Infrared

Infrared, officially The Infrared Collective, is a Marxist-Leninist media collective and internet community whose main representative is currently the livestreamer Haz. Its main output is the Infrared Show, which has been censored by Twitch but is still available on YouTube and Kick.

The main stated purpose of Infrared as a media collective is the promotion of the study of Marxism-Leninism in the age of multi-polarity and the post-COVID world.

Marxism-Leninism in the Age of Multi-Polarity and the Post-COVID World

The main thesis of Infrared is that there has been a major translation error in communicating the experiences of 20th century Communist history to Western leftists. Beginning with the October revolution, Western thought has failed to appreciate the significance of Communism as a real and objective historical phenomena, rather than a mere theory or idea.

According to Infrared, this reflects a historical antithesis between Western and non-Western societies, which has deep historical origins. The main contention Infrared has with all hitherto importations of Marxism-Leninism in Western contexts is that Marxism-Leninism was reduced to an ideological doctrine, rather than an index of objective historical experiences to be applied practically.

The most pressing issue facing Western Communists is to confront the failure of Marxism-Leninism to be successfully synthesized in the Western context. To that end, Infrared draws from a diverse array of thinkers in order to help clarify the true nature of the 'translation error.'

The significance of these thinkers lies not in following their questionable political commitments, as in the case of Heidegger, but studying the various ways they attempted to (and failed) to grasp the unique challenges facing Western thinking as a whole.

According to Infrared, the theoretical contributions of Marxist-Leninist statesmen and thinkers, regarded by Western academics and vogue 'Marxians' as simplistic and vulgar, represent an integral historical brilliance, genius, and wisdom that only the most advanced conceptual apparatuses available to the Western mind can properly comprehend.

With the rise of multipolarity and the end of 500 years of Western hegemony, a comprehensive re-examination of the basic assumptions of Western thinking and the way this thinking has obscured the study of Marxism-Leninism is necessary. Additionally, with the rise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and what certainly appears to be the transition into a new mode of production, Marxism-Leninism must ultimately be re-synthesized in a way that fully appreciates a now uncharted and new historical era.

A New Beginning for Western Marxism

Much of what distinguishes Infrared from all Marxist schools of thought in the West is its fundamental rejection of György Lukács, the seminal thinker of all Western Marxist traditions. While the majority of Social-Democratic Marxists openly regressed into revisionism, repudiating the revolutionary aspirations of Marxist thinking, Lukács is widely regarded as the founder of Western Marxism proper due to preserving a vague commitment to its revolutionary aspirations, as the broad 'emancipation' of all humanity and society.

Additionally, Lukács originally defended actually existing socialist states, and in his earlier years is widely regarded to have been a 'Stalinist.' However in Infrared's view thinkers like Lukács, alongside and in parallel with the Frankfurt School, were just as afflicted with neo-Kantian revisionism as the rest of Western Social Democracy. According to this view, Lukács did not 'preserve' Marxism, but rather opportunistically elected to revise the essence of Marxism in the first placing an overly-exaggerated emphasis on 'sociality' as the ultimate transcendent horizon in direct opposition to nature.

'Western Marxism' was therefore founded upon the rejection of objectivity in Marxism, as it was expressed by Frederich Engels in Dialectics of Nature. This led to the complete dominance of both the 'social-constructivist' tendency in Western Marxism, which eventually regresses into the insanity of contemporary identity and cultural 'politics.' It additionally led to an overall rejection of Actually Existing Socialist countries, on account of an inability to recognize the integral objectivity of history, reducing it instead to the transcendental horizon of 'inter-subjective and discursively mediated social relations.'

The material content of social relations, being excised from any connection to nature, amounted to a repudiation of objective historical necessity in Marxism. The long-term consequences of Lukács' ill-gotten monopoly on 'Western Marxism' was the complete replacement of materialism with subjectivism and, in fact, voluntarism.

Because of Infrared's rejection of Lukács, a newfound appreciation for the objectivity of civilizations, nations, polarities, and integral historical formations has become possible within the framework of Marxism in the West.

