Basically there's some NGO trying to co-opt the land back slogan and now a bunch of dipshit white people are using that to say that the land back movement as a whole is "bourgeois"
Ah, classic NGO :cia: move.
The audacity of these shitstains.
So he would be OK if a communist native-people's government expropiated the land? Rad!
If I had taken that L publicly I think I would have just logged off forever.
Seems like they quickly moved onto Ms ACD. Everyone involved has been private enough about it that it’s probably not appropriate to speculate much beyond that
I hate that Ashley deleted all her content. I was really looking forward to more videos from her. Also, I wish Jamie Peck would get her own YouTube channel as well. I'm short on fellow solo female lefty content. Anyone have any suggestions? I just keep getting recommended men.
I recall rev left doing an episode with someone called Mexie. I don’t know much about her personally, but I think she does a fair bit of YouTube
I didn't realize she had videos. I only know of these people from the Low Society podcast. Unfortunately I've no solo suggestions for you, most podcasts I listen to are mixed company, but in groups of 3 or 4.
Before you all go dogpile on the guy, I believe the context here is that there have been past instances where land was returned to indigenous people only for it to get sold to private interests. Also, the org that is behind the Landback manifesto is sketchy. As in like Jeff Bezos literally funds them.
That landback org is sketchy, but Indigenous people and Indigenous Marxsists have been calling for this for a long time
The exact specifics always depends on the material conditions and the needs of the colonized people the land is being returned to, but I think you've got the general gist of it down. When we talk about "self determination" regarding land back a lot of people tend to think about it abstractly, but land back is the physical material necessity for self determination. The same way that workers need to own the means of production, Indigenous peoples needs to own their land.
Yeah. It seems both sides of the landback debate are pro land reform actually. I guess where the disagreement here is is that peter coffin et al. are against supporting the present movements surrounding it before socialists have taken power?
It's more incoherent than that because a lot of people like Peter Coffin will openly support other colonized people like the Palestinians and black South Africans while it's the same system of oppression as in North America. It's just a mix of paternalism and settler guilt complex.
All that said, if you want my pie-in-the sky idea as to what to do if I somehow became the American , I think you should give them Oregon, and as many guns, tanks, planes & ☢️ as they think they need to keep private re-settlers & the US state from fucking with them. Plus like a $500-Billy development package, and let them to as they will with all that
that's more or less what Ulysses Grant tried to do the problem was that once gold was found on their land the government couldn't stop the settlers and when the natives killed the settlers it put public support for war to such a level that the government was essentially strong armed into it.
basically that might not actually be within the capabilities of the US government to do even if they were willing to do it
Ehh Indigenous people are almost always under counted in population stats, not to mention there's racist shit like blood quantum rules that exist to specifically limit the size of Indigenous populations. And besides that it's not like all FNs are asking for complete autonomy with a "settlers go home" demand. That's why returning the land needs to be paired with decolonization, if there's one thing I can generalize about Indigenous people is that they want to co-operate with the people here, but our systems create oppression that prevents it.
Check out the Line 3 protests or the Fairy Creek blockade or any land/water defence action going on near you. Residential School Survivors Society (Canadian). If you want a group to support check out Red Nation.
I took some time to dig into this debate a bit more, and I think what Peter Coffin and others are saying is pretty clear. This is what happens when "land back" occurs under capitalism and it is why capitalists are funding the current "land back" movement: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/senakw-squamish-first-nation-vancouver-rental-housing-development
Squamish First Nation members overwhelmingly voted to approve the massive development on their 12-acre Kitsilano reserve in late 2019. Thus allowing band leaders to seal the partnership with local developer Westbank and continue their work with refining the design concept.
Between $16 billion and $20 billion will be generated from the rental income of Senakw throughout the entire lifespan of its buildings, with the First Nation receiving half of this income under its 50-50 partnership with Westbank. In 2019, the construction cost of the project was estimated to be $3 billion.
The people who are against "land back" are against it not because of "paternalism and settler guilt complex" but because giving land back right now would ultimately end up serving capitalist interests
You're kinda proving my point about paternalism here.
Why should settlers get to dictate how the land is used? Should Israelis get to dictate how Palestinians use their land if/when it's returned? Should we as "leftists" be against Palestinians getting their land back because they might not be socialist?
If we look at Canada, this conditional right to land has always been the status quo. Recent conflicts like Wet'suwet'en blockades, the standoffs at Six Nations, Standing Rock, and the Baffinland blockades all occur because the government says that First Nations have a right to their land, but when they assert that right in opposition to capital, the state takes off its mask and brutalizes people who're asserting what's supposed to be their rights as distinct nations enshrined through treaties with the Canadian government. But when we see the state and First Nations getting along like in the example you brought up, we usually find it to be the band councils, which are Western style governance systems created through the Indian Act in Canada. As we should always keep in mind, Indigenous peoples, even those in the same First Nation, are not a monolith and so opposition can form between traditional and colonial systems of government. And even then we should understand the economic reasoning why both band and traditional leadership might support certain capital friendly decisions: the Canadian government has forced poverty on Indigenous people for centuries.
