Recently, I learned that a clown named “A Brown Bear” on Bilibili reposted my post about Cthulhu from the forum. In the video, he kept calling me a “net left” and looked at me with contempt. This person seems to be quite pleased with himself, thinking he has found some straw that can be used to criticize Marxism (just as he did before), and intends to use this to attack Marxism. But his calculations are probably wrong. He has never made any positive critique of the content of my article, yet he vainly believes he can claim a “spiritual victory” over the so-called “net left.” This only further exposes his own ignorance and reactionary stance. As for his slander, I originally did not intend to respond, because for a Marxist, personal grudges are insignificant compared to revolutionary interests, and wasting time engaging in verbal disputes with this person is meaningless. However, since he not only attacks me personally but also attacks the Marxist ideology upheld by the entire forum, and his influence is harmful, it is necessary to give a direct response. Moreover, after reviewing again, I found some details that need further supplementation and correction, which I will also include in this reply.
- The Color of the Stars and the Issue of Nuclear Radiation
In the article, I mistakenly referred to “nuclear radiation” as “nuclear leakage,” which was due to my lack of rigorous academic attitude, leading to an expression error. However, ignoring this point, the view itself is undoubtedly correct. Because Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space is closely related to the nuclear radiation accidents in American capitalist society at the time. The ignorant Brown Bear talks nonsense about the atomic bomb only appearing in 1945, but he is even unwilling to understand that humans had already discovered radioactive materials by the late 19th century, gaining a preliminary understanding of nuclear radiation, and gradually began to apply nuclear energy in capitalist industrial production. At that time, radioactive elements like radium had already been used in medical and industrial raw material production. The Colour Out of Space was based on the sensational “Radium Girl” incident in the United States, but it distorted this event. Lovecraft’s work avoids mentioning the capitalist greed that disregarded human life behind the incident and the brutal exploitation of workers, instead maliciously portraying radiation sickness as an inexplicable, uncontrollable, incurable phenomenon caused by “extraterrestrial visitors.” This is not to exonerate greedy capitalists; what else is it if not covering up the reactionary nature of capitalism? And what does all this have to do with the atomic bomb of 1945? Humanity’s understanding of radioactive materials and nuclear energy predates the 1945 atomic bomb by half a century. Lovecraft, as a bourgeois writer of that era, merely drew inspiration from the nuclear radiation accidents of his time to create his reactionary novels. To deny the connection between his works and the social reality of that period with such a poor excuse is simply laughable.
- Roosevelt’s New Deal and Beyond Time’s Shadow
Although the Brown Bear did not give a direct evaluation, many leftist circles often boast that Lovecraft in his later years supported “socialism,” calling black white, and equating capitalism with socialism, claiming that Roosevelt’s policies, which protected American monopoly capital interests through state monopoly capitalism, were “socialist,” and thus criticizing my critique of Beyond Time’s Shadow. It’s unclear how ignorant these leftist figures are, but they go so far as to accept the pro-Roosevelt propaganda in the textbooks, and follow the so-called experts and professors to praise Roosevelt’s New Deal as “socialist,” and even label Lovecraft as a “socialist.” According to this logic, then the current bureaucratic monopoly capitalism, which heavily relies on state power to organize social production, can also be called “socialist,” and China can be called a “socialist country,” because the content of Roosevelt’s New Deal is essentially the same as the policies of the bureaucratic monopoly bourgeoisie in China, both based on Keynesian vulgar economics that advocate for state monopoly capitalism. This clearly only proves one thing: all leftist supporters of bourgeois art, for the sake of their class interests—allowing them to indulge in the low tastes of capitalism—support the existing capitalist system, which ultimately inevitably degenerates into being the running dog of the bourgeoisie.
