Part of the problem, like the problem with Team America, is that the ideas still propagate even if you're mocking them. The same is true of The Office, making fun of misogyny and racism by acting it out while trying to play it straight is very similar to acting it out earnestly. It's not a defense to say it's parodic or subtle or sarcastic.
More than anything, South Park was dominated by the shock factor. The content wasn't particularly insightful, educational, or complex. It was mostly absurdism and shock, both fundamentally predicated on doing things other people weren't willing to do because it was taboo or uncomfortable.
Did some young viewers come away with enlightened sensibilities? Probably. But RATM achieved the same goal without reproducing the messages of the movements that they were fighting against.
The problem with the DSA isn't that they don't align with the corporate neolib agenda. It's that the DSA seeks to abolish the institutions that liberalism relies on for its power. It is not in the interest of the Democrats to support the DSA except in so far as it allows them to sheepdog proto-revolutionary energy into dead ends. That's how they use Bernie and in the last decade or so it's how they used the DSA.
Until people understand what liberalism is, this confusion will continue. Liberalism is what made Thomas Jefferson want to split from the crown. It's also the philosophy that allowed him to argue against importing slaves from Africa to increase the price of the slaves he sold from his "breeding plantations", or rape farms as they might be more rightly called.
Every conservative in the US today, with a couple rare exceptions, is a Liberal, and every Democrat in the US today is also a Liberal. They differ on how far liberal values should extend, but they rely on the same power system: private property, profit, corporate personhood, common stock, police, genocide, and ecocide.
The DSA will only be a part of the Democrats insofar as they are a) ineffective or b) abandon their anti-capitalist pole. Outside of that, the NYT is doing the same job it always has done - protect the ruling class from the masses.
You literally have drawn upon no facts, historical or present, about actual communist revolutions. You have no counter arguments. Your only move has been to assume your position is correct because of course it is, and that if I can criticize you then you must be able to reverse the criticism because anyone critiquing you is not doing so from a basis in reality but in vibes.
You know how I know that you're operating from indoctrination and I'm not? Because I know what my indoctrination was and it sounds exactly like the shit you're saying. I used to get on everyone's case about communism is authoritarian and the bread lines and the poverty and the horrible conditions and the prisons and the police state and on and on because how could anyone think those horrible people who claimed to be communists actually did anything worth studying let alone celebrating.
I see my words in your words. I know those words. I was raised by anti-communists, in the US, with all the same schooling and media and social indoctrination as you and the people you grew up around. Do you know how freaked out I was the first time someone recommended that I read Lenin? It felt insane because how could anyone want to read a monster's writing.
But as it turns out, I was indoctrinated. And now, instead of being indoctrinated, I study history.
If you scroll through this thread, you will only see historical claims about the revolutionary states I am discussing. If you look at your comments, you will find nothing of the sort. I tell comment about the actual factual historical events, you speak in moral judgements about "not actual communists because authoritarianism" and aphorisms about "the people's stick".
We are not having a disagreement about facts about the world out there. We are having a disagreement about what's in your head. I say that what's in your head is not founded in historical reality but in indoctrination and you have yet to say a single thing that resembles anything else.
Again, completely ahistorical. Despite the USSR's total abandonment of the communist road and revisionism that led to terrible outcomes for the people, polling in Eastern Europe and Russia still shows that the majority of people believe the dissolution of the USSR was a net negative. Because again, every single communist movement that successfully overthrew the ruling class improved the lives of the people at scales that seemed completely impossible.
Under every single communist country today, the majority of the people support it and want it to continue. Even under the USSR the prison system was smaller than the USA's and the outcomes were better. This is true in every communist country. Women do better, children to better, education is better, medicine is better, nutrition is better, mental health is better, housing is cheaper, cost of living is cheaper, participatory government is more extensive.
You are doing the thing we're saying you're doing, which is spewing anti-communist and capitalist apologetic propaganda and every anemic talking point you've raised has been endlessly researched for decades and shown to be distortions put forth by anti-communists.
You and I are not living in the same reality. You have not done the work to learn about the history and present of the global movement for communism. You operate from your indoctrination and from that conclude that everyone who disagrees with you is indoctrinated.
You will continue to engage in these sorts of debates where the only thing you can do is intone "it is known" until you actually start reading about the history that you think you already understand without having studied. You are ignorant and there's nothing wrong with that. But ignorance is not a political position worthy of respect and equal time.
