Americans and socialism
TheOubliette @ TheOubliette @lemmy.ml Posts 0Comments 1,482Joined 2 yr. ago
Coward
You mean the tiny group that served some free meals in a few cities and got wiped out by the police?
I mean the communists that organized within black communities, fed children, protected their communities from racist cops, and did so well enough that they were targeted not just by the local police but by the FBI and other parts of the "national security" apparatus, including Reagan. Their former members are still often active and passing down valuable lessons to young people just learning, which you could also be if you learned to have some humility and honesty.
Note how far we have drifted from the things I've actually said, as you do not have actual convictions you can defend, just lazy reactionary talking points to help you avoid thinking challenging thoughts.
The one that had a leader [Eldrige Cleaver] who considered rape as a political act?
Rape can very much be a political act. US soldiers doing so systematically in Vietnam, for example.
But every political formation will have individuals with wrong opinions or worse. And if you are organizing with the marginalized, you will be organizing with ex-cons. I'm not sure what you think is accomplished by this tidbit. Cleaver was quite open about this part of his past and renounced it.
Later in this comment you refer to Obama. How many children did Obama kill with a stroke of the pen and a cynical line and how does this compare to the viplences of a teenage Cleaver? How much has Obama renounced and how many years did he serve in prison for the act?
Meanwhile Obama's ACA gave health coverage to 45 million people.
The ACA is primarily an individual mandate to buy a massively overpriced product from the insurance industry. It also included a limited Medicaid expansion that was quickly eaten up by inflation and wage growth (but not real wage growth). Insurance costs still rose, just less quickly than they were otherwise expected to. This is what you consider to be a major material win? Slightly slower rates of growth in picking workers' pockets? What an amazing gift!
I'll stick with the people who actually get things done.
What do you mean stick with? What part do you play in any of that? The ACA was a response to uncontrolled spiraling of healthcare costs that, among other things, make US workers entirely uncompetitive and only serves to create debt. The ACA was a Republican plan that forces people to buy companies' products. You are not the force at work here and you are not on any team aside from the exploited.
Whete do you factor into any of that?
You ever heard of the Black Panthers?
HTS and those in their orbit are derived from ISIS and similar groups, itself drawing radicalized fighters from around the world to do heinous things to people. And in Syria/Iraq, funded by the US to destabilize inconvenient governments. Like that of Assad.
It is not entirely surprising that fellow imperialist attack dogs are not first on their list to attack. They are also trying to court "the international community" (OECD) by privatizing (read: scrapping for parts) industry and services. Going after Israel would disrupt that angle. But attacking countries and people that the US has already been helping kill? No worries of retaliation from the "international community".
Abortion should be free and available to all. At the same time, we should end social and economic forces that force the marginalized to make more difficult family planning choices, including ending poverty, ending racialization, and improving baseline education.
Abortion in the US is an electoral wedge issue. It is fought over by both parties mostly as a tool for getting elected, and they might think about making changes after that. Some politicians are true believers on this issue, but as a whole they use it cynically as a political football. So, we can recognize that, for example, Roe was overturned, and then Dems did nothing except campaign on it and codify some state-level protections. The immediate outrage was coopted back into the Democratic Party where it died. Now there is just fear and disappointment.
So, legislation being "bipartisan" doesn't really mean very much when it's just a couple names on introduced legislation. The topic is essentially dead at the federal level or is more likely to move right, like defunding healthcare subsidies or angling for a federal ban. The Democratic Party has already been going to bat for anti-abortion politicians in its own party. Expect them to cave, especially if they actually win elections and get a majority in Congress and the presidency in 4 years.
The British
Do you think you're doing something else?
Yes, we should definitely not have something like Sweden or the old New Deal.
I think you need to refamiliarize yourself with what I said, as this is not it.
We should let children grow up in poverty, let old people suffer, and let the planet burn while we sit around discussing Trotsky and the Second International in hopes that the revolution will come.
I said something that is the exact opposite of sitting around, actually. Do your best to read a little more carefully before sharing opinions.
iirc de La Cruz got less than 100,000 votes.
And?
Great quote and book!
Socialism is always about recreating a ruling class: it is to make the working class into the ruling class.
