#And it’s how leftists have been in this country for too long

[thisismenow3]

A lot of people ignoring the fact that when democracy is at stake you have to REALLY do all you can to stop authoritarians. Will Wheaton almost sounds sensible until you think about how George Clooney ain’t a great medical authority and that there is no alternative. Honestly just that last point is what matters. We’ve seen time and again that the conservative justices will make shit up to create the conservative theocratic oligarchy they crave. Why wouldn’t they speedrun a case lodged tomorrow that wants to say you can’t sub in a nominee for president this close to the election? Actually having merit, following precedent, not going against the constitution in spirit or plain text are all things this right wing court and most federal bench below them don’t give a shit about. Changing Biden out even for Kamala Harris begs this to happen.

And then you get into what previous posters have said; the people with power closest to the top democratic officials mostly don’t want Harris (at least the ones openly trying to dump Biden), the only candidate with track record, with squint and it’s kind of precedent for subbing in, who is a part of or associated with the mostly unsung wins of the last 4 years. So dumping Biden for someone who ain’t Harris is foolish and that’s what getting rid of Biden gets us.

When Republicans wanted to keep packing courts and deregulating business, and killing unions and killings schools, did they drop Reagan before his second term because of his obvious and far along Alzheimer’s? No, cause a president is only as important as the people they surround themselves with through appointments. The lion’s share of things that an administration does is thought up and executed by these people and their subordinates. A second term president can just sit there and have very little to offer other than broad strokes things like “fix economy and climate change but don’t hurt non white people to do it,” and it ends up not too different from a very involved president who doesn’t have experience directly in the related fields. Is it ideal? Obviously not, but we have to resist the urge to shoot ourselves in the foot when fighting authoritarian takeover. Waiting for perfect lands us with worse. If our democracy is to survive we have to bite the bullet and vote for a “Harris behind the throne” presidency at worst, dude with a life long stutter who is also 81 at best. Based upon Biden as he’s presented the last 15 years, neither choice is really that different, especially in regards to fixing what needs to be fixed. George Clooney may not be a news anchor, but he’s acting like one with this stunt attempting to make the Democratic Party act unstrategically cause even a small chance of getting exactly what he believes is better is more important to him than taking no chances and protecting people with less money, privilege, etc. Will Wheaton is being similar frankly in that by being rich he can afford to be moronic about how the media and Supreme Court would fuck this because of his privileges. I don’t believe either are doing this on purpose, they just ain’t the source of strategic wisdom for shit like this. And dems HAVE to win for us to have any chance fixing things for non white people, the climate, our economy for workers, etc.

“Clooney wrote of the “profound moment” the country is currently in, noting how just last month he hosted the “single largest fundraiser supporting any Democratic candidate ever, for President Biden’s re-election.” “I love Joe Biden,” Clooney wrote. “As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him. Believe in his character. Believe in his morals. In the last four years, he’s won many of the battles he’s faced.” “But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time,” he continued. “None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F—ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.” Regarding the debate, in which the 81-year-old President stumbled continually, Clooney wrote that “our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw.” “We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign. The George Stephanopoulos interview only reinforced what we saw the week before. As Democrats, we collectively hold our breath or turn down the volume whenever we see the president, who we respect, walk off Air Force One or walk back to a mic to answer an unscripted question,” he wrote.”

—

George Clooney calls on Biden to drop out to “save democracy” — just weeks after hosting fundraiser

George Clooney has nothing to gain and everything to lose, by telling the truth right now. Politicians and their supporters hold grudges for eternity. He’s speaking up and saying this now, knowing exactly what the stakes are for him, and for our country.

This is what I’ve been wanting to know. This is what the campaign has been hiding from us: WE all saw that President Biden had a bad night. The question the demands an answer is: was it a bad night? Or has time and age caught up with the president? Are we going to believe our lying eyes, or clap louder?

We don’t vote for just a president; we vote for an administration. For the most part, this administration has been fantastic, more progressive than I ever dreamed, to say nothing of rebuilding a nation out of the wreckage of four years of Trump.

And all of that is going to be burned to ash if President Biden can’t mount an effective campaign to defeat fascism and its leader. Since the debate, the campaign has kept him behind teleprompters and away from unscripted interactions. That’s alarming, and a tacit admission that he can’t fight like he once did, that the person we saw at the debate is the person he is most of the time.

If we lose this election, America will be plunged into decades of authoritarian, theocratic, christian nationalist fascism. The stakes will never be higher, and President Biden and his team need to do what is best for the country.

We will not win this election by clapping louder and gaslighting ourselves. We need — this crisis demands — a candidate who can clearly and easily refute Trump’s lies, and simply and clearly explain to voters what the stakes of this election are. The 2020 Joe Biden could do that; the 2024 Joe Biden doesn’t seem to be capable of that, anymore, and that puts our entire nation and way of life at risk. George Clooney is telling us that he literally just saw, privately, what we all saw in public, and it was not a one-off. He also reveals that every single elected Democrat he talks to agrees with him, but they are too afraid to speak up. That’s horrifying, and I desperately hope it isn’t true.

But if George Clooney is telling us a hard truth, risking the wrath of countless powerful political players, and we should listen to him; not because he is rich and famous, but because he was literally in a room with President Biden and his supporters, and is now on the record that the President Biden we saw at the debate is not a guy with a cold or whatever, and now journalists can follow up with other people who were there to confirm or deny George Clooney’s observations.

These are tough questions that demand answers, now, because we are four months out and this shouldn’t be close, at all. America hates Trump, and he has lost every election since 2018 as a result.

President Biden and the Democrats need to run up huge margins in Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, and Ohio, to overcome the inevitable MAGA fuckery. We need a candidate who is fifteen points ahead of Trump, not someone who has been in the margin of error for his entire presidency – which is fucking insane when you look at all of Trump’s felonies, judgments, impending trials, and all of his corrupt criminality that the SCOTUS MAGA Majority twisted itself into knots to protect.

This should be a landslide against Trump and MAGA. It’s close because the candidate running against him isn’t – likely can’t – be out there, every day, banging the podium and forcing a change in the narrative. 

Did you see my governor after the debate disaster? He was on fire. That guy would destroy Trump in a debate. Vice President Harris would be laser focused on prosecuting the case against him. President Biden is the only candidate who Trump could drag into a fucking dick waving contest about golf scores when the fucking future of American Democracy is at stake. There is not a single other credible candidate who would take that bait. My god.

President Biden has done so much more than I ever thought possible. He doesn’t get credit for all his progressive achievements, for pulling America out of a economic calamity (caused by Trump and his allies), forgiving student debt, his appointments to the FCC, FTC, and other regulatory agencies that had been captured by industry during the Trump regime.

All of that will be wiped out in a matter of days, if Trump seizes power again.

George Clooney is warning us that President Biden doesn’t have the stamina and focus to win reelection and secure not just his legacy but the future of our country. He is saying out loud and as publicly as possible that we are not crazy, that we really did see what we saw.

This is DEFCON 1 for Democracy. This isn’t politics as usual. This is a moment of tremendous existential danger that only gets worse with each passing day. IF President Biden remains the candidate, I will vote for him, obviously. But I hope that he will fire everyone involved in preparing him for the debate, because they failed him, they failed America, and if Biden is going to take the fight to Trump and MAGA the way he needs to, it he needs a team who understand who they are fighting against, how to punch Trump in the nose, and what the stakes are.

[chaos-coming]

I'm annoyed and have been stewing in these thoughts for a few weeks, it's time to get it off my chest.

Despite their enthusiasm, i think i will not he working with the local marxist group here after all. Ive met with them a few times and honestly they fall into all of the classic shortcomings of white european leftist groups.

This group of upper middle class white swedes seem really and truly convinced that they will be the leaders of the great global revolution. They openly told me the first time we met that they are studying the literature to train the future leaders of the movement (the ego is just...wow). Dogmatic and enthusiastic, yes, but aware of the global currents happening right now, no. They dont see that capitalism is reliant on imperialism, and the idea that they might not be center stage when the workers of the world (most of whom live in the global south) rise up has never crossed their minds. They say they only want members who are serious and committed to the cause, but it really looks like they just want to create an echo chamber to boost their egos.

They think that boycotts and direct action are meaningless, as if disrupting the capitalist war machine is antithetical to their "great revolution". They use protests and demonstrations as opportunities for recruitment and to prosthelytize about reading theory. I watched them stand in front of a group of mostly migrants and refugees from syria, iran, palestine, and talk at them about the situation as if everyone showing up to a demonstration organization meeting wasnt already aware. As if refugees with family in the region wanted to hear this blond guy with a mustache posturing for Woke Points(tm) and say nothing constructive, dominate the conversation and ignore suggestions for action from people who have lived through the imperialist wars in SWANA.

Besides going to marxist conferences aka paid field trips, these people dont talk about any action if it's not directly about the great revolution and recruiting more communists, and place way too much emphasis on reading "the classics" (dont get me wrong reading theory is useful but its not the end all be all they think it is). And they dont read literary response/criticism to the classical theory, or modern interpretations, it's not "pure" enough. Theyre not just reading it for theory either, theyre literally and uncritically looking to 100 year old descriptions of society for instructions and methods for creating a revolution in the current day - descriptions which do not acknowledge climate change or indigenous sovereignty or the hyperconnected global economic system we live under - with no critical thought to how it must be adapted to the current epoch (i watched them shoot down all suggestions for organizing online and on social media, or provocative visual demonstrations, insisting that the only and best way to spread awareness is to stand in the hallways and pass out fliers to passersby like its still 1980 and sweden isnt already a paperless cashless society).

