effort
By request of [@LargePenis@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/u/LargePenis) , posting this three-part effortpost to this comm: **The Rise of the Collective Shia Identity: Part One** The year is 1978. Ayatollah Khomeini, the main voice of Shia Islamism has just been expelled from Najaf by Saddam Hussein. Najaf, the capital of Shia Islam and where the biggest Hawzas (Shia Islamic schools) are located, is a hotspot of political repression, executions, and arrests. The main Marja (basically Shia pope), Sayyid Abu Al Qasim Al Khoei is reduced to a strictly religious role, giving rulings about useless things like marriages and inheritance. His predecessor, Sayyid Muhsin Al Hakim, pushed the political buttons too hard with a ruling that deemed communists and Baathists as disbelievers, which made the Iraqi state go crazy and start a huge campaign of repression of anything political from the Shia elite. Khomeini’s development of the concept of Wilayat Al Faqih was very worrying for Baathist Iraq, so he was expelled from Najaf. Shias in Iraq never got a place post-Sykes-Picot, with the Kingdom of Iraq being dominated by the Sunni Baghdadi elite. The period between 1958-1968 after the revolution was too chaotic and disjointed to produce an elite, with daily conflicts and coup attempts by adventurers with different ideologies. The Baathist period produced a new elite strictly dominated by Sunnis from Salahaddin Province, so the Shias just never got a seat at the table. Two ideologies penetrated the Shia mind, Islamism and Communism. Islamists were concentrated in Karbala and Najaf, two holy cities for Shia Islam. Communists where concentrated in Nasiriyah, Amarah and Basra, cities where poverty was rampant. Islamists were finally organised in the form of the Dawa Party, led by Musa Al Sadr’s cousin Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr. Musa Al Sadr would later rise as the spiritual leader of the Lebanese Shia community. Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr’s works and political activities really annoyed the Iraqi state, so he and his sister were executed by the state in 1980. Most of their followers were executed or exiled. Many of the influential families in Najaf and Karbala had some Persian ancestry, nearly all those families suffered from mass deportations as Saddam’s anti-Persian paranoia grew. The communists suffered from the same fate, with most communists either executed or exiled by the state due to their political activities. Now we’re done with Iraq, let’s go to Iran. Shia Islamism is dead here too, the Shah’s security services arrests anyone with any political activity. Khomeini was successfully chased out 20 years ago, and there’s no organised political force that can even talk loudly without getting executed. The Shah is at least Shia Muslim on paper, he prays in public once every 10 years, visits the shrines in Qom and Mashhad occasionally, but to everyone with a functioning brain, this man is a disbeliever. There’s something brewing, but let’s wait with that story. Let’s go to Lebanon. Shias in Lebanon are around half of the Muslim population. It’s hard to get exact numbers, but Shias are around 25% of the total population of the country. The Shia community here also never got a real seat at the table. The president holds most of the power and is always a Maronite. The prime minister gets fired every few weeks, but he’s always a Sunni and does nothing while the Maronite elite is pretending to be French and robbing the country. The speaker of the parliament is Shia, but toilet paper is more useful than that position. Feudalism didn’t really end in the Shia parts of Lebanon, most Shias were farmers who were getting fucked so hard on a daily basis that they didn’t have time to even think about politics. Remember we’re in 1978, where are the Shias in the middle of civil war? The answer is nowhere. The main sides are Maronites vs Sunni Muslims, communists and Palestinians. Shias were not a major factor here. The only notable Shia organization is the Amal Movement, led by Musa Al Sadr. Musa was a charismatic leader who would set the foundations of the modern Shia Lebanese identity, he was respected by all sectors of the cursed Lebanese society and his connections to Iran and Iraq were slowly starting to be important in a regional context. But nothing good lasts, as he was inexplicably disappeared and presumably killed by Gaddafi during a routine visit to Libya in August 1978. Let’s go to Yemen and the Gulf. In Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Shias were an afterthought, they are 0% of the ruling families and have zero political representation. They’re allowed to do some rituals at home when no one sees, but if you open your mouth in public and say anything Shia Islamist, you’re getting disappeared and your whole family will probably be deported to Iran or something. Shias in Bahrain are the absolute majority and they’re significant minorities in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In Yemen, the Shias are not the same kind of Shia as in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon. The main group of Shia Muslims are either called Jaafari after the theological works of the sixth Shia Imam Jaafar Al Sadiq, or Ithna Ashari (Twelvers) due to their belief in twelve Imams after the Prophet Muhammed, starting with Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib and ending with Imam Muhammed Al Mahdi, also known as the Hidden Imam who according to Shia beliefs will reappear one day and basically set in motion the end of the physical world. The Shia of Yemen are known as Zaydis, after Zayd ibn Jaafar Al Sadiq, who the Zaidis recognized as 7th Imam, while the Twelvers recognized Musa ibn Jaafar Al Sadiq. The Zaidi Imamate in Northern Yemen continued for nearly a thousand years, but it could not withstand the post-WW2 chaos in the region and ended in nearly comic fashion after a coup led by local rivals and involvement from an exiled Iraqi officer. The Zaydi community here in 1978 is in disarray, with many converting to Sunni Islam out of convenience in a new world. There’s no organized Zaydi force or political party, they just farm in the highlands of Northern Yemen and chill out there. It is a fading group, but wait, something just happened in Yemen. Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Zaydi military officer from Sanaa, and one of the great adventurers of the 1900s in the Middle East, just did a military coup and took power in the failing state of North Yemen in July 1978. How did this defeated religious group go from edges of the region to the dominant group in five countries and a political force that annoys America and Israel? We’ll find out in the next episode as we cover the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the formative value of the Iraq-Iran War, the failed Shaaban Revolution in Iraq, the rise of Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon, and the rise of the Houthi (Ansarallah) movement in Yemen. **The Rise of the Collective Shia Identity: Part Two** We continue the story around 15 years later, we’re now in the early 90s. Three significant events have taken place in the modern Shia story. The first and the most significant is the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the second is the Iraq-Iran War, the third is the formation of Hezbollah in South Lebanon and the real start of the Shia Lebanese story. We have to start with the Islamic Revolution. I won’t go into the details of how the Revolution happened and why it happened, but I will talk about what it meant at the time and what the consequences were. I will sum the events of the Revolution in three sentences. Mass protests break out in Iran against the Shah’s repression and economic inequality, which slowly takes a more Islamist character in opposition to the Shah’s pro-Western secular regime. The Islamization of the protests meant that some sort of spiritual leadership had to rise, Ayatollah Khomeini who was exiled in Paris becomes the spiritual leader and he manages to unify all sectors of the protest movement under his leadership. He then returned to Iran as the unopposed leader of the movement in the ending stage of the revolution and then consolidated the revolution in his vision of the new Iran working under his system of Wilayat al Faqih. The success of the revolution in Iran led to the formation of the first modern Islamic state which draws its legitimacy from Shia Islam. Sykes-Picot created only kingdoms as in the Gulf and Iraq, and semi-functional weak republics like Syria and Lebanon. The establishment of Islamic Republic was significant on several levels. It was the first popular revolution which established an Islamic Republic, unlike the revolutions in states such as Egypt and Iraq, where military dictatorships were founded instead of the old comprador kingdoms. It also marked the end of nearly 2500 years of hereditary rule in Iran and old Persia. The events of the Islamic Revolution were frightening for the Gulf monarchies and for Iraq, as they realised the threat of Shia Islamism within their borders. One of Khomeini’s first promises after the success of the revolution was exporting the experience to other nations where “disbelievers” were in power and where Shias were barred from participating in controlling their destiny. The first seeds of a “Shia International” were planted by Khomeini very quickly. Shias in Iraq were very emboldened by Khomeini’s success, and political activities by the banned Dawa Party accelerated in late 1979 and early 1980, which ended after the execution of Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr in Iraq in 1980. If you were a Shia Islamist in Iraq in 1975 for example, you had nowhere to go, but if you needed to flee in 1980, you suddenly have a massive Shia neighbour that not only allows you to come as a refugee, but also fully supports your political activities and gives you weapons. Saddam decided to not wait for the inevitable confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran and started a massive war in late 1980. The Iraq-Iran war is the most important moment in the formation of the “Shia International” and the formation of the first fully ideological generation of young Shias that would later change the world. Literally every single influential Shia character of the last 30 years had some degree of interaction with Ayatollah Khomeini or Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr or fought in the Iraq-Iran War. Qassem Soleimani fought in the war. Hadi Al Ameri, leader of Badr Brigades in Iraq fought in the war. Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah was a 16-year-old student under Al Sadr. The Houthi family lived in Qom in Iran after the revolution. Ali Khamenei was President of Iran during the war. Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis fought in the war. Even current president of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian fought in the war. Abdul Aziz Al Hakim, son of former Shia Grand Marja Muhsin Al Hakim fought in the war and later become president of Iraq for one month under the American occupation. Musa Al Sadr’s niece was married to Khomeini’s son Ahmed and Musa’s son was married to Khomeini’s granddaughter. The war itself was not that eventful, with both sides mostly in deadlock for eight years. The relevant part of the whole war was basically four battles. Iraqi capture of Khorramshahr and then the Iranian liberation of the city. Then the Iranian capture of Al Faw and the Iraqi liberation of the area. The Gulf monarchies went crazy in their support of Saddam during the war and gave him lots of money, mainly because they really wanted the defeat of Iran without shooting a bullet, which reminds us of a certain Ukrainian comedian who is getting duped now in a similar way. The culture around the war is the most important part in the formation of the modern Shia identity in my opinion. In Christianity, the defining moment for the religion is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which presents Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice of humanity and the image of him bleeding on the cross is etched into the mind of every Christian. For Shia Muslims, the martyrdom of the grandson of Prophet Muhammed Imam Hussain and the wholesale murder of his entire family holds even more emotional value than the crucifixion of Jesus Christ does for Christians, because there’s no happy ending here and no Ascension to the sky. Hussain was slaughtered, his father Ali ibn Abu Talib had his skull shattered while leading morning prayers, and every single Imam was murdered in Shia beliefs. What the Iraq-Iran War did was a complete revival of the tradition of martyrdom in Shia Islam and the commemoration of martyrs became not only just an accepted practice, but also encouraged by the Iranian state. Iranian fighters that were deployed to the front wore headbands with Shia slogans such as “Ya Hussain”, “Ya Zahra” and “Ya Mahdi”, clerics held Qurans over the heads of the fighters when they were boarding trains and trucks to the front, and fighters didn’t only receive combat training at camps before reaching the front, but they also received religious lessons about the sacrifices of Hussain and his family and participated in the first sessions of state-sponsored “Matams” in modern history, where poems about martyrdom were recited while the religious Shia beat their chests. The official “music” of the Iranian state was no longer Googoosh in her skirt performing Persian Pop for the son of the Shah in his birthday party, but it was militarised and Islamised and became stuff like “Karbala Ma Darim” (“Karbala we’re coming”, a reference to the holy city of Karbala) and “Mamad Naboodi Babini” (“Mohammed you didn’t see it”, a reference to an Iranian solider that played a heroic role in the battle of Khorramshahr, but was martyred a few days before the liberation of the city). The names of the streets were changed, the names of metro stations were changed, the names of the city squares were changed. Pahlavi Street became Shahid Bahonar Street, the Tehran Metro now has over 15 stations named after some martyr, mostly from the Iraq-Iran War and the revolution. This complete transformation of Iranian society led to the creation of the concept of the Resistance itself in those years. What is the Iraq-Iran War called in Persian? Difaa e-Muqaddas, Holy Resistance. Remember that I said that Khomeini wanted to export to revolution to other countries. It did happen, but not fully successfully and not in a conventional manner. The first seeds were of course the Dawa Party movement in Iraq, which we previously mentioned, and it ended with mass executions including the whole leadership. The next organized group was the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by the 2nd generation of the Al Hakim family. The top brass managed to flee to Iran in 1983 and later fought in the Iraq-Iran War on the side of Iran. The rest of the Al Hakim family were brutally executed in 1983 by the Iraqi state, with literal kids getting executed. A very important detail here needs to be mentioned. The Shia Islamist ideology was powerful enough transcend borders here, Sykes-Picot was effectively broken for the third time since the establishment of the Middle East borders. It was broken by the Arabists under Nasser with the United Arab Republic which lasted for five stupid years. And it was broken by Communists who were popping up from Algeria to Oman fighting for each other’s causes. Then it was broken by Shia Islamists under the leadership of Khomeini. It would be broken again in 2013 by Sunni Jihadists fighting for ISIS. Only one of those projects still remains, and it’s Khomeini’s project. The third attempt of Shia Islamist uprising was in 1991, and it was the most successful attempt, but it still failed. The Shaaban Uprising in Iraq lasted for around a month and large sections of the country fell under Shia rebel rule, but Saddam managed to reorganise his army after the massive defeat in Kuwait and crushed the uprising. The sources of the uprising were both expected and unexpected. The Al Hakim family and their newly formed militias breached the Iraq-Iran border and stormed into the country, which was an expected source considering the semi-collapse of the Iraqi state after the withdrawal from Kuwait. The unexpected source came from the Al Thawra (now Sadr City) ghetto in Eastern Baghdad. Another Al Sadr family member, Muhammed Sadiq Al Sadr, had secretly organised his followers and unleashed them in the uprising. His eccentric son Muqtada would later form the Mahdi Army and fight the US during the occupation of Iraq. The uprising failed, but it confirmed how deep the penetration of the pan-Shia Islamist ideology had come in Iraqi minds. In Bahrain, a Khomeinist group tries a failed coup in 1981. These seeds that were planted would later be the ideological backbone of the Bahraini uprising in 2011, which was mercilessly crushed by Saudi Arabia, but that’s a story for a later episode of this effortpost. In Saudi Arabia, a Shia group called Hezbollah Al Hejaz fought a low-level insurgency against the government and later bombed the Khobar Towers and killed a bunch of US soldiers. Now we have to go to Lebanon, what happened there? Well Israel invaded the country in 1982 and occupied everything up to Beirut. Musa Al Sadr’s group, the Amal Movement was ideologically disoriented and very disorganised following the disappearance of Al Sadr in 1978. The Shias of Lebanon were basically left without competent leadership for four years while Israel quickly the Shia heartland in the South. Enter Khomeini again. Hezbollah was basically founded in Iran, the group doesn’t exist without the efforts of the IRGC in organizing Shia Lebanese leadership from those who had prior connections to Khomeini or Al Sadr. The first real leader of Hezbollah was Sayyid Abbas Al Musawi, who studied under Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr in Najaf, Iraq. Hezbollah’s mission in Lebanon was very simple, follow the ideology of Khomeini, kick out the Israelis, and end the collaborationist South Lebanon Army who formed a fake state that was fully propped up by Tel Aviv. Hezbollah succeeded in all three tasks. Khomeini’s pan-Shia ideology is now the de-facto ideology for Lebanese Shias, Israel would finally be kicked out from Lebanese soil in 2000 after a successful guerilla war, and the SLA was crushed in the 1980s by an alliance of Hezbollah, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Lebanese Communist Party. Sayyid Abbas Musawi was later martyred by an Israeli strike in 1993, and his successor was Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah. In the 1990 Taif Agreement to end the Lebanese Civil War, Hezbollah was the only armed group who did not have to disarm and were allowed to control Shia areas. Thanks for reading! Next episode, we learn about the Houthis who I was supposed to cover here but I was too lazy. We will also learn about the 2006 Hezbollah defeat of Israel, the Mahdi Army, the Bahraini uprising, and the 2nd shia identity formation post-ISIS. **The Rise of the Collective Shia Identity: Part Three** We move 25 years into the future with part three, we’re now in the period after the defeat in ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the Houthi revolution in Yemen, Hezbollah’s victory against Israel in 2006, and the failure of the Bahraini Uprising in 2011. We start in Yemen, which was reunited into one state after the end of the Cold War. The first president of the new reunited Yemeni state is no one other than Ali Abdullah Saleh, former president of North Yemen and one of our favourite adventurers like we said earlier. The first real event in the history of Yemen is the start of the 1994 civil war, which ended in a decisive victory for Ali Abdullah Saleh’s Republican forces over the remnants of the South Yemen Communist Party. The republican victory could not be achieved without the strong support by Sunni Jihadist forces who received massive concessions by Saleh in order to secure their support in the war. The growing voice of the hardline Sunni Islamists in Saleh’s government angered the Houthi family, who returned to Yemen from Iran somewhere around reunification, with the aim of reviving the Zaydi traditions that were slowly fading away as Yemen took a more “Sunni” character. It is clear that the Houthis’ stay in Iran led to them being greatly influenced by Khomeini’s pan-Shia ideology, as they founded a youth group called the Believing Youth when they returned to Yemen. The Believing Youth was a loose collection of after-school workshops and summer camps for kids in the mountains of North Yemen, where they would read works by Khomeini, Nasrallah and Al Sadr. The Believing Youth would grow in size, and by the early 00s, their presence would be felt even in Friday prayers in the Grand Mosque of the capital Sanaa. Like a true paranoid Arab government, the Yemeni government would ultimately decide to arrest Hussein Al Houthi, the founder of the BY and brother of the Abdul Malik Al Houthi that we all know and love. The government failed in their attempt to arrest Hussein Al Houthi, who retreated to the mountains of Saada and started a large insurgency again the Yemeni government. He would be killed in late 2004, but a low-level insurgency continued until the Arab Spring hit in 2011. Yemen had some of the largest protests in the whole region, which turned violent very quickly. The escalation of the protests wasn’t surprising at all, Yemen was the poorest and the least developed Arab nation out of all the relevant ones, and Saleh had been ruling the country in some form for 33 years while achieving literally nothing of note. The Houthis and their supporters would become one of the largest factions against the government in peaceful protest, and later in armed struggle against a government long past its expiry date. After around a year of clashes everywhere in Yemen, Saleh would resign and sign a power transfer agreement in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a place where no real peace has ever been established. An election was held in 2012, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, Saleh’s best friend and former vice president would win the election with 100% of the votes in a real democracy moment. Saleh was there again in Yemen for Hadi’s inauguration. The Houthis, the southern secession movement and the Islamists all rightfully boycotted this sham election. Two years later, the Houthis would launch an offensive from the mountains towards the capital Sanaa and capture the capital very quickly after the collapse of the government forces. The Houthis then absorbed the bulk of the Yemeni Army and essentially became the new government itself, they’re not an armed group anymore, but the Yemeni state itself. When did the Houthis become a real “Shia” force and a part of the Axis of Resistance? Good question. The founding principles of the Believing Youth were explicitly Khomeinist, in response to the gradual Sunnification of the Zaydi Shia Yemenis after the final collapse of the Zaydi Imamate in the 1960s. There’s no proof of direct Iranian involvement in the founding of the group, nor any proof of direct support until the explosion of the conflict after the Arab Spring. Shiaism itself evolved with the absorption of the Houthis into the wider Shia umbrella, as it followed a similar previous step with the absorption of Assad’s Alawite faith into a wider Twelver-adjacent umbrella. The Houthis aren’t Hezbollah, where the founding itself was influenced directly by Iran, but they became closer and closer to Iran as their war with Saudi Arabia started in 2015. Just like the Iraq-Iran War became the origin story of all of the heroes of the new pan-Shia ideology, the Houthi victory in the war against Saudi Arabia and the Arab Alliance became the mythological origin of the first “pan-Shia” generation of Yemen. One such hero is Saleh Al Sammad, the first president of Yemen under Houthi rule, who was killed in a Saudi drone strike back in 2018. He received the Khomeinist martyr treatment, which was a first in Yemen. Shia-style mourning ceremonies have entered the Yemeni mainstream, and celebration of the Prophet’s birthday is now a big day in Yemen, in a clear departure from the hardline Sunni position that forbids that. The Houthis, or Ansarallah as they should be called, are now a fully integrated member of the pan-Shia movement despite not having a direct line back to Khomeini or the Al Sadr family. We travel to Iraq again now. In 2003, something called the Iraq War, and the American Occupation happens. The Americans basically allow anyone that hates Saddam on their team, so the team that takes over the Iraqi state post-Saddam is a very dysfunctional one where Communists, Khomeinists, Kurdish nationalists, Sunni Muslim Brotherhood members, Liberal CIA assets, and random minority representants were supposed to pretend to play politics while the Americans were robbing the country. There was one crucial group that the Americans missed while building the political playhouse. That group was the Sadrists under the leadership of Muqtada Al Sadr, son of Muhammed Sadiq Al Sadr. The Sadrists split in two sometime in the late 90s, but no one had noticed that under the media suppression in Saddam’s Iraq and the general American disinterest in Iraqi attitudes while they were planning to invade Iraq. One group of Sadrists stayed in the Dawa Party and adopted more Khomeinist and pan-Shia ideas, while poorer Sadrists under Muqtada’s leadership from the slums were more into nationalist and isolationist policies within Iraq’s border. Muqtada’s group would later be called the Sadrist Movement and its military wing, the Mahdi Army, would become the main player in the Iraqi Insurgency against the American occupation and later in the sectarian civil war phase of the occupation. Muqtada’s eccentric behaviour continues to this day and the Sadrists still get themselves into wacky situations, as the group slowly morphs into a cult that finds itself on the fringes of Shiaism itself, but that’s an effortpost for another day. The Iraqi state found itself under pan-Shia Dawa Party rule from 2005 to 2018, but nothing formative happened on a state level, mostly due to the failure of the American occupation and the grave incompetence of the new cast in Iraq. The most notable change during that period was that Iran was slowly becoming the main foreign player in Iraq, after several missteps by the US and their Arab allies. The war against ISIS is when large sections of Iraqi Shia society were absorbed into the Iranian pan-Shia network with the creation of the Hashd Al Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units, or PMU for short). The PMU was essentially Iraq’s own Hezbollah, an explicitly pan-Shia organization that was created with a clear religious background. The creation of the PMU itself came after a ruling from Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, who is the current Grand Marja of the faith. He issued a ruling that called for global Shia jihad against ISIS after the collapse of the Iraqi Army and the fall of large cities such as Mosul, Fallujah and Tikrit into ISIS hands. Iranian government support through the IRGC was open and direct, with PMU head Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis and IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani being on the frontlines together and forming a shared war room. The pan-Shia framework of open commemoration of martyrs with clear religious messaging was fully imported to Iraq and became the dominant ideological marker in the Shia south of Iraq. I remember visiting Baghdad with my wife sometime before Covid and literally every single street in the capital had some pictures of martyrs. We now move into Lebanon again, where Hezbollah have transformed from a religious militia into the most influential political party in the country. Lebanon after the end of the civil war was dominated politically by the Future Movement, which was founded by liberal Saudi-Lebanese Sunni Muslim businessman Rafic Hariri. Hariri was an interesting character, he moved to Saudi Arabia very early after finishing his university studies in Beirut, and even acquired Saudi citizenship and basically lived as a Saudi for a large part of his life, but he caught the “philanthropic” billionaire bug during the civil war as he realised how much power his money would give him in Lebanon. His companies’ re-built large sections of Beirut after the war, but he was an indecisive Prime Minister and his relationship with the Syrians deteriorated quickly in the mid-00s. Lebanon got rid of the Israeli occupation in the south after Hezbollah’s first victory in 2000, but the Syrian Army still had a presence in Lebanon until 2005. Hariri got assassinated in 2005, most likely by