Sam Kriss, for those who don’t know, is (perhaps, was at this point) a contributing writer for Jacobin Magazine’s online presence. Jacobin Magazine is a socialist magazine covering a variety of global and American affairs from the socialist perspective. The thing is, Sam Kriss is the kind of intellectual that a lot of people both in and outside of academia make fun of. The first article I read of his, Smash the Force, was a typical leftist piece trying to expose the real meaning of Star Wars. The criticisms were harsh, to the point of being absurd, but it was making the rounds among my friends and so I mistakenly took it seriously. I should make a disclaimer that criticisms of pop culture are not wholly bad, but Sam Kriss is like a dementor, sucking the joy out of pop culture. It’s not even the criticisms themselves that are always bad, but the fact that his heavy-handed leftist intellectual approach combined with a deadpan seriousness and self-righteousness that should make critical readers scoff and feel even a little embarrassed for Kriss.
For a while I had a crisis, since I love Star Wars and my own Small Religion borrows a lot of the same concepts as Star Wars. Was I really rooting for right-wing junta death squads by cheering on the Rebel Alliance? It wasn’t until I saw Kriss’s article on Pokemon GO that I realized just how ridiculous his writing was. I felt a bit silly for being duped earlier in the year by his article on Star Wars. But it did beg a question, if Kriss is so awful, why does the Jacobin let him write for them? Surely they can see how absurd his ideas are and don’t want to be confused as being that kind of socialist. I started adding comments on Jacobin’s Facebook page about it. Most of it was good-natured jokes like, “Has anyone checked on Sam Kriss? I’m worried he’s sitting in the [movie] theater crying because he can’t enjoy pop culture.” I also shared some more serious thoughts about how his articles come across. Apparently other readers regard him as satire, but the Jacobin doesn’t list him as a satire writer or even make a disclaimer of any kind about their opinion of his writing. I thought this was a bit irresponsible of the Jacobin considering the high(er) caliber of writing usually populating their online magazine. It would be as though someone from the Onion (a satirical, often absurd news outlet) wrote the same kind satirical articles for the New York Times and the editors did nothing to indicate it was satire. How should readers respond?
One morning I woke up and discovered I wasn’t seeing Jacobin posts on my Facebook feed. I was a bit puzzled. Had I accidentally unliked or unfollowed them? I typed Jacobin in the search bar and found them easily enough. When I looked at their Facebook page it was different. There were no buttons for liking or following. It took me a long moment to realize what happened. I had been banned. Not only could I no longer offer criticisms and jokes about Sam Kriss, but rather I was now unable to get updates from their Facebook page which meant essentially that if I wanted to read it that I’d have to go to their page and check to see if they had published a new article. This may seem like a minor thing, but I would compare it to missing a section of a newspaper. Imagine if you were sent your local newspaper to your doorstep and it was always missing one section, perhaps even your favorite section. That’s what this was like for me. Being banned, I suddenly had to rethink whether the Jacobin was really all they were cracked up to be. They couldn’t take criticism and jokes about one of their authors? Did I hurt Kriss’s feelings? Did I hurt his editor’s feelings by pointing out how completely bollocks Kriss’s writing is? I’d like to think I don’t have that much power. I’m not a socialist scholar nor do I have the long list of published articles that Kriss does. Surely they can indulge a disgruntled reader a bit of griping, can’t they? I guess not. I guess the Jacobin is just as reactionary and suppressionist as their namesake. No dissent. No joking. No criticism. I guess I should grateful they don’t kill people who speak badly of their magazine (something the historical Jacobins did even after they had seized power).
I suppose that if people took what I wrote seriously they might think twice about being a paying subscriber. People might read my criticism and ask, “Why am I paying to read a self-important academic write ridiculous diatribes against pop culture?” That may be closer to reality. They most likely don’t have an intellectual disagreement with me, but they can’t have someone making them look bad and possibly risk losing subscribers. It’s a pragmatic, albeit troublesome position to take. If they have this harsh of a response to dissent, is their ideology really that strong? Are they committed to protecting their contributors to such an extent that they can’t say, “Sam Kriss has written many well-respected pieces for The Atlantic and while we don’t always agree with Kriss’s analysis of pop culture, we support a diversity of thought.” They aren’t going to do that. Instead, anyone who threatens their precious money sources (i.e. subscription base) is considered too dangerous to let have a laugh or to say anything calling into question the validity of one of their writers and thereby challenging the integrity of their magazine.
Who am I kidding? It’s always about money. Socialist, communist, capitalist, fascist; money is the one thing that will corrupt them all and reduce their ideals to rubble. Living in a capitalist society means money will always be factor, but I question whether the Jacobin was really all that great if they feel so threatened by little old me.
The Sapling and the Soul 