🗽UNITED STATES POLITICS 🦅<"Pied Piper" EditionThread for the hellish discussion related to
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https://www.bloomberg.com/live/usPrevious thread:>>2294363
>>2296027The entire IDF vs. one Greta
we all know who will win
>>2296106>>2296103Basically all that remains "antisemitism" for them is antizionism. And even then, they don't much care for promoting antisemitism outside of their own turf.
The Zionist lobby has made it explicit that doing Sieg Heils on live TV is not to be confused with Nazism. Even coming from someone who is an outspoken white nationalist such as Elon Musk. And has been throwing white supremacy rhetoric around for years.
They also don't care, not in the USA or it's NATO appendages about promoting actual neonazis and equipping and training them and sponsoring the formation of a fascist international in Europe. As long as they remain useful "anticommunists" they are good goys.
>>2296166dems and reps are just opportunists
they have no values or standards
>>2296181I hate NYT
I hate NYT
>>2296181Two pathetic tweets denouncing the bill after he helped get the motherfuckers behind it elected and that's all it took for liberals to start rehabilitating Elon lmfao.
That Nazi salute is gonna be memory holed real soon me thinks.
>>2296166All attempts at engagement in politics outside of city level at most in America is meaningless
You should at most go to your town hall meetings and vote your regional politicians
All other effort should be focused on building alternative structures in rotting unresponsive corpse of the old
>>2296236In general, I think we're a lot more likely to see Socialism In One State than we are an American Socialist Revolution.
>>2296246Trotskyism and MLism have absorbed so many ideas from eachother that they might as well be the same thing at this point, despite how much both sides would mutually hate to admit it.
>>2296246Wrong. Trotskyism is bourgeois deviation from Marxism-Leninism. Stalin said the Trotskyites were the greatest enemies of Socialism. Trotskyites work for imperialist atate intelligence agencies.
>>2296236>>2296217>You should at most go to your town hall meetings and vote your regional politiciansWrong. This is bourgeois democratism. Proletarians must demand that their Party does its job.
>>2296116Something I've learned after decades of being online is that you should always take the most cynical interpretation of whoever you're interacting with possible. People can and will use "it's just a joke" to get away with saying the most retarded shit that they earnestly believe.
>>2296263Their approach to geopolitics is probably the biggest one. Campism is a Trot concept.
>>2296295Wotanists have for a while now reduced Asatru and indigenous European faiths in general to some kind of general worship of the "white race" and everything associated with it. Being part Slav myself and having an interest in Rodnovery it's always infuriated me how Wotanists coopt the symbols and names of ancient Slavic and Celtic religions and handwave it with the justification of "well it all comes from the Aryan race anyways" NO IT FUCKING DOESN'T. The ancestors of the Slavs were among the first to ride horseys, meanwhile your Pvre Nordic Race was living in mud huts like get outta here motherfucker
>>2296303This is just stuff I pulled from Bluesky, I didn't bother saving videos. But I have noticed that a lot of these goons seem to be under the impression that standing around and looking tough is enough to cow people into submission, which granted is often true but they have no idea how to react when it doesn't work.
Francesca Albanese United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories
USA has and others have been trying to get here removed for a long time trying to accuse her all of kinds of things. Very truthful person
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesca_Albanese>>2296318>Religion has become more symbolic than realalways has been
> Genuine faith is only confined to a small bodyGenuine faith is for the masses. the religious leadership has always been secretly secular and manipulating the masses and laughing behind their backs.
>>2296319Yup. I grew up in a pretty serious Buddhist family, and even with that theres a ton of syncretism of various folk beliefs that they/their ancestors couldn't let go of and had to include, even if its antithetical to actual Buddhist practice.
Like geomancy, or wealth based practices (Tibetan Buddhism has started to take off in China gain, and the Gelug school which is popular in Northern China has yellow Dzhambhala practice which is supposed to make you materially successful, but it has to be taught by a monastic whose obviously going to charge, or have his attendants charge)
>>2296333Mainland Mahayana, primarily Pure Land / Zen dual cultivation, aka non-Shandao following, I practiced Vajrayana in Tibetan Buddhism for a few years as well.
Thing is, a lot of Mahayana Sutras were written quite late, especially more popular ones you see in East Asia that created exceptions for these practices even if they are overtly focused on material / worldly concerns, things like the Avatamsaka sutra or other "Chinese Apocrypha" as some Buddhists call it.
The Dharma has basically become a business anyways. Especially in the West with the Tibetans who have it baked into their modern Tantras that they are allowed to take as much money as they please, literally because some supposedly respected meditator had a dream and said it was cool 200 years ago.
>>2296321I think anon has it the other way around, Santa, conceived as a traditional rite of passage for children, is the symptom(e) of secular society
>the religious leadership has always been secretly secular leadership are hush about it because it's lowkey taboo to openly admit your lack of faith as a representative of an institution built around faith, but ministers, priests, etc, are not coy about their own secular interpretation of religion, it's probably a really widespread vision among clerics and it's likely actively incentivized in certain orders like jesuits. zizek is right when he says christianity is the most atheistic religion in the world, even jesus himself expresses doubt in god while crucified.
