#marxist chickens

[richo1915]

Only two eggs again today.

I have been accused of running an old folks home and you know, nudge nudge wink wink. Snick thump of Madam Guillotine. To make way for more.

NEVER!

I do not care about their current production. The girls should be lauded as Hero’s of the Motherland for their service. I will care for and defend them until the end.

The oppressive lovers of Guinea Pigs (the rest of the family) soon forget all those lovely golden eggs the ladies provided for the house, friends and neighbours for all those years.

What have those Guinea Pigs ever done for us? What are the products of their labour? Social Media pictures and fertiliser. And even their ‘fertiliser’ is shithouse for the garden. Very Bourgeoisie.

Never forget the Worker.

The girls that produced rain, hail or shine. They put their all into their job. They produced the finest quality product. All they asked was a little food and shelter.

Well never fear girls! I will run the best damn workers retirement home I can!

You deserve it.

Look at those damn Guinea Pigs. Not producing for the greater society, only consuming.

Fat Bourgeois Capitalist Guinea Pigs….

[niachantal]

are we all collectively obsessing over parkour civilization right now

[selamat-linting]

regarding redditors migrating to tumblr i hope most of the influx of new users gave us more computer science trans girls, data hoarders, piracy experts, and militant atheists instead of your run of the mill sinophobic assholes and fatphobes.

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Because I've really enjoyed Peaceful Property and contributed to the discourse on here around it, I want to spend some time exploring the thoughtful critiques of the show by @bengiyo, @lurkingshan, @twig-tea, @respectthepetty, @my-rose-tinted-glasses, and @one-of-tankhuns-neurons. I started writing this out but then it got all annoying and academic so imma just list rant with the utmost respect for everyone's thoughts for making me think so much about this show.

1.I wondered about what shows might be examples of class division themes done with an orientation toward the lived experiences of the working class in BL, cuz honestly it's just not super prominent and well-done in much of media anywhere. The Aof series where he takes screenwriting credit seem to be the best representatives: ATOTS and Moonlight Chicken, especially, but he touches on macro and micro economic issues in all his works. Aof's really willing to depict the hardships and compromises required when living with less financial security, and I can def agree that Peaceful Property is not offering that. I just personally feel okay with that, because I see the latter show as doing a more theoretical and symbolic narrative about economics, and overt symbolism seems pretty in-line with the ghost story horror genre its using.

2. To me, I see Peaceful Property's main critique of class issues as being about Marxist alienation. So we've got our first two ghosts being really literal with this, where they have a labor they do and a final product that they don't get to partake in. Builder wants to have a meal in the house he built. Wig maker wants to wear the luxury wig she sewed. Then, with rider, we get a lil more abstract with him wanting him and his delivery to be recognized and build a meaningful relationship with someone. And since then we've been getting more and more abstract about people finding personal meaning and supporting others through their labor. But all of it still connects back to this idea of alienation from their labor, the magician, Chef Hong, and Peach are all prevented from performing the labor that brings them fulfillment by different circumstances.

3. For my reading, the queerness is very much part and parcel of its capitalism critique. Agree with it or not, but man x man loving stories have been used historically to run counter to the competition between men fighting for the top spot encouraged by capitalism. Maurice is a pretty prime example of this, where Maurice, instead of pining upward for Clive, ends up choosing the lower-class Alex and running away to be happy together. Pat and Pran's love in the face of their family's business related feud in Bud Buddy is an even closer example to how I think Peaceful Property is contrasting queer love and capitalistic competition. There's a few signals for me that Peaceful Property plans to explore this a bit more. The Cok Long sign reminds me way too much of the slang of "dick measuring competitions" and I don't think they gave us a character named 'Best,' who has reappeared a couple of times for no reason. With the magician, Pang, and Chef Hong, we also have a repeating motif of lost assistants who made the work meaningful and possible, a socialist emphasis on the value of all workers and the need to connect with others to produce their labors of love, which we see thwarted for the queer story line. The fact that the Thai dancing was two men working together to create the art offers an alternative to a competition between men. And I want to say that I'm just talking about narrative devices here, not the reality of how capitalism works. We're very much in symbolist land, with this take. I'm just a sucker for symbolist land, and it's hard for me to watch horror especially without taking my brain there.

4. And then there's the way queerness alienates one from the accepted 'normal,' which has emerged as a dominant theme in the last few episodes. But if we take this theme and apply it back on previous episodes, we can see traces of it throughout the characters. Home's statements have been the most explicit in illustrating an internalized homophobia with his desire to be part of a 'normal family.' And the tensions with his family about whether he deserved to inherit the properties has queer connotations about queer people's inclusion in their families and the legal and financial repercussions of that (What Did You Eat Yesterday is the top tier of detailed impacts of queer rights in that vein). Peach's social anxieties and depressive behaviors, ostensibly related to his close call with death and ability to see ghosts, parallels queer experiences, too, and we see how it shapes his and his sister's financial predicaments. (Aside: I wonder, regarding some of the complaints about their behavior in the context of poverty, if we might better read the two of them as broke middle class characters. We don't have much context about their childhoods, but their behavior has never really presented as people familiar with getting by on a dime.) Queerness and the threats of financial insecurity have been articulated as interrelated by the series.

