imagine being a CIA agent and being sent to Deleuze lectures

I studied philosophy in school, so started subscribing to channels like these because of my personal interests. After I graduated, and spent many years unemployed and under-employed, I got a job in labor union and community organizing. To say that radical theory, as it is written about in these books and discussed among grad students, is useless for line of work that I'm in is probably an understatement. I do hope that people know there is some dense-ass radical theory happening in trade union campaigns and in trailer parks in KY tenant organizing campaigns that is fucking incredible. Folks in labor and tenant union drives are conceptualizing their work, in real time, and it is very impressive. While the people in universities are out there shitting the bed (or doing whatever in the hell it is they do), workers are out here winning union drives and tenant campaigns amid some unbelievably difficult political conditions. Just a reminder for the philosophy types to listen every now and then to get schooled up on theory from tenants and workers out here actually doing the work rather than the online circle jerks. (I acknowledge the irony of posting about this online)

CIA: Leftist theory has divided and leftists spend more time arguing with each other. Me: I have never been so offended by something I 100% agree with.

This was one of my favorite videos yet. I'm 42 years old and a first year grad student. I've been largely self-taught and absorbing all the critical theory in my classes takes some getting used to. It's not that I don't find it valuable, because I definitely do, but there is something so Vital about making these ideas digestible for people who don't necessarily have the time or will to wade through the jargon. If there's something I've learned in my extreme old age, it's this: No one cares what you think--only what you do. Policy is everything. Action is everything. Real solidarity is everything. Keep doing what you do, PP. It's wonderfully helpful to people like me.

I often find myself being more interested in niche political theory and philosophy books than those on current public policy issues. I prefer to engage with abstract concepts, because they envoke my imagination and creativity, whilst on the other hand I have become disillusioned with practical solutions to political issues as I will probably not see any significant progress in my lifetime. However, this type of engangement with leftist politics is futile and will only lead to a left of anonymous individuals who lack any solidarity and thus hold no serious power or threat to the current order. This video has remined me that I can't just sit on my intellectual and moral high ground for the rest of my life if I want to make real tangible change. Real activism is not fun and aesthetic but still necessary.

“Well, as one judge said to another, ‘Be just. And if you can’t be just, at least be arbitrary.’” -Burroughs _(Naked Lunch)_

Putting the discussion here in the context of the CIA report really does hammer home the conclusions. Excellent.

This was a pretty good episode! _Plastic Pills_ is one of the best shows on TV right now imo

An excellent analysis along with a very important conclusion. Really great video 🙏🏼

"or talk about reading theory" -shots fired

I think Plastic Pills is secretly saying: "it's the season for love and understanding. Merry Christmas everyone."

You can be radical without being esoteric. People are literally only esoteric because they're too scared to be as radical as they really are. Or because they have to generalize enough to avoid getting locked up.

DO socialism where you are. Organize your workplace. Fill strike coffers. Provide mutual aid. Feed people.

One of the best videos I've ever seen watched it multiple times over the past few months

Einstein said it best "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."

Hey Pills, I've been listening to the podcast for about a year but just recently subscribed to your channel. I just wanted to say thank you for your content. Really inspiring to this auto-didact.

God, I love this channel. Intellectually stimulating and educational, but also entertaining-- and yet, not to the detriment of its substance.

for a second there at the beginning i thought you had the Tenet soundtrack and I got so hyped. but i stayed hyped and watched the rest of the video. great work as always.

This was very eye opening. Thank you for sharing.

Another great video. You have a great channel and I appreciate your authenticity.

Roses are red So are we Overthrow the bourgeoisie

People need tools not lectures. They need to be conveyed these ideas in a way immediately relevant to them. I think guattari was so frustrated because unlike the rest he was kind of a jank "intellectual" and was far more politically active but was alienated himself in his attempts to translate political work into academic work. Thats why everyone thinks he's so weird. Doesn't help his own field alienated him from the public discourse too. Disability I think offers a legitimate underrespected avenue because it is directly related to labor but we will see.

i feel very much on a similar path. excellent work, introspection, and analysis. what a bizarre year 1968 must have been

Great episode, lived in Portland, Oregon in the 90's. My experience with the left mirrored the same trajectory of disillusionment. Still fascinated with niche political ideas, yet in sliver of what can be actuated in the US, it is hard to see any sort of practical application. It is like particle physics in the stone age.

ngl, Im digging through an interesting rabbit hole, this was a very interesting video to find, and a very cool first video of yours to stumble into

