CounterPunch | The alt-right, Steve Bannon’s Leninist cadre of white nationalists
looking to build their base, is one of the most astoundingly ironic
things I have ever encountered in my years of studying Marxist theory
and cinema. Among all the undeniably well-designed and
aesthetically-pleasing elements of this new Nazi cottage industry is the
fact that their entire initiation system, so-called ‘red pill-ing’
someone, is a trope derived from THE MATRIX films, one of if not the
most successful neo-Marxist series made in history. In other words, so
to wage a war against ‘Cultural Marxism’, ‘feminism’, and ‘white
genocide’, they literally are using as a vehicle for their wretched
doctrines not just a Marxist text but a masterclass on Althusser,
Gramsci, Lacan, and Zizek and how their theories are elements of the
discourse about praxis and cultural studies, which the alt-right
mistakenly call ‘cultural Marxism’.
The irony is so rich it would be the stuff of a deadly diabetic shock
if it were not so deadly serious. Bebel’s famous quip about the
socialism of fools is totally lacking in this instance. I would argue
the alt-right’s use of this film is nothing less than the War Communism
of the genocidal lunatics. Certainly one might wonder whether jesting
about such matters is appropriate but I respond by pointing to the
European pogroms that were flooding newspaper headlines when the German
socialist made his remarks. Furthermore I feel inclined to point to the
fact that, at least in my own analysis, we are only going to beat these
people with humor. For if there is one thing borne out by history, it is
that Adolf Hitler felt so threatened by Charlie Chaplin that he banned
THE GREAT DICTATOR. By contrast, he found allies in the Communists not
once, when the KPD idiotically helped get the Nazis elected in 1933, but
twice, when Joseph Stalin allowed for the commission of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact!
My hope here is to provide a basic primer for the non-academic and
non-Leftist reader so to build a consciousness that can challenge the
alt-right’s use of the films and repudiate it. Putting it another way, I
offer a short essay on the true meaning of the films and why it is an
important tool for the abolition of the white race. I would argue that
our repudiation of the alt-right’s “red-pill” must articulate a brief
summary of the notion of ideology, which the films act out, and then a
sufficient explanation of what the implications of the much
misunderstood and maligned final film are.
The first point to be discussed in such proceedings would therefore
be an explanation of the analogy of the Matrix. What is it actually?
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