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2 hours ago
anarcho_blinkenist [none/use name]
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Cake day: September 7th, 2024
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6·2 hours agoDo you do the same thing to all religious people too? Aggressively condescend to them? What about Indigenous spiritual mysticisms?
If not, why are you targeting one vs the others, when there’s no materialist or scientific method reason to believe any of them are more or less true than the others in reality? This is worth analyzing.
If so (or you concluded to do so), don’t. Comrade, we don’t need a rehash of the insufferable petulant reddit atheists in the world, let alone in the socialist movement. And most of those reddit atheists all became gamergate CHUDS, which is a logical conclusion of this kind of chauvinist attitude. and because astrology is in general a heavily femme-leaning and trans-leaning mysticism/spirituality, there are certainly these implications that we absolutely do not need to reinforce. We do not need to have men condescending to people’s spiritual beliefs out of a misplaced superiority, when I am certain you tell yourself just as many lies to get through the day as any religious person does. So do I. And I’ve worked with ‘witchy’ marxists who have put more into the struggle than you or I combined.
Your attitude is not as mature and grounded as you think it is, but more importantly, it’s not just counterproductive but actively reactionary to decide to be alienating and spiteful toward others and advocate that “we should collectively adopt” these petulant and petty attitudes towards peoples’ personal beliefs. I’m more of an absurdist, but if someone reacted to me sharing deeply held beliefs of mine with them in the way you are advocating, I might punch them in the mouth. And they would deserve it.
OP, this might seem kinda harsh; and I don’t know you so I don’t intend to attack you personally; but I feel the need to go off a bit and tell you how this and some of your comments below all comes across. Because
This Whole Thing Smacks of Gender
Judging by your pronoun tag, you’re a man telling everyone about how, in the abstract, women “feminists,” are “distracted” by things they ‘shouldn’t be’ because it’s “irrational” and “pseudoscience,” and they “are a problem to the movement” and you apparently know better than such frivolity~ and are here to revoke their ‘diamat credentials’ because they ‘probably don’t even understand it.’ It reads as some pretty blatant chauvinism and patriarchal denigration that’s not based in anything but a misplaced sense of superiority.
Like, can you give me one example where a marxist feminist action has been undermined by someone being interested in this particular personal mysticism? How marxist feminist progress or work has been materially undermined at all by how marxist feminist organizers or others might play with or relate to these things in their free-time? Has any prominent marxist feminist engaged in direct action ever said “I won’t work with you bc ur a scorpio” to another comrade engaged in the struggle and split a party over it, and you saw this and were so shaken by it that you feel the need to bring up the concern? Have any of these things happened for this criticism to be rooted in a real reality as a concern for you, and you are not just concern-trolling about ‘the sanctity and strength of the marxist feminist movement,’ which you may or may not even be a part of, to distance yourself from the visibly likely problematic aspects of your mentality behind it?
Or are you working yourself up in a way that frankly, to me, reads as adjacent to anti-feminist gamergate CHUDS attacking things women like because women like it, and you think it’s “silly” and ‘beneath you’ in some way?
I think you should analyze where this is coming from and maybe do some self-criticism, because this doesn’t sound real. I’ve organized many people, including with many marxists (women and otherwise, cis and otherwise) some of whom were in varying degrees interested in this kind of stuff (with women and non-cis being the most common) and plenty who weren’t or practiced other beliefs. And with those of whom were, I’ve had many quality conversations where it came up and we learned more about each other in how we may or may not relate to or experience supposed signifiers-of-aspects of our personalities represented in these ~jungian-style ‘universal archetypes’ that astrology is constructed around. Just as I have in different ways with people who had other spiritual/religious beliefs. And at no point at all were these mysticisms or religious beliefs made central or even came up at all in the actual analysis and planning and material action of protests, union organizing, or discussion in theory-study groups or anything. Least of all did it ever cause any harm to our work. Many of those individuals have been more committed, do better and more focused work, and have accomplished more to help working people and further socialism than me even at my most involved; and, again I don’t know you, but going off of other people I’ve encountered who’ve expressed similar attitudes, I’d find it VERY hard to believe that these people, who I’ve also never heard speak like this about others’ personal religious/spiritual beliefs, are less capable marxists than you.
