#like not in a capitalist way but as a way

[orc-apologist]

This shit is fucking stupid because it doesn't bother to raise the question why the right is gaining traction (btw the Democrats are also a right wing party). It just contends itself with the essentialist answer that Whites™ are simply evil.

It also fails to account for the fact that, actually, both sides LOST votes. Trump did not gain in absolute votes, just in relation to Democrats.

The rise of one thing is always caused by the failure of another. The Democrats did nothing for the bread-and-butter issues Americans face. Most of the mass movements failed to connect the big societal issue with the bread-and-butter issues. Inevitably, people have to eat, people have to pay bills, people have to raise children. This election proves once again that these are what decide elections.

The Biden presidency failed to answer these issues. It made them worse. The Harris campaign promised to keep things as is. The Democrats have thoroughly proven that they are not a viable option for bettering the lives of Americans.

Republicans have consistently appealed to exactly these issues. Of course, they plan to answer these in the most reactionary, divisive and disastrous manners possible. But left without another option, and faced with active antagonism from people like these, these are who people turn to because every other force has failed to provide them with other options.

As everyone, Americans want to lead good lives and they will align with whomever they feel will provide that to them. If you fail to do so, someone else will. They are not fundamentally evil. They're people looking for the way out of capitalist fucking misery that don't yet see the actual way out, which is nothing short of a revolution. This is because no one is offering them this perspective.

[nicorobinphd]

btw am i the only person that hates the fandom conception of sabo as like crazy & unhinged irt violence? like not only are there ableist undertones, more specifically as it pertains to his head injury & potential brain trauma, but it also just seems to function as a way to ignore the fact that sabo isn’t just a part of a militant anti-establishment resistance group with the aim of revolution because it’s en vogue. like, he is not regularly partaking in violent direct action against the world government because he thinks it’s # edgy. he’s partaking in it because he has specific political aims that will be furthered by such acts, with the hope of bettering society on the whole. tbh it comes off as very like “oh of course we don’t need to think about the fact that he’s presented as having a very thoughtful & coherent system of beliefs regarding the nature of freedom, the right people have to autonomy & self determination, the corruption innate to capitalist structures & the function of state apparatuses, etc. that is rooted in personal experience as well as compassion & understanding granted to the experience of others. we don’t gotta reflect on what that could say about the narrative or how it interacts with the themes of the main plot or anything, there is no genuine political commentary or espousal to be found here. he’s just a cuckoo bird who’s in it for the kicks lol!”

maybe i’m being overly serious, but like. okay it’s not necessarily that i don’t expect characters depicting an ideology that is radically against the status quo of the modern era on a foundational level to be entirely sanitized of their beliefs in audience discussion as a means of making them more palatable while allowing the audience to remain intellectually complacent to the aforementioned status quo, but does fandom have to partake so wholeheartedly? & do so without a hint of irony? can’t we do better? & like, again, to be clear- i am aware that this is generally what happens to revolutionary characters on the whole, it is just disappointing to see in the op fandom particularly when considering how integral the politics reflected by both the revolutionary army & the straw hats are to the source material.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Why did the Nazis call themselves National Socialists when they were vehemently anti-communist and not left in any political sense? This isn't a gotcha, it's a genuine question I've had regarding history that I can't find an answer to for some reason.

Because capitalism was genuinely unpopular in Germany. The German economy was tumultuous after WW1, and while the Social Democrats tried to keep the whole thing running smoothly, their reformist approach tied their hands. The Great Depression was the second economic crisis to hit Germany within 10 years, and people were desperate for any alternatives.

The two biggest competitors to the status quo at the time were the Communists and the Nazis. While the Communists were riding on the success of the Russian Revolution, the Nazis branded themselves as "respectable" socialists that patriotic middle class Germans could be proud to support. They weren't your old boring conservative nationalists who were in favor of the same old economic policies that brought the country to ruin. They wanted change too just like everyone else. But they weren't in favor of that dastardly foreign Bolshevism either. That was crude working class socialism that only led to class conflict and civil war.

