Nobody is willing to even entertain the idea that West isn't Best. Suggesting that whitey shouldn't rule the world is received as if you'd advocated cannibalism, and you will be condescended to and treated like an ignorant child even as they make it clear they know much less than you do about the subject at hand, if not outright ejected from the community. It's not just bots and manufacturing consent, either - it happens to me in real life just as easily as it happens online.
Anyone who isn't unconditionally anti-NATO and anti-American hegemony is a white supremacist. No exceptions.
Love this place, though. I think I'd go crazy if it wasn't for you guys. Glad I have somewhere to get this off my chest :soviet-heart:
Talked to my colleague about how the capitalist state uses violence to enforce its laws and that its not just something that "authoritarian countries" do
And he gives me a look like i've just talked about how the moon landing was a hoax
You have to say something like "the guy with the gun makes the rules, even in a democracy." Actually uttering the words "capitalism" will make most Angloids brains shut off.
It's like the star trek aliens that talk in references, but with moviespeak clichés.
The other day I overheard a father talking to his kid say something to the tune of "Well, son, unlike other countries in the world we're a democracy. We can voice our opinions, choose our government and criticise them, that's our right!"
I immediately thought of how Toronto was turned into an open-air prison during the G20 protests in 2010 and how (more recently) the RCMP openly used violence and police brutality against anti-old growth logging protesters like a 30 minute drive from where this dude was standing.
You can criticise the government all you want, bucko, but you cannot pose an even minor threat to capital.
See the US with all its freedoms enshrined in law vs the US when a single group (BPP, YL, RC generally) threatens its hegemony. I had a professor use the foot in the door metaphor to describe political progress in the US, where at least there is a bit of freedom to make change, unlike Iran or China. The way I understood it was, you get a foot in the door, but any attempt to widen it gets your toes chopped off
like i’ve just talked about how the moon landing was a hoax
I mean well yeah, it was faked on a soundstage on Mars
I continue to shock leftists I know when I say Death to America but I'm even more shocked that they haven't come to that conclusion themselves. I understand your pain
At this point I don't even bother talking about that stuff with anybody. I've gotten a few glares when I snicker at their dumbass comments but when they ask me to elaborate I just say "oh it's nothing, man"
I have two modes raving commie and "are you absolutely sure that's awfully wise" I find the latter works better. The former I only use to rant
Yeah this is me most of the time (outside of certain client-work situations). Depending on my audience I sometimes deploy the self-deprecating Well I'm one of these crazy communists so I believe [incredibly simple and compassionate idea it's hard to disagree with]. That's often done well to de-spookify my tendencies from friendly acquaintances.
Mao would call you a liberal for it (it's okay he'd call me one too, I want people to like me).
Mao was writing conduct guidelines for members of a Marxist political party, though. If I wasn’t the only communist for miles I’d probably be more open to speaking my mind, too.
I am not a member of a communist party that runs the government
I don't know. Even when I hear the rare, based comment, I just don't even say anything because talking about politics with people face-to-face just seems unnatural to me, regardless of the content
you misunderstand me I frequently express my political views I just don't do so fully. Only enough to make my point
That's where I am unless people directly ask me my opinions, then I don't hide it. I call myself a communist when asked and it seems to work so far because other people either think I'm joking or they have no idea what a communist is.
I don't hop into things anymore though, it just makes pointless arguments happen and most people don't feel strongly enough to care anyway. I just nod and go "Yeah." Like the other day a coworker asked me why I don't move to Canada if I like socialism, then I did joke saying Canada's too communist for me. He nodded and said "Yeah, they're even worse than communists there. They're like Democrats."
that's around the level most people are at
He nodded and said “Yeah, they’re even worse than communists there. They’re like Democrats.”
Correct, but probably not for the reasons he thinks.
This is how I generally feel too. I have a painfully lib co-worker, a chud co-worker, and a less painfully lib co-worker whose heart is in the right place. The third one and I often see eye to eye, to the point I've sometimes wondered if he's secretly more left than he lets on (but I think I'm coping).
The first one though, my god, comes out with the dumbest politically illiterate "taken from Reddit front page" takes and is also ridiculously smug about it. It does wind me up a bit sometimes but mostly I just see him as a loud idiot. I say enough to offer a counter to his talking points, but I'm also very aware of the environment in my lib/conservative workplace.
Anyone who isn’t unconditionally anti-NATO and anti-American hegemony is a white supremacist. No exceptions.
:yes-hahaha-yes-l:
:sicko-hexbear:
The Russia-Ukraine war has made it more difficult to talk about NATO for sure. I really have to be tactical about my criticisms and knowing when to deflect. Luckily the position of "making a peace deal is objectively the best thing for both sides" is now palatable to most libs, but it gets harder once you start saying that the US is prolonging the war and has no intention to slow it down.
It's like walking on eggshells. My family chewed my out for using the word denazification unrelated to the war. :jesus-christ:
I'm sorry. In the future maybe remind them that the Soviets were hanging war criminals into the 50s, way past Nuremberg
Russia's gonna collapse, just any minute.
