>look at le epic based anti-imperialism
>look inside
>kill gays because of “muh western-decadence”
Sorry Leftychuds, I don’t have masochism fetish letting them kill me and spreading reactionary ideologies, just because they are “anti-west”
>letting them kill me
You were planning to go to Burkina Faso?
>>2752234Obviously not same reason not going to Arabic countries.
>>2752236Lol you calling it fake news like Trumptards?
Go to their official media even they admit banning icky gays.
>>2752232Vietnam, Colombia, Cuba, and Thailand are all pretty pro-gay and anti-Imperialist. The two don't necessarily go hand in hand.
>>2752249Ppretty sure thailand is a us ally
Yeah have some dealings with china, so does everyone else
Damn, this is crazy. We should bomb them immediately!
95% of faggots are fullblown reactionaries
case in point: OP
>>2752271It was always going to be this way, the political left is perpetually degenerating into campism and opportunism. Social atomization and online anonymity only accelerate this trend.
Homosexuality is not radical, anti-imperialism is.
Campism is good, anticampism is bad. Only liberals like OP disagree
I could keep going on and on about how crypto-reactionary they are and how many of them are de facto anti-communist, or how they don't understand Lenin's theory of imperialism, but for me the most damning thing right now is that all these radical American anti-imperialists on /leftypol/ and twitter are doing absolutely fuck all against the war their government is waging on Iran. They keep bitching about anarchists and liberals, then when it's time to do something, they just keep tweeting and say "we can't spontaneously raise class consciousness!", as if it wasn't the whole point of radical activism, to raise class consciousness when it matters. The liberals who were protesting in 2003 against the Iraq War are infinitely more radical than them, and now that China have zero interest in helping Iran and Russia actually benefits from the war by selling oil to the EU, their worldwiew is starting to crumble apart. I wouldn't be surprised if half of them become fascists in the next few years and the rest politically apathetic.
The only anti-imperialism is communism
settler paranoia thread
this thread is proof this website is just a groyper discord server now
>>2752232Anti-imperialism is a sham and a humbug.
>>2752898 In what way anon?
>why should I oppose Western Imperialism when the targets are not pro-me enough
Moralism.
>>2752232>letting then kill meYou live in a suburb in america op not in burkina fasso.
>>2752232when I researched Burkina Faso the shit I found was criminal: deliberate under development, just a few miles of sealed roads, massive poverty and unemployment, literacy and education nearly non-existent, only the most basic healthcare, every cent of mineral weatlh stolen.
it's a shit law, I hope they reverse it, it doesn't justify colonial subjugation and exploitation. trarore is doing a great job, the kids that get to go to a school paid for with sovereign wealth aren't going to grow up with the same ignorance and suspicion as their parents.
>>2752913I read somewhere once that this is basically the opinion of the CPC on homophobia. A relic from underdeveloped economy, which dissapates as education and economic wellbeing increases
>>2752915using gay rights to smear independant third world countries is a relic from an underdeveloped political consciousness. it was obamas favourite refrain while bombing afghan kids. cuba had a pink revolution and led the entire world on gay rights. BF has so many challenges, if this is popular just pass it and don't enforce it. I'm sure they'll circle back to it when they poverty is under control.
>>2752920I agree. It's an indication that their primary vector for political engagement is morality and wanting to have the goodest political views. Much like a christian
>>2752886>The only anti-imperialism is communismCommunism is a sham and a humbug unless imperial core proletarians do revolutionary defeatism and establish a DOTP.
>>2752308how does "atomization" accelerate "campism". if anything it accelerates individualism, in which you
aren't even aligned with a geopolitical "camp" let alone a "class"
>>2752947>Communism is a sham and a humbug unless all proletarians everywhere do revolutionary defeatism and establish a DOTP.fixed
I looked into this on Lemmygrad a few months ago and we had an indepth discussion about it with people working in BF at the moment.
TLDR this law targets western conceptions of LGBT but allows there own, they have words for gay and queer men such as 'Skewer' that remain legal.
>>2752936I don't think it's the goodest political views. I think it's just a dumb gotcha that deliberately misses the point. bibi did the same thing when he made that cringe quip:
>gays for hamas?>that's like chickens for kfc!?it's not like gay palestinians are better off getting blown up. it's not like gay burkinabe are better off living in poverty under a french colonial government. It's not like gay russians are better off with sanctions and a blockade.
I am sick and tired of liberals dropping this weak talking point.
>>2752993Interesting if true. But aren't they mega abrahamcucked in BF? Seems unlikely they'd have some indigenous gay subgroup
>>2752998The history of queerness in BF is actually really interesting, they are one of the only countries where Polyandry is the norm (women can have multiple husbands) and they have a lot of traditions around that.
Its also not widely supported
>>2752995Yeah but for them the real world doesn't matter and only the subjective moral goodness of their beliefs are what matters.
I'm not talking about Bibi or other disingenuous actors, but the libs who honestly believe and regurgitate that shit
>>2752985even worse, individualism leads to anti-campism for multiple reasons: beautiful soul unstained by messy reality of trying to survive under conditions of global capitalism and imperialism, no country perfectly matches the unique ideal in their head, narcissism of small differences, contrarianism which often ends up defending imperialism
>>2752999>>2753003Very intriguing, thank you for sharing anon. I will look into this
>>2753012As always if a western news source is telling you to hate a socialist country be highly critical and skeptical.
>>2753014Lmao ofc, you don't have to tell me that, but thanks anyway
>>2753001I don't think libs believe this shit. I think there are queer people who hold it as a single issue, and the libs are using it cynically as an excuse or deflection.
>>2752989it needs to happen in the imperial core first otherwise the DOTP in the periphery either gets destroyed or forced to capitulate in some manner and you will just repeat the entire 20th century again
>>2753021Ehh I think ascribing disingenuity is kind of pointless. For all intents and purposes they sincerely believe they are morally superior for chastising BF on this issue, which is all they care about. We are crazy campists/tankies in their eyes who don't care about the real people or whatever, they think we are bad people for dismissing it and that is basically the argument they use against us
>>2753029you can believe whatever you want but what i said is just fax
>>2753034You are just saying things.
>>2752889
>the only reason third-worlders are anti-imperialist in the first place is because its in their self-interest
Duh. Why would a worker, a woman, a Black person, or any other group engage with progressive politics, if not to some extent, out of self-interest? Is it any different in your case? Did Woke Jesus appear to you in a vision saying
<Timothy, my son, behold, I command you: walk in self-denial and embrace the path of the left, and proclaim my word through leftypol.org. These doctrines, in truth, will bring you no benefit, O my son; however, you must uphold them not for gain, but for the purity and progressiveness of your heart.
