Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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World is more red than black today. Hopefully tomorrow, & the day after,
All I’m gonna say is that the residents of Clackton have the chance to do the funniest thing in the world and if they dont vote for supreme leader count binface I will tell Putin to nuke them
We’re entering the second heat wave but it won’t be as bad as the previous of a week ago
This might be a bit naive, and I’m not the best micro-economist, but would it be feasible for someone/sime country to basically make an industry out of recycling and composting? As in, they’ll pay a small price to import what people were already throwing away [including higher end things like electronics and vehicles and airplanes] and recycle the raw materials out of them, and then make a vertical integration that way. I.e, a country doesn’t have domestic aluminium deposits so it imports recyclable waste that it then takes the aluminum out of.
Same with industrial composting. Import trash, probably maybe even simply taking it for free from countries with landfill charges, take out what isn’t compostable and just pump out fertilizer from that instead of importing it. Idk, I think i was just inspired reading about how Japan got most of its iron/steel during ww2 from American scrap metal
At this point I’m fairly convinced Platner was a psyop or something along those lines (not that I hold strongly to this opinion, since he isn’t in my state and not worth the time to do much research and analysis).
My question is, what is an ML’s place in this whole ordeal, or more generally when it comes to spectacularized electoralism? Speaking primarily of how we engage with (or sidestep) the discourse surrounding it, since obviously I don’t think our finite energy should usually be spent actively participating in electoral politics.
I’m pretty unconvinced of the utility of the contrarian-leaning anti-electoralist stance in the discourse. It seems better at fostering a feeling of superiority towards libs than radicalizing them. Which is counterproductive to our usual understanding that electoralism’s failures should be radicalizing events.
But a lot of people seemed to fall for the Platner thing. And I worry it risks shattering a lot of potential ideological pipelines. His problems seemed so obvious that it’s hard not to outgroup anyone that defended him but at the same time I’m not sure that’s productive. I dunno.
Overall I’m not satisfied with anti-electoralist discourse in general. It seems mostly reactive to and contained within manufactured discourse, unable to transcend it or really convince anyone of anything, in my experience. Personally I’ve moved more towards a passive optimism (in how I talk with libs, not internal beliefs), not shitting on people for feeling hopeful about Mamdani and the like, but trying to gently mention the limitations of elected individuals within capitalism. Doesn’t really work for a (in my opinion) deliberate poison pill like Platner.
I think there are two essences within the pro-Platner left/libleft. One is an underlying imperial-colonial (sub)consciousness, where non-white people and people outside the imperial core are implicitly valued less. The other is an (in my opinion) unrefined and misdirected pragmatism that views him as a lesser evil and sees criticisms as attacks from the establishment. The former needs to be excised and eliminated without mercy. The latter is salvageable and needs to be engaged with, I think. Because when it comes down to it, revolutionaries very often have to utilize “evil” people, and we should be very careful giving up any advantages we can muster. There’s a massive difference between tactically using them and investing time and energy into electing them into positions of power, of course.
And the two essences aren’t distinct or discernible, so it’s not like we can easily draw a line between people who supported a murdering rapist for “good” versus bad reasons.
To reiterate: I dunno. Every talking point pro or against gives me the feeling of getting played, getting trapped by the spectacle or manufactured discourse, rereading a scripted dialogue that’s already been read a thousand times. But it’s too late to just tell people to stop talking about it.
I think Platner is awesome. It’s like a thermobaric weapon went off in a private party & every compatible left figure came spilling out holding their guts into their torso, leaving us to ask “why are these people hanging out”
Oh you’re looking to convince these people? Can’t help, sorry. I only want to help Americans who are exactly like me
FWIW, and keeping in mind this is only my personal experience with transitioning from lib to ML, I distinctly remember someone online who helped move me further left after Bernie faceplanted and their MO went something like: Being gently understanding of why people are supporting Bernie, but also being plainly a communist and talking about communism in detail, trying to educate people further, explaining why they don’t think Bernie is enough, etc.
