Catma
11th March 2014, 03:29
Lately I've been watching The Atheist Experience (or more accurately, listening to it) at work. They have a handful of hosts who talk a bit and take calls - there is some variety, from questioning religious people, to supportive atheists looking for debate help, to total whackjobs and prank callers who can still be amusing.
I'm wondering why there doesn't seem to be any sort of analogous program for communists... anarchists... anti-capitalists... basically anyone to the left of, say, Amy Goodman. There doesn't even seem to be any no-budget youtube channel with a self-aggrandizing jackass, nor even any tendency promotion!
A lot of very general ground-laying work needs to be done in terms of spreading ideology. Our basic definitions differ from the general public (at least or especially in the us) so thoroughly that it is hard to even converse. Every day the insipid "human nature" argument is repeated to polite smiles in workplaces and on forums, along with plenty of others, creating a low thrum of argument that keeps capitalist ideology reinforced. Our traditional use of media is just terrible - the complaints I've read in this forum about papers just pasting the same conclusions onto each article, for example, ring very true and exemplify the stagnation in the entire leftist media effort.
I think this sort of format would be useful for popularizing leftist ideas. Through calm, knowledgeable discussion, you can increase exposure to the public (and generate the occasional great clip to link back to.) The similarities end at talking about action, since atheists are not looking to cause major structural changes to society, but it seems to me that the model that works for atheism should be adaptable for leftism. Obstacles in adapting the format would be:
1) Finding serious callers. Screening and persistence, along with a lot of patience on the part of the hosts, would be required.
2) Finding hosts in general. They would need to be able to speak broadly for most of the left in educational terms, while also capable of refuting every random crackpot theory that callers would bring up. I feel nearly competent to speak on The Atheist Experience just from general life experience and logic, but there are more holes than substance in my understanding of marxism/anarchism/whatever.
3) You would have to keep the entire left from throwing the program under the bus at the first sign of disagreement, in order for it to be a pan-leftist educational sort of show. Alternatively, every tendency and group should have their own show, and why not?
It seems like such a thing should already exist, but it doesn't. Why not, or why am I wrong about this whole thing? And if there are any good leftist shows available on the internet, please let me know. When I was a part of Socialist Alternative, I seem to remember there were some guys in Boston doing a radio show, but I'll be damned if I can find it online. Part of the problem is that if you put "leftist" or "socialist" into a search engine, you get a bunch of reformist and democratic party bullshit, which just speaks to the need to spread our definitions better.
I'm wondering why there doesn't seem to be any sort of analogous program for communists... anarchists... anti-capitalists... basically anyone to the left of, say, Amy Goodman. There doesn't even seem to be any no-budget youtube channel with a self-aggrandizing jackass, nor even any tendency promotion!
A lot of very general ground-laying work needs to be done in terms of spreading ideology. Our basic definitions differ from the general public (at least or especially in the us) so thoroughly that it is hard to even converse. Every day the insipid "human nature" argument is repeated to polite smiles in workplaces and on forums, along with plenty of others, creating a low thrum of argument that keeps capitalist ideology reinforced. Our traditional use of media is just terrible - the complaints I've read in this forum about papers just pasting the same conclusions onto each article, for example, ring very true and exemplify the stagnation in the entire leftist media effort.
I think this sort of format would be useful for popularizing leftist ideas. Through calm, knowledgeable discussion, you can increase exposure to the public (and generate the occasional great clip to link back to.) The similarities end at talking about action, since atheists are not looking to cause major structural changes to society, but it seems to me that the model that works for atheism should be adaptable for leftism. Obstacles in adapting the format would be:
1) Finding serious callers. Screening and persistence, along with a lot of patience on the part of the hosts, would be required.
2) Finding hosts in general. They would need to be able to speak broadly for most of the left in educational terms, while also capable of refuting every random crackpot theory that callers would bring up. I feel nearly competent to speak on The Atheist Experience just from general life experience and logic, but there are more holes than substance in my understanding of marxism/anarchism/whatever.
3) You would have to keep the entire left from throwing the program under the bus at the first sign of disagreement, in order for it to be a pan-leftist educational sort of show. Alternatively, every tendency and group should have their own show, and why not?
It seems like such a thing should already exist, but it doesn't. Why not, or why am I wrong about this whole thing? And if there are any good leftist shows available on the internet, please let me know. When I was a part of Socialist Alternative, I seem to remember there were some guys in Boston doing a radio show, but I'll be damned if I can find it online. Part of the problem is that if you put "leftist" or "socialist" into a search engine, you get a bunch of reformist and democratic party bullshit, which just speaks to the need to spread our definitions better.