>>2752232One only need to read Bourdieu to understand why these countries criminalize homosexuality. Its because homosexuality is widely seen as the cultural capital of the Western elite, the foreign exploiter class. Simple really but Marxoids and queers don't seem to get this at all and have to default to the "look how bad these evil human rights abusers are", at which point the mask slips and they reveal themselves to be nothing but cheap liberals. It might be wrong, but there's little attempt to understand why people have taken this position beyond shitty moralism and little critical analysis.
Burkina Faso would not have passed this law if it was not a victim of imperialism and kept in semi-feudal conditions. Reactionary conservative social beliefs come from backwards economics which comes from being a colonized country. Anti-imperialism is the only way to achieve LGBT rights.
>>2753211>>2753217The land of the upright people stay standing.
>>2753224
>agency
liberal idealism
>>2753274Hes lost 60% of his country to islamists
>>2753274Except that homophobia in Africa is heavily funded by imperialists today. Homophobia in Africa is motivated by pandering to the imperialists.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/africa-us-christian-right-50m/ >>2753276That was the previous coup government and the civilian government preceding it that lost all that land to al-qaeda, losing that land is what caused the multiple coups, not the other way around
God I hate campists. We will never evolve if people keep using fighting against a more powerful opponent to excuse any and all reactionary behaviour, we'll be stuck forever.
>>2752880pretty much. recently discovered the whining about "third world nationalism" that sounded suspiciously like "reverse racism" is unironically anti palestine hasbara. never good faith with these "anti-campist" fuckers again
>>2753418>to excuse any and all reactionary behaviourexcept
1) no one does this
2) reactionary behavior has a material basis that can only be overcome through the development of productive forces so the solution to your complaints is exactly what you complain about and you are fucking stupid
>>2753357How does this excuse work for burkina faso?
>>2753274doesnt matter. progressive social policies come from independent development not by decree. you must have a sufficient infrastructural foundation to support social progress which you cant have without sovereignty. anti-imperialism is a material prerequisite for minority rights
>>2752232Your opinion is irrelevant; the supremacy of the proletariat uniting the workers of the world is the duty of communists, and the economic sovereignty of these peripheral countries against dependence on imperialist capitalism and aggression from finance capital is their right, as is their duty to cut off all foreign financing of finance capital, debt, and weapons so that all the puppets of finance capital hegemony collapse.
If you are a cowardly fearful person clinging to superstitions of the bourgeois state, then you are not a revolutionary socialist; your opinion is irrelevant. Defending economic sovereignty against the demonization of the imperialist core is your duty to prevent class conciliation with your country's finance capital, which attempts to create a puppet state abroad that will intensify the exploitation of workers.
Let's see what the communist manifesto says about what communists are:
<The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
<The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
<The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Chapter II: Proletarians and Communistshttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htmNow let's see what imperialist capitalism is with Lenin:
<But very brief definitions, although convenient, for they sum up the main points, are nevertheless inadequate, since we have to deduce from them some especially important features of the phenomenon that has to be defined. And so, without forgetting the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development, we must give a definition of imperialism that will include the following five of its basic features:
<(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital,” of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.
<Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916, VII. Imperialism as a Special Stage of capitalism.https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch07.htmNow let's look at his position on the types of countries as examples at the time Lenin wrote about the self-determination of nations and capitalist imperialism:
<6. Three Types of Countries in Relation to Self-Determination of Nations<In this respect, countries must be divided into three main types:
<First, the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe and the United States of America. In these countries the bourgeois, progressive, national movements came to an end long ago. Every one of these “great” nations oppresses other nations in the colonies and within its own country. The tasks of the proletariat of these ruling nations are the same as those of the proletariat in England in the nineteenth century in relation to Ireland.
<Secondly, Eastern Europe: Austria, the Balkans and particularly Russia. Here it was the twentieth century that particularly developed the bourgeois-democratic national movements and intensified the national struggle. The tasks of the proletariat in these countries—in regard to the consummation of their bourgeois-democratic reformation, as well as in regard to assisting the socialist revolution in other countries—cannot be achieved unless it champions the right of nations to self-determination. In this connection the most difficult but most important task is to merge the class struggle of the workers in the oppressing nations with the class struggle of the workers in the oppressed nations.
<Thirdly, the semi-colonial countries, like China, Persia, Turkey, and all the colonies, which have a combined population amounting to a billion. In these countries the bourgeois-democratic movements have either hardly begun, or are far from having been completed. Socialists must not only demand the unconditional and immediate liberation of the colonies without compensation—and this demand in its political expression signifies nothing more nor less than the recognition of the right to self-determination—but must render determined support to the more revolutionary elements in the bourgeois-democratic movements for national liberation in these countries and assist their rebellion—and if need be, their revolutionary war—against the imperialist powers that oppress them.
<V. I. Lenin, The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, 1916https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jan/x01.htm#fwV22P151F01Now regarding the issue of wars and the opportunists who obscure the truth by trying to defend imperialist capitalist finance capital that maintains dependence to intensify exploitation. If you think Iran has no right to fight for economic sovereignty or possess nuclear weapons because of some outrage or sentimentality of yours:
<In short: a war between imperialist Great Powers (i.e., powers that oppress a whole number of nations and enmesh them in dependence on finance capital, etc.), or in alliance with the Great Powers, is an imperialist war. Such is the war of 1914–16. And in this war “defence of the fatherland” is a deception, an attempt to justify the war.
<A war against imperialist, i.e., oppressing, powers by oppressed (for example, colonial) nations is a genuine national war. It is possible today too. “Defence of the fatherland” in a war waged by an oppressed nation against a foreign oppressor is not a deception. Socialists are not opposed to “defence of the fatherland” in such a war.
<V. I. Lenin, A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism, 1. The Marxist Attitude Towards War and “Defence of the Fatherland"https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/carimarx/1.htm#v23pp64h-029Now a text against those opportunists who equate every war as if it were "inter-imperialist" to defend US hegemony:
<Advanced European (and American) capitalism has entered a new era of imperialism. Does it follow from that that only imperialist wars are now possible? Any such contention would be absurd. It would reveal inability to distinguish a given concrete phenomenon from the sum total of variegated phenomena possible in a given era.
<V. I. Lenin, A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism, 2. “Our Understanding of the New Era”https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/carimarx/2.htm#v23pp64h-036 >>2753424Except anti-imperial reactionary behaviour usually comes joined at the hip with exploitative capitalism justified through nationalism. So long as the ruling elite can maintain a siege mentality in the population they can keep getting away with it.
