On 1/6/2021 at 7:57 PM, dingformung said:

He was indoctrinated by Russian spies.

disinfo is shared more more than it is seeded. 

  On 1/6/2021 at 8:44 PM, very honest said:

yeah i mean this is the way people like me get "shut down" but what it ignores is the well established fact that disinfo gets seeded but then it's spread mostly by being shared by carriers. if anyone is buying into some of putin's propaganda, they most likely didn't read it from a direct russian source, but from some lineage of unsuspecting people who bought into it and perpetuated it

Yes, but the same way Russia spreads false information that they think benefits them (or better: non-false information that benefits them) and anti-American narratives there is still plenty Russia paranoia left that is a result of anti-Russian cold war propaganda, I think, especially in the US. Suspecting a Russian false info attack behind anything remotely anticapitalist is paranoid. Especially since Russia is the epitome of unchecked capitalism.

prior to this trump  was having a rally near the whitehouse and said "... and we're going to go up to the capitol"

and here we are.

  On 1/6/2021 at 8:51 PM, dingformung said:

Yes, but the same way Russia spreads false information that they think benefits them (or better: non-false information that benefits them) and anti-American narratives there is still plenty Russia paranoia left that is a result of anti-Russian cold war propaganda, I think, especially in the US. Suspecting a Russian false info attack behind anything remotely anticapitalist is paranoid. Especially since Russia is the epitome of unchecked capitalism.

hm maybe

it also seems like a clever way to sabatoge the left. get them to embrace an ideology at odds with the majority.

  On 1/6/2021 at 8:04 PM, dingformung said:

Yes, Putin was - in East Germany - but I was referring to milkface. He is a Russian spy

Ah. LOL. Now you know that I'm also a communist sleeper operative masquerading as a Finnish IDM nerd.

  On 1/6/2021 at 9:05 PM, very honest said:

hm maybe

it also seems like a clever way to sabatoge the left. get them to embrace an ideology at odds with the majority.

Yes, you should always be careful not to turn into a useful idiot, etc.

  On 1/6/2021 at 9:15 PM, dingformung said:

Yes, you should always be careful not to turn into a useful idiot, etc.

i make a point to be useless

  On 1/6/2021 at 10:56 AM, dingformung said:

 

FlightClub isn't an anticapitalist/anti-consumerism movie, it just tries to come off as one. In the end it promotes capitalist values: You need an army of stupid workers for the rough work that see you as their authoritarian leader to achieve something (kind of like every corporation), you need creative destruction to keep the machinery working, etc. Tyler Durden isn't a rebel, he is a modern entrepreneur. They should do a remake with Elon Musk playing Elon Musk.

 

All serious Marxists (as in they actually studied Marx in an academic context and agree with parts of his analysis and try to apply it to modern times) that I've talked to were very educated and didn't just reproduce simplified ideological paroles. Marx is regarded as one of the most important political philosophers/sociologist that has ever lived for a reason, not only by left-wing ideologues.

Lenin was an opportunist who would have used any popular ideology to get into power and socialism was, next to fascism, very popular at the time. I'm not a Lenin expert but I've read that he was more reasonable (and less of a demagogue) before his exile, but dunno. I think the Soviet Union is generally a very bad example for socialism and/or communism because it never was even close to being either, despite its self-identification with it.

Generally I'm very suspicious about anything that contains the word "Lenin". Maybe that has to do with me being East German. Stalinists usually refer to themselves as Leninists. If you are serious about socialism or communism you shouldn't use them as a theoretical foundation because of the historical delegitimisation through the Soviet Union and Mao.

 

Who legitimises the vanguard, though? Does it legitimise itself? If so, that would be the same sort of power legitimation you would see in a fascist putsch.

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Lenin was a Marxist and the Bolshevik party has no power until it seized the revolutionary potential of the proletarian revolutionary activities happening on the ground when they occurred.  Socialism is not something that can be immediately created it's a process of experimentation of how to repel the bourgeois reaction, which the Soviet Union failed to do longterm, but which through its lifetime proletarians can learn how a proletarian revolution can be prepared for, executed, and maintained.  Marxism-Leninism is a continuation of Marxism's revolutionary core and its fusion of praxis and theory in the form of scientific experimentation in proletarian revolution to learn how to achieve it in various material conditions.  The Soviet Union and Mao did not delegitimize communism but rather provide additional information on how to implement it.  Anarchist leanings aside, their theory worked to the extent that it provided the results they achieved, which were the greatest achievements in proletarian history. 

The vanguard only legitimizes itself in retrospect through analysis of its behavior and results

Stalin collaborated with Hitler, though.

  On 1/6/2021 at 6:22 PM, very honest said:

i would say "social programs" is a better talking point than "socialism" and accomplishes the same purpose. 

i'm surprised to see joshuatx coming out against capitalism. seems like a sure-fire way to torpedo the goal of flipping texas and unseating the oil cartel. i would say capitalism needs adjustments (tax rates) but capitalism by definition means people being free to own their own businesses, and i just don't get how any argument can undermine the self-evident importance of that.

i consider russian propaganda to be effective more than a lot of people, and no one has been able to convince me that i'm wrong about that. so, naturally, i am inclined to wonder if putin's propagandists are working to

• subvert american values
• bolster support of the russian "system" (mafia government authoritarian state)

by using the tried and true talking points of marxism.

