I gotta say the death cult shit on the left is so wildly fucking weird to me. it really is one of those just like entirely sociopathic things where people have just decoupled themselves from empathy so much through frustration and demoralisation they've ironically, which always ends up meaning earnestly but detached and with a thin veneer of dismissal, embraced this idea that horrific judgement day levels of shit is needed on certain countries and large groups (not talking about the bourgeoisie here, but the working masses), millions we all openly agree are shaped and brainwashed by systems outside of their control. do bad people and places cause unimaginable pain? for sure, but to then throw that blind injust dehumanised violence back at the masses that characterises imperialism and capitalism is full of this Christian evangelical smite and divine retribution of those who have sinned beyond salvation and must die to cleanse the world.
I already know all the explanations, 'it's just a meme', 'the imperial core did bad stuff so needs to suffer', 'the west will never embrace socialism unless enforcement via mass violence and destruction of all institutions and infrastructure'. but the thing is like, you read any text by international communists, black radical groups, anti imperialists, they literally all say 'we just want you to stop being assholes so we can be friends who work together', and so it seems to be this self hatred that fuels this than any outside demands, one which just seems really unnecessary and honestly childish especially from people who claim to have a deeper materialist analysis which breaks down why these opinions and actions are so common and systemically enforced.
everybody knows those sentiments are not 'kill everybody' but are 'we should destroy the system and state that takes out violence upon people'
Everybody as in us :left-unity-4: simple leftists or everybody else :Hoggers: ?
Because I'm pretty sure the popular understanding of "death to <country>" means the country and everybody in it.
Hucking :brick-police: and glass houses or something like that
the iranians have never meant "yankees should be genocided" death to <country> has always been about opposition to imperialism and neocolonialism.
some navel-gazing arrogant americans think half the world literally wants them dead but they're the most incurious hateful people imaginable so their opinion doesn't really count on whether victims of the yankees' slogans hurt their feelings
Go and ask any American what "death to america" means to them. I'm willing to bet at least 1 in 500 (which is extremely generous) may actually have a hint of a contextual background understanding of what that means. Everyone else is gonna tell ya the most simplest answer you can extrapolate from that phrase.
If you're gonna be a western leftist whining about irony poisoning that causes western leftists to post doomer shit while you yourself are also a hog in the mud pits with the rest of us, don't hide behind other countries peoples like the Iranians and own up to the fact you're looking into the mirror and shuddering at what you saw then going "folks I think we should log off and touch grass" in the most condescending libshit way possible.
its not necessarily a yank's fault they're uneducated about what their country has done but anyone who lacks the compunction to ask "why is this person chanting death to america?" and not take their answer from a idiot news host 'they hate us for our freedoms'---these people don't deserve a voice on the meaning of a slogan from a country they know nothing about in a language they don't speak.
(also im not DtB im just defending the formula, which especially should be unproblematic here because we're aware of the context of the phrase)
Doesn't matter if you think they deserve it or not, they're gonna have an opinion because it directly impacts them.
This entire Tangent is entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand in which a fellow death cultist is condescendingly expressing their concern about how much of a disconnected-from-reality death cult the sociopathic death cultist Left is.
I've been thinking about this today and I feel like ultimately it's just not that serious
There are a few users here that I've noticed who have some things to work out (to put it mildly), but for most people here saying :xi-plz: / death to the west / x years of humuliation / ect are just just venting and letting off steam. "Death to the west" didn't start in communist forums and it feels like most people here understand the mentality behind saying it. Sometimes after a particularly dismal day in America, asking Xi for a few nukes via emoji scratches that itch of utter hopelessness. That said - the same people who might say that will still go to protests, still do mutual aid, and still try to make any difference. I'm positive nearly everyone here doesn't actually want to be nuked by China or inflict years of suffering on their entire country
Constant civility in the face of racism, bigotry, and general fascism is fine if that's your thing, but at a certain point I don't care if you ended up on the wrong side of the "capitalism brain washed me" spectrum. My patience runs thin on the bigots who would kill me and sometimes I really just need to say some shit to let some of that sadness and fear go
edit - With that said it's not fair to call this a wrecker take as some people have
This is pretty much where I'm at. I don't super agree with D2B, I think Hex does a pretty decent job at self-maintenance. But reacting to sincerityposting with "don't take away muh ironyposting! :jokah:" is kind of proving her point for her.
:this:
I visited Canada last year (Am 'murican) and a lot of the people were really chill. Yeah, I ran into some people's party dipshits but I kept my distance.
Quebec and the Maritime provinces were really nice. The former had many friendly people and has a respectable track record for environmentalism (sexy hydropower), and the latter seems more interested in just wanting to fish for God's sake.
People are just letting off steam in the face of a genocidal power controlling their lives.