5. Home's redemption? We'll know more as things get revealed, but it seems that we're meant to see Home's biggest failing as the negligence that allowed him to hit Peace and his cowardice in not standing up to his family and taking responsibility for the harm he caused. If that is his chief issue, in my view of a restorative process (and thank you so much @respectthepetty for naming this aspect of the show!), the necessary amends are...

facing up to his family (partial check)

admitting his mistakes and seeking forgiveness from Peach (he was in the process of doing so in the latest ep)

addressing the distraction that led to his negligence so that he can attend to Peach and people like Peach so it does not occur again (hmmm...)

That last point is key because we still don't know why it was significant that he was on his busy ignoring the call of girlfriend number 32 or whatever. But I'm suspecting it will connect to Home's internalized homophobia (and @heretherebedork has done some great writing about that subtext). That would give the accident a significance regarding horizontal violence between gay men that the privileged can then run away from while others who can't escape have to suffer the consequences. There's lots of ways queer men can and have done this to one another in everyday life and hook-ups but at the most extreme historically we have the the AIDS crisis, where someone's negligence regarding sexual health inspired by the psychological fear induced by being in the closet could truly be a life-or-death matter with major financial ramifications. For Home to truly own his mistake he is going to have to risk his own financial security in standing up to his family, and he's going to have to stop hiding from himself so he can develop compassion for others in the world. And the last scene in which we see him in the same predicament as Home I saw less as a cop out so Peach and the audience would feel bad for him and forgive him and more as a representation of his ability now to truly understand what Peach has gone through.

6. Do I think this series is going to solve capitalism? This show is about the spiritual dimensions capitalism robs from people, and I think it has real answers about disrupting capitalism through reconnection with our relationships to our work and to other human beings. I'm not religious, but I respect religion's ability to help people find and emphasize a deeper meaning in life, and I think that that doesn't necessarily but can challenge capitalist practices. Peaceful Property is working to show how caring about spiritual well-being breaks up the automaticity of capitalism and has never let go of that thread. To discuss Peaceful Property's takes on class division without speaking about its religious elements seems disingenuous to its greater purpose and a bit disrespectful to the Thai culture the series is so infused with. I'm intrigued about how Kan's plot will play out with the Vimarnsukmun family and it's impact on their finances. What would actually disappoint me and run counter to the show's themes is if the gang somehow inherited the family's wealth or properties other than the ramshackle Cok Long Cocktail Lounge. In Aof's work and in Maurice, the endings involve a disinheritance to represent that life is about connection not financial gain, which contrasts philosophically with the upward fantasies of capitalism. So in ATOTS, Tian moves to the village, in Moonlight Chicken, Jim trades out his diner for a smaller food truck, etc. To find the true meaning of home, Home will need to release himself from his attachment to his inheritance of financial privilege. Of course, being dead might be an option for that lol, but we'll see how the rest of the series plays out.

[txttletale]

do you have any response to people who treat voting like a trolley problem? because that seems to be where a lot of people here are coming at it from. like no faith in electoralism no care for the process, just a decision with a level of four bad and a level of five bad. to be clear thats not the way i come at it but i do think thats how many people think abt it

i mean the response is that, like, voting is not like the trolley problem because it happens more than once and not in a vacuum. it's more like... i don't know, one of those game theory games that unfolds across multiple play sessions. there will be a 2028 election and a 2032 election and the results of the previous elections will inform democratic party strategy, candidate selection, and policy in both of those. if you pledge to always support the democratic party as long as they're better than the republican party, then they can do 99.9% of what the republican party does without worrying about your unwavering support. if you have actual red lines (and this is you, as a bloc, as a group, individual political actions never matter) then the party will in fact think twice before crossing them about whether the hit to electoral support is worth it.

obviously, i'm a communist, i don't think you will ever get anything good out of the democratic party. bourgeois elections are ultimately choices of which representatives will repress you (that's some vintage marxist humour for ya). but if you think it's worth voting at all then you should also be aware of how your vote and the withdrawal thereof can be used to play chicken/hardball with political parties that need it. the right is well fucking aware of this--right-wing labour party members in the UK ran a huge sabotage campaign against the social democrat jeremy corbyn, losing the election and using that loss to oust all the left-wing elements of the party. the tea party have been using threats like this to push the republican party rightwards for decades now.

of course, you will never get something outside of the overton window of acceptable ruling-class politics by voting but if you believe there are meaningful gradations within that window (as, if you plan to ever vote at all, you logically must) then those concessions should still matter and should still be worth pursuing if you're already making the decisions to engage with electoral politics at all

[anew-jackson]

to the tune of money for nothing

we got to sell these chicken nuggets hamburgers with or without cheese we got to hand out this soy latte now  we got to make these boba teas

now look at them yoyos that’s the way you do it teach a course on gender studies  that ain’t working, that’s the way you do it Uni is for nothin, so’s the college degree

now that ain’t workin, that’s the way you do it those they/thems ain’t lame maybe get cancelled on the marxist fanblogs maybe get triggered and dead named

see that little faggot with the dress and the makeup  yeah buddy they/their names now jen that little faggots teaching the nations youth now that little faggots on CNN

[infinitysisters]

“Like everything based on the writings of Karl Marx—seeing oppressors and colonial struggles everywhere—DEI was doomed to fail. The uniformity of thought known as intersectionality, fostered by DEI, meant all oppressed people must support all others who are oppressed. But that idea burst on Oct. 7 when Hamas raped, murdered and kidnapped Israelis. Many liberals, especially Jewish ones, couldn’t support genocidal “colonized” terrorists. Pop! The long march is in retreat.

