This short essay covers the US invasion of Venezuela, enacting state predation. "Concerning Venezuela" examines the larger vampirism taking place—state vampirism* and those who enable it (not just politicians)—but also how to dialectically-materially expose and challenge state power/feeding under Capitalist Realism pimping nature/workers treated as "of nature" (under Cartesian thought): by holding each other accountable!
*Stemming from earlier work of mine on vampirism (see: "Concerning State Vampirism," deeper in).
(source: David Axe's "America Would Need More Than 100,000 Troops to Invade Venezuela," 2019)
Update, 1/6/2025: I don't plan to expand this essay much but have added some quality-of-life changes; e.g., extra definitions, visual aids, footnotes, and a postscript explaining some of my ideas vis-à-vis the usual pimps-in-disguise; e.g., Bad Empanada, but also those who continue to defend him despite his incel behavior when praising of Trump's behaviors; re: "Go to town, Donald" (source). As the usual chickens come home to roost, refer to "Slurs Aren't Activism" and "The Chickens Come Home to Roost: Transphobe Bad Empanada Goes Mask-Off" (2025); i.e., for a quick-and-dirty look into why Bad Empanada is fash. Read "Raising Awareness" (2025) for the whole dossier on him (and further citations that I can quickly list, here). Here, he only appears at the end of the essay, which focuses on combating systemic oppression—capital, ergo Trump/America as a part of Capitalism doing what capital does—using what we, workers, actually have to work with: an ability to critique each other, thus raise intersectional consciousness amid tactical unity (see: footnotes for keyword definitions). —Perse
P.S., If you want another minority to critique Bad Empanada besides my white trans ass, consider what F.D. Signifier has to say about him (above): "If Bad Empanada had a PhD and wrote some books, he'd be Norm Finkelstein; Norm Finkelstein is a professional edgelord/white liberal" ("Problematic White Guy Tier List," 2026; timestamp: 35:22). Yup! F.D. continues, "At the end of the day Bad Empanada says a lotta shit and I'm like, 'yeah!' But he's so spicy/up his own debate bro ass that every third time he talks he's gonna say something where you're like, 'What are you talking about?'" Verily.
Table of Contents
- Concerning State Vampirism
- Disclaimers
- Summary
- Essay Body
- Conclusion
- Post-Script: Power Means Taking Accountability (re: Bad Empanada and Those Who Defend Him Pimping Sex Work/the Gothic)
- Footnotes
Concerning State Vampirism
(artist: Karen B.; cited: "The World Is a Vampire," 2024)
This piece (essay or otherwise) is part of a larger series on state vampirism. As I conceive it, state vampirism = feeding through the state mid-abjection*, be it openly capitalist or Marxist-Leninist. These are largely questions of aesthetic, whose Promethean (self-destructive) function extends to other configurations "of Omelas"; e.g., Zionism. Furthermore, there's overlap between my anti-Zionist work and my work critiquing Marxist-Leninism/state vampirism alongside capital, so consider reading both.
*Which state predation and revolutionary action both rely upon to function; i.e., "on the Aegis" as something to further or reverse, mid-vampirism, through paid/unpaid labor (re: me, vis-à-vis Julia Kristeva). To that, abjection (us versus them/alienation and fetishization) is one of four main Gothic theories my book series utilizes—the other three being hauntology (retro-future), cryptonymy (show/hide) and chronotopes (time-space) alongside smaller theories; e.g., Jerrold Hogle's ghost of the counterfeit† and Barbara Creed's monstrous-feminine (Gorgons and Amazonomachia, as I study it). As a queer sex worker and academic, I dialectically-materially prioritize abjection and vampirism through unpaid labor—chiefly sex work as exploited by Cartesian dualism and its harmful, maximalist binaries under Capitalist Realism, treating nature as monstrous-feminine (re: "Nature Is Food," 2024)—but mention the other theories, too (access "Four Main Gothic Theories (the Four Gs)" in "Paratextual Documents" for their longer definitions). In essence, capital/the state rape by design, which unpaid labor prevents by breaking Capitalist Realism mid-abjection; i.e., reversing abjection during ludo-Gothic BDSM (rape play) when having the whore's revenge (which "State Vampirism" explores at length): "to break the profit [and productivity] motive by making a world for which it (and rape) are no longer possible using these methods; i.e., by using the same demonic and slutty language capital does, but at cross purposes" (source: "Rape Reprise," 2024).
†Re: "Raising Awareness" (2025), footnote 1.
Disclaimers
"Concerning Venezuela" is part of my Sex Positivity book series, which continues after its June 2025 finale in small-form content; e.g., essays on and interviews with other sex workers, all of whom I credit on my Acknowledgments pages and Sex Work page. This piece doesn't focus on sex work itself, but widespread exploitation; i.e., in a shared predatory system, "whoring nature (and workers) out" in highly abject ways.
(artist, left: Bay Ryan; right: Persephone van der Waard)
For the Visually Impaired: I read this essay on my YouTube channel.
Disclaimer Regarding Essay Contents: All opinions are my own; i.e., as part of my research, conducted alongside my book series, Gothic Communism (2023). The material within is written/speaks about public figures and popular media for purposes of (sex) education, satire, transformation and critique, hence falls under Fair Use regarding copyright and free speech regarding defamation/obscenity laws (the Miller Test; source: Justice.gov). Click here for my entire series disclaimer. Lastly many of the links on this page lead to my age-gated 18+ website where my entire work on Gothic Communism is stored and exhibited.
CW: racism, genocide and fascism; transphobia, rape* and tokenism; vampirism/the Gothic (monsters and themes; e.g., zombies and cannibalism)
*Meaning (from my definition) "to disempower someone or somewhere—a person, culture, or place—in order to harm them," generally through fetishizing and alienizing acts or circumstances/socio-material conditions that target the mind, body and/or spirit) […] Rape can be of the mind, spirit, body and/or culture—the land or things tied to it during genocide, etc; it can be individual and/or on a mass scale" (source: "Psychosexual Martyrdom," 2024).