It's genuinely nuts how many :reddit-logo: commenters think that Ukraine is "KICKING RUSSIA'S ASS". Look at a map, it is very clearly a stalemate.
If reports that Ukraine is throwing increasingly desperate infantry in to the RF's artillery it's only a stalemate in the sense that the armies aren't moving. Russia is destroying the enemy's capacity to make war, a more fundamental goal than sweeping strategic advances. Attrition is a nasty way to win, but the RF tried diplomacy, maneuver, and limited war, so...
The side that is conscription 16 year olds by grabbing them off the street is likely not the winning side.
The EU Commission chief gave a speech a while back which mentioned that Ukraine had suffered 100k dead. That part of the speech was quickly cut, so it's probably something the EU/NATO doesn't want floating around out there. Usually you take many times more wounded as casualties than dead, so Ukraine is probably looking at something like 100k dead and 300 to 500k wounded. Even the optimistic (I.e. high) estimates of Russian casualties from the West come out to 200k dead AND wounded, so the attrition war is definitely going in the favor of Russia.
Even if the EU commission number is wildly high, Russia has a much larger population to draw from than Ukraine, so even a 1-for-1 trade is a net loss for Ukraine.
Luckily the position of “making a peace deal is objectively the best thing for both sides” is now palatable to most libs
Yeah, except their idea of "making peace" is Russia giving back Donetsk, Lukhansk, Crimea, and partitioning Moscow a la Berlin 1945. Libs are no more open to an actual negotiated resolution any more than they can imagine Harry Potter negotiating a peace accord with Voldemort.
That's not even getting into the weeds of how a negotiated peace would even work since the Minsk Agreements were negotiated and agreed only to have Zelensky ignore them and Merkel come out and admit that they were a Molotov-Ribbontrop style bargain to buy time to arm Ukraine.
Anyone who isn’t unconditionally anti-NATO and anti-American hegemony is a white supremacist. No exceptions.
I don't know what interactions you've had, but if you're dropping scorchers like this that's probably a big part of the issue.
No, I never get anywhere near that far. Usually all it takes is "I don't think we can trust the media to give us the unvarnished truth about Ukraine, considering all the wars they've lied about in the past" or "I don't see why Chinese ships in the South China Sea are a sign of belligerence but American ships in the South China Sea are not."
What use is being right if you can't convince anyone else to agree with you?
Yeah you gotta read the audience. If you fly in waving the 'd2a kill all cops' flag people are gonna fuckin ignore you. I my experience majority of non hogs are some degree of reachable, depending on their class position.
I am mostly talking about the context the op is discussing, more interpersonal work and friend group conversations. I realize with a rereading my use of the word audience is a bit confusing, I meant it more colloquially as any and individual or group you are talking to, not strictly a crowd. Political sloganeering is a different context that you can often be more open in. If you walk up to a coworker and go "hello fellow laborer have you considered seizing the means of production today? Death to amerikkka!" You are going to immediately hit a stone wall; or you have found a secret comrade. Like its not a respectability thing, it's just getting people to listen to you. Once you get your foot in the door with some more low level convos, I find most of the coworkers I talk to are pretty amenable to the more radical stuff in reasonable doses.
In Atomic Heart a major plot point on the good ending scientist dude you listen to for said good ending freaks out gamers
spoiler
The main scientist initially seen as bad was actually just making cheap robots to completely destroy the US and cause it to collapse as the US's capitalist class would buy the robots leading to mass unemployment and socialist revolt. The robots were also programmed to eventually kill the capitalists and US army via a kill code that accidentally got switched on during the improper time and led to the science island in the sky going crazy.
Like holy shit that's awesome right!?
For me this reveal makes me like this character even more and mildly sympathize with them because even in Atomic Heart universe the US is controlled by horrible fucking capitalist and a jingoist military industrial complex. Like fuck the fictional Soviet solution to the US is better and less bloody when compared to the fucking shit we unleashed on Indonesian communists or in South America.
The U.S. MUST be dismantled with any and all intelligence agencies and military power subverted for any chance of communism to become a global reality (and I pray China has realized and is prepared for this).
The U.S. MUST be dismantled with any and all intelligence agencies and military power subverted
This is true, but the tough part is for the global 90% to walk America down safely. I think China and Russia are currently doing a good job at this, but it can be hard to predict a rabid dog...
It's funny with Lula as I have one weird hardline friend that continually shit talks Lula on being nothing more than a lib, however I feel as long as he continues as is there's a chance that Brazil could see itself separate from US hegemony without being immediately couped.
I'm honestly wondering how Peru will go as right now with the continual crackdowns from the neoliberal coup government there's more and more momentum for an actual revolution if a vanguard is formed. Also so far it seems the coup government is unable to give anything away to the people via another election or reform of congress.
Yes, most of peacefully walking down America is just the rest of the world moving away from American economic and political hegemony. So literally almost every country is doing their part in that regard.
We also have :covid-cool: to thank for a whole swath of European leadership suddenly souring on US hegemony
Hadn't really been paying attention to Atomic Heart, but this game sounds based
It's good just unbelievably horny and has those post soviet collapse brain-worm vibes on occasion.