Mannnnnnnnnnnnn !!! being french , thank you sooooooooooooooo much for this ! I can tell you that NO "intellectual" can say that in France today ( thank god, Frances Stonor Saunders isn't french ) . We still have some great young ones who can still think properly ( grégoire chamayou is one ) , but I think we won't be able to learn the lessons of that time ( of my lifetime ...) for a long time ! thank you so much

Thank you, I subscribed. This was the first video I saw on your channel, and I think the conclusions should be a shift to a willingness to work with many different organizations with different views to achieve a common goal. In the U.S., the fight for high-quality state-paid healthcare seems like the first fight we should start. Acknowledge that if everyone had healthcare right now, with the current healthcare system, doctors and hospitals would be overwhelmed (and the care for anyone who has insurance at present would get worse than it already is). The fight for universal healthcare has to include subsidies for students going into the medical field, not only free tuition, but also stipends for people who need them. It also has to include a demand for building more healthcare facilities (need experts to go over statistics to determine how many and where). A fight for something like this might wake up the sleeping giant that we are. We have other interests, but I think the relatively arcane differences between regular communists (called Stalinists by many others), Marxists, Trotskyists, anarchists, and any other schisms on the left should be set aside to win the masses to our common goals.

Loved this video. Super informative!

The camera sweep of tissues, Foucault, and lotion. SO PERFECT.

Plastic Pills is back!!!!

Dude, thank u! Thank u for putting soo much work into something so relevant! The pessimism of the reality can't win over the optimism of the will!

"this is like fighting in an alley way behind the marketplace of ideas" hahahahahah omg

Great video!!

grea video, as always. and very important topic. thanks

Great work! Deleuze's comment at the end sounds a lot like the phrase Zizek has borrowed from Melville' Bartleby: I would prefer not to.

Great episode. Loved every bit of it.

And here we sit in our ideological ivory towers of intellectual superiority and made it a sport, a game we play to reassure ourselfs of our own political and cultural worthiness. I admire your spirit. Would love to have a conversation at some point in our lives. Though I can't pay for the privilege on patreon though ^^° broke lefty... Greetings from Germany.

Thank you.

When you are in the middle of realizing that your protest politics have been half-cocked and you need to act towards mutual aid and policy alike to get shit done.

Breh - you're one of the most to the point educators from the scene on here actually bringing up interesting and relevant subjects rather than engaging in endless drama or chasing trends. Your channel deserves to be huge for real.

"The revolution won't be televised."

Banger post Mr pills

Thanks so much for your video!

Fantastic case study - thanks for this!

Really do enjoy your content.. Thank you. Mahe Ohna ✌️ Favour ALL

One of my favorite videos by Pills. I have enjoyed the cope that radical theory has brought me via a sense of better understanding processes, change and language but ever since I started studying it I always felt it "lost the plot" having read Marx, Engles, Lenin, Stalin and Mao first. I am thankful I did read them first as I think I would just be aimless and lost if I dove into CT first. This video puts an historical perspective on all of that, great video. Solidarity, comrades.

Thank you

This is depressing in the healthiest way I think.

great videp, very intriguing, something I always think about but never found teh answer to.

Does anyone know of any good books breaking down May 1968 from a historical standpoint?

It would be nice to look to Perry Anderson's critical analysis of western marxist and its mid-late XX century intellectualist deviations, and of the demise of french critical culture. Thanks for the vid!

amazing video

This is amazing

I think this is your best work

Very good Video

Can you recommend a good Critical Theory reader? (And maybe while there also a good Frankfurt School reader?)

Great video and conclusion. It is so related to what is happening in our up and coming presidential elections in Chile right now. I also couldn't help thinking of a point Yuval Noah Harari makes in Homo Deus, where he says what makes the huge difference in a successful and a failed movement is how well organized they are, I guess intellectuals have never been very good at organization because of tbeir egos, that is a big assumption, but it could be the case.

That's such a dope shirt. Is that still in your merch store?

I like the lotion next to all the theory books

Now this is depressing.

Where can I buy that shirt? Love your channel.

All the energy of this radical left as such can today be found in current ecological thought. The figure that proved to be the bridge to this ecosophy is Felix Guattari and the text is The Three Ecologies. Guattari's turn to ecology and importantly also seeing the potential of technology is an under appreciated remnant of 68.

I was waiting for this whole day

so the intellectuals became part of the spectacle? yikes. grabriel rockhill has written about this issue a lot. maybe you can have him on? great vid!

Where am I can find more CIA documents?

