rambling_lunatic @ rambling_lunatic @sh.itjust.works

Posts

96

Comments

551

Joined

2 yr. ago

Ah. Thank you.

I'm a bit out of the loop. Did he stop funding Israel or is the USA helping both sides?

He is extremely rude IRL, which pissed off a bunch of people who later talked about it online.

He defended gay people's right to exist, which pissed of a bunch of conservatives who later talked about it online.

Seems weird that an anarchist was a US soldier. Maybe he joined before he came to the political beliefs he held as he burned, or perhaps he came to these beliefs because of what he saw in the army.

Fair.

Russia wasn't free for very long.

Point taken. I will revise my original post. You're right, man. Further reading supports your view. It seems that they just weren't very visible.

I think the Zapatistas are doing pretty good at being socialists. They're not that far off from pure communism, either.

Hexbear.

Mmm microplastics. Delicious.

Man, Lenin set fire to a good chunk of his own dreams during the Civil War.

The betrayal of the SRs and Makhnovists, the butchering of Kronstadt, the subjugation of local soviets and trade unions to centralized top-down rulership, and nationalization of previously independent cooperatives all helped bring down the dreams of equality and liberty. Lenin created all of the infrastructure that Stalin then used to horrifying ends. IMO this is an inevitable outcome of vanguardism and a "dictatorship of the proletariat", but that is a topic for another day.

Some of the things mentioned above did manage to survive post-Stalin. There was immense scientific progress in the USSR and the education was the best in the world. Everyone got food, though it was poor-quality and standing in line for it was universal (again, post-Stalin).

Russia is not like the US under Donald John. There are indeed rabid supporters of Putin and Russian imperialism ("vatniks"), but the regime functions regardless of popular support.

You are right about what groups of people exist. You are, however, completely mistaken about their importance if you compare Russia to the US under Trump.

My understanding, which is based in large part on my personal experience and observation of the size of protests (statistics suck when dictatorships are involved), is that the vast majority of Russians dislike Putin, but they believe that there is nothing that can be done at the moment.

Doomerism is very strong in Russia. Our prevailing mentality is to suck it up and keep going. It pains me to say this, but in the current conditions of Russia, the doomers have a point.

1. You are a Westerner.
2. You live after the beginning of the Ukrainian War.

In Russia, for the longest time, dislike of the regime was primarily limited to the youth. The average person had a vague understanding that there was a lot of corruption. However, they did not understand just how deep it went. The average person understood that there was some enrichment going on, but they thought it was mostly local and small-scale. People seldom had personal experience with the repression of dissidents, nor did they know much about the opposition movement.

Navalni opened people's eyes. He revealed the palaces of the deputies, ministers, and Vladimir Vladimirovich himself. He revealed how corruption was horrendous on every level of government. He revealed the absurdly close ties between the oligarchs and government. He made the repression visible too, thought this was a much more minor part of his project.

On the back of all of his investigations, he built a mass movement. Individual, fractured discontent just leads to depressed people who believe themselves to be isolated, the sole sane man in a sea of nutcases. He united people. He organized demonstrations. He made discontent public and visible, thus opening the eyes of even more people.

The modern opposition movement would not exist were it not for Navalni.

That being said, there were two main issues with Navalni's work. First, he wasted a lot of energy telling people to vote, and came up with the Smart Voting scheme to vote out URers, even though he himself acknowledged the lack of fairness in the elections. This was a colossal waste of time, energy, and resources. It changed nothing. You cannot vote out a dictatorship.

Second, he was a nationalist, especially early on. Later on he became more of a typical liberal, but his years as the sort of guy to yell "Russia is for Russians" have been harmful to the opposition.

He was, himself, a nationalist. Or at least he was in the distant past. He seemed to have distanced himself from that.

Still, he lived by his principles. He wasn't a robber or a hypocrite. He genuinely cared about Russia. He loved his nation. I cannot say the same for the party of crooks and thieves.

Doom.

Read "1984", by George Orwell.

I live in Latin America.

Please. No more pain.

The most English measurement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

FPTP tends towards a two-party system. CGP Grey made a video about it.

A state, according to the average anarchist, is a society ruled by rulers who make decisions for you.

Resource distribution and factory management could absolutely be planned without a central planner under socialism/communism/whatever. Capitalism, on the other hand, needs bosses and police officers that protect the boss's property. Fascism doesn't require an explanation IMO.