Is the siege mentality revolutionary or reactionary? Anonymous 27-04-23 06:28:53 No. 16924 [Last 50 Posts]
I have a very strong belief that the prevailing ideology in existing late-stage capitalism is the siege mentality. Literally every identity group feels as if they are under siege. Everyone believes they are being specifically targeted by some grand evil force that wants to destroy them.
Anonymous 27-04-23 06:42:18 No. 16926
>>16925 >siege mentality is just idpol taken to extreme lengths. I don't think it's just idpol. A lot of it revolves around outright paranoia to the point where you think everyone outside your identity group automatically has nefarious intentions to destroy you. This isn't: "we want more autistic queer girlbosses" or something but more along the lines of: "everyone who isn't an autistic queer girl wants to destroy all autistic queer girls".
How are colonized peoples, the disabled, etc. not classes?
Anonymous 27-04-23 06:53:47 No. 16929
>>16924 >1. What is the best materialist explanation for why the siege mentality has emerged so heavily in our modern age? Is it social media? Capitalism collapsing on itself? An overarching feeling of uncertainty about the future? The failure of the 60s New Left? Or something else? Simple: destruction of old communities and capitalism running too quickly for society to catch up.
Depends on how well it translates to radical actions. People who bitch and moan on Twitter all day who aren't organizing IRL are useless. Plus feeling like everyone is out to get you makes you focus on yourself and your in-group 24/7 meaning you lose sight of everything else.
Anonymous 27-04-23 06:58:13 No. 16931
>>16930 >Polarization and group-specific oppressions are a bourgeois class warfare tactic, spread through media, legislation, reinforcememt of economic inequality, etc. I'm fully aware of that, but what's exactly at play which turns manufactured divisions into all-out paranoia about everyone who isn't of your identity group trying to destroy you? Repressive laws exist, sure, but what creates a collective mentality of: "everyone wants to destroy us"?
I never said it was idpol. In fact I was arguing against this assumption since I don't think you can explain it by reducing it to idpol gone wild.
My point is though that the reactionary attitudes towards trans people leads transphobes into adopting an all-out siege mentality even though they're the ones doing the oppressing. That's the paradox. You see it on "both sides" even when there's a clear-cut oppressed vs. oppressor.
Anonymous 27-04-23 07:01:43 No. 16934
>>16931 >Repressive laws exist, sure, but what creates a collective mentality of: "everyone wants to destroy us"? I'm not sure I agree this is a substantial phenomenon. "Everyone"? Maybe the odd individual or group thinks this way. Its caused by hyper polarization and susceptibility to it, or real oppressions.
>>16931 >My point is though that the reactionary attitudes towards trans people leads transphobes into adopting an all-out siege mentality even though they're the ones doing the oppressing. That's the paradox. You see it on "both sides" even when there's a clear-cut oppressed vs. oppressor. Its literally right wing media and specific interest groups. Trans people weren't even on their radar as much decades ago
Anonymous 27-04-23 07:18:50 No. 16935
>>16934 >Its caused by hyper polarization and susceptibility to it, or real oppressions. But why has it become so prevalent in the culture in, say, the past 13 or so years? I remember Tumblr from 2012-2016 was full of this way of thinking ("SJWs").
I get that right-wing brainwashing by media exists, but there has to be a material reason as to why it turns into full-blown paranoia.
I live in a town where there's a lot of right-wingers who are outright transphobes/queerphobes. Most of their hatred comes from thinking there's some conspiracy specifically designed to destroy their way of life, e.g. the secretively LGBTQ mafia is actively recruiting kids to become gay/trans in order to usurp the "traditional family" and destroy gender norms or whatever. For them, the fear is *very* rational even if we can see why it's bullshit.
Anonymous 27-04-23 07:27:02 No. 16936
>>16935 >But why has it become so prevalent in the culture in, say, the past 13 or so years? I remember Tumblr from 2012-2016 was full of this way of thinking ("SJWs"). This is obscure internet shit
>>16935 >I live in a town where there's a lot of right-wingers who are outright transphobes/queerphobes Media brainwashing and ingroup bias
Anonymous 27-04-23 07:53:51 No. 16940
>>16939 summary: siege mentality is bullshit.
read better more historical materialist works as mentioned to understand inner class divisions.
Anonymous 27-04-23 08:53:28 No. 16946
>>16924 It's neither reactionary nor revolutionary in and of itself, it's "human nature". The question is like asking: "Is happiness revolutionary or reactionary?"
But it's an interesting situation and you're neither wrong nor stupid to identify it. Here's my case: It is currently downstream of reactionary forces. Specifically, the incentive structures of a commercialized internet. The siege mentality is a basic part of human group dynamics under certain circumstances, and the way in which it makes groups behave is ideal for driving certain market behaviours. Twitter is perfectly designed to make you feel part of a group, then make you feel that group is under siege. The ultimate result of this is the pathetically banal outcome that you post on Twitter more. Plus, as a positive outcome for capital as a whole, you're gonna click and share a bunch of news articles, and maybe buy a few t-shirts to show your group loyalty.
