#which usamericans as a whole do not
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already seeing bluewavers co opt the british and french elections to browbeat people into voting for the "diet" genocide grandpa this year, completely neglecting to think about the fact that these countries operate with ENTIRELY different electoral systems. parliamentary elections and usamerican presidential elections could not be more different from each other lol these are not the same. "strategic voting" ONLY works in governments that use parliamentary systems where parties can form coalitions and runoff elections occur.
#if ur gonna act like voting is the only option for changing stuff u should at least actually have an understanding of how elections work#which usamericans as a whole do not#if ur gonna vote then vote green vote socialist pick someone who doesnt make you sick i promise its not a sin#also uk labour is not a good party at all dont get it twisted
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lets say hypothetically that i wanted men to die and suffer for all time
#which is more than the money made annually by the 50 biggest companies in the world btw#apparently icelandic women went on an unpaid labour strike in the 70s and it brought the whole country to a standstill can we pLEASE bring#this back!!#a;so the countries with the smallest divides#it isnt that the men do more#its countries with better social care etc#WHICH MEANS the gap still exists#just becomes a class AND gender gap#the average USamerican woman spends more than 4h a day doing unpaid work#which is literally like a second job#imagine what u coudl do with an extra four hours in ur day
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as far as christian-themed art goes I'm of the opinion that you cannot meaningfully appropriate mainline western catholicism (it's a massively powerful branch of a religion that has been spread by imperialism and that actively seeks out converts as a core tenet. how could you appropriate it?) but that it is possible to engage with it shallowly and that that's fair game to make fun of. I will not be taking questions at this time
#bolo speaks#which isn't to say that you need to be personally connected to a specific branch to make good art about it#I think sincerity and research are key there#but I was just listening to lingua ignota (having a normal one) and thinking how funny it was#that she was raised catholic but as an adult artist her whole thing is usamerican evangelical protestant imagery and ideas#most people who crib elements of forms of christianity they weren't raised with for their art#are ex-protestants ribbing on catholicism. I think it's neat to see it the other way around#on a related note you can't meaningfully appropriate usamerican-style evangelical protestantism either#and I don't think we make enough freaky gay art about that#I want tumblrinas to bring the energy they do to st sebastian to whatever tortured ideas of gender are being cooked up in missouri right no#...though maybe I say that because I watch a lot of fundie fridays
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#so im gonna be a lil bitch on main for a minute#ive been offline for a while#pretty much absent from all my socials#im in a pickle financially like i have no money anywhere#my credit cards are maxxed#my bank account is negative 400 dollars#im getting 20 dollars less in disability benefits a month without a clear reason for the witholding#granted its only 20 bucks less but that still makes a huge difference when thats my ONLY source of income#AND i am moving into a new apartment which should be an exciting experience finally moving out of my parents house and on my own and all BUT#even with the voucher program i would need an additional 600 to be able to afford my rent share and utilities#on top of being negative 400 dollars a month so now thats -1000#WHICH end result and the crux of this whole rant#i can no longer help#like i am fucking useless right now and people are literally dying#i have many unanswered asks from gazans right now that I cannot even help bc im so broke#it feels really bad bruv like reallybad#feels like absolute shit#and it ust feels so wrong to ask for help when others need it more#like i dont think i could do that#wtf man#is it me upset that my entire disability check goes to bills to the point where i overdraft every month? yeah sure#my art does not sell and ive tried everything! like it just DOES NOT sell#and it all kinda boils down to me not having any sort of following online#i just breached 200 followers here after 13 years on this website#most are inactive blogs from years ago so i maybe have like... 10 active followers?#whiny usamerican rant over for now#delete later
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I think australian high schools are treated the same way usamerican colleges are
#okay hear me out#universities differ based on what degrees they offer but every uni here is good for something#whereas it’s what high school you go to that influences your leaving mark and people get all weird about those#to the point where literal 10 year olds are doing tests and stuff to try get into the best school or a scholarship to a private one#what area you’re in (as in for which school) legitimately influences house prices as parents will move into the area just for a school#and idk some of these things seem to be similar to what usamericans do for colleges#and idk lowkey. at least in those situations the kids are 17-18 rather than 10-12#like we’re pretty chill about universities. but at what cost?#fuck the whole system honestly I’m sick of watching jt#and as for the leaving mark. it kinda influences what degree you can get into. but you can basically get in anyway if you don’t get it#you just have to do a year of something else first. idk why people don’t get it
