Yes. This. This is exactly what I was talking about in my other comment in this thread, posted before seeing this one. I was calling it scale instead of scope, but this is spot on.

People will pick and choose how things function at one scope and pretend it applies at others. A lot of people, even good well-meaning ones, will do this and fall into this trap, but particularly shitty people will do this as a way to justify their garbage beliefs or justify hurting and demeaning others. Exactly like OP image "you don't matter 'cause the Earth doesn't give a shit if you're here or not as one person. You're a loser for thinking you matter at all." FUCK that. You absolutely matter, just not necessarily at the scale/scope of an entire planet orbiting a star, that doesn't invalidate or make meaningless the just as real scale/scope at which you DO matter. Their application of how things function at scale is always used in whatever way is beneficial to them at the moment or to prove whatever flawed, even sadistic point they're trying to make. Capitalists, politicians, and of course the mass media under their control do this constantly and it infuriates me to no end.

Don't know of any, but there was a similar (if shorter) list going around a few months ago, and it was pretty much debunked point by point here: https://hexbear.net/post/275117

calm down you fuckin' weirdo. This kind of ridiculous, childish response to having your morals called into question is pretty telling, though. Time for some self crit.

I know it was deployed against Iraqis during the first Gulf War, with Hillary Clinton claiming Saddam was issuing his troops with Viagra specifically so they could [redacted] more.

I don't doubt r**e was a claim made against Iraqis too, but it's the absurd claim about soldiers taking babies from incubators that most sticks out in my memory when it comes to Iraq and the first Gulf War. However, Hilary Clinton talking about soldiers being given viagra was definitely about Gaddafi. Keep in mind who was in power when those respective conflicts were happening.

Alright, like I said, maybe I need to learn more about MMT, but as I've understood it so far, it's a way of understanding the nuts and bolts of what's actually going on with things like inflation, dollar hegemony, etc. It's not contradicting Marxism at all, just delving into the ridiculous cult-religion of neoliberal economics and attempting to materially explain all those things that are taboo to classic western economists. It's not a refutation of a Marxist concept of economy and it's not advocating for social democracy. Do you think Michael Hudson is lying or do you think he's confused, or is what he talks about not actual MMT?

I think all of that is a gross mischaracterization of what he's doing. Have you watched his videos or listened to The Deprogram podcast? None of what you said is required to meet people where they are at. As I said upthread, I think it's best to have a multitude of different approaches. But to act like going immediately from "socialism is when the government does stuff" to "Death to America" is the only correct way of introducing people to concepts and realities that they have been taught to despise and reject since they were old enough to speak, is naive at best. (Btw, they often say "Death to America" on The Deprogram, only it gets bleeped just barely enough that they won't get instantly banned from every podcast platform.)

I don’t see the utility in convincing a bunch of people in the imperial core that they should be investing more into the long term interests of the western bourgeoisie. That they should be concerned about stabilizing capitalism and reforming it.

I completely agree. I just don't think that the dude who runs Second Thought is doing that. That channel is among the best there is, if not the best, for getting liberals to start considering things outside of their bullshit worldview. The guy is as at least as radical as most people here, but he's cognizant of the fact that the typical western libs aren't capable of going from supporting "the lesser evil" blue team to calling for a protracted people's war against the US. Pipelines are real, and JT as well as the other Deprogram boys have made an excellent opening for people to jump into it, people who would otherwise just scoff at anything that seems to resemble gommulism.

I'm not entirely sure what this means specifically, but it does sound cool.

As for leftist internet personalities, JT of Second Thought (youtube channel) and The Deprogram (podcast) fame will be doing an AMA on hexbear on the 28th, and I hope lemmygradians come participate. Lemmygrad should get Hakim to do an AMA after that, then we can have some sort of posting battle for who gets Yugopnik as a follow up.

I am actually tempted to put some feelers out for the starting of a community researching project. I think we have a varied knowledge base and if we could put our collective minds to use in mapping the history of a country/region/issue in a similar way to the Ukraine stuff.

