#imperialist war

[damnesdelamer]

A “revolutionary struggle against the war” is merely an empty and meaningless exclamation [...] unless it means revolutionary action against one’s own government even in wartime. One has only to do some thinking in order to understand this. Wartime revolutionary action against one’s own government indubitably means, not only desiring its defeat, but really facilitating such a defeat. ("Discerning reader”: note that this does not mean “blowing up bridges”...)

~ V.I. Lenin

[determinate-negation]

"even the nazis didnt..." - guy who doesnt know that much about the nazis

[komsomolka]

this is exactly what i meant under yankee fragility.

[redrobin-detective]

One of my favorite parts of  Zuko Joins The Gaang Early or other AUs where Zuko breaks free of his brainwashing earlier than in canon is Zuko’s shock at how easy-going and gleeful Iroh is about ‘suddenly’ turning traitor. The man has been committing high treason for gotta be years at this point but he’ll pretend otherwise up until the exact moment his nephew’s beliefs start to slip then he’s chugging that treason punch like nobody’s business.

[om0000]

mfs will make one of the most interesting n nuanced characters uve ever spun in ur brain just to stuff them into a kids media n make them look like this:

[sansculottides]

at some point goodsir admits to silna, quite pathetically, that theyre looking for the northwest passage just for trade. but it's not just trade, isn't it? they wanted a faster route to china because by then, they'd already started the ruin and humiliation of china after the opium war. after they had humiliated india by destroying their industry and forcing them to produce opium. the netsilik community in the show is just the most visible victim of imperialism in the text, but it goes way further and the characters' lives are entertwined with that too (see: jfj's dinner story, literally about him being in the first opium war). everything that happens in the show is merely a symptom of imperialism

[lewishamiltonstuff]

Biden would risk a wider regional war than stop Israel from committing genocide.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

So beyond the whole "Ganondorf is now Canonically a Femme Fatale" conversation, I feel like this part of the interview wasn't discussed a ton? Because apparently the original vision was that Zelda doubted whether to restore Hyrule at all (an interesting conflict! put it in the game next time!), and then got punched into the past and then seemingly was convinced of the necessity of her role and Hyrule as an entity (I'm extrapolating but it feels like it's what's being suggested, the direction they wanted for her arc, and it's basically what we get in the game).

And uhhh.

that certainly does not help the whole. imperialist. thing.

[thespectrehauntingfodlan]

Hey remember when the brutal occupation of Afghanistan by the United States was defended by putting it in terms of protecting women? The brutal extraction engine that robbed and slaughtered the people of Afghanistan for literal decades?

No but this time it's actually good and isn't just a thin cover for imperial and bourgeois interests

[writer-room]

Ahsoka is probably the person everyone means when they say “I know a guy”. Girl knows a bunch of senators, some ragtag rebels, many criminals, a handful of Imperialists, and a couple other random people dotted across the galaxy. If you ever need to find someone, you just call Ahsoka. Chances are high that she knows exactly who they are. Chances are even higher that she knows someone else who knows them. She runs around enough that it’s not that hard for her to just ram into them. Her one exception is Ezra Bridger, because apparently knowing a guy personally means it’s impossible to find him for over a decade.

[hussyknee]

People are really hung up on this idea that ambiguity affords protection, and that it's the same as privilege. As though having camouflage means you aren't hunted.

Only the oppressed are concerned with our own variation and degree of difference. There is no such ambiguity in the eyes of the oppressor. They don't care how like them you are, in fact being like them is all the more reason to punish you and keep you in your place. The project of exclusion is not to force conformity, it's to find people to make an example of so that others comply with the oppressor's hierarchial power structure and struggle desperately to conform. Exclusion is purely a show of power. The more people try to conform, the more they fail, the more can be made examples of. This is how systems of oppression propagate themselves.

Identity politics focuses on defining ourselves by the extent to which we are punished as individual groups, and under what criteria. It imagines a rational and restrained power matrix that metes out punishment according to the degree of difference and perceived threat. A methodical, conscientious, if misguided, gardener pruning a rose bush, rather than a brutal machinery that has invented arbitrary rationales to eat the human bodies it needs to sustain itself. Instead of building a coalition around the fact that we're all being hunted by the same beasts, idpol would rather build a hierarchy of prey animals according to the ways we will be skinned and cooked, stopping only short of putting us on a menu with accompanying prices.

This is the project of hyperindividualist neoliberalism, that is culturally entrenched in the West at every level. It's what drives the destructive identity discourses and leftist in-fighting that use trauma as currency. When you define yourself according to the appetite of the thing that wants to eat you, you end up weirdly attached to the romance of being eaten, and are loath to give it up.

[ash-and-starlight]

.

[penelopwgarcia]

I hope I get to pass the right message I'm meaning to, cause it is amazing that people from the USA are talking and pointing out the inconsistencies of the American speech of "we're saving the people and giving democracy" that, well, doesn't add up since the 70s and for non white communities it never made sense cause the democracy USA talk so much about only work with their white rich. We all know that. Yet everytime I see a post from someone addressing this as if it was the first time they ever noticed I think about things such the privilege of not noticing from early age that the state doesn't care about you and in fact works for you to be exterminated - and I got that thought of uh, are you new here? It's been said for awhile. Yet the person think they just find out a whole new world and although I do know it's important to have allies and people that want to know more I still find almost hysterical how there are people out there not so rich that CAN ignore the issue until the media and head of state don't fuck bother about hiding anything

[dirbenaffleck]

as a non american watching the most influential country having to whine about picking the lesser evil when some countries have to pick between 5 political parties ranging from fascist upfront, fascist adjacent, literal criminals, to somewhat good and having all of your votes unequally divided amongst all of those is fucking ridiculous