I made a comment about how soviet agriculture in west asia wasnt sustainable and got blank or disappointed faces in response. Which leads me to suspect that they idolize the ussr and have no intention to look at non european perspectives. I even tried to bring up the fact that we are currently on occupied sami land, sweden still has a literal actual monarch, living off of taxes and the imperial conquest of the sami people and neighboring countries. It got quiet, they did not want to have that conversation, they dont care beyond lip service about the rights of the indigenous people in their backyards (literally, theyre camped outside the city with their reindeer right now). Getting rid of the monarchy is not a priority, the concept of a monarch in the 21st century is not offensive or antithetical to their beliefs because the "great revolution" will take care of it anyway. Theyre not interested in actions, anything short of their fantasy of a total revolution is meaningless to them. These self proclaimed leaders of the revolution arent even interested in leading a push for an end to the monarchy which takes the workers' taxes to uphold an imperialistic remnant.

Like its basically a pay to play book club, theyre super insistent on the member fee being 10% of your income (even if you have no income you still pay) and it needs to be paid to participate in any of their group meetings etc. Like i get that they have a newspaper and printing press and a full time newspaper employee to pay for, but how is that not capitalistic? How is it not a class barrier, and especially when non-european students have to pay 5 figure tuition costs and they get to go to uni for free. The fact that their group is entirely 100% white and almost all swedes says volumes. And the fact that the palestine organizers have stsrted to schedule their meetings at the same time as the marxist group regularly does, almost like they dont want to work with these white guys who are trying to control the local solidarity movement.

When all you do is sit around reading literature and patting yourselves on the back for being special, when you look a refugee in the face and talk about revolution like theyre not the ones who have literally lived through it, when you are completely uninterested in taking action to fight imperialism in your own country, when you staunchly refuse to get with the times, why are you surprised nobody wants the 'revolution' youre offering them.

[boreal-sea]

So from what I've seen there are four main excuses American leftist non-Jews use to deny indigeneity for diaspora Jews.

Most of them agree Jews were indigenous 2,000 years ago, but some think the Jews who were forced out of Israel during the past 2,000 years have "lost" their indigeneity in some way. In other words, they don't think diaspora Jews have a right to claim indigeneity to the Jewish homeland.

Some of them think that converts and/or external marriages have "diluted" diaspora Jewish bloodlines too much, and diaspora Jews are now a "different race" or "different ethnicity" from the "original Jews". They may even consider some diaspora Jews to be "white", which means they think those Jews definitely can't claim indigeneity.

Some of them think the fact that diaspora Jews absorbed parts of other cultures means they are no longer the "same kind of Jews" that originally came from the region, and this means they have changed too much to be considered the same culture, and thus they cannot return to their homeland.

Some just think "too much time has passed". It doesn't matter that diaspora Jews didn't choose to leave, nor does it matter that people prevented them from returning until very recently. Time is time, and too much time has passed. Indigeneity gone.

Finally, I have seen some argue that birthplace or citizenship is what matters. They say, "you can't be indigenous to a place you weren't born in". I've seen some claim that being born as a citizen of a country or becoming a citizen of a country erases any prior ethnic, cultural, national, indigenous, or religious ties they and their family may have had. For example, they think Jews born in America are American, and have zero right to say they have any ties to anywhere else.

Basically, for whatever reason, they don't think diaspora Jews are "native Jews" anymore, and thus they don't belong in their homeland.

...

I wonder though.

Do they know the difference between an ethnicity and a race? Do they know what an ethnoreligion is? Do they know how Jews view converts?

Do they think certain Jewish ethnic groups get to have a claim to indigeneity while others don't? Why do they think that as a non-Jew they get to have any say in that?

If they think the indigeneity of diaspora Jews has "expired" due to how long Jews have been living in the diaspora, do they think the indigeneity of ALL displaced indigenous peoples can "expire", or does this rule only apply to Jews?

If they believe indigeneity expires, when does it expire? After 200 years? What about 500 years? 1000?

If a colonized country with a displaced indigenous population waits long enough, will it be OK to tell those displaced people, "Sorry, you've been gone from the parts of the continent you were originally from for too long. Even though it wasn't your choice to leave, and even though we have prevented you from returning, you have no right to claim that as your homeland anymore". Is that acceptable?

When does a population living in a forced diaspora have no right to return home?

[alaiis]

So I want to talk about the Olympic games opening ceremony.

Apparently it's been watched by 1 billion people around the world, so this spectacle promoting queer relationships, women and revolutionary ideals must show quite a progressive picture of France. The fact that so many fascists are crying over it must make it good, right? Right?

We saw statues of important women in the ceremony, like Simone Veil, Louise Michèle and others. I'd like to remind people that today, many of these women would be on the file compiling terrorists and potential terrorists. You know, like so many people who happen to be leftist activists and learned they would not be able to work for the Olympic games or attend them when they tried. For past acts of activism that date years and never resulted in convictions most of the time.

All around the ceremony, LVMH, that luxury brand, was everywhere. Bernard Arnault (currently richest man on earth) surely grabbed the spot for these games. What a great ad for his brand.

The ceremony, which was presented as a "street ceremony for the people" actually only included a few privileged people able to spend 2,000€. The city was empty. The city is empty.

They locked up kilometres and kilometres of the city, where only few can go. Paris is barricaded. Some hospitals have become inaccessible.

They sacked so many homeless people so that the tourists wouldn't see them. Who knows where they are now. They sacked students from their homes too, before even the end of exams. And when the police came and took their rooms, they complained about the housing conditions. Well that's how our students live all year, but that's not a problem then.

And then I could talk about the surveillance conditions, Macron's friendship with the worst world leaders, that they tried (and failed) to make the Seine swimmable by spending billions on it meanwhile people in the colonies over-sea regions still don't have drinkable water. I could speak about the work conditions, that most of the work was made with undocumented workers and so. Much. More.

But that would be a very long post.

So after seeing this opening ceremony and all the great, progressive messages it carried, what you need to remember is this.

France is a police state.

France is a classist country.

France almost elected the far-right to power less than a month ago, and the far-right is still more powerful than ever.

France is a queerphobic country. And a very, very transphobic country.

France is a racist country, where Arabs get murdered while barely making regional news.

France is nothing like what we showed.

That was propaganda at its finest.

[anexperimentallife]

The US far right has been working on their plan since AT LEAST the 1960s, when I was a kid listening to evangelicals talking about their plan to take over the US, and eventually the world. It's called "Christian Dominionism," and it's a fascist ideology which goes hand in glove with the GOP's plans.

Although it was not expressed so much to the world at large, this plan was OPENLY and FREQUENTLY discussed in far right circles. We kids, if we asked about it, were told that it was "God's Will." Ask any exvangelical about it, and they'll confirm. (Part of why I know so much about these dangerous and deluded folks is I WAS ONE OF THEM in my youth.)

And where has that plan gotten them? Well, the GOP recently released a hundreds of pages long document filled with their intentions if they win--including a nationwide abortion ban and a repeal of anti-discrimination laws, among other things.

Trump has already signaled his intent to create a military dictatorship if elected, by repealing laws against using the military against US citizens on US soil sp he can deploy them against dissenters, etc., and if the GOP pick up a few more congressional seats, he can do it. The GOP has already pushed to repeal presidential term limits, and Trump has indicated he'd like to be president for life.

So I'm amazed at all the people who think withholding their vote and letting the GOP win is going to somehow fix things and "push the Dems left."

You wanna know how to push US politics leftward? You're not gonna like it, because it takes actual work beyond stomping your foot and pouting and performatively showing everyone how "pure" you are by refusing to vote.

You have to start the same way the far right did (and again, they've been OPENLY talking about and pursuing this plan since I was a kid in the 1960s, AT LEAST)--they started by getting the most extreme right wingers they possibly could into any position they could. Positions like school board member, police chief, sherrif, city prosecuter, city council member, municipal judge, mayor, governor, hell, fucking dog catcher.

They encouraged far right extremists to become police officers and military personnel and work their way up the ranks to the point at which even the famously-racist FBI reported that major city police departments across the nation were pretty much taken over by members of white supremacist organizations.

In formerly reasonable churches, right wingers pushed for the hiring and training of more and more right wing pastors and mire right-wing theology.

More affluent right-wingers bought local papers and broadcasters, and as their political power grew, they changed laws to make it easier for a single entity to control the news--until now a mere handful of entities own nearly every major media outlet in the US.

And then they used every victory as leverage for the next one, and worked their way up. I mean, there's more, like the capitalization on economic and social anxiety and their inentional exacerbation of same so they could take advantage of it, but that's intertwined with the rest.

Essentially, they got this far because they put the work in.

If the US left is going to turn things around (and if it's not already too late), we've got to do the same, but it takes RESEARCHING and PROMOTING your local and state candidates, attending city council and school board meetings, and shit like that. It's actual fucking work to fix a country.

And then, after you've done all that--and after you've shown up to primaries to try to get any non-authoritarian leftist candidate you can nominated--then you vote for the leftest folks you're able to in the general. If there are no remotely leftist candidates, you vote for the centrist or right winger who will do the least damage.

Again, that's what the US far right has been doing for decades. Taking action. Wherever possible, taking new ground, but when they couldn't do that, ceding as little ground as possible. If they couldn't win, they made damn sure to do everything in their power to try to keep actual decent human beings from winning.

Actually doing the work doesn't have the emotional satisfaction of a grand gesture, but it definitely shows who is serious about making a difference and who would rather let everything burn than sully their imagined purity by voting for anything less than perfection.

Listen, Trump is not going to end the genocide in Gaza--in fact he increased tensions between the Israeli occupation and Palestine. And the GOP will never be persuaded. Hell, they want to let Russia take Ukraine and declare open season on asylum seekers.