This is an absolutely superb video

Thank you for sharing this excellent video essay. Damn. This is a devastating wake-up call for those of us on the political left. Those of us, who are late to the party, were just beginning to wake up to the 20th century radical theory, after struggling with the difficult 19th century texts, such as Marx's Capital. These are readings few engage with beyond the university campus. And, now, Plastic Pills drops this revelation on us. It seems obvious, after the fact, that policy not ideas is what really shifts the status quo. But the left has had a lot of soul-searching to do, having had to deal with the widespread conflation of communism with authoritarianism, and other pro-capitalist propaganda. In the US, the left has had to deal with the Red Scares; McCarthyism; FBI programs, such as COINTELPRO. In the UK, the left had to deal with the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee. And, like in the USA, the UK's most repressive agencies were reserved for non-white leftists, as with the UK's Black Power Desk. And, most saliently, the CIA had launched a global war against the left, which likely continues to this day. (cf. "Jacobin: The CIA's Secret Global War Against the Left", lumpenproletariat dot org, 26 DEC 2020) The CIA, of course, was watching the leading leftist intellectuals closely, especially in France. Now, documents reveal the CIA decided the French radical theorists were on a path of infighting and sectarianism, which could only lead to atomization. This is like a gut punch to realize that all of our current and future study of 20th century radical theory is not as subversive as we may have hoped. The truth hurts; but it also liberates. And we have yet to see what future anti-capitalist, antifascist movements will accomplish as radical theory becomes more widely understood. We still need Plastic Pills to keep sharing these valuable lessons for the left, to grow and develop our intellectual capacities. It seems this elixir is still brewing. The left has learned a lot, but mainly in academia. Now, we just need to translate the lessons from the leading leftist intellectuals from technical jargon to working-class vernacular. We don't want to become mired in highfalutin discourse. But we also need to help expand and elevate the consciousness of our alienated working-class brothers and sisters. And we need catalysts, like Plastic Pills, Epoch Philosophy, Jonas Čeika, et al. to provide space for community-building. We must keep building bridges, as the capitalist state seeks to further alienate us from each other. And as Jeff Mackler (AssangeDefense dot org) recently said at a Free Assange! rally at the Oakland Grand Lake Theater: 'Form groups! You're not going to be able to figure it out by yourself!' It seems the job of the political left is far more difficult than the job of the political right because the political ends of the right can be affirmed by manipulation and deception, by simply encouraging individualism and self-preservation instead of mutual aid, whereas the left is obliged to educate, empower, organize, and mobilize. It seems we have stalled in the educate phase, a pre-power stage. In the US, the left has also been decimated. Contrary to corporate media propaganda, the Democrat Party is not part of the left, as they consist mainly of center-right and right-wing politicians.) For the most part, the left doesn't operate in the evil, manipulative ways we see play out, for example, in Trump Nation, with front groups and hierarchical structures of complete obedience from below and complete authority from above. In the US, we seem to be following a path toward totalitarianism, which reflects elements from Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism as well as elements from Adorno & Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment. Meanwhile, the left has been experimenting with horizontalism and more democratic structures, which promise to increase egalitarianism, but are far more complex and fragile forms of organization than the vertical, hierarchical structures of organization favored by the right. And the political right has so much more money than the left, which, again, does not include the Democrat Party institution. What the left has are ideas, which can galvanize solidarity and people power. So, now, we see just how atomized we have become on the left. But this is probably true for all western societies. So, our challenge is to find common ground. Machiavelli reminds us there are two ways to affect political change: force or laws. The choice is yours. Pacifists must never lose sight of this reality. We must defend human rights and freedom from the totalitarian impulse. Ideas are important only insofar as they inform action, insofar as they help mobilize the left into action. In the US, this tells us what remains of the left must break the stranglehold of the two-party dictatorship. which is a right-wing dictatorship operating under a false left-right paradigm. We must get ranked-choice voting, abolish the electoral college, get proportional representation in Congress, abolish the antidemocratic Senate, restore publicly-funded elections, overturn Citizens United, and so on. And the left must champion these issues as a single-prong of a multi-pronged approach. The Cuban Revolution succeeded because of the synergy between student movements, elecroral politics, and all dimensions of popular resistance to the U.S.-backed dictatorship. Electoral politics is only one pathway to freedom, neither panacea nor poison. But electoral politics mustn't be surrendered to the bourgeois, to the liberals, and to the political right. But, then, I'm probably missing something, which you can help me see. I may be wrong. I may be right. In any event, we're searching for truth. We're working to cultivate wisdom within a community of cultivating wisdom to expand our consciousness, our cognitive capacities, our potential for revolutionary change. Damn. This was a welcome wake-up call. Meanwhile, if you don't work you don't eat. Work. Eat. Act for justice. Form groups. Solidarity.