Socialist Patriotism and the Rejection of Cosmopolitanism

Because of Infrared's rejection of Lukács and 'Western Marxism,' it recognizes, drawing from basic Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, the objectivity of nations and countries as the fundamental context of class struggle.

As opposed to a narrow form of nationalism, Infrared regards countries as objective and integral receptacles of historical development, and appreciates the wisdom of Marxism-Leninism's rejection of historical nihilism. As such, not the narrow context of the nation-state, but what in today's world amount to regional-poles suffice to constitute objective historical formations.

Infrared therefore rejects 'nationalism,' but also and simultaneously rejects cosmopolitanism for the same reason. And in fact, the rejection of the nation-state as the fundamental context of class struggle actually represents one of the main critiques Infrared has of the orthodox Marxist-Leninist view of the nation. This means that the view of Infrared is less nationalist in orientation than orthodox Marxism-Leninism.

Infrared regards the Marxist-Leninist conception of the nation to have borrowed from Social-Democracy, and narrowly confined to the paradigm of the nation-state. Such a view is 'euro-centric' and historically has yielded mixed results as far as satisfying the authentic national aspirations of non-Western peoples for whom the paradigm of the nation-state amounts to balkanization and the destruction of otherwise integral, multi-ethnic civilizations. Lenin's national policy deserves critical examination. It is clear that the Soviet Union and even today's Russia amounts to an integral Eurasian civilization irreducible to any 'nation-state.'

Rejection of Liberalism

Infrared, in continuation with its rejection of 'Western Marxism,' likewise rejects 'leftist' cultural politics and their universalization across the world.

Infrared can be broadly regarded as socially conservative in the same sense that Communist states were historically. This does not amount to a one-sided view that all aspects of culture deserve to be preserved, or that there can be no progress in the sphere of culture.

It amounts to a basic humanist view which rejects the voluntarist liquidation and 'social engineering' of human culture. Infrared regards the development of culture to be based on the objective and total integration of history, and rejects attempts to liquidate the wealth of historical traditions at the disposal of mankind on account of the narrow and superficial view that they are 'unjust' or 'problematic.'

The overall rejection of historical nihilism means that Infrared, while not turning conservatism into an 'ideology,' is socially conservative in the sense that it regards the wisdoms of historical experience to be a fundamental foundation of human culture. This is a 'conservatism' based not on any abstract idea, but on the conservation of the integrity of history.

While culture changes, it does not change according to the whims of 'activists,' 'academics,' and 'social engineers,' but based on an organic receptivity between the people, society, technology and nature. Authentic culture is conducive to the reproduction of civilizations, societies, families, and well-rounded individuals, whereas inauthentic and contrived culture is based on ideas that come at the expense of humanity's modes of existence. Thus Infrared rejects the 'punk rock' and 'romantic' infantilism of 'Western leftists' as social-constructivist and even fascistic, and instead adheres to a political position that respects the integrity of a people's history--i.e., culture--as the essential context for the class struggle to be raised in the first place. Without this, Infrared contends that an appreciation for the class struggle cannot be meaningfully articulated into any relevant political demand. Infrared therefore rejects what is often characterized as "identity politics" and "intersectionality" while also rejecting "class reductionism" and theoretical economism.

Technology, Industrialism, and Accelerationism

Infrared is to a limited extent, and with deep critical reservations, influenced by the ideas of British philosopher Nick Land and the schools of thought influenced by him.

What Infrared adopts from the 'accelerationist' view is the irreducibility of the productive forces and the scale of time at which their development occurs to the narrow limits of 'inter-subjective discourse.' However Infrared simultaneously rejects the view that the productive forces accelerate at the expense of humanity altogether, instead electing to reexamine Western assumptions about the nature of humanity.