The Dems suck. But the GOP is far, far worse, and will do MORE damage, and kill FAR MORE innocents. And if allowed to do so, will make it even harder to change the system than it is now. They've already PUBLICLY ADMITTED that their only chance of victory is keeping people from voting. Don't play into their hands.

Under current circumstances, you know what the Dems are going to do if Biden and a bunch of other Dems lose for not being pure enough? You think they'll be all like, "Oh, no! The left sure taught us a lesson by handing the country to the GOP! We'd better shift to the left!"

No. They're going to sip champagne in their multi-million dollar mansions and have meetings about how they need to move FURTHER RIGHT to win elections, because the left doesn't vote.

And if the US becomes a military dictatorship, most of the high ranking ones will simply take their fortunes and leave.

Yup, it'd sure teach ol' Joe a lesson to force him to spend the rest of his days sipping cocktails on the Riviera.

Look beyond the single battle and think strategically. That's how the GOP keeps gaining power. And refusing to act strategically is why the left is losing. We cannot take the hill we want right now. But if we lose the hills we've already taken, we risk losing the entire goddamn war.

So fucking vote. Work to get every leftist you can in any office you can. And if you can't do that, support the one who will do the least harm.

And if it takes voting for that shitbag Biden to keep Trump and the GOP out, hold your fucking nose and pull the goddamn lever.

[doberbutts]

I remember reading a post that men are the oppressor class so why would they bother to dismantle systemic patriarchy when they actively benefit from its existence? And as I read it, I thought, Damn, so an entire half of the population can never conceivably help us, and the people who love men in their lives are doomed. It wasn't a helpful post. It basically felt, here's some actual material analysis on feminism and said, That trying to educate and make men be part of feminism is fundamentally a flawed effort, because again, they are the oppressor class, why should they care about uplifting the oppressed?

And it made me think about this very good pamphlet I read, explaining how the white worker remained complacent for so long because at least they weren't a Black slave. And that the author theorized the reason labor movements never truly created exceptional, radical change is because of internal racism (which I find true) and failure to uplift black people. And the author listed common outlooks/approaches to this problem, and one of them was: "We should ignore the white folks entirely and hold solidarity with only other POC, and the countries in the Global South. Who needs those wishy-washy white fragile leftists who don't care about what we think or want?" (roughly paraphrased.)

And the author said, This sounds like the most leftist and radical position, but it's totally flawed because it absolves us of our responsibility to dismantle white supremacy for the sake of our fellow marginalized people, and we are basically ignoring the problem. And that blew me away because this is a position so many activists have, to just ignore the white folks and focus entirely on our own movements. I wish I knew the name of the actual pamphlet, so I could quote entire passages at you.

But I feel this is the same for men. Obviously, we should prioritize and have women-led and women-focused feminism. But saying that men are an oppressor class so they can't reliably be counted upon in feminist activism--it's such a huge oversimplification. And mainly, I'm a Muslim, and I've been treated with plenty of misogyny from Muslim men. And also plenty of misogyny from Muslim women. And I love my male friends, I want men to be part of the movement, and I dunno. Thinking about communities, movements, and the various ways we fail each other and what it means to be truly intersectional keeps me up at night.

I don't know the pamphlet you're talking about but I've read and been taught similar. There's a reason much of my anti-racism is so feminist and most of my feminism is anti-racist. Many people coming at this problem from a truly intersectional angle have seen that there is no freedom to be had without joining hands across the community. Not picking and choosing our allies based off of identity but off of behavior.

As used in a previous example, a white abled moderately wealthy man saying "wow Healthcare sucks in this country, why does this system suck so bad" should be told "hey, this system sucks so bad because it's built off of sexism, racism, classism, and ableism. You want to improve the system? Fix those things and it will be much better in the long run" and not "shut up you're a man. Healthcare is always going to be better for you". The second response doesn't fix that Healthcare is still a problem even if you are at the "top" of the privilege ladder. If we want true change, we have to dismantle the entire system at it's core and build it up without the yuck, otherwise you're gunna get to the top and realize this place sucks too.

Something something if the crabs worked together to hold each other up, they could all get out of the bucket and be free.

[mariacallous]

Which were the pivotal years of the past century? An argument could be made for 1929, when the worldwide financial crash ushered in the crisis that led to the rise of Nazism (and of the New Deal) and, eventually, to the Second World War; for 1945, when the United States emerged from that war uniquely victorious—having, like Hercules, strangled two serpents in its cradle, as Updike thought—and in possession of the most lethal weapon the world had ever known; for 1968, marked by a series of assassinations and domestic unrest that announced the beginning of the end of the American bulwark empire but also, through the awakening to liberation and the soft power of the European left, of the Russian one. Other years raise their hands eagerly and ask for admittance: 1979, with the rise of Margaret Thatcher and Ayatollah Khomeini and the war in Afghanistan; 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall; 2001, with its terrorism and counterterrorism. But 2020, the year when a virus came out of China and shut down the world, gets in by acclamation.

Writing the history of an event that happened generations ago is difficult enough. (The 1968 movements in Paris and elsewhere seemed leftist at the time but actually marked the break of young radicals with the Communist Party.) Writing about an episode that happened five minutes ago is hard in another way. Who knows what counts and what doesn’t? Yet 2020 already seems historic—how remote so many of its rituals now feel, from the Lysol scrubbing of innocent groceries to the six-feet rule of social distancing. Andrew Cuomo and Joe Exotic, both superstars of the first pandemic months, have been banished from attention. We speculated about how New York City would emerge from the pandemic: traumatized or merry or newly chastened and egalitarian? Now the city is back, and little seems changed from the way things were when normal life stopped in mid-March of 2020.

The restaurants—can it really be the case that for several months they were shuttered by edict?—are packed tight, the subways tighter, and almost no one wears a mask in either place, not even those of us who swore to keep wearing one in the future, though the virus continues to mutate and spread. The political trajectory of the country appears to be set on the same catastrophic path it was on before the pandemic. One can look up in the evening and see more darkened office buildings, where once sweet monitors shed their aquarium glow, but on the New York streets the last remnants of the pandemic are the ingeniously improvised sidewalk-dining sheds. Nobody knows how much longer they will last.

What did it all mean? There are lots of takes on what happened, many of them plausible even as they contradict one another. A non-crazy case gets made that the period was just as epoch-changing as it seemed: a million people died of the plague in America; schoolkids were deprived of instruction and left behind in ways that may be impossible to remedy. The paranoia that was already rampant in the social-media age intensified, advancing the corrosion of institutional trust. Another non-crazy case gets made that much of the damage was self-inflicted: the schools should never have been closed; the elaborate pantomime of masking may have saved some lives but may not have; and, amid high-handed edicts, the price we paid in the erosion of social trust was higher than it needed to be.

At the same time, a non-crazy case can be made that the restrictions and restraints did not go far enough and were abandoned too soon, so that now, with the pandemic still rampant—very few families have not been through at least two or three cases—we have simply decided to ignore the bug, even as it refuses to ignore us. The cases are less lethal, but significant numbers of people suffer from long COVID—with ongoing uncertainty about whether this is a thing, or several things, or a combination of things and non-things. Many immune-suppressed people argue that we are indulging, in the name of exhaustion, a collective callousness to the welfare of others, particularly the most vulnerable.

The last pandemic to strike the world with such force was the Spanish flu, which started in 1918, primarily afflicting not the old but the young. Tens of millions around the planet died in what the editor of the new Oxford University Press collection “Pandemic Re-Awakenings” says “may have been the most lethal catastrophe in human history.” Many who died were makers of modern consciousness—Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele in Austria, Max Weber in Germany, Guillaume Apollinaire in France. (Joe Hall, a Montreal Canadiens defenseman and Hall of Famer who died during the 1919 Stanley Cup Finals, causing it to be cancelled for the only time in its history, was perhaps not a maker of modern consciousness, but he was a maker of modern hockey.) In the new anthology, a series of historians offer focussed views on what happened then, but the fundamental question they pose is about the oddity of our amnesia: Given the scale of what occurred, why is there so little collective memory of it?

The answer is, in part, that the Spanish-flu pandemic was so braided together with the end of the First World War, which accelerated its spread (most brutally on troopships headed home), that one calamity was buried under another, more photogenic one. The culture of memory of the Great War and its fallen soldiers, which for a time dominated so many public squares and public buildings, drowned out the cries of those who died, equally horribly, from the influenza. We have room for only one story at a time, the historians argue, and in a competition for memorial space—at times a literal one—a military conflict among nations takes political priority over a medical conflict between germs and humanity. An idea of heroism sticks, however grotesquely, to the story of war as it does not stick to the story of infection.

One sees this in Ernest Hemingway’s First World War novel, “A Farewell to Arms,” the tale of a wounded soldier, Frederic, and his love for a nurse, Catherine. Though mentioned in passing in the Oxford anthology, the actual story of Hemingway’s intertwining of war and influenza is complicated and revealing. Having raced to Europe as an ambulance driver, he got word in the mail that his family back home, outside Chicago, had been hit hard by the flu. (It had taken hold at a nearby Navy training station, on Lake Michigan.) His favorite sister, who had fallen ill, wrote to him poignantly, “Dad just called me in his office and looked at my throat and said I had the flu. Oh, bird. My head is beginning to ache, so I think I better go to bed. So good night but tell all the Austrians and Germans you can that I would like to get a good chance at them and see what they would look like when I got through.”

