#mass utopia

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"In the last days of the Soviet regime, dissident artists within the Soviet Union represented its past history as a dreamworld, depicting the crumbling of the Soviet era before it occurred in fact. For this generation, the moment of awakening replaced that of revolutionary rupture as the defining phenomenological experience. Exemplary is a 1983 painting of Aleksandr Kosolapov, The Manifesto, in which, against a martial, red sky and amidst ruins that include a bust of Lenin, three putti try to decipher a surviving copy of Marx’s Communist Manifesto. The dreamer who is still inside the dream of history accepts its logic as inexorable. But at the moment of awakening, when the dream’s coherence dissipates, all that is left are scattered images. The compelling nature of their connection has been shattered.

It is crucial to recognize that the end of the Soviet era was not limited spatially to the territory of the Soviet Union. The Bolshevik experiment, no matter how many specifically Russian cultural traits it developed, was vitally attached to the Western, modernizing project, from which it cannot be extricated without causing the project itself to fall to pieces—including its cult of historical progress. Those who at this stage of awakening attempt the task of political interpretation are not to compare themselves with revolutionary prophets. They do better to approach the dream fragments like soothsayers who read the entrails of animals before a battle, not to predict which army will win, but to decipher what forces of collective fantasy exist to withstand the violence of any army, aiding those forces by exposing the deceptive representations on which every army depends.

“History” has failed us. No new chronology will erase that fact. History’s betrayal is so profound that it cannot be forgiven simply by tacking on a “post-” era to it (postmodernism, post-Marxism). There is real tragedy in the shattering of the dreams of modernity—of social utopia, historical progress, and material plenty for all. But to submit to melancholy at this point would be to confer on the past a wholeness that never did exist, confusing the loss of the dream with the loss of the dream’s realization. The alternative of political cynicism is equally problematic, however, because in denying possibilities for change it prevents them; anticipating defeat, it brings defeat into being. Rather than taking a self-ironizing distance from history’s failure, we—the “we” who may have nothing more nor less in common than sharing this time—would do well to bring the ruins up close and work our way through the rubble in order to rescue the utopian hopes that modernity engendered, because we cannot afford to let them disappear. There is no reason to believe that those utopian hopes caused history to go wrong, and every reason, based on evidence of the abuses of power that propelled history forward, to believe the opposite.

When an era crumbles, “History breaks down into images, not into stories.” Without the narration of continuous progress, the images of the past resemble night dreams, the “first mark” of which, Freud tells us, is their emancipation from “the spatial and temporal order of events.”108 Such images, as dream images, are complex webs of memory and desire wherein past experience is rescued and, perhaps, redeemed. Only partial interpretations of these images are possible, and in a critical light. But they may be helpful if they illuminate patches of the past that seem to have a charge of energy about them precisely because the dominant narrative does not connect them seamlessly to the present. The historical particulars might then be free to enter into different constellations of meaning. The juxtaposition of these past fragments with our present concerns might have the power to challenge the complacency of our times, when “history” is said by its victors to have successfully completed its course, and the new global capitalist hegemony claims to have run the competition off the field.

To be engaged in the historical task of surprising rather than explaining the present—more avant-garde than vanguard in its temporality—may prove at the end of the century to be politically worth our while."

- Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2000. p. 67-69.

[grain-susu]

My favourite!

commissioned done by @ 阿啾沙

[mithliya]

white ppl can be so funny.. “as a white person, i’ve never noticed racism” yes girl we know and yet poc face it regardless

[tanadrin]

Landlords are different from other jobs though, in that their income comes mostly from rents, in a way it doesn’t for say, entrepreneurs.

yes, and landlords as a drag on the economy has been pointed out by economists foundational to the field, like ricardo and smith, but as long as you have private real property of any sort, and as long as leasing that property is legal, you will have some quantity of landlords in your economy

the question is, what specific negative outcomes are you looking at and wish to avoid? because only once you begin to identify those can you begin to make real policy decisions. is not enough housing being built? are rents rising too fast? is it too hard to enter the property market? do you just want to increase the rate of home ownership? these are all, like, operationalizable. you can do something with them.