25 year old son of democratic congress member raskin committed suicide on new years eve. raskin is a noble fighter, he was out there standing up against trump's serious abuse of power, and abandonment of ally ukraine. his son's suicide note said something like please take care of the animals, each-other and the global poor. this sets off my spidey sense. a 25 year old son of a vocal house dem mentions the global poor in his brief suicide note? hm. 

i consider information warfare to be a significant presence in the information ecosystem and i suspect it feeds this topic. 

and of course problems exist, i'm not saying everything is fine. i just don't get the notion that capitalism can be discarded. adjustments are what makes sense to me.

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putin, eternal lover of marxism /s

  On 1/6/2021 at 6:55 PM, very honest said:

if you continue strawmanning me i'll stop responding. i said his government is a mafia authoritarian government, and that he simply uses marxism as propaganda

logically incorrect. capitalism also functions by allowing people to own their own business

actually it is. technological advancement has brought us to the point where it is perfectly possible for there to be plenty for all. sorting out our systems through incrememntal improvements is the way to arrive at that.

i could also argue that apples lead to all the problems of the world. the convenient simplification is not an accurate description of the situation

outsourcing labor is not always bad, neither are huge or multinational companies. but i can guess at the problems you are referring to, and i will say they can be addressed without tossing capitalism, which i think makes no sense.

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what does it mean to "own" your own business? can you "own" a business without access to a wage labor pool?  what creates a wage labor pool?  why can't that wage labor pool own a business too?  because if everyone owned a business there would be no wage labor.  by definition every business requires wage labor which requires people incapable of owning a business, or else they'd do it

  On 1/6/2021 at 10:46 PM, dingformung said:

Stalin collaborated with Hitler, though.

not 4 long bro

  On 1/6/2021 at 10:46 PM, dingformung said:

Stalin collaborated with Hitler, though.

Hitler literally wanted to kill all Slavs

[spoiler]

stalin the moment he heard hitler broke their "collaboration" [img][/img][/spoiler]

  On 1/6/2021 at 10:54 PM, milkface said:

not 4 long bro

The only reason it didn't continue was because Hitler decided to attack the Soviet Union out of nowhere. To be fair the Stalin Soviet Union was probably very different from the Gorbachev one.

  On 1/6/2021 at 10:55 PM, cyanobacteria said:

Hitler literally wanted to kill all Slavs

Yes and yet a lot of his collaborators were Slavs. Fascists don't necessarily make sense

  On 1/6/2021 at 10:54 PM, milkface said:

not 4 long bro

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this was also appeasement really.. many leader tried to appease him not accepting the reality of who he was. 

they're semi-comfortable coexistence didn't last long. 

  On 1/6/2021 at 11:01 PM, dingformung said:

The only reason it didn't continue was because Hitler decided to attack the Soviet Union out of nowhere. To be fair the Stalin Soviet Union was probably very different from the Gorbachev one.

Yes and yet a lot of his collaborators were Slavs. Fascists don't necessarily make sense

The US also collaborated with him in actually meaningful ways anyway, providing capitalist goods, and in fact opposition to Nazism before the US entered the war was considered unpatriotic and communistic, being called "premature anti-fascist".  The US continued to collaborate with Nazis after WW2, importing them directly into the country for high level positions and exporting them elsewhere to create distributed resistance to socialism.  If stalin's temporary agreement with hitler is a refutation of the USSR then the US's behavior digs its own grave

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

  On 1/6/2021 at 11:06 PM, cyanobacteria said:

The US also collaborated with him in actually meaningful ways anyway, and in fact opposition to Nazism before the US entered the war was considered unpatriotic and communistic, being called "premature anti-fascist".  The US continued to collaborate with Nazis after WW2, importing them directly into the country for high level positions and exporting them elsewhere to create distributed resistance to socialism.  If stalin's temporary agreement with hitler is a refutation of the USSR then the US's behavior digs its own grave

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

not to mention nazis given jobs at nasa :^) so much for postwar denazification. some nazi-vichy collaborator politicians were still in power in france well into the 1960s..... funny that.

  On 1/7/2021 at 12:41 AM, Rubin Farr said:

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  On 1/7/2021 at 12:41 AM, Rubin Farr said:

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Ossoff won.

Jon Ossoff Wins Georgia Runoff, Handing Democrats Senate Control

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/952417689/democrat-jon-ossoff-claims-victory-over-david-perdue-in-georgia-runoff

It's been a hell of a day.

  On 1/7/2021 at 12:49 AM, ignatius said:

 

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we're probably days away from the Nazi Third Reich flag being explained as a "antifa dogwhistle" by Trump loyal elected officials