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472
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • They migrated from North Arabia and took Jewish land every time the Jews were forcefully removed by a long line of oppressors. Then, when every Arab country started kicking out Jews, thy had nowhere to go but their homeland. When they arrived in the early 40's en masse, the Palestinian leader met with Hitler to see about exterminating them. You got the colonizer/colonized dynamic backwards. This is what happens when you get your info from Facebook.

    I saw this YouTube comment where people were arguing whether the Palestinians or Jewish people were there first. Does anyone know how accurate this comment is?

  • Yup I think I'm going to have to share this a lot, especially with a lot of people here in the States that only know that Hamas sucks (which it does) but don't know the conditions in Gaza or what Israel has done to exacerbate this situation. It's the best take I've heard on the situation so far. That organization of parents of dead kids from both sides was the first thing to give me hope about this conflict in awhile.

    The comment the last guy said was especially poignant. "Were going to have to either share this land, or share the graveyard underneath it."

  • And you like to take the nicest part of the pre-revolutionary history, where often rulers perpetrated violence against the poor as well for years, and ignore that as well. You also seem to be taking the worst examples. There's been socialist revolutions where nothing happens to teachers, doctors, or small businessmen. Most of them, actually. China and it's Cultural Revolution is the only one I can think of that went out and hurt a bunch of unrelated civilians.

  • Palestine is already not a war fighting state. They have no military. They've got a guerilla fighting force fighting and that's it. You're not going to see Palestine invade neighboring states like Germany or Japan, they're more like German occupied France at this point except one of their resistance groups are a terrible terrorist group.

    Theyre already weakened to the point where negotiations need to begin. Hamas only gets more recruits the more bombs you drop on them and the more you oppress their people. And ya, it's only probably going to take a lot of work, but it's better for our souls than genocide.

  • That's the thing, often the rulers resort to violence even before the people. You can't talk or debate your way into power against a dictator or monarch. They'll shoot your peaceful protestors and kidnap and torture your leaders. They will blacklist your writers and artists. Talking and other avenues should always be the first step, and if you're already in a democracy probably your only step, but if violence is used to enforce an unjust system I'm not sure how else you think it could be changed.

    I could see a vanguard party providing for more than just defense or violence, too. It provides a way to organize and spread your thoughts and ideas, a way to provide mutal aid, a way to focus your demands, a way to teach political theory, etc. The rich always have class solidarity while they are masters of splitting up the poor intos different factions based on race, sex, gender, etc. Finding a way to foster solidarity into a big group where the proletariat can get their needs met seems like a worthy goal.

  • Generally these countries already had massive wealth disparity so keep that in mind, with a few landlords and the rich ruling over vast amounts of a mostly rural populace.

    The USSR massively reduced wealth inequality and then it rose against after it fell. The funneling as much wealth as possible to their ruling classes happened more afterwards, with the rise of the oligarchs.

    North Korea was a lot more equal than South Korea when it was formed although I'm sure it's changed since then, but they don't let people in so there's not many official figures. China is basically a capitalist country now, although notably it's income inequality rose more when it implemented these market reforms that made it more capitalist. It's wealth inequality is less than the US's, or about the same, anyway.

    Cuba was a lot more equal after the revolution than before. They basically removed homelessness, fed everyone, gave everyone health care, etc. It's commonly known that the Batista era was filled with graft, rich landowners and club owners, and corrupt government officials while most of the countryanguished in poverty. Inequality has only risen when they had to implement more capitalist-like market reforms after the Soviet Union fell and they lost their major trading partner.

    Vietnam had also done well at that front, increasing growth with only slight increases in inequality, doing better than China on that front. They're still worried about it after implementing market reforms as well but are working on it, and have still done better than other countries.

    Notably Social Democratic countries like the Nordic ones have also done well in terms of wealth inequality, but like these other ones examples, it can trend worse when increasing - privatization or similar capitalistic reforms. Some of these countries like Norway also have even more publically owned goods and companies than countries people think of as socialist, like Venezuela.

    Speaking of, Venezuela had the lowest inequality in South America for a long time, although crashing oil prices has impacted that.

