#and to the development of ideologies to support it

[maxdibert]

Having a shitty past is no excuse for being a horrible person, and Snape was a horrible person. Snape fans always try to turn him into a tragic hero, but there was nothing heroic about him when he was just an obsessive bigot who followed a group of genocidal maniacs

Well, I think I’ve said this a million times already and explained in exhausting detail why growing up in a particular environment—lacking social, emotional, economic, or essential support—and being subjected to violence during the most crucial years of cognitive development creates the perfect breeding ground for antisocial behavior. It also makes vulnerable or socially excluded youth prime targets for sectarian groups (whether religious, political, or otherwise) that prey on their situation, offering them promises of protection, safe spaces, surrogate parental figures, or social progress. These groups actively seek out kids with emotional voids caused by dysfunctional family dynamics, minimal to no financial resources, and a profound sense that the system has failed them at every turn. They offer these kids an alternative system—one that gives them a roof over their heads, a hot meal, a place to belong, and people who won’t marginalize them like the rest of society has—at the simple price of blindly following the group’s ideology. And they do it. Of course, they do. Because what other choice do they have? This group gave them life, a place in society, and restored their status as human beings.

But since I’ve spoken about this at length before and about how Severus’s life shaped his decisions, I feel like I’m starting to sound like a broken record. So, since I’m also reading a legal ruling I need to memorize by Friday, I’m going to indulge myself and dissertate as freely as I please—because hey, if you’re going to throw hate, I’m going to grant myself the privilege of replying however I want.

Here’s a question: why does it even matter? Seriously, what does it matter if he was a shitty person? Do you know that people go to space today thanks to the work of physicists and engineers who were literal SS members? That after WWII, all the top scientists, physicists, chemists, and engineers were granted amnesty and fast-tracked into citizenships so they could work on government projects? That people working within a stone’s throw of concentration camps are the pioneers behind some of the greatest technological advances of the 20th century? And you don’t care that the products you consume are derived from the work of collaborators with mass genocide, but you’re upset that people find a fictional character interesting? I don’t want to sound cynical, but honestly, it’s ridiculous to get so morally high and mighty about a character who doesn’t exist and who followed an extremist cult for, what? 3 or 4 years tops? and then canonically worked actively to take it down. If we put Severus in a real-world, wartime context, the guy would be a literal war hero with medals to his name. No exaggeration. If he survived, he’d be recruited with a fat paycheck to work in internal affairs for some major world power’s secret projects. That’s just how the world works.

And yeah, he was obsessive. But in an era where everyone suffers at least one anxiety episode a month, where the best-case scenario is that your panic attacks don’t spiral into chronic mental health issues—can we really judge him for that? Like, most of the people I see being ultra “snater” are folks who openly declare themselves neurodivergent, and one of the common denominators of all neurodivergence is obsessiveness. All of them. Whether it’s chronic anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD, paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder or autism. Every single one has an obsessive component. So it’s kind of ironic—and even hypocritical—for people who are themselves pretty obsessive (because let’s face it, we’re all compulsively doomscrolling here to soothe our anxious compulsions with little dopamine hits) to judge this character’s obsessiveness as a negative trait. Maybe let’s take a good look in the mirror, too.

And let me just say, no court would convict Severus of collaborating with a terrorist group. Not a single one. Impossible. Especially since he literally collaborated against said group, so any judge would happily clear him—not after the war, but the moment he struck his deal with Dumbledore. Severus is what’s known as an informant. He worked from the inside, exposed himself to greater dangers than regular agents. Legally speaking, there have been cases where people guilty of heinous crimes—including crimes against humanity—were let off because they provided critical information. So imagine someone like Severus, who, as far as we know, didn’t even kill anyone during his time in the group, willingly spilling the beans and agreeing to work as a spy. He’d be celebrated as a hero of war. Hell, they’d probably buy him a mansion in Florida if he wanted one. That’s just how our system works, and honestly, this kind of moralist posturing is pretty cringy because you’re talking about a guy who literally saved half of magical society’s asses and without whom the kid destined to save the world would’ve died in his first year at school.

You can dislike him or think he’s a jerk, but he was damn good at his job. And compared to the people he’s often unfairly measured against (Sirius, James, Remus...), he actually did something. They didn’t. Absolutely nothing. Contribution: negative one.