I think there were some others I encountered who acted similarly to this too. In other words, there was no impression of condescension or superiority, but of being understanding of how someone would arrive at the position of supporting Bernie, while also being firmly not a soc dem.
The end result was that when Bernie failed, they were still there to pick up the pieces and explain what went wrong and why, with someone who was even more willing to listen to them now. In a way, I guess what I’m describing is what we talk about sometimes with regards to building relationships with people. These do not necessarily have to be close friendships. Even having a relationship of respect as acquaintances is worth something.
During an electoral campaign, true believers in the bougie electoral system can get swept up in the energy of the campaign and stave off doubt in order to push for a win. In the aftermath of a failed campaign, I think it is easier to get through to people, so long as they see you as someone who may be worth listening to.
Isn’t this broadly Marx’s original position on the organic spontaneous working class energy?
I.e. what you want and are fighting for is correct and just, but here are the limitations of doing it in the way you’re trying to - you should do it this way instead because of x y z.
On the topic of electoralism, the ML position is simple: it is useful to engage tactically with electoralism, so long as it is done under the banner of an actual communist/socialist party. The real psyop is the DSA itself, as a pipeline into the Democratic party. The real psyop is “lesser evil-ism”. As for Platner, i haven’t really followed that situation because it was always deeply uninteresting and irrelevant in my opinion, but if the whole Nazi thing and having served as a murderer for hire for imperialism was not a deal breaker for the socdem/demsoc radlibs who supported him prior, why should this latest scandal be? That was far worse than him being a drunk rapist. The whole DSA project is fundamentally misconceived to begin with. The point of socialists engaging with electoralism is to build and expand the power base of their own independent party, not to attract votes to a neoliberal imperialist party. As it stands it’s all just a different name for “Vote Democrat”. Platner, Mamdani, all the same because the outcome is the same: leftists getting tricked into campaigning for Democrats. I thought the US left had learned their lesson after Bernie and the “Squad” betrayed them. Apparently not.
I don’t disagree but my focus is a step outside the ML theory position, on the ML tactical or agitprop position. We know we think those things, but how are we choosing to engage or disengage with people who don’t think those things or aren’t advanced enough in their radicalization/education to understand or be receptive to those ideas? It seems the broad unorganized left (whatever we want to call it) still isn’t inoculated against this kind of poison pill (I guess we’ll better understand the degree to which once we can fully see the Platner fallout). But I don’t think the ML left has enough cultural production/influence to take an explicitly hostile or exclusionary stance towards the broad unorganized left.
No, I’ll word that differently. I don’t know if the explicitly hostile or exclusionary stance serves us best. Or if that’s even how it should be labeled/categorized.
Is an explicit schism between the people who fell for it and those that didn’t useful for pipelining? Is pipelining even a real process that we should care about?
Another angle to it that I’m having a hard time putting into words. In game theory, there are often situations where a strategy is the correct one assuming all players are also playing to maximize value, but becomes worse if another player is playing poorly. So in a three player game, player 1 might play “optimally” and lose to player 3 because player 2’s incorrect play changed the equilibrium.
Shitty way of trying to explain the concept but here the first-order optimum might be for us (player 1) to outright reject electoralists. But because so much of the unorganized left (player 2) swallowed the poison pill, the original strategy may no longer be optimal. If we continue to play without exploring the possibility of a second-order optimum, we risk handing a win to player 3 (bourgeoisie, fash, institutional dems, whatever). But it’s possible the first one is still optimal. Again, this is how we publically engage with discourse, not about what we personally believe.
Trying to process that abstract nonsense into concrete particulars, say some co-worker is excited about Platner or watches Hasan or whatever is currently an outgroup signifier that I don’t keep up with. Is the process to sidestep the issue because it’s a psyop, to nip it in the bud and correct them, to develop a tactical response that hopefully leads towards self-radicalization? What about for somebody in a mutual aid group? A family member or friend? Someone in your political party? A media influencer?
