#Neoliberalism

[coolmaycroft]

Watching a youtube documentary about things like how neoliberalism took over the USA or how Nazism spread after WW2 is like warhammer 40K or naruto lore for me. It's full of complex characters and rich worldbuilding.

But watching anything about my country after the columbian exchange I can't stomach.

[leftistfeminista]

From a survivor of political sexual violence against women political prisoners: We were anti-capitalist militants not "poor little things"

We developed the concept of political sexual violence to initially differentiate it from the sexual violence that is exercised on the bodies of women and dissidents on a daily basis, because it corresponds to structural violence. However, we made this differentiation first of all because during the times of the dictatorship, women who decided to fight against the dictatorship resolutely, and who were subjected to kidnapping, torture and also what we call political sexual violence, had a history that ran on a different track than that of our comrades who were arrested. 

In the case of women, I would say that 95% of the women who were in these torture centres or kidnapping centres were subjected to this sexual violence. This was applied in an unequal and differentiated way, mainly to women, and there were also cases of some men who, deep down, were treated more like feminized bodies, that was the way to break them. In the case of the “Venda Sexi”, where I was detained, this was a daily practice, there was a particular emphasis on sexual violence. 

After several attempts, because the Collective of Women Survivors was not the first to address the issue, since previously some colleagues, some academics, had spoken about sexual violence, then when we decided, several former political prisoners, to file a complaint, then, because of all the difficulties that we survivors have, because as you know, we survivors of the dictatorship to this day have no defense from the State, so if we want to go to trial we have to find someone to sponsor us to file a complaint against the State. When we were filing that complaint, the day before filing that complaint, we said no one takes us into account with this, we have to do something that allows us to make our own voice.

We did not know that it was going to be a concept that would endure, and we said we are going to call it “SEXUAL POLITICAL VIOLENCE” because this is a State policy,  it is the agents of the State who decide to use, and this is very important, a sexualized power over our bodies , violating our bodily and sexual integrity, as well as our sexual freedom, to discipline us, to domesticate us, to break us, to tame us, and particularly to return us to the patriarchal capitalist order. 

We decided to raise the issue because, first of all, we didn’t want it to happen again, but obviously it didn’t go well for us, because this situation keeps repeating itself. Secondly, we wanted to challenge the State. It’s not that we thought, nor do we think today, that we are going to obtain justice from this neoliberal capitalist, heteropatriarchal State, but we wanted to challenge it. We wanted to tell it that you are the ones who are doing this, and you send these officials to exercise this particular violence against women and dissidents.

On the other hand, we wanted to demystify this tremendous thing that had no relation to the women that we were, this thing of always leaving us in the role of the victim, in the role of the “poor thing,” “you women had it so bad,” those kinds of comments always leaving you small, tiny, suffering, and erasing the history of our struggle.

There we rebelled deeply against the whitewashed politics of memory that erased our political projects. We were militant women, we had a worldview, we wanted to change society, we wanted a classless society, we were deeply anti-capitalist, it's not just that we thought differently, we acted differently and that's why we were punished. 

We are very emphatic, we do not separate political violence and sexual violence, in this case when it is exercised by agents of the State it is political sexual violence. It is a policy towards women, feminized bodies and dissidents to, as I said before, return us to order, that is to say to the place where they want us to be, of subordination, of domination, of submission, because capitalism cannot function if it does not put us in that place, or needs to put us in that place to continue functioning and saving millions, millions and millions with all the work that we women do, which is absolutely unpaid.

[shinyasahalo]

[kropotkindersurprise]

On April 8 we celebrate the death of Margaret Thatcher, and remember all the lives she destroyed.

[cbcsherlock]

And after you filmed it, life will go on as usual. You'll have to bare the cost of coping with disaster, unless you're extremely rich, in which case youll have to spend hours on hold with an insurance company to get your housed fixed or something.

You'll still have to go to work. If you're injured due to the disaster, you'll have to go through the (now overcrowded) medical system.

