Twitter was David’s public platform and tools for practicing a new language – clear and understandable for everyone, it was a space where he made friends and enemies.

Tweets 7,501 Replies 51,144 Retweets 24,559 Everything 83,204
Sun 28 Jun 2020 11:21

@dareljedid well you can’t deny it rather worked – there are a lot of Christians in the world. But point taken.

Sun 28 Jun 2020 11:03

@MastaOpuppetz well I’ve never sat in on a full “platform” session but I’ve kind of got the feeling for how they work from people’s accounts, reflections, explanations …

Sun 28 Jun 2020 11:02

@rattlecans well it’s very post-Maoist, they call it “platform”, a collective effort to think through what happened when something went wrong with the subject of analysis being assigned an advocate who can instantly shut anyone up who gets personal …

Sun 28 Jun 2020 11:00

@tauphipi that all sounds very reasonable but if people are just a product of their conditioning, that 1. means those people who seem to rise above their conditioning are just misfiring robots, 2. it suggests we think of ourselves as reprogramming people which has a dubious history

Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:57

@scottfitzpatr13 @dwx64 well there’s the whole PMC issue, agreed – I’ve written about it a lot elsewhere.

Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:56

RT @rattlecans: @davidgraeber Benjamin Boyce has been looking at it Loads of vids eg College Is A Super Expensive Church https://t.co/aUmfN…

Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:55

@hapoelorient I wrote an essay once alluding to it, was very cathartic. Though difficult and depressing to write. https://t.co/11pxB89ZMr

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:52

@Bohaimed_77 back in the 1780s the fundamentalists were the radical left, for debt abolition, universal vote, etc. It’s a fascinating story how they gradually completely switched sides.

Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:47

when I described this to a lot of leftist friends & wondered about extending the logic their first reaction was instinctual rebellion against the idea they had a deep self that WASN’T guilty. I thought: wow. Christianity runs deep. 12/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:44

it’s all framed as “you cannot be a truly free individual, doing what you really feel is right, until you understand those structural forces coercing you by, e.g., making you feel others will see you as less of a man… We need to free you of this so you can be yourself” 11/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:41

it’s inspired a bit by Kurdish revolutionary practice, where old Maoist self-criticism has been totally transformed into a collective process to show individuals how their actions are not really they’re own, but caused by structures like patriarchy they’re unaware of 10/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:37

one thought passed through my head, tho even saying it feels dangerous: what would happen if we redefined racism, sexism, class privilege, not in moral terms, as bad elements of your soul, but as some kind of external disease you need to be cured of to be your real self? 9/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:35

the thought occurred to me, is there some way to neutralise this puritanical narcissism? Which also of course involves the urge to be wannabe cop & identify a sin in would-be allies one can use to condemn them & tacitly establish one’s superiority, the uglier side of same 8/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:31

because I’m not from a middle class background I’m from a working class background & got the shit kicked out of me all the time as a kid. And as such, I can’t think of any topic I’m LESS interested in than how some middle class guy feels about his privilege. I don’t care. 7/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:30

everyone started going on & on about their middle class privilege, agonising, joking, theorising, seriously debating … on and on. And I thought “oh so this must be what it’s like to be the one Black guy in a white activist group in the US” 6/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:28

I remember when I’d just come to UK being at an anarchist debate over violence/non-violence, & someone started saying “well there’s the elephant in the room we’re not talking about: we’re all middle class & have been sheltered from violence as children” – & the room exploded 5/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:26

the particularly US take on identity politics is basically puritan, in that involves endless awareness & contemplation of one or another sort of privilege, which is often (I hate to say this) prioritised over concrete action that might benefit those that don’t have it 4/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:22

puritanism is all about one’s internal moral state, the inevitability of sinfulness, & competitiveness, where – to put it cynically – heroic white males compete over who’s best because they are most aware of their fallen nature, their inevitable internal corruption 3/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:19

Most Abolitionists were puritans of some sort; I still remember a quote from a newly enslaved African when he first met a bunch of them – “they were all singing, which suggested a festivity, but none of them seemed to be having any fun. Actually they seemed rather depressed.” 2/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:17

@Phil_O_Keefe @violetreess I’ve always had positive feelings towards it as a language, though I don’t speak a word myself.

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:17

The first major activist movement in the US after independence were the Abolitionists & I wonder sometimes if they set the tone for US activism – it’s peculiar characteristic puritanism – in ways we rarely acknowledge 1/

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Sat 27 Jun 2020 21:45

RT @Tom28513893: ‘The possibility of political pleasure’ by @DavidGraeber at TEDx – https://t.co/vDKi6XwtFP

Sat 27 Jun 2020 20:28

RT @skwawkbox: SKWAWKBOX editor lodges formal antisemitism complaint against Keir Starmer for conflation of Jewish people with actions of I…

Sat 27 Jun 2020 18:25

RT @thepetergrimm: @liz_franczak @nplusonemag @bathr0bespierre Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about David Graeber, we need to move into a “ca…