>>2296358>It’s been 20k years of recorded history how does this scam still work? Not sure, Tibet is/was a crazy place, even up until China invaded. CIA got hold of their diaspora and used them as a propaganda piece and pretended like they never did anything wrong and white washed their history, so most westerners have a pretty happy view of it.
In reality, even when the current Dalai Lama was living in Tibet, they were very much in the business of enslavement, which was overseen by the various monastic orders. They had monks whose sold job was to physically punish people by limb or eye removal for petty crimes. Although the Dalai Lama has spoken about this himself, its incredibly taboo to bring up in Western Buddhist circles, even with other Asians.
Tibetan Buddhism in particular has these things called "termas" that are revealed by advanced Dzogchen practitioners called Tertons who supposedly have the karma to see into the future and past and reveal new teachings. One such Teron a few hundred years ago basically "found out" that it was actually totally permissible for monastics to make money from their teachings and accrue material wealth.
You'll sometimes here in Western circles that Tibetan Buddhism / Vajrayana is "expensive" because of this, but they are usually quickly hushed. This Tantra in particular flies in the face of pretty much every Buddhist teaching.
Realized thats a huge wall of text, sorry for shitting up the thread.
>>2296372> One such Teron a few hundred years ago basically "found out" that it was actually totally permissible for monastics to make money from their teachings and accrue material wealth.Lmao, that’s pretty convenient.
>>2296383I think ICE is well aware they’re pretty close to getting gun down soon on one of these raids and the consent manufacturing machine is broken so few tears will be shed. One the things they’re prolly most afraid of is being unmasked and found out that most of them are Nazi pedophiles or pedophile Nazis. So I think that’s the reason we haven’t seen a shoot out yet. They don’t want to run the story “Randolph HitlerFan was killed in line of duty attempting to abduct a 5 year old immigrate. Randolph was recently recruited to ICE via their ayrian brotherhood outreach program and opted to join for community service due to their pending human trafficking charges”.
>>2296285Minneapolis is consistently one of the more radical burger cities.
Minneapolis worker councils when?
>>2296416the moment minneapolis has unions
we don't have industrial cities anymore
>>2296450I just say "I think the workplace should be controlled by the people who actually do the work"
It's an oversimplification but a good starting point.
>>2296459 me
*over expired visa or whatever
>>2296477please read marx babe
become big brain
read Critique of the Gotha Programme first
>>2296179I wonder if it's because of makeup or poor aging.
Also fun fact: Her husband is some 60-something year old real estate porky who used to donate millions to her local political campaigns before they started dating.
>>2296587I think she's a Christian. But ya even black christians shouldn't act like their religion is somehow less hateful. It's probably the most hateful one of all.
>>2296585Is he Muslim? They may have just assumed black guy was muslim
>>2296624Collective guilt policy now like Israel when they demolition a "terrorist" family home.
Now trump starting policy of deporting your whole family if you commit a crime.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to strike the name of pioneering gay rights activist Harvey Milk from one of its ships, orchestrating the change as Pride month celebrations take place, according to sources.
A defense official said the timing of the decision was intentional.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hegseth-orders-navy-rename-ship-honoring-gay-rights/story?id=122460707Prosecutors in Milwaukee have charged a man with four felonies for attempting to frame an undocumented immigrant he is accused of assaulting, by sending forged letters in the immigrant’s name with a threat to kill Donald Trump.
The handwritten, forged letters were mailed to Wisconsin’s attorney general, Milwaukee police and US Immigration & Customs Enforcement (Ice). The story received a flood of media attention and was highlighted by the White House and Trump’s allies, but appears to have been a hoax.
Among those who fell for the hoax was Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who released a statement praising immigration officers for arresting Morales-Reyes on 22 May, one day after the forged letter was received by an Ice field intelligence officer.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/02/letter-threatening-trump-fake-plotA 6-year-old boy was found dead in his Florida home during a welfare check after he didn't show up to school for over two weeks, authorities said. His mother has now been charged with his murder after she allegedly told detectives he died while she was trying to "exorcise demons out of her son's body."
Authorities responded to the child's Fort Pierce home on Friday, after school resource deputies had requested a welfare check. The boy – Ra'myl Pierre, a student at Samuel Gaines Academy – had been absent since May 14, according to St. Lucie County Sheriff Richard Del Toro.
The boy's mother, Rhonda Joyce Paulynice, led a responding deputy inside to his bedroom, where he was found dead in a bed, according to Del Toro.
"In speaking with the mother, she believed she was being told by God to basically exorcise demons out of the child's body," Del Toro said during a press briefing on Friday. "When the child had stopped moving and basically passed away, at that point, she felt the child had been released of those demons and was waiting for him to basically come back at that time."
https://abcnews.go.com/US/6-year-boy-killed-alleged-exorcism-mother-charged/story?id=122426581>>2296663Fair.
