• FALGSConaut [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    68·
    2 days ago

    Dear FBI/NSA/DHS/ICE/ETC

    All of my posts are satire, parody, or for comedic purposes, even this post, especially this post. I am but a clown and should in no way be taken seriously by any organization or individual. Any similarities to revolutionaries, ideologies, or any anti-government beings, living or dead, is coincidence and in no way inform my actual stance on any given topic.

    I am a centrist here as part of a balanced media diet, I browse the radical liberal website Hexbear while watching Charlie Kirk reruns and reading The Babylon Bee

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    481·
    2 days ago

    and has recently promoted the idea that “democratic socialism must be criminalized.”

    They’ll all be killed. Democratic socialism is irresponsible because it leaves socialists defenseless when the state determines democracy must be prevented.

      • miz [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        55·
        2 days ago

        This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: “Who was right?”

        In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?

        Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington.

        Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported – what the rich countries said, rather than what they did.

        That group was annihilated.

        —Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method

        • blunder [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          25·
          2 days ago

          I have been weighing reading this book but I am apprehensive that it is just going to be unrelentingly depressing with no further takeaway than “here is all the times the capitalist system won, and here are how many it killed”

          Am I off base?

          • Damarcusart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            36·
            2 days ago

            Kind of? I found it more…not sure what the word is, filled me with a sense of “this is what they will do (the capitalists), there is no level they want stoop to, which means we have to stop them.” It more made me angry at capitalists than sad about failed revolutions.

            But either way it’s important to read and educate yourself on why certain movements failed, in order to avoid making the same mistakes.

            (And seeing your other comment, I’m in the same boat, weapons are borderline impossible to get in my country, but that doesn’t mean it’s truly impossible, it’s only impossible if you’re playing by the rules the capitalists set specifically to try and prevent you from defending yourself and others.)

            • blunder [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              20·
              2 days ago

              Me facing federal weapons charges:

              phoenix-evidence

              it’s only impossible if you’re playing by the rules the capitalists set specifically to try and prevent you from defending yourself and others

              Jk thank u for your perspective

              • Damarcusart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                19·
                2 days ago

                Yeah, it isn’t something I look forward to, but I wouldn’t trust anyone who is eager for revolution. It’s going to be awful and bloody, but the capitalists leave us with no choice other than revolution or complete subjugation.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        41·
        2 days ago

        Allende won 3 elections in a row as a demsoc in Chile, what followed was the US sponsored Pinochet coup and the mass murder of 30,000 socialist organisers, setting back organising in the country by many decades.

        Here is Allende’s last speech, given by radio while the airforce was bombing bridges in the capital, moments before he would be dead.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZVWOWA2Hpk

        Bourgeois democracy is a myth. It is only allowed to exist so long as it serves the cause of the ruling class. When democracy no longer serves that cause they abandon it. If democratic socialists succeed they will be subjected to mass violence and their movement will be defenseless against it. Only revolutionary organising can achieve socialism because only revolutionary organising builds with the intent of socialists holding the weapons, organisations and power to defend themselves.

        If you do not plan for violence as an inevitability, you are defenseless when the capitalists turn against democracy. If you want further reading on this, The Jakarta Method goes into detail on the same problem occurring in Indonesia where 1 million of us were killed because they did not arm themselves.

        Democratic socialism is irresponsible and will get people killed. I do not hate these people, they are real socialists, but I very firmly believe that history shows this path gets people killed when it succeeds.

        • Piltdowntown [they/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          4·
          2 days ago

          Do not call DemSuccs “us” please. They are not real socialists they are imperialist dogs who only want free healthcare because they want specifically themselves not to die and couldn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone in the global south that they have spent their entire lives subjugating by reaping the benefits of imperialism. Stalin recognized them as the moderate wing of fascism for a reason.

            • Piltdowntown [they/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
              3·
              2 days ago

              Distinction without a difference. They are fools who refuse to embrace the necessity of authoritarian socialism because it would make them personally uncomfortable and cling to the bourgois lie of democracy. No love.

              • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                4·
                2 days ago

                There is a very clear distinction. One supports capitalism and the other does not but has the wrong approach to ending it.

                • Piltdowntown [they/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  3·
                  2 days ago

                  the other does not but has the wrong approach to ending it

                  Which means they prop up capitalism. Again, these are comfortable first worlders who don’t want too much change to happen too fast lest their own standard of living is impacted, when a real socialist analysis would reveal the plain truth that the living standard of the first world MUST be decreased.

        • blunder [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          14·
          2 days ago

          While I completely agree with everything you have written, I don’t have a gun, neither does anyone I know, neither does any organization I know. Guns are basically impossible to get where I am.

          I understand that violence is an inevitability, what am I to do about it with no weapons and no source?

          (This is not an invitation to fedpost lol)

          I’m also curious about your opinion of my comment elsewhere in this thread, I’ll repost it here:

          I have been weighing reading this book but I am apprehensive that it is just going to be unrelentingly depressing with no further takeaway than “here is all the times the capitalist system won, and here are how many it killed”

          Am I off base?

          • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
            27·
            2 days ago

            You’re an individual. It’s not the job of the individual to arm themselves.