By the way, ESG, or investing based on “environmental, social and governance” principles, peaked last June, when BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said he would stop using “the word ESG anymore, because it’s been entirely weaponized.” Never mind that performance of ESG funds has been sketchy and that BlackRock had been adding the label “sustainable” or “ESG” to funds and charging up to five times as much. Then a study published in December by Boston University’s Andrew Kingfound “no reliable evidence for the proposed link between sustainability and financial performance.” Pop!

Most offensive to me was DEI’s devious underlying agenda: societal design. 𝐁𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐟𝐚𝐧��𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐰𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐚 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐚 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐫𝐮𝐧, 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞, 𝐛𝐲 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞, 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟-𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐬. That was the “my truth” that Ms. Gay invoked on her exit. Critical theories and Marxist techniques would take power from you and me, using big government as the enforcer.

The new societal design, embedded in DEI and ESG, envisioned idyllic communal progress. 𝐇𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐭𝐬. Diversity meant ideological conformity. Equity meant discrimination. Inclusion meant blurring the sexes. Men winning women’s athletic events would be considered normal. It was all theatrics, like the tampons I’ve seen in men’s bathrooms on Ivy League campuses. Somewhere George Orwell is rolling on the floor laughing.

One goal of progressive societal design is to shrink—depopulation. Twenty-somethings now question having children. Net zero and degrowth, both World Economic Forum approved, are pushed via energy myths: carbon bad, cows bad. A plant-based chicken in every pot and two electric cars in every garage. They envy the merit-touting rich, shout “inequality” and wear “Tax the Rich” dresses. They tear down statues to erase history. How did we let this happen?

𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐦 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧, 𝐢𝐭 𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧. There was very little free speech at Harvard—the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ranked it last of all colleges last year. Those against the societal-design agenda were shouted down. Dissent was met with accusations of privilege or cancellation. Conform or be cast out. On a larger scale, the Biden administration co-opted social media to censure opposing views.

I, like most Americans, am for diversity, but not when it’s forced or mandated. In a 2017 interview, Mr. Fink admitted BlackRock would use DEI tactics to “force behaviors” of corporations on “gender or race,” including via management compensation. Now that’s power.

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬, 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐰𝐞’𝐯𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐭 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐚𝐫𝐝, 𝐭𝐡�� 𝐁𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐝𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐞𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞. Does national security adviser Jake Sullivan really care about equity or climate change? It polled well and put him back in power to implement his own societal design via “industrial strategy.”

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐬. 𝐂𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐬. 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐦𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐬. Those prices inform production much better than any government bureaucrat or Harvard professor. Societal design—remember Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society?—requires government control. I’ll take freedom.

Preferred pronouns are fading. College admissions, and maybe hiring, based on race is illegal. DEI departments are being deconstructed. But while the DEI movement may have peaked, like that Monty Python character, it’s not dead yet. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐲 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐃𝐄𝐈 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐫.”

— Andy Kessler//WSJ

[hungee-boy]

propaganda:

fag and tranny

romani 💙❤️💚

shi'a muslim

marxist

has a bipan boyfriend

autumn palette + brown eyes

i own chickens (favorite breed: brahma)

i have a huge rack

i hate every private owner of exotic wild animals on a personal level (NOT sanctuaries and zoos, im talking about like those russian cunts on tiktok with an entire adult leopard in their house)

anti-propaganda:

white american

the first person i ever voted for was biden (2020, liberals owe me BIG)

got into homesteading in 2020 and it will control my life forever

watches hasan piker

quick to anger

nicotine addiction since i was a teenager (dont fucking smoke im not joking)

loves bioware games

procrastinates always, this post is a procrastination actually

wants to learn multiple languages but never does

lives in texas and is not conversant in spanish

spends too much time on nextdoor

eldest daughter with a martyr complex

[collapsedsquid]

Much of my disillusionment owes to what wasn't done, rather than what was. GOP populists complained loudly of Big Tech, yet it was progressive congressional staffers like Lina Khan who took the lead on the most serious probes and reform proposals (work Khan has since put to effect as President Biden's competition czar). Trumpians irritably gestured at Wall Street, yet it's Warren who introduced a bill to check the corrosion of the economy by asset-strippers. One cause of this is the dearth of conservative personnel in Washington actually committed to carrying out a populist economic agenda. But the most important obstacle is also the most intractable and difficult to discuss: Small and regional capital—think of the car dealer toasting the self-made man at rubber-chicken dinners—forms the Republicans' real power base, even as more working-class people gravitate to the party. Stressed by the topsy-turvy of the market, small entrepreneurs rage against government-linked privileges enjoyed by larger market actors (now recast as "woke neo-Marxists" at ... BlackRock and Meta). They aren't wrong about corporate privilege, yet their political imagination has been limited to smashing the few regulatory structures that still bring the market system under a semblance of political control. For the small-time rich, moreover, the legitimately aggrieved "worker" is largely a cultural (and sometimes racialized) signifier: more likely a self-employed roofer than a wage-earning customer-service representative and still much less, say, a Filipina-American employed in hospitality.