Holy shit why are we tone policing this
Fascist: hey I'm going to murder you, your family, and everyone you've ever cared about. Also I'm not just saying it. Your government is funding me to do this. I have both a financial and legal obligation to uphold the threats I am making, and you can watch me uphold these threats in real time across the globe and at home.
Commie: I'd prefer if you were the one that was dead instead
Libother commie: uh excuse me mr commie that's actually really problematicLike what are we doing here folks
Commie: I’d prefer if you were the one that was dead instead
I don't think that's what the OP is referring to here. I would assume it's moreso about jokes etc for mass violence against entire countries (Sink England, nuke America etc) that come across as insensitive and frankly weird/gross unless you understand the irony/context behind it and can assume the random person posting on a niche internet forum is joking and doesn't actually want mass suffering
Nuke America would be a fucked up thing to say if America wasn't the one that was threatening to nuke everybody all the time, any other country in the world had launched a nuke at an enemy, posadas also didn't exist, and also if anyone here had any kind of control over such a thing.
Maybe OP comes from some strange alt universe wherein this stuff isn't occurring
idk I feel like I can wholeheartedly want Justice :maduro-katana-1: : :maduro-katana-2: to be served to the bloodthirsty ghouls who run this empire but a vast majority of the people I know and love who live in the empire hate the empire and are kind, sweet people whose deaths won't bring justice at all.
I know dismantling the empire will bring suffering of some sort to those living within and without, but to actively strive for the suffering of the masses of the empire seems like impotent rage imo
Our end goal is liberation, not the suffering that can occur along the way. I feel like when people keep going back to ironic statements about the suffering and jokingly act like they look forward to the suffering, it can potentially reflect how right-wingers reinforce and indoctrinate into people their violent beliefs through memes. Obviously we're different from right-wingers and they actively salivate for day-of-the-rope type stuff, but it doesn't help if our posting patterns follow similar patterns
I'm saying the nuke the US thing isn't earnest, it's an over the top joke response to the reality of what the US does mixed with a meme about the weirdest leftist of all time, Posadas.
It isn't serious, at all.
It's a funny joke because of how fucked up the US is. If the US wasn't doing these things then it wouldn't be.
It's also, and importantly, a completely unactionable threat, unlike the right wing shit.
No one is making jokes about or supporting lone wolf attacks here. It's a joke about something we have ZERO power over.
One last thing: I couldnt give two shits about my "posting patterns" being compared to right wingers.
That's just going to happen anyways. You can be the nicest leftist in the world and the capitalists and fascists will still call you a monster and want you dead.
There's no reason to placate this shit. The nuke the US thing is unactionable, it's not a threat.
People will ALWAYS find something to demonize leftism under. It doesn't matter. Say whatever you want, you'll get camped no matter what if the fascists take charge.
Exactly all of this. I say :xi-plz: all the time, I would actually definitely prefer it if America wasn’t nuked to glass because I happen to live there and like being not dead.
Also China nuking the US would lead to retaliatory strikes by the US. Mutually assured destruction and all that
I think it's not a coincidence this got posted after we saw the Buffalo shooter manifesto.
this post is fucking lame
I live in UK and when I say for example I want the island to sink into the sea I so obviously don't mean literally and killing everyone in it including my friends and family. Its an expression of disgust and frustration about the society and institutions not all the individual people.
This post just reads like wrecker shit, to make us argue over pointless bullshit. Not saying it is tho this site isn't worth infiltrating (yet).
Also people are already dying here as a result of the UK government's actions, hundreds of thousands of poor people, disabled people, refugees over the last decade alone, to say nothing of the UK's actions abroad.
I'm not trying to manifest bloodshed; its already here.
but we can still talk about orders of magnitude, c'mon, nuking London kills every black person, every queer person, every woman, and every communist. It's bad but it's not like it can't get much, much worse. We can fix it without burning everyone, good and bad, in nuclear fire or drowning them in the sea
People have to be able to express discomfort, there are a few things people have posted they were uncomfortable with and it really did make me more sensitive to it. Usually its in the moralizing tone, like, everybody has their reasons and rationales and that's how you assert yourself online. So I think the post is fine even if I disagree
its just like "come on, man" with some of the comments. But even then why not, its fun to have a little chatter. You can't say its totally a waste, you posted after all. You're having fun. Its nice to talk about something seriously and not just everyone making jokes, even if some people are embarassing themselves
"Death to America", "Death to Israel" etc are very common slogans used by a lot of people in the imperial periphery (or at least in the middle east). They do not just mean "death to the American/Israeli state". I think when you've seen your people suffer and your country dismantled by the west, you're allowed to (a) be extremely upset about it and (b) want revenge
death to X is not what I am talking about. like you can see my username obviously, I know what those slogans mean. I am talking about fro western leftists who want mass death of westerners as punishment for things. and also like genuinely if you even ask Hamas and so on 'do you think we should mass kill Americans' they say no
The depressing thing is that it's pointless for leftists to worry about because the west is going to do that shit to itself. :yea:
we already have enough death cultists murdering babies for The Line god, we don't need to join them in cheering for a sea of blood or nuclear hellfire to own the people who dislike us
White genocide is rad and I'm tired of pretending it's not. :virgil-phone:
we literally have an emoji asking for a nuclear war :xi-plz: that murders billions
what's the difference between saying :xi-plz: and saying DeathToBritain
The difference is they know they're joking and/or their own position is nuanced. They don't trust anyone else's position to be just as nuanced. Everyone else is completely serious and earnestly wants to cleanse the world in nuclear fire. Only they are capable of nuance. It's their job to let everyone else know they're not being nuanced and also are immoral in their lack of nuance. If they can correct everyone else's moral failure on a website, then it feels like something has been accomplished.
