Libidinal Materialism, Kabbalah, Energy Drinks, and the 30 Year Old Boomer

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Cryptofascism: Tim Heidecker, among others, secretly a Nazi?

Is Tim Heidecker Hiding His Secret Nazi Roots? Were His Attacks on Sam Hyde Merely a Cover For His Own Despicable Past? (or, on right and left wing art, red herrings, and the method of character assassination).

I was recently reading this article on Pewdiepie. It plods along bringing up mostly disconnected 'facts,' facts which never undergo any kind of synthesis that would convince a critical reader of any connection, only to arrive at a conclusion that in no way is derived or necessitated by the prior facts (redherring).

It goes something like this:
- 1: This real bad racist guy liked video games; 2: Pewdiepie likes videogames; 3: Pewdiepie is popular on Youtube and apparently "dog whistles" racist signs; 4: Jordan Peterson is popular on Youtube too and was recently in a place where that real bad guy from point 1 did a real bad thing; 5: The Alt Right, the internet, ironic humor, etc. etc.

The author calls these "important connections." Go experience it yourself. It reads like a collection of buzzwords and tropes copy and pasted together. Red Herring. Throw shit at the reader and see what sticks.

A more recent example of a youtuber - one less popular than Pewdiepie and Petereson (which is far from a bad thing here) - ex-academic and internet intellectual nomad Justin Murphy  was condemned for his "cryptofascism," that is, like Pewdpie, "dogwhistling" secret racist signs. Murphy discusses these accusations here, accusations which are made in reference to another of Murhphy's videos (a conversation with Nina Powers and DC Miller which we will come back to this later...) which of course spawned other critical responses which not only miss the basic facts, but misspell Murphy's last name. The important thing for now is how stoically serious these crazily paranoiac (a sort of hermeneutic analysis and decoding of innocuous and innocent gestures and comments in Murphy's videos) "open letters" take themselves.

Read enough of this junk literature stuff and it makes you think like the authors of these open letters, and when you start thinking like the authors, you realize they must have a lot of fun - unconsciously perhaps - writing these. For example,  I am watching TV and see an innocuous moment in an interview and immediately think of what kind of crazy narrative I can concoct in my head.  Of course, I'm not a sociopath - or an open letter writer - so I don't go and write the damn piece.

Ok. Pause. We're jumping around a bit (don't worry, this is a short post, your short term memory can handle it).

Story: I'm lounging around in Florence Italy with my girlfriend. She tells me that 'in Italian they call Florence "Firenze." ' Like a good schizo, I immediately alienate my lovely girlfriend by saying 'Firenze' over and over again, messing around with the palette of my mouth / tongue, until it sounds like I am saying 'Florence.' When I get home later that month, I look through my linguistics books and look into how phonemes drift through different territorial languages, and how the mechanics of the mouth and face materially limit and effect the production of certain sounds. F L O R E N C / F I R E N Z E:  'F' stays the same; the shape of the mouth and tongue used to produce 'ir' easily lapses, with the slight lowering of the tongue (try it out), into an ' L ' sound (think of the stereotypical depiction of Asian Americans confusing their Ls and Rs, or the some speech impediments); 'enze' is very simply 'ence' for if you say each phrase back to back you will notice almost little to no difference between the sound and function of the C and Z. Phoneme drift. This is basic linguistics which we see pragmatically in the phonetic re-articulation of last-names.

Ok, unpause.

Theory: Tim Heidecker. Last name is an Americanized version of a former European last name, as often happens when families came to America through Ellis Island. But what was the previous last name you ask ?

Heidegger

Google: Heidecker is an Austrian-German name the most common variation of spelling of which is Heidegger. 

Martin Heidegger was a German Philosopher who - as is now banal knowledge - was a Nazi. Not figuratively, but literally.

So, Tim Heidegger.
Hmm.

Tim Heidecker is probably a Nazi.
Tim Heidecker is a Nazi.

If my shitty still frame does not do it justice, check out On Cinema Season 9 and take a look for yourself.

What is more, when you consider Heidecker's  efforts to take down Sam Hyde's Million Dollar Extreme: World Peace (to experience some of this drama, see here and here), it is easy to see that Heidecker's attacks on Hyde for being an antisemitic, racist, misogynistic, etc. are simply a projection of his own hidden past (see Hyde explain himself as not a bad guy, but an edgelord interested in comedy, not hate, here).

....

This was a character assassination on Heidecker, just to show form (and I actually find Tim and Sam's humor funny all the same...)

So, is Tim Heidecker Secretly a Nazi? Is Tim Heidecker Hiding His Secret Nazi Roots? Were His Attacks on Sam Hyde Merely a Cover For His Own Despicable Past?