"landlords are parasites" isn't, really. it has a negative effect in both directions: it raises the hackles of anybody who owns property (which, again, unless you're in favor of mass expropriation and/or collectivization of housing, is something a nonzero number of people in your society will own), and it doesn't suggest any specific policy solution, besides "do things which hurt landlords' interests."

but hurting landlords doesn't actually necessarily help everybody else! there are lots of ways to make life worse for random groups of people that do not, in fact, help society at large. and the policies that do in fact make a difference very often aren't, like, satisfying as revenge. they're boring, unsexy stuff like improving tenant protections, or encouraging tenants' unions, or building social housing, etc., etc.

[claudiosuenaga]

Missa Negra: Religião Apocalíptica e o Fim das Utopias, de John Gray

Pode parecer um paradoxo, mas a política moderna explora o que há de mais arcaico e tenebroso na religião. Em Missa Negra: Religião Apocalíptica e o Fim das Utopias, o filósofo britânico John Nicholas Gray nos mostra que essa subversão é o tema-chave da história recente. Para isso, Gray analisa os conflitos mais destrutivos dos últimos séculos e chega à conclusão de que as religiões políticas exploraram o mito do Apocalipse como uma crença em um evento que mudaria o mundo e que levaria ao fim da história e de todos os seus conflitos.

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Livros que o Deep State não quer que você leia:

✅ "Encuentros cercanos de todo tipo. El caso Villas Boas y otras abducciones íntimas": Amazon.com (envios a todo o mundo desde os EUA): https://amzn.to/3Lh93Lb Amazon.es (envios a todo o mundo desde a Espanha): https://amzn.to/3LlMtBn Amazon.co.uk (envios dentro do Reino Unido): https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/es/Cl%C3%A1udio-Tsuyoshi-Suenaga/dp/B0BW344XF1/ Amazon.de (envios dentro da Alemanha): https://www.amazon.de/-/es/Cl%C3%A1udio-Tsuyoshi-Suenaga/dp/B0BW344XF1/ Amazon.fr (envios dentro da França): https://www.amazon.fr/-/es/Cl%C3%A1udio-Tsuyoshi-Suenaga/dp/B0BW344XF1/ Amazon.it (envios dentro da Itália): https://www.amazon.it/-/es/Cl%C3%A1udio-Tsuyoshi-Suenaga/dp/B0BW344XF1/ Amazon.co.jp (envios dentro do Japão): https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/es/Cl%C3%A1udio-Tsuyoshi-Suenaga/dp/B0BW344XF1/

✅ "As Raízes Hebraicas da Terra do Sol Nascente: O Povo Japonês Seria uma das Dez Tribos Perdidas de Israel?" https://www.lojaenigmas.com.br/pre-venda-as-raizes-hebraicas-da-terra-do-sol-nascente-o-povo-japones-seria-uma-das-dez-tribos-perdidas-de-israel

✅ “Illuminati: A Genealogia do Mal"; "Contatados: Emissários das Estrelas, Arautos de uma Nova Era ou a Quinta Coluna da Invasão Extraterrestre?"; "50 Tons de Greys: Casos de Abduções Alienígenas com Relações Sexuais - Experiências Genéticas, Rituais de Fertilidade ou Cultos Satânicos?"; e "Lua de Pedreiro: A Apoteose do Impossível - As fraudes da Missão Apollo e o lado oculto da NASA", em formato e-book em minha loja no Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/suenaga/shop

[nicklloydnow]

“Leading National Socialists, and most importantly Hitler himself, had an apocalyptic view of the world. This vision was the extreme manifestation of National Socialist religiousness - or of the "political religion" of National Socialism - and is the only plausible explanation for the intention to destroy the Jews, which led to the holocaust. In this chapter these statements will be explained and substantiated.

First of all, it is important to note that the interpretation of National Socialist ideology as "apocalyptic" is not new. As early as 1938, in The Political Religions, Vogelin interpreted the conviction of National Socialists that they belonged to the chosen race and that the Jews, beyond all others, constituted an inferior "counter-race," as the expression of an apocalyptic view of the world. And he identified this view as one of the forms of modern apocalyptic interpretations of the world and history, pointing out that each apocalypse in the history of Europe "also created its own group of symbols for Satan." During the war Sigmund Neuman characterized National Socialism as "messianic,” and following the war Carl Joachim Friedrich described it as "chiliastic." And even Hans Mommsen, who otherwise rejects the concept of "Political religion", confirmed the "chiliastic character of the National Socialist 'world view'" in his seminal article "National Socialism," in Meyers Enzyklopädisches Lexikon (1976). Despite their various shades of meaning, the concepts messianic, chiliastic, and apocalyptic are often used as synonyms; I have chosen to use apocalyptic since it is the more comprehensive term. It is not that I have tried to find the most impressive word to describe the phenomena; objective criteria demonstrate the correctness of placing the political religion of National Socialism in the Occidental tradition of apocalyptic thought, although the movement had separated itself from the tradition's religious roots and introduced new protagonists into the spiritual drama.

