This is a Dengist community in favor of Bashar al-Assad with no information that can lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton, our fellow liberal and queen. This community is not ironic. We are Marxists-Leninists.
See this GitHub page for a collection of sources about socialism, imperialism, and other relevant topics.
This community is for posts about Marxism and geopolitics (including shitposts to some extent). Serious posts can be posted here or in /c/GenZhou. Reactionary or ultra-leftist cringe posts belong in /c/shitreactionariessay or /c/shitultrassay respectively.
We have a Matrix homeserver and a Matrix space. See this thread for more information. If you believe the server may be down, check the status on status.elara.ws.
Rules:
Welcome again to everybody. Make yourselves at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
☭ Matrix homeserver and space
☭ Theory discussion group on /c/theory@lemmygrad.ml
☭ Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna's Archive
^image\ from^ ^this\ article^
First day at my new blue collar job. Time to slowly spread some Marxism-Leninism among the workers.
Good luck!
Started college again this week. I'm a bit older than the other first years. Someone asked me about a class today thinking I was a teacher lmao. I'm not THAT old.
We also had a protest this weekend at a local town where a refugee center will be located. A Dutch far right leader came to speech and there was a counter protest. We turned up with like five times as many people. It was great.
Have a great week everyone! Make sure you take care of yourselves and those you care about.
As always, communism will win.
It's been nearly a decade since my last physical labor job and I kinda forgot the shit diet people have. Especially now because I want to eat healthy myself. Like we are out cutting trees, lifting heavy and whatnot and these people get by on some simple sandwich with a slice of salami or an egg. And lots of cigarettes and coffee.
Meanwhile I am here with my wraps with tofu, avocado and vegetables lol. These people are either scrawny as hell or overweight but all of them are tough as a nail. I'm covered in scratches and dirt myself but at the end of the day it feels very rewarding being out there doing all this. Much more than staring at a screen all day in my opinion.
Surreal scenes on a Dutch talkshow where a scientist was sounding the alarm on climate change followed by a guy who was praising China's efforts on combating climate change saying their models might be the way forward. What is happening?
Decades happening in a few weeks, I suppose.
The actions of the US over the last few years have been so blatant, both in rhetoric and execution, that I thought for sure this would be a radicalising moment for the majority of people to realise that the country, or at least it's ruling class, is inherently malicious and dangerous.
Unfortunately this isn't the case, US propaganda is so effective that most people in the West who do have negative opinions of their country's actions, simply chalk it all up to Donald Trump. Is that really the best they can do? Turbo Trump derangement syndrome instead of some genuine awareness? Fuck these people just as much as those who enthusiastically support the imperialism, their ignorance and lack of investigation is yet another pillar on which the Empire can stand.
These things don't happen all at once, or all organically. The conditions make it easier to get through to people on a point like this, but they will still benefit greatly from guiding voices. The media apparatus is practiced at redirecting people's ire in various wrong directions, so part of our task is getting past that to make sure people are not being led astray.
The other thing to keep in perspective is that "the majority" is a lot of people. It would be unreasonable to expect that outcome in any country, while the various state apparatuses and inertia are in place. What is most needed as a foundation is people who can build an alternative. It's not as though western countries are going to pass a threshold of disliking the government and then automatically press the revolution button. Probably what would happen if the majority saw it as fundamentally awful, is the exploiting classes would sell them on the idea of reformists in office and some people would fold on their views if/when they see the system reforming at all.
Point being, popularity/unpopularity only goes so far. Organizing and tactics are what turn potential into substantial change.
I think it makes a lot more sense when considering that they are just labour aristocrats justifying themselves. But it is still a opportunity to help people recognize reality I think
You are in the belly of the beast as it is filling up with poison but it just wont vomit.
Agitprop is a material condition. Your voice can be a quantitative change that pushes the qualitative change. I believe in you.
I have entered the secret world of tradesmen. Multiple workers in their vans have waved at me or let me pass on my bike ride to work. I have received multiple sympathetic nods from fellow workers on the way home after a day of working your ass off.
It is tiring and energizing at the same time to dig a trench for 8 hours a day. At least I now know how to efficiently dig a trench.
Trades are lit
I know that leftists, especially in America, seem to look askance at them, partly because the trade unions can be very conservative.
But a lot of some great and very radical friends of mine are in the trades labor unions.