Yeah, I know that's what you were doing. It's a ridiculous position. What you're saying is that 7 successful ML revolutions that established societies organized around the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat is equivalent to over 100 years of Democratic Socialism literally have never achieved anything other than welfare concessions within capitalist societies and zero change in ruling class power.
There is no mirror. Democratic Socialism has never moved beyond compatibalism and "peaceful coexistence" with the ruling class. MLism has successfully demolished ruling class power 7 times in 60 years. No single political praxis has even come close to it.
what communism did the supposed communists produce during their rule from 1922 to 1991?
You do realize that, of every single thinker, of every single text, of every single successful revolution, of every single revolutionary movement, not a single one of them has ever said that communism is state of being that we can knowingly and deliberately achieve in our current society, right?
7 successful ML revolutions, not a single one has produced "communism" the way you're thinking about it.
Engels writing about communism says this:
What is Communism?
Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.
That's what communism is. Not something you produce. Not a recipe you follow. Not a decision you make or a policy you enact. It is a doctrine and it is specifically the doctrine of establishing the conditions that are necessary for the liberation of the proletariat.
What did the communist party achieve in the USSR?
They produced the most rapid industrialization in the history of the world.
They were the first modern feudal agrarian society to end nation-wide famines permanently.
They defeated the Nazis and liberated almost half of Europe.
They provided housing to all their citizens at a cost of less than 5% of their salaries.
They became the second-best-fed population in the world, second only to the US.
They implemented the first legalized abortion framework in the world.
They established women's rights to self-determination economically and politically and legally long before anyone else did.
They went from health indicators that categorized them as "near-medieval" to the world's first state-funded healthcare system and developed multiple world-first vaccines.
Because you know what the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat are? They start with food, shelter, medicine, and safety from literal Western Nazis and their international liberal backers.
But the USSR failed. Everyone is fully aware that they failed. You think that they failed is some kind of gotcha? You think that failing to survive counter-revolutionary forces and failing to protect the revolution means that there was no communism, there was never any communism, and everyone who claimed to be a communist is a liar? You think the Mets aren't really a baseball team because they lose? You think a startup isn't a company if it fails?
Your position is ridiculous, unexamined, ignorant, and internally inconsistent.
Just because they failed doesn't mean it was against their interests. Iran has been a target of the West for almost a century at this point. Longer really. Defeating Iran would advance the US empire's interests. It just that they're struggling to accomplish it.
Stating MLs glorify authoritarian dictators isn’t anti-communism because those dictators weren’t communist.
This is quite literally anti-communism. Claiming that globally recognized communist movements were not communist is the quintessential definition of anti-communism. The fact that you disagree doesn't make the mod a power tripping bastard, it makes you in violation of that community's rules. It's quite simple.
Bernie isn't a socialist and DemSocs are socialists in the same way cryptozoologists are veterinarians - if your movement has never once in the history of society every produced socialism, it's a stretch to call yourself a socialist.
He's telling on himself. He doesn't actually know how to do anything and he never did. He's terrified of losing a.i. because there's nothing for him to go back to
Accurate. That's why white men building community are in a position where they need to ask for help from others outside their community. They have to do the work and they have to lead themselves, but they need advice, guidance, support, education, accountability, etc. and in my experience, if the men are doing the work earnestly, there are non-white-men persons out there willing to provide those things, if even only for a short time and in a limited capacity
Of all the people in the world, white men are the most likely to have the space, time, and means.
But privilege? All white men have privilege. It's structural. It's inescapable. Think of privilege as the shadow cast by oppression: if black people are oppressed in particular ways, white men are privileged in not being oppressed in those specific ways. If women are oppressed in particular ways, white men are privileged in not being oppressed in those specific ways. You can do this for so many oppressed groups, cis het white men have the most privilege on the world.
I don't see how you don't see the connection. China is asserting that control over the SCS is part of its national security requirements. One of the reasons for this is that the US has been hard at work for over a century projecting power in the region and one of the pillars of that power projection is through its navy. Control over the SCS means asserting territorial boundaries that match Chinese security assessment. It can easily be said that fishing boats are not a threat, and yet, historically, the US has taken advantage of the fact that civilian fishing is not considered a threat to violate the Geneva conventions at in fact use fishing boats to project force and create national security threats for nations in the region. China, therefore, is not willing to accept anything less than total territorial control over the SCS for national security reasons and that means even fishing boats must be expelled from the area.
