• wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    What's it like to actually believe that the fall of the Soviet Union was a good thing?

    • Chomsky [comrade/them]
      hexagon
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      4 years ago

      It was good for the first year or two, but when it turned into just purely saving face it got pretty depressing.

    • Chomsky [comrade/them]
      hexagon
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      4 years ago

      That's science. I am still pretty proud of my work coauthoring Manufacturing Consent.

    • Chomsky [comrade/them]
      hexagon
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      4 years ago

      Great. As long as I say Marxism-Leninism is bad they don't heart attack gun me.

    • Chomsky [comrade/them]
      hexagon
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      4 years ago

      Yes. That's just part of living in the freest country in history.

    • Chomsky [comrade/them]
      hexagon
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      4 years ago

      Horrible. I have a burning sensation in my genitals 24 hours a day. I don't recommend living past 130.

    • Chomsky [comrade/them]
      hexagon
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      4 years ago

      Sounds like a contradiction to me. I never read Marx nor did I ever really figure out what it was all about. Can I interest you in a materialist class analysis of journalism instead?

  • ImaProfessional1 [he/him,comrade/them]
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    4 years ago

    How are you so old? Why is your beard awesome? What was it like to have to dial a rotary phone? What was the turning point to the slide into pure Capitalism?

  • JoeySteel [comrade/them]
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    4 years ago

    Oh Leon Chomsky, can you elucidate on how Lenin was actually a right wing thug ?

    Given how the Kurds went over to the side of US imperialism do you still think the US should stay in Syria ?

    Particularly given how the US and the Kurds began to starve the Syrian nation by occupying Syrias breadbasket (it's wheat growing areas)?

    In your book Powers and Prospects (1996) you talk of actually existing socialism being a "monstrosity" and the "collapse of tyranny". How come you had little to say of "tyranny" while Yeltsin shelled parliament and murdered communists in the streets to US applause?

    Given, during this period, 12 million Russians died , the birth rate collapsed and the death rate skyrocketed in what economists now call the "Russian Cross" do you stand by this?

    Did you consider Yeltsins Russia to be less tyrannical than the Soviet Union when women with 1 or 2 masters degrees had to turn to prostitution to feed their children?

    In an interview with Andrew Marr you once pointed out to him that the "british system has a self selecting system and that if he believed anything different he wouldn't be sitting where he is. "

    Given that your entire career has been to criticise US foreign policy but not too much whilst dismissing all of the actually existing alternative systems in existence do you think if you "believed anything different you wouldn't be the US's most prominent 'intellectual'"?

    If so do you think your time would've been better spent wanking into a bucket because by now you could drown yourself in your own cum instead of telling people to "vote bluu no matter who" in 2020 when the "worlds proletariat has been seized by the throat and an era of blackest reaction has set in" ?

    • Chomsky [comrade/them]
      hexagon
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      4 years ago

      Lenin was a right wing thug because he used the war as an excuse to silence descent leading to Stalinism.

      The US should stay in Syria because, as the freest country on earth, it has an obligation to protect the idyllic freedom of the libertarian kurdish project.

      I already explained my position in the fall of the USSR.

      I was being polite. Andrew Marr is an MI5 operative.

      Now that I'm on my death bed, I'm happy to say I have no issue with actually existing socialism. I'm basically the 17 dimensional chess Dengist of journalism.

      Trump is the most dangerous man I'm history. More dangerous than Hitler. Maybe not more dangerous than Lenin though.

    • Hungover [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      Given how the Kurds went over to the side of US imperialism do you still think the US should stay in Syria ?

      Please don't tell me you thought it was a good thing when Trump agreed to pull out of the region (troops ofc stayed in Syria) and let Turkey invade Kurdish territory.

      • JoeySteel [comrade/them]
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        4 years ago

        I think the Kurds were dumb as fuck to ally with the US who would only use them for as long they needed before discarding them like a used condom

        Being betrayed by the US and fed to the turkish army is real pikachu hours :shocked-pikachu:

        • Hungover [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          Who else should they ally with? The central Syrian government is out of question, as that is the government they're splitting of from and the region is pretty fucked from the war so they're kind of reliant on outside assistance.

