I call Saikat Chakrabarti “AOC’s brain.” I think it is likely that he is responsible for her tweet’s that mention prescriptivism:
Here is your Twitter Prescriptivism Prize ? while you’re at it, try capitalizing my name next time. https://t.co/NbAV3HyqUR
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 9, 2018
Chakrabarti went to Harvard, studied computer science, then Wall Street, before becoming a founding engineer of Stripe. Stripe is valued north of $20,000,000,000 right now, so his paper wealth is likely putting him in the 0.1% or more (unless he cashed out early, which would mean he’s more liquid, though less wealthy).
In addition to his far-Left politics, professional and financial successes, he seems to lift judging by the photos. So good for him!
Today he got in trouble for wearing a t-shirt with a photo of Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose was a radical nationalist, but complex otherwise. Today he is being reduced to his alignment with the Axis-powers a meeting with Hitler (after all, in the West, all that matters is your meeting with Hitler during World War II, not what was going on in far off Asia).
The weird thing is if Chakrabarti wore a Che Guevera t-shirt I don’t think it would be a major issue. But to me, that would be worse, because Che acted with brutality in favor of international Communism of his own free will. Bose’s alliance with the Axis-powers was clearly driven mostly by pragmatic concerns. An analogy here might be Finland’s alliance with Nazi Germany, so as to fend off absorption into the Soviet Union.
Of course, the online Left has never been much for subtly. Do unto them, as they would do unto you. I hope Chakrabarti gets what he deserves, but I doubt he will. Blue-checks take care of their own kind…
Ooh! A post about AOC, Social Justice, India, Hitler, Subhas Bose …. I can’t wait for comments.
Droll!
If our Alpha Desi is so smart why does he work for AOC rather than the way round 🙂
Hitler was E1b1b (north African) haplogroup.
I don’t think Bose is that well known to really have any effect. He is hardly a factor in his home country. Add to the fact there is not much to add militarily ( contrasting with Che ) positive or negative way.
Western woke Folks might first google this unknown bose guy and might be a little underwhelmed by what a downer this supposed hitler-meeting-nazi-loving guy achieved and will pass on this issue to the next topic of the day
Well, achievement may be a weak contributor to a legendary hero status. Often, it is the unfullfilled achievement of hero that lands him great status. Arguably the most romantic hero of 20th century, Che Guevara, doesn’t have much achievements in his name.
Sorry for being somewhat off-topic, but this is a follow-up of sorts to Shafiq’s comment. There are claims that leftists inherited glorification of martyrdom from the Christian western cultural milieu (a slightly different perspective is that Taleb talks of Jesus’ crucification as a skin in the game marker, something similar might apply to Che). But how realistic is this theory? Shias glorify Hussain, but perhaps given that much of Ashura is mourning, is his glory/hero-hood independent of his martyrdom? Or the Hindu glorification of Rana Pratap?
There are claims that leftists inherited glorification of martyrdom from the Christian western cultural milieu
maybe contingent, but not necessary.
the spartans under leonidas were martyrs too, right?
spartans were not ethically greeks, right?
…ethnically…
I’m just looking forward to American hot-take columnists getting deluged with angry tweets from the Internet Bhakt Armies.
Which would be ironic because Bose used to beat up members of RSS in Kolkata.
That shows RSS is able to rise above immediate incidents and passion and take long term view.
“Which would be ironic because Bose used to beat up members of RSS in Kolkata.”
Interesting. Do you have any reference for this, or is it just hearsay?
Ah yes, that too, indeed.
AOC smell like unbridled ambition a la Kamala Harris or worse.
So far not enough political history to justify gut feeling. Time (two or years will tell).
Thats still not going to detract those who worship at the new colored peers.
re: Saikat Chakrabarti. I seem more and more Indians becoming the behind the scene manipulators, much like the Jewish manipulation of politics.
I don’t think Bose is that well known to really have any effect. He is hardly a factor in his home country.
WHAAA………AAAAT? I hope you are talking about people in the West, because in India he’s probably the best-known freedom fighter after Gandhi and Nehru.