Remember, the contradictions at the heart of any society are dialectically linked and economism will not solve them all.
I think you may be making some false assumptions here so I'd like to make it clear that nowhere in my comment did I condemn them for their decision or purport to know what is better for them.
As far as I can tell, nobody is arguing that Indigenous people must first be socialist before land is given back to them, although I now see how one could easily interpret it that way.
Sorry if I projected those people's opinions on your comment too much.
From what I've seen (because I've had similar discussions before) these people seem to be arguing exactly that and I honestly don't know how else to interpret it, it's just class reductionism. Like if they agree Indigenous people are oppressed and should have their land returned, why should Indigenous people have to wait until either the settler state becomes socialist or they somehow establish socialism on their own while still under the boot of the settler state? If these people don't agree Indigenous people should have their land returned, why? What assures that the settler colonial contradiction will be resolved through settler focused, class-only, socialism, y'know? It just gets frustrating seeing these types of people trying to use Marx and Lenin to justify their bad settler brains.
Yeah I've been trying to wrap my head around all this and I think the idea behind the criticism would be that socialists in the imperial core should put their efforts into seizing power and supporting "land back" efforts don't necessarily help with that (and in some cases it may even be harmful arguably). There's probably also some confusion where some instances of "land back" activity like that Bezos funded org in the US advocating for giving public land away are in capitalist interest whereas others are not.
Just found this well written comment on r*ddit that talks about the exact article you're citing better than I can
Seeing people here giving the benefit of the doubt to Peter Coffin of all people lol
if people want to understand land back they should look at the way it was implemented in Bolivia under Morales and in Nicaragua under Ortega
https://youtube.com/watch?v=21YTQvzdCek
The assertion being made in the OP screenshot though isn't that land reforms should not take place, but that they cannot take place now under capitalist rule. The examples you are giving were done only after socialists took power right?
"We do not live under communism and neither do indigenous people. this is simply creating a new place for the fundamental contradiction to occur"
and then there's also the rest of the twitter thread where I think the point gets made pretty clearly.
ok Bolivians and Nicaraguans do not live under communism either, yet land back policies very clearly took place giving indigenous people this autonomy. land back is not privatization of public land, its just one very reasonable policy for socialists to support, this isnt complicated stuff!
it is pretty clear that "we do not live under communism" is just a figure of speech which in this context means "we live under capitalist rule".
I don't know about Bolivia, but it seems like what they did in Nicaragua according to that video you posted can't be what American progressives mean when they say land back though, since America already has autonomous regions for Indians just like Nicaragua. That's not even bringing up the fact that Miskito are a former British colony, are closer to Anglos and have a different culture from the Nicaraguans, meaning they need different schools that teach in English instead of Spanish and all sorts of other differentiated infrastructure that American Indians don't i.e. there's a different possible interpretation of "autonomous" more akin to China's autonomous regions.
They've got that Zizek thing going on where whenever they speak I can't understand a damn thing they're talking about but I keep just assuming I'm the dumb one for not getting it. Zizek did a forward on an Audiobook to Mao's Contradictions and my eyes just glazed over. And I know it wasn't just me because I listened to the rest of the book just fine.
If you are too be generous to him you could imagine a shitty neoliberal way of giving the land back where each person was given a lot individually which would then be bought up by capital, leaving the native American communities as exploited as ever.
But there are other ways to do it.
They responded to Luna Oi's thread about why land back is important with a yawning emoji, fuck this chauvinist piece of shit
He rarely has absolutely absurdly dumb takes. He's often on to something but usually throws all nuance out the window or just doesn't communicate his idea properly.
Just stop taking online micro celebrities seriously, if they do something good then great if not then oh well.
This. They’re in such a cycle of
- say something edgy and baffling on twitter
- talk more about that subject on their weekly live stream
- promote edited version of stream on same Twitter feed
that I wonder if they do it on purpose as a form of outrage marketing to reach the portions of the left that will hate read this sort of take
I wouldn't be surprised. Like very explicitly they say at the end of every video "this youtube politics thing is a side gig where i convert your attention into money."
Yeah but that's exactly what's going to happen. The US govt is behind this (Or rather, would be behind this as things currently stand)
Replace the word "indigenous" with Palestinian to learn how wrong this take is. Palestinians are colonized Indigenous people, but we don't say "wait for Israel to become communist first!!1!"
American "socialists" deal with socialist criticism of one of their social justice pet projects maturely challenge (impossible).