>>2753675What exactly was the alternative? LGBT anti-assimilationists are schizos who nothing will ever be good enough for and who fetishize a time in history when it sucked horribly to be LGBT. I don't know about you, maybe it's not even applicable to you, but I think winning a state of affairs where we have basic civil rights and your average normie doesn't give too much of a shit was a very big deal and I think preserving that situation is much more important than being able to cosplay radicalism. We were handed, by assimilationist activists, an exceptionally tolerant little bubble of time for LGBT people. A level of tolerance that is unparalleled historically and that we can easily see from history could be very fragile. Not to blame the signs that it might be ending on the no cops at pride crowd primarily but it didn't help.
>>2752232>spreading reactionary ideologies, just because they are “anti-west”>>2752271>chizo in their individual opinions some time<(taps the sign: "You aren't thinking dialectically")When a country goes through a crisis, there is a power vacuum, and the empty space of hegemony is usually filled by whoever is the most evolutionary adaptive and able to flourish under those harsh material conditions. They often resist whatever imperialism threatens them merely for survival. Very funny that leftists exclaim 'workers are struggling to merely survive!' but they don't actually believe that? They think its just random people being random? lol
Reactionary 'strongmen' opportunists like Stalin/etc who rise to the top are to be expected. Nice and friendly mutual aid cooperation isn't likely to survive a forest fire that destroys everything
>>2752885>the war their government is waging on Iranevery socialist I've seen has done nothing but sneer with contempt at the concept of Iran's state socialism as a "regime that I am of course not going to defend". Sorry spiritually Israeli radlibs but this is your war!
>They keep bitching about anarchists and liberals>their worldview is starting to crumble apartAnarcho-libs: "Israel wants to turn the middle east into Syria, which I have defined my entire personality around cheering while I seethed at Assadist red fascist tankies to build social capital for my brand as a woke antifa Jewish content creator. I'm totally anti-Zionist though trust me bro"
>>2753666it doesnt matter because the material base determines ideas not the other way around. they can maintain a siege mentality because they are physically under siege not because they are tricking people with false ideas. if you want them to stop "getting away with it" you address the primary contradiction, that is you end the imperialist siege.
Forget the gays, those guys are just local ruling class negotiating a bigger share of the imperialist pie, now the US is aiming for even bigger economic investnents in the sahel in addition to military stuff. At the end of the day burkinabe workers get fucked just about the same while their bourgeois exploiters cynically glaze sankara who let's be real would have all of them shot
>>2753748Vaguely rambling about evolution, material conditions and forest fires also is not dialectics. Read a book.
>>2753783Books are for idiots
>>2753748>Iran's state socialismIran does not have a state-socialist or state-socialist economy. Iran has a capitalist economy, and as a bourgeois state, it is possible to have state capitalism, which is superior to private capitalism, but present-day Iran has private capitalism like all current capitalist economies. Remember that even so, having an independent internal capitalist national economy within the country puts it in a superior position to debt-dependent neocolonies with a primary-exporting economy. Your duty as a communist is to oppose any measure by foreign financial capital—arms, military, loans, etc.—that seeks to maintain puppets of financial capital serving US and European hegemony.
All this means that Iran has the right to nuclear weapons and economic sovereignty because this serves the interests of communists in the future.
>>2753732>LGBT anti-assimilationists are schizos who nothing will ever be good enough forbut there are more workers than porky. Letting a rich minority co-opt your pride IS anti-assimilationist.
>>2753748you quoted my post but didn't seem to read the rest of it. if you had, you would see that I was "thinking dialectically" and addressed how LGBT is seen as a 5th column in the colonial countries. I even provided a very simple meme illustrating the feedback loop.
>>2753732> an exceptionally tolerant little bubble of time for LGBT people. only those with property. LGBT proles are still treated like shit. Like the meme said. LGBT in the imperial core only won bourgeois "rights" which can be withdrawn. the LGBT people got the right to express themselves, but no real protections from violence. That is not liberation. That is the bourgeoisie leading them to a class collaborationist scapegoat status with false promises of protection.
>>2752232Why do you hate the proletariat so much?
>>2753432Nobody has a duty to do jack shit. Marxism is a science. Either gay workers in the imperial core have a material interest to support Burkina Faso or they do not.
>>2753850Marxism isn't a science, that's just bullshit to trick the rubes
>>2753830We've seen before that there's no guarantee that socialism will lead to sustained periods of gay rights. The left in the 1920s was largely pretty pro-gay, from the 30s until the end of the Cold War it wasn't. The only exception being the DDR in the 80s and norms there changed because of a bottom up protest movement modeled on the Western gay rights movement, not because the party itself was pro-gay. Same for Cuba and China, to the extent they've liberalized on the issue it's because of Western cultural influence. That's not me being a Western exceptionalist or saying socialism doesn't matter, it is just a fact of history.
And anyway idk what trying to radicalize Pride and LGBT culture generally has to do with bringing socialism any closer. LGBT people are liberally estimated at about 3-9% of the population depending on the country and poll. Probably it's a bit less than that if you take away the trend chasers. That is not a number of people that can do the revolution.
>>2753836I can tell you're very young. The situation today in any Western country is so much better than it was just 30 years ago that there's no comparison. You don't need to have property to benefit from marriage, anti-discrimination laws, free prep. If we're talking about boomer gen then they did not even have the baseline ability to have gay sex without worrying about the law. These are material benefits for proletarian gay people and they were won by assimilationist activism, not waving a bunch of red flags and radqueer nonsense.
>>2753874This would be compelling if not for lgbt rights are being thrown under the bus at the moment in the West while socialist countries outpace them. The socialism of the 1950s was anti gay because the entire world was anti gay, the user being one of the first countries to actually decriminalise it. In the same way that western influence made modern socialist countries liberalise gay rights, they also spread homophobia for most of the 20th century by virtue of being the hegemonic power.
The West was lobotmizing gay people, don't forget it.
>>2753357>Except that homophobia in Africa is heavily funded by imperialists today. Homophobia in Africa is motivated by pandering to the imperialists.Yeah I will mostly expect this, Uganda is just as repressive of queers as Burkina Faso and they are still a western puppet. But western imperialism isn’t entirely to blame because homophobia sill sometimes happens as a reaction to imperialism as we see in Burkina Faso although less common.
>>2753431>doesnt matter. progressive social policies come from independent development not by decree. you must have a sufficient infrastructural foundation to support social progress which you cant have without sovereignty. anti-imperialism is a material prerequisite for minority rightsWhy are you acting as if Burkina Faso is some Tap and Wait game where they have to wait 10 hours to unlock homosexuality?!?! Although it was mostly banned even before the coup there was no reason to codify it.
>>2753887I see it as a similar conundrum that the ussr inherited and why they rolled back the social progress they made in the 1920s, mainly because everyone under them hated it because the conditions they where subjected too in serfdom degraded the mass consciousness so much.
Same with bf, most of the country doesn't even have electricity, how are they meant to educate people? They have to appease the reactionary mass public to get them on side. It sucks but its the material and political reality.