When I was growing up, he was also our (i.e., kids’) favorite freedom fighter as we thought he actually had the balls to do something about freedom as opposed to Gandhi, who most of us thought of as a pussy and a walkover.
Needless to say, my views on Gandhi are much more nuanced and positive now, having read a lot about him that didn’t come through in the caricatures our school history books paint. Concomitantly, Bose has fallen in my esteem. I think he displayed very poor judgment in his selection of bedfellows during the war. Plus his vision for how India ought to be ruled after independence was authoritarian, even totalitarian (some flavor of fascism was what he thought India needed.)
Bose is a political orphan. There is a reason why you would find all his grand nephews and all in political parties OTHER than the party he founded. That’s what i meant as “hardly a factor” .
I used to be naive while growing up on Bose, similar to you. My issue with him is not whether he was totalitarian or his judgement or his meeting with Hitler and all. It has more to do with his capabilities ON which his myth is built on.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/aakarvani/is-our-revered-netaji-the-same-man-who-was-enamoured-by-hitler/
“But actually Bose knew little about how to manage an army and, as I have said, the INA could not fight without the Japanese. Dr Kasliwal’s descriptions of how this happened are almost comic, so poorly run was the INA. Netaji’s interest, going by this book, was mainly in inspecting parades, which were a serious and time-consuming ritual for Bose, himself neither trained nor particularly fit. And the other activity was making daily speeches, two hours long, on the radio, which exhausted him.
This play-acting of soldier-soldier was the primary aspect of Bose’s militarism. “
@Saurav
I think you are being uncharitable to Subhas Bose. Subhas’s achievement must be seen in the light of symbolism it represented. The fact he could forge an army, however rag-tag it might have been, and march in over India (they actually reached outskirts of Kohima), was a big deal because it had huge symbolic value. It set a precedent that Indians can form an army to challenge the British rule.
Subhas and his INA’s accomplishment in fact played a big role in Britain’s decision to fold up their empire in India expeditiously. They could no longer take it for granted that Indians won’t rise against them militarily.
The buzz on the American right about Bose’s dalliance with the WW2 Axis goes back at least as far as some videos by a Youtuber called “Mr Reagan” (who, ironically given his name, complained about AOC just being an “actor”). It’s kind of mindless – on the same level as “national socialists were socialists, therefore they were also leftists, checkmate Democrats”. It will be more enjoyable to see the ironic alt-right (e.g. @kantbot20k) construct alternative historiographies in which Bose and Chakrabarti are both considered part of a unified resistance to liberal globalism, a la Dugin. But that is an esoteric form of entertainment.
On a more down-to-earth plane, I used to wonder what political affiliation Chakrabarti’s T-shirt actually signalled. But this year I became aware that Bengali leftism is a distinct phenomenon, so now I just categorize it as Diaspora Bengali Leftism.
“I call Saikat Chakrabarti “AOC’s brain.””
She doesn’t have one between her ears.
/An analogy here might be Finland’s alliance with Nazi Germany, so as to fend off absorption into the Soviet Union/
Why Finland, Stalin himself aligned himself and USSR with Hitler, till Hitler broke the agreement. The US was neutral to Hitler till it was attacked.
The present attitude to SCB is Call a dog by any name and hang it.
RK: “Stripe is valued north of $20,000,000,000 right now, so his (Saikat Chakrabarti) paper wealth is likely putting him in the 0.1% or more.”
BP also has a certain commercial value if it is to be listed on the market. Every (original) contribution and increases (more in quality than quantity) of readership rise its value. Modestly, using Stripe’s valuation methodology, I believe that my comments increased the value north(west) of 6 figures. For the record and for the future Literature Reviewers (the timing of the future mainstream is important) let summarize in a nutshell only few points (out of few dozen) from the top shelf, which firstly appeared here at BP (the first 3 were extensively elaborated, the 4th much less, but it will be):
– Aryans were ancient Serbs
– Sanskrit was Aryans’ language
– The term ‘Indo-European’ should be replaced with ‘Serbian’
– The term ‘Caucasian’ should be replaced with ‘Serbian’ (considering that originated in Vincha and the first spoken language was Serbian)