Concerning Keywords: My arguments rely on various keywords I've previously coined, which here present in bold while color-coded (usually only once, while stressing their keyword status; e.g., ludo-Gothic BDSM, Metroidvania, or the palliative Numinous, etc). While some are given here, in abridged form, "Paratextual Documents" provides all neologisms, in full.
Summary
(source: Konstantin Toropin's "U.S. strikes Venezuela and says leader Maduro has been captured and flown out of the country," 2026)
The United States—after months of overtures/sharpening their knives for bloodshed (again)—invaded Venezuela last night. In the process, they kidnapped its leaders under cloak of darkness (and establishment apologia), indiscriminately killing Venezuelans in the streets. "Process" being the key word, here, their doing so marks the continuation of a common tactic—one employed by America/the CIA since WWII (and borrowed/repackaged from older ethnocentric forms, before that): regime change for resources, geography-as-destiny during Capitalist Realism*. It's merely capital doing what capital does (vampirism, fly-by-night—above), which I want to acknowledge while reflecting on Venezuela's ominous fate (as victims of the same hungry machine):
Thus, like the sad presaging raven, that tolls
The sick man's passport in her hollow beak,
And in the shadow of the silent night
Doth shake contagion from her sable wings (source: Marlowe's Jew of Malta, 1592).
*This plays out in half-real[1] ways reversing abjection† during ludo-Gothic BDSM (see: footnotes), onstage and off. "Under Capitalist Realism, Hell is a place that always appears on Earth [or an Earth-like double]—a black fortress threatening state hegemony during the inevitable decay of a colonial body. Its widening state of exception must then be entered by the hero during the liminal hauntology of war as a repeatable, monomythic excursion [...] Conjure a Radcliffean menace inside the Imperial Core, then meet it with American force" (source: "Scouting the Field," 2023; cited: "A Note About Canonical Essentialism," 2024). In other words—and speaking as a Gothic ludologist commenting dialectically-materially on state vampirism at large—the Imperial Core has no limits; it monopolizes violence, terror and monsters, in media and out (re: Weber, Asprey and me; see: "The State: Its Key Tools" from "Paratextual (Gothic) Documents," 2024): to move money through nature, ergo conduct state vampirism versus nature as monstrous-feminine† with worker help (as this write-up briefly explores).
†Julia Kristeva's abjection (us versus them/alienation and fetishization; re: The Powers of Horror, 1980) being one of four main Gothic theories my book series utilizes (access "Four Main Gothic Theories (the Four Gs)" in "Paratextual Documents" for their longer definitions). It commonly does so alongside Barbara Creed's monstrous-feminine (1993).
Well, the "raven himself is hoarse" (different play), and I shall blow the whistle: "They're eating her, and then they're gonna eat me!" This isn't "goblins" (or some-such poetic displacement of state abuse) but capital par excellence, pimping nature and those "of it" as monstrous-feminine prey (weak/strong enemies): might makes right out of revenge against the usual prey dressed up as monsters, abjected through DARVO and obscurantism* under state devices—namely Cartesian dualism, heteronormativity and settler-colonialism (capital being Cartesian, heteronormative and settler-colonial; re: "The State: Its Key Tools" from "Paratextual Documents").
*DARVO = Deny Accuser Reverse Victim/Offender—a classic abuser's tactic that, alongside obscurantism (the theft of symbols and language; e.g., the crooked cross), fascists love to abuse; i.e., while infiltrating Communist circles, and any liberals/so-called "progressives" enabling them.
We'll unpack these various ideas in the essay body. For now, remember that Capitalism cannot be defeated by force alone; "defeat" (transformation) occurs by first acknowledging—however painfully—capital-as-process through all levels thereof: state predation aka vampirism, thus rape and lies en masse. You can't outrun it, no amount of Christmas cheer (or New Years resolution) able to hide the present state of affairs! We have our revenge (as workers, including unpaid labor/whores) by speaking out on state vampirism, holding ourselves accountable alongside the establishment. I do so as a queer (trans) Gothicist, gleefully embracing poetic ideas like vampirism for their iconoclastic potential (and which many worker—especially straight paid workers—are allergic to); i.e., which my friends and I (unpaid sex workers) synthesize to Marxist theories: able to organize, thus to liberate all workers from state illusions; re: "Making Marx Gay" (2024) through inclusive dialectical-material analysis (which Gothic Communism essentially is—see: "Disclaimers"). The state eats us; we whores eat them back, organizing to service our own needs versus theirs confusing nuclear models (fixating, as the Gothic does, on home-as-alien/vampire).
Note: "Concerning Venezuela" isn't quite a full-sized essay in delivery or scope; it's largely a "quickie," one whose conversational response to current events incorporates theory from previous essays messily into itself—e.g., Marx' theory of capital-as-vampire and its furtherance through Kristeva's abjection process being furthered by worker denial concerning monstrous-feminine things/reversed by intersectional conscious† and solidarity (among paid and unpaid circuits): to raise emotional/Gothic intelligence and class, cultural and racial awareness amid privilege and oppression. We won't have time to lay out a thesis argument, merely bastardize older ones I've already made. Even so, "Concerning Venezuela" continues my own work on vampirism, starting most recently with "Sharing the Blame; or, the Mild Tokenism of F.D. Signifier and Foreign Man in a Foreign Land when Defending Philosophy Tube (re: Liberal Zionism and State Vampirism)" (2025). For the dualistic, anisotropic, apotropaic function of vampirism (and all monstrous language in Gothic), read "Sharing the Blame." Further links appear inside, whose cited elements contain even more; i.e., tied to my book series, Gothic Communism (2023).
†A neologism of mine, "one meant to combat various forms of reductionism (class, culture and race); i.e., by building on Marx' notion of class consciousness: combining class with culture and race consciousness (awareness) to raise emotional/Gothic intelligence while synthesizing praxis" (abridged, source: "Paratextual Documents").
