this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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I think Ukraine's proven this conclusively at this point. We really might be entering an unprecedented time for fascism. Western countries were far more self sufficient back at the start of the 20th century than they are now. The industrial capacity isn't something that you can just magically create overnight the way you print money. It's a decades long process because you need trained workers, which means having a school system that prepares people for trade jobs, you have to build factories, you have to reorganize supply chains, and so on. There aren't any simple solutions here.
Trying to create socialism in the imperial core in 2024 really is uncharted territory. We're far, far away from the conditions of any successful socialist project, and not even particularly close to the best attempts (so far) at socialism in the belly of the beast.
We can learn plenty from prior movements, but we get too dogmatic about them at times. Interwar German politics aren't just continually playing out everywhere, forever.
I think this is why I personally have always been interested in dangerous, unconventional, previously unsuccessful, or morally repugnant solutions--a la accelerationism, red-brown alliance, infiltration, cults, j*had, sporadic anarchist-like violence, and the like.
Things are truly unprecedented in this country, the US. The spirit of socialism is unquashable and I see it in the misguided fervor of people here of all political affiliations; being socialist is human and the human quality cannot truly be extinguished even in such a highly developed anti-social society. But it is so difficult to imagine a straightforward road to things getting better. I imagine things splitting to pieces, and different sectors of society all moving sideways to equally heinous but different modes of being, and having to properly "try" and fail at all of them to prove their delusional ideas of how to make this society better are crapshoots. I imagine "Handmaid's Tale" Luddite Christofascist Mujahideen puritanism, I imagine anarchist hedonists, New Age narcissist communes, cryptobro transhumanist Silicon Valley "imperial Chinese harem" freak experiments, I imagine ethnostates of every race present being tried, I imagine the horrors people will concot with A.I., I imagine mass suicide and senseless Mad Max larping.
On the flipside, I also imagine a lot of people waking up quicker than the pessimist in me imagines, people learning quickly how to communicate, cooperate, and survive in whatever communities they are trapped in, those who don't try to larp sickly fantasies and who don't try to or can't flee--it will be interesting to see how the world will react to a wave of American refugees now that they aren't forced by gunpoint or persuaded by propaganda to love and praise them.
I think the apocalypse here is going to be very colorful and multifaceted.
For sure, we really have to take the time to understand the moment we're living through its contradictions. Only then can we start applying lessons from the past in a meaningful way.
Better yet also, not only is the industrial capacity something they can't magically recreate overnight- but their specific systems of dollar imperialism, hyper-financialization, and neoliberalism are very effective in further hindering the process, as well. Never mind getting to the point of training the workers, even before that they need genuine systemic reforms and to wean off the present forms of capital- even if it's just to try to return to the systems of industrial capitalism and imperialism they once had- their efforts will all be largely moot.
absolutely