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sometimes you read a post and you think to yourself holy fucking shit do usamericans really live like this????????? honestly the insane behaviours I learn from posts saying stuff like "this [thing] [that the post talks about like it's normalized/common] is fucked up" is absolutely nuts
#i am obviously not going to mention this in the original post in any way. but this is because#i just read that post about how 'peoples reaction to seeing a person walking with a white cane is either fearful or agressive'#and obviously i am noone to say anything about the topic. seeing as i dont use nor am close to anyone who uses a white cane.#but. i have seen plenty of people using white canes out in the streets in my life. and a few i see/saw quite frequently#like both of us walking on the same street regularly for a while#which of course doesnt make me anyone with enough information to have an opinion about that post i read#but never in ky fucking life have i seen *anyone* react the way that post described to someone walking with a white cane#and i seriously think its just because usa is so fucked up and usamericans have so many hang ups about people with disabilities#the whole 'but are you REALLY disabled or are you just faking it' bullshit theyre obsessed with#but seriously. people here see someone walking down the street with a white cane and they just. move out of the way#theyre not 'eithr scared or agressive'#ive seen people who're in a hurry get impatient‚ hell im pretty sure ive been that person once. but they just fucking wait#or find a way to walk around them. or something.#ive seen kids get curious about it qnd i remember when I was a kid and cueious the first time i saw someone w a white cane#walking to school and i asked my dad about it. i also remember being a kid and not getting out of the way fast enough and#lightly bumping into a person w a white cane#anyways my point is. im not saying theres no people who're shitty about it here i al sure there are#and i know for a fact that blind people do suffer from discrimination here and ut fucking sucks#but. nothing at all like that post describes. im pretty sure thats just. usamerican bs. or not bs but. sucking really bad. or smth#mine#me#personal
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I guess the thing about Godzilla is that it represents a massive national trauma which eviscerated nature and the human soul, but the USA versions fall somewhere on the spectrum between "vaguely about 9/11 or recent natural disaster" and "giant monster smashy smash." I think that stems from trying to conceptualize Godzilla as representing a particular and isolated instance of disaster and translate that into something of a similar nature in the USA.
But the real deep down soul death and national trauma in the USA isn't anything recent, you can't point out something uniquely bad like an atomic bomb. Really the kaiju for the USA needs to be symbolic of how this whole place is an infinite recursive system of devouring its population, starting from colonization and going right up through to the present day. The crucial difference is that if a kaiju was to represent the deep, unhealed, and still bleeding scar at the heart of the nation, it has to by definition be some ancient dead thing which rises on the anguish of everyone consumed in the name of this country and burns it into the ground. There's not an easy way to make a USAmerican kaiju because the only way to do so accurately means the kaiju has to be the protagonist, and ultimately has to show how much the people in the USA are unified when the hyperwealthy and our government are destroyed.
Who is gonna make that?
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If you are usamerican and someone gets frustrated that usamericans have no clue about most of the major atrocities their country committed, and you feel attacked, you can at any point just google it and shut up.
Yeah ok, someone brought to your attention that you should've known this shit and you didn't. You're probably a bit upset, a bit ashamed, a bit guilty, you probably feel a bit attacked. That's fine. You can just think "Oh I probably should've made an effort to know about things like this if I am to consider myself progressive or leftist. I could simply google it or I could ask OP to give some recommended reading on the subject. I am going to educate myself and move on." or you can at least simply recognise that at the end of the day you don't really care and move on. You do not have to go "you don't understand how bad the us education system is, they don't teach you how to wipe your ass in school!! also I'm literally neurodivergent which means I am incapable of taking my eyes off of fandom for the 5 whole minutes it would take for me to at least read one article about this."
Why do you feel the need to endlessly be the victim? Why do you have to act like a clown? If you didn't know, you can just recognise that you probably should've known, take the L, educate yourself and move on.
Do you think there's many countries that mention their atrocities in their history lessons? Do you think many countries talk about US history and atrocities other than the ones that experience said atrocities? And yet people still fucking know.
This information hasn't even been suppressed in decades but it apparently doesn't need to be since most of the US population isn't bothered enough to look it up, and when someone is frustrated with you about that fact, you'd rather double down and throw a tantrum than educate yourselves.
