0__0

That would be absolutely hilarious

He's decent. Not really a marxist even though he declares himself as one every so often. Disagree heavily with his whole "techno-feudalism" shtick since those things aren't historically comparable. His analysis whilst good is not really materialist but is materialist-adjacent, like Mearsheimer or Sachs. He has made an interesting documentary about his time as finance minister of Greece, although your eyes might roll to the back of your head when you hear him talk about his father. Guy was in a ~~Nazi concentration camp in WW2~~, and when the communists asked him to sign a worthless piece of paper denouncing leftism just to get released, he was stupidly stubborn and refused, yet Varoufakis makes this out as some point of unbent pride or something lol. Like damn, I wonder why the communists asked you to do that, it couldn't possibly be because you'd be a helluva lot more useful outside than inside of there.

Edit: He wasn't in a Nazi concentration camp, but in the one established by the reactionary Greek government after the war.

Enjoy that shit for those of us who can't. Cheers!

Well, we already know the US waged an active propaganda campaign against the Chinese vaccine

Considering that, has anyone noticed that 5G conspiracy theories are mostly gone? Strange that just when China had the upper hand in 5G, they were the most prevalent...

The capitalist class is not a monolithic entity; it is factional and tied to various concentrations of capital that settle around specific forms of commodity production and arbitrage (the Oil Barons, the Tech Lords, Wall Street, Legacy Media etc.) We've born witness to the exposing of a major decades old intelligence operation by the CIA and Mossad to utilize pedophiles for the purpose of blackmail and leverage, ensnaring a wide assortment of capitalists and capital supporters from a wide pool of factions.

No, of course they're not monolithic in the sense that they all realize surplus value in the same form. However, the profit of the bankers, rentiers, merchants, industrialists etc. all rests on commodity production and the realization of surplus value. This attribute of capital generally, standing in contradiction with that of labour in general, is why we're opposed to capital. Yes, all the people caught in this scandal all wield some sort of power, but that power in and of itself does not automatically assume that someone will stoop to that depravity, which is why I mentioned Bezos and Zuckenberg.

This reality is born right out of the unpunished criminality of the CIA and the state/capitalist self-preservational logic of the settler-state of Israel; this is an operation that took conscious advantage (proven by the most recent released files) of the fall of the Soviet sphere, kidnapping and trafficking young girls from Russia and Eastern Europe for the sake of political networking.

And since I'm going to assume we're talking about the radicalization of the american working class (since this is affecting the american political scene the most), that is not going to be realized by pointing out the exploitation of Easter Europe. It can only be realized by directly pointing to the contradictions inherent between capital and labour in America (although considering imperialism, who knows if a true radicalization of the working class in America is even good, let alone possible). The Russian, French and Chinese peasants certainly didn't rise up in arms because they were appalled by the treatment of Native or African Americans.

This operation didn't require the ensnarement of every single capitalist on earth to work, they simply needed some of the most powerful, and they got all the ones they went after, because your assessment that capitialist production doesn't lead to moral depravity is incorrect, to be a capitalist is to devalue the lives of workers and their families, to set aside humanity to keep the circuit growing, the capitalists are human who through the pressures of competition and the imperatives of capitalist produtction transform themselves into anti-humans just to keep afloat

And that's exactly why it is not the "mother of all radicalizing catalysts"! It is not an all systematic, all-encompassing critique of capital as such, but rather a moral failing of a certain group of capitalist (and even non-capitalists). Sure you could say it leads to moral failure in the way you described, but it is not definitively and absolutely so. The capitalists aren't practicing their evil laugh, they all equally think they're saving the world whilst lowering wages. It also doesn't take a capitalist to be a piece of shit, thus the concept of "good billionaires" for the liberals. And again, at the end of the day, morality is completely subjective based on the country, as well as the time in human history and the advancement of human development.

Trump broke containment in 2016 to become the avatar of carbon extraction capitalism, and he's done nothing that would warrant Israel challenging his status and the question you should be asking is why would they risk it anyway? You think the Israelis would risk alienating the MAGA base anymore than they've already done? Blackmail doens't have an infinite shelf life.

The mistake is assuming Trump's policies are the result of blackmail, rather than the presupposition of him coming to power in America. Kamala and Biden too, enacted Israeli interests despite not being apparently compromised.

In the sense that this critique of capitalist is too narrow and does not in fact include some of the other prominent figures (such as Bezos and Zuckenberg, at least to my knowledge), it is indeed insufficient in criticizing capital as a whole. Moralistic critiques are great supplements to systematic ones, but can never take their place. They can certainly be introductions, but you're not going to get anywhere if they cannot accept the central thesis of capitalist exploitation. Especially with a guy such as Chomsky being in them, who sure as shit is not much of a capitalist (although most certainly a radlib). You're not exactly discrediting anarchism if you point that out. You're also not going to find someone such as Dick Cheney on the files, even though we know he's an evil piece of shit. Sure they have all the power to be the most morally depraved evil bastards, but that is inherently not a characteristic of capitalist production. This certainly isn't the "mother of all radicalizing catalysts", rapid economic deterioration is, which is why economism was so widespread in the Russian worker's movement, particularly with the Mensheviks.

Also the whole compromising thing with Mossad is a bit unconvincing considering that Trump is constantly in the files yet nothing has actually happened to him. Nobody cares about compromising material in the form of someone's dick pic or moral depravity, except for Starmer and his weird spy camera obsession I guess.