(…)

Thus the apocalyptic message was originally for those who longed for redemption because they were oppressed and persecuted, and because their suffering was so extreme that a change for the better no longer seemed possible. The apocalypse did not promise to simply improve the situation, but to radically transform reality and bring redemption through the destruction of the old, imperfect, and degenerate world.

In summary, the main structural characteristic of the apocalypse is the combination of destruction and renewal, of annihilation and redemption. Apocalyptic thinking comes about in times of crisis in the minds of those who, in the entirety of existence - spiritual, social, and political - feel threatened, humiliated, oppressed, and persecuted. These feelings may have a real basis, but it is also possible that they may not accord with the facts, may be exaggerated, and indeed may rely on a false interpretation. But whatever the case, the apocalyptic visionary experiences the world as suffering and longs for redemption. At the same time the world appears to him to be so thoroughly degenerate and evil that he cannot imagine that by changes here and there or by reform anything substantial can be achieved. He believes that redemption can only come through the destruction of the old corrupt world and of those responsible for it. The apocalyptic thinker experiences the crisis as both acute and universal, sees the final judgment on it as inescapable, and believes that radical transformation will take place in the near future.

Thus, it is characteristic of the apocalypse to see first a strict and morally weighted dualism between the profoundly degenerate old world and the perfect world of the future, between the "evil enemy" who is responsible for the present state of things and the elect who, although now just barely alive, will soon triumph over evil; second, the conviction that redemption must be preceded by the destruction of the old world and the annihilation of this evil enemy.

(…)

The absoluteness of the apocalyptic vision makes the unlimited use of force appear necessary. This is in accord with the conception of the approaching final decision that resolves a bitter struggle in an incomparably horrible battle. The strict dualism of the apocalypse, the radical and morally weighted bifurcation between the deficient world and the hoped for new dispensation, is expressed in contrasting images of filth and purity and of darkness and light. The evil enemy is portrayed as a beast, a brutal, treacherous, nauseating and disgusting animal against which the use of violence is fully justified.

(…)

Some of the modern political apocalyptic movements that began with imagined violence also moved to real violence. They developed out of the tradition of religious apocalypse but broke with their roots. For this reason, the following important differences must be borne in mind.

Firstly, in the modern apocalypse it is no longer God who intervenes to bring salvation. This role is now taken by human beings and attributed to them exclusively. The protagonist in the apocalyptic drama is now a nation (as in German nationalism during the era of Napoleon and the First World War), or a social class (as in the Marxist drama of history), or a race (as in National Socialism). The modern political apocalypse is neither of the "left" nor of the "right"; the paradigm can be filled with various ideological content.

Secondly, in the modern apocalyptic interpretation of the world the state of salvation is no longer thought of in terms of a Heavenly Jerusalem but of an earthly paradise. Unlike chiliastic speculation in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period, paradise is not ruled by Christ or one of his representatives, but by a nation or social class, or by a party as the class's avant-garde, or by a race, and a leader as the race's representative. The apocalypse is now completely world-immanent and if it still invokes "God" or the "Almighty" or "Providence," then it is for rhetorical purposes. The inner-worldly apocalypses suggest that a new vision can be realized and that violence will have to be used to establish it. Despite the inner-worldly character of these modern political movements, their structure, language, and content are so similar to the paradigm of religious apocalypse that they are justifiably termed "apocalypses."

