#associated with the white communists

[chaos-coming]

So goddamn frustrated with the white communists who keep coopting the palestine solidarity meetings to either wage little recruitment turf wars (the stalinists) or turn every single point into a plug for their worker's revolution in sweden (the marxists).

The palestinian youth movement people literally Walked Out of the meeting today in frustration. One guy who survived the syrian revolution tried to tell them to stop and why this was not good and they just bulldozed over him. A black woman tried to talk about how as a person of color in sweden she feels like their voices are often suppressed, and this guy kiterally replied that he doesnt think race has anything to do with it. I feel like im in a bad parody.

Tried to talk to the marxists about how we are supposed to be supporting palestinian right to self determination and why you shouldnt show up to a solidarity meeting and alienate the people you claim to support by making it all about you and your ideas, and the most dogmatic of these guys (same one who said race has nothing to do with it) literally said no instead of toning it down he thinks they need to step it up with trying to recruit withing the solidarity umbrella org. Like...

Besides being the kind of contrarian rhetoric style thats the most frustrating (you say tone it down and he says no in fact turn it up), theyre just completely unable to work in an umbrella organization because they cant stop hounding on their socialist revolution long enohgh to build broad solidarity or even focus on the immediate crisis at hand.

This dude is completely convinced that he, personally, will be the vanguard of the revolution and wont stop about how everyone globally needs to implement his methods. Talking about how the palestinians should be centered in the discussion of their own struggle goes completely in one ear and out the other.

I'm so fucking frustrated and dont want peoole to think i'm associated with them its such bad white saviorism and completely dogmatic tunnel vision i wanna punch things

[dravidious]

Did you know you're aaaaaawwweeeessome?

Started making like. An Actual Set. With structure and rarities and stuff. Themed around the modified keyword, with different modifications. Here's the white commons

[headspace-hotel]

What i've been learning thru my research is that Lawn Culture and laws against "weeds" in America are deeply connected to anxieties about "undesirable" people.

I read this essay called "Controlling the Weed Nuisance in Turn-of-the-century American Cities" by Zachary J. S. Falck and it discusses how the late 1800's and early 1900's created ideal habitats for weeds with urban expansion, railroads, the colonization of more territory, and the like.

Around this time, laws requiring the destruction of "weeds" were passed in many American cities. These weedy plants were viewed as "filth" and literally disease-causing—in the 1880's in St. Louis, a newspaper reported that weeds infected school children with typhoid, diphtheria, and scarlet fever.

Weeds were also seen as "conducive to immorality" by promoting the presence of "tramps and idlers." People thought wild growing plants would "shelter" threatening criminals. Weeds were heavily associated with poverty and immortality. Panic about them spiked strongly after malaria and typhoid outbreaks.

To make things even wilder, one of the main weeds the legal turmoil and public anxiety centered upon was actually the sunflower. Milkweed was also a major "undesirable" weed and a major target of laws mandating the destruction of weeds.

The major explosion in weed-control law being put forth and enforced happened around 1905-1910. And I formed a hypothesis—I had this abrupt remembrance of something I studied in a history class in college. I thought to myself, I bet this coincides with a major wave of immigration to the USA.

Bingo. 1907 was the peak of European immigration. We must keep in mind that these people were not "white" in the exact way that is recognized today. From what I remember from my history classes, Eastern European people were very much feared as criminals and potential communists. Wikipedia elaborates that the Immigration Act of 1924 was meant to restrict Jewish, Slavic, and Italian people from entering the country, and that the major wave of immigration among them began in the 1890s. Almost perfectly coinciding with the "weed nuisance" panic. (The Immigration Act of 1917 also banned intellectually disabled people, gay people, anarchists, and people from Asia, except for Chinese people...who were only excluded because they were already banned since 1880.)

From this evidence, I would guess that our aesthetics and views about "weeds" emerged from the convergence of two things:

First, we were obliterating native ecosystems by colonizing them and violently displacing their caretakers, then running roughshod over them with poorly informed agricultural and horticultural techniques, as well as constructing lots of cities and railroads, creating the ideal circumstances for weeds.

Second, lots of immigrants were entering the country, and xenophobia and racism lent itself to fears of "criminals" "tramps" and other "undesirable" people, leading to a desire to forcefully impose order and push out the "Other." I am not inventing a connection—undesirable people and undesirable weeds were frequently compared in these times.

And this was at the very beginnings of the eugenics movement, wherein supposedly "inferior" and poor or racialized people were described in a manner much the same as "weeds," particularly supposedly "breeding" much faster than other people.

There is another connection that the essay doesn't bring up, but that is very clear to me. Weeds are in fact plants of the poor and of immigrants, because they are often medicinal and food plants for people on the margins, hanging out around human habitation like semi-domesticated cats around granaries in the ancient Near East.

My Appalachian ancestors ate pokeweed, Phytolacca americana. The plant is toxic, but poor people in the South would gather the plant's young leaves and boil them three times to get the poison out, then eat them as "poke salad." Pokeweed is a weed that grows readily on roadsides and in vacant lots.

In some parts of the world, it is grown as an ornamental plant for its huge, tropical-looking leaves and magenta stems. But my mom hates the stuff. "Cut that down," she says, "it makes us look like rednecks."