:code-brown:

:fall-braun:

But they already had literal CIA black sites in the EU? I mean, what else could the US possibly want? This truly is just Trump being a dumbass, there is literally no other rational explanation.

Sow a little dysentery among the ranks

Well, comrades, happy new year from this miserable part of the world

I love how the megathread for the Dessalines DPRK meme not only lacks any kind of statement of the DPRK being this great place to live or the best country on planet earth as the liberal strawman claims (I wonder if being the most sanctioned place on planet earth has something to do with it), but in that very picture has some guy espousing true European values by calling Russians "orcs" ("Asiatic hordes" in Old English)

I wouldn't really compare gold to bitcoin, since bitcoin is extremely volatile when compared to it. Obviously the neoclassicals love it and want to bring back the standard since it decentralizes money creation, but it is a good investment when it looks like the central authority is not handling the crisis well.

Yeah, I mean bonds are always a secure investment. Not to sound like a gold bug, but gold isn't bad either, especially during a crisis when faith is lost in fiat currency.

if capitalism chugs along it'll increase, if it doesn't that's even better and you won't have to worry about savings

Capital in crisis doesn't at all immediately equal socialism. Also, if you applied this logic to the property market pre-2008, you probably wouldn't come out all that great.

I finally finished the nightmare that is Elden Ring's DLC after some time of just putting the game down.

Barely figured out how to find the Abyssal Woods, but I gotta say, I got the luckiest fucking RNG ever on the guy guarding them. He didn't get to teleport once since I just kept doing backstabs on him. After exploring some of the area I finally found the mansion and Midra, who was an actually kind of fun boss all in all, took me a couple dozen attempts maybe. But after that detour to make sure I got all the bosses, I finally got to the big, heart stolen boy himself. I gotta say, after worrying so much about him, the fight itself was terribly anti-climactic all in all, took me only 3 tries (would have been 2 if I had bothered to dodge the grab attack). Although I will say I just used the shield poke strategy, with bleed on. Honestly, with a Verdigris shield +10 and the shield talisman, Radahn might as well have been hitting me with a toothpick.

All in all, what can I say. This game clearly isn't even close to being the GOAT, nor is it a terrible game. Sure, that horse is cool, moddable Weapons arts (refuse to call them the dumb elden ring name), the world is fucking massive and the art direction of it deserved the award it got. But at the same time, as much as they expanded the game, it really feels like they actually hollowed out the core experience. The bosses never played by the same rules you did obviously, but I don't think it has ever been this egregious. They have 50 hit combos, which then if you try to hit them, chain into other 50 hit combos. If you get hit once in some of these combos, you're dead, since you can't recover. They input read and hit you specifically when you're healing. They very realistically delay their attack, and then swing it at the speed of light. One of them even has an attack where you either have to be a kilometer away to dodge it, or you have to go on youtube and look up the most unintuitive way to dodge an attack ever.

But even the RPG aspect is rather trimmed down in a way, with metas now being the prevalent way to play. And those playstyles require having all the necessary items, which can only be found if you look at the wiki and run the risk of spoiling yourself. Although you no longer really have to worry, since you can pretty much fast travel from any point of the map, but that still kind of defeats the feeling of danger you had traversing the worlds of the other games. It's a massive open world, there is no way someone is going to explore all of it alone, especially when there is only 7 bosses that aren't repeated, despite there being like 150 in total. A boss fight used to be a pretty special event in the other souls games, whereas in Elden Ring it just feels like another mindless obstacle that you overcame 10 hours ago with a beefed up statline. Despite it being massive, the game just kind of gets stale, and you'll be begging it to end by the late game sections. On the whole, I'd give it about a 7-7.5/10.

00 [he/him]

@ 00 @hexbear.net

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0__0 [he/him]

WaPo: "Ranking the 2028 Democratic presidential contenders"

Greece’s Varoufakis to stand trial after admitting drug use 36 years ago

I've had 2 drinks and I'm an ultra-lightweight, ask me anything

What "conspiracy theories" do you believe in?

Hot take: people are giving themselves epstein derangement syndrome (and that is a bad thing)

Hot take: people are giving themselves epstein derangement syndrome (and that is a bad thing)

:thought-about-it:

Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 12th to January 18th, 2026 - Abolish ICE - "C"OTW: USA

Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

What are some GOOD things that happened in 2025?

Mao Zedong - Novo General Megathread for the 25th-31st of December 2025

Documentation of Lemmy.ml's Extremism [Megathread]

Anything to do with savings other than see them dwindle?

Anything to do with savings other than see them dwindle?

Anything to do with savings other than see them dwindle?

Sunday is Gaming Day: What Are You Playing Weekly Thread

How most Marxists use dialectical materialism wrong

How most Marxists use dialectical materialism wrong

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 8th to December 14th, 2025 - Cyclone Ditwah Strikes Sri Lanka - COTW: Sri Lanka

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 8th to December 14th, 2025 - Cyclone Ditwah Strikes Sri Lanka - COTW: Sri Lanka

Was there ever any attempt at making a socialist calendar?

I radicalized myself

:stalin-sniper

Westerners simply cannot stand the fact that the USSR was objectively less racist than them

Why is there no Mao Zedong city in China?

Eurofucks try their hand at fanfiction

I present to you, the School Shooter Six

"r/TikTokCringe"