comfy @ comfy @lemmy.ml

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3 yr. ago

(something something invasions of North America, invasion of Mexico, Occupation of the Philippines, ... )

"So we wanted to start this interview off with a bang."

One aspect is that mass media is overall owned by those people and is propaganda. If you don't have ways of seeing what's happening on the ground, you miss a lot of the good news. Even your twitter/bs/mastodon feeds won't give you the full story, you have to (where possible) get involved in a real community organization.

Vandalize ads where safe to do so.

People are saying it is Bad News

So, uhh, you want to tell us who is saying it's bad news?

higher resolution version

Ideology does not come about from ‘convincing’ or ‘swaying’ anyone.

Tell that to the propaganda model. False consciousness is a real barrier which can, and has, dominated material class interests.

Leftism is unpopular by definition

This really depends how you define "leftism".

If you mean 'whichever side of politics is left of the population's center' then sure, it can't be a majority.

If you mean 'whichever side of politics is left of the political center' then that doesn't imply it's unpopular, and there's direct electoral evidence of 'left' parties achieving a majority government.

If you mean socialism and communism, they certainly aren't unpopular by definition. If anything, their definition makes them a mass movement of the proletariat, the vast majority of a post-industrial society.

I don't know Luigi's gender for certain, nor is it relevant to my statement. Neutrality is appropriate.

Furthermore, I personally disapprove of gendered language in general. It's pointless. I can't think of one reason to keep that archaic tradition.

For what it's worth, the far left (internationally) is traditionally pro-gun. I wouldn't know what positions are about any citizen and any gun, but I wouldn't be surprised either to hear a socialist advocate for it.

Obligatory:

[...] The whole proletariat [i.e. worker class] must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois [i.e. owner class] democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.

If anyone wants do go deep into non-monetary economic systems, I haven't read/listened-to much of their work but economists and computer scientists like Cockshott have researched planned non-money economies.

A summary: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/paul_cockshott_cyber_communism.html

The white nationalist movement preys on alienated young white men (more than other groups). Creating avenues for including these people in our movement means less people we have to fight.

I'm not saying everyone is able to fit into our movement, or they may require so much education that we just don't have the resources to depropagandize them, but as a mass movement, more is generally better.

Perhaps it would be useful to build up from basics, asking them what issues actually affect their own life, and hopefully avoid all the hyperreality* culture wars of the media.

https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-in-USA-vs.-media-coverage.png

Related: I believe it's ok, given certain contexts, to speak broadly and crassly to people who expect that. It's ultimately ineffective and therefore bad to come off as an pretenscious arrogant know-it-all, correcting everyone's grammar and word choices and any ignorance they have. I see some students in the labor movement and wonder if they're capable of expressing their knowledge to typical joe worker, without injecting French, German or Russian, or losing their temper at some unintentionally offensive ignorance. We're speaking broadly to regular people, don't alienate them with your academic knowledge.

That doesn't mean never correct crappy things people say, you can and should, but pick your battles. A climate scientist once told me, being correct isn't enough.

Yep, their defederation from piracy comms and moderation of Luigi-related politics are my two biggest gripes with the instance administration itself.

Agnifilo argues against this decision. He is a model prisoner

The way the clothes they wear are flying off the shelves, and Luigi's outstanding photogenic quality, you bet they're a model prisoner.

There are things that happen to people who are nazis.

Those things usually aren't just done by random people alone. They happen because people were networked,organized and working together.

The number of days left to begin organizing are getting less and less.

On one hand, yes, these people are pathetic and have little idea what the symbols they're playing with truly mean beyond white supremacy. And yes, it is useful (and fun) to mock farcists.

On the other hand, some of these people are (literally) astronomically rich, in bed with leaders of one of the most powerful military forces ever to exist, and the others are those supported by these rich haute-booj oligarchs (just like the original Blackshirts and Brownsharts were supported by landowners and maginates). A Nazi salute, understood with respect to history and the powerplay of today, is personal to many people. If it's a teenage edgelord fucking around to get a reaction, sure, dismiss them or let them 'find out', but Musk and Bannon are people with huge influence over politicians and mass media. Elon Musk, for example, literally owns a pervasive media platform. They can start sizable rallies gathering both the batshit unhinged and the ideologically driven, armed and hungry.

So if you're someone who the Nazis would have sent to the extermination camps (and there are many, many groups that were, basically most of humanity), then that salute is someone with state power declaring they want you dead. I wouldn't call it insulting as much as a credible death threat.

If you can pull a few people out of filter bubbles, it helps. But it's up to you to decide if it's worth the investment, it really depends on where you are and what you can do.

You can also engage in one-person propaganda efforts, like putting up critical posters/stickers. Just don't get caught.

It's a tough battle upwards, the established propaganda model helps make sure of that, but undeniably at the end of the day, the workers in the US hold more than enough power collectively to threaten decision makers into compromise (and, if you have the guts, submission). I'm not even talking about violence, I'm talking about things like withholding labor and simple sabotage.