Egon [they/them] @ Egon @hexbear.net

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2 yr. ago

You're talking about the Nazis. Your post was about nazis, people are responding talking about nazis. The discussion is clearly about nazis, which comes as a result of you framing the discussion about nazis. If you didn't want it to be about nazis, but I stead your perception that leftists label political opponents "nazi" as a way to otherize them and justify political violence, then you should've argued that point instead.
Do better, learn what words mean.

And answer the question

:cringe:

Biden helped get the benefits the rail union workers wanted for them even after the actual strike was off.

I haven't seen anything about this, could you point me towards someplace where I can learn more? Last I heard he'd crushed the strike, and people were quitting in droves.
His infrastructure bill did also give billions to both Ukraine and the MIC. There's a lot of other critiques that I can't really be bothered to get into right now, but if you're genuinely interested I'd recommend making a post on hexbear asking about it. Though a lot of the users are prickly, they do welcome and enjoy open and honest good-faith discussions, which it is my impression you are seeking.

I do know that, sad as it may be, there really was no choice.

There were many offramps to handle both the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, neither were inevitable. The alarms about covid were rung early, but ignored. I don't know if you recall but China was mocked by both European and American media for "alarmism" before the pandemic came to their nations.

Trump would literally have gone nuclear and/or instituted martial law if he could have and saw an opportunity

I'm no fan of trump, but I don't see how we're closer to a nuclear war then than now. Were actively involved in a conflict with a nuclear power that has threatened to use said nukes.
Under Trump the North and South Korea's engaged in peace talks for the first time. The us signed a deal to pull out of Afghanistan. The middle eastern countries begang to engage diplomatically with one another.

I would encourage you to engage with hexbears newscomm and the megathread on it. I would also encourage you to visit the site and continue your discussion as you do now.

Anyway, sorry to bother you. I get politics is a touchy subject.

Don't worry about it, were several comments deep on a political discussion on a political meme posted on a forum run by Marxists. I could've chosen to disengage or redirect you at any point.
It's been a joy, thank you for an open and good-faith discussion with kind language even when I was prickly.
I sincerely encourage you to visit hexbear and ask questions - either in a post or as a comment to relevant news discussions.

Edit: just saw your edit about the supreme court.
Biden could have gone past the supreme court by enshrining Roe v Wade with executive decisions. The Dems could have enshrined it years ago. Biden could've packed the courts. RBG could've stepped down under Obama, as she was asked to do. There were several offramps.
The fact that none were taken is a sign that the Dems are at best feckless and at worst republicans - either way the result of their rule is the same as a republican government

The poste is about the Nazis - the people that made use of concentration camps in order to perpetrate q genocide. How is this not relevant to a discussion about nazis?

You're talking about the Nazis which were the people that perpetrated the holocaust. We think it was good to use violence, you seem to think otherwise. What did you think should've been done to stop the holocaust?

Libs and doing casual ableism, name a more iconic duo

I'd say the guys with swastikas, wolfsangels and sonmenrads on their arms stanning a SS collaborator by name of Bandera

Wow you managed to engage with one single point! Very good, though you still haven't answered my question. You also keep to debating the holodomor, as if I disagree there was a famine or something? I don't, we agree there was a famine. Answer my question.
It's also neat to see you continue to engage in holocaust denial by way of peddling double genocide theory. At no point did the Soviet government deliberately take actions with intent to starve it's population, implying this - and thereby equating it with the holocaust - trivialises the holocaust, as well as spreads misinformation about historical events.
Did the soviets make mistakes? Yes, many. Did the Soviet government intentionally starve it's citizens? No.
This is not a debate about the long-since debunked "deliberate" famine where Stalin personally went around with his big spoon and ate all the grain. What made the famine worse? If you are interested in such a discussion I'd recommend actually looking into the data and the historians interpretating it first.
This thread has good and approachable information an excerpt:

Even anti-Communist propagandists like Robert Conquest (whose propaganda was cited extensively during the Cold War before most of it was debunked and he was forced to recant his claims over and over again) claim that the landowning class destroyed about 96 million head of cattle, and possibly twice as much tonnage of grain and other foodstock, completely wrecking the food production capacity of the region in the middle of the famine and exacerbating the problem beyond anything seen before.

