View source for The Cultural Revolution is BACK!

This page contains the notes from Infrared's livestream "The Cultural Revolution is BACK!"<ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFZCduJ0SUs&t=6723s</ref> In this stream, Haz refutes liberal comedian Bill Maher's segment about the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and gives an MS Paint lecture about the Chinese Cultural Revolution in particular and cultural revolution in general.

=== Notes from Lecture ===
'''What objective problem is Cultural Revolution dealing with? And how it relates to wokeness.'''

- Cultural Revolution

Objective Material Significance vs. Ideology.

Ideologically, it was of course about defending “Proletarian Consciousness from cynical Sovietized technocrats.”

But what was it materially?

Problem with reducing it to ideology is form vs. content

You can have “cultural revolution” without the Communist ideological content, but structurally it is the same.

For example – woke liberalism – for example  - rightist obsession with purity-policing viz. Antisemitism

All kinds of gatekeeping and “purity-policing” follow from this paradox.

What is the first form of “cancel culture,” by the way, Bill [Maher]?

It was ZIONISM – “purity-policing” and canceling people for being “antisemitic” over not supporting Israel enough.

REMEMBER JEREMY CORBYN?

The fact of a difference between form and content shows -

Cultural revolution has two legacies – one that is ideologically explicit, and the other which is a truly objective and material “paradox” that is not resolvable. What is that paradox?

'''- The paradox of “cultural revolution” is the following:'''

How can culture, consciousness, stated belief, and expression – which is chaotic, whimsical, material, be reconciled with the universal aspirations of a given community?

How can one respond to an anime profile picture on Twitter that just says the N word? Usually by saying “That is horrible and racist – it is incompatible with the universal aspiration, and universal aim of treating all peoples equally.”

Why does this response not work?

When you try to “cancel” the racist anime pfp, the important thing is not the “cancellation” but the reason:

The reason lies in the view that, if we extrapolate their whimsical behavioral expression to a “Kantian categorical imperative” – it is obviously incompatible with what we believe is a “”good society”.

Kantian categorical imperative is basically like “Act as though you believe this action would be universally moral for anyone in your circumstances.”

For example: if we “all” started saying the N word and being racist, wouldn’t it lead to a bad social outcome?

Would it not lead to some kind of UNTENABLE social outcome – race wars, social instability, complete enmity between peoples trying to live in a society? Etc. etc.

Why is this “categorical imperative” an ineffective response to that kind of behavior?

Because these “discursive anarchists” (people being edgy on the internet) are, rather than committing themselves to a Kantian categorical imperative of any kind, trying to make a point (and that is their aesthetic).

Their implicit point consists in the impossibility of uniting the “ideal of a good society” on a social level, with the whimsical, unpredictable, and wild reality of individuality and individual expression.

In other words, there is something FALSE about the “Kantian morality”.

Why is it false, or impossible?

Because the universal aspirations of society, differ in form from the content of individual unconscious.

That content could be “determined” by something social, sure. But there is no direct relationship between the individual unconsciousness and the ideal aspirations of ideological consciousness. They may be RELATED, sure, but not directly – the latter cannot explicitly define the terms of the former.

The reason it (wokeness) appears similar to the cultural revolution, is because the cultural revolution was the first instance of political ideology basing itself in phenomena, than than in institutions.

Before the cultural revolution, the content of “political ideology” was just the bland political power of state. Now, it is based in CONSCIOUSNESS, in CULTURAL PHENOMENA, in the way we GIVE EXPRESSION to the world, i.e., the way we represent it as a society.

The era of mass culture made the production of culture, and the criticism of culture, something accessible to everyone.

Culture is now artificial, rather than passed down by tradition. IT is something “manufactured”.

So culture itself becomes socialized – both in Communism and in the capitalist corporate consumerist West.

Culture, or the production thereof, acquires some kind of social significance – it is considered something MEANINGFUL at the level of what all society “should” aspire to ideologically and politically.

Today’s rightists are no different. Ever seen one of those “trad West” accounts? They want, basically, trad cultural aesthetics.

What about the quartering? Doesn’t he like Top Gun and want mass produced culture to reflect what he considers better ideals?

The problem is not necessarily an ideological one – it is a paradox of a deeper aesthetic shared by both left and right.

The Right is superficially critical of this aesthetic, but cannot respond to it without often being hypocritical. Same is true for Bill Maher – who is happy to cancel people for being “anti-semitic” for opposing Israel, but is complaining about Woke leftism.

Deeper aesthetic = how we make sense of the world in a coherent and unconscious way.

You cannot escape the “cultural revolution”. Not via anti-wokeness or wokeness. You have to GO THROUGH IT. What does that mean?

If someone, for example, says some horrifically edgy thing, does this not have a “social significance” to you? Even if you are a normal, reasonable person?

The contradiction – “universal morality” (whether as a political ideology, wokeness, trad-ideology, or whatever) vs. material reality.

''There lacks a direct continuity or relationship between the object of the aesthetic, and the object of an institution’s universal ideals.''

“Evangelical Priest with a hat on sideways singing Jesus hip-hop” will never be cool.

“Communism” will never be made “cool” either when trying to directly politicize art.

''Why is this?''

What is the object of the aesthetic? The way things make sense objectively.

The object of a conscious ideal, is the way something SHOULD make sense, the way it OUGHT to make sense according to a contrived view for what society SHOULD look like.

Here is how they are related – our conscious ideals, are more or less derivative from our aesthetical consciousness.

What is a conscious ideal? It is a specific representation of reality that is SUPPOSED to make sense. Does it actually? That depends of the fidelity it has to the condition of its origination – in the material consciousness.

The Xi era, for example, resolves the cultural revolution paradox by refusing to dictate the terms by which the conscious ideal finds expression and harmony with the aesthetical unconscious or the material conditions of its origination – There are “many possible path to socialism” for example.

Wokeness forgets its origin in ancient Anglo metaphysics (which houses the aesthetic of blind universalism in “unhappy consciousness”) while afflicting and influencing the whole of society. No one can put an end the nightmare because no one has the courage to confront its repressed origins.

What was the ORIGIN of CHINA’s Cultural Revolution? Was it the blind universalism of 17<sup>th</sup> century Anglo-Saxon metaphysics?

No, it was the registration of a NEW “metaphysics” heralding a New Chinese era. That is why China “woke up” from its nightmare, but we are trapped within it.

China’s cultural revolution did indeed take the form of trying to impose universal ideals on every spontaneous and material expression of life.

Except of course, the economic reality of the relations of production, which were largely unaffected (besides some “co-op” BS). China’s decentralizing “transition to market economy” was happening throughout the cultural revolution, many don’t know this!

China’s cultural revolution made “intelligible” or “sensible” the true, immovable, unalterable material reality of the forces and relations of production.

By “reducing all reality to culture,” it basically exposed the realities that could not be directly affected by culture because they were not culturally relevant.

This is not “human nature” is Bill Maher’s claim, it is the material reality of the forces of production.

Positive achievement of cultural revolution was deeper though…

- UNLEASHING OF CHINA’S CIVIL SOCIETY.

The unknown cultural revolution – where slogans, and the spirit of the movement, rather than simply weaponized against random people by young Red Guards, directly empowered China’s agrarian rural peasants to acquire POSITIVE recognition politically.

- At the expense of Sovietized technocrats and bureaucrats.

''What is America’s way out?''

The DARK cultural revolution -

In the same way that China’s peasants acquired political subjectivity via cultural revolution, and it was not just urban students (who Mao sent to the countryside) with their excesses

We need to send the students down to the country to “learn from the peasants” as Mao did for the Red Guards -

THE MAGA CULTURAL REVOLUTION.

MAGA gave the flyover Americans of the Midwest, red state, the deindustrialized proletariat, the “rednecks” and “hillbillies” political subjectivity in a way that is not that dissimilar from China’s cultural revolution.

We must give POSITIVE CONTENT to the American cultural revolution, by drawing out its POSITIVE CONSEQUENCES.

The wokes have already destroyed the liberal institutions of society. Now they will reap what they sow  -in a RED TSUNAMI of MAGA AWAKENING from the American countryside!

Instead of bitterly bickering, bitching, and moaning like Bill Maher or Ron DeSantis – we will draw out the real consequences.

'''MAGMA COMMUNISM IS AMERICA’s DARK CULTURAL REVOLUTION.'''

'''The only way we can resolve the distinction – between culture and material reality, is by addressing the political subject of MAGA – that is how America’s “farcical” cultural revolution comes to an end.'''

'''Not by returning to the past, but by accelerating to the future.'''

'''The political subject of MAGA is ''irreducible'' to CONSCIOUSNESS. By recognizing the MAGA political subject in their MATERIAL reality, sensibility of that which lies BELOW THE SURFACE of “universalizing cultural ideals” can be de-negated.'''