>>2752314>Homosexuality is not radicalyou're just not gay enough
Auto-translated from French but this is a Nigerien intellectual talking about the Sahel. I like his takes. He does not like the Sahel juntas and thinks they're retarded and sees them as comparable to Donald Trump in the U.S. and Nigel Farage in the U.K., but they emerged from a failure of liberal (bourgeois) democracy which became attractive in Africa in the 1990s after many countries underwent an economic collapse in tandem with the collapse of the USSR's alternative concept of a "people's democracy." But that interest in democracy was co-opted by a Western hegemonic project, which hopelessly confused the whole thing, and the attempt at doing bourgeois democracy failed (it was corrupt and shitty and didn't deliver the goods). Also the discourse of developmentalism is more important, and a lot of people came to reject democracy because they don't view it as delivering development.
>In Africa, democracy is today rejected by a significant portion of the intelligentsia, and its very concept faces strong headwinds in public opinion. This is particularly true in countries where that concept has achieved a certain degree of realization in the form of institutions and social groups such as the political class and civil society. In these countries, the promises that democracy seemed to carry—namely, for most people, the kind of political life that appears to exist in the West and that serves as an indicator of success and development—have not materialized.
>In African political vocabulary, development still carries a slightly greater importance than anything else, because it is this project that gave rise to the continent’s modern states, and collective entities tend to define themselves more by their origins than by anything else. Principia, the Latin word from which “principles” derives, simply meant “beginnings.” The project of development lay at the “beginning” (the foundation) of the African state; it was the element that, at the dawn of independence in the 1960s, was meant to legitimize emerging state power and the dominance of new elites. This also applies to Ethiopia, which had retained its independence but, in the 1960s, experienced growing unrest against the imperial regime in the name of objectives fundamentally similar to those of other African countries—namely modernization, development, progress, justice, and a new state committed to delivering these benefits.
>These positive aims were not at all associated with democracy, but were instead to be achieved through a single-minded, unwavering political will exercised by means of a disciplinary authority. The term did exist in the lexicon of the many adherents of Marxism–Leninism, where democracy was seen as the outcome of a popular revolution led by a vanguard of subversive players. But when such revolutions took place, or were claimed to have taken place, they resulted in the emergence of an authoritarian leader presenting himself as the champion of the people, rather than in genuine government by the people, which is the fundamental meaning of the word according to its Greek etymology. Development was conceived as a kind of political and economic war against poverty and its social and cultural roots, and a war required an iron hand—either in the form of a mass single party or a military junta, preferably led by a charismatic figure or strongman.
>Even today, the Africans’ modern political heroes are leaders who seem to embody these ideals—figures such as Thomas Sankara and Paul Kagame. Africans project this fantasy onto any leader who appears to fit this profile. One might cite the example of the prime minister here, or that of the Burkinabè dictator Ibrahim Traoré.
>In Africa’s political trajectory, the development project began to falter in the 1970s and collapsed completely in the 1980s. Many theories attributed responsibility to the West and to the unjust international political economy it dominated, and to a large extent rightly so. But it was also necessary to take into account the fact that political regimes rarely survive a defeat in war. Even when they do, they are so weakened that they must change in order to endure. And if development was a war, then failing to achieve it amounted to a defeat—one that authoritarian regimes had to pay for one way or the other.
>This situation was particularly striking in the region I come from, the Sahel. Between 1966 and 1976, this region experienced a series of coups d’état and political changes that clearly illustrate this point. The first occurred in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), when the leader at the time, Maurice Yaméogo, announced a drastic austerity plan in response to a severe fiscal crisis. He was overthrown following a popular uprising, which was quickly followed by a military takeover. Next came Mali, where the socialist leader Modibo Keïta was also overthrown in 1968, in a context of economic crisis and social unrest that had paved the way for the coup. In Niger, the same thing happened in 1974, after the great Sahelian drought had destroyed the country’s development model, while popular discontent—particularly driven by students and trade unions—was weakening the regime. The following year, Chad experienced a similar event in an even more brutal manner. Finally, in Senegal, President Senghor, having understood the direction of history, chose a different path: faced with the economic crisis, he reintroduced multiparty politics in 1976. He would in fact resign a few years later, declaring, “the African merrymaking is over,” and having no desire to rule over the pauperization he saw coming.
>And, of course, we know that Burkina Faso attempted, in the 1980s, a desperate, last-ditch effort to win the battle for development, resorting to drastic revolutionary and authoritarian means. This attempt ended in blood-soaked failure.
>Thus, in the 1980s, a desire to change course emerged across Africa. Populations were sinking into pauperization while being oppressed by an authoritarianism that had become pointless, thereby combining the worst of both worlds. It was then that the idea of democracy began to assert itself as an appealing alternative to this debacle.
>Until then, when democracy was discussed, it usually meant either “people’s democracy,” favored by the intelligentsia—though what that actually looked like in practice, in terms of institutions and the real distribution of power, remained unclear—or “bourgeois democracy,” which, in line with Marxist thinking, was seen as an exclusionary system reserved for the bourgeoisie, despite the fact that no true bourgeoisie existed in Africa.
>In the 1980s, part of Africa’s intelligentsia began to take the concept of liberal democracy seriously, and it became the subject of extensive debate—particularly in the CODESRIA journal Africa Development. Incidentally, the very title of this flagship journal of Africa’s scholarly intelligentsias reflects the enduring importance of the idea of development, conceived as Africa’s project par excellence.
>Within its pages, the core debate revolved around the following question: should liberal democracy be embraced for its intrinsic virtues—among them the rule of law, fundamental freedoms (of expression, association, and conscience), as well as institutions of political participation and representation—or should it primarily be seen as a more effective means of achieving development than authoritarian rule?
>This debate gave rise to three broad perspectives: instrumental, normative, and contextual. They were notably advanced by Peter Anyang Nyang’o, for whom democracy is an instrument for achieving a better African dispensation; Thandika Mkandawire, who defended democracy as a value in itself (a position to which Nyang’o responded); and Claude Ake, who saw democracy as a phenomenon that must be shaped by the African context. Of course, these perspectives were not mutually exclusive, but they highlighted different dimensions of the value to be attached to the emerging democratic project in Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
>Overall, however, African public opinion—both among intellectuals and the broader population—tended to adopt the instrumental approach. Those who defended democracy for its own sake were in the minority and struggled to make their case in the public arena, all the more so as they often relied on a “ready-made” model of democracy drawn from Western experience as their reference point. They paid little attention to Claude Ake’s argument that a truly relevant conception of democracy for Africa could only be developed from Africa’s own experience.
