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Tara Is Back… Get Used To It
March 27th, 2006Update: For my New Orleans readers, this makes no sense. Here is some context. I’m writing about a woman who markets computer software in San Francisco, who has been harping about something she calls the Pinko Marketing Manifesto. She uses Communist imagry and rhetoric to draw attention to her marketing efforts. When someone tries to explain that Communism really was bad, she says that they are ignorant and attributes their ignorance to American education. It would not be worth mentioning, except that she’s getting a lot of support from people in software industry.
A few friends have heard me tell the story of Tara Hunt’s Marx Is Back post.
This article stunned me.
The post is highlighted with an image of Castro, Stalin, and Mao at a party, along with Lenin and Marx. They are having a party. The text of the post has some rambling about Marxism and a quote from the Communist Manifesto.
Keven Marks in the comments of Marx is back…get used to it questions the decency.
Tara, citing the Communist Manifesto’s rhetoric is one thing, using several of the biggest mass murderers in the history of humanity as graphical elements is quite another.
I wonder why you left Hitler out of the graphic?
Tara then explains that.
A. I didn’t create the graphic, it’s from a very popular Threadless shirt. (which is beside the point)
And then with one of the most stunning own goals I’ve seen in a long time she follows up with.
B. Because Hitler wasn’t a socialist.
This, combined with the rambling lead in where she patronizes her overly sensitive American readers, offended me to no end. She explained that Canadians are more open minded and better educated, thus they are not threatened by Socialism.
History is interpreted through heavily influenced lenses, Kevin. Many countries believe that the US has been run by murderers as well. I don’t think there is a single leader in history that doesn’t have blood on their hands.
For Tara Hunt, Jimmy Carter and Joseph Stalin are six of one, a half dozen the other.
20 million. Start with the Holomodor.
Party Girl
Tara Hunt has every reason to be dismissive. These symbols she’s employing are evocative. They are building her brand.
She has no idea why they are so evocative. They are evocative do to a century of state sponsored murder and torture.
Her dismissal of the complaints of her readers is entirely self-serving.
Why Pinko? She asks herself. Say what she will. I say link bait.
False Diversity
To me it seemed that the marketing bloggers had echoed themselves into the realm of the untouchable. Evelyn Rodriguez linked and chimed in to support Tara in her Marx Is Back post. Doc Searls raved about this new manifesto. I stopped reading blogs for a while.
Do I really want to associate myself with these people?
For all her condemnations of oversenstive Americans, I’d be afraid to offend people that I communicate with in Eastern Europe or on the Pacific Rim.
Heaven help me in any attempt to work with the Vietnamese community in New Orleans, where they to find me on my blog, waving a hammer and sickle.
Communist rhetoric as salon chatter, symbols of the Stalinist state as eye candy, choosing heros among the great murderers of humanity as if they were nothing more than the bad boys of pro-Wrestling; these are exemplary of the sort of narcissism that Tara assigns to her American readers.
Is this a product of false diversity?
For too long, the blogosphere has been dominated by male, college educated, wealthy, white, San Franciscan, Californian, technical industry voices. Now that we have the opportunity to hear from a female, college educated, wealthy, white, San Franciscan, Californian, technical industry voice, we show deferrence to account for our past discrimination.
Rising to defend the appropriate of Soviet propaganda for the creation of a “Global Microbrand.”
The web marketing worldview is more insular than ever.
Fahrfergnugen
Again, I say link bait.
No Google Juice for Tara.
Alas, after a through fisking, now she’s recanted. She has responded to her market. (Ugh!)
Great. Let her off the hook.
Tara is back. I’ll get used to it.
But, did she get it? What about the rest of the bandwagon?
Her apology is timed with her employer’s product launch. What has worked is no longer working. It is obvious that she’s ridden Mao’s coattails as far as they will take her.
In the comments of Tara’s mia culpa, Mark Coller says
It’s the whole mental gatekeepers thing. You say ‘pinko’ or ‘commie’ marketing, and you activate the ‘I don’t like those things, so I’m not going to like what you say next’ mental gate.
True. Decimating a population tends to slam a gate shut for generations.
In high-school I drove a Fahrfergnugen era Volkwagen. I liked my Volkswagen. I’d had it not more than a week when I had a parking lot conversation that, with variations, I would find myself in repeatedly.