Do you think there's some other reason for them to expel fishing boats from the SCS? Do you think it's totally unconnected to national security and history? Do you think it's some sort of problem with the personal psychology of Chinese leaders?
China is not ramming fishing vessels because the US once clandestinely deployed mines in the 1960’s.
So what you're saying is that China has no valid security concerns behind their actions?
I don’t think “40 years of non-violent growth” is an accurate statement at all.
Let's see why.
I can agree that contemporary Chinese imperialism doesn’t look like US imperialism and has utilized less
Well, since 1992 the US has conduct major kinetic military operations against over 14 countries, completely destroying at least 3 of them. Since 1992, China hasn't fired a shot against anyone. So, yeah, doesn't look like it at all. Less as in zero.
I think your framing of China vs. violent psychopaths is inherently flawed.
Fair. White supremacist Christian Eurocentric empire has only dominated every continent for 600 years, with most national borders across the whole world defined by genocidaires and child rapists, and military bases all over the world that are immune to local laws where young women are kidnapped, raped, and murdered by soldiers weekly and everyone knows it but no one can do anything about because of the violent psychopaths (sorry, I meant USians, who are just like everyone else). Not to mention the US criminal justice system monitoring and managing at least over 3x the number of prisoners and parolees as the next highest country in the world with some of the worst outcomes, worst recidivism rates, and economic extraction practices compared to literally anyone.
But fair, maybe my framing is uncharitable.
China may or may not have fewer of those kinds of people in power compared to other governments, but it has plenty.
Granted. Is it driving the same outcomes? No. It's not. The outcomes are substantially and consistently better and have been for decades without interruption.
It’s an inescapable fact of humanity that those people exist and have a tendency to seek power, and that power has a tendency to bring out those characteristics in people.
And it is the job of a society to develop the social technologies necessary to manage those characteristics effectively. Eurocentric society is the world-crowning pinnacle of what happens when you fail - patriarchal white supremacist ChristoFascist genocidal child raping oligarchs committing mass murder on every inhabited continent to prove how civilized they are.
There is nothing special about the people of China that make them better than the rest of humanity, the same problems of humanity manifest in China as everywhere else on the planet.
And yet, the outcomes are different. Is that because Chinese people are racially superior? No. It's because Chinese society has developed superior social technology for managing these problems.
MLs preaching left unity but actually not following through themselves.
Again, completely ignorant of history. MLs do not preach left unity. They preach Marxist Unity, and non-Marxist leftists are called out appropriately. It's been that way for over a century. That you don't know this is part of your problem.
somehow its always history something something purges were / are / will be actually correct something something
Democratic Socialism has literally never succeeded in the history of humanity, whereas Marxist-Leninism has succeeded 7 times: Russia, Yugoslavia, North Korea, China, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba. All 7 times the MLs did not preach left unity but rather a unity of Marxists and those with incorrect analyses were excluded.
Part of the problem, like the problem with Team America, is that the ideas still propagate even if you're mocking them. The same is true of The Office, making fun of misogyny and racism by acting it out while trying to play it straight is very similar to acting it out earnestly. It's not a defense to say it's parodic or subtle or sarcastic.
More than anything, South Park was dominated by the shock factor. The content wasn't particularly insightful, educational, or complex. It was mostly absurdism and shock, both fundamentally predicated on doing things other people weren't willing to do because it was taboo or uncomfortable.
Did some young viewers come away with enlightened sensibilities? Probably. But RATM achieved the same goal without reproducing the messages of the movements that they were fighting against.
Homer meme: the only other ORM I will ever need for python
The problem with the DSA isn't that they don't align with the corporate neolib agenda. It's that the DSA seeks to abolish the institutions that liberalism relies on for its power. It is not in the interest of the Democrats to support the DSA except in so far as it allows them to sheepdog proto-revolutionary energy into dead ends. That's how they use Bernie and in the last decade or so it's how they used the DSA.
Until people understand what liberalism is, this confusion will continue. Liberalism is what made Thomas Jefferson want to split from the crown. It's also the philosophy that allowed him to argue against importing slaves from Africa to increase the price of the slaves he sold from his "breeding plantations", or rape farms as they might be more rightly called.
Every conservative in the US today, with a couple rare exceptions, is a Liberal, and every Democrat in the US today is also a Liberal. They differ on how far liberal values should extend, but they rely on the same power system: private property, profit, corporate personhood, common stock, police, genocide, and ecocide.