[psychotrenny]

It's so stupid how people talk about ideas on social media as though they're the product of aliens or demons or something, arbitrary notions from a bizarre realm with no relation to "The Real World". Like the digital world is a product of the physical one, and ideas in the former reflect the ideas of the latter. Meanwhile ideas from the digital world in turn influence the development and spread of ideas in the physical. Sure some level of distortion takes place due to various factors like the structure of specific websites, user demographics etc. For example certain ideas are more prevalent in certain social circles than in the broader population, or you'll see a specific variation in ideology online that lacks a significant political presence physically. But these ideological "aberrations" are still very much rooted in "The Real World", with any variations from "Real" ideology occurring for reasons beyond random insanity.

Even in cases where things are written without sincerity or direct human intention, trolls and bots and all the other sources of internet "fake stuff", those "nonsense" statements don't exist in a vaccum. The kind of ideas a troll thinks will be most stupid and obnoxious are something they thought of and judged based on the values they do genuinely hold, while all the data output by bots is a product of whatever "real" data was put into it in the first place. That's not to say you should take every scrap of info you see on the internet completely seriously; there's certainly a lot of meaningless nonsense that's worth ignoring by itself. But you need to stop acting like there's an absolute separation between the "Real" physical world and "Fake" digital one. Appreciating the relationship between the two is vital if you want to understand either the internet itself or how it actually affects the physical world.

Because the internet is fundamentally still a part of our reality; it couldn't exist without the physical infrastructure that supports it while the data and ideas found within can be ultimately traced back to various aspects of the material world. It's misleading to refer to the physical world as The Real World, because Online is also Real

[twomoreseconds]

Arcane theory - The first timeline

Now this might be a bit long so please bear with me. I absolutely loved the ending of Arcane (we win jayvik nation) but there are a few aspects of it that I can’t quite wrap my head around. If anybody has a different perspective than me please do tell I’d love to hear it.

—————————————————————

Now for what I don’t quite understand (I’ve never been good with the logic of time travel)

1. What was the first timeline like? How did the story play out the first time round? Ik time doesn’t work like that and ik about the bootstrap paradox but I’m still so curious. And how did Viktor know Jayce would be the one to save him?

2. How did Viktor know that he was giving Jayce a different rune each time? Is there like some history tab in the Arcane??

—————————————————————

I’ll now try to answer these questions but again it’s all purely my speculation:

—————————————————————

1. What was the first timeline like? How did the story play out the first time round? How did Viktor know Jayce would be the one to save him?

We learn that each time Viktor ends up destroying the world he goes back in time in an attempt to stop himself. He says to Jayce “In all timelines, in all possibilities, only you can show me this (this being the fault of his ideology).” This means he is certain that Jayce is the key to stopping him.

Now as to how he knows it’s Jayce and only Jayce that can free him from his false ideas. I have two theories.

A) He’s literally gone trough ALL other possibilities.

He’s nudged all people in and around Zaun and Piltover in the direction of developing hextech and through trial and error he finds that Jayce is the one. - This has many faults and is more of an idea than a theory

B) In the first timeline that started their loop he had already met Jayce.

If he had already in some capacity come into contact with Jayce and seen his desire to prove himself, his drive and kindness. He would know that that’s the person who’s to be his conquests undoing. - This theory sounds more plausible to me and thus is what I’ll be going with

With this established we can move on to what the first time line was like.

Since Viktor wasn’t there to save his mother, Jayce grows up to be an orphan (I can’t remember anyone ever mentioning his dad). I believe he would still gravitate to becoming an inventor/ scientist, but with no funding he would probably be someone’s assistant or some such.

Viktor wouldn’t have met Jayce so early so he would still be Heimerdingers assistant. Eventually though his illness would start showing and in my mind, Viktor wouldn’t want to die without his life meaning something, without helping the people of Zaun.

I believe he would go see Singed just like he did in our timeline. Singed wouldn’t have the support from Silco like he does in our timeline since there would be no explosion in Piltover, thus no arrest of Vander, thus no death of Vander, thus no Silco leader (presumably).

This would mean that Singed would seek more drastic measures for example hextech. I believe he would have given Viktor some hextech crystals and shimmer, maybe as a part of a deal maybe out of the goodness of his own heart.

I think Viktor would start researching hextech which would perhaps catch the attention of Jayce, leading to them working together on hextech in secret.