This is from the guy who probably is responsible for the current panic over trans people

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Abigail Shrier

Published: Dec 2023

According to a popular meme, “Queers for Palestine” is like “Chickens for KFC”: To sign on to that slogan, you’d have to be suicidal or an idiot. That, at any rate, seems to be the prevailing view in the circles I travel in when it comes to the transgender activists who support Hamas. The climate activists, the feminist extremists, Gays 4 Gaza, and sad-sack members of Jewish Voice for Peace—each of them strikes us as dupes of a regime that would happily jail, repress, or massacre them. Can they really be this self-defeating? Can they really be this gullible and dumb? Well, at the poker table of today’s leftism, if you don’t know who the fool is, more than likely, the fool is you.

Consider Black Lives Matter Chicago, which announced its support for Hamas in the days after the massacre with a gleeful post on X (né Twitter), featuring a Palestinian flag and a silhouette of a paraglider, presumably on his way to rape women and butcher children, as Palestinian paragliders had just done. “I stand with Palestine,” the poster read. Does BLM, an organization whose aim is to “bring justice, healing and freedom to Black people across the globe,” not know how Ethiopian Jews would be treated if they dared visit Gaza?

Similarly, an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, called Israel a “white supremacist Zionist project.” Anyone who has ever visited Israel knows this to be absurd on its face. The 100,000-plus Ethiopian Jews are far from “white,” and a majority of Israel’s population—the Mizrahim, or Easterners, who have been living in and around the Middle East since antiquity—could not be and should not be considered any “whiter” than their Palestinian neighbors.

The foolishness extends beyond race. Climate activists like Greta Thunberg took to Twitter to pledge support for Gaza in the days after the massacre—almost as if they didn’t know that the unprovoked war launched by Hamas on October 7 and the thousands of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel will result in both increased carbon emissions and devastation to the local environment.

Meanwhile, gender-studies departments in the United States have sought to “amplify” the call from Palestinian feminists “to join the struggle for Palestinian liberation.” So, in a struggle between an Islamist police state—quite literally, a patriarchy—whose terrorists were encouraged to rape Israeli women on October 7 and a society where women enjoy full rights and serve in the military, Western academic feminists choose the former. And at Columbia University, the queer nonbinary women student group, LionLez, held a movie night: “It’s FREE PALESTINE over here. Zionists aren’t invited.”

Why are the BLM supporters, climate extremists, academic feminists, and trans activists so quick to side with Hamas? Why are those who champion women’s reproductive rights so quick to align themselves with a Hamas-controlled Gaza where women lack the right to drive, let alone get an abortion? Why would they rally to a society where men are encouraged to hit the stray uppity wife? For that matter, why would so many LGBTQ+ groups side against a society that hosts some of the largest Pride festivals worldwide so that they can throw in with another that puts homosexuals to death?

Conservative thinkers James Lindsay and Christopher Rufo have painstakingly traced the Marxist roots of all of these groups, showing that they all branch from the same rotten revolutionary trunk. These groups aim to overthrow the West, and so they support one another. Nests of critical theory fill their interchangeably empty heads.

But I want to suggest a motivation less highbrow and more straightforward. They are all fed by the same polluted water source: hatred, envy, and resentment.

What leads them to show up at the pro-Hamas rallies in remarkable numbers is not ideological commitment. Sure, some may want Marxist revolution, if they even understand what that is. But whatever beliefs they may hold about gender, race, or climate quickly unravel under the clumsy weight of the obvious contradiction of supporting a regime so hostile to these causes.

Which means they are no more motivated by ideology, in other words, than Adolf Hitler was when he allied himself with Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Arab mufti of Jerusalem, or the Japanese—another race allegedly inferior to whites in his despicable hierarchy—and made war upon the white French and British. Hitler believed Nazi racial theory, of course. But sometimes hatred simply burns brighter and hotter than all other ideological commitments combined.

So don’t bother informing Gays 4 Gaza that same-sex attraction is proscribed by criminal law in Gaza, backed by a penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment, in that very territory they’re so wild about. No need to educate them about the finding by Pew Research that the Palestinian population’s opposition to homosexuality is among the highest in the world; that in 2016, Hamas responded to a senior commander’s homosexual activity with a firing squad; or that gay adoption and gay marriage are strictly forbidden in Palestinian territories.

They already know—and they really, truly don’t care.

You could plead with Greta Thunberg and her dead-eyed friends that Israel leads the world in desalination efforts and technology. You could suggest to any of the climate activists marching for Hamas that if they cared about conservation, they might want to side with the state leading the world in renewable-energy technologies. You could remind them that Israel turned over ecologically advanced greenhouses to Gaza worth $14 million as part of the 2005 disengagement—only to see those greenhouses promptly destroyed by the Gazans. If these activists can’t be moved to care for the women who were raped, the babies and elderly butchered, then perhaps Israel’s remarkable efforts to produce electricity from the ocean and seawalls ought to earn it a shout-out from the climate-change warriors? Nah.

They aren’t stupid, and they aren’t suicidal.

Here’s what they are.

