#and is a malthusian social darwinist

[skimblyshanks]

listen luke evans has the pipes of an angel and the character design is dilftastic but the latest adaptation is committing the greivous sin of making scrooge's problem that he's grouchy and doesn't like the holiday so it's an automatic L

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

That feeling when you feel like you have to keep an eye open around people who call themselves "leftist", yet a number of their media takes frankly sound dangerously like they'd be supportive of extremely authoritarian or outright genocidal mindsets just because the bad guy "had a point". Like, I understand that people's morality shouldn't be judged based on their takes of media, and that media doesn't inherently inform every aspect of a person's moral system, but good lord does some of these things just makes me feel...unsettled at times.

Takes like "The Jedi deserved to be genocided because Dooku/Sidious were right about how flawed and corrupt they actually are" (ignoring how much propaganda those two are spewing and the sheer amount of corruption from the REPUBLIC around them, and how much Jedi philosophy isn't based on Christianity and fundamentally opposes everything they just said, and no Anakin isn't a good indicator of that corruption because he's a terrible person, patsy, and propagator for the space fascists). Or how the genocide of Mantle was good because Ironwood was "thinking about the bigger picture". This speaks for itself.

Or people who favor Thanos' "kill half the universe because overpopulation", ignoring how Malthusian (I think that's his name?) philosophy ignored how much technology and means of gaining resources would change overtime to accommodate for increased numbers, and that overpopulation has rarely been an actual issue because the lack of resources almost always comes from rich billionaires and corporations hoarding resources at the expense of everyone else, not the poor people trying to make a living.

Or Senator Armstrong's "social darwinist utopia" being a good thing, never mind that social darwinism is a fucking stupid thing that's never worked, or only favors those who already have massive advantages (ie, the people Armstrong knows are part of the problem), while screwing over the little guy. Also his gall of acting like war makes people strong while having never served IN a war, and saying this to a FORMER CHILD SOLDIER who know how hellish and evil war actually is.

Like, maybe you need to take a harder look at your beliefs if you keep on siding with the villains just because they have one or two good points mired in openly fascistic rhetoric.

"Genocide is bad actually" should not be the fucking hot take you'd think it is, but for some people, the only purpose of social justice is figuring out who is acceptable to hurt and how to hurt them in the worst way possible while still feeling righteous about it.

[transmutationisms]

thinking about the 4 humours in succession and logans death...do you have any thoughts on how this has played out in season 4?

as much as i enjoy humoural analysis, and bearing in mind that humoural medicine did occupy certain places in eugenic discourses during the long nineteenth century, i think this particular bathroom scene is better analysed as part of the show's engagement with ideas about liberal capitalism, eugenics, and bodily fitness.

since 1969, historians of biology have argued that darwin's theory of evolution represented a biological transposition of the economic and political ideology of victorian britain. the emphasis on competition, the malthusian population logic, the attempt to ground moral sensibility in a discourse of individual self-motivated actors—all of these things are features of liberal capitalism. darwinian evolution, then, was adopted in part because it was a politically useful ideology by which the operating logic of capital was biologised and naturalised.

this is why it's so significant that logan is what we might call a social darwinist. he, too, claims to value competition and domination; he devalues those he perceives as weak; even his speech is littered with comparisons to the animal kingdom, and the way he tells it, nature is a brutal domain in which the only law is rule by force. he's essentially making the same linkage as above: arguing that his own dog-eat-dog, competitive, anti-social political morality is simply the rule of nature. it can't be changed, it's a naturally existing system, and the world has always been this way and always will be.

so, the fact that logan's own body is deteriorating for his entire presence on the show is highly significant. we meet him losing control of his bladder, and he dies with his hand in karl's shit. i've written elsewhere about bathrooms on this show as sites of social marginalisation and waste disposal. and in the kingdom logan has created, the operating logics of eugenics and ableism mean that he's unable to face his own bodily decline as anything other than a depreciation of value. even as the founder, waystar has no use for him if he's not able to live up to his own standards of masculinity and able-bodiedness. he has spent his life reducing the world to market logic, and his own definition of strength no longer applies to him. hence, his death is relegated to the shitcan on a private jet.

liberal capitalism creates death: the migrants and women who were thrown off waystar cruises, the labourers squeezed on starvation wages, everyone politically un-personed when capitalists team up with fascists. logan ran his empire on this logic, because it was profitable, and of course, he and waystar exist within a larger capitalist system that also operates on this logic. his death—as a body that has been rendered worthless and useless by the eugenicist logic of his own kingdom—is a microcosm of the way capitalism operates on ableism.