The Nazis proclaimed that the bourgeoisie weren't the enemy, you see. The enemy was foreigners, an international conspiracy to deprive Germany of capital and impoverish its people for the benefit of a small global elite; a secret Jewish cabal that were behind everything bad in the world. It didn't matter that the Jewish community in Germany was actually poorer than the average German and that most Jewish citizens were working class. The Nazis needed a way to convince people they were doing anything to tackle corruption and greed, so they tapped into the already-existing current of antisemitism in Germany and used the Jews as a scapegoat to cover for the fact that their economic policies did not actually break significantly from the Weimar era, apart from heavy investments in remilitarizing the country, which would eventually fuel the German expansionism that sparked WW2.

National "socialism" was ostensibly socialism for the benefit of a nation rather than a class. In practice, this meant that German capitalists got subsidies and the German workers were supposed to be happy about that because they were all German, right? Yes, German workers got more welfare and benefits, but they got those under the Kaiser and during the height of SDP leadership too. The Nazis weren't any special in that regard. The only real difference with the Nazis was the utter contempt they held for international solidarity and cooperation. That was how they distinguished their socialism from the barbarous Eastern Bolshevism: the latter promoted working class organization that transcended national boundaries, whereas the former asserted that national ties come first and that through national pride and cooperation, class divisions can be overcome.

In effect, Nazism was a means of protecting German nationalism and German capitalism from the threats posed by the rising support for revolutionary communism. The appellation of "socialism" was simply a means of co-opting radical sentiment at a time when traditional conservativism and liberalism had very little respect among the average person, and the utter contempt the Nazis held for the actual working class meant that their movement had little genuine working class support before they gained power.

[bugbastard]

I think a really useful way of splitting the difference on this issue is being willing to say to acknowledge a lot of issues men have are real issues even if they're not, per se, "men's issues" and don't have the causes heavily online men think they have.

My experience with the way the online left engages with men and masculinity, is that it is generally more willing to lead with (completely deserved, mind you, but that's also irrelevant) critique of men and masculinity a la "here is how the the ways you act and the systems you are part of hurt women and society. Some of that you can change through hard work, listening, and self reflection to become a better person, some of that you will benefit from and be complicit in no matter what you do as long as you are a member of society," which is a hard pill to swallow on so many levels.

This ends up being a huge problem, because these leftist critiques only hold water to people who actually accept the underlying premises of the leftist worldview. It's common sense (and common practice in any other area) that if you want somebody to support your cause, you have to actually explain why it's in their interests and in line with their worldview. This isn't even hard; essentially every thing the "manosphere" and incel type losers are upset about is a real issue, and they're just back asswards about the cause.

"Your low self esteem by virtue of feeling like you aren't, and being judged by other men and women for, not measuring up as a man, is rooted in the erosion of the working class by capitalists, and indeed, those standards of masculinity you fail to live up to were *designed to be impossible* and at no point in history have men successfully lived up to it".

"Yeah dating is harder than ever. The young working class has less time, less money, and fewer friends than they did in decades past. This is the fault of the capitalist system we live under. And, actually we could take it a step further and discuss the way that hole in your heart is maybe best filled by friends first and foremost rather than dating."

Like, these two conversations alone are like 75% of what manosphere dudes obsess over, and their causes are explicitly patriarchal and capitalist in nature. There is room for compassion and commiseration rather than contempt, and doing that is good, leftist work.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[hoelandah]

I'm sorry that half the time I'm a Kripke hate blog, but as a leftist, the writing literally makes me so mad.

It's why any real leftist thought can't be had. It's proof that the general populace only understands politics on a surface level and systemic issues are way above their heads. It's why the capitalist hegemony is never questioned in any real way and continues to hurt people.

The show is a symptom of a larger problem that won't stop with voting out Trump. The neolib ass backwards writing of the show is a partial taxonomy of why "Trumps" happen in the first place.

Some smug ass American lib prick of a writer will look at a tortured orphaned child groomed to produce profit at the cost of his self worth and sanity and think "omg he's just like this privileged Nazi fuck that's giving us problems" and then turn around, humanize a CEO and introduce the 574456 actor from his dead ass mediocre show.

