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emizeko [they/them]

@ emizeko @hexbear.net

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5 yr. ago

  • Mia Agraviador is 23 years old now and works as a barista in Sydney (the orginal ad was an Australian campaign for Old El Paso tacos)

  • shout out to the "Back to Back Vietnam War Champs" design as well

  • I don't like this one because it tacitly accepts a lot of bad framing without targeting it

  • I feel like this connects back to the liberal need to erase anyone left of them, because otherwise they can't pretend to be the good guys

    also this:

    The kitten-burners seem to fulfill some urgent need. They give us someone we can clearly and correctly say we’re better than. Their extravagant cruelty makes us feel better about ourselves because we know that we would never do what they have done. They thus function as signposts of depravity, reassuring the rest of us that we’re Not As Bad As them, and thus letting us tell ourselves that this is the same thing as us being good.

    from https://redsails.org/false-witnesses/

  • see also

    https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/#automatic-subject

    and

    Now your dreams will never again be so peaceful. You will see capital in your nights, like a nightmare, that presses you and threatens to crush you. With terrified eyes you will see it get fatter, like a monster with one hundred proboscises that feverishly search the pores of your body to suck your blood. And finally you will learn to assume its boundless and gigantic proportions, its appearance dark and terrible, with eyes and mouth of fire, morphing its suckers into enormous hopeful trumpets, within which you’ll see thousands of human beings disappear: men, women, children. Down your face will trickle the sweat of death, because your time, and that of your wife and your children will soon arrive. And your final moan will be drowned out by the happy sneering of the monster, glad with your state, so much richer, so much more inhumane.

    —Carlo Cafiero, Summary of Marx's Capital (1879)

  • Harvard University’s Ash Center released a 2020 study of Chinese public opinion showing that, as of 2016, “95.5 percent of respondents were either ‘relatively satisfied’ or ‘highly satisfied’ with Beijing,”

    [...]

    Li: At the moment, the Chinese the party state has proven an extraordinary ability to change. I mean, I make the joke: “in America you can change the political party, but you can’t change the policies. In China you cannot change the party, but you can change policies.” So, in the past 66 years, China has been run by one single party. Yet the political changes that have taken place in China in these past 66 years have been wider, and broader, and greater than probably any other major country in modern memory.

    Pilger: So in that time China ceased to be communist. Is that what you’re saying?

    Li: Well, China is a market economy, and it’s a vibrant market economy. But it is not a capitalist country. Here’s why: there’s no way a group of billionaires could control the Politburo as billionaires control American policy-making. So in China you have a vibrant market economy, but capital does not rise above political authority. Capital does not have enshrined rights. In America, capital — the interests of capital and capital itself — has risen above the American nation. The political authority cannot check the power of capital. That’s why America is a capitalist country, and China is not.

    from https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/

    also hey look, you're in this picture:

    Marxists view "success" as improving people's lives, i.e. increasing the amount of wealth each individual has, getting people out poverty, improving life expectancy, improving literacy, improving home ownership rates, improving access to health care, so on and so forth.

    Liberals view "success" as bringing people "freedumb and democrazy", even if that entails completely destroying their living standards, killing tons of people, driving people into immense poverty, preventing their country from developing.

    But it makes no sense because if "democracy" comes from the Greek, "demos kratia," meaning, "people's power." If the people actually had the power, why would they not use the political institutions to improve their livelihoods? So how do liberals reconcile this contradiction that you can have "democracy" while at the same time not having expected outcomes from democracy?

    They resolve this contradiction by reducing "democracy" down to mere rituals. If you perform the rituals, you're a "democracy." If you don't, you're a ”dictatorship." The actual outcomes of the rituals don't matter, if people's lives aren't improving, if they're even getting worse, it's all justified as long as people are performing the correct rituals.

    This makes liberal understanding of "democracy" better understood as a state religion rather than any actual real desire to give power to the people. They, in fact, always, consistently, praise the destruction of living standards as long as those rituals get to be performed. Libya is a great example of this, but so is all of eastern Europe, so is the million who died of COVID in the US while they call China "authoritarian" for protecting its people.