I doubt you will look into it though, since you so far continue to be.more interested in condescending cheap shots.

Here's another one you won't engage with

Double genocide [1] [2]

You don't know? Yoruo speak with a lot of confidence on this conflict, surely you must know the details of it?

Allright having looked at it again:

You come into this with an ahistorical "point" about famines. There is no humility or invitation to an open dialogue, you are clearly being condescending and smug.
Your "point" gets argued by me in the way that I point out that famines were eliminated. Instead of engaging with this argument, you once again choose condescention talking vaguely about "if the dead could argue their case" and then vague speak of looking at past tragedies. I engage with this point and agree, which leads me to reiterate my argument - One famine once is better than constant famines. Once again you choose smugness and condescention instead of engaging with the argument. You the try to change the discussion to one of food aid? Instead of relating to the one that was present. This is so far typical bad-faith behaviour. You once again return to the question of starvation.

I then once again point out how historically famine had been an issue, and it was eliminated. I then point out how famine and starvation is still an issue in capitalist countries. You do not engage with this point, instead handwaving "there are a lot of problems" and you try to downplay the achievement by writing a lie (famine has been solved) which also still doesn't answer any of the questions I've asked. So far you're still being condescending, I've yet to call you a name.
I respond to every one of your arguments and point out how you are going against historical consensus on what happened in the soviet union wrt the famine in the soviet union. I refrained from pointing out how you've engaged in "double genocide theory" which was pushed by nazis to downplay the holocaust. I am however tired of your condescention and your tired arguments, so I am curt and I finish off with a rude picture.
You have yet to respond to this post, yet you continue the same argument elsewhere with both me and other users. It is clear you are not interested in a good-faith discussion. If you were you would have answered my questions, related to the arguments and asked questions where you were unsure. You didn't.

Elsewhere someone points out your absurdity and idiocy by responding your condescending ahistorical "famine" comment with a "gottem". You ask if that's a joke - thereby implying you think your comment in any way deserved to be validated, despite the fact that we've now all seen that it was right to disregard you and your opinions.
I point this out and I refer to your type of person with a derisive name - Indirectly calling you a name. This then becomes the crux of your new argument, instead of - once again - actually engaging in the arguments put forth in the discussion you're having. It is clear you are not willing to engage in an exchange of knowledge of opinions, instead looking for quick and easy ways to post smug and condescending comments.
Now we are here, you will have learned nothing. You will at best engage with the name calling or - once again - me making "assumptions" about you. Assumptions that have so far been proven true.

With this behaviour you've engaged in, why do you think you deserve anything other than ridicule?

Tell you what, you've come across as snide, dismissive smug and completely uninterested in an actual discussion, instead maintaining the superiorty of your own belief, and purely working towards convincing me on what is right.
But I've been in this thread quite a bit, I'm a bit on hair trigger, so I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and come back to you in a little while.
You're right, I called you a name last time and I'm sorry. That completely invalidates all the arguments put forth.

You and some other hexbears seem to throw around the term "libs" as an insult whenever someone doesn't agree with you, and often prematurely.

Rehashing the same tired debunked argument time and again does get tiring. "Reverting" to calling you a lib is a way of highlighting the many thought-terminating cliches being spit out as a result of being uncritically enmenshed in propaganda.

I also think that you have developed your own "common knowledge" in relative isolation, and often have trouble explaining/justifying it outside of the hexbear community.

