At the beginning of the 20th century, Chilean workers had no social or labor legislation that favored or protected them. It was they themselves, through mutual benefit societies, resistance societies and mancomunales, who organized themselves to protect their associates and promote proletarian solidarity.
The Federación Obrera de Chile (FOCH) began as a grouping of railroad workers with a mutualist orientation linked to the Democratic Party. In the mid-1910s, saltpeter workers began to join and it acquired a national character. Likewise, the Democratic Party lost influence when the revolutionary ideas of the Socialist Workers Party led by Luis Emilio Recabarren, who later became the Communist Party, were imposed on the organization, and the Federation assumed an anti-capitalist and revolutionary attitude that was strongly manifested in the social mobilizations that characterized the 1920s.
However, the enactment of the social laws and the Labor Code, between 1925 and 1931, radically changed the conformation of the labor movement and workers' organizations. From then on, the unions and their federations debated whether to accept the new legislation and submit to its rules, as was the case of workers and employees in the state sector and large companies, or to continue with the classist and revolutionary discourse. The leadership of the workers' movement, which adhered to the latter line, was divided between three large organizations: the FOCH, linked to the Communist Party, the CGT (National Confederation of Workers), of anarchist inspiration, and the CNS (National Confederation of Trade Unions), of socialist origin.
In 1934, the violent repression by Arturo Alessandri's government of a national railroad strike was reacted by the unity of the different workers' organizations. Thus, the Unified Command that emerged from the strike was transformed into a Trade Union Unity Front, which organized a Trade Union Unity Congress in December 1936, giving rise to the Confederation of Chilean Workers (CTCH).
The strength acquired by the new workers' organization allowed them to form part of the political alliance that supported the candidacy of the radical Pedro Aguirre Cerda in the 1938 presidential election. The triumph of the Popular Front gave the CTCH a direct link with the new government, which, although it allowed it to grow as an organization, would later be the cause of its division and loss of prominence.
Indeed, at the end of the 1940s, the workers' movement, which was strongly linked to the Communist Party through the Confederation of Workers of Chile, was strongly repressed and weakened by the government of Gabriel Gonzalez Videla when he enacted the Law for the Defense of Democracy or "Damned Law". Consequently, the leadership of the workers' movement was taken over by employee organizations, especially in the public sector, which through the leadership of Clotario Blest managed to organize a new workers' confederation in 1953: the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT).
Chile: anarchism, the IWW and the workers movement
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I honestly do think on a level there's too much coddling of people with bug phobias. I'm sorry, but the way I see even vegans irl pre-disposed to smashing or torturing every tiny creature they see cause they think it's gross is just disgusting. There really needs to be more pushback against the whole "kill it with fire" nonsense, as even if you don't like bugs, that attitude tends to have a bit of a snowballing effect, especially if that person has a lawn and access to pesticides...
I'm normally more productively inclined on this matter and have helped people warm up to stuff like spiders and moths, but damn I can't have my customer service voice on all the time.
Like, yeah, sorry they aren't megafauna. Most animals are bugs, we're the scary terrifying giants. Also they're absolutely fascinating and do so much weird and neat stuff you'd never see in big animals. Killing anything for petty reasons is something that should be taught out of you as a toddler, even if you aren't comfortable with something doesn't mean you can end the life of a sentient being. Also it's an animal, if they're doing something that bothers you, be the smarter animal and realize it doesn't have the reasoning that we do to know it's being a disturbance. Once again, sorry they can't be megafauna mammals that you can innaporiately anthromorphisize comfortably. Sooooo many people are just completely fucking ignorant about animals and have no respect for them whatsoever and have this immature concept that animals will meet them at their level instead of putting any effort into understanding them, animals are already maxing their dealing with humans effort, trust me, they need to. It's even people I've seen trying to pet cats in the neighborhood who will jump over cars while running at full speed when they see me outside to say hi. They don't know what makes a cat comfortable but want the reward anyway, it's a combination of impatience, willfull ignorance and the assumption their ignorance will be catered to that makes them awkward and shitty with animals and I generally feel reflects more generally on the person as well. It's infantile.
Tldr: kill bugs, no hugs
I do my best not to kill them, but it's rather a lot of effort and I just don't see the practice going widespread, it's hard enough to convince people to buy fewer tortured birds and mammals
Surely it's a massive bit of cognitive dissonance to be vegan and then kill bugs?
Phobias (from phobos, fear) are an involuntary activation of your fear response, often a very extreme one. You can cognitive your dissonance all you want, your fight/flight response doesn't care and isn't interested in your thoughts on the matter.
It's a mental health disorder, not bad vibes.
They're still living creatures though.
If you want to talk about people hating and killing bugs because they're trained to by their culture, talk about people killing bugs because they're trained to by their culture.
If you want to talk about phobias, a specific class of anxiety disorder that causes victims to suffer extreme and irrational fear and distress when they come across non-threatening stimulus, talk about that.
One is a cultural problem, the other is a mental health condition.
Somehow I don't believe phobias are causing this type of bug-killing, irrational fear usually not compelling you to touch the bug. If they are, does the same apply to snakes? Is it cool to just run around killing snakes because of a phobia?
Go back to the beginning.
This thread started by stating that people suffering from a mental illness are receiving too much consideration and compassion.
Imprecise language begets casual ableism and contributes to the tendency for mentally ill people to be blamed for the behavior of "normal" people. Phobic people aren't driving the "Kill it with Fire!" Memes. They're having panic attacks, fleeing, shutting down completely, when they encounter whatever triggers their phobia. In my case they were near pissing themselves as adults screamed at them for refusing to go in to the garage, the basement, or the closet because they had an irrational fear of venomous spiders.
So now we've got this thread that starts with "mentally ill people are being coddled", instead of "people who hate bugs" or "people who think bugs are icky or "normal people with good mental health who kill bugs thoughtlesslys".
I had really bad, disruptive arachnophobia for most of my childhood and it really had nothing to do with the spiders. Once it was abruptly and very unexpectedly cured I was on pretty good terms with the arachnid kingdom and most other arthropods, provided they don't wreck my stuff or bite me. Arachnophobia is not the problem. Cultural attitudes towards bugs are the problem.
Not trying to be a dick or start a struggle session, just trying to highlight how casual ableism and othering of the mentally ill can creep in even where it probably wasn't intended.
So this is a false premise and conflation then, is the thrust? I actually skimmed the "too much coddling", eesh.
Yeah, i think that's fair.
Pobias are an involuntary extreme activation of your whole fight/flight aparatus. It's a mental health condition. Having had a spider phobia for a long time, it's a completely crippling fear response that, for me at least, overwhelmed anything approaching deliberate or "rational" thought.
I never got over it, i started taking anti-anxiety medication for an unrelated condition and the phobic fear stopped. Wasn't education or "spiders are friends", it was straight un psych meds stopping a pathological fear response.
I didn't 'think they were gross." I wasn't thinking at all. My limbic system had smacked me in the head with a brick and seized control of the cockpit.