  • I think one thing that's confusing is that there's Marxism, communism, Leninism, MLM, etc. Different communist countries try to learn from other countries and each one has its own implementation based on its own material conditions.

    From what I've heard, Lenin's vanguard party and violent revolution thing was basically theorized to be required basically because of the long history of more peaceful movements being squashed by violent capitalists, the difficulty it is to wrest power from the old dictatorship, that of the rich, and the difficulty it is to change a country's culture (see the super brainwashed US that might re-elect Trump let alone ever be able to get affordable health care). It's not really required for communism so much as seen as a working theory of what's required to achieve it in a pragmatic way due to the US trying to destroy it in every country that's gone near it from its very inception and their full corporate-owned media blitz on people like Bernie or the democratic socialist in the UK.

    A lot of the authoritarian nature of these countries is due to the material conditions from which they arose (usually poor, rural non-industrialized dictatorships, often colonized) and from which they had to stay alive (which is usually in a siege mentality as the US or other Western countries continued to sanction and undermine them). I'd definitely prefer to live in a Nordic country than any communist one, but they also started off in very different contexts, so I'm not sure if that will always be true. Like the other commenter, I'd be curious to see more data. I'd give the point to socialist countries right now though, because the experiment of capitalism has the entire global south counting against it.

  • Tbh I think having everyone in the country in the same party might be a perk. It's an interesting way of abolishing the idea of political parties. Basically opposition is allowed, we saw that with those protests before, the economic reforms, and the Constitution updates, but it's done by people changing things within the party.

  • Where do you think these terrorist groups come from? Decades of people displacing, killing, and blockading their friends and family. The West has been invading and splitting up the Middle-East for like a hundred years. Continuing to do the same is just causing more jihad groups.

    The solution, since you asked, is to not undermine the PLO by supporting Hamas like the right in Israel did. It's to prop up and strengthen the PLO, legitimize them instead of running scared from negotiations every time Hamas does an attack (a third party that should be ignored, but since Israel has never been serious about negotiations since that one guy got assassinated it's been a good excuse for them to stop them and then keep grabbing more land). Then they can work together against Hamas. Then you're probably going to have to Marshall Plan the area. It's racist to think their inherently more violent because they're brown. It's basically what people used to say about the Japanese during WW2. They're in a giant prison right now which breeds that kind of behavior.

    Basically they need a chance to have a better quality of life, and that will require what the world did for the Germany and Europe after the war, the same kind of investments we made in Japan or South Korea, or Israel lol. It will probably also require some Reconciliation committees like South Africa, possibly some land reform like in many formerly colonized countries, maybe reparations, etc.

  • Nah the PLO is the official government of Palestine and is recognized as so by basically everyone, but they are stationed in the West Bank and Israel tries to keep them separated. Hamas has some control over Gaza and held an election decades ago before most of the people there could vote and hasn't held another one since.

  • It's weird how you are okay with genocide against Palestinians, including all the classic hallmarks of genocide via settler colonialism (displacement, apartheid and blockade, massive civilian damage, etc) that we've seen countless times since the Native Americans, but if anyone says that's wrong you immediately cry anti-Semitism. Israel is not the one in danger of being genocided here, they're the ones perpetrating it. Even lots of Jewish people can see it. To mix up the colonial ethno-state of Israel with all Jewish people is real, deceptive purposeful propaganda.

  • I'm reading through the Wikipedia article and don't see anything about the Israelis using human shields. Part of it mentions Hamas using human shields, hiding under hospitals, keeping weapons in houses or mosques, etc.

    Can you help narrow it down for me which part you're talking about?

  • How long has Gamurs owned The Escapists? I thought it was getting suspicious lately how many different things they were trying to get money so quickly.

    They were putting more sponsor segments in ZP videos at different points and Nick would respond in the comments when people complained, trying to find a good place to put them. Then they started letting Yahtzee curse more and offering the uncensored version on their subscription service. And these changes were quickly one right after the other. I should've known something like this was coming, but I'm still sad about it. I hate capitalism so much. Why does these corporations have to ruin all my favorite things?