And any concern about “abysmal contradictions between pseudoscience and materialism” would equally apply to any marxists of any gender being religious or believing in a higher power at all — but you fixating on astrology and women marxist-feminists sets off alarms for me. So I’m not trying to attack you personally, because I don’t know you, but I want to communicate to you that it sounds like you either harbor some misogynistic attitudes and chauvinism, or that maybe, you like, heard a classmate you like say something bad about your star sign and you’re upset about it and deflecting.
I’m more absurdist when it comes to personal-emotional beliefs. But astrology is just a fun mysticism for some people. For some people it gives them a sense of greater-than-them wonder and/or purpose not so different to what other religion and spirituality does, and without the inbuilt patriarchal structure of most major religions. I’ve found it can also be an effective tool for self-reflection by externalizing aspects of one’s self in an arranged way that expresses the interconnected dialectical strengths-in-weaknesses and vice-versa of aspects of one’s personality, to examine separated from your ego. When I was taught about some of this stuff by a coworker years ago, it did genuinely help me embrace and confront parts of myself that I hadn’t previously thought about, or struggled with due to over-internalization of toxic patriarchal norms. As well it can just be a fun way of getting to know other people according to how they do or don’t relate to certain aspects or signifiers supposedly attached to them, in a way that’s not much different from, and in some cases deeper-reaching or more specific than sharing art that we connect with back and forth, as an extension of ourselves to be felt and understood in ways that we might struggle to be otherwise in the course of normal conversation.
Like what is the actual problem here where this needs you to take such a
stand? There is laughably zero threat of some Kautsky-level “Astrolo-marxist” movement misleading the working class into a world war because ‘oops I’m such an aries’. There’s no “Astrological Papacy” that owns 1/3 of the land in Europe and is embedded in the governmental structures of nations. It’s not that serious. And your saying they’re “distracted” and “a problem to the movement” and “not radically useful” like they’re only good “pure” marxist feminists if they dedicate every second of every moment (including self-reflection or leisure time) to pure doctrinal historical and dialectical materialism is… it’s just weird my dude. Who made you the arbiter of feminism? And do you ever watch TV? Play video games? Shitpost online? Imagine fanciful scenarios in your head? These are all distractions. Why is theirs “worse” than yours? I guarantee you that you tell yourself lies every day that are just as inaccurate and anti-materialist as a given mysticism/religion that someone might resonate with. I don’t care how “dialectical-materialist-mensch” you think you are. I do too. We all do to an extent. I think this is all worth you reflecting on.…
…
In short:
JUST like a Capricorn
right in the headline, where it didn’t say “another vehicle”
4·14 hours agoIn younger days I’ve been that drunk man (well didn’t enter the home but definitely tried loudly to open the door for a minute not realizing the street I was on); Makes me proud to be an American that the current VP and Democrat candidate for the President of the United States of America might have shot me dead that day to raucous applause of Oprah-watchers.
5·14 hours agoseconding BJJ or wrestling as focus (and learning to sprint well), boxing or kickboxing as second if you feel the need. The vast vast majority of civilian fights that can’t be de-escalated are not cinematic circling-and-striking but instead are very sloppy tantrums that immediately go from shoving, to clinching, to the ground. Being able to control someone’s limbs is important, especially if they might have a weapon and there is no de-escalation possible or as you said you can’t access yours if you have one. I also think something like a stun gun or mace would probably be safer option than a knife to end a fight. People, especially under adrenaline, can keep going not even realizing they’ve been stabbed 50 times, and by that point you’ve added a much more ugly variable thrown into the mix (and it’s also harder to grip somebody who is covered in blood)
That said always avoid fights or escape those circumstances if you can, and try to never be alone where fights might happen. And where there are fights, like serious fights with someone trying to do you harm, be as unfair and brutal as you can immediately.
could have been easily de-escalated
“could have” is the point. Sometimes even if it “could have” it isn’t. Better to have something that might not need be used than vice versa. OP also isn’t guaranteed to always be alone in situations that can’t be de-escalated (and plenty of fights happen with prior warning, belligerence etc.). It is always better to be able to contribute than not if your friend is attacked or some other thing happens.
