Russia invading was really the best thing for hawks. It’s only gonna get harder to argue for anti-imperialism now, even smarter people I know see the USA as the lesser of two evils. It doesn’t help that a lot of the people opposed to the US right now are legit ghouls who there isn’t much nice to say about besides that they oppose to the US. No amount of nuance or intelligent arguing is gonna convince anyone now, the US were the good guys against the big evil Putin.
The US is getting more and more regressive on LGBT issues but on classic American style they’re doing it slowly and regionally enough that it doesn’t seem like a sudden regressive take over, so most LGBT people I know still see the USA as a generally progressive state with some regressive enclaves, unlike the “backwards” nations in the developing world.
The hope pilling about China is seeming more and more like cope to me. Even if they are really building socialism I think they maybe too late. Besides it seems to only be socialism for China, they’re not planning on exporting anything.
Anti-communist propaganda as worked. Failures of past socialist movements along with the almost scientific methods of modern propagandists means really only an aesthetic meme version of the idea is gaining any meaningful popularity.
Frankly I’m just fed up. I don’t think anyone else in the west can be talked into socialism at this point, the propagandists won. People say that we shouldn’t be doomer even if we are doomed, but NGL having hope just seems exhausting and obnoxious right now. It being over seems like the best fate because at least then we don’t have to deal with people telling us how wrong we were.
You are actively under the effect of the capitalist media ecosystem. Ukraine is being blurted across all channels 24/7 the feeling your feeling is exactly what those in power want you to feel.
The system is actively alienating you right now, just as it always has. It's just egregious at the moment. Ground yourself in your community and the things you can control.
You need to contextualise your feelings too. There are struggles going on in places of the world that are much more bleak, there are generations of people who've been in this situation and reflected on this feeling since at least 1789, it may not be the people around you but it could help to read texts of people in the past reflecting on past failed revolutions.
At the end of the day this is an ongoing event and we are going to be able to properly understand it for months. Your first gut feelings are almost never the most correct ones, sometimes it's best to just wait and see.
I refuse to give up hope. Leftists are spending too much time arguing about which side is worse or better, whether Putin is justified in invading a neighboring country or if NATO encroachment is not a big deal. I don't give a fuck. The fact of the matter is the left has abandoned any agency, it has disappeared entirely on a global scale. The infrastructure to enact worldwide socialism is non-existant and time is running out. We need to mobilize right now and set ourselves up to take a hold of the power vacuum that is inevitably going to arise as these two sides bicker over nationalist bullshit. The west has spent almost a century fighting communism and Putin has aided and abetted that effort, spending time bickering with libs about Putin's justified grievances against the west are fucking stupid.
:this:. Material reality is what matters, not the discourse about NATO or Russia that we're currently surrounded by. Everybody on every side of this war will propagandize to their citizens that they have won and the enemy has lost. The left must rebuild itself. I won't succumb to the easy path of doomerism and surrender my agency while there's still work to be done.
There are reasons not to lose hope entirely:
- China might not be exporting revolution but they are doing their own thing and resisting US dominance, as well as developing their country. This alone is proof that a world outside the US exists.
- The war in Ukraine is horrible but the fact that it happened at all shows that we're not living in the end of history any longer.
- In Latin America popular movements have managed to gain power, against the wishes of the US.
- Cuba and Venezuela still exists, despite being targets of US aggression for decades.
If history teaches us anything it is that America will destroy anyone who tries to move just a millimeter closer to socialism. The Great Satan is decaying and losing the ability to project power. This opens new possibilities, one of them being the construction of socialism outside of American reach. Many other and more sinister possibilities exists but for the first time in ages, an alternative is possible.
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.
- Antonio Gramsci.
Perhaps you’re right.
I made a recent post that gave me a little hope, apparently some Communist politicians in Russia are calling out the fact that Putin is opportunisticly using the violence in Donbas to justify invading all of Ukraine. I know the lathe almost never works for positive things but it would put some egg on western Libs face if Russian communists became the leading force in deescalating this conflict.
harder to argue for anti-imperialism
No amount of nuance or intelligent arguing is gonna convince anyone now,
we don’t have to deal with people telling us how wrong we were
Don't waste your time getting into online debates with Liz Warren voting PMC, organize the working class instead
only an aesthetic meme version of the idea of socialism
Organize the working class (repeats 100x)
working class instead
I’m surrounded by labor aristocrats. Also most of the working class is pretty brain rotted by propaganda.
Everyone I've spoken to about it in my area is incredibly anti-war and once you shoot down the Putin memes they are fed and only lightly believe, they actually listen and understand that NATO created this situation.
No one I've spoken with wants war, no one even had strong feelings about who's the "lesser evil". Only psycho partisans have strong opinions, which is a huge minority of the working class.
Regardless of what is happening, the left are still in a better position then they were during the "end of history".
America is in shambles, and change can happen in the blink of an eye. Police stations were blazing in the states not long ago, it can happen again.
Regardless of what is happening, the left are still in a better position then they were during the “end of history”.
why?
America is in shambles, and change can happen in the blink of an eye. Police stations were blazing in the states not long ago, it can happen again.
oh god yes. I was hoping we'd see more of it in 2021 but it seems things have gone back to sleep again...
