Splicetoday

Writing
Jan 02, 2018, 05:56AM

Racism and Wrong Laughter

It’s unnecessary to interpret or deconstruct the diseased body of Cabal’s work. 

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A little less than a year ago, I wanted to do a piece on prison abolitionism for Splice Today. A college friend of mine is a journalist and activist in that area, and my idea was to interview him and his colleague about the goals, justifications, and contemporary activities of prison abolitionism today.

After some research and emails, we formed a concept together, and I was ready to conduct the interview and write the article. But then my friend’s colleague, herself a scholar and woman of color, happened across Alan Cabal’s writing for Splice. In particular, she had found an article called “The Past is Prologue,” a paranoiac, foolish rant, full of racist invective and violent fantasies. Until that point, I hadn’t been familiar with Cabal’s writing, nor had I realized that Splice Today published that kind of content.

After some discussion, my prison abolition contacts rescinded their agreement to do the article with me. I was disappointed, though I completely understood. But if I’m being honest, I was mostly disturbed by the realization that my own name was now listed alongside this author, as we are both contributors to this website. I spent weeks pondering it, and wondered whether I could in good conscience (and as a matter of professional prudence) write any longer for Splice Today.

I recognize—and appreciate—that Splice Today cultivates a pluralistic environment. I can’t think of many websites home to such a patchwork of conflicting viewpoints, particularly as we trend toward identity epistemics and discursive isolation. There are writers here with whom I seriously disagree. But they usually don’t have the effect of turning my stomach. Except for Cabal.

It’s unnecessary to interpret or deconstruct the diseased body of Cabal’s work. Its ugliness speaks for itself. His words are not worth reading, let alone engaging with. Rather, I’d like to address a simpler point: the editorial justification offered for continuing to publish his writing here.

Back in October, an article by Cabal called “The Rules of White Privilege” caused a stir. The article marked a new low, even for him, a loathsome attempt at humor and unsightly pot-stirring. Naturally, it inspired outrage among a wide range of Splice writers. One of the questions we had was how Splice could tolerate publishing such openly vile content. In a comment, Splice editor Russ Smith explained, “Cabal’s not everyone’s favorite, but he clearly has tongue in cheek, and certainly doesn’t take himself as seriously as [some other writers here].” At the time, I took this for what it was: a safe, boilerplate editorial dismissal, encouraging us to “lighten up” and see the ironic entertainment value in Cabal’s writing. This justification didn’t cut it for me, and still reads like a cop-out. So, I left my own comment, indicating my respectful disagreement, and moved on.

But recently, the question of Cabal’s writing popped back into my head, when I came across The Daily Stormer’s leaked style guide. If you haven’t heard of The Daily Stormer, it’s the BuzzFeed of the ultra-right, home to writing on white supremacy, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and other idiotic schools of thought.

The document is as fascinating as it is disturbing, and sheds light on the tactics deployed by the contemporary far right in spreading its cruel ideology. The Daily Stormer describes itself as an “outreach site, designed to spread the message of nationalism and anti-Semitism to the masses.” Its style guide offers a number of tips to this end, a couple of which are important for understanding why Cabal’s writing remains so unacceptable.

First, it advises a light tone. This is because levity makes hate speech more palatable to some readers, who might have a morbid curiosity about racist discourse, but are still too guilty to embrace the swastika. Specifically, it encourages a judicious use of racial slurs. “Generally, when using racial slurs, it should come across as half-joking—like a racist joke that everyone laughs at because it’s true.”

Similarly, Cabal always delivers his racism with a wink and a nudge. He drops the N-word alongside half-pithy slogans, cultural references to William S. Burroughs and David Lynch, and allusions to acidhead counterculture. This strategy of mixing hate speech with pop culture is recommended throughout the Daily Stormer’s playbook.

Very often, his writing takes a turn for the surreal. See his recent article “Living Under an Iron Sky,” in which his genocidal anxieties generate fantasies about Nazi space exploration. As a result, encountering his stuff makes for an uncanny experience, as one struggles to discern whether he’s joking or not. In fact, one could be forgiven for wondering whether he’s engaging in sophisticated satire, a literary experiment in projecting thoughts from deep inside the rotten brain of a far-right maniac.

Who knows? Maybe he’s trolling us all. Either way, note this portion of the Daily Stormer style guide: “The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not.” The purpose of such ambiguity is ethical disorientation. “Dehumanization is extremely important, but it must be done within the confines of lulz.”

The crucial point is that humor, creative prose, or identifications with pop counterculture do not inoculate Cabal’s writing; he peddles invidious racism. And his ostensible uniqueness as a writer doesn’t let Splice’s editors off the hook either. On the contrary, these elements are constituent aspects of far-right propagandizing. But don’t take my word for it. On this point, the Daily Stormer literally cites Hitler.

Despite the alt-right’s surface fetishization of “rational argument,” “race realism,” and Dark Enlightenment, its propaganda department knows very well that it can win only through lies and deception. Today, humor is the far-right’s deception of choice, and it’s one to which we all remain disconcertingly vulnerable.