>>2296681See you have bastards like these here and then you have Democrats who flat-out refuse to believe the Harris campaign did anything wrong. It does not make me hopeful.
>>2296876b-but my
tulpas discord friends said it was patsoc!
>>2296845Honestly the way Elon Musk has been acting for the last year has woken up a ton of people.
Before this, the average Joe thought billionaries were ubergeniuses who, if they had to do it again, would be able to recreate their riches and success without issue.
In reality they were just lucky people in the right place at the right time, who were willing to step on enough toes and hurt enough people to "make it big".
>>2296557That would be my fear. "Oh yeah I'm a communist" "what's that all about anyways?" and then I have to search the unsorted bag of marbles and baubles that is my brain for an answer. With any luck that will change one day, though.
>>2296619Thanks anon, I'll give it a read
>>2296976>There needs to be a thread of someone much smarter parsing this weird fusion of Nazism and jewish theocracy. They're basically just trying to co-op the term Nazi so they can do Nazi shit … Meanwhile hitler was some schizo failed artist meth head. Nazism is really the most criminal elements of the bourgeoise getting power. Their words mean nothing, they are ideological snake oil sales men that prop up in a failing society.I don't know how to do it, but part of the difficulty lies in that "Nazism" by virtue of it being defeated in the war has come to mean a radical evil that everybody now defines their politics against. You see contemporary Nazi sympathizers point this out a lot, and they're not really wrong about that? But I think they actually enjoy that because it feeds their unreflective and narcissistic tendencies, because if practically every government in the world defines itself as anti-Nazi, then you must be some big threat to the system! (As opposed to being an incel loser.)
The Nazis were also way more radical and (I know this term is problematic) totalitarian in their methods, but many things they believed in were also not exceptional at the time. Take eugenics for example. Or racism, the theory of the superiority of the whites over the colored people of the world. Not unusual in the 1930s. Racial anthropology and psychology were considered sciences and taught at universities. Germany and Italy were not considered radical antagonists of the Western democracies until the war. The French and British still had colonial empires. (Churchill was partial to fascist Italy and approved of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia because they're just a bunch of savages there so it's for their own good, y'know.)
So it's also not like the Nazis invented anything. Social Darwinism? Was already being used to justify capitalist exploitation. I already mentioned colonialism. They were only taking up their own version of it all and developing certain ideas of the common Western cultural background, that of the epoch, that is to say, basically, capitalist and colonialist.
>>2297001You can't expect representatives to read the things they vote on and presumably discuss in committees. OR to show up every day to vote. OR to show up at all.
Or honestly to represent your interests in any capacity. Who do you think you are? They are up there, and you are down here. Be content they play the fool for you for the cameras and wrangle the interns to post on social media. what else do you want? A jingle of the keys? Alright, there you got it.
Happy now, big baby vooter? We have lots of meetings with actually important people to get through.
>>2297079The strategy of exposure. That the flotilla is so harmless and full of famous faces they wouldn't dare strike it.
But they probably will. This is Israel we're discussing.
>>2297127>>2297131>>2297135>>2297138i call them zionazis because they're doing final solution style shit to palestinians. methinks you complain because you're mad OG nazis don't have as much power as zionazis. nazis look at israel and go "damn I wish we had that for aryans (pic related)"
>muh ZOGvid related
>>2297138Yes Trump panders to Black people, yes his core base of pandering are White nativists who are in league with Jewish nationalists. There is no contradiction
Idk why you guys struggle wrapping your head around this when Hitler himself literally allied with the Japanese, an Asiatic race he despised so much to the point of refusing to congratulate their capture of Singapore because it humiliated Britain, a White empire. Politics make strange bedfellows especially in our neoliberal age where identities are discrete and smattered all around
>>2297349Why else do you think he is pardoning rappers moron? To sate guys with names lik @rapisthitler1488 as their twitter account?
Trump is identity panderer who primarily pander to white nativists and racists but also tried to occassionally cover bases with Black people (or at least attempt to)
>>2297413For me it's complete disregard to human suffering combined with praising Jesus
I hope she is laughing inside because I am terrified of whatever is happening in their minds otherwise
>>2297410>>2297557ANTICLERICALISM NOW
BURN THE CHURCHES
TOPPLE THEIR IDOLS
EVICERATE THE CLERGY
>>2297579lol no
assuming we even have elections in 2028, it's very clear that the Dem establishment and their donors want to shift to the right even more, and even a liberal sheepdog like AOC is too "extreme" for them. They're gearing up to have Buttigieg be the nominee, probably with Hillary Clinton or Josh Shapiro as VP
>>2297592RATS
WE'RE RATS
WE'RE THE RATS
WE PREY AT NIGHT WE STALK AT NIGHT
WE'RE THE RATS
>>2297610 (me)
rhetorical question
>>2297621Because a critique from the Right.
lt's literally what online Fascists have been saying about Trump since his first term.
