#what do you think your anti-communist histories are?

[damnesdelamer]

‘Socialism has never worked’?

What do you call Russia, China, and Cuba functionally eradicating homelessness and illiteracy in their respective spheres within a few years of the massive upheaval of revolution, and radically improving the living conditions of millions after generations of poverty? What do you call the Soviet Union bearing the brunt of the greatest military conflict the world has ever seen and emerging victorious? What do you call the Soviet Union holding out for four decades of sustained military and economic warfare against the greatest military and economic superpower the world has ever known? What do you call Vietnam defeating the greatest military empire the world has ever known in its anti-imperialist resistance campaign? What do you call China emerging from the 20th Century as the most populous country on earth with the highest GDP? What do you call China reducing daily covid numbers to double digits in a population of 1.4 billion? What do you call Cuba thriving after six decades of brutal embargoes? What do you call Cuba passing the most progressive and practically protective legislation for family and LGBT rights in a world historical moment marked by increased LGBTphobia among the Western powers? What do you call the people of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe shrugging off the muck of ages to usher in an era of progress, all while Western powers conspire to sabotage them at every turn while growing fat off the earth they’ve scorched?

I’d ask what history books you’re reading, but I know that you’re not reading any, and the only information you have on the subject is spoon-fed into your colonised mind by the people’s enemies, whose vested interest in fabricating events is readily apparent to any who bother to look into these things.

‘Socialism has never worked’? It has been one of the dominant political-economic models of the past century, and has made drastic strides on every front despite its relative infancy and constant opposition from Western superpowers. If you fear socialism, what do you really fear? Socialism is the people. Socialism is me; socialism is you; socialism is all of us, together.

‘Socialism has never worked’? Socialism has always worked. Socialism is working right now. We will see socialism work again, always.

#socialism #socialist #communism #communist #original #btw I know that if bootlickers find this post they'll call this 'propaganda' or whatever and like... #what do you think your anti-communist histories are? #who wrote those versions of events? #could it have possibly been enemies of socialism with vested interests in expanding global capitalism for the profit of a ruling class? #these questions are rhetorical #bootlickers fuck off

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

.

#still not over the insane george orwell post that got reblogged onto my dash yesterday #i unfollowed the person who reblogged it #because either A) theyre a tankie or B) their criticial thinking skills are sub-fucking-zero #like 1) the OP of that post was just copying Hakims awful video on Orwell #2) to read animal farm and come out of it with the interpretation that Orwell was saying that the animals and hence the proletariat in the #USSR were just innately unintelligent shows a reading comprehension so bad its not even like piss poor. its piss impoverished #3) if a post is like ''also look X said Y Bad Thing'' without providing any of the context as to where that quote comes from theyre likely #being deliberately mishonest. it is easy to take someone out if context to make it look like they were saying something they werent which is #exactly what the OP of that post was doing. they took one sentence of Orwells writing on the nazis and Hitler to make it look like Orwell #thought Hitler was a swell guy when actually Orwells writing was about the dangers of charismatic tyrants like Hitler and their rhetoric #the entire thing was about how Hitler was able to amass such power and popularity and use that to his advantage #not every despot is so easy to pick out as dangerous or so easy to detest. hitler was hardly the first charismatic tyrant in history #OP also conveniently left out the fact that like the next sentence is orwell being like yeah no i would fucking kill this man which wow #thats a glaring omission. imagine if people decided to look up what OP was refetencing to verify irs veracity #4) OP does not mention that Orwell fought in La Guerra Civil alongside communists and socialists and anarchists etc. #he fought against the nationalists. he took a bullet to the neck during the fight. he was very much against francisco franco and his fascist #regime who were allied with Hitler and the Nazis #mentioning orwells participation in the spanish civil war really undercuts any of those arguments #5) you know who was actually allied with Hitler and Nazi Germany? STALIN #at the beginning of WWII the soviet union and nazi germany were in alliance. stalin and hitler did not have fundamental ideological #differences. if hitler had not betrayed stalin the soviet union would not have joined the allied powers #your uwu anti-fascist communist idol joseph fucking stalin was joseph fucking stalin. he was a fascist dictator whose actions deliberately #caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. he like vladimir lenin before him did not care for the ideals of marx #marxism leninism is a meaningless political ideology #the soviet union was not a communist paradise. neither stalin not lenin cared about the proletariat #i said this in my tag ramble yesterday but if you want to see a leader who actually followed marxist ideals go look up thomas sankara #im just rambling in the tags today to get out the lingering frustration i have

[specialagentartemis]

I get variations on this comment on my post about history misinformation all the time: "why does it matter?" Why does it matter that people believe falsehoods about history? Why does it matter if people spread history misinformation? Why does it matter if people on tumblr believe that those bronze dodecahedra were used for knitting, or that Persephone had a daughter named Mespyrian? It's not the kind of misinformation that actually hurts people, like anti-vaxx propaganda or climate change denial. It doesn't hurt anyone to believe something false about the past.

Which, one, thanks for letting me know on my post that you think my job doesn't matter and what I do is pointless, if it doesn't really matter if we know the truth or make up lies about history because lies don't hurt anyone. But two, there are lots of reasons that it matters.

It encourages us to distrust historians when they talk about other aspects of history. You might think it's harmless to believe that Pharaoh Hatshepsut was trans. It's less harmless when you're espousing that the Holocaust wasn't really about Jews because the Nazis "came for trans people first." You might think it's harmless to believe that the French royalty of Versailles pooped and urinated on the floor of the palace all the time, because they were asshole rich people anyway, who cares, we hate the rich here; it's rather less harmless when you decide that the USSR was the communist ideal and Good, Actually, and that reports of its genocidal oppression are actually lies.