The in-group/out-group lines are getting drawn on social media of course but I’ve really grown tired of them and how either disconnected or parasitic they can be towards real-life organizing. My impulse is to sidestep spectacle, but since I’m not the whole of the ML left nor the unorganized left, my personal impulse isn’t necessarily what would work best if all ML’s decided to do it.
I absolutely get the psyop theory, and have been leaning that way myself when I consider Platner. That said, I never considered him much because I’m also nowhere near Maine.
I would see posts about him where people are legitimately yearning for the reformist policies that would lesson the tension the workers of the imperial core are under, and I desperately want to grow that inkling of class consciousness. Unfortunately, it was obvious that these people are still too trapped in capitalism-as-default to seriously imagine a real alternative.
To me, American Exceptionalism ™ is still the dominant narrative, even within the movement that is looking at Platner and Mamdani.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a solid recommendation for how to actually address this with people beyond the tender prodding you’ve already illustrated. Mostly, I just wanted to reply to tell you that I definitely understand that feeling/though.
Stay strong.
gosh
nobody says gosh anymore
dadgummit
darn it to heck
Gosh darnit
Golly!
Sorry for posting here a lot. But I was just thinking about it, it’s so goddamn sad that Indonesia never had a revolution. I think it’s even sadder that even after the new order fell thay the PKI still hasn’t been unbanned and the left is still essentially prosecuted. Honestly, a communist Indonesia would’ve been beautiful
I’ve been reading The Jakarta Method. It’s very sad that neither Sukarno nor the PKI could rise to meet the moment. Mao told them both explicitly to arm up and prepare for violence but they were over confident.
The lesson here is to be armed and willing to fight because the reactionaries will kill you.
Friendly reminder that Tom Homan, a key figure within ICE, has been around since the Obama days and is only now seen as a problem by libs. He even got a medal given to him by Obama for ‘his effectivness with deportations’.
They do that with everyone, including Obama himself.
eyyup
I’ve been thinking about how did revolutionaries organize during bourgeois revolutions. Obviously they didn’t adhere to any Leninist organization method, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had something similar to Democratic Centralism (democracy for the rich, of course). I might write a follow-up about this in the future.
A good place to start would probably be looking into the Guomindang and Tongmenghui under Sun Yat-Sen given the KMT adopted a leninist model and the Chinese Revival Society was a secretive organization that was constantly persecuted by the Qing
Thanks for the suggestion!
I think i get so easily annoyed by people that it’s physically impossible for me to doomscroll, because i hate like 90% of people making any form of short form content
same
Is it just me or is the USian solution to any sort of bodily/mental issue immediate medication? Like with pretty hard drugs. ADHD? Put 'em on adderall. Cough? Some syrup with a potent opioid in it. Either this is my straight-edgeness talking or the pharmaceutical industry trying to get the entire population hooked on the infinite number of addictive shit they make. Not that I am anti-medicine in any way, but you really should always know what you are putting in your body.
Its not just usa but all the western capitalist nations. The goal is to maintain workers at the lowest cost. Drugs are cheap to produce. If they make workers slightly less effective by deadening their senses it just means they will not look in to the real causes of their suffering. There are no shortage of unmedicated workers to take up the jobs that require a clear mind. If they make people die sooner it means less old age pension payouts.
Right on the money, comrade.
ADHD symptoms are well proven to be treatable in most cases by proper medication. They also help children with ADHD have their brain develop to be far closer to a neurotypical brain, causing a cessation in distressing ADHD symptoms in adulthood sometimes allowing them to be able to come off medication entirely.
ADHD medication, prescribed properly and titrated onto under guidance of a specialist doctor also is not addictive and easily weaned off of.