members of Hezbollah who were unhappy with how he’s dealing with the Syrians. What followed is the Cedar Revolution, where thousands of Lebanese civilians protested massively against the cancerous presence of the Syrian Army in Lebanon. I must add a personal anecdote here. As an eight-year-old, I was in Beirut with my family on a long summer holiday in the early 00s. We were in a Kaak (basically Lebanese bagels) shop with my uncle and my young cousins, and the streets were suddenly shut down by armoured trucks. It was the first time my diaspora eyes had seen an army on the streets, so I vividly remember literally being glued to the window of the shop watching the Syrian Army raid a nearby shop while my uncle tried to keep everyone inside until they were finished. A few years later, I learned that they were basically extorting the poor guy, and he refused to pay. Such incidents were very common, and the Syrian presence were viewed very negatively in Lebanon, so it wasn’t surprising that people took the assassination of the most popular guy in Lebanon as the last straw. The Syrians left after the Cedar Revolution, but fumbling Lebanon wasn’t the last big mishap by Assad, and more on that later when we examine Syria’s position in the pan-Shia world. We move into the 2006 War now. I won’t go into the specifics of the war, but the whole mythology of the war is wildly exaggerated in my opinion. Hezbollah defeated Israel, that is certain, but it wasn’t an extremely bloody war for both sides. The number of dead Israeli civilians + IDF soldiers in that war was less than 500, and the number of dead Hezbollah fighters + Lebanese civilians was less than 2000. Israel’s mass bombing of Beirut generated no tangible military advantage and just made people hate them more. The current war has been bloodier on both sides already, and the number of displaced civilians in Israel + Lebanon is already way bigger and more permanent. The real victory was that Hezbollah once again confirmed that they’re the most successful anti-Israel side in history, and with that also confirmed that there is an existential conflict between the Axis of Resistance and Israel. A decisive Israeli victory like 1967 could not happen anymore. Egypt in the leadership of the anti-Israel axis had lacked the ideological discipline and were simply way too incompetent to accomplish a permanent victory over Israel. Arabism as the leading anti-Israel ideology was not radical enough to defeat the crazy settler-colonial state. But the pan-Shia Khomeinism was definitely radical enough to create groups that Israel simply can’t defeat. Hamas can still not be defeated, Hezbollah can’t be defeated, and Ansarallah couldn’t be defeated despite the combined naval power of the West. What 2006 did was confirm that the strongest and most disciplined anti-Israel ideology could be found in the pan-Shia Hezbollah. The psychological victory was enormous, and it couldn’t be achieved without the expertise and the weaponry of Iran, once more confirming the strength and unity of the Axis in the face of Israeli aggression. Hezbollah emerged out of the war as a heroic group across the Arab and Islamic worlds, and Hezbollah was probably the most popular army in the Arab World until the Syrian Civil War, but more on that later when we cover Syria. We end with a little failure of the pan-Shia revolution. Bahrain had some of the most intense protests during the Arab Spring, with the whole island being crippled by Shia protestors demanding an end of the Bahraini Monarchy and the abdication of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. Bahrain is very special demographically and also occupies a special place in the pan-Shia heart. The majority of the population are Shia Muslim, and a large part of that Shia majority are people with Persian ancestry, but Shias have literally 0% real representation in Bahraini politics. If you visit an Ashura mourning ceremony in Bahrain even today, half of the service will probably be in Persian. Some of the most famous recited poems were written by Bahraini Shias and many of the highly regarded reciters are also Bahraini. Hussein Al Akraf would recite back in 2005 the famous poem of “In you Khomeini, the world taught me how to be free” on the anniversary of Khomeini’s death. A few years later he would recite another famous poem where the chorus were “You oppressed us with how oppressive you were, and you’re always against us in opposition, O government”. The government of Bahrain basically let Shia Bahraini do the religious stuff with all its political undertones freely in order to sort of ease the pressure, but that wildly backfired when the Shias were all charged up with pan-Shia ideology and poured out in the streets with Iranian flags and pictures of Khamenei and Khomeini. The pan-Shia connection into Bahrain is Sheikh Isa Qassim, who also studied under Al Sadr in Iraq and became the highest ranked Shia cleric in Bahrain after his return to Bahrain from Iran in the 90s. The revolution took the famous Pearl Roundabout as HQ, and things quickly snowballed into a situation where either the Royal Family abdicates due to the enormous pressure, or things could snowball into armed conflict very soon if Iran “accidentally” ships some weapons through the sea. The king instead begged some support from Saudi Arabia who were fighting their own Shia insurgency in Awamiya and Qatif in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis completely crushed the uprising through excessive violence and massive arrest campaigns. Influential Khomeinist voices like the previously mentioned Al Akraf and Isa Qassim fled the country, and even mere participators in the protests like football legend Alaa Hubail were arrested and imprisoned for years. Historic Shia mosques were razed and destroyed, thousands were arrested and tortured in prison, and nearly a thousand fled through Iran and had their citizenships revoked. The iconic Pearl Roundabout itself was bulldozed by the government. My commentary on Bahrain is “don’t do protests if you don’t have guns and an implicit threat of violence”. That's the end of part three, hope you enjoyed reading this. We have one big and two small stories saved up for part four. The big one about Syria's alliance with Iran from the Hafez Al Assad days, then the Syrian Civil War and Iran's entry there. One small story will be about pan-Shia movement's religious business in non-Shia countries such as Nigeria and Egypt. The last story will be about the failures of the movement in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
 Let me know if there are any more suggestions. Regarding certain role changes, please suggest a way to make the changes accessible. I'm not going to add any more walls of text, so the changes should be user friendly and understandable without the text. ::: spoiler Before 14-03-2024 7AM  ::: ::: spoiler Before 13-03-2024 11AM  ::: ::: spoiler Original  :::
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3564123 > Much like a lot of Gen X, some of the older Millennials in my life (particularly the white working professionals) are parroting the age old mantra of "I don't care about passing my skills on to the younger generations or helping those in need, no one ever helped me in my life.". My response is always "That's not a good thing!" because I never know what to say. Debate is not my strength. > > My working class grandparents were never like this. They lived through the great depression and two wars and never wanted anyone to suffer as much as they did. I miss them and their kindness dearly. It's only from boomers and younger that I've seen this attitude. Capitalism is crushing our instincts as a social species. If we can't stand on the shoulders of giants... well then we will stop advancing as a species. We will stagnate and go extinct because the challenges we face now need all of us. It goes against everything that is human to be this alienated and antagonistic to one another. Particularly frightening is the hatred and contempt modern society has towards children. > > > This is not going to end well. > > I appreciate all the people here, whether you're 20 or 60, for not becoming the thing that hurt you. We need people with a soul more than ever.
::: spoiler Norsk Motstand til engelsk i Norge har vært i stor grad et høyrepolitisk fenomen i min opplevelse. Norske kommunister som jeg har møtt har ikke engasjert seg i språkpolitikk i det hele tatt — kommunister i Norge bruker lånord fra engelsk, og snakker engelsk, like ofte som liberalister, og har i stor grad de samme meningene om språkpolitikk som liberalister. Jeg ville da sagt at språkpolitikk er en stor blindsone for norske kommunister. Denne situasjonen minner meg om Storbritannia, der motstand til EU ble så sterkt tilknyttet reaksjonær høyrepolitikk at progressive briter nektet å høre på venstrepolitisk kritikk av EU: "de onde toskene hater EU, derfor burde jeg støtte EU!" — man har vel bare så mye energi man kan bruke på å gruble over forskjellige problemer i verden, så det blir kanskje litt lett å falle inni denne tankemåten, ikke sant? Og siden motstanderne til engelsk i Norge er som oftest overdramatiske, rare, reaksjonære, eller "anti-moro", så blir det lett for progressive nordmenn å anta at reaksjonisme er et grunnleggende trekk til motstand til engelsk i Norge, og at denne posisjonen er derfor ikke verdt å vurdere om man ønsker å være progressiv. "Det kommer nye lånord, men sånn har det alltid vært," sier de. For å komme til en proletar anti-engelsk må vi først utforske den borgerlige anti-engelsken. Jeg har lest en debattartikkel skrevet av en student som heter Elias Kristofer Sætermo, som jeg tror representerer den typiske borgerlige anti-engelsken — artikkelen var jo lagt ut på VGs nettside, og VG er en borgerlig avis. Gjennom hele artikkelen tar Sætermo for gitt at Norge og norsk identitet må eksistere, at "norske verdier" både finnes og er gode, og at disse blir "truet" av "ytre krefter" og at vi må "sikre en fremtid for det norske nasjonale prosjektet" (æsj!), og Sætermo oppfører seg nesten som om kulturell endring er i seg selv dårlig, om disse endringene er uten "norske røtter" (hva enn dette skal bety). Sætermos anti-engelsk har ganske klart mye tilfelles med reaksjonær motstand til innvandring, inkluderende sammenligningen med urfolk. Sætermo har tydeligvis merket overfloden av engelsk i vårt samfunn, men, uten kunnskapen for en god analyse, har tatt bekymringene sine i en reaksjonær nasjonalistisk retning. Det interessante som Sætermo sier er at "norsk språk må fremmes i underholdning, i musikken og på sosiale medier" og at "et språk er et sosialt lim". *Hmm.* Jeg selv ville sagt at Norge som en nasjon, samt norsk identitet, er begge borgerlige oppfinnelser, og at "norske verdier" er da *borgerlige* verdier — til og med det norske språket selv er en borgerlig oppfinnelse! Vi har i Norge mange forskjellige dialekter som kan være vanskelige å forstå, og om man kan norsk kan man vel forstå svensk og dansk til en grad også. Man kunne da like godt argumentert at trøndersk og sørlandsk er forskjellige språk, eller at norsk og svensk er det samme språket. Så "et sosialt lim" er nettopp hva norsk er: vi ser dialektnivellering i Norge fordi folk flytter rundt for arbeid, fordi mediene i Norge fremmer noen dialekter og gjør narr av andre, og fordi skriftspråkene selv representerer og fremmer "normative" norsker. Hva er da "tradisjonelt" med norsk? Det norske borgerskapet vil forminske regionale identiteter for å fremme deres idé om en felles norskhet — dette er formålet til dialektnivellering. Det norske borgerskapet vil at vi skal snakke norsk og se på og høre på og lese deres borgerlige medier, slik at de kan propagandisere oss til å ha en norsk borgerlig mentalitet. Så dette er hva det norske borgerskapet frykter når folk er i dag så hektet på seppolandske filmer og kjendiser: "du er hva du spiser", og når folk sluker opp borgerlig seppolandsk kultur, så vil de få en borgerlig seppolandsk mentalitet — akkurat som når de sluker opp borgerlig norsk kultur, så får de en borgerlig norsk mentalitet. At kapitalistene innen Norges kulturindustri klager om at deres industri er ikke lønnsom nok, og fremstiller dette som "en eksistensiell trussel imot Norge", er da ikke så annerledes fra seppolandske kapitalister innen kabel-TV sin alarmisme om Internett og streaming: arbeidernes fokus på nasjonal-borgerlige medier er en nokså stor del av det nasjonale borgerskapets kontroll over landets arbeidere. Men vi må fortsatt huske at det var det norske borgerskapet selv som valgte å la engelsk bli til en samfunnsmakt. Dette vil si at det norske borgerskapet tjener fra nettopp det som de klager om. Hvordan? # Første punkt: Vestlig identitet Det norske borgerskapet kan bare beskytte dets imperiale interesser gjennom allianse med andre land i den imperiale kjernen. Dette nødvendiggjør en fellesidentitet for arbeidere i den imperiale kjernen, altså et fellesspråk og en felleskultur for hele denne alliansen. Denne "hvite" eller "vestlige" identiteten står da i konflikt med den "norske" identiteten: det norske borgerskapets frykt er at de mister kontroll over arbeidernes identitet, og norsk identitet blir da erstattet i sin helhet av den imperiale identiteten. Det norske borgerskapet må da holde disse to identitetene i en balanse. Denne balansen blir holdt gjennom bl.a. alarmisme om "amerikanisering". # Andre punkt: Mobilitet Når nordmenn kan engelsk, kan norske bedrifter lettere etablere seg og markedsføre og spre propaganda i andre land, sende nordmenn til andre land for arbeid og få nordmenn til å jobbe sammen med folk fra andre land. Med andre ord, imperialismen med dens evig økonomisk utvidelse til andre land krever at medarbeidere kan snakke sammen, at sjefen kan snakke sammen med arbeidere, at kapitalister kan snakke sammen med hverandre, osv. Det som gjør det norske borgerskapet nervøs er at, når enn de selv tjener fra at nordmenn kan engelsk, så tjener Seppoland mer fra at deres språk har blitt verdensspråket. Det norske borgerskapet ønsker da selvfølgelig å maksimere makten som de får fra engelsk, og forminske makten som Seppoland får tilbake. # Tredje punkt: Eksklusjon Norsk imperialisme er ikke bare bygget på at norske kapitalister utnytter resurser og arbeidere i utlandet, men at utenlandske arbeidere blir importert til Norge — arbeidere kjøpt gjennom investeringer i krig og krise i disse fremmede landene. Verdien stjelt gjennom super-utnyttelsen av innvandrer-arbeidere i Norge betaler for kjøpet av lokalfødte arbeideres lojalitet til kapitalisme. Denne ordningen krever at kapitalistene skaper en skille mellom "innvandrere" og "lokalfødte". Én måte å skape denne skillen er gjennom språk: å kunne norsk påfører mange privilegier, mest merkverdig er at naturalisering i Norge krever at man har nådd B1-nivå (tidligere A2-nivå) i muntlig norsk. At kravet ble hevd viser at det norske borgerskapet justerer naturaliseringssystemet når enn dette trengs. Når nordmenn kan engelsk, skaper dette enda mer fleksibilitet for å utelukke innvandrere fra privilegier. Kassedamen snakker engelsk til deg, fordi du er en "utlending"; bussjåføren snakker engelsk til deg, fordi du er en "utlending". Arbeidsplassen din snakker engelsk, fordi du kan ikke skaffe arbeid hos en norsktalende arbeidsplass. Du søker opp norske artister, men halvparten synger på engelsk. Du ser på TV men mer enn halvparten er seppolandske filmer og serier. Når evnen din til å lære norsk gjennom poppkultur er forminsket, når stedet der du bruker stordelen av dagen din snakker engelsk, og når hvem enn du snakker til kan når som helst bytte til engelsk, får du rett og slett færre sjanser til å forbedre norsken din — som betyr at du er mer avhengig av klasserommet. Og klasserommet, selvfølgelig, finnes ikke for å lære deg norsk så raskt som mulig: klasserommet finnes for å lære deg norsk så raskt som er nyttig for borgerskapet, dette vil si, sakte nok at du vil ikke forstyrre balansen mellom "innvandrere" og "lokalfødte". # Konklusjon Det engelske språket i Norge fremmer imperialisme. Nekter man engelsk og det språkets innflytelse på norsk, så nekter man "vestlig" identitet; nekter man dette, så nekter man profitt for borgerskapet, både i Norge og i Seppoland; nekter man dette, så nekter man utnyttelsen av innvandrere. Samtidig må vi nekte det borgerlige monopolet over kultur og språk i Norge, som har alltid vært fienden til Norges mangfold, og som har som sitt formål å fremme kollaborasjon med borgerskapet. Når nordmenn lærer om kommunisme fra Adam Tahir, er dette ikke internasjonalisme, men heller importeringen av pseudovenstre hjerneormer fra en bosettingskoloni med liten sjanse for ekte klassebevissthet. Når nordmenn lærer om kommunisme men kan ikke si hva noen av Marx sine idéer heter på norsk, er dette ikke internasjonalisme, det er kulturimperialisme i venstrepolitiske klær. Den ekte internasjonalismen vil si at engelsktalende vil lære seg norsk, om de vokste ikke opp tospråklig, og vil oversette deres tekster fra engelsk til norsk. Internasjonalisme handler om *samarbeid* mellom land, og ikke at ett lands språk og kultur skal dominere over andre. ::: ::: spoiler English Opposition to English in Norway has been largely a right-wing phenomenon in my experience. Norwegian communists I've met have not been at all interested in language politics — they use loanwords from English and speak English just as often as liberals, and have largely the same views on language politics as liberals. I would then say that language politics is a big blind zone for Norwegian communists. This situation reminds me of the UK, where opposition to the EU became so closely associated with right-wing reactionism that progressive Britons refused to listen to left-wing critiques of the EU: "The evil dipshits hate the EU, so I should support the EU!" — one has after all only so much energy to expend on contemplating the world's many problems, so it's perhaps a bit easy to fall into this type of rationale, right? And since the opponents of the English language in Norway are most often over-dramatic, weird, reactionary, or "anti-fun", it becomes easy for progressive Norwegians to assume that reactionism is an inherent characteristic of opposition to English in Norway, and that this position is therefore not worth considering if one wishes to be progressive. "There will be new loanwords, but that's how it's always been," they'll say. To arrive at a proletarian anti-English we must first explore the bourgeois anti-English. I have read an opinion piece written by a student named Elias Kristofer Sætermo, that I think represents the typical bourgeois anti-English — the piece was after all posted on VG's website, and VG is a bourgeois publication. Throughout the whole article Sætermo takes for granted that Norway and Norwegian identity must exist, that "Norwegian values" both exist and are good, and that these are "threatened" by "external forces" and we must "secure a future for the Norwegian national project" (ew!), and Sætermo acts almost as if cultural change is in itself a bad thing, if these changes are without "Norwegian roots" (whatever this is supposed to mean). Sætermo's anti-English clearly has much in common with reactionary opposition to immigration, including the comparison with Native peoples. Sætermo has clearly noticed the flood of English in our society but, lacking the knowledge for a good analysis, has taken his worries in a reactionary nationalist direction. The interesting thing that Sætermo says is that "the Norwegian language must be promoted in entertainment, in music and on social media" and that "a language is a social glue". *Hmm.* I would myself say that Norway as a nation, and Norwegian identity, are both bourgeois inventions, and that "Norwegian values" are then *bourgeois* values — even the Norwegian language itself is a bourgeois invention! We have in Norway many different dialects that can be difficult to understand, and Norwegian speakers generally have the ability to understand some amount of Swedish and Danish as well. One could then just as well argue that Trønder and Southern Norwegian are different languages, or that Norwegian and Swedish are the same language. So a "social glue" is exactly what Norwegian is: we see dialect leveling in Norway because people move around for work, because media in Norway promotes some dialects and makes fun of others, and because the written languages themselves represent and promote "normative" Norwegians. What is then "traditional" about Norwegian? The Norwegian bourgeoisie wishes to minimize regional identities to promote their idea of a common Norwegianness — this is the aim of dialect leveling. The Norwegian bourgeoisie wants us to speak Norwegian and watch and listen to and read bourgeois media, such that they can propagandize us to have a Norwegian bourgeois mentality. So this is what the Norwegian bourgeoisie fears when people are hooked on Seppolandic movies and celebrities: "you are what you eat," and when people eat up bourgeois Seppolandic culture, they will get a bourgeois Seppolandic mentality — just like when they eat up bourgeois Norwegian culture, they will get a bourgeois Norwegian mentality. That the capitalists of Norway's cultural industry complain that their industry is not profitable enough, and present this fact as "an existential threat against Norway", is then not so different from Seppolandic cable TV capitalists' alarmism about the Internet and streaming: the workers' focus on national bourgeois media is a pretty big part of the national bourgeoisie's control over the country's workers. But we must still remember that it was the Norwegian bourgeoisie itself that chose to let English become a societal power. This is to say that the Norwegian bourgeoisie profits from exactly the same thing that they complain about. How can this be? # First point: Western identity The Norwegian bourgeoisie can only protect its imperial interests through alliance with other countries in the imperial core. This necessitates a common identity for workers in the imperial core, i.e. a common language and common culture for the whole alliance. This "white" or "Western" identity then stands in conflict with the "Norwegian" identity: the Norwegian bourgeoisie's fear is that they will lose control over the workers' identity, and Norwegian identity will then be replaced in its entirety by the imperial identity. The Norwegian bourgeoisie must then keep these two identities in balance. This balance is kept through alarmism about "Americanization" among other things. # Second point: Mobility When Norwegians can speak English, Norwegian business can more easily establish themselves and do marketing and spread propaganda in foreign countries, send Norwegians to foreign countries for work and get Norwegians to work with people from foreign countries. In other words, imperialism with its eternal economic expansion into foreign countries requires that coworkers can communicate, that the boss can talk to the workers, that capitalists can communicate with one another, etc. What makes the Norwegian bourgeoisie nervous is that whenever they profit from Norwegians' proficiency in English, Seppoland profits more from that their language is the world language. The Norwegian bourgeoisie of course wishes then to maximize the power they get from English and minimize the power that Seppoland gets in return. # Third point: Exclusion Norwegian imperialism is not only built on Norwegian capitalists exploiting resources and workers in foreign countries, but that foreign workers get imported to Norway — workers bought through investments in war and crisis in these foreign countries. The value stolen through the super-exploitation of migrant workers in Norway pays for the purchase of local-born workers' loyalty to capitalism. This arrangement requires that the capitalists create a divide between "immigrants" and "locals". One way to create this divide is through language: speaking Norwegian grants many privileges, most notably that naturalization in Norway requires a B1 (formerly A2) in spoken Norwegian. That the requirement was raised shows that the Norwegian bourgeoisie adjusts the naturalization system whenever this is necessary. When Norwegians speak English, this creates even more flexibility for excluding immigrants from privileges. The cashier speaks English to you because you are a "foreigner". The bus driver speaks English to you because you are a "foreigner". Your workplace speaks English because you can't get a job at a Norwegian-speaking workplace. You look up Norwegian musicians but half of them sing in English. You watch TV but more than half is Seppolandic movies and shows. When your ability to learn Norwegian through pop culture is minimized, when the place where you spend the largest share of your day speaks English, and when whoever you talk to can switch to English at any point, you quite simply get fewer chances to improve your Norwegian — which makes you more dependent on the classroom. And the classroom, of course, does not exist to teach you Norwegian as quickly as possible: the classroom exists to teach you Norwegian as quickly as is useful for the bourgeoisie, which is to say, slowly enough that you don't disturb the balance between "immigrants" and "locals". # Conclusion The English language in Norway promotes imperialism. If you reject English and its influence on Norwegian, you reject "Western" identity; if you reject this, you reject profits for the bourgeoisie in both Norway and Seppoland; if you reject this, you reject the exploitation of immigrants. Simultaneously we must reject the bourgeois monopoly over culture and language in Norway, which has always been the enemy of Norway's diversity, and has as its aim to further class collaborationism. When Norwegians learn about communism from Adam Tahir, this is not internationalism, this is the importation of pseudo-left brainworms from a settler colony with little chance for true class consciousness. When Norwegians learn about communism but cannot say what any of Marx's ideas are called in Norwegian, this is not internationalism, this is cultural imperialism in leftist clothes. The real internationalism would be for Anglophones to learn Norwegian, if they didn't grow up bilingual, and translating their texts from English to Norwegian. Internationalism is about *cooperation* between countries, not that one country's language and culture should dominate over others. :::
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3444788 > TL;DR: actions that society considers morally reprehensible and "corrupt" when carried out by public institutions, are seen as normal and acceptable when it comes to private institutions, so traditional comparisons of "corruption" between capitalism and socialism put socialism at a disadvantage by definition. > > 1- Let us imagine that I'm a business owner, and I decide to carry out some renovations in my building. I decide that, since I have a reliable friend who owns a renovations company, I will simply carry out the renovation with their company. We sign a contract, the renovation is carried out, the work gets done, the other company gets paid. Nothing out of the norm here. > > Now let us imagine the case in which this first business, instead of being owned by me privately, is socialized and owned by the state: a public entity. Some renovations are necessary, so I, as a public administrator, decide to order the renovation to be carried out by a friend... except that's corruption! I need to organize an auction and order impartially from a variety of firms, by lowest expense and by highest level of satisfaction! What is normal and approved in capitalism, is unthinkable and in most instances illegal under the principles of public ownership! > > > 2- Another example: I'm a worker in a private company. One year, the CEO that is put in place by the stockholders, happens to be a former employer of mine, and because they know me and my performance, I get promoted. Meritocracy! Some people even call that "networking", which is a necessary social skill in capitalism and highly regarded in wealthy circles. > > Now let us imagine the case of a soviet workplace, in which I'm a worker with excellent performance. The union-approved party member in charge at this time, sees my performance and my contributions and involvement with the union and party, and decides to offer me a promotion. Oh, what a blatant case of dictatorial bureaucracies, in which only party members giving each other favours get to rise to the top! What an unfair and corrupt system! > > > Whenever we hear these claims of "corruption", "bureaucracy" and such from socialism, please make it a point to compare these events with similar instances in capitalism, and how normalized and approved by the social majority they are. Why do we only expect transparency, efficiency and impartiality from public institutions, but normalize the opposite behaviours in capitalist enterprises?