I haven't played yet so thank you for spoiler locking. Is there a specific decision/series of decisions you have to make to get the "good" ending. When I first played Bioshock I killed one little sister the very first time ( :deeper-sadness: ) and then saved every single one after, but it still gave me the "bad" ending.
Here the tldr (also it's not as bad as Bioshock, you don't have to avoid killing the loot children like that game. Tbh Atomic Heart is still way too horny as well, like there's even a horny vending machine for some reason.
spoiler
Don't listen to your AI handwatch/wristwatch buddy, he's a Elon Musk misanthropic asshole (that kills humanity and is apparently the "good ending" for liberals cuss god forbid soviet robots win), instead listen to the main scientist don't kill him just fuck off to the Caribbean and let the robots take over the world.
You can bring up shit the cia has admitted to doing and has fucking Wikipedia pages about it and libs will still look at me like I'm the crazy one. How the fuck are you supposed to explain the cia faking vampire attacks in the Philippines to fight communism?
Theory: the crazier CIA ops are ops to make people who talk about them appear insane.
Ops all the way down.
I 100% believe the true conspiracy is the psyop of pushing crazier shit to discredit the real shit. CIA actually tested airborne disease over the US? No its actually all contrails, they're really "Chem trails". No one can take the actual history seriously because so many of the people who believe it, also openly shout at condensation from their porch.
Two days ago I showed my great aunt and uncle my hammer and sickle tattoo not realizing they’re republicans and I would do it exactly the same if I had known. I think they knew what side would’ve won out if they tried to get into it lol
“Oh!” and moving back to talking about my microscope tattoo saying it’s cool because “It means something to you” even though I got that from a flash sheet and the rat with the hammer and sickle I got to commemorate starting grad school is the one that means something lmao
I mixed those relatives up with a different great aunt and uncle my mom had talked about who are “capital D Democrats” so that’s what I thought the situation I was in was, and the only things they said the whole night that cued me in on anything different was I mentioned that I really like Seattle and she made some comments about homeless people that made me raise my eyebrow but nothing that was a blaring alarm.
Like, it seemed like the vibe she was giving was “the homeless problem in Seattle is bad because I am exposed to homeless people (which it probably was) but she didn’t say anything explicit that couldn’t be explained as “the homeless problem in Seattle is bad because human beings are being forced to live on the street and deserve homes” but I instantly shut it down with “Yeah, the housing cost there has really gotten out of hand, they need to deal with that” and I feel like she may have fought me in a different situation but knew the rest of the room would back me up
I have found that with some people it's a non-starter, but not quite as bad as you've run into! I am curious, it sounds like these might be group situations?
I usually don't bring up any of the actually left internationalist stuff unless I've got an hour+ and rarely in a group setting, 3 others might've been the most I've dealt with directly like that. I've made quite a few comrades, even essentially deprogrammed some people who just fell down the reactionary path of explaining why everything keeps getting worse (my positions on COVID vaccines as neoliberal bludgeons has proved seriously beneficial with those types), and nobody really tries to get condescending in a 1-on-1 situation.
Even better of course is having another person who is on the same page with you, as long as they're sufficiently educated and patient I've found it's often possible to individualize the message and address the specific phrases that trigger the gut response that propaganda has imparted on them.
Every workplace I work out I radicalize people so I never have this issue, but I feel your pain in a lot of ways the liberal hegemonic mind set is pervasive but it has cracks. Its all about knowing the people you talk too and presenting a compelling set of arguments and not wasting energy on succccc dem nato defenders.
I'm still admittedly of two minds at times since I fear that the socially conservative climate of a lot of the opposition would mean bad things for my ability to be openly gay and rub it in right wingers' faces. Is this one of those cases where having to compromise is inevitable? I don't want to do that, especially not with the international equivalent of American "I don't mind what people do in their bedrooms but don't shove it in my face" guys.
Oh, yeah, I get where you're coming from. I was worried about having to compromise with those more socially conservative elements of the opposition, but forgot to specify.
Even in my local mosque during semi-casual conversation, since the escalation in 2022, if I say anything negative about NATO, people will look at me like I had just climaxed in their borsch. Alao parliamentary elections are going on and just about everyone deserves the :gulag:
🇪🇪 :stalin-gun-1::stalin-gun-2:
I'm terribly sorry to even say this, but who the hell is making up a muslim diaspora in Estonia? I know that a bunch of Syrian refugees was sent there in 2015, but I figured that they had all left, since AFAIK the EU only sent the men to those camps, while women and children were sent to the european core.
Theres like 2-3000 in the country and theres like one mosque near the Tallinn airport. Some are converts, some moved from elsewhere in Europe but many are from faraway lands. Theres even a few folks from Ukraine there. They are ...mostly tolerable but do have some :PIGPOOPBALLS: takes especially wet the Ukraine conflict.
When you say far away lands, do you mean like old USSR or do you mean Middle East?
Huh, figured it would be a lot more from central asia and not as many from the parts of the world that Europe is hyperexploiting. Anyway, thanks for explaining! :fidel-salute-big:
