The Current Thing Did Not Take Place (James Lindsay)

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Nov. 27 2023 The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 130

The issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution. The issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution. This is a core maxim of Marxist activist thought, and it explains so much. In the early 1990s, the French Postmodernist philosopher Jean Beaudrillard put it another way, though, in a sense. He provocatively published a book with the title The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (https://amzn.to/3QHprG9). What Baudrillard meant is that the Gulf War was an event that happened in the Persian Gulf, but what we call the "Gulf War" was a propaganda and media creation by Western intelligence communities and mass media to achieve specific political warfare aims with the public. In that sense, just like how the issue, whether Covid, BLM, Drag Queen Story Hour, Ukraine, "Palestine," or whatever else, is never the issue; each of those Current Things did not take place, in the Baudrillardian sense. In this provocative episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay explains the maxim and Baudrillard's point and uses them to reveal Leftist tactics as well as political warfare strategies and counters. Join him to understand.