As his illness would progress Viktor would again corrupt the core and enhance his leg. This time though since there is no funding for their illegal study there would be no Sky, meaning there would be no accident (don’t even dare to tell me it would kill Jayce I don’t want to even think about that).

If there is no accident then maybe Viktor would use the core on himself sooner. Become the machine herald as he would have no guilt (Sky) making him hold on to his humanity.

If he becomes the machine herald so soon Jayce wouldn’t have much time to talk him out of everything. Not only would there not be enough time to talk, since they met so late their connection wouldn’t quite be what it becomes in our time line.

Jayce would get pretty close though since after Viktor achieves his salvation of the human race and realizes its faults, it’s Jayce who he trusts to save everyone.

Now he would come up with the plan to inspire Jayce sooner, so he develops hextech sooner, so they meet sooner, so Jayce has more time to stop him.

This only eventually works when Ekko buys him more time, otherwise he still wouldn’t have enough time to convince Viktor. (Ekko is the goat fr)

—————————————————————

Now for with the one that makes the least amount of sense to me.

2. How did Viktor know he was giving Jayce a different rune each time?

In episode 9 we are explicitly shown and told that Viktor went and tried all kinds of different runes in hopes that one will give Jayce enough time to save him.

Let’s say he starts with rune A, it doesn’t work so when he’s in the “world rid of humanity’s imperfections” he decides to give him rune B.

Now if it doesn’t work, the Viktor in the past who meets Jayce with rune B becomes the Viktor in the present.

Only problem is new Viktor is here for the first time. He presumably doesn’t have the memories of old Viktor, so how could he know that the rune he decides to try this time isn’t one he’s already tried for example rune A.

How does he know that he’s not already in an endless cycle of going between A and B. Never even trying C.

I believe the only explanation would be that the Arcane is somehow giving him access to all his “past” memories from his past timelines.

Although time doesn’t really work like that. Time is a loop a cycle it doesn’t have an end or a beginning who’s to say that it wouldn’t give him memories of the acceleration rune working.

But I digress since I can’t think of a better solution.

—————————————————————

If anyone actually read it to the end thank you and sorry that it lowkey read more like fanfiction than a theory.

If anybody has literally any other ideas please comment I wanna hear them so bad you don’t even know.

In conclusion going by my theory Jayvik are truly meant to meet in every timeline and Viktor is the direct downfall of Vander and Vanders Zaun. (What a silly guy am I right or am I right)

[tanadrin]

Duncan does a quick compare-and-contrast episode on the German Revolution, and points out that:

Kaiser Wilhelm bowed to pressure to switch out his government much faster than Tsar Nicholas

The SPD was immediately hostile to the spreading workers' and soldiers' councils in Germany--Friedrich Ebert, despite heading the SPD, is really hostile to the idea of a social revolution like occurred in Russia, and thinks the SPD can win socialist goals in a parliamentary system because of its electoral strength. (This is not absurd on its face--Russia at this point is in civil war and there are competing Red and White Terrors; the SPD is electorally strong, though the weakness of the parliamentary system Germany will get will prove to be a huge problem)

Prince Max shoves the Kaiser out the door by announcing his abdication, even before the Kaiser actually does abdicate, then immediately resigns in favor of Friedrich Ebert, the head of the SPD. In general one gets the sense that the SPD is not getting caught flat-footed by events like everybody was in the Russian revolution, but accurately anticipating or even forcing them to ensure a smooth transition of power.

In Germany the provisional government is all socialists instead of all liberals, the equivalent of the Right SRs in Russia

When a call goes out for a worker's assembly in Berlin to run the new government, and Ebert can't stop it, he leans into it and gets as many of his guys into it as possible--once again showing the Wisdom of Showing Up to Meetings. The SPD and the anti-war USPD splinter faction manage to coopt this assembly.

The radical left is explicitly trying to create a revolutionary body to overawe the provisional government a la the Petrograd Soviet, but instead of it being SRs and Mensheviks in the Soviet versus liberal Kadets in the government, the SPD/USPD is controlling the whole show. No dual power dynamic emerges.

Ebert also quickly moves to get the German military onside: in exchange for their support against attempts to implement a soviet-style system in Germany, he promises not to fuck with their autonomy.