As it happened, the real-life model for Catherine, Agnes von Kurowsky, wasn’t wrested away from Hemingway by a fatal pregnancy; she was simply reposted to a hospital for men suffering from the flu. (She also found another fellow.) Eliding this truth, Hemingway remade this story of the entanglement of epidemic and vocation into a simpler and more romantic story of war and love—an easier tale to grasp. (He wrote a candid short story inspired by von Kurowsky, in which the soldier, at one moment, refuses to kiss the nurse for fear that she might infect him, but it was never published in his lifetime.)

The same process that made all the monuments about the fighting made all the books and poems about the fighting, too. Hemingway did write at length about the flu, dwelling on its ignominy: “The only natural death I’ve ever seen, outside of loss of blood, which isn’t bad, was death from Spanish influenza. In this you drown in mucus, choking, and how you know the patient’s dead is: at the end he shits the bed full.” In “A Farewell to Arms,” Frederic goes back to the war, and the nurse gives him a St. Anthony medal to keep. In real life, Hemingway gave the nurse a St. Anthony medal as she went off bravely to help the influenza patients. Through such details do writers revenge themselves on life. Once again, in literature as in public memorials, there is a figure-ground reversal between war and contagion.

It is perhaps a larger truth that epidemics, being an insult to human agency, are always removed to the background as quickly as we can find a figure to put in front of them. Something similar is happening with the history of the Covid pandemic, whose literature typically makes the medical story secondary to some other story, one with a plainer moral point. Like Hemingway with the nurse, we seek to make what happened less about pathogens and infection and more about passions and infatuation—in our case, often, political passions and party infatuations. Right-wingers were quick to decry the medical establishment for stepping away from its own public-health strictures when the George Floyd marches happened. (The protests took place out-of-doors, which provided at least a medical fig leaf for the rearrangement.) Still, such exchanges happened in all directions—as with the manic libertarian rhetoric that accompanied the resistance to vaccination. We search for some significant figure to place against the motivelessly malignant ground.

And how can we not look for larger social meanings? What if the pandemic, rather than knocking us all sideways and leaving us briefly unrecognizable to ourselves, showed us who we really are? In Eric Klinenberg’s excellent “2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed” (Knopf), we are given both micro-incident—closely reported scenes from the lives of representative New Yorkers struggling through the plague year—and macro-comment: cross-cultural, overarching chapters assess broader social forces. We meet, among others, an elementary-school principal and a Staten Island bar owner who exemplify the local experience of the pandemic; we’re also told of the history, complicated medical evaluation, and cultural consequences of such things as social distancing and masking.

The book is broad in scope, within certain limits; Manhattan north of Chinatown is left unwitnessed. (As the liberal-democratic coalition has become increasingly weighted with highly educated voters, it has become reluctant to make too much of their lives in its chroniclings, perhaps wary of the fact that it is the educated élite who control the chronicle.) Still, we meet many people who make convincing case studies because of the very contradictions of their experience. Sophia Zayas, a community organizer in the Bronx who worked “like a soldier on the front lines,” was nonetheless resistant to getting vaccinated, a decision that caused her, and her family, considerable suffering when both she and her grandmother contracted covid. Klinenberg sorts through her surprising mix of motives with a delicate feeling for the way that community folk wisdom—can the vaccines be trusted?—clashed with her trained public-service sensibility. Throughout, Klinenberg’s mixture of closeup witness and broad-view sociology is engrossing, and reminds this reader of the late Howard S. Becker’s insistence that the best sociology is always, in the first instance, wide-angle reporting. As we flow effortlessly from big picture to small, we learn from both. To be sure, Klinenberg takes a platoon-in-a-forties-movie approach to casting: we feel that we are given one of every New York type, and that all can be redeemed. The Staten Island bar owner, who insisted on reopening his place early despite the rules against doing so and thereby became a kind of Trumpite champion to local libertarians, is treated sympathetically, as a confused working-class hero betrayed by unfeeling élites whose balky rules hindered his enterprise. Yet even if the interdiction on restaurants was, in retrospect, excessive, no one could have known that then. Part of being a good citizen is accepting restrictions on our own freedom for the sake of strangers. We do things like obey speed limits and put on seat belts, even if we are alone, because we recognize that these are rules that benefit everyone.

Klinenberg’s own figure on the pandemic ground is that America’s exceptionally poor handling of the crisis exposed the country’s structural selfishness: our political culture and institutional habits tell people that they’re on their own. Other countries, he writes, “experienced a spike in generalized anxiety when the pandemic started. Their lockdowns were extensive. Their social gatherings were restricted. Their borders were sealed. Their offices were closed. Yet no other society experienced a record increase in homicides. None saw a surge in fatal car accidents. And of course, none had skyrocketing gun sales, either.”

And so, he tells us elsewhere, “we need a social autopsy . . . to identify the underlying conditions and acute shocks that shaped these patterns.” The pandemic exposed the geological faults in American society, which now threaten to split the earth and plunge us inside.

Anyone who is sympathetic to Klinenberg’s concerns—who recognizes how increased crime disfigures politics, or who hates the gun culture that disfigures American life—is bound, at first, to nod at these injunctions. And, indeed, in 2020, many of us were inclined to see societies with greater degrees of social trust—one had to look no farther than the northern border—as superior models in their handling of the pandemic. Even the conservative writer David Frum wrote admiringly about the efficiency and diligence with which the authorities of his homeland—he was born in Toronto—tracked contacts and monitored risks in Canada, in contrast with the anarchic American pattern.

And yet, over the course of 2020, Quebec, which took notably stringent measures, ended up with roughly the same cumulative mortality rate as Florida, Georgia, or Michigan. Although over-all Canadian mortality was meaningfully lower than our own, the social history of unhappy lockdowns and lockdown resistance was similar—the path of the pandemic was not recorded in medical data alone. A truckers’ convoy in Ottawa brought anti-vaccine hysteria to the usually milder Canadian political climate. Fox News may have contributed, from the south, but there was no ducking the same spiral of pandemic-fuelled delusion.

Indeed, to survey the planet through the pandemic years is to see how societies with fundamentally different ways of ordering their citizens’ lives could end up with comparable consequences. Britain, with its creaking but deeply lodged National Health Service, had case rates and death rates similar to those of the U.S., with our laissez-faire entrepreneurial medical system; it also shared the same fury about lockdowns—and saw the same political crises born of the seeming hypocrisy of the overseeing health authorities. The outrage over lockdowns on the part of conservative Britain parallels the outrage over mask mandates in red-state America. Sweden, an improbable libertarian outpost given its social-democratic history, was the least restrictive country in Western Europe. But the rate of all-cause excess mortality does not suggest that Sweden fared worse than its neighbors. About the only indicator on the global dial that clearly shows a better outcome is crudely geographic: it helped to be an island, like New Zealand or Singapore. For most of the world, the virus went its way, mutating cleverly, with the weird mimic intelligence of microorganisms. And so virtue regularly went unrewarded; a Lancet study from last year found that covid death rates in Florida, adjusted for age, compared favorably to those of California. The broader American sickness that Klinenberg rightly deplores—shooting deaths, traffic deaths, violence generally—was entrenched before the specific sickness of Covid arose, and was only marginally slowed or accelerated by it. If anything, the pandemic seemed to act as a brake on populist politics, helping to end both the Trump and the Boris Johnson governments. The pathogen, finally, is an agent without agency—a bug trying to make more bugs, heedless of motives or morals.

A final non-crazy case can be made that human existence is inherently crazy—that is, chaotic and not easily explicable by a single rule. A pandemic that affects billions of people will have billions of specific effects, and they will be grouped into various bunches; even a marginal phenomenon will involve an enormous number of people. It’s in the midst of such numbers that we turn to fiction and poetry, for their specification of experience. What makes Camus’s “The Plague” so memorable—and what made it so popular during the pandemic, despite the fact that it was an allegory of the German Occupation of France—is that in his plague people are so particular. It is a seductive mistake to say that the pandemic X-rays their souls. What happens in “The Plague” mostly happens through happenstance: strong people die, weak people cope, the average become exceptional.

In the pursuit of that kind of pandemic particularization, we now have “Fourteen Days” (Harper), a round-robin novel written by many illustrious hands—including Dave Eggers, John Grisham, Erica Jong, Celeste Ng, Ishmael Reed, and Meg Wolitzer—all left cozily anonymous in the linked storytelling. (You must turn to the back to see who did what.) With a wink at Boccaccio’s Florentine narrators, filling their time with stories as a plague rages, these modern storytellers do their thing on the roof of a somewhat improbably run-down building on the Lower East Side, where they meet by evening to share tales and memories.

Each storyteller is identified by a single signifier—Eurovision, the Lady with the Rings—and the stories that the speakers unwind (in a way properly reminiscent of the Decameron itself) leap wildly off topic, with the morals of their tales and the pandemic itself almost invisible. An apron sewn in a suburban home-economics class becomes the subject of one narrative. Another storyteller recalls an art appraiser’s trip to the country and a scarring revelation about the wealthy collectors he is visiting: they keep the lid of their dead son’s coffin visible as a memento of their pain. (“At every meal it had been there, hidden, present. It was the only object in the house that was truly theirs.”) A comedian with dated tastes and old-fashioned sex jokes suddenly appears, talks about his act, then vanishes. The others wonder whether he has jumped off the roof. But nobody is eager to go down to the street to see.

The evasion of the central subject, the turn to subtext over text, the backward blessing of being “off the news”—all this rings true to the time. Symbolic experience overlays all the other kinds. At one point in Klinenberg’s book, we get a chapter, written with cautious delicacy, about the mask wars, making the point that, although the medical value of masking is still undecided, the practice quickly devolved into a battle of symbols: wearing a mask meant one, lefty kind of thing; not wearing a mask meant another, righty one.

