I'm writing a currently genre ambiguous Sci-Fi/lovecraft/spaceopera/superhero novel that doesn't outright declare everyone is openly is Maoist/Anarchist/Stalinist/Etc., (the alien characters won't have human etymology for their ideologies) and maybe it's not actually all that political on the surface anyways, but any tips for slipping in vegan and leftist dog-whistles?
This doesn't exactly answer your question, but I met someone at a party (friend of a friend) and my dude immediately started talking about Brace Belden and then the GDR. so sometimes you just gotta go for it I guess.
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun"
"There are decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen"
Women hold up half the sky
Material conditions
Nothing to lose but chains
Leftist icon pet names
Guillotines
At an old apartment I used to live at I saw a wifi network named, “let a hundred flowers bloom”
And after you let the flowers bloom you arrest the right-wingers who foolishly revealed themselves and sentence them to hard labor for 20 years
Oh Mao, you were such a clever bastard when you wanted to be
It was, 100%. He knew there were right-wingers hiding in the Party and elsewhere. Finding them was the problem, they were deeply closeted. But allowing them to criticize the Party "to help improve it" would certainly get them to out themselves. They couldn't resist. They identified themselves, Mao didn't have to do anything but note names. Then after a few months, he brought the hammer down. BAM, off to the labor camps. None of them were released until after Mao died.
Slipping in famous leftist quotes or paraphrases of those quotes. :biden-leftist:
we don't have dog whistles because there's no way to say we should accept people, housing and feeding them, and destroy anyone who disagrees covertly. any sly reference to billionaires would be interpreted as anti-semitism, and calling out bigotry without naming it is liberal garbage. dogwhistels only really occur for dominant social ideologies
Yeah I came here to say this. Only overt leftism tracks as leftism most of the time. Sly leftist jargon in most situations can easily be redirected into fascism or get interpreted as wild conspiracy theory. The only time I've been able to dogwhistle leftist things have been in situations where leftism was already kind of occuring, but I wanted to push it further. Like I slipped in a lot of jargon when I tried unionizing, plus when I do volunteer work I'll talk to the homeless folk about how landlords are parasites.
I think that's more about acclimating people to leftist ideas rather than secretly messaging your true base. similar but not quite the same. Like, the message is same top to bottom, no matter who reads it with what you're doing, while dogwhistles read different once you understand.
Be subtle and nazis will hijack the message.
Be direct and some will call it a "morality play."
When faced with that dilemma and forced to choose, may as well lean toward the latter anyway.
Have your leftist heroes do leftist things even if they don't directly quote leftist thinkers.
yes, but the point is you have to call out billionaires directly and make clear what is wrong about them. This isn't subtle or sneaky.
I just think it could maybe work to have some villains who blame the billionaires shit on a racial group to go with sly anti-billlionaire stuff
Again, not subtle. You need to name specific groups to make clear what you are saying, not innuendo.
I don't even know what this sentence means and I was already planning on having a character say this line.
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
Nothing to lose but your chains
Stream of consciousness:
Not using credits to pay for stuff. Have reproductive work and community relations (like small-ish collectives) be something no one bats an eye at. Have Polyamory and some people who pair bond. Have child care that isn't done by the "traditional" core family.
Have easy access to resources and information. Historical newspaper clippings / blog posts about scarcity or lack of healthcare even though it was there.
Maybe underline how much art there is, showing how much free time there is. Showing that conflict still exists. Job boards / skillshare boards. Historical reenactment of companies.
Fancy voting systems? Mentions of Cybersyn? Holidays as in feasts for leftist things. Green bike-able and walk-able cities (think Ecotopia, but better) . Lots of usage of rivers and nice use of water bodies. Some produce is produced within arms reach where ever people are? No pets in the form we know them.
Festivals with drug use and good consent?
The Dispossessed is a neat book btw.
