COVID-19 has drawn much of this discussion into the public sphere. Whereas it’s generally seen as poor taste to refer to groups of people as infections, diseases, and plagues – for good reason – this seems to be forgiven when the group being referred to is non-specific. Hand waving at humanity in general, as if being vague is ethical bulletproofing, gets a pass. It is relatively common today to find another viral tweet with tens of thousands of likes gesturing towards the clearing waters of Venetian canals, or the wandering deer of Japan navigating neon-lit city centres and declaring that the Earth is healing itself; the smog-cleared skies of California receive a probing enquiry – perhaps we were the real virus all along?
Strange as though it may seem, musings of this kind have become more and more common as the weeks have gone by and the evidence of nature ‘reclaiming’ previously populated areas has begun to accumulate. Suffice it to say, there is more than a little of the eco-fascist ideology floating around in the assumptions of that question; when somebody asks if humanity is the ‘real virus’, they set up a system in which the Earth is a being and humanity a problem that needs to be solved. The solution being proposed is rarely stated outright, but it doesn’t have to be because it’s implicit in the question; you cure a virus by getting rid of it. Beneath the surface level wonder at seeing a wild boar shuffle across Italian cobblestones, there is a lurking belief that maybe the world would be better off without us. Or, more commonly, the world would be better off without some of us, with who that some is being left as a blank to be filled in by the subconscious of the questioner. Unquestionably, whoever that somebody is, will be someone else.
[...]
The language of the eco-fascist claims that human beings are the problem, and that with their self-isolation – that is, their removal from the system – has come ecological recovery. Such individualised and atomised analysis prevents the ever-important systematic approach; the real problem is capitalism, and it is with the interruptions and staggerings of capitalism that recovery has come along. Deeply embedded in the language of the right wing, the misattribution of the worst elements of capitalism to the mere existence of human beings exists as a dual weapon.
Firstly, it allows them to turn their vitriol upon individuals... Secondly, it allows them to imply a connection between the two; to link the existence of capitalism to the existence of individuals and bind them together ideologically; to present capitalism as human and therefore inevitable and inescapable.
Somewhere out there are honest-to-god Bourbonists but they do not have a material basis to exist as a major force.
Russian and russophilic fash still fly the imperial banner (thus keeping its meaning in memory as a symbol) but they will never reinstate tsarist feudalism, only fascism. The conditions for tsarism simply no longer exist. The coat of arms of the House of Bourbon on the other hand has not been widely used by the modern French far right. Bourbonism as a movement no longer exists. Thus it does not symbolise the white terror anymore, while the imperial banner does.
Roman symbolism exists in an in-between state where it is not necessarily the domain of imperialist reactionaries but remains in use by them.
The strongest reactionary monarchist movements, and thus those whose symbols still hold weight, are in places which still have monarchs (e.g. Ulster traitors, neo-falanguists).
This only really proves my point that symbols retaining hateful meaning do so through active use by hateful movements and that it only really loses its connotations when the movement is symbolises ceases to exist in a meaningful way.
We have fortunately gotten rid of many kings and removed the social basis of feudalism. However, Neo-Nazis persist today and seem likely to persist for a while longer. Their symbolism will remain known as such until the destruction of the basis of fascism.
It is good when people help each other. It warms a truck when a community sticks by each other.
Shit like this is why I love the punk scene. The punk scene is like the idealized small American town, for you may one day be asked to help someone you barely know and do it without a second thought. Why wouldn't you help someone who needs it. You know damn well that when the time comes and you too need help, it will be found.
I have pulled on my network of comrades to make sure someone got a phone. This was done for the price of food and fellowship.
Cuba is still pretty crap I'm afraid. Like with the USSR, you're not exactly fairly electing your foreman or your governor. Emma Goldman would call it state-capitalist.
The reason the old Marxist parties called themselves social-democrats, before they sold themselves out so bad that the name changed meaning, was because it was conceived that socialism would involve democracy in every facet of social life rather than just electing a parliament.
