Reminder to read theory :knifecat:
Marx & Engels Selected Works :blushing-engels: :marx-ok:
-Capital Volume 1 :curious-marx:
-Wage Labor and Capital (kinda like a condensed version of Capital Volume 1 :animarx:
-How to Think Like a Vietnamese Communist by Luna Oi :uncle-ho-2:
-The Wikipedia page :michael-laugh:
Hola Camaradas :fidel-salute-big: , Our Comrades In Texas are currently passing Through some Hard times :amerikkka: so if you had some Leftover Change or are a bourgeoisie Class Traitor here are some Mutual Aid programs that you could donate to :left-unity-3:
:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:
The Conquest of Bread :ancom:
Remember, sort by new you :LIB:
Yesterday’s megathread:sad-boi:
Follow the Hexbear twitter account :comrade-birdie:
THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :Richard-d-wolff:
COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS :af:
Join the fresh and beautiful batch of new comms:
Hell Yeah Motherfucker :deng-cowboy: what are you guys up to tonight (or morning :good-morning:)
@lydiaaaaaaa said shes making the megathread for tomorrow so uh yeah :among-drip:
:morshupls: Question of the Day:
What was the first Theory you read?
Lol people on twitter saying left twitter would've supported the war in Iraq because 70% of people did back then is so funny. They do realize that implies that almost 1 in 3 people did not support the war in Iraq, and probably a self selected group of left wing people who are vocally anti-war would most likely be a part of that third. Like it's actually an insane reading that a majority opinion is actually the opinion of the whole. Not to mention that support was probably pretty heavily skewed by the media taking every war propagandist seriously, while marginalizing even mildly anti-war voices.
So I was a literal child during Iraq. I was libish through high school and joined the army straight out. The whole time never understood why I was in certain locations. My first deployment was Djibouti, Africa. After that Kuwait (more understandable at the time to me).
What I didn’t realize until my post suicide attempts and hospitalization is that that the military and propaganda is so strong towards youth and the wrapped in patriotism that it literally took me almost killing myself and discovering Marxism-Leninism to understand everything.
Why I was deployed to those places. Why we can have a fucking subway and turf field in Africa while people literally (I saw this) sleep on the ground besides roads, dead water Buffalo and trash litter the roads, people live in shanties made of sheet metal and trash and tires and fucking garbage.
I’ve seen the results of American foreign policy and imperialism and colonialism (Djibouti was former French and we were stationed in their old base Camp Lemonier literally had their old, iron gates and guard towers rusting away in the salt water air).
I’m sorry comrades.
hug
Maybe, but it's like a super stupid thing to try to argue because Iraq is like a huge part of the reason so many people on the left ended up being anti-war.
Who cares about a hypothetical time in the past when we've already learned why we shouldn't believe imperial lies.
I mean, yes absolutely. I think way too many people forget how pervasive it was, and how scattered the "left" was. Sure maybe if you brought back Twitter and the current numbers there'd be some level of split, and I don't want to claim everyone would be on board, but 70% is a lot. Consider this- (it's long so hiding it in a spoiler)
spoiler
In our survey, more than half (54 percent) of respondents report being aware of the Uighurs’ detention in camps. Those respondents were asked what options they would support in response — for the United States to enact sanctions, go to war, boycott the 2022 Beijing Olympics or withdraw the ambassador to China. More than half (55.9 percent) of Americans favored enacting sanctions, the only option that garnered a majority. After that, 40.8 percent supported boycotting the 2022 Olympics, 35.9 percent supported withdrawing the U.S. ambassador and only 19.6 percent were willing to go to war with China source
It's tough to compare the two, but the current sentiment around China that is being pushed in the media pales in comparison, honestly, it's not great coverage obviously but it's not even close. And despite that, discussion around China in left twitter is obviously effected by it, and while people will avoid calling for war (because war bad) they'll still decry an entire country to be evil etc. Honestly the main reason why leftists today have reasonable takes on like, Iran, is because of the war in Iraq still being in people's minds
My point is more along the line of giving the 70% figure and flattening it to "literally everyone, even those firmly on the left" is a way of reducing the Iraq war build up to "the only rational and acceptable opinion to hold at the time was pro-war". And sort of giving in and not pushing back with the fact that 1/3 of the population did see the issues with the war leaves it even easier in future circumstances where we're in a war build-up for the same sort of push of this the only opinion presented on "objective" media -> this is the only rational and acceptable opinion.
Ah shoot, wrote a whole reply and lost it. I agree with your approach regarding future war efforts, but funnily enough I thought you were flattening things actually, by focusing on willingness for war. Some people believed that Iraq was involved in terrorism or had dangerous weapons, but opposed war and opted for sanctions, or wanted to wait for UN inspections to wrap up, or thought wars were expensive, or hated a possible draft.
I think looking at like, the amount of people who viewed Saddam as a threat, regardless of the action they planned for, or were "anti-terrorism" and also believed Iraq was tied into it, etc, is more meaningful, I've felt if Twitter was around then we'd have a ton of stuff starting with "Iraq is bad, but"
You also gotta remember the Gulf War is still in a lot people's minds at the time too, so the idea we can win in the ME, as well as the idea Iraq is our enemy, has already been imbedded in people's minds. I like this poll archive link scroll all the way down to the bottom for a fun one if you don't want to read the whole thing. You're right that it's not universal, but a ton of people accepted the premises that lead to the war, and the premises I think are more important to measure
Zoomers trying to call out millenials like they had any idea what things were like back then.
I identified anarchist since back in the bush days, but had to keep quiet because there was literally no support. Absolutely no idea the work it took to even get here again.
Nah I actually do agree with that take, I'm 90% sure I could post some disguised Christopher Hitchens quotes and get them significantly upvoted or retweeted in most online left spaces, I did it once in the old sub and that place was way to the "left" of left twitter
Just link them fair.org, it has fascinating dunking potential