Essay Body
"Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks" (source: "Limits of the Working-Day"). Marx wrote this in 1867 but it obviously holds true today, and not just with Venezuela. In 2023, for example, I wrote:
I, for one, will not stand idly by while the same old proponents of Imperialism make the same old tired arguments to serve the elite. These are people's lives, ground into dust by the great machine of capital as having become an ever larger and more fearsome monster as time goes on. Even if those in the present fall into the state of exception, targeted for termination inside state-manufactured prisons by old ghouls like the American establishment (the mother territory) and her allies, we should not be silent as they siphon all life from the land and its peoples, places and ecosystems; the elite and their supporters need to be exposed for what they are: the Great Destroyers of our age, the ultimate threat to all life on the planet purely to enrich the smallest number of persons they can (source: "Justice for Palestine").
I did so regarding Israel preying on Palestine (with Western help), but the same reality applies to any American victims, past or present. The world is a vampire, insofar as nation-states—i.e., as America defines them, borrowed from older examples—are fundamentally imperialist, and "Imperialism [the] highest stage of Capitalism" (source: Lenin, 1916). Capital also decays (re: Lenin), forever in search of fuel to feed and feeding with fuel to ward off death: a stopping of profit/production, however banal that sounds.
(artist: Andreas Marschall; cited: "Thesis Body: Gothic (gay-anarcho) Communism vs the State," 2023)
So is capital/the state a terrible machine, one that sucks this-or-that to enrich the usual benefactors "steering the ship"; i.e., mid-Capitalocene/Capitalist Realism, its predation only halted by unified worker action (or state shift, aka climate change). Classically "blood" means oil, but it likewise involves the drug trade, arms dealers/running guns, sexual slavery and many other things the state sucks; they are not separate, but walk arm-in-arm. In turn, the real pirates routinely disguise their deeds, styling as "liberators" under false flags/rebellions*: the real vampires sucking on state prey, DARVO-and-obscurantism (the "white Indian retaking 'stolen' land" argument that settler-colonizers love to use against actual native populations; e.g. the Americans vs the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island, the Nazis vs the Soviets during Lebensraum, and the Israelis vs the Palestinians, etc).
*From Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds (1997): "fascism is a false rebellion" (source). Also from Parenti, "There are no poor countries, only poor populations" (1986); re: capital sucks, the state sucks, to feed on workers and nature.
(source: Tom Phillips' "US 'Night Stalkers' seen in Caribbean as fears of regime change rise in Venezuela," 2025)
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" How 'bout a parasite? The United States (and allies, foreign or domestic) aren't just "parasites," though; they and capital remain closer to a parasitoid that kills its host—not just the given nation-state(s) it invades in territorial terms, like Venezuela, but the entirety of the land, its people, animals and environment—i.e., not acting like an animal at all, but a manmade machine. Except, whereas consent in nature is a non-factor, parasitoid wasps also cannot rape; they're cuckoos kill for food within a web of life they're fundamentally of. States, by comparison, rape by design, destroying nature at large; i.e., while treating life as alien/from-another-world to invade, cuckoo-style. They do this to perform capital, moving money through nature while concealing everything-as-process:
The process of exchange and circulation turn money into capital. At the heart of Marx's Capital is a simple, powerful model: in production and exchange, capitalists combine labor power, machines and raw material. The resulting commodities are then sold for money. If all goes well, there is a profit, which needs then to be reinvested into yet more labor power, machines and raw materials. Neither commodities nor money is capital. This circuit becomes capital when money is sunk into commodity production in an ever-expanding cycle. Capitalism is a process in which money flows through nature. The trouble here is that capital supposes infinite expansion [growth] within a finite web of life (source: A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, 2017).
In other words, capital cheapens life to move money through it—effectively as a form of rape, concealed: "Capitalism achieves profit by moving money through nature; profit is built on trauma and division, wherein anything that serves profit gentrifies and decays, over and over while preying on [raping] nature [...] something to destroy by the state or defend from it (and its trifectas, monopolies, etc) using the same threatening aesthetics of power and death, decay and rape" (source: "A Cruel Angel's (Modular) Thesis," 2024). Capital, like any rapist, will lie when raping you/will rape you while lying to your face; i.e., before, during and after the event, itself, eating you/the world alive: replacement through extermination (re: capital being Cartesian, heteronormative and settler-colonial).
(source: "'My Quest Began with a Riddle': the Caterpillar and the Wasp," 2024)
In short, states rape because capital rapes; i.e., by design in machine-like ways incomparable to animals: eating all of nature while scapegoating nature. So do states seek profit to enact capital, state "bio-power" demonizing nature by abjecting it as monstrous-feminine (re: Kristeva and Creed), and generally out of revenge versus whores* or things whored out by capital, Cartesian thought and a Protestant ethic (re: "Nature Is Food" and "Rape Reprise"). This, in turn, compounds by demanding more land to invade, but also more lies to back itself (and its rape) up—meaning through a web-like market thereof, its theft of different things by force called "trade" in neoliberal spheres (a widening of the net through state lies):
In turn, the re-liberalizing of the market (neoliberalism)—specifically of deregulated markets through the abuse of state power and lies—has led to the predictable expansion of nation-state practices and modern war as spreading across the entire globe. Both in theatrical and actual forms, war and genocide have only increased since the so-called economic "end of history" in 1991; and with the socio-material conditions that enabled them, the usual benefactors have, time and time again, looked the other way or jumped through the same old hoops of Capitalist Realism: there is nothing but what currently is and anything else is the end of the world. This model is untenable as is, but the mental gymnastics required to fulfill its continuation must be exhausting. Capitalism alienates, and those who feel nothing for the Palestinians or otherwise stand idly by and say nothing are, in some shape or form, complicit in their annihilation (and the annihilations of all peoples living in the Global South) (source: "Justice for Palestine").