The war ends like two days after the November Revolution starts--I think Baden is appointed head of the government on the 9th, and the armistics occurs on the 11th. There's no question of continuing the fighting--indeed, one aim the military is trying to secure is getting the civilian government to end the war, so they aren't blamed for it (despite their situation being unwinnable).

Circumstances helped a lot--and the SPD and Ebert in particular are much better at navigating the situation than anybody between February and October 1917 in Russia. It helps that the SPD is a big-tent party with a ton of support, in a more developed multiparty political system. These are the same properties that made then feckless when opposing the war, but left them in a position to take up the reins of government in 1918.

Ebert's government is good at quickly announcing a slate of popular social and political reforms, delivering on their socialist credentials; it helps that the workers' and soldiers' councils that do form are more ideologically in line with the SPD than they are with the Bolsheviks, and support the government's call for a national assembly slash constitutional convention. Unlike in Russia, this assembly is not delayed by war or anything else.

When the USDP and Spartacists/KPD break decisively with the SPD, they are kind of muddled in their aims and divided between each other, and the Spartacist Uprising breaks out basically by accident, but fails to attract much mass support. Ebert is able to use the Freikorps to suppress the uprising. More July Days than October Revolution--and Liebknecht and Luxemburg are captured by the Freikorps and murdered, which means there's no regrouping and reconsolidation for an equivalent later push.

As with the Russian Revolution, very small differences in both individual actions and general circumstances might have produced wildly different results--anything from right-wing military dictatorship to full-blown communist revolution. Still, it's hard to see the Weimar Republic as the optimal outcome, given how that's going to turn out.

[communist-ojou-sama]

Like, this may come as a shock to people like Tumblr liberals who are totally stuck in the Western anglophone neoliberal ideology echo-chamber but like, outside of the west, out there where the majority of the worlds people live, Kwame Nkrumah's thought is taken more seriously than Milton Friedman's. So why will left liberals engage with Friedman's thought, even if only to debunk it, but not engage at all with Nkrumah's writings on neocolonialism, and just write it off?

There's a common charge leveled by supposedly "open-minded" liberals toward anti-imperialists, that we just 'blindly' support any force that's contravailing US the US on a regional or global scale, but how am I supposed to take this seriously as anything but projection?

We anti-imperialists often make specific, verifiable claims about happenings in global geopol, such as that the so-called "Free Syrian Army" consisted mostly of salafi jihadists allowed into Syria through their northern border with Turkey, and that it doesn't make sense that a civil war could simply Materialize in a country like Syria which right before the war started had one of the lowest ratios of guns to people in the world, or that the Maidan coup regime that swept into power in Kiev in 2014 was heavily infiltrated with fascists, and would not have been able to consolidate power without the instrumentalisation of fascist gangs and paramilitary organizations.

The liberal response to these specific claims, then, is to point to reports from corporate media with every incentive to lie, themselves doing no independent investigation but instead parroting verbatim the word of the State Department as fact, and dismissing all independent media investigations out of hand with no further thought.

In a situation such as this, can that response really be considered "open-minded"? It seems that time and time again intellectual rigor is reserved for discussions of technocratic tinkering within the west's iron curtain, and not the lives of people outside of it.

There's plenty of brain-juice to be expended on justifying why the US economy is actually in good shape and the people saying they're struggling more than before are just stupid, but when it comes to considering why African heads of state choose the China Development Bank over the IMF as an economic partner or Russia over the NATO states as security partners, these leaders of millions are dismissively written off as histrionically anti-Western, paranoid, and too mentally weak to see through Russian and Chinese propaganda. Is it this really a 'rational' way to look at the world?

Personally, I think not.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Are you a Tankie?? Do you think the USSR was a good nation? Do you maybe even defend Stalin somewhat, not just Lenin? Do you support Mao or ''commuist" nations in the modern age like China or North Korea? I think Commuism is a good ideology, but anytime it's been attempted alongside a government, it's been used as an excuse to control and oppress people. I think it can only work feasibly under anarchy because a government will never release control of its citizens.

I used to be an anarchist myself. I'm not going to say there's some magic phrase that will convince you to become a "tankie" like me, but I will say that if you haven't read some of the core works by Marx, Engels, or Lenin, you should give them a try sometime. "State and Revolution" especially. There is no magic "abolish the state" button that can be pressed to do away with all authority in one stroke. The material conditions must be changed first before the state can disappear.