My Favorite vid after your Deleuze Nietzsche one.

Such a sad state for an ideology that prides itself in mass movement of people for a greater good. When looking at how it got to this place though, it does seem kinda inevitable. I’m not nearly well read up or intuitive to envision how this conundrum could possibly be overcome to form a genuine, leftist resistance to capital but I have hope one day that vision will be realized.

Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote a good political science book on the student protests of the 1960s, and it's failures put some of the final nails in the coffin to marxism and international communism. Called "Between two ages: America's role in the technocratic era".

Just subscribed

Stifling humanity's advancement of philosophy should be a serious crime.

big love.

Should have talked about Fanon dying in the room with a CIA

Tight

it would be great if you would put subtitles, for people who do not hear well. auto generated are good, but maybe review them..

Make lesdons from the CIA/KGB a series, pls

whoa Camus did not hit CIA agenda concerns about French thinkers lol

I just want to convince people of their own collective power in a public vegetable garden

Top tier vid

Eventually dad will pass away from his drunken behaviour....

wow this channel is really fucking epic

I think these books have a lot of valuable insight and amazing critique of society. But maybe one thing that's missing that is keeping them from being dangerous is that they're mostly critique. I haven't read all of these books but as far as I now, they don't really have that much alternative visions for society or future. They can show the potholes of our current society very well, but they don't have proposals for alternative societies like for example earlier works of leftist thought had. They don't have that alternative that the workers can take and use in the battle for better future. They are also quite culture oriented like said in the video. To be fair, I think this was still an important stage to go trough, because it disillusioned people from the Soviet Union and paved way for more complex outlook on building post-capitalist societies. But the reality is that the left feels pretty reactionary today. I wish we had more proposals of our own and more ambition. We cant build our identity on the basis of criticizing the far-right, we must be able to also provide something for the average person. We can't build anything on just critique, we must also be able to build something on our own. Critique without alternatives still leaves us in this kind of 'capitalist realism'. Even the capitalist can criticize capitalism, but can we really imagine something beyond it?

Anyone think that identity politics has been emphasised to discredit the otherwise based left?

Aha and the Israeli defensive force using tactics inspired by D&G's A Thousand Plateaus as well

Just came back to watch this today because its genius or reinforcing, or both, bot not none

Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not after you 😁

Trying to come up with something banal so that I can get my phd.

Good stuff!

How do we know you aren't cia?

Awesome video!! I hope the consequent dismissal of postmodernism and wokeness is more well received among millennials than the appeals of Chomsky

hell yeah dude

theres good reason why i always say im in central left and not radical left, i believe in the power of making compromises as long as human rights arent at risk, im also not into ethical competition and i prefer practicality and locality when it comes to making a change like being in organizations that help people, theres many different ways to make world better like charities etc. but raging online might not bring the needed changes😅

That is a pretty long video for the tankies are always right

Pretty good video. I am fascinated by the immobility of the Left and it's something I think about all the time when I see Leftist discourse on social media. No matter how popular it is, no matter how radical they sound, where are the results? Where's the political organization? Where's the mobility? Academic journals and Twitter memes don't count. I think the New Left is what started this schism and after half a century people somehow haven't improved. Today, it feels like everything has only gotten worse and more decadent. It was only a year ago that 20 million people protested for racial justice and against the police state. One year later, not a single material policy has changed and no systemic overhaul has occurred. We're stuck and we're not willing to admit it.

omg whst are we supposed to do

There is a reason why I don’t click like on your video doesn’t mean I don’t like it #paranoia

All true.

Cuál es la razón de ser más radical, a dónde se dirige con tales acciones? Una constante tienen todos los filosofos mencionados y es que no tienen grandes ilusiones respecto a una transformación revolucionaria, porque los caminos que se hicieron con esos propósitos terminaron convirtiendose en cárceles, en persecuciones, censura, en dogmas. Repetir el discurso de que en nuestras manos está el poder es apelar al argumento más débil de nuestro tiempo. En nuestras manos sólo está el hambre, la desesperanza, la depresión y la ansiedad. Lo que sea que surja de ello, dificilmente tendrá una forma "radical".

Agree 100%. So where is the forum for relevant debate/critique? I think KZfaq (or more broadly our modern social media soaked panopticon) would be a solid platform for broadcasting ideas but how do we do it in a significant way, with personae that have a talent for narrating complex issues.