We're not going to have an apocalypse from one day to the next. We're just gonna have boring old capitalism.

[elderinternetresurrection]

Btw, privatization is stealing from *you.* You are the public in "publicly owned." Oligarchs are coming in to take the things we all share ownership of as Americans, like Medicare, Social Security, National Parks, PBS and scrapping them for parts they find profitable.

The right is planning to rob us and quite literally want us to thank them for the privilege by calling it "government efficiency."

[mysharona1987]

[animentality]

[politijohn]

Source

[odinsblog]

👉🏿 https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/15/elon-musk-trump-super-pac

[nando161mando]

The pearl-clutching is real.

Know the difference

LMAO they are caving

[technofeudalism]

i just need everyone to understand why no one takes vote scolding seriously and why there is so much animosity towards Joe Biden and the Democrats from those on the left who hold him responsible for not only failing to address the self inflicted "immigration crisis," but blatantly giving in to baseless Republican fear-mongering re: rising immigrant crime.

they quite literally provided an even more cruel foundation for Trump to build on, and due to this, they can no longer make a genuine claim to be pro-immigration.

by this i mean they normalized the narrative so much that the Democratic party has totally shifted it's view on immigration, leading TODAY to the bipartisan celebration and passage of the horrifying Laken Riley Act, which Trump will likely sign as his first piece of legislation. this bill, among other terrible shit, effectively eliminates due process for immigrants and threatens it for everyone.

this is why no one listened to your vote scolding then. this is why no one listens to you now while you join Democrats in blaming third-party voters, Palestinians, transgender people, and leftists for an entire political party's failure to sufficiently address people's rapidly declining material conditions. this is why no one will listen to you in the future while you sit on the sidelines yelling cynical platitudes at people working to actually make the world better.

[quasi-normalcy]

When I say "We didn't used to call it 'neoliberalism' when I was a kid, it was just common sense", understand that I'm not saying "Neoliberalism is good and I miss the pre-lapsarian days of youth when people just accepted self-evident 'truths' about the efficiency of the private sector," or whatever; I'm saying "'Common sense' is hegemonic and informed by the interests of power, and the fact that huge numbers of people are even in a position to question neoliberalism now means that capital's grip on power has actually weakened considerably since the 1990s and that's good."

[whereserpentswalk]

Imagine what neoliberal propaganda articles look like in various evil empires.

"Women in Sauron's army. How female orcs have helped create a more inclusive global conquest." - The Mordor Examiner

"How the death star program is revitalizing the galactic economy." - The Coruscant Times

"Despite progressive cries to "Free Arrakis" situation with House Harkonnen more complicated then most people think." - The Corrino Fund

"How the anti imperial rabbit hole can easily lead to people to pro choas views." - Ultramar Today

[vilevexedvixen]

In light of the conservative philosophy that "cuts = efficiency", consider:

A skeleton is not a more "efficient" body.

All other parts are needed for it to function.

Even "foreign bodies" live in symbiosis to form the flora on our skin and in our guts. Protecting us from infection and helping us better digest food. They are part of the body.

Even just bone and muscle is not enough when the means to sustain our energy needs are stripped out.

Reduction is not efficiency.

[probablyasocialecologist]

"But Weber’s argument was carefully grounded in history. Price controls, she argued, had been an essential element of the U.S. mobilization strategy during the Second World War. And there were several striking similarities between the economy of the nineteen-forties and that of the present day, including very high consumer demand for goods, record corporate profits, and production bottlenecks in important areas. Back then, the Office of Price Administration simply prohibited companies from raising prices above certain levels. Violators could be sued, or worse. In 1944, Montgomery Ward, the department-store chain, refused to accept the terms of a collective-bargaining agreement—a cap on the price of labor—brokered by the government. President Roosevelt ordered the National Guard to seize the business and remove Sewell Avery, its chairman, from its headquarters." (source)