  • responding to the Columbia Journalism Review article (by the WaPo's Beijing bureau chief who was in the square) with an unsourced tone poem inspired by Jorjor Well, you don't look like a shit-eating clown at all

    The actual content of the utterance as it spills out is no more complex or nuanced than “China Bad,” and the elementary mistakes people make when they write out statements of “solidarity” make that much clear. This is not a complaint that these people have not studied China enough — there’s no reason to expect them to study China, and retrospectively I think to some extent it was a mistake to personally have spent so much time trying to teach them. It’s instead an acknowledgment that they are eagerly wielding the accusation like a club, that they are in reality unconcerned with its truth-content, because it serves a social purpose.

    What is this social purpose? Westerners want to believe that other places are worse off, exactly how Americans and Canadians perennially flatter themselves by attacking each others’ decaying health-care systems, or how a divorcee might fantasize that their ex-lover’s blooming love-life is secretly miserable. This kind of “crab mentality” is actually a sophisticated coping mechanism suitable for an environment in which no other course of action seems viable. Cognitive dissonance, the kind that eventually spurs one into becoming intolerant of the status quo and into action, is initially unpleasant and scary for everybody. In this way, we can begin to understand the benefit that “victims” of propaganda derive from carelessly “spreading awareness.” Their efforts feed an ambient propaganda haze of controversy and scandal and wariness that suffocates any painful optimism (or jealousy) and ensuing sense of duty one might otherwise feel from a casual glance at the amazing things happening elsewhere. People aren’t “falling” for atrocity propaganda; they’re eagerly seeking it out, like a soothing balm.

    https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/

  • [laughs in IMF loans]

  • Few people here think that the CPC is "genuinely dedicated to communism".

  • the TESLA shirt and the slackjawed gullibility really make a good combo

  • yes

    This kind of “crab mentality” is actually a sophisticated coping mechanism suitable for an environment in which no other course of action seems viable. Cognitive dissonance, the kind that eventually spurs one into becoming intolerant of the status quo and into action, is initially unpleasant and scary for everybody. In this way, we can begin to understand the benefit that “victims” of propaganda derive from carelessly “spreading awareness.” Their efforts feed an ambient propaganda haze of controversy and scandal and wariness that suffocates any painful optimism (or jealousy) and ensuing sense of duty one might otherwise feel from a casual glance at the amazing things happening elsewhere. People aren’t “falling” for atrocity propaganda; they’re eagerly seeking it out, like a soothing balm.

    from https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/

  • meesa sorry

    it got removed anyway

  • holy shit

  • Anyhow, this is a humble request that you should feel less concerned that something might have been posted before. Post it again in case someone missed it, if it sinks it sinks :ivan-drago:

    this is the way

  • What are the strategic consequences of decisively rejecting the tripartite social theory advanced by Orwell, and adopting Marx’s all-encompassing one instead? The basic call to action looks something like this:

    • Stop accusing the masses of being “brainwashed.” Stop treating them as cattle, stop attempting to rouse them into action by scolding them with exposure to “unpleasant truths.”
    • Accept instead that they have been avoiding those truths for a reason. You were able to break through the propaganda barrier, and so could they if they really wanted to. Many of these people see you as the fool, and in many cases not without reason.
    • Understanding people as morally flawed but essentially intelligent beings, craft a political strategy that convincingly makes the case for why they and their lot are very likely to benefit from joining your political project. Not in some utopian infinite timescale, but soon.
    • If you cannot make this case, then forget about convincing the person in question. Focus instead on finding other people to whom such a case can be made. This will lead you directly to class analysis.
  • Now your dreams will never again be so peaceful. You will see capital in your nights, like a nightmare, that presses you and threatens to crush you. With terrified eyes you will see it get fatter, like a monster with one hundred proboscises that feverishly search the pores of your body to suck your blood. And finally you will learn to assume its boundless and gigantic proportions, its appearance dark and terrible, with eyes and mouth of fire, morphing its suckers into enormous hopeful trumpets, within which you’ll see thousands of human beings disappear: men, women, children. Down your face will trickle the sweat of death, because your time, and that of your wife and your children will soon arrive. And your final moan will be drowned out by the happy sneering of the monster, glad with your state, so much richer, so much more inhumane.

    —Carlo Cafiero, Summary of Marx's Capital