And you bringing up mugging is irrelevant, because nobody would ever say that someone who has you at gunpoint in a mugging should be struggled against, martial arts or not. No serious martial arts instructor would ever recommend or even float that as an option. You always give them your shit. That’s not what self-defense is for, fighting back against armed muggers.
Having a gun can help de-escalate through threat if there’s distance and it hasn’t broken out, but if a fight has already started or the distance can be closed before you can access it or even worse after you’ve drawn it but can’t point and fire it, now you’ve added a lethal variable and turned a fight of-some-kind into an almost certainly lethal scenario. And by that point too if you aren’t trained enough to know how to control someone’s limbs in wrestling for the gun, you’re increasingly possibly fucked.
It is very very good to train martial arts, and very very good to train the ability to run away fast, and always hope you can opt for the latter in most cases.
like ‘light blue’? Shit’s green
10·15 hours ago
We’ve got concepts of progress
If you’ve already got it drawn and ready before the fight breaks out and distance closed, absolutely. If not, now you’re wrestling over a gun, so back to traditional martial arts only now with the stakes now increased infinite-fold
31… She was a fucken’ kid.
Parenti quote
facts. the most real-effective martial arts were deliberately developed to remove raw strength from the equation as much as possible. someone 1/2 this person’s size who studied BJJ for a year could probably break every bone in this guy’s body (and that student would be below an amateur level compared to those who’ve really trained)
Also in my experience those who train to fight are some of the least likely to ever seek out a fight deliberately, or even show they can fight. Unless and until they need to. And to be honest this guy sounds like he needs to have his ass kicked and be put in his place. This is why isolation is bad; having no community around means nobody checks these dipshits before they go off the rails.
Honestly, does whining about this shit not turn off more voters than the usual no tv/media coverage ignoring
It does and it is a “capitalist selling the rope” dialectic. It’s also showing that the ruling class is not as sure as you are that “Kamala is going to win”. They wouldn’t do this if there was no reason to. They wouldn’t send out all those darkmoney superpac lawyers to purge 3rd parties from ballots in as many states as they can either. They’re paper tigers afraid we’re going to starve them of the working class margins they rely on while they are instead committed to fighting over the increasingly shrinking bourgeois and petty-bourgeois voterbase with the republicans so they can still cater to the billionaire exploiters, murderers, racketeers, and death-merchants that they are structurally incapable of not serving. We should absolutely starve them, and elevate the PSL as much as possible in doing so.
8·1 day agoIf they eat shit because of mass defections and people throwing their weight behind 3rd parties, especially socialists like PSL who do non-parliamentary ground work as well, and people continue throwing their weight behind them voting for them and joining them, and continue agitating and growing to not only pull the Democrat-defectors and people who are holding their nose who can be convinced that this is not helping (of which there are and continue to be many); but also continually activating the 35%-50% that don’t even vote because of how disillusioned and disenfranchised they are by the corporate-imperialist duopoly; such that the margins of working class voters that Democrats rely on by being the “lesser evil” are starved from them, while they are instead committed to fighting over the increasingly shrinking bourgeois and petty-bourgeois voterbase with the republicans then they will never get power again unless they reorient toward the left; which we know and you’ve stated as much, they are institutionally structurally incapable of doing.
This means either the ruling class floats a reformist social-democrat “labor” or “progressive” party to try to capture working class voters from moving to the growing socialists, which we are growing and will — from those radicalized after the 2016 primaries to the George Floyd Uprisings to now and on it’s been exponential; which would cause the Democrat party to split in half with half joining the republicans (that they’ve already been converging with anyway), and half hedging their bets and fleeing to the new “progressive” party like ‘rats from a sinking ship,’ which would not only alienate the new “progressive” party’s left wing by “democrat-izing” the party with the same people and politics they were trying to escape from (with which sufficient agitation easily moves many of them into more radical politics and joining the socialists), but would force this reconstituting on the bourgeois politicians as a chaotic retreat into positions they don’t want against a rising socialist party. This also, in turning the focus of the bourgeois politicians inward, inevitably helps the victims of imperialism and sharpens the external contradictions of empire, which have in many places already approached or reached rupture points.
