This is essentially, ideologically anyway, the same as Eastern European (Ukrainians specifically I recall several years back way before the current Russia shit) diaspora who love to put those “in remembrance of the brave Ukrainians who died fighting evil ideologies.” And then its very clearly supporting the collaborators with the Nazis against the Soviets.

Also the same as the “daughters of the confederacy” type statues. I think most Americans, liberals mostly, but even some of the less completely brainbroken conservatives/republican types recognize the confederacy just stood for maintaining the institution of chattel slavery in the US and thus was dogshit, inhumane, indefensible ideology for that alone. But yet they’ll often defend those statues of like General Lee and Jefferson Davis, etc. There’s something fucking weird about statues. And this is just my opinion, but whatever, it’s like people just want to mythologize and whatever else this made up past or heavily altered vision of the past. Like thinking David and Lee were “generally respectable southern gentlemen who just happened by historical standards now to do abhorrent things.” And it’s just weird, man. Sometimes people are just bad people. If you owned other humans you were bad. Is that so fucking controversial? If you fought for an army willingly that advocated genocide of people based solely on weird racial and religious grounds, I don’t really care WHY you did it: that was fucking bad! And you do not deserve to be remembered as anything other than a person who died for a bad thing. And not individually remembered, no, just a fucking sack of bones and sludge along with your former pieces of shit. If your grandfather was one of these soldiers, yeah, that’s not your fault. But it IS your fault to embrace that person when no one is fucking making you and choose to hold them up on a pedestal. You’re actively tying yourself to some of the worst shit in history and doing so willingly when you could also reject such people and their ideologies. It’s ok to condemn shitty family members. Nazi grandpa, Nazi brother, I don’t care, you aren’t doing some good thing by honoring them especially when they died way way outside your lifetime. You’re just choosing to do so because you like their ideology. And that makes you also a shitty person.

Got off on a rant there, but fuck it.

Ultimately these monuments don’t mean much on their own. However, there is absolutely an undertone, a bad vibe maybe the zoomers call it. Material conditions are worsening in the first world for many reasons. People are looking for “why” and more importantly seeking a solution. As leftist movements become more pronounced in the third world, such as Africa, it makes sense to see a reactionary turn in the first world to further fascist ideology. The mixture of worsening first conditions and the rise of some leftist, socialist, communist, whatever else, governments and such is exactly the perfect climate to push the underlying fascist tendencies of the first world forward and accelerate them. Fear of the other, fear of retribution (a favorite for white liberals), just… fear. Fear from ignorance. It’s not good. These statues, who cares ultimately. But they symbolize a lot and not in the way they intend to. Symbols of untaught history, willful and forced ignorance, fears of the unknown, fears of different people and cultures. I dunno. I’m not proposing any cheat codes to fix anything. Just saying what I’m observing. It’s hard to see anything going the “good way,” but I guess we’ll see…

The entire idea of continents is stupid anyway, really. I understand the desire to name locations on the map for easy identification and reference, that’s fine, but the execution is arbitrary as fuck as far I can tell.

Most of the issue is Asia, Europe and, to a degree, Africa. At some point we just started using Middle East to describe the area vaguely east of Egypt and west of India. Just draw a giant fucking circle south of Russia and between those countries and call it “Middle East.” Ignore all history, ignore cultural differences. They are all one thing now.

I could definitely rant about a bunch of other shit like “Russia? The fuck is going on there?” or “Africa: Continent or country? Don’t ask Americans!” but I really just find the entire idea of continents to be kind of silly. More silly than the usual “nations are dumb” kind of way. Even more arbitrary and ultimately meaningless.

Also, everyone always says Australia is the only country and continent simultaneously. But isn’t New Zealand part of the Australian continent? Or are the Kiwis just special? (Yes, I’m trying to start shit between the Kiwis and the ‘stralians). What about Antarctica. Google? What the fuck is google? No thanks, I’m just typing and guessing shit now. It’s like advanced Wikipedia perverts. They read made up shit and believe it. I just make shit up and ask easily answered questions.

Edit: apparently I posted this last night in a weird half-sleep state. I apologize for nothing. My brain is weird.

Oh I remember this guy. He made the bold choice of taking the username goat and then instead of meaning “greatest of all time” just went with… a literal goat. Which, I think everyone has to agree, you absolutely have to respect.

I wonder if someone can create or has already created a “Marxist AI” that can argue purely from like an ML stance, avoiding the bullshit centrist shit. Let the perverts debate a literal robot all day.