[a-very-tired-jew]

A lot of the anti-Zionist crowd reminds me of the Che shirt kids from high school and undergrad.

You know the ones I'm talking about.

In high school they'd talk about how the "system was evil" while purposefully being disruptive in class, would barely pay attention or pass a class cause the material was all "propaganda", and would wax philosophic about their teenage comprehension of Communism and its associated leaders. Any history class would eventually end up with them arguing with your teacher. Yes, they would have some good points, but at the same time their understanding of the material would be juvenile at best.

In college they'd get worse. Some of them might continue wearing the shirts and paraphernalia, but others would go all out and start wearing the black beret and/or associated dress of Che and other leaders. They now have a college vocabulary and use it to drive every discussion towards their political ideology. Almost nothing exists outside of their political framework and talking to them is exhausting.

They're also not seen as a disruption anymore, but more as that annoying Tankie who has to go "um, actually" and then go on a monologue about the CIA in class. Professors will either let them do this or tell them that it's not the time or place and that they have to teach. The former gives a small sense of triumph as they "subvert the system" (and we do this because if we don't you become more annoying), the latter causes them to grumble and complain about being "silenced".

Yes, we're aware of the CIA's actions. Yes, Che had some very good points about the role of neo-imperialism in the Global South. Yes, the USA has done some absolutely horrid shit. But what makes everyone keep these people at arms length and/or ignore them is the refusal to acknowledge the atrocities that the man on the shirt did. It's the black and white juvenile reasoning that colors everything they talk about and putting him and other leaders on a pedestal.

If you talk to anyone in the Cuban diaspora they, their family, or someone they know within the community will refer to Che as a butcher. They will tell you about the absolutely horrific things he did as a leader. They will tell you about how this man that young adults are idolizing would imprison and execute them for any number of things that they enjoy simply because he objected to them. The same thing goes for anyone who has family members that survived the USSR or any other 20th century authoritarian country that called itself Communist.

It's the refusal to acknowledge that the world exists in shades of nuance. It's the refusal to acknowledge that these authoritarian Communist governments would imprison, exile, and/or execute all of them and their friends for being queer, speaking out, their writing, their taste in music, their manner of dress, etc, etc... That countries, governments, leaders, ideologies, and people are multifaceted and not this idealized fantasy that can be argued for with whataboutisms.

We see this same behavior in the current batch of anti-Zionists. Some of them are the newest cohort of Tankies who are just repeating the same behaviors we've seen time and time again. However, in this current situation we all have access to information and are able to address things for what they are. The disruptive misinformation isn't as tolerated any more because Che shirt kids are no longer just marching around on the college green in their Communist LARP gear, but are instead coopting a war and its suffering for their Glorious Revolution accelerationist rhetoric.

The adherence and defense of Cold War era tactics, the almost rabid want to implement them, the use of whataboutism to defend your blorbo and the refusal to acknowledge their atrocities, plus the additional antisemitic laden screeds, all the while the world is attempting to move forward from this is downright regressive and juvenile.

And keep in mind, I'm an old alt kid. I've been part of counter culture for decades now. I have patches older than most of these college Tankies. I remember the Che shirt kids and how we stayed away from them because they often spouted rhetoric that was both fantastical and extremely violent. If you're unaware, Che himself believed that to achieve the socialist utopia that extreme violent revolution was necessary (sound familiar?). Not mentioning the fact that often this process gets stuck at the authoritarian step after the violent revolution.

Meanwhile, we just wanted to be accepted for wearing all black, chains, and just being "creepy". We weren't actually violent as most suburban moms believed. So we often stayed away from people who actually believed in violent rhetoric. Not only would it not look good for the alt community, but it was simply antithetical to what we believed. We wanted to be accepted in society and help improve it, not burn it down (and look where we are now, everyone wants a goth mommy. Mission achieved).

The two groups are counter culture in essence, but extremely different. So when I say the current batch of anti-Zionist protesters are just Tankie Che shirt kids, believe me. I've known their type for years.

[mesetacadre]

What is the origin (and meaning) of the flag adopted by the Second Spanish Republic? The choice of colors seems rather unconventional to me...

The purple stripe was adopted officially by the second republic as a nod to Castille, a big region in the middle of Spain:

Hoy se pliega la bandera adoptada como nacional a mediados del siglo XIX. De ella se conservan los dos colores y se le añade un tercero, que la tradición admite por insignia de una región ilustre, nervio de la nacionalidad, con lo que el emblema de la República, así formado, resume más acertadamente la armonía de una gran España

Translation:

Today the flag adopted as the national one towards the mid 19th century is folded. From it, the two colors remain and a third one is added, which tradition takes as the insignia of an illustrious region, nerve of nationality, and therefore the Republic's emblem, thus formed, contains more accurately the harmony of a great Spain.

The purple as a symbol of Castille comes from a misunderstanding of what the 1520 revolt of Comuneros used as a symbol. The color of Castille has always been described as crimson, which is sometimes confused to have a more purplish hue. While it has been shown the Comuneros used a red cross as opposition to the imperial white cross, popular wisdom was that they used purple, and it gradually became an actual color used by Castillian regionalists.