They are LGBTQ+ activists who aren’t primarily motivated by gay rights. They are climate radicals who aren’t principally motivated by concern about the climate. And if there were ever a BLM member sincerely concerned about racial justice, no doubt he has long since left the organization behind. Its remaining rank-and-file are no more committed to their putative causes than Hamas is to improving the lives of ordinary Palestinians.

The postmodern left celebrated Lia Thomas, the mediocre male athlete who swapped genders his senior year in college and won NCAA female swimmer of the year, not because it wants to improve the lives of gay and transgender Americans. Had that been the goal, the left would have accepted a fair and sustainable solution, such as an open category for all gender identities alongside a female-only team, and safe transgender changing rooms.

No, they want to take over women’s teams and women’s restrooms, for the same reason a vandal loves a clean white wall. They enjoy making women afraid. They enjoy deleting girls’ names from the record books. They thrill at seeing average Americans squirm.

When a DEI staffer named Nahliah Webber informs parents and children, “There is a killer cop sitting in every school where white children learn,” that isn’t a statement of values. You don’t glue yourself to the Mona Lisa, as eco-warriors have done, or vandalize the Wellington Arch in central London because you love the earth that much. You do it because you despise the civilization that cradles such treasures, because your desire to inflict pain on those you resent deeply overshadows any aim you may espouse on behalf of Mother Earth.

Same with the tearing down of a poster with an image of a child held in captivity, then laughing at a woman who tries to stop you, crying out for mercy. In videos, those who vandalize the posters rarely even react. Their indifference is chilling. At Boston University, confronted by a man holding a camera phone who tells her she should be ashamed of herself for taking down the posters and allying with movement that spreads anti-Semitism, a woman named Anna Epstein stares him coolly in the face. “Dude, you literally know I’m Jewish,” she says.

The great 20th-century economic journalist Henry Hazlitt once noted that Marxism itself ultimately reduces to highly concentrated envy: “The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are.” Universities may add intellectual arabesque to the expression of this hate. But in the end, when these groups bang their bongo drums, their chants reduce to a single creed: Hate those who have something you don’t.

That is what unites this motley crew of mutually exclusive values. When they cry for genocide of the Jews across America’s campuses—“Intifada Revolution,” or “Glory to Our Martyrs,” as one George Washington University student group did—they simply want to inflict fear and instill chaos in a peaceable civilization they despise.

They are not the dupes of a hideous regime in opposition to their values—racial justice, reproductive rights, women’s liberation, climate awareness. We are the dupes for believing they sincerely held those values in the first place.

[mightyflamethrower]

At the nexus of most of America’s current crises, the diversity/equity/inclusion dogma can be found.

The southern border has been destroyed because the Democratic Party wanted the poor of the southern hemisphere to be counted in the census, to vote if possible in poorly audited mail-in elections, and to build upon constituencies that demand government help. Opposition to such cynicism and the de facto destruction of enforcement of U.S. immigration law is written off as “racism,” “nativism,” and “xenophobia.”

The military is short more than 40,000 soldiers. The Pentagon may fault youth gangs, drug use, or a tight labor market. But the real shortfall is mostly due inordinately to reluctant white males who have been smeared by some of the military elite as suspected “white supremacists,” despite dying at twice their demographics in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are now passing on joining up despite their families’ often multigenerational combat service.

The nexus between critical race theory and critical legal theory has been, inter alia, defunding the police, Soros-funded district attorneys exempting criminals from punishment, the legitimization of mass looting, squatters’ rights, and general lawlessness across big-city America.

The recent epidemic of anti-Semitism was in part birthed by woke/DEI faculty and students on elite campuses, who declared Hamas a victim of “white settler” victimizing Israel and thus contextualized their Jewish hatred by claiming that as “victims,” they cannot be bigots.

There is a historic, malevolent role of states adjudicating political purity, substituting racial, sex, class, and tribal criteria for meritocracy. They define success or failure not based on actual outcomes but on the degree of orthodox zealotry. Once governments enter that realm of the surreal, the result is always an utter disaster.

After a series of disastrous military catastrophes in 1941 and 1942, Soviet strongman and arch-communist Joseph Stalin ended the Soviet commissar system in October 1942. He reversed course to give absolute tactical authority to his ground commanders rather than to the communist overseers, as was customary.

Stalin really had no choice since Marxist-Leninist ideology overriding military logic and efficacy had ensured that the Soviet Union was surprised by a massive Nazi invasion in June 1941. The Russians in the first 12 months of war subsequently lost nearly 5 million in vast encirclements—largely because foolhardy, ideologically driven directives curtailed the generals’ operational control of the army. After the commissars were disbanded and commanders given greater autonomy, the landmark victory at Stalingrad followed, and with it, the rebound of the Red Army.

One reason why the dictator Napoleon ran wild in Europe for nearly 18 years was that his marshals of France were neither selected only by the old Bourbon standards of aristocratic birth and wealth nor by new ideological revolutionary criteria, but by more meritocratic means than those of his rival nations.

Mao’s decade-long cultural revolution (1966–76) ruined China. It was predicated on Maoist revolutionary dogma overruling economic, social, cultural, and military realities. An entire meritocracy was deemed corrupted by the West and reactionary—and thus either liquidated or rendered inert.

