Compare China with the capitalist project? Ok, China is clearly winning in just about every conceivable way. Were you trying to make some sort of point?

Same. Deeply grateful for the pushback on it, though.

Don’t know of any, but there was a similar (if shorter) list going around a few months ago, and it was pretty much debunked point by point here: https://hexbear.net/post/275117

calm down you fuckin’ weirdo. This kind of ridiculous, childish response to having your morals called into question is pretty telling, though. Time for some self crit.

I don’t know about mossad/IDF specifically and would guess that is unlikely, but I’m also not so sure everyone here who saying “no way, lemmy is way too small for feds/ops to care about” are really going off anything more than a hope.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they have a few spooks to send in to steer the narrative a bit here and discredit actual realities there. It’s not a lot of work for them. It is for us, because we’re of course fighting the dominant mainstream narratives. All they have to do is parrot that shit, or say something even worse than what the MSM is saying to shift the window of acceptability (not quite the Overton window, but same idea), putting people talking reality on their back foot. Because the ubiquity and predominance of libs, the feds will have a ton of support, a ready-made base of nodding fools who will upvote them because what they’re saying reproduces and reinforces the libs’ worldviews. It’s a feedback loop, and they’re there to ensure it keeps feeding back in the direction that benefits (again, reproduces/reinforces) the existing power structures.

It’s not like the feds that we know for a fact that are on reddit can’t also moonlight on lemmy a bit, the same way regular users often do. And come on, there are countless documented cases of undercover feds infiltrating the tiniest of innocent orgs, like 5-person book clubs IRL. It’s vastly easier to astroturf online communities than it is to infiltrate actual orgs. I think it’s a tad naive to think feds wouldn’t at the very least dip their toes into lemmy for a bit of astroturfing, especially since that silly reddit blackout. It doesn’t take much in the way of resources for them, but I think there’s obvious reason and benefits to do it, even on just a small scale.

As for feeling burnt out, if you feel like you could use a break, take a break! Don’t sacrifice your own well being for this shit, it’s not worth it. But if and when you do go back to the posting trenches, remember that the goal is never to change the mind of the person you’re arguing with. That is simply not going to happen, in anything but the most absurdly rare cases. But if others are seeing the conversation, lurkers, the people there just up/downvoting, they’re the ones who see your “debates” with the terminally brainwormed and lot of those lurkers really are capable of recognizing the bullshit versus the reasoned and sensical argument, even if it doesn’t immediately click for them (though sometimes it does). It’s not unlike watching a kind of dialectic. My mind has been changed that way a few times, and I know that’s the case for many others. So don’t let it get you too down when you’re inundated with their garbage and their lies. Someone else saw what you had to say and they were affected by it. Seeds do get planted.

Glad to help!

wtf is retrograde anyway.

Have you ever been on a bike (usual analogy is a car, but fuck that) traveling along at a pretty good clip, and you come upon another bike ahead of you that’s moving in the same direction as you but going slower?

They look like they’re moving forward against the background scenery at first, no surprise there. But as you’re passing them, they look like they’re moving backwards against the background hills. Then once you’re a ways ahead of them, they look like they’re moving forward normally again. Ever notice that? If not, try it sometime. The other bike was never actually moving backwards, but since they are going forward more slowly than you, relative to the background, it does look briefly like they are going backward.

Same thing happens with slower planets further from the sun than we are - as earth passes them, it looks for a period like they’re going backwards against the background stars from our perspective. That is retrograde motion. The planets don’t actually stop in their orbits, move backward for a bit, stop again and then move forward, but it looks like they do because of our relative motion around the sun.

Now, if you’re from a time before it was well known that Earth is in orbit around the sun same as those other planets (and not the center of the solar system and universe), then it would mean those planets were moving backwards. And if you also think of the sky as literally the heavens which determine the fate of people on Earth, this backward motion is going to seem extremely significant (even if it’s in reality basically just an optical illusion).

but how can they literally not see this?! Its been repeated over and over in history! How many times do they have to be wrong? How many times do they find out they were deceived on every level?! They know their politicians lie, at least they say they do, but they never once question them! Its so fucking tiring to watch it happen every single fucking time! They never learn! Ever!

It’s because they know, if even on an instinctual level, that their material interests are fundamentally aligned with the empire. Every time they’re lied to, they can easily say “it’s different this time” simply because it broadly serves them better to believe those lies.

Most of the propaganda isn’t there to “trick” or “fool” them into believing the lie, it’s there to provide them with the justification, the excuse that they long for, that they need in order to maintain their view of themselves as good and right and smart. It’s not that they’re incapable of learning, it’s that they have no material incentive to learn and plenty of incentive not to, since doing so would challenge their identity, their firmly-held beliefs that all their privilege and treats are earned and that they have a legitimate and moral right to them. Which of course they don’t. Of course they’re going to believe the lies over and over and over.

I think I understand better what you meant now that I’ve read the other thread. Yeah, I’m in full agreement with you. My support is with whatever the Palestinian freedom fighters and the Palestinian people support. Those (here of all places) who are saying that cheering for what’s happening is “cheering for blood” need to get the fuck over themselves. Can’t help but wonder what other revolutionary action they’d concern-troll. (Not that any of what we cheer or what others pearl-clutch about makes any material difference in the liberation efforts happening right now).

I was about to try to go to sleep. Not anymore.