I would also recommend checking out Pat Sloan's "Soviet Democracy", and pretty much anything by Anna Louise Strong but especially The Soviets Expected It, The Stalin Era, and In North Korea. On the subject of North Korea, you should also watch the democracy "Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul".

There is a lot of propaganda surrounding actually existing socialism in the West, and it is important to separate truth from fiction. People do not fight in revolutions only to turn around and accept new oppressors. Every currently existing socialist state is democratic, and that includes the DPRK. Democratic does not mean ideal, but it does mean that people have a say in who is running the government. Even more than that, in every existing socialist state the people have the right to recall elected officials at any time, something which is not guaranteed in most bourgeois democracies, including the US.

Can you imagine members of the ruling party meeting with the people directly on a regular basis to discuss and debate the issues that matter most to the people in the US or any other bourgeois democracy? Can you imagine government officials whose top priority is the material welfare of the most disadvantaged citizens? You look at government meetings in China, in Cuba, in Vietnam, in Laos, and in North Korea, and that is what you see time and time again. That is the crux of politics in these countries, the material conditions of the people and how to improve them. They are dictatorships of the proletariat and thus the proletariat are the class for which the state exists to benefit.

Finally, you should read the 1986 paper "Capitalism, socialism, and the physical quality of life" by Cereseto & Waitzkin. While it is nearly 40 years old, it used World Bank data (clearly not a source biased in favor of communism) to demonstrate how on average socialist economies outperformed capitalist ones at similar levels of economic development in terms of actual material conditions for the average citizen. Being 40 years old, it also has the advantage of comparing data at a time when the number of socialist nations was at its highest. If you want to see more recent examinations that take a similar approach, you should read any papers by the economist Jason Hickel, but especially his 2016 paper "The true extent of global poverty and hunger", where he demonstrates that capitalism has by and large failed to improve material conditions outside the imperial core, and that the only nations that buck the trend in the developing world are the ones who have rejected neoliberal economic policy, most notably China, whose socialist economy has been responsible for the vast majority of people lifted out of poverty in the last decades.

[headspace-hotel]

There are so many tumblr communists that consistently describe people with (in their opinion) distasteful or evil political beliefs as being into Marvel movies, Disney, Taylor Swift, "nerd culture," picrews, Steven Universe, and other things that are "cringe" or "normie." Does anybody know what the fuck is wrong with these people.

Like I have seen MULTIPLE posts now from tumblr communists about a "pattern" of Zionists liking picrews and being into steven universe. These are people that are proudly well-read on political subjects, post a lot of serious, usually abstruse political stuff, and talk extensively about injustice, oppression, colonial power structures, and the necessity of liberation, and yet they are totally fucking incapable of distinguishing their own ideology and morals from their petty distaste of uncool people.

How self-obsessed do you have to be to think "supporting genocide" and "liking fandoms I think are cringe" are seriously causally connected.

Half of these people are constantly posting about how everyone they meet IRL is a drooling barely-sentient NPC enslaved to capitalism and Disney movies and how their music taste is more developed and sophisticated than everyone else's, and they use the terms "midwit" and "normie" basically interchangeably with "liberal," which I think they understand as the political flavoring of "cringe"

[cluethegirl]

I said,

NO TERFS ALLOWED

Do i need to type that in a biologically female way for you to understand that like, what the f

[moe-broey]

@eriisaam I just GOTTA SAY. THIS IS SO WILD TO ME. FASCINATING READ, TO ME.

I have this very oddly specific tendency. To avoid, or at least not get super involved in very specific media. This isn't at all a reflection of the media itself, it's ENTIRELY just me being Weird and experiencing what I call Shrimp Colors. No other way to put it, if I were to attempt to describe it I would sound insane.

However!!! That doesn't always stop me from absorbing things through osmosis. Sometimes it's enrichment for me, to see what my mutuals are having fun with!! I just think it's neat...

ALL THAT SAID. WILD TO ME. CRAZY TO ME. That from everything I've gleaned about Slay the Princess. It gives me Shrimp Colors, I would generally avoid it, but from what I've Seen. It feels soooo Mani coded, to me.

JUST. REALLY REALLY FASCINATING and staggering tbh to hear this. THE SHRIMP COLORS............... I was RIGHT (maybe). I feel like I've gone from "Very compelling, however I would generally avoid this one" to apprehensively "hm. Perhaps... for research purposes....."

