In defence of normies

 

A quite significant stage in my "growing up" occurred when one of my personal heroes - a revolutionary writer on music who single-handedly persuaded me that Marxism was useful - sneered at me as a "victim of the culture industry" because I liked Pink Floyd. Well, he may be pleased to know that I can't enjoy Pink Floyd any more since Roger Waters became a tool of evil. But that sheer nastiness about someone else's joy is pretty symptomatic.

I'm seeing it in a lot of online circles today, curmudgeons mocking the (largely Black) urban masses of the United States actively dancing in the streets that their wannabe tyrant lost the election. Of course his replacement is a dull, grey machine politician who not only won't, but can't do anything to fix the real problems of that country. (Only the people themselves can do that.) But fuckin' imagine sneering at the masses dancing in the streets of Berlin thirty-one years ago, even though capitalism certainly wasn't all it was cracked up to be. OH WAIT a lot of the Left did that too, because "nooooo muh deformed workers' state, enjoy your Fourth Reich".

To deturn a radical trans rights phrase of the 90s - normie lives under capitalism are lived, and therefore liveable. Cringe stuff like Christmas carols, or Garfield cartoons and cuddly toys brightening up a cubicle, are necessary to be alive under capitalism. Some people are under the impression that the people won't "grow up", won't take on their historic responsibility of seizing their own destiny, unless we "break all their toys". That's how you create abused, frightened children, not responsible adults.