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Cake day: August 18th, 2023

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  • Your uncle is correct in that work isn’t given to inmates for their benefit or edification. It’s to line the pockets of those in charge. If the state wanted prisoners to more easily ‘re-integrate’ into society, they would let them form unions and pay them a decent wage for their labor. Instead, they’ll either abuse their authority to get the inmates to work for peanuts and pocket the difference, or they’ll pass the work to one of their cronies.

    One of the roles of prison labor is to undermine organized labor outside of the prison. Prisoners are often employed outside of the prison in addition to doing work to maintain the prison. By forcing them to compete for jobs with slaves, it undermines non-incarcerated laborers’ bargaining power and pressures them to accept conditions closer to incarceration.

    I don’t blame your uncle for his position; life in prison is extremely tedious, and the quality of what you’re given makes commissary essential. People outside need to organize with people inside to create a situation that benefits both.








  • From Folding Ideas’ “Triumph of the Will and the Cinematic Language of Propaganda”:

    ‘Triumph of the Will’ is not a triumph of film-making. I just want to lay that out before we even start. Chances are good that you’re familiar with ‘Triumph of the Will’ by reputation but have never actually watched it beyond referential clips, and a sizable portion of that reputation is in its value as an advancement of the art of filmmaking. This is propaganda.

    Like, that belief is in and of itself propaganda.

    Nazi sympathizers spent a lot of time between the film’s release in 1935 and the war promoting the idea of ‘Triumph of the Will’ as an advancement of filmmaking. It was an intentional message to promote Nazi state art as superior, to suggest that the Nazi mechanism can produce better more proficient art than the artist the Nazis were busy throwing in jail.

    It is however not a triumph of filmmaking; it is a triumph of budget. None of the ideas or techniques were new it is simply that no one had previously thrown enough money and resources at propaganda on this scale before. We’ll come back to this and develop it in more detail, but I want to be upfront with the fact that you should be highly suspicious of any messaging surrounding propaganda.