One wonders, though, if the symbolic level of communication isn’t exactly the place where humans meet one another to contest the truth. Saying that something is a symbol does not rob it of rational significance. The swastika is a symbol, and the peace sign is a symbol. What they symbolize is still worth an argument. People who wore masks and people who did not weren’t simply members of different clans: the ones with masks were making a gesture toward social solidarity and signalling a reluctance to infect their neighbors; the ones without were affirming selfishness as a principle of conduct. Back then, one might not have known for certain what a mask would do while still being certain that it was better to signal community than self.

Did 2020 change everything? Perhaps those big, epoch-marking years are tourist traps of a kind. The year 2001 may, in historical retrospect, be remarkable first as the year when, at last, more American homes had Internet access than did not. A terrorist attack came and went, was grieved and then memorialized, but big terrorist attacks will happen every generation or so. On the other hand, a life spent online is a permanent feature of our modernity. Those few who proposed that the wisest thing to do after 9/11 was to mourn and move on were excoriated, but they may have been better guides than those who insisted that a new age of militance and counter-militance had arrived, and that a global war on terror had to be unleashed. There is nothing to do with a day except to live it, a great poet wrote, and there may be nothing to do with an epochal year except to remember it.

Of course, this is the sort of view that, taken to its logical end, can annihilate the meaning of any event. Did the First World War require updating our beliefs and values, given that ordinary life went on afterward? It’s true that we should be hesitant to leap too soon into a new world view because of a dramatic outlier event; it’s also true that updating our beliefs about the nature of the world is what science routinely demands of us.

Irony was dead, we were told after 9/11, but the largest irony of the past couple of decades is that the vaccine project called Operation Warp Speed, which may be the only decent thing Trump has ever done, or at least did not keep from happening, is also the one thing that has weighed against him with his own base. (The story of 2020 may be many-voiced, and full of choral counterpoint, yet its resolution, post-vaccines, whistles one plain, familiar tune. Science saves lives.)

We can’t help, it seems, placing a human figure before the ground of inexplicable nature and its contagions—and most often that figure is pointing, accusingly, right back at us. You did this, we insist to ourselves, through some failure of belief or behavior or ethical tenet. Yet a disaster that happens so similarly to so many seems a hard case for too much moralizing, since at its heart is the one thing that always escapes moralizing, and that is our own mortality. As the rituals of the pandemic recede, we might recognize that some of them, like the beating of bells and pans for essential workers at 7 p.m., were good in themselves, not because they made anything else happen or protected us from harm. W. H. Auden, writing in yet another candidate for an epochal year, 1939, insisted that we must love one another or die—and then withdrew the remark, recognizing that we are all going to die no matter what we do. He decided that we ought to love one another anyway, or try to, year in and year out. ♦

[crimeronan]

hey kitkat, if its not too much trouble, could you make a propaganda post for the silt verses? I've been seeing you talk about it a lot (i have spoilers marked dw) but im afraid to look up anything about it. is it horror? all i know about it is val <- horrible woman(?) so im intrigued. was wondering if it'd be possible for a silt verses post a la that trc post you made a while back

OH, ABSOLUTELY. i think about 95% of my followers have no idea what this media is about, so this ask is very exciting. i'll preface it by saying that i think it's edged out the dreamer trilogy for my favorite story Ever -- it's exactly on par with the first two books in terms of Reading My Heart Off The Page.

the premise:

the silt verses is a now-complete horror-tragedy narrative podcast set in a fantasy world that has many parallels to our own. this fantasy world is embroiled in late-stage corporate capitalism and is ravaged by the effects of colonialism, war, and oppression.

in this world, gods are created through sacrifice and belief. there are thousands of them, with thousands of individual religions.

the problem is that gods must be fed through human sacrifice. and if they aren't fed, they die.

and people are very invested in keeping their gods alive.

sacrifice is considered a necessary part of society, something that's as essential as breathing. the idea of simply not making sacrifices is considered a violent, radical, leftist anarchist position that is simply unsustainable. or so the state would have you believe!

but. SOME gods have been outlawed, and worshiping them WILL get you killed by the government.

the state says that it's because these gods are uniquely evil, and too dangerous or sadistic or wild to be fed.

in actuality, gods are outlawed when they don't serve the state or corporations' purposes. the question at the heart of the worldbuilding is always, "is Anything you've been told about the gods and the magic true? how much of this world is socially constructed? who benefits from the way things are?"

Metaphors Abound.

-

the cast:

the first season follows four key narrators; the second season introduces a fifth; the third a sixth.

-

carpenter - sister carpenter is an older woman who was born into an outlawed river-worshiping faith. she has seen her entire family murdered by the state, including her brother, parents, and grandmother. she briefly left the faith but returned to the parish because she had nowhere else to go; her relationship with her river and her church is complicated at best.

carpenter begins the series as a """devout""" disciple of the river parish. in actuality, her faith has been slipping for a Long Time. she's no longer certain that she loves this god she's been killing for for her entire life.

she begins the series investigating some unexplained "miracles," aka Deeply Fucking Horrific Murders, that appear to have been done by her god.

alongside her is brother faulkner.

-

faulkner - faulkner is a kid, somewhere around 19 or 20 years old when the story starts. he was NOT born into the river faith, but was instead called to it, back when he was still a rural farm boy living with his father and brothers. his first sacrifice was his brother, who he drowned on the farm. he later left home to find the parish.

faulkner has been with the parish for a pretty short period of time, but he truly IS a devout fanatic. because of this, he does not get along with carpenter. the two of them bicker a lot. carpenter thinks that faulkner is a stupid country bumpkin who's naive and full of starry-eyed optimism, and he annoys the piss out of her.

faulkner is not a dumb country bumpkin.

but he knows how he sounds and he knows how he looks. so he plays the part of the starry-eyed child with ease.

he is planning to kill carpenter.

he knows she's slipping, he knows she's losing her faith, and he wants her dead. he's been asked to keep an eye on her because the parish knows she's slipping, too.

uh oh!

-

hayward - investigating officer hayward is a police officer in the religious homicides division of the greater glottage police force. this police force has jurisdiction over outlawed gods. hayward's job is to find outlawed gods, arrest/kill their worshipers, and report them to the government.

he is the main antagonist of season one. crucially, he's a Good Cop - he's friendly, affable, funny and likable. he's kind of a dickhead bastard, but in the way that the protagonists of Cop Tv Shows (TM) often are. he offers to "help" the people he's arresting. he's good at playing the role of a good guy who just needs to uphold the status quo for the good of society.

but. he is, first and foremost, a cop. and the narrative has a Lot to say about cops. and about other people whose job is to Enforce The Law.

so. don't think that him being a Good Cop means that he's Actually a good guy or that he's not dangerous to the protagonists. Hoo Boy.

-

paige - paige duplass is a corporate boardroom executive who works for a marketing firm that creates gods. her job is to do all the marketing and branding for new corporate mascots. what does the god look like? how does the worship work? how are the sacrifices made?

but her company's profits are waning. and they need to return value to the shareholders.

so. they're going to kill their employees.

not paige, of course! she's a highly valued member of the team. she just has to keep everyone calm and be a kind, upbeat manager while the Layoffs approach. everything is fine, everyone. we aren't going to kill you :) don't worry :) just keep smiling :)

the horror of this gives her a crisis of conscience; after all the murder goes down, she leaves to go on a long drive.

which becomes longer still when she's taken hostage by carpenter and faulkner.

-

shrue - season two introduces shrue, a spineless liberal politician who runs on a """left-wing""" platform but really could not care less about anything except polling numbers. they're willing to do rotten, ugly propagandist things for their campaign -- including killing the river god. and all of its followers. for the good PR! :)

not great news for carpenter, faulkner, or their people.

but then shrue experiences Actual Violence up close for the first time. and it Shakes Them To Their Core.

and, well. suddenly they're not so comfortable being a spineless liberal politician anymore.

too bad they've locked themselves into their role and cannot fucking escape it!!

-

val - introduced in season three, VAL is the saint of a god of liars, purposefully created by the government for use as a weapon. she is the remnants of a woman who killed herself to serve her country. she does not remember who she is or what else she wanted, aside from her mother's approval.

as the saint of a god of liars, whatever VAL says becomes true..... as long as someone is there to listen. you're a loyal soldier? no, you died of a tumor as a child. you're a politician begging for mercy for the sake of your infant child? no, your baby has an insatiable taste for flesh and ate your sorry ass. etc

she's a monster and a sadist; she enjoys killing people to try to fill the emptiness in her. she is in terrible pain all the time and does not understand why. and she is becoming increasingly disillusioned and sick with herself, the government she serves, and the Utter Pointlessness of all this systemic violence.

but how do you break a cycle when you Are the cycle?? how do you get better?? how do you change anything??

much to consider.

-

overall, it's as close to a perfect story as it gets imo. literally every detail is carefully, painstakingly chosen to further the themes, arcs, characterization, etc. the plotting is suspenseful, the horror is Deeply Fucking Scary, the storylines are gutwrenching, the voice acting is spine-chilling, and the characters are So Fucking Compelling.

also, i get frustrated by representation-first fiction recs, but if you get this far and want to know: it's Deeply queer. faulkner, paige, and shrue are all trans (shrue is they/them, paige is a post-transition trans woman, faulkner is a trans guy who's recently started T). carpenter is aroace, there's casual representation and normalization of trans n gay people throughout the ensemble cast.

and more importantly, it's just. So Damn Good.

@valtsv @deermouth you two are the other main silt verses bloggers i know, so if you want a pitch for your followers.... here is this!