My experience is quite the reverse. Every time I interact with one of your opinions you revert to the same tired arguments using the same tired long-debunked "facts" - When you actually use facts. Most of the time you refuse to engage with the arguments put forth in the discussion you're having. Instead you choose condescenstion. You do this because you believe yourself to be correct and me to be misinformed - I simply haven't heard of the holodomor or whatever. I was once like you, but then I started investigating the things I thought I knew about. Consider wether you might be misinformed about things you consider to be true. Consider why you are misinformed on these things. Consider who misinformed you. Consider what you can do to work against this misinformation. Consider why you react as you do with people whose beliefs stride against your perception of reality. Consider why those people have those beliefs despite us all learning those simple things you hold to be true.

My experience of hexbear is that of a vibrant community sharing knowledge and critiquing each other when that knowledge is lacking or wrong. This leads to a community that shows humility towards learning new things, as well as staying critical towards that which it believes to "know". You do not experience this humility because you come in as an outsider expecting your tired long-since-debunked beliefs to somehow have any relevance or novelty. They are not new, they are not insightful and they have been shown time and again to be wrong. Which is fine - we're all wrong. The "bad habit" you experience is people being sick of arguing with obviously wrong libs that refuse to engage with new knowledge.
Asking questions is good, but posturing as if you are the purveyor of divine knowledge to be shared (and that knowledge being wrong) leads to you meeting the attitude you've met

I will continue to encourage people to explain or argue their case. I will also continue trying to be open and inclusive, and advocating for dialogue.

I am glad to hear that that is what you think you are doing. I would encourage you to investigate how you interact with those you disagree with, and reconsider how you are creating dialogue

I mean, no? The USSR had a successful revolution and was almost defeated by the white army. The Paris commune was crushed by the forces of capital, Salvador Allende was murdered by capital, Cuba barely survived its infancy or the fall of the Soviet Union, COINTELPRO has crushed many nascent movements as well as the BPP, the government of Iran was couped as well as many others.
Pretending line capital does not have immense power is silly. Pretending we do not exist in a society wherein left movements are routinely hinted, crushed, suppressed, destroyed or subverted is naive and silly.
Every single revolution was long and drawn out, the victories precarious and hard-won. It's not a cake-walk. And even then it is impressively idealistic to go "the people united are indivisible" because yeah sure, but that unity has never been available. Reactionaries are a thing, fifth columnists are a thing. The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks fought each other, the makhnovosts and soviets fought each other, China and Vietnam waged war against each other.
You gotta accept the reality of the world you're in, and work from there. I would suggest reading Engels "On Authority"

Okay that does make more sense, I had trouble parsing the text, thank you for taking the time to explain it.

Disengage

More of a social democrat actually,

Social democrats are also in favor of capitalism, which again means you're a liberal.

I was just reading Adair Turner's articles on how financial growth might in fact take rent on the real economy rather than deliver economic value, what is called "unproductive financialization", I think you might be interested in reading around this idea.

Are you trying to show leftist credentials or something? This is hilarious. Why would I be interested in yet another economist speculating how finance capital will influence the material world?

m also against the military dictatorship installed by the United States anywhere outside of the United States, but we're talking about China and right now we're going into whataboutism territory and I'm going to disengage.

So first off you're abusing the disengage rule. It is not a "get the last word" magic spell, but instead a rule existing in order to make the site more welcoming for neurodivergent comrades. It is clearly stated that you must post "disengage" and nothing else.
Secondly: whataboutism is a concept introduced by CIA stooges in order to frustrate discussion. It is not "whataboutism" to introduce context relevant for a discussion. What actions the Chinese government takes are influenced by the historical and material context that give birth to them. This is the reason for introducing these facts to the discussion.
Thirdly: Even if whataboutism was a real thing, you choose to focus on this I stead of the arguments which have been put forth that relate to the discussion at hand. If you cannot relate to or engage with the arguments, do some self-crit and consider why that might be.
Fourth: Keep your condescending faux-friendliness to yourself you piece of shit

Yeah and then you wrote "in either case, I agree" as in you think it would be better to have Scandinavians, than whatever you have now, which is why I ask what you mean by that?