It’s absolutely true that as westerners it would be supremely arrogant to think we know better than the Palestinians about what’s going on. Still, I think it’s fair and justified to be worried about the well-being of the Palestinian people as this continues to develop and the extreme reaction and terror that Isn’treal is capable of. Regardless: Full and uncritical support to Palestine and their resistance to the genocidal ethnostate.

I know it was deployed against Iraqis during the first Gulf War, with Hillary Clinton claiming Saddam was issuing his troops with Viagra specifically so they could [redacted] more.

I don’t doubt r**e was a claim made against Iraqis too, but it’s the absurd claim about soldiers taking babies from incubators that most sticks out in my memory when it comes to Iraq and the first Gulf War. However, Hilary Clinton talking about soldiers being given viagra was definitely about Gaddafi. Keep in mind who was in power when those respective conflicts were happening.

I don’t mean to refute that but they do have somewhat strict laws around nazi apoligia.

Yeah, about that…

https://hexbear.net/post/720421

1. Mostly it was about fooling you into thinking that, as a worker, you have even an iota of power within that company.

2. You: “The owners deserve all the value that results from owning the company and not the workers because the owners own the company, duh.” Reread what you said and note the ridiculous circular logic.

3. The company would continue to function perfectly fine without the owner(s), yet would immediately cease to function or even exist without the workers. The only role the owner plays in the company (that the workers operate), is to siphon the value away from the workers who made it and unto themselves.

Hi JT. I think it’s safe to say, you’ve had a good deal of success in reaching people online and opening them up to socialist concepts. But are there any instances in real life where you’ve felt you “got through” to someone in some significant way? I mean that in terms of just straight up talking to someone in person who wasn’t aware of your online work and making real headway, but also if anyone you know “in real life” has told you that your online work is what helped change their perspective. In either case, did they have anything specific to say about what it was that “won them over”?

Just to add a little context, I remember you mentioning on the podcast that you and some old college buddies still on occasion get together and do powerpoint presentations for each other. First of all, my god, that’s some wholesome nerdiness. If I remember right, those friends were more receptive than you had expected, and I always wondered about what they thought much later on, after you became a reasonably big online persona.

In addition to my above serious question, I wonder if you might just maybe indulge me a little further with a second one? Would you be willing to nudge Hakim & Yugopnik into doing an AMA here too? I don’t know if that’s socially/parasocially uncouth of me to ask, but it would be awesome if we could pick the brains of all 3 of The Deprogram boys I have jokingly said that since Hexbear was fortunate enough to get you, we should let our comrade instance, lemmygrad.ml, have the honor of hosting Hakim’s AMA. But then Hexbear and Lemmygrad need to have some sort of posting battle, and only the winner gets to host Yugopnik. Regardless of the particulars, Hakim & Yugopnik may really enjoy it as a respite from the monotony of being forever stuck in your basement, yeah?

(Apologies if any of this was asked before, I’m still working my way through the thread)

Alright, like I said, maybe I need to learn more about MMT, but as I’ve understood it so far, it’s a way of understanding the nuts and bolts of what’s actually going on with things like inflation, dollar hegemony, etc. It’s not contradicting Marxism at all, just delving into the ridiculous cult-religion of neoliberal economics and attempting to materially explain all those things that are taboo to classic western economists. It’s not a refutation of a Marxist concept of economy and it’s not advocating for social democracy. Do you think Michael Hudson is lying or do you think he’s confused, or is what he talks about not actual MMT?

I think all of that is a gross mischaracterization of what he’s doing. Have you watched his videos or listened to The Deprogram podcast? None of what you said is required to meet people where they are at. As I said upthread, I think it’s best to have a multitude of different approaches. But to act like going immediately from “socialism is when the government does stuff” to “Death to America” is the only correct way of introducing people to concepts and realities that they have been taught to despise and reject since they were old enough to speak, is naive at best. (Btw, they often say “Death to America” on The Deprogram, only it gets bleeped just barely enough that they won’t get instantly banned from every podcast platform.)

I don’t see the utility in convincing a bunch of people in the imperial core that they should be investing more into the long term interests of the western bourgeoisie. That they should be concerned about stabilizing capitalism and reforming it.

I completely agree. I just don’t think that the dude who runs Second Thought is doing that. That channel is among the best there is, if not the best, for getting liberals to start considering things outside of their bullshit worldview. The guy is as at least as radical as most people here, but he’s cognizant of the fact that the typical western libs aren’t capable of going from supporting “the lesser evil” blue team to calling for a protracted people’s war against the US. Pipelines are real, and JT as well as the other Deprogram boys have made an excellent opening for people to jump into it, people who would otherwise just scoff at anything that seems to resemble gommulism.

I admit I don’t know enough about MMT and am willing to learn about where I’m wrong. But from my limited understanding, MMT is narrowly just theory about how economics works without anything prescriptive to say about revolution. You can recognize that MMT explains a lot of the things that western “economists” are utterly blind to (and outright refuse to look at) and still be a dedicated Marxist/ML. Doesn’t even Michael Hudson talk a lot about MMT? Should we write him off as not worth paying attention to because of that?

I don’t know what JT’s views are on MMT, and I am skeptical it even matters. But I do know he’s not a social democrat, he’s a radical Marxist and has openly and frequently said so. If I remember right, even said so here during the last AMA.