I need something that can help me tell if a house guest has communist brainworms, but doesn't signal anything to the uninfected. I was thinking something like a print of one of the Diego Rivera murals where Lenin is lurking in the background. I need some more ideas. It could be music, some choice phrases, some prominently displayed literature, etc. But it has to only be meaningful or interesting to the already initiated.
Edit: My wife is pretty sure that a normal American does not know what Lenin looks like. However, a portrait of Lenin won't work as a shiboleth if I'm asked to explain who he is.
He's interesting. He lived in Germany for a bit and then moved to Russia. That was a really long time ago.
With the picture of Stalin I'll tell them it's my wife's boyfriend's dad.
Is talking about your wife's boyfriend a good way to id people that spend too much time on this website?
nah, is discussed on 4chan and other websites, appears sometimes on reddit and instagram.
i have a literal picture of mao zedong that you see right as you enter our apartment so (mostly to fuck with our landlord who is a piece of shit)
probably that
Then the liberals roll up on you like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMljirxfXRU&t=209s
:patrick-lenin: "never trust the liberals."
That movie looks painful.
Lmao I'm glad to see this is a common occurrence on here. I do the exact same thing.
Put a tastefully framed photo of Thatcher's grave in your restroom.
"Immortal science" probably doesn't mean anything to non-commies
I have a framed photo of a bank on fire in my office in oil ( like this )
However, a portrait of Lenin won’t work as a shiboleth if I’m asked to explain who he is.
Easy solution. Have a shrine for Patrick Stewart and just include one portrait of him portraying Lenin among many other innocent ones. :galaxy-brain:
I have a cryptic portrait of a certain leader and a few inoffensive marxist-humanist books. But also I wear my politics on my sleeve and see how people resonate.
I'm not always shy, but this is more for people where one of us has a professional relationship and the complication of an ideological conflict isn't worth the trouble.
You got any marxist-humanist recommendations? I'm partial to Ioseb Besarionis Dze Jughadhvili.
I don't especially like them so take it with salt, but Raya Dunayevskaya and Mike Davis are nice. I also have gotten away with some very heavy handed allusions at work when I had a professional job. For instance, we were discussing rising rent prices in our city and a coworker said very jokingly 'god! landlords should be hunted down,' to which I said 'you know, there was someone else with that idea a few decades ago who was very successful.'
I've had some situations like that, and then they ask if I'm a communist. When I say yes they just laugh.
I did find a fellow traveler once while going on a rant about how some industry needed to be nationalized.
I think we have a positive obligation to engage in ideological struggle as communists. A lot of times people are very flippant and ineffective about it which is counter-productive, but so is accepting defeat on every point. Ultimately though, the PMC workplace is not the great site of struggle. Us as PMC revolutionaries, our main responsibility is to paypig our proletarian comrades until we are so fed up with the contradictions of our position that we commit class suicide. Or as in the case of nurses and teachers in many countries, our roles become so thoroughly proletarianized that we are able to start agitating and organizing in our workplaces as a direct site of struggle.
Finally, if you are not a part of a larger organization, it is difficult to start agitating or organizing in your workplace (when it is a PMC workplace where there cannot be an internal labor struggle) because you do not have an outlet for the energies you are trying to awaken in your colleagues. The primary goal then should be to start joining that organization or building it if there is nothing worthy locally. Only in the later case would your shibboleths be helpful. I think if your workplace is a site of acute class struggle then you can be more direct in your propaganda.
I think if your workplace is a site of acute class struggle then you can be more direct in your propaganda.
I've been there, and frank amd honest organizing was easy. Where I'm at now there's no class consciousness at all. I don't know if it's the work environment, regional culture, or the cumulative impact of nationalist propaganda.
i have lenin with cat on my computer. i feel like that's pretty good.
A big red picture of Che. Just a meaningless shirt to normies. However to us it'd be something more.
Failing that a DPRK soccer jersey. No normie could ID that.
Uh, I'm pretty sure I'll be asked why I'm venerating a murderer.
My extremely lib(ertarian) dad and stepmum bought me a communist Vietnam shirt. idk why, but I feel like homestuck runner.
EDIT: homestar
I ordered a little tapestry of Mao direct from China. I'm not a Maoist but I keep it hanging in my doorway for whenever my landlord stops by. I'm not great with subtlety.