From all the concern trolling I see in the other instances it's clear that there's no winning over these people. Everything is "Kremlin propaganda" to them. I do think a lot of chapos did go a little overboard with the PPB, but even thoughtful responses were met with the "hateful rhetoric" and "Kremlin talking points" BS. As always, it is to the Global South we must look to for any hope in the future...
Annoying internet arguments aside, the people on the ground in the core also face the most expansive and advanced police state mankind has created yet. This makes doing anything close to truly subversive impossible without extreme precautions. Some Ferguson organizers dying (being murdered imo) comes to mind.
there were several post george floyd executions as well
can you link me to any reporting on that? I haven't read anything specifically but I believe it.
I'll have to do some research but the killing of Daunte Wright was sus and I think there was another Fed style execution of a blm guy out west around the same period
Michael Reinoehl was death-squadded by state & local police deputized by the feds.
I searched Ferguson and got some stuff about BLM protests in reaction to the murder of an 18 year old. Was there something more recent or was this what you were referring to?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/puzzling-number-men-tied-ferguson-protests-have-died-n984261
yes the shooting of Michael Brown from 10 years ago. Weird to type out, goddamn
Two young men were found dead inside torched cars
Ah yes, a very normal and non-suspicious death that happens normally
No witnesses, no suspects. No motive could possibly be speculated!
plz explain. do you hold hope for america? I feel like the Ukraine thing is just because the way democrats just rallied behind another proxy war, and when you say that they go BOT!!
Also to expand on this, the vast majority of people in the US who consider themselves progressive, who are likely the ones that could otherwise be convinced to join in to a labor movement, are exactly the ones who have been persuaded to believe the #1 priority for good people™ is to support Ukraine. They have also been persuaded to believe that anyone who says otherwise is a threat to freedom and democracy™. In short, the war propaganda has reset a lot of the progress we made during the Trump years where people started to see how broken and irreconcilable
was, by giving them false consciousness.
Where in my comment did I give anyone an out? I simply added to the conversation by stating a difficulty of organizing.
It is obvious there were murdered by the police, you shouldn't hedge your bets on this.
I was extremely polite in that lemm.ee thread, admitted we could stand to tone it down a bit, even called out a rude post from one of our own, and I only got hostility from them in response. There's literally nothing we can do to not be called wreckers
I feel like we need an independent thought alarm emoji
I think your responses were more than forgiving, and the troll responses were so obviously in bad faith that I'm surprised they're still up?
This is all a bit new to me but holy shit. I don't want to assume the worst but I saw that other guy puppeting accounts earlier?
There was a surprising amount of hostile replies aimed at HB users... whereas HB users themselves were fairly constructive IMO. Even one post by a HB user calling for defederation was worded much calmer compared to some of the .ee instance natives
You're not wrong but I'm surprised it was an online forum thing that made you realize this
It hurts me a billion times more hearing absurd anti-communist and reactionary statements irl
It's frustrating, I agree. But "shitposting leftie site interacts with some other echo chambers for a week and has some non-constructive disagreements" is not really a datum from which to draw any wider conclusions.
Personally, I've seen at least five users on separate occasions ask questions in good faith and concede points. If anything I've been surprised by some of the positive responses to our community, rather than being 100% rebuffed from the get-go.
Ridiculous posts and comments set a tone and people respond in kind most of the time. I don't agree with every popular opinion here but I genuinely try to interact in good faith.
Yeah sometimes I'll see you guys engage with one of these people politely and informatively and they just go "UGH, can we defederate from Hexbear please? This brigading, trolling and propaganda is annoying.😤💅"
But I've also seen a couple come to us because "I wanted to see what you were about and you weren't as bad as people were saying."
Eh, this take is axiomatically unacceptable to me. Regardless of how absurd and hopeless it feels like achieving our aims in Western 'democracies' (and boy howdy does it feel absurd and hopeless), the abandonment of it is a tacit admission that billions of people are gonna need to die in rather catastrophic fashions before we get anywhere. Which, like I said, is a no go for me.