*[*cross-posted from lemmy.ml*](https://lemmy.ml/post/20123880) # sources **on the dprk** - *right to housing and retirement, multi-party peoples democracy:* [constitution of the dprk](http://www.naenara.com.kp/index.php/Main/index/en/politics?arg_val=constitution) - *power checks and balances:* [infographic: why the us is a dictatorship and the dprk isnt.](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/8e01c0f7-6ec6-409a-8c34-c96c40e04fb6.png?format=webp) - *welfare economy:* [prolewiki article about the dprk, section on economy ](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Democratic_People%27s_Republic_of_Korea#Economy) (that whole article is generally really great and debunks a lot of western propaganda) - *democratic since inception:* [kim byong sik. "modern korea: the socialist north, revolutionary perspectives in the south, and unification." 1970.](https://archive.org/details/ModernKoreaKimByongSik/) **on the rok** - *poverty, slums:* [prolewiki-article on the term "hell josoen"](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Hell_Joseon) - *political prisoners:* [western source confirming the existence of the national security law](https://thediplomat.com/2022/03/will-yoon-suk-yeol-finally-reform-south-koreas-national-security-law/), [stephen gowans (2018). patriots, traitors and empires: the story of koreas struggle for freedom: 'the political partition of korea' (pp. 115–116) ](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Patriots,_Traitors_and_Empires), and the prolewiki-article on the rok, sections ["national security law"](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Republic_of_Korea#National_Security_Law) and ["unconverted long-term prisoners"](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Republic_of_Korea#Unconverted_long-term_prisoners) - *widespread corruption:* a lot of reporting can be found on this topic, even in western media. lets just take [the government-sanctioned prostitution and sex trafficking ](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Republic_of_Korea#Government-sanctioned_prostitution_and_sex_trafficking_victims) as an example, though there is other equally horrific stuff, including [the usage of disabled people as agricultural slaves](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-islands-of-abuse-inside-south-korea-s-slave-farms-for-the-disabled-9954527.html). - *worlds second highest suicide rate:* [katrin park (2021-10-5). "south korea is no country for young people" doreign policy. ](https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/05/south-korea-suicide-rates-mental-illness-squid-game/) - *tyrannical history:* prolewiki-article on the rok, section ["history"](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Republic_of_Korea#History) warning: very bleak read # debunking of anticipated liberal comments > norf korea no food malnutrition was in fact a thing during the 1990s, though the portrayals of this time period, the so called "arduous march" in westen media are usually exaggerated. mostly omitted by american-allied media is the fact that those difficulties were caused by the inhumane and terrorist western sanctions and embargo against the dprk, as well as the cia-backed illegal and undemocratic dissolution of the ussr. nowadays problems regarding food security have pretty much ceased to exist in the country. > hermit kingdom first of all, the term itself is nothing but racist, orientalist nonsense, but whatever... the dprk is in no way a kingdom, its democratic model of governance, while obviously imperfect and worthy of (constructive) criticism, is explained in the constitution and infographic linked above. furthermore, the county is neither "reclusive", nor internationally isolated. the dprk enjoys very friendly relations with fellow aes china, cuba, laos and vietnam, as well as anti-imperialist nations like iran, russia and palestine. the reason you dont hear much from inside the country is due to western press not wanting to report the truth. > no lights, no electricity the famous "no lights"-photo is a photoshopped fake initially circulated by a southern far-right tabloid. here is an actual image of east asia, including the korean peninsula:  > haircut police [unlike south korea](https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20230412000650), the dprk never had such policies. [here](https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=2BO83Ig-E8E) is a very entertaining video debunking that myth.
We need to make a new version of the anarchist's cookbook that still tells you how to do "naughty" things as a hook, while discouraging  and guiding young susceptable edgeladies and edgelads toward collective and organized action in support of their CLASS INTERESTS instead of whatever racist incel shit the right is selling them. It would have new sections about hacking, drones, gardening in urban settings, and primers on other things that work better for group organizations and recruitment than the original was geared towards. It could be primarily distributed in a portable executable which is self encrypting for plausible deniability (I'm thinking something like tomb if you're familiar) and when your password is entered, lets you access the contents like a Wikipedia page. People will read it because it makes them feel like a naughty hackerman/woman, but will be getting a healthy dose of communism on every page. I would say "without being too larpy" but I think maximum LARP is appropriate for this. It would also greatly improve our ability to covertly  by alluding to sections of the book withoutdiscussing exact plans. We can talk about things broadly and deniably while literally being on the same page. Thoughts? Criticism?
I sometimes see New Atlas videos popping up, and I have often needed to have the same struggle session with the poster of the video. So my problem, being an old fuck that I am, have been following Brian since the late naughts. Back in 2009-ish, being an internet nerd meant Indymedia, Blogger, and Geocities created webpages. He was a pretty open reactionary before Twitter and YouTube became big. He tied his wagon pretty solidly to Inforwars around 2010. Brian Berletic used to go by the name of [Tony Cartalucci](https://www.youtube.com/@thenewatlas). The original Tony C used to write HEAPS for Infowars [[example](https://elite-newworldorder.blogspot.com/2012/04/nwo-genetics-and-humanitys-future.html?m=1)] [[example - he cites Paul Joseph Watson](https://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/05/infowars-brothers-in-arms.html?m=1)] [[example](https://landdestroyer.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/the-global-elite-want-you-dead/)]. Sadly the Wayback Machine doesn't have a search name feature, but you can still find [Infowars when you type his name in](https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/tony%20cartalucci). The message was very [globalist, George Soros](https://landdestroyer.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/the-global-elite-want-you-dead/) kinda stuff. I hear you saying, hey ButtBidet, that was in 2012. Maybe the guy has grown in the last twelve years. Hey, many of us started out as libs. To which I answer: with the name change to Brian Berletic, he's distanced himself from the Infowars garbage and gotten a better message, but he's still far right as fuck. For example, he did the [antivax thing hard during 2020-21](https://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/search?q=vaccine). He's done a lot of [climate change skepticism pretty recently](https://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2019/09/greta-thunberg-and-big-biz-climate.html). Lastly, he's very clearly [pro-monarchy](https://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/search?q=monarchy). I see that [he writes](https://journal-neo.su/author/brian-berletic/) from the maybe Russian funded journal NEO ([according to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Eastern_Outlook) which I'm too lazy to verify). Honestly I couldn't care less if Russia is funding him, but I just assume that he's an intellectual for hire.
ive recently made an extremely cringe comment in a thread about the electoral victory of the (even more) extreme right in germany which i since removed. in that comment i accused the german people of being intrinsically inclined towards fascism and even called for measures of ethnic cleansing against that population, including children and elderly people. this statement was inhumane, destructive and just generally disgusting and inexcusable. so what led me to do such a thing? *(again, i want to reiterate that im in no way trying to excuse or justify my behavior in any way)* like with virtually all of the population of the former soviet union, my family history is defined by great tragedy that we suffered from the hands of the fascist invaders. many of my ancestors served in the red army (even the non-communist ones) and others still were part of one of the population groups that the hitlerites were brutally murdering in concentration camps. how this lead to a dramatic surge in germanophobic sentiment after 1941 is obvious. but here is the thing: the direct victims of those crimes, those heroic men and women of the victorious red army that marched all the way to berlin, mostly dindt really fester this kind of sentiment. contrary to western anti-communist propaganda narrative they behaved themselves with almost unbelievable levels of humanitarianism, empathy and generosity towards german civilians, organizing soup kitchens and free abortions for women raped by western soldiers. i believe that the reason for this is that **unlike reactionary ideas our worldview is humanitarian above anything else**. i lost sight of that fact and this led me to say things that i now regret. and i believe that sadly this is a somewhat systemic issue within the global anti-imperialist left: many people within the cprf, myself sometimes regrettably including, say *death to america* but actually mean *death to american**s***. this tendency is unjust, as our hatred as anti-colonialists should be directed towards the genocidal american regime and not the population that also suffers from its governments vile actions. in leftist online spaces there are emerging similarly wrong viewpoints like people taking the *unlimited genocide*-meme way to seriously or even posting "apology forms" to vile figures like henry morgenthau. a user on lemmygrad recently stated that he would be fine with the west being "left to fester in its own fascism" and that antifascists should simply emigrate to china (i hope i dont have to explain the classist underpinnings of such views). a different person on that same instance speculated in all seriousness a few months ago, that westerners have a "racist gene" that makes them more inclined towards white supremacism. such thinking led many western users, who form a majority on the english-speaking web, to engage in excessive self-flagellation, decrying their own cultures as inherently inferior and barbaric, denouncing even the most unproblematic of aspects like cuisine. those people should take a look at the gdr and ask themselves wether that government was trying to destroy german culture. comrades! lets not loose ourselves to the darkness of racial and petty-nationalist hatred! justice for the criminal regimes? yes! reeducation for the propagandized? absolutely! but ultimately progress and socialism for **ALL** of humankind.
the way I see it - "upvotes," "likes" etc are just a digital form of the verbal validation someone would get irl. Like if you told a joke, people would laugh, smile. If you made a good point, people would nod, say "uh huh" or something. A thread would look pretty weird if someone wrote something funny and there were like 30 people underneath going "lol" and "haha" so that validation is replaced with likes and upvotes. People absolutely get too caught up with how many internet points they get, but idk I don't see that obsession as fundamentally different from being obsessed with social acceptance in general. We all have a desire to fit in and idk, I think it has the same root causes as someone who gets too caught up with trying to be funny irl or something. It's something we all have to work on, whether online or irl.
I was thinking, we have a bunch of weekly megathreads that cover certain topics like trans megas, em poc megas, news megas, a reading club, etc It got me thinking, what if we had another mega that gave people weekly organising and unionising tips? Like every week they could highlight a good leftist org or union and give people some basic tips on how to do some praxis and strengthen the western left. I want to do it myself, but I don't know much about the subject myself, and I already have university assignments sapping me of my effort for that kind of thing. But I just thought it was a good idea, and if anyone has the time and energy to make a weekly org thread, I say go for it. Especially because recently liberals have been going "There is no alternative to voting, how do you possibly plan to get anything done?" we can say "this." A lot of libs don't know how to organise or fall into despair when they realise the system is rigged because they don't see a way out. We can show them how organised leftists have done it in the past and what orgs to trust. Give people some hope.
It might sound silly but I honestly believe that the Democrats insistence on being civil with the right is the biggest thing holding them back to the point of self-sabotage. Kamala, Biden, whatever could have got up on stage and mocked the shit out of them. "People can't even afford homes anymore and the right want you to care about what a cartoon M&M is wearing? You want to vote for that joke? You think those people are going to help you pay the bills? No, they're too busy tweeting about Potato Head dolls. 'I can't pay the bills but at least Elon turned the pistol emoji back into a real gun!' pathetic!" Of course we know why they won't, because they believe half the dumb shit the right do, and because they aren't trying to win over the public, they're trying to win over rich donors, all of whom are economically right at the least. So we get "I want to reach across the isles." civility towards the right and mild empty promises towards the public (barely do that anymore) Anyway, fuck liberals for letting the GOP win time and time again. Their weakness towards the right proves that they have no interest protecting the marginalised groups that rely on them. They only people they have to blame when they lose are themselves.
I thought this was still worth posting: I've lifted on and off since high school. I hit my 1/2/3/4 and beyond and continue to maintain my membership in the 1000lb club. My clean and jerk was higher than Arnold's ever was because I never learned I wasn't supposed to be able to do it. I did team sports and XC in high school. I primarily focus on combat sports these days. People seethe when I get their head in the clinch in muay thai. All this to say that I have a really good working relationship with my fitness. I don't think anybody ever quite hit the nail on the head when it comes to the downsides of body building as a primary pursuit as this guy, Braden Wellman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BhlgWZz7_w Bodybuilding is a silly and selfish thing to put the glut of your focus into. ESPECIALLY if you don't like it. Vanity is not fulfillment. The reality of vanity is bringing your own cake to birthday parties (with no allergies), declining going out with friends because of your sleep schedule, you can't track your macros at the local pub, alcohol inhibits muscle growth, or white knuckling through shit sleep for an early workout. "I'm sorry your mother is mad at me, babe. I know that this food is something you've eaten for generations for celebrations, but I'm having chicken and rice again instead." Couple that with the Instagram game (which absolutely trickles down into your fitness forum) with photoshop, steroids, anglefraud, perfect lighting, etc. and it effects you. There's nothing quite as ubiquitous as lifting as a means of finding affection. You could probably nick a couple rightoids from the gym for leftist causes if you explained alienation & atomization in an engaging way. They probably think socialism is when the government pays for Ozempic and takes 30% of your gains to give to people who watch Desperate Housewives. If you put dedicated gym goers in a society that isn't plagued by forever wars, where their extended family doesn't have 5 vets with PTSD, 8 people who can't afford healthcare, an upbringing defined by their parents' work stress and instead had a walkable city, nutritious food, and things to do, I bet 85% of them will find something else to focus on other than maintaining <10%BF. Could many of us stand to be more active? We're on an internet forum, there's no doubt! It would not only be good for the body, but for the mind. But would there be diminishing returns? Not only would there be, it could leave you worse off than when you started if you obsess over it. Hiking is a beautiful thing that doesn't give you an aesthetic body. Traditional martial arts have a rich history and lore, but doesn't help you in the street fight they're always droning on and on about. Combat sports are the most fun thing I've ever done, but I get hit in the head, my joints hurt, and it's not anabolic. Yoga could help you with a bad back or a lack of mindfulness. Aerial sports/pole dancing will attract their ire despite being badass and thrilling. Regular dancing is the most consistent anti-depressant activity[1], but invaded by those same people trying to get female affection while they learn how to talk to a woman for 4 minutes for their progressive overload. Triathalons are. Swords are fucking sick whether it's fencing, kendo, HEMA, or LARPing. The fash are obsessed with aesthetics. It's no wonder they'd be willing to do all the legwork it takes to be the one that stands above the others (for their body). That's their whole shtick. The difference is that I don't look down on someone for going to the party, eating a slice of cake, finding someone cute, falling in love by accident, and realizing it doesn't work 3 years later. I think for every 1 person who has truly made something special out of their life with aesthetics, there are 9 other people who scrubbed away magic and social fulfillment from their living. I think, for many people, they'd be better off really engaging with themselves and interrogating why what they have and who they are isn't enough. Maybe they'd realize that aesthetics aren't everything and a better future is possible. TL;DR: Exercise is only as useful as it is liberating. If you like bodybuilding, you should continue, but if the sacrifice isn't worth it, then you'd make a rational decision to avoid it, likely in exchange for a different type of physical activity. [1]https://www.leafie.co.uk/news/dancing-best-exercise-treating-depression-study/
Like no white proletariat developed because there really wasn't a white proletariat. At least a sizable one for a significant period of time. The worst jobs went to (usually) black slaves. White labour either costed a lot more, or griped with over exertion as non whipped people tended to do. Putting white people as labourers tended to import a lot of the class problems of the mother country. As said in Counter Revolution of 1776: >For the absence of Africans would serve to allow class and ethnic tensions among Europeans to fester, replicating Europe on the mainland, which was not exactly the goal of many colonizers. Banning Africans would mean that Europeans would have to perform tasks they might not otherwise, while being bossed—perhaps menaced—by other Europeans. Adding enslaved Africans, on the other hand, meant that brute agricultural labor could be assigned to the degraded dark folk, which would boost certain Europeans up the class ladder and enrich others. Whiteness afaik wasn't a common term before slavery. Europe before 1700 was filled with divisive hatreds between countries and religions. The English feared the Spanish and the Irish. Protestants despised Catholics. Whiteness was designed to create an artificial solidarity against the slaves who were, in many places, a majority and a real threat to the settlers of an area. Wrote Dr. Horne: >Then there was the developing notion of “whiteness,” smoothing tensions between and among people hailing from the “old” continent, which was propelled by the need for European unity to confront raging Africans and indigenes: this, inter alia, served to unite settlers in North America with what otherwise might have been their French and Spanish antagonists, laying the basis for a kind of democratic advance, as represented in the freedom of religion in the emergent U.S. Constitution. I read this thinking about how European whites more feel a sense of class conflict compared to settler countries where it's been hidden for centuries. Or at least until recently as fascism has been rearing its head. White solidarity, and I assume a social pact, has reduced a lot of class antagonisms in settler countries, especially as non whites are often exploited harder. BTW, if you're not yet a "read Settlers" person, I'm not saying that you white worker are not exploited. This is especially true now as Western hegemony is failing and internal exploitation is increasing. Maybe you're like me, had working class parents who did well because they were white after WW2, and you're struggling but doing better than other marginalised people. Sorry to make you all read my book report. It helps to remember what I read.
Biden is now kissing the ass of Trump and crying about his ear booboo. Basically spitting in the face of every marginalised group that will suffer under Trump. If the Dems aren't going to take serious measures to protect us, why should we vote for them? Why should we vote for people who are going to feed us to the wolves?
With the libs in my life, the reaction to Trump being shot at has been "It's a shame they missed." They have been hearing that Trump is a threat to democracy for the last 8 years, so hearing the so-called opposition to Trump suddenly support him has made them go "Huh?" and you can tell they're getting frustrated with them. Now would be a good time to remind the anti-Trump people in your life that the Dems/Labour clearly won't protect them from Trump and fascism, and that an alternative exists. The status quo is losing it's appeal. The important thing is to make sure people don't fall into the nihilist trend of "Both sides suck, there is nothing we can do. The world is terrible." A better way does exist and it *will* win.  People need guidance right now and communism can provide that.