Note on the Comuneros, Castillian regionalism, and some trivia about the Republic's coat of arms under the cut:

The revolt of 1520 happened in the context of emperor Carlos 1st (5th of the HRE) barely speaking the language, favoring politically and financially the Flemish court with the wealth extracted from the Americas, and also funding very expensive wars that didn't even have anything to do with the Crown of Spain. He was also a corrupt monarch who raised taxes. Both the nobility, which wanted more participation in governing, and the merchant/middle strata (including an embryonic bourgeoisie!), which were being overburdened with taxes, revolted against the king. The focus of the revolt and where they had more strength was in Castille, and one of the forms of territorial organization of the Crown of Castille was the Communities, which is where the name comes from. The people who participated in the revolt as well as the modern political movements that claim to descend from them (more on that later) are known as Comuneros, which I'd translate as Communards.

I won't go into very much detail, and this is still a debated topic. The character of the revolt had many axes, one of which was the more popular elements (peasants, bourgeoisie, artesans, merchants, etc), to the point that it is considered by some to be some of the first if not the first attempt at a bourgeois revolution in Modern Spain, another was the more opportunistic axis (fiscal reform, the nobility, etc.). What matters is that a very strong narrative has grown around the 1520 revolt, beginning in the Golden Era of the 17th century and its literature, that of a popular revolt and of a relatively old and legitimizing ancestor for the popular movements in Castille.

This is the Comunero flag nowadays, notice the purple field as a reclamation of this color as a Castillian symbol. What's of more interest to me is the following flag:

This flag and the movement it represents, Izquierda Castellana (Castillian Left) emerged after the end of the dictatorship, not as a separatist kind of regionalism, but as one that appreciates the history and culture of Castille. The red star is a very overt influence from communists and socialists, which are, as far as I'm aware, quite present in Izquierda Castellana.

So purple in Spanish politics has been, ever since the ~16th/17th century, associated with the popular movements and tendencies of Spain, particularly those in the peninsula's center. It became even more cemented in this role after the Second Republic adopted it, sort of hitchhiking the much bigger Republican tendencies.

The Second Republic's coat of arms subtitutes the monarchich crown for a castle in the shape of a crown, both as another nod to Castillianism and to symbolize the replacement of the monarchy for the people themselves

In the short life of the Republic, its symbols found their way into a lot of places or replacing old symbols, and almost all of them were destroyed during the dictatorship. The most prominent exception is the facade of Madrid's main train station, Atocha (originally named Estación del Mediodía (midday station)):

Notice it perched on the clock? I don't know if it went unnoticed, or if they did not care enough (unlinkely). It is possible it went unnoticed because I can't find information on it. Other examples of this castle-mural crown remaining in Madrid are:

This lightpole right in front of the Royal Palace

And this massive coat of arms on the facade of the Bank of Spain

[san-demetrio-corone]

Oleksandr Ranchukov, born in 1943 in Kyiv, was Ukrainian documentary photographer.

Oleksandr primarily saw himself as a chronicler of his times and hoped his images would "complement the story of the sad end of the U.S.S.R., the dull streets of the city showing its decay…". He wanted to capture for younger generations the faces of Soviet people - in a way very different from how they are presented on posters.

Oleksandr is an author of several books about Kyiv and numerous photographs of the city. He was active in the photographic movement: in the years of perestroika, Ranchukov initiated Погляд (‘Outlook’) association that had a lot of influence on the development of documentary photography in Ukraine. Погляд exhibitions were closed by the KGB and party authorities, and some patriots wrote in the comments book that the participants should be shot. One of their first exhibitions in Kyiv was shut down after just one day by scandalized KGB and Communist Party apparatchiks.

Although these images didn't go down well with Soviet bureaucrats, they obviously struck a chord with ordinary Kyiv residents, and crowds of people lined up to see them when the exhibition reopened at another location sometime later. One of those who visited the Ranchukov exhibition in 1989 was a Canadian exchange student named Chrystia Freeland, who later became a prominent journalist and politician and is now her country's deputy prime minister. Describing Ranchukov as a "brilliant and prolific documentary photographer," Freeland was instrumental in getting his images and those of some of his peers to the editors of The Independent newspaper in London, who "were hugely impressed by his work, and promptly published it."

Oleksandr shot at eye level — the passerby outlook — and didn’t acknowledge color photography: “Color provides the superficial look on the object. Today, a person may be wearing a red shirt, and tomorrow they may be wearing a green shirt. You can paint a building brown today, and green tomorrow… You can’t grasp the object in color. It is defined by volume and texture. Color distracts, and a black-and-white photograph helps reveal the essence of the object that I photograph.”

Colleagues didn’t always understand why Ranchukov documents ‘bland nothing.’ The photographer himself didn’t believe that the work will be valued and be in demand while he is alive. He deliberately took photographs ‘for himself’ — "photography is my way of communication with the world, with other people.”

Ranchukov believed in the bright future of the country and said that young people who will live in the satisfied, well-fed, and rich Ukraine will be able to see how things were there before with the help of his photographs.