You cannot tell me you want anything progressive or left or even socialist and yet you vocally refuse to do the barest fucking minimum of effort to know anything about the fucking country you live in or the role it has geopolitically.
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The thing about comparing various political candidates to Hitler is not only that you look like an idiot, but Hitler is dead. The original Nazis are dead or pushing over 90 years old. While we can argue about how successful desnazification was, Nazi Germany was crushed and defeated. Almost a century ago.
Fascism still exists as an idea. Neo-nazism exists as an idea. Fascism is dangerously on the rise today. But these aren't dead nazis rising from the tomb, with the possible exception of the AFD (and even that is arguable). They are the result of modern, current dynamics that are happening right now. Why do you think we see things that for Hitler would be heresy, like Slavic neonazis or white supremacists supporting Israel? Because they are not ghost nazis marching from the 1940s, they're new currents of fascist and ideological allies that have been born from the current conditions of today.
In Argentina, we see the agrarian landowner conservatives allying with the libertarian movement which has found ways to revindicate the murderous military dictatorships to the youth. In the United States, we see the neoconservatives who support the military-complex with the alt-right, the evangelical Dominionists, and a current of white supremacism that has it's roots in the KKK rather than Hitler. And so with other countries. Every country has it's own roots of fascism and it's own horrible expressions, but actual nazis or rather neo-nazis, while present everywhere, aren't the dominant enemy right now.
(in fact, the current expansion of white supremacism is, at is root, almost completely Usamerican in ideological origin, as the US exports it's products and culture, it also exports it's ideological extremists)
To understand and combat fascism one has to understand how it manifests in different periods and places, and how the whole spectrum of the right, while broadly allied in the defense of the current capitalist/imperialist system, has many different currents on it that require different approaches.
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The US presidential elections are upon us (just in time to herald in the next US presidential election cycle) and although I am not USAmerican, I will be affected by its outcome, so I thought I'd chime in on one specific point. I hear you guys have a Green party. That's cool, I vote Green-Europe literally every election, they're the party I align myself with on the most issues last I checked. I get to do that because elections in France worked on a two-turn basis, where if no clear majority is defined on the first turn, the two best scoring parties move onto a second turn to determine the most popular candidate. So in essence I get to vote for my niche, borderline one-issue party because I know it won't affect the end result, which is invariably left vs far right these days, while showing in the first turn's result that environmental and european questions are bankable campaign promises to whoever does end up winning. Y'all don't get to do that. Like nevermind that Jill Stein sounds like a cunt to begin with, if you're voting green in the US you might as well vote red because you're just splitting the democrat vote, aka the side that isn't talking about sending the military to arrest political opponents the day after the election results are in. Vote democrat, complain the whole time (it's actually encouraged), and enjoy being able to complain because you did. The other side will probably make being a cuck a federal crime or something and throw you in jail instead.
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The Jewish people are also indigenous to that land. The word Jew came from “the kingdom of Judah.”
Both groups have indigenous claim to the land. Connection to land does not expire over time.
Israel’s current government and leader should not be in power but that shouldn’t erase anyone’s claim to the history of the land.
Ok but you really don't understand what western colonialism (especially settler colonialism) to send me this. It's not *just* about connection to the land. It's about your relationship with colonialism and where you lie within the hierarchy of colonialism. Indigeniety is not some abstract concept in the way of emotional or religious connection solely. Colonialism relies on specific standards of suppression and control which Israel fulfills. I never said anywhere on here that Jewish people don't have a connection to Palestine. I'm saying the settler colonial project of Israel has no right to exist and settlers do not have a right to a land they live on as a result of violent dispossession.
This message equates judiasm and Jewish people with the idea of Israel which is an inherently violent thing to do. It's too narrow minded to say "well these people have a right to this land also" without addressing how Israel came to be and how it maintains its current power. You cannot erase the context of British and usamerican imperialism especially when discussing Israel and you must examine it through that lens to make any meaningful analysis of the plight of Palestinians.
Land is political. It represents many things such as culture, farming, economics, so on. All of these things are taken and used by the state of Israel and western colonialism as a whole to further its goal of complete subjugation. There is no just or moral or even sustainable way to maintain the state of Israel without completely erasing (or attempting to) the population in which it wishes to disposses. It just doesn't make sense to attribute it to governmental factors alone when the very essense of colonization is that it is the complete takeover of a land AND its people.