For Infrared, Western assumptions about the state likewise deserve critical reexamination. Rather than an 'intersubjective social contract' or amalgamation of 'inter-subjective relations,' Infrared regards the universal state (Kojeve) as an objective integration of all history. The acceleration of the productive forces thus occurs in time at the same scale that the universal state exists in space. This gives Landian accelerationism a geopolitical twist, which opens a new frontier of dialogue between accelerationist thinking and geopolitical thinkers like Dugin.

Infrared recognizes the content of Communism to lie in the development of the productive forces, which, moreover participates in the development of history itself. Rather than accept the accelerationist critique of universal humanism outright, Infrared regards it as necessary to develop a new conception of what universal humanity is in the first place, from an individual to a collective and super-historical being.

Rejection of Green Politics

While accepting the basic insights of ecological thinking and Xi Jinping's notion of "Ecological Civilization," Infrared rejects 'green politics' as the one-sided elevation of nature over and at the expense of industrial civilization.

Additionally, Infrared rejects the peculiar and inherently anthropocentric aestheticization of nature corresponding to green politics, which effectively reduces nature to the 'vibrant' and 'colorful' biosphere depicted for humanity's aesthetic consumption. Infrared rather believes a stronger emphasis should be played, in ecological thinking, upon the destructive geological and cosmological forces that are simultaneously the basis of natural development and progress in natural history.

Most importantly, Infrared fiercely opposes the resurgence of Malthusianism and 'degrowth' paradigms, which reject industrial and technological civilization on the basis of a superficial 'anti-capitalism.' For this reason, many have mistakenly over-exaggerated the influence of Lyndon LaRouche's critique of neo-Malthusianism on Infrared, despite Karl Marx's own well-known critique of Malthus and views on industrial civilization.

Infrared rejects both 'green' and 'technological' utopias, accepting the rugged contradictions of both technological civilization and nature itself to be the fundamental basis of human and historical development. It regards these 'dreams' as infantile attempts to escape responsibility for the concrete development of the productive forces. While Infrared embraces the aestheticization of the latter, such an aesthetics, even those speculative, must be grounded in a minimal realism.

Promotion of Science Fiction

Infrared's aesthetic orientation heavily draws from the science fiction genre, drawing from Landian notions of time and hyperstition as well as an interpretation of the present orientation of Chinese cinema. According to Haz Al-Din, contemporary socialist realism must be based on science fiction as the realization of the future has become an ever-present, unavoidable and objective realty.

How the future is being realized, related to and imagined is an unavoidable part of the post-capitalist civilization humanity has long begun to transition into. Infrared views the purpose of contemporary art to lie in giving expression to the lofty aspirations of humanity, as long as they do not serve as a medium with which to escape the contradictions of reality rather than reconcile them.

Major aesthetic inspirations Infrared draws from include, but are not limited to:

• Death Stranding
• The Wandering Earth
• The Three Body Problem
• The Terminator series
• The Works of Fan Wennan

Chinese science fiction artist Fan Wennan was among the first to be interviewed by Infrared, even before Haz began livestreaming.

Views on AI, Intellectual Property, and Social Parasitism

Infrared strongly approves recent trends in the development and promotion of AI-generated art, regarding them as objective and irreversible developments of both the productive forces and technological civilization. It rejects 'criticisms' of AI-generated art as inherently and self-evidently reactionary by every possible standard or metric one may use within the tradition of Marxism.

Infrared rejects the 'grievances' of 'artists' as legitimate grounds for class struggle. It rejects artists as a 'class,' regarding such a relation to the productive forces as parasitic. Infrared rejects that artists, writers, and other 'creative workers' are 'entitled' to anything on the basis of their 'work' whatsoever, viewing art as a privilege only those willing to struggle and make sacrifices are worthy of.

As such, Infrared fiercely opposes the 'labor organizing' of Hollywood writers and Netflix employees as mockeries of the labor movement. In Infrared's view, no amount of 'organizing' or 'protesting' can make up for a lack of sufficient taste and talent.