It encourages anti-intellectualism in other areas of scholarship. Deciding based on your own gut that the experts don't know what they're talking about and are either too stupid to realize the truth, or maliciously hiding the truth, is how you get to anti-vaxxers and climate change denial. It is also how you come to discount housing-first solutions for homelessness or the idea that long-term sustained weight loss is both biologically unlikely and health-wise unnecessary for the majority of fat people - because they conflict with what you feel should be true. Believing what you want to be true about history, because you want to believe it, and discounting fact-based corrections because you don't want them to be true, can then bleed over into how you approach other sociological and scientific topics.

How we think about history informs how we think about the present. A lot of people want certain things to be true - this famous person from history was gay or trans, this sexist story was actually feminist in its origin - because we want proof that gay people, trans people, and women deserve to be respected, and this gives evidence to prove we once were and deserve to be. But let me tell you a different story: on Thanksgiving of 2016, I was at a family friend's house and listening to their drunk conservative relative rant, and he told me, confidently, that the Roman Empire fell because they instituted universal healthcare, which was proof that Obama was destroying America. Of course that's nonsense. But projecting what we think is true about the world back onto history, and then using that as recursive proof that that is how the world is... is shoddy scholarship, and gets used for topics you don't agree with just as much as the ones you do. We should not be encouraging this, because our politics should be informed by the truth and material reality, not how we wish the past proved us right.

It frequently reinforces "Good vs. Bad" dichotomies that are at best unhelpful and at worst victim-blaming. A very common thread of historical misinformation on tumblr is about the innocence or benevolence of oppressed groups, slandered by oppressors who were far worse. This very frequently has truth to it - but makes the lies hard to separate out. It often simplifies the narrative, and implies that the reason that colonialism and oppression were bad was because the victims were Good and didn't deserve it... not because colonialism and oppression are bad. You see this sometimes with radical feminist mother goddess Neolithic feminist utopia stuff, but you also see it a lot regarding Native American and African history. I have seen people earnestly argue that Aztecs did not practice human sacrifice, that that was a lie made up by the Spanish to slander them. That is not true. Human sacrifice was part of Aztec, Maya, and many Central American war/religious practices. They are significantly more complex than often presented, and came from a captive-based system of warfare that significantly reduced the number of people who got killed in war compared to European styles of war that primarily killed people on the battlefield rather than taking them captive for sacrifice... but the human sacrifice was real and did happen. This can often come off with the implications of a 'noble savage' or an 'innocent victim' that implies that the bad things the Spanish conquistadors did were bad because the victims were innocent or good. This is a very easy trap to fall into; if the victims were good, they didn't deserve it. Right? This logic is dangerous when you are presented with a person or group who did something bad... you're caught in a bind. Did they deserve their injustice or oppression because they did something bad? This kind of logic drives a lot of transphobia, homophobia, racism, and defenses of Kyle Rittenhouse today. The answer to a colonialist logic of "The Aztecs deserved to be conquered because they did human sacrifice and that's bad" is not "The Aztecs didn't do human sacrifice actually, that's just Spanish propaganda" (which is a lie) it should be "We Americans do human sacrifice all the god damn time with our forever wars in the Middle East, we just don't call it that. We use bullets and bombs rather than obsidian knives but we kill way, way more people in the name of our country. What does that make us? Maybe genocide is not okay regardless of if you think the people are weird and scary." It becomes hard to square your ethics of the Innocent Victim and Lying Perpetrator when you see real, complicated, individual-level and group-level interactions, where no group is made up of members who are all completely pure and good, and they don't deserve to be oppressed anyway.

It makes you an unwitting tool of the oppressor. The favorite, favorite allegation transphobes level at trans people, and conservatives at queer people, is that we're lying to push the Gay Agenda. We're liars or deluded fools. If you say something about queer or trans history that's easy to debunk as false, you have permanently hurt your credibility - and the cause of queer history. It makes you easy to write off as a liar or a deluded fool who needs misinformation to make your case. If you say Louisa May Alcott was trans, that's easy to counter with "there is literally no evidence of that, and lots of evidence that she was fine being a woman," and instantly tanks your credibility going forward, so when you then say James Barry was trans and push back against a novel or biopic that treats James Barry as a woman, you get "you don't know what you're talking about, didn't you say Louisa May Alcott was trans too?" TERFs love to call trans people liars - do not hand them ammunition, not even a single bullet. Make sure you can back up what you say with facts and evidence. This is true of homophobes, of racists, of sexists. Be confident of your facts, and have facts to give to the hopeful and questioning learners who you are relating this story to, or the bigots who you are telling off, because misinformation can only hurt you and your cause.

It makes the queer, female, POC, or other marginalized listeners hurt, sad, and betrayed when something they thought was a reflection of their own experiences turns out not to be real. This is a good response to a performance art piece purporting to tell a real story of gay WWI soldiers, until the author revealed it as fiction. Why would you want to set yourself up for disappointment like that? Why would you want to risk inflicting that disappointment and betrayal on anyone else?

It makes it harder to learn the actual truth.

Historical misinformation has consequences, and those consequences are best avoided - by checking your facts, citing your sources, and taking the time and effort to make sure you are actually telling the truth.

#history #history and the world #misinformation

[morhath]

Oh I’m very very interested in your nonfiction book recs 👀

EDIT: ykw I'm gonna make this a little more organized

I listed a bunch in this post (the last question) but lemme see if I have any additions because I know I was kinda trying to keep it short when I wrote that. (But that being said, that post is the Top Faves Of All Time, so go for those first.)

Freaky medical shit I also liked:

The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years by Sonia Shah

The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco by Marilyn Chase (I just read this a few weeks ago and OOUUUGGHHHHHH IT'S LITERALLY JUST. LIKE THE RESPONSE TO COVID.)