I always think of that Camus bit. One must imagine sysiphus happy. The prospect of revolution in the core is 100% absurd, but what the fuck else you gonna do? Give up?
Eh, I heard someone who visited Cuba being told that the US has a lot of revolutionary potential by Cuban communists so
They may have a lifetime of practice defending their revolution, but nothing compares to the horrors of the posting wars.
There is always "we can't do a revolution here but we can funnel resources to where a revolution could succeed" but that's an edge case and I agree with the sentiment.
IDK where I land between genuinely thinking a revolution will ever happen in the imperial core (at least in a meaningful amount of time before it all collapses due to climate change) but I think it's also possible to think, "We might never see a revolution here, but we can do our best to lay the groundwork for one and seed enough class consciousness as to prevent further US imperialist interventionism" which is different to defeatism IMO. Not that revolutionary defeatism doesn't also have its place.
It's important to remember that the Settlers critique of the U.S. is not shared by AES states.
I once tried explaining the concept of a mortgage to a Cuban and they were stunned that a country so rich would have such a complicated nonsense system of home ownership
Those people don't really believe in anything, when the US states department dumps Ukraine and moves on to other imperial projects they'll shift their whole "belief system" right along with it
In a years time you'll see these very same people begin concern trolling about the bad behavior of Ukrainian refugees, they'll start using words like "ungrateful", "authoritarian" and "mentally colonized by ruzzia"
But you're right there is no hope in the north until climate change begins wrecking property values in significant numbers
The industrial and revolutionary fulcrum of the world lies in the global south
There's a reason so many people believed the Iraq war lies. Propaganda works. Then and now.
It works, but how is baffling. Anyone paying a mild amount of attention knew we had been fucking over Iraq since the 1st gulf War. Basically the first Bush admin said if we topple this country it will be nightmare. and they stopped. (getting a ton of ppl they told to rebel killed in the process. we even loaned Iraq military hardware to mop up.)
The end of history is actually about how the lumpen have no memory of any political events that are no longer being blasted 24/7 on the news. History may as well not exist for 90% of Americans because history is in books.
Mix that with straight jingoism and you can blow up anything. Fucking sad.
I agree that the most revolutionary potential lies in the global south. Hopefully, more gains can be made through partnerships with China, particularly as the US position geopolitically seems likely to weaken. Even now the US seems only able to accomplish relatively short term gains while setting themselves up for longterm defeats (the proxy war in Ukraine dwmonstrates this).
Its not surprising that revolutionary potential, and the possibility of real gains is higher on the periphery than within the imperial core. I think a lot of western leftists deal with brainworms (for understandable reasons) the the West is the main character of history, so the revolution must happen here and lead the world. There's over a centuries worth of evidence to the contrary.
I say its understandable because its a less extreme version of the classic "left" liberal brainworm of "the US may be bad, but [target country] is worse." Its also seen throughout left anti-communism's stance and critiscims against AES. The unexamined assumption that the nations of the imperial core will be the leaders of the socialist revolution as opposed ro the last and most dangerous holdouts of a dying imperial order, is, i think, the last vestige of this way of thinking.
This isn't, and I'm not endorsing, a doomerist position for communists in the imperial core. A better world is possible, and we should do what we can to defend our comrades at home from rising fascism and support our comrades abroad on the periphery. Not being the "main character" does mean there is no role to play. Revolution is like an Eisenstein film, the people, the class, are the main character and we are united across boarders
This isn't, and I'm not endorsing, a doomerist position for communists in the imperial core. A better world is possible, and we should do what we can to defend our comrades at home from rising fascism and support our comrades abroad on the periphery.