(…)

Naturally, the actual transition from imaginary to de facto violence, to massacres and mass murder, requires additional explanation. Two recent noteworthy studies have analyzed in detail the process that led to the 20th century's large scale violence and genocide. The historians Jorg Baberowski and Anselm Doering-Manteuffel compare the murderous terror of Nazi Germany with Stalin's. The French political scientist Jacques Sémelin compares the massacre and genocide of Nazi Germany with those in Bosnia and Rwanda. Both studies show that the transition from imaginary, or indeed proclaimed, violence to actual violence requires several pre-conditions. Among others, the authors identify the following for the mass murder of lews: the 1914-1918 experience of war that had a brutalizing effect on the soldiers and left them numb to mass suffering and dying; the ideological indoctrination following defeat in war, and the legend of having been "stabbed in the back." The authors find the most important pre-condition in spiritual-intellectual pre-requisites - namely, a type of "pre-knowledge" or "context of meaning" whose thought "anticipates" mass murder. For Baberowski and Doering-Manteuffel these pre-requisites include "ideologies of Manichaean salvation,” whereby the criteria for the use of this term is obviously the ideologies' dualistic worldview. Indeed this dualism is the only criteria the authors have for justifying the use of the term "Manichean," for there is no historical connection to the Manichean religion that disappeared in the 14th century. However, in contrast, there is now a 2,000 year uninterrupted tradition of apocalyptic interpretations of the world and history including, beginning in the 18th century, secular political ones. Just a few years prior to Stalin and Hitler developing their worldviews and attaining political power there was an abundance of apocalyptic interpretations of World War I and the nationalist and socialist revolutions that followed. It was in this spiritual milieu that Stalin and Hitler received their ideas; for this reason their views of the world had more to do with the apocalyptic tradition than with Manichaeism.” (pages 117 - 125)

[tavina-writes]

highlighting @watertightvines' tags because it needs to be said:

Like, yeah yeah I get it, we love to shit on China on this hellsite. Have we considered *why* people are doing this for western shows and why they'd do this still even if they *weren't* trying to sell it to places where it'd be censored.

Like, self censorship prior to it reaching a point where there's legal censorship is still. Censorship. And there is something DEEPLY deeply cowardly and disgusting about it and we should consider why it happens perhaps.

Also uh, mayhaps, vote in the election given that the Republican party is current set on destroying any kind of queer rights we have so yeah :/

i’d be really curious to know what percent of queerbaiting is 

a) an intentional marketing scheme to stir interest in the project and attract certain fanbases (lgbtq people and young women) vs. 

b) members of the creative team genuinely wanting to write queer characters but the corporate side of things force them to tone it down but they still leave little hints vs. 

c) they legitimately did not know how gay something would come across

[elbiotipo]

When South Africa dismantled apartheid, it did not end with the expulsion of all white South Africans. They became part of the new South Africa, just without the criminal discriminatory oligarchic powers the apartheid goverment had. When Bolivia recognized its indigenous heritage and became a plurinational state, it did not mean that people of European descent were expelled in masse. It meant the recognition of the previously discriminated indigenous and mestizo people of Bolivia and the beginning of a path of integration and revalidation.

What I mean is that it's ridiculous to think that decolonization inherently means mass suffering and relocation, that's what colonization does. Decolonization is recognizing the crimes of colonization, but more importantly, material, political and social steps to give power and self-determination to the exploited native people who were victims of colonialism and imperialism.

In multicultural societies, you don't go like in that Peter Griffin meme with a skin tone chart and saying 'well, you go back to Europe, you go back to Africa, you stay here'. You build a new society on the paradigm of dignity for exploited people and equality under the law. People are acting like this is some sort of fantastic utopia instead of real initiatives that were done in living memory, with successes and failures, as all such initiatives have. One must ask why are some so insistent that multicultural societies can't thrive, especially when for most of history, societies were indeed like that. Consider why you think like that.

[violayves]

honestly it is really interesting how similar the us and china really are. sometimes i wonder what their control over free speech really is like over there. can it be as bad as tumblr's ceo harassing and mass blocking trans people? is it like us not being able to say palestine and having to use the watermelon emoji? now that i'm an adult i find it really hard to believe that china really is some secret police invested nation whose sole purpose is to destroy america and oppress its citizens. i just can't see them being any worse than us.