Either way, I found this to be EXTREMELY validating to hear. In a way I can't even really comprehend. SUPER COOL 😳🧍����💥💥

One day. I will be able to find the words. To explain what the difference is between Lif and Mani. There is a Core Difference between them. Of what they Are. Today apparently is NOT that day though.

[apas-95]

*wokely* aktually nazism was about the economy

between 'fascism is the natural endpoint of capitalist society in crisis, the perfectly 'rational' pursuit of profit at the expense of human life, the exact practices carried out by the european empires in their colonies applied in desperation to the imperial core itself', and, conversely, 'fascism is a collective madness with no real source that spontaneously overtook some nations in the previous century', one of those explanations is factually correct, and has analytical power in explaining why corporations essentially universally supported fascist rise, why the western world was functionally in lockstep supporting fascism until it began infringing on their own empires, and how and where fascism developed from; while the other is a comforting thing liberals like to tell themselves while they send donations to Right Sektor and the IDF. one was the ideology of the partisans who defeated the nazis, the other, of the financiers who profited from their labour camps. it's certainly very funny to paint the former as "unwoke" to extoll the latter.

[psychotrenny]

People really love to cynically abuse that whole "old dead white men" line don't they. Like there is a very genuine issue with how various systems of oppression (racism, misogyny etc.) mean that thinkers from privileged backgrounds got a disproportionate amount of attention and praise compared to those from a more marginalised position, with the theoretically contributions of the latter getting frequently mis-attributed or outright ignored. It doesn't mean that the contributions from said privileged thinkers are all inherently worthless on that basis alone.

Like it's a classic example of the way that liberals take structural critiques and turn them into a matter of personal morality. "Overrepresentation of privileged thinkers is bad" gets turned into "Privileged thinkers are all bad people". And it always gets used in the most cynical way possible. You hardly ever see this line used on thorough reactionaries like Nietzsche. It's mainly used to denounce progressive thinkers who, whatever flaws they had and bigotries they were unable to escape, still made innumerable contributions to the causes of liberation and laid the groundwork that was later developed and expanded by marginalised theoreticians. Like people should definitely read more Ho Chi Minh and Amilcar Cabral and Angela Davis, but that doesn't diminish the value of Marx and Lenin.

As important as it is to remind people of the contributions that marginalised people all over the world have made to Marxism (if only because even many Marxists themselves fail to appreciate this*), using it counter the whole "dead white guys" gotcha misses the point of why it's such a stupid thing to say. Because that line is a critique of a system, and it loses all power and meaning when removed from that context applied on the level of individuals. Bigotry is a dialectical structure and not a metaphysical condition; possessing privilege matters in terms of interaction with the broader world not as an ontological fact of your existence. Individuals do matter to some extent, but mainly in terms of how they fit into broader systems and not how systems fit around individuals. You need to realise all this if you want to get anywhere. This individualist bullshit only works as a tool for personal gratification and flagellation; it's masturbatory in the worst possible way

*even if you consciously support an ideology of anti-bigotry, it takes discipline and vigilance to properly unlearn all the biases instilled by life under Imperialist Capitalism and not everyone is successful at applying this

[metamatar]

i have a question and sorry if it sounds incoherent. why is it so important to marxists to distinguish that marxism is not “moral” or “ideological”? i understand that marxism is grounded in historical materialism and that it aims to understand how existing structures and institutions function with the specific goal of abolishing them in favour of a marxist state, but when it comes to understanding how to move forward past capitalism, how can MLs claim that it’s entirely objective and scientific? isnt the fundamental purpose of marxism (abolishing the oppressor class and putting the proletariat in power) a subjective one, given that it to support that you need to believe that abolishing the oppressor class is desirable in the first place? how would ML “scientifically” help people decide where the line is drawn on subjects like the death penalty and incarceration if its committed by a communist party (given that the decision that the cost of killing/imprisoning people is worth the boon it would give in establishing a communist state is still based on subjective goals?)

i don't think modern marxists should claim they're not ideological. im sure some do, but imo the correct claim is marxism is not idealist. i think some of this confusion comes from a popperian view of science as "neutral" or "objective" outside of time. how the political economy affects the propagation of ideology and the process of science as practiced in reality is very standard marxist analysis now. some of the claim to objectivity is something that most people claim belongs to their favourite philosophical project see the rawlsian veil of ignorance in liberalism. marx is also writing in a world where theological and religious reasoning have a lot of primacy in philosophy and he is drawing a clean break from that by hewing to scientific characterisation of his methods.