People will call it idpol, but they miss how pervasive identity is and how it interacts with the internet landscape. It is perfectly possible to feel as strongly about Homestuck or /leftypol/ as other people do about being Black. Too many on the left are averse to seeing the situation honestly, since that would mean recognizing that identities cannot simply be "set aside" and that ultimately, most appeals to doing so are really just a way of showing off your own identity (for example, as "anti-idpol")
The quickest technical hack around it would be to try and build a new broad-brush identity, like getting everyone to strongly feel that they're a communist. Ironically, those who're most responsible for this would be branded as treacherous liberals by most because they're the ones saying Jade Harley is communist, which - if you think of yourself as a very serious marxist who's above all this identity nonsense - is childish nonsense. Anonymous 27-04-23 09:59:51 No. 16948
>>16946 >since that would mean recognizing that identities cannot simply be "set aside" and that ultimately, most appeals to doing so are really just a way of showing off your own identity (for example, as "anti-idpol") You're aware that people do sometimes adopt new identities online and offline, right? Identities can be set aside. Your answer in the spoiler implies the same thing.
If you're wanting to say that "one can't not have some identity," this is more ambiguous. In the sense that one can always be placed into "identity" categories by someone, sure, but this is trivially true of any entity. In the sense that one is bound to an identity, this isn't true. People do things that don't align with their sense of identity often enough, most evidently in statements like "I don't know why I just did that."
Although I find these accusations that opposition to identity politics is necessarily identitarian very much like "anti-racism is the real racism," in its presupposition of no alternatives outside of racial (or identity) thinking. One problem seems to be the conflation of a simple or trivial use of the word with a more serious or complex use. The senses are (usually) linked in some way, but the link isn't necessarily a rational commitment to the other meaning(s).
>The quickest technical hack around it would be to try and build a new broad-brush identity, like getting everyone to strongly feel that they're a communist. Ironically, those who're most responsible for this would be branded as treacherous liberals by most because they're the ones saying Jade Harley is communist, which - if you think of yourself as a very serious marxist who's above all this identity nonsense - is childish nonsense. Yes, it would be childish in its overestimation of the power of labels. Labels identify and, in this, can have an "ought" or directive character, but this directive character is historically determinate. If the label is applied to many different cases, its directive character toward any particular outcome is going to be weak or nonexistent.
Take "socialism" as it stands now for an example: if someone were to tell me she were a socialist, I wouldn't know what she meant exactly without further detail. She may mean something like "I'm a big supporter of Bernie Sanders," or she may mean "I finished Lenin's collected works last week." The label itself (like communism) does not have an immediately directive character toward any single end, but designates a variety of different ones. As can be seen in arguments over identity and who is or isn't a "real communist" here (or whether this week one is a liberal for supporting trans people, and next week one is a reactionary for opposing them), not all of these ends are compatible or can be made compatible in principle with one another.
Anonymous 27-04-23 10:06:49 No. 16949
>>16935 >But why has it become so prevalent in the culture in, say, the past 13 or so years? I remember Tumblr from 2012-2016 was full of this way of thinking ("SJWs"). I read one theory (here, I think, a few days ago) that it's kinda like sublimated energy, and you saw it particularly from 2012-2016 because liberals and leftists were frustrated by Obama being a non-entity servant of Wall Street in his second term, and that energy has to go somewhere, so endless self-devouring SJW-ism and articles about "why we're finally done with straight white guys" functioned as substitute "victories." But that also declined considerably after Trump got in, and now you often see the right doing something with similar substance, while the liberals are satisfied to see the Republicans eat themselves. I'm worried the bad days of Tumblr will come back though, and I'm interested in trying to prevent that.
I wonder if instead of saying "identity politics" we should just say "ideology," which is a strange thing, because the real debate isn't always necessarily about whether straight and LGBTQ are equal and deserve equal rights, but fear of being "converted" or re-programmed with a new ideology, in this case "gender ideology." The same goes for those who fear Evangelical Christians making a move on non-Christians and implementing Christianity as a state religion.
>>16946 >The quickest technical hack around it would be to try and build a new broad-brush identity, like getting everyone to strongly feel that they're a communist. I was thinking "you do your shit and I do my shit and you don't mess with me and I don't mess with you." Basically, we shouldn't bother with "conversion." And less emphasis on identity would be good, but there's two parts of this. One is less paranoid/angry focus on the white male constituency of what used to be called the alt-right, as if they're some terrible bogeyman and the only people who have a monopoly on fascist ideas. But the other side of the deal is that also means no more coddling of them either, because mean words are not a sufficient condition for becoming a neo-Nazi. Something is already lacking in the heart and the head if people choose that over all the other possible responses to discourse that, rightly or wrongly, makes them uncomfortable.
>>16948 >As can be seen in arguments over identity and who is or isn't a "real communist" here (or whether this week one is a liberal for supporting trans people, and next week one is a reactionary for opposing them), not all of these ends are compatible or can be made compatible in principle with one another. I think this is also like "SJW-ism" but in another form, and basically a self-aggrandizing "game." Like a card game. If I'm a man, and I criticize a woman, the rules of this "game" means she can put her "feminist" card on the table and "cancel" me, but if I want to outsmart her then I can become "trans" (as an abstract "identity" here) and flip her card upside down and I don't have to actually change anything about myself, because I just identified that way. That's the magic of ideology and is basically how the game is played, or like Protestants vs. Catholics and "you're not a real Christian" or "you're not a real communist."
With respect to trans people, I think this phenomenon of identifying as trans and pulling my card out is also considerably different from trans people who really are oppressed, are often living in poverty or near it, have poor health outcomes, and their appearance is sometimes not so good and so they don't "pass" well (which relates to the poverty). And I think you can reason out from that particular, concrete example based on material analysis to a general indictment of capitalism which becomes a common basis to struggle together.
But basically, people identify in this way or that, and like to pull their cards. I learned a long time ago not to argue with such people, nor get defensive (out of fear) or try to "reason" them down as that will only encourage them and make them more hysterical. I try to be like clear water and open myself up and let their argument be its own undoing if it's based in pure ideology like that.
