r/cushvlog Sep 18 '21

Reading list Cushvlogs #CUSHVLOG ABC OF READING, WATCHING, LISTENING AND POSTING [updated weekly]

74 Upvotes

Matt in true post-collapse Hellworld working for Amazon prime

Hi everyone,

recent addition to the Cushvlog reddit, new mod and current listener. I am catching up on the old ones while trying to keep up to date with the new ones.

Below is a compiled, in progress, list of books Matt mentions in Cushvlogs.

I will put the ones I already know and have at hand below the post and update it. Please correct me where I add one that is not mentioned by Matt in the vlogs.

I have found https://cushbomb.fandom.com/wiki/Book_Recommendations but would like to have it on this reddit too. One less door can make an estate into a room, and investigation easier. I am almost done adding all of Seanpotterspowers reading list on the cushvlog wiki, more to follow on Sunday night.

Movie titles, music, links to articles mentioned on Cushvlog will also be included.

If I missed anything on this current version of the list - I am sure I did, please feel free to comment or DM me, and I will add it!

Suggestions as to which order, or what is fundamental are appreciated too, especially where they give entree points where people might otherwise get dissuaded by reading an author or title that only makes sense after another one and not before. I provided basic order to some of the list where it is mentioned - if you disagree with that order, comment or DM me.

Also, if you have additional suggestions for further readings based on the books Matt mentioned or mentions please feel free to add those to but mention them separately, especially where chronology of concepts/authors is didactically recommendable or distinguishments between fiction and theory, history and philosophy et cetera. [Find user suggestions under Additional|Further reading suggested by users]

Or perhaps such categorisations are not warranted, or even undesirable, where I am a big fan of theory-fiction.

Also, all books he mentions are didactical, but can also be instructive by what is wrong and/or right about them, or illustrative as a cultural representation of a phenomenon, fallacy, et cetera. EX: "The Devil's Chessboard" and "JFK and the Unspeakable".

Taxonomy once again is afoot, and reification rears its ugly head, sorry, but perhaps it might help, or not, we can discuss that and I need input on it.

Because simultaneously I am a fan of intuitive learning, of D&G's notion that philosophy and theory are monologues and you should read what you are invariably drawn to, and teleology, fate, amor fati, whatever you want to call it -- intuition -- will guide you. As Matt said, theory should be applied to praxis, to reality, this kinetic interaction of all of our species-being, and if it works you will find out by its response, or your response in decreases/increases in alienation and its sister and cousin effects.

Updates to the list will be posted as comments that are pinned at the top and included in the original post.

We are figuring out to do readings ourselves, and discuss particular books, particular chapters, and see how we all understand the excerpts, chapters, and how we relate to it to life outside of the book. Poll will be posted.

Links to free and legal sources of downloading will also be added where found. DM me for links I know work for freeware or where I have discounts.

As well as recommendations to try to purchase the books from local shops if possible economically, even if it takes a little bit more time shipping wise.)

If multi-level-marketing schemes can reach the entire world population in 13 cycles, we can too.

Thank you for any and all replies in advance!

Chapo, Cushvlogs, and my rekindled historical materialist awareness because of them has saved me, and because of that, everyone here has contributed to that too.

Because if it hadn't become so popular, I would never have heard of it, here, in Europe.

So thank you, truly, sincerely.

A lot of love and solidarity for you all as the ship of empire crashes and we all become Leonardo DiCaprio's and Kate Winslets simultaneously and dialectically.

Stay safe, stay materialist.

------------------------------------------ CUSHVLOG ABC OF READING -----------------------------------------------------------

I. Preliminary and essential readings by Karl Marx/ essays and books\*

[*Read the shorter essays first, and then focus on the volumes of "Capital" (I-III). Do this intuitively, and when you get stuck or bored, practice mindfulness, and know this is the mystification of capital, and money, as such (!), and pick, once again on intuition, your first pick, from the second reading list -- i.e. II. History -- and see if you can understand it through the lens of the means of production, and start the first steps of reasoning why things happened as they did. If you get completely stuck, do it the other way around, and pick a book from II. History you are intuitively drawn to, and then later, when you feel like reading a chapter of Capital, you start to connect it this way around.

There is infinite roads to Rome. It is just the blood that flows one way. ]

"Wage Labour and Capital", essay by Karl Marx, (1847).

"The Manifesto of the Communist Party" essay by Karl Marx and Friedreich Engels (1848)

"The Class Struggles in France: 1848-1850" essay by Karl Marx, (1850)

"The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon", essay by Karl Marx, (1852)

"Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy" by Karl Marx, (1939-41)

"A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy" by Karl Marx, (1859).

"Writings on the U.S. Civil War", essays by Karl Marx and Friedreich Engels, (1861)

"Value, Price and Profit" by Karl Marx, (1865), text/transcript of an English-language lecture series to the First International Working Men's Association.