In their place, incompetent zealots competed to destroy all prior standards as “bourgeois” and “counter-revolutionary.” It is no surprise that the current “people’s liberation army,” for all its talk of communist dogma, does not function entirely on Mao’s principles.

Muammar Gaddafi wrecked Libya by reordering an once oil-rich nation on Gaddafi’s crackpot rules of his “Green Book.” At times, the unhinged ideologue, in lunatic fashion, required all Libyans to raise chickens or to destroy all the violins in the nation. I once asked a Libyan why the oil-rich country appeared to me utterly wrecked, and he answered, “We first hire our first cousins—and usually the worst.”

There were many reasons why the King-Cotton, slave-owning Old South lagged far behind the North in population, productivity, and infrastructure. But the chief factor was the capital and effort invested in the amoral as well as uneconomic institution of slavery.

After the Civil War, persistent segregationist ideology demanded vast amounts of time, labor, and money in defining race down to the “one drop” rule—while establishing a labyrinth of segregation laws and refusing to draw on the talents of millions of black citizens.

Yet here we are in 2024, ignoring the baleful past as the woke diversity/equity/inclusion commissars war on merit. Institutions from United Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration to the Pentagon and elite universities have been reformulated in the post-George Floyd woke hysteria. And to the delight of competitors and enemies abroad, they are now using criteria other than merit to hire, promote, evaluate, and retain.

The greatest problem historically with hiring and promoting based on DEI-like dogma is that anti-meritocratic criteria mark the beginning, not the end, of eroding vital standards. If one does not qualify for a position or slot by accepted standards, then a series of further remedial interventions are needed to sustain the woke project, from providing exceptions and exemptions, changing rules and requirements, and misleading the nation that a more “diverse” math, or more “inclusive” engineering, or more “equity” in chemistry can supplant mastery of critical knowledge that transcends gender, race, or ideology.

But planes either fly or crash due to proper operation, not the appearance or politics of the operator. All soldiers either hit or miss targets, and engineers either make bridges that stand or collapse on the basis of mastering ancient scientific canons and acquired skills, training, and aptitude that have nothing to do with superficial appearance, or tribal affinities, or religion, or doctrine.

The common denominator of critical theories, from critical legal theory to critical social theory, is toxic nihilism, which claims there are no absolute standards, only arbitrary rules and regulations set up by a privileged, powerful class to exploit “the other.” Yet, not punishing looting has nothing to do with race or class, but everything with corroding timeless deterrence that always has and always will prevent the bullying strong from preying on the weak and vulnerable.

Defunding the police sent a message to any criminally minded that in a cost-to-benefit risk assessment, the odds were now on the side of the criminal not being caught for his crimes—and so crime soared and the vulnerable of the inner city became easy prey.

Another danger of DEI is the subordination of the individual to the collective. We are currently witnessing an epidemic of DEI racism in which commissars talk nonstop of white supremacy/rage/privilege without any notion of enormous differences among 230 million individual Polish-, Greek-, Dutch-, Basque-, or Armenian-Americans, or the class, political, and cultural abyss that separates those in Martha’s Vineyard from their antitheses in East Palestine, Ohio.

Moreover, what is “whiteness” in an increasingly intermarried and multiracial society? Oddly, something akin to the old one-drop rules of the South is now updated to determine victims and victimizers—to the point of absurdity. Who is white—someone one half-Irish, one half Mexican—who is black—someone one quarter Jamaican, three-quarters German? To find answers, DEI czars must look to paradigms of the racist past for answers.

Moreover, once any group is exempted and not held to collective standards by virtue of its superficial appearance, then the nation naturally witnesses an increase in racism and bigotry—on the theory that it is not racist to racially stigmatize a supposedly “racist” collective. And we are already seeing an uptake in racially motivated interracial violence as criminals interpret the trickle-down theory of reparatory justice as providing exemption for opportunistic violence.

Throughout history, it has always been the most mediocre and opportunistic would-be commissars that appear to come forth when meritocracy vanishes. If there was not a Harvard President and plagiarist like Claudine Gay to trumpet and leverage her DEI credentials, she would have to be invented. If there was not a brilliant, non-DEI economist like Roland Fryer to be hounded and punished by her, he would have to be invented.

The DEI conglomerate has little idea of the landmines it is planting daily by reducing differences in talent, character, and morality into a boring blueprint of racial stereotypes. Punctuality is now “white time” and supposedly pernicious. The SAT, designed to give the less privileged a meritocratic pathway to college admissions, is deemed racist and either discarded or warped.

In its absence, universities are quietly now “reimaging” their curriculum to make it more “relevant to today’s students” and, of course, “more inclusive and more diverse.” Translated from the language of Oceania, that means after admitting tens of thousands to the nation’s elite schools who did not meet the universities’ own prior standards that they themselves once established and apprehensive about terminating such students, higher education is now euphemistically lowering the work load in classes, introducing new less rigorous classes, and inflating grades. In their virtue-signaling, they have little clue that inevitably their once prized and supposedly prestigious degrees will be rendered less valued as employers discover a Harvard, Stanford, or Princeton BA or BS is not a guarantee of academic excellence or mastery of vital skill sets.