This is true now and it was true back then, history repeating itself at any point through entrenched criminogenic, socio-material conditions. Firmly in place, it's an abattoir—one designed to conceal itself through open slaughter and lies: someone being eaten on a presumed "other side." So "[t]he Western world is generally a place that testifies to its own traumas by fabricating them; i.e., as markers of sovereignty that remain historically unkind to specific groups that nevertheless survive within them as ghosts of unspeakable events linked to systemic abuse" (source: "Healing from Rape," 2024). Such is the Gorgon:
(artist: Caravaggio; cited: "A Note About Abjection and Reversing It during Rape Play (re: ludo-Gothic BDSM/rape play)" from "Nancy Drew Syndrome")
*The whore's revenge being "to break the profit motive by making a world for which it (and rape) are no longer possible using these methods; i.e., by using the same demonic and slutty language capital does, but at cross purposes: to hug the alien—not demonize it to receive state violence [mid-abjection]—thereby (ex)changing how the world is seen to begin with. We aggregate power differently than state forms, outlasting and outperforming them to dismantle their harvesting mechanisms, social and material, foreign and domestic. / Nature, then, is always a whore who punches up against state pimps to end profit as an endless structure of genocide. History more broadly could be described as whores vs pimps, hence workers vs the state; i.e., something the seemingly cannot die, but whose aforementioned whores are as imperishable as Medusa despite being beheaded" (source: "Rape Reprise"). "Her terrifying powers" (as Creed puts it) become our terrifying powers; i.e., "on the Aegis" during ludo-Gothic BDSM, our rape play (and its performative ironies) reminding the state/traitors to the cause where feeding [abjection] takes place: the revenge as had in either direction simultaneously. Monopolies are a myth, including sex-as-terror-weapon policing by/expressed through force in Gothic language. During the abjection process, we can shield ourselves and attack—freezing our pimps with castrating reminders of their own crimes but also historically inability to completely destroy us. They cannot; the state always needing someone to exploit/whore to pimp and rape in some shape or form (the oldest victim/struggle being a rape victim/the monstrous-feminine† organizing despite myths of total fragmentation (re: "Always a Victim" and "Our Sweet Revenge" [2025] vis-à-vis Elizabeth Hadley's "Medusa Misunderstood," 2024).
(model and artist: Cosmo Wanderlust and Persephone van der Waard)
In turn, we organize in ways that "castrate" our foes, generally by paralyzing profit (re: the whore's revenge) in socio-material ways: making our own monsters (above)—composites that present as smaller parts to a larger whole, Gothic Communism working in tandem to debunk state myths (ergo stereotypes) about unpaid labor (which paid labor propagates). Infinite power, infinite form using what we're born into/with: our bodies and what we make with them as things to holistically reclaim, "on the Aegis."
†Click here to read all my research on the monstrous-feminine, but especially Amazons/the Gorgon; i.e., as things to tokenize/reclaim, mid-Amazonomachia, under present-day struggles (my bête noir being tokenism; re: "Regarding Tokenism and Fighting It," 2025). Whores are pimped regardless if they organize, the ones who do divided and conquered like usual:
(artist: Doc Zenith)
Oh, the lies people tell themselves to avoid facing facts, even when those facts are staring them in the face (often as metaphors, above and below): a cycle of feeding passed off as "nightmare," one that weighs "on the brains of the living"; i.e., from Medusa to Marx's "Eighteenth Brumaire" (and love for Gothic language, 1852) to George Romero and us—all of the above touching on similar forms of veiled feeding, its traumatic camouflage/dark core spilling apocalyptically outwards, mid-concealment (re: "Police States, Foreign Atrocities and the Imperial Boomerang," 2024): there's nowhere left to hide/no more room in Hell, state feeding making us undead through different horrifying ways. And horror, as Kristeva notes, has power to do different things: to speak the truth of things (regarding consumption), mid-fabrication-as-dualistic.
(source)
"Zombie" isn't just "for show"; it's a label to grant, describing givers/receivers of state force at any point in time (with vampires enthralling their prey while feeding on them, below)—e.g., "If some Iraqi has to die so I can have a nice car then so be it!" Dave Madura told me this, in the early 2000s; i.e., after America invaded Afghanistan and reinvaded Iraq. He lied after they lied—a cycle to repeat, mid-feeding. In turn, the same vampirism (and its undead lobotomy/cannibalism) happened with Bush senior and junior, the Clintons, Obama et al using different ways to feed (and those around them lying in ways not dissimilar to Vietnam and Nixon, LBJ and Kennedy following French collapse, and so on). State terrorism calls itself "counterterrorism." Ergo, I can only imagine what lies those in/with power will tell; i.e., while preying on state victims, during (and after) Venezuela. More of the same, with the same results: "War pimps and jailors speaking pretty words, the enablers of Israel are little more than murderers who come to you with smiles. They will destroy the Global South and then set their sights (and mercenaries) on the Global North (which is already a police state rife with fascism) as the Imperial Boomerang sails home" (ibid.).
(artist: Axel Ross; cited: "Modularity and Class," 2024)
Speaking of, said vampirism affects everything in its wake—the predators and prey while turning blind eyes (drunk on blood, above). Betrayal is betrayal. This includes open fascists, but also those seemingly more principled; i.e., wearing different disguises while scapegoating whoever to further abjection, which capital demands, lie-upon-lie; e.g., my ongoing 2025 series on different "progressives": so-called "radicals," who—despite their rebellious façade—cannot critique, dialectical-materially, capital's vampirism as a fundamental, historical-material process (ergo partaking in it, themselves); re: "Sharing the Blame" exploring F.D. Signifier and Foreign Man's mild tokenism (enabling PhilosophyTube's liberal Zionism, therefore their own), "Nancy Drew Syndrome" concerning Rebecca Watson's state/genocide apologia with Joe Biden, and "Raising Awareness" insofar as Bad Empanada says one thing and does another (all of them furthering abjection in ways my friends and I want to reverse).