Anonymous 27-04-23 16:05:24 No. 16950
>>16946 >>16949 I think of it like this: about 10 years ago we started seeing a huge amount of commodification of LGBTQ politics. This was right after Occupy was over and everyone had to accept Obama was going to do nothing to help the working-class. Now, in the 2020s you're seeing the exact same thing with "neurodiversity": autism, ADHD, BPD, etc. are all becoming commodified.
Someone made a thread on the other board (I think it's since deleted) about this very subject, how the same people who all started coming out as queer or gender non-conforming back in the early 2010s when queerness was still transgressive are now rushing to get diagnosed with autism or ADHD for the exact same reason. Queerness has become very accepted in many US states in spire of all the attacks in other states (Florida, Tennessee, Texas), and because queer people no longer feel like social outsiders, said individuals look for another thing they can pin on their alienation and inability to fit in which also gives them transgression points ("I subvert the system just by existing!"). The thing is, commodification of autism/ADHD is happening now that everyone realizes Biden is a total asshat who isn't going to undo whatever damage they see as having been done by Trump. It's the exact same paradigm from 10 years ago only with a different group.
Anonymous 27-04-23 16:15:40 No. 16951
>>16950 (me)
Something else I've noticed along the same line: 10 years ago it was very common to see trans people (usually younger adults) talk on social media about how they don't feel "safe" with some even going so far as to say they don't feel safe around any cis people and can't leave their homes because of it. Now, you see younger autistic people saying the exact same thing, only this time they'll say something along the lines of: "I can't go to the store because masking is psychological torture for me."
While I'm not saying these people don't have real grievances, I find it telling how that mentality has become so common – "I don't feel safe in everyday life." That's the exact siege mentality I'm talking about.
Anonymous 27-04-23 21:39:28 No. 16963
>>16962 The media is only summarizing a report put out by the british National Institute of Health Care Excellence (NICE). NICE only studies medical trends/literature to make reports and give recommendations. In this case they found that the literature lacked any sort of quality evidence for this treatment.
The NHS (National Health Services) can decide whether or not to hold a large trial to determine the risks of using this treatment or they can curtail this treatment altogether and recommend against it.
If a long-term, high quality trial had been completed within the last 2 and a half years, I'm sure the news would've reported on it and the person who claimed to have studies would have linked it.
Anonymous 27-04-23 23:30:50 No. 16967
>>16942 That would also be Christopher Lasch's "culture of narcissism" thesis. This is from the "sequel" book,
The Minimal Self :
>The social changes so far summarized—the substitution of observation and measurement for authoritative, “judgmental” types of social sanctions; the transformation of politics into administration; the replacement of skilled labor by machinery; the redefinition of education as “manpower selection,” designed not so much to instill work skills as to classify workers and to assign them either to the small class of administrators, technicians, and managers who make decisions or to the larger class of minimally skilled workers who merely carry out instructions—have gradually transformed a productive system based on handicraft production and regional exchange into a complex, interlocking network of technologies based on mass production, mass consumption, mass communications, mass culture: on the assimilation of all activities, even those formerly assigned to private life, to the demands of the marketplace. >These developments have created a new kind of selfhood, characterized by some observers as self-seeking, hedonistic, competitive, and “antinomian,” by others as cooperative, “self-actualizing,” and enlightened. By this time, it should be clear that neither description captures the prevailing sense of self. The first sees consumerism only as an invitation to self-indulgence. It deplores “materialism” and the desire for “things” and misses the more insidious effects of a culture of consumption, which dissolves the world of substantial things (far from reinforcing it), replaces it with a shadowy world of images, and thus obliterates the boundaries between the self and its surroundings. Critics of “hedonism” attribute its increasing appeal to the collapse of educational standards, the democratization of an “adversary culture” that formerly appealed only to the intellectual avant-garde, and the decline of political authority and leadership. They complain that people think too much about rights instead of thinking about duties. They complain about the pervasive sense of “entitlement” and the claim to unearned privileges. All these arguments invite the reply that although a democratic culture may offend “champions of public order and high culture,” as Theodore Roszak calls them, it gives ordinary people access to a better life and a wider range of “options.” >Neither party to this debate stops to question the reality of choices that have no lasting consequences. Neither side questions the debased conception of democracy that reduces it, in effect, to the exercise of consumer preferences. Neither side questions the equation of selfhood with the ability to play a variety of roles and to assume an endless variety of freely chosen identities. What he's hinting at is the ties of this form of "personhood" or "social character" to Debord's "society of the spectacle." Moreover:
>In its liberal use of labels, its addiction to slogans, its reduction of cultural change to simplified sets of opposite characteristics, and its conviction that reality is an illusion, this simpleminded case for “cultural revolution” betrays its affinity with the consumerism it claims to repudiate. The most glaring weakness of this argument, however—and of the whole debate in which it is immersed—is the equation of narcissism with “selfishness of an extreme form,” in the words of Daniel Yankelovich. The terms have little in common. Narcissism signifies a loss of selfhood, not self-assertion. It refers to a self threatened with disintegration and by a sense of inner emptiness. To avoid confusion, what I have called the culture of narcissism might better be characterized, at least for the moment, as a culture of survivalism. Everyday life has begun to pattern itself on the survival strategies forced on those exposed to extreme adversity. Selective apathy, emotional disengagement from others, renunciation of the past and the future, a determination to live one day at a time—these techniques of emotional self-management, necessarily carried to extremes under extreme conditions, in more moderate form have come to shape the lives of ordinary people under the ordinary conditions of a bureaucratic society widely perceived as a far-flung system of total control. >Confronted with an apparently implacable and unmanageable environment, people have turned to self-management. With the help of an elaborate network of therapeutic professions, which themselves have largely abandoned approaches stressing introspective insight in favor of “coping” and behavior modification, men and women today are trying to piece together a technology of the self, the only apparent alternative to personal collapse. Among many people, the fear that man will be enslaved by his machines has given way to a hope that man will become something like a machine in his own right and thereby achieve a state of mind “beyond freedom and dignity,” in the words of B. F. Skinner. Behind the injunction to “get in touch with your feelings”—a remnant of an earlier “depth” psychology—lies the now-familiar insistence that there is no depth, no desire even, and that the human personality is merely a collection of needs programmed either by biology or by culture. >We are not likely to get any closer to an understanding of contemporary culture as long as we define the poles of debate as selfishness and self-absorption, on the one hand, and self-fulfillment or introspection on the other. According to Peter Clecak, selfishness is the “deficit side” of cultural liberation—an “unavoidable byproduct of the quest for fulfillment.” It is a part of contemporary culture that must not be confused with the whole. “Though they are plausible to a degree, characterizations of America as a selfish culture typically confuse excesses with norms, by-products with central and on the whole salutary outcomes of the quest” for self-fulfillment. But the question is not whether the salutary effects of “personhood” outweigh hedonism and self-seeking. The question is whether any of these terms capture either the prevailing patterns of psychological relations or the prevailing definition of selfhood. >The dominant conception of personality sees the self as a helpless victim of external circumstances. This is the view encouraged both by our twentieth-century experience of domination and by the many varieties of twentieth-century social thought that reach their climax in behaviorism. It is not a view likely to encourage either a revival of old-fashioned acquisitive individualism (which presupposed far more confidence about the future than most people have today) or the kind of search for self-fulfillment celebrated by Clecak, Yankelovich, and other optimists. A genuine affirmation of the self, after all, insists on a core of selfhood not subject to environmental determination, even under extreme conditions. Self-affirmation remains a possibility precisely to the degree that an older conception of personality, rooted in Judaeo-Christian traditions, has persisted alongside a behavioral or therapeutic conception. But this kind of self-affirmation, which remains a potential source of democratic renewal, has nothing in common with the current search for psychic survival—the varieties of which we must now examine in some detail. Anonymous 28-04-23 20:45:21 No. 16976
>>16974 Are you MTF or FTM?
I ask because this matters.
Anonymous 28-04-23 20:52:22 No. 16977
>>16942 >I'd reckon it's a combination of atomized Western societies and a declining standard of living (evaporation of the post-war middle class) with people trying to hold their lives together that's manifesting in the cultural superstructure. /thread
People can’t cope with reality so they believe all of society apart from their in-group is conspiring against them.
Anonymous 29-04-23 22:03:07 No. 16980
>>16930 >Reactionary cishets mad about trans people is entirely manufactured though lol
<transexuals transition <start beating foids with ease <women get buttmad and tell everyone they know and it starts to become big news >this is entirely manufactured manufactured by trans people perhaps
Anonymous 30-04-23 05:15:42 No. 16982
>>16981 didn't you see that trans woman who came ahead of thousands of cis women to win the london marathon?
(if by "win" you mean "came lower than 6000th and got a consolation medal absolutely identical to the one they'd have won if they registered as a man, but nevertheless became an international story because this is definitely newsworthy and not outrage bait if you just say she came ahead of some other women, leaving out that she also came behind a lot of other women.", which would be no less disingenuous a language trick than that employed by the press here.)
Anonymous 30-04-23 11:55:08 No. 16983
>>16982 the pic that was getting spreaded around clearly had (cis) male runners in the background as well kek
it's literal baby shit. not even trying
Anonymous 30-04-23 16:10:10 No. 16986
>>16985 you overlook that not all of these fears are justified.
oversimplifying: if white genocide is real, the black man on the street has little to fear from racism. if racism is endemic in US society, the white nationalist has little to fear from black people.
Anonymous 30-04-23 17:27:35 No. 16989
>>16988 What are the "larger forces" at play if not capitalism?
Who is the "invisible enemy" try to wipe everyone out?
Anonymous 01-05-23 07:05:13 No. 17001
>>17000 its not an autistic trait
->
>>16998 Anonymous 01-05-23 07:07:05 No. 17003
>>17002 social anxiety is its own disorder
leftypol is fucking embarrassing whenever the topic of formal mental problems comes up lol its like the kind of trash i have to see on social media from people wanting to feel special
Anonymous 01-05-23 17:25:08 No. 17011
>>16953 OP, your article answered your own question on its first page:
>)It is the fear of cultural extinction (whether defined in ethnic, racial or broader - including language, beliefs or behavioral - terms) that prompts the emergence of what may be identified as siege groups or cultures. TL;DR - in diverse societies with hierarchies you see different in-groups competing for power for the sake of survival.
Anonymous 01-05-23 19:31:58 No. 17013
>>17010 No one outside of Twitter, IG, and TikTok believes autistic people amount to a "strong identity group" akin to religious or cultural groups. I've been on the far-left since I was a teenager in the mid 2000s and not a single comrade I knew began heavily identifying as "autistic" or "neurodivergent" up until like three years ago.
Now you see weirdos like 40-year old married mothers with PhDs referring to themselves as "high support needs AuDHDer" which is asinine. But that didn't exist until like the turn of the last decade.
