I don’t like Naomi Klein’s anti-China brainworms so I’m gonna skip that section, but I’m reading The Shock Doctrine right now and it really does seem like this is the plan - to shock, destroy, and rebuild. Shock Doctrine is what neoliberal America imposed on so much of the world, so this really is an example what’s learned in the periphery coming home to the core.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck... maybe even a "recreational vehicle." And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?
Captain Ramius: I suppose.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: No papers?
Captain Ramius: No papers, state to state.
This is from a movie made at the end of the Cold War, meant to highlight the freedom Americans have versus the lack of freedom the Soviets had.
Are Americans in their late teens and early 20s actually super-reactionary?
Ever since the election, there seems to be a torrent of polling that shows Americans in their late teens and early twenties are fairly reactionary (young men overwhelmingly so). I’m old so I don’t know anyone IRL in that age bracket. But something about what the media has been claiming for months now doesn’t seem to sound right. Idk maybe it’s 100% true but it’s something I have a hard time taking the media’s word for. I know we have quite a few users here in that age bracket. What are your real-life experiences (i.e. not online) with this? Do you think this age demographic is actually trending reactionary?
(I do remember digging into the details of one poll, and while it seemed there was more affiliation with Republicans than previous, it also seemed like there were an also very large segment that were openly showing to be further left than the democrats? So maybe more reactionary sentiment but also more genuinely leftish sentiment?)
Comrades who just don’t give a shit and say whatever you want… how do you do it?
I am so conflict-avoidant that I’m now at the point that most people in my life don’t actually have any idea I’m even close to being a commie. I really want to start expressing myself more openly and honestly - especially since I feel like I’m actually harming my mental health by not saying how I feel - but I always feel held back. Any tips on improving this are appreciated.
German speakers, how do you say “Liebknecht”?
As in our comrade Karl Liebknecht, co-founder of the KPD? All these years I’ve been saying “LEEB-necked”, two syllables. But the I heard Matt Christman say “Leeb-KUH-neck-et” (four syllables). And I realized I don’t really know why I was saying it like I was. Anyone know how to actually say it?
How do you identify with your socio-political views (commie, Marxist, leftist, etc) IRL?
I identify differently depending on the context.
When around comrades, I will identify as a Marxist-Leninist, as this is the most precise definition of what I hold to. I generally don't use this other than around comrades because no one else has any idea of what it means.
If I'm around people who at least sort of know what Marxism is, I'll call myself a Marxist. But in my experience this is pretty rare. Or this is what I will default to around people who I know are leftist broadly. I feel like "Marxist" is accurate enough where getting into the details of M-L isn't really necessary.
But when I'm around most normies, I will identify as a socialist. I think it's accurate enough to convey to people who do not have a very developed political understanding what I hold to. "Socialist" at the same time conveys a commitment to radical change well beyond the current Republican/Democrat paradigm, while not, for example, putting my job in jeopardy if I call myself a socialist to co
People don’t want to hear this but an iPhone, with the right settings, is the most secure phone outside of a pixel running GrapheneOS. This is something that Daniel Micay himself would say often.
Three votes away from a veto-proof supermajority.
Also no way Kamala wouldn’t have also signed it.
Ilan Pappe stated that before Al-Aqsa flood, he felt the cause of Palestinian liberation was really on the ropes and possibly done for. Saudi legitimization of the entity would have been disastrous, and the Resistance themselves cited this as a reason for launching Al-Aqsa Flood; now that’s not happening anytime soon. Now Pappe says he think the entity is living on borrowed time.
Not to downplay the unimaginable price paid by the Palestinian people over the last 15 months, but the story isn’t over yet. It is certainly possible that down the line, schoolchildren will learn that it was Al-Aqsa Flood that was the beginning of the successful liberation of the Palestinian people and maybe even the end of the Zionist entity (inshallah).
No, because despite what most Americans say they stop reading books after they are required to do so in school, and 1984 is frequently a book that is mandatory to read in high school curriculums.
I used GOS for about a year and a half, it’s pretty great. Tbh I didn’t feel I was really losing anything from the standard Android experience, but of course gaining more privacy and security.
Sandboxed Play Services works great. The only downside is you still need a Google account to use it, even if you only use the account for that purpose. And Google has really clamped down on not letting you create an account without providing a phone number.
But overall I definitely recommend GOS.
I have a hard time criticizing the UN; because it seems clear to me that the nations that make up the global majority do want to seek justice, but the UN is structured specifically to not allow them to act without the blessing of the “Great Powers”. And it’s the US, UK, and France that have longest list of historical crimes.
Just to add, the idea that western countries do not subsidize their exports is laughable. I don’t doubt that in many sectors, western governments - both now and in the past - have subsidized their industries to far greater degree than China ever has with theirs.