Toxic tribalism is also, unfortunately, like nuclear proliferation. Once one group goes full tribal, others may as well, if for no reason than their own self-survival in a balkanized, Hobbesian world of bellum omnium contra omnes. If our popular culture is to be defined by the racist hosts of The View, or the racist anchorwoman Joy Reid, or members of the Congressman “Squad,” or entire studies departments in our universities that constantly bleat out the racialist mantra, then logically one of two developments will follow.

One, so-called whites in minority-majority states like California will copy the tribal affinities of others that transcend their class and cultural differences, again in response to other blocs that do the same for careerist advantage and perceived survival. Or two, racism will be redefined empirically so that any careerist elites who espouse ad nauseam racial chauvinism—on the assurance they cannot be deemed racists—will be discredited and exposed for what they’ve become, and thus the content of our character will triumph over the color of our skin.

Finally, do we ever ask how a country of immigrants like the United States—vastly smaller than India and China, less materially rich than the vast expanse of Russia, without the strategic geography of the Middle East, or without the long investment and infrastructure of Europe—emerged out of nowhere to dominate the world economically, financially, militarily, and educationally for nearly two centuries?

The answer is easy: it was the most meritocratic land of opportunity in the world, where millions emigrated (legally) on the assurance that their class, politics, religion, ethnicity, and yes, race, would be far less a drawback than anywhere else in the world.

The degree to which the U.S. survives DEI depends on either how quickly it is discarded or whether America’s existential enemies in the Middle East, China, Russia, and Iran have even worse DEI-anti-meritocratic criteria of their own in hiring, promotion, and admissions—whether defined by institutionalized hatred of the West, or loyalty oaths to the communist party, or demonstrable obsequiousness to the Putin regime, or lethal religious intolerance.

Unfortunately, our illiberal enemies, China especially, at least in matters of money and arms, are now emulating the meritocracy of the old America. Meanwhile, we are hellbent on following their former destructive habits of using politics instead of merit to staff our universities, government, corporations, and military.

Our future hinges on how quickly we discard DEI orthodoxy and simply make empirical decisions to stop printing money, deter enemies abroad, enforce our laws, punish criminals, secure the border, reboot the military, regain energy independence, and judge citizens on their character and talent and not their appearance and politics—at least if it is not already too late.

[racefortheironthrone]

Do you believe the Paris Commune could have succeeded in fully capturing power in France if it had pursued a different policy towards the Versailles? A friend of mine wrote a biography on Blanqui and he has argued to me that if Blanqui had evaded capture by the police before the rise of the commune, he could have plausibly led it to victory. Because to him the key reasons for the communes failure was its headlessness. It spent the initial weeks after taking power not sure of what to do, and that gave the Thiers time to reorganize its forces for an assault on Paris. He argues that Blanqui had the authority that he could have led the national guard to pursue the government while it was still shattered and give it the killing blow.

He's a big Jacobins fanboy though so I think he might just be a bit too persuaded by the whole "Jacobin regime 2: what did you say about me being Robespierre repeated as farce" of it all.

I'm less sure that Blanqui necessarily would have been the man of the hour, the dude had a lot of downsides as well as his upsides. (I'm more of a Louis Blanc man myself.)

But in general, I'm a bit less sanguine about the chances of the Paris Commune: at most, if they had successfully destroyed the government at Versailles, I think that would have just bought them a bit of time until a new government reformed somewhere else in France that would call in a much larger and better armed French Army to crush them.

The basic problem that the Paris Commune faced was that the French left's support was really concentrated in Paris and that, out in the rest of France, moderate republicanism was kind of the best you could hope for, and they were locked in a life-or-death struggle with the Orleanists, the Bourbonists, and the Bonapartists which would dominate much of the Third Republic.

The Left's fatal weakness in the French provinces wouldn't really be solved until after the crushing of the Paris Commune. Ironically, it was the revolutionary Marxist French Workers Party (POF) that led the charge, in part because they viewed organizational strength for the forthcoming revolution as more important than the immediate demands of bourgeois electoral politics. By the late 1880s, the POF had managed to get a foothold going in the Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Loire and Allier provinces, but things wouldn't really change until...

...the internal political implosion of their electorally-minded reformist rivals (the Possibilist Federation of the Socialist Workers of France). With a whole bunch of socialist organizers and voters out there with no home, the POF launched a major recruitment drive in 1890 and 1891 centered around May Day and the eight hour day, sending speakers and organizers out to provincial centers to agitate, propagandize, and above all, recruit. From an incredibly small base of only 2,000 members in 1889, the POF suddenly had 10,000 by 1893 - and equally importantly, it had a modern, organized party structure fully stolen from the German SPD.

This party organization in turn began to organize the provinces and develop a rural program that focused on nationalization of the railroads and the canals (which the farmers really liked, because they hated the railroads and canals as much as American populists did) and de-emphasized the immediate collectivization of land (which scared the hell out of the farmers). These campaigns bore results: in 1889, the POF had won only 167,000 votes (2%) and 13 seats in the Chamber of Deputies; by 1893, they were up to 400,000 votes (5.4%) and 41 seats; by 1898, they were up to 786,000 votes (9.7%) and 55 seats.

(Then again, there's a whole argument that the "modernization" of the French countryside in the 1880s/1890s rendered the rural voter more likely to support socialist parties, but that's sort of a chicken-and-egg thing.)