The lack of trust for everyone else is, of course, our fault. We have failed our ideals by participating in this moral shortcoming. Only through atonement, self flagellation, and a more strict control of affectations can we find redemption.
Sorry I want China to build nuclear reactors in my country as a path to transition away from fossil fuel. :xi-plz:
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of people saying we should go after proletarians (except like dangerous nazis and labor aristocrats/petit boug who have the power to sick cops on people). Most of your run of the mill countryfolk and hillfolk have radical elements to them that they just ideologically don't have the knowledge to manage properly (so Democrat-level "hicks are stupid" takes just rub me the wrong way. They have way more in common with the urban poor than they know and it's really obvious when you see both groups in the same place). Suburbanites are a scourge, sure, but the average grillpiller would join whatever side looks like it's winning in the tail end of a revolution, all you need is clever propaganda, not violence.
This is why, in a similarish vein to you, I've been saying that working with "lumpenproles" and minorities is how you form core pockets of resistance.
Edit: I'd also like to point out that a not insignificant number of hexbears admit to being ex-alt-right so the hypocrisy is palpable.
I have lived in rural America and you can't be too rosy about it. It is a fascist landscape and you encounter a lot of people, a significant chunk, who are pretty openly fascist. Its not a majority, there are good people everywhere and generalizations are always unhelpful. But like... people like to talk about executing the homeless and purging the schools, a lot. The KKK lives, in the PNW at least, and under those hoods its just guys
I mean, yeah, I've also lived in the country. I'm mostly just getting tired of lib "hicks bad" rhetoric.
your name is DeathToBritain? You probably know what we mean then. Honestly yeah it is sometimes concerning, but I think there's a difference between expressing frustration and putting forth a real theoretical platform. Most of what I see here is a kind of hopeless frustration, not an actual call for violence. Sometimes I do see genuine calls for violence here and they're far more unhinged. Usually those people get banned or people in the replies will express concern.
It's not like we come here to actually organize or theorize. We come here to have shared suffering and camaraderie.
I don't even think about is as like a branding or optics thing, I just find it uncomfortable to knowingly want mass innocent deaths for people you've decided are guilty by proximity.
i don't think most people want that so much as we might be steeled by the idea it might occur, or we're just depressed. I don't know.
also again, most of the time here it's an expression of bitter frustration rather than a genuine call to organize, fund, and enact a mass war against innocent people. Like me personally I've had so many family members die of covid that I actually do want the people responsible put on trial and executed.
A revolution in the Imperial core will almost certainly lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Accepting this is not bloodthirst, it is merely accepting the likely cost of overthrowing the ruling class.
The ruling class will always maneuver so that they can use the working class as human shields.
I know, I'm talking about the edgy gleeful embrace of divine smite rather than the smaller scale
who tf is wishing for the mass death of millions of the left lol?
https://hexbear.net/post/194269/comment/2438894 I mean for one here's literally a comment from a few hours ago in the mega that is the kinda stuff I am talking about
ok yeah random online accounts who prolly aren't organizing don't really have value to their words.
like if visible leftist ppl were saying stuff like this then yeah that's an isssue obvi, but random wall or send the nukes xi jokes are just that lol~~___~~
This is clearly someone witnessing the hatred and bigotry average Americans dish out on a regular basis, then going online to express discontent and blow off some steam by calling for something extreme that will never actually happen. They know that the old testament christian god isnt going to be smiting anyone in 2022, its just words expressing discontent.
What exactly do we as a group gain by telling people that they cant say stuff like this? Saying "I wish god would smite americans" or "President Xi please press the button" doesnt actually have any material effect, and the people saying those things know this. These are jokes. Certainly it's dark humor, but sometimes people need to laugh at horrible things to help them cope with the terrors of reality.
and yet that comment probably resonates more with a lot of people than some tone policing crap.
I think @Kanna has the right take here (it's not that serious, people are just venting and joking), but also I'm prescribing 10 cc of touch grass for everyone involved in this struggle session.