What extensions does chrome have which are useful that Firefox doesn’t?

My only recurring issue with Firefox, which may have been fixed I dunno, is it for some reason it “isn’t officially supported” or whatever exact wording to use hardware security keys (like yubikey, which I use on every account that allows it). It’s only certain websites that don’t want to work though. Like google, Microsoft and many others were fine but I think paypal didn’t want to work properly but it does work on Edge, Chrome, probably Brave. Overall annoying as fuck at times but I deal with it to be out of Google’s-world

Wow I can’t believe you just advocated for getting Trump back in office.

No shit.

Anyone who objectively looks at the Nazis and the US back to its founding until today will see many similarities… mostly because the Nazis just ripped off the US. The US had already completed (by the early 1900s) its expansion westward and genocide of the indigenous inhabitants along the way. Germany saw that and liked what it saw and copy pasted to the German eastern front. Their idea of “Lebensraum” was essentially the same as the (white) American dream of the open frontier. It required violent expansion supported by the government and the extermination of all the non-whites along the way. And obviously as far as Nazi laws go they just straight ripped Jim Crow laws written to discriminate against black Americans to the Nuremberg laws to discriminate against Jewish Germans.

True.

I rethought it after I posted. Considered deleting. Hoped no one would call me out. And here we are.

Maybe we should sanction America so Americans will rise up and demand their government changes… I mean, that’s how it works, right? Surely Putin will be murdered by angry, starving Russians any day now

Reminder that while Mt Rushmore is obviously dogshit and insane it exists…don’t worry, Georgia one-upped the rest of the nation:

https://stonemountainpark.com/activity/history-nature/memorial-carving/

(The website sucks and the link doesn’t show the image as I intended, on mobile at least, so here’s just the image from that site: stone mountain carving )

Yup, that’s right, they carved their racist confederate leaders into a goddamn mountain.

That website is hilarious btw.

A FAMILY PARK! WITH HISTORY! AND FOOD! AND A MONUMENT CARVED INTO STONE TO REMEMBER THE GREAT SACRIFICES OF WHITE SUPREMACIST SLAVE OWNERS IN THEIR RESISTANCE TO THE AGGRESSIVE NORTHERN OPPRESSORS AND DESTROYERS OF WHITE IDENTITY! DID WE MENTION THE CORNDOGS AND FUNNEL CAKES?

I don’t live in VA, let’s say nearby, but my ISP sometimes incorrectly shows VA. A couple sites started popping up saying I had to make an account to which I obviously immediately said suck my dick and started VPNing, which I should be using anyway probably.

Fuck these Christian fascist weirdos. Everyone knows their intent here is to lightly ban porn because no one trusts or even wants to upload their personal identifying information to sketchy companies.

And I know we all know you can use a vpn. For now. While there’s no criminal liability for you. What happens when these weirdos get Jesus’ wiener deep in their brains and decide these laws aren’t good enough… they want to make porn outright illegal. Who has faith the Supreme Court will stop them? Not fucking me. They should already be stopping these laws, but there’s zero indication that’s gonna happen. Crazy to me people still defend any of this.

You seem to think minds are being changed in twitter comment sections or even on here. I think we should all know by now that’s not the case.

Besides that, anecdotally of course but whatever, before I started taking Marxism seriously and reading more I got yelled at by I can’t even estimate how many people who were a mixture of MLs, anarkiddies, whatever else. Some clown being mean to me, justified or not, had exactly zero impact on my willingness to learn more when the time came. If I’m being honest, my upbringing in the heart of capitalism had already put blinders on to Marxist ideas. They were simply wrong and anyone who believed in them was crazy/evil/stupid, take your pick. It’s not like some guy calling me a lib could lower the bar of consideration below zero, if that makes sense.

Anyway, the only way people are reliably going to come to embrace Marxist critiques of capitalism is if they find it when in a state of mind where they’re already receptive to it. If their material conditions are shit or becoming shit they’re going to be desperately seeking out the reason… I mean I wish I could say we all could help guide these desperate people to the light, but I just do not think that’s true. Sure, post an explanation when something happens that kind of boggles liberals’ brains. Maybe even post when the hogs are especially riled up over something. But overall it’s not going to penetrate deep enough.