Their response to this has been hilarious. I don't think they realise how fucking crooked they sound (or don't care?) when they pretend Trump getting a hole in his ear is a bad thing. Like, my brother's in Christ, you have been saying this man is a threat to our Democracy. You repeatedly have failed to stop him. He is one of the most openly hated people on Earth and yet here you are telling people that you're horrified that his ear got a booboo. You sit there pretending to be anti-violence when YOUR OWN COUNTRY HAS BEEN PROTESTING YOUR FUNDING OF VIOLENCE IN GAZA. It's like the Dems are doing everything in their power to remind voters "Don't bother voting for us, we won't protect you and we will lie about literally everything." If Trump wins it will be 100% the Dems fault.
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2968910 > As well as the other evils the right-wing Democrats have been doing. Even if Biden was young, there are more important things that would keep decent people from voting for him. > > Funding overseas fascists and funding genocide. > > Failing to protect abortion. > > Failing to protect Trans rights. > > Failing to protect the poor and allowing rent and basic living costs to sky rocket. > > Failing to make a meaningful impact on climate change. > > Failing to end predatory student loans. > > Failing to enact universal healthcare. > > Failing to handle Trump and the GOP in a meaningful way. > > Working with the fascist GOP and "reaching across the isle" to the far-right. > > Strong arming 'allies' and interfering with their sovereignty. > > Failing to close the concentration camps at the boarder > > Failing to properly lockdown against COVID and allowing the pandemic to continue to spread, mutate and kill millions and cripple millions more for life. > > And much more. > > Biden and the rest of the right-wing Democrats are just a big of a threat to democracy as Trump and the GOP. The Biden regimes refusal to enact the things the people voted him in for, as well as his prioritising of the wishes of the donor class over the wishes of the public show that the American plutocracy has serious corruption in both major parties that can't simply be voted away. > > Blue MAGAs refusal to acknowledge this, and insistence on voting in a system that does not care about their vote is nothing short of cowardice. They are afraid of what living in a system where democracy has little meaning requires from them to defeat. >
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2886858 > [I want to share with you all an essay that has been particularly influential on my way of thinking](http://ereserve.library.utah.edu/Annual/ENGL/7740/Potolsky/beast.pdf), kind of a skeleton key for how I think about a lot of issues of surrounding male sexuality, and one that might also serve as an entry point into people’s individual inquiries into theory generally or queer theory more specifically. > > I encourage you to read the whole thing if you’re at all interested, but this is a work of literary theory. Sedgwick is interested in analyzing the literature of a time in which the conceptualization of homosexuality was changing, and drawing conclusions from them. It’s all great stuff, but I understand not everyone here may find extended analyses of Thackery and Henry James to be their cup of tea, so I’m going to restrict myself to glossing the first section which summarizes most of the key theoretical concepts that she uses in her analysis. > > Sedgwick starts off by discussing the work of Alan Bray in order to situate the historical perception of homosexuality in England. Prior to the 19th Century, homophobia was intense, but also theologized, a manifestation of the ultimate disorder and the Antichrist, but simultaneously not something highly relevant to people’s everyday lives: “sodomy was … not an explanation that sprang easily to mind for those sounds from the bed next to one’s own – or even for the pleasure of one’s own bed” (Sedgwick 184). This began to change as the eighteenth century gave way to the 19th as a much more secular and psychologized homophobia began to develop. Readers of Foucault will note that he makes a very similar argument in The History of Sexuality, and indeed Sedgwick references him later in the essay. > > This shift coincided with new kinds of persecutions. Gay men had long been subject to “‘pogrom’-like” legal persecutions, which had a disproportionate effect due to their random nature, but now, with this new secular homophobia, all men, whether gay or not, became unable to determine whether their bonds with other men were free of any homosexuality. Thus this relatively small-scale legal violence could now have an effect that ramified out through society at large. Sedgwick calls this “homosexual panic”: “The most private, psychologized form in which many … western men experience their vulnerability to the social pressure of homophobic blackmail” (185). It is precisely because what is “homosexual” as a concept is arbitrary and forever shifting, unable to be pinned down, that a man can never be totally certain that he is clear of it and the consequences that come from being labeled with it. This is particularly true in the 19th century because “the paths of male entitlement required certain intense male bonds that were not readily distinguishable from the most reprobated bonds” (185). On one hand, society virtually mandated intense male bonds (boarding schools, the military, etc.), but on the other hand, absolutely forbade that these bonds cross over into homosexuality, ensuring continual anxiety on the part of men about their relationships transgression this invisible and constantly shifting boundary: “In these institutions, where men’s manipulability and their potential for violence are at the highest possible premium, the *pre*scription of the most intimate male bonding and the *pro*scription of (the remarkably cognate) ‘homosexuality’ are both stronger than in civilian society–are, in fact, close to absolute” (186). > > If you’ve ever wondered why many all-male institutions (sports, the military, etc.) are on one hand virulently heterosexual and homophobic, yet, on the other hand, homoerotic or in some undefinable sense “gay,” this is why. These institutions mandate close bonds while absolutely forbidding them from being erotic in nature, in a way that casts a constant shadow of homosexuality over them. In turn, these institutions and the individuals involved must be at pains to constantly assert their heterosexuality to the extent that it in turn calls their straightness into question. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” All male relationships stand under the shadow of homosexuality by their very nature. The desire for intimacy between men, whether enforced or not, is always under the shadow of the prohibition of becoming *too* close. Meanwhile the constantly shifting and arbitrary nature of “homosexuality” keeps men from becoming to comfortable that they are safely outside boundaries of the dreaded gayness. Is wearing your hair long gay? Maybe! Dressing nice? Maybe! Washing your ass? Maybe! Having sex with a woman? Quite possibly! Who knows? Paradoxically it is only the openly homosexual man that is free of this double bind. > > This essay is particularly influential in queer literary theory, because it provides a framework for understanding the queerness inherent in texts that are not explicitly gay. Wherever men are, homosexuality follows them, relentlessly, inescapably. Those characters, good friends, is it truly totally platonic? Those two enemies whose hate for one another consumes them, say Batman and Joker, is there not something a bit erotic about their all-consuming obsession for each other? The domain of queer theory, then, is not merely the ghetto of officially queer texts, but rather everywhere. The very act of censoring, silencing and excising homosexuality from art only ensures that it is paradoxically ever present and inescapable, and this is true of the world, not only of the text. > > I’ve long been interested in trying to expose people to a broader conception of theory on here (I’ve been" threatening to write an essay on what "The Death of the Author actually says for a long, long time ). If this stuff is interesting to you, let me know.
It gets bandied about as though it's in contrast to nature, separate from it. Like, *"I'd take civilization over nature any day; there's lions and tigers and bears out there!"* As if we left evolution, red in tooth and claw, behind. There's a reason Marx and Darwin are contemporaries. I'd like to here propose a distinction; a difference in kind and scale. There's Generational Evolution -- Darwin outlined this while sketching finches and pinning insects to corkboards. It's slow. Generations upon generations, infinitesimally small changes seeping through populations bit by bit. He described it as "survival of the fittest" but I think *"perpetuation of the first thing that just so happens to work"* better captures it. And then there's Behavioral Evolution. If the first sort of evolution was slow, this one is a lightning-strike. Genetic Evolution needs a bottleneck to up the pace - needs to crawl right up next to extinction for a new trait to propagate in only a lifetime or two. *We*, on the other hand, just need to talk to each other. We learn. Our behavior changes at the rate we allow it to. Of course, it's not as if we're no longer subject to that older sort of evolution. Genes still do their thing - but, again, that wheel turns *slow*. It's got a great and terrible momentum. We don't harness it. Not this century, or the next. Hell, probably not even this millennium. We have a much more attainable goal - harnessing Behavioral Evolution. At present, we use words like "civilization" as though we already have. As though we're not still stuck ***perpetuating the first thing that just so happens to work***. As though liberal-democracy nation-states were some deliberate design and not just classes of people acting out of material self-interest, reacting to others doing the same, enriching themselves via the latest scheme that happens to work. It's funny; here in the US, the people who deny evolution and the people who champion market economics have such a broad overlap. --- this, I believe, is how we frame the struggle of the 21st century. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the *evolution* of class struggles." Communism is the belief, the dream, of putting consciousness in the driver's seat. Of making dialog *the* defining evolutionary pressure, rather than a mere component.
It'd be fine and understandable if we're talking to the average person, but to anyone with some political knowledge, who willingly say things like this... it's less forgivable Especially when they speak of two or more entities in a conflict, on the same footing... when the power between is asymmetrical For example: When you say nationalism, do you mean national chauvinism (nationalism at the expense of neighbors; rightist) or national liberation (nationalism to liberate the many, or just an ethnic group; leftst)? When you say criticism of {insert anti-west, if not socialist nation}'s government is banned in a nation, do you mean constructive criticism or regime change rhetoric? When you say dictatorship in a world, the dictatorship of fucking what... no man rules alone... is that of the capitalists, the feudal lords, the proletariat? Baby-brained dickhead... you could just think of, idk, some random political movement and that's it Like Idk... the Schiller institute ruling Belarus or something... then we can pretend you actually have a clue about the damn country And lastly, but most recently, 'both sides badism' I swear, this is the last resort pipeline libs go to, when even their western allies are reprehensible as fuck... For example: When you say both sides have committed atrocities in Israel-Gaza war, with Israel undoubtedly causing disproportionate series of massacres against Gazans, in their war against guerillas. Yet you can't apply saying the same courtesy to the Russo-Ukraine War... even though the morality of war between them is more comparable... relatively Honestly, fuck you... And don't get me started about how you can just label your enemies Hamas, and that's the end of the argument Also, fuck western-funded NGOs, may NED's HQ in Washington DC be bombed, Eglin Air Base nuked...
Many of you may or may not wonder what software to use. People may provide walls of text as a response, but you may just want something to reference without having to look into how the software works. I hope this can be that reference for all of you and anybody else who stumbles upon it. This is up for discussion and change, but I hope this can be a good baseline, as I myself have been making the changes to FOSS for a long time now, and it would be a good idea to have a recommended software/services page on Hexbear. (The [*] marks the better option) Workstations: - OS: Linux, I reccomend Fedora with GNOME (for a new, but efficient and simple feel) or KDE (similar to Windows with more customization), but I know some people like Mint for new users. Install as much software as possible on flatpaks. For maximum anonimity and safety, use Tails. Runs on USB, wipes data when removed. - Browser: Firefox with Arkenfox, Tor Browser (For reliable anonimity; DO NOT ADD EXTENSIONS TO TOR BROWSER) - Browser Extensions: Ublock Origin (add Adguard URL Tracking Protection and Easylist Cookies blocklists), Libredirect. - Office Suite: Libreoffice, OnlyOffice - Password Management: Secrets on GNOME, KeepassDX on KDE. DO NOT REUSE PASSWORDS OR IGNORE THIS STEP!!! - Music Downloading: Nicotine+ (Soulseek Client), make sure to use VPN - Music Listening: Gnome Music (GNOME), Elisa (KDE) - Network Permissions: Flatseal on GNOME, System Settings on KDE (search for "flatpak"). - BitTorrent: Fragments (GNOME), Qbittorrent(KDE) Mobile Devices: - Phone: Google Pixel + Graphene OS*, Divest OS - Browser: Vanadium*(Only on GrapheneOS), Mulch, Tor Browser* (For reliable anonimity; DO NOT ADD EXTENSIONS TO TOR BROWSER) Mull can also be a good browser option with better content blocking. It is also not chromium, which while avoiding the monopoly, does leave it without site isolation (security feature) like other firefox mobile browsers. - App Stores: Fdroid Basic*, Aurora Store (Google Play replacement, use as needed) - Password Management: Keepass DX, DO NOT REUSE PASSWORDS OR IGNORE THIS STEP!!! - 2-Factor Authentication: Aegis (Android, 6 digit codes), Hardware Keys ($$$). SMS Verification is better than nothing, but avoid it if you can. DO NOT USE GOOGLE AUTHENTICATOR OR MICROSOFT EQUIVALENT - Music Streaming: Harmony Music - Music Listening: Auxio, Fossify Music - Network Permission: Graphene OS is the only OS that has this functionality, find it in permissions settings. - Camera: Graphene OS Secure Camera*, OpenCamera - Notes/To Do: Fossify Notes - Weather: Breezy Weather (Fdroid Version) - Navigation: Organic Maps - Voice Recordings: Fossify Voice Recorder - Keyboard: Helioboard - Lemmy: Jerboa - Youtube Front End: Libretube, Poketube (Web App) Proprietary Apps (Social Media, Banking, etc.) are best used as Web Apps, as privacy and security benefit from the browser sandboxing. General: - Search Engine: DuckDuckGo (more consistent, proprietary), SearXNG (open-source, less consistent). - Chats: - Large Groups (Like Discord, [DO NOT USE DISCORD](https://hexbear.net/post/2639980?scrollToComments=false)): Jami, Matrix - Small Groups/Individuals: Briar* (only on Android), Signal (Struggle Session on Signal, I know there might be something wrong but at the same time Signal seems to encrypt everything) - Email: Proton Mail + SimpleLogin Aliasing, try to avoid email as much as possible, Chat options are more private and secure. - File Sharing and Syncing: Syncthing, but don't forget that you can directly transfer files from devices with usb-c and usb-a cables. - File Storage: Store files locally, sync between devices with Syncthing as needed. If you *really* need cloud storage, use Proton Drive. - Password Management: Bitwarden, more convinient than keepass, while eliminating the risk of losing the file or having to manually sync. Only downside is that data is stored on their servers if not self-hosting, meaning it's a bit more vulnerable to data breaches. - VPN: Proton VPN for free, keep an account for each device as the free tier is limited to one device, Mullvad VPN* at a premium for reduced hassle and faster speeds(5 Euros per month) - Social Media: Cut down on big social media as much as possible. Relocate to the fediverse, and be careful with what you post, it's still public. Do not post too much identifiable information, do not dox yourself. - Front Ends: Invidious (Youtube), Poketube (Youtube), Redlib (Reddit), and many others for a ton of different websites, all avaliable with the libredirect extension. I feel like the "datura.network" are pretty private and reliable, with a rotating IP to bypass blockage. Got a lot of my info from here [privacyguides.org](https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/), though some of this is based on my own experiences and suspicions. If anything can be added, let me know! Love you all  UPDATE: I'm bad at titles, so that's up for a struggle session.
 > TL;DR Discord loves to present itself as a company run by a few gamers just like you. The service aggressively advertises itself as "for gamers" with the hope that this "reputation" alone will propel Discord to the top. This has worked really well. The Discord team has **refused**, however, on multiple occasions to take certain steps to protect their userbase, described in more detail above such as adoption of E2E encryption or going open source. Instead, the Discord team states clearly in their privacy policy that they will gladly hoard a plethora of data about their users indefinitely, loosely claiming to only delete it when its no longer needed. The data they collect and store includes (but is not limited to) **full chat logs, all chat media, a list of who you chat with, email address, IP address, device ID, behavioral analysis, activity tracking on the service, pulling info from social media accounts you link, and much more as stated above and in their Privacy Policy**. Discord shares this same data with all of its partners, affiliates, agents, and "Related Companies" while lazily instructing you to check their privacy policy to find out what happened to your information, as its no longer any concern to Discord. In addition, Discord goes further to say "Developers using our SDK or API will have access to their end users’ information, including message content, message metadata, and voice metadata". Their very vague "information" wording allows Discord to send whatever they please while, of course, leaving it up to you to go check their privacy policy and figure out just where and to who Discord sloppily throws your data around. Discord continues to show little to no progress or effort in considering open source code, strong end-to-end encryption adoption, or even something as simple as allowing the deletion of an old account. It is important to note that while Discord allows the "deactivation" of an account, their support team will happily inform you that they do not delete your data and your account cannot be deleted. This data is again stored for an indefinite period of time. # Discord is proprietary [spyware](https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/discord). Using it means endorsing and legitimizing it. Discord relies on its reputation to lure its victims. Despite just starting out as a way for  to mingle in chatrooms and VoIP rooms, Discord has now expanded to any sort of purpose, even extending to schools where students will use Discord for clubs as well as online projects where communication is done over the platform. The reliance on Discord is dangerous. Any thing you type or do in this program is recorded for the highest bidder (that be your government or private data brokers). The interface and UX is designed to keep you in the app for as long as possible. There's no way to "smartly" or "responsibly" use Discord. One way or another, Discord will extract value from you. It's not just about you, but about everyone who uses the platform. # Solutions There are no "alternatives" to Discord. I'm not going to try to fool you by saying there's a magic bullet to defeat Discord's presence in western society (other than socialism and ). But that doesn't mean there aren't ways to help. - [Matrix](https://matrix.org/): A decentralized messaging protocol. It supports video conferencing on its main instance as well as support for the Discord "Server" functionality. Easiest solution for a drop-in replacement. - [IRC](https://libera.chat/): The one that came before Discord, community networks can be used if you need to communicate and is just as secure as Discord (public chat rooms with zero end-to-end encryption besides TLS) - [GNU Jami](https://jami.net/): If there was a magic bullet, this would be it. Completely decentralized, peer-to-peer messaging network that is *device based*. It is a GNU package, possibly the most guarantee for freedom you can get in this world. The team is small, but if you need somewhere to host your leftist activities that will require more than a court order (or a simple bribe) to de-anonymize by state and non-state (those funded by other states) actors then this is it. # Conclusion This is a post for self crit. If the service is free of charge, then you're the product. Any leftist should take steps to eliminate their dependency on Discord and proprietary messaging programs. Also any leftist should spread this message and inform others about the risks of using proprietary software. We should also take Discord as a lesson in how to identify the dangers of proprietary programs and why it could make us vulnerable to abuse (which as we know in a capitalist society, is coming one way or the other). Discord isn't the lone offender, but an example of how nonfree software will always pose a threat to a free and democratic society and only benefits the bourgeoisie. Let this be the last thing I have to say about this accursed program
You could get rid of both Biden and Trump, whoever replaced them would be beholden to the same imperial corporate interests and be just as vile with their policies. You could do Putin or Zelenskyy in, and another capitalist oligarch would just take their places. If Netanyahu disappeared tomorrow, Israel has plenty of genocidal politicians ready to fill his boots. The real world isn't a Marvel movie, there is no single "ultimate bad guy" to rally against. The entire systems of these places need to be overcome.
>I need to write a zoology paper on bugs >All search results are for pest control businesses or are AI generated garbage that have wrong information. Yes, the internet always had problems, but I cannot stress how much *worse* it has gotten for information over the last ten years. I used to be able to search a species and get scientific papers or at least articles that referenced scientific papers in the results. None of that anymore. All search results are for someone trying to sell you something, and articles are regurgitated AI monstrosities that waffle on with no real information and no references. If your search even manages to direct you to news articles every news site will have identical, poorly written tabloid hidden behind a paywall. All of it useless for even the most basic academic research. I literally can't do my job if every search result for species identification is behind a paywall, or an AI generated image of a bug that doesn't really exist. It's no longer the information age. But not because of Trumpism and other things liberal whine about, it's because capitalism has hollowed out the internet into a husk of what it was meant to be. I literally had to go and buy an expensive field guide from a museum to finish this paper. I haven't had to do that before.
**Disclaimers** tl;dr at the end My perspective comes from living in part of Burgerland (aka the US) and will be focused on the left "movement" in this country. I'm not going to do the typical American thing of assuming my experiences and perspectives are the only ones that matter, so please let me know in the comments how other countries handle what I'm about to cover. Also this post has been kicking around my head for a while, so apologies if it ends up long-winded or hard to read. The way I think is all over the place, so I have lots of headers and sections to keep things organized. **Intro: Messaging from the left = Capitalist Realism** Mark Fisher (RIP) wrote a very important book about a phenomenon he called Capitalist Realism. I highly recommend every leftist reads at least the opening chapter to this book. In this piece Fisher describes a widespread cultural attitude that Capitalism is inevitable, the only system that can exist in this "end of history". No alternatives are possible, so don't bother trying. And if you do try, you will be made an example of, another reason on a long list of reasons not to try again, so don't even bother. Or worse, your criticisms of Capitalism are used to help keep Capitalism going! Your efforts co-opted and integrated seamlessly into the machine. "Sorry To Bother You", but I doubt "Don't Look Up" got throngs of people who never heard of Socialism to sign up with  *The left, unknowingly(?), contributes to Capitalist Realism* Look at the news feeds, the posts on here, all of the updates on all of your favorite Reddit subs, left Twitter, etc. Overwhelmingly negative stories about how Capitalism is screwing us, how this week a company is caught poisoning food, or how capitalist governments are suppressing speech, or some shitty Conservative politician pushing the latest woman-hating bill. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Capitalism sucks. No one here needs convincing of that. What I want you to focus on is how this deluge of negative stories affects activists and organizers. More in comments.