(source YouTube community post, Socialism for All: October 2023; cited: "Raising Awareness")
If only. "Remember when he said 'Go to town, Donald' [above]; i.e., regarding US crackdowns on home soil [against trans/plural people and furries]? Well, what about overseas? Say, Venezuela? Accelerationism is fascist because it leads to fascism everywhere, and Donald and company are 'going to town' on foreign soil. Accelerationists like Bad Empanada are fascist in said warmongering because they don't meaningfully challenge it. In fact, they encourage it, full-stop; i.e., start the fire in one place and it spreads to others, feeding the flames" (source skeet, vanderWaardart: December 3rd, 2025).
The same goes for anyone ignoring or otherwise apologizing "for the furnace"; re: F.D., Watson, et al, to one degree or another (e.g., "vote for Kamala or else you're racist") but also those who refuse to investigate them refusing to investigate each other (e.g., The Kavernacle making "Trump INVADED Venezuela for OIL" [2025] while refusing to investigate Bad Empanada*). Invasion is par for the course; so are the white lies and blind eyes, whatever those are and wherever they avert their eyes from looking at. Doing so is just another mask, another lie concealing the larger problem; re: capital sucks, eating itself in all directions to send power-as-blood upwards. "You are what you eat" but also who you feed. State vampirism needs betrayal (token or otherwise) to operate, the liar classically an infiltrator/undercover cop haunting the venue and the victim (e.g., race betrayal, below). Many traitors think themselves just:
*Re: since "Essay 9.25: Apologizing for Misapplied Research/Asking for The Kavernacle's Help with Bad Empanada" (2025).
(source: "Sharing the Blame"; cited: "Accommodated/Assimilated Minorities, part two: Trans TERFs, NERFs, and Queer Bosses (feat. Natalie Wynn)")
Conclusion
To conclude, state vampirism exceeds America, alone; i.e., to include its allies enjoying imperial bloodspill anywhere and everywhere, across all registers of capital/state power (on and offline). Capitalist Realism in action, capital/nation-states are only capable of feeding now—in effect, repeating what has already happened and will again (and again and again)—because various lies are told and blind eyes turned, upholding denial; i.e., Marx and company failed to stop state vampirism because they weren't gay enough (re: "Making Marx Gay"), their followers apologizing for Lenin, Stalin and Mao's vampirism alongside American exploitation (re: "Notes on Lenin, Stalin, and Why Marxist-Leninism Historically Sucks for Women and Queer People" from "Raising Awareness"). Nature is something to protect as stewards thereof:
(artist: Bay Ryan)
Assimilation is poor stewardship, a form of silence/segregation that leads to continual death under state hegemony. The state is straight, white and male, but tokenizes just as well (re: "Understanding Vampires," 2024). "Survive, solidarize and speak out" (2025). We must solidarize against capital and its vampirism as a whole, intersecting consciously to achieve tactical unity by challenging globally said hegemony and its unchecked predation: that we have more in common with those America invades than the American elite sanctioning said invasions, thus not lying to ourselves (and each other) about how capital works. From Venezuela to anywhere the elite (and their toadies) suck blood, abjection needs to reverse; it must, lest the entire planet fall prey to state lies-and-predation! "For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life, but for me, it was Tuesday." Verily.
Post-Script: Power Means Taking Accountability (re: Bad Empanada and Those Who Defend Him Pimping Sex Work/the Gothic)
(model and artist: Julesss Next Door and Persephone van der Waard)
Angry readers today told me that "Trump has all the power" and that workers and social critiques are "powerless." Either we have power or we don't; if we don't, nothing we do matters, so I prefer to focus on something constructive—i.e., while building optimistically* on Marx' ideas (re: vampires) in ways that acknowledge/address capital's vampiric qualities, including labor's hand in things. Gothic Communism is holistic, and we must share the blame; i.e., even if someone like Bad Empanada—acting the pimp versus sex work/the Gothic—is just a smaller piece in a larger puzzle. The fact remains: it's possible to critique Trump and fascist supports at the same time (the leader and his followers), all while doing so in a variety of ways that include—for my friends and I, at least—sex work, the Gothic, an-Com thought, and videogames (e.g., Jules Next Door and I, above, and Iris Daydreams and I, below). Art is activism, the Gothic a potent means of activism/organizing for whores-like entities since its inception; or, says Guillermo del Toro, "At a time when people tell you art is not important, that is always the prelude to fascism. When they tell you it doesn't matter [...] they think they can debase everything that makes us a little better, a little more human. And that, in my book, and in my life, includes monsters" (source: Jack Dunn's "Guillermo del Toro: Saying 'Art Is Not Important' Is 'Always the Prelude to Fascism,'" 2025).
*A similar optimism to what Non Compete and Luna Oi describe, in "Revolutionary Optimism in the Face of Rising Fascism" (2025). The ability to fight back—including with monsters as labor expression fighting for land and bodies back—is undeniably important. But it happens in shared spaces/on shared bodies and language, including sex work/Gothic poetry and aesthetics; i.e., land, labor and sex back with land, labor and sex, "on the Aegis": as good monsters vs bad, worker rights vs state's rights using the same monstrous(-feminine) language challenging capital by reversing abjection, ergo profit, during the whore's revenge; re:
(model and artist: Iris Daydreams and Persephone van der Waard)
Sex Positivity illustrates, similar to how oscillation is a key component of the Gothic, that Gothic Communism is the oscillation between Capitalism and anarcho-Communism as dialectical-material forces felt in Gothic language by real people: oppositional praxis, or the practical application/synthesis of theory in dialectical-material opposition. To combat nation-states as the ultimate foe, Gothic Communism's chief aim is to be campier (thus sexier and funnier) than Marx; i.e., camping his ghost to develop a holistically intuitive anarcho-Communism begot through a widespread, collective and solidarized emotional and Gothic intelligence/awareness that recultivates the Superstructure and reclaims the Base[2] through intersectional resistance and de facto (extracurricular) reeducation: the Wisdom of the Ancients, or cultural understanding of the imaginary past, endemic to this organizational process, and not one any particular group can monopolize (through violence, terror and monsters, etc).