The DSA will only be a part of the Democrats insofar as they are a) ineffective or b) abandon their anti-capitalist pole. Outside of that, the NYT is doing the same job it always has done - protect the ruling class from the masses.
Racist reuters continuing the age old European tradition of orientalism
The money being passed around by the rich is 100% our money. We made them those profits.
You literally have drawn upon no facts, historical or present, about actual communist revolutions. You have no counter arguments. Your only move has been to assume your position is correct because of course it is, and that if I can criticize you then you must be able to reverse the criticism because anyone critiquing you is not doing so from a basis in reality but in vibes.
You know how I know that you're operating from indoctrination and I'm not? Because I know what my indoctrination was and it sounds exactly like the shit you're saying. I used to get on everyone's case about communism is authoritarian and the bread lines and the poverty and the horrible conditions and the prisons and the police state and on and on because how could anyone think those horrible people who claimed to be communists actually did anything worth studying let alone celebrating.
I see my words in your words. I know those words. I was raised by anti-communists, in the US, with all the same schooling and media and social indoctrination as you and the people you grew up around. Do you know how freaked out I was the first time someone recommended that I read Lenin? It felt insane because how could anyone want to read a monster's writing.
But as it turns out, I was indoctrinated. And now, instead of being indoctrinated, I study history.
If you scroll through this thread, you will only see historical claims about the revolutionary states I am discussing. If you look at your comments, you will find nothing of the sort. I tell comment about the actual factual historical events, you speak in moral judgements about "not actual communists because authoritarianism" and aphorisms about "the people's stick".
We are not having a disagreement about facts about the world out there. We are having a disagreement about what's in your head. I say that what's in your head is not founded in historical reality but in indoctrination and you have yet to say a single thing that resembles anything else.
Again, completely ahistorical. Despite the USSR's total abandonment of the communist road and revisionism that led to terrible outcomes for the people, polling in Eastern Europe and Russia still shows that the majority of people believe the dissolution of the USSR was a net negative. Because again, every single communist movement that successfully overthrew the ruling class improved the lives of the people at scales that seemed completely impossible.
Under every single communist country today, the majority of the people support it and want it to continue. Even under the USSR the prison system was smaller than the USA's and the outcomes were better. This is true in every communist country. Women do better, children to better, education is better, medicine is better, nutrition is better, mental health is better, housing is cheaper, cost of living is cheaper, participatory government is more extensive.
You are doing the thing we're saying you're doing, which is spewing anti-communist and capitalist apologetic propaganda and every anemic talking point you've raised has been endlessly researched for decades and shown to be distortions put forth by anti-communists.
You and I are not living in the same reality. You have not done the work to learn about the history and present of the global movement for communism. You operate from your indoctrination and from that conclude that everyone who disagrees with you is indoctrinated.
You will continue to engage in these sorts of debates where the only thing you can do is intone "it is known" until you actually start reading about the history that you think you already understand without having studied. You are ignorant and there's nothing wrong with that. But ignorance is not a political position worthy of respect and equal time.
Yeah, I know that's what you were doing. It's a ridiculous position. What you're saying is that 7 successful ML revolutions that established societies organized around the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat is equivalent to over 100 years of Democratic Socialism literally have never achieved anything other than welfare concessions within capitalist societies and zero change in ruling class power.
There is no mirror. Democratic Socialism has never moved beyond compatibalism and "peaceful coexistence" with the ruling class. MLism has successfully demolished ruling class power 7 times in 60 years. No single political praxis has even come close to it.
You do realize that, of every single thinker, of every single text, of every single successful revolution, of every single revolutionary movement, not a single one of them has ever said that communism is state of being that we can knowingly and deliberately achieve in our current society, right?
7 successful ML revolutions, not a single one has produced "communism" the way you're thinking about it.
Engels writing about communism says this:
That's what communism is. Not something you produce. Not a recipe you follow. Not a decision you make or a policy you enact. It is a doctrine and it is specifically the doctrine of establishing the conditions that are necessary for the liberation of the proletariat.
What did the communist party achieve in the USSR?
Because you know what the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat are? They start with food, shelter, medicine, and safety from literal Western Nazis and their international liberal backers.
But the USSR failed. Everyone is fully aware that they failed. You think that they failed is some kind of gotcha? You think that failing to survive counter-revolutionary forces and failing to protect the revolution means that there was no communism, there was never any communism, and everyone who claimed to be a communist is a liar? You think the Mets aren't really a baseball team because they lose? You think a startup isn't a company if it fails?