idealism, in the kantian sense is a philosophy that argues that our ideals (about say, fairness, justice etc) inform how we organise society. marxism, as philosophical project develops in response to kant and hegel to argue that the political economic base, ie the productive relations of society actually inform superstructure of ideals. to quote marx in the preface to critique of political economy: "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."

for clarity's sake the idea that changes in the mode of production (mostly due to technology) transform the relations of production which is the main driving force of history is historical materialism. the analysis of why existing structures and institutions must be abolished therefore has to be grounded in analysis where such structures are considered variously – unstable, internally contradictory etc. if you view historical materialism as true, your theory of change cannot be that you'll change the world because it is unfair (an idea.) you can view the world as unfair as a marxist and talk about it to propagate the necessity of your project but that doesn't actually give you a blueprint on how to change it.

capitalists are oppressors, but marxism doesn't view the problem in their oppressive or evil natures. capitalist economies demand even the most moral capitalist to exploit the proletariat. but! it is desirable to abolish there class relations not merely because they are unfair and exploitative but because these class relationships cause workers to develop class consciousness, recognise their power and abolish capitalism.

on your specific example, i don't think marxism can or should claim their are no moral dilemmas. historical materialism doesn't assert that there are no conflicting understandings of history. walter benjamin's theses on the philosophy of history is imo good reading here.

so i dont think your concern about why it's important for marxists to believe this makes sense, because this is what marxism is. if you don't find this convincing, you're not a marxist. you could be an anarchist, or a social democrat or a radical liberal.

[tanadrin]

My duties towards the beings of my own species had greater claims to my attention because they included a greater proportion of happiness or misery. Urged by this view, I refused, and I did right in refusing, to create a companion for the first creature. He showed unparalleled malignity and selfishness in evil; he destroyed my friends; he devoted to destruction beings who possessed exquisite sensations, happiness, and wisdom; nor do I know where this thirst for vengeance may end.

This passage clearly seems to me to read “My duties meant I should not create the creature a companion; the reason I should not create the creature a companion was that he is malignant, selfish, and evil. I know he is malignant, selfish, and evil because [list of crimes that only occurred after the creature had been abandoned and deceived, like the murder of Frankenstein’s wife, which was explicit revenge for reneging on creating a companion for it].” Unless I am misremembering the order of events earlier in the book (which is possible--again I haven’t read it in years), that seems pretty clear-cut to me!

In describing aesthetic revulsion as the basis of race science, what I mean to describe is more the internal narrative of Victorian race-science, the one that adherents would use in accounting for the justification of both their political project and the hierarchy of aesthetics built into it. Of course the real historical picture is different, but the internal account is what is of interest to me here, because of the way it resembles Frankenstein’s own prejudice against his creation.

Do you think Frankenstein is about not meddling with nature, or is it about being unprepared and isolated from society?

I think Frankenstein is one of those thematically rich texts that you can get a number of very different interesting readings out of. It would be very difficult indeed to argue it was about only one thing. “Don’t play god/meddle with nature” is one reading, but in some ways it’s the least interesting one (cf. “Caveman Science Fiction”), if only bc we have so few real opportunities to play God and most hand-wringing over the idea feels to me either contrived or like mundane technophobia.

Here’s one reading: In Frankenstein, it’s made pretty clear that however horrified he is by it in retrospect, Victor’s act of creation isn’t what rendered his creation monstrous—it was his subsequent cruelty and neglect. The “monster” had in him all the capabilities of reason and perception, it’s just that Victor’s own revulsion kept him from seeing that. That’s not playing god and suffering the consequences—that’s being driven to hate your own offspring by the narrowminded moralism of your reactionary worldview. Frankenstein’s sin isn’t inquiry, it’s fear of the result.

In that result we are shown a lesson society still refuses to internalize: monsters are made of men when we treat men like monsters. Nobody, not even an unnatural science experiment, is born monstrous so long as he has the capacity for reason (which the creature plainly does); only cruelty, born from the expectation of monstrosity, engenders it. Indeed I would argue we abuse and despise precisely those people we want good reason to hate: when they fulfill our expectations, we are pleased, seeing this as justification for our hatred from the beginning.