The Leninists and reformists have failed to bring about this dream, but it is a fair dream to strive towards. Class society and the state (including alleged democracies) restrain people's control over their own lives and turn us into mere order-takers content with scraps. The struggle for more than mere scraps and the struggle for self-management and autonomy are in truth the same struggle, which is the struggle for that dream.
Fellas I dunno if reposting Twitter roasts is newsworthy. Ted Cruz is a fucking joke and American politics are deeply unserious, but surely y'all got more important things to report on than random Twitter posts.
Rojava's immense social revolution has continued to hold on despite everyone and their grandmother trying to bomb the shit out of them.
In Armenia, Nepal, and Ukraine, less all-encompassing revolutions have occurred to successfully change leadership while maintaining the structure of a liberal capitalist republic. Albania may well join this list soon.
Most of the countries which helped defeat fascism in WW2 had a checkered history before and after the fact. The Americans of course pulled Operation Gladio and sponsored fascist dictatorships all over Latin America during the Cold War while IBM gave the Nazis the accounting tools they needed for the Holocaust. Liberal capitalism the world over starved the people with austerity leading to the material conditions for the rise of fascism. The Stalinist USSR in turn pushed the Third Period policies which had a massive part in keeping the Stalinist parties from fighting fascism effectively, which played an important role in Nazism's victory in Germany, cut up Poland with the Nazis, and funded the SRP and Francis Yockey.
In Spain of course, American oil fueled the fascists while the NKVD commissars shot the anarchists and POUMistas in the back.
I get what you mean. I won't pretend like bigotry isn't a core plank of the platform of the GOP or Independent Ireland. Still, an awful lot of bigoted people still felt the allure of people like Bernie Sanders and may join a trade union in certain circumstances. Such things also go a long way towards moving them away from bigotry if they succeed, because it shows that gay people and migrants were never the thing making them miserable.
My point though is moreso that saying that the farmers had it coming and giving up on them is not how one digs one's way out of the pit one is stuck in. I don't particularly wanna turn my back on conservative communities as irreparably fucked and feel proud of being smarter than them. I would like the community around me to be better. And saying that the farmers had it coming rather than using the opportunity to push them left is essentially patting oneself on the back for moral superiority rather than making life better.
I'm a migrant myself. I chose to come another country and integrate myself. I'd quite like it to be nicer, y'know?
Did Hispanic farmhands vote for Republicans? They're the ones that are gonna be directly at risk of getting screwworms in their injuries. If the bosses scale down operations, they're gonna be the ones who lose their jobs.
Do the 12% of farmers in Tennessee who are black also deserve to get fucked?
You do not defeat right-wing populists with snobbery. You defeat it by offering a compelling left-wing alternative that addresses the economic issues which bigotry is peddled as an alleged solution to.
Write drunk, edit sober.
~ Ernest Hemingway
Bold move assuming the Dems have the chutzpah to send fascists to prison
Usually I hear "trash" (мусор)
Fraser, J. (2020). Eco-Fascism: The Rhetoric of the Virus. Organise Magazine. Archived at https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jay-fraser-eco-fascism-the-rhetoric-of-the-virus.
Somewhere out there are honest-to-god Bourbonists but they do not have a material basis to exist as a major force.
Russian and russophilic fash still fly the imperial banner (thus keeping its meaning in memory as a symbol) but they will never reinstate tsarist feudalism, only fascism. The conditions for tsarism simply no longer exist. The coat of arms of the House of Bourbon on the other hand has not been widely used by the modern French far right. Bourbonism as a movement no longer exists. Thus it does not symbolise the white terror anymore, while the imperial banner does.
Roman symbolism exists in an in-between state where it is not necessarily the domain of imperialist reactionaries but remains in use by them.
The strongest reactionary monarchist movements, and thus those whose symbols still hold weight, are in places which still have monarchs (e.g. Ulster traitors, neo-falanguists).
This only really proves my point that symbols retaining hateful meaning do so through active use by hateful movements and that it only really loses its connotations when the movement is symbolises ceases to exist in a meaningful way.
We have fortunately gotten rid of many kings and removed the social basis of feudalism. However, Neo-Nazis persist today and seem likely to persist for a while longer. Their symbolism will remain known as such until the destruction of the basis of fascism.
"Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels and gold wands in the bank, and buy a revolver"
~ Comrade Markievicz
At the very least he grew up Catholic
It is good when people help each other. It warms a truck when a community sticks by each other.
Shit like this is why I love the punk scene. The punk scene is like the idealized small American town, for you may one day be asked to help someone you barely know and do it without a second thought. Why wouldn't you help someone who needs it. You know damn well that when the time comes and you too need help, it will be found.
I have pulled on my network of comrades to make sure someone got a phone. This was done for the price of food and fellowship.
Cuba is still pretty crap I'm afraid. Like with the USSR, you're not exactly fairly electing your foreman or your governor. Emma Goldman would call it state-capitalist.
The reason the old Marxist parties called themselves social-democrats, before they sold themselves out so bad that the name changed meaning, was because it was conceived that socialism would involve democracy in every facet of social life rather than just electing a parliament.
The Leninists and reformists have failed to bring about this dream, but it is a fair dream to strive towards. Class society and the state (including alleged democracies) restrain people's control over their own lives and turn us into mere order-takers content with scraps. The struggle for more than mere scraps and the struggle for self-management and autonomy are in truth the same struggle, which is the struggle for that dream.
The Weathermen were, objectively speaking, terrorists. Their praxis was to scare the politicians into stopping the various imperialist wars.
Noble goals (and that bathroom in the Pentagon had it coming) but they were terrorists.
*pedant, not pendant
Beans
Out of the loop, what is Tesseract?
EDIT: Apparently its a UI for Lemmy that decided to start hiding leftist posts secretly because the dev is a lib
Why not both?
Fellas I dunno if reposting Twitter roasts is newsworthy. Ted Cruz is a fucking joke and American politics are deeply unserious, but surely y'all got more important things to report on than random Twitter posts.
Rojava's immense social revolution has continued to hold on despite everyone and their grandmother trying to bomb the shit out of them.
In Armenia, Nepal, and Ukraine, less all-encompassing revolutions have occurred to successfully change leadership while maintaining the structure of a liberal capitalist republic. Albania may well join this list soon.
Most of the countries which helped defeat fascism in WW2 had a checkered history before and after the fact. The Americans of course pulled Operation Gladio and sponsored fascist dictatorships all over Latin America during the Cold War while IBM gave the Nazis the accounting tools they needed for the Holocaust. Liberal capitalism the world over starved the people with austerity leading to the material conditions for the rise of fascism. The Stalinist USSR in turn pushed the Third Period policies which had a massive part in keeping the Stalinist parties from fighting fascism effectively, which played an important role in Nazism's victory in Germany, cut up Poland with the Nazis, and funded the SRP and Francis Yockey.
In Spain of course, American oil fueled the fascists while the NKVD commissars shot the anarchists and POUMistas in the back.
I get what you mean. I won't pretend like bigotry isn't a core plank of the platform of the GOP or Independent Ireland. Still, an awful lot of bigoted people still felt the allure of people like Bernie Sanders and may join a trade union in certain circumstances. Such things also go a long way towards moving them away from bigotry if they succeed, because it shows that gay people and migrants were never the thing making them miserable.
My point though is moreso that saying that the farmers had it coming and giving up on them is not how one digs one's way out of the pit one is stuck in. I don't particularly wanna turn my back on conservative communities as irreparably fucked and feel proud of being smarter than them. I would like the community around me to be better. And saying that the farmers had it coming rather than using the opportunity to push them left is essentially patting oneself on the back for moral superiority rather than making life better.
I'm a migrant myself. I chose to come another country and integrate myself. I'd quite like it to be nicer, y'know?
Did Hispanic farmhands vote for Republicans? They're the ones that are gonna be directly at risk of getting screwworms in their injuries. If the bosses scale down operations, they're gonna be the ones who lose their jobs.
Do the 12% of farmers in Tennessee who are black also deserve to get fucked?
You do not defeat right-wing populists with snobbery. You defeat it by offering a compelling left-wing alternative that addresses the economic issues which bigotry is peddled as an alleged solution to.