[scrollypoly]

So let's talk about this post I found on a trending tag

Theres not much to it, just a link to a website that talks a bit about this "secret boycott" against "woke corporations". But i can't help but find it interesting, because as a "woke" leftist person, this kind of stuff actually sounds closely aligned with my consumer habits (minus the conservatism).

There are links to get invited to this store i didnt click on, because I can't verify if they're safe. So I don't know what this store is. But i think just looking at how this store is presented says a lot about how leftists and right-wingers have some of the same values.

Theres a focus on supporting small American owned businesses over mega-corporations. Leftists are also boycotting mega-corps, albeit for different reasons. But we both vote with our dollar. Supporting local smaller businesses is very important for local economies, especially with the way our economy is going. We, as citizens, can't avoid the tariffs that have been imposed on other countries by Trump. Hence supporting local is going to become very necessary as our economy gets thrown all over the place.

I also can appreciate the emphasis on safe, nontoxic ingredients, in a country where plastics and preservatives seem to permeate laterally everything we buy. If whatever products this store is selling is made of locally sourced and grown, nontoxic and/or natural ingredients, its not only better for us on a consumer scale, but it'll be more beneficial for our economy on a production scale too (so long as it's made with ethical labor practices, wouldnt that be ironic if their stuff was produced on underpaid immigrant labor?)

Ig all this is to say that. Yes, its about punching up. It's about taking back control from these mega corporations that have ruled our lives as Americans and dictate our very government at this moment. Left or right, the common people have more in common with each other than we do with the mega wealthy and out of touch people in out government that will say anything to have control over us. As a queer person living in a very small town in the very deep south, i think it's important to remember that sometimes, while keeping to our own values.

[khoesib]

Since propaganda against South Africa will be ramping up here's a short reading list about South African history:

The Colonial Period

The Anatomy of a South African Genocide: The Extermination of the Cape San Peoples - The genocide of the indigenous hunter-gatherer people's in South Africa is somewhat overshadowed by apartheid but it's a core part of South Africa's history and a core part of white supremacist rhetoric, who argue the land was empty before they came. They forcibly emptied the land by killing everyone who refused to integrate into the burgeoning agro-pastoral capitalist society. There are some bits of the book I disagree with, such as framing other indigenous groups treatment of foragers being equivalent or worse than the settlers (source: the settlers) and using terms like outdated terms "Khoisan" but it's a good introduction to the topic if you keep that in mind.

Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labor on the Dutch Frontier - From what I have currently read this is the most detailed analysis on slavery in South Africa up to date. It is during the colonial period that much of the apartheid laws find their predecessors and the existence of a large base of slave-holding whites (as well as whites too poor to own slaves but still wanted free labour) really provides a background to why apartheid manifested itself in the way that it did as opposed to other settler-colonies.

Apartheid:

I Write What I Like - A collection of essays by anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko who was killed by the apartheid regime in 1979 at the age of 30. He was a leader of the Black Consciousness Movement during the 60s and 70s which was highly critical of anti-apartheid white liberals (as well as white leftists) which is reflected in these essays.

A Crime Against Humanity: Analysing the Repression of the Apartheid State - This book very neatly describes each and every crime of the apartheid regime in a digestible way. Until I read this it didn't really occur to me that the Apartheid government was responsible for around 2.5 million deaths across Southern Africa minimum through their proxy contra groups and militias and that's only one point made here.

Long Walk To Freedom - It's Nelson Mandela's bibliography. What more can be said?

General:

The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa - Even though the primary chapters of interest are the ones regarding South Africa specifically, the entirety of the book is useful in seeing the different ways that colonisers constructed their own identities and created new identities for indigenous people (often with the help of the colonised elite).

Making Race: Politics and Economics of Coloured Identity in South Africa - Essentially a longer version of one of the chapters in the previous book. Although the book is ostensibly about Coloured identity (and it is about that don't get me wrong), it also shows some of the divisions in the various factions in the National Party in their approaches to white nationalism and the demographic question.

Regarding Muslims: From Slavery to Post-apartheid - A comprehensive look at how Muslims have been portrayed in South Africa both by others and within the community itself.

Coloured: How Classification Became Culture and Coloured by history, shaped by place: New perspectives on coloured identities in Cape Town - Both of these books (along with Making Race) are excellent for understanding Coloured identity and it's relationship to colonialism and apartheid, and how the idenitity emerged in the first place (which is much more complex than Coloureds being just "mixed race". Both are also written in an accessible form (although the former is written for a much more general audience).

Other:

Zimbabwe Takes Back It's Land & Land and Agrarian Reform in Zimbabwe - Although these books aren't directly related to South Africa, they are related to the land reform in Zimbabwe, a country which was not only demonised on the international stage for daring to redistribute land from wealthy landowners to the indigenous people of the nation but has been continually punished for doing so for over 2 decades through sanctions.

Many white South Africans and other white supremacists will bring up Zimbabwe in their propaganda to show the "negative consequences" of land reform, ignoring the sanctions and international isolation that was brought about by the West following these reforms. These two books debunk the mainstream narrative in detail and describe how land reform has changed Zimbabwe entirely (ZTBIL is a lot more accessible for a general audience).

Feel free to make other recommendations in the notes.

[hussyknee]

it’s rare to find a sinhalese person (online atleast) who is supportive of tamil self-determination. genuine question: among leftist circles in sri lanka, how common is such a stance?

I don't know whether I'm a reliable source to answer this question because I'm very jaded about this in general. A couple of days ago, someone on the Sri Lanka Reddit started up discourse about Maitreyi Ramakrishnan's choice to reject identifying with the country that tried to genocide her people, which I'm still chewing wire about. I'm a very isolated person with a very small social circle of like-minded leftist friends. They're mostly not SinBud and anti SinBud nonsense, but none of them are Tamil and I'm the one who really convinced them about Eelam I think. The people I learned from, who are out there doing the work of building inter-ethnic dialogue and overturning Sinhalese propaganda, might have a more hopeful view.

Thing is, there's no one "leftist" faction here because "left" doesn't mean the same thing as it does in the West. The Rajapaksas' party SLPP is socialist, a legacy of the SLFP that they branched off from, that was the party aligned with the USSR. They and their voters and their saffron terror acolytes (Buddhist priesthood) are all for public infrastructure they can rob blind and central government they can use to crush minorities, and build on the nationalist fervour of genocidal Sinhalese Buddhism that's served both major parties since independence.

There's quasi-communists, descendants of the ethnonationalist Marxist JVP that rose in opposition to the class corruption of ethnonationalist USSR-aligned socialist SLFP and enthonationalist US-aligned neoliberal UNP. The current JVP party itself is no longer communist; their coalition the NPP are mostly just very pro-union social democrats, and they've since distanced themselves from their ethnic myopia, possibly due to suffering much of the same state terrorism as minorities via militarisation and policies like the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). They're the most vocal about the abolition of the executive presidency, the removal of all martial law mechanisms and the PTA, defunding of military and police, and restructuring and executing the long-mismanaged socialist infrastructure. These are usually the working class and university students, but their base has been growing in other demographics too, since we "held our noses and voted" for the Yahapalana government in 2015 and it ended up fucking us over. But despite their sympathy with the suffering of Tamils and Muslims and favouring the devolution of power, most still cling to the idea that Sinhalese majoritarianism is a fair result of democracy.

The kind of pro-LGBT, anti-racist, feminist liberals that would pass muster with the western left otoh, are a minority of urban, English-speaking middle class. The younger of this crowd is increasingly favouring the aforementioned NPP (that is rapidly marrying the economic left with the social consciousness led by western dialogues that otherwise go against their traditional rural working class base), but that is very new and hampered by decades of Red Scare propaganda. The minority communities and the urban liberals traditionally vote for the current neoliberal party, that has distanced itself from their virulent nationalism over the last thirty years and basically modelled itself after the US Democrats (diet right-wing as opposed to nuclear right-wing) Their idea of reducing corruption and increasing efficiency is privatizing everything, makes the right pro-feminist and pro-LGBT noises, and coasts on the minority votes on the promise of never actively feeding ethnosupremacy, even if they won't do anything about it either. The Sinhalese affiliated with this party are deeply uncomfortable with if not entirely resistant to the idea that the North and East are Tamil lands colonized by the Sinhalese. Just like the quasi-communists, urban liberals are aware of the corruption and complicity of the Buddhist priesthood in ethnofascism and are prepared to do exactly as much nothing about it.

What I'm trying to say is that Sinhalese Buddhist ethnosupremacy is baked in to the Sri Lankan political fabric. "Left" means jack shit when it comes to whether Tamils have rights, in much the same way that the western left agrees on everything except Palestine. It's a political no man's land everyone tries not to look at.

The fundamental problem is that Sinhalese people who know enough about 1958, 1983, or the full scope of genocide perpetrated against Tamils during the last push of the war, let alone all 26 years of it, are very much in the minority. It takes a particular education to understand that "Sri Lanka" is a post-colonial invention that took over from "Ceylon", which was nothing but a construct for the ease of British administration. As far as I know, this education is confined to activist organizations and whoever followed my sociology program. So my kind of anarchist leftism that calls the war a Tamil genocide with their whole chest, calls the priesthood saffron terrorists, and recognises Eelam, is vanishingly small, afaik.