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson

Political shit I also liked:

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century edited by Alice Wong

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher

Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change by Janelle S. Wong

History I also liked:

Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle

The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives by Bryant Simon (between those two you can tell I was on a bit of a "workplace tragedies caused by lax regulations and bad management" kick)

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore (I think everyone knows about this book, including it for completeness)

Promised the Moon: The Untold Story Of The First Women In The Space Race by Stephanie Nolen

The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison by Hugh Ryan

Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke (this is nowhere near as fun and cute as you'd assume from the title)

Memoirs I also liked:

The Less People Know About Us: A Mystery of Betrayal, Family Secrets, and Stolen Identity by Axton Betz-Hamilton (I read this before I really got into nonfiction and it was WILD, I tell people about it all the time)

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui (this one is a graphic not-novel-I-guess-memoir)

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Other:

Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood

A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America by Ken Armstrong, T. Christian Miller

Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food by Lenore Newman

It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror by Joe Vallese

AND here are a few on my TBR that I'm really excited for! I decided not to categorize them because they're almost all history:

Silk and Potatoes: Contemporary Arthurian Fantasy by Adam Roberts

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown

All the Young Men by Ruth Coker Burks

The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara by David I. Kertzer (I am actually partway through this right now but in a bit of a dry/confusing section)

The Broadcast 41: Women and the Anti-Communist Blacklist by Carol A. Stabile

The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History by Kassia St Clair

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell (have just barely started this)

Time to Dance, a Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518 by John Waller

The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyŏng: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea by Lady Hyegyeong

Miss Major Speaks: The Life and Times of a Black Trans Revolutionary by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste by William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley (I'm in the middle of this but it's surprisingly, um. not exciting.)

Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond by Mark Ames

Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won't Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It by Joslyn Brenton, Sinikka Elliott, Sarah Bowen

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel

Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber

Medieval Gentlewoman: Life in a Gentry Household in the Later Middle Ages by Ffiona Swabey

Hitler's First Victims: The Beginning of the Holocaust and One Man's Fight to End It by Timothy W. Ryback

I am soso normal and have very normal interests that are not at all grim :)

#long post #life #reading #books #tempestclerics #my book recs

[eldritchdyke]

The recent Signalis anticommunism discussion on here made me stumble onto your take about it from last month, and while I do believe that Signalis is very... normie anticommunist (you seem to disagree), your post made me really curious, but at the same time it was very vague, and a lot of people interpreted it as "Signalis isn't anti-communist, it's anti-authoritarian". Would you be willing to elaborate?

Oof didn't realize there was more discussion to it than I thought so I won't wade into the whole of that cuz that wasn't what I was responding to at the time. Also just to preface two things; for one I am a communist myself and that did effect my reading of the text a great deal and for two I didn't say anything about the "Signalis isn't anti-communist, it's anti-authoritarian" thing myself that was a later addition from other people (personally I don't like the term "authoritarian" as a way to analyze the faults of certain socialist states but that's neither here nor there).

What I was driving at is the idea that the DDR imagery (and beyond that, as others have pointed out it isn't solely pulling from that) is doing a lot more than simple condemnation or any sort of post-war triumphalism over "dystopian" socialism. We can read a lot based on what was given attention in the text, and I think the ways that DDR imagery show up in the game are shown with a rather loving, even reverent light at times (you don't create a bunch of intricately designed DDR robot girl ocs and name some of them after historical DDR special forces units because you totally despise everything the DDR stood for). This is intentionally contrasted with the rotting and decayed state we actively find a great deal of these things in, which provides a great deal of contrast between the lowercase i ideal and the reality of an execution which was tainted by the literal bleeding psychology of collective trauma and the attempts at domination of individuals.

What results is less a coherent world as such that can be dissected as one might dissect typical worldbuilding lore and more an emotional portrait which depicts a sense of portrayal at the way the history of the DDR played out, and you may disagree with parts of that (I do with certain parts as well) but it isn't intended to reflect a dissertation on the flaws of the DDR. It's an emotion first conceptualization of tainted Ostalgie and the hauntological traces of a future which was not allowed to be for reasons internal and external, through that lens it is, to me, quite ambiguous over whether or not the source object was a negative or a positive. Instead its a truly conflicted portrayal of the emotional state one is left in after both the (again lowercase i) ideals of that revolutionary state and its practical execution, warts and all, have passed into the realm of cultural memory.

(I'm sorry that's probably a whole lot of words to not fully answer your question but tldr I don't think Signalis is as anticommunist as a lot of people think it is, I think people are generally reading the diegesis too literally and not really delving into the full emotional depth going on with how communist imagery is used in the game)

#eldritch asks #signalis #it's also super late where i am so i'm a bit fried but this is my best stab at an explanation #without writing the whole essay of feelings i have on the topic #this isn't even getting into the additional context of how the Eusan Nation is 1. described first and foremost as a nation #and 2. contrasted with the Empire or 'Reich' which is intentionally not depicted #and the additional meaning that lends to showing the Eusan Nation in the state we see it in #also obligatory 'i cannot read the devs minds and i very well might just be a communist projecting a better read than the one they intended

[communistkenobi]

I was wondering about the horseshoe theory (mentioned in your post about fascism and communism). There's also something called the fish hook theory (don't really have any thoughts on it). I've been graphics illustrating both and tbh sometimes they feel like they fit but part of it is bc I think a lot of people calling themselves communists and anti imperialists are left nationalists and revanchists. It definitely seems like there's a lack of striving towards internationalism etc. At the same time idk if calling these communists not real communists makes sense (no true Scotsman fallacy or w.e) bc they're the ones we've got on planet Earth.

I don’t find any type of visual shorthand like horseshoe/fish hook/compass etc useful personally because I don’t think those symbols depict any actual empirical facts about history or politics. Like I think they are just fundamentally not serious because you can’t use them as frameworks to analyze history or political conflict, and doubly useless as prescriptions for what to do to resolve those conflicts. The fish hook is to my understanding a response to the horseshoe theory (extremism of “both sides” equivalently harmful/bad/“ideological”), but the problem is that the fish hook is using the same logic that all political conflict can both summarized and understood with a single symbol, that this symbol speaks for itself. the actual critique of horseshoe theory I find most compelling is that it’s fundamentally a joke premise, it’s the analytical equivalent of an r/Libertarian meme and should only be mocked and dismissed out of hand, not countered with a different symbol. its primary function is to argue that “centrism” is a coherent political ideology. this symbol may even occasionally appear to fit with a particular context of reality but that does not mean it is valuable for understanding reality

re who are actual communists is a conversation I have with close friends somewhat regularly re: activism work and am interested in responding to, but I do not want to do so in a public setting. or at least, not on tumblr. you know how it is on here

#asks #I like your url btw lol #I’m high also so if this sounds rude or hostile I genuinely don’t mean it that way like I’m not mad or anything #anatomy of fascism #<- I think i discussed this under this tag before #i have to finish that book also. I GOT TOO MUCH TO READ!!!!