ADHD is a disability under capitalism, and even under socialism can cause massive issues and certainly can be disabling even under a fairer economic system. We will need to move to a much more accommodating system of work that might still only get an unmedicated person with ADHD up to like 80% as efficient over long stretches of time (short term analysis is pointless because most people with ADHD can completely outperform neurotypical people while a task is novel and interesting to them). It is a tiring neurotype to have as you desperately want constant stimulation and newness that is just impractical to provide in most cases. Not to mention its higher likelihood of co-occurence with Autism that also makes the person crave structure and routine as well as novelty in the right doses, which just throws a big spanner in the works for accommodating them.
I guess I didn’t elaborate far enough in terms of what I meant, but thanks for the explanation.
US soccer fans got a lesson in humility last night which is kinda funny because the entire football world was saying they only played some weaker sides until today, but a lot of them seemed confident to win. It’s even funnier that it is Belgium who knocked them out as we had some issues with our local US ambassador in the past year.
As salty as I am about Iran’s treatment during this world cup, watching Belgium kick Yankee ass was satisfying. If only because it proved that team Melli went down swinging and was a worthwhile opponent.
My mental health has been rebounding in general along with my physical health.
But the last two nights (last one and the night before) have netted barely any sleep in each of them.
I slept maybe 2 to 3 hours two nights ago (probably more like 2) and 1 to 2 hours last night.
It can really impact your mood when you’re improving overall but then you suddenly don’t sleep the full 8 hours two nights in a row.
It doesn’t affect me that bad (but it’s still pretty bad) during the first night of missed sleep.
But the second night of poor sleep is where it really seems to accumulate and get much worse.
My mood really does just drop like a stone when that happens, maybe even as the day continues depending on the circumstances.
I’ll hang in there. I’m glad that I’m starting to trust myself more and more again. That’s never happened before.
But it can really make you anxious sometimes when you hit what appears to be a roadblock on your way to recovery and a better life, you know?
I want to take this moment to explicitly thank the Jewish community for inspiring me to do the research that I do, even when it seems very tangential to the Shoah. In certain ways, it would have been easier for Jews to try to put their tragedies behind them (if such a thing be possible), but they have a long tradition of keeping memories alive through commemorations such as Tishʻa BʼAv, Pesach, Chanukkah and so on. While I have several other reasons for researching it, I truly doubt that I’d be here explaining Fascism’s history to others if no-one endeavored to keep the Shoah’s memory alive. So to the Jewish people for inspiring me through their sumud and commemorations, I just want to say ‘thanks’.
Recently, I read that the Jewish tradition of reading the Talmud and understanding the Talmud through Rabbi commentary was one of the reasons why the Jewish people had high literacy rates since the 1st century.
The Jewish community has such a commendable record of dedication to literature and preservation.
So thank you for your dedication and for continuing the tradition of your community comrade. And thank you for your research on Fascism.
Honestly there needs to be a term for “arguments abound due to poor writing.”
I literally just woke up thinking about this so I’ll come up with more examples soon, but the civil war questline in skyrim comes to mind first for me.
There’s this opinion online that people will only argue about something if it’s well written. For example, the political questions of Fallout New Vegas compared to “will you nuke this random town for 5 caps” in fallout 3 or basically the entire renegade route in the mass effect games.
But I think there’s also the opposite. If something is poorly written it can also create arguments because the writers didn’t both to expand anything.
So for Skyrim, I see people argue about it, and it basically revolves around the same like…3 points. Which is white-gold accord, one side is racist, and the thalmor having a file on ulfric.