Views on Service Workers

In contrast to the lies propagated by mentally ill 'leftists,' Infrared does not oppose service workers. Rather, it opposes the 'labor strategy' according to which the institutionalization of 'bullshit jobs' can sufficiently represent the aspirations of general labor. According to Marxism, the aspirations of general labor is represented by the proletariat.

Rather than be conducive to a movement of 'general labor,' the institutionalization of bullshit jobs, such as Starbucks baristas, amounts to craft-unionism which Marxism stands opposed to as an objectively reactionary force retarding the productive forces and the development of proletarian class consciousness.

Infrared also regards it as opportunistic and self-serving that 'leftists' commit to 'organizing' graduate students, baristas, and Hollywood writers. Infrared regards this as opportunistic not because these groups are the most strategically important for the labor movement, but because they tend to reinforce 'leftist' discursive and cultural bubbles to the detriment of the aspirations of general labor.

While Infrared rejects the view that service workers create capital on the shop floor, or are 'proletarians' in the context of the shop floor, Infrared does not oppose service workers. It rather believes that the interests of general labor and service workers in general must revolve around the destruction of 'bullshit jobs' all together. Infrared holds that this is accomplished by politicizing the demand for a shorter work-week, automation of the service industry, and reindustrialization.

Infrared does not view this as hostility to those struggling to make a living working in the service industry. It rather regards the destruction of the service industry itself to be in the interests of both service workers and general labor as a whole. Infrared likewise does not view the 'organizing' of prostitutes to be in the interests of the majority of the victims of the sex trade. It rather regards the wholesale abolition of the sex industry as in the best interests of its victims.

Content

One of the core tenets of Infrared's theories is that most Communists, in the West, miss the sense of objectivity that made Eastern Marxists successful. The reason for this is that most Communists undialectically assume, often unconsciously, that the contradiction that gives rise to Socialism and Communism is between the world and its injustices and the socialist/communist experiencing this, while a principled Marxist position would be that the contradiction is internal to the object itself. Instead of trying to understand the material reality of the people, which is the basis of every communist state, western communists are stuck in an abstract idealized form of it.

Another idea of the Infrared collective is that western thinking cannot understand the deeper truth of Marxism-Leninism because of its origins in Cartesianism, and that it is only through thinkers like Heidegger (and others influenced by him, like Kojève and Dugin) that Marxist-Leninist experiences can be truly understood in the west.

Infrared coined the term Anglo Box, which refers to a way of thinking, relating to English philosophy, consisting of the reduction of the meaning of words to a fixed form, like a dictionary definition, which leads to the dogmatic thinking of BreadTubers like Vaush. This kind of philosophical illness is directly opposed to the dialectical method of Marx, Engels, Lenin and the other prominent Marxist-Leninist thinkers.

Following the assassination of Daria Dugina, Haz delivered a video essay explaining the ideology of Dugin, defending his legacy against accusations of being a "fascist" as he's described by the Western corporate media and Western leftists.

Questions of philosophy are also covered by Infrared streams.

Infrared has interviewed Grover Furr, the author of Khrushchev Lied.

Links

Official Links

• Infrared Website
• Substack
• Kick (Livestreams)
• YouTube
• Rumble
• Twitter
• Telegram
• Tiktok
• Instagram
• Reddit
• Telegram Chat
• Discord
• Patreon
• DonationAlerts
• Twitch (banned)
• Streamlabs (banned)
• StreamElements (banned)

VODs

• Infrared VODs (Twitch VODs) (YouTube, Archive)
• infrared-vods (Youtube VODs) (YouTube, Archive)
• Infrared Archive (Kick VODs) (Rumble)

• "Haz Al-Din" (YouTube)

• Search the catalog of Infrared video transcripts ([1])

Clips (unofficial)

Most of Infrared's content is video-based. It's been recommended that others download the longer videos to clip them into shorter, easier to share clips.

• Talonsight (YouTube)
• Black Lenin (YouTube)
• Papi Chulo (YouTube)

• carl_markus (TikTok)
• hazalghul (TikTok)
• igg_clips (TikTok)