There is no practical alternative to this. Imagine trying the only way: to immediately end class relations. You've won the revolution. Your ideological brethren are in power and the Great Workers' Council is going forward with your plan. How are you going to force people to end class relations? Won't it require a state? Who is enforcing the end of relations? If someone buys up an extra-big plot of land and starts charging tenants rent, reinventing semi-feudal relations, who is going to stop them? And what are you going to do about the bourgeoisie who still exist, especially those overseas, and are working against you to reopen your country for exploitation?
All of these basic realities require a state. And you cannot simply end all class relations instantaneously, as the wider public will not all agree with you ideologically. Unless you plan extreme forms of oppression for the entire population, you will need to deal with the remnants of various class relations in various forms, engaging, ideally, in a process that will whittle them away. That entire process will be recreating a ruling class, i.e. the working class, to impose this process on the other classes.
Socialism is not about the government's size. Socialists, particularly Marxists, emphasize using the state and nationalization after proletarian revolution to reflect the working class' interests and build socialism, but the size of the state itself is not what makes something socialist, both because (1) socialists seek to eventually end the state itself once productive forces and consciousness are sufficiently advanced and (2) capitalist states can also have large governments, generally to serve the interests of the ruling class, albeit sometimes in a roundabout way.
Socialism is about making the working class the ruling class. It is explicitly about oppressing the bourgeois class, which is itself the current ruling class oppressing the working (and other) classes. The idea is to take the means of production and run it for ourselves rather than the profit of a class defined by merely owning factories, buildings, tools, etc.
The cartoon may be confused.
It's the opposite, actually.
The people who talk about "tax the rich" or the New Deal don't actually do anything, they are armchair activists who have no real idea of how they would ever accomplish this outside of pretending the Democratic Party, which constantly opposes them and crushes such ideas, is the vehiclr, and the way to make it happen is complaining on the internet.
Communists know that actually addressing our collective problems is a much more difficult task, nothing less than the overthrow of capitalism, something that would need to survive attempts at cooption by liberal power structures like the aforementioned party. So we build from the ground up, educating one another and developing practice so that we can balance growth, education, and having impact through actions. We go to the meetings, we run the meetings, we teach one another, we organize the protests and marches, we build the strategic mutual aid events, we embed with workers' spaces and unions, we embed with and build from within the marginalized so as to be of them. Communist organizing is adding a part-time job on top of your other obligations.
Norway is a capitalist country. It us an OECD hanger-on to the US-led imperialist world order.
Before I respond to anything in this comment, I want to make a note about its nature and content.
It does not, in fact, address basically anything I said. Rather than address what I said, 90% of your comment is just an attempt to rehash pieces the history of "Israel" and Hamas, with some true elements, some misleading elements, and some outright false elements. It is unclear why you wrote most of it and its presentation is incoherent, without clear connection between paragraphs or points. It's like you are summarizing bits and pieces of Wikipedia and injecting your own takes every so often.
Anyways. I will simply repeat myself where necessary, which is to say, repeat most of my previous comment in one way or another.
In my last comment, I took issue with your presentation of Hamas as terrorist. You claimed, "Using indiscriminate armed violence against civilians for political goals or under political pretenses is about the most reasonable definition of terrorism I can come up with." and I responded to this with two paragraphs explaining how this is misleading at best and is itself deployed in a racist way via its inconsistent application. I made note of how it is used inconsistently repeatedly and challenged you to consider your own use of the term. In your reply, you did not engage with any of this. Instead, you wrote this:
Yes, plenty of other people perform indiscriminate attacks upon civilians, and many states, including in the west use arbitrary violence against other civilians or even their own. I’m sure people are aware that they are terrorists outside of Hamas.
You are right, plenty of people use the label to further their own goals and the ‘terrorist’ label is mostly used if not misused to discredit groups of people or political movements. Since it doesn’t really seem like the term is going to go anywhere soon, I think it is important to give a precise meaning to the term for this very reason.
This does not address what I said or how I challenged you. I did not ask "how is the term used?" I gave you plenty of direction: it is used inconsistently and in a racist manner. I asked you what function that serves. Is, "discredit" the entirety of your thought process for why a colonized people would be targeted with demonizing language applied inconsistently? You should spend more time thinking about it. I'm not exactly being subtle, here.
Re: precision, that is actually what I am pointing out to you. The term is not applied consistently, i.e. it has more meaning than what you might go and try to look up in a dictionary. You are actually being less precise, using a false facade of semantics, missing the actual semantics going on here. And still trying to push back despite conciliatory language.