You can listen to Okelsandr talking about documentary photography:

[urdreamgirls-dreamgirl]

the duffers were heavily inspired by the cia’s secret operations called mkultra which targeted women, people of color, and poor people most heavily and completely destroyed their lives to experiment with torture tactics and “mind control” during the cold war, focusing heavily on experimental drug use and electroshock therapy. el’s mother in the show is a victim of mkultra and el is the product.

what the show fails to acknowledge and what would have been so fucking interesting for them to explore in a show abt GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY is that mkultra was built on the intense and extensive manipulation of the american capitalist propaganda machine that instilled fear in americans of becoming victims of these very same brainwashing tactics the american government was experimenting with but at the hands of the “big bad scary communists.”

now, in the 21st century with the benefit of hindsight, we know that the american people were being manipulated and lied to by their own government abt the “dangers” of communism in an effort to manufacture consent for wars in vietnam, south america, afghanistan, etc. that allowed the us and us-backed military regimes to torture and execute millions of people associated with trade unions and leftist organizations. we killed che guevara, salvador allende, attempted assassinations on fidel castro, and facilitated the murders of millions of regular people to maintain the lie that communism is evil and a direct threat to the american people.

instead of exploring these themes they laid the groundwork for in season 1, the duffers succumbed to the pressure of the hollywood propaganda machine and the promise of continued funding and guaranteed marketing and viewership by creating characters like dr. sam owens in season 2 that allowed their audience to begin sympathizing with the us government and framing brenner as simply a “bad apple” within a system where people were just trying their best. brenner is evil and he’s a villain, but he’s no longer a representative of the us government but rather an extremist leading a covert cell of other extremists within the bureaucracy.

in doing this, the show allowed for the introduction in season three of the big bad communist boogey man in the form of the russian government/military and thus allowed stranger things to enter into a series of media products that, though seemingly unrelated & from different studios, nonetheless all work together to manufacture consent in the present-day for us wars abroad that claim to be protecting us from the perceived threat of “brainwashing,” “indoctrination,” and, in some instances, communism/threats to the capitalist machine (think specifically marvel and star wars). “the evil communists are doing this evil thing so we had no choice but to also do this evil thing” becomes the thesis of the show—the ends will eventually justify the means.

except that now it doesn’t. because to remain a part of the hollywood propaganda industry, the duffers have to sacrifice the themes they first established at the beginning of their show. they have to abandon any characters that offer a deviation from these new themes they’ve introduced. and it’s becoming apparent that the duffers lack the talent and the ability to execute complex storylines that go beyond what was introduced in the first season—perhaps they have the ability to conceive, but they lack the ability to follow through and it’s the very nature of the capitalist structure of the white male artistic genius that has now trapped them in this position—their inability to let go and let others take over the creative execution of their product will be their downfall as their series comes to a close.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Judd Legum at Popular Information:

Elon Musk created America PAC to help Donald Trump win the presidential election. Through the end of September, Musk spent $75 million to fund the PAC's activities. More recently, Musk began giving away $1 million per day to registered voters who signed a petition sponsored by America PAC — even though such an offer likely violated federal law. The total amount Musk will spend on America PAC will almost certainly reach nine figures. 

Musk seized the handle @America on X to promote America PAC's activities supporting Trump and has repeatedly amplified the account.  On Friday afternoon, America PAC posted a video ad attacking Trump's opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. "America really can't afford a 'C-Word' in the White House right now," America PAC posted, adding a laughing emoji. "Kamala Harris is a ‘C word,’" the narrator of the ad says. "You heard that right. A big ole ‘C word.’" The "joke" of the ad is that Harris is a "communist." Of course, Harris is not a communist. And the ad makes no effort to show she is a communist. The line is only included as a pretext to repeatedly use a crass, misogynistic slur against Harris. 

The ad had no apparent impact on the relationship between Musk and the Trump campaign, which coordinates directly with America PAC. On Sunday night, Musk was featured at Trump's high-profile rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City.  The event featured more sexist attacks on Harris. Businessman Grant Cardone appeared before Trump and described Harris as a prostitute. Cardone said that Harris "and her pimp handlers will destroy our country."

Trump has used a variety of gendered insults to attack Harris during the campaign. On Fox News, Trump said that world leaders would "look at" Harris and use her "like a play toy," adding "I don’t want to say as to why. But a lot of people understand it." On Truth Social, Trump has targeted Harris with crude sexual insults, suggesting her career is based on sexual favors. In August, the Associated Press reported that Trump refers to Harris as a "bitch" in private, citing two sources. 

Elon Musk’s America PAC released an ad that featured sexist tropes aimed at Kamala Harris with this caption: “Kamala Harris is a ‘C word.’”

The “c word” the ad claims is “communist”, but we know that’s not the word they intend.

[velvetvexations]

<3

We should all be so lucky to live in places like that, genuinely. I'm really happy you have that and I hope one day soon we can all join together and live freely.

It's not fair, and you're not scary. <3 I'm sorry, anon. As someone who would also be perceived as a threat because I'm not traditionally feminine enough, I'm with you.

