#capitalist propaganda

[lastcatghost]

The most absurd propaganda shit I see is when some magazine or newspaper runs an article of money management advice from someone who's wealthy.

The ultra rich, especially those born into excess wealth always seem to be the people with the worst money management skills out there.

I want grocery shopping tips to save from a single parent with many dependents and yet don't qualify for stamps, let them tell me their tips for stretching the buck, not some mf who's never actually had to work and worry trying to tell those they exploit to just cut out all luxuries, and somehow being more miserable will magically save enough to buy a house

[soulsevaporate]

“The individual in his rationality is determined by the rationality of capital which he encounters as a force of nature, which he experiences daily and which therefore must appear to him as rational through and through. His protest against this life-destroying force can therefore only be a protest of feeling or emotion. But since ‘reason’ rules, these emotional outbursts of the individual are rationalised and ‘disappear’ into stomach pains, gall stones, circulatory problems, kidney stones, cramps of all kinds, into impotence, head colds, toothaches, skin diseases, back aches, migraines, asthma, car and workplace accidents, depression, and so forth – or feelings mushroom in interpersonal relationships (emotional plague), in flat affects (‘serious’ people), in psychosis etc.”

Socialists Patient’s Collective, Heidelberg, 1972

[mickeymouseispublicdomain]

"Disney's finally given up Mickey Mouse's copy-rights"

No! Disney didn't "give up" or "let go" of shit! Bog Iger had no say in Mickey Mouse becoming Public Domain! Disney did not gracefully surrender Mickey Mouse to us.

These billionaire fuckers had no choice in the matter. Stop giving Disney credit for literally not having a choice in the matter.

[astromechapunk]

Happy Corporate Inclusion Month 

[alpaca-clouds]

Telling Stories to better the World

*looks on the calender* You know what time it is? Yeah, it is time for the alpaca to rave on about the power of stories once again. Because I kinda feel that we cannot talk about that enough.

Say it loud and say it clear: Stories have power over us.

The baddies kinda understand that. Which is why they use stories as propaganda tools. I mean, there is a reason why the US Military funds the Marvel movies and stuff like Top Gun. Because it is propaganda that exists to serve their goal.

And humans also have always kinda understood it. Because guess what: Fairytales existed as teaching tools. Be it to teach kids to not run into the forest at night... Or do a Beauty and the Beast and exist to teach young girls that: "Hey, your political husband might be abusive, but you can try and tame him, girl!"

A lot of oral stories have once existed for such reasons. To both teach people about the world and reaffirm a society's values. And this is still true to this day.

I have been harping on anarchist ideas vs capitalist ideas for the last few days and the entire story thing plays into this a lot.

And yeah, I gotta crap on the MCU here once more, because it kinda is the most influencial offender here. Because those people know the power of stories. Which is why in most of the MCU movies the bad guys wanna change the system - while the good guys heroically defend the status quo without ever questioning whether or not the bad guys might actually have a point in some cases. (Worst offender is obviously Falcon and the Winter Soldier.)

Given that mass media right now very much is held obviously by the capitalist class, for the most part media only rarely gets to sneak in messages that are too anti-capitalist. (Which is also, why modern Cyberpunk, especially western Cyberpunk, does not have a ton of bite going on.) And in many cases it has to be sneaky and rely on the lack of media literacy in the folks financing the movies. Like the Matrix, for example. But in that case they obviously run the risk of the viewer also not quite getting that message, if they are not primed for it.

But we do need those stories.

We need stories in which people rebel against a system and win. In which those rebels are allowed to be heroic, instead of the narrative going: "Well, sure, their goal was admirable, but we just cannot condone violence!"

We also need stories in which people live in a less hierarchical society. In which people are aiding one another. In which it is not rugged individuals saving the world, but close-knit friend groups and communities working together.

And we need stories, in which climate change is stopped in time. In which people live actually on renewables and micro grids. In which people then also live without capitalism. Because we need to learn to view that world as possible,

So, if you are a creator... You know what to do!

[rjalker]

Disney did not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars bribing politicians for years to keep the Public Domain locked up like a vault so that random ass people who don't know how the public domain works could start claiming that using Mickey Mouse now that he's public domain benefits Disney. You people have literally no idea what you're talking about.

if you think people using public domain Mickey Mouse is helping Disney, then you better go tell Disney that so the billionaire execs can take back all the money they've spent on bribes to the literal fucking government over decades to keep him out of it for as long as possible.

[aranchide]

Moet je zien

[violent-femmess]

capitalism ruined the meaning of life by brainwashing people into thinking life has any meaning at all

we are born to live, as is everything on this planet and everything on every other planet, the planets themselves were formed purely to exist, because they have the capability to exist in this universe, no other reason.