[mesetacadre]

107 years ago today an organized group of workers in the Russian Empire decided they had had enough of war, misery, the oppression of women, and of a corrupt democracy that had promised much and changed nothing, the Tsar still in his palaces, the workers still giving their life for a cause foreign to the working class of Europe and the world. Most bolsheviks were industrial workers, with an insufficient formal education, precarious salaries and conditions. The working class in the Russian Empire had tried liberal democracy, had seen its hipocrisy in the months following the election of the provisional government, and understood their historic goal of progressing further beyond the democracy of the landowner, businessman and aristocrat. It wasn't the first time the proletariat had attempted to take power, both worldwide and in the Russian Empire, but this time they were ready, educated, an organized enough.

The armies of 14 imperialist powers combined could not stop the will of a mass of workers that had realized their worth, their potential, and most importantly, their dignity. They no longer had to bow down to paternalism, electoralism, and the capitalists to whom they sold their labor, no armed intervention, no amount of propaganda, no adventurist distraction, could take away from that fact. This isn't a fantasy, it isn't idealistic, it's a historical fact, that revolutions are possible, have happened, succeeded, and that the opportunity presents itself sooner than most expect. The only task at hand is to organize towards it. Agitation, education, an actual dual power structure predicated on a unified will, not on voluntarism and horizontalism.

I understand the topic at hand for the last 2 days and many more to come will be the results of the US election. But the US is not the only liberal democracy that increasingly creates disappointment among the social majority. After all the posting about the various liberals that make up the US electoral environment, it is imperious that nobody falls into despair. Not in a self-care way, not in the way most left-liberals have been talking about, referring to an abstract sense of "preparing", but because of the simple necessity for this election to further erode any popular faith in reformism, whether it's Trump's reforms, Harris' reforms, Bernie's reforms, or Stein's reforms. Wallowing in despair is as useful as placing yet more stake into whoever is wheeled out next to promise even less, in what will most certainly be also called the most important elections of our lifetimes.

Return to the working class of the Russian Empire, of a fractured and hungry China, to the colony of Indochina, to the plantation island that was Cuba. And I urge you to exercise some perspective. These masses of people had suffered more than you for longer than you. Nobody's asking you to feel guilty about your economic position in the world, we're asking you to realize that, for as long as there have been modes of production predicated on the exploitation, division and discrimination of a producing class, there have always been options, better options than sinking into despondent depression. They have managed to cast off their yoke and build towards a society not based on exploitation. They're not utopias, and mistakes have been and will be committed, but they all realized and understood that it's better to commit our own mistakes, than to toil under the rational oppression by another class for any longer.

[traegorn]

So many leftists are accelerationists without critically understanding what mass societal collapse would look like, but they seem to think their leftist utopian will rise up in the ashes anyway.

I mean, if we had societal collapse everyone dependent on medication to live would die.

Because I have type 2 diabetes. And before I was on medication I had already gotten permanent peripheral neuropathy and have blind spots in my vision. I might go blind or lose a limb if the supply chain was disrupted.

And type one diabetics who rely on insulin to live... would just die.

Think about every person you love who required medication. All of that is gone with societal collapse. A bunch of us don't live to see that supposed utopia if society crumbles.

Accelerationists can go fuck themselves.

[komsomolka]

If we relinquish anarcho-liberal fantasies of utopias where we no longer work, if we instead accept that we are workers, if we are able to do so with pride, many realistic victories turn out to be very much within reach. Everywhere that workers already work hard, they simply need to socialize the fruits of their already-socialized labour. Admittedly, reorganizing production isn’t a trivial task. However, the point here is that our social mechanism already offers ample proof that our skills and abilities are in plentiful supply. We already accumulated Alexandrian libraries of scientific knowledge as well as entertainment, and the ability to produce infinitely more without any “help” from capitalists!

Capitalists don’t fear individual rebels. They shower us with such bohemian stories. They fear exactly the opposite: the proliferation of an authentic working-class consciousness that pointedly rejects their “idle rich” lifestyle as everyone’s ultimate ideal. The hatred of “herd mentality” ultimately derives from the aristocratic hatred of the collective wisdom of the underclasses, of their choosing to work together in order to defend themselves from predators that would otherwise pick them off one by one. The project of repurposing this elitist attitude towards utopian goals is a dead end.

If you want to be radical, then, begin by radically rejecting the oldest and most vicious and most widespread bit of ruling class ideology: the idea that there is no wisdom whatsoever to be found in the behaviour of the masses. Reject the idea of “brainwashing,” and insist on seeking the kernel of intelligence and truth and wisdom in everyone’s current actions, even when they seem repulsive or hopelessly short-sighted. Identify where exactly you can intervene, and with whom, in such a way that it dovetails with existing tendencies, but always with an eye to revolution and the prize of a better future. Address yourself to reality in just this way, and you might just begin to change it.

Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing”

[zorciarkrildrush]

I think the essence of what drives me crazy about current Enlightened Online Leftist Discourse Regarding My Life Personally And Whether This Time Killing Me Is Morally Correct (as in, commentary about the latest episode in i/p violence) is this:

I want a free Palestine.

I don't personally know a lot of people that don't! They might bristle at the tagline, because it's co-opted by people who do in fact want them dead, but as soon as I lay out why it's in literally everyone's best interest, how a non-free Palestine is horrific both to the people of Israel and to the people of Palestine, how pragmatically ridiculous the occupation of the west bank and the siege upon Gaza are (and I am a very pragmatic person), they get it. And I don't mean I debate people online about it - this, too, is a ridiculous concept - I mean having, time and time again, the deradicalization conversation with my friends, and colleagues, and my family. Obviously not only now - I've always been a very principled and argumentative Jew, ever since I became an adult - and I've been alive for, I don't know, a dozen flashpoints and operations and wars at this point, and I don't stop being argumentative and loud in peacetime either, but especially now.

But that's not what "from the river to the sea" means.

When you, gentle soul from across the sea, echo this slogan, you are either:

By apathy or will, ignoring that the sentiment cheers for the mass expulsion and killing of Jews. Indeed, any non-Muslim present from the river to the sea. This doesn't even begin to cover how even Muslim arabs still will not be safe under Hamas rule - and trust me, I don't care if a Hamas apologist told you different. A victory for Hamas (And we're ignoring the fact they do not have the military capacity for it - I hope you are aware of the privilege inherent to not understanding military conflicts) means exactly that. No "rule by the people". No socialistic, Palestinian utopia to be had, which is a fantasy I'm seeing alluded to a lot recently. Just an extension of the horrific power structure in Lebanon and Syria, where Hezbollah - friends and allies to Hamas - have been playing a tango for decades of both refusing to participate in actual government and betterment of civilian lives, while still draining their resources and controlling them with no real contest. "From the river to the sea" is not a sentiment for freedom fighting - it's a sentiment for a final solution to the people living here who are either Jewish, or for some Very Strange And Weird Reason would rather not submit to Hamas rule. You know - Israeli Arabs, secular and Muslim and Christian, Druze, Circassians, Bahai, take your pick. Their suffering, and my suffering - you know, a person who made the strategic error of being born in Israel while Jewish, which is inherently problematic and not okay of me - don't matter to you. Just the fantasy of an easy, morally correct cleanse of the land.

Are well aware of all of the above! You just don't care. You either smugly chuckle that I, and anybody else who will die, deserve it - or that it's an acceptable loss for the aforementioned fantasy. "Decolonization is an inherently violent process", you'll say to me, chillingly, before implying I have a summer home in Brooklyn I can just retreat to when things get tough. Israel is basically Rhodesia, a very popular blog here mentioned flippantly, so what's the issue with all of those lily-white Jews fucking off back home before the righteous freedom fighters strike them down? Well. This might be the part I urge you to open a book, or even Wikipedia or any god damn thing that will explain to you these upsetting, dense things you clearly struggle with.

It's easy for me to discount islamophobes. Like, very easy. It's very easy for me to discount insane evangelistics who "advocate for me" simply because I'm a pawn in their religious rapture. It's easy for me to fight against Israeli and Jewish fascists - I have been long before this news item came across your feed, as did the insinuations that some civilian deaths are okay, actually.

It's easy for me for me to see promotions for donations to non-political aid in Gaza. It's easy for me to see the sentiment that hey! Palestinians deserve safe, healthy lives. That they have deserved an independent state, and were unfairly denied one, for decades. It's easy for me to see people saying "You know, the Israeli government is shit, actually, and their actions endanger and promote to the misery of innocents". Because that's right! I wouldn't be voting and protesting and donating for all of these sentiments otherwise!