Anonymous 03-05-23 04:46:21 No. 17016
>>17013 >I've been on the far-left since I was a teenager in the mid 2000s and not a single comrade I knew began heavily identifying as "autistic" or "neurodivergent" up until like three years ago. Which should ask why autism and ADHD are now political identities when they weren't at the height of the so-called "autism epidemic" of the 2000s when everyone hated and feared autism.
If they're engaging in disability tourism then it's pretty obvious they're fishing for vulnerability points. "Look at how weak and fragile I am," etc.
I think it's also important to note that most of these people only exist on the internet. There's a reason why a lot of autistic leftists (most of them college-aged) will talk big on Twitter/IG but can't handle IRL organizing, because most comrades in IRL organizing are neurotypical or have a basic understanding of maturity and meaningful social interaction. The reason why it seems like half the communists on Twitter are on the spectrum is because those are the people who are chronically online and do nothing else of significance.
Anonymous 06-05-23 04:06:39 No. 17022
>>17021 And anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers don't also feel like they're under siege?
There are people who will claim not wearing a mask and getting vaxxed is eugenics. There are also people who believe the masks and covid vaccine are eugenics.
It's not one-sided.
Anonymous 07-05-23 16:48:12 No. 17026
Overall it's what other people on here have said: inability to cope with all the extreme changes that have happened in the world over the past 30-40 years.
Anonymous 07-05-23 19:04:18 No. 17031
>>17026 Part of being a Marxist means questioning the whole notion of absolute truth.
Your thesis is a dumpster fire.
Anonymous 09-05-23 03:40:31 No. 17052
>>17045 I'm sorry, but if you're a radical leftist activist part of your job is to EDUCATE the masses of people, and education requires intellect to some degree or another. The reason why Maupin and Haz have such die-hard followings is because they actually attempt to "show the light" to their followers, whether or not what they're saying is true. Most leftist YouTubers/"Breadtubers" don't do that, rather they make video after video pandering to marginalized identity groups.
>>17047 >The more we realize social norms are constructed to serve the power structure the more we can change the culture to become more accepting of social outsiders. Because PoMo isn't supposed to change anything. It's supposed to make you skeptical of everything and anything without giving you an alternative. Wanting to be seen in a positive light by The Other isn't activism. It's narcissistic supply.
>>17051 When I first became an anarchist in the late 2000s "neurodivergent" wasn't a political identity like it is now. Most of the comrades I was working with were at least 10 (if not 12-15) years older than me (Gen Xers/Xennials, basically) and they came from a completely different ballgame as well. If you were autistic/ADHD you had to work on your social deficiencies. You weren't given a get-out-of-jail free card like you are today.
Maybe, it's because even as late as 16 years ago comrades still held something of a notion of working together for a common mission.
Anonymous 09-05-23 18:08:00 No. 17056
>>17054 (me)
For online discussions I lean the other direction and want even the literal schizophrenics to speak
Interestingly the sorts who generally want to make all sorts of insane counterproductive concessions for whatever and talk a big game want to shut them up and ban them I've noticed though
Anonymous 09-05-23 18:18:28 No. 17059
>>17058 Learn how to or volunteer for moderation duties here → >>1416319
Also study theory
Serious there's so many important effort posts I should be making since I've studied Marx Engel's, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Kollontai, etc etc etc that I simply don't have time to because I work full time and so few people do the neccesary reading
Please if you can be a theorist and study the theory and develop it that would be amazing
Anonymous 09-05-23 18:27:13 No. 17060
>>17053 >>17055 >>17058 No one is obligated to "dumb down" the revolution for you. Either you put in effort IRL or you don't. If you're incapable of contributing in any meaningful way to the struggle then you have no business demanding other comrades halt our efforts to ensure you get credit for doing nothing.
No one is going to dismantle the barricades or stop fighting police because some autistic 19-year old shut-in feels left out. Stop being so self-absorbed.
And this is the exact problem I keep addressing: what it means to be left-wing has gone from: "we are going to successfully overthrow capitalism" to: "I'm weak and vulnerable, PITY ME".
A few weeks ago Luna Oi (of all people) said something very interesting on her stream. She made a point how when the Vietnamese Communist Party was being formed under the tyranny of French colonialism members had to take an oath to never commit suicide. The reason being was that regardless of how horrible you were suffering under the colonial system it was far more important that you fought against the colonial system to abolish it. Whatever was going on in *your* brain was secondary to the collective struggle.
I honestly blame social media for a lot of this bullshit. Back when I started out social media was still in its infancy and in order to be a "leftist" you had to be politically active and involved in organizing. How, being a "leftist" amounts to posting on Twitter all day and calling everything oppressive without doing anything to change things. People think they deserve credit just because they've taken on a label without any of the depth associated with it.
Anonymous 09-05-23 20:00:47 No. 17064
>>17060 >A few weeks ago Luna Oi (of all people) said something very interesting on her stream. She made a point how when the Vietnamese Communist Party was being formed under the tyranny of French colonialism members had to take an oath to never commit suicide. The reason being was that regardless of how horrible you were suffering under the colonial system it was far more important that you fought against the colonial system to abolish it. Whatever was going on in *your* brain was secondary to the collective struggle. Kek, I remember a post on Twitter where OP asked other leftists what’s stopping them from owning a gun.
90% of them said they were suffering from mental health issues and would use a gun on themselves if given one.
Anonymous 10-05-23 03:23:43 No. 17065
>>17061 I hope I helped you with your dissertation.
>>17063 There's nothing ableist about anything I've been saying. If you want communism/socialism you will require the working class to be highly intelligent or educated at the very least. There's a reason why the Wobbly slogan was always EDUCATE, agitate, organize. You can't make an effective revolution with low-autism score individuals. That's just reality.
