#and to the development of ideologies to support it

[tzifron]

Lehi (Hebrew pronunciation: [ˈleχi]; Hebrew: לח״י, sometimes abbreviated "LHI"), officially the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (Hebrew: לוחמי חרות ישראל, romanized: Lohamei Herut Israel) and often known pejoratively as the Stern Gang,[10][11][12][13] was a Zionist paramilitary militant organization founded by Avraham ("Yair") Stern in Mandatory Palestine.[14][15][16] Its avowed aim was to evict the British authorities from Palestine by use of violence, allowing unrestricted immigration of Jews and the formation of a Jewish state. It was initially called the National Military Organization in Israel,[17] upon being founded in August 1940, but was renamed Lehi one month later.[18] The group referred to its members as terrorists[19] and admitted to having carried out acts of terrorism.[14][20][21]

Lehi split from the Irgun militant group in 1940 in order to continue fighting the British during World War II. It initially sought an alliance with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.[22] Believing that Nazi Germany was a lesser enemy of the Jews than Britain, Lehi twice attempted to form an alliance with the Nazis, proposing a Jewish state based on "nationalist and totalitarian principles, and linked to the German Reich by an alliance".[22][23] After Stern's death in 1942, the new leadership of Lehi began to move towards support for Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union[17] and the ideology of National Bolshevism, which was considered an amalgam of both right and left.[24][22] Regarding themselves as "revolutionary Socialists", the new Lehi developed a highly original ideology combining an "almost mystical" belief in Greater Israel with support for the Arab liberation struggle.[17] This sophisticated ideology failed to gain public support and Lehi fared poorly in the first Israeli elections.[25]

In April of 1948, Lehi and the Irgun were jointly responsible for the massacre in Deir Yassin of at least 107 Palestinian Arab villagers, including women and children. Lehi assassinated Lord Moyne, British Minister Resident in the Middle East, and made many other attacks on the British in Palestine.[26] On 29 May 1948, the government of Israel, having inducted its activist members into the Israel Defense Forces, formally disbanded Lehi, though some of its members carried out one more terrorist act, the assassination of Folke Bernadotte some months later,[27] an act condemned by Bernadotte's replacement as mediator, Ralph Bunche.[28] After the assassination, the new Israeli government declared Lehi a terrorist organization, arresting some 200 members and convicting some of the leaders.[29] Just before the first Israeli elections in January 1949, a general amnesty to Lehi members was granted by the government.[29] In 1980, Israel instituted a military decoration, an "award for activity in the struggle for the establishment of Israel", the Lehi ribbon.[30] Former Lehi leader Yitzhak Shamir became Prime Minister of Israel in 1983.

[mossadspypigeon]

when you call me and other jews nazis…just know you’re truly showing how little you actually know about nazism and the holocaust.

“nazi” has very little meaning anymore. i, and other jews, use it to describe jew haters who would celebrate us being shot over pits and who would have absolutely voted for hitler, but 99% of goyim on the internet, especially ultra leftists and tankies, use it as a silencing technique.

they were doing this in 2012 and 2016 and it’s continued today. how can you argue with it, in the pea-sized minds of the tumblr masses?

i say today: easily. not a single one of you knows anything about the shoah outside of boy in the striped pajamas, a wikipedia article, and al jazeera propaganda. you don’t know what led up to the shoah, you don’t know what happened in camps, you don’t know nazi race science or what their plans actually were or how they developed, and you don’t give a single flying fuck. that isn’t the point. your focus is misusing the names of our oppressors to spread cruelty and lies while you vocally support the people who are the actual nazis. who want to continue hitler’s work today and have stated this goal both verbally and in writing.

a little fyi for you: JEW HATE was a key component of nazi ideology. arabs were the allies of the nazis. bit of a difference there.

you’re not insulting me when you call me a nazi because logically, a jew cannot be a nazi. all you’re doing is proving everything i think about you is right.

[sleepymim]

Ok so this is going to be my attempt to put all of my thoughts about Silco and Vander and their relationship and how they might achieve reconciliation into one coherent post because I cannot! stop! thinking about them!

As we see in s2e7, reconciliation between them is definitely possible. However, I think it definitely wasn't easy, and it wasn't motivated by a single event like Silco finding Vander's letter or Vi dying. I think a million little things needed to perfectly align for them to find back to one another. As others have already said, and I agree with this, I think the "happy" timeline is a statistical anomaly for them.

So what was needed for them to find back to each other? And like, disclaimer that this is obviously only my own interpretation of events.

First of all, I think one of the prerequisites for reconciliation is that Silco doesn't start working with Singed and doesn't get into Shimmer, which is supported by his eye having healed normally in the alternate timeline.