I next responded to your boorish claims about Hamas doing lots and lots of terrorism, saying: "Such as? How does this compare to “Israel”? The surrounding comprador states? The US? Canada? Do you apply this logic and labeling frequency consistently or as suggested by dominant propaganda?"
The entirety of your response to that appears to be:
Do we really need to mention every single act of terror committed by the Hamas or otherwise since the dawn of time? This is just shitty rhetoric, the same kind that Zionists use all the time.
This is childish behavior. You claimed, "Hamas have carried far too many terrorist attacks over a far too long period for us to have any doubts that they are indeed ‘terroristic’ as our friend put it". (PS this chauvinist is not my friend). I asked you to back up your false claim (because we both know you can't) with examples and to critically examine what you are saying by comparison to relevant countries, including the occupying power and its imperial backer. Rather than do so, you are pretending I have asked the world of you, to name every single "terrorist attack" (you named zero). This is dishonest and bad faith behavior and unless you are literally a child you should know better.
Answer the question or just be honest that you can't.
I then challenged you to contextualize this in terms of settler colonial genocide, of which there are many precedents following similar models, also with the same kinds of backers from what is now the OECD. The absurdity would be clear if you were honest about this and actually tried to answer. I stated, "When First Nations fought against settlers, were they terrorists and similarly illegitimate? What would you think of someone who watched their genocide and spent their focus on villifying militant groups and alleged specific acts with racialized language while using no such emphasis for the much greater volume of such violence to enact genocide? Many indigenous groups have recognized the need to oppose settlers themselves and settlerdom, the people who stole their and their parents’ land and houses and killed their relatives. You simply dismiss such people as terrorists? Without chauvinist glasses of the oppressor you would probably call them freedom fighters."
You simply ignored this in its entirety.
The rest of my comment was similarly ignored. Repeating it,
While it is nice to keep it mind, the fact that they also do other things besides terrorism is not an argument.
Of course it is when the absurd premise is to ignorantly broad brush them with the label. The vast, vast majority of the activities of Hamas cannot be described as terroristic, much more so than their accusers.
Or should we also refrain from calling the Israeli state terrorist because it also does other stuff besides indiscriminately and arbitrarily targeting Palestinians?
Do you call “Israel”, which is infinitely more guilty of this and is itself the settler colonial occupier, a terrorist state at its every mention? Do you jump into conversations to ensure it is understood as such?
“Israel” engages in a genocidal campaign of land theft and ethnic subjugation. Describe the actual acts and see how much value your attempt at labeling possesses in terns of delegitimation.
Instead, you populated the rest of your response with an uninvited and, as stated before, problematic attempt to summarize Hamas. The point of doing so is not clear. You explicitly say what you claim it to be, i.e.,
But you do make some good points. Although I understand why you might have thought otherwise, I do think that Hamas needs to be portrayed fairly which indeed we haven’t done so far. Leaving it that way doesn’t do Palestinians, which overall greatly require our support and help, any good.
So for anyone else who would, per chance, stumble upon here, I’d like humbly submit my own personal presentation of Hamas, not-so-highly condensed for your own benefit:
You might have noticed that I don't require nor did I ask for a meandering and confused history lesson. I am not bumbling around here like you are, throwing around settler language and dancing around questions and challenges. I have been quite direct and plain in what I am saying and you are avoiding it, which I suppose is an admission in its own way that you are not up to the task of honestly responding.
Because you have dumped a confused and meandering history lesson and then immediately ran away, there isn't much reason to go through it point by point and it would take up way too much space. I will poke at a couple things stated just because I can, but if anyone is particularly enamored with any sections I would be happy to tear through them. Feel free to ask. I do want to again emphasize how strangely written this is, making allusions to people you could simply name and making seemingly disconnected points that jump around in time.
[...] in the nineties [...] they started launching suicide bombings [...]
