Reviews and Comments

I like how Brooks engages intellectually with the people he criticizes, this is something I think is priceless - there's nothing worse than reading shallow criticism intended for people to just parrot. I feel like the idea of convincing people something/someone is bad as more important than actually making them understand why it's the case is a genuine "political pathology" and is actually very unethical: it treats people as a means to an end, rather than empowering them to be intellectually autonomous political agents capable of thinking and reaching conclusions for themselves. To me unsubstantiated critique intended for mere parroting is the recipe for disaster, because if people don't actually understand what's wrong with, say, a public intellectual, it's easy af to be lured into p r o b l e m a t i c ideas and movements whose tactic centers around casuistry and emotional rhetoric. We shouldn't take people's desire to be in for granted... it might work sometimes but it's dishonest. So this is a nice short book, a good example of a substantive critique in a sea full of trash talking passing as political commentary.

hell is full of good intentions, and no criticism in this book is new, so i'm left with the book's form, that is, what its "performative" intention is: cringy lefter than thou content. i'm very skeptic of left criticizing left when it's indistinguishable from right wing talking points. also not sure if calling fellow militants hobbyists is actually... inviting for other people to fight with you? it makes you sound judgemental and unable to constructively criticize things. i can understand the criticisms but i don't think how they're conveyed is very... politically wise. if we apply the criticisms he makes to hobbyists and PeRfOrMaTiVe RaDiCalS to the author himself and consider writing a book full of right-wing talking points to sell books as PERFORMATIVE RADICALISM i think not much is left, the message is self-contradicted. but maybe i'm missing context again. much of what he says is really important, but not new. so i'm not sure writing a book phrasing thing as.. ahem controversially as in this one is actually helpful. it's funny because it's the second book in a row i read that is left-wing but sounds strangely right-wingey. maybe i'm seeing things? dropping this for now.

The book has good points. I specially enjoyed the chapter "The PMC Reads a Book". Throughout the book she explains how the PMC uses supposedly progressive agenda to conceal its real class-based politics. It's nothing new that, for instance, feminism, anti-racism, pro-LGBT causes aren't necessarily progressive and can be, and actually were in many situations, used to push for conservative, capitalist, anti-working class politics. I think of TERFs and Puar's homonationalism. There's nothing inherently liberating in these "causes", and we should pay attention to the way we take those discourses for granted - as we "progress" and people agree with these ideas more and more, it becomes easier to trick people while sounding rad. This is just marketing: now that we care about women's rights, or at least pretend to, we have to tone-adjust our language to get across our message, EVEN if this message is actually against women. Capitalist recuperation is how many authors call this: left-wing radical politics being used as a "packaging" for politics that aren't really radical, but seem so to us, whose sensibilities are different than that of previous generations. However, this criticism could have been done better: the author seems to despise all these causes. Her tone is really irritating: "Socialism itself is neither glamorous nor innovative: it does not sprinkle its agendas with new pronouns or fancy neologisms". How is this actually helpful? It's like she's getting money to make people go as far as possible from socialism. If I didn't know better, that's what I would do. Is this the actual strategy of north-american socialists? Because trans rights are working class rights. Even hardcore marxists theorists agree. How can the author of this book be so dismissive of it?

The way she talks about "identity politics" makes her sound delusional. One thing is to disagree with how much of identity politics is devoid of meaning, or uses a horrible strategy - i would 100% agree. Another completely different thing is to think identity politics and LGBT rights, anti-racism, etc., are the same thing. The strategies, tactics are not the same things as the causes; people have to get it wrong to do it better. If college students are inarticulate and generally bad at criticizing things this does not mean that the causes they are pushing for are bad - just that they can't get their message across. It takes time to mature things. You need to make mistakes in order to get better at what you're trying to do. The book is very moralizing about this, as if the author's POV was absolute. It felt really patronizing to read. What are her intentions? It's like she's virtue signalling from the upside down of the overton window. Very ideologically inconsistent.

I'm having a hard time processing how can so many contradictory ideas exist in the same person. Maybe it's a cultural thing. Her discourse is not different from Brazil's far-right, regardless of her socialist inclinations. If someone can explain the context to me i'd love to hear. I just don't get this.

very interesting read but she’s so invested in making a critique of postmodernism/post structuralism - a trend in north american academia, where not ever reading french philosophy is also trendy - that it makes the “philosophical” content of the book very shallow and cringy. it’s so weird seeing a serious scholar being so dismissive of other scholars to prove a point that is plain wrong. north american writers are WEIRD, they have no idea how their understanding of reality is completely psychedelic and conspiratorial, looking for easy ways to put blame on foreigners, not to mention the irony in north americans shaming the french for being liberals lol. she dismissively name drops philosophers blaming them for all evils without ever questioning if she should actually know about those authors and offer a substantiated critique instead of repeating the same old bs right wingers made up. it’s so cringeworthy bc it’s totally gratuitous, she could have made her point perfectly without this. i’m halfway through the book and never once she managed to criticize those philosophers substantially. the anti-intellectual content of this book feels very out or place, specially considering it’s left leaning