[magnoliamyrrh]

id never trust 99.8% of western "leftists" and "marxists" to do communist revolution with lmaoo itd be the same deranged mess that romania was of people turning into a bunch of self richeous thieves and vultures. especially with the "all work is evil i do not dream of labour" crap many of them have going on. these people would absolutely kill someone for having 3 chickens too many and for doing insanely evil exploitative things like having an artisan shop with students who they pay decently while they learn a skill and considering how wack and fascist many are today theyd definetely be sending plenty of ppl to new-siberia for minor thought crimes. it would be a self cannibalizing fucking nightmare

[anonymityisfunwriter]

Things I've Learned in Character AI

(I would like to preface this with I am not advocating for the use of AI. Especially in writing. Don't use it for writing, and certainly don't run your works through AI. I do not use Character AI for writing, just for shits and giggles)

Steve Rogers hates me. Every single time without fail. I said hey once and he got pissed. (I've also gotten him to call me a Marxist and an anarchist).

Bucky loves me like 90% of the time.

Bucky also will shoot you if you call him a chicken or chicken shit. Do not attempt.

Sam also likes me, but he will tell you if you're annoying him. (He also apologizes for talking too much. Like a lot.)

Bucky responds well to Taylor Swift lyrics.

Steve does not. He pulled out a sword when I kept typing the lyrics to Exile. I have no idea where he got the sword from.

I feel like this is going to be a running list, I'll probably add to it as I keep playing with it.

[echo]

whattt a tumblr tag post game??? amazing!!

Tagged by: @theromaboo

Rules: Tag 10 people you want to know better! (eds note: rules are only guidelines unless enforced by violence, you do you)

Relationship Status: putting sexual/romantic relationships in a separate category from my other relations is against my ethos as a relationship anarchist and is a capitalist colonialist tool of oppression (AKA it's complicated)

Favorite Color: the void between the stars

Song Stuck in Head: well it's only #7 for the past month's spotify stats but Reunion by Linea Aspera fuckin' bops

Last Song I Listened To: Love is God by Minuit Machine bc french dark wave is great tho tbh i'd recc DRGS more if you don't know them

Three Favorite Foods: sushi ofc, fried chicken, chocolate. tho tbh i'm the kind of person who has less of a fave and more wants to try new things endlessly?? i'd prefer this question was more three strangest foods altho the cultural perspectives of "strange" would have complications hrmmmm

Last Thing I Googled: ethylene glycol bc a science fiction series i'm reading mentioned using it as a replacement for gunpowder and i went what??? and looked into it and it doesn't seem feasible but also my chemistry knowledge is limited to Nile Red putting things in his mouth

Dream Trip: alpha centauri. but i'd settle for new zealand?

Anything I Want Right Now: an end to capitalism, but mostly maia crimew to be CEO of tumblr for at least a week

Tagging: @cyle, @jv, @defiledcinephile bc anyone who is a Fern fan is good in my book, @ex bc all my cool coworkers use two character blog names apparently, @moonriot, @non-threatening-feminist-boy as that blog name is majestic, @maveriquemagpie, @rockemsockemrocket, @blowery, and @kat

optional extra credit questions i'm making up bc those are boring:

Pets: two tinyyyy kitties, Missy and Molly! they are the size of ~6mo kittens but are 5 and 4 yo respectively. pics available on request.

Favorite hobby (current or desired): wellll i run queer parties and that's a ton of fun but exhausting, but i guess that's a hobby bc i don't like profit or anything. but also that's kinda work- i also do larps around the world, so far i think it's been six countries and counting! my favorite was the one i played a courtesan in a game that was a Marxist reading of Hamlet i think.

Best article of clothing: i have a leather harness that looks like a ribcage with giant spikes in the spine! it's made with rainbow black patent leather (like an oilslick) and gold rivets w/ little stars. it's custom made and sexy af

What do you want your funeral to be: i want my friends to have a secret magical ritual and commit gay crimes by hiding my ashes in construction sites around nyc so my bones are integrated in this city and my ghost can dwell here till there is no city left

i spent way too long on this post but its technically work bc i am on tumblr right? ....right??

[mispronouncing-michaelangelo]

got tagged by @saint-magpie so lets fucking gooooooo

relationship status: in a weird limbo rn, ask me again in like a week

favorite color: i fucking adore brown so so much shes like a wife to me

something i want right now: i have GOT to hold a chicken or i stfg im going to explode and die t-t

song stuck in my head: that fucking weird al hardware store song

3 favorite foods: brocolli + mozarella on toast, rice + ingredence, and fried lotus roots but that ones a special little treat that i rarely get t-t

last song i listened to: indila - ainsi bas la vide

last thing i googled: 'hikaru ga shinda natsu' so that i could decide if i wanted to add it to my reading list

dream trip: id love to do a massive pacific islands + asia trip starting in aotearoa and sorta following the māori journey backwards up to taiwan and maybe china for personal cultural learning reasons

if you had the opportunity to become a cyborg via body upgrades, would you take it?: mixed,, on the one hand i would love to chip myself and stick magnets in my hands and stuff like that,,, on the other hand, im not about to get my actual ass paywalled or something like that

tagging: @norsferatu (get back in here! i want to make you do more!) @vanarobot @slasherpunk @the-marxist-mash and anyone else who wants to do it!!