Decades of sanctioning and warmongering by the US and its allies has kept a small country like the DPRK on the defensive, which isn't ideal if you want a thriving nation, regardless of its ideology.
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FYI, Machado is a far-right plant who's championing the sanctions and US intervention in her country and every other nation that opposes imperialism. Notwithstanding her vocal and active support for far-right parties in Europe and LatAm.
Everything's so performative with liberals. There's no introspection regarding what their "protest" seeks to achieve; do they really expect fascists to somehow step down after performing the role of the victim?
You're welcome
Reeducation is indeed needed. But people won't easily engage with it as is.
Let's be honest, most do not engage with rational thought as much as with their emotions and intuition, especially when the hegemonic, mainstream media has tamed our minds with bourgeois propaganda.
Instead, we need incentivize reeducation: feeding an impoverished neighbourhood for free once a week; open a free clinic and provide vaccination; offer cheap after-school courses for their kids, so forth. And work on publicity. The people, especially those who are directly benefiting, will then probably think, "those communists ain't that bad after all," and will therefore be more open to learn to see things from a materialist perspective.
And this strategy has worked in the past and is even working with Islamist groups. Why do you think Hamas and Hezbollah have popular support? Because they offer their communities many quality services (healthcare, education, alimentation, etc.) which the bourgeois state would never have given them. And while most of their supporters and sympathisers are not strictly islamists — indeed, not even strictly religious — they nonetheless believe that these groups have the people's interest in mind.
You're absolutely right in your observation. I believe there is a stoic attitude of sorts that pervades the logic of the average worker under the western capitalist system. The supposition is that the latter is outside of one's control, so there is no point in trying to change it; it is rather more useful to change one's own feelings towards it. Absolutely no compromise: either you accept it as part of "nature", or you spend the rest of your life suffering (mentally).
USA citizens in particular have been continuously consuming anticommunist propaganda for a century, to the point where it became inconceivable to imagine a system other than the capitalist mode of production. And so, despite being cognizant of its severe injustice, they were led to believe that they can only cope with it. In fact, the sample of comments above clearly demonstrate this: these people are in exactly in the same spot as OOP, yet their ferocious attack against their fellow proletarian serves as their coping mechanism.
Is this reversible? Perhaps it could be, but we are facing a multi-billion propaganda machine that knows no exhaustion.
It's so frustrating because I've always used them, because it makes sense to use them like any other linguistic device!
I'll do you one better and recommend Dostoevsky's The Double. Way more sinister and eerie, as it deals with schizophrenia.
Check out Cloudstream. It requires extensions to function and some of them include torrent providers.
Answer delivered by u/StarTrackFan and linked to by Dessalines in Socialism FAQ :
"The Spanish Civil war is an expansive and complex subject due to all the "sides" involved, the frequent changes in power, its meaning to global politics etc. For brevity's sake I'm going to take your question as just about the USSR's role in the Spanish Civil War.
For us to understand the actions of the USSR in relation to Spain, first we have to understand the political situation in Europe and Asia during the years preceding and during the Spanish Civil War. I recently made this comment that talks about the USSR's political position before WWII, the first half of the comment especially is relevant to this question.
The short story is that when the war broke out in 1936 the USSR was desperately trying to arrange a "collective security" pact with Britain and France to fight the fascists together. The USSR saw that they were facing war with both Japan and Germany if they couldn't work out a solution so they were in a pretty desperate position.
We should also understand that the Spanish Republic was not necessarily an "ordinary" bourgeois republic. Spain had a high amount of revolutionary fervor at the time and even the Republican government had many Communists/Anarchists in positions of power as well as high working class/peasant militancy. This is part of what would make it so scary to Britain and France. It's worth mentioning that the USSR had been aiding a communist party in Spain for years and had for some time been hoping for a revolution similar to Russia's.
After the rise of the Nazis the USSR had switched their strategy for advising communist parties around the world. Whereas before all social democrats etc had been declared "social fascists" now they advocated a "Popular Front" of bourgeois democracies/social democrats, and more left groups to fight fascism. This was basically influenced by communists parties inability to curb the rise of fascism in Germany/Italy.
So, like their broader strategy to ally against the fascists, their strategy for nations with the threat of fascism was to ally against it and stomp it out wherever possible. This meant that the USSR was for the Spanish Republic in the time of the Civil War. Also, the communist line was always to attempt to turn the revolution into a communist one, the point of the "Popular Front" was simply to attack the fascist threat first since they saw it as the primary danger.