[catgirlanarchist]

will never understand how people just interpret "anticiv" politics as some kind of anti-technology tradleft RETVRN social darwinist malthusian stance where everyone's gonna be forced to return to pre industrial and pre agriculture fucking caveman shit and anyone who is sick or disabled will be left to die or whatever

when "anti-civilization" has much more to do with opposing colonialist impositions of forced assimilation, forced organization, the destruction of nature in the name of profit, and the state monopolizing the legitimate use of force

also shows how much people view politics through the lens of "everyone's worldview is just how they think everyone should be forced to live" rather than "people are aware of and capable of criticizing social phenomena that affect everyone"

[edwad]

worth noting: malthus was not a social darwinist. darwin was a malthusian.

[clarisimart]

A rant about IW and the dangers of making Thanos a sympathetic villain (or at least his motivation)

Ya' know I doubt I'm the first person to talk about this, but the more I think about the Russos and the Powers that be at Marvel Thanos and marvel changing Thanos motivation in IW from loving Death and killing to court her to killing half the life in the universe to "save the rest and stop the draining of resources", the more asinine it seems. And dangerous, but we'll get to that later.

Like first of all, you are saying "half of life in the universe" so I'm asuming that includes plant life and animals. But you are also saying there is no choosing process, it's random. Which means than in actuality, you are obviously going to end up killing way more than half. If there is no criteria, you would include all species, that means also those that are endangered, which means you are probably condeming them to extintion. It's not the same to kill half the population of mosquitos or ants, than half the population of, say, pandas (and actually, if you go by hive minded insects, if the half you kill includes the queen, you are killing the whole community). And when it comes to plants, you think it's the same to destroy half the vegetation in a desert climate than in a forest or jungle? (which would be intensly harmfull as well). And what about animals with young? How are they gonna survive without their parent? And what about pregnant animals? Or say if you kill the only male in a pack? What happens then?

And that's not even touching humans.

You say you "only" take half. But you will probably take for example, pilots and co pilots mid flight. Train conductors. Drivers. And what about parents? 

And that's not even touching people in health services. Surgeons gone in the middle of operations. Hospitals suddenly severly under staffed. Ambulance drivers. EMRs. 

You say half of all life, without any criteria, "ultimate justice" you call it, to, according to you, stop life from killing itself. To save those who are left.

Give me a fucking break.

If you actually cared about saving people, and had unlimited power at your disposal, you would do it differently; you would make it so there are infinity resources. Or if you want to take the more bloodthirsty route and wanted to kill somebody, you would take away the assholes who explote people and planet(s) for their selfish gain, not giving a shit about anything. You would restore the weather, and the rainforest, and the endangered species.

They tried to make him sympathetic.

All they did was make him a raging hypocrite. 

And nobody even points this out IN THE MOVIE. Nobody questions if he's right or wrong. They make it seem like he's got a point.

And it's making me really fucking angry, because now there are so many fucking social darwinists and wannabe malthusians, that come out of their caves saying he has a point, when in actually, there is more than enough resources for all of us. The thing is, the people who make money with exploting them, don't want to. They profit with scarcity. And blame the over population for it, when it's actually the fault of  irresponsable wastefull practices, mostly by that same people. 

But who do they say is the problem? Poor people, of course. Black people. Asian people. Third world countries.

If you think these ideologies are anything but clasicism and racism's ugly child in disguise, you are only fooling yourself. 

And Marvel is using all of this power they have, all of their reach, to spread this message.

Honestly, I'm not surprised a mega corporation like Disney is doing this, but I'm still disappointed.

tl; dr;: the idea that killing half of all life it's the only way to save the universe it's a really fucking stupid one, based on racist and classist real world ideologies, and the fact that Disney with all of their reach is spreading these thoughts and making them seem reasonable, makes me rage a bit.

[wepicy]

21 Socialist Quotes Of S. J. Hermann

21 Socialist Quotes Of S. J. Hermann

1.

“Every totalitarian Communist considered themselves as a Socialist first and foremost.” – S. J. Hermann

2.

“Knowledge can never imprison you, but you can be captive to your ignorance.” – S. J. Hermann

3.

“Marx called Darwin a plagiarist and Malthus a fraud. Now all Marxists are Malthusian Darwinists.” – S. J. Hermann

4.

“Democratic Socialism is simply Totalitarianism that…