The duty to laugh is imposed on us daily, via inter-passive laugh tracks on television and through the ubiquitous peer pressure to take a joke. In the 1940s, the Frankfurt School philosophers identified the same tendency under German fascism. For Jewish Marxists on the run from the Holocaust, their society’s frequent appeal to laughter had no connection with beauty or joy. Instead, the chuckling crowd denoted an alienated bourgeois sadism. “There is laughter because there is nothing to laugh about,” wrote Horkheimer and Adorno as they narrowly escaped the camps. If that sounds too sardonic for us today, we might still reevaluate the political significance of the next hilarious Donald Trump impression or Milo stunt, as American soldiers put bullets in Yemeni children.

We laugh because we’re afraid, but this recourse to jokes shouldn’t be mistaken for resistance. “Wrong laughter copes with fear by defecting to the agencies which inspire it.” So, SNL liberals are guilty of their own, more cowardly form of wrong laughter too.

But that is not to say there’s any equivalency between the impotent, self-satisfied takedowns of liberal comedians and the cold-blooded farce that now characterizes the far right. As the scholar Angela Nagle argues in her book Kill All Normies, there is today a critical link between transgressive aesthetics, edgy humor, and the radical right wing. Nagle identifies the Sadean slogan “It is forbidden to forbid” as the constituent ethos of the alt-right. Horkheimer and Adorno drew a corresponding connection under German fascism: “The collective of those who laugh parodies humanity. They are monads, each abandoning himself to the pleasure… of being ready to shrink from nothing.”

This is why Cabal’s writing can’t be saved by characterizing him as a dark humorist, a prankster, or an envelope-pushing polemicist. He’s just another hack filled with hate, and there’s nothing funny about it. Because to laugh at a racist joke, to flirt with far-right polemics, or to tolerate cruelty in the hallowed name of transgression, is indeed a privilege—but it’s one to be ashamed of. 

Discussion
  • Alan's writing - contrarian, well-constructed, often eloquent - is in the true tradition of New York Press, the wonderful alternative weekly where Russ Smith first let both of us run wild in print. What makes for a great newspaper is not a rigid adherence to dogma. It is allowing good writers to freely express any opinion, provided they can defend it in sound. readable prose. While I don't think Alan would ever admit this or even agree with me, his posture and language reminds me of that of a really good rapper: it's a pose, it's a joke, it's an act. Candidly, we need to return to Lenny Bruce's notion that when we learn to deal with the use of language that makes us uncomfortable, we come to a better understanding of ourselves.

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  • Tom, two questions: 1. Why blame an entire site and its many writers for the writings of one particular author? You imply that because of Alan's writings, your contacts rescinded their offer to speak to you about your article. You also state that you questioned your own association with the site because they also post Alan's work. Where is the intellectual honesty in that? Does every article need to agree with your particular views on everything in order for you to be willing to submit work to them? If so, how do you expect to reach those who may not always agree with you? 2. Do you really believe that your readers are so easily fooled? If so, why even write for those so poorly educated that they cannot decide the merits of an article for themselves? Furthermore, why should they listen to you telling them how to think over other opinions and thoughts? Although I am not a fan of Cabal's, I respect his right to write such articles and I'd much prefer to be made aware of his type of viewpoint by reading Splice Today, where I can get many viewpoints (including yours), than visiting trash sites like the Daily Stormer and giving them clicks which in turn yield higher ad revenue

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  • My personal hot take: Russ has every right publish whatever he wants, and I have every right to say, "Alan Cabal's latest article is a steaming pile of shit, and here's why."

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  • The Lenny Bruce comparison is in no way relevant to this issue. What did Bruce say that the Daily Stormer would endorse?

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  • Also, I should point out that, besides Splice Today, I also write for Ravishly and The Establishment, and they sometimes publish articles about astrology and Wicca, so technically I can't cast too many stones. As long as they allow me to write about how secular humanism empowers me.

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  • All other issues aside, the point Tom makes about humor is on the money. I've listened to a bunch of alt-right podcasts and one of the things they focus on is keeping things light and breezy while making their Jews in the oven jokes. This offers them a certain degree of cover in that they can say those criticizing them just have no sense of humor.

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  • Wicca's a religion; not sure why writing about that would be different than writing about Christianity. Astrology is bad science, but it isn't deliberately fomenting hatred towards a race or religion.. I think you should be allowed—even encouraged— to make moral distinctions when choosing whether or not to publish outright racists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis.//Alan has repeatedly attacked me with anti-Semitic rhetoric, on my own posts here, and on social media, where he sought me out on Facebook to post sneers about the Elders of Zion on one of the posts where I shared a link to a Splice article. I'm sure he thought it was "funny."

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  • Alan must have gotten hold of some bad acid because most acidheads I know see God and believe we're all connected. Alan, on the other hand, became a shitlord.