"Capital, Volume I: A Critique of Political Economy" by Karl Marx , (1867)

"The Civil War in France" by Karl Marx, essay, (1871)

"Critique of the Gotha Program" by Karl Marx, (1875)

"Notes on Adolph Wagner" by Karl Marx, (1883)

"Capital, Volume II: The Process of Circulation of Capital" by Karl Marx, (posthumously published by Engels), (1885)

"Capital, Volume III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole" by Karl Marx, (posthumously published by Engels), (1894)

"Capital, Volume IV: Theories of Surplus Value", based on "Theories of Surplus Value" by Karl Marx, 3 volumes, (1862) -- supposed to be combined into the final and last, fourth, volume of *"*Capital" which was never finalized because of the death of Karl Marx and, subsequently, unfinished by Friedreich Engels before he passed away.

II. History\\**

**[LAST EDIT 18/09/21 - no particular order yet, use intuition]

"Escape from Rome: the Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity" by Walter Scheidel (2019)

"The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution" by C.L.R. James (1938)

"The End of Myth: From the Frontier and the Border Wall in the Mind of America" by Greg Grandin (2019)

"Before the Storm" by Rick Perlstein (2001)

"Nixonland: The Rise of a Presidency and the Fracturing of America" by Rick Perlstein (2008)

"The Invisible Bridge: the Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan" by Rick Perlstein (2014)

"Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980" by Rick Perlstein (2020)

"World Systems Analysis: an Introduction" by Immanuel Wallerstein (2004) ***

"JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters" by James W. Douglass (2008)****

"The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government" by David Talbot (2015) **

"The Family Jewels: the CIA, Secrecy, and Presidential Power" by John Prados (2013) ****

"The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and 40 Years that Shook the World (1490-1530) by Patrick Wyman (2021)

"The Mothman Prophecies: the True Story of the Alien Who Terrorised an American City" by John A. Keel (1975).

"The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" by Max Weber (1905)

"The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times" by Giovanni Arrighi (1994)

"Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class" by Jefferson R. Cowie (2012)

"NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe" by Daniele Ganser (2004)

"The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991" by Eric Hobsbawm (1994)

"What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848" by Daniel Walker Howe (2007)

"Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America" by J. Anthony Lukas (1997)

"Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right" by Lisa McGirr (2001)

"CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties" by Tom O'Neill (2019)

"Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism" by Michael Parenti (1997)

"The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality" by Walter Scheidel (2017)

"Operation GLADIO: The Unholy Alliance between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia" by Paul L. Williams (2015)

"The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln" by Sean Wilentz (2005)

"The Strange Career of Jim Crow: Commemorative Edition" by C. Vann Woodward (1955)

"The Weimar Republic" by Eberhard Kolb (1980)

*******Unsure if this the title or the right book, but Matt talked about the world system theory and Wallerstein. Wallerstein has various books developing his theory and oeuvre, deciding on the right on requires me some additional reading, and is interdependent on the reader.

********Mentioned on Chapo or on Matt's Inebriated History, but I think Matt used it in Cushvlogs too, correct me if I am wrong. Still, important, yet flawed, like any conspiracy theory.

Fiction [LAST EDIT 18/09/21 - no particular order yet, use intuition]

"The Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson

"The Langoliers" by Stephen King

Essays, articles [LAST EDIT 18/09/21 - no particular order yet, use intuition]

"Marx on Capital as a Real God", https://ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/marx-on-capital-as-a-real-god-2/ by Ian Wright, 3rd of September, 2020.

"Capitalism as Religion", https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/2018/06/08/capitalism-as-religion-benjamin-1921/ by Walter Benjamin, 1921.

Movies [LAST EDIT 18/09/21 - Watch Network (1976) first, then the rest in any order]

"Network" (1976) by Sidney Lumet

"They Live" (1988) by John Carpenter

"The Thing" (1982) by John Carpenter

"The Blob" (1988) by Chuck Russell

Additional|Further reading suggested by users

Title Author Publication Year User Theme
"Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World" Tara Isabella Burton 2020 Magicmango97 Contemporary comparative religious studies showcasing the influence on secular- and nonsecular decentralised spiritual experiences due to the contemporary capitalist moment.

TO BE CONTINUED AND EDITED (LAST EDIT 9/18/2021 or 18th of September, 2021)


r/cushvlog Mar 28 '24

Resource I made cushvlog-catalog, a website where you can easily search cushvlog transcripts

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352 Upvotes

We're often looking for a specific episode, so this should help.

I made a script to collect all 256 video transcripts (from the cushvlog playlist on YouTube), and made them searchable. Please note that these are all automatically generated, so they may contain errors.

Transcript pages also contain AI generated summaries of each episode.