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sorry for coming in with a stupid question but as a person thats really against "vote blue no matter who" i think all the voting posts are getting to me, especially from all my friends who i trust have a good heart. i just cant feel good voting for kamala or be confident that would do any real good but im starting to get scared bc this is different from voting uncommittted in primaries. i just wanted to hear if you had any thoughts about this or your opinion on "harm reduction" voting (which i kind of think is bs). sorry for coming into ur inbox with this, and thank yo for reading regardless of if you answer ❤️ your blog is like a breath of fresh air honestly
I know this ask was in good faith but it blows my mind how white people have to be re convinced every day that Arab lives matter as much as theirs do and that the concept of “harm reduction” is obsolete in the face of all those innocent Palestinians dying. “This is different” no it’s not. It’s actually going to be worse w Kamala Harris, bc they’re going to use misogyny/racism/misogynoir etc etc to justify why you should vote for someone who served under a genocider. It’s not any “different” and white usamericans are using the buzz around this whole thing to convince themselves that it is
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AITA for advising a woman to get married?
Maybe I'm digging my own grave because this website is very US centric but I'm hoping you see where I'm coming from. I (mid 20s M) come from a culture where arranged marriage is the norm. I have this friend Maya (early 20s F) who also comes from a similar culture, but the difference is that hers values consent more, whereas where I live, only the parents have a say in the matter. We also have a USAmerican friend Jade (late 20s F) who will make an appearance at the end.
Maya is a sex repulsed Ace, and she kept saying she will stay single forever. I know what the situation for women in her country is like, it would be very difficult to live without a husband. One day she made a vent post saying how her parents keep asking her to reconsider, that they are worried about her being alone for the rest of her life, and her father is worried about who will financially support her after he dies.
She didn't come out to her parents, no use of doing it since they won't even understand what Asexuality is. All she did say that she refused to marry a man she wasn't in love with, and implied she will never fall for one. She's trying too hard to prove she can be an independent woman.
Her family, out of concern, told her that marriage isn't about love. She can marry someone who she is compatible with and get along just fine. That many people don't end up married to the love of their lives and even if they do, they end up losing the spark anytime but stay because they built a loving home together.
I don't find this a bad thing. Stability is very important in marriage. I mean sure, I wish I could marry the love of my life, but if my parents decided that my next door neighbor would be my wife, I would go along with it because that's just how things are where I live.
I told Maya this and she got upset with me. She said my case was different because I'm a guy (??) And because I was hetero.
I told her to value her culture more, and she has the advantage over me because she can actually CHOOSE her spouse. She got angry and said I wasn't being considerate of her feelings, and she'd rather die than be touched by a man, which frankly is making me worried.
I told her she wasn't being realistic. She is fine for now, but she will suffer in the future. Being single in our cultures is very difficult and she needs to give up. She replied with long paragraphs about how she doesn't care. I say this because I care about her as a friend, and her parents from what she described are good people too and they care about her too. She doesn't appreciate it and thinks she can live alone for the rest of her life. Unlike the west, roommates arrangements aren't available here. If she loses her family, she becomes dependent on relatives who may or may not be available. Frankly I think she's very influenced by the western lifestyle which will get her nowhere in real life. And she's disabled and works a minimum wage too.
Maya stopped talking to me for days. The whole discussion was a on a public post so by the time our mutual friend Jade woke up (different time zones) she read the whole post and came to scream at me in DMs. Jade was Ace herself, she told me I was being sexist and acephobic. I told Jade that wasn't my intention but she should stay out of our business because she can't relate to our cultures and isn't being helpful to Maya, and she has it easy because she has the resources available that allow her to be independent.
AITA for wanting my friend to realize she's being unrealistic and things won't work for her in the future?
What are these acronyms?
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That post you made about Harry Potter and how to not financially support and fund the franchise and put more money in Joanne's pockets felt like a lie because I swear I got the impression that even that wasn't allowed when the whole thing started
To be clear; I stopped. Completely. I compartmentalized it all and just stopped interacting with anything Harry Potter online whatsoever. But I always wished it would be fine to still be able to do certain fandom things without supporting her, but people were saying that even using the tag or reading the fanfiction or making fanart was still supporting the ip and not letting it die completely as a topic on the internet was indirectly putting money in her pockets.