A big part of the issue is that if you tell them this they just go "well they can misgender themselves and present as a scared woman if they ever want to sic the transphobic dogs on trans women." Trans men have male privilege but also cis female privilege. I think we should start saying all trans men also have white privilege and are members of the 1%, too. The ultimate nexus of oppression.

Nah, communism is fine in and of itself. Tankies tend to be the loudest of people who actively engage in communist discourse, though, so a lot of people don't use the term to describe their beliefs, even if it might be accurate, because of the association. I know that if I see "communist" or "Marxist" or something like that in the URL it's probably a tankie, just because they're so eager to scream about it at every opportunity and push themselves as being communists. But you can be a communist or a Marxist without being a tankie.

Are you sure they were trying to be kind, and weren't about to call Tumblr to tell them they missed one and need to send a squad over to take you to the island where banned transfems are exiled?

I'm still really mad about that.

"splash damage"

Although, saying that, I had believed shemale was a slur referring specifically to trans women, but now that I think about it I'm not really sure if it's also applied to others intentionally.

[chaos-coming]

So goddamn frustrated with the white communists who keep coopting the palestine sokidarity meetings to either wage little recruitment turf wars (the stalinists) or turn every single point into a plug for their worker's revolution in sweden (the marxists).

The palestinian youth movement people literally Walked Out of the meeting today in frustration. One guy who survived the syrian revolution tried to tell them to stop and why this was not good and they just bulldozed over him. A black woman tried to talk about how as a person of cokor in sweden she feels like their voices are often suppressed, and this guy kiterally reolied that he doesnt think race has amything to do with it. I feel like im in a bad parody.

Tried to talk to the marxists about how we are supposed to be supporting palestinian right to self determination and why you shouldnt show up to a solidarity meeting and alienate the people you claim to support by making it all about you and your ideas, and the most dogmatic of these guys (same one who said race has nothing to do with it) literally said no instead of toning it down he thinks they need to step it up with trying to recruit withing the solidarity umbrella org. Like...

Besides being the kind of contrarian rhetoric style thats the most frustrating (you say tone it down and he says no in fact turn it up), theyre just completely unable to work in an umbrella organization because they cant stop hounding on their socialist revolution long enohgh to build broad solidarity or even focus on the immediate crisis at hand.

This dude is comoletely convinced that he, personally, will be the vanguard of the revolution and wont stop about how everyone globally needs to implement his methods. Talking about how the palestinians should be centered in the discussion of their own striggle goes completely in one esr and out the other.

I'm so fucking frustrated and dont want peoole to think i'm associated with them its such bad white saviorism and completely dogmatic tunnel vision i wanna punch things

[dailyanarchistposts]

A.1.5 Where does anarchism come from?

Where does anarchism come from? We can do no better than quote The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists produced by participants of the Makhnovist movement in the Russian Revolution (see Section A.5.4). They point out that:

“The class struggle created by the enslavement of workers and their aspirations to liberty gave birth, in the oppression, to the idea of anarchism: the idea of the total negation of a social system based on the principles of classes and the State, and its replacement by a free non-statist society of workers under self-management. “So anarchism does not derive from the abstract reflections of an intellectual or a philosopher, but from the direct struggle of workers against capitalism, from the needs and necessities of the workers, from their aspirations to liberty and equality, aspirations which become particularly alive in the best heroic period of the life and struggle of the working masses. “The outstanding anarchist thinkers, Bakunin, Kropotkin and others, did not invent the idea of anarchism, but, having discovered it in the masses, simply helped by the strength of their thought and knowledge to specify and spread it.” [pp. 15–16]

Like the anarchist movement in general, the Makhnovists were a mass movement of working class people resisting the forces of authority, both Red (Communist) and White (Tsarist/Capitalist) in the Ukraine from 1917 to 1921. As Peter Marshall notes “anarchism … has traditionally found its chief supporters amongst workers and peasants.” [Demanding the Impossible, p. 652]

Anarchism was created in, and by, the struggle of the oppressed for freedom. For Kropotkin, for example, “Anarchism … originated in everyday struggles” and “the Anarchist movement was renewed each time it received an impression from some great practical lesson: it derived its origin from the teachings of life itself.” [Evolution and Environment, p. 58 and p. 57] For Proudhon, “the proof” of his mutualist ideas lay in the “current practice, revolutionary practice” of “those labour associations … which have spontaneously … been formed in Paris and Lyon … [show that the] organisation of credit and organisation of labour amount to one and the same.” [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, pp. 59–60] Indeed, as one historian argues, there was “close similarity between the associational ideal of Proudhon … and the program of the Lyon Mutualists” and that there was “a remarkable convergence [between the ideas], and it is likely that Proudhon was able to articulate his positive program more coherently because of the example of the silk workers of Lyon. The socialist ideal that he championed was already being realised, to a certain extent, by such workers.” [K. Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism, p. 164]

Thus anarchism comes from the fight for liberty and our desires to lead a fully human life, one in which we have time to live, to love and to play. It was not created by a few people divorced from life, in ivory towers looking down upon society and making judgements upon it based on their notions of what is right and wrong. Rather, it was a product of working class struggle and resistance to authority, oppression and exploitation. As Albert Meltzer put it:

“There were never theoreticians of Anarchism as such, though it produced a number of theoreticians who discussed aspects of its philosophy. Anarchism has remained a creed that has been worked out in action rather than as the putting into practice of an intellectual idea. Very often, a bourgeois writer comes along and writes down what has already been worked out in practice by workers and peasants; he [or she] is attributed by bourgeois historians as being a leader, and by successive bourgeois writers (citing the bourgeois historians) as being one more case that proves the working class relies on bourgeois leadership.” [Anarchism: Arguments for and against, p. 18]

In Kropotkin’s eyes, “Anarchism had its origins in the same creative, constructive activity of the masses which has worked out in times past all the social institutions of mankind — and in the revolts … against the representatives of force, external to these social institutions, who had laid their hands on these institutions and used them for their own advantage.” More recently, “Anarchy was brought forth by the same critical and revolutionary protest which gave birth to Socialism in general.” Anarchism, unlike other forms of socialism, “lifted its sacrilegious arm, not only against Capitalism, but also against these pillars of Capitalism: Law, Authority, and the State.” All anarchist writers did was to “work out a general expression of [anarchism’s] principles, and the theoretical and scientific basis of its teachings” derived from the experiences of working class people in struggle as well as analysing the evolutionary tendencies of society in general. [Op. Cit., p. 19 and p. 57]

However, anarchistic tendencies and organisations in society have existed long before Proudhon put pen to paper in 1840 and declared himself an anarchist. While anarchism, as a specific political theory, was born with the rise of capitalism (Anarchism “emerged at the end of the eighteenth century …[and] took up the dual challenge of overthrowing both Capital and the State.” [Peter Marshall, Op. Cit., p. 4]) anarchist writers have analysed history for libertarian tendencies. Kropotkin argued, for example, that “from all times there have been Anarchists and Statists.” [Op. Cit., p. 16] In Mutual Aid (and elsewhere) Kropotkin analysed the libertarian aspects of previous societies and noted those that successfully implemented (to some degree) anarchist organisation or aspects of anarchism. He recognised this tendency of actual examples of anarchistic ideas to predate the creation of the “official” anarchist movement and argued that:

“From the remotest, stone-age antiquity, men [and women] have realised the evils that resulted from letting some of them acquire personal authority… Consequently they developed in the primitive clan, the village community, the medieval guild … and finally in the free medieval city, such institutions as enabled them to resist the encroachments upon their life and fortunes both of those strangers who conquered them, and those clansmen of their own who endeavoured to establish their personal authority.” [Anarchism, pp. 158–9]

Kropotkin placed the struggle of working class people (from which modern anarchism sprung) on par with these older forms of popular organisation. He argued that “the labour combinations… were an outcome of the same popular resistance to the growing power of the few — the capitalists in this case” as were the clan, the village community and so on, as were “the strikingly independent, freely federated activity of the ‘Sections’ of Paris and all great cities and many small ‘Communes’ during the French Revolution” in 1793. [Op. Cit., p. 159]

Thus, while anarchism as a political theory is an expression of working class struggle and self-activity against capitalism and the modern state, the ideas of anarchism have continually expressed themselves in action throughout human existence. Many indigenous peoples in North America and elsewhere, for example, practised anarchism for thousands of years before anarchism as a specific political theory existed. Similarly, anarchistic tendencies and organisations have existed in every major revolution — the New England Town Meetings during the American Revolution, the Parisian ‘Sections’ during the French Revolution, the workers’ councils and factory committees during the Russian Revolution to name just a few examples (see Murray Bookchin’s The Third Revolution for details). This is to be expected if anarchism is, as we argue, a product of resistance to authority then any society with authorities will provoke resistance to them and generate anarchistic tendencies (and, of course, any societies without authorities cannot help but being anarchistic).

In other words, anarchism is an expression of the struggle against oppression and exploitation, a generalisation of working people’s experiences and analyses of what is wrong with the current system and an expression of our hopes and dreams for a better future. This struggle existed before it was called anarchism, but the historic anarchist movement (i.e. groups of people calling their ideas anarchism and aiming for an anarchist society) is essentially a product of working class struggle against capitalism and the state, against oppression and exploitation, and for a free society of free and equal individuals.

[bighermie]

John Kirby Walks Out of Press Briefing While Being Grilled by James Rosen on Joe Biden Mention in Hunter Biden Text to Communist Chinese Business Associate (Video) | The Gateway Pundit | by Kristinn Taylor | 30

[docgold13]

yes! please tell me more of your detest for John Wayne. My dad loves that guy and I need ammo for arguing that the dude was a douche

I don’t think you’ll make much headway with your dad.  Once someone has their mind set on something, cognitive dissonance can become a force stronger than gravity.  

But I’m happy to try to help out.  

Anyways, John Wayne he played a significant role in creating the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA) in 1944 and was voted in as its president in 1949. This was an anti-communist organization that blacklisted industry professionals suspected as being in any way shape or form associated with the communist party.  He was additionally an ardent and vocal supporter of the infamous House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as well as the work of Senator Joseph McCarthy. 