I want to go into them myself now that I am in Europe.
Also, in America, there are a lot of very radical trans organizers making big wins in the trades.
People will be on Twitter all day and then wonder why they hate everyone and have no hope.
The mainstream western platforms have so much brain poison. Which I say with some reservation because Twitter did help me reach ML at some point in time, so not like it's all bad, but that was also pre-Musk-takeover. After him, it seemed to slowly deteriorate into little more than bots and neo-nazis with leftish twitter more marginalized.
And I mean, even back then, it had plenty of brain poison and false paths to get lost going down. I do not miss the cortisol spikes (not sure if I'm being figurative or literal) from reading the latest Twitter beef and being very careful not to get involved, so as not to suddenly have ire turned on me over a phrasing misunderstanding in my notifications. I never liked how it had this embedded status-based dynamic, where small accounts basically had to ingratiate themselves to the ones with lots of followers, or else risk getting quote tweeted and bombarded because they said something that set the person off. I found that a lot of mid-sized accounts (decent number of followers, but not like in the tens of thousands or something) would have a tendency to act like you were in their house invading their personal space when replying to them, instead of it being a public forum, which only made the angst worse over minor misunderstandings and confrontations. And to some extent, I couldn't blame them for acting that way about it because it wasn't like they were necessarily wanting to be a minor e-celeb. They may have more so stumbled it because they were witty, or because they happened to exist as a girl on the internet with a conventionally attractive pfp pic and so were getting guys chasing them, or sometimes a combination of the two.
In retrospect though, it's not at all surprising that a society like the west's would produce such an unhealthy and stratified-feeling "social media" platform like Twitter.
I used to read Wikipedia and watch "left" YouTubers a lot in the past. I read a lot of smear against China but that changed really quick after reading about it.
In retrospect, I think the main reason for this quick change was that I wasn't emotionally invested in it. Like, the Wikipedia page for the Uyghur "genocide" doesn't have any images of a malnourished person like the page for the Holocaust has. There wasn't any punch to my gut, so to speak.
People who still think the Uyghur genocide or the Ukrainian genocide by Russia is real after living through the current Palestinian genocide are beyond daft - like you saw plenty of visual evidence of it happening done by a government shielded by the west with a lot of very powerful people censoring it- And you think somehow the United States who controls the skies and spies on nearly every single grain of sand would not blast visuals of the supposed genocides of their political rivals everywhere??
People too online are whining about Magneto potentially being rewritten as a victim of ICE and not a holocaust survivor - As if he was not changed from romani to jewish in the 80s.
Business as a school subject. I cannot express in amy way gow much I hate it. Liberal economics combined with bourgeois ideology. I have a difficult time even listening due to the sheer amount of horse shit said. Again, how the fuck do people honestly belive this?
I was lucky that my business classes happened in a very left-leaning school.
One time I had a class on stocks. Of course there was the "this can make you rich!" talk, but my teacher also talked about the pandemic and stuff, like "this is why the richer get richer and the poor poorer" and "rich people like crisis".
But yeah, other than that, serious petit bourgeois brainworms.
Maybe think of them like studying the enemy. It might help.
This is extremely low on the pecking order, but I like watching Minecraft survival videos & other cool mods. Im watching a recreation of WW2 edition of Minecraft, and the video creator somehow managed to force in 2 "soviets had no supplies & food" jokes into a span of like 2 minutes lol. Just let me enjoy my slop without the incessant anti-communism.
For real, I hate seeing anticommunism in videos that have nothing to do with communism. You literally can't escape the brainrot.
Ngl I kinda hate quantum physics. "So these balls are spinning except they're 0 dimensional waves and not spinning and also there's color charge and also there's like 20 fundamental particles but half of them decay immediately, and half of the other half can stack in the same quantum state and the others can't, also everything is waves now and all the electrons are the same because fuck you."
[From an engineer not specialized in electrical or computing or nuclear]
Quantum physics is alright. It's just a lot of fancy linear algebra and spinors. I have a lot of problems with the culture surrounding it though.
Like, it seems like scientists want quantum mechanics to feel magical. For example, "quantum wave collapse" is a "collapse" only in some interpretations of quantum mechanics. There was one article by 真理zhenli that talked about this mystification of physics.