It wasn't until I came across a post from a queer woman from somewhere in the global south with heavy OCD and intrusive thoughts or something like that, commenting on how hostile of a thing it became for someone of her affliction; the way people were treating it like do or die. Pointing out that no matter how much trans people and allys cut off their support of her, she has other large means of income that we won't be able to touch, and there will still always be transphobic homophobic Harry Potter fans that will continue to support her actively, putting that money in her pockets. Another thing she mentioned was the treatment of Harry Potter and Joannes bigotry in contrast to the treatment of FNAF and the creators bigotry. And lastly something about the USAmericanized nature of it? I don't really remember that part but I think I understood it at the time I read it (maybe it was something about all the other countries the IP is popular in who are probably more conservative and unaware or caring of the issues with her who will still put money in her pockets, or maybe it was something about American fans fixating and posing the support of her as the ultimate battlefield of Trans Rights to other queer and trans individuals trying to be quiet fans who are facing Much Worse in their countries)
Anyways after that I briefly started reading ao3 fanfic again, just put a filter for anything before 2019 or so, and then my interest more gently fizzled out.
I can't remember what my point is anymore, maybe just to bring these arguments to your attention(also I am not arguing against the financial boycott or ending of support for this woman through her ip).
Harry Potter will never stop earning money. That's just the flat reality of it; I mean, look at the likes of Elvis and the original Sherlock Holmes books and every other 'dead' media that's still earning money. Short of making Harry Potter an illegal piece of media, yes, there will still always be a number of people giving her money.
The goal is to give her less money. To turn Harry Potter from a prominent, profitable cashcow into a defunct piece of media that only select groups are still clinging to. To make it so that JK Rowling has to choose between paying her bills and funding anti-trans movements.
When something stops bringing in a certain amount of profit, studios start looking elsewhere. When a cashcow starts drying up, they stop trying to milk it as hard. Which in turn means less productions for JK Rowling to collect her pocketmoney from.
What would you rather; JK Rowling getting $100,000 or JK Rowling only getting $10,000?
Something is better than nothing. Damage reduction is better than open exposure. If everyone just rolled over and gave up because "things will keep happening anyway" the world will literally be a rancid, fetid wasteland of bigotry and violence.
I'd much rather watch JK Rowling fizzle out into a bitter old wench sustained only by the dogged support of other stubborn bigots than watch people willingly disregard and condone bigotry because its "easier" and "she'll be a bigot anyway."
I'd much rather JK Rowling only have $10,000 to donate to shitty movements over $72,000. Shitty movements can do a lot less with a lot less money.
#myfandomrealitea#sephiroth speaks#fandom#proship#proshipping#discourse#reality#HP#harry potter#anti harry potter#jk rowling#bigotry#tw: bigotry discussion#transphobia#lgbt
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yo i really like your content and agree with you on most things but i don't really know what you mean with that last one. my friends from ukraine both oppose the war's existence but would rather not be violently annexed by an imperial power so of course they, with little other options, support resistance efforts.
it's really hard for me to understand what you're going for because if ukraine stopped fighting back it'd just get taken by russia. maybe i just have bad brainfog, but it's hard to understand what you're asking us to do and believe. should we try and take out both the russian and american imperialist powers at once? but that's unrealistic and unlikely to happen in the near future, no matter how much i personally support it, which i do.
i guess my question is, what's an actual realistic thing we should support in the meantime? we can't just pretend that somehow revolution will take out both american and russian imperialist interests immediately, so. it's like, well yes we should have a better world playing by better rules, but how do we do the right thing when we are bound by the rules now.
i have friends who have family who died in the war, and sometimes it feels like bloggers i otherwise trust say things that sound suspiciously close to "ukraine should stop this pointless fighting and give up." which i am aware isn't your intention, and i want to be an effective anti imperialist and have the correct and informed opinions on stuff like this, but i am having a very hard time understanding what you are trying to say.
i really promise i am not a concern troll or nato apologist or anything, i just also have personally been struggling with what to support and how to save innocent lives. i hate war and i wish we could magically create a situation in which ukraine didn't have to rely on horrible things for self defense. i just don't know what to do or believe because my friends would rightfully hate me if i said ukraine should stop defending itself.