          • JoeySteel [comrade/them]
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            4 years ago

            It proves beyond doubt that their opportunistic timing for secession was reactionary and reunifying with the Syrian government was the only decent and humane option to have done at that time instead of allying with the Great Satan to try and balkanise Syria and occupying their wheat fields to starve the Syrian people before being abandoned by the Great Satan

            Even after Great Satan betrayed them and fed them to Turkey the US did not simply walk away and dust their hands of the Kurds....

            The US actively stopped the Russian and Syrian armies from preventing the Turks from wiping them out

            https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-forces-reported-preventing-syrian-regime-forces-from-helping-kurds-fight-turkey?ref=scroll

      • FunnyBunny [he/him]
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        edit-2
        4 years ago

        Well the thing you have to realize is that the US political goal is not an independent Rojava. If it was the goal it would have happened by now. The goal is the destruction of the Syrian Government, and opening up Syria's oilfields to international investment, just like the Iraq and Afghan wars were about. Preventing the Kurdish people from getting genocided by ISIS was just something Obama had to do. Isis would not be a US ally, and threatened to destroy the US backed "moderate rebels" and would have to be dealt with at some point. Turkey genociding the Kurds? Now why would the US care about that hu?

        Trump moving his troops away from protecting the Kurds from our NATO ally Turkey is in line with US objectives, the US troops are still in Syria by the way, assisting the SDF and trying to destroy the Syrian Government. The US is still enforcing the embargos that cause poverty, and medicine or food shortages.

        So why would any leftist who just wants the killing to stop support that move of Trumps? I want the US to get their bloody hands out of Syria, maybe pay some reoperations for the death and suffering my country caused.

        • Hungover [he/him]
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          edit-2
          4 years ago

          Yeah obviously, I agree with everything here. The US only acts on its own interests and protecting the Kurds was temporarily favourable for them.

          Now my objection is that the question wasn't 'what do the United States do in Syria' it was 'what should the United States do in Syria'. Here I don't see anything wrong with Chomskys position, as stated in the article “The idea that they should be subjected to an attack by their bitter enemies the Turks, or by the murderous Assad regime, I think is anything should be done to try to prevent that.” If you ask for what should be done, wouldn't you agree that the achievements of the social revolution in Rojava should be secured?

          It is clear that pulling the US army completely out of the region - though to the improvement of the situation in greater Syria - would and did lead to a Turkish invasion / the independent regions going under government control again.

          • FunnyBunny [he/him]
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            4 years ago

            Well to be honest I don't see anything wrong with the Chompsky position either because the article was written over 2 years ago when the situation was pretty different.

            What should the US do? Well if you want me to engage in the fantasy of the US military and state department acting benevolently? Sure. The US could probably cut a deal with Assad, an independent Rovaja in exchange for peace and reparations. The US should also cut all aid to Turkey, in fact pull out of NATO entirely and implement BDS, and go back to recognizing the Golan Heights as Syrian territory.

            That's not going to happen though right? Which is why I talk about just pulling out, I can try to convince myself that the US pulling out of Syria is possible.

            • Hungover [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              Yeah sure. They're already out of the region, now they can fuck off and leave the whole of Syria (and the middle east for that matter and the globe obv.). They won't do that in the near future or even under a second Biden term, but yeah, the push should now be to get all the troops out.

              My original comment was just to point out how Joey shit on Chomsky for a (in my opinion) correct take.

  • Hungover [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    What is your opinion on the use of neo-pronoun flairs on an instance of a federated link-aggregator run by the moderators of a former community of another link aggregator dedicated to a podcast?

    • Chomsky [comrade/them]
      hexagon
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      4 years ago

      Id say I'm more or less I'm agreeance with Richard Stallman in regards to mandatory pe/per usage.