But yes. The contemporary left thinks having more intellectually impaired people in the world is good, because the left sees being a vulnerable child as being the most redemptive thing one can possibly be. Because you don't care, you just want morality points.
>>17064 I've struggled with mental illness in my life too, but what's kept me going all these years is knowing my actions can make a difference in the world. There were times I was at rock bottom but pulled myself out of it with the help of others, but mostly because I knew I had something to win that was bigger than myself.
That's the attitude all comrade should have, not this "I'm too weak and fragile" bullshit that doesn't lead to anything positive.
Anonymous 10-05-23 05:35:15 No. 17075
>>17074 uh no, derrida even identified as a marxist
so that makes it 1 out of dozens, and foucault just had a beef with mls when he joined an ml party and they all turned out to be homophobes lmao
Anonymous 10-05-23 05:41:53 No. 17077
>>17060 All of this.
Organizing isn't babysitting. If you can't handle it, stop complaining.
Anonymous 10-05-23 05:45:17 No. 17078
>>17075 ahhh sorry i was wrong,
>>17076 reminded me that derrida avoided labeling himself but he was one of the few notable figures who came out in defense of marxism just as the soviet union fell. he also shat on fukuyama, his fans and anyone who thought like him
he also warned about defanging marxism of any revolutionary potential, the same thing leftoid brainlets accuse """"pomos"""" of doing
Anonymous 10-05-23 06:42:07 No. 17079
>>17026 >Why are trans comrades constantly appealing to capitalist science in order to affirm their transitions and trans identities? Do you know what gender dysphoria actually entails?
Do you realize trans people become gravely depressed and suicidal if they can't affirm their identities through medical transition?
Anonymous 10-05-23 06:52:59 No. 17080
>>17026 >Seven years ago the left claimed conventional science was "colonial" and "eurocentric", Who?
XD
>>17043 Nobody cares about hippies and new age bullshit, why is this your idea of "the left"
Anonymous 10-05-23 19:43:03 No. 17082
>>17079 Why does needing medical care require you to cape for the capitalist medical establishment?
A better solution would be for comrades to go into the medical field and establish their own practices for trans folks as an alternative.
Anonymous 10-05-23 19:49:06 No. 17084
>>17067 I agree, but it’s being portrayed more and more as a requirement to be a leftist, which like I said becomes counter-intuitive when it stalls any kind of real leftist action.
If everything is rooted in standpoint epistemology you can’t engage in a truly collective struggle for a goal that transcends the will of individuals, because you have zero way of determine what is better than another thing. So for instance we can no longer say “it’s better to be intelligent and strong than it is to be stupid and weak” because someone is going to insist that there’s nothing wrong with being stupid and weak and we should just change the way we view things so stupidness and weakness are now seen as assets. Which is a huge detriment if you’re actually serious about defeating capitalism.
Anonymous 11-05-23 15:25:58 No. 17088
>>17026 What is "The Left" at this point other than the radical far-left wing of Neoliberalism? They're more passionate and willing anti-Communists than even the fascists. They firmly reject the political for the personal. They are more consistent in supporting interventionism that the Right, always telling everybody that "Its different this time" and telling people to vote Democrat/NDP/Labour/SPD/whatever.
>>17047 Because Post-modernism denies anything else other than the self and explicitly forcloses any action as "authoritarian" and pointless. A more Neoliberal ideology I cannot imagine.
>>17049 Undialectical. You cannot "Return" no matter how much you may want to. Modernism, like everything else, was always destined to be superseded by the contradictions inherent to it, just as Post-modernism will eventually be superseded.
Anonymous 11-05-23 20:44:58 No. 17093
>>17011 This sums it up.
It’s also accurate to say the reason you see so many people stringing together all their identity labels is because the more marginalized categories they fit into the more justification they have to demand entitlement to power and resources.
Anonymous 11-05-23 21:29:58 No. 17094
>>17022 The vaccines were new and experimental. They didn't go through trials because governments wanted to deal with the pandemic as quickly as possible.
The public vaccination program was the trial. At every stage of development, both before and after they were widely distributed we were told they worked. After a couple years and some hindsight we can see that most of these vaccines were duds. They didn't work very well. In some cases they caused heart problems.
Covid mutated faster than any vaccine could've developed, and even after they knew the vaccines were ineffective against the new strains we were told to go and get them, get boosters, etc.
I don't see this as eugenics, after all, the motive wasn't to sterilize people, but to profit off of a government program. The government said they'd pay for all the covid vaccines, so companies double- and triple-dipped by providing boosters for the government to market and pay for. Everyone got paid, and since the product was rushed, there was no worry about quality.
Anonymous 11-05-23 22:52:46 No. 17097
>>17088 >They firmly reject the political for the personal. True but I don't think the 1930s left saw those as discrete concepts.
I dunno about that, I haven't had DSA members burst into a meeting I've been at wearing masks and trying to break it up, but I have dealt with self-described fascists try to do that. Fascism is all rather abstract until it's breaking through your door.
Anonymous 12-05-23 03:47:04 No. 17100
>>17097 In the 1930s being a communist meant actually going out and agitating, organizing strikes, organizing rallies for the unemployed, being active in the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement, writing communist propaganda, etc. etc.
Now being a communist just means agreeing with communism and being terminally online.
Anonymous 13-05-23 23:15:16 No. 17135
>>17131 >We autistics This feels like bait.
>>17133 Proletarian means your only significant asset is your capacity to work as opposed to the bourgeois who own the means of production. It doesn't mean you stop being proletarian the moment you become unemployed, lol.