Tldr: quantum mechanics is the "shut up and calculate" of physics and a grand theory of everything ain't gonna happen in this century.
Edit: Found the articles: Physicalism was a Mistake; Let us Return to Materialism and A Critique of Idealist Interpretations of Quantum Theory
So after years I decided to see what online dating is and got some apps. It is shit. These apps exist to make money, of course.
Years ago when I was still using them, I h a dozens of likes and matches within a few days. Now it is 4 across two apps. Not even a match. And I'm a decent looking guy with interests that don't involve looking like a serial killer.
Capitalism has to ruin everything it seems lol. Actually getting matches isn't in their best interest even if you pay them (which I don't). Back to approaching people then, I guess.
There will be a strike of the public transport in the Netherlands on september 9th, and the ferries in Amsterdam won't be operable. So some restaurants and schools are going to have their own ferry service on that day. Fucking scabs.
Did you know striking workers used to form gangs to beat up scabs back in the day? Just saying out loud.
Haha, I was just thinking about blocking the scab ferries but that works too
The Lemmygrad server seemed to be in a weird state during the previous few days. At first I couldn’t vote or comment, and then I couldn’t log in. I wasn’t the only one experiencing such issues.
Things seem fine now. Were there any posts/updates about it?
Were there any posts/updates about it?
Dunno, but I did see some weirdness as well. Times where it would sort of load if I clicked a page and then refreshed it. But usually couldn't post during those periods, IIRC.
Zaragoza (not sure I got the pictures or angles right; might need a better camera than the one on my Redmagic Astra tablet):
Not sure what camera to get, tbh.
The student loan situation in the US is a great example of how truly shitty the country is beneath its mask of liberal democracy do-goodery. Basically punishing young people for believing in higher education and turning them into a decades long source of revenue.
Then there's the healthcare system. So bad somebody whacked a health insurance CEO and people were like "yeah, that makes sense."
Or the food quality. Poorly regulated, sugar and salt is the answer to damn near everything.
So the US doesn't value education, it doesn't value healthcare, it doesn't value food quality. What the fuck does it value that actually matters to the wellbeing of people? I'm inclined to think the only thing that stops the country from being unbearably terrible to live in for the majority of people is all the workers who do well intentioned work in spite of the bullshit systems they're tangled up in that make their work harder. But they need to realize they don't need those bullshit systems, never have, and they can create a system based on humane principles. They have to take power seriously first though.
Studying political economy is really paying off. I feel like I might be able to analyze things in the future. I've fallen off a bit with studying Chinese though, will have to try to pick it back up again.
Job hunting fucking sucks. I can't find anything that fits and if I do, I'm not getting hired
So I had coffee for the first time today. It felt...fine I guess? I accidentally had a larger dose than I should've but like mentally it felt okay. For some reason it made me feel calmer. However it also made my arms feel like sore or whatever and my stomach hurt a bit. Idk. I think I'm gonna try cold brew and see how that is
For the first time in years I am looking forward to work again for the coming week. I seem to have found my place.
Given the amount of mask-off moments from some companies recently, I'm gonna start assuming that every proprietary software is eventually gonna be prop up by fascists.
Sometimes I feel like this is hell. Not in a "I actually sincerely believe it is" kind of way (I don't even really believe in hell in the religious sense), but more like I'm looking at how bad things are sometimes, how prolonged, and it's hard not to go to a dark place sometimes.
I guess it's one reason I'm inclined toward romanticizing early commune style of society. I know it had hardship, but god damn, at least you had community; like actually existing in the immediate real world community, not online posting or people who are a long drive away. Individualism segments everybody out like they're an island of their own and then says "cope".
I wish I could summon a black void, hold it up to liberals, and be like, "See this? This is what your liberal individualism is. This is the best case scenario of it. Emptiness." Like what is fulfilling about "be yourself" if there's no "us"? This is one of the things reformists either don't understand, or do understand and ignore. Even if you somehow temporarily make "capitalism with better living conditions", you haven't addressed the pain of individualism, which works hand in hand with capitalism. We should be aspiring for people to be able to lead a good life, not a slightly less terrible than before life.
I bought an e-book reader. But I have to install my favorite fonts in a .bin format
Is hyrox a right wing sport? I only see these right wing liberal kinda types doing it. The consultants crowd. Maybe it's their equivalent of bouldering.