No, no, and no...but the damage is done, isn't it? Character assassination.

Jumping back to Murphy for a moment: Is this Heideck(gg)er vs. Hyde situation not simply completely consistent with the Murphy, Powers, and Miller incident eluded too earlier?  Heideck(gg)er, a left leaning funny guy takes out Hyde, a right leaning funny guy, just like the successful attempt the left made at taking down the right wing art gallery LD50 by throwing anything at the wall that would stick. But where's the deeper connection? Well, DC Miller, as Murphy mentions, fought to keep the LD50 open. The left attacks the right over who has the right to be artistic and humorous, part of which means character.

So here we have a sort of web of associations:

Anyways, I'm tapering off here...

Pen an oped piece, throw semiotic shit at the wall and see what sticks.


(further notes added 8-30-19)

I originally made the following its own post, but upon reflection I believe it is better suited as an addition to this original piece.

There no deep insight, nor even a conclusion, here. Just some dots I’ve connected for what it’s worth (which I’ll probably expand in a later piece arguing that the left’s tendency to accuse others of secret fascism is an inversed form of left identity politics…)

In light of one  of Justin Murphy’s recent podacasts, I’d like to revisit one of my previous pieces (Cryptofascism: Tim Heidecker, among others, secretly a Nazi?) which critiqued – in a goofy way albeit  - the notion of cryptofascism by pointing out some connections (and some false connections) between Justin Murphy, Nina Powers, DC Miller, LD50, Tim Heidecker, Sam Hyde, Pewdiepie, and Peterson, along with a more general notion of right and leftwing art / performance and cancel culture.

In this recent podcast, Murphy had a fellow named John on who currently works with Sam Hyde. It now appears Jon may also work with Murphy in creating content. As someone in the comments section put it, ‘Murphy is now 1 degree removed from Hyde.’

Synthesizing this recent development with my previous piece on cryptofascism, I offer a few thoughts, and connect a few more dots:

• -        In this Murphy episode, Murphy is wearing an Odd Future shirt. Members of Odd future had a show on Adult Swim called ‘Loiter Squad.’ As mentioned, Sam Hyde’s comedy show on Adult Swim was cancelled in part due to Tim Heidecher, Eric Warheim, and Bret Gellman’s (big names at Adult Swim) reaction to Hyde’s right leaning politics. Odd Future, equally as abrasive and controversial at times (mainly due to Tyler the Creator who antagonized people in public, promoted violence, used slurs, etc.), was not.

• -        Kantbot was cited, in addition to the scheduled Nick Land appearance, as one of the reasons right wing art gallery LD50 was shut down.

• -        Sam Hyde and Kantbot (and an other guy who presumably co-hosts Tekwars with Kantbot) had a discussion together that was edited into an episode of Sam Hyde’s show and an episode of Tekwars.

• -        Tekwars recently hosted a debate (rightfully behind a paywall, subscribe to Tekwars link above to listen) between Nick Land and white nationalist Richard Spencer, a debate which cements Land, despite what his critics say, as firmly anti-Spencer, and, to what Land’s follower already knew, clearly not a white nationalist, nazi, racist, etc.

• -        Tekwars is scheduled to have Murphy on their show in the upcoming months

Our core repeating cast: Justin Murphy, Kantbot, Sam Hyde.

Our peripheral repeating cast: Nick Land, DC Miller, Nina Power, Tim and Eric

Our superstructure: Left art via Adult Swim and corporate TV and Right art via LD50 and independent platforms, podcasts such as The Other Life and Tekwars.

Now, I want to find a way to get Youtube into the mix here. I saw the Tekwars-Hyde interaction as an illegally ripped version of their show on Youtube. I watch Murphy on Youtube. I learned about DC Miller through Murphy’s Youtube channel and also Hermetix podcasts on Youtube. And, as mentioned in my last piece, Pewdiepie, arguably the king of Youtube who has not been without his own controversies and somewhat outlandish performance art pieces, has been also been in the media crosshairs for ‘cryptofascism.’

Anyways, I am trailing off again…

I have a hypothesis that the notion of cryptofascism is essentially the assigning of a signifier to another person who does not identify as or with that signifier with the insistence that if even if they do not identify as that label, it is still an undeniable or apodictic fact that they correspond to that label.

This is often done by the very same people who fight for legitimacy for others to refer to themselves as whatever they choose, or to refer to themselves as whatever they choose (which I personally don’t have an issue with).

So I end with a provocation: Is the accusation of cryptofascism the inverse of identity politics (I can refer to myself as whatever I like and you have to believe it / I can refer to you was whatever I like and you have to believe it)?