Simply put, Gothic has that mood, that cool factor to do the trick; i.e., by subverting monstrous language, which normally dehumanizes workers and nature through popular stories furthering abjection (us versus them): to suitably humanize the harvest, which capital (and its Realism) can only pimp out when vengefully raping nature as monstrous-feminine whore. The whore's revenge against profit, then, is to fuck back on the same Aegis; i.e., when the Man comes around, show him your Aegis. When done correctly, its paradoxical, cryptonymic exposure will set you free (re: silence is genocide), but reversing abjection must happen together as one—per intersectional solidarity healing from rape through a shared pedagogy of the oppressed: walking away from Omelas and towards post-scarcity while becoming better stewards of nature than historically have ever existed (assimilation is poor stewardship)! Medusa demonstrates there is power in what they try to control; take it back by using it in ways they can't steal from you! Become the Gorgon! (source: "Abstract" for "My Book: Gothic Communism").
Reclamation is dualistic, holistic, dialectical-material insofar as workers can pessimistically betray themselves but also optimistically solidarize and fight back despite said betrayals.
(source: "Understanding Vampires: 'What Is (Problematic) Love?'; or, Positions of Relative Ignorance to Relative Clarity (feat. Bad Empanada and Marxist-Leninism," 2024)
I agree, insofar as monsters and sex = art and can be vital ways to humanize ourselves again, mid-alienation and fetishization*; i.e., by reversing the abjection process (ergo state vampirism) as enacted by philistine prudes like Bad Empanada, who think monsters are dumb, rock 'n roll "noise pollution," and sex bad, etc. By dismissing Gothic play as "dumb," our destroyers become dumb to serve state needs, killer virgins acting like pimps too good to have fun without acting like cops. Nazis are lame to puritanical extremes, and Bad Empanada is a Nazi calling for us to imprisoned, erased, "made taboo again" (above), etc; i.e., the state hates sex but paradoxically needs it to survive. Policing the whore is the norm, enacted through acceptable:unacceptable and paid:unpaid forms under a Protestant ethic/Cartesian dualism. Genocide is genocide, DARVO is DARVO (re: "Raising Awareness").
*As I write, in "Nancy Drew Syndrome":
"Capital alienates everything," argues Marx, in "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts" (1844; cited, 2011: Asher Horowitz' "Perspectives on Politics"); "capital sexualizes everything," I reply (source: "Thesis Statement," 2023)—meaning to fetishize the alien in dialectical-material ways† workers can reclaim (the Base) through media (the Superstructure) extending from their bodies; i.e., "The collective, holistic idea is to break Capitalist Realism vis-à-vis the historical-material reality that capital not only alienates everything but sexualizes/fetishizes it, too. The latter idea is actually the subject of my PhD, which concerns various ways to challenge Capitalist Realism during ludo-Gothic BDSM" (source: "Raising Awareness"); e.g., queer folk as normally "pimped out": "Capital and state power historically alienate workers to pimp nature as monstrous-feminine, including queer folk" (ibid.).
†Re: camping the canon; i.e., during the "dialectic of the alien," as I call it[3]. Re-education remains historically an uphill battle for whores to enact (re: "An Uphill Battle (with the Sun in Your Eyes): Operational Difficulties and Revolutionary Cryptonymy," 2024), but it (and its anti-predation objectives relaid in predator/prey language, below) can still be fun to reenact: "ass war is class war, and whores/unpaid labor are commonly nerds partaking in public nudism to get paid/prevent worker exploitation alongside the natural world; re: "Paid Labor," 2024 [...] / Specifically class war via sex work (with intersections of culture and race), the whore's revenge raising emotional/Gothic intelligence and awareness to reduce rape on a societal level (re: intersectional consciousness)" (source: "Sharing the Blame").
(source: DirtTheSixth's "Castle Rat live at Sonia 9/5/2025 (FULL SET)")
Sharing power means sharing blame. Ergo, those the state dehumanizes must reclaim what the state pimps us with—mean for the power that monsters and sex have to maintain matter but also shape consciousness, hand-in-hand. This includes sex-as-art/activism monopolized, "sex, drugs and rock 'n roll"; re: as alien, monstrous-feminine whores "from outer space" (above). Calling us "degenerate," "fallen" or "liberal," etc, is to defend Bad Empanada, who in turn defends Trump and fascism at large "in sheep's clothing"; re: he's a TERF, SWERF and incel/Gamergate denier* making Stalinist arguments, "Communism" as much an aesthetic that functions regressively through state power in historically fascist ways, push-come-to-shove (see: "On Sex Work versus Marxist-Leninism" in "Raising Awareness"). It all goes into the same pot, sucking power up towards the elite (with Bad Empanada engendering accelerationism globally while locally exploiting Argentina, the very third-world country he lives in—re: Parenti's "going to a country to make money," specifically by exploiting it as white straight men classically do).
*Literally in his own words; re: "I'm a Gamergate Denier" (above, 2025). Yet despite the dogwhistle ("Gamergate denier" = "fash"), many still defend him, gaslight-gatekeep-girlboss, when I critique him. Some do so him by ignoring him or tacitly supporting him as a "maverick," while others take a more aggressive approach; i.e., versus me, an anti-fascist/anti-Zionist trans-woman rape survivor/granddaughter of a holocaust survivor speaking out against fascism in all its forms (re: "I'm a Rape Survivor" from "Raising Awareness," "Discussing My Grandfather (a Dutch Holocaust Survivor) w/ My Work" [2025] vis-à-vis "On 'Anti-Semitism' versus 'Antisemitism" [2024] and "Justice for Palestine" and "Invincible Shield and Zionism," 2024). Fascism is extant; its apologizers gonna apologize, doing so DARVO-and-obscurantism: little pimps/schoolyard bullies emulating larger-and-larger abusers, scapegoating whores (and similar "degenerates") to conceal capital's feeding mechanism, mid-abjection. I literally have an entire dossier on how Bad Empanada's fash (re: "Raising Awareness"), but these bad actors won't read it; they'll anti-intellectually "pimp a ho" to defend capital/state vampirism, ipso facto.