Which of course goes to my last point which ties to your first thing. There isn’t just poor discussion from those of us who consider ourselves to be MLs and live in the imperial core… there is NO discussion because there is no real significant amount of us. I don’t think I’d even say 1% of the US have read and understand Capital. Or any other writings for that matter. It’s probably an insanely small amount. Which IS a problem because if you don’t have people who understand the ideology to teach those who won’t go learn on their own (not online, but in settings such as union meetings which is one of the reasons I do advocate for unionization even in the imperial core) then how the hell will you ever have a revolution much less one favorable to principles we’d like to see? You don’t, basically.

On the hand, and this gets a bit doomer/pessimistic so brace yourself, there will no socialist revolution within the imperial core. Not likely in our lifetimes. The way things are, and the way ideologies work, even if material conditions continue to plummet, and who the hell would expect otherwise?, people will become more and more radicalized… towards fascism. I wish it weren’t true, but the US state has all but assured it will happen either on purpose or by completely moronic and evil policies. Thry wiped out any even slightly leftist movements in the country repeatedly and barely or never touched the right wing. Add to that that fascism has no like real driving ideology or core principles. It can be molded to fit the individual racism and hatred of any given person or group. Socialism, done correctly, does require a base level of acceptance of certain principles. A politically uneducated mass of people with falling material conditions… what else is there to expect?

I know this probably comes off as inconsistent or schizophrenic. It does in my mind too. We’re simultaneously faced with the reality that we probably can’t really affect anything, but we must do something. So what do you do? Post nice essays on Twitter? I dunno, maybe. I’d say just about the only really consequential thing to be done is what I said earlier. Try to form or join a union for a profession you work in and find those workers who seem to share your mindset and see where they are in their political educational journey. Maybe you journey together further, I dunno. You could probably do this in other ways too just in the real life local community. The key though to this entire thing is the people you seek to educate in order to “convert” them have to trust you and not just like some sociopath shit where you manipulate them into it. But real, actual trust that you build through genuinely discussing things, helping people, whatever. Sounds like a lot of work. I know. It is. Way more than posting nicely online, for sure. But if you want to be doing something, short of going off and John Browning some shit or offing yourself (can’t recommend either of these), I don’t really know what else there is to be done. We’re just in a weird wait and see period of history right now it appears. The decline of the US and the western EU could take another century, who knows. I dunno. I’d just spend less time worrying about random libbed up, probably a Nazi dude on reddit being butthurt and more time worrying about focusing your power and energy where it can affect change and accepting that your power to do anything is damn near zero. Some people call that being a doomer. I’d call it being realistic.

Of course this is only one man’s opinion…

I appreciate the recommendation, but I’ll probably keep slogging on the downvotes as badges of honor. After so many years of pissing off swarms of redditors, well, time to do some more I guess. So far I have enjoyed the times I’ve seen people handwringing over the .ml domain (when they learn it can mean more than the country it’s meant for lol) and how they’re like “well yeah spez sucks, BUT ARE WE GONNA GO TO A TANKIE SITE!?” I love it.

Mostly just annoying. Kinda wish the site didn’t have downvotes or maybe even upvotes. Specifically downvotes though are never used to indicate “This info is factually wrong” or “This is a racist comment.” I mean, they might also be, but the primary usage despite any intention years ago is a cathartic “fuck you!” to the person you’re downvoting. It’s used so much for that purpose that I basically mentally swap downvotes for upvotes when it’s a topic that will anger libs. Their disapproval just shows me I probably said something correct (but also further shows the worthlessness of the downvote button). Probably the “like” button is about the only useful such device to indicate engagement but limit butthurt kneejerk downvotes.

And before anyone thinks I’m making this like my life priority: I’m really not. I don’t care that much. It’s just one of those things which seems outdated and should go away but probably never will because the anticipated asshurt is so high. I absolutely know reddit soys, chud or libs, would lose their minds crying over it if it happened (see the time YouTube removed their dislike button- people fucking still try to code it back in lol).

Welp, back to downvoting all the liberal comments :)

This has 9 downvotes from those pieces of shit LMAO

Is there a way to stay federated so they have to read our posts sometimes but they can’t downvote? They can comment, then we can mock them, but silently, anonymously downvoting is too cowardly to abide.

Someone rate this drama on a “worth learning about” scale from 1-10. 1 being mentally filter all further references and 10 being read a 3 volume analysis on the history and full critique of this goat-person person… goat…?

I refuse to actually watch any of these clips. I’ve seen the screenshots with captions, so I know the sick content, but I just can’t watch them.

