no evidence for these claims, I will. How exactly did the existence of Canada pervert the socialist revolutions in the 20th century? Why does some rhetoric of some long dead slaveholder mean that a nation is inherently revolutionary? How do you square the United States’ desire to free people and places with the legacy of support for conquest and dictates going all the way back to the Philippine-American war? Should we expect anything from a man who’s entire business career is full of fuckup after fuckup, including a failure to make money while running a casino?
Maybe Cutrone has serious answers for all these basic rejoinders. But all that Cutrone provides is conjecture.
The next piece of evidence that this is extremely fucking stupid are the defences raised by supports of Cutrone. Most notable of these is Douglas Lain of Sublation Media wherein he argues that Cutrone is actually being provocative in asking such questions because we need to consider whether or not socialism in the United States would be better served by an American controlled Greenland and that we need to find the “rational kernel in his provocation”.
Wondering whether the socialist movement in the United States would be better positioned in a world where America controlled Greenland is akin to wondering what you’ll eat in a month when your house is currently burning down. Sure it’s a question that might be useful to ask at some point. But right now, you have much bigger things to worry about. Particularly given that Lain and Cutrone have been long time critics of the mess that is American socialism.
Such excuses are especially obnoxious because the language that Cutrone uses in his article is not aimed at the left at all. I’ve already cited a bunch of the rhetoric that Cutrone uses and its indistinguishable from conservatives justifying imperialism.
Even if this is 4d chess designed to get the left to really think about how annexing Greenland would be “good for socialism”, how you present yourself matters. Writing an article that is indistinguishable from some right wing imperialist pablum, publishing it in a right wing journal and then expecting people to not call you right wing is the sort of obnoxious trolling you expect from teenagers, not someone who calls themselves “The Last Marxist”. Effectively communicating with people means doing the work of speaking in a way that people are receptive to. Acting like you made some sort of point when people call you stupid for not clearly stating your point might win you points with people who’ve already brought into your position, but you aren’t going to convince anyone outside of your cult.
Sometimes there’s no hidden hidden wisdom in a text, no key insight into understanding capitalism or Trump or the left or the world. Sometimes a public intellectual is just kinda fucking stupid. It’s okay to admit that.
PARTISAN! 