I also think that Vander's letter could only ever be a starting point for their reconciliation, something that would get them in the same room to talk again. After that, I think they'd still need a long, long time to get back to how things were.

Vi's death imo has absolutely nothing to do with whether they reconcile or not, because in the alternate timeline she dies during what would be Act 1. Silco is already past the point of no retunr here, he doesn't give a shit about Vi or the other kids, he's deep into his Shimmer business. He's literally planning to kill all the kids in episode 3. He would not give a fuck if Vi died in that explosion. If Silco and Vander are to reconcile, it needs to happen pretty soon after the betrayal.

But I think the most important aspects for their reconciliation are violence and ideology.

Obviously the actual betrayal is horrifically violent and traumatizing. Vander actively chose to drown Silco which is just like, such a brutal way to die. He does this because he puts the blame for the bridge fight escalating on Silco. This is unjustified, and the show wants us to know that Vander was in the wrong here. Vander himself admits in s1e3 that he has regretted what he did to Silco since it happened. In general episode 3 in my opinion very clearly communicates that Vander overreacted and that what Siclo did (throwing the first molotov) does not justify Vander's reaction (violent murder).

However! Vander also clearly still thinks Silco is dangerous and despite regretting how he reacted still puts some form of blame on Silco.

In the apology letter, he says the blood is on both their hands. The letter in general is shit considering the weight of what Vander did, and what it shows is that even though Vander feels bad about what he did, he does still put the blame for the bridge fight on Silco.

In act 1, Vander also says there are worse things than enforcers in the Undercity while looking at his brace that covers the scar Silco gave him while escaping. This is, presumably, before he knows Siloc has been funding Shimmer development and getting into human experimentation. He thinks Silco is worse than enforcers based on whatever happened between them in past. With s2, this is explicitly Silco's escalation on the bridge.

So obviously despite the time that has passed and the fact that Vander can admit what he did was unjustified, he does still believe Silco is dangerous based on their differing ideology. Benzo, too, obviously still holds a grudge against Silco for what happened.

So really the crux is that even though Vander feels sorry, he does not change his stance on non-violence being the right way forward for the people of Zaun, and thus he can never truly forgive Silco for what he did on the bridge - he still believes that Silco is responsible and that his own way is the right way.

I think as long as Vander keeps his ideological stance, reconciliation between them isn't possible. From both sides, because Vander thinks Silco's ideals are dangerous, and from Silco's side because he thinks Vander is a coward and a sellout.

Then let's look at Silco's side of things a little bit.

I think there's two aspects to his forgiveness/reconciliation with Vander: the violence and the ideology.

Canon pretty much tells us that Silco is willing and able to forgive the violence Vander inflicted on him. We see this not only in the alternate timeline, where they're obviously close again, but I think s1e3 tells us the same. Silco kidnaps Vander, but still offers him the chance to join him in the fight against Piltover again. I don't want to talk here about Silco's methods at this point in time, but he's obviously willing to put the murder attempt behind them IF Vander is willing to switch to his side again. He even says that his hatred for Vander passed with time. I think this implies that, somehow, eventually, with time, in a nicer timeline Silco could really forgive Vander for trying to kill him.

However, and I think this is the much bigger issue for them, there's still the matter of ideology. Vander betraying their shared goals, turning towards a pacifist, more passive approach to revolution and ultimately striking a deal with Grayson is what really drives the wedge between them.

This is what Silco despises Vander for: For turning his back on violence. Silco encourages Vander's violent tendencies, he wants him to become the person he used to be again, wants him to embrace that part of himself again. I think this supports the assumption that Silco would forgive the violence inflicted against him much easier than Vander abandoning their shared dream. Until the end, he wants Vander to embrace that violence again.

And a Vander who is committed to non-violence is a Vander who stands in the way of Silco's goal of a free Zaun. So as long as Vander stays firm on his ideological stance, Silco is always eventually going to get rid of him. There is no way for them to find back to one another if they remain on opposite sides of the struggle they used to fight together.

This is, I think, the crux of my interpretation of them:

Reconciliation doesn't only depend on Silco coming back to Vander and forgiving him for the violence Vander inflicted upon him. It also depends on Vander coming back to Silco, internalizing that the bridge figth was not Silco's fault, and being willing to compromise his non-violent ideology and take action again for their shared dream.

It's about the two of them coming back to each other.

[mitigatedchaos]

You're smart, so you've probably already noticed that my style is very much about dividing things into component parts.