>In my view, it is Claude Ake’s perspective that we should have followed, and I will return to what that entails at the end of my remarks. The fact remains, however, that we adopted an instrumental approach—one that was, moreover, rather underdeveloped. It was not exactly the highly sophisticated version advocated by Anyang Nyang’o.
>This instrumental approach posed problems on two levels. First, it was the product of a hegemonic tendency. Second, it gave rise to two distinct logics of instrumentalization—one popular, the other elite-driven—which were, and still are, at the very least incompatible with one another.
>Let me now examine these two levels, or aspects, of the problem.
>As I mentioned earlier, African intellectuals began in the 1980s to take liberal democracy seriously—not under the influence of the West, where this system was already firmly established, but in response to the severe political crisis Africa was then experiencing.
>More specifically, this shift stemmed from the realization that, although authoritarian regimes sought to mobilize populations through mass parties, tightly controlled organizations, slogans, and disciplinary ideologies—often resorting to violence and terror—their actual effect had been, in practice, to demobilize the population. Bodies complied, under the pressure of fear and coercion, but hearts and minds were not engaged.
>By contrast, liberal democracy had the advantage of valuing individual will and autonomy, implying that power over people should rest on persuasion and accountability rather than on violence and paternalism. In the democratic movements that emerged at the time, authoritarian rule was therefore often likened to a form of colonial domination, while democratization was seen as a second independence—or even a new liberation.
>At the time, dominant discourses about Africa—whether from the so-called free world or the Eastern bloc—categorically rejected the idea that liberal democracy could be viable in Africa, albeit for different reasons.
>The Eastern bloc, then in decline, remained committed to the idea of “people’s democracy,” even as it was facing, within its own ranks—particularly in Eastern Europe—a growing wave of movements in favor of liberal democracy, for reasons partly similar to those observed in Africa. In the West, the prevailing view—including in political science—was that democracy is an outcome, not a project. It was seen as the product of development and the social and cultural transformations that accompany it: it presupposes a substantial middle class, an educated population, a pacified political culture, and a sufficient degree of national homogeneity to politically neutralize divisive factors such as religion or ethnicity. On all these counts, African countries were seen as lagging behind and therefore unable to realistically aspire to democracy in the sense of advanced Western democracies.
>Of course, democracy could also be seen as a means of achieving these conditions. And indeed, if one looks at Western history, the available evidence suggests that democracy is not simply an outcome, but the product of struggle—a point to which I will return. But the effect of hegemony, whether Soviet or liberal, is to naturalize the methods and practices that prevail at the core of the dominant system—particularly in its relations with the peripheries—that is, to present them as if they were natural truths rather than the result of historical struggles.
>In this context, when the hegemonic ambitions of the Soviet Union collapsed at the turn of the 1990s, liberal democracy became the only hegemonic model on the global stage. The West then began to promote this system as one that all countries ought to adopt, pushing aside the idea that it might not be suited to most non-Western contexts.
>A convergence thus emerged between, on the one hand, Africa’s groping toward liberal democracy and, on the other, the West’s sudden promotion of this model—a convergence that gave rise to a rather particular kind of confusion in African minds.
>This is particularly evident in francophone countries, where the hegemonic impulse took the form of a speech by French President François Mitterrand, calling on African leaders to adopt democracy, at a Franco-African summit held in La Baule in June 1990. To this day, many people still believe the narrative that democratization in francophone Africa began at La Baule. In reality, it had started much earlier—in the mid to late 1980s in many of these countries, including Niger, which I know best. In fact, the most decisive event in this process, the National Conference in Benin, took place in February 1990, several months before the La Baule speech.
>An interesting aspect of La Baule is that its supposed effects were once credited to France, at a time when democracy was in vogue, whereas today they have become a source of grievance against it, now that democracy has become a contested system.
>In any case, what we observed across Africa—not just in its francophone regions—was a surge in support for democracy that was, in a sense, captured by a hegemonic project.
>This appropriation certainly accelerated the adoption of democracy, but it also likely made it shallower. It undoubtedly weakened African intellectual engagement with democracy by providing Western support across all areas of its implementation—through NGO funding, capacity-building programs, training, and so on. Today, in the counter-hegemonic moment that large parts of Africa are experiencing, this clearly works against democracy. Even at the time, it mainly helped foster a diluted version of democracy which many Africans perceived in purely instrumental terms.
>From this perspective, there is what one might call a popular form of instrumentalization: the idea that democracy must necessarily lead to development. It is thus seen as a means to that end, rather than as a value in itself. This aspiration is legitimate, but it also implies that the real commitment is not to democracy as such, but to development—which opens the door to tension, or even contradiction, between the two.
>Alongside this, there is an elite form of instrumentalization, which consists in turning democratic institutions into a vehicle for power grabs, social climbing, and in general private and individual aggrandizement—rather than for public service and the collective good. Democratic institutions thus become subordinated to these illegitimate ambitions, which have ended up becoming pervasive within the social group produced by this system: the political class.
>Both forms of instrumentalizing democracy were harmful, albeit in different ways, and they were also partly incompatible with one another.
>One may assume that the objectives of the political class have contributed to creating a situation unfavorable to development: a proliferation of corrupt practices linked to access to the state and control over rents and privileges, which has fragmented the political class into factions rather than genuine parties. These factions have engaged in intense competition, brutalizing institutions within a zero-sum logic. This has given rise to a troubling phenomenon: that of the monopolistic party—in other words, not strictly a single party, but a ruling party that shows little tolerance for opposition. The system that emerges from this situation is no longer led by a true national leader, as in the 1960s, but by a partisan boss.
>This trend could be mitigated—or even contained—where democratic institutions were relatively strong, as in Senegal, Ghana, or even Nigeria, not to mention the countries most advanced in terms of democratic institutionalization, such as Botswana and Namibia. But elsewhere, it contributed to a deterioration in governance, leading to excessive politicization across many areas of life and the exclusion of political opponents. In such a context, meritocracy, though essential for development, simply becomes impossible to establish.
>Ultimately, from the perspective of ordinary people, democracy—as embodied by its driving force, the political class—and good governance, which is essential for development, appear to be incompatible. This helps explain, for example, the widespread popularity of Paul Kagame across the continent: he has neutralized the political class and frozen the democratic process, along with the freedoms associated with it—in exchange for what appears to be an effective system of governance. Many see this as a model worth following.
>The overall result, however, is a widespread sense of discontent.
>Those living in democratized countries are dissatisfied with the elite-driven form of democracy they experience; those in countries where authoritarian leaders have stalled democratization—especially in equatorial Africa—regret not even having access to that very form of democracy others loath; and those in Rwanda can only express their satisfaction at the cost of relinquishing what is the true gift of democracy: the vital energy and dignity of a free humanity collectively engaged in addressing the many challenges of living together.