i mean, first off: don't worry, you obviously don't sound like a concern troll or a nato apologist. this is an eminently reasonable question -- healed's law strikes again. & i certainly don't blame you for worrying that marxist-leninists are apologists for russian imperialism, because unfortunately many self-proclaimed marxist-leninists have been deceived by the frankly paper-thin figleaf of 'denazificaiton'--even as putin, puppet of the russian bourgeoisie denounces lenin & the bolsheviks & the soviet union with every speech he makes. it sucks!
first of all, i think the important thing here and the central point of disagreement is on what constitutes 'ukraine'. liberals and nationalists alike consider nations to be fundamentally one whole: that all the people of ukraine together constitute 'ukraine', and so 'ukraine as a whole' has consistent interests, and acts as a one--the ukrainian government represents this unitary ukraine armed forces of ukraine fight for this ukraine.
but the marxist analysis of the nation is completely different. from the marxist perspective, the nation is split across class lines. ukraine is not 'ukrainians', but in fact 'the ukrainian working class' and 'the ukrainian bourgeoisie'. now, of course, there are further contradictions even within these classes--there is a faction of pro-Russian bourgeoisie, and a faction of pro-Western bourgeoisie. but remember, we must apply the same analysis to these countries too: the 'pro-Russian' Ukrainian bourgeoisie do not wish to submit to Russia's working class, but to their oligarchs. the 'pro-Western' Ukrainian bourgeoisie are not opening the nation's economy to the European and USAmerican working class, but to their bourgeoisie. so the bourgeoisie are, in every case--even when split among themselves--only ever in league with other sectors of the bourgeoisie.
so, through this lens, how do we see the war in ukraine? well, i think that the union of communists in ukraine must have a far better handle on this than i, because they're living through it: so i will quote their analysis and then elucidate on it in relation to your question.
The puppet regime in Ukraine participates in this war in the interests of Ukrainian oligarchs, who have made themselves completely dependent on big capital of the West and NATO, who have turned the Ukrainian army into an advanced military unit of the Western bourgeoisie. The war is not about "the Ukrainian nation," not about "the Ukrainian language and culture," not even about "European values". It is a war for the united interests of the Ukrainian and international bourgeoisie, which coincide in their desire to destroy the economic and political power of the Russian bourgeoisie. No interests or rights of Ukrainian workers are protected by this war. Both Ukrainian and Russian workers in this war have only the right and obligation to go to the front and die so that one group of the world bourgeoisie defeats the other and gains more monopoly rights to oppress the workers, both in their own country and in the defeated countries. […] For the working class of Ukraine, this imperialist war has the most tragic consequences. It lies on the shoulders of the workers the role of "cannon fodder" and the inevitable deaths in the fighting, mass impoverishment, unemployment, complete restrictions of rights and freedoms for the sake of protecting the interests of the Ukrainian big bourgeoisie, the oligarchs and the interests of the Western bourgeoisie in destroying and robbing Russia and seizing its natural resources. This will inevitably be accompanied by the destruction and seizure of Ukrainian industrial and natural resources, including in the case of Russia's success. The same fate awaits the vast majority of the Ukrainian petty bourgeoisie. The big bourgeoisie has already bought its children out of the war and taken them abroad, just as it took its capitals out. But that is not the main point: the big bourgeoisie is profiting from the war under Zelensky, just as it profited under Poroshenko: stealing finances, making money from reselling weapons, supplying the army with uniforms, food, repair work, humanitarian aid, etc. In war the bourgeoisie makes billions of dollars, while the mobilized people have to be equipped and fed by relatives, friends and volunteers – which is clearly not enough. As in peacetime, but even more brazenly, the bourgeoisie is getting rich off the bones of the working class!
—Union of Communists of Ukraine, On the War and the tasks of the working class
that is to say--the russian army, which is funded by the russian bourgeoisie, is fighting to establish the exclusive right of that russian bourgeoisie to oppress and exploit the ukrainian people. meanwhile, the ukrainian army, funded by the ukrainian and western bourgeoisie more broadly, are fighting to maintain the exclusive right of the ukrainian and western to oppress and exploit the ukrainian people. already, ukrainian public assets are being put up in a fire sale for western buyers--(and of course, should russia's offensive have been as succesful as they'd hoped and this war already over, they'd be doing much the same thing for the benefit of buyers among the russian bourgeoisie).
