Daniel Buntovnik’s Hurt Feelings and Non-arguments

[Notice: This post was originally a comment on a reblogged post from Jason Unruhe’s “Maoist Rebel News” blog. Unruhe has since retracted his first attempt at rebutting my critique of Ultraleftism-Primitivism-Orientalism-Third Worldism, which I responded to below. He conceded that his first attempt was poor, and upgraded my “non-arguments” to “pseudo-intellectualism” in a second attempt at rebuttal.]

In response to Jason Unruhe’s knee-jerk reaction to my criticism of “Third Worldism”:

1) Scare quotes imply skepticism, but I do not use them in place of arguments. Seems like you are the one whose feelings are hurt that someone is skeptical of your ideology.

2) LLCO does use campy aliases. That they may have come out against text-to-voice software is knit-picky beyond the scope of my criticism. This is not an attack or a complaint. I actually found some of the Shubel Morgan videos inspiring. The introduction to my post begins with description to ease persons who are not familiar with this discussion into it. The description of the low profile of most Third Worldists serves to demonstrate that you are a public figure when it comes to this idea, and there is not one, that I know of, prominent Third Worldist from the Third World, with comparable influence to the First World “Third Worldists”. Similarly, the Warren Montag quote is entirely descriptive, included because it is a nice summary which gets at the crux of Third Worldism and its origin.

3) I considered that including further examples of “the subaltern cannot speak” (besides the Prairie Fire imagery) would be superfluous and off subject, given that this is a common place notion in postcolonial theory for decades. But one obvious example is indigenous peoples. For example, some recently contacted tribes or uncontacted tribes do not speak any Western language, and of course no one in the West speaks their language. And yes they are subjects of capitalism.

4) You and the First World-based LLCO leadership refered to Bengali people who disagree with you as “French”. This is psychological projecting.

I do not think you have taken adequate time to fully take in my arguments and you are clearly quote mining in at least a few instances. For example, the fetishization of identity politics refers to the idea that self-acknowledged bourgeois individuals can simply “remold” themselves as “pure proletarians”, as if one’s upbringing, class background could be undone just like that. And Prairie Fire did explicitly endorse cults as a more efficient organizing method in the First World in another quote which you skipped over. I would suggest rereading and reflecting more, because you have not addressed the crux of what I wrote.