Despite his dodging the draft for World War II, he continued to make war films presenting himself as this great leader of the armed forces.  Furthermore, his movie,  The Green Berets, was an overt attempt toward rallying support for the ruinous Vietnam War.

Wayne did not just hate communists, he also hated those who were gay.  He lambasted  Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight’s characters in Midnight Cowboy, calling the pair ‘a couple of f@gs.’  He also accosted Kirk Douglas over his role as Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh in the film Lust for Life. He was reported to have said, “Christ, Kirk, how can you play a part like that? There’s so goddamn few of us left. We got to play strong, tough characters. Not these weak queers.”  There were rumors that Wayne was a closeted homosexual and that some of his hatred may have been a sort of reaction formation, but who knows if that is true.

He also didn’t give a damn for Native Americans, whom he deemed as savages.  “I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from the Indians,” he said, “Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.” 

But perhaps he strongest animosity was reserved for Black Americans.  “I believe in white supremacy,” he said in a notorious 1971 interview with Playboy magazine.  He added that he did not want Black people working on his films until they became “educated to a point of responsibility.”

He also made disparaging remarks about Jewish people and was entirely against any form of social welfare programs.  

Apologies to anyone hurt by seeing all of this hateful stuff disseminated.   

[palin-tropos]

what he says: I’m fine

what he means: the capital of the SRV being Sapormat-Ulan is an obvious way to imply it’s sort of Mongolic given the naming association to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia and Ulan-Ude in Buryatia but the reason “Ulan” is in both names is because it means “Red” in Mongolian ie. communist but in Disco Elysium the communists are the Whites and red seems to be the social democrat color so is this an incisive critique implying the SRV is at best social democratic or is it just not very thought through. or is Sport also colorblind

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 26 January 1944, Angela Yvonne Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama. A communist, civil rights organiser and the third woman to feature on the FBI's most wanted list, for a time Davis was also closely associated with the Black Panther Party. Davis worked at University of California, Los Angeles until being fired for her political views on the orders of governor Ronald Reagan. Soon after, Davis was arrested following the Marin county courthouse incident on bogus charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy of which she was later all acquitted at trial. Davis has also been a consistent advocate of feminism which takes into account factors like race, class, capitalism and transgender rights, and highlights the vital historical contributions of Black women: "When we speak of feminism in this country, there almost always is the tendency to assume that this is something that was created by white women… Women like Ida B. Wells, women like Mary Church Terrell, women like Anna Julia Cooper, are responsible for the feminist approach today that we generally call intersectionality… What I want to argue is for a feminist perspective that understands that we cannot simply reform institutions like prison and the police, because they are so embedded with racism and violence that, if we're ever going to extricate ourselves from that, we have to abolish prisons". * We only post highlights on here, for all our anniversaries follow us on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@workingclasshistory https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2195303000654838/?type=3

[mariacallous]

The possibility of another Donald Trump presidency has sparked profound anxiety in the U.S. intelligence community—and especially the CIA. It is not just the recent talk among Trump advisors of giving the bear-bothering conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. an “oversight” role over the agency. Trump has also vowed to destroy what he and his supporters call the “deep state,” an alleged cabal of unelected officials—largely in the intelligence services—who want to keep him out of the White House and thereby thwart the democratic will of the people.

Yet the deep state theory is nothing new. It partly has roots in the Watergate era, when associates of President Richard Nixon claimed that he was the victim of a CIA effort to frame him. The Nixon loyalist and political provocateur Roger Stone helped carry the notion of a silent coup by shadowy state actors into the 21st century. In recent tweets and videos, Stone has even linked the attempted assassination of Trump in July to Watergate.

Of course, the deep state is not the only conspiracy theory to have featured the CIA. Others have alleged that the agency—a foreign intelligence unit expressly forbidden from domestic operations—turned its secret powers on the U.S. anti-Vietnam War movement and even assassinated John Lennon; that it carried out “mind control” experiments that resulted in other killings on U.S. soil, including that of RFK Jr.’s father and those carried out by Charles Manson’s “family”; and that during the 1980s it trafficked crack cocaine in U.S. inner cities with the intention of decimating Black communities.

Above all, there is the mother of modern American conspiracy theories: the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Over the years, JFK buffs have named many suspects, but the CIA has always been near the top of the list. Some accounts emphasize Kennedy’s refusal to provide military back-up for the agency’s abortive 1961 invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs as a possible motive. Others point to his supposed intention to clip the wings of the military-intelligence complex by withdrawing from Vietnam. Those are only the two most common theories, and many more abound.

All this begs the question: Why have CIA conspiracy theories been so numerous and persistent?

One reason is that the United States has always been prone to conspiracy theory—what historian Richard Hofstadter famously called “the paranoid style in American politics.” Once, Americans believed that it was outsider groups undermining the republic: Catholics, Mormons, Jews, or communists. In the years after World War II, however, when much of the modern national security establishment was created—the CIA, for example, was founded in 1947—conspiracy theories began to focus on covert compartments of the government itself.