“The CRX is quick, but it still feels like a Honda. Hondas are driving appliances. Volkswagens were designed for the Autobahn.”
“Yeah, I wanted a Volkswagen, too, but my dad would never let any of us own one.”
“Why not?”
“He says it’s Hitler’s car. Hitler’s promise the the German people.”
“That was the Beetle.”
“He doesn’t care.”
That is the power of branding.
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Comments 
Alan…I agree. I was being myopic and naive. I wasn’t even thinking of history (and that many very evil people used socialism as a very evil tool against human beings). Not at all what I meant.
And I did get a different history lesson than my American friends. That is true. Which is right? Who knows. Maybe neither.
Just so you know, though, I didn’t rescind my stance because of Riya’s launch. That had nothing to do with it. In fact, I don’t think anyone at my work even noticed. My opinions are entirely my own (and good thing, because I put my foot in my mouth).
Anyway…ignorance is my crime, not malice. Hell, I’ve been writing about this stuff for years…and it wasn’t until I put a comparison to it that I caused such a ruckus. The comparison was stupid. I’ve changed the wiki a great deal now…but my blog posts stay intact to be transparent about my mistake.
I hope this helps.
Tara
Hi Alan, I’m not sure that you understood the context of this discussion. It started with a cybersalon that was set off by cultural critic Andrew Keen remarks such as these recorded by Scott Rosenberg, “To Keen, that sort of talk is part of a “cult of creative self-realization.” “The purpose of our media and culture industries,” he writes, “is to discover, nurture, and reward elite talent”; blogging opens the door to too many mediocre voices…”
In other words, YOU should not be writing this blog and expressing this opinion, that’s the purview of professionals only. Anytime someone tries something alternative and distributes power or the press in the last 30 plus years it’s labelled “hippie Communist” by the status quo.
About a year or so ago I floated an idea to a small group of business folks - I only knew one, but it was supposed to be a supportive group for entrepreneurs to get feedback. I said I was thinking of a collective structure because I didn’t want the wealth concentrated with a few owners, and I didn’t want to do the VC route, but grow it “organically.” One guy blurted out, “That sounds hippie Communist!”
“”What is the value in sharing experiences?” Keen asked at one point, with a touch of disdain in his voice.”
Yes, what value could that possibly have. Only Times-Picayune or CNN ought to report, they’re the pros. I’m probably just pissed because every media outlet I approach slams the door in my face - I guess they are saying of what good is your personal experience, your own witnessing. We have professionals that would do a much better job sweetie; go back to your little personal diary. Ultimately, it seems that will be the only alternative. When no one will publish you, you have to DIY even if the reach is much smaller that way.
In his own writing, Keen compares social media and blogging to Marxist thought: “Web 2.0 is Reminiscent of Marxist Thought.” I agree that Web 2.0 euphoria is nauseating sometimes and lately a lot of it is founded on greed and not the hacker ethic of sharing, but the foundation is allowing anyone to be a producer, not only a consumer. Whenever you spread the means of production to people and outside the hands of a few elite barons, you get that Marxist thing thrown in your face. Or I’ve heard “unpatriotic” wielded too at me.
“Traditional “elitist” media is being destroyed by digital technologies. [Boo hoo, that's called CAPITALISM.] Newspapers are in freefall. Network television, the modern equivalent of the dinosaur, is being shaken by TiVo’s overnight annihilation of the 30-second commercial. The iPod is undermining the multibillion dollar music industry…”
“Is this a bad thing? The purpose of our media and culture industries — beyond the obvious need to make money and entertain people — is to discover, nurture, and reward elite talent…”
[Keen really means ELITE; both of us are just monkeys typing drivel if you read his latest post.]
Bono would never have become Bono without the music industry’s super-heavyweight marketing muscle. And W.G. Sebald, the most obscure of this trinity of talent, would have remained an unknown university professor had a high-end publishing house not had the good taste to discover and distribute his work. Elite artists and an elite media industry are symbiotic. If you democratize media, then you end up democratizing talent…
[Ends with then...]All we have is the great seduction of citizen media, democratized content and authentic online communities.”
I’ve never seen this as a dichotomy, even we have only big record labels OR only artists podcasting their songs. Why not: AND?