[grandhotelabyss]

Any thoughts on nick land / mark fisher?

I've encountered both of them essentially as bloggers—I don't think I've ever read a word of either on paper—so I can't say I've studied them formally or mastered their thinking.

Land's concept of capital as autonomous alien intelligence assembling itself through retroaction on human agents—do I have this right?—is fun science fiction. I accept that as a theory of cultural temporality in general but not necessarily as a theory of technology or capitalism in particular. As for his more (shall we say) "ethnic" idea about "exit" and the Anglo character—maybe there's something to that. Modern history as the struggle between decentralized commercial sea empires (UK, US) and despotic communist land empires (Germany, Russia, China). And his new thing about Anglo-Zionism—I believe he's read Milton deeply—is right on time. All his Compact pieces on the English canon are paywalled, so I haven't read them, but it seems like he's approaching the idea that the God of the Bible is the force he previously identified as capital. (I think this is similar to what Mitchell Heisman outlined in his Suicide Note, but I only read some of that, and only once, on one sleepless night over 10 years ago, and doubt I'll revisit it. Does Heisman cite Land? I don't recall.) Hyperstition is real, as any manifestation girl on here or on TikTok or on YouTube will tell you.

Now Fisher was a sad case. I think all that anti-humanist theory did him no favors, personally. I'm not sure he could stand in that desolate place, the way Land could. I don't believe I ever directly interacted with him online when we both were bloggers in the same milieu circa 2005 or so. Maybe once or twice. He had a positive Marxist take on Batman Begins, and I had a negative one, and I think somebody sent him mine when he had comments open. (He had a whole thing, which anticipated the "vampire's castle" image, about "gray vampires" who stalk the comments section and suck the life out of your imaginative assertions with their point-missing nitpickery. He wasn't wrong!) I'm sure he thought I was hideously naive if he ever thought about me at all, and I was naive, I was essentially a Stalinist, an obvious example of humanist theory gone wrong, but there are limits, too, to that gothic style he picked up from Land and the CCRU.

I think he said Kafka was his first major author. There's a case to be made that you should read Kafka only after Dickens. (I don't mean literally but metonymically. Nor do I mean the 19th century vs. the 20th or even realism vs. modernism. Replace Kafka with Baudelaire and Dickens with Joyce and it'll mean the same.) And I'm not talking about politics here or even ethics. No panacea for politics and ethics can be found in books. Kafka, for that matter, was probably a nicer guy qua guy than Dickens was. But, just as someone who has to live in the world in your skin, it can't hurt to read a non-anti-humanist book from time to time if you're a bookish person. To not always try to conceptually outflank as a ruse of power every obvious humane sentiment. And to try not to need your humane sentiments to be conveyed only by the most alienating stimulus, to need them to come in the form of their opposite. I never got over his review of The Passion of the Christ:

What, from one perspective, is the utter humiliation and degradation of Jesus's body is on the other a coldly ruthless vision of the body liberated from the 'wisdom and limits of the organism'.

Masochristianity.

Christ's Example is simply this: it is better to die than to pass on abuse virus or to in any way vindicate the idiot vacuity and stupidity of the World of authority.

Power depends upon the weakness of the organism. When authority is seriously challenged, when its tolerance is tested to the limit, it has the ultimate recourse of torture. The slow, graphic scenes of mindless physical degradation in The Passion of the Christ are necessary for revealing the horrors to which Jesus' organism was subject. It is made clear that he could have escaped the excruciating agony simply by renouncing his Truth and by assenting to the Authority of the World. Christ's Example insists: better to let the organism be tortured to death ('If thine own eye offend thee, pluck it out') than to bow, bent-headed, to Authority.

This is what is perhaps most astonishing about Gibson's film. Far from being a statement of Catholic bigotry, it can only be read as an anti-authoritarian AND THEREFORE anti-Catholic film. For the Pharisees of two millennia ago, puffed up in their absurd finery, substitute the child-abuser apologists of today's gilt-laden, guilt-ridden Vatican. Against all the odds, against two thousand years of cover-ups and dissimulation, The Passion of the Christ recovers the original Christ, the anti-Wordly but not otherwordly Christ of Liberation Theology: the Gnostic herald of Apocalypse Now.

This is why I found him frustrating when I read him as a daily blogger almost 20 years ago. Plus the over-solemnity about pop-culture ephemera. I found him a bit naive, too, in the end, though he was almost 15 years my senior. I also sometimes just didn't and don't know what he was talking about, because I sort of hated and hate theory.

In his purely political commentary, he was right, however, to focus on bureaucratization as an effect of neoliberalism—the way capitalism and communism converge in the present for the worst of both worlds, everything is at once a competition and frozen in a statist hierarchy. I'm not sure I'm persuaded by the "hauntology" thesis. I've thought through that issue in a different way and am not convinced the end of the myth of the revolution or the myth of the avant-garde has to mean that we have no future. In fact it might mean the opposite. But good for him for putting into public consciousness an interesting and melancholically beautiful idea that would otherwise have remained confined to smug Derrida-readers.

He is fun to read. That's the highest compliment I can pay. I'm sure the big K-Punk book is a wonderful thing to own and to browse through: to watch a movie or read a book or listen to an album and then see what he had to say about it. He was one model of the blogger as true essayist.