It's not easy for me to see people, who I honestly held in high regard and saw having well thought out opinions on important matters, inadvertently echo the sentiment that my death is acceptable. That a terrorist organization, who rule over their own territory with fear and violence, are righteous freedom fighters, vox populi, only out to establish a free state. Like hey, their manifesto said otherwise, so it must be all there is - right? That Jews are just hysterical, they can easily live elsewhere - ever since that nasty holocaust business everything's fine abroad. Besides, it was just so long ago who even cares stop talking about it. Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, the Ayatollahs in Iran, the fucking Islamic Jihad - are not interested in freedom. They aren't, and echoing their slogan tells me you are either ignoring that, or support them anyway. If antisemitic rhetoric, half truths and lies by omission work on you today, they would have in any period of time. I'm sorry this makes you uncomfortable. I'm not, not really.

So finally:

Know what your fucking words mean. Have a cursory glance at the history of the MENA and why it's so fucked, one that doesn't boil down to "The Jews, with American help, rolled into where they don't belong". This isn't even a joke. I've seen this braindead, history-revising sentiment repeated so many times, both online and in actual textbooks, that I feel I'm going insane. So many well-meaning people handwringing and assuring each other that repeating genocidal slogans is fine, that calling the i/p conflict "a simple problem" (which means it has a simple solution, right? Just kill the Jews.) is a well-adjusted and intellectual take. That "only the Zionists should die! The rest will be fine :)" I dare you to say that and also give me a correct definition of what Zionism is. Why I, a Jew that advocates for Palestinian statehood and rights and safety and always have, won't also face the wall in your little fantasy.

Freedom to Palestine. Peace in the middle east, fucking yesterday.

A curse and a plague on those who don't want either of those, and just want to cheer on the death of "the other side".

A curse and a plague upon you, when you tell me, smugly, from somewhere safe and far away, "from the river to the sea".

[forevergulag]

The proletariat needs the state — this is repeated by all the opportunists, social-chauvinists and Kautskyites, who assure us that this is what Marx taught. But they “forget” to add that, in the first place, according to Marx, the proletariat needs only a state which is withering away, i.e., a state so constituted that it begins to wither away immediately, and cannot but wither away. And, secondly, the working people need a "state, i.e., the proletariat organized as the ruling class". The state is a special organization of force: it is an organization of violence for the suppression of some class. What class must the proletariat suppress? Naturally, only the exploiting class, i.e., the bourgeoisie. The working people need the state only to suppress the resistance of the exploiters, and only the proletariat can direct this suppression, can carry it out. For the proletariat is the only class that is consistently revolutionary, the only class that can unite all the working and exploited people in the struggle against the bourgeoisie, in completely removing it. The exploiting classes need political rule to maintain exploitation, i.e., in the selfish interests of an insignificant minority against the vast majority of all people. The exploited classes need political rule in order to completely abolish all exploitation, i.e., in the interests of the vast majority of the people, and against the insignificant minority consisting of the modern slave-owners — the landowners and capitalists. The petty-bourgeois democrats, those sham socialists who replaced the class struggle by dreams of class harmony, even pictured the socialist transformation in a dreamy fashion — not as the overthrow of the rule of the exploiting class, but as the peaceful submission of the minority to the majority which has become aware of its aims. This petty-bourgeois utopia, which is inseparable from the idea of the state being above classes, led in practice to the betrayal of the interests of the working classes, as was shown, for example, by the history of the French revolutions of 1848 and 1871, and by the experience of “socialist” participation in bourgeois Cabinets in Britain, France, Italy and other countries at the turn of the century. All his life Marx fought against this petty-bourgeois socialism, now revived in Russia by the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties. He developed his theory of the class struggle consistently, down to the theory of political power, of the state. The overthrow of bourgeois rule can be accomplished only by the proletariat, the particular class whose economic conditions of existence prepare it for this task and provide it with the possibility and the power to perform it. While the bourgeoisie break up and disintegrate the peasantry and all the petty-bourgeois groups, they weld together, unite and organize the proletariat. Only the proletariat — by virtue of the economic role it plays in large-scale production — is capable of being the leader of all the working and exploited people, whom the bourgeoisie exploit, oppress and crush, often not less but more than they do the proletarians, but who are incapable of waging an independent struggle for their emancipation. The theory of class struggle, applied by Marx to the question of the state and the socialist revolution, leads as a matter of course to the recognition of the political rule of the proletariat, of its dictatorship, i.e., of undivided power directly backed by the armed force of the people. The overthrow of the bourgeoisie can be achieved only by the proletariat becoming the ruling class, capable of crushing the inevitable and desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie, and of organizing all the working and exploited people for the new economic system. The proletariat needs state power, a centralized organization of force, an organization of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population — the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and semi-proletarians — in the work of organizing a socialist economy.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The State And Revolution