And its manifested in the most cartoonish fucking way of Schumer basically calling Trump a bitch for not going to war with lran
<"YOU DONT HAVE THE FUCKlNG BALLS TO FRY ALL THESE SUBHUMAN BROWN PEOPLE DRUMPF!>>>"YOU WONT DO SHlT!!!"Literally 4cuck /pol/ shit being spewed by the democratic fucking party.
>>2297703>>2297711This is only semi related but l was at the pub the other day and in finally clicked to me that the "republican vs republican lite joke" actually has another layer to it l never thought of before:
The tap for Budweiser is actually red and the one for Bud Light is blue.
lt's literally "blue team vs red team" lol.
>>2297703Good. It must be made clear to the people that armed struggle is the path forward, not continued false hope in bourgeois reformist parties.
I am begging people to listen to vid related. It takes ONLY 17 minutes.>>2297707It isn't these threads, it's the entire country.
>>2297711There is no pretense, only a strategy of thinly veiled kayfabe. False alternatives. Chudweiser "versus" Chud-Lite. Both red team and blue team owned by the same class…
>>2297797Fine, NotebookLM summarise
"Based on the provided source excerpts from Lenin's "The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War" (1915), here is a summary of the main arguments in English:
* During a
reactionary war, a revolutionary class
must desire the defeat of its own government. This is presented as an axiom disputed by social chauvinists and their supporters.
* Opponents of this view include Semkovsky, Trotsky, and Bukvoyad. Trotsky argues it's an "uncalled for and absolutely unjustifiable concession to the political methodology of social patriotism". Semkovsky dismisses it as "nonsense, because either Germany or Russia can win".
* "Revolutionary struggle against the war" is deemed a
meaningless phrase unless it involves revolutionary action against one's own government even in wartime.
* Wartime revolutionary action against one's government undeniably means not only
desiring its defeat but also actively facilitating it. However, this does *not* mean actions like blowing up bridges or organizing unsuccessful strikes that would actually help the government defeat the revolutionaries.
* The source argues that opponents like Trotsky, Bukvoyad, and Semkovsky misunderstand the concept, thinking that desiring Russia's defeat equates to desiring Germany's victory. The example of the
Paris Commune is used to illustrate that even when a country is defeated by an external enemy (France by Germany), the workers can still be defeated by their own government (Bismarck and Thiers), highlighting the importance of the class struggle against one's own rulers.
*
Revolution in wartime means civil war. The conversion of an inter-governmental war into a civil war is facilitated by military reverses or defeats of governments. One cannot strive for such a conversion without simultaneously facilitating defeat.
* The reason chauvinists reject the defeat slogan is that it is the
only slogan that consistently calls for revolutionary action against one's own government in wartime. Without such action, millions of "ultra-revolutionary phrases" about fighting the war are worthless.
* To genuinely refute the defeat slogan, one must prove one of three things: 1) the 1914-15 war is not reactionary, 2) a revolution stemming from the war is impossible, or 3) coordination and mutual aid between revolutionary movements in all belligerent countries are impossible. The third point is particularly relevant for backward Russia, which is why Russian social democrats needed to advance this theory and practice first.
* The Tsarist government was correct in recognizing that the Russian Social Democratic Labor Group's agitation in the Duma weakened Russia's military strength and could lead to its defeat. Opponents of the slogan are afraid to acknowledge the obvious
inseparable link between revolutionary agitation against the government and helping to bring about its defeat.
* The source asserts that the possibility of coordination and mutual aid between the Russian movement (bourgeois-democratic in nature) and the socialist movement in the West has not been doubted by socialists over the past decade. The movement among the Austrian proletariat after the Tsar's manifesto of October 17, 1905, is cited as practical proof of this possibility.
* An understanding regarding revolutionary action, even in a single country, can only be achieved by the
force of the example of serious revolutionary action, by launching and developing such actions. Such actions cannot be initiated without desiring the government's defeat and contributing to it.
* The proposed substitute slogan, "neither victory nor defeat", is viewed as merely a
paraphrase of the "defense of the fatherland" slogan. It shifts the focus to the war between governments rather than the struggle of the oppressed classes against their governments and justifies the chauvinism of bourgeoisies claiming they are "only fighting against defeat".
* The slogan "neither victory nor defeat" effectively means a
class truce and the renunciation of the class struggle in all belligerent countries. Class struggle requires striking one's own bourgeoisie and government.
* Striking one's government in wartime, according to opponents, is high treason and contributes to the country's defeat. However, the source argues that those who write against "high treason" or the "disintegration of Russia" hold a bourgeois, not a proletarian, viewpoint. A proletarian cannot deliver a class blow to their government or aid a fellow proletarian in an enemy country without committing
"high treason" and contributing to the defeat or disintegration of their "own imperialist great power".
* Whoever supports the "neither victory nor defeat" slogan is considered a
chauvinist (consciously or unconsciously), at best a conciliatory petty bourgeois, and an enemy of proletarian policy, supporting the existing governments and ruling classes.