>This is where we stand today.
>The path that was not taken is that of contextual democracy, as advocated by Claude Ake. Unlike him, I do not have a precise theory of what a form of democracy truly adapted to the African context would look like.
>Ake sought to develop an ideal vision of African democracy capable of countering the idealized image of Western democracy as promoted by hegemonic discourse. But in the era of Trump and the rise of illiberalism within the so-called advanced democracies themselves, such an image is difficult to sustain. Likewise, the ideal version of communal democracy proposed by Ake would struggle to accommodate the continent’s changing and dynamic realities.
>I share his view that we must start from African realities; but it is not so easy to determine exactly what those realities are. Ake sought to do so by adopting an approach that might be described as “the colony strikes back”: he highlights precisely those features of African societies that Western hegemonic—or, in his terms, universalist—discourse tends to devalue, setting them in opposition to a supposed Western superiority.
>For my part—and here I align more closely with Mkandawire’s perspective—I suggest instead starting from the idea of democracy as such, neither Western nor African, and considering it as a value in its own right. But a value that does not come naturally, that is not acquired effortlessly, nor attained without struggle.
>In reality, the problem with what hegemonism proposed did not lie so much in its hegemonic nature as in the fact that it made us complacent. It led us to believe that it was enough to reproduce liberal-democratic institutions as if they were ready-made products—mere consumer goods—without investing the thought, effort, and struggle that alone can turn an institution into a living reality rather than a set of words on paper.
>This led us to underestimate democracy: we came to see it as extremely fragile—which it is, as the current situation in the United States, long assumed to be the most robust of democracies, demonstrates—and deeply frustrating—which it can also be. But for these very reasons, we ended up regarding it as beyond repair, which is a serious mistake.
>For my part, there are three essential points that I believe we must keep in mind:
>First, we must recognize the value of democracy. Some of the elements of that value are present in its liberal form—particularly the rule of law and fundamental freedoms—while others, such as respect for human dignity in terms of social justice, are lacking. This absence is not due to liberalism as such, but rather to the fact that liberal democracy developed within the context of monopolistic, rentier capitalism, which, in my view, constitutes a socio-economic formation fundamentally incompatible with democracy.
>Second, it is necessary to ensure that democracy serves development—or, to use a formulation I prefer, that it helps bring about a “good country”: one in which prosperity is not measured solely by growth rates or profit margins, but by the extent to which those most exposed to hardship within the existing order can recognize it as a good country. For political truth comes from the margins, not from the center.
>Third, with the collapse of Western hegemony—driven in part by the actions of this consequential man, Donald Trump—we are now free to rethink democracy without the dead weight of hegemonic influence. But this also means that we can no longer afford to be complacent. If democracy can only function within its own specific context, then this implies, for example, that African universities must undertake a vast program of research and theorization devoted to the study of our societies, economies, and cultures in their concrete reality—their particular texture, their present forms, and their future trajectories.
>This reflection must be both critical and normative, in keeping with the demands of democracy—that is, government by the people, but by a people that truly constitutes a people, grounded in law, rather than a mere multitude brought together by the accidents of history. A multitude is ruled by a leader or a tyrant; a people governs itself through institutions it creates and continually rethinks, in the ongoing pursuit of justice and the never-completed quest for a good country.https://rahmane.substack.com/p/addis-notes-on-democracy-in-africa >>2753881The left of just 30 years prior had not been anti-gay in the 1950s, certainly not overwhelmingly so especially in Western Europe.
To be clear I'm not saying that the Eastern Bloc was bad because of homophobia. My point is that history shows that socialism is not some magical cure for it. I don't think there necessarily is a permanent solution even. We've seen violent and persecutory homophobia under primitive communism, under the slave mode of production, under feudalism, under capitalism and under socialism. The idea that it's just going to melt away once enough factories are built or something like that is obviously a relic of 19th century positivism. The moments of tolerance that end up existing are very precious and fragile and we have to be careful not to break them, if we value stupid bourgeois things like marriage, medicine and having the right to fuck without going to jail that is.
>while socialist countries outpace themOn gay rights? I guess that's why China is cracking down on gays in media and yaoi writers right? Cuba is headed to outpace us and Laos isn't doing horribly but neither exactly matters in an international sense.
>>2753906Yes China has had some gaffs, should keep in mind both of the things you mentioned are regional within China in the same way that lgbt rights aren't uniform in the US either, there are reactionary pockets in China in the same way and sometimes those reactionaries get political power to do that shit.
It still doesn't even remotely compare to how both the UK and the US are currently getting off on trans bashing
>>2753908What I'm talking about isn't regional. There is a national policy against overly feminine men in media and also against yaoi. Both of those obviously are homophobic, both of them are coming from the party and both are relatively new. China is backsliding on gay rights just like the West is in other words. On trans issues they're better but trans issues become threatening to the degree that trans people are agitating for more rights and are a very visible part of cultural politics. Conservative American newspapers in the 50s were calling Christine Jorgensen beautiful and calling her by the right pronouns. Today that kind of treatment is much less likely precisely because trans rights has advanced.
>>2753850Gay workers within the imperialist core share a common interest in the self-determination of nations; that is, the economic sovereignty of Burkina Faso will not allow the most intense exploitation and dependence by imperialist capitalism to prevent these capitalists from gaining strength to more easily attack the workers in their country. It's important to remember that the labor aristocracy is a minority group of workers whom the bourgeoisie optionally bribes to weaken the workers' movement with lies, so that in the future this movement will weaken, allowing the capitalists to withdraw concessions, since these workers have been pacified through deception.
Let's consider a quote from Lenin about the labor aristocracy and what to do:
<In a letter to Marx, dated October 7, 1858, Engels wrote: “…The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.” In a letter to Sorge, dated September 21, 1872, Engels informs him that Hales kicked up a big row in the Federal Council of the International and secured a vote of censure on Marx for saying that “the English labour leaders had sold themselves”. Marx wrote to Sorge on August 4, 1874: “As to the urban workers here [in England], it is a pity that the whole pack of leaders did not get into Parliament. This would be the surest way of getting rid of the whole lot.” In a letter to Marx, dated August 11, 1881, Engels speaks about “those very worst English trade unions which allow themselves to be led by men sold to, or at least paid by, the bourgeoisie.” In a letter to Kautsky, dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote: “You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers’ party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies.”