            The issue is not getting arms, those can be acquired by revolutionary organisations via smuggling and international comrades when the moment arrives. The issue is ensuring that people are mentally prepared to take up arms instead of rolling over for the fascist death squads. The demsoc method results in people being mentally unprepared and unwilling to take up arms. They roll over and die when the fascist death squads start their work. The revolutionary method prepares people to fight because they have always known that fighting is inevitable.

            You say there is no source for weapons. What you really mean is “weapons are illegal”, which is correct but is a mentality flaw caused by democratic socialist ideology. The weapons can be brought in, illegally, via international smuggling and comrades. Tens of thousands of people travelled to Spain to participate in the revolution, tens of thousands travelled to Rojava to participate in their revolution (no matter how people feel about what happened in Syria). If revolutionary movements are significant and viable comrades will work to resolve these sourcing issues. The issue is not in where to get weapons, the issue is in making sure you and others are prepared and mentally willing to hold them when the time comes.

            • TheoryofChange [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              7·
              2 days ago

              Really good post, but with one caveat, that it’s critical to begin physical preparations before there are fascist death squads in the streets. This is not an individual issue but something that your group/formation should be working on internally. I agree though that the mental and political issue is more important and that where there is a will, folks can find a way to acquire necessary armaments (and not through Internet forums!).

            • blunder [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              5·
              2 days ago

              Again I agree with you 100%. But I don’t have it in me to assign blame to those who don’t have it in them to kill, and who would rather be killed than live with having killed.

              I also think there are more long term benefits to the kind of organizing that is happening today around demsoc politicians, even if a demsoc elected is not a viable end goal.

              • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
                7·
                2 days ago

                Again I agree with you 100%. But I don’t have it in me to assign blame to those who don’t have it in them to kill, and who would rather be killed than live with having killed.

                I’m not interested in assigning blame, but if someone would literally rather be tortured to death than shoot an active pogromist because of potential guilt over the death of the pogromist, we don’t necessarily need to treat that as an essential element of their nature, and I would argue that such a totalizing aversion to defending yourself and your whole community is probably the less healthy attitude.

              • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                9·
                2 days ago

                Longterm benefits like what? When the demsocs start succeeding, everyone gets killed and the movement is reset.

                • blunder [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  7·
                  2 days ago

                  I just don’t think the organization you’re describing as superior arrives from nowhere, but from laborious organizing, education, and radicalization over time. And people who come to those movements are largely aligned on political objectives. Personally I wouldn’t be where I am today politically without my previous electoral campaign work, even though I now see electoralism as the slightest brake on immiseration at best, and a total waste of time at worst. It took elections for me to see the charade of electoralism. (Although a plurality of people don’t vote, so I guess seeing that doesn’t necessarily align with a political ideology.)

                  I’m curious, what do you see as the alternate organizing centerpiece, aside from electoral campaigns and founding a political party, that can realistically pull in a critical mass of regular people? Or do you see the objective as totally different? How does the organization you describe arise?

                  Edit: you’re welcome to point me to reading as well

  • Maeve @lemmygrad.ml
    51·
    3 days ago

    They’ve known about Lemmy in general fire for several years. They arrested an antinatalist from his posts on .world, which means mods would have handed over information. Just assume feds are on every instance.

  • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    45·
    3 days ago

    Trump has threatened to deploy the military against the “enemy within” and has recently promoted the idea that “democratic socialism must be criminalized.”

    rat-salute Salute to comrade jdpon don in his ceaseless crusade to rapidly radicalize the demsocs by educating them in the implacable hostility of capitalism to meaningful reform.

    Presinald big boy looked at the moderate wing of fascism and said “fuck moderation”.

      • AltMaarri [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        30·
        3 days ago

        She means it’s hosted in France

        And I’d worry more about them dumping and analyzing comments from here directly through scraping, without ever having to seize the hardware, and trying to identify users through cross matches with other sources

        US users should be particularly careful with OPSEC these days

        And while hexbear is pretty low profile, it’s not that crazy: there was already a contractor scrapping comments massively from hexbear in the past to “analyze trends in extremist discourse” or some such. I remember they even complained in their report because admins had temporarily limited the history length you could consult, resulting in a limited dataset for the contractor in question.

        Also we’re federated; even if hexbear had perfect security and so on, other instances have most of the content. Again, back to OPSEC. Can’t scrap / exploit data that doesn’t exist.

  • agentant [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    31·
    2 days ago

    We are fighting right now in Congress over whether we’re going to maintain our status as a constitutional republic OR trade that in, dismantle the foundations and GO DOWN THIS DARK ROAD OF DEATH TO COMMUNISM,” he continued. “THAT is the question.

    DARK ROAD OF DEATH TO COMMUNISM

    Anti-communism is a dark road

    he-admit-it

    • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      25·
      3 days ago

      At the same time, I’ve been seeing this groundswell lately, been seeing more communists irl. It feels similar to ten years ago, when “socialist” was just beginning to have it’s moment as a popular, acceptable label (among the disempowered majority of people if not the news media) . It feels like maybe we’re about to hit that point with “communist”.

      • SevenSkalls [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        23·
        2 days ago

        It feels like they’re trying to do the reactionary backlash early to prevent it from coming in the first place.

        On the one hand, it’s terrifying. I’ve got a nice life relatively, a family, and people who need me, I don’t want to be arrested or killed for thought crimes or organizing a peaceful protest or filming an ICE agent. On the other hand, it means they’re scared, and I’m not gonna lie, that gives me quite a bit of satisfaction.