* The war inevitably evokes turbulent sentiments in the masses. Revolutionary tactics must adapt to these. Main currents are horror/despair, hatred of the "enemy," and most importantly for class-conscious workers,
hatred of one's own government and bourgeoisie. This hatred stems from understanding the war as a continuation of imperialism and recognizing that "war against war" is empty without revolution against one's own government.
*
Hatred of one's government cannot be aroused unless their defeat is desired. Being a sincere opponent of civil peace requires arousing this hatred.
* Those who favour "neither victory nor defeat" effectively side with the bourgeoisie and opportunists because they lack belief in or desire to develop international revolutionary action.
* The proletariat in the most backward belligerent great powers (like Russia), especially given the betrayal by German and French social democrats, had to adopt revolutionary tactics. These tactics are utterly unfeasible without contributing to their government's defeat. However, only this path leads to a European revolution, lasting socialist peace, and liberation from current suffering."
>>2297883The budget.
Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill"
>>2297869There's posting through it and then there's whatever the fuck Musk is doing
>>2297883THE bill. The "big beautiful bill"
>>2297909Yeah and they run through tires even faster than gas powered cars.
>>2297911That's why we need more trains, at least at the state level there is more interest in that. But new car registrations are not going down either.
>>2297917because a demsoc becoming the mayor of new york would be considerably useful
never forget new york was the birthplace of austerity in the 1970s, it is the festering sore that gave birth to our current mutation of modern capitalism
>>2297555You disingenuous simp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_war#Fossil_fuel_useArmies are some of the most pollutant industries, even out of war. They are some of the most devastating things for ANY environment, the preservation of which is regulated to be damn near irrelevant. And they do this in direct, measurable ways that impact human life immediately. Not like the abstract harm of climate change or the statistical projections for some far future.Any self respecting environmentalist would be strictly anti war and would have it at the first of their priorities. The rest of the socialist politics follow naturally if one is consistent. Which Greta , or rather her neoliberal owners, aren't
for obvious reasons.
So now that the cold war is afoot, you got Greta going on about some irrelevant dam in Ukraine as the only thing she can say about a BIG FUCKING GROUND WAR because that's all she can say without stepping on her master's toes. Palestine has been a PR gift for the washed up activist class, but only after the EU gives them the signal because the genocide is already set in stone.
If Greta wants to do direct action she can summon her philanthropy thralls to block the NATO war machine with their bodies.
Burning hydrocarbons is terrible except when it's to fuel the army.Haven't seen the little bitch peep a word about the projections of at least tripling of NATO budget, re-militarize Europe and the prospects for the environment have you? Haven't seen her go about the pollution of the arms race and increased militarism of the cold war like deploying troops and vehicles and boats and planes fucking everywhere and always needing more. And more fuel, and more harmful fucking waste to explode people and poison the land.
What about unleashing LANDMINES AND UNEXPLODED MUNITIONS EVERYWHERE!? CLUSTER BOMBS? All of this is very current, but her handlers LOVE that side of Ukraine, so not a peep.
OH RIGHT HER HANDLERS ACTUALLY LOVE WAR AND HAVE EVERY STAKE RIDING ON THE COLD WARAnd I'm being
very generous and giving you the completely bollocks argument that she just didn't know anything about politics until the latest attempt on Gaza and that this is why she either said nothing, or
sided with NATO at times when the atrocities are their fault.
This is just a rebranding campaign, because all her backers love war now and she needs new "progressive" causes to be an activist for.
>>2297973small baby israel needs help defending itself from ballistic missiles firing from the poorest nation in the middle east (yemen) and hamas who uses bathtub rockets
fuck AOC she's a scum bitch democrat like any other, anyone who is still onboard with her is delusional she's completely captured and always had careerist ambitions to be so
>>2297975lol lmao
Thank you Hamas for destroying AOC's prospects as the future of the democrats. Who the fuck is still going to fall for pushing democrats left when the "progressive" darling is supporting an ongoing genocide?
>>2297967>>2297975They can’t help but shoot themselves in the foot, can’t they?
>>2297980And Dengists wonder why they are disliked so much
>>2297975Bring the war home
Bring the war home
Bring the war home
Bring the war home
Bring the war home
Bring the war home
Bring the war home
Bring the war home
Bring the war home
Bring the war home
Bring the war home
Bring the war home
>>2297990>Dengists are more revolutionary than youOkay Mr
>I wish no harm to the American ruling class>>2297994I already know about this twitter user. I have already seen their posts. And I’m quite concerned about your ability to discern context clues.
>>2297967>Fuck the DSA.I started reading Sorel yesterday and all statements he makes about the parliamentary socialists describe DSA and their elected officials to a tee.
Also it dawned on me that these attempts to reform DSA into a mass socialist organization is the new "Pushing the Democrats/Biden to the left"
>>2298003>Not a refutation thoughYou don’t want to get rid of the ruling class. I think that says enough by itself. And then you brought a position I do not have and is in fact contradictory to my earlier comments.