**Content Warnings: this post contains discussions of hypothetical gun violence and brief mentions of police and fascism.** I recently encountered an anarchist critique of *On Authority* called *The Problems With On Authority.* Originally, I intended this response to be a writing exercise in rhetoric and argument construction, but I'm actually really pleased with it and decided to share it. Critique is welcome; this is after all a practice piece. Additionally, please let me know if there's a more appropriate place to put this; I'm not really familiar with this platform. I should note that I have not written this as a critique of anarchist thought in general, just a critique of *The Problems With On Authority.* However, being that this is a response to a critique of Engels' critique of (certain) anarchists, I can see how it may read that way. **Introduction** The author's critiques of Engels are, as I show below, evidence of a significant misunderstanding of what Engels is talking about, and in places actually serve to prove him right. I'd encourage anyone reading this to first read both *[On Authority](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm)* and *[The Problems With On Authority](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/london-anarchist-federation-the-problems-with-on-authority).* Both are fairly short, and you'll get a better sense of context for my critiques (though I do use quotations of both texts where appropriate). Plus, *On Authority* is a great read. I've structured my response to broadly follow the structure of the original critique, though I do jump around in a few places. Again, I use quotations from both texts where I can to give context for my response. **Main Points in *The Problems With On Authority*** These are the main critiques that I'll be responding to. Each of these correlates, in order, with the Problem headers in the text. 1. Force is separate from authority. 2. In Engels' analysis of organizations as authority, he failed to make distinct the top-down organization of capitalist enterprises from voluntary, democratic workplaces under a socialist mode of production, which due to their democratic nature are not organized in a way that utilizes authority. 3. Authority is generated by obedience. 4. Authority is never necessary and should be rejected/combated at all times. 5. Authority, as it is defined by the author, is alone what serves to maintain capitalism. In *On Authority,* Engels defines authority this way: >"Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination." And in *The Problems With On Authority,* the author comes to the following definition: >"As an anarchist who rejects *all* authority, this is what I mean when I use the word, and from this point on when I say “authority” I am referring only to the authority granted by unquestioning obedience." I state this now as the critique doesn't give its full definition until the third Problem section, but I will be addressing parts of it ahead of that section. Ultimately, the author seems to construct a vastly different definition than the one Engels uses, with the apparent result that they can both take a wholly anti-authority stance while still agreeing for use cases for authority as it is defined by Engels. I find that their definition is wholly incomplete and, if used as-is, has some implications I'll address below. **Authority as a Generated Force** I refer throughout my rebuttal to the *generation* of authority-- that is, the phenomenon by which some action or quality grants a party authority over another party. I use this model as a rhetorical device as I think it serves very well to demonstrate why the critique's re-defining of authority is incorrect and to explore the implications of that definition. I specify this because I see this model as a natural outgrowth of that definition, and it is not a model I have explored or interrogated outside of this context, and therefore it is not a model I necessarily subscribe to. **Problem One: Authority as Force** In this section, the author claims that (some anarchists) do not define force as authority (or as either a component or sub-type of authority), and that Engels, in failing to understand this, has misrepresented anarchists in their total rejection of authority as also rejecting the use of any and all force in revolutionary pursuits. As from the outset they have rejected Engels' definition, I'll explore the ramifications of their definition (that authority comes from/is generated by *blind obedience*) here. They contrast blind obedience with obedience in the context of the subordinator doing what they have been instructed to do because it is in their own self-interest. However, they also discuss the subordinator who *has* considered the obedience, and finding it against their own self-interest, *obeys anyway*: >"And if an obedient subject does come to an understanding of their own desires while remaining obedient to authority, their own obedience prevents them from expressing themselves to that authority." This is a failure to understand *why* someone might knowingly act outside their own best interests (which I'll address further on), but it also leaves us with some fascinating implications. This text and others use violence in self-defense as an example of justified force without authority, so I'll use that scenario as well. Say that someone has pointed a gun at me and told me to give them my wallet. If I obey them, under this definition of authority without force, we're presented with three absurd scenarios: 1. I give them my wallet because it *serves my own self interest of not getting shot,* and **this person holds no authority over me.** 2. I give them my wallet not because they'll shoot me if I don't but because *I am blindly obeying,* and **there is authority generated by my blind obedience and not by the (threatened) force of the gun.** 3. I give this person my wallet not because they'll shoot me if I don't and not because I haven't considered that it's not in my best interest to do so-- *I am doing what I have been told, knowing it's not in my best interest to do so, despite apparently no other reason to do so*, and **there is still authority, generated by my obedience alone (thus apparently putting me in power in this scenario)**. All of these scenarios are ridiculous. The will of this person is being imposed on me by threat of force. They have a kind of authority in this moment, and it is solely from the gun-- I would have no reason to give someone my wallet if there were no (explicit or implicit) threat of violence. The author goes on to state that some anarchists *do* consider (correctly) force to be authority, but those anarchists believe that only *unjustifiable* authority is unacceptable. They use this to doubly refute Engels; either force is not authority, and so anarchists do not out of hand reject force, or force is authority, but some anarchists do not out of hand reject all authority. Being that the author is arguing the first position, which we've demonstrated is an unfounded one, and that Engels specifically *agrees with* the second point, the critique that Engels makes still stands. If anyone has a critique of *On Authority* from the other perspective, I'd actually really like to hear it. >"If the autonomists confined themselves to saying that the social organisation of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable, we could understand each other..." The section concludes with this: >"I personally am in the camp that does not consider force to be a kind of authority, as we have a perfectly good word to describe force without having to use “authority” and so confuse force with other kinds of human action." There are authorities without force-- different types or sources of authority do exist-- but divorcing force from authority entirely is incorrect, especially as it relates to systemic force as we'll see later on. Sub-categories exist for a reason and are perfectly useful here. **Problem Two: Authority as Organization** Here the author asserts that: >"Engels talks about solving these problems entirely in the language of imposition, and dismisses any proposed alternative out of hand as nothing but wordplay." Followed by this quote from Engels: >"When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that’s true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, _but of a commission entrusted_! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world." As we have established, and as the author is aware, Engels uses the language of imposition *because that is how he has defined authority*. We're already aware of the author's complaints with parts of this definition; however, at no point in this text does the author offer an alternative definition in the purpose or use of authority, only in the generation of it, so I will continue to use that part of the definition from Engels. This entire section is regarding the example that Engels gives of an individual will necessarily being subordinated in a production context to the will of others. The author says here that Engels didn't consider ways you could make decisions about production other than a manager being appointed from above. He did, though: >"The workers must, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work..." And: >"Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by a majority vote..." He has not stated in what manner a delegate has been selected, though I certainly have never worked somewhere where my manager was a delegate to a sort of manager council making decisions together, so I'm inclined to think that he's not referring to managers under capitalism here. Nevermind the fact that he states *in the quote they used* that the preferred method of decision is by majority vote among the workers. The wordplay bit is a reference to this line: >"These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves." Given what we've seen and will continue to see in their definition-crafting (it seems to me that on a topic like this you wouldn't want to wait to define your most basic term until the fourth section, which is why Engels defined it in the second paragraph) I feel comfortable saying Engels is right here. The author goes on: >"In the bottom up form of organisation, procedures and specialist roles are only possible if they are built on accommodation and compromise between those involved." I agree with this idea-- *and--* it's important to recognize the power *and authority* that comes with specialist positions. Have you ever worked somewhere where someone was allowed to get away with things others weren't because they were respected in their field or because they were the only one who had certain vital knowledge or skills? Granted that we presently live under a capitalist mode of production, but problems don't just go away under socialism without deliberate work, and refusing to name power so you can justify it while remaining 'anti-authority' doesn't make it go away. In fact, that kind of attitude contributes to the broken stair issue in organizing, where an individual is a known problem for one reason or another in an organization, but the issue is never addressed due to the person's skills, influence, or connections. In a bottom-up form of organization, people would still need the *will* to remove or resolve a problem in order to actually do so-- letting problems lie to keep the peace or because resolution would be complicated is one of Mao's definitions of liberalism if I remember correctly, and combatting that problem behavior and the liberalism that perpetuates it requires naming both. Consider the democratic workplace: everyone votes to take a certain action, and by whatever democratic processes have been laid out, the majority vote is followed. From here, those who had the dissenting vote have two choices: submit to the majority, and in so doing submit to the *authority* of the majority-- which they have consented to by their joining the workplace, but *which does here still have power over them*, or leave-- validating the authority of the majority in their demonstration that they can't act within the workplace but outside that authority (presuming that there are measures in place to address workers who try to do so). Now consider my job in a capitalist system: I have no say in who my manager is or in what decisions they make. If my manager makes a decision that I disagree with, I have two options: I can submit to the decision, submitting to an authority I did not choose, or I can leave. These scenarios aren't identical in that the authority is conferred in different ways, but they are both types of authority. In the democratic workplace the authority is that of the workers over their collective labor power, but it is also authority over the dissenting individual if there's not strong enough dissent to change the outcome, and ultimately the decision is the same: submit or leave (of course I recognize that the consequences of leaving your job would be different under a different mode of production, but that doesn't negate my point). A final point in this section-- the author says this about Engels: >"...he says that delegation makes no difference regarding the level of imposition a worker faces within an organisation." He absolutely does not say that. In fact, before the spinning mill example, he refers to authority "changing its form". Again, there are different degrees and types of authority, and I doubt that Engels would disagree with that, but less authority is not no authority. **Problem Three: Authority as Obedience** It's here that our critic finally supplies their definition of authority (or at least its source; as I've said, nowhere in this text do they define what, in practice, authority *is*): >"As an anarchist who rejects _all_ authority, this is what I mean when I use the word, and from this point on when I say “authority” I am referring only to the authority granted by unquestioning obedience." I discussed what this means in terms of the realities of decision-making by the subordinated person; here I'd like to discuss how this implicates the working class in their own subordination and the relation of (systemic) force to (systemic) authority. A common throughline you'll see in some socialist texts (particularly those written by the intelligentsia) is the idea that the working class is, in so many words, stupid. The working class does not *know* they're oppressed, they don't *know* they're those who clothe and feed society but not those who benefit from that work. *The working class knows.* The problem isn't that they haven't figured it out, it's that, through alienation, lack of proper education, and virulent anticommunist propaganda, they are (not all, but many) lacking the correct analytical framework to take their understanding of their circumstances and turn it to action and organization. This is to say, the idea that unquestioning obedience confers authority is incorrect because the people who live and work under that authority broadly know it's bullshit. The text goes on to mention that, even if someone questions that authority but still takes the action, the result is the same. However, authority is *not* conferred if you take an action recommended to you if "you understand that following their instructions is in your own best interest." This is where systemic force comes in. If my manager tells me to do something I disagree with, I can tell them no. Depending on the instruction and our relationship, this could open a dialogue, but it likely won't. If I continue to refuse, if I have a disciplinary history, or if my boss just doesn't like me, I'm now out of a job. My boss has exercised authority, and I am now subject to no more of it (except that ongoing authority that keeps me out of work with that company and, if they give bad references, other companies). But my boss didn't need to use force; the implicit (and often explicit) force of capitalism is here. If I don't have enough in savings and can't get a new job fast enough, I'm going to get behind on bills. If my friends and family can't support me, I'm going to be evicted-- forcefully. Without submission to my boss's authority, I am now at the mercy of the violence of the system. So I know my boss has told me to do something which contradicts my will, and I'm going to do it anyway. This can be both against and in line with my self-interest: against, if the instruction contradicts my will or threatens my well-being (perhaps in the context of workplace safety issues), and in line with, in that it is in my self-interest to remain employed. And if it is in line with my self-interests for that reason, it's only because of the threat of force that exists: thus, authority granted by force causes me to act against my interests knowingly. This section gives a definition of authority which puts the responsibility and in fact power of generating authority in the hands of those who must submit to it-- blaming the working class for their own exploitation and ignoring, as we have removed force from our definition, the violence which keeps us exploited. This point also fails as a historical analysis: if blind obedience alone generates authority, where did the current conditions come from? How did we come to have obedience to capitalist authority if obedience generates that authority to which we must then become obedient? Did some proto-capitalist arrive one day, start giving out orders to serfs, and find themself perfectly obedient proto-proles? Or is it possible, perhaps, that specific material conditions gave rise to capitalism as we know it, among them the taking by the bourgeoise state power (and its related force) from the feudal lords before them? Perhaps then blind obedience is also what sustained (and apparently created) feudal authority. One additional point I find notable in this section is the reference to any society which has authority as being an inherently class society (ignoring the incorrect analysis that an authoritative relationship is inherently a class one-- I've worked in plenty of places where my manager, who held direct authority over me and my continued employment there, was working class, and had no different a relationship to the means of production than I). Later we will see how the author views revolution, and that view leads me to assume (and this is an assumption only, but one I see as founded in the author's attitudes towards Marxism-Leninism and revolutions) that this perhaps includes the dictatorship of the proletariat, part of the transition from capitalism to socialism and then, eventually, communism. On that, I have only to say: yes, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a class-based society. No theory I've seen has ever claimed otherwise, because *that's the point.* But as the state (far transformed from its bourgeois capitalist form) would be run by *the workers and their directly elected and recallable representatives*, the class being repressed becomes *the bourgeoise*. They complained about being told to read 'On Authority;' now I'll tell them to read *State and Revolution*. **Problem Four: Authority as Necessity** I feel I've discussed already the points in this section, so I don't have much to say here, only that it seems evident to me that Engels understands the different types of and uses for authority, and is even quite explicit that all *unnecessary* authority should be done away with. The author seems determined to define authority in a way that is completely divorced from Engels' use so then they can berate him from the position of that definition and not the one Engels was talking about. As we've seen, the author accepts use cases for authority under Engels' definition-- they simply don't count those necessary uses as uses of authority. Again, *State and Revolution* is a good explainer on this point and what it means to wield state power in a proletarian state. **Problem Five: Obscuring Social Relations** This section makes some assumptions about force and what's involved in maintaining capitalism that are incorrect. It refers back to that idea of obedience generating authority-- which does not explain how that authoritative relationship that's generating the authority came to be. As I mentioned in my work example, force does not have to be directly applied to me to be a coercing force. The systems under capitalism, increasing with industry as we are further and further alienated from the products of our labor, serve as implicit forces. Without a job, I won't have money; without money, I can't access food, shelter, medical care, and other basic necessities. Trying to access those without money may result in that threat of force, namely the police, becoming a very material authority. As the text points out, a unified working class can overcome this force with their own. The author again states that it is a curated obedience that prevents this, but again a lack of organization and analytical framework is a better explanation here. Workers understand on their own they are exploited; no one knows on their own how to bring about the end of that exploitation. Even those who do understand are nothing without organization; being a communist doesn't make my bills go away while the working class remains unorganized. In discussing revolution, the author implies that the dissolution of the state will *precede* revolution, which will begin after the collapse of capitalist society has already occurred: >"However, a failure of state and capitalist authority is one of the key elements in a revolutionary situation that _could_ lead to socialism. But there need to be a body of people already practiced in socialist, and thus necessarily anti-authoritarian, institutional forms and the cultural norms that support them, to present an alternative to simply rebuilding authoritarian institutions." This is both ahistorical and implies, frighteningly, that the author believes that workers will simply have to suffer fascism-- as we know it is capitalism in crisis-- before they can hope to move towards socialism. Further notable, as the author imagines socialist organizations picking up the pieces after the failure of a state which has been backed into a corner by its own unsustainability and made to overuse force to cling onto diminishing authority, it should be stated that the first group any fascist government seeks to exterminate is the left broadly: labor organizers, socialists, communists. These organizations may well not exist to rebuild, and if they do, it would be in a greatly diminished capacity and certainly without the power/resources to do so. It should be evident that, for a great number of reasons, it is in the interest of any socialist project to *prevent* fascism, not to hope to outlast it. The author also implies issues with the use of a vanguard party; for a third time, *State and Revolution* discusses this more in-depth than I can here, and there are many decades of work since to address the issue. **Other Anarchist Definitions of Authority** In writing this critique I searched for other places that anarchists have defined authority to see if they supported this text, and found two I found notable enough to mention. The first, from Bakunin's *What Is Authority,* asserts that authority is wrong when it is imposed from without, and without the ability to deny it, but acknowledges the existence of and even potential benefits of certain authorities, such as that generated by expertise. As I addressed the issue of imposition under Problem Two, I won't rehash it here. The second I found notable was from [a deleted Reddit user](https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/qphi5f/what_is_a_useful_anarchist_definition_of_authority/) who used the force/self-defense example to say that, in killing someone to defend yourself you do not become *an authority* over them. I bring this up because *The Problems With On Authority* uses that same example and extrapolates it to revolution. I have issues with the equivocation of having/using authority and being an authority, but my primary issue is that extrapolation: in a revolution, even insofar as a revolution is an act of the self-defense of the working class, the revolutionary class as a whole (and individuals as representatives of that class) would absolutely be authorities over another group: *the other classes, namely the bourgeoisie.* **Conclusions** This critique fails entirely to disprove anything Engels wrote in *On Authority*. We can revisit their main points to see this: 1. **Force is separate from authority.** But we know that it isn't, and in fact is a great generator of authority. 2. **In Engels' analysis of organizations as authority, he failed to make distinct the top-down organization of capitalist enterprises from voluntary, democratic workplaces under a socialist mode of production, which due to their democratic nature are not organized in a way that utilizes authority.** But Engels *did* make this distinction, and still there is authority-- obscuring it by renaming doesn't make it disappear. 3. **Authority is generated by obedience.** This theory fails to explain how the current conditions of obedience came about if authority, from obedience, is necessary to create obedience. Further, this idea blames the working class for their own conditions. 4. **Authority is never necessary and should be rejected/combated at all times.** The author themself refuted this when they stated that some anarchists use the definition that Engels does, and we've further refuted it in demonstrating that the author's definition is incomplete *at best.* The author also agrees with use cases for force, which as we have seen either *is* or is *a generator of* authority. 5. **Authority, as it is defined by the author, is alone what serves to maintain capitalism.** And again disproven via systematic force and the threats thereof. As in point three, a conclusion that must be drawn from this is a very paradoxical understanding of history, wherein the blind obedience of the working class must have given rise to the conditions which allow for the existence of that working class. This critique defines authority (or at least the sources of it) away to a fine point, then dismisses all uses of *that type of authority* (which is in itself an unsatisfactory source of authority) as wrong. At the same time they acknowledge valid use cases for authority as Engels has defined it, such as revolution as an act of self-defense. As Engels said: >"These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves." And his final point says it well: >"Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction."
I'm sorry in advance for spelling and grammar errors, I am not the best writer. [CW: use of the word 'insane' here is about outdated medical norms.] We always hear about how the West values "freedom" and "the individual" but what does the reality of living under capitalism actually show us? **Freedom of expression:** In the West, we are told we are all free individuals who can express ourselves in any way we choose. But any artist can tell you just how crushing creating under capitalism is. The ruling class (those who employ and pay artists, investors, producers, executives, etc) call the shots, not the artists themselves. Profit is the motive, and they want a safe bet. Forcing artists to "play it safe" stifles creativity. Without the freedom to break boundaries into new horizons, and without the freedom to express themselves (rather they are forced to try and express the desires of a nebulous and fickle "market"), art becomes stale and hollow. People often use the term "soulless" to describe particularly capitalist art, which is an accurate description in my opinion. If art is the perspective and soul of the artist that is shared with the world, art that is made for the market becomes like a fake smile in that respect. Hollow. Some art is still outright banned for theocratic reasons, such as recent book bannings in the US. Thankfully the human drive to create persists, but art under capitalism struggles to be truly free as it claims. And what of other forms of self-expression? Common anti-communist propaganda depicts people under communist rule as wearing identical grey uniforms, unable to express themselves through fashion (despite all evidence proving otherwise). And what about fashion in the West? From a young age, most countries require people to wear uniforms to even go to school. Even in countries that don't require school uniforms, once they go to work, 'lower class' workers are forced to wear embarrassing uniforms and name tags, and people all rush through business districts wearing near identical suits, drab and colorless. Even in your own time, looking too 'strange' or 'different' is subtly discouraged, whether it is harder to find a job if you have tattoos, or being socially policed for being too outside the norm. If you have hair too long or short from your assigned gender, or if you have brightly colored hair, or if you wear clothing that is not 'normal' for your assigned lot in life, be prepared to be mocked for "trying to be special", not exactly the talk of a free people. It wasn't too long ago that such social deviation was deemed 'insane' and such people were inflicted with cruel forms of outdated therapy or institutionalized. And this isn't even going into what people who are not white male cishets still go through to this very day. **Transport:** Americans like to say that the car is a symbol of freedom. Unlike a train which is on a set track and filled with other people, a car is yours to go wherever you want, your way. But what is driving in America actually like? In reality, it's millions of cars trapped on a freeway, going a predetermined way set by a road, surrounded by others. Only unlike a train, you can't socialize, and each car is spewing tons more waste per person than a well-maintained train system ever could. If we look at the reality of what is happening, these expensive death traps are anything but free. Anyone stuck in a traffic jam could tell you that if they were being honest. **Work:** In no place is the idea that capitalist societies are free more laughable than in the workplace. The average person living in a capitalist society will spend most of their waking life working to enrich the ruling class. They do so in an environment that can only be described as an authoritarian dictatorship of strict rules, hierarchy, and restriction of autonomy. Many workers are not even allowed to speak freely. Some are given scripts to follow. It is not uncommon for retail workers to be forbidden to even sit. Even failing to force a smile in the presence of customers can be punished. All under penalty of losing their jobs and potential poverty. **The Capitalist Surveillance State:** Interestingly, mass surveillance was once considered something unique to so-called 'authoritarian communist' countries, yet privacy is under far worse conditions in the West. Slowly but surely, capitalist countries have become a panopticon, where no one quite knows when they are being watched. Because there is no space where some kind of device isn't collecting their information. In our world where everyone requires a phone that doubles as a monitoring device in their pocket to take part in daily life, it's hard to imagine that even CCTV was once controversial here. However, it went ahead anyway, as petty theft was used (as it often is) to justify its implementation. After all, in a capitalist society, the private property of the wealthy is more important than the rights of the common people. Now, everything from online activity, location, photos, and even biometrics are all combined to create a profile of each person. Consent isn't even possible in such a case, as the devices of others can even provide information. To avoid it would to become a hermit. People have become numb to this, and any questioning is either met with weak resignment to their powerlessness to stop it, or a declaration that "I don't care if Google knows my search history, at least it's not the government." Unfortunately, under capitalism the government does not lose power, it merely privatizes it. In a way, corporations *are* the government. They donate, they lobby, they treaten to remove donations or sue if their demands are not met. Under capitalism, business *is* the government, and their geopolitical and domestic motives are not in the best interest of the people. It's in the interest of profit. The personal data of civilians can and already has been traded back and fourth between government and corporation, to be used against protests or organization that threatens the ruling class. Frighteningly, all of these are normalized to the point that a lot of people do not question it, and if they do, are too afraid to fight it. That is the state of freedom and individuality in a capitalist society.