So, going back to when the fascist reaction breaks out and when the Fascists of Italy and Germany start sending aid, the USSR had to consider it's position. Britain, France, the US, all declared "neutrality" on the matter (though some of these nations still allowed corporations to sell arms to the fascists).
People don't often realize that at this time the Western Powers viewed the USSR as a bigger threat than the fascists -- they had this view right up until about 1939. So, the USSR wanted to stop fascism and preserve itself against a two front war. This led them to be wary about aiding the Spanish Revolution since it basically harmed their foreign relations with Britain and France. They actually sent substantial military aid which I'll get to later, but they did it secretly at the time. Also their official stance had to be in support of a Republic only even though their actual goal was a communist revolution. Even so, by openly declaring support for the Republic and by publicly in some ways, secretly in others, giving major aid, they risked great damage to their international position as far as allying with the Western Powers went.
In addition to the pressures in the west at the time of the reaction the communists had major concerns about the anarchists in Spain, who were very disorganized militarily and were essentially unpredictable in many ways (in some cases they would work with the Republic, other times they would refuse. Sometimes they'd take political power, sometimes they wouldn't. Sometimes they'd realize that they needed peasants and petty landowners on their side, many other times they'd demand collectivization of everything).
The relationship between the various anarchist groups, the Communist Party, the Republican government (in its different formations), and the USSR are really pretty complicated and it somewhat changed over time. It's a shame that most people get their "knowledge" of what happened from reading "Homage to Catalonia" in high school or watching "Land and Freedom". The "analysis" most people get from these is that the big evil communists killed everyone.
In reality it was much more complex with bungling and hostility on every side. Certainly to blame the defeat on the Communists is basically nonsense -- I think even anarchists who had read thorough histories on this would have to agree.
The "purges" of anarchists by communists that are often blamed for the defeat of the whole left came very late and not in the numbers often assumed -- basically, though it was a problem, it was nowhere close to being a primary one. Usually people who attack the communists don't mention that in many cases this was a reaction to anarchists attacking communist camps and stealing ammunition/weapons (since they, refusing to participate in the popular front, were not given the soviet weapons), they also typically don't mention things like the anarchists role in the "Casado Coup" betraying communists, or the plenty of anarchists that actually worked with the Popular Front in various ways. Also I don't mean to belittle the anarchists -- they played a major role. It's more the "popular" modern anarchist "common sense" interpretation of the reason for the Fascist victory I take issue with and that just doesn't match up to the facts no matter what side you're on.
I had a lot more stuff I wanted to mention but this comment is going to be way too long already. Please, anyone curious at all, I encourage you to ask questions about this stuff because it is complicated and I will do my best to answer. For now I'll just leave with a little more information on the aid the USSR gave Spain since I've noticed a lot of confusion on this lately:
USSR aid to Spanish Republic
First, they organized a civilian aid campaign, even getting Soviet workers to volunteer for a .5% pay reduction to help the Republicans
Soviet totals for the Spanish relief campaign altogether came to 115 million rubles for 1936, 102 million for 1937, 45 million for 1938, and 9 million for 1939— a total of 271 million rubles, or approximately £1,416,000 sterling, which took the form of large amounts of Soviet foodstuffs and other civilian goods shipped to Republican Spain.
As far as military aid goes, it was pretty substantial
estimates of material provided by the USSR to the Republicans vary between 634 and 806 planes, 331 and 362 tanks, and 1,034 and 1,895 artillery pieces
In addition they provided 15,113 - 20,486 machine guns, 414,645-500,000 rifles, 110,000 bombs, 500,000 grenades, and massive amounts of ammunition.
It's worth noting that the quality of the weapons, though bad in some places, was overall pretty high. Especially the Tanks were far superior to even the ones the Nazis were able to give at the time. Also in addition to the above plane estimate 300 Soviet-model fighter planes were manufactured in Catalonia and Alicante on Soviet blueprints and with the assistance of Soviet technicians, which were incorporated into the Republican air force
Of the military advisors/troops
Altogether, the number of military personnel was limited, and Soviet sources recognize little more than 3,000 in all, of whom 200, or 6.67 percent, were killed. This rate of loss was about average for the two contending armies
Offsetting the small numbers, however, was the skill level of the Soviet personnel. Not a single one was an ordinary infantryman. The largest contingent was made up of the nearly 800 air crewmen who flew in the Republican air force, followed by several hundred tank crewmen. Many of the rest were officers, some of fairly senior rank; the remainder consisted of technical support personnel, nearly all of them commissioned or noncommissioned offcers.