†Not for attacking Brianna Wu, but for denouncing Gamergate at large while equating it with the token, "identity narcissist" trans woman; re: similar to Abigail Thorn or Natalie Wynn. Critiquing Wu is valid (e.g., source skeet, Katelyn Burns: November 1st, 2025), but equating her with Gamergate to dismiss Gamergate being exactly what Gamergaters would do (read: sexist, transphobic white men doing fascism). Bad Empanada is fash; anyone who uncritically and reactionarily defends Bad Empanada is also fash (moderates also being an issue but I digress): a false rebellion denying or displacing state responsibility onto state victims, pimped as whores "for being too fixated on sex." It becomes something to scapegoat, thus abject through the usual pogroms—a sickness to purge, a witch to burn, a slut to shame, etc. Bait is bait, pimping pimping when taking said paid; i.e., "If you scratch a TERF/SWERF, a fascist bleeds" and fascists are pimps, regardless if they mask or not: outing themselves by blaming/gaslighting whores, mid-abjection (re: the state hates sex, which it needs and which we turn into a weapon against those pimping us).
(source: "Concerning Venezuela (and State Vampirism)," 2025).
Furthermore, he, F.D., and the others were just one example of worker betrayal in media studies I gave from recently studying YouTubers (who, in pursuit of profit, want to be seen as entertainers on one hand, educators on the other—and always while getting paid/avoiding criticism). Feel free to provide your own/critique all aspects of society's socio-material conditions; re: doing so to raise emotional/Gothic intelligence and class, cultural and racial awareness amid privilege and oppression: intersectional consciousness and solidarity through self-critique. Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss; teamwork makes the dream work. No exceptions, no reductionism—no blind eyes, cuckoos or Omelas children. Hold your friends accountable, insofar as capital affects us to blinding extremes; i.e., regarding what suffers under such deception and destruction, preying on ourselves by turning a blind eye to bigger predators like the American establishment. "No man is an island," wrote John Donne (who also wrote "The Flea" [1633] but I digress):
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee (source: No Man Is an Island, 1624).
[1] Meaning liminal; re: me, vis-à-vis Jesper Juul—not merely "between the fiction and the rules" (as Juul argues, 2007) but between stories and anything they attach to, onstage and off. We unruly whores reverse abjection (as I conceive it); i.e., by anisotropically/apotropaically sending power towards works, effectively swapping terror/counterterror per Asprey's paradox in pirate-like ways; re (from "Sharing the Blame"):
One meaning "defined by direction," the other meaning "to reduce harm/ward off evil"; i.e., sex as terror weapon, referring to Asprey's paradox of terror (which we'll unpack deeper in): "Not only can terror be employed as a weapon, but any weapon can become a weapon of terror: terror is a weapon, a weapon is terror, and no one agency monopolizes it" (source: War in the Shadows, 1975). "Terror is the kissing cousin of force and, real or implied, is never far removed from the pages of history. To define (and condemn) terror from a peculiar social, economic, political, and emotional plane is to display a self-righteous attitude that, totally unrealistic, is doomed to be disappointed by harsh facts" (ibid.). Medusa is a terror weapon, one that reverses state power, guerilla-style, by retaking stolen goods; i.e., with said goods, the whore/monstrous-feminine working with policed materials stolen from herself/unpaid labor as a whole: "fleecing the pimp," dialectic-of-the-alien, by embodying what he/the state fear for abusing over time (the state vengefully pimping nature, endlessly justifying the same vicious cycle of state vampirism).
In other words, the state hates what it needs to exist, controlling sex through fear, mid-abjection; during the same process in reverse, workers reclaim sex-as-terror-weapon to expose and subvert state predation. We share the same aesthetics—the same bodies, props, costumes and spheres, onstage and off—that our enemies do, the Gothic a liminal exercise enamoured with castles and castle-like things as monstrous code bearing out historically a dialectical-material function. (e.g., Creature Commandos, 2024—above); i.e., flow of power determines function, regardless of aesthetic. Who uses what to send power where/for whom (workers or the state). Monopolies are myth, the only certainty that such things are fought over using themselves: canon-vs-camp. "Camp = rape play to reverse abjection, and 'we camp canon because we must' (from Colin Broadmoor to me, 2021 and 2023). This happens by enjoying taboo things, specifically by playing with them in subversive ways that liberate sex work (therefore all work): enjoy "harm" without endorsing its unironic forms, subversive play a necessary form of critique, during ludo-Gothic BDSM [rape play], regarding things normally played without thought (me vis-à-vis Anita Sarkeesian's famous adage)" (source: "Sharing the Blame").
[2] As I argue in my book series (re: "On Twin Trees," 2023), borrowed directly from Marx:
(source: Rana Indrajit Singh's "Base and Superstructure Theory," 2013)
This includes not just dialectical-material theory but Marx' love for monsters (re: "On Marx, the Gothic, and Camping Them through Poetic Shorthand" from "Raising Awareness").