This homegrown impulse was exacerbated by foreign influence. In the 1960s, the KGB, the Soviet intelligence service, probably planted stories about the JFK assassination in the European press that then worked their way back to the United States. Peace protestors needed little encouragement to believe the misinformation, as they were already listening to so-called Third World leaders—such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro—who claimed (accurately) that the CIA was conspiring against them. In this sense, post-World War II conspiracism was a boomerang effect of U.S. interventionism overseas. More recently, during the Trump presidency, Russian operatives launched campaigns to spread the deep state theory online.

Finally, the CIA itself is to blame. For one thing, the agency’s historic tendency to overclassify its records and reluctance to comply with freedom of information laws has encouraged U.S. citizens to imagine that it protects even greater secrets than it really does. Even an inside-office joke report from 1974 about a plot by the “Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge” to sabotage a “courier flight of the Government of the North Pole” was marked confidential and not declassified until 1999.

For another, the CIA really has engaged in unethical and illegal activities within the United States. During the 1950s, in an operation codenamed MKULTRA, it sponsored research into interrogation methods using psychotropic drugs and traumatizing behavioral techniques that involved unwitting human subjects. In one experiment, it set up safe houses in New York and San Francisco to observe what happened when prostitutes spiked their clients’ drinks with LSD.

In the 1960s and ’70s, the CIA spied on U.S. peace protestors and Black activists in a program called MHCHAOS, acting on instructions from Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, who suspected a foreign hand in the era’s anti-war movement. And during the 1980s, it worked with anticommunist drug smugglers who helped supply the Contra rebels fighting to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government while trafficking cocaine in U.S. cities such as Los Angeles.

When journalists or whistleblowers tried to expose such activities, media friendly to the CIA dismissed them as either foreign agents or “pathological” conspiracy theorists. During the 1980s, the conservative Washington Times denigrated investigations of the Contra affair. Even the Washington Post joined with several other leading newspapers in assailing Gary Webb, the Bay Area reporter who exposed the CIA connections of Contra-linked drug smugglers.

These twin behaviors—excessive secrecy and operational overreach—were particularly evident in the JFK era. During the early 1960s, the CIA (acting, ironically, at the direction of the Kennedy administration) carried out increasingly reckless attempts to eliminate Castro—involving not just Cubans but, as viewers of the Paramount Plus docuseries Mafia Spies will already know, American mobsters as well. The Warren Commission, appointed by the Johnson administration to investigate the assassination, disregarded these operations and their possible relevance to JFK’s death, leaving holes in its final report that invited skeptical readers to form their own conspiracy theories.

This does not mean that those theories were right. Despite the best efforts of thousands of JFK researchers, no proof has ever emerged conclusively tying the CIA to the president’s assassination. Other theories, such as those implicating the agency in Lennon’s death or the Manson murders, will probably never be proven because there is very little likelihood that they are true.

The CIA has not taken such allegations lying down. During the 1960s, it worked behind the scenes to combat skepticism about the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in JFK’s assassination. In the wake of the damaging “Family Jewels” leak of 1974 and the high-profile congressional investigations that followed in 1975, the CIA launched a public relations effort to mend its image led by the craggily handsome retired intelligence officer David Atlee Phillips. And, since the 1990s, it has routinely reached out to Hollywood to assist productions that show it in a good light, such as the 2012 movie portrayal of its hunt for Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty. In 2022, the CIA even launched a podcast, The Langley Files, depicting its headquarters as a place of quiet professionalism, diversity, and mindfulness. One episode even featured an interview with the agency’s chief wellbeing officer.

But it is far from clear how much good these PR campaigns have done the CIA. The Langley Files has attracted conservative allegations of “wokeness”; revelations about the agency’s involvement in the making of Zero Dark Thirty added to the negative publicity surrounding its use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on suspected terrorists such as waterboarding; and Phillips’ high public profile in the late 1970s led to his becoming a prime suspect in JFK conspiracy theories, an experience he privately likened to the ordeal of a character in a Franz Kafka novel.

As long as the CIA carries out covert operations that impinge on the U.S. domestic sphere and conceals its activities in impenetrable layers of official secrecy, members of the American public will suspect the worst.

Moving forward, the CIA must make greater efforts to comply with freedom of information laws governing declassification. In addition to helping dispel the state of enforced public ignorance in which conspiracy theory thrives, such a move would improve information-sharing with other government agencies and disincentivize data leaks by disaffected employees.

At same time, the CIA must avoid taking on the questionable covert operations that helped give rise to conspiracy theories in the first place, focusing instead on its original mission: intelligence analysis. Much like the Cold War, the so-called war on terror encouraged mission creep in the realm of covert action, as successive presidents resorted to using the CIA’s secret powers to detain, interrogate, and kill terrorists. With that conflict winding down, there are encouraging signs that the agency is indeed refocusing. In 2021, for instance, it created two new mission centers, one devoted to China and the other to emerging technologies, the climate, and global health. Furthermore, the agency’s correct prediction of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, strategically declassified by the Biden administration, has boosted public confidence in its intelligence capabilities.

Whether such steps will be enough to prevent the further spread of deep-state-style conspiracy theories is far from certain. Defusing suspicion of the CIA (and the other 17 intelligence agencies) in a society historically suspicious of secret powers may be an impossible task. But the attempt must be made. In the era of Trump, the agency’s survival could depend on it.