With regards to this, I literally was talking to a woman the other day who readily admitted things like: how behind every successful man there are countless women who do unpaid emotional labor, how companies are taking in too much in profit for no reason, how companies will cynically shield themselves from criticism by appointing a POC ceo, etc. etc. She even said that workers should get a share in the profits of the company. I jokingly responded that her idea sounded kind of like socialism, and she immediately replied, "no it's not socialism, I believe in capitalism, just not with so many excesses." And this is a black woman who fully understands intersectionality, the problem of corporations, etc. So I'm a little doomer not just online, but IRL as well...
I definitely understand, and have personally felt what you're talking about. And if you're just looking at the US/imperial core its pretty depressing. The most propagandized people who have ever lived. Everyone alive in the US right now has been exposed to the most advanced and coordinated and pervasive propaganda campaign since birth. The person you're describing who gets so much, but is still "oh no not socialism" is maddening for us but also a sign of how greatly the contridictions of capitalism have intensified that her position and people like her exist.
The real hope for the future is in the periphery obviously, but remember our worldview is based on dialectics. The contradictions inheirent in capitalism intensify as things get worse, and that's what ultimately breaks through propganda and brainworms. Ideas do not shape reality, material conditions do, and as people in the imperial cores material conditions change, their ideas will change. Part of why it looks so doomer is because for many people their material conditions are still too good to want to change their belief system, and because propaganda evolves to at least keep them from blaming capitalism itself or the US (crony capitalism, we need more of team blue in change, or the current "Bidenomics is working" bullshit).
Theres more hope in the periphery because material conditions typically are worse there, not because things are better. That's an important thing for comrades struggling with doomerism to remember. Trust me i get the emotion, i think most of us do here, i think we'd be crazy not to. But having a marxist veiwpoint is understanding that a better world is possible. Not because of any idealistic notion of human goodness, but from an understanding that history, historical change, is a process governed by class conflict defined by the contridictions in the mode of production. The workers of the world will prevail, not because we are morally superior, not because we a better, or smarter, and not because the class as a whole will even necessarily understand the process they are involved in while it is happening. Material conditions and our relationship to them is what defines this conflict and causes historical change.
If anything, her acute awareness of contradictions despite her idealistic view of capitalism can be seen as hopeful? Material conditions are significantly worse than twenty years ago and that comfort in the status quo historically changes through class antagonisms. It takes so much to break through that barrier of capitalism being the only option because of that passive propaganda system you live through.
That's a great question. Most people don't even know what supporting capitalism means. Propaganda being what it is, capitslism just equals good in most people's eyes in the west
Capitalism and socialism to most westerners might as well refer to moral character traits rather than distinct political structures. Capitalism just means something like ingenuity but also greed. Socialism means altruism but also bland uniformity.
The more politically minded westerner might think capitalism means wealth disparity and socialism means everyone gets paid the same.
Yeah the political illiteracy in the West is horrendous, and of course its by design
The unexamined assumption that the nations of the imperial core will be the leaders of the socialist revolution
To be completely fair, even Marx concluded similarly, and it took about 130 years of new theory and new evidence on top of it to get to where we are now.
Absolutely. Thats why i understand that assumption persisting particularly in the West.
I've read some about that, and also how Marx gave some serious thought to ecological issues and their interaction with capital/socialism. Still, Marx, thinking as hard as he did on stuff like this did think that, so we can give some grace to Metropolitan leftists for reaching a similar conclusion.
To be fair to Marx though, he lived through a time of revolutions where it looked like France and Germany were about to pop any day. Places in the imperial core during Marx's time did have things like frequent uprisings, like the revolutionaries in Paris were what inspired the writing of the manifesto.
Marx had high hopes for the USA too, but that was a standard opinion at the time. Lots of German socialists came to the US to start little utopian experiments in places like Ohio.
the revolutionary potential of the global south has been repeatedly suppressed by western imperial forces. if anything, people living in the imperial core are on damage control duty. we can see the NATO fashonistas getting ready to throw a tantrum and they have a massive military complex to back it up with. i just hope young americans can stay fat, mentally ill, and on drugs enough to completely frustrate the military agenda tbh.