Or they ignore this and ignore us and drop the thinnest-of-masks they still have; joining the open-fanged republicans straight away. This would be their worst option for maintaining the illusion of liberal democracy, and would promptly radicalize a huge portion of working people who never held any illusions about the Republicans or about Trump into socialist and revolutionary politics. And with supporting the PSL and actively engaging in movement-building with them, having the socialists standing on the other side of the see-saw with the weight of the working class when this happens, funneling masses to us, could legitimately lead to a sort of dual power situation. This latter option would be incredibly self-destructive for the ruling class, but they are that and have clearly become so comfortable and entrenched in their interest they’ve forgotten how to play politics, so who knows.
We need to think proactively and dialectically, and engage ourselves in confronting with sharp intent the contradictions that exist; with a mind for movement-building among the masses, many of whom still engage with electoral politics or otherwise still believe in it as an institution, if not the parties in it. This is what I see as the proper line. And though you’re not wrong (in fact are quite accurate) in describing exactly what the Democrats are happy to do in their cruise-control political niche within the duopoly which they’ve grown so comfortable with, it is an improper and opportunist line to just accept that as is and so capitulate to their precepts which only serves their ends. Instead, we need to think about how to exploit their strategy by our understanding of what and who they are, and make it untenable and force them into positions that they are incapable of handling.
Unironically I think Venezuela coup and Bolivia coups probably would have been less of a disastrous clusterfuck for the US, and much more competent and effective under Clinton, because of how petulant and stupid and impatient and spiteful Trump is in comparison to… basically anyone on the planet. John Bolton was all pissy about it in his book and interviews. Trump just hated the guy’s mustache and would be petty all the time, and pushed himself into involvement where he had no place to, and eventually just got “bored” of Venezuela and scrapped it. Leaving things in the hilarious state where after Russia went into Ukraine, Nuland had to meet Maduro asking for oil while the US still recognized Guaido, and got grilled by, of all people, gusano-extraordinaire Marc Rubio in a congressional hearing over it (same hearing where Nuland admitted about the biolabs in Ukraine that was being denied elsewhere. Bizarre timeline)
Murdering Soleimani was fucking unhinged and horrible, but it’s hard to say Clinton of all people wouldn’t do something equally evil, but with less randomness and with more followup than just murdering a guy on a diplomatic mission, by the grace of Iran not causing a massive war over such a stupid thing, and claiming “victory.”
Honestly they all deserve the hague, but then the US would invade the hague
You’re mistaken on a few points here, friend. I’m gonna give an overview and then there’s a spoiler with a wall of text deepening explanations.
Your sister is already not maintaining her bodily autonomy under democrats now. It’s being stripped all over the country and democrats have been doing nothing to stop it, and in many ways actively helping it be stripped. It will keep happening without change. Fascism is not a person, and is growing and will grow regardless of who is president, as the economic crises and world crises of empire worsen. No one is asking you to falsely signal, but telling you why giving democrats the mandate to do what they are doing and supplying them their margin they rely on to cruise control into genocide and aiding fascism and destruction of the planet so they can turn around and drum up this same sentiment and fears in you for the next election is untenable and is how things got this bad in the first place.
And 2016 didn’t “mostly just get leftists labeled bernie bros and blamed for clinton failing”, 2016 and experiencing that nonsense from liberals made people communist. It made them actual leftists. It radicalized more people into communism than any event in decades, only surpassed by the George Floyd Uprisings (which may not have had that kind of energy without such radicalization) and then this moment we are living in now. 2016 made many people into actual active socialists and made them realize the role liberals truly play in society because of the things that you said “mostly only” happened. And what is happening now in 2024 is doing that tenfold. Maybe more. The radicalization happening now is unprecedented in modern USA and other countries. You never would have seen in the USA these kinds of mass sustained protests saying “Free Palestine” and calling for decolonization of the occupation, and interrupting campaign events to protest US-backed Israeli atrocities, like we are seeing now. I’m going to deepen these with explanations, but it’s a wall of text so I’m gonna spoiler it so it doesn’t mess peoples’ scroll.