Its leaders are dead
Yes, some are; and new leaders have stepped in, as what always happens
Its ranks are depleted
There is zero evidence this is the case, but because the Israeli genocide has been so brutal westerners and their media just assume it’s true. Over the course of the last year, the Resistance in Gaza has shown absolutely NO reduction in its ability to fight. I would say the Resistance’s ability to fight has either held or even possibly increased over the last year.
You might want to sit down for this but… Donald Trump is a big talker, and will usually bloviate well beyond what he’s actually capable of doing. Yeah of course, he uses more genocidal language but so what, how does that translate into action?
Biden has given Bibi everything he’s asked for. The administration has provided diplomatic cover for every single genocidal action that taken place. Weapons are sent to Israel without delay, to the point that supplies are getting stretched there’s talk about how Ukraine and Israel can’t both be supported (guess who’s losing out there btw). Every time Biden draws a red line, Bibi crosses it with zero consequences.
But as you correctly point out, there is really only one way a president could be MORE genocidal than Biden, and that’s by committing ground troops. I should point out that Biden has already done this with the recent THAAD deployment, but that’s not a massive commitment of personnel. But no, neither Harris nor Trump will be committing troops because not only would that end up being a disaster, but because doing so defeats the purpose of Israel. Israel exists in order to do America’s wetwork in the region. For reasons of both domestic and foreign policy, America can’t be seen as directly causing so much blood to spill in the region, so it gets outsourced to Israel. The CIA and State Dept know all this too well and neither Trump nor Harris are gonna cross them.
We know Trump supports …let's call it "Genocide+"
We do know that? Biden and Harris are currently ok with the IOF sealing off an area with 400k+ people in it, hoping to starve them to death. No, if you’re going to claim Trump will do something more, be specific. Because outside of dropping a nuke on Gaza there isn’t much more that can be done, we’re at what essentially is maximum genocide that is reasonably possible.
I believe most people think Harris will make getting a permanent ceasefire and supporting a two state solution central tenets of her administration.
Oh wait, you’re serious. Oh you sweet summer child. I can even be mad at you. But not only do most people not believe this, most people know this is patently false because it IS false. Btw the reason people like Blinken and Harris bring up a 2 state solution is because Israel has made it functionally impossible.
I mean, they’re not exactly chanting “from the river to the sea” at rallies but they think the Israelis and Palestinians should each have their own state because “that’s fair”. They understand the Palestinian state has been under military occupation since they were little kids and that’s about as far as I’ve gotten.
I saw recently that the total number of deaths due to the “war on terror” is up to 4.5 million.
I had this realization yesterday, and not like this is some big insight but it was a new thought to me:
Most Americans have zero conception of “anti-imperialism” or “anti-colonialism”.
It’s not that most Americans knowingly approve of imperialism or colonialism. Or that they have a warped idea of what these terms mean. It’s that they have no idea what these concepts are or how they exist in history up to the present.
I like to think my parents are pretty good examples of the “median” (white) American. If you asked them what “colonies” were, they would say something like “well, in the past countries like Britain and France owned parts of Africa and Asia, but now they don’t anymore”. That’s it, that’s all they would able to explain. They have no idea that there was an anti-colonial struggle across many countries. They think Vietnam was just “the communists were trying to take over the world”, where “the communists” are not even specifically Vietnamese or Russian or Chinese, just a sort of blob of anthropomorphized ideology.
This bleeds into their present-day understanding of what’s happening in Gaza. Palestinians or really any brown people are just naturally violent for reasons unknown, so they get branded with the “terrorist” label and they don’t think any deeper than that. The conflict then becomes not an anti-colonial struggle or a people striving for liberation, but the bad “terrorists” who just want to do violence to the white people who look like they do and have democracy and capitalism and speak English so they must be good. This gets reinforced by the media which has now spent over 20 years pushing hard stories of Muslim or Arab “terrorists” who want to set off a nuke in an American shopping mall or whatever crap they watch of NCIS / CSI / JAG / Homeland / FBI (yes, there’s now a show that’s just called “FBI”).
The struggles that Mexico has had to endure are completely unknown to most Americans, so when AMLO or Sheinbaum get labeled as “autocrats”, (white) Americans will just accept it because of their own lack of knowledge plus inherent racism.
(Just to clarify, I’ve worked on my parents so they no longer think the above
In the US I have never seen so much actual anti-semitism in my life, and it is 100% because of western governments appearing to move heaven and earth to support Israel. While we know Israel is not the one calling the shots (that’s the US), because of how it looks on the surface actual anti-semites are capitalizing on this to say “see look, the Jews DO control the world”. And there are people who are listening and internalizing that.
He described speaking Russian as a major offense for Ukrainians.
Remember, folks, Ukraine did nothing to provoke Russia in the years leading up to the SMO. They certainly didn’t persecute Russian language speakers or kill over 14,000 people (primarily Russian speakers) in the years between Euromaidan and the SMO. No sir, Ukraine was just a smol bean minding its own business, yep…