Aimee Terese is an Australian political pundit who has been vocal on social media, such as twitter and in podcasting.[1] Aimee Terese and Oliver Bateman discuss topics from a skeptical perspective on their podcast What's Left? As of June 21, 2021 it has a total of 108 episodes. She is active on twitter under the username @aimeeterese. Her account was created in March, 2009.
Some internet user's description
She’s a cutthroat Marxist who often criticizes self-proclaimed “socialists” for their unexamined liberal tendencies. I suspect the reaction against her to a large extent illustrates how reactionary and/or alienating materialism taken to its logical conclusion can appear in a liberal cultural sphere. Unfortunately Aimee’s caught in the poster’s dilemma that Michael Tracey is in, where their hypercritical perspective, often confrontational posture, and a few past social faux pas have essentially relegated them to the status of lepers in the eyes of their opponents. Instead of engaging with the real substance of their critiques, they can just brush off Aimee or MT by belittling their intelligence, implying their pretentiousness (i.e. any reference to a thesaurus) or smearing then as reactionaries (e.g. Nazbols, Strasserites, crypto-fash, etc).
A basic example of Aimee’s divergence from other online leftists would be her opinion on “identity politics.” Many leftists seem to consider identity politics as any political critique which concerns a non-class formation such as gender and race. There can be bad applications of identity politics (for example, judging Kamala Harris as a better candidate than Bernie Sanders due to the historic significance of a black woman becoming president) so it must be carefully modulated, but necessarily must also exist in a socialist perspective for fear of a class-first approach failing to serve the interests of historically marginalized communities. I have seen examples of online leftists who publicly identify as socialists retrospectively label the civil rights movement as an example of identity politics done well in spite of identity politics only being explicitly theorized (I believe) in the 1970s.
On the other hand, Aimee and her ilk acknowledge the existence of racism, sexism, and bigotry of other kinds and the need to combat that through their politics. However, she understands these forms of discrimination to stem from material relations of inequality (think the formulation of black and white races being formulated in the 19th century as a justification for slavery). As she understands societal relations to be grounded historically in materialist relations, she believes the best way to address racial and sexual inequities is through a universalist, economic movement. Identity politics is not a necessary component of a socialist worldview, but rather an inherently liberal and incompatible element which can be wielded by the ruling class to undermine worker solidarity.
I can understand being personally annoyed by her but as a neophyte to leftism I do find her Twitter feed and podcast very educational and illustrative of what a rigorous Marxist approach can be like. It’s a nice counterpoint to Red Scare’s lazier approach to redpilling listeners through aesthetic appeal and general skepticism. And it’s telling that both often rile up some of the most annoying people who inhabit or orbit the leftist twittersphere.
]calderadog 23 points [2]
aimee terese is one of my favorite people on here, not for the content of her ideas (which I don't really follow) but for her aggression, volume, relentlessness, and for the story/brand of being this tiny australian woman who runs rampage on american hipster socialism circles
-- "@jrmphy" 14. June, 2020.[3]
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- 21st Century marxism; Post-marxism
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AQ-204= Aimee Terese; Ender dragon; Thundercat; Tea for two; Modernity;[]
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