"During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it." Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The State and Revolution Link
"We say we're not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we're going to fight it with socialism."
Almost always cut off from the quote when I see it.
yup same as with countless other things, the "this land is my land" property verse, and myriad other civil rights leaders you find out were socialists when you look into it but you never hear about that in school, or even on wikipedia sometimes. Real life conspiracy hours.
That first page of State and Revolution broke my fucking brain when I first read it. Suddenly all of these pieces clicked into place and started making sense. I also credit the book the Assassination of Fred Hampton on really being the watershed moment for me politically. I was always somewhat left but reading what my own government did to a guy who grew up maybe 10 minutes away from me who had the same views as me pushed me down a path I can't come back from. I recommend anyone in the Chicago area to visit the statue of Fred Hampton in Maywood. The first time I went I just cried in my car for a few minutes.
Literally the first person I think of when reading that opener to State and Revolution is MLK. But it goes double for the likes of Malcolm X and Fred Hampton.
Oh absolutely, MLK was pretty much the first person to pop into my head when I first read it too.
Honestly amazing that it's become mainstream to celebrate Fred Hampton. Even if Democratic party members use a watered down version, you'd think they'd be coy about celebrating a key figure in a Marxist-Leninist party.
Honestly amazing that it’s become mainstream to celebrate Fred Hampton.
He's trending on Twitter and neoliberals have no idea why. They're just procedurally generating meme responses to revolutionary sentiment and thinking about how to barely lose the next election cycle.
Oh fuck Cory booker. This is ridiculous. How can you be either that blatantly obvious, or stupid to think people won’t look up the whole quote/call him out.
The interview with him in “Who Killed Malcom X?” On Netflix makes me hate him too.
"What does solidarity look like? Millions of dollars in donations from pharmaceutical companies."
Libs love to appropriate leftist quotes all the time. Or do actual erasure like with "first they came for the socialists" shit too
some people say you fight fire best with fire
I don't! I say you fight fire best with imprisoned laborers!
God damn she's so brave and transformative and she looks amazing in that single-color pantsuit overcoat combo this is what real feminism looks like uuuuuuuuuugh I'm cummmming!!!!
I swear I thought you were going to link to the one narrated by Chris Matthews
I remember when Howard Dean said the Democrats should be trying to appeal to Dixiecrats with confederate flags on the hoods of their cars, and everyone freaked the fuck out.
But now Corey Booker wants to do a rainbow coalition for neoliberalism, and its cool again?
:-/ Sus.
