purpleworm

The issue is that's not really an argument against Islamism being a valid term, it's just saying that it gets weaponized by Islamophobes.

I also think it's strange to say that "jihad" is not ideologically distinct from the generic concept of "struggle" because the word can be translated to "struggle". That's not how language works either, it's a specific term with theological meaning. It would likewise be totally valid to use, to pick an arbitrary, the Mandarin word for "struggle" to connote the meaning of the term as Mao used it (which is not entirely different from jihad but clearly distinct from the generic term "struggle").

To be clear, i wasnt trying to disparage anarchists in general.

You're good, I was just trying to be clear about where I was coming from.

I think the thing to do in these situations is to start with first principles, probably supplied by them with gentle nudging, and then simply drawing conclusions from those principles more coherently than they've been inclined to so far.

We seem to be speaking from experiences with somewhat different types of people despite the overlap you noted, but if it's even slightly helpful, I wrote about the ideological tendencies of liberal academics and how it relates to people at other levels of education here: https://hexbear.net/post/5277098/6249585 . That probably doesn't help, but I don't think I have adequate experience to address the sort of people that you are discussing because I have had much more trouble understanding how to communicate with them.

I tend to just avoid overly-specific discussions about Nordic "socialism" by explaining that those states function as the crown jewel of a blood-soaked beast that only exists on the basis of brutal imperialism (even if it still fails to live up to what it could do domestically to boot!). And I agree on Mao, of course. idk what you mean by "maoist" in this context, but he wrote many helpful texts and honestly you would probably find several of them more helpful than talking to me, like the Peasant Movement in Hunan, etc.

I don't see what the actual argument is. Either you want religious law to be the law of the land or you don't. Either you aren't secularist or you are. Are you upset about "Islamism" being the word instead of "theocrat"?

2020 was the one time her "They're jealous of my big tits and Achkenazi IQ" pick up line finally worked on one of the teenage fascists she was hitting on.

It's a one time expense that isn't even that huge in order to meaningfully shift at least a facet of the relations of production. Expropriation is cool but it's not worth it here if you can afford to buy the plots.

It's sort of an example of the fetishism of commodities, assuming that those private grocery stores are the reason food is available at all. Dawg, there's still the government stores and the local vendors who were selling to the private stores who now can only really sell to the state, in this catastrophization. You are literally just making an argument that government stores are at least marginally better in this case.

There are many people who devote their entire lives and work to anarchy, but there are a lot of people who get into it because it's the "safest" radicalism because only rightist boomers bother to stigmatize it (via "antifa thugs" or whatever), though I honestly have a little more respect for them than the other "safe" radicalism of more precisely what I was talking about where you're an anarcho-neoliberal-socdem who just says "radical" things but opposes any radical practice, who will attack Mao for not being left enough and then concern troll that some Berniecrat is unrealistic, which is extremely typical among certain kinds of academics. Like, they will simultaneously say "Oh, Stalin says that those who do not work, neither shall they eat. So much for 'to each according to their needs!' Also, collectivization stifles innovation."

But talking to you rather than myself, what you are saying reminds me a little of the better parts of that essay "Why Marxism?" where faux-radicals in the west will denounce anything and everything, seeming to be the most radical of all but really supporting the status quo in the west by denying that there's ever been anything better than it anywhere while certainly (and partially correctly) asserting that many things are worse than it. This lets them be at the apex, at a vast frontier where they have basically no one and nothing to learn from beyond liberal commentators and sometimes the most co-opted faux-left trash like Chomsky. The closest thing you'll see to decency in these people is some default socdemist fetishization of the New Deal and of Nordic "socialism," and that's still a far cry from actual decency.

But yeah, if someone admits that they're just running on vibes (and the people I'm talking about are mainly pretentious academics who could never), then I don't see what could be better for them than to learn to exercise some epistemic humility until they have a framework by means of which to judge things that they can actually defend. If you aren't acting on behalf of your own ideology, you're uncritically acting on behalf of someone else's.

That's not what entryism means, but it's similar in its pathological aversion to confrontation. Why not just suggest Parenti? He's got some nice, accessible polemics, and also a lot of his material is in talks, so you're more likely to get a young person to engage with it (though I guess you didn't mention the demo).

Are you going to get killed or fired if the person you are talking to discovers you to be a communist? If not, then hiding it is probably counter-productive if you're still advocating for your positions. You don't need to shout in people's faces demanding that they acknowledge the efficacy of Mao's land reform, but actively hiding behind lib academics is just silly.

I don't think this is very different from radlibs in general. By some defintions of communist, you can easily get most of them to agree to the label, but they still behave how you say. I think it's question-begging to call most of the states you have in mind "AES," but the lines of objection radlibs raise to such states are usually incoherent (and at best deeply hypocritical), and they will oscillate between talking like an anarchist and a neoliberal point to point based on rhetorical convenience, because they love the language and aesthetic of radicalism but all they believe in is the lifestyle of being a person who knows better while protecting their own comfort. At least, that's my experience.

All of non-hobbyist Reddit (and a lot of hobbyist Reddit) is a struggle to make your preferred political view apolitical and ban the other ones for being political

I only caught that one because a certain "not a Republican" MAGA rapper made a whole song called "Daddy's Home." I went and rewatched it and remembered why I hadn't done so before, which is that it's just unbelievably lame but not even in an interesting way. There's an industry of Republican media people whose whole schtick is going "nyeh!" at a camera attacking libs, but it's not for liberals to watch, it's for reactionaries to fantasize about shit talking liberals, like a post-hoc shower argument but someone else is doing the arguing for you to the liberal who isn't there. There's no point in seeing it more than once because it's all just this weird pathology of affecting not caring what anyone thinks while being extremely concerned with people thinking that you don't care what anyone thinks.

I suppose that a lot of media is like that, to be fair, but at least chapo makes some effort to come up with jokes or draw broader conclusions instead of just talking about le tears.

Either this is a lie or Colbert's brain is fried, because he was wording it in the same loaded "does the state of Israel have a right to exist?" with zero critical engagement. Colbert was indistinguishable from whatever typical zio could ask that question except for his affectation of empathy to Mamdani. If that's what being an ally is, then it's indistinguishable from being an enemy who has a trace of good faith.