Fuck that dude and anyone who let him make those awful writing decisions.

[mesetacadre]

How did you start your political life or more specifically, how did you learn about communism and made it part of your life? I'd love to learn more about communism and how I could help the world and people but I feel like I'm too stupid for that and I just generally don't know where to start, especially since I'm afraid even socialism will fail and hurt people more than help. Sorry for this message but thanks in advance if you decide to answer!

Around the time I began to come out of a year-long+ depressive period, I began to seriously "get into" politics. I suspect one of the reasons which triggered such a long and severe depressive period was the beginnings of a political consciousness, I intuited something was wrong with the world in a fundamental way, especially the education system, but did not have any knowledge or will to get at that more concretely. I did latch on a lot to that "don't go to school" viral video, especially the part about how it hadn't fundamentally changed since the industrial revolution.

The first thing I found after I stopped wanting to kill myself so constantly was anarchism, actually, and specifically vaush videos. I know. but I did start reading some things, like the conquest of bread, and some more "competent" political theory content than vaush, I did really like the idea of market socialism and coops. To my credit, I also encountered georgism and even I could tell it was pretty stupid. Anyhow, I never really was convinced on anarchism, on a fundamental level. I knew the talking points, the common arguments, that jazz, but it was more a superficial belief rather than a core one. After like 6 months of this I decided to contact the party I am now, I had encountered them a couple months earlier but kinda chickened out. The will to do something more than watch vaush and be opinionated about US politics eventually prevailed and I contacted the party, and they were very patient in actually educating me, giving me some responsibility, and in the years since then I've continued to be educated in practice and theory. Generally I'm glad by trajectory wasn't like some other young people in my position that I encountered, who went from fascist to right-libertarian to US democrat in a matter of months, those people wear their lack of principles like a badge of honor.

Anyway, about your other questions, there is no such thing as being too dumb for communism, it's rather a question of a will to learn and a decent enough offline organization with which to apply some principles to your context. Theory is extremely deep, for sure, but there is no minimum theory requirement to start to get organized. This perception exists because often, the only communists who organize as such explicitly are, frankly put, massive nerds, and it gives off the impression that you need to have read all the basics before doing anything. That isn't true.

I get your concern about hurting people, I think it's a legitimate doubt to have, and one that can only really be resolved with an actual 1-1 conversation and not this format, but succinctly, I'd tell you that already, millions of people suffer and thousands die every day from causes related to the oppression intertwined with the capitalist mode of production, especially imperialism. It has killed throughout history exponentially more people than any army could ever do, even the most genocidal and cruel army you could imagine. Isn't the opportunity to end all of this worth the risk of failing? The capitalist class will oppress our organization regardless of what we do, a failed uprising is more of an excuse to clamp down on our class, and less of a cause in itself.

[lakritzwolf]

I worked a retail job and now I have an office job.

When I worked retail I was trained on the job for two weeks after which I could work my shifts alone including closing up the shop. My current vocation requires two years at university including a graded final research project of 30k words.

Both jobs are/were hard in their own ways, and satisfying and easy in others.

Creating artificial divides like that based clearly on a lack of understanding only helps the powers that be who want to underpay and undervalue everyone.

"Unskilled" labour is a capitalist lie. And as we see the problem goes both ways.

[mundifinis]

god i love rushes

[kagoutiss]

junimo sight

[frostedpuffs]

every time someone makes a point to say that "Marinette doesn't wear makeup, she isn't like other girls" I want to SIGH because not only does Marinette Actually Wear Makeup in canon, it is exhausting that it is 2023 and people are still doing the "not like other girls" thing

[ravewing]

diabolical mix of characters right here

[rotzaprachim]

one of the things in Life is that even the most radical or anti establishment of ventures, particularly anything involving “community” or “mutual aid” still relies on really normie skills to be accomplished if it wants to be effective for real human beings in the long run. Like a queer housing group or any kind of shelter is still a House that needs to be clean and have clean toilets. A radical off the grid farm is still a farm where the biological necessities of crops might very well require you to wake up at 5:00 AM for weeks on end in order to have a crop. A Union meeting still might need childcare from qualified individuals who can take care of a bunch of preschoolers for hours on end. An abortion fund is still a monetary operation with a flow of cash that needs to be taken care of. Any operation needs to have regularly scheduled meetings set up and attended in the long run. A lot of these things aren’t really negotiable based on vibe or ideology so much as things that need to be done here, in the real world, in order to make peoples lives better, and no amount of perfect buzzword ideology will change that.