I will note that you do not actually go over how this is terrorism, but leave it implied by the form of resistance, relying on the audience's familiarity with islamophobic tropes. I invite you to list the bombings, their targets, and their locations. Re: location, here is a hint: they are nearly all in the West Bank, i.e. demarcated Palestinian territory. You may wish to ask yourself why, say, blowing up a military vehicle (like in Mehola Junction) is not a direct act of resistance against oppressing occupiers and not terrorism. You may wish to ask yourself how much you have internalized islamophobia by the form of weapon used. The occupiers use planes, missiles, and tanks, and kill in far greater volumes, and target civilians to a staggeringly greater degree. I challenge you to, again, go through your own references to "Israel" and ask whether you always call it, "the illegitimate terrorist so-called state of 'Israel'", as your knee-jerk response to Hamas is to go into such invective.
other legitimate or terror attacks where committed and directed by Hamas members
Such as? I've already asked you to back up your claim that they have committed, "so many" that it justifies saying Hamas, "have carried far too many terrorist attacks over a far too long period for us to have any doubts that they are indeed ‘terroristic’ as our friend put it"
Hamas being largely considered at this point by the Israelis as a mortal enemy of Israel and of the Jewish people
"Israelis" already considered all Palestinians to be such, particularly any that formed any kind of militant resistance to genocidal settler colonial occupation and oppression. They are extraordinarily racist, as in old-timey racist (because they are settlers), and they conflate Judaism with their own violent and horrific projects - itself one of the most antisemitic programs in existence. Your claim here was simply left to fester, unchallenged. Oh good, the "Israeli" settler point of view. Funny how others are not given the same weight.
Israel blockaded the Gaza strip in return
Is it in return? Or was it simply another excuse to escalate and oppress, same as the status quo for decades?
Anyways, I'm out of space.
Sure. When's the last time they've allowed elections to occur, though?
When have you ever tried educating yourself on this topic outside of accepting and repeating the propaganda of those who genocide Palestinians?
Palestine and Palestinians are not permitted a functioning state, including the so-called Palestinian Authority. There was exactly one round of questionable "elections" in the late 2000s following the failed Camp David agreements, the electoral process dictated to Gaza by the UN, but not one allowed to be executed in any remotely fair way due to meddling and destabilization by the occupiers, "Israel", including wars and invasions during the process. The people of Gaza are refugees and their government, such as it is, is a collaborative relationship between the UN and Hamas, a relationship established by Hamas de facto winning a small guerilla civil war with Fatah with the election they won as words to be misunderstood by Western chauvinists. This is why "Israel"'s genocidal campaign in Gaza heavily targeted UN workers alongside hospitals and schools: they are part of the normal civilian infrastructure responsible for healthcare, aid distribution, etc, and they work alongside Hamas members doing the exact same things but more closely to the people on the ground. There is no process or even just basic societal basis for elections. This is a factionalized struggle for survival. Their democratic progress has been to form solid alliances with other anti-comprador groups and to involve them in governance. And to organize against their occupiers.
Calling them terrorists is using racial "Israeli" propaganda directed at all Palestinians
Nope.
Yep.
You can clearly see I differentiated Hamas from Palestinians.
And "Israel" propaganda also waffles on that line as needed, broad brushing when they can get away with it and being slightly more specific when it suits them. When making a case to, say, Western governments, it will call Hamas, specifically, terrorists. It is intended to be a selectively-applied delegitimizing label. But in casual conversions and domestically, it is used much more broadly and causally but to the same effect. And always racially.
If we go through your comment section, will we find the same knee-jerk labeling of "Israel", which is infinitely more guilty and more is an occupying oppressor? How about your own country, which likely supports the genocide?
Yes, the Israelis look at all Palestinians as Hamas
The "Israelis" look at Palestinians as subhumans just like other Western settler colonists did to their targets. You are seeing an ongoing settler colonial genocide and following the propaganda of the genociders. Would you have called the Sioux terrorists for opposing their own genocide, fighting the settlers occupying their lands? I think so. Rather than recognize the dramatic difference between the actions and basis for them, the violences at hand, you are allowing yourself to be persuaded by the inconsistent, flattening application of settler propaganda, persuaded to repeat it even while feeling that you're doing the opposite. This is common with a lack of investigation.
as do many people in the West, but I'm not Israeli nor do I care what they think - so what they think doesn't matter. There's no Israeli propaganda in my comment, that's your assumption based on....?
The misleading and false characterizations of Hamas as simply terrorist. This is an easily recognizable trope.
If your entire argument boils down to "Well you're saying the same stuff as Israel is so you're just spreading propaganda" then maybe you don't have thoughts of your own, it's all just the opposite of what Israel says.
This is just projection. You're clearly recycling the logic of (racist) Zionist settler propaganda, I am simply recognizing it for what it is.
Israel is a terrorist state but that doesn't mean every single thing they say is wrong. Hamas are terrorists, plain and simple. They invoke fear through violence.