On Oct 7th numerous instances of 'Hannibal Directive' have been made evident. The most extensive casualties are due to 28 attack helicopters ("Apache") emptying their full complement of weapons ("shoot everything") and re-arming through the course of the morning hours of that day. Other known incidents have been reported of tanks firing on homes known to have hostages inside under orders from command. There are also reports of drone operators firing at vehicles and other targets that likely had hostages contained within. This list of links focuses mostly on the evidence of the helicopter attacks. What is the **Hannibal Directive**? >*"the name of a controversial procedure that was used by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) until 2016 to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers by enemy forces. According to one version, it says that "the kidnapping must be stopped by all means, even at the price of striking and harming our own forces."[2] It was introduced in 1986, after a number of abductions of IDF soldiers in Lebanon and subsequent controversial prisoner exchanges. The full text of the directive was never published, and until 2003, Israeli military censorship forbade any discussion of the subject in the press."* TL;DR: A policy of killing hostages instead of allowing them to be taken alive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive ***How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on 7 October*** *extensive collection of detailed reports and evidence of the various incidents of Hannibal on Oct 7th* https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-killed-hundreds-its-own-people-7-october/49216. **IDF Ordered Hannibal Directive on October 7 to Prevent Hamas Taking Soldiers Captive** *'There was crazy hysteria, and decisions started being made without verified information': Documents and testimonies obtained by Haaretz reveal the Hannibal operational order, which directs the use of force to prevent soldiers being taken into captivity, was employed at three army facilities infiltrated by Hamas, potentially endangering civilians as well* https://archive.ph/CTeR2 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-07/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-ordered-hannibal-directive-on-october-7-to-prevent-hamas-taking-soldiers-captive/00000190-89a2-d776-a3b1-fdbe45520000 **OCTOBER 7: Israeli Military Kills Israelis** *A forensic analysis by award-winning British journalist Richard Sanders and Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit provides a detailed examination of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.* https://youtu.be/ESd4vrdSqKM **Israel Killed Hostages on October 7th, Al Jazeera Doc Shows** *Novara Media coverage of new Al Jazeera Doc about civilian casualties by Israeli forces including clips and commentary* runtime: 24:08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mArZ60k9EEo **"How Israel Merked its Own Civilians on October 7"** *This video essay does a really good job of tying together the various bits of information collected in this post into a concise narrative.* runtime: 12:35 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCjTki-OgKQ **Israeli army ordered mass Hannibal Directive on 7 Oct: Media** *An investigation from Israel's leading newspaper indicates Israel deliberately killed many of its own civilians and soldiers during Hamas' Operation Al-Aqsa Flood to prevent them being taken captive back to Gaza* https://new.thecradle.co/articles-id/18512 **Shielding US Public From Israeli Reports of Friendly Fire on October 7** *Since October, the Israeli press has uncovered damning evidence showing that an untold number of the Israeli victims during the October 7 Hamas attack were in fact killed by the IDF response.* https://fair.org/home/shielding-us-public-from-israeli-reports-of-friendly-fire-on-october-7/ **Israeli HQ ordered troops to shoot Israeli captives on 7 October** *pretty solid overview of Helicopter, Drone and Tank attacks on hostages* https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israeli-hq-ordered-troops-shoot-israeli-captives-7-october **How Israeli forces trapped and killed ravers at the Nova Festival** *New evidence points to Israeli security forces, not Hamas, for causing the most fatalities at the music festival - civilian deaths that were then utilized to justify Tel Aviv's Gaza genocide.* https://new.thecradle.co/articles/how-israeli-forces-trapped-and-killed-ravers-at-the-nova-festival AP News video **Israeli rave survivors return to look for cars after Oct. 7 Hamas attack** *Hundreds of scorched and destroyed cars have been moved from the Nova music festival after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Almost a month later, some survivors return to look for their vehicles to reflect and make sense of what happened.* This shows the scale of the helicopter attacks, as HAMAS had no capabilities to do this type of damage. https://apnews.com/video/israel-hamas-war-israel-hamas-war-and-unrest-assault-1c3a2dd42dbb4f58a1ce29c431d080da Daily Mail - official youtube channel (CW: Deaths) **Israel Apache helicopters strike Hamas targets with chain gun and missiles** *posted Oct 16, 2023 #dailymail #israel #hamasattack* Here is direct video evidence of helicopter attacks on civilian vehicles, pedestrians, etc with no clear discrimination of targets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkNYB0DayKo **We Blew Up Israeli Houses on Oct. 7, Says Israeli Colonel** *AN AIR FORCE COLONEL has said that Israeli airstrikes may have intentionally killed Israeli captives rather than let them be taken to Gaza. Speaking in Hebrew about the airstrikes, Colonel Nof Erez told a Haaretz podcast in November, that “the Hannibal Directive was apparently applied” and that Oct. 7 “was a mass Hannibal.”* An extensive article collecting details of helicopter, drone and tank attacks on hostages that day. https://www.wrmea.org/israel-palestine/we-blew-up-israeli-houses-on-oct.-7-says-israeli-colonel.html The Electronic Intifada youtube channel and blog **"Mass Hannibal" — We killed Israelis on 7 October, says Israeli air force colonel** *An air force colonel has said that Israeli airstrikes may have intentionally killed Israeli captives rather than let them be taken to Gaza.* *Speaking in Hebrew about the airstrikes, Colonel Nof Erez told a Haaretz podcast in November, that “the Hannibal Directive was apparently applied” and that 7 October “was a mass Hannibal.”* The colonel confirms that the helicopters killed hostages and civilians indiscriminately during the chaos of that day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r63nmfbIUBA https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/we-blew-israeli-houses-7-october-says-israeli-colonel **Friendly fire may have killed their relatives on Oct. 7. These Israeli families want answers now** *Relatives of civilians killed at a kibbutz in southern Israel during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas are demanding the military immediately investigate signs that some may have been killed by Israeli security forces as they battled militants holding hostages* AP article that covers the incidents of tank attacks on homes with hostages inside being investigated. https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-hostages-investigation-friendly-fire-3b6fdd4592957340b32a8ee71505b8e9
Lately I’ve been seeing posters here express some form of the sentiment that Hexbear has fallen from its previous heights of glory and now we post amongst the ruins of greatness. This is not a response to anyone in particular, and I don’t want to call anyone out. In fact, it seems to be a normal human tendency to romanticize the past. But I’ve been here since the beginning and want to provide an alternate view. **1. Hexbear just isn’t like it used to be.**  This is one I am particularly suspicious of, since people started posting this after the site had been around for a couple of months. Before that they posted about how chapo.chat wasn’t like the old chapotraphouse subreddit. If the good ol’ days ever existed, they always seem to have been just prior to the current moment. If anything the site culture and vibe have been remarkably consistent since its inception, for better or worse. Faces have changed, people have come and gone and sometimes come back again, but Hexbear remains. **2. People used to be nice here and treat each other as comrades. Now there is just a culture of shallow dunks.**  Seriously? Be for real. I’m not going to deny that we love a good dunk around here, but let’s not pretend that this is a new phenomenon. It’s a big part of the culture around here that predates the site and even arguably even the subreddit. You can be free to like it or not, criticize it or not, say its productive or not, but its definitely not a new development. There’s always been a lot of love and mutual support, but also a lot of vicious arguments intracommunity arguments here. If anything I think there’s less of this now. The early posters would laugh at what passes for a struggle session around here these days. The VCJ struggle session seemed at the time like it might legitimately end the entire site. **3. This site had the potential to be a place for organizing and building something rather than just posting.**  This one is an interesting counterfactual. From the beginning there was no clear agreement on what the ultimate purpose of the site would be, and there were definitely people who saw the site as having revolutionary potential. There were also people who saw it as a place to hang out and shitpost among comrades and were skeptical of its potential for organizing. Over time, I think it’s become clear that we’re closer to the latter than the former. I’m okay with that, personally, but more than that I think it’s worth considering why despite having a lot of smart, determined people on the site, organizing never really materialized, or if it ever had that potential in the first place. **4. People used to post effort posts and stuff and now its just a bunch of shitposting.**  It’s always been mostly shitposting. [This is one of my first comments on this site.](https://hexbear.net/comment/18527) It’s hard to say if there really used to be more effort posts or not, but what’s stopping you from writing an effort post if you feel like Hexbear needs more of them? I’m doing it right now, and so can you. One thing that really has changed is that we used to have more comrades actively working on developing the site. Hopefully more people will step up to do that (not me though because I can’t code). In conclusion, Hexbear is mostly, for better or worse, as it always has been. Enjoy your time here without worrying about whether it measures up to some imagined glorious past. If there’s something you feel is lacking, step up and contribute it. This site is nothing more or less than the sum of our contributions.
monthlyreview.org
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1517140 > Lukács’s work set off a firestorm among Western left theorists seeking to accommodate themselves to the new American imperium. **In 1963, George Lichtheim, a self-styled socialist operating within the general tradition of Western Marxism while virulently opposed to Soviet Marxism, wrote an article for Encounter Magazine, then covertly funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)**, in which he vehemently attacked The Destruction of Reason and other works by Lukács. Lichtheim accused Lukács of generating an “intellectual disaster” with his analysis of the historical shift from reason to unreason within European philosophy and literature, and the relation of this to the rise of fascism and the new imperialism under U.S. global hegemony. > > This was not the first time, of course, that Lukács had been subjected to such strong condemnations by figures associated with Western Marxism. **Theodor Adorno, one of the dominant theorists of the Frankfurt School, attacked Lukács in 1958 when the latter was still under house arrest for supporting the 1956 revolution in Hungary. Writing in Der Monat, a journal created by the occupying U.S. Army and funded by the CIA**, Adorno charged Lukács with being “reductive” and “undialectical,” writing like a “Cultural Commissar,” and with being “paralysed from the outset by the consciousness of his own impotence.” > > However, the 1963 attack on Lukács by Lichtheim in Encounter took on an added significance due to its absolute condemnation of Lukács’s The Destruction of Reason. In this work, Lukács had charted the relation of philosophical irrationalism—which first emerged on the European Continent, particularly in Germany, with the defeat of the 1848 revolutions, and that became a dominant force near the end of the century—to the rise of the imperialist stage of capitalism. For Lukács, irrationalism, including its ultimate coalescence with Nazism, was no fortuitous development, but rather a product of capitalism itself. Lichtheim responded by charging Lukács with having committed an “intellectual crime” in illegitimately drawing a connection between philosophical irrationalism (associated with such thinkers as Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Georges Sorel, Oswald Spengler, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt) and the rise of Adolf Hitler. > > Lukács provocatively started his book by saying “the subject matter which presents itself to us is Germany’s path to Hitler in the sphere of philosophy.” But his critique was in fact much broader, seeing irrationalism as related to the imperialist stage of capitalism more generally. Hence, what most outraged Lukács’s critics in the West in the early 1960s was his suggestion that the problem of the destruction of reason had not vanished with the historic defeat of fascism, but that it was continuing to nurture reactionary tendencies, if more covertly, in the new Cold War era dominated by the U.S. imperium. “Franz Kafka’s nightmares,” Lichtheim charged, were treated by Lukács as evidence of “‘the diabolical character of the world of modern capitalism,'” now represented by the United States. Yet, Lukács’s argument in this respect was impossible to refute. Thus, he wrote, in terms still meaningful today: > > > **In contrast to Germany, the U.S.A. had a constitution which was democratic from the start. And its ruling class managed, particularly during the imperialist era, to have the democratic forms so effectively preserved that by democratically legal means, it achieved a dictatorship of monopoly capitalism at least as firm as that which Hitler set up with tyrannic procedures.** This smoothly functioning democracy, so-called, was created by the Presidential prerogative, the Supreme Court’s authority in constitutional questions, the finance monopoly over the Press, radio, etc., electioneering costs, which successfully prevented really democratic parties from springing up beside the two parties of monopoly capitalism, and lastly the use of terroristic devices (the lynching system). And this democracy could, in substance, realize everything sought by Hitler without needing to break with democracy formally. In addition, there was the incomparably broader and more solid economic basis of monopoly capitalism. > > **In these circumstances, irrationalism and the “piling up of cynical contempt for humanity,” Lukács insisted, was “the necessary ideological consequence of the structure and potential influence of American imperialism.”** This shocking claim that there was a continuity in the relation of imperialism and irrationalism extending over the course of an entire century, from late nineteenth-century Europe, through fascism, and continuing in the new NATO imperium dominated by the United States, was strongly rejected at the time by many of those associated with the Western Marxist philosophical tradition. It was this, then, more than anything else, that led to the almost complete disavowal of Lukács’s later work (after his 1923 History and Class Consciousness) by left thinkers working in conjunction with the new post-Second World War liberalism. > > Nevertheless, The Destruction of Reason was not subject to a systematic critique by those who opposed it, which would have meant confronting the crucial issues it raised. Instead, **it was dismissed vituperatively out of hand by the Western left as constituting a “deliberate perversion of the truth,” a “700-page diatribe,” and a “Stalinist tract.”** As one commentator has recently noted, “its reception could be summarized by a few death sentences” issued against it by leading Western Marxists. > > ## A GLOWING ENDORSEMENT!!! > > ### IF YOU READ THIS FAR YOU ARE OBLIGED!!!!! > > # Georg Lukacs - The Destruction of Reason-Penguin Random House LLC (Publisher Services) (2021).epub > 0.9 MB > https://files.catbox.moe/w2jp94.epub > > Still, there was no denying the scale of the undertaking represented by The Destruction of Reason as a critique of the main traditions of Western irrationalism by the world’s then most esteemed Marxist philosopher. Rather than treating the various irrationalist systems of thought of the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries as if they had simply fallen from the sky, Lukács related them to the historical and material developments from which they emerged. Here, his argument relied ultimately on V. I. Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Irrationalism was, therefore, identified, as in Lenin, principally with historical-material conditions of the age of monopoly capitalism, the dividing up of the entire world between the great powers, and the geopolitical struggles over hegemony and spheres of influence. This was manifested in an economic-colonial rivalry between various capitalist states, coloring the entire historical context in which the new imperialist stage of capitalism emerged. > > Today this fundamental material reality in many ways persists, but it has been so modified under the U.S. global imperium that a new phase of *late imperialism* can be said to have arisen, dating back to the end of the Second World War, merging immediately into the Cold War, and perpetuated, following a brief interregnum, in the New Cold War of today. Late imperialism in this sense corresponds chronologically with the end of the Second World War, the emergence of the nuclear age, and the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch in geological history, which marked the advent of the planetary ecological crisis. The consolidation of global monopoly capital (more recently monopoly-finance capital), and the struggle by the United States—backed by the collective imperialism of the triad of the United States/Canada, Europe, and Japan—for global supremacy in a unipolar world all correspond to this phase of late imperialism. > > For the Western left itself, the history of late imperialism has been primarily marked by the defeat of the revolts of 1968, followed by the demise of Soviet-type societies after 1989, which had as one of its primary consequences the collapse of Western social democracy. These events placed the Western left as a whole in a weakened position, ultimately defined by its general subordination to broad parameters of the imperialist project centered in the United States and its refusal to align with the anti-imperialist struggle, thus guaranteeing its revolutionary irrelevance. > > [read the rest](https://monthlyreview.org/2023/02/01/the-new-irrationalism/)
Like holy shit. It's tiring being a leftist, but damn at least leftists have a hope of a better future for the most part, or at least WANT a better future. Chuds on the other hand are like... they think there is no solution to the world's problems, just every man for himself. Hell, they don't just think that, they work towards it. Just a life of constant stress and strategic games to fuck over their fellow man so they can consume as much shit and declare themselves a 'winner' until the planet burns. No real friends, no real love. Just them and... what, the satisfaction of winning the world's loneliest prize? Is a species that's eating itself truly winning? It sounds so miserable and exhausting.
This past week a post was made by **autismdragon** criticizing a Spanish meme calling out those who hypocritically denounce reformism and social democracy/democratic socialism in the United States or Europe but are ardent supporters of Latin American reformism and social democracy. within this post I and several Latin American comrades criticized this position from my our perspectives as abandoning revolution and being conciliatory to capitalists and capitalism in our countries. during this conversation I offhandedly mentioned that Honduras is also a western nation, a belief commonly held here, much to the chagrin of the general userbase who found the concept of any Latin American country being western preposterous. A comrade from Brazil, **Apolonio**, decided to make a separate post to expand on this topic in more detail and help explain the Latin American position so that people can understand where we are coming from. I was banned for 3 days for being a white supremacist for believing my country is western and Apolonio was bullied off the platform and went on to delete their account and every message they have ever made. its within this hostile atmosphere that I am going to analyze the oppositional view and its origins and analyze the chauvinistic attitude toward the predominant Latin American perspective. **1. The Beliefs Of The Userbase** User **Dirt_Possum** says >The way I've always thought of it is that "Western" is just an informal way of saying Imperial Core. That it's all a matter of who is doing imperialism to whom, who is benefiting from imperialism and who is being exploited by it. That it's not a matter of culture, language, etc., and is only a matter of race and racism because it's racist reasoning and racist justification at the heart of imperialism and **SeventyTwoTrillion** says >"Western" and "imperial core" are synonymous to me, too, and thus Honduras is not in the imperial core and I assume is in the periphery while **sooper_dooper_roofer** adds >This whole debate is pointless because "Western" is just another weasel word, a euphemism, a dogwhistle, for "White". The point was to make it sound softer and tamer, and the fact that this debate even exists, means they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. "The White World" sounds awkward and racist to the POC across the globe, but "The Western World" sounds soft and tame and inclusive--mission accomplished! and **autismdragon** themself who made the original post says >For me, "the west", "the imperial core", and "the global north" are very close to being synonymous in how i understand them. But maybe they shouldnt be. This is why i usually use imperial core though, since it seems the most specific. finally to end with we have **supafuzz** saying >The white bourgeois insistence on 'cultural westernism' or whatever in these countries is just aspiration to the Imperial core that they ain't in viewing all these different statements combined, none of which are being detracted by other people as being blatantly wrong and all being surrounded by a conversation about the definition of white and whiteness it is safe to assume that for the community there is no nuanced difference between all these different terminologies and they are not defined in significantly different ways. The West is the Imperial Core is White is The Global North is each other. Western Culture is not a defined set of beliefs, values, culture, religion, or anything else that can be viewed concretely but viewed holistically as just what white people do. This is a racial categorizational view of the world or a racially reductionized view that begs us to ask the question of what is white or more importantly who is white. on the topic of eastern europeans we have **Egon** who says >Croatia, while being perceived as a "white" country most certainly is not perceived as western. Polish people, Czech people, Croatians, these people are not treated as equals when they come into "western" European countries. There is immense racism against them. You should hear how people speak of old "east block" countries. and yet this seems contradictory to what has been established beforehand about western and white being synonymous. thankfully, in the past this sort of contradiction was found and rectified by categorizing eastern europeans in their own subracial category called the alpine race. This categorization allowed for the continued differentiation of eastern europeans in their own group while still allowing them to be caucasian which was the fancy term for white in the past. on the topic of southern europeans we have **sooper_dooper_roofer** adding >Italian was considered a different racial category from northern European as late as the 1980s, I've seen it on official job applications. Italians also just look different in a way which doesn't exist for Irish Polish or even Russian people. They're darker, and they look more proximal to Arabs or Mexicans depending on who you ask. >only from the (visibly darker pigmented) European periphery of Spain or **TupamarosShakur** who says >However I think another point is that "the west" doesn't apply to even Spain, I mean not really. There is of course the racial component that someone touched on, where Italians, southern Europeans, are not considered white from this we can see that southern europeans are both included and disincluded from whiteness with the added fact that unlike eastern europeans, or the alpine race as it would've been called, southern europeans are significantly more tan than the real whites. thankfully this problem was also rectified with the sub-racial categorization of the Mediterranean race. this subracial categorization also conveniently solved the next problem on the list; Latin America. **sooper_dooper_roofer** explains extensively through talking about admixture within latin american communities saying >that's like 90% of Latin America or 75% of South America. They're not white, they're admixed with Europeans. Just like Black Americans are. I know a lot of you think you're white because you're lighter skinned than black people. Arabs and lighter skinned Indians also think that a lot of the time. They're not. Almost everyone in Northern Europe and Anglo America can tell the difference and tbh even Argentinians don't really look that white to me on average. >America is technically mixed race, but the average white American is 98.5% white (and western european to boot), unlike any "white" person in any Latin country where even the least mixed people are still 20% Native admixed >Latinos are basically only half white (from a darker than average white country like Spain), that means that Latinos are not Western while **Egon** talks similar with >The argument that a lot of Italians went to Brazil, and so the place is "white" is funny to me too. Italians were still treated like an exotic "other" up to the late 90's lol. within these arguments we can see that Latin Americans are made up of Mediterraneans and natives and since Mediterraneans aren't truly white either you end up with non whites and ergo non westerns. this also contains an age old classic The One Drop Rule. Since all Latin Americans are considered to have at least one drop of non-white in them they're all tainted to be non-white while since the united states is made up of English and Germans mixing with Italians or other Caucasians this has a purifying effect creating real whites. to further expand we have **JohnBrownNote** saying >yeah japan is sometimes part of "the west" but it's not western. i mentioned in another comment that this is perhaps an opposite to the latam situation. or **supafuzz** taking even further saying >I'd also argue Japan is more "western" than, say, Colombia in most cultural ways too. Full internalization of Western art, music, and most importantly political and governance structures, which are sort of a superficial veneer in most of Latam. this comes from an old trope that japan is honourary aryan and that the japanese are special enough to be allowed in an anglo-japanese alliance. this further highlights the underlying racial aspect of this since anyone can very plainly see that very little about japan is culturally similar to western european countries and ties into the final point in a little bonus **420stalin69** concludes with >I think of latam as having a western layer in the upper and more white classes that exploit a non-western majority. this highlights the well established in other comments belief in white inherently being successful and dominant. those within latin american societies which are rich and do well obviously have to be white in the same way japan must be atleast honourary white in order to explain their similar success despite being asian. this also explains why the west is also the richest place on earth due to their dominance now what does this all add up towards? this forum fundamentally believes in **Anglo-Saxonism** or **Nordicism** which is an outdated racialist ideology that divides the world into differing Caucasian races who predominantly inhabit different countries of which the Nordic race is the endangered and superior one destined to lead the other white races to greatness. the origin of the Nordic race comes from the Germanic tribes which went on to conquer across Europe and create Germany, The United Kingdom, France, and other countries. In fact, the only significant difference between Nordicists and the people on Hexbear seems to be the belief that white people are bad. This explains the incongruence of ideology between Latin Americans on the forum and the non-Latin American majority. Within Latin America Nordicism is not at all popular and those who espouse it are mentally tied together with the Nazis of Germany in the 30s. **2. Credibility of Those Beliefs** Now I was under the impression that after ww2 racialism was entirely discredited within academia and inside any groups in society who matter but evidently with the rise of neo-nazism, white identitarianism, and apparently this forum its an ideology that makes intuitive sense for some and has grand explanations for others. keeping in line with the talk of admixture some people have done before I am going to start by saying there is no such thing as races and its a concept that makes no sense whatsoever biologically. https://www.eupedia.com/europe/autosomal_maps_dodecad.shtml you can see in these simple autosomal admixture maps that genetic diversity is the rule and not the exception when it comes to Europe even within these countries that are labeled as "true white". the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, and France do not have their entire population share any haplogroup which could be used as the basis of this racial theory and the majorities in the UK share with Ireland, France share with Spain, Germany share with Poland haplogroups that they don't share with other "true whites". this is also entirely ignoring the fact that hapolgroups from outside Europe is found in abundance within Europe. The lack of scientific rigor for race is precisely why in South Africa they did not follow this ideology but instead used the Pencil Test to gauge who was and wasn't white. now the only defense for why the need to adopt crazy racialist theory always amounts to "well a lot of people believe this stuff is true so we need to too" which apparently is true for nordicism but isn't true for the belief that communism is evil or that lowering taxes is good. conveniently, too, no singular person or group is ever pointed to as holding these beliefs its always an amorphous "everyone". well, as a counterfactual to this apparent majority who all think that western culture and civilization is just white I will point to the two most well known authors on Western Civilization. **Oswald Spengler** who wrote The Decline of the West in 1918 which popularized talk of western civilization and gave it universal terminology said in volume 2 page 46 >But that which distinguished Faustian man, even then, from the man of any other Culture was his irrepressible urge into distance. It was this, in the last resort, that killed and even annihilated the Mexican and Peruvian Culture — the unparalleled drive that was ready for service in any and every domain... the relation between this forceful young Civilization and the still remaining old ones — is that it covers them, all alike, with ever-thickening layers of West-European-American life-forms under which, slowly, the ancient native form disappears. This aligns with Spengler's view of Western Civilization not being defined in racial terms, he was actually ardently opposed to the racists of his time and believed a "race" was a population united in outlook not ethnicity or dna and believed that mesoamerican culture was overthrown and replaced with western culture to join western civilization. **Samuel Huntington** who wrote the foremost modern book on Western Civilization, Clash of Civilizations, writes on page 45 a simple description of Western Civilization as >Western. Western civilization is usually dated as emerging about A.D. 700 or 800. It is generally viewed by scholars as having three major components, in Europe, North America, and Latin America. more specifically regarding Latin America he says >Latin America could be considered either a subcivilization within Western civilization or a separate civilization closely affiliated with the West and divided as to whether it belongs in the West. This underpins his disbelief in race being the objective definer of western civilization. this in fact highlights the widely accepted belief within academia, since I sau it once again racialism is no longer the vogue in academia, that other factors such as culture define whether or not someone is within western civilization not race. **3. Why it Matters** Some at this point may believe its fine to have outdated racialist concepts considered reactionary in the early 20th century and that they help explain the world very well despite being demonstrably false. I say that this theory ironically orientalizes Latin Americans, papers over the realities and differences in our specific countries, and promotes chauvanistic and paternalistic thinking towards Latin Americans. Latin American society was born from western conquerers and is defined in this and is not defined in whatever "brownness" that is prescribed onto us by foreigners. when a latino talks to another latino from another country its through a european language, spanish or portuguese, not through a native language. this language, spanish or portuguese is our native language which may not mean much to americans who have no concept of knowing more than one language but it makes a great deal more difference when your family, government, friends, and workplace all speak and express themselves and their identity through that language than when you have to use your second language, which you're usually not very good at, to negotiate through society as a foreigner or other. we act in a fashion mimicking the mannerisms brought to us by conquers from long ago and believe in ourselves in a way brought to us by these same conquerers. and finally many of us can trace our lineage very recently from elsewhere and may not have any kind of genetic connection to natives. plenty of chinese, italian, german, or in my particular case arab immigrants moved to our countries very recently. I can very easily trace my family leaving palestine in 1922 but nobody in my own country would deny my latinness since we're not racist in that way. even further, people talk about being hatecrimed immediately upon stepping foot in rural united states, which I have done and can say I am not dead and nobody cared quite as much as it was made out to me, yet you can literally say the same thing about mexicans hatecriming hondurans upon entering mexico and deporting them or mention the fact that the majority of border patrol in the united states is latinos themselves. fundamentally, the theory just does not understand latin america which is why its there is an issue and why it needs to be done away with.