spoiler
- On bodily autonomy: her bodily autonomy is already being stripped in the country, and fascism is rising and will continue to rise regardless of who’s in power. The democrats are doing nothing to stop it and never will. Democrats had the executive and both houses of congress in Obama’s term and could have codified abortion rights and LGBTQ civil rights then and there. They refused and Obama even gave up a supreme court seat in active capitulation, after which now Biden is refusing to push to pack the court and denouncing the idea; and they do this because they don’t care about any of us. They work for all the same billionaires and imperialist monsters that the republicans do. They LIKE womens’ rights and LGBTQ rights to be under attack, because then they can drum up exactly the kind of sentiments in you right now to bully you and panic you and manipulate you and brow-beat and shame you to get you to give them a mandate of power while not having to do anything to earn it, and continuing to spiral everything towards and into and through fascism and genocide and nuclear brinksmanship imperialism because “they’ll vote for us anyway — we’re not the republicans”
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When in objective reality, they are the republicans. We’re closer to WW3 than we’ve been in decades. military expansion and proxy wars and coups and mass prisons and police militarization and murder, and repressions of civil rights and free speech and protests, have all continued to get worse under the democrats. Cop City is happening under democrats. Biden not only didn’t close the border camps, but deregulated them and allowed them to be privatized for profit by private contractors. Biden brought in all the worst neo-con warmongers he could find, put a Chevron executive who defended the destruction of the Amazon and poisoning of Indigenous people to head his environmental executive, and continued the legacy of his President Obama whose entire cabinet was hand-picked by Citigroup (and we all remember him bailing out the banks)! And there is an active genocide, the most televized genocide in history, being financed and funded and armed by the US, and the supposed “lesser evil” Biden went around congress twice to give them bombs and guns faster than even congress could do, hoping that Gaza would be finished off before the Elections. But because Trump is open and honest about his wanting to do what the democrats are already currently doing he’s somehow worse for Palestine so we’re shamed into supporting the current genocidaires who are covering up their crimes and lying about their crimes? The current genocidaires who, when protestors shout “no to genocide, stop the genocide” are shouted down and smugly condescended to with “I’m talking! You must want Trump to win!” These people are better and Trump is worse? No, they’re the same and will continue to bring us down the same path if we continue allowing them to.
. - On false signaling: Who is telling you you should “falsely signal?” We’re saying the only option is to not give these people a mandate, and do everything we can to visibly starve them of their taken-for-granted margins and punish them for what they’re doing and put our vote toward people with principles and elevate them, with the votes the democrats need, so we are un-ignorable if the democrats ever want power again. If you’re capable, join a socialist organization like the PSL who is working on the ground to fill in gaps and help people, but at the very least vote for them too and push them up in numbers and visibility, and force the establishment that is and will continue to bring about all of the things you and your loved ones are afraid of unless they are forced not to. And one of the simplest ways to force them to stop this genocidal cruise-control and reorient or break the duopoly is by starving the only face of the duopoly-of-exploiters that requires your working class margin to win. Either they reorient politically, or a huge amount of people who don’t have any illusions about the republicans either are now becoming much more radical and serious, where the PSL will be prepared to bring them on board and tell them why this happens and what is to be done.
. - On what 2016 accomplished and being called names by our enemies: You are mistaken, the Clintonite liberals who chided and brow-beat people who were justifiably disgusted with the flagrantly corrupt and imperialist bloodthirst of both candidates and backed Bernie, and saw how even the liberal Bernie was treated, didn’t just then become democrats again. They became COMMUNISTS. Many of them were radicalized by seeing and experiencing their illusions about bourgeois democracy be ripped down and spat on by the ruling class. Many weren’t even really part of the political “left” until this happened, and 2016 caused the left to grow exponentially and caused socialism to grow in astronomical proportions compared to how it had in decades. I saw it, I was in the middle of it. This election is doing the same and more, watching the democrats act so viciously and shamelessly in their bloodshed, corruption and lies, and disregard for life and liberty of the people. None of us ever had illusions about Republicans; they never pandered to the working class. The Democrats are supposed to do that but have failed to even remember how to pretend, and are bringing more and more people to the left. Which is why we need to stay ahead of them to grow socialism, to build the change we need from the ground up, and actually resist fascism, which is not resisted in the ballot box between two corporate-imperialist-genocidaire parties which are converging together into fascism which is growing regardless, it’s resisted on all fronts.