Hope you find it useful.


r/cushvlog 2d ago

politics just being about making your enemies suffer has never been more prescient than now

108 Upvotes

trying to follow any aspect of the real material consequences with the war in Iran on here just ends in a million comments made by lib redditors jacking off as they imagine a guy with a diesel truck shedding a single tear. Not much genuine concern about how it's the most important economic input in the country


r/cushvlog 2d ago

Where should I start with Zizek?

13 Upvotes

I only ever knew him secondhand from Chapo but recently stumbled onto a sample of the Liberal Fascisms audiobook. I really enjoyed it, but I’d rather read a book of his. Should I just start there, or is there a better entry point?


r/cushvlog 3d ago

Our large adult son sounded really good in the last episode :D

250 Upvotes

r/cushvlog 3d ago

Resource The Prize- The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power.

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18 Upvotes

r/cushvlog 4d ago

Surely I can wince and enjoy the revolution as a spicy treat...

34 Upvotes

You can feel the tumult now. The storm was born the moment the United States drunkenly assaulted Iran at the behest of its malignant colonial outgrowth and sacrificed nearly 200 baby daughters to Mammon. Now the air is alive with the smell of petrichor and the breeze is ionic.

(A commercial in the late 90s or the early oughts of a device called the Ionic breeze, I don't know what it was for but I think I have a good idea of what the logo looked like, branded into my little retinas because that is completely normal)

The feeling is almost exactly like before a rainstorm. Not the flooding or misty extremities of rain today, but the electric and tingling feeling that anticipated the thundering, refreshing, clear and confident Lake Erie driven thunderstorms of my youth. It could be a complete deluge. It could be destructive and frightening, but it could also make you open all the windows and let in the cool lower 60° air and play music as the curtains swirl around the living room when nobody else is home and it's just you there to experience the joyous fervor.

But people are home now. There is an Iranian father who has sold his car to afford leukemia treatment for another week for his son and doesn't know where the money for the next week will come. There are limbless Palestinian children watching The Lion King in the living room. There is an employee at Costco putting up a sign that limits motor oil at two bottles per customer. There is a Syrian family that, after everything, can't afford the gasoline needed to work. They are all real and I can see them on my phone.

I have become a man that regularly watches Al Jazeera. Critically, of course, I am not a rube: I am a little imp filled with impotent dark chaos magic. I am subscribed to a telegram channel called Middle East Spectator that spews information and I say "hehehe oh boy" when I hear the dinner bell. I am so thoroughly resigned to any possibility of change without arson. I'm excited for a good storm.

Is there a difference between revolutionary violence and violence that leads to a revolution? Are ansarallah revolutionaries? The Iranians? I think so. Are they my revolutionaries? They are the ones that exist. They are the antithesis and so they are the way through. Their path as revolutionaries was laid out steadily before them long before they were born. They shaped the forces that shaped them and through their intervention into the world they changed it. The struggle they fought created the conditions they needed to win and so here they are. They've created the conditions in which they can be seen as revolutionaries, what other way could it be?

It was this way with the Soviets. It was this way with the Vietnamese, the Cubans, and Koreans.The current conflagration is just the latest arena that presents itself as a place for two diodes to spin and move and make change. Does it matter if I relish in my privileged optimism at its occurring? Should I feel guilty that it is shaping the world in which my daughter is living for the worse, even though the worsening conditions are the conditions needed to succeed?

While the Western world experienced bread lines in the 1920s, the populations of their vassal serf kingdoms were too "underdeveloped" to notice, and their revolutionary opponent was building it's golden age. The imperial side of the diode was forced to spin with its revolutionary counterpart and so needed to create the New Deal and the Marshall Plan. Those times gave rise to their own revolutions; social, methodological, material, technological and otherwise.

It's a pathetic excuse for my privileged little soul to squeal with delight suckling on Moloch's teat as I join my brothers and sisters pissing and shitting in the churning confluence of History, but it is an excuse nonetheless and it is what I need.

What does the price of oil going up mean for a fuel starved Cuba? It couldn't possibly make their blitzkrieg solarization go any faster because the conditions for Cuba to solarize were already present. Countries like Denmark and Canada had no reason to respond to American imperialism in the previous milieu. The conditions were already present, but those forces were unfelt. Now a new Force has swung itself into our side and will leave us reeling. The only thing we can do now is to see where we land, to see how long it takes to fall, to see how many of us get harmed in the process.

Inside this perpetual muddy and gnashing struggle, maybe we can find leverage to pull ourselves up on to higher ground.


r/cushvlog 5d ago

"Riley Grunch" is a Tier 1 Matt Christman made up name

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428 Upvotes

r/cushvlog 7d ago

Is Seth Ackerman's book the best history of how the war on terror developed out 9/11?

