Slop.

Yeah, this was all fantasy book research. I don't actually give a shit about healthcare or genocide or whatever. It was all in good fun.

This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: “Who was right?”

In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?

Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington.

Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported -- what the rich countries said, rather than what they did.

That group was annihilated.

—Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method

Allende won 3 elections in a row as a demsoc in Chile, what followed was the US sponsored Pinochet coup and the mass murder of 30,000 socialist organisers, setting back organising in the country by many decades.

Here is Allende's last speech, given by radio while the airforce was bombing bridges in the capital, moments before he would be dead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZVWOWA2Hpk

Bourgeois democracy is a myth. It is only allowed to exist so long as it serves the cause of the ruling class. When democracy no longer serves that cause they abandon it. If democratic socialists succeed they will be subjected to mass violence and their movement will be defenseless against it. Only revolutionary organising can achieve socialism because only revolutionary organising builds with the intent of socialists holding the weapons, organisations and power to defend themselves.

If you do not plan for violence as an inevitability, you are defenseless when the capitalists turn against democracy. If you want further reading on this, The Jakarta Method goes into detail on the same problem occurring in Indonesia where 1 million of us were killed because they did not arm themselves.

Democratic socialism is irresponsible and will get people killed. I do not hate these people, they are real socialists, but I very firmly believe that history shows this path gets people killed when it succeeds.

Chile, 1973

Jamie, pull up the Wikipedia page for Indonesia

the guys in the office should take my upbear as confirmation that i am also like that

🫂

Probably.

I think he was the one who was cheering on that guy what blew up the fertility clinic

Oh wait, was this around the time that guy blew himself up in that fertility clinic parking lot? I forgot about that.

Omelette du fromage

She means it's hosted in France

And I'd worry more about them dumping and analyzing comments from here directly through scraping, without ever having to seize the hardware, and trying to identify users through cross matches with other sources

US users should be particularly careful with OPSEC these days

And while hexbear is pretty low profile, it's not that crazy: there was already a contractor scrapping comments massively from hexbear in the past to "analyze trends in extremist discourse" or some such. I remember they even complained in their report because admins had temporarily limited the history length you could consult, resulting in a limited dataset for the contractor in question.

Also we're federated; even if hexbear had perfect security and so on, other instances have most of the content. Again, back to OPSEC. Can't scrap / exploit data that doesn't exist.

just remember: you cannot be cornered

Ok thank you, should I start filing down my toothbrush?

Can I still eat lunch with you?

It feels like they're trying to do the reactionary backlash early to prevent it from coming in the first place.

On the one hand, it's terrifying. I've got a nice life relatively, a family, and people who need me, I don't want to be arrested or killed for thought crimes or organizing a peaceful protest or filming an ICE agent. On the other hand, it means they're scared, and I'm not gonna lie, that gives me quite a bit of satisfaction.