War always results in people thinking in the short term at the expense of everything else. The general mid-long term outlook isn't significantly different today than it was 1 week ago.
-The US economy and population will have to deal with millions of people suffering with long COVID.
-COVID is far from over and new variants will continue to cause issue. Of course the US will never lockdown again but that also means more deaths, more long COVID and potential eventual healthcare collapse. The only way out of this is hoping there wont be any more variants which is pure copium.
-China will soon become the #1 economy, a symbolic event but with great significance. The Russian war is in part because of this fact, the BRI will create a separate trading block that will serve the basis of future geopolitics. Even though the individual members of this Chinese led block are not all particularly good on their own, this is necessary and will define 21st century politics and beyond just like the bipolar USSR/US world of the 1950-90s defined by the USSR vs US. This time the US is in a much worse position in all aspects.
-US politics is still very much a circus, there is no competent leader in sight and neither party will ever get a mandate from the entire population. There is no incentive to fix the crumbling infrastructure. The US will remain economically dependent on China, and defined by worsening inequality and quality of life. This is still massive potential for radicalization.
-Climate change will continue to get worse and more disasters are on the way, major disruption to the flow of treats is not something Americans can deal with in the long term.
-The short term boost in pro NATO/nationalist feelings is just that is not going to be enough to change the outlook at home. At the end of the day there wont be WW3 and people will stop caring about foreign affairs. War is not enough to stop people from caring about being homeless, being fired, being rejected from job interviews etc. Antiwork is just a glimpse at the underlying sentiment and issues that are waiting like a bubble to burst imo.
War is not enough to stop people from caring about being homeless, being fired, being rejected from job interviews etc.
Exactly right. In fact, many revolutions in history were caused by the poor conditions of war: the October Revolution being a prime example.
It sucks, it really fucking sucks. I just got into argument with my nominally leftist friend over this article he sent me. I said the article was loaded with pro-imperialist rhetoric like asserting that NATO was ever a defensive operation and was just dismissive of the anti-imperialist position in general. I couched the whole discussion in "yes putin sucks, really fucking sucks, I hope the russian people seize power and execute him and all the other oligarchs" but even that wasn't enough. Apparently anything less than arming and funding the nationalist ukrainian government and turning all of ukraine into ground for a proxy war with russia is putin apologia.
how dare you not want to arm nazis against the evil Putin man who is as bad as Hitler who is bad because nazis!!!!
I’m not going to abandon my beliefs but I do agree with everything you’ve said. Putin has condemned us to a world of unquestionable loyalty to western hegemony. The end of history seems more real and real every day. The only difference is that it will literally be the end of history and everyone who’s part of it.
Also this should go to c/doomer
The hope pilling about China is seeming more and more like cope to me. Even if they are really building socialism I think they maybe too late. Besides it seems to only be socialism for China, they’re not planning on exporting anything.
About this, even just giving countries the freedom to pursue socialism by protecting them somewhat within China’s sphere is a HUGE deal, especially in Africa and Latin America. Pro-China leftists leaders in Latin America seem to be gaining ground pretty quickly, and a victory for Lula in Brazil would add to that. If this continues, it seems likely we’ll end up with some kind of Latin American socialist union which would have a pretty big direct impact on the US, given our ties there.
I somewhat agree that the west and the US in particular is fucked in the near future, but I would be careful not to let this dictate your views on what’s happening globally. US hegemony is fraying at the edges, and I think it’s not unrealistic to believe good things could come from that. Things will get tougher in the US, but eventually we might have a real opportunity to join our comrades elsewhere in overthrowing the US-led capitalist world order.
and a victory for Lula in Brazil would add to that
that's the only reason why i'm 0.5% happy in voting for that lib
War ✔️
Pestilence ✔️
Famine ✔️
Death ✔️
Yep 4/4 Horsemen agree...and that's not even acknowledging the climate change race course they're running on
Decades where nothing happens days where everything changes. Have to maintain a spark for the next opportunity.
Dark but one thing to think about in this endless world of media cycle after cycle is that not just long ago the modern capitalist system was close to a precipice just from 1 disease any modern state has the technology to deal with.
The future if we're frank is going to have more and more events like this and climate change on top. A system where everyone supports each other isn't really attractive to your average person in the first world when you're living in a condition that's honestly godlike compared to the rest of humanity. It's very easy now to believe in the status quo when it has no effect on your day to day.
When things start going south quick, people start looking for new ideas. This will happen in our lifetime, it is not a big commitment to continue to work on leftist thought or even planting seeds of cooperation in the people around you.
For comparison, yes the right is bankrolled, but the very extreme right shows time and time again how far people will believe things like the earth is flat and the earth is hollow for the sense of community it brings. If they can nudge people like this, the left can too. It won't be the next 1917 but it is a spark. We are not even in 1848 right now we are serfs in Alsance afterall.
the contradictions will force people to reconcile with the reality that capitalism and imperialism were nice to them for a while, but they are not sustainable.
I don't know, they might just turn to fascism. Would be much easier given how propagandized people are.