#nick land #mark fisher

[hereforthelizardsex]

You mentioned about different analyses of 1984 in a post that you reblogged from me, and now I’m interested. I haven’t read 1984 for a while (I’m thinking of rereading it soon), but I’d be interested in any of your opinions / other people’s analyses if you want to share! :)

Omg yay 1984 is my favorite book and I always want to talk about it.

Of course the well known thing about the book is the issue of censorship, but the censorship in the novel does not exist in isolation, rather it is influenced by other political and economic forces.

1984 is a story of a society where, as a result of an end to scarcity (which would otherwise require a transition away from capitalism), those in power have created an economic system where war is used to manufacture scarcity, thereby ensuring the continued existence of hierarchy and power. It is important to note that hierarchy is also the problematized issue in Animal Farm, another book my George Orwell that is often misinterpreted as anti-communist while in actuality being anti-capitalist. The censorship in 1984 is done not only in the service of preserving the state but specifically for the purpose of preserving hierarchy as a concept. This is stated outright in the theory section in the middle of the book, when Winston is reading The Book. When I logged on to tumblr after finishing 1984 to look for meta posts and analyses, I was shocked to find people saying that they had skipped that entire section of the novel. I exclaimed out loud about this and my mother who was in the room at the time said she’d done the same thing. While people are entitled to consume media in whatever fashion they like and 1984 itself promotes this idea, I find it deeply concerning that many people skip what was to me the most interesting and important section of the book due to finding it to be a difficult read. The book states outright that the preservation of the power of the capitalist class and the subjugation of the working class is the entire reason that the government does everything it does, and people just don’t read that part of the book.

The censorship in the book is also not only censorship by elimination but censorship by the rewriting of history. This is important because it happens all the time in real life. For example, Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis wishes for it to be taught in schools that slavery helped Black people. This is the same kind of censorship that happens in 1984. In the field of political science this is called the “usable past” - versions of rewritten history used to uphold a nation’s identity.

Another political science concept that 1984 takes to an extreme is that if war abroad being used to put an end to social movements at home. This has happened throughout history as wars are used to make patriotism the norm, thereby marginalizing “unpatriotic” political movements such as labor or racial or gender equality that are seen as not in line with the aforementioned national identity that has been constructed. In 1984 the wars do this quite literally by manufacturing scarcity and thereby preventing the rise of communism.

I could go on forever, but instead I’ll conclude with an anecdote from when I was in high school. In my English class senior year of high school we were split into groups and assigned various novels to read instead of reading one as a class. The group that was assigned 1984 (not my group, I read The Color Purple which is another favorite that I could go on about forever) decided they wouldn’t read it because “the main character wants to rape someone.” I found this disturbing immediately because the novel is about censorship being a bad thing and here my classmates were not wanting to read it because it depicts sensitive subject matter. Their behavior was disturbingly indicative of the self censoring mindset of so many young people on the internet today. When I myself read the novel a few years later I discovered that it deals with rape in a few different ways. The first is that the main character was himself raped by his wife before the story takes place, not for sexual gratification but for reproductive purposes. The second is that he does indeed fantasize about raping someone who he is under the impression wants to get him killed. He later has sex with this person after finding out that she does not in fact want to get him killed, and it is the sex scene in a novel with the best negotiation of consent I have ever read. After the characters have sex Winston muses on the political power of sex in ways that I recognize more from queer activists who post on tumblr than from any other novel. All of the novel’s dealings with sensitive topics around sex are well done. The ones that are disturbing are intended to be disturbing - the book ends darkly; nothing in it is intended to make the reader feel good.

I could go on and I have - I wrote one of my papers in undergrad on 1984 and would be willing to share that too, if I could find a way to link it without my full name attached - but I’ll leave this as is for now.

#1984 #1984 george orwell #rape mention

[apas-95]

“Russia is waging an unjust war, yes, but so are Ukraine and its western allies” I am begging you to learn what a fucking war is. Fighting against an unjust invasion and occupation cannot itself be unjust. The Russian Communist Party actively supports the war. Western Communists supported the war until it was clear that it was a quagmire. Just own up to the fact that you clearly think stopping NATO expansion is worth the murder of thousands of innocent people.

History shows that wars are divided into two kinds, just and unjust. All wars that are progressive are just, and all wars that impede progress are unjust. We Communists oppose all unjust wars that impede progress, but we do not oppose progressive, just wars. Not only do we Communists not oppose just wars; we actively participate in them. As for unjust wars, World War I is an instance in which both sides fought for imperialist interests; therefore, the Communists of the whole world firmly opposed that war.

- Mao Zedong, On Protracted War

Now, tell me, are you begging Mao to learn what a war is, too?

The character of the war as a whole is unjust. The current war in Ukraine is an imperialist war, fought between imperial powers, to secure the interests of one or the other imperialist bloc, but overall in defense of imperialism itself. There are no just sides in the current war. Was, say, France, in World War I justified? It was fighting against an unjust invasion and occupation, after all. What about their ally, Imperial Russia, also facing invasion?

No principled communists supported this war. If you look through the 'Ukraine' tag on my own blog, you'll find articles detailing communist protests against the war (against the war as a whole, against both NATO and the Russian Federation) from the very beginning of the conflict. Many, many chauvinists have revealed themselves, declaring their side to conveniently be the lesser evil, just as happened in WWI with the demise of the International - lest we forget the case of the 'anti-imperialist, anti-state, anti-capitalist' anarchists who volunteered to join Right Sektor's militant wing.

I'm confused what your accusation is; that I secretly support the war? The only people trying to justify the deaths of thousands of innocent, working people are those trying to marshal them to follow the capitalists' marching orders. The Russian capitalist state, ruled by oligarchs, strips its workers of their rights, profits off their misery, and then sends them to die to defend the very system that oppresses them. The Ukrainian capitalist state, ruled by oligarchs, strips its workers of their rights, profits off their misery, and then sends them to die to defend the very system that oppresses them.