In my Belgium example in the other post, I immediately split Belgium into the national layer ("national interest") and the sub-national layer (Belgian groups). I then split the sub-national layer into groups ("rogue army unit," "legislature," "croissant-eating civilians").

This allows me to narrow in on and isolate the problem component ("rogue army unit"), which allows me to examine better ways to achieve leverage and thereby convert force into traction. It also allows me to notice when something is missing ("this is happening because the PM wanted it" vs "this is happening because the PM is weak").

You can probably see where this is going.

I haven't seen that much of the Universal Century timeline of Gundam. I've seen part of the Mobile Suit Gundam compilation movies, Gundam: The Origin, and Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn. I've also seen just a bit of one of the sequels, enough to see the Earth's colonial occupation forces rough around beating people up for kicks.

My first exposure was the PS2 game Federation vs. Zeon. That has multiple campaigns which cover key events in the UC timeline (as these events happen to overlap with mobile suit battles).

Based on this limited information (someone such as @irradiate-space could comment on how accurate my description is)... The oppression of the Spacenoids creates emotional political motive power that can be used as the driving force for a political movement. From this perspective, the Zeonism of Ghiren Zabi is an ideological machine which transforms the reaction to the oppression of Spacenoids into colony drop operations. These colony drop operations then create a security dilemma for Earth, as well as hatred and resentment towards the colonists which reduces the dimensionality of the Earth's response. This leads to more oppression of Spacenoids.

This feedback loop then creates more colony drop operations.

If we want to save the Spacenoids, then we have to figure out a way to break this feedback loop.

First, decompose Zeon into the Spacenoid people ("Zeon") and the Zeonist ideology ("Zeon"). Second, decompose the Zeonist ideology subject to Ghiren's influence ("freedom for Spacenoids through military domination of Earth") into two parts { "independence for space colonies," "military domination of Earth" }.

We can now see that one of our objectives must be to disconnect Ghiren from the Spacenoid people, so that their emotional self-conception does not require supporting him. This creates a void. We then see that we need to create a Spacenoid independence movement, a new ideological machine, which transforms the emotional reaction to the oppression of Spacenoids into reform of the Federation government.

This new independence movement would divert the supply of personnel and materials away from the colony drop faction. However, in order for this new movement to successfully reduce support for invading the Earth with giant robots from space, it must have a reasonable prospect of success.

Therefore, we must functionally decompose the Federation government, identify the power networks, and determine how to gain leverage over key nodes in order to shift the internal balance of political power within the Federation away from oppressing Spacenoids. The Federation government's oppression of Spacenoids may also be the result of a lack of development or strength internally, an empty space. For example, the people of Earth may not especially want to oppress Spacenoids, but there may be no structure which converts their desire into actual oversight of the occupation forces, or the structure which does exist may be underfunded, or not have the right personnel.

Unaligned or anti-aligned forces who benefit (or perceive themselves to benefit) from the current system may act to stop us. We must have courage. Those who seek peace and love must also be strong. They must be daring.

Overcoming the legacy of Ghiren Zabi, shifting down the estimated likelihood of space war, is a generational project, which will primarily benefit those born near or after its completion. Those who wish to save the Spacenoid people must have the determination and will to wage peace. They must have talent, and they must have maturity, and they must love truth. They must be willing to fight even if victory is uncertain.

Remember, if the Spacenoid people were entirely without virtue, then they would not be able to wage space war.

Death to the woke! Exterminate the liberal-communist vermin! You do not count as human!

You know when you send these, I don't know who you are, right?

Anonymous asks aren't connected to a larger body of work which demonstrates a time commitment to a particular ideology.

It's impossible for me to tell if you are a sincere right-wing ideologue, an actual Communist trying to radicalize me against right-wingers, a troll who time-traveled from 2004 and has decided to return to the art of trolling, or just someone trying to see how I react.

You might even be someone hoping for a spectacular maneuver that defeats this ask in one move, because you think that's what people need to see.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[eternal-echoes]

“"Intersex" is an umbrella term sometimes used to include more than forty different kinds of disorders of sexual development (DSDs). Most people who experience one of these conditions do not identify as trans. In fact, some resent being used to promote transgender ideology and being lumped into the LGBTIA category. After all, intersex conditions are not a reflection of a person's sense of identity or sexual orientation. Those are different issues altogether, and it's a leap in logic to believe that variations in biology support the idea that a person can be something other than his or her sex. Moreover, nearly all people who identify as trans were born with a biological sex that is anything but ambiguous, and this is precisely what those with gender dysphoria express dysphoric feelings about.”

-Jason Evert, Male, Female, or Other: A Catholic Guide to Understanding Gender

—

For more recommended resources on gender dysphoria, click here.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[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.