Of course, Marx’ manifesto was twisted around and used by dictators to do horrendous things. My own family fled Cuba as political refugees. But if you’ve never been called a Marxist before simply because you believe that everyone should have equal rights to production, to ownership, to voice, then maybe it doesn’t make as much sense what Tara or I wrote. It’s not about being PC, but reclaiming the names people call you. If someone calls you & your gender “cunts” as a way to keep you in your place, then maybe you reclaim it, write a play and call it “The Vagina Monologues.” Someone calls you Pinko, you go yeah, okay, fine, Pinko marketing, then. Whether she had ulterior brand-building motives, I do not know, but that’s why I would have claimed it.
Neither of us did a good job setting the context though. And obviously Marx’s Manifesto is one thing, communism in practice is another. I don’t agree with Tara’s comments that communism itself isn’t all bad; even though Cubans in Cuba even say that sometimes. And I’ve met plenty of Canadians, and other nationalities, whom have studied in Havana universities.
Of course the irony of the situation is of course what Keen is whining about is ACTUALLY called capitalism. Creative destruction, et all. The established players never are fond when they’re the ones now being disrupted.
I have no illusions that technology will save the world, and I agree with some of what Keen writes, but Keen’s remarks that only a special elite few have the talent, skill, and intellect to create culture and contribute to it - well, I’m not just going to let that slide by.
Well written article.
There are basic flaws in the ideas and philosophy of communism if reality time and time again demonstrates the results as destructive and opposing to it’s stated ideals. Hitler was a socialist — a combination of Fascism and Socialism — Nazism is National Socialism. Stalin, Pol Pot, Ceauşescu, Castro, et. al. demonstrated the destructiveness of communism. These attempts to implement pure communism have oppressed and killed. Milder forms of socialism are mainly ineffectual. This is not just “right wing” thinking, but John Lenon’s song “Working Class Hero” sang of the empty life of living for “the people” in communism. Joan Baez criticized oppression in communist Vietnam.
However some people continue to bring back and hold up the ideas of communism as worthy of implementation. Disregarding the evidence of history, and giving it another go.
One more comment before I go out in the beautiful sunshine to see what’s coming up in my community garden.
Enric: I agree with your assessment of the failure of communism, but wonder why you say that “milder forms of socialism are mainly ineffectual?”
Ask my Swedish friend about that, or a Canadian. The economies of those countries are undoubtedly capitalist, but their governments have adopted much of the social safety net and progressive taxation, etc. that are hallmarks of socialism.
I live in what is often referred to as the most “socialist” state in the US–Minnesota. I receive state run health care that is the best I’ve had as an adult (but only because I’m a starving artist that falls below the rather ridiculous income limits after all my self-employment deductions. And our Republican governor keeps trying to kick us single, childless folks off MNCare every year). I receive a rebate on the property tax I pay every year, as do thousands of low-income renters and homeowners. And there are many other social programs to help low-income Minnesotans. It’s part of wht makes living here pleasant. And I think it helps keep our crime level fairly low for such a large metropolis, national media attention on the Uptown and downtown murders of last moth notwithstanding.
My dad, who lives in another high tax state, Maryland, and is an elderly Goldwater Republican, even admires how Minnesota manages to put its tax money to pretty good use to take care of its citizens. Even in my inner city Minneapolis neighborhood we have good public libraries, beautiful clean parks, fairly well maintained streets and decent public schools, among other amenities.
In a way my own experience here in MN may not be of socialism so much as of progressivism, and it’s been a good one.
Now if we can just do something about those accursed winters up here. Oh yeah, there’s global warming…
I haven’t studied the relationship of increased social programs to competition and innovation. So I’m not prepared to make an argument either way. I knew as I was writing that I’m assuming in declareing the ineffectualism of socialism in a mixed capitalist economy. Though I do think that socialism can reach a point in a national economic/political arena where that countries standard of living, competitiveness and creativity diminishes in relation to more competive nations.
Tara
Have you seen C.S.A. yet? It is a fake documentary about an America where the South won the Civil War and slavery was perserved until the modern day.
Heavy handed, it is at times hard to watch. There are moments of humor. It allows one to realize that the charactures of slavery were only recently abandoned in our culture, around the time of the civil rights movement.
Until then, those symbols were used in advertising to invoke an image of friendly servitude.
Eventually, those advertisers came to the realization that they built their brand on a long, disgraceful history of chattel slavery.
Enric
This message was prompted by the moral equivalence. I didn’t think to get into the argument about communism as an economic policy.
