love me, i'm a liberal

Finn | he/him | 21 I'm an undergrad majoring in Anthropology and Linguistics. This blog is mostly for learning about leftist thought and literature and documenting my progress in this area. Yes that is a Phil Ochs song. Main blog: fakeoldmanfucker

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Currently Reading

As of 5/5/26

The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage - Todd Gitlin, 1987

A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn, 1980 (modern classics edition, 2015)

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Hello I am alive

I've been reading lots of articles and chapters for school this semester, not been able to complete many books. But I'm reading The Sixties by Todd Gitlin right now, and I'm planning to start Perfect Victims by Mohammed el-Kurd soon.

What I will say about Todd Gitlin's book thus far, but I knew it would be considerably biased going into it (obviously all projects come from a certain positionality, but I'm using bias here in the more typical sense) but Wow I did not know just how biased it was going to be. Guy has a huge blindspot for his friends and was definitely holding onto 20-year-long grudges

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I think Not "A Nation of Immigrants" is good. But! I think it could've done with another round of edits imo

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Seize the Time - Bobby Seale (1970)

I devoured this book, I read it in about two days. As someone who, I'm ashamed to say, knew only the barest of bones about the Black Panther Party, this was incredibly compelling. Thank you to @plutospromise17 for recommending it to me to read, as well as Elaine Brown's A Taste of Power, which I'm reading currently. I'm already appreciating how reading the two of them in succession highlights the poignancy and relevance of both. In a conversational style, Bobby Seale goes into detail about the founding of the Black Panther Party in Oakland in 1966, leading into the experiences and current goals, as well as the trials and tribulations, of the party.

Brief note, I am a sucker for a guy who is nice to kids. I really enjoyed reading Bobby's account of his time as a foreman in the anti-poverty program in Oakland in the summer of 1966.

As someone who knew next to nothing about the Black Panther Party, I appreciated Bobby's inclusion of the 10 point program, which I was really impressed by. I really had no idea how socialist the BPP was, so that was pleasantly surprising. Seale presents the party from a very appealing, very reasonable position, maybe even a bit too much. But I got a kick out of him calling Charles Garry the Lenin of the courtroom. Something that struck me was how completely centered this book was around Huey P. Newton. I don't know if that's because of the Free Huey campaign at the time of writing, or if that was Seale's true feeling at the time, and it could very well be a mix of both.

Reading the latter half of this book, the part composed in Cook County Jail, is very interesting compared to Jerry Rubin's diary of the same time, composed in the same place, during the three-week imprisonment that Rubin experienced. It's sad, thinking about Bobby saying Jerry is the most politically conscious of the White radicals he's met at the trial, because a few years later Jerry would be leading the yuppie trend. Compelling, really, when you realize that Rubin would loop Seale into an mlm shortly before the former's death in 1994. I personally think that Abbie Hoffman was more radical and committed to leftist ideals at the end of the day, though I will concede that he did not really convey that very well at the time.

I was a bit of a fan of Bobby Seale harping on the cultural nationalists, particularly from the perspective of them being armchair revolutionaries who just sit around and discuss things and never do anything. I know that this got quite serious later on, with the deaths of Bunchy Carter and John Huggins, but it was fun and funny and relatable. It was in these parts of the book that I could see the comedian come out.

As a call to action, I think this book takes a while to get going and really only lands in the latter half. As a memoir and one of the first histories of the Black Panther Party, I think this is a piece of writing that at least appears vulnerable and honest, and was undeniably written in a very difficult time for Seale.

One criticism I have is how the first part of the book (and lesser parts throughout) seems to glorify Huey Newton's physical violence. I thought at first that I might just be being too sensitive, and insensitive to Newton's experiences in Oakland, but having started A Taste of Power, I can pretty confidently say that I don't Love how often Seale returns to this image of Newton as supreme being of violence and reason, for all he decries the Superman figure.

Quotes that I want to muse on and not spend too much time organizing and rewording:

"Late in November 1966, we went to a Third World brother we knew, a Japanese radical cat." - honestly I am really itching to know more about radical Japanese activists (be they socialist, anarchist, etc) and I haven't found any books about them yet. A few mentions in Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris, and I think a featured Wikipedia article recently that I forgot to save. So if anyone has any recommendations or knows any place to look, I would greatly appreciate some guidance.

Apparently "Japanese radical cat" is Richard Aoki and according to Seth Rosenfeld in the San Francisco Chronicle from a FOIA request, it was revealed posthumously that he was an FBI informant against the BPP as well as other organizations he had previously been a part of, namely the CP and SWP. Rosenfeld interviewed Aoki's handler, and most of his information comes from that interview and the FOIA documents from the FBI. It seems no one in the BPP or otherwise knew he was an informant, and the information only came out after his death, so take that as you will.

"It's obvious that trying to fight fire with fire means there's going to be a lot of burning. The best way to fight fire is with water because water douses the fire. The water is the solidarity of the people's right to defend themselves together in opposition to a vicious monster. Whatever is good for the man, can't be good for us. Whatever is good for the capitalistic ruling-class system, can't be good for the masses of the people." - what can I say, this is just a good quote. Go off Bobby Seale. Right on, etc

I mentioned before I wasn't very familiar with the 10 point program, but throughout the course of this book I became a big fan of the phrase "decadent American society" and all of the alternatives Seale uses. It's just a very nice turn of phrase, and accurate!