Anonymous 13-05-23 23:18:15 No. 17138
>>17131 Based comment
>>17090 Cringe comment as if sped teachers are out here rubbing their hands and fantasising about how they can create more AuDHD kids
Anonymous 14-05-23 00:35:19 No. 17147
>>17144 How would that even be possible?
And what about people with profound autism who will never live independently?
Anonymous 14-05-23 00:37:05 No. 17148
>>17091 Let me put it another way - the wheel of history cannot be turned back. One cannot undo the World Wars, Vietnam War, environmental disasters and 1970s malaise that discredited modernism. Post-post-modernism's time has not yet come it must sublate post-modernism, not merely negate it.
>>17129 In fact, disabled workers are super-exploited. The wages they get paid are literal pennies to the dollar. As in 34 cents/hour.
Anonymous 14-05-23 20:32:28 No. 17171
>>17170 I think we should back this one
The trans community went far further than I expected to and were willing to jump on that third rail and take the backlash to keep pushing
Congratulations goes to the gays on stopping the monkeypox pandemic dead in it's tracks unlike the breeders with their coof
Fags do what breeders can't I guess
I guess we'd better be getting used to this so how does it go ahem
Autist rights are human rights?
Anonymous 15-05-23 02:11:31 No. 17173
>>17172 A lot of autistic people have issues with cooking and driving, so something like worker canteens or government-run food delivery service would be necessary for them. Or, just making public transit better and cities more walkable. Or housing co-ops since a lot of autistic people struggle to live independently.
But you're correct: all of these things don't require socialism and could easily be achieved under capitalism if people pushed hard enough.
Anonymous 15-05-23 04:22:37 No. 17175
>>17172 To be quite honest, aside from the siege mentality stuff, the biggest problem I have with a lot of autism advocacy ("actually autistic") is how it centers almost entirely on high-functioning level 1 Aspies who just want to be accepted for being nerds. These are people who are fully verbal, live independently, have university degrees, can drive/cook without issue, can work on a team with others, have very high levels of intelligence, etc. Autistic people who are level 2 or 3, are non-verbal, will never live independently, can't feed themselves, can't dress themselves, are still in diapers well past age five, and so on are almost completely ignored in the conversation. It's very trendy for Aspies to attack "autism moms" on the basis that their hardships raising their level 2 or 3 kids is "their fault" because "you signed up for a child by choice" but they rarely ever deal with the question of what happens to those level 2 or 3 autistic kids when the autism mom gets too old and can no longer provide for her child. Are profoundly autistic people just supposed to be shipped off to institutions where they can die alone? Or is a neurotypical sibling supposed to give up the rest of their lives and serve as caregiver? These aren't easy scenarios and it bothers me how even the left doesn't want to deal with this reality.
Anonymous 15-05-23 04:50:12 No. 17178
>>17175 My friend has a non-verbal brother and his parents put him in a home for other autistic adults. It costs so much that his family will never be out of debt, despite both parents and son working 2 jobs each.
My brother is turning 18 and was expelled from every elementary school in my state and never went back for an education. He's verbal, and considers himself high functioning, but more of a chrischan style high functioning, for lack of a better example.
When my parents get too old, I'm going to be the one taking care of them, and my brother. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to have a job like that.
Anonymous 15-05-23 04:52:43 No. 17179
>>17178 That's horrible comrade.
And that's exactly my point: every time you bring up the question of low-functioning autism to the left they always default to the neoliberal answer: "the family will take care of it, they signed up for that kid so it's no problem of mine". I'm not saying the old asylums were good by any means but placing almost 100% of the responsibility for the profoundly disabled on the immediate family is equally as fucked.
Anonymous 15-05-23 06:10:37 No. 17181
>>17178 If you go on abortion-related subreddits like r/tfmr_support you'll see the main reason parents have for aborting for Down Syndrome is fear of what will happen to their disabled kid when they're no longer able to serve as caregivers. Even in AES countries and social democracies care for the severely disabled isn't great.
Personally, I think prenatal testing should be mandatory. The pregnant person can decide if they want to abort or not obviously, but given that raising children IS a form of labour the parents need to know what kind of job they'll need to do. If they can't handle the job they should be allowed to terminate with no barriers.
Anonymous 15-05-23 06:31:26 No. 17182
>>17172 >>17173 Could you two shut up and help me roll out the red carpet
We need Weaponized Autism with their high 'tism scores more than ever before
Now say after me autism rights are human rights and Stalin did nothing wrong other than be too kind and merciful great man that he was
Anonymous 15-05-23 20:32:14 No. 17185
>>16941 this is correct I think. Cedric Robinson's argument in Black Marxism is that "racism" has it's antecedents in European labour organisation going back centuries before modernistic racism.
Kenan Malik's new book is apparently all about this too.
Anonymous 15-05-23 20:52:53 No. 17187
>>17183 Yes yes I'm sure I upset you very much by reminding you of people who disagree with you on social issues but if I'm a conservative anybody behind me on social issues is a reactionary
Now since the red carpet is rolled out help me set up a sensory room
>>>/siberia/ for our new autistic overlords
Say after me
Trans rights are human rights
Autism rights are human rights Stalin did nothing wrong except be too kind and merciful
U don't wanna be a reactionary now do you?
Anonymous 21-05-23 21:23:59 No. 17197
>>17196 Stirner doesnt like rights for idealist reasons
Marxists dont like rights for materialist reasons
Anonymous 21-05-23 22:01:09 No. 17200
>>17154 You're wrong, but you're posting an anime reaction image so you gave it away too easily. Here I'll break it down for you:
Anti-racist struggles centered on class analysis relate to actual social forces that can impact production, improve people's material outlook and agitate revolution.