## Hexbear's latest struggle session is in: should Latin America be considered western or not? I decided to write up some thoughts about it. The discussion on comrade's @autismdragon 's [post](https://hexbear.net/post/1379138) centered around a comrade from Palestine living in Honduras (or born in Honduras with Palestinian ascent) and others from neighboring countries claiming that Honduras (and other neighboring countries) is a western country, as it is populated by christian protestants, speaks a romance language, and has been subject to continuous economical, cultural, and imperialist influence by the United States. Others have pointed out that western should be understood in its most exclusive sense as pertaining only to western europe & the USA, and that racist white people in such countries would never consider a latin american person to be western and therefore it must be true they are not western. I think this argument fails to capture the way the concept of "western" has been utilized in Latin American countries to further the position of certain groups. So while I do agree that there are fundamental differences between Latin America and Europe or the US (the basis on which I believe they should be understood to be described below), adopting the most radical exclusionary concept of westerness does not allow us to understand the totality of social relations in Latin America, which are very much infused with notions of westerness and white supremacy. To make an analogy with phenomena within "western in the strict sense" places, it is known that US WASPs did not consider italians or poles or sometimes even germans to be white. Or we can imagine an italian who moves to Sweden and is not reeeealy considered white, over there. Does that mean only the most exclusionary concept of whiteness is true? Or, rather, should one look into it as a fundamentally relational concept with changing significates? That same italian from the example above can move into Africa or South America and be very much considered white: Brazil for example welcomed several italian migrants during the 19th/20th century as part of a state policy of whitening society. A polish descendant in the US, some generations removed, might very well be considered a white westerner. And our european comrades such as @egon would not BELIEVE what passes for white on, say, northeastern Brazil. The fact is that such concepts of western institutions and thought, and whiteness, are woven into societies born out of colonization and used even by the mestizo descendants of the colonizers of yesterday. I'm perfectly aware that several argentinian people who consider themselves very white would not be considered white by a racist northern european (or even a mildly progressive one). That does not change the fact that their white and european heritage has a material effect on their social relations within argentinian society. The fact is also that whiteness and westerness exist insofar as certain parts of latin american society hold the power of defining non-whiteness within their own societies (by e.g. murdering a black or indigenous person). This might be the alchemy of racism in Latin America: nobody is white yet it is clear and defined who is black. I think disregarding such mechanisms as delusions of a comprador elite, as has been proposed by one of our comrades in the thread, does not allow us to capture the issue in its totality. It also leaves out that although latin american countries generally do not have a nationalistic bourgeoisie as combative as, say, Osama Bin Laden or some russian capitalists, it is also not completely devoid of a certain degree of autonomy and interests that clash with those of imperial/external capital. An internal bourgeoisie, if we go by Poulantzian concepts. I also think that telling our latin american comrades to shed the concept of westerness because a northern european would not consider a latin american western, while having interesting rethorical effect and shock value, is not as necessary as some comrades in the thread made it out to be. Rather, an european who reminds our latin american comrades that they are very much not western and "to be honest we don't even consider the czechians western" is merely exercising once again the power to define who is or isn't [ingroup] that is characteristic of whiteness and westerness. Again, possible rethorical effect but to me it does not seem to further our comprehension of material reality, merely recreating its mechanisms with inverted signifiers. ## What would then be a more interesting way of looking into it? I'm by no means an expert but I also wanted to end this effort post with a more propositional tone. So here is what I think to be more useful to us in a marxist forum. It is true that Latin America has several cultural ties to the west-in-its-strictest-meaning (e.g. romance languages, christianism); that it has institutional ties to the west-in-its-strictest-meaning (e.g. a lot of state building in Brazil happened when the Portuguese king was in exile following defeat to Napoleon, to the point where some liberal scholars will consider ours a Portuguese-state-in-exile); and that it might as well share some customs (e.g. santa claus dresses in heavy red clothes while christmas is in summer goddamnit) or ideologies (with a seemingly unending propensity to import the latest fads in european economic science). On the other hand, a proper marxist understanding should stress that material conditions are central to the social phenomena observed. A shared cultural heritage (which exists and accounts for comrade's @CatrachoPalestino considering Honduras western) does not supersede the class relations of indigenous displacement and genocide, black slavery, superexploitation, and having part of our surplus value directed to the central capitalist countries. It is those relations that should be seen as the defining features of our material reality rather that a cultural heritage - which does not exclude looking into how such cultural heritage might be utilized to very material effects. ## Final notes: musical notes I will not translate two song's lyrics as of right now but I feel two songs are thematically relevant to our discussion which I will leave linked below because I like them. Mapping them out within western or non western musical traditions will be left as an exercise to the reader. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe8DN92jtbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PShf2AzheIk
You will never see a more disgusting place than YouTube. An algorithm that pushes the most disgusting content like gore and trauma and the comment section of even the most benign video will have some chud shitting on feminists or whatever with a million updoots. Absolute shithole of a content farm website. [Sexism] I was just watching a wholesome video of a rooster protecting the flock from a hawk, and the highest comment was like "Hurr duurrr I bet this triggers feminists seeing hens run in fear while the rooster takes charge." Bruh, no, what is triggering is how illiterate misogynists are about the animal world. Imagine choosing hens as your proof that women are weak. Hens, the gender of chickens that also attack predators regularly. Hens, the gender of chickens that are where scientists came up with the term 'Alpha'. Hens, the gender of chickens that can literally change their gender. [link because I'm not a lib, this person deserves bullying tbh but I doubt it's worth wasting time on](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YoJ2KkVMVgI&pp=ygUhcm9vc3RlciBkZWZlbmRzIGNoaWNrZW4gZnJvbSBoYXdr) And then, to top it all off, in the recommendeds was a thumbnail of a real picture of a squirrel gored up after being shot with a pellet gun, with the title "Watch this before YouTube deletes it"  So yeah, youtube is fucked up trash.
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1355656 > There's a lot of misleading things about this presentation; for one only the poorest of people were crossing the plains and Mountains. Instead those who could afford it preferred to sail to Nicaragua and walk across the isthmus, to then sail up to the West Coast. Yes the mountains were tough to pass, but not because they are mountains, but because the easiest paths are controlled by, and tolls are enforce by Indigenous nations across the west. Meaning it was not the Mountains that discouraged them, but instead the idea of following Indigenous laws; i.e. it's a political barrier. This barrier prevents a western expansion preferring instead almost a Roman style, build a fort around your enemy, style of invasion. > > >Palo Alto was further from the White House than it was from Mexico City. Frémont felt safe massacring unarmed indigenous groups in 1846, but the Anglo settlers were vastly outnumbered, and the tables could turn fast -never mind the European powers and wildcards like Russia and the Chinese. In the West, the United States was out on a limb. What the United States needed was for a bunch of people to go to California and stay there, anchor the territory, and ready it for statehood. The problem was that there were not a whole lot of reasons for settlers to try it. The sea routes around the Cape of Good Hope or down to British Nicaragua and up the West Coast after an overland trek were long, dangerous, and expensive; the Oregon Trail across the continent was even worse. When they got to the California territory, settlers found unsurpassed natural beauty and unbelievable biodiversity, but the pecuniary prospects the only thing that could lure them in large numbers were not all that great at first. There was plenty of land but no one was especially enthusiastic about working it for profit. Indians comprised the vast majority of laborers (as they comprised the vast majority of the population), but their connection to the land always left them an exit if the contracted terms were insufficiently remunerative. > > So while people like Leland and William Randolph Hearst's dad fled the eastern side of the Mississippi after ending slavery cut into prophets, it became clear it was very easy to rip people off in California; and anti-slavery laws didn't apply to Indigenous workers who were disregarded as people, so remained a cheap if not free source of labor. A lot of folks then assume the railroad was made to cheapen the costs of traveling to the west, but in reality that was more of a marketing ploy by a group known as the Combine, or 'the Associates' that Leland Stanford would be made a de facto face of, hell he was even made the de facto governor. According to the eugenics science that was pioneered in Stanford University later in Leland's life, he was a great man because of great genetics. In reality it is birth lottery, as is always the case, and a uncanny ability to somehow take credit for everyone else's work making him the best of the capitalists. > > He couldn't even pretend to be self made. Even his associates often made jokes about how all of his money is made for him, he doesn't have to do anything. At any rate it was land speculation by which this profit was made, just as George Washington's was made before him, this business was the American dream; the get rich quick scheme. One that practically presents itself to him after squandering the perfect opportunity he had on the Erie Canal. These excerpts come from Palo Alto a must read for movement members today. > >After an apprenticeship, he opened his own law office, which suffered from his total lack of German-language proficiency, given that German immigrants formed the bulk of the settler population. A run for district attorney on the progressive Whig line flopped. In 1850 he briefly returned to Albany to marry Jane Lathrop, a merchant's daughter from his hometown milieu. Back in Port Washington, Leland's office burned down, taking with it his law books and legal career, such as it was. Leland's life to that point - he was in his mid-twenties - was a total loss. Despite the cosmic luck of being born alongside the Erie Canal, he'd squandered the little he put together. What he did have left was family, including four surviving brothers. He (scandalously) deposited his new wife back home, and set out to join the rest of the Stanford boys in California. With his family's support, he took the ritziest of the three routes west: a ship down to British-occupied Nicaragua, an overland trek, and another boat up the continent's flank. > > > >Born at the edge of a commercial frontier, Leland was a restless young man, moving from mediocre school to mediocre school, performing in accordance with his surroundings. Leland liked reading more than he liked working, and he didn't like reading all that much. He decided on a career in law, perhaps with a quick transition to politics, a professional path forever beloved by ambitious slackers. A politician needs a good name, and so Leland dropped the biblical Hebrew Amasa, which, fittingly, means "burden." The frontier had lower standards than New York did, so he took the law books his father bought him and in 1848 moved to Port Washington.
Yes, I love having my zoology class completely interrupted and derailed to do an assignment on something completely unrelated to the class, it's very smart forcing this bullshit into classes that it doesn't make sense for instead of making it an elective for people who need it. I love being groomed to prove my worth to capital by researching and compiling a list of skills based on the random whims of the employer class. I love being forced to read and reference very totally academic and serious reports like "The New Work Order Series" that present findings like "Young Australians are currently working more jobs than ever before but they're also underemployed despite being more skilled than ever before." and then they somehow make the dumbass conclusion that "Our young people are not prepared for work." Oh yes, it's always the fault of us workers, isn't it? It couldn't be the fault of employers not doing their part. Nope. I'm sure that reading a bunch of LinkedIn profiles and writing an assignment up proving that I understand what employers want will make their demands less unreasonable. I love that I'm essentially paying employers to propagandize at me. I love that this complete joke of an assessment, written by some HR goon, gets to push its way, unearned, into the same realm as a field of science that has undergone centuries of rigorous peer review. This shit, which has nothing to do with Zoology, is worth 10% of my mark for Zoology. I had to do a similar one halfway through Chemistry. Fuckng bullshit propaganda I am going to screm Requesting a c/rant because AAAAAAAA
A lot of this is taken from a paywalled substack article by Evan Reif who also writes for Covert Action magazine. Evan Reif wrote several exposés of nazism and antisemitism in Ukraine, NATO, the EU, and the United States, for Covert Action magazine, so I view him as trustworthy on the subject of zionism, and not coming from a place of concealed antisemitism. Warning: Reif's article has photos of historical pogroms and genocides https://ddgeopolitics.substack.com/p/the-fascist-zion?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2 --- Israel is a genocidal settler-colonial apartheid state set up by the European and North American powers to colonize the middle east. Even early zionists like Theodor Herzl understood Israel in these explicitly settler-colonial terms. Here is Herzl speaking in the 1800s, when Palestine was still Ottoman territory: >If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could offer to resolve Turkey’s finances. **For Europe, we would form part of a bulwark against Asia there, we would serve as the advance post of civilisation against barbarism.** So Theodor Herzel felt not only that European people were entitled to Palestine over the people already living there (including Ottoman Jews), but that the presence of "civilized" Europeans in Israel would form a "bulwark" (forward operating base(offensive, not defensive)) against Asia, which entire continent Herzl racistly characterized as "barbaric." Herzl was born on May 2 nd , 1860 in Budapest, Hungary to a family of German speaking assimilated Jews. His father, Jakob, was a wealthy businessman and the young Theodor was expected to enter politics or engineering by his parents. In a sense, he did not disappoint, as Herzl was destined to become the father of political Zionism. While Herzl never saw his Jewish state during his lifetime, his ideology remains [so influential](https://www.morfix.co.il/%d7%97%d7%95%d7%96%d7%94+%d7%94%d7%9e%d7%93%d7%99%d7%a0%d7%94) that even today he is considered the [father of Israel.](https://x.com/Israel/status/1563828214233006080?s=20) [Herzl’s birthday is a holiday in Israel,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herzl_Day) his grave is a national monument, the organization he founded is still active today and the largest mountain in the country was re-named in his honor. It is not an exaggeration to say that Herzl and his ideology remain central to Zionism. As a young man, Herzl was a fanatic Germanophile. He believed that if Jews simply tried hard enough, they could become “Germanized” and shake off what he called “shameful Jewish characteristics.” Herzl viewed German culture and language as inherently superior to that of the reviled working-class Yiddish speaking Jews. At first, he believed that Jews should be Germanized, arguing that Eastern European Jews were so "savage" and backwards that they must learn the very concepts of beauty and nobility by studying the works of authors like Goethe and Shakespeare. He initially envisioned his Zion as a German colony, [and waxed poetic about importing German culture to the orient.](https://hanskundnani.com/2011/06/25/herzls-german-adventure/) However, as time went on, Herzl increasingly started to believe that Jews could not and should not assimilate into Europe, and the only solution to the “Jewish question” was the complete removal of all Jews from Europe. If all of this sounds anti-Semitic, that is because it is. Herzl’s Zionism is fundamentally based in antisemitic notions about Jewish incompatibility with gentile society. Herzl dedicated the rest of his life to his goal of a Jewish state. In 1897, he founded the World Zionist Organization, a big tent coalition of Zionists dedicated to creating a Jewish state by any means necessary. As time went on, and the "Labor" Zionist wings were increasingly persecuted by Herzl, the organization moved farther and farther to the right. Given what Herzl believed in, this is understandable. Unlike the Zionists of today, who must pretend to have some respect for the charade known as international law, Herzl was quite open about his plans. In the view of Herzl, [Israel was explicitly a colonial project](https://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/actually-herzl-was-a-colonialist/), and he toured the capitals of Europe trying to drum up support and funding for his cause. Herzl cast a wide net, he was not terribly concerned with who supported him, or why. He gladly [worked with](https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/israel-zionism/2021/01/the-mystery-of-theodor-herzl/) some of the most extreme antisemites on earth. After many attempts to get a meeting with Tsar Nicholas II by promising to solve Russia’s “Jewish problem”, Herzl finally got a letter saying Russia would support hisproposed deportation of the Jews. He kept it for the rest of his life, treating it as one of his most prized possessions. At the same time, Tsarist forces were carrying out reactionary pogroms all throughout the so-called Pale of Settlement, the home of most of Europe’s Jews. In 1903, the same year Herzl was in correspondence with the Tsar, over seven hundred pogroms took place in Ukraine and Moldova alone resulting in the murder of thousands of Jews. In many cases, [the pogroms were incited by the Tsar’s secret police](https://books.google.com/books?id=L3VS4Kqa_nAC) and in others the guilty were simply granted clemency by the government. Herzl knew all of this, and his continued support of the Tsarist government was controversial even inside his own movement. In the end, it was all for nothing. The Tsar did not keep his word and Herzl was perfectly willing to sacrifice thousands of Jews in exchange for empty promises. Sadly, the genocidal tendencies inside Zionism would only accelerate as the movement grew. The Tsar wasn’t the only one who used Herzl as a tool. Starting in 1896, Herzl actively worked with the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II. After a meeting with the Sultan’s advisors in the Levant to discuss strategy, [Herzl threw his support behind the Armenian Genocide](https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2015-05-01/ty-article/herzls-sell-out-of-armenians/0000017f-db3c-df9c-a17f-ff3ccc740000), a crime so vile it had cut off the Ottomans from European loans. Herzl believed that he could jump in to fill that gap, offering to pay off the empire’s increasing debts using funds raised from European Zionists in exchange for permission to start a colony in Palestine. Although he found almost no support even inside the World Zionist Council, Herzl spent 5 years touring Europe, speaking, raising funds and writing articles in support of Turkey’s extermination of the Armenian people. Herzl cast the crumbling empire as a historical ally of the Jews and one they should support. [He called the Ottomans civilized and decent people, justified in their actions due to the allegedly backwards and violent ways of the subhuman Armenians.](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2536529) He was even awarded a medal by the Grand Vizier in Istanbul, in commemoration of his loyal service to the Ottoman Empire. In 1901, Herzl finally got his long-awaited meeting with the Sultan, who rejected his proposal out of hand. Once again, Herzl was perfectly willing to sacrifice thousands of lives for words on paper. Today, Herzl’s "civilized" slaughter is viewed as an act of genocide by all credible historians and groups as diverse as the [United Nations](https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G85/123/55/PDF/G8512355.pdf?OpenElement), the United States Government, the [European Union](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-8-2015-0094_EN.html?redirect), the [Anti-Defamation League](https://web.archive.org/web/20130116114810/http:/www.adl.org/PresRele/Mise_00/5114_00.htm), and the [World Jewish Congress](https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/german-jewish-leader-calls-for-recognition-of-armenian-genocide), who specifically called it “the blueprint of the Holocaust.” With his options dwindling, Herzl even turned to Cecil Rhodes, the openly white supremacist founder of the unrecognized apartheid state of Rhodesia to ask for his advice and blessing to colonize Palestine. Although his efforts amounted to nothing, the ideological connections remained, and the state of Israel became a [close ally of Rhodesia](https://web.archive.org/web/20170210154222/http:/www.southafricaproject.info/rhodesia_and_south_africa.html). At one point, Israel was one of the only countries willing to [sell weapons](https://archive.org/details/israeliconnectio00beit) and licenses to its fellow apartheid states. Israel even collaborated with apartheid South Africa on its nuclear program, a direct violation of international law which was never punished. > "You are being invited to help make history. It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews... How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial" - [Herzl in a letter to Cecil Rhodes](https://www.972mag.com/zionism-jewish-lives-herzl/) At best, Herzl represents the sort of reactionary, callous “realpolitik” that the state of Israel still embraces today. At worst, he was a genocidal racist willing to support even the vilest crimes toadvance his movement. When the rest of his actions are considered, it appears the latter is much more likely. Herzl’s actions are those of a man who did not just sit idly by and watch genocide happen, but rather those of a man who viewed the genocide as a cornerstone of his ideology. The simple reality is Theodor Herzl was a reactionary antisemite who openly called for the extermination of the Jews of Europe while simultaneously calling for the colonization of Palestine by European Jews. He viewed both of these ends as codependent upon each other. While this sounds contradictory, this is only because most people have simply accepted the historical premises of the Zionist movement without question due to decades of well-funded propaganda. Herzl’s antisemitism was rooted first in a deep, intense classism. In order to understand this fully, we need some historical background. Herzl was a German speaking assimilated Jew from a wealthy merchant family. He did not experience any of the hardship which defined the interaction between Jews and Gentiles in Europe. Rather, Herzl’s family willingly sold out their fellow Jews for money and status, using the poor Yiddish speaking Jews as a sort of human shield to protect themselves from the predictions of their German allies. When it came time to create his “Jewish” state, Herzl sought to portray himself and his handful of wealthy allies as “the good ones” while the rest of the Jews were little more than vermin to be exterminated. The vast majority of the Europe’s