Wait so we're not supposed to just assume the worst possible interpretation of what other leftists have to say and then dunk on them as fast as possible for internet points?
I mean the idea is that a socialist society is created on the land. It won't be privately owned by a couple landlords lol
But that won't happen in the current sydtem. Even if Indian tribes were genuinely trying to set up socialist communes on the land and there wasn't a self interested bourgeois interest in sight, the handover would be from the US government and involve the creation of subnational governmental entities within it's territory. There is no way in hell the US would allow a non capitalist alternative to exist within it's own borders in direct competition with itself.
It's either going to be a bourgeois compromise with an empowered minority of the native population getting all the resources, or the US government essentially has to experience a revolution.
I think it would have to come from a revolution lol, 0% chance the US would give up land without it
Isn't this the guy who made up a girlfriend? I try to avoid learning about these people, but I definitely heard that
Nah that was some unsubstantiated shit signal boosted by kiwifarms and then parroted by gawker. You know those “stories” that are really just a retelling of a single tweet thread? Yeah.
If you avoid learning about these people, I wouldn’t recommend looking into it, but the same people claiming he made up his girlfriend also claimed that his now-ex-wife Ashleigh was a CGI blowup doll.
I also remember hearing that, but apparently they were also married to that attractive socialist lady which is baffling
Ashleigh is super funny. I wish she’d kept up with her Youtube channel
Her Twitter is private now, I guess she had enough of the circus? If so, I can't blame her.
I am glad socialist twitter has grown enough it can support someone who is simply mediocre. That is my opinion on the man.
"Land" shouldn't belong to anyone. I'm very skeptical of people saying any piece of land belongs to any specific ethnic group, that just sounds like an ethnostate to me.
This is because you're looking at this issue in a vacuum and applying western forms of universalist thought to it.
When indigenous peoples talk about "owning" land they probably arent talking about it in terms of anglo "ownership" through a law and contracts. I have no clear understanding of what they actually mean but its clear they arent speaking in anglo legal terms. Furthermore, im pretty sure they also dont want any sort of "ethnostate", because why would they want a "state" or consider shit like "ethnicity" the way anglos do?
Also its ironic how they were all genocided and driven of their ancestral lands by crackers who declared such "terra nullis" and established white ethnostates.
I have no clear understanding of what they actually mean
Then why are you speaking for them? I’ve been around and spoken to plenty of rez folks around where I live and they are every bit as capable of being greedy capitalist shitheads as any white person. This comes across as some kind of “noble savage” romanticism.
Please specify where I said that indigenous conceptions of land back are somehow better than the anglo legalist contract based system to substantiate your "noble savagery" claim.
Im saying shit because im confident enough to admit i dont know what they mean, and thus not make any unfounded anglo idealist claims about landback creating "muh ethnostates" and how akshually nobody should own land because "muh terra nullis". Notice how those arguments are colonist projection and how I never said the indigenous peoples do not have the capacity to be exploitative capitalists.
I disagree, but maybe this is just semantics. I’m not a Georgist but their tenants are not bankrupt - land is power and a means of its own. Related, if land belongs to no one then no one has authority over another on what they can do with it, and anti-social forces can exploit the power gap. Ideally it belongs to everyone/everything (ecosystems) in that all uses should be considered and allowed outside of what harms other uses, beyond some kind of reasonable consideration (unfortunate loophole?). So really it should be in the hands of the public, through nations or councils or otherwise. I think we’re on the same page I’m just an obnoxious pedant.
E: a second pedantic thought is to reconsider this not as a support of ethnostates, but as retroactively acknowledging the democratic wishes of oppressed peoples and their ancestors, to try and repatriate their agency in deciding what should happen on the space they primarily used and called home. If we had our ideal situation, much of what has happened would not have happened because it was largely done against their wishes, so mitigating that going forward through land back is one option. But I agree with others it seems this is not being done in good faith. Not sure what other ways exist that can acknowledge wrongdoing without letting bad actors exploit it long term.
Reservations are among the worst places in the US to be born/live, horribly depressing places. we need to fix that before expanding the issue imo
a lot of white people think that land shouldn't have people on it, doing things. unless those people are white, with phds, engaging in knowledge manufacturing aka "research". other people allowed to visit land: rich white people on the board of a foundation that supports research activity. they can have a nice set of cabins with a beautiful view to have yearly or quarterly meetings to talk about how great they are as responsible, Stewards of Stolen Land.
but just returning BLM land (that has been exploited and ripped open by oil, gas, mineral, ranchers and logging firms) to the indigenous people with their tribal governments that are poorly understood by urban leftists, if at all? that's crazy. whites can't just give land back to indigenous all willy nilly. what if they were to do something white people didn't want them to do?