Please do not draw conclusions from how people post on a niche internet forum.
True, though it's arguably worse in the general population. Western indoctrination runs deeeeep.
Idk may just be my personal experience but I've never heard anyone irl say anything close to as weird about geopolitical stuff or communism as I've seen from liberals since federation. Closest is my dad saying once that he agreed with Patton that the western allies should have "kept going" (like the opposite of our "Stalin shouldnt have stopped at Berlin" thing) but that was a one time thing.
Maybe its because I haven't really bothered to say things that challenge liberal perspectives about geopolitics I guess? But it says something that they certainly haven't volunteered that kind of weird shit.
That said I haven't had much human contact since I lost my old job so maybe my experience is limited.
I've tried to talk to libs about China because I'm Chinese so maybe that's why I have a different perspective.
Its like everyone around you refusing to believe that the sky is blue because BBC told them that the sky is green. After a while you start to question even yourself.
Someone here on Hexbear said something like liberals don't believe in other countries as existing geopolitical entities with diverse populations and economies. They think of places like Russia and China as mischievous polytheistic gods with distinct character flaws and demonic powers to influence people's minds. They think of Putin as some malignant devil in the clouds watching all discussion about him.
Xi Jinping will polymorph into a swan and seduce your wife though.
Trying to convince white libs that insert Bad non white country isn't cartoonishly evil and out to get them personally as a poc is like banging your head against a wall
They see us as blinded by loyalty and discard our feelings because only us dirty coloreds can be influenced by propaganda
Here, show libs videos from this channel: https://vid.puffyan.us/channel/UCzDE2LGSmJnw53WrZ7mM_Aw (Living in China).
They're much more likely to be receptive to Westerners who actually live in China, rather than native Chinese (racism, unfortunately, runs deep) on the grounds that 1.4 billion people are somehow spies and unanimously a monolith pulling the greatest conspiratorial ruse in world history whose level of planning and labor to pull it off reaches heights far beyond anything the liberals themselves could possibly conceive.
A couple funny/good videos I like (since you mentioned BBC) are these two here: Western Media's Baseless Xinjiang Claims 外媒的涉疆谎言 Xinjiang Cotton 🇨🇳 Unseen China, and The BBC has EXPOSED my CCP Funding...🇨🇳 BBC曝光我们被北京资助？Unseen China
There's so many videos of tangible, visual examples of Chinese infrastructure, and some compared to the US. These videos, more often than not, will shatter these people's worldview and flip it over in real-time, softening their shields and making them more receptive to what you have to say.
I encourage you to dig deep through the channel's history, as there's almost always a video I can find that's relevant to whatever topic(s) the conversation has engaged with. Best of luck in the field.
I just had a conversation about the wave of true crime media with my coworkers. They were visibility uncomfortable when I pointed out it just how wild it is the cops are so bad at their jobs an entire media empire spawned from it. One guy couldn't bring himself to speak and we had to change the subject.
It was sad really. They were talking about the one dhalmer victim that the cops gave back to him. They were trying to work out how the cops didn't realize it. What details caused them to overlook the situation. I told them the cops knew. They knew and didn't care. It was poor black gay kids mostly. Half of them they had already arrested for the crime of going to a gay bar, the other half had been arrested for the usual racism. I pointed out how these cops would have been trained by working under the apartide rules of Jim Crow. So after they gave the crying bleeding child back to the man that openly stated he was having sex with him, they laughed and placed bets on if they would ever see the kid again as they drove back to the station so they could clock out and beat their wives. Obviously that is the only interpretation that fits the data. One of my coworkers glitched out. He got quiet and started doing the, "no, but see.... if they..." routine for a minute before we changed the subject and he just sat quietly. I am the most cis het white guy at work so when I talk shit on the cops really people really have a hard time pushing back. They want to, I work in a middle class environment so they want to.