No Ukrainian worker should die defending the government that, at this very moment, using the powers of martial law to ban protests, is pushing through unpopular legislation to completely remove its workers from any labour protections. The same government that sat by as they froze, unable to afford heating, while their politicians and oligarchs fattened their wallets by shipping gas to the EU. The same government who trained, armed, and deputised the right-wing neonazi gangs who beat, killed, and immolated dozens, if not hundreds, in the attack on the Odessa trade union; who raided Roma camps; who taught children that LGBT people were a form of western degeneracy sent to undermine the white nation, then trained them with rifles.

Do not, for one second, pretend that you care about the lives of the innocent people dying in this war, if your only objection to it is that your preferred band of right-wing oligarchs aren't the ones winning it. This is an unjust war in its entirety. You cannot, if you have any principles at all, claim to support the workers while also supporting the war that is actively waged against them, actively aiding their oppressors, actively killing them.

#ukraine #russia #mao

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

You know what, I'm off on a tangeant we're politics posting tonight. Anon whomst I have deleted you're inspiring theory buckle up.

There's a certain number of terminally online "communists" or what have you, and most of these people are teenagers so do keep that in mind, who have managed to turn Communist, something antithetical to capitalist consumer demographics, into a consumer demographic. If you ever meet a bitch who doesn't organize because they refuse to talk to anyone who hasn't read Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Stirner, that's who I'm talking about, but it's not exclusive to anarchists, there's white maoists who have sub-maoist microlables and will fight other maoists over it, there's Leninists who still talk about Trotsky like that shits a current event, and so on.

But anyway, that's not to say that Leninists who are interested in russian history or maoists who have disagreements with people within their own political movement or anarchists who know the theory cover to cover are necessarily like this, it is to say that there is undeniably a demographic of supposed leftists who care a lot more about signalling their intelligence over the average person than what the theory they claim to base their ideology off actually says. Joe shmoe the union man who has reactionary views on gender is genuinely more revolutionary than these people because at least he doesn't define himself as being superior to working class people.

I'm not gonna no true Scotsman here. We're all raised under capitalism, and the idea that the capitalist conditioning in our current circumstance is truly shakable isn't the hill I want to die on, but it's undeniable that to a certain extent these people are treating leftism less as a political movement and more as a consumer demographic that means you have to buy 500 theory books which you do nothing but read and fight with other leftists about it to an absurd degree that requires no small amount of double think. You need to be critical of falling into that mind set. If you find yourself spending more time fighting with people over relatively arcane leftist schisms than you spend ripping up anti homeless architecture or volunteering at a food shelf or protesting then you should step back and remember what leftism is really about. I'm not saying you need to spend all your time doing those things either but you can't yell about how someone else is doing it wrong when you're not doing it right.

[workersolidarity]

I'm not sure how to word this but looking through your page I can't help but see a....dying type of leftism.

The biggest disappointment is your support of the biggest imperialist action of the decade. But more than that, it has failed.

No one listens, because the Soviet Union was shit and we shouldn't seek to replicate it. Under your watch fascists gained ground and took the presidency.

I don't see anything about what one does to change. Very little about building community, or taking back our power with strikes and ranked choice voting.

It's a path to angry complacency.

LMAO 🤣

A dying type of Leftism? What like the Liberal "Leftism" of MSNBC and CNN that can't even get a million viewers at prime time?

Or perhaps you mean the dying Leftism of the Culture Warriors no one gives a shit about anymore?

Also, I wasn't aware "Leftism", a meaningless term these days to begin with, meant supporting US Imperialism and Western Imperialist goals.

The whole fucking point of the Ukraine War is wash money being sent to Ukraine and put it right back into the pockets of US and European Politicians and Defense Contractors.

Just like the whole fucking point of Afghanistan was to wash money and recycle it back into Western Elite's pockets.

And YOU are just a useless tool of these War Mongering elites, justifying the raiding of Tax Payer money to recycle it back into the pockets of the Bourgeoisie.

Lol, calling the Russian's actions Imperialist while literally ignoring the US literally couping Ukraine 2014 and empowering self-described Nazis is as dishonest and moronic as it gets.

You can't even describe the "Leftism" you're talking about.

I mean, what are you even talking about you fucking loser?

The Soviet Union destroyed the Nazis, not the Western Powers dumbass. So pretending they caused Nazism is as intellectually absent as any anti-Communist argument I've ever heard.

What do you know about community building you Western Imperialist Shill? You think you community build by running around online backing Nazis and the largest offensive military alliance in history?

How stupid can you really be?

#another fucking idiot

[magpiecrust]

What is Red Revenge?

Basically, it's a WW2 superhero story that actually goes into alternate history instead of pretending modern day would be unchanged from the real world after all these events and despite all these supernatural and superscientific elements.

I can't think of anything to compare it to. Über? The Specialists? There is also some inspiration from Inglourious Basterds. But Red Revenge is not as gory as Über or Basterds, the aforementioned inspiration i don't mean Tarantino's voyeuristic gore. Also nobody is as OP as Über's supersoldiers. Still, it's obviously very dark.

It's supposed to become a webcomic eventually. I've seen writing advice that tells you to make incorrect quotes, playlists, moodboards, etc. about your characters to get a hang of them, which is what i'm doing on this blog. I'm also still workign on the character designs. Researching armies, history, involved real people, and the weather so your alternste history that spans over a decade is realistic is a lot of work and takes a really long time (even withiut indecisiveness and procastination). While the unrealistic elements are the point of divergence, i want the events unfolding from their presence (and other interference) to be realistic and make sense. I need to do other stuff besides research every once in a while too.

Tom Handschin/Carmine Avenger is the main character, a young german antifascist whose adoptive father Hans Leonhardt is murdered by the nazis in 1940 when they're found in Paris. Tom becomes sort of a superhero, though he's propably more similiar to the pulp characters The Shadow and The Spider. Like them, he doesn't have any superpowers. He's also autistic and gay ace, like me. I might change his name to Red Avenger.