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  • "Today, humor is the far-right’s deception of choice, and it’s one to which we all remain disconcertingly vulnerable." A Frenchman once wrote, "He who hath not a little foolishness in his soul is not as wise as he thinks." I have no respect for someone who finds himself "disconcertingly vulnerable" to humor. The whole point of your prolix, overwritten article reduces to this: Alan Cabal is ;politically incorrect. Well, that's your problem, pal, not his. Over the several decades we've known each other we've had our ups and downs,some all-out fights,and moments of transcendent harmony, for which there are no words. Cabal is a brilliant, one-of-a-kind being whose mission in life is to irritate the cosmos in which he finds himself, desecrate its sacred cows, and raise a middle finger to Authority. That's why I love the man. If you don't, that's your problem.

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  • A white knight has just ridden in.

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  • Ok, I was going to try to be fair to this writer even though he's obviously an overt leftist from the get-go. But as I read through his near-hysterical, syrupy virtue signalling, two things stood out immediately. First, he talks about writing a piece on prison abolition, something I'm sure would be near and dear to his bleeding liberal heart. How dare the evil white racists lock up and remove from our society murderers, rapists, pedophiles and other poor victims of racial injustice and white privilege - I feel your pain! If that's not enough, he goes on to praise and lift the banner of his beloved Frankfurt School of Cultural Marxism fame and its prophets Adorno and Horkheimer. Their overarching influence on the 60's counterculture and our "educational" institutions have brought us to today's wonderful multicultural, politically correct society of SJW's, gender-confused children and victim-cults of every ilk. And don't forget that they inadvertently saved our western civilzation from the evils of "fascism", whatever that means today (it's meaning seems to change on an almost hourly basis depending on whose using it - but muh Nazis!). These are things that the author thinks are "good". So in light of these two glaring facts, I'm not even going to bother going over Al Cabal's Hunter S. Thompson-esque rants that I find very enjoyable and ultimately very insightful if one understands that his style is meant to provoke and shock. Again, refer back to Hunter S. Thompson...or H.L. Mencken...or Mark Twain. Wouldn't our world be so much better if we had sensored and gotten rid of the racist rants of those evil white bigots? I have little doubt that Mr. Syverson and his fellow bolsheviks would think so. So if Al Cabal offends you, don't read him. As for Tom Syverson, I'm sure he hates white people, the "patriarchy" and nationalism of any sort, and lovingly adores feminism, socialism, and unfettered borderless mass immigration and would like to lock up anyone who disagrees. I think I'll stick with Al.

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  • So these prison abolitionists have the time to comb through a bunch of Splice articles and then decided they'd pass on an opportunity to get their message about prison abolition out because of what they found? Have to wonder what other media outlets they're finding that will run articles on abolishing prisons?

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  • Prison abolition is not an especially unusual position on the left, nor among anti prison activists. Mariame Kaba is an important activist who worked on the successful campaign to get Chicago to pay reparations to victims of police torture. You can google her and find numerous articles by her, if you're interested.

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  • Prison abolition doesn't get much coverage is my point, so when you get an opportunity to get some coverage and advance your cause I'd think you'd take it, instead of combing through past articles and then cancelling because you're so principled or delicate. The prisoners you claim to be advocating for might appreciate that. Weighing the pluses and minuses of doing the interview, it's obvious that doing it produces a more positive result. Not doing it produces a net result of nil. This person who cancelled just "happened" to come across Alan's writing? That hardly seems like how it actually went down. I'd be interested in knowing what really happened.

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  • I don't share your confidence that I know better than an activist doing organizing work what the communities they are working with would want.

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  • Pretty sure that in the prison "community," getting out is the number one priority by a long shot.

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  • Yeah, see, I think that's a big assumption. People in prison are people, like anyone else. They have a range of interests, including getting out, but also care for their families, reforming the prison system so others don't suffer, etc. Also, many of them do in fact care about racism, and see it as part of the system that has treated them unjustly.// I just think it's a little presumptuous to speak for prisoners when you haven't actually talked to any of them. Activists who are actually accountable to affected people seem like a better source of info about what accountability means than random commenters on the internet, to me.

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  • I've talked to prisoners, and you're a random person on the internet using one particular case, that you heard about second hand, to claim that you know what prisoners want and that they wouldn't want that interview to run in Splice Today.

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  • No. I am saying that I don't know what prisoners want, and that the activist in question who is in touch with prisoners should therefore be given the benefit of the doubt, since she has talked to the people involved, and neither of us has.

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  • I'm not inclined to give people I don't know anything about the benefit of the doubt, and I don't believe she "happened" upon Cabal's writings. That's not how things happen. That story's not credible.

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  • Uh, how did we go from Cabal's racism to prison abolition?

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  • Get over your neurotypical linear bias, Trav. Haven't you evolved past ableist thinking yet?

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  • Troll much?

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  • Given that your entire existence seems to be a rather ineffective troll against the glory of Western Civilization, I'd say "Si!" Which bathroom do you use, and why should we care? Will you use pills or a razor blade?

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  • SI SE PUEDE, PUTA!

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  • Have a drink, Trav. Have six.

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  • Tom Syverstein has obviously never lived under a Communist regime.

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