To be honest, I never really questioned the propaganda and narrative we've been spoon fed myself until I went to Canada when I was 23 to complete my anthro degree (became disabled and dropped out after). One thing that struck me was how racist the Sinhalese diaspora was. I was raised SinBud, my school didn't admit any non-Sinhalese, half my uncles were in the military, but these people that had left the country decades ago still hated Tamils and Muslims in a way that nobody else I knew did. I wondered whether this was what it had been like when it had all started; whether this hatred that seemed to have been preserved in amber was a true taste of what had ignited Black July. Suddenly the attitude of the Tamil diaspora towards the Sri Lankan government and Sinhalese people didn't seem so unreasonable.

Then, later in the same uni term, I went to an art exhibition of a white artist who travelled the world collecting information about their genocides and made art about them, and found a painting depicting Sri Lankan Tamils in 2008. Promptly had a meltdown. Went to the lady and told her tearfully that it was all propaganda, we didn't really hate Tamils, not even my uncles in the army hated Tamils, it was a war, the LTTE had terrorized us for my whole lifetime. Bless the woman, she didn't fight me, just let me cry at her and patted my hand and pretended to take me seriously. This made it easier for me to really think about what I knew once I'd stopped wailing and stamping. It prompted a years-long self-interrogation and fact finding that made me unearth how much brainwashing had been done to us by everyone, from our families to our school textbooks to news media. It's like the air we breathed was propaganda. And I still didn't know a fraction of what life had been like for Tamils (or Muslims) and the scope of atrocities perpetrated by the Sinhalese until I began my Society and Culture degree at the Open University when I was 30. The first year textbooks were only broadstrokes facts, but at last I found out about Gnananth Obeysekera, Prageeth Jeganathan, Stanley Thambaiya, Malithi DeAlwis. Their work on nation-making, ethnicity, historical revisionism, genocide and ethnic conflict and state terrorism...everything I should have been taught as a child. The chapters on the rapes and murders and shelling and war crimes and IDP camps were..indescribable. That was what properly radicalised me about Tamil self-sovereignty, because there's clearly no possible way the Tamil people will ever be safe and safeguarded under a Sinhalese majoritarian government.

I had to drop out of that programme too because of my health. But during the mass protests against the government in 2022, I learned even more about Tamil indigeneity, the extent of JR Jayawardena's crimes, and the persecution of Marxists and victims of the '71 and '89 insurrections. So much of the protests and their encampments were directed and galvanized by social media, that organised online and in-person lectures, teach-outs, and live discussions that anyone and everyone could attend right alongside the protests. I've never seen that kind of truly democratized, free, egalitarian civic education and discourse before. That was the very first time I saw academics, survivors, refugees and human rights activists being given a respectful platform, the masses hearing firsthand accounts from people of the North and East and witnesses of Black July. April to July 2022 was a truly golden bubble of time where I saw people finally start listening, believing, and challenging all their convictions. It was the closest we ever came to realising the hope that things could be different; that we could, as a society, understand how Sinhalese ethnosupremacy had been the black rot killing this country from the first, stop being racist Sinhala-first cunts and actually hold any of these murderers accountable.

Teach us to hope, I guess.

But I suppose it's no small thing that I learned about the Tamil resistance and struggle and taught all my friends about it. I'm sure they're informing their own circles in small ways too. These tendrils are hard to see, but they exist and grow. Especially with the fall of the Rajapaksas and their Bhaiyya contingent, more people can see ethnosupremacy for the grift that it is, and the younger generations are less defensive, more willing to listen and eager for justice and change. So I guess the answer is: not very common, but less uncommon than it used to be.

[gemsofgreece]

Has there been a rise of the far right in greece too (like in western europe) ? If yes, how is it manifested ?

It’s so hard to explain politics in Greece, it’s like when you don’t have the words to explain something so incredibly stupid.

In Greek politics everything is nominal. Political parties change approaches according to where the wind blows. As of now:

The country is governed (and it will be governed for the entire millennium by the looks of it) by the centre-right party. This one, just like all major parties in Greece, change rhetorics second by second according to global power dynamics and affairs. As an example, this party legalised same sex marriages earlier this year with the PM stating how significant it was for Greece to take that progressive route and support people’s rights etc. A couple of days after Trump’s election the very same PM said, in an international convention mind you, how he was done with wokism and the imposition of their rights to the majority. So… you get an idea. Wherever the wind blows. And, are they competent at least?……. lol no

The far right consists of smaller joke parties with people that you aren’t sure they can handle the matters of their own house, let alone those of the country. They are preoccupied with solving the serious problems of the country like: the 6 gays who got married this year, women having armpit hair and they exploit the religion unethically to the point that one of them who, besides a political party leader, is also selling hair loss creams in a telemarketing tv show, also tried to sell supposed letters written by Jesus himself… Those parties are voted by people who can’t tell religion from blasphemy, usually middle aged people of poor education and old as heck grandpas and grandmas who just won’t give it a rest. These aren’t going to ever govern but they could participate in a coalition government, should the centre-right party’s popularity ever fall.

Greece had received a lot of bad press globally some years ago for the huge rise of the Golden Dawn, the most extreme far right party we have had. Those were indeed a different style: they weren’t a “Jesus and family” type of far right that the Greeks love, they were hardly hiding their love for fascism / nazism and they were more into Ancient Greek supremacy. They were elected third into the parliament causing international uproar. Even their highest members acted violently, even on TV. Those were the years of the crisis and it is safe to say that most people (stupidly) voted for them to punish and shock the major parties which were responsible for the dire situation of the country. In the next elections Golden Dawn was plummeted. I don’t remember the timeline, whether it happened before or after the next elections, but the turning point was when important members of the Golden Dawn fought and murdered a leftist rapper. After that, Golden Dawn was removed from the Parliament, condemned as a criminal organisation and its leaders were imprisoned. Its place is filled by the party “Spartans” founded by old members of the GD, but they are a much weaker - and comparatively moderate - political party and there is no serious risk of them getting any power soon enough, which also shows how impulsively Greeks voted that first time. This is how impulsively they always vote. Thinking is not involved.

As of now I don’t think anyone will disagree with me for saying there is no Left in Greece. The second in power party until recently was a moderate leftist party which this year managed to self-combust in a glorious way. This was the only left party to ever govern, at the times of the crisis (and of course it went where the wind blew too) ! But yeah they exploded now. Long story. The rest of the left parties could not exist at all and you would not be able to tell the difference. The communist party is stuck in the Russian Revolution of 1917. The rest… I don’t know if there are any decent people there but what’s the point if they are invisible and without any vision? (And most are not decent there either.) Our whole political scene is a circus.

The socialist / centre-left party was in the third place until the major left one self combusted so now it is second. It was historically the only truly potent party alongside the centre-right one and power was switched between the two always. During the crisis it was viewed as the more responsible one for the mismanagement of the finances, so it was plummeted and it got a new younger leader, minimising trust even more. Now they are back in second place but it’s also like they are not there. All those parties look like they operate in auto pilot. They are just there.

Perhaps you understand by now that the centre-right reigns undisturbed. The country can be threatened to be purged tomorrow and nothing will change, it seems. They don’t have a competitor and they are free to do whatever they want and I think they do take a lot of advantage of this “liberty”………

As for the people, compared to my years in high school and college, I definitely see a clear shift towards the right and religion. You see it in social media. Then again there are a lot of people talking back to such comments. I don’t think the far rights will topple the centre rights. Currently, it’s by far the centre rights, then in a long distance the socialists / moderate leftists and then chaos. It’s just that the far rights are very loud and it’s the first thing you see always. In truth most Greeks vote for a beach umbrella and a cocktail every time we have elections and that’s how you get one single party essentially ruling unbothered and then the void.

What you need to understand is, it doesn’t matter whom people vote in Greece, we’re cooked anyway.

[alpaca-clouds]

Solarpunk and the Importance of Learning about History

If you have followed this blog for long enough, you will know that the one topic I am super passionate about is anything relating to history - and will rant on for hours about how people are badly educated about it.

And this is sadly an issue, too, in leftist spaces, including Solarpunk cases.

To bring my issue down to a very single point: Most people have gotten a historical education that has covered the time between 1750 and 1950, so 200 years. They have at best a very rough understanding what happened in Europe before that (and maybe in North America between the 1490s and that time), and pretty much no knowledge of anything that has ever happened outside of Europe and the USA, other than what relates to WWII.

And yet, a lot of people will then go: "Yeah, but XYZ has never worked." While XYZ in this case might well be something that was not only practiced but the norm for thousands of years outside of Europe - and at times even within Europe.

For example anarchism and different forms of socialism. Or, if we are having more specific discussions things like ways to do agriculture, or marriage, or child care, or other things. Basically it comes down to people being just aware of how it has been done in western and central Europe in a very short amount of time (200 years is really not a lot) and just assuming that this is how it always is.

Admittedly, it does not help that of course during those 200 years the Victorians have tried their damnest to rewrite history in a way to make everyone believe that the way they have been doing shit has been the only way it could be done. (My favorite example is Victorians claiming that the middle ages were even more puritanical than them, and everyone just believing it, even though it absolutely does not line up with the sources we actually have from the middle ages.)

And then there is the other part of the usual "white leftist space" variety. And this is an issue that is even bigger in Solarpunk than in most areas, because Solarpunk is a bit special in regards to at the very least being VERY HEAVILY INFLUENCED by indigenous cultures, if it was not funded by indigenous people. (I talked about it before: there is two competing stories about how Solarpunk started out. One being that it came from the Amazonas movement.)

A lot of the issues that leftists technically want to tackle are heavily connected to colonialism. A lot of the issues we have with capitalism, the destruction of the environment, and hierarchies within society have maybe not only started with colonialism, but got entrenched with it. You cannot talk about any of those issues without also taking into account a post-colonial/anti-colonial viewpoint.