Like The Shadow, Tom has a bunch of other people working for him. The most developed ones, whom i've already mentioned on this blog, are Emese Nacht/Pine, Horst Dießl/Crow, and Arthur Tangemann/Star. They all have single-word codenames that are supposed to look like legit surnames.

Sascha Schwinghammer, Basti Brandt, and Karl Barbier are Hans' friends and compatriots who are alive (at least for the time being), Renate Brandt is Basti's wife and Hannah Barbier is Karl's wife (Hannah, Karl, and Sascha are secretly all together). Hans, Sascha, Basti, and Karl are all disabled WWI veterans, they met during WWI, remained in contact, and opposed the nazis together.

Detlev Herr is Tom's former friend from the orphanage and a current frenemy. The frenemy thing is because Detlev joined the communist party in the late 1920s and believed KPD's narrative that all non-KPD leftists are evil. And since Tom is an anti-USSR and anti-KPD socialist...

The other superheroes of Red Revenge, besides Tom, are the generically superhuman Louisa Kinge/The Catalyst, pretty low-level psychic dhampir Miyako Hasuike/Wisteria Woman, the hydrokinetic and potential nixie Tadpole, the vampire Noah Ashford/Grey Howler, and generically superhuman Orville Holm/Freedom Fighter.

The main villains of Red Revenge are, obviously, a group of nazi supervillains; their leader The Lightbearer, the robot soldier Living Inferno, speedster Falk Bernhardt Rot/Thunderlight, telekinetic Adele Siemon/The Maiden, and hydrokinetic maybe-nixie/human hybrid Romano Marchegiano, generically superhuman Byron Ashford, and sniper Jan Messer who i don't have codename ideas for yet. The Lightbearer's girlfriends Gretchen Wagner and Kreszentia Glasner might also get mentioned. I've already decided how and when all these people die, at least tentatively.

(Yes, Noah and Byron are related. There's a whole british upper class family drama with them)

(Tadpole and Marchegiano are not related. Neither are Miyako and Noah)

#red revenge #superhero oc #superhero ocs #supervillain oc #supervillain ocs #superhero comic #superheroes #superhero #alternate history #dieselpunk #? #paranormal #tagging it as that because i don't want to appear in the tags of Supernatural TV show #which sucks and was too long by the way #historical fiction #madge's #tvtropes calls this genre weird (historical) war? #tw nazis

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

Mid-Terms Voting Hype

Don’t Vote, Boo!

Stephen Jay Morris

10/30/22

Scientific Morality©

People like me, who are of the ultra Left, do not vote. Well, I say: Its there! Its free of charge! Why not?

It used to be that electoral politics was a dull affair; something that adults did. I remember how the nightly news was a bore fest. Back in the stone age, there were Liberals in the Republican party. Really? No shit! There were also Conservatives in the Democratic party. George Putnam, the Los Angeles news broadcaster who was as conservative as they come, was a registered Democrat. War hero and California congressman, Pete McCloskey, was a liberal Republican. He was the only Republican who was opposed to the Vietnam war.

In most other countries, there is typically only one political party. That’s what’s known as a “monopoly.” Here in the greatest country in God’s multiverse—America—we are have a duopoly! Yeah! The two-party system. That was never mandated in the U.S. Constitution, mind you. So, which of the two is the evil party? Some say it’s the communist Democratic Party. Others say the fascist Republican party. And there you have it: the distance into which American politics has degenerated.

For well over a year now, we’ve heard so much hype about the upcoming, mid-term elections. In years past, the only election that mattered to most was the presidential. Like I’ve said many times before: the American people don’t vote in state or local elections; why should they vote in the mid-terms?

I am not going to lecture you on the importance of voting. Consequences are consequences. Now, however, the two parties are sensationalizing these mid-terms. Those on the Right are telling you that we will become a communist nation should the Democrats get your vote, and the so-called Left are saying that if you do not vote, fascism will come to the land of the free! I think the Democrats are laying it on thick this time around. So, I will say this: you can’t stop totalitarianism by voting! So, let me tell you a story.

This story is factual and true. In 1970 Chile—a South American country—there was a democratically-elected president. He was a Marxist and a proud Socialist. His name was Salvador Allende, the 28th president of Chile. His approval ratings were high among the peasants. The rich hated his guts. This was the first time in history that Socialism was voted in peacefully, without a shot fired.

Well, the U.S. State Department was shitting bricks! President Nixon wanted bloodshed! The CIA had a plan. At the time, the CIA was more anti-Communist than the John Birch Society. All they did was fight communists! They would install Islamic dictators solely to stop communist insurrectionists. And what did we get for that effort? Can you say 9-11?

Speaking of 9-11, let’s return to the crux of my story. The CIA infiltrated the Chilean military. Guess what happened on September 11, 1973? President Salvador Allende was assassinated by Chilean troops. The conservative press claimed he committed suicide, but he’d been riddled with bullets and died instantly. General Augusto Pinochet became the new dictator. He implemented a campaign against peasant Socialists by imprisonment or death. This U.S.-backed dictatorship lasted until 1981.

So, what’s the moral of my story? Voting is essential, but it is not enough. Activism and non-violent protests help, too. If the Republicans have a slew of candidates who win control of Congress or the Senate, it won’t mean the end of American freedom. It will be the beginning of a new, anti-Authoritarian Left revolution! Help is waiting, like the fire department is waiting for a fire.

So, my friends, go vote! And my enemies—why bother? You should just stay home and clean your guns for the next Civil War.

#mid term elections #mid term 2022 #stephenjaymorris #poets on tumblr #baby boomers #anarchism #poetry #satire #american politics

[sicilyjoy]

You aren't a right Anarchist if you don't vote.

In this series called what I saw on SM that burnt my eyes.

Tf, Anarchism has a principal of anti-electoralism.

Now, it's understandable if you have crucial items in your state to vote on. Go ahead. Knock your sock off.

But to say general speaking that Anarchists have to vote is wild.

Anarchists do not believe it wasting energy on electoral politics. Think big not individually. Think of what we could do with all that money and organizing energy that we get pull into by the ruling class

Anyway, it's not Abt whether u can vote or not as an Anarchist. It's y'all need to respect words and history. It is simply false and not ok to say Anarchists must vote. If u feel that way, be a socialist, communist even but don't make false statements Abt anarchist philosophy to suit your personal beliefs are the moment.

#anarchism #anarchists #leftist #people be wild

[communistkenobi]

Hey Nick, I was wondering if you had any reading recommendations for ppl looking to get more into political/leftist theory? Ik you've posted a lot about The Authoritarian Personality and I agree with your insights and posts abt it and I'm considering picking that up! But I also wanted to know if you have any other recs besides that? Anyways, thanks so much, and give Muffin a pet for me! :^)

I would recommend reading historical non fiction written from leftist perspectives. I often find that to be A) a more approachable start if you’re not super familiar/comfortable with the more dense and abstract theoretical texts, and B) very instructive in what the actual value of leftist political thought is, how it’s been built and shaped throughout history, and the core contradictions that exist within class relationships. Reading about the Haitian Revolution is a great start, either Black Jacobins or Avengers of the New World (I’ve only read the latter but I’ve heard Black Jacobins is the better of the two so I recommend that one, Avengers was a bit dry). Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism essay is also fantastic, I find him to be very insightful (and funny) without speaking in the more dry academic tones you’d find in a lot of other theory. + I think it’s foundational in describing what colonialism “is”, not just as a historical process but as a historical force itself

I would also recommend David Harvey’s work, he’s a very influential marxist geographer and has written a lot about how neoliberalism is expressed in the built environment/urban contexts (+ I think neoliberalism is one of those concepts that’s extremely valuable to understand because it’s the dominant expression of capitalism, and knowing exactly what it is and what it does will be very useful in helping you understand a lot of what’s happening today economically). He also wrote what I believe is a fairly famous book called A Companion to Marx’s Capital, though I haven’t read that one. Everything I’ve read of Marx’s work has been fairly impenetrable, so (echoing advice I hear often) I would recommend secondary sources that either commentate or criticise his stuff. Which is extremely easy to find because everyone is responding to Marx lol

OH also Transgender Marxism is a self explanatory collection of essays on the topic of transness and marxism. I’ve read a couple of the essays in there that I’ve been impressed with, particularly Seizing the Means: Towards a Trans Epistemology and ‘Why Are We Like This?’: The Primacy of Transsexuality.

I can provide you the list of books I’ve bought and intend to read after I’m finished The Authoritarian Personality but haven’t gotten around to yet. A lot of the stuff ive read are journal articles / books that are written specifically to be taught in universities so they aren’t necessarily good to recommend because they can be hard to find/expensive/annoying to read. Although if you do want some recommendations in that vein I’d be happy to share a list + any PDFs I have on hand

Anyway this is what I want to read after I’m finished auth personality:

A People’s History of the United States (I almost always see this on “so you want to start reading leftist theory” lists)

The Jakarta Method (a book about the United State’s anti communist foreign policy during the Cold War. I hear the subject matter is pretty horrifying but very illuminating)

Are Prisons Obsolete? By Angela Davis

I also listen to podcasts about theory by other grad students but idk if that’s what you’re looking for. If you are I recommend Liv Agar and What’s Left of Philosophy. Obviously this has a lower bar on quality and fact checking but I find them enjoyable. Also if you’re into podcasts Blowback is really good (covers the Iraq War and Cuban Revolution).

Sorry this is a bit scatterbrained but I hope that helps lmao. If that’s not helpful I can take a look at some of the shit I have downloaded on my computer. Mutuals can also chime in if they have book/essay recommendations

#asks #book club

[emphasisonthehomo]

Hey! I have read you have a Russian (history? lit? Sorry don't remember) degree so you are perfect to vent about how fucking stupid the leaders were during the 1928-29 yeah crisis. I just want to cry every time they didn't care about statistics or invented some hysterical stories about kulaki (if you make people more productive they gain more money and obv they become richer, stupid boy). The complete disregard of reality and science, economy for them is just something disgusting lurking in the corner and they won't touch it with a stick!

And this without even thinking about how they treated people!

Cats would have been more apt to govern that Lenin, Stalin and their goons

Lmao whoops I did the thing where I read a message and then didn't respond and so forgot about it. I just have a generalized Russian Studies degree.

Anyways, I feel like the USSR is a prime example of "the ends justify the means" being taken to it's most extreme. Obviously it's very complicated, but imho if you were to distill it down to the most basic nonsense, if you remove ambition, personal motivation, old fashioned bigotry, etc. that's what drives a ton of the bullshit.

The Goal is to creative a Communist Utopia, that will make life easier and more fulfilling for the downtrodden and abused. And if you oppose that, you must be a Bad Person deserving of Punishment, right? It doesn't matter that the ideological definition of what it means to be "anti revolutionary" keeps changing in a way that benefits those in power. It doesn't matter that one year you're perfectly in step with the Party Line, and the next you're sent to the gulag. Any opposition to the Party is opposition to the well being of The Workers, and therefore must be destroyed.

You see this a lot nowadays w/ tankies and shit, in response to people who lived under Soviet control being like "no actually it sucked." Jewish Soviets had an ~outsized~ influence in what was supposed to be an atheist nation, (Religion is an opiate of the masses, etc) therefore antisemtism is okay actually. If your family were refugees fleeing soviet prosecution, it was because they were capitalist pigdogs brainwashed by the west. No no no, it wasn't authoritarianism or prosecution. They wanted a pair of denim pants and listened to Kiss. Western Brainwashing.

If the end goal is Perfection, virtually anything can be twisted into a threat. What's the definition of Perfection? What does it mean to have a Marxist Leninist Communist Utopia? How is it to be achieved? Well, that's in the realm of people more educated than you, more prepared Do What It Takes to achieve that. Don't worry about it. Do what you're told. You gotta break eggs to make an omelet.

#aron's opinonion #anonymous