Yeah, I think we’re done here.
>>2298007Pretty much the direction we’re going. Certainly going to disengage from this topic now.
>>2298022"The myth" as Sorel invokes it seems to refer to the idea of using a narrative with powerful imagery that can politically charge the masses and guide them towards correct action. A myth in this case isn't a lie really, but by necessity it must be a simplification to allow for easy understanding by the masses. If you want a good example for our present American conditions, take the slogan "All Cops Are Bastards". Simple, poingent, powerful, and easy to reinforce with viral videos of police brutality and the simple usage of statistics to call attention to brutality and crimes by police such as that statistic about 40% of cops being known domestic abusers. Now "ACAB" is not strictly true in all cases, there are indeed individuals in the police force who might have a conscience, maybe even a lot of them, but it IS true that policing in America is a systemic issue that cannot be solved without a full scale upheaval. Thus ACAB is a useful narrative. In the era of digital activism and the general ease of communication in the modern day, the generation of myths becomes even easier and something that can be contributed to in all sorts of ways. Even something as silly as writing a Sonic fanfic wherein themes of police brutality and the systemic issues of policing are a clear theme can help, because the readers of the fanfic will come away from it with a convincing narrative of the cops being antagonists not just in the story but in the real world. Sometimes the best way to communicate ideas isn't through debates or philosophical texts, but seeing those ideas being put into practice within an easy to follow narrative.
>>2297876it's become increasingly obvious to me this year that whenever the AmeriKKKan empire falls, if it doesn't destroy the rest of the world with it, and if there are historians alive in 100 years to document the period of time we're living through, that post-Reagan US history will be viewed as a fascist regime that seized and maintained power for a longer time than most classical fascist regimes because it was able to drag out and slow down crises in capital resulting from the first world having materially moved past it without any accompanying class consciousness necessary to produce a transition to socialism. in a way, you have to admire how they pulled all this off, because for nearly 50 years the US was able to maintain a balancing act of soft global imperialism through the dollar being the reserve currency and retaining a high amount of consumption power for Americans relative to the rest of the world as a way of offsetting stagnating wages, and then grooming Americans into having to accept more and more debt to further kick the can down the road, and also doing various psyops around the world and domestically to keep the third world and the left in the imperial core from being able to threaten the status quo of AmeriKKKan imperialism.
the past 20 years in particular is when capital had started to rot enough for it to be noticeable, but the ruling classes in the US were able to buy themselves more time and keep the conditions (and an escalating police state, human rights violations and war crimes even by bourgeois liberal standards) invisible even as the rot began to set in so visibly that mass shootings, opioid addiction, debt and social murder all became far worse. it's really quite insane when you think about it just how long things have been this bad and yet it's been so (hyper)normalized that even a lot of intelligent radicals haven't really made this connection.
it's only after the US this year in particular has become so visibly rotted and the ruling classes increasingly brazenly desperate to maintain a failing status quo that we can begin to seriously look back on how we got here and realize that this hasn't just been in the works for a long time but that in some ways the current situation in the US is an improvement over how things have been. for the past 20 years the AmeriKKKan ruling classes haven't needed to be so openly fascistic and disciplinary because they were already successfully keeping everyone in the Matrix and viciously repressing anyone domestically or abroad who dared to try to do anything about it without anyone even being aware of what's been happening. even the people who have been aware of it have been mostly shouting into the void, because it's all been so hypernormalized for so long that there's been this herd mentality pressure to accept all of this as normal even though a lot of Americans have known for a long time that we operate illegal torture prisons, effectively still have slavery, have done multiple domestic genocides (the AIDS and crack-cocaine epidemics), and have the most sophisticated surveillance state in the world.
>>2298022A myth is a collective, motivating, and non-rational vision that enables action. Given that the idea of the general strike originated in America, and still proves itself to be uniquely applicable to the mobilization of the American proletariat then and today, I don't see why Sorel's advocated myth need be substituted.
"Thanks to these men, we know that the general strike is indeed what I have said: the myth in which socialism is wholly comprised, i.e. a body of images capable of evoking instinctively all the sentiments which correspond to the different manifestations of the war undertaken by socialism against modern society"
>>2298025I've never thought of ACAB in that way. The issues with it though are that it's become associated with cringy anarchists.
>>2298029How do you even have a general strike when most Americans scoff at the idea of unionizing their workplace?
>>2298026I've been thinking about this a lot. The recent announcement about the Trump admin-Plantir deal and the fact he's trying to criminalize restrictions on AI are telltale signs that porky knows that people are waking up, and are desperately trying to keep whatever control they have over us. The purpose of the database is pretty obvious, but a lot of people don't realize that the ban on AI restrictions isn't just to protect profits but also so that AI can be used for insidious propaganda purposes to manufacturere consent for oppression of The Other.
>>2297982>The fuck did Equatorial Guinea do? That's a damn good question actually. They have oil money but the uber-oligarch Obiang family owns it all and buys mega yachts with it. It seems like the kind of country we like. And I thought we did. What a mystery.