Your position is ridiculous, unexamined, ignorant, and internally inconsistent.
Just because they failed doesn't mean it was against their interests. Iran has been a target of the West for almost a century at this point. Longer really. Defeating Iran would advance the US empire's interests. It just that they're struggling to accomplish it.
This is quite literally anti-communism. Claiming that globally recognized communist movements were not communist is the quintessential definition of anti-communism. The fact that you disagree doesn't make the mod a power tripping bastard, it makes you in violation of that community's rules. It's quite simple.
Bernie isn't a socialist and DemSocs are socialists in the same way cryptozoologists are veterinarians - if your movement has never once in the history of society every produced socialism, it's a stretch to call yourself a socialist.
Israel is acting in the interests of the US, so no
He's telling on himself. He doesn't actually know how to do anything and he never did. He's terrified of losing a.i. because there's nothing for him to go back to
Accurate. That's why white men building community are in a position where they need to ask for help from others outside their community. They have to do the work and they have to lead themselves, but they need advice, guidance, support, education, accountability, etc. and in my experience, if the men are doing the work earnestly, there are non-white-men persons out there willing to provide those things, if even only for a short time and in a limited capacity
Of all the people in the world, white men are the most likely to have the space, time, and means.
But privilege? All white men have privilege. It's structural. It's inescapable. Think of privilege as the shadow cast by oppression: if black people are oppressed in particular ways, white men are privileged in not being oppressed in those specific ways. If women are oppressed in particular ways, white men are privileged in not being oppressed in those specific ways. You can do this for so many oppressed groups, cis het white men have the most privilege on the world.
I don't see how you don't see the connection. China is asserting that control over the SCS is part of its national security requirements. One of the reasons for this is that the US has been hard at work for over a century projecting power in the region and one of the pillars of that power projection is through its navy. Control over the SCS means asserting territorial boundaries that match Chinese security assessment. It can easily be said that fishing boats are not a threat, and yet, historically, the US has taken advantage of the fact that civilian fishing is not considered a threat to violate the Geneva conventions at in fact use fishing boats to project force and create national security threats for nations in the region. China, therefore, is not willing to accept anything less than total territorial control over the SCS for national security reasons and that means even fishing boats must be expelled from the area.
Do you think there's some other reason for them to expel fishing boats from the SCS? Do you think it's totally unconnected to national security and history? Do you think it's some sort of problem with the personal psychology of Chinese leaders?
So what you're saying is that China has no valid security concerns behind their actions?
Let's see why.
Well, since 1992 the US has conduct major kinetic military operations against over 14 countries, completely destroying at least 3 of them. Since 1992, China hasn't fired a shot against anyone. So, yeah, doesn't look like it at all. Less as in zero.
Fair. White supremacist Christian Eurocentric empire has only dominated every continent for 600 years, with most national borders across the whole world defined by genocidaires and child rapists, and military bases all over the world that are immune to local laws where young women are kidnapped, raped, and murdered by soldiers weekly and everyone knows it but no one can do anything about because of the violent psychopaths (sorry, I meant USians, who are just like everyone else). Not to mention the US criminal justice system monitoring and managing at least over 3x the number of prisoners and parolees as the next highest country in the world with some of the worst outcomes, worst recidivism rates, and economic extraction practices compared to literally anyone.
But fair, maybe my framing is uncharitable.
Granted. Is it driving the same outcomes? No. It's not. The outcomes are substantially and consistently better and have been for decades without interruption.
And it is the job of a society to develop the social technologies necessary to manage those characteristics effectively. Eurocentric society is the world-crowning pinnacle of what happens when you fail - patriarchal white supremacist ChristoFascist genocidal child raping oligarchs committing mass murder on every inhabited continent to prove how civilized they are.
And yet, the outcomes are different. Is that because Chinese people are racially superior? No. It's because Chinese society has developed superior social technology for managing these problems.
Again, completely ignorant of history. MLs do not preach left unity. They preach Marxist Unity, and non-Marxist leftists are called out appropriately. It's been that way for over a century. That you don't know this is part of your problem.
Democratic Socialism has literally never succeeded in the history of humanity, whereas Marxist-Leninism has succeeded 7 times: Russia, Yugoslavia, North Korea, China, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba. All 7 times the MLs did not preach left unity but rather a unity of Marxists and those with incorrect analyses were excluded.