"He would explain many times that if a black businessman is charging you the same prices or higher, even higher prices than exploiting white businessmen, then he himself ain't nothing but an exploiter." - I have absolutely no qualms with the statement of course, and I like that Seale was thinking this in 1968-1970 because so much of representation now in business is supposed to be the pinnacle of equality, and of course it's not, and I've met a lot of people who think that just because they're a member of an oppressed group and own a business, it is some grand resistance. It's not. Also, I want to like Huey P. Newton so much, and I was pretty convinced by the end of this book, violent posturing aside, but having started A Taste of Power, I will be reserving my judgement for later.

Would I want a physical copy of this book? Yes! I don't know if I would read it again in full, but there's some good points and quotes in here, and I'm always looking to expand my bookshelf. Note: I was using a shitty pdf for the first section of this book, which made me think there's only 200-odd pages in this book. Imagine my surprise when I looked to see if it was on Internet Archive and found out it has 450 pages! Anyway, it's on Internet Archive to borrow if your library or local bookstore doesn't have it.

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Palo Alto - Malcolm Harris (2023)

This book took me entirely too long to read, but I am very glad I stuck with it. Harris's balance of deep research with an approachable and often sarcastic writing style made it more engaging than it might have been otherwise, even as interested as I am in the topic.

I was pleased by the overall framing of the book as an argument for the return of land to the Indigenous people of Palo Alto. I wish he had brought it out more throughout the entire book, rather than mainly in the introduction and conclusion, but the inclusion of such a perspective at all is refreshing.

Something I had no idea about was the history of Japanese leftists in the Bay Area, or really any knowledge of Japanese leftists at all. In general, I feel like this book serves as a great introduction to the history of the area, but because of the span of time it covers, it can't go too in-depth in any particular area, even though you feel as if Malcolm Harris definitely could if given the time/space.

One criticism I do have is that, even though the sections are organized by time periods, there's a bit of jumping back and forth in time periods and referencing something that was last mentioned 300 pages ago. Fortunately, there is a robust index available.

I highly recommend this book, especially as an introduction to the history of the area from a leftist perspective. The amount of research Malcolm Harris has done is truly amazing.

Would I want a physical copy of this book? I have one, and I feel it really needs it. At the least, taking notes as you read would not be a bad idea.

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Broken Code - Jeff Horwitz (2023)

As Ed Zitron said in a recent interview with Adam Conover, there is no way to come out of reading Broken Code without believing that the executives that work at Meta are evil. I don't really believe in evil people, only evil acts, mostly because I think labeling people as evil others them and blinds us to the possibility of becoming like them, both due to individual choices and cultural pressures. This book shows the relentless internal and external pressures placed on the Meta employees to conform to a profit-oriented status quo and the largely fruitless efforts of some to resist. Time and time again, Meta executives water down and stop plans to make their platforms safer and more enjoyable for users in pursuit of growth, which is just another word for profit though they like to pretend it's less earthly than that. Even the executives who are occasionally on the side of morality, most notably Chris Cox, ultimately fail to stand up to Zuckerberg and Sandberg when it counts. The company, on Zuckerberg's behalf, has argued in the past that its executives simply don't know about the immoral and exploitative behavior occurring on their platforms until it is too late. But what Broken Code shows is that this ignorance is constructed intentionally in order to shield the company and its executives from liability. None of the big picture stuff is that surprising: of course a Big Tech company plays both sides in order to get as much money and as little restriction as possible, of course a Big Tech company cares little for the way it affects non-Western countries. But Horwitz's book shines an in-depth look into the dynamics of the company and its employees and the specific, alarming ways it discards our collective well-being for the sake of power.

Would I want a physical copy of this book? I already own one, and i don't regret it at all.

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Currently Reading

City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways - Megan Kimble (2024)

The Plague - Albert Camus (1948)

If Beale Street Could Talk - James Baldwin (1974)

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and The World - Malcolm Harris (2023)

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We Are Everywhere - Jerry Rubin (1971)

I read this on Internet Archive in one sitting. I honestly couldn't put it down. I've recently been trying to find out more about the New Left, so my interest partially came from Rubin's closeness to the movement. But just as compelling was watching him struggle against his future (which I, as a reader of his Wikipedia page, was privy to, and he was not). Throughout this journal, supposedly unedited from its initial form, he frequently denounces capitalism in all of its forms. And yet by the end of the decade he will have become a stockbroker. There's a particularly tragic part of the book where he is musing on the future of the yippie movement, and he seems so energetic and hopeful that it's genuinely a little bit heartbreaking. Mostly, I was struck by how similar his positions are to those I've encountered on social media. While I haven't encountered the same veneer of militancy that Rubin advocated for, almost everything else he wrote about would not be out of place in modern discourse. This seems unlikely to be because of Rubin's prescience. His account of feeling betrayed when his defense lawyer mentioned voting for Humphrey to keep out Nixon reminded me of the current debate about whether or not to vote for Biden. This, to me, indicates that there just hasn't been much development, there has perhaps even been backsliding, in the past fifty years. The book should seem outdated, and the fact that it doesn't is worrying.

Would I want a physical copy of this book? Yes

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Currently Reading

Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street - Karen Ho (2009)

Reunion: A Memoir - Tom Hayden (1988)

Broken Code - Jeff Horwitz (2023)