Without playing the “equivalency game” or whatever, it’s crazy how our society broadly doesn’t care/embraces this type of disgusting murder porn. I just imagine someone making a TikTok like superimpose Epstein’s face on your own “me when I see little kids.” I mean it’s the same basic thing, but apparently murdering millions of people is ok to jack off to but joking about being a kid diddler is disgusting… I personally find them both horrifying and mainstream-ish joking/mocking of it in a clearly supportive way (imagine supporting r*ping MORE kids) is just a reflection of the true heart of far too many Americans (mostly Americans, but others too).

Pretty much true. Probably people don’t even consider/realize how many times daily they violate copyrights laws which Congress has empowered the FBI with the absolute discretion and legal justification to pursue anyone for at any time violating some section of the DMCA or other laws which can result in absolutely life destroying penalties. Now of course the FBI doesn’t often pursue individuals for piracy or whatever (they had a stint of doing so in the early 2000s but I think the insanely bad PR + 9/11 distracted them away), but they could. And anyone who has ever skimmed the methods of how the FBI operates just imagine “legalized mafia.” Not more moral, and in a lot of ways worse. If they suspect you or X crime (doesn’t actually matter what it is, “real crime or bullshit crime”) they can lean on your ass with the built-in “well, we already know from your phone and harddrive you had 25 pirated movies and software. We could just charge you with that if you don’t sign this document admitting to [crime some agent wants on his record].” It’s just classic extortion type bullshit. Everyone is a criminal so we can grab anyone for almost any thing “legally” at any time and make them admit to anything we want. It’s insanely fucked up on a billion levels. (And don’t grt hung up on the piracy hypothetical, it can be anything like drug possession for personal use that they’ll easily call “intent to distribute.” Yes, even weed.)

The “normal” oil used for such an event would be baby oil or maybe a cooking oil like canola or coconut.

But I choose to believe Peterson was going all in on his new persona as chief oil lobbyist. He wants to see them wrestling in crude oil and the victor rising up like some mixture of the Dune character and the oil tycoon character from “There Will Be Blood”

Assuming this is genuine- thank you! I’m by absolutely no fucking means a professional writer, but it has long been a side-passion of mine. I wrote this between workout sets while sitting on my bench. I actually forgot I wrote it, but I’m glad someone enjoyed it.

(If Coca-Cola or Levi Strauss would like to hire me, I am willing to write the exact opposite of the above for a small six figure salary. Send dms!)

Even if true, which it definitely isn’t for Cuba, the reason people care is the same obsession that capitalism has successfully created through advertising and we saw great examples of during the Cold War. The obsession with owning a pair of jeans and whatnot. Things that objectively do not matter but Americans latch onto as an entire lifestyle and project that lifestyle via media and advertising onto the rest of the world and it gets reflected back, “confirming” their beliefs.

When life has no meaning or purpose beyond commodity consumption, as is true in the imperial core, what commodities one owns and consumes become their purpose and meaning. A reflection of who they are and the ideals and morality of their civilization. Subconsciously, but vocalized by these hypothetical (but very real) reactionaries, Americans “know” that Coca-Cola is a symbol of freedom, liberal values, wealth, etc. and they tie their own selves so strongly to the idea of a strong nation that they cannot envision such a country that doesn’t overly value meaningless consumption of brand name commodities. How could a country be a success if it “can’t afford” to lavish its population with sugar-water with our logo? Or a specific type of cloth we’ve made seem fashionable and desirable?

The worse part is that thinking is obviously favored by a lot of people, thus the existence and success of advertising as an industry, which means the portrayals in US media (movies, tv, news, etc.) have completely permeated the globe for decades now, so it’s not just an American-held belief… it’s practically a truth at this point. Your wealth and prestige IS encapsulated in a slick logo on an otherwise low-value commodity and this is true because it’s how the world is perceived… or something to that effect anyway.

It’s all very sad and bleak and feels unmovable when you really disassociate and try to look upon it from an outside, elevated place. It’s hard to not see how thoroughly the capitalist class has dug its roots in so deep that even beginning to pull a few smaller roots makes YOU a threat to the entire thing. “Hey, he wants to take away Coke! Get him!” It’s even sadder when you realize the entire system wasn’t built with some sort of ultimate design to addict humanity to slogans and cool colors; it was individuals and groups along the way, working in their own “logical best interests,” which built this tangled web so complex and entangled with our entire lives. It’s easy to see why people fall into conspiracy theories and lose all hope for anything different.