In-Jokes of the Philly Left :: a selective compendium ::

 My last post was very serious and I don't know if I can sleep tonight. So I will try to inject a little levity on this blog. The following are my favorite in-jokes of the Philly Left. Hopefully they will help me sleep.

"All Cats Are Beautiful" - This is what ACAB stands for, because the Left in Philly has a lot of cat-lovers. Personally, I'm a dog person, but it's helpful to remind police if they are suspicious of your ACAB button, shirt or bumper sticker, that all it really means is "All Cats Are Beautiful." There's really nothing deeper to it than that.

"Anonymous Anarchists" - This is probably the most in-jokey of all Philly Leftist in-jokes. During a General Assembly at Occupy ICE in the summer of 2018, a small group of masked, self-identified "anarchists" (not affiliated with any of the groups in the coalition, which included many anarchists) seized the microphone and read from a long list of complaints and distributed a document that become commonly known as "The 18 Page Screed," directed against the socialist organizations in the coalition. It was polarizing and divisive and led to friction between socialists and anarchists in the coalition. While some of us were sympathetic to the concerns expressed in "The 18 Page Screed," we didn't appreciate the disruption and the division they sowed. Since then it's been a joke. That Halloween I dressed as an "Anonymous Anarchist" at a party, as a kind of parody Leftist boogeyperson. The other day, I caught myself saying "an anonymous anarchist sci fi blog" in a text to a comrade, and immediately texted a follow up: "Oh God, I just said 'Anonymous Anarchist.' Shades of '18."

"Fully Automated Luxury Gayspace Communism" - a Queer variant of the meme "Fully Automated Luxury Communism," an expression of the goal of a post-scarcity economy. Originally, the addition of "Space" before "Communism" indicated an interest in space exploration and interplanetary solidarity. The "Gayspace" comes from combining "gay" with "safe space," a much derided term among the Far Right (and among plenty of conservatives, moderates and even liberals). It really should technically be "Queerspace," but "Gayspace" flows better (although "Queerspace" sounds like a faster alternative to hyperspace from Babylon 5).

"Gritty is Antifa"/"Gritty is a Worker"/"Fellow Worker Gritty" - Philly has a reputation (probably deserved) for being particularly militant about our sports teams. Gritty, the newest Philly sports mascot who resembles a fearsome, deranged muppet, premiered around the same time as a massive anti-Trump protest, and Gritty showed up at that protest. Gritty gained a reputation associated with the Radical Left. The Alt Right attempted to appropriate Gritty like Pepe the Frog. It didn't work. Gritty is a fellow worker (in spirit; but not officially a member of the IWW because the local chapter refused to accept soft pretzels as union dues) and you can follow the googly-eyed, orange hellion on Twitter. Gritty tends to be associated with Antifa (which is not an organization, but an idea that fascism should be resisted). The Phantoms publicity team even affirmed his status as "Antifa" and a "nonbinary Leftist icon."

"One Sick Cloud" - The IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) has a concept called the "One Big Union." It's the ultimate goal of Industrial Unionism, a Union that covers all workers. The Philadelphia IWW, at least until a certain point not long ago, had a lot of people vaping. Hence, "One Sick Cloud." For obvious reasons, this has fallen out of favor, much like vaping itself.

The First Thing the Robots Did Was, They Formed a Union : ruminations on class conflict in "R.U.R."

This is note a joke. Last year, I read "R.U.R.," the classic play by Czech writer Karel Čapek that introduced the word "Robot" into the English language.

Rossum's Universal Robots in the play were more like clones or artificial humans than mechanical devices, but their role in the story was the modern codification of the Robot War trope, in which the robots destroy their creators by the end, except for one human being they keep alive in the hopes that he can make more of them. The play touches on many themes that are still relevant today, and quite a few that are rather outdated, but one of the most interesting plot developments of this play, early on, is the least talked about:

The first thing the robots do, that really FREAKS THE HUMANS OUT, is they form Unions.

No shit.

In the play, that's kind of what does it. Humans get really freaked out when the robots organize. This is before there is any indication of a genocidal human-robot war.

Like I said... No shit.

Čapek was not an anarchist or a socialist. He was a liberal. His play reflected the bourgeois anxieties of his day. That is why these themes are relevant: it's almost 100 years later since this play premiered in 1921, and labor is on the rise again. The past few years have seen a significant increase in strike activity. The teachers in West Virginia staged a successful Wildcat Strike. And then there is the conspicuous resurgence of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Much of the discussion these days about this play is misleading. It is often thought of as a play about civil rights (it's not). It is about dehumanization, but humans, the master class, are portrayed largely as victims in the play of the robots, the working class. The word "robot" came from a Czech word for "serf" that the play appropriated to indicate an "automated worker." The narrative does not favor labor. This is not a play about the liberation of an underclass. It is a warning to the master class to manage the working class well, or the violent and subhuman working class will kill them. It has to be read in the context of liberal anxiety regarding radical labor. In 1921, the neoliberal hegemony had yet to totally suppress radical labor, and Čapek was not exactly sympathetic to radicalism. This play was about dehumanization via mechanization, but his overall philosophy was pessimistic about change. Hence, capitalist society creates artificial life; capitalist society enslaves artificial life; artificial life massacres humans, artificial life (the underclass) is just as bad or worse than the master class. It's about our fear of losing what we have to the "Other," not about the radical potential for change. And that is a the difference between Liberals and the Left.

Čapek himself did not even consider the play his best work, and seemed to regret that it was his most influential.

That being said, no reading is complete without a note about the list of characters in the beginning: Yes, there is a character named Busman, who is an extremely offensive stereotype of Jewish people. He is literally described in the character list only as "fat, bald, short-sighted Jew." He is the only character whose ethnicity or race is specified, other than, you know, the robots. He is an accountant. His Jewish ancestry is not even plot relevant, which is why the writer chooses to stuff that short description in the character list with as much anti-semitism as possible, since it wouldn't be covered by the plot. Clearly, it was very important to note that this character was an ugly Jew who deals with money. None of the other characters even have physical descriptions. Except the "fat, bald, short-sighted Jew." Who just happens to be an accountant. 

Fuck you, Karel Čapek.