I think this is an excellent idea and believe that @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net has said something very similar. It was the major impetus behind the COTW thing that was started a few weeks back. It might be worth hitting him up to discuss further.

"Elevatorgate" and especially Dawkins' "Dear Muslima" letter made me step away from atheism as any organized movement.

the idea of standing with that bunch of euphoric reactionaries was unbearable by that point.

Exactly the same for me. Well, I would say I stuck with the movement a little longer, but only as part of the sliver that had no choice but to shift the focus of criticism towards our former atheist "allies," the reactionaries and sex pests, which in turn made us the evil enemy SJWs, the fanatic feminists, the beta cucks, and the cringe white knights. While it was shocking how elevatorgate suddenly revealed this giant gaping rift in the community, and how full the entire atheist movement had been with the most disgusting of reactionaries, it was one of those things where in hindsight, all the misogyny, racism, white supremacy, etc. had been visible just beneath the surface all along, but had been easy to overlook as just a nasty patina sticking to the broader movement. Nah, turns out it was actually deeply intertwined with it.

I still think Rebecca Watson is cool (for anyone who doesn't know but is interested, "elevatorgate" centered on her because she dared to say "guys, don't do that" when referencing being hit on by a stranger very creepily when alone in an elevator at a convention, and was subsequently hounded, harassed, ridiculed, and derided even by the famous Dickie Dawkins). She still to this day puts out some banger videos sometimes. I will always have a soft spot for PZ Myers and his Pharyngula blog that I spent so much time on, finding community there because even then it was clear how ugly and toxic so much of reddit was. Pharyngula was like the last bastion where social justice was recognized as good and necessary, rather than demonized as something that needed to be snuffed out.

I'm also still an atheist. But that movement is dead, just as it fucking should be. Amusingly, but also sickeningly, the larger fascist-adjacent majority of it kind of morphed over time into things like Jordan Peterson's cult, at least the parts that didn't just fizzle out into the background noise islamaphobia and generic chuddery.

I should confess too, reading Christopher Hitchens (one of the "four horsemen") was definitely a big stepping stone on the path towards my own radicalization. Though I wince to say it now, I did admire him back then and he wrote about being, or having been a Trotskyist, which was one of those little epiphanies that showed there were actually political positions to the left of "as left as it gets" liberal. Wanting to find out more about that is eventually what lead me to Lenin.

To be clear, I'm not saying that's what radicalized me, though it was a small part of it. I'm mostly just commenting to respond to the New Atheist part of the discussion.

I guess I'm trying to understand what makes this a liberal viewpoint or why do you classify it as such?

I guess I am just trying to understand the viewpoints of my communist fellow humans

I'm not the person you're responding to, but... A liberal viewpoint (in this context) is one that is idealist, not materialist. A liberal will point at a policy ostensibly drawn up to address some given issue, and whether that policy is effective or not, or even whether the policy is enforced, will claim that "something is being done" to address that issue. In a liberal framework, it is the policy itself that satisfies the condition that the issue has been addressed, not any actual action that makes a real material difference to solve or change the issue. Again, it's just idealism vs materialism. Liberalism is a philosophy based on the former, communism is (among other things) a philosophy based on the latter.

I'm not the person you're replying to, but I think you missed the whole point of GarbageShoot asking you specifically about Allende.

just based on a small snippet of reading about them, I think in general [...]

I think this is the main problem here: a lack of knowledge about the historical context of "authoritarian" socialist projects, but nevertheless making generalized statements about them without even considering the material reasons why they were by necessity "authoritarian." Read up more about the history of Chile and consider what happened to Allende and the hope of a socialist Chile. Who came after Allende (and almost as important, who installed that successor)? Why do these events seem so familiar when learning about every other attempt, successful or not, to bring about a communist society? When you've done that, you will at the very least have a leg to stand on when criticizing so-called tankie authoritarianism.

I'd also suggest reading The Jakarta Method. Here's a somewhat relevant quote from it:

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.