>>2297919>oh no. the bombs will no longer be gay.The brands are not changing their logos this month either. Man, not the brands. I love brands!
>>2298035this is admittedly partially a cope on my part to not fall into complete suicidal despair but I have been telling myself a lot this year that you can tell porky is getting scared by how outwardly disciplinary the US has suddenly shifted towards when the strategy for the past 50 years has largely been control. in an advanced capitalist society, it's easier to stop people from wanting to change the status quo by capturing as much desire into capitalist relations of production, e.g. the well-known Situationist concept of recuperation, or "selling out" in 20th century music subcultures. let the working class share in the spoils of imperialism to a limited extent, affirm their desires while also subtly changing what they want so that they can't even imagine any alternatives (cf. Capitalist Realism), and in the few cases where this doesn't work just imprison, torture, and kill the actual dissenters as secretly as possible. even when people find out about it, the sort of domesticated herdlike existence that Americans were groomed into is so normalized that they never even think of actually doing anything when we find out about how the CIA trafficked cocaine into black communities or how AIDS was allowed to spread in gay communities or how we have illegally detained and tortured people indefinitely for being suspected terrorists (or even fucking BLM organizers who were straight up sent to black sites).
like I said it is remarkable how bad things have been for as long as they've been and comparatively you can tell that things are really falling apart because the bourgeois state has reverted back to the old disciplinary methods. they're trying to modernize them with AI and surveillance tech, ironically trying to create the exact New World Order that rightoids have been crafting a bizarre repressive eroticized horror of for decades now, but it's getting to the point where they can't win without killing off most of the population. which is the main thing that scares me, because they've been doing their best to make that happen.
>>2298035The trouble is that Sorel's preference for violence as an act of purification lends itself to "cringy anarchism" already, and while I personally am an anarchist I agree that the kinds of militant edgelord nihilists that flock to the black banner are not helpful. Which is why ACAB must be only one of a collection of narratives, others of which should emphasize the social aspect of the revolution. Cops aren't simply bad because they're the enforcement arm for "the system", they divide communities and disproportionately target those who are disadvantaged by neoliberalism. Therefor ACAB can be incorporated into collectivist ideals such as mutual aid and parallel governing structures operating in tandem with trade unions and organizations dedicated to spreading revolutionary consciousness to prep the people for a mass uprising. Combining myth making with real world activism helps prevent the movement from being bogged down by terminally online edgelords who think posting is praxis on its own, and can easily be incorporated into the overall myth of the General Strike
All that said, some of the more "enthusiastic" anarcho nihilists could be useful as front line shock troopers of sorts, their overconfidence might get them killed but can also serve to inspire others to action. Part of the purpose of myths is to generate an emotionally charged mass ready to destroy all of those who stand in the way of utopia, and if some people want to act like barbarian berserkers then I see no reason why we shouldn't utilize them. For any one of those could be like the Uruk-Hai in The Lord of the Rings who throws his great sword upon the charge and sacrifices himself to blow a hole in the walls of Helm's Deep. I admit it's not a perfect analogy but it's a striking image and inspirational to those foolhartey enough.
>>2297707Yeah seeing the constant terrible news and people's usually terrible reactions is incredibly distressing and depressing.
I want to do something but I don't know what because this area, including my workplace, is teeming with reactionaries. Like Democrats don't even run candidates here. There's some presence in the cities that's closer to actual leftism (WFP, GP, DSA, CPUSA, IWW) but even then they don't have much sway. It's disheartening to say the least.
>>2298034I welcome the collapse of the Trump coalition over this shitty bill but you'd have to be fucking stupid to embrace Musk at this point unless you're an actual fascist.
But what am I saying? We're talking about the Democratic Party here.
https://thetechbubble.substack.com/p/trapped-in-the-maw-of-a-stillborn
>In a conversation with Hedges, Schüll doesn’t mince words:
<“When you look at contemporary slot machines, they don’t operate on volatility,” she continued. “One designer of the mathematics and algorithm of these games said we want an algorithm that makes you feel like you are reclining on a couch. The curves, architecture and the softly pixelated lights, they want you to sit back and go with the flow. I just couldn’t make sense of that for the longest time in my research. Gamblers would say, ‘It’s so weird, but sometimes when I win a big jackpot I feel angry and frustrated.’ What they’re playing for is not to win, but to stay in the zone. Winning disrupts that because suddenly the machine is frozen, it’s not letting you keep going. What are you going to do with that winning anyway? You’re just going to feed it back into the machines. This is more about mood modulation. Affect modulation. Using technologies to dampen anxieties and exit the world. We don’t just see it in Las Vegas. We see it in the subways every morning. The rise of all of these screen-based technologies and the little games that we’ve all become so absorbed in. What gamblers articulate is a desire to really lose a sense of self. They lose time, space, money value, and a sense of being in the world. What is that about? What does that say? How do we diagnose that?”