Anti-racism ideology concocted by the bourgeoisie in its present form is a tool to divide the working class, to strengthen the managerial state apparatus and protect capitalism.
It's really that simple. If the rhetoric sounds like it's coming from an upper-middle class HR manager, then it probably was cooked up by exactly these sorts of people.
Anonymous 21-05-23 22:07:19 No. 17201
>>17189 One of my professors at Law School is an ardent Green left socdem and his response to my criticism of green politics being Malthusian is that Malthus was wrong then because he was racist but he's more or less correct now because "we have the data".
Marx's critique of Malthus in the Grundrisse needs to be more widely circulated, because this race to the bottom siege mentality is compatible with Malthus's line of thinking and it is diametrically opposed to the revolutionary outlook. Either we redeem history and revolutionise production, or we gets cartels and gangs running rackets to protect their scraps.
Anonymous 21-05-23 22:59:18 No. 17203
>>17202 >How do you tell the difference? By the terms and stakes that are used in the debate and if they actually represent a threat to the system or if they are trying to be accommodated by capitalism. For example, if you use racism to agitate for "representation" in Hollywood movies and that's your political horizon. Or demand "equity" (property mortgage term) in the form of state welfare guaranteed by bourgeois political parties.
No it's not 99% of the time, you're projecting that onto people. People are absolutely willing to talk about unjust labour conditions on the ivory coast, police violence or how refugees are treated poorly. The problem is whether you ascribe all of these social problems to the "original sin" of white people which can only be redeemed by the capitalist state righting the wrongs of history. Or, you're instead analyzing capitalism as a global system and questioning why these patterns continually re-emerge during periods of crisis.
Anonymous 21-05-23 23:28:43 No. 17205
>>17204 Once again you're projecting things I did not say, and do not believe. Instead of imagining a strawman, deal with the substance of the argument. Modern "progressivism" is reformist, in some cases hostile to the interests of the proletariat and complicit with imperialism. And this is the exact modus operandi of the Democratic party who will use this racialist, subaltern rhetoric so you continually vote for them in the name of "harm reduction". You don't need to dance around the issue, just call a spade a spade.
Because I am an orthodox, I always frame the debate this way: Are you a revolutionary, do you understand class interests - or are you a liberal/reactionary?
Anonymous 23-05-23 04:38:38 No. 17213
>>16953 >>17011 >>17093 This is an S-tier article that should be read by every idpoler since it sums up the logical conclusions of their beliefs.
For starters, it points out how siege groups (autistics, queer community, white conservative Christians, Muslim immigrants in Europe, etc.) will primarily resort to some kind of separatist sentiments as the primary means of dealing with the siege. You see this in statements like "we don't want assimilation, we want AUTONOMY AND RESPECT" as if the autonomy in this situation isn't just a demand for separatism.
I'd add too you see those groups end up becoming very conservative in that they demand conformity so that the enemy isn't able to infiltrate and destroy their group. Queer spaces for instance were a hell of a lot more liberating 15 years ago when I started getting involved. The whole idea was "be yourself" and everyone accepted you regardless. Now there's a billion and a half unwritten rules you have to follow. Like if you detransition you're now persona non grata because everyone assumes you're anti-trans. I get the impression if trans people could they'd form their own Israel just because they feel constantly attacked and in need of a permanent safe space.
Maybe the US becoming more polarized is a good thing because each state now has the potential to act as a sort of safe space for people feeling like they're under siege. Let transphobic and ableist white Christians have Florida and Missouri while letting neurodivergent and queer progressives have California and Washington State.
Anonymous 23-05-23 16:27:19 No. 17218
>>17213 Honestly impressive how many people broadly within the “critique of callouts” socioculture have more or less the same starting assumption that the community has Bad People who need to be identified and driven out but instead of being about some broad harm it’s like, harshed vibes.
Feel like there are other stages of intervention one can have before drastic social blow ups or reverse uni exile but the thing about that is it doesn’t reinstate your social currency your lost when the last stupid game you played got you a stupid prize.
Anonymous 23-05-23 18:40:03 No. 17222
>>17217 Centrist? How? If anything I’m pointing out the need for siege groups to loosen up and become more open to things which challenge their paradigm in order so they can be more adaptive. Refusal to change is what results in totalitarian tendencies.
Or, we should all read Hegel.
Anonymous 24-05-23 15:31:02 No. 17225
>>17172 Sensory accommodations
Bans on bright lights and loud noises
Ban ABA therapy
Make autistic a specific legal category
Anonymous 24-05-23 16:49:25 No. 17228
>>17225 >Sensory accommodations >Make autistic a specific legal category Already covered in disability legislation.
How do level 2 or 3 kids learn basic skills then?
Anonymous 30-05-23 04:16:55 No. 17231
>>17230 >Remember in the mid 2010s when Zizek used to talk about how the new trend in politics is ethnocentrism mixed with neoliberalism Zizek was correct for his time but as we know, the owl flies at dusk. He was grasping a political moment that was already over by the time he theorized about it. What we're witnessing now is the slow agonising death of neoliberalism, and the current mix of idpol perfectly complements the siege mentality as the state intervenes to circulate capital.
If things aren't growing economically, each marginalised community feels that they have to scrape the barrel to maintain their equity, and it leads them to see the state as the vehicle that butters their bread and "enfranchises" their wellbeing. It is a problem that has been inherited from the New Left, and I'm glad that socialists are waking up to the miseducation.
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