[knuththetruth]

It’s not really. Holiday has always been a “finger to the wind” public intellectual. Stoicism isn’t really a marketable ideology in a time of social and political upheaval, so he’s staking out a more “activist” position to sell himself.

This time, I guess it’s that conspiracies to destroy your opponents might actually be a good thing because they represent action over inaction (he more or less says as much about two thirds of the way through the interview). That seems a weird quasi-fascistic stance (Marinetti and other proto-fascists argued in favor of the same bias towards any action, regardless of its morality), but not one that’s out of fashion in our era.

[dingbat]

Holiday as a "public intellectual"? he's always struck me as a marketer, retweeter of self-help quotes, and curator of other people's ideas, at best. something about him tells me there's nothing there.

[knuththetruth]

>he's always struck me as a marketer, retweeter of self-help quotes, and curator of other people's ideas, at best. something about him tells me there's nothing there.

Yeah, sorry. In America, to me, public intellectuals are synonymous with all of that. I guess that’s less true elsewhere in the world. But it’s probably too generous to even given him that label and plays into how he’s trying to market himself.