All of this is basically surface level information. Playing through either questline doesn’t really help either, as no new information is really given [there’s also the issue of Bethesda being very purposeless game designers. So the imperials sending you to clear and entire fort full of bandits could be a sign of them not liking you, or lack of manpower, or incompetence, etc. Or it could be that the devs were lazy.] So, i think, there emerges this phantom wedge where the two factions and questlines are so similar, that any actual differences are amplified in discussion despite the fact that they don’t really matter. I’ll try to think of a reason why this happens, but that’s the jist of what I’m thinking about since i saw another video about it pop up on my feed
Attack on titan could maybe fit here? Less “poor writing that explains too little” and more “the author is completely ignored by readers and because of that there is insufficient information”
The ending basically boils down to “omnicide them vs genocide us”, where one side correctly identifies that Eren and the rest of paradise have no choice, but to kill everyone else on the planet due to the rumbling not exactly being a precision strike and also being the only relevant weapon/means of defence they have in the face of genocide, which was greenlit and supported by every other nation in the world apparently (which makes no sense lol)
The other side, however, also correctly identifies that the Yaegerists and their leader, Eren, are basically fascist, especially the Yaegerists are just monumental assholes and easily hateable. Also, omnicide is seen as unjustifiable by most readers, no matter what (it should not be justifiable, but here we are)
Some wonky writing allows side 2 to say that Eren had other choices and that he didn’t do the omnicide for any moral/material reasoning, but because he has a childish view of what the outside world should look like and he didn’t see what he wanted to see, so he killed everyone to clean the slate.
Side 1 basically has no wonky writing to “abuse” for their point, so they stay at “so Eren and the Yaegerists should just be perfect little victims in the face of genocide?” There is also the point of Eren literally seeing his own future and seeing himself commit to the omnicide, so it was pretty much inevitable anyway, as it shows that there really was no compromise available and that knowing the future does not offer better choices.
All opinions and analysis i have ever seen on AoT fall into diegetic analysis, where they argue from an in-universe point of view. The problem is that there are just moral contradictions in this show that most people can’t handle (especially when most people have a libbed up moral code, that makes them side with real life genocide), which is why most people end up on condemning the easily hateable side (The pro-omnicide Yaegerists) as they have more observable negatives (them being fascist assholes and omnicide being bad no matter what).
Essentially, the author wrote a story about people that should be wrong and placed them into a situation, where their fascism is simply…correct and easily justifiable as it’s just self defense.
The non-diegetic view here is that the author is likely just a japanese nationalist, that sees japan as the tiny little island fighting against the entire rest of the world and the only way to win is fascist violence on everyone. This is evidenced by him basing the prominent character Dot Pixis on Akiyama Yoshifuru, a general and war criminal in the Imperial Japanese Army and a second twitter account likely belonging to him being very nationalistic
In the end, the thought process most go through is “I mostly understand Eren, but i draw the line at omnicide. Also they are fascists assholes anyway, so they must be wrong” when the thought process should be “why tf did the author write fascism and the eradication of almost all life on earth as the only plausible solution???” With the likely answer being that he does see this as the only solution in real life too.
Tbh, no longer sure if this fits at all, but i wrote too much to just delete it haha
I don’t think it’s exactly what I had in mind, but it’s similar.
I think a counter example helps here. Fallout new vegas for instance has a fascist genocidal faction called Caesars Legion, led by “Caesar” or Edward Swallow. They rape and torture and kill and all the other stuff you expect from roman larpers in the post apocalypse. You can join them if you want. I don’t think the point of them is to be morally equal to the other factions [especially since, if I remember right, killing their soldiers during the battle of hoover dam gives you positive karma]. They’re kinda there to juxtapose the other factions, especially the NCR. The fact the NCR is bad at their job is not bad writing, it’s the point and you can tell. Caesars legion being somewhat competent at having their land be safe and Chem free is not an ideological statement like TOT, its a point that some people are willing to put up with the worst stuff to love safely [of course, that’s not accounting for the slaves]. This doesn’t mean there’s nothing to criticize, but just that very rarely do you question if the devs actually meant for x to mean y or if they just gave up. It helps that the writing quality and moral questions are generally well written as well, compared to skyrim or fallout 3.
So for AOT, the problem is “is there an argument or did the author just want to make fascist propaganda.”
Honestly everytime i try to think of another example of what I’m talking about it’s just another Bethesda game like Starfield or Fallout 4. The only other two I can think of are Captain America: Civil war and Bioshock Infinite. Those two are a little different though.
Civil war is closer to my thing, where not much thought it actually put into the sokovia accords, it’s just a backdrop for fighting. People will argue, but theres no evidential or contextual backing for much, and one side ends up having to be wrong so they make the accords a hydra plot or something.