this is what is meant by 'inter-imperialist' war. it's easy to say 'well, the ukrainian army isn't imperialist--it's fighting for the nation's independence!' but in terms of real economic interests there is no 'the nation'. the ukrainian army isn't fighting for the ukrainian working class (which of course includes themselves!)--the government that pays them and the states that equip them wouldn't do so out of any sense of interest in the well-being of the working class. we can see this clearly as the western imperialist powers now start to equip the ukrainian army with depleted uranium shells, which will poison swathes of ukrainian land and cause sickness and death among the people this army purports to be fighting for. the goal of the ukrainian state and army isn't to protect any working class people--only to protect its total right to the economic exploitation of those people.
it's this that the ukrainian state is afraid of when it fights not to cede territory, not the (surely real, to be clear!) brutality from the russian state that would face the inhabitants of any such ceded territory. in fact, funding nazi groups that operated in those areas before the war and will surely continue to operate afterwards, the ukrainian govenrment makes it clear that brutality against the inhabitants of its eastern provinces alone does not phase it, so long as the ukrainian bourgeoisie (& their western bourgeoisie patrons) continue to be the ones profiting off the region's people and resources.
elsewhere in the article the UCU observe the same thing that can be observed by those outside of ukraine by listening to the words of zelenskyy and the ukrainian government's allies--that even the goal of 'protecting its people' [read: protecting exclusive economic/extractive access to those people] has been sidelined by the dream of a total or partial obliteration of the russian bourgeoisie entirely--not for any moral or anti-imperialist reason, but simply so that the ukrainian/western bourgeoisie no longer have competition.
[...] the goals of warfare are changing. If at the first stage of the civil conflict the Ukrainian regime aimed to restore state control over the Ukrainian territories, where this control was lost, then at the second stage it aimed to destroy Russia as a condition for the existence of Ukraine.
—ibid.
so--now that i've really dug into the precise nature of this war and why it's being waged on both sides, i'll answer some of your points directly:
if ukraine stopped fighting back it'd just get taken by russia "ukraine should stop this pointless fighting and give up."
both of these positions, both the one you hold yourself and the one you worry about others expressing, assume that what the ukrainian armed forces with NATO backing and full-throated embrace of fascist paramilitaries is doing constitutes 'ukraine' 'fighting back' against 'russia'. but it doesn't--it represents the ukrainian bourgeoisie fighting back against the russian bourgeoisie.
so, the big question--do i think that the ukrainian proletariat should abandon armed resistance against the russian invasion? absolutely not!
genuine popular resistance against the russian invasion is heroic and commendable--i am under no belief whatsoever that in the face of imperialist war the ukrainian people should not arm themselves and fight against the imperialists. i just reject the framing of the actual war as prosecuted as constituting this, because, to go back to what i've already established, there is not in fact one 'ukraine' but two--only one of which constitutes in a mieaningful sense the ukrainian people. i don't believe (and neither do the UCU, whose analysis i base mine on somewhat) that 'the war' as you ponder 'supporting' constitutes the ukrainian proletariat arming themselves or fighting against imperialism on their own behalf, but rather being armed by the bourgeoisie and fighting on their behalf.
and obviously i'm not an idiot who's blind to the actual numerial and material realities. the communist, anti-imperialist movement in ukraine, just like in most of the world, is completely dwarfed by imperialism and its footsoldiers. 'the ukrainian proletariat as self-armed acting organization rising up and challenging both imperialisms and freeing itself from both sets of bourgeoisie' is not something that's gonna happen tomorrow, and it's not an immediately actionable plan--no ukrainian communist can wake up tomorrow and say 'well, today i shall hit the big proletarian revolution button'.
the realities are that as the meeting ground between two imperialisms, ukrainian communists have to make decisions about which one they can most ably fight, might need to temporarily align themselves with or allow themselves to benefit from the ukrainian bourgeoise state--but never support it. like any bourgeoise state, a communist should know the ukrainian state is an enemy of the proletariat. yes, the pressing material realities on the ground might well make cooperation with that bourgeoise state the best temporary option--but 'cooperation' should never mean 'support' or 'loyalty', and should be done only tactically with ultimately loyalties remaining above all else with the working class.