Frankenstein explores this dynamic in a one-to-one relationship, but of course it applies to social dynamics that appear at a much larger scale. The Frankensteins of this world will always misidentify their original sin as one of too much kindness or tolerance—as situated in the act of creation. This is ego flattering nonsense: “My problem is that I have an overabundance of virtue.” Their real sin is perfectly ordinary fear and disgust, which was just looking for a target to fixate on.

[forevergulag]

That "center Chinese voices" post was something else. Let me tell you. I've met a lot of Chinese people.

I know a few Chinese trotskyists who oppose the current PRC government who can't decide whether they want to blame Xi Jinping for covid deaths or critisize him for covid lock downs.

I met a Chinese guy who told me he was a Donald Trump supporter and was a white supremacist right after he taught me how to make a really mean egg-drop soup.

I know a woman from Shang Hai living in the USA who tells me every time I talk to her how badly she wants to go back.

I met a Chinese guy who told me at length how his parents went from living in a shack on a farm to a modern apartment thanks to socialist economic development

"center Chinese voices"

All of them? Or just the ones who share your liberal ideology.

REAL. for context:

[mesetacadre]

Any resources you would recommend about why proletarians would be against worker's rights? It's a topic that has been interesting to me lately

I don't know any specific resources, maybe Lenin touches on this in What is to be Done but I'm not sure. I think a better way to phrase the question is to ask why workers would go against their class interests, even in the most economicist and immediate struggles. Essentially, I'd say it's a concatenation of two facts: most workers lack actually consistent politico-economic education, and the propaganda of liberalism works more like an invisible mold than anything explicit you can point to and single out as a Propaganda Piece. No matter how angry a worker is at their own bad situation (which they might not even conceive of as exploitation), if they've spent all their lives soaking in liberal ideology everywhere from school to the generally accepted trains of thought to even the most innocent piece of media, it's not that surprising they might oppose, say, a rise in the minimum wage. Maybe they've bought into smart-sounding liberal economics and have some vague notion or memorized slogan about inflation rising. Or maybe they've internalized the narrative of individual achievement, they feel like they've "earned" having a better salary than minimum wage and feel it's unfair for others to begin at a better place than them.

Typically the first and only type of class consciousness that workers develop, what Lenin defined as economic-spontaneous consciousness, or consciousness from within (and the type of consciousness most anarchists love to praise), is the one that arises from the daily happenings of class antagonism. But this is a highly subjective and imprecise class consciousness. Without further education and a scientific approach (acquiring political-revolutionary consciousness, or consciousness from without), spontaneous consciousness can be easily misguided by the aforementioned liberal state of affairs or by the worker's own biases. Someone predisposed to racism for whichever environmental reason might take that imprecise, spontaneous class consciousness and assign the cause of their felt exploitation to the presence of migrant workers in the economy, and therefore support measures that harm that specific minority while also greatly benefitting the capitalists exploiting both. The worker aristocracy is also very vulnerable to supporting the imperialist system when their spontaneous consciousness, especially in regards to trade unions, aligns with imperialist interests. And besides all of this, some workers never develop any sort or consciousness and believe themselves potential equals to their exploiters

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Dion J. Pierre

The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is waging a campaign to gut Jewish life in academia, calling for the abolition of Hillel International campus chapters, the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world.

“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign, titled #DropHillel, said in a manifesto published last week. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”

It continued, “Such actions reveal Hillel’s ideological and material investment in Zionism, despite the organization’s facade as being simply a ‘Jewish cultural space.'”

DropHillel claims to be “Jewish-led,” although only a small minority of Jews oppose Zionism, and the group has been linked to and promoted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters.

Hillel International has provided Jewish students a home away from home during the academic year. However, NSJP says it wants to “weaken” it and “dismantle oppression.”

The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.

“Zionism is a racist supremacist ideology advocating for the creation and sustenance of an ethnostate through the expulsion and annihilation of native people,” the group told the paper. “Therefore, any group that advocates for a supremacist ideology — be it the KKK, the Proud Boys, Hillel, or Heels for Israel — should not be welcome on campus.”

The #DropHillel campaign came amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.

Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.

“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” the report said. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US-designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”

The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California – Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, it continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.