The USSR also directed Communist parties around the world to organize and recruit the International Brigades (also sending film crews to Spain and making tons of propaganda films to encourage enlistment), took in many refugees from Spain, and trained Spanish pilots, tank crewmen, and other specialists in the USSR.
A major source for the more specific stuff (numbers and some quotes) for this comment came from the thorough yet very anticommunist book by Stanley Payne "The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism".
Again, please ask any questions you might have about this (or post new threads if you want). I know I have not been super clear in this meandering comment. Anarchists -- do not be afraid to ask questions and press me about some concern, as long as you can be respectful. This is a contentious topic that I feel is full of misconceptions so I'd love to help clarify anything."
From the tankiejerk comm they manage. I'm still not sure what I should gather from it.
Mind if I ask, what does the ministry of home affairs entail?
I understand where you're coming from, and I agree. This why I made sure to mention that this does not apply to all situations and not everyone's experience is the same in this respect.
Precisely, what the author has in mind is when expectations do not lign up with one's reality and how this might lead to their entire worldview crashing down. We as human beings seek comfort and certainty, which is why we tend to formulate some intrinsic meaning to the world we live in. But what happens when we don't have the capacity anymore to find any meaning to life? Is taking one's own life the only option? These questions are of an existential nature, which places Cioran in the same tradition as authors like Camus, Schopenhauer and Sartre.
Anyhow, this is simply my review of the book and how I understood it. I don't particularly agree with its whole philosophy.
It's a very interesting case. I think it could be a culmination of various factors, like:
- Maybe teaching Marxism through formal education, like any other discipline, isn't as effective to disseminate the ideology. It would seem like a mandatory chore than a voluntary venture.
- The children of the communist partisans did not live through the harsh times of feudal oppression or fascist rule. The more time that passes, the less the people are connected to the original spirit of the revolution, especially when the later generations of the USSR were living in very comfortable conditions.
Of course the answer will be negative if I were to ask the young residents who did not live under actually existing socialism (AES) and whose only knowledge of the Soviet era is through heavily propagandized media by rich capitalists. Conversely, the older population who lived through that epoch has a mostly positive opinion about the USSR. Why do you think that is the case?
Would you mind elaborating? How can a man who liberated the peasant and working class from serfdom and empowered them and uplifted them from poverty and Tsarist oppression, and wrote extensively on Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, be considered an Imperialist?
When I see certain communist personalities in history who later become staunch anti-communists, I am led to believe that it comes down to poor theoretical formation or, as you and star have both mentioned, there was no interest or "belief" in Marxist theory in the first place. Or else, why would many Eastern Europeans who actually lived under AES and received formal education and a rigorous formation in Marxism, would overnight just go completely against it?
Some people have ideology tied to their emotions, which we all do to different extents and which can be useful when it comes to praxis and mobilising large masses of people. But emotions are not fixed and can fluctuate, which is why it is important to contain them within a theoretical framework. This is why I have been striving to read and study theory extensively; because, like you, I can't and don't want to see myself as anything other than a communist in the future.
That's what I used to do before opting for online streaming.
Some minor gripes is that these files seemingly dont come with metadata, and you cant download a whole playlist or album at a time, both being huge bummers :/
I'm pretty sure yt-dlp can do this. Why not try Seal on F-droid.
Open Source @lemmy.ml Open source Android video editor, built with Media3 and Jetpack Compose.
Literature @beehaw.org Deleuze on Palestine: "The Grandeur of Yasser Arafat" and "Stones"
Open Source @lemmy.ml There's a promising start for an anti-goodreads subreddit, we should take this opportunity to direct them to open source alternatives
Jerboa @lemmy.ml Features we'd like to see in Jerboa
Communism has always been the ideal. However, we have to take into account that we do not live in a bubble insulated from everyone else. We are facing the real, global and continuous threat of imperialist invasion by the capitalist forces. See Cuba and Venezuela, for instance.
It's really hard to not be an ultra-militaristic society when the CIA and the enemies of the proletariat are always lurking in the shadows and looking for any miniscule gap to breach socialist countries from within. Regardless, we need to diffuse a proletarian, anti-bourgeois culture among the masses in order to inhibit the possibilities of foreign intervention.