Jewry were Yiddish speaking workers and peasants who were restricted by law from entering most professions to keep them poor and easily exploited. The Yiddish Jews had been expelled from all their previous homes in Europe and were eventually chased into the eastern part of what was then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but today is part of seven countries, mostly Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. The commonwealth was much friendlier to Jews than most of its European counterparts, and so the region was quickly settled by Jews fleeing oppression elsewhere. After Poland was defeated and partitioned in 1791, most of this territory and the people living there came under the control of the violently antisemitic Russian Empire. Tsarina Catherine’s regime had recently conquered former Ottoman territories in Crimea and the Black Sea region. These lands were combined with the recent acquisitions from Poland to form what became known as the Pale of Settlement. Jews were allowed to settle and do business in this land, but nowhere else in the empire. All other Russian Jews were violently expelled from their homes and sent to settle the Pale. The plan was that the Jews would serve as a buffer against Ottoman expansion while keeping them away from the Orthodox heartland of the Russian Empire. Their lives were not easy, as the Pale of Settlement was more of a trap than a gift. Jews were not allowed to own land inside the Pale, meaning that to live and do business they had to rent fromgentiles. They were also kept at first from the major urban centers of Kiev, Sevastopol and Yalta, forcing them into agricultural work in rural areas. In practice, the system was slavery in all but name. Jews were often forced to buy or rent tools at usurious prices to work land that did not belong to them, thereby keeping them permanently bound in debt. This was the origin of the Kulak, a parasitic class of peasant landlords which emerged specifically to exploit Jews and siphon off their wealth into the coffers of the Tsar. Despite all this, a strong Yiddish speaking Jewish culture existed in the Pale. They had a long, rich heritage, maintaining their own traditions and culture even in the face of centuries of violent repression. They refused to assimilate as Herzl’s family had, remaining proudly and defiantly Jewish. It was these people, the so-called “Ostjuden”, in whom Herzl saw all the lies of antisemites made flesh. Herzl even borrowed their language. In 1897 he released an unhinged antisemitic rant entitled “Mauschel” (a German racial slur so vile I will not translate it), where he branded the long suffering Ostjuden with the same irons their tormentors had. To Herzl, the Mauschel was everything he was not. His type of Jew was the only real Jew, while the Mauschel was nothing more than vermin. The Mauschel was simultaneously lazy and greedy. The (rich, assimilated) Jew was hard working and charitable. The Mauschel was stupid and backwards, while the Jew was educated and cultured. The Mauschel was “something unspeakably vile” while the Jew was upright and upstanding. Most importantly, the Mauschel was a weak and pathetic creature who had meekly gone to the slaughter, while Herzl’s Jew was a mighty warrior who would never submit. The only problem is, Herzl’s new Jewish man was not real. The Ostjuden were, and at a population of around five million, [they constituted 40% of the world’s Jews and around 80% of Europe’s](https://www.jhi.pl/en/articles/anniversary-of-the-pale-settlement-decree,243). Therefore, to call for the extermination of the so-called Mauschel was to call for the extermination of the Jews. Herzl’s ideology assumes that everything antisemites said about Jews is true, and the only solution is their complete extermination. [Just like the fascists that would come after him](https://www.fairobserver.com/culture/new-man-fascism-legacy-extreme-right-ideology-news-61001/), he sought to create a new type of man, the so called “Israeli” from the ashes of the old. Herzl particularly despised Yiddish, the diaspora language of the Ostjuden. At first, he favored its replacement with German, then the modern reconstructed Hebrew. Since Herzl was a classist first, he viewed Yiddish and its speakers as being inherently uncivilized and inferior, once again finding himself in alignment with his fellow antisemites. Regardless of what antisemites believe, Yiddish was and is a [vibrant, living language with a rich history](https://yiddish-culture.com/yiddish-civilisation_en/yiddish-and-hebrew_en/) tied intrinsically to the history of its many speakers. The history of Yiddish very much is the history of the Jews. For centuries, the Yiddish was the voice of the masses of Jews, rather than elites such as Herzl. It was in Yiddish, not Hebrew or German which the Jewish people recorded their hopes and dreams, reflected on their joy and sorrow and more importantly, resisted continued efforts from the European powers to break their culture via assimilation. Yiddish has a long history, a vast corpus of work and like the Jews themselves, it is no lesser for its roots. Herzl had an interesting plan for the destruction of the Jews, he wanted to sell them out to antisemites to fund his operations. Not only would this liquidate the property of the Jews of Europe, but their deaths could then be used as propaganda for the Zionist movement. This would, of course, constitute an act of genocide, but for Herzl that was a small price to pay to create his promised land. This strategy of collaboration to fan the flames of antisemitism and thereby spur immigration to Israel has remained a cornerstone of Israeli policy, as has the violent hatred of any Jews who do not conform to Herzl’s particular idea of what an “Israelite” should be. Herzl said, quote: >It would be excellent idea to call in respectable, accredited anti-Semites as liquidators of property. To the people they would vouch for the fact that we do not want to bring about the impoverishment of the countries we leave. The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies. While Herzl died in 1904, his antisemitism outlived him. The state founded with his ideology has remained a violently anti-semetic state. The Zionists who came after Herzl took his antisemitic ideology to it’s logical extreme. One of the greatest ironies of the Zionist movement is that despite basing their entire existence on the Holocaust, the Zionists of the time were enthusiastic supporters of Adolf Hitler and his final solution to the same Ostjuden “problem” Herzl decried. When the Nazis came to power in Germany and began their long planned and promised extermination of the Jews, in full view of the world and it’s people, Zionists the world over viewed the Nazi regime as the vindication of their ideology. Now, there was finally a European leader who preached the same vile antisemitic doctrine as Herzl. As their goals regarding the extermination of the Ostjuden were aligned, most Zionists [actively supported the Nazis](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-21/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/zionist-military-org-efforts-to-recruit-nazis-in-fight-against-the-british-are-revealed/00000188-d93a-d5fc-ab9d-db7ae0ea0000). Even the “mainstream” Haganah movement actively collaborated with [Adolf Eichmann](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2536016), the architect of the Holocaust. Not only did they [negotiate with Hitler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement) to achieve Herzl’s dream of deporting the Jews, but some of them also even took up arms in support of the Reich. One of the largest of such groups was a Zionist terrorist organization called “Lehi”, which was split from the slightly less radical Irgun by Avraham Stern in 1940. The split was caused byStern’s support of Hitler over the British, who ruled the mandate of Palestine at the time. Stern’s reasoning was simple. Hitler was an enemy of the “Mauschel”, not the Israelis. Lehi contacted the Nazis almost immediately after their formation. The two sides met in Beirut, where [Lehi delivered a letter from Stern](https://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story799.html) outlining his plans. He proposed that Lehi actively enter the war on the side of the Axis, saying “the German worldview and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people” were closely aligned. >“The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a totalitarian national basis, in an alliance relationship with the German Reich, is compatible with the preservation of German power.”-Avraham Stern The Nazis ignored the letter, but that was not enough to dissuade either Lehi or Stern. Even with nothing in return, they still took up arms in support of the Reich, hoping that they could prove themselves worthy to their fellow fascists through propaganda of the deed. Lehi embarked on a years long terrorist campaign, marked not only by [assassinations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte#Assassination) and bombings (including a [letter bombing](https://books.google.com/books?id=qW6QpWs2CHoC&pg=PA331#v=onepage&q&f=false) campaign targeting the British government) but also the brutal depopulation of [dozens of Palestinian settlements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre), perhaps an intentional echo to the violence their Nazi heroes inflicted on the Ostjuden in Europe. Although Stern died fighting for Hitler in 1942, the gang was not snuffed out until 1948. Despite the Israeli government’s public condemnation, most of Lehi was rolled into the security structures of the new state, where they formed the nucleus of [the Mossad](https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230622-israels-state-archive-exposes-zionist-efforts-to-enlist-nazis-against-britain/). [One of Lehi’s senior commanders Yizhak Shamir](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/former-israeli-prime-minister-yitzhak-shamir-a-stalwart-of-israeli-conservatism/) would even serve as Israel’s 7th prime minister. It seems that Lehi’s ideology was not a problem for the mainstream Zionists, only their targets. Sadly, the Israeli government’s violence towards Jews did not end there. With the fascists deputized into brutal secret police force to rival their heroes in the Gestapo, the so-called Jewish state still violently oppresses any Jew who does not fit their very particular ideal of what an “Israeli” should be. As Zionists began to settle Palestine, they encountered an unexpected problem that threatened to derail their entire project. Namely, there were already Jews living there. The bedrock of the Zionist ideology is the idea that after the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE, all the Jews either left or were expelled from the Levant, leading to over a millennium of wandering Europe in search of a new home. The reality is not so simple. While there was a mass expulsion of Jews, many of them remained in the Middle East. Of those, a great deal remained Jewish while others converted to different religions, such as Christianity or Islam, ironically making them Palestinian in the eyes of the fascist Israeli state. When the Europeans began to settle Palestine, these so called “Mizrahi” Jews ([a racial slur created by the antisemitic Zionists to describe them](https://web.archive.org/web/20200808090243/https:/itu.org.il/?CategoryID=548&ArticleID=1829), while they referred to themselves simply as Jews) posed both a practical and an ideological problem for the fascists. Not only did they have land that the European settlers wanted, but their very existence was proof that Zionism was based on mythology rather than reality. The response from the settlers was about what you would expect. Just like their idols in Germany, the Zionists put [Jews into ghettos](https://www.972mag.com/salama-mizrahim-nakba-palestinians/). This time, however, the Zionists were inspired not just by Herzl and Hitler, but by the antisemites who came before them. The strategy regarding the Mizrahi is virtually identical to the strategy used by the Tsar to oppress and rob the Ostjuden with Herzl’s support. After the Palestinians were murdered or expelled, the fascists used Mizrahi as their shock troops, settling them by force into the newly stolen land. However, the Mizrahi were not allowed to own the land, only to live there. They were considered squatters under the euphemistic “Abandoned Property Law” and could therefore be extorted and evicted at will. This created a system wherein the European settlers could exploit a permanent Jewish underclass, thereby creating almost the same dynamics as existed inside the Pale of Settlement. While all of this was going on, the Europeans also embarked on policies of cultural genocide against their fellow Jews, [stealing Mizrahi children](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/world/middleeast/israel-yemenite-children-affair.html) to be raised by “civilized” Europeans. Despite the Zionist entity [openly admitting](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/hundreds-of-yemenite-kids-were-abducted-1.5418281) to this policy, no action has been taken whatsoever. None of this was accidental, it was simply the logical conclusion of an inherently antisemitic ideology. Policies of systematic discrimination towards the so-called Mizrahi Jews continue to this day. The racism against the original Jews by European settlers is so severe that Israeli schools were segregated by law until [2010.](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sephardim-ashkenazim-and_b_615692) As we can see, the Zionists are masters of projection. When they accuse their enemies of a crime, it is likely because they are doing the same thing, and simply assume their enemies are as brutal and racist as they are. [Even when they accuse Hamas of supporting ISIS, they are speaking as a country who openly supported the Islamic state.](https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-chief-acknowledges-long-claimed-weapons-supply-to-syrian-rebels/) These policies have not changed, even today the Zionists are openly carrying out yet another genocide in Gaza. As always, [they make no effort to hide their crimes, rather they brag and bluster endlessly about them.](https://new.thecradle.co/articles/leaked-israeli-plan-to-ethnically-cleanse-gaza) Today, rather than seeking the support of Adolf Hitler and Cecil Rhodes, their patrons are men like Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak. The core ideology of Zionism has not changed, only the language used to justify their crimes. Zionism has been a fascist ideology since it was invented by Theodor Herzl, and it remains one today.
I wanted to outline my understanding of the West's relation to Zionism since it's been on my mind a lot lately. I'm interested in feedback for any details I might have wrong or lacking context. So, we have Christianity being born out of Judaism and then being syncretized into the Roman Empire, which propagates its version of Christianity throughout its territory as part of its imperial structure. The empire wanes and leaves behind the politico-religious concept of Christendom or "the Christian world". By the time that capitalism became Europe's dominant mode of production, Western Christianity was largely separated from Eastern Christianity and thus Eastern Christendom, and was relatively united under Catholicism. Importantly, papal bulls had established the Doctrine of Discovery, which set out instructions for (implicitly Western if I understand correctly) Christian countries to cooperate in the mission of subjugating and Christianizing non-Christian peoples. Even as the Reformation birthed Protestantism and wars were fought within (Western, but this is the last time I'm going to note that distinction) Christendom, the Doctrine of Discovery was mainly respected as something like property law among European Christian nations, including Protestant ones. Notably, Europe is white as hell and the people they colonized were not. Through various means including pseudoscience and theology, European colonial powers reinforced their ideology with a new system of racism that would become the white supremacism we can recognize today. Tied in with the notions of Whiteness and Christendom, Europe (including the Russian empire in this instance) also forged the variety of antisemitism that would ultimately be advanced by the Nazis. To this day, the successor states of former European colonies including the US cite the Doctrine of Discovery as their root source of legitimacy. This is reinforced by white supremacist ideology outrageously insisting indigenous peoples had no "civilization" in the first place, so that instead of unjustly plundering the world, the White Christian West was merely building civilization where none had been before. It follows the same racist reasoning, then, to claim that disparities in wealth between the West and its colonies were due to intrinsic differences in peoples and/or some need for a people to "mature" for generations under Christianity. By the early 1900s, antisemitism remained homogenous across the West. Most notably it helped fuel the rise of Nazi Germany, which left the US in a privileged position to capitalize on WWII and centralize bourgeois power under its own flag. Still homogeneously antisemitic, the West, led increasingly by the US and witnessing the deterioration of the traditional colonial relationship, determined to concentrate much of its Jewish population in Britain's colonial territory in Palestine. The status of Jews as non-white was leveraged both to drive Jews out of the imperial core and to encourage an impression that they could only become and remain liberated by forming a "homeland" in the fashion of the West. This both gratified antisemites by voluntary deportation of Jews, and solved the problem of holding on to an increasingly unprofitable colony. The present result would seem to be a near-universal Zionist stance within the Western bourgeoisie (which is *the* bourgeoisie in the global sense) and its institutions, and an Israeli ethnostate that is nominally Jewish but is in fact syncretized with White Supremacism as evidenced by their treatment of black Ethiopian Jewish immigrants.
From a discord discussion I had with a liberal friend. There is no -> arrow of progress to humanity, there’s no direction to it but what we make. It’s not inevitable that societies end up centralized and authoritarian and industrialized. The conception of savagery needs to be re-examined, because much of the sustainable knowledge of the earth was lost in the European drive to “civilize” and industrialize the world. As the Amazon is burning, we’re actually discovering entire civilizations, with roads, monumentalism, and technologies centered around balance with nature rather than profit or violence, in addition to having decentralized food production, that was capable of supporting vast networks of people spanning great distances. Technology can be a boon to humanity, but I believe under our current system, investment into sustainability and long term health of humanity and the ecosystem is untenable. As a capitalist enterprise, you have *no choice* but to do whatever you can to improve margins. If you do not, your competition will, and they will drive you out of business. This is an accepted law of economics, though most people don’t know that it comes from Das Kapital. To understand the current economic system and the driving forces behind it, only a materialist dialectical view encompasses enough nuance to have any chance of explaining things. So if we start with the Labor Theory of Value, which I can’t explain in a discord comment, but can at least summarize.. Starting with some terms: >Labor Power: Marx: “aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being” Labor: The work that adds value to raw material commodities. Labor is purchased by Capital for a wage based on time. It is *entirely necessary* that the wage does not meet the value produced by the labor, for if it did, there would be no profit. So there is inherently a *necessary* labor period in every wage workers day. This also means that there is necessarily a period where the worker produces excess value beyond what their wages entitle them to. This is known as Surplus Labor. Raw materials used up and energy inserted into a commodity do not create new value but simply transfer their value to the product. In the machines, and factories themselves, this value transfer is shown as wear and tear, and is expressed as depreciation. The only value added into the materials comes from the labor power itself. Even an “automated” production plant will eventually rust away without human intervention in the form of labor. So now that we know what surplus value is, we know also that the driving force behind capitalism is the production of surplus value. The creation of this surplus value comes in many ways, from speeding up machines, to creation of higher quotas, or extension of shifts, or by telling your warehouse workers to piss in bottles on your packaging floor, but no matter what, it comes from Labor Power. Since the surplus value is now located in the commodity, the capitalist must now sell that commodity to harvest both the necessary value to pay the workers, and the surplus value to pay himself. Now, we can get to “competition”, which, many would have you believe drives innovation, and they’re not totally wrong, but it drives innovation in methods of extracting value, not in sustainability nor ways that improve the health of the worker. Competition means that one *must* do that which lowers your costs to compete with the other capitalists who lower their costs, or one will not have a business any longer. This results in more and more exploitation of the working class and innovations in exploiting raw materials. In the dawn of the US, this necessitated the genocide of the natives to allow westward expansion, and the enshrinement of chattel slavery to ensure cheap labor power to create commodities. In the gilded age, this meant 12-16 hour days 6 days a week, debtors prisons, child labor exploitation, continued use of slave labor to build infrastructure. In the post modern age, this meant exporting as much labor as possible to nations who had not had labor revolutions. Today, it means making Amazon employees piss in bottles and FedEx drivers dying of heat stroke. All of the negative externalities of capitalism are inherent to the system. From the cyclical collapsing of the economy, to the continual erosion of labor rights, the expansionism and imperialism, and the hoarding of capital, they are not flaws in the system that can be reformed away, but inherent features. The collapsing of the economy allows for consolidation of capital by the elite(we’re seeing this happen in real time, right now), the erosion of labor rights allows for further surplus value creation, expansionism and imperialism allow for further exploitation of raw materials and labor and for the creation of new markets to sell their commodities. That’s before we even get to the conception of private property and land ownership, which inherently contains within it the Roman right to jus utendi et abutendi — The right to use *or abuse*, giving carte Blanche for atrocities to the environment all around the world for hundreds of years now. Then we can get to Mutual Aid, which is the driving force in humanity, and is directly what has allowed us to achieve such great things. Things like Salk refusing to patent Insulin, like radical resistance to the institution of slavery didn’t happen because of capitalism, but in spite of it. Humans are generally good, but when your system incentivizes sociopathy and individualism, it’s no wonder why our structures are breaking down. Infrastructure is declining not because we didn’t invest into it, but because the system *cannot* invest into it. Because the only times it has done so in the past were either for military purposes as the interstate system was(it was also purposefully targeted through minority communities) or to stave off revolution as was done in the new deal, where FDR explicitly told Capitalists they could either support the New Deal or they’d be facing the Bolsheviks within the decade. The few bits of infrastructure we get are poorly made, poorly maintained, and privatized to ensure continued profit extraction from the workers. Cars are still prioritized because they generate so much capital. Trains are more efficient, significantly faster, and can be made entirely sustainable outside of periodic battery replacements. Hundreds of millions of electric individual passenger vehicles is not efficient, not sustainable, still runs on rubber wheels, still relies on mass fossil fuel burning to cover peak charging, and does nothing to address the urban heat Island effect created by pavement roads taking up roughly 60% of cities. So now what are they pushing? Car sharing. Because we’ve progressed to the point of capitalism where the only way to ensure rising margins is to create “as a service” style scams that extract wealth in perpetuity for little to no investment. We’ve reached a point where there is no longer even a proletariat class in the United States. There is the Precariat, precariously perched one sick month from homelessness and suffering, that precariousness constantly serving as a reminder of what will happen should you choose not to conform.