<On December 7, 1889, Engels wrote to Sorge: “The most repulsive thing here [in England] is the bourgeois ‘respectability’, which has grown deep into the bones of the workers…. Even Tom Mann, whom I regard as the best of the lot, is fond of mentioning that he will be lunching with the Lord Mayor. If one compares this with the French, one realises, what a revolution is good for, after all.”[10] In a letter, dated April 19, 1890: “But under the surface the movement [of the working class in England] is going on, is embracing ever wider sections and mostly just among the hitherto stagnant lowest [Engels’s italics] strata. The day is no longer far off when this mass will suddenly find itself, when it will dawn upon it that it itself is this colossal mass in motion.” On March 4, 1891: “The failure of the collapsed Dockers’ Union; the ‘old’ conservative trade unions, rich and therefore cowardly, remain lone on the field….” September 14, 1891: at the Newcastle Trade Union Congress the old unionists, opponents of the eight-hour day, were defeated “and the bourgeois papers recognise the defeat of the bourgeois labour party” (Engels’s italics throughout)….
<That these ideas, which were repeated by Engels over the course of decades, were so expressed by him publicly, in the press, is proved by his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1892. Here he speaks of an “aristocracy among the working class”, of a “privileged minority of the workers”, in contradistinction to the “great mass of working people”. “A small, privileged, protected minority” of the working class alone was “permanently benefited” by the privileged position of England in 1848–68, whereas “the great bulk of them experienced at best but a temporary improvement”…. “With the break-down of that [England’s industrial] monopoly, the English working class will lose that privileged position…” The members of the “new” unions, the unions of the unskilled workers, “had this immense advantage, that their minds were virgin soil, entirely free from the inherited ‘respectable’ bourgeois prejudices which hampered the brains of the better situated ‘old unionists’” …. “The so-called workers’ representatives” in England are people “who are forgiven their being members of the working class because they themselves would like to drown their quality of being workers in the ocean of their liberalism…”[…]
<The bourgeoisie of an imperialist “Great” Power can economically bribe the upper strata of “its” workers by spending on this a hundred million or so francs a year, for its superprofits most likely amount to about a thousand million. And how this little sop is divided among the labour ministers, “labour representatives” (remember Engels’s splendid analysis of the term), labour members of War Industries Committees, labour officials, workers belonging to the narrow craft unions, office employees, etc., etc., is a secondary question.[…]
<The last third of the nineteenth century saw the transition to the new, imperialist era. Finance capital not of one, but of several, though very few, Great Powers enjoys a monopoly. (In Japan and Russia the monopoly of military power, vast territories, or special facilities for robbing minority nationalities, China, etc., partly supplements, partly takes the place of, the monopoly of modern, up-to-date finance capital.) This difference explains why England’s monopoly position could remain unchallenged for decades. The monopoly of modern finance capital is being frantically challenged; the era of imperialist wars has begun. It was possible in those days to bribe and corrupt the working class of one country for decades. This is now improbable, if not impossible. But on the other hand, every imperialist “Great” Power can and does bribe smaller strata (than in England in 1848–68) of the “labour aristocracy”. Formerly a “bourgeois labour party”, to use Engels’s remarkably profound expression, could arise only in one country, because it alone enjoyed a monopoly, but, on the other hand, it could exist for a long time. Now a “bourgeois labour party” is inevitable and typical in all imperialist countries; but in view of the desperate struggle they are waging for the division of spoils it is improbable that such a party can prevail for long in a number of countries. For the trusts, the financial oligarchy, high prices, etc., while enabling the bribery of a handful in the top layers, are increasingly oppressing, crushing, ruining and torturing the mass of the proletariat and the semi-proletariat.[…]
<On the economic basis referred to above, the political institutions of modern capitalism—press, parliament associations, congresses etc.—have created political privileges and sops for the respectful, meek, reformist and patriotic office employees and workers, corresponding to the economic privileges and sops. Lucrative and soft jobs in the government or on the war industries committees, in parliament and on diverse committees, on the editorial staffs of “respectable”, legally published newspapers or on the management councils of no less respectable and “bourgeois law-abiding” trade unions—this is the bait by which the imperialist bourgeoisie attracts and rewards the representatives and supporters of the “bourgeois labour parties”.
<One of the most common sophistries of Kautskyism is its reference to the “masses”. We do not want, they say, to break away from the masses and mass organisations! But just think how Engels put the question. In the nineteenth century the “mass organisations” of the English trade unions were on the side of the bourgeois labour party. Marx and Engels did not reconcile themselves to it on this ground; they exposed it. They did not forget, firstly, that the trade union organisations directly embraced a minority of the proletariat. In England then, as in Germany now, not more than one-fifth of the proletariat was organised. No one can seriously think it possible to organise the majority of the proletariat under capitalism. Secondly—and this is the main point—it is not so much a question of the size of an organisation, as of the real, objective significance of its policy: does its policy represent the masses, does it serve them, i.e., does it aim at their liberation from capitalism, or does it represent the interests of the minority, the minority’s reconciliation with capitalism? The latter was true of England in the nineteenth century, and it is true of Germany, etc., now.
<Engels draws a distinction between the “bourgeois labour party” of the old trade unions—the privileged minority—and the “lowest mass”, the real majority, and appeals to the latter, who are not infected by “bourgeois respectability”. This is the essence of Marxist tactics!
<Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the “defenders of the fatherland” in the imperialist war represent only a minority. And it is therefore our duty, if we wish to remain socialists to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses; this is the whole meaning and the whole purport of the struggle against opportunism. By exposing the fact that the opportunists and social-chauvinists are in reality betraying and selling the interests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the vehicles of bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are really allies and agents of the bourgeoisie, we teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist armistices.
<The only Marxist line in the world labour movement is to explain to the masses the inevitability and necessity of breaking with opportunism, to educate them for revolution by waging a relentless struggle against opportunism, to utilise the experience of the war to expose, not conceal, the utter vileness of national-liberal labour politics.
<V.I. Lenin, “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htmTherefore, you have a duty to cut off any financing, loans, and arms sales from foreign financial capital if you are in the imperialist core, regardless of the consequences or your cheap sentimentality, so that the puppets of financial capitalism collapse.
>>2753920I will say the yaoi stuff has a bit of a moral panic angle to it as well as some actual reasonable stuff mixed in, like it was initially a reaction to people writing pedoshit and posting it on national forums and a panic ensued. I'd say from knowing gay men in China who have lived in the UK they believe that China is 100x more safe for them because people won't assault them on the street for holding hands with a guy.
>>2753925If a party can't pass a law against pedoshit without it turning into a gay propaganda law then that isn't a pro-gay party. I'm sure assault of all kinds is a lot less frequent in China but that doesn't make me any less pessimistic about things.
>>2753928Moral panics hit everyone, the difference is china doesn't have a tabloid press constantly stoking idpol issues with hysteria that then drives the mass public into reaction against minorities.