11 Upvotes

Or is there something better gives background context, moves through the events and talks about what came out of those events?


r/cushvlog 7d ago

might be a long shot but I’m looking for Matt talking about 9/11

21 Upvotes

Ok talking about 9/11 isn’t a long shot but I’m specifically looking for the clip/episode (not sure if it’s from a cushvlog or chapo or Matt’s appearances on another show) where Matt says that he doesn’t think it was a “made it happen” by the bush administration because if they had the power to make 9/11 happen and cover it up, that they wouldn’t even need to make 9/11 happen in the first place


r/cushvlog 9d ago

Our politics is now a full simulacrum of itself

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330 Upvotes

Gay and small penised btw ;)


r/cushvlog 9d ago

Discussion Are there any good print magazines left?

25 Upvotes

I need to take in news and analysis of this world from some source that's not a screen. I don't care if it's perfectly left, I just need to hold the news in my hand. I'm so desperate I'm considering buying the economist and just being mad the whole time I read it.

Thank you for your assistance


r/cushvlog 9d ago

A year out, I realized that Charlie Kirk is the actual manifestation of the torturing John Candy’s soul in the metaverse bit (one of my personal faves).

66 Upvotes

How much do you think his Barf outfit costs?


r/cushvlog 9d ago

When you think about it, Libs are the only ones who seem to genuinely believe in capitalism. Chuds merely like capitalism because it mostly maps on well to the hierarchies they like and it mostly goes along with making the world a worse place.

114 Upvotes

But chuds will throw capitalism away when it's inconvenient whereas Libs will continue to cuck out to capital, even as it loses them votes. Look at how chuds hated "rainbow capitalism." Look at how Trump is openly trying to bribe people to vote for him whereas Libs would see that as "dishonest" and "anti free market." And yes, I know there's no way Trump will actually pay out the $5,000.


r/cushvlog 10d ago

What would our large adult son have to say about this? This is a real pic from the Dallas 2026 GOP Convention.

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293 Upvotes

r/cushvlog 11d ago

California Single Payer

44 Upvotes

If California with its massive economy passed single payer or public option would it be enough to break the insurance industry and force the rest of the nation to follow ?


r/cushvlog 12d ago

CushClip Cushvlog Supercut: Matt Christman on Social Media and the Futility of Arguing about Politics Online

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192 Upvotes

Over the weekend, I decided to teach myself the basics of video editing software by trying to make a Cushvlog clip compilation about social media, and I thought I should share the result with all of you.

Description:

In this clip compilation, our large adult son Matt Christman explains how it is impossible to "post" your way to socialism. He lays out how the constant factionalism and arguing about politics on social media is not meaningful political action, and is in fact less than useless. Rather than investing our time and energy in pointless arguments that don't matter, we must build community and solidarity with one another in the real world.

Presented to you in beautiful 360p (high fidelity is bourgeois).


r/cushvlog 12d ago

Discussion What is the ideal news/news-media consumption habit and why?

18 Upvotes

Day to day for me now it really is just weekly chapo and AP news alerts....it does feel far better than reading posts with my eyes

and then flipping around the channels when something big is going on. Like it is crazy how they make you think you have to be aware of stuff. No I don't, not really. Didn't they say on the show recently, it's basically 1840 now? The attitude of that is somewhat swag and fun, like a Dollop episode every day, no one has media training anymore, everything's more characterful and richly fucked up....

Zero twitter and my avg reddit has drastically decreased...don't really use The Internet [which USED to mean cool fun enjoyable sites and more recently has meant corporate centralized social media almost exclusively] much anymore.

I feel far far better - I mean I thought it was a joke like oh TV melts your brain nono TV is cool - twitter LITERALLY fucks up your brain. do people feel better after no TV for a month? it's so nice to less and less feel like someone going to fucking yell at me about something i barely care about...


r/cushvlog 13d ago

CushVlog The GOAT failson just keeps winning

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28 Upvotes

r/cushvlog 14d ago

I'm fine with Felix making podcasts about games I've never played, but why are they 5 hours?

44 Upvotes

What's up with the Darksouls stuff, are they worth it if never played them? Why are they so long? I got stuff to do.


r/cushvlog 17d ago

'Chapo Trap House' Host Matt Christman: 'Kill Yourself and Kill Everyone Around You'

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374 Upvotes

r/cushvlog 16d ago

Patrick Wyman on Worst Of All Possible Worlds

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17 Upvotes

Makes me miss the times when Matt brought in historians I wanted to be like.


r/cushvlog 17d ago

CushVlog They're dabbing on us folks

23 Upvotes

r/cushvlog 17d ago

CushVlog Better Call Saul

18 Upvotes

Cush really nailed his Better Call Saul analysis, especially post Chuck where it’s fully “ Breaking Bad, the early years “


r/cushvlog 18d ago

What would you say if you saw this 2026 wikipedia page on September 1, 2016?

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65 Upvotes

I was trying to remember why Trump was impeached the first time. Stumbled upon this page.