in fact, refusing to offer the government and army a show of support and valorization is a key element of creating the conditions--radicalization, agitation--that would allow the proletariat to effectively rise up and truly combat imperialism, rather than choose under which imperialist heel they would rather be ground into dust. don't support an end to the war on either imperialist bloc's terms, but rather on proletarian terms--understand that the state of ukraine is not on the side of the ukrainian people, except tangentially, in individual moments of necessary alliance. raise awareness of the true war, the class war, and resist the ukrainian state's claims to stand with the people when it pursues the interests of the bourgeoisie.
tldr: the anti-imperialist position is not that the ukrainian proletariat should not be fighting, or that their fight is not worth supporting. the anti-imperialist action, therefore, is to draw the most awareness possible to this division within 'ukraine' among the working class themselves, make them aware of the realities of the economic condition. this is of course the foremost anti-imperialist and communist task across the entire world, because it is only through creating organizations of the working class that will fight for the working class can international imperialism be dfeated.
i'll leave this answer off by adding what the UCU said about this very topic in the same statement i've been quoting:
We understand the complexity and danger of these tasks, which inevitably cause repression on the part of the bourgeois political regimes. That is why workers' and communist organizations will need to develop illegal forms of class struggle along with legal ones in order to set and implement such tasks. The UCU has been forced to conduct its work in illegal forms since 2014. Many workers' and communist organizations may consider these antiwar tasks impossible because of their organizational weakness and lack of influence on the working class. However, historical experience shows that a correct and honest formulation of the tasks of the working class in conditions of war – real, not momentary tasks – may not yield success immediately, but will yield gains as the revolutionary situation intensifies. Since the task of destroying capitalist social relations is an international task, the international coordination of workers' and communist parties' actions, including the joint elaboration of tasks for the struggle against the imperialist war of the twenty-first century for the sake of uniting the international struggle against this war, for a communist reorganization of society and world peace, is becoming increasingly important. Proletarians of all countries, unite!
#ask#long post#i hope this helps! i entirely understand your worries & concerns & i genuinely hoep this elucidates something about the situation for you
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I don't want to see any of you usamericans talk about "punching nazis" ever again. I don't want to hear yall pat each other on the back and say shit like "If I had been alive during the holocaust I would have done something about it", or any other white savior shit like that.
You don't care about jews, you didn't care about them back then, just as you don't care about palestinians now. Yall repeat and repeat "the holocaust was terrible, we should condemn it", not because you care, but because it lifts yourselves up. Because it's the only war that the US won where they just happened to be on "the good side", so it portrays you as heroes, warriors of justice, which happens to be excelent propaganda material, so you exploit it. You make memorials, you make films, hundreds of them, fetishizing the jewish suffering and portraying yourselves as the force of good that saved them all. Meanwhile, dozens of other genocides - many of them even bigger and bloddier than the holocaust - happen around the world, many of them endorsed or supported by your government. But yall don't care. It's not the holocaust. You're not the good guys in this one so why bother making a movie, why pay atention to it at all? It's hard to keep track of everything happening in the world, it has nothing to do with you. So you just keep scrolling your socials paying no mind to whatever fucked up shit is happening out there, until you run into some fucker from the global south posting something mildly critical of israel, or about how the United States shamelessly exploits jewish history for the sake of warfare, or how victim mentality is a dangerous thing for a marginalized group to hold on to, and you get furious. How dare they say things that don't align with the narrative I've been fed my whole life?? They are anti-semitic!! They hate jews!! They are nazis!! And you tell them so, you put them in their place, because you are a democrat and a good guy and you won't tolerate nazis. And then you reblog "support our troops" posts and write letters to your president begging him to bomb brown people on the other side of the planet because they are terrorists, I think. And I'm here to tell you that you are not the good guy, you are not a hero. You are a victim of indoctrination and an idiot, and your domestic white politics mean absolutely nothing to the rest of the world.
Yes, I did watch Schindler's list. No, I don't hate jewish people. Yes, I'll aggresively condemn Israel's actions and anyone blind enough to say that one genocide justifies another, and I will always support palestinian people. And if you happen to be a jewish person that has somehow found themselves in the center of a conversation that isn't even about you, and getting negative attention you don't deserve, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that no matter what you do or where you live, you keep being used as a scapegoat and your life and history exploited for colonialist propaganda, your heritage is worth more than that.
So keep calling yourselves the good guys, keep pulling the anti-semite card or the "Palestine is homophobic" argument. Keep playing your white politics in your white country that you stole from non-white people. The rest of the world is watching you and history will remember you as what you are and always have been; fucking colonizers.
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