Also expecting a 80 year old Chinese political to understand the nuance in smut about underage dick girls might be a bridge too far sorry anon
>>2753931You had the factories for decades in the USSR and it didn't produce a superstructure that was even passively tolerant of gay people. In China on the other hand there mostly was passive tolerance despite China being a lot less industrialized than the USSR until the reforms. This kind of holds true for the 19th century too, the Ottomans were a lot more progressive on gays than any place in the West, to generalize a lot, but they were economically the most backwards of the major powers.
I think people really need to put deterministic schemes to one side and look objectively at the history if they want to have a realistic view on the issue. There is very little evidence that periods of homophobia line up cleanly with any particular economic or social order, or moment if you prefer, and even less evidence that any particular economic or social order is a cure for it. Hence the caution about not taking these periods of tolerance like the one both us and the Chinese are living through at the moment for granted. They can and have ended before, under all kinds of governments and in all kinds of societies. And personally my reason for supporting communism is not moralistic self-sacrifice on the altar of some suffering victim an ocean away, it's self-interest. Solidarity with the suffering victim an ocean away happens to be necessary for that but even so, if you are LGBT you really should not be under the illusion that you have permanently reliable friends in politics. Among the third world masses less than anywhere lol but it's true in general.
>>2753950Its best understood sociologically thru moral panics, look your the Irish garroting panic its the same shit, throwing minorities under the bus is a quick way to make money or gain political power.
The only way to stop this is educating people enough to recognise this when it happens.
>>2753921>self-determination of nations;Liberal drivel, drink bleach you jewish negro
>>2753951>>2753957the national liberation will continue and you will be happy.
>>2753960
>>The liberalism will continue
erm, yes? are you going to stop it? the people's stock market will continue and you will be happy
>>2753966
lassaleanGODS won, cope
>>2753950Common confusion, Ottoman's were vile pederasts which is actually homophobic and not homosexual. The same thing goes for raping slaves and so on. It's like those bizarre homoerotic right-wingers who rape male prostitutes.
>>2753874>We've seen before that there's no guarantee that socialism will lead to sustained periods of gay rights.in every example of socialism it was less developed then the west at the period when the west had gay rights. the united states itself didnt have gay marriage until 10 years ago.
>to the extent they've liberalized on the issue it's because of Western cultural influence. That's not me being a Western exceptionalist or saying socialism doesn't matter, it is just a fact of history.no its because of the level of development
>>2753887>Why are you acting as if Burkina Faso is some Tap and Wait game where they have to wait 10 hours to unlock homosexuality?!?! i dont know what that is but its because that is how the world works. picrel
>>2753906>My point is that history shows that socialism is not some magical cure for it.again, neither is capitalism.
>The idea that it's just going to melt away once enough factories are built or something like that is obviously a relic of 19th century positivism.???? whats positivistic about materialist dialectics? thats exactly how it works. why dont agriculture societies tolerate homosexuality? they need hetero families with 6-10 kids for the harvest. why do computer service economies? because they dont. when does gay culture become a thing? urbanization and social services overcoming the social necessity of nuclear families and inheritance.
>>2753422Of course. Anyone whining about campism or "third world nationalism" is an unironic bloodthirsty ziorat. It's obvious hasbara as the current most notable national project of such character is in Palestine. It's the same with leftcoms who try to subtly advocate against Palestinian nationhood with some bullshit about choosing the side of the proletariat or whatever, in effect they are advocating for Palestinians to remain a subjegated untermensch for the Israelis.
>>2754263Ok. Imagine that magically palestinian natlib happens in approximately n + 2 weeks. What's stopping markets from bullying a small poor nation in the middle east into becoming a neoliberal shithole and imposing suffering upon Palestinian workers? What would stop powers like the US, Russia, or Turkey from making them a proxy? What meaningful capacity would Palestine have for political and economic self-determination? What would stop them from getting bombed and destabilized if they didn't obey the above?
>>2754265It would still be preferable to being a racial untermensch subjected to apartheid and genocide zioscum
>>2754197Look at how socialist Poland and Ireland are now!
Should probably use the CIA to overthrow their government and install a much more reactionary pro capital regime so that they can be homophobic AND economically backward but closested gay CEOs in burgerland can use the money to do bdsm on male prostitutes in a fully kitted out dungeon then. That sounds better to me and woke (pro sex work)
>>2753957the resident glowie wrecker, once again show himself as a complete retard that hasnt read shit
>>2753874>We've seen before that there's no guarantee that socialism will lead to sustained periods of gay rightsbecause there are various factors in play and the evolution can be slow, but historically, when you look at things like women liberation, it's obvious both liberalism and even more socialism favor women rights long term. lgbt rights will be slower because the economic incentive isnt present, and they're minorities, but its still quite clearly becoming increasingly accepted.
>The left in the 1920s was largely pretty pro-gayno, they were abolishing everything of the old order and doing cultural revolution, but mostly they just didnt care much
>>2754188>neither is capitalismI agree and said as much.
>why dont agriculture societies tolerate homosexualitySome of them did.
>>2754186>no its because of the level of developmentOkay then explain why Mao era China was more pro-gay than Brezhnev era USSR
>>2754014Not what I'm talking about. The Ottomans decriminalized homosexuality in 1858, that was before any Western country except France. Once again you Uyghurs need to read a book or two on the topic before opening your mouths.
>>2754293Not an argument
kys ziorat
>>2754294>not an argument<refuses to argue<relies on moralistic adhoms for rhetoric<instantly strawmans every perspective differing from the current leftist twitter linethird-worldists really are the anarchists of the 2020s
>>2754298My statement was not an invitation for you to practice your hasbara rhetoric ziorat. Even if I was to grant your retarded supposition that because not all issues in palestinian society would be immediately solved upon their emancipation and that they'd be vulnerable to exploitation by other more powerful actors, that still means nothing in regard to your advocacy for their continue subjugation. It would still be preferable for them to not live under apartheid, it would still be more progressive economically for their racial segregation and subjugation at the hands of zionazis like you to end
You are making the exact argument slaveowners made in regards to the abolition of slavery. Because you are just like them you filthy ziorat
kys
>>2754290>ooooh what about my niche example oooooo my outlier ooooothe trend is overwhelmingly that the more economic developement = nicer to gays
economic development requires imperialists to fuck off
which requires them to be fucked off, by a mass movement with an army
>>2754302>not all issues in palestinian society would be immediately solved upon their emancipation and that they'd be vulnerable to exploitation by other more powerful actors Not vulnerable, it would happen just as it did in other post-colonial nations like Syria, Sudan, Iraq, etc. The choice for workers under capitalism, and especially workers in nation-states in a weak position relative to the global market is always the same, work or die, sometimes both. I'm asking if your "advocacy" has any content beyond tantrums at injustice.
>that still means nothing in regard to your advocacy for their continue subjugation. >You are making the exact argument slaveowners made in regards to the abolition of slavery.Keep shadowboxing
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