Edit if there are sexual scenes then it could be possible to show that organic bodies how they come are not the non plus ultra, but that you can readily use whatever suits ie prosthetics, toys, or nothing, which is fine, too.
"Altered" bodies, aka biomods, which are not scarce but more like fashion.
Speaking of fashion: A multitude of options would be something I would like, but how is that done in an ecological fashion? Clubbing with colorful and fun outfits is good, but having 40 dresses might not be ideal, so they might be either cheap to fabricate and redo, some of them be semi-shared, might be so that they can change colour or form, be easily put into some water where magic aka chemical nano science magic does recolour / recode them. Maybe the threads of the fabric are not hard interwoven but connected so that they can easily change where every thread part goes.
In terms of accessibility, I would like to imagine a world in which steps aren't a barrier for some of our comrades, this would mean that either there are no steps as we know them - as only option to get into something - to begin with, or techniques that enable to surpass them, since I believe hand-waving away that those are barriers since all people are able to climb them might be read as eugenically.
Similarly displays of old ages are nice.
Not having school as we know it, might be nice, too.
Not having police and prisons, having semi-involved (local) communities that handle a lot of social frictions.
Having a different way to deal with neurodivergents than our current society - which does repress, oppress, marginalize, criminalize, pathologize.
Have child care that isn’t done by the “traditional” core family.
:sicko-hair: give me non-nuclear, collectivist family structures
If you accept that animals have some kind of person hood like children do, then the question is if you basically locking them in a totalitarian prison in which you control their every move and food etc. or in which they have some kind of agency to live a life they want to live, which will reduce the mental, emotional and physical problems that can be found in many if not all animals to be found in flats or houses.
Lets take a goldfish:
A: Yes! Goldfish are social animals and when kept in groups often socialise with their fishy friends. They even learn to recognise people, too! You should have at least two goldfish in an aquarium to give them some company and stop them from being lazy, couch potatoes!
They are often not held in environments which are socially stimulant enough, large enough (in "natural" conditions they are swimming much further than even your largest pool is sized) and enjoy a multitude of environmental objects and interactions.
In door cats are basically prisoners, dogs are often bred to be pets in the first place and are put indoors for most of their life and can't properly socialize with other dogs, nor run around as much as they want to and there is a problematic hierarchy between the humans and the dogs (esp. since most humans have no clue that dominance theory is pseudoscientific bullshit) and since most humans are forced to work there is not enough time to properly interact with the dogs anyhow.
So good pets would be those in which the domination of animal by human doesn't occur (or at least not in the brute force it does now), in which animals aren't produced in stuff like puppy mills.
That said I think that some form of human / animal interactions are very sensible to keep going that aren't of mass industrialized cows being slaughtered for treats or locked in dogs.
Also: common dogs with some caretakers might be nicer than the current way to have pets in any case.
At some point describe a pig pooping on its own balls. :PIGPOOPBALLS:
That, or some kind of hexagonal ursine creature. :ursus-hexagonia:
If I read a book and there was a detailed description of pigpoopballs I would be blown away. I would be showing that book to everyone I know.
I already had a innocuous mention of pigs, I can see myself trying to build up to the glorious people's ppb.
working vs owning class/or the fact that their is a dissolution of class, moneyless stateless, gay luxury space (blank)
honestly any mention of workers/labor/fruits of labor
"Under no pretext"
"The _______ and its consequences have been a disaster for _______"
and its consequences have been a disaster for
While a funny meme here, it's originally from Ted Kaczynski, who wasn't really a leftist.
Class consciousness alone is a good dog whistle and easy to reframe in terms of a sci-fi situation. The trouble, really, is whether you want just lefties to pick up on it or libs to understand and internalize it. The former can be done with dog whistles. The latter you really have to hit with a sledgehammer and even then half won't get it.
libs to understand and internalize it
never underestimate the important of tricking libs into reading theory.
Could probably paraphrase this stalin quote
It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.
Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.