Plants do not exist to give us oxygen or food or any resources at all, they exist because theyre meant to, they thrive in earths soil and grow purely because the environment allows it to, a seeds only purpose is to grow, and after that the only purpose is to live. the resources from plants are there to aid nature in its growth, to aid the lives of everything naturally on this earth. the same with animals, and the same can be applied to humans.

generosity is the only thing we need to survive, what one person lacks another has spare, a task one person cannot perform another can. we should all aim to give people as many useful things to them as we can, memories, resources, time.

money is a meaningless concept corrupted by greed and neglectful of compassion.

memories cannot be escaped, the one thing we will have for the (majority) of our lives, memories unite all of us, people, animals, plants. memories have no language, they exist within every sense and exist within the lack of senses. history is a mandatory subject based purely on memories and keeping memories alive. memories have more meaning than money ever will.

a million pounds makes you rich in greed.

a million memories makes you rich in experiences, in knowledge and in life.

we exist to live, and we remember the ones that have lived before us, and we will continue to remember the lives of others because the meaning of life is to live it, remember it and keep those memories alive.

[bunchacrunchcake]

With all the SAG wins, there's a musician union too

https://www.afm.org/

Share to kill capitalist pigs

[nando161mando]

[workersolidarity]

[lastcatghost]

[mistprints]

Why we cannot maintain the capitalist-style status quo just so the unaccountable rich can stay in power a little longer:

Summary: Big business do small good things to distract us from the bad, promises for being better in 30 years is useless, and even businesses who try to be ethical all the way through eventually fall because capitalism does not allow them to exist sustainably. Capitalism requires infinite growth in profits in the margins, and anything not profitable has to cut costs, be taken up by a bigger corporation, or shut down. A system like this breeds inequality, dishonesty, malpractice that doesn’t get punished unless the public demands it, and unethical practices. Capitalism requires people to suffer at the bottom to work, and keeps people too tired, poor, disconnected, and distracted to do anything about it. Class Awareness and power in numbers is how change will happen.

Highly recommend looking to channels like Second Thought for more content like this to be aware of.

[alpaca-clouds]

History ain't linear

Okay, based on the little rant from last week, let me talk about another big misconception people have about history. And that is this weird idea that history is linear.

What do I mean by that? Well, in general there is this idea, that history went from undeveloped people living horrible lives to super developed people living good lives. And that in this things got better constantly every step of the way.

With this comes the idea that people in medieval Europe lived horrible, miserable lives and that obviously people always were super racist and sexist and homophobic, for it to only get better slowly over time.

Now, this idea - of history being linear - are actually rooted in propaganda. Part of it comes from Enlightenment propaganda, where the folks wanted to be seen as better than anyone before. But most of it comes from pro-capitalist propaganda, that after the end of the Cold War decided that this was "the end of history", aka "humanity has reached their peak stage".

Anyone reading my ramblings here will know, that I am not of the opinion that capitalism is peak anything - or at least anything good. But even outside of the discussion we need to have about whether capitalism should end, maybe, this idea of linear history is just plain wrong.

Excuse me for going all medieval on you again, I am just currently hyperfixating on the late medieval period.

See, we have this idea of the middle ages that everything was backwards. Woman doing her own thing would get hanged. Homosexual would get burned. Witch hunts all around. Probably some racism going on as well.

And while it is not wrong that the era was most certainly sexist and that the crusades for certain brought in the roots for later racism... It was not quite like that.

One big problem we have with the middle ages is, that we got a lot of the history through either the lense of the Enlightenment age - a time during which they wanted to propagade the idea of the horrible middle ages, while they were themselves horrible sexists, homophobes, racists and so on - or of the church, because the church is responsible for a good chunk of the written sources we have from the times itself.

But... we still have other sources, even though they are few and far between. But we have for example stuff like letters send by "normal" people. We have some popular media surviving. We have also pictures and what not. A ton of additional sources. And what we learn from that is, that for example medieval homophobia was by far not as bad as later projected. Because it was a topic that people talked about in their letters.

Or not even to go at homosexuality and just tackle sexuality in general. If we were to believe the church sources, people in the middle ages had no sex for fun. And if we look at so many other sources, this is just... plain wrong.

And, of course, let me say one thing loud and clear: The Witch Hunts were not a medieval thing. The Witch Hunts happened after the end of the middle ages. Yes, a few early ones happened during the last few years of what we consider the middle ages today, it was mostly an early modern thing. And it was closely linked to the church gaining power - not to it loosing it, as one would believe when looking at how we look at history.

History is not linear. There is never going to be an "end of history". Because there is always going to be change. Both to the good and to the bad.

Which means, that no fight is ever truly lost. But it also means that no fight is ever truly won.

Things change. Things will always change. But something that most certainly has gone forward ever since the medieval period is technology. So we should embrace technology in some degree. Because it allows us to learn and to communicate. It allows us to organize. And that is a good thing.

[rjalker]

Just things people who haven't done even 5 seconds of research on the Internet Archive say:

Well, you’re stealing from an author you claim to love. I think that’s wrong. When you buy a copy of a writer’s book, they get paid. When your library buys a copy of the writer’s book, the writer gets paid. When you read a stolen PDF from the internet archive, she gets nothing for all her hard work. NOTHING. Is it capitalist to get angry when someone steals from a hard-working artist? Well, fuck me, I’m a capitalist.

Yes, person, you are a capitalist. You have drunk the capitalist koolaid. You are in the capitalist ground. You're dead under the capitalist boot.

You can even do 5 seconds of research. The Internet Archive's lending library is not "stolen PDFs" it's literally books they own. They're paid for. The author has gotten their money. It's the online, global version of letting your neighbor borrow a book.