I love when people describe a system better than capitalism when trying to make communism look bad.

So true

It is frustrating in almost every way! I can summon a lot of optimism for the project of socialism and the historic role of the working class; but when it comes to the day to day its too easy to get disillusioned. Its supposed to be disillusioning! The tragic reality in the west is that in our alienation, our exploitation appears to us as comfort. Hang in there and take care of yourself!

You have to learn to distinguish cool liberals, who are for individual freedom, democracy, progressive society; from the bad liberals who always side with private property against those things. The people in the first category are just confused; the people in the second category are actual class enemies. I acknowledge that these aren’t discreet categories and there will be some overlap, but winning people to your ideas slowly, over time – because these ideas are based in their material reality, which they need to test against their existing views – is the only way to get through to people. Sometimes the process is quicker, sometimes its slow, but its the only way to help people see the world for what it really is, and that together we can actually bring the fight to the ruling class.

Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, colorized

Lol when I got banned from a major comm for defending a trotskyist comrade, after two years of participation on the instance, I learned all about the wholesomeness of your “non-sectarian” instance.

I’m not sure what’s going on in this comment but I like it

I have a constitutional right to glue an Uzi to a quadcopter to protect my GMC Sierra

Roko’s basilisk is gonna have a field day with this one

Tbf there were people in the audience holding water bottles which could be thrown as a deadly weapon – how do you know those bottles aren’t full of kerosene – and also filming the officer which can lead to the officer’s family being threatened by doxxing. The only people allowed to threaten the officer’s family with violence is the officer

I didn’t mean it to be antagonistic, and I provided a source. Its just such a disgusting story, bereft of any humanity. I wish I had never heard about it, I just couldn’t believe someone wanted to like read about it

Jesus, you want a citation for this?

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israelis-protest-arrest-of-soldiers-accused-of-gang-raping-gazan-detainee/3288825

There have been protests inside Israel for ceasefire, the org Standing Together has done a lot of good organizing inside the country.

But one thing that Oct.7 accomplished was show the divisions in society wrt Palestinian apartheid. Its getting more difficult for people who can’t abide it to coexist with people who are okay with it; and the people who believe there should be even more brutality and violence against Palestinians are becoming a major problem for both of those groups. The state of Israel is fracturing, while groups like the PFLP, Hamas and Fatah are coming together for the first time in decades. While some of the tactics of Hamas are unconscionable, and Fatah has a long collaborationist history with Israel, it definitely indicates a dramatic change of the dynamics in the region. We’ll see what holds together and what breaks apart. Its very sad that Marwan Barghouti is currently imprisoned, he’s one of the most popular figures in Palestine whereas Fatah and Hamas are fairly unpopular

Pat Tillman has entered the chat

If the Israeli government was trying to nationalize their oil or mining resources, we’d invade their ass so fucking fast; but they’re just murdering tens or hundreds of thousands of people, starving children, bombing infrastructure, destroying culture, and traumatizing generations, so let’s just ask sternly for a cease fire, and frown a bit for the cameras – if that

I looked it up, it appears in a lot of places though its origin is unknown. So you picked it up from somewhere. Definitely not your fault for mangling what is obviously a distorted Friere quote, though it remains mangled and now a part of public consciousness. I still have the same reservations about it and I wish you would consider reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed rather than dismiss what I’m saying and probably keep repeating this. But you’re right, it was a waste of time.

Just because you don’t know where it comes from doesnt mean it isn’t connected

Imma take issue with this.

You’ve rephrased, and essentially reformulated Paolo Friere’s famous and enlightening quote, “Equality feels like oppression to the oppressor.” Does having privilege make one an oppressor? In some cases, it most certainly does but I would disagree that coming from privilege makes one an oppressor: history is full of examples of people from the oppressive ruling classes risking or sacrificing everything to fight against oppression and restore equality. I am privileged but equality would not feel like oppression to me; or if it did I would have to self criticize harshly since I spend so much of my time and energy fighting against oppression and for equality. And this is what your rephrasing has done, it has eliminated the class aspect from Friere’s formulation; furthermore it isn’t connected to anything. So when you say this in isolation you create a privileged other. Friere on the other hand was fully aware of the dialectic between the oppressed and their oppressors, and scientifically worked out his thesis: through dehumanization of the oppressed, the oppressors lost their own humanity. While oppression had to be fought, first the oppressed had to restore their own humanity by restoring their own subjectivity. Once they had liberated their minds, and in fact through this process they would become organized in such a way to organize their bodies as well. This is the perceived nadir of the oppressors, the equality that feels like oppression. However, in its final stage this equality restores the humanity of the oppressor, in fact it is the ontological mission of the oppressed to restore the humanity of the oppressors. this final synthesis of the dialectic is not inevitable however, and the whole enterprise is based on education. “When education is not liberating,” he said, “it is the dream of the oppressed to become the oppressor.”

I don’t know what that deleted comment was, probably some hateful bs, but was your comment intended to educate, and set others on the path of education?

Its not a bad thing

The point of the meme isn’t about whether you personally would want to sleep with someone who is trans, and whether that makes you a good person or not, its about how the first, second, and last thing a lot of people think about wrt trans people is whether they are fuckable or not. Its not good to objectify people, if you do it is transphobic/sexist/racist/whatever dehumanizing. But if you see trans people as people, and respect their gender, their right to express themselves openly even if you aren’t sexually attracted to them, then this meme will never be a problem for you. And if you feel personally attacked by this meme, try and figure out why, because it’s probably not about you. Don’t be a creep isn’t that complicated, folks

Yeah I read WL&C after a failed attempt at reading Capital (I had never read much Marx other than the manifesto at that point) and realized I needed to understand his economics first, as I felt completely out of my depth. Turns out reading Capital v1, the first few chapters are just like that! But I’m glad I read WL&C, like you said its short and gave me something to chew on for a year or so before diving back into the big book.

I edited my comment above about CotGP. All solid recommendations, for exactly the reasons you state.