I do feel bad for giving him such a hard time. I am sure he was just trying to vibe and get through the shift you know
One of my coworkers glitched out. He got quiet and started doing the, "no, but see.... if they..." routine for a minute before we changed the subject and he just sat quietly.
I am the most cis het white guy at work so when I talk shit on the cops really people really have a hard time pushing back. They want to, I work in a middle class environment so they want to.
You're doing the lord's work comrade
One of my coworkers glitched out.
Idk may just be my personal experience but I've never heard anyone irl say anything close to as weird about geopolitical stuff or communism as I've seen from liberals since federation.
Back when the SMO started in early 2022, I was hanging out with some ppl IRL and one of them just blatantly said "they should just take him [Putin] out" (as in assassinate him). And this was at a milquetoast event where geopolitics wasn't even the reason we were there (it was a trivia night). So yeah even irl normies have some pretty warped views. Another guy I know just blatantly repeated the "China is buying up all the farmland in the US" nonsense...
I've never heard anyone irl say anything close to as weird about geopolitical stuff or communism
People generally try to avoid political topics in conversations. Especially around people who aren't very close. It took me around 6 months of knowing some people to discover one guy was a BJP supporter, one guy supports the Nazis over the Soviets, one guy thinks Putin invaded because he has cancer, one guy thinks Chinese people can't access VPNs or they'll be taken away, one guy discovered the truth about Ukrainian Nazis, how Soviet backed Afghanistan was much better, yet still supported American interventionism because he works in America so it's good for him, etc.
I could literally keep typing for paragraphs and paragraphs but yea
It's fine, I think some comrades here don't remember how long it took for them to snap out of the capitalist worldview. Going through a naive stage of anti-AES pro-West Progressivism/Reformism/Anarchism/Trotskyism/Leftcom is pretty normal for new members of the left, as is a later sudden uncritical swing to being an ML followed by backsliding because it wasn't based on theoretical understanding.
Eventually if we work on them, a lot of the people there will settle into more mature examples of whatever tendency provides the tools they need in their conditions.
a later sudden uncritical swing to being an ML followed by backsliding
I'm in this picture and don't like it. I doubt I'll ever get over my philosophical distrust of hierarchy, but somehow this made it finally click that I should at least read some theory (and not short versions, or long explanations of the current systems at play in China) before continuing being critical of MLism.
Tbh, I think seeing how insufferable libs are, and how the so-called anarchists of blahaj prefer them to us, really primed me for this awakening. Thanks.
I'd like to point out that ML is not some of natural "good" endpoint to political development. I'm not an ML ( though I think it was the right approach for Russia in 1917 for the most part) and am a strong advocate for a diversity of tendency even if that makes revolutionary discipline harder.
Trotskyism
I literally sold a trot newspaper before I found my way to ML
Yeah, a lot of us did. Also I've never been an ML, though the difference is more degree than kind.
You tried to play nice with the fediverse and it blew up in your face. Where did that bring you?
Back to me
Some of the people I've encountered over the past few weeks feel like such relics. I don't mean that they seem old or out of touch, but their politics seem to have ceased moving around 2009. It's the feel good liberalism without specific policy goals. It's so empty that I have to wonder what sort of lives they've had to be so just...liberal.
Like a lot of us were galvanized by the 2008 economic crisis, or perhaps we were part of anti-war movements, or labor movements or maybe we slammed head first into realizing just how anti-LGBTQ everything is.
But for some of the folk I've encountered, you'd think the primary three problems of the world are Russia, China, and liberals being uncomfortable online.
I'm a bit hopeful, but more in the sense of forming dual-power in the face of eventual balkanization. It's why I'm a bit softer on anarchists. I don't necessarily believe in a communistic revolution in the United States, but that this shithole can fall apart well enough for the global South to gain a sigh of relief. And in those ruins we may see a better world many smaller communist and pan-Indigenous movements that warm my heart enough to strive for a better world.