In some regards Solarpunk as a movement somewhat does understand this - mainly by not only looking up information about how indigenous people related to the environment, but also distributing that information. In some areas this is done respectfully - but often it also drifts up into the "noble savage" stereotype, which is an issue all on its own.

But the general conversation of why we are not actually doing this is still not happening.

And let's be fully honest here: The issue is once again white people and their general assumption that they can easily extrapolate from their own history to everyone else - and that whatever their culture has eventually landed on is the only way for culture to go.

I will often argue using papers from anthropology, but yes, I am quite aware of the fact that anthropology has the same issue, as there are a lot of white people - especially white men - arguing that indeed the white way is the only way. And with white they mean "Germany, France and England", obviously, as they will assume that the Scandinavian countries will agree, while they do not fully see Eastern or Southern Europe as fully white, unless it fits their purposes. (One day I will go into the African-ness of Greece. One day.)

It sucks.

And yes, this is partly is inspired by a comment I got nto too long ago going: "Anarchism never works! History has shown that!" To which I was sitting there like: "... What history? Because I don't know how to tell you, but MOST HUMANS LIVED UNDER ANARCHY."

I really do not know how to get people to look better into history admittedly. I sure can give people books to read, but I know that most people will not have the same enthusiasm I have due to having hyperfocus to read 1000 pages of early human history.

But I think everyone would be well served if they realized how fucking little they know about history.

I mean, I know a lot about history - more than most people. But I know fucking little, because my history knowledge boils down to "some areas of Europen history, colonial history, Ancient Egypt, Japan between 600 and the modern day, and some North American history pre-coloniasation." I know next to nothing about most of African history. Or Asian history outside of Japan. And South America I know little about other than what is related to colonialism and the fight against it.

The main thing is though, that usually in a discussion I will go: "I think this is wrong, because A, B and C, but I do not know enough about this particular era to say more." But a lot of folks do not do that. I mean, middle ages. Talking about middle ages is so darn depressing. And that even when you are talking to fairly leftist people who do not have a hard one for the romanticized concept of knighthood.

*sighs* Which is all to say: If we want to change the society for the better, as the Solarpunk movement proclaims, we also need to learn from the past. Both in regards from what did not work and what did. But for that you need to learn about that past. And no, knowing some rough stuff about the French Revolution and the World Wars will not cut it.

[jewish-vents]

I'M TIRED. NONE OF THIS IS NORMAL!!!!!!!!

To white supremacists I deserve to die because I am brown and a Jew.

To leftists, to minorities, I deserve to die because I am a potential threat - a secret Zionist.

Can I live?????????

I know gentiles have never cared for us, it's been bothering me my whole life. I never felt safe, comfortable, happy or accepted in spaces that are supposed to be meant for me as a queer, disabled brown woman. Why? Because I'm Jewish and our existences have long been forgotten and ignored by marginalized groups. And the few times we were remembered there was always confusion. No one knows what we are (hence the whole "you were oppressed for your religion" thing that many believe). We're immediately seen as a threat but nazis hate us and goyim need to be morally superior and better than nazis which is the ultimate evil to them so that means they can't just outright hate us. They need to make as many loopholes as they can to hate us.

For the first time ever im seeing gentiles read books written by jews as in theyre seeking out these books with jewish authors. Why? Because they need to tokenize them as they write about how zionism is the root of all evil alongside racism and everything else. Where is this energy and passion when its time to care about our history our culture? All of it is going to self hating anti zionist jews who write about how we jews are the new nazis.

And as other minorities I am so ashamed. As a queer woman Im watching people who cant give up chick fil a and kept saying well im gay so i can eat it boycott mcdonalds. PLEASE CARE ABOUT WHATS GOING ON IN YOUR COUNTRY TOO. IN YOUR BACKYARD. PLEASE. DONT IGNORE PROBLEMS BECAUSE YOU THINK THEYRE SMALL AND LESS IMPORTANT THAN A GENOCIDE. Also the superiority complex of those boycotting is so strange. The way that they all talk its almost like the genocide is the only issue with these big corps. They rely on cheap labour from the global south. Why didnt you boycott for that too? Do you really force yourself to care about only the worst things in the world? Are you seriously incapable of caring about everyone?

.

[call-me-liquid]

Helpful guide to who the fuck the federal Canadian parties are (since Lily hasn't explained them right):

1. The Conservative Party of Canada (Cons): Canada's only true right-wing party-- though, at least before Pierre Poilievre, Americans would have seen them as closer to Democrats than Republicans. They were conservative in the truer form of the phrase-- no spending money ever or doing anything ever sort of Conservative. Because, small government. Neoliberal. Concerned mostly with starving piblically funding resources and tax cuts. This has taken a dramatic change in a very short period. Poilievre is taking the party in a very MAGA direction-- though, he's kind of still in 2016 MAGA because the Overton window in Canada is still more comparatively liberal. With Anerica being on fire right now, that's still very scary. They historically can't hold the PM spot with a minority because they are almost always the contrarians in The House of Commons fighting the rest.

2. The Liberal Party of Canada (Libs): THIS is the moderate vote in Canada (fight me.) Frankly it's hard to define the Lib's real position because they're the "well, I guess I'll vote for them" party. Their constituents are typically a broad range of people who want the government to be *doing something* other than sitting on their hands all day bitching about spending. Their very limpwristed policy and law changes are what make right-wing Americans clutch their pearls and claim Canada's some kind of sicialist hellscape-- which is hilarious, but. Still, most of Canada's best policies DID come from Lib PMs-- though it's kind of a coin toss depending on the party leader. No, Trudeau is not so widely mocked and scorned because he was a bad PM. More so, he campaigned on some pretty radical changes he never ended up enacting, alienating a massive portion of his voter base, and then pissed off even more people with how he handled the trucker convoy. Leftists because he did deal with it quickly enough, right-wingers because he was forced to take drastic action when he did.

3. The National Democratic Party (NDP): The third largest political party in Canada, and the actual party a good portion of liberal voters actually want to vote for (including me.) Contrary to American perception THEY are Canada's one true properly socialist party. Even then, as it stands now anyway, they're still pretty soft-core socialist. Very inoffensive socialism. Giving a shit about worker's rights, remembering First Nations exist, giving a passing thought to how Healthcare and social services can be improved, being half-way decent to immigrants, being nice to the girls and the gays, etc. Lot of fear mongering that letting them have too many seats in government will bankrupt the country-- which is the stupidest sentiment known to the great white north since they've consistently been on the side of labor, but. Jagmeet Singh is the party leader. He's the other politician everyone calls hot. He posts cringe on social media sometimes to try to meme with the gen zs but otherwise he's pretty alright.

4. The Green Party (No nickname for them, just Green Party.): Honestly, people mostly talk about voting for them as a joke-- but someone must be because they have seats in the house so. Really they are the Green Party, they speak for the trees. Nobody ever expects them to win the PM position so they're broader policies haven't ever really been hashed out, but. It is nice to have someone consistently seated in the house arguing for the environment. They may or may not have been the first party I chose to vote for as a 19 year old, drunk at the poles, not happy with any of my options at the time, but you can't prove anything. Elizabeth May is their party leader. I don't even know what she looks like.

5. Bloc Québécois (Bloc): Okay, the existence, purpose and politics of this party is the hardest to explain to non-Canadians because it's tied to a long and complicated Canadian history and the tension between the Anglophones and the Francohones. Lily, the Anglophone she is, called them a "left-wing" party. They are not. They are French Nationalists. They do want an ethno-state in Quebec. But because the Cons are typically aggressively anglophone in their priorities, even with a French party leader, they beef with them more than the Libs. But the Bloc has had big dramatic beef with every party at one point. The TL;DR of how Bloc came to be is; the English oppressed the French way back when, but Quebec joined Canada to be protected by America taking them over, the promise was that anglophone Canada wouldn't try to culturally assimilate then, they sorta kinda didn't keep that promise, francophones kidnapped and killed politicians, big scuffle, martial law was happening for a hot minute-- Bloc has consistently angled for Quebec to succeed from Canada, but they couldn't economically do so so it's a big drama. Being the grandchild of a French Nationalist on one side and a anglophone white supremacist on the other, I am an unholy combination of two diametrically opposed foes and at birth I took a screenshot. Yves-François Blanchet is the current party leader and he's frankly more willing to play ball with other parties than former leaders were in the past.

[captainjonnitkessler]

I think there's something to be said for just how frequent a situation it is that there has been some kind of revolution in another country, only for the people who take power to immediately begin murdering anyone who disagrees with them. The citizens of the country may not agree with all of their ideas, and rather than working to change peoples' minds, execution becomes the way to deal with it. (I know it's a lot more complicated than this in many instances, but this specific thing is really important to discuss, I think, in light of the amount of these performative online leftists who simply refuse to entertain anyone who does not share their exact ideas down to specific details)

None of them seem to have a plan or want to work with others, because that's far less glamorous than fantasizing about burning everything down and building their utopia

I think the problem is that once you've decided "violence against people I disagree with is a good way to obtain power" it's very easy to conclude "violence against people I disagree with is a good way to *maintain* power".

And look, sometimes you're in a situation where violence really is the only option, but America is a democracy. We already HAVE a non-violent way to enact change, the problem is just that too many people disagree on what change that should be. (Spare me the rant about how "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" bullshit, if you genuinely believe democracy cannot result in positive change then a) explain how no social mores have changed in the last 200 years and b) we may as well just pull the plug on humanity then. jesus christ what a bleak view of the world).

Anyway persuading people to change their minds is an extremely long, awkward effort that you probably won't live to see the end of, but fantasizing about violently seizing control of the country (whereupon everyone just starts agreeing with you automatically) is easy and fun!