There are plenty of well run state social programs in America. Discussing the safety net and the role of government in society is well within the bounds of American discourse. Jenny notes Minnesota as a state with effective social programs. New Orleans has a lot of struggling social programs, but they are very much a part of the society.
Nothing shocking.
I return to the fact that images that Tara has used to build her personal Global Microbrand are soaked in blood. When she chides Americans for their flustered reponse to a party boy Stalin, she’s displaying her insensitivies, not ours.
My education system, the Berkely (Michigan) Public Schools, make a point of teaching me about the horrors of slavery and the Holocaust.
They didn’t expose Stalin. They did not teach me to fear communism. When I attended school, our confrontation with the Soviet Union seemed intractable. The nuclear threat was an abstraction that had little to do with ideology.
We did learn to question our government by continuing to question our role in the Vietnam War. The general consensus in this Detroit suburb, where many people had lost a friend in the War, was that it was a mistake.
I put it all together myself when I learned about the Killing Fields, the Gulag Archepelego, and read such high-school favorites as Milan Kundera.
On occasion, in a working city like Detroit, I’d meet people who’d fled Eastern Europe. They fled for a reason.
When you are taught the way in which cruelty can scale, the way that governments will organize to eslave or eleminate peoples, you become attune to it, and you don’t take it lightly.
It’s not about a philosophy of the organization of labor. It could be, but not when you are using Soviet art and imagery to build your brand, and when you go so far as to use the likenesses of Stalin, Mao, and Castro.
Stepping back from Godwin’s Law, why not include Erich Honecker or Erich Mielke from the GDR? Or as Enric suggests, Nicolae Ceauşescu?
Can’t you just see Gustáv Husák with a lampshade on his head? No? Too boring a Slovak? Not enough blood?
Romanticizing communist propaganda when we’ve conviently forgotten the tens of millions of vicitims of communism, is no different than romanticising the kindly, impoverished sharecropper, even when we’ve conviently forgotten that his subservient demeanor was inforced by nothing less than terrorism.
I’m saying that the phrase “Pinko Marketing” and evoking Soviet imagery is no better that “Sambo Axle Grease” and invoking the imagery of Jim Crow.
Use all the club soda you want on that blood, it’s like Uncle Ben’s rice to me now.
Evelyn
Don’t let some hack get you down. To paraphrase Gawker If Moreen Dowd can have opinions, anyone can have opinions.
We are watching the collapse of the audience. We are seeing a rebirth of the salon.
I don’t much care what that dude has to say, because I’ll never see him at Rose Nicaud in the morning. He’ll never write me check or buy me a beer. I can’t be bothered to scroll up and read his name. He’s too 133t for me.
This medium is hyper local. It will coalesce around regions and interests. It will spawn more political organizations, some international.
Enough of that pap.
Getting published takes packaging and persistance. Get the help of your journalist friends. Seek the help of anyone who has ever praised your writing. Ask them how it’s done.
I am learning quickly that people respond well to the printed page. A web page is a web page, it seems too easy. Try and put your stuff together as a word processed document. Then print it. Then post it. My humble suggestion.
Jenny, how does someone get published?
I do hope that you don’t feel that your research is so timely that you can’t continue to build on that work.
Let me know if there is anything at all that I can do to help you regarding the Tsunami.
Alan:
I came from Eastern Europe, Romania, in 1963 at the age of seven. I was too young to recall much or put anything together from living there. Living in California during the 1960’s and 70’s, I had a generalized view that liberalism, progressiveness and communism were pretty much the same thing — to benefit “the people.” I didn’t put together the effects of communism on my birth country until the son of a professor my father had in Romania came to stay with us in 1975. He was getting his PhD. in Mathematics and got a visa only because his area of Mathematics was not taught in Romania.
One day I naively said how it must have been good in a progressive country like Romania. He looked at me askance and told me about the inefficiencies, corruptions and destructiveness of communism in Romania. That people were starving for the good of “the people”. My mother had told me that her Father had been imprisoned for some time for being a Capitalist. And the villa he owned in Predeal was confiscated, given to several poor families in the area and is now in ruin.
It’s not pleasant for me to disagree with Tara. I consider her a friend and she has been very warm and friendly to me in conversations. But, this is an error I find too significant to dismiss.
I do think the philosophy of communism leads to its results. I did a short critique of some of the Communist Manifesto at http://www.thefutureoftheweb.com/blog/2006/4/distributism#comment2