I’m honestly curious what it would take to get an actual socialist or communist on his show at this point.
Communism created two super powers in the span of ~100 years, but of course Communism doesn't work :shrug-outta-hecks:
It feels so disingenuous and I hate him for it. I want to punch this smug rich liberal's teeth in
I bet Bill would put Dasha on his show if she implied she'd fuck him in exchange. And then I bet he'd blacklist her if she didn't.
With Dasha specifically or is this just a reference to Ann Coulter?
I got as far as the cultural revolution mentioned in this video. Based on the youtube comments, Bill's audience is exclusively white boomer males ("I'm a conservative, but I loved this!" and "I'm as far left as they come..." comments abound). Still, I can't help wondering if any younger people are still watching this show, looking at those photographs, hearing about the Four Olds, and thinking: "hmm, that Mao guy had some pretty good ideas." Inshallah, Bill Maher will one day wear a dunce cap, and in re-education he will be forced to learn how to care about other human beings.
Still, I can’t help wondering if any younger people are still watching this show,
They watch :funny-clown-hammer: streams instead.
Still, I can’t help wondering if any younger people are still watching this show
They arent
Bill Maher once compared not getting married to being like Harriet Tubman.
The man’s an ass.
The quote was something like “my married friend’s wives hate me I bring news of freedom."
Blocked by a paywall.
the strong sense of what was ‘Soviet’ (asceticism—the exercise of an ‘iron will’—self-sacrifice) was meant to be offset by an equally strong sense of what was not (self-indulgence—weakness—self-serving behaviour).
But from the little available, this sure sounds like something someone really into Warhammer would say. That "iron will" thing is adjacent to some pretty scary ideas.
That's because it's an anti-communist article.
A Stalin-era communist would say a New Soviet Man was inspired by a love of all humanity and a desire for its liberation from want and hardship, a dedication to helping the community through their labour, and a belief that the free development of each was the precondition for the free development of all. That they'd see past not the development and happiness of themselves as individuals, but the selfishness, desire for immediate gratification, and desire to own more than what they can use that exemplifies capitalism.
I'm pretty critical of it, but yeah, partially. People, especially in the cities really did internalise it and of course the material conditions did naturally lead to a more communitarian society. But people were still selfish sometimes, corruption was a problem, and there were real issues with achieving the same result in rural areas, especially collective farms. With the final generation of Soviet Children, who'd never seen war and whose parents hadn't seen it, it did seem to finally be taking root.
This is something I think about a lot. We're materialists. We know that the economic relations of society do impact peoples' ideology, identity, beliefs, values, etc. Capitalist economic relations give us the kind of people we see today all around the global north. And socialist economic relations will change the superstructure and I think will create "new people".
But the USSR and especially China built/are building socialism gradually. A lot of the old capitalist conditions still exist (like the money form). It feels very un-materialist to think you can just create "new" people in the superstructure without more radical changes to the base. I think China's approach to building socialism makes total sense but how do you change hearts and minds if so much of the old capitalist forms remain? It feels like a chicken-and-egg problem that I genuinely don't have an answer to, but I hope someone else has maybe figured out.
Yeah, this is my critique, they tried to build the superstructure of New Soviet Man before the base was there.
They were just too optimistic, not about people, but about where their system was. Declaring things like that they had attained the first stage of Socialism in 1970. Bukharin asked for "Socialism at a snails pace", and even though more radical voices took over and made things progress more rapidly, that's all they could accomplish.
We forget, I think, that New Capitalist Man was also created, and it took 500 years to do so.
It annoys the hell out of me how right wingers bring up Maher as one of the sensible voices on the left when he's basically a Republican aside from his anti-religion and pro-weed stance (both of which are becoming more common on the right anyway).
After Penn Gillette finding god, I assume it’s only a matter of time before Maher goes tradcath
Haha I only saw the truncated clip on some right wing weirdo’s post
I hate this smug prick so much. His writers should all be ashamed of themselves. Just off the top of my head is:
Mao’s cultural revolution was a response to shit like the Indonesian genocide we supported and helped orchestrate
The law prof Killborne happened in 2020 which is conveniently omitted. Dude thought it was a good idea to “academically” discuss the n-word after one of the most active periods of civil protest in modern American history
Holy shit. Equating gender revolution to cultural revolution or the notion that “obesity does not affect health” is absolute baby brain shit.
As we all know, humans are all innately greedy and Maher definitely isn't projecting
The only actual human nature is living in highly horizontal egalitarian tribes with love and solidarity, that's the way it was for hundreds of thousands of years, it's only class ruled the political economy that changes our proverbial payoff matrix to this cursed late day selfishness and isolation.
Humans are naturally greedy so lets give a tiny handful of them access to levers of power. I'm sure they'll work in all of our interests!
What would be the point of a communist going on? Bill'd say something obviously wrong, and Donny McDSA tries to refute it and he'd dismiss them with a nonsensical one-liner. He didn't get to this level of smug by considering that other people might have something to say.
Expelling members of your organization to preserve its principles? Whose idea was that, hm? THEREPUBLICANS?
