Malcolm Harris

writer WHAT'S LEFT (out now!), PALO ALTO, KIDS THESE DAYS, SHIT IS FUCKED UP AND BULLSHIT malcolmpharris@gmail California communist (him)

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

Introducing https://t.co/zfGc43ifiy, a holistic nonsectarian events calendar for the Philly Left. Book events and film screenings, organizing meetings and skill shares, we got it all. With more to come

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

@HondaWang I don't follow, is that a yes you think they should've assessed dues day one? Seems like low wage organizing is gonna be prohibitively hard if it has to be totally bootstrapped. How does that work?

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

Re: celebrity and left organizing, biggest donations to ALU came from AFT, and sounds like second biggest was @hasanthehun

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

@pigeon_clown No I think that's the job she got recruited into

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

I don't really think the American left has an overreliance on charismatic leadership or even celebrity tbh, especially not compared to every other part of American society.

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

Hipster music? Wouldn't know anything about that.

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

Not for nothing, there are a lot more of those people than the other kind!

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

One problem with the overlap between anti-intellectualism and elitism in American politics is that you end up looking for a candidate who's a dumbass with a graduate degree in government from an expensive university. Another problem is that you find him.

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

Wouldn't you rather have the smartest person at a work site or a hair salon or whatever?

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

@BrandonMH I got the permanent redhead babyface of Ron Howard

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

Carded at the Phillies game in a way I assumed was perfunctory and the woman looked at my ID and said "Oh my God I'm sorry, wow." Still got it 💅

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

@CharmaineSChua Think that point is broadly understood, to the degree that (for example) no one outside the org can name anyone in DSA leadership, they only know media entertainers. Smalls didn't know not to for one of the same reasons he was such an exciting spokesman: He's not from the left.

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

It would be easier to write off Smalls if other people had been able to accomplish what he did https://t.co/CtTkHGAdkS

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

@CharmaineSChua I'm reading Derrick Palmer's book now and it's dramatic A. How important Covid/that moment is and B. How sectoral their original orientation was C. The failure of the Amazon ILM to create room for ambitious workers with "some college" to move up

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

Goodness

[Max Tani @maxwelltani]

NYT book review editor Gilbert Cruz is stepping down, per a note to staff. He'll become "Canon editor," where he will build a team dedicated to "expanding our embrace of those moments when we invite experts and readers alike to help us declare the definitive works in a given discipline."

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

The reason some people on the left are pro- data centers is because they still believe in deferring to capital's development of the productive forces. They think we need these data centers and capital is building them for us (using labor).

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

The "No you can't do that, because slowing any sort of capitalist tech progress is intolerable to Americans, who only think as consumers" would be more compelling if not for the very clear popular antipathy for data centers.

[arne ness @arne__ness]

i hope one day to live in a society capable of making collective, conscious decisions for certain technological pathways and against others, rather than one that confusedly insists that market-mediated pathways are both inevitable but somehow also absolutely open & indeterminate

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

I don't think it's a good strategy, as I wrote a decade+ ago https://t.co/A1zIePHkZl

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

@MattZeitlin They have to want to buy it, that's the only way to dump it on them. "We are selling to willing buyers" etc. Can't dump on buyers who don't have an indiscriminate desire to buy...

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

If they dump SpaceX on retail at $2 trillion or whatever, people are going to do the stupidest riot.

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

Vicky's reading of it as depicting a particular conflict within Disney executive management is compelling

[Sohrab Ahmari @SohrabAhmari]

The movie “Ratatouille” is the purest cinematic expression of neoliberal ideology ever made.

[Malcolm Harris @BigMeanInternet]

@TrplDblNoboards Then someone who's more principled should simply run the same playbook and win, what's the problem