[3] A neologism of mine, from "Paratextual (Gothic) Documents." Here are several useful terms from that list:
Gothic (gay-anarcho) Communism (abridged)
Coined by me, Gothic (gay-anarcho) Communism is the deliberate, pointed critique of capital/Capitalism and the state using a unique marriage of Gothic/queer/game theory and semi-Marxist (an-Com) ideas synthesized campily by sex-positive workers during proletarian praxis: developing systemic catharsis, mid-liminal expression during praxial opposition, breaking Capitalist Realism* to reverse abjection using ludo-Gothic BDSM and palliative-Numinous dialogs (e.g., Metroidvania). Exploitation and liberation exist and occur in the same half-real shadow zone, on and offstage.
ludo-gothic BDSM (rape play)
My 2023 combining of an older academic term, "ludic-Gothic" (Gothic videogames), with sex-positive BDSM theatrics as a potent means of camp—specifically rape play by placing "rape" in quotes, mid-Gothic (where rape [and playing with it] is ubiquitous). The emphasis is less about "how can videogames be Gothic" and more how the playfulness in videogames is commonly used to allow players to camp canon in and out of videogames as a form of negotiated power exchange established in playful, game-like forms (theatre and rules). Commonly gleaned through Metroidvania as I envision it, but frankly performed with any kind of Gothic poetics, ludo-Gothic BDSM playfully attains what I call "the palliative Numinous," or the Gothic quest for self-destructive power as something to camp (the Numinous, per Rudolph Otto, being a divine force or numen tied less to the natural world [the Sublime] and more to civilization as derelict, dead and alien; re: the mysterium tremendum): a Communist Numinous/the Medusa per Barbara Creed, but not tokenized (re: the Amazon) while dancing with Hogle's ghost of the counterfeit to reverse abjection (thus profit) and shrink the state!
For further information on ludo-Gothic BDSM and its rape play elements, refer to my new webpage cataloging the subject and its history/extended definition(s), everything coined and synthesized by me. —Perse
intersectional consciousness
A new term I coined, one meant to combat various forms of reductionism (class, culture and race); i.e., by building on Marx' notion of class consciousness: combining class with culture and race consciousness (awareness) to raise emotional/Gothic intelligence while synthesizing praxis. Generally synthesis occurs by illustrating mutual consent during informed labor exchanges; re: "At a presentation level, Gothic Communism reduces to one central goal: illustrating mutual consent as an educational device—i.e., one that makes rape of the alien impossible on a cultural level; but doing so requires humanizing the alien through iconoclastic engagement with dogma as something to break (and along with it, Capitalist Realism)" (source: "Brace for Impact: Some Prep When Hugging the Alien," 2024). I would summarize intersectional consciousness inside "Preface: Gothic (gay-anarcho) Communism; or, Synthesizing Emotional/Gothic Intelligence through a Sex-Positive Gothic Mode" (2024); re:
Synthesis is vital to good praxis. For our purposes, synthesis can be adequately summarized as "the cultivation of emotional/Gothic intelligence and class/cultural/racial awareness; i.e., the deliberate utilization of Gothic poetics during the practical application of simplified theory had between activist workers: formulating healthy social-sexual habits to deal with state trauma." But there's still plenty of theory that goes into these habits and their collective instruction/de facto education during ludo-Gothic BDSM. To that, Gothic Communism is "picky" in terms of what it incorporates (source).
I would extrapolate on this idea in "The Basics of Oppositional Synthesis." However, I wouldn't specifically call this notion "intersectional consciousness" until "Is Metal Racist? Yes, It Is; or, a Trans Woman Critiquing Heavy Metal Philosophy's Good-Faith Response to Andrew Lee" (2025)—months after my book series had concluded (re: on June 1st, 2025)!
(model and artist: Blxxd Bunny and Persephone van der Waard; source: "My Logo for Gothic (gay-anarcho) Communism!" 2023)
Gothic maturity
A new term I coined, specifically the ability to say healthy things through taboo language during ludo-Gothic BDSM; i.e., while pushing for intersectional solidarity and consciousness, developing Gothic Communism (thus universal liberation) through various creative successes that collectively overcome praxial inertia, division, dormancy and betrayal.
the dialectic of the alien
A term I coined to articulate the dialectic of the abjection process and venerate the Gothic—vis-à-vis Julia Kristeva, but also Frederic Jameson's "dialectic of shelter" and subsequent class nightmare (re: Postmodernism), as well as Summoning Salt's "The History of Mega Man 2 World Records" (2024; timestamp: 8:25); i.e., as a dialectic useful towards universal liberation, one concerning the alien as something to parse and arbitrate for or against abjection (as something to reverse): to hug or hate, police or liberate, the assignment of "alien" status using the same language/aesthetic of the alien, mid-play.
As I write in "Brace for Impact: Some Prep When Hugging the Alien" (2024):
"All in all, I live the Humanities as a ludo-Gothic means of thinking inclusively about and experiencing the Gothic first-hand (an ongoing relationship the Gothic deliberately combines—an affect); i.e., BDSM or otherwise, people work through preference and experimentation to issue public statements that are, to some degree, coded. Monsters are code for the dialectic of the alien (us versus them) as taught to us through canon, power being made to flow in one direction when faced with trauma as a historical-material effect: the ghost of the counterfeit waiting patiently for revenge (state shift). The horror of the Gothic, then, is when it truly comes alive, ceasing to be a pure fiction but a nightmare that applies to us as victims of the state cannibalizing us" (source).
Ludo-Gothic BDSM, then, is a potent means of negotiating generational trauma during the dialectic of the alien; i.e., by rarefying or otherwise going where abuse (or spectres of abuse) are—mid-dialectic—to perform and interrogate shelter and alienation for development purposes: setting nature-as-alien (re: the monstrous-feminine) free from state control/pimps (re: the whore's revenge).
(artist: Alex Ahad)
the liminal hauntology of war (danger disco)
Another term of mine, one describing a half-real poetic space to heroically move through, onstage and off, and one that concerns the hauntological presence and function of a Gothic chronotope (the castle or some other war-like alien double of the nuclear home); i.e., of the Imperial Boomerang bringing monsters (and their masters) home to roost, during fascism; e.g., Tolkien and Cameron's refrain (further academic coinage on my part, specifically that of the High Fantasy treasure map and Metroidvania/shooter), per the monomyth and Promethean Quest (for power) chasing the Numinous: for different reasons during the dialectic of the alien. In turn, these translate in and out of neoliberal stories (especially videogames) into real life; i.e., during the abjection process as something to reify and further for profit raping nature as monstrous-feminine (re: "A Note About Canonical Essentialism," 2024). Also something I call the "danger disco," or source of Numinous thrills; i.e., where the hero chases the Numinous during calculated risk: to articulate and interpret generational trauma under state confusion and duress.
