/edu/ - Education

Does anyone have good sources on brainwashing during the Korean War? Or in general anything about how American POWs were treated. Everything I've learned about it have come from western sources, some of them older than others, and some probably less accurate.

Looking to read John Reed's "Why Political Democracy Must Go" but can't find it anywhere. it's not on libgen.is, marxist.org, or the anarchist library. anyone know where to download a pdf?

what was the name of that pre-WW2 German author that wrote how stereotypically non "aryan" germans were typically the most fanatical Nazis because they knew that they were on the fringe of being considered racially acceptable. Note how the entire high command of the nazi apparatus were a men who were mostly dark-haired, brown-eyed and somewhat short by german standards and who personally proved the lunacy of the aryan "race" as a concept by their mere existence

So I read The Rape of Nanking a couple weeks ago and something that kinda bothered me, that it wasn't only slightly alluded to in the book, was the mindset of the preparators

From what I've gathered, Prior to 1895, Japan as a whole pretty much had an inferiority complex towards China. China had won every single war with Japan up until that point (if you exclude that time the Mongols tried to invade with collaborating Chinese troops.) the fact that Chinese philosophies, culture, architecture etc heavily influenced Japan in question was well known. Many of Japan's late 20th century generals and even the more nationalistic ones in the 20th had great admiration for things such as Chinese poetry and literature. They couldn't get around the fact that China was essentially Japan's big brother in cultural and military terms for the vast majority of the two's existence.
However, after the first sino-jap war, in which the jap navy completely crushed the Qing navy, the illusion of Qing China being the superior older brother to Japan was completely dissolved in the eyes of the world. Japanese officers witnessed firsthand the miserably poor and awful starvation-tier conditions Chinese civilians lived under in the late stages of the Qing Dynasty. All their respect and apprehension of what they perceived to be a mysteriously powerful China.
so the fact that Japan had emerged as the dominant Eastern power after 2,000 years of Chinese dominance went straight to their fucking heads.(to say the least)
so the biggest reason is that the Japanese soldier was intentionally brainwashed and hammered into a fearless bloodthirsty wild animal by his superiors. Japanese officers in general were largely raised in sheltered, isolated military academies and believed in total racial holy war in which the entire population should die before surrender and had a strange form of contempt for their own civilian population because they weren't soldiers. (better to die as a shattered jewel; one hundred million shattered jewels.) The enlisted ranks were starved, humiliated and beaten to a pulp, sometimes even to death by their officers for even the smallest mistakes and infractions. they were bombarded with totalitarian propaganda from their first day out of their mothers' womb that they were the chosen heavenly master race, all their enemies were demonic insects with no exceptions, and that their only purpose in life was to slaughter and then die themselves as an expendablePost too long. Click here to view the full text.

Since this is a subject that has been making the rounds in the public discourse again, let‘s make a general that debunks anti-semitic conspiracy theories. Post literature, videos, infographs, memes, whatever. Unfortunately, I don‘t have anything on my own, but I will make this thread to get this going.

How to use Marx's methodology of analyzing the world based on material dialectics? As far as I know, Marx hasn't explicitly explained his methodology, he merely used it. How do I learn his way of analysis?

https://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/review-poverty-philosophy-karl-marx
This article claims that Marx's "Poverty of Philosophy" is just a slanderous book that has nothing to do with Proudhon's real theories.

Marx doesn't properly quote Proudhon or openly strawmans him. His claims about Proudhon being bad economist in the begining of the book sound laughable since Proudhon was respected economist in his time.

>Comparing Marx’s “reply” to what Proudhon actually wrote, it is hard to take the former seriously. Once the various distortions and inventions are corrected, little remains. Proudhon was right to suggest Marx’s work was “a tissue of crudities, slanders, falsifications, and plagiarism.” (Correspondance [Paris: Lacroix, 1875] II: 267-8) Worse, Marx himself twenty years later embraces in Capital most of the positions he attacks Proudhon for holding in 1847.

>The dishonesty of The Poverty of Philosophy has distorted our view of Proudhon’s ideas and the time is long overdue for a revaluation of Proudhon and his contributions to anarchism and the wider socialist movement. This does not mean that Marx does not, occasionally, presents a valid point – most obviously, Proudhon’s opposition to strikes was wrong as subsequent anarchists recognised – it is just that these are frustratingly few in the midst of so much distortion. So, yes, Proudhon’s mutualism – a form of market socialism based on worker-run co-operatives – does need to be critiqued but Marx’s book is simply not that work.

are there any counter arguments to this?

If feudalism had markets, does that demonstrate that capitalism has always existed and is not truly escapable?

Simply put, a thread to document and explore China's relationship with the CIA.

Here we collate sources, examples, etc, which document China's friendly relations with the CIA and its objectives, in places like Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola, The Philippines, Israel, etc.

These are becoming popular among small independent communist groups that want to investigate material issues and publish their findings and theses. They can also pseudonymize writers and put the focus on subjects first and foremost, akin to how imageboards detract from online personalities at least to the extent where fetishization is minimal and ignored if ever pushed by anyone.

Here's a decent Toronto area one that I've been reading:
https://kites-journal.org/
Program wise, they're a little too Maoist, and it seeps into elements of their investigations obviously, but it's a good concept and spirit in vague.