juchebot88

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

You mean to say that --

  • switching candidates halfway through the election

  • having your replacement candidate be one of the few people somehow less popular than Biden

  • having said candidate go around openly endorsing genocide

  • telling leftists to ignore this, because genocide isn't really a big deal

-- isn't some kind of winning strategy to Unite the Left?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Haven't checked out Hasan, but I've been watching the online meltdown, and it's pretty hilarious. E.g., from the Destiny sub (ngl, had me at the title):

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Source: the ghost of Kiev (excuse me, Kyiv or whatever dumbass way they spell it)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

There is a weird phenomenon from both anti-communists as well as a lot of ultraleft and leftcom communists themselves of applying a “one drop rule” to socialism, where socialism is only socialism if it’s absolutely pure without a single internal contradiction. But no society in the history of humankind has been pure, they all contain internal contradictions and internal contradictions are necessary for one form of society to develop into the next.

This is a really good way of putting it. So much of ultraleftism is in fact an idealist denial of basic dialectical materialism.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Today is the US presidential election. And everybody online and offline is in the most annoying state of hysteria imaginable.

Since it doesn't make any difference who gets elected, I think I'm just going to sit back and watch the fireworks.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

That butthurt look on Netanyahu's face...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

Can neither confirm nor deny this rumor....

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

All thanks are due to the immortal ideas of Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism, not me.

 
[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I gave Haz & Co. critical support at the beginning, only to see them get worse and worse and worse. Early on, when they were associated with CPI, their tailism was absolutely a strategy. They would say all kinds of offensive things, and pepper their speech with any number of right-wing memes and dog whistles, but you could tell that it all rested on a basic Marxist worldview. One can disagree with such tactics (I do), or find them stupid and counterproductive, but it was almost certainly sincere. Since early 2023, however, the predictable has happened, and Haz, Hinkle, etc. have become prisoners of their own brand. Now I don't see them as trying to do anything other than a sort of 4chan with Stalinist aesthetics.

It's a good cautionary tale, though with an obvious moral: don't try to do all your organizing online.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Yeah, the Infrared crowd hates Maupin because they see him as an old fuddy-duddy who (gasp) wanted them to do real stuff in the real world, and not just be edgy online. Maupin dislikes them because (1) they rip off his ideas without attribution, and (2) they went whole hog on the "recruit from the right" thing in the dumbest way possible. And when I say dumb, I mean really dumb: as in "talk about Hegel in front an American flag bikini poster" dumb. Yes, Haz actually did this.

Basically, the way that whole sphere works is: Maupin says something that's wrongheaded, but somewhat thought out; Haz presents it a few days later as his own, mixed with some dumbass Ned Land/Dugin/Larouche stuff; then Jackson Hinkle, Midwestern Marx, Sameera Khan, and other assorted intellectual lightweights spread it all over the internet in the form of lazy AI-generated memes. With each step the original idea gets stupider, with @REVMAXXING being the absolute nadir.

That I thought for a long time that whole crowd could reform and become principled Marxists is one of the worst blunders I've made.

EDIT: for instance, look at this not-very-original piece of analysis. I think my dog could come up with something about as profound, and I don't even have a dog. Face of modern communism, anybody?

 
 

One above is Symphony of the 6th Blast Furnace (1979). Others:

People of Fire I (1979):

People of Fire II (1979):

People of Fire III (1979):

Lights of Laboring Tagil (1984):

 
 

Happens about February-March of every election year (the, ahem, independent media goes out of its way to induce it). Get ready for the next lib wave, and a bunch of iterations of the following script, which they've been practicing since like 1999:

    1. "Eh, I disagree with [Democrat candidate] on a lot of things, but to pretend he's not better than [Republican candidate] is just delusional."
    1. "Yeah, I know [Democratic candidate] is a war criminal and complicit in a genocide, but have you considered that [Republican candidate] is a war criminal as well, plus he said rude things about [minority group]? In the interest of harm reduction for Americans only, I have a duty to vote Democrat."
    1. "Your vote actually does matter."
    1. "The only reason the Democrats aren't Wholesome Progressive Scandinavian Model Chungus is because they have to play politics with the Republicans. You have to recognize the reality of a two-party system."
    1. "We can push the Democrats left."
    1. "Such-and-such Democratic policy (usually the Affordable Care Act) was actually really progressive."
    1. "My [minority group] partner, whom I've never mentioned up to this point and very possibly just made up, is voting Democrat." (This tactic also gets used by libs defending porn and/or prostitution, e.g. "my totally-real girlfriend loves it when I post videos of us having sex online").
    1. "If even one less person dies because [Democratic candidate] is in office, it's my moral duty to vote for [Democratic candidate]. I am a mature, compassionate person who absolutely understands socialism."
133
Chen RULE(s) (lemmygrad.ml)
 
 

This is a real article, lol

 

This is the city which the fascists have been using since 2014 as a base to shell civilian areas in the Donbass

 

And did ESWildcard get you into the DPRK

 

So my uncle ran into Enver Hoxha at a grocery store in Tirana when he was an exchange student back in the 70s. He told Hoxha how cool it was to meet him in person, and that he had some questions about Stalin's Marxism and the National Question, but he didn't want to to sound like a revisionist or anything. Hoxha said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” My uncle was taken aback, and all he could say was “Huh?” but Hoxha kept cutting him off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my uncle's face. Finally my uncle walked away and continued with his shopping, and he heard Hoxha chuckle as he walked off. He thought he'd seen the last of the great leader, but when he went up front to pay for his stuff he saw Hoxha trying to walk out the door with like 15 candy bars.