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Let them call you whatever they want. Why decide what you’re going to do politically based on what your enemies say? They will call you worse than that. You should take pride in your enemies calling you such petty names knowing they are throwing ideological tantrums. The more you antagonize the system and its status quo, the more the system and their supporters will demonize you. Why do you think communist was made a dirty word in the US through a century of active red scare propaganda and COINTELPRO operations? It wasn’t because they were telling any kind of truth, it was because they were scared of people liking us, and of joining us. Of divesting from their system and building our own. There is zero reason to let the people who hate you and want you to be compliant dictate your politics. Instead do what is intelligent and incisive to jam a crowbar into the contradictions of the system, and work for those working class people (who know better than you do and have known for longer the ruling class and their petty-bourgeois college liberals are full of shit and the names they throw mean nothing) so we can all with our collective weight pry the contradiction apart.
And remember that the more absurd the demonization gets and the more active work we do to show their lies and hypocrisy, the more their demonization of us becomes their undoing. Like now conservative reactionaries are calling everyone to the left of Thatcher a communist. This didn’t make communism scarier to the working class — it made it so now people are less instinctually terrified of the idea, or think “that doesn’t sound right” and read some Marx and realize he had a very prescient analysis of what we can all see around us. There are more communists now than there were in the 80s, and we’re growing. You can help in being a part of that, or let our enemies and their liberal minions shame and cow you into submission and compliance based on fears that they’ve implanted on you that are only telling half the story, and in doing so helping those fears come true.
- On bodily autonomy: her bodily autonomy is already being stripped in the country, and fascism is rising and will continue to rise regardless of who’s in power. The democrats are doing nothing to stop it and never will. Democrats had the executive and both houses of congress in Obama’s term and could have codified abortion rights and LGBTQ civil rights then and there. They refused and Obama even gave up a supreme court seat in active capitulation, after which now Biden is refusing to push to pack the court and denouncing the idea; and they do this because they don’t care about any of us. They work for all the same billionaires and imperialist monsters that the republicans do. They LIKE womens’ rights and LGBTQ rights to be under attack, because then they can drum up exactly the kind of sentiments in you right now to bully you and panic you and manipulate you and brow-beat and shame you to get you to give them a mandate of power while not having to do anything to earn it, and continuing to spiral everything towards and into and through fascism and genocide and nuclear brinksmanship imperialism because “they’ll vote for us anyway — we’re not the republicans”
1·1 day agoWe need a new rejuvination of spirit and comradery of purpose in action with which to rally around instead of the lustreless consumerist idleness of the bygone era
I read that the Taiwan pager company Golden Apollo (that the Hungarian company BAC that is suspected of being the ‘middleman’ in the attack purchased licensing of, hence why the remnants of the bomb pagers were licensed as official Golden Apollo ones) is a very established exporter of pagers to north america and west europe and is used by western intelligence agencies. western intelligence apparently (by their words so who knows) got tipped off that “something” was being planned to happen by Israelis but weren’t told what.
So it is conceivable that it was a simultaneous terror attack on Lebanon and low-key threat to its western backers who are faltering or otherwise having their populace turn on their support. There were EU countries who not only abstained in the UN GA vote, but even voted in favor with the “uncivilized world” in calling Israel’s presence in the occupied territories “unlawful,” demanding they remove themselves, and urging countries to embargo them from weapons and war-prosecuting material trade. While the Israeli UN ambassador shitted and farted and cried about how it is “diplomatic terrorism” (Whatever the fuck that even means)
They’re non-binding but still politically representative of trends. The stances of these countries and their populations leading up to votes like this is definitely easy for intelligence to have prior-knowledge of; and the Democrats are and have been visibly hemorrhaging support over this. The mass sustained protests all over the world against the IOF’s genocidal occupation and assaults and for the liberation of Palestine have become unignorable by their establishments. Even US college campuses have had to update their rulebooks to include “zionism” as hate speech (surely not going to hurt Jews and trivialize and provide cover for actual judeophobia by equating Jews with Israel. DtA). So it could be a double-message there.
As well, Israel is just desperate to escalate in as many tangential ways as it can to kick off a regional war and drag the US and NATOsphere into it because their current predicament is unsustainable.