All substantial violence invokes fear but somehow you don't seem to consistently use the language that way. Do some self-interrogation on why that is and what purpose this label is serving in your mind on this topic.
Let me know of all the benefits Hamas has brought to the Palestinian people and educate me.
This is asking me to write quite a bit more than I already have. It would be many comments long. Hamas is the governing body of Gaza, it works with UN aid distribution and expertise to manage the infrastructure of Gaza. The people of Gaza had hospitals and doctors due to Hamas via this system, for example. In addition, Hamas is the only ruling Palestinian body that does not function as compradors like the PA, who assists "Israel" in their oppressions. The existence of a militant resistance to the occupation is in many ways thanks to Hamas - along with smaller militant factions, of course. Imagine how much could be listed re: all aid dispersal, all governance of infrastructure, bureaucratic necessities, militant organizing.
I'm not going to write up this comprehensive history for someone who is not only uncurious, but actively resistant to humility and education. That would be silly. If you are curious you can read books yourself and learn the same things.
Nothing you wrote was educational or convincing.
I do not set my bar for educational or convincing based on your responses so that's okay. You are already aware that you have not actually investigated this topic and this is just disssembling. I did not have high hopes for you being open about this.
Hamas are still terrorists who are holding their own people hostage.
It's really funny that you claim to not be blindly repeating Zionist propaganda and then say things like this.
Using indiscriminate armed violence against civilians for political goals or under political pretenses is about the most reasonable definition of terrorism I can come up with.
That is not what Hamas does. And by that definition, applied consistently, you would actually need to include most of the groups that Hamas does fight, including "Israel" and its supporting states like the US and Canada. And yet they are rarely named terrorist states, whereas Hamas routinely receives this association by those who live in those countries and help build their materials of oppression. What function do you believe this selective use of language serves?
The application of the label has been racist and chauvinist for ages. Most pick it up by cultural osmosis, not seeing reason to question or investigate it. Now is your opportunity!
I agree that the Palestinians are fully legitimate in taking up arms to fight against the occupier but the Hamas have carried far too many terrorist attacks over a far too long period for us to have any doubts that they are indeed ‘terroristic’ as our friend put it
Such as? How does this compare to "Israel"? The surrounding comprador states? The US? Canada? Do you apply this logic and labeling frequency consistently or as suggested by dominant propaganda?
When First Nations fought against settlers, were they terrorists and similarly illegitimate? What would you think of someone who watched their genocide and spent their focus on villifying militant groups and alleged specific acts with racialized language while using no such emphasis for the much greater volume of such violence to enact genocide? Many indigenous groups have recognized the need to oppose settlers themselves and settlerdom, the people who stole their and their parents' land and houses and killed their relatives. You simply dismiss such people as terrorists? Without chauvinist glasses of the oppressor you would probably call them freedom fighters.
While it is nice to keep it mind, the fact that they also do other things besides terrorism is not an argument.
Of course it is when the absurd premise is to ignorantly broad brush them with the label. The vast, vast majority of the activities of Hamas cannot be described as terroristic, much more so than their accusers.
Or should we also refrain from calling the Israeli state terrorist because it also does other stuff besides indiscriminately and arbitrarily targeting Palestinians?
Do you call "Israel", which is infinitely more guilty of this and is itself the settler colonial occupier, a terrorist state at its every mention? Do you jump into conversations to ensure it is understood as such?
"Israel" engages in a genocidal campaign of land theft and ethnic subjugation. Describe the actual acts and see how much value your attempt at labeling possesses in terns of delegitimation.
Hamas is the government of Gaza and a large portion of the armed resistance against "Israeli" occupiers. Calling them terrorists is using racist "Israeli" propaganda directed at all Palestinians and cynically leveraged by imperialist countries - like the kind you probably live in and whose politicians you probably provide support - to assist in the systemic violent oppression and displacement of Palestinians. In fact, your entire line could be lifted from bog standard "Israeli" propaganda takes, including the perpetrators of genocide.
Please educate yourself before sharing opinions.
You're typing out the words "lol" and "I'm literally laughing out loud" on a keyboard or phone, cognitive dissonance carefully avoided, hoping that by repeating yourself and ignoring what has been said to you, you can get away from this conversation purely on vibes.
You are running away and trying to taunt in bad faith while doing it. Go ahead, bravely run away, nobody is stopping you.