Bioshock infinite is closer to AOT, where the writers go “both sides bad” because shockingly the revolutionaries were right. So they have the leader try to kill a kid like she’s on an episode of The Wire so any discussion on the factions boil down to “I don’t like killing kids vs the writing is bad.”
If I could jump in, I see what you mean by lack contextualization as a symptom of bad writing creating pointless arguments in communities. The example I come to probably would be an animal as well, Code Geass. I personally love the show, but I think the charecter of Suzaku is very badly written for what he’s supposed to be. However, if you act like his chatecter is the way that it is intentionally, he’s probably one of the best for what he is.
In the series of Code Geass, Japan has been conquered by the Holy Britainian Empire (a mix of the US and British empires which has conquered like a 3rd of the world). The son of the former Prime Minister of Japan, Suzaku, joins the Britanian military after the fall of the nation. Joining the Britainian military as a Japanese earns someone the title of honorary Britainian. The Britainian occupation renamed Japan to “Area 11” which they do with all their colonies, and outlaws mentions of the former national identity (So, Japanese are called Elevens in the show).
Suzaku throughout the series acts like your typical liberal idealist. He moralizes everything and disdains any end achieved through what he considers “immoral” means. He consistently enforces the colonial policy of Britainia against his people under the illusion that he’ll be able to rise up in the ranks to change the system from within.
You can probably already see how this creates problems for his framing. You see, the show frames him to be a moral paragon of justice who stands above the rest of the cast be they the more callus protagonist lelouch or the more bigoted Britainian military. However, as an audience, it’s very hard to accept that framing when golden boy suzaku assists Britainia in committing a pogrom (It could honestly be charged as a genocide) in the 2nd episode by fighting Japanese militants defending the city. It’s not left up to interpretation at all that Britainia is doing this, the show has scenes of Britainia soldiers sweep through floors of an apartment and execute civilians on sight.
The reason I provide all this context is because Suzakus story should be a very simple tale, and frankly it is (though not by intention I believe). It’s an example of how trying to work within an inherently corrupt colonial system will never lead to emancipation, instead only blooding the hands of idealists naive enough to attempt it. That’s what happens in the show as well.
However the writers constantly attempt to frame Suzaku as if his hypocrisy is somehow morally complex, or as if he isn’t one of the most despicable individuals in the narrative. He continues to morally grand stand against “terrorists” while helping his oppressors butcher more of his people, all because he’s honestly more concerned about his own personal ego over the well being of his nation.
The story is fantastic if you ignore what the show us trying to say and take it for what it is. Regardless of everything outside the material explicitly provided to you, Suzaku is a perfect example of how liberal idealists end up being morally reprehensible to the revolutionaries they oppose but still fund ways to justify everything to themselves. For this reason, many people recognize Suzaku for what he is, a traitor to his people whose more interested on proving himself right then bettering peoples lives.
Yet so many on the Code Geass Fandom take everything from the source material, and still view Suzaku as an upstanding individual who is more correct than he’s not. They will constantly argue using the charecters personal details and past that he’s actually more justified then others make him out to be. Some like to treat him as the “other side” of the coin that holds the series protagonist, Lelouch. Tons of both siding and all that even though, frankly speaking, Lelouch’s schpeal that you need to get your hands dirty to fight an empire and make a better world is entirely correct. Suzaku proves it through dirtying his own hands by aiding Britainia, just because he does it legally doesn’t deny the fact he’s upholding an inherently racist system.
I think the writers of Code geass were massive libs, and they let it show with how they frame the events of the show. However it makes Suzaku appear relatively transparent to anyone who chooses to judge his actions on context of the events presented on the show rather than rely on musical scores and directorial decisions to inform their opinion.
I guess in the example I’m talking about, it’s less so the writers didn’t provide context, but that the presentation of that context clashes with how an astute audience would perceive it. For that I’d say it’s bad writing.