[nicklloydnow]

“"And the people?" it will be asked. The thinker or the historian who employs the word without irony disqualifies himself. It is all too clear what "the people" are destined for: to suffer events and rulers' whims, lending themselves to the schemes that weaken and overwhelm them. Every political experiment, however "advanced," is performed at the people's expense, is carried out against the people: the people bear the stigmata of slavery by divine or diabolic decree. No use wasting your pity: the people's cause admits of no recourse. Nations and empires are formed by the people's indulgence of iniquities of which they are the object. No head of state, no conqueror fails to scorn the people; but the people accept this scorn and live on it. Were they to cease being weak or victimized, were they to disappoint their destiny, society would collapse and with it history itself. Let us not be overoptimistic: nothing in the people permits us to envision such a splendid eventuality. As they are, the people represent an invitation to despotism. The people endure their ordeals, sometimes solicit them, and rebel against them only to rush into new ones, more horrible than the old. Revolution being their one luxury, they fling themselves into it, not so much to derive certain benefits from it or to improve their lot, as to acquire for themselves, too, the right to insolence, an advantage which consoles them for their habitual setbacks, but which they immediately lose once the privileges of chaos are abolished. Since no regime assures their salvation, the people adapt themselves to all and to none. And from the Flood to the Last Judgment, all they can claim is to fulfill their mission honestly: to be vanquished.” (pages 45, 46)

[twenty-qs]

I find it SO interesting how Viktor and Ekko present different versions of an “underground utopia.” It represents their different philosophies of technology as well as their approach to environmentalism.

On the one hand, we have Viktor. He believes science will save us, specifically science that augments the human form. I think a lot about the hex claw as his vision of “improving lives”—because honestly, Heimerdinger was right. That thing is a blatant safety hazard. It is not ready for a mass rollout. Also, the only thing it would accomplish is making the exploitation of labor in the Undercity more efficient—it makes the individual more productive, and as Jayce puts it, enables the individual to work longer and harder, while doing nothing to actually improve the working conditions and rights of the laborer. Everybody knows what happened after the well-intentioned invention of the cotton gin, right? But Viktor was blind to this because he had spent so long separated from life in Zaun, because of his desperate ambition, and because he does genuinely believe that science is Good. Especially science that augments the human body’s capabilities.

This carries over to his Herald arc. “The goal of evolution is to supersede nature.” His idea of a utopia is a world where the pains and horrors of the human body are obsolete—where bio-engineered plants can flourish, where violence doesn’t exist simply because nobody thinks to engage in it. He’s the type who would look at a chemical spill and say, hey, we can engineer bacteria that can break the chemicals back down to something safe. It’s great, it’s a good thing. But it doesn’t address root causes, it just enables people to keep spilling those chemicals. It remains to be seen exactly what the price of his utopia was, but it’s notable that his version of “superseding” nature is fundamentally unsustainable. Once Viktor dies, once he takes his power and inspiration and knowledge away, the whole commune dies.

On the other hand, you have Ekko. He also builds a non-violent utopia in the middle of the Undercity with a culture centered around nature. But his idea of utopia is living with nature, stewarding it, taking only enough to live by and paying forward with the rest. His technology is simply part of the tree’s ecosystem. The hoverboard is explicitly inspired by the firelights. Bugs play a central role in the ecosystem by helping to pollinate plants across large distances. Ekko’s people use the technology to move around the tree to help take care of it, and to move across the Undercity and spread their ideology. He doesn’t interfere with or supersede nature. He sort of just—shepherds it. And when Ekko disappears, the Firelights are seen functioning perfectly well without him. That’s what sustainability means.

Ekko focuses on social inequities of the impact of technology. If he saw a chemical spill, he’d go to whoever spilled it and try to make them stop. Root causes.

Ideally they’d work together. After all, Ekko can’t help people who are too far gone on Shimmer. But I’ll be very interested to see if we get some Ekko and Viktor interactions in act 3.