Asking semi-seriously.
The Socialist Workers’ Sport International (although I prefer its German name Sozialistische Arbeitersport Internationale as it was abbreviated as SASI) was formed in Switzerland in 1920. They organized three International Workers’ Olympiads between 1925 and 1937 to offer a less classist version of The Olympics, which especially in the early days of its modern revival upheld a view of sportsmanship that was very upper class coded and upholding idealized images of a privately educated “gentleman amateur” who was an “all-rounder” who didn’t specialize or excel in one particular area. The events emphasised international cooperation, shared class struggle, and solidarity above national identity.
If we were to bring the spirit of this idea into the modern age, would the obvious candidate not be the Eurovision Song Contest. Like the Olympics, it’s based on international competition. and people have complained for decades that most countries just end up voting for their closest ally. Then there’s the fact that the EBU still refuses to bar the genocidal apartheid state of Israel.
So do we need a “Prole-Oh-Vision” (Never said I was good at naming things. Fuck You. What are you going to contribute?) Song Contest? Keeping the libs and reactionaries out would solve most of the problems with Eurovision. You wouldn’t even need to ban Israel, because any Israeli who believed in internationalism, shared struggle, and liberation for all wouldn’t be a zionist.
You wouldn’t even need to ban Israel, because any Israeli who believed in internationalism, shared struggle, and liberation for all wouldn’t be a zionist.
Alas the whole Israel approves what is happening in Gaza, your mythical Israeli doesn’t exist.
Really not a fan of this rhetoric. Even among Jewish Israelis there’s some that object to the genocide on moral grounds, not to mention the Muslim population. The number of actual anti-zionist Israelis is even smaller but they do exist, I’ve met at least one in person. They have no institutional power whatsoever and I imagine many of them leave the entity as soon as their conditions allow it, but they’re not “mythical” rare. I’d probably compare them to American communists.Eichmann once again. They live there and benefit from the genocide even indirectly.
USAmerican communist is another oxymoron. Communists exist while organized. And to become a communist one has to abandon the imperial core’s values. But what I know? The imperialist Bernie is a leftie there
This is incoherent gibberish. You’re not seriously comparing anti-zionist Israelis to SS official Adolf Eichmann, are you?
Communists exist while organized.
This isn’t just factually wrong, it also implies that there are no communists organizing anywhere in the US which is also wrong. However small they may be and what little power they may have, there are communist organizations in the US. But even if there weren’t, what would you call someone who holds communist beliefs but has no opportunity to organize? Do they cease to exist entirely?
And to become a communist one has to abandon the imperial core’s values.
Do you think every American holds “the imperial core’s values”? What site do you think you are on? Do you think every American on here is LARPing and actually thinks US fascism is cool and epic? What the fuck are you actually talking about?
Omission is complicity, a lesser evil than “just following orders” but still an evil.
To be a communist one has to be in a, let me see, community. In this case, an organization. Sympathizers aren’t communists, they don’t provide praxis. One can’t be a communist alone, that’s why it’s so difficult to infuse communist values in the intrinsically individualist US population.
Lemmy is nice, but it also exists to let you guys know what is like out there.
What would an American need to do to qualify as a communist in your eyes and do you think any such Americans exist?
To me, a real communist isn’t just someone flying the label. It’s someone who actually sees capitalism as a specific, exploitative system and not just “““greedy people doing bad stuff”””. Who views the state as structurally built to protect the owning class, so the whole strategy is about building independent working-class power from below, not just electing nicer managers (i.e. communism won’t come out of ballots). Who actually wants to abolish the entire boss/worker setup, wage labor, and private ownership of the big stuff, replacing it with a democratically planned economy oriented around human need. Who instinctively sides with workers in other countries and despises their own nation’s imperial adventures because solidarity doesn’t stop at borders. Who backs all that up with the unglamorous, face-to-face organizing work: shop-floor talks, tenant meetings, serious party-building. Instead of just treating communism as an online aesthetic.
Overcoming American individualism is a slow, non-linear process of unlearning. You have to let go of the shame attached to depending on others, the reflex to blame yourself or your neighbors for systemic misery, and the comfort of thinking you can opt out of class struggle if you just try hard enough. A person becomes a communist not when they just adopt a new set of opinions, but when they start experiencing themselves as part of a class and act accordingly. That’s almost always born from the friction between the American dream and the brutal reality of life, combined with the lived experience of collective struggle. The individualism never fully vanishes (lifelong cultural programming). But organizing is the cure because it teaches you that “we” can do what “I” never could.
And because this is adressed to Americans, one has to talk about systemic racism. Racial issues aren’t an add-on. A white worker who thinks class unity means ignoring racism is a liability. A POC who thinks racial liberation can happen without smashing capitalism is, from a communist view, a naïve liberal. The goal is multiracial working-class solidarity forged in a common struggle that takes on both exploitation and racial oppression head-on. Overcoming individualism means overcoming racial individualism too i.e. the idea that you can escape alone, or that your group can get a slightly bigger slice of a pie of shit. That’s one of the hardest leaps for an American to make.
Do you think any such Americans exist?
Huh, next edition is hosted in Saudi Arabia. It’s cool that Vietnam won the last contest and all, and i’m boycotting ESC as long as the Occupation can use it to pinkwash its crimes, but having the Jemen genociders instead of the Gaza genociders host this doesn’t sound promising. That this was originally revived when Russia was still allowed at Eurovision, but was too triggered by queer people existing doesn’t make it better.
i did not mean to endorse the contest in its current form, merely to refer to its history as a formally socialist-dominated art contest. obviously, there is sadly little to celebrate about the current interests behind the event.
already exists