The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Comrade, you need to pay for those first.” At first Hoxha kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.

My uncle says that when she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, Hoxha stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent Soviet social imperialism,” and then turned around and winked at my uncle. I don’t even think that’s a thing. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.

 

is this and this only: supporting the status quo, but disagreeing on minor points, so that while receiving the plaudits than go along with holding the majority opinion, they can feel (somewhere in their pathetic TV-poisoned minds) that they are "brave" and "intelligent." It is the ancient gambit used by every would-be intellectual who desires to to be popular as well: "Yes, I agree with you all, but not for precisely the same reasons. Would you perhaps like to hear what I think?" These words, when spoken aloud, are always in that back-of-the-throat drawl which, in American English, signifies considered thought and long acquaintance with books, and of course a string of letters at the end of one's name.

Thus we get the typical liberal position on anything. "I sympathize with the Palestinians, and the policies of the Israeli government are certainly to be criticized, but all civilized people should denounce Hamas because nothing justifies terrorism!" Or: "Yes, Ukraine has a problem with corruption, and there is a troubling right-wing element in their military, but we still need to side with them because Russia is much worse!" Always there is the ghost of an acknowledgement that the situation is complex -- a cheap rhetorical trick -- and then doubling down on the socially acceptable position. The ultimate in this stupid game is the invocation of an equally stupid phrase, "two things can be bad at once, mkay?" -- which always means in practice that the side America supports is actually the less bad of the two ostensible evils.

Hence we "tankies" are always accused, by liberals, of having for great revolutionaries of the past a wholly uncritical admiration. This is manifestly false, for nearly every discussion among Marxist-Leninists at some point devolves into a picking apart of historical minutiae, with the goal of finding what Mao or Stalin or Honnecker did right or wrong. We are one of the few political groups that does not spare our heroes. But when liberals ask us to approach Mao with "nuance," what they mean is: admit Mao was a bloodthirsty tyrant who ate babies for breakfast and never brushed his teeth, but he also ended footbinding. Hence the historical record is "complicated." We Marxists, of course, will not engage in such asinities, and we state openly that Mao's successes far outnumber and outweigh his mistakes. For liberals, who are at root historical nihilists, this is unacceptable, and why? Because we refuse to play the game, but also because them out in their silly attempts at pandering and social climbing.

 

Man, what a bad year for us. Look at all these setbacks the global communist movement faced and didn't overcome:

  • The Chinese spy balloon incident. We hoped the presidency and the Pentagon would make utter fools of themselves by shooting down children's kites and talking about alien invaders. Didn't happen: Biden's measured and appropriate response won him the admiration of the entire world, and put to rest any lingering doubts about his fitness for office.

  • US sanctions absolutely destroying China's semiconductor industry. We thought that one of the world's richest countries, with the biggest real economy and most advanced industrial base on earth, would find a way to make needed chips on their own. Nope: cheap commie manufacturing got exposed once again as unable to adapt to the computer age, and the Chinese had to come begging to Washington to get the sanctions lifted. Just like Reagan predicted.

  • The US economy and the USD were both stronger than ever, with de-dollarization basically a nonstarter. (This after the US did NOT experience a recession in 2022, and after American economists absolutely did NOT redefine the very meaning of the word in order to hide how badly the economy was doing). We hoped Russia and China announce a raft of trade agreements, including trade in yuan; none of that came to fruition, and we might as well accept that Bretton Woods is going to be with us forever.

  • Russian retreat from Bakhmut, a city which had not strategic value to begin with. Russia said it was the key to the Donbas, and as good Z bots we have to keep parroting that line, but we all know the city was only attacked to stroke Putin's ego. Avdiivka is NOT, I repeat NOT, in danger from Russian forces.

  • But the biggest humiliation we faced: the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which people are STILL talking about, which ISN'T being quietly swept under the rug, and which all freedom-loving people (not Tankies) will CONTINUE to talk about until the end of time. We thought the Ukrainian army would stall at the skirmish line, unable to advance because of extensive mining and massive Russian firepower; instead, we had to gnash our teeth in rage as those rag-tag Ukrainian heroes, armed with advanced American and EU weaponry, broke through Russian lines and liberated Crimea. Guess those Patriot missiles really are invincible.

So there it is, a really crappy year for anti-imperialism. Let's hope 2024 can be better.

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