[arsonism-the-eighth]

Third option :)

1.

Seduce (optional) the big ocean creature with your fucked up info dumping, squeeze your way into its heart. Then once you’ve gotten it to fall for you/made it confused and interested in what in the seven seas is “wrong” with you, get it to bring you to shore.

2.

Once it’s brought you to shore, you tell it to complete either three, seven, or twelve (depending on where your from and your general preferences) impossible tasks. Thus leading to it going back to the ocean, or wherever else it might go, to - hopefully - try and complete the impossible tasks you’ve set for it.

3.

You get between some weeks, months, or even several years worth of time to just vibe around and chill in a world made up of a failing capitalistic, and slow dumpster fire. Then when it returns, for it will return no matter what you tasked it to do, it shall present you with whatever it was tasked with, claim you as its own and drag you down to the depths of long forgotten empires and cities.

4.

Here it may vary, you could marry it, simply be a confidant, die, travel, explore, become one with an unknown universe so far behind the human comprehension that your mind is ripped apart and put back together again, but something is wrong, you don’t know what but something is wrong. you can’t breathe, your clawing at your neck, you can’t breathe, your eyes are wide but all you see are the hollow depths of its dark eyes, that are somehow so much darker than the ocean around you, how it is possible, you don’t know, you can’t breathe, it surrounds you body and soul, trapping you, cradling you as a mother would an infant, you can’t breathe, please let me go home, you can’t breathe, it has consumed your very being, you and it are one in the same, it has always been this way, you can’t breathe, it has been searching for you child, you can’t breathe, your finally home, you can’t breathe, one and the same, you can’t breathe, whole once more, you can’t breathe, father and son, you can’t breathe, mother and daughter, you can’t breathe, parent and child, you can’t breathe, one from the other, you can’t breathe

You shall never leave me no more young beirn, for you have seen enough damage and horror to last several generations my child, you are safe here with me

You. Can’t. Breathe.

You try to escape, to run, but it holds fast - have I not done enough for you child - it doesn’t speak, but it’s in your bones, ripping your flesh off of them, half hazardously putting you back together, you, can’t, breathe.

You’ll be safe here, I’ve finally found you again my small beirn, I’ll keep you safe, no longer shall you ever come to harm

You - Can’t - Breathe

Safe, child in my arms you shall stay, till the stars take you from me again, and then I shall rip the cosmos apart, until the day I find you and hold you once more.

Water makes its way into your lungs, the pressure from the ocean flooding into them and crushing you, or maybe it’s the things grip on you that’s tightening.

You can’t breathe.

They shall never steal you from me again child, for I shall hold you close to me, and my chest and keep you safe, my darling love, my first creation, my child.

You can’t breathe - and soon everything turns to black.

______________________________________________________________ Note! - i wrote this on like two hour of sleep at midnight, and didnt relise it was epic untill this morning :)

wyd in this situation

[dykedvonte]

I think if their was internet on the Tulpar that Daisuke wouldn’t call for help and just live tweet everytime Swansea and Jimmy got into a fist fight or “girls night” (him and anya sleeping in a different area during said fight).

Almost every tweet is a live tweet of him going “Lol Swansea brought out the axe again :p”

[scarlct-vvitch]

do you think jenna marbles knows how appreciated and irreplaceable her presence on youtube was? does she know that she mastered the craft of making a video feel like hanging out with a treasured friend? do you think she knows that she was one of the last youtubers to feel genuine in her craft, making videos for the fun of it rather than making everything polished, elaborate, and distanced? does she know that even four years later we still miss her? does she know that an era of the internet ended when she left? i hope she knows we saw her. i hope she's having a great time.

[vamprisms]

'i prefer winter' bitches are insane. there's no way you work full time