<“It’s the flip side to the incredible pressure, which is experienced as a burden, to self-manage, to make choices, to always be maximizing as you’re living life in this entrepreneurial mode,” she said. “We talk about this as the subjective side of the neoliberal agenda, where pressure is put on individuals to regulate themselves. In this case, they are regulating themselves, but they are regulating themselves away from that. This really is a mode of escape. It’s not action gambling. This is escape gambling. You can see it on their faces. The consequences and ethics are distasteful. It’s predatory. It’s predation on a type of escape where people are driven to exit the world. They’re not trying to win. The casinos are trying to win. They are trying to make revenue. They’re kind of in a partnership with the gamblers, but it’s a very asymmetrical partnership. The gamblers don’t want to win. They want to just keep going. Some people have likened gamblers to factory workers who are alienated by the machine. I don’t see it that way. This is more about machines designed to synchronize with what you want—in this case escape—and [to] profit from that.”
>This, Hedges argues, will be the building block of our future politics: perpetual immiseration obscured by public-private partnerships to build digitally mediated pleasure palaces, alongside robust efforts to improve access to various opioids and soma, and reinforced with a healthy dose of outright force when we step out of line. After CES, I think this vision doubles as a diagram that connects gambling and Vegas (as a laboratory of odious technologies of surveillance and social control and extraction and immiseration across society) to CES (as a place to fine tune hype narratives obfuscating the scramble for these tools) to capitalist technology and our political-economic order. >>2298049Reading what you wrote made me think of Luigi Mangione
The man play a role in The Myth or hell he could a Myth himself. Unfortunately people turned him into thirst bait.
>>2297975Its so funny that Bernie is grooming her to be his replacement. She's just gonna be a heel from here to eternity.
AOC will be repeating the same talking points now and when she is 90.
>>2297981I am going to enjoy tremendously when she finally outlives her utility. If shes as deranged as it seems she'll lose her goddamn mind if she ever gets shelved by the activist complex and her privileges revoked. If she's as you say, in control of her own agenda, then they'll just martyr her and replace her.
Either way, it's going to be cinema and it's going to be soon.
Re the Boulder attack and the Holocaust survivor victim:
https://www.cuindependent.com/2019/04/08/barbara-steinmetzs-story-of-escape-wraps-holocaust-remembrance-week/
>Steinmetz was born in Hungary on Nov. 26, 1936. Her parents ran a hotel on the island of Lussinpiccolo, off the coast of Croatia in the Adriatic Sea, which at the time belonged to Italy. Today, the island is known as Mali Lošinj.
>Italian dictator Benito ᴉuᴉlossnW stripped the Italian Jews of their citizenship in 1938 while forbidding them to hold positions in government and in certain professions.
>By 1940, Steinmetz’s father decided that enough was enough and took the family back to Hungary, where they tried desperately to convince other family members to leave the country.I don't know, isn't this kind of stretching "holocaust survivor?" She never experienced the Holocaust. She and her family fled to the Dominican Republic. It just seems like another devaluation/exploitation of terms like "anti-semitism" has gone through.
>>2298076Democrats are trying to recruit Elon?
But then again, Elon was a Democrat donor before he turned to Trump
>>2298095we've already been at the point where mostly the only people who take the Dems seriously are their ranks (like celebrities and journalists) who function in a partially unofficial capacity as part of the ideological apparatuses like the media and universities that has been their main strategy for co-opting anything on the left. meanwhile normal people who would have been centrist libs a year ago are starting to wake up. aligning themselves with someone as widely hated as Elon Musk is pretty much the stupidest thing they could do right now and will only delegitimize liberalism even more and push people further left.
it's all extremely disorganized, but a vibe shift of sorts is happening and the Democrats are accelerating it.
>>2297975>>2297967periodic reminder that the DSSA was literally and explicitly formed to hamstring the new left after it's founder, Michael Harrington, was expelled from the SPUSA for supporting the vietnam war.
he then toured america trying to create an anti-communist, pro-war "leftist" coalition before finally merging one of his groups into the DSSA in the 1980s.
it is, was, and always will be pro-imperialist and constitutionally anti-communist.
the only use for the DSSA is to raid their chapters, both figuratively and literally, for members and then liquidate their cells.
>>2298119Check his political history.
>>2298120This. All the hysterical libs whining about "fascism" are no different from the alt right whining about "communism".
If Trump were to be put in charge of a fascist regime, he would need to be assassinated by his own officers.
>>2298103So was Ronald Reagan and Tucker Carlson.
A lot of Republicans were Democrats in their political infancy. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who was a consistent Republican voter from the get-go.
>>2297579>l think Pete and Kamala split the centrist vote This didn't work in 2020, when Buttigieg and Warren decided to drop out and endorse Biden so he could beat Bernie.
And I think you're seriously overestimating Harris' appeal. She was laughed out of the 2020 primary and only got the VP position because Biden explicitly wanted a woman of color.
AOC will just go for Schumer's senate seat if anything.
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