Starting to think centralizing the internet into platforms owned by far-right billionaires might have been a bad idea.

I swear to God, “whataboutism” just means, “You stated a fact I don’t like.” Of course it’s relevant that the guy criticizing ICE was someone who could’ve actually done something about them and chose not to. What a load of bull.

She’s auditioning for 2028.

Are you sure on that? My understanding of Marxism is that they believe even fair elections are rigged, so to speak, because they are bourgeois election and they discourage all participation in any election that is a bourgeois election.

Common misconception, but yes, I’m quite sure. Should We Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments? - V.I. Lenin

Even if only a fairly large minority of the industrial workers, and not “millions” and “legions”, follow the lead of the Catholic clergy—and a similar minority of rural workers follow the landowners and kulaks (Grossbauern)—it undoubtedly signifies that parliamentarianism in Germany has not yet politically outlived itself, that participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the parliamentary rostrum is obligatory on the party of the revolutionary proletariat specifically for the purpose of educating the backward strata of its own class, and for the purpose of awakening and enlightening the undeveloped, downtrodden and ignorant rural masses. Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.

That’s an analysis that I agree with. I don’t think that Lenin’s goal of revolution is necessarily applicable to modern day conditions, but I think there are other methods like strikes that could be encouraged by a radical party.

By calling it out and stating exactly what they are doing, and how, you bring awareness to it and it shows the world that it is rigged. My hope is that then other countries will take economic action and populations across the world will begin to boycott thing i.e. The World Cup and USA made goods.

I think countries are more likely to take action based on the US’s bizarre and imperialistic foreign policy, which directly affects them, than the prospect that elections might not happen.

The thing is that there’s so much horrible shit that the administration is doing right now, in front of our eyes, that I don’t really see much point in messaging about what they might do. At that point, if elections do happen, then everyone who said they wouldn’t looks silly and discredited, and the administration gets to dismiss the opposition as doing paranoid fearmongering.

What do you believe the Democratic party should be doing then? You’ve made it clear what you think they will do. Of you were in their position how would you deal with the rigged election situation?

Well look, I fundamentally disagree with their approach, but if we’re talking about messaging strategy then I think we have to stay within the realm with what’s actually plausible. Since they’re committed to an electoral approach, they can’t cast doubts on the election because it could decrease turnout. They have to operate on the assumption that the elections will happen, and focus on criticizing things like ICE, while promising things that will materially improve people’s lives, like Mamdani’s approach.

The Democrats to be talking more about the possibility of election manipulation by the GOP and making the public aware of their intent to fight any such plans, I imagine?

Why? To what end?

There is a political theory that says you should continue to participate in rigged or unfair elections, while explicitly calling them out as rigged, for the purpose of reaching people who are invested in electoralism and convincing them to engage in direct, mass action, such as strikes or revolution. That theory is called Marxism-Leninism. The democratic party are not Marxist-Leninists. They have no interest in getting people to abandon electoralism in favor of other means of resistance, they want the exact opposite of that.

There’s another political theory that says you shouldn’t focus your efforts on elections but should instead focus on building dual power through things like mutual aid networks. This theory is called Anarchism. The democratic party are not Anarchists. If you want to take that strategy, then you shouldn’t even be looking to the democratic party, because it is a political party.

So why on earth would a party that is completely committed to electoralism as the only avenue of affecting change go around telling people the elections are rigged? It’s nonsense. It goes against everything they believe in.

They are intrinsically tied to the system and they will continue to uphold the system until the day comes that they get dragged away to a torture dungeon in El Salvador. It’s technically correct that they should change, but I don’t see how it’s remotely possible that they would change to anything like the extent necessary.

And what exactly does the author imagine as an alternative?

Dystopian fiction: The regime alters photos to make people look happy and smiling, to hide their cruelty.

Dystopian reality: The regime alters photos to make people look sad and pained, to brag about their cruelty.

Oh it was awful. I was about your age back then, and I had been raised religious which I rebelled against by trying to be completely rational, to the point of trying to suppress all my emotions like a robot, which made me miserable. I had no self confidence, crippling social anxiety, and all sorts of bad ideas steering me in completely wrong directions.

I don’t think I had met any openly queer people at that point and the first time I did I was like, “I don’t get it, I would never express myself that way, because what would people think?” while of course completely sidestepping the question of how I actually felt or wanted to identify because again, suppressing my emotions. Spoiler alert: probably should’ve examined that!

The best decision I ever made in my life came a few years later when I studied abroad in Japan. It exposed me to a lot of different perspectives in the international house and also gave me interesting experiences to talk about which helped with my social anxiety (actively identifying and working on it with therapy techniques later on probably did more).

Politically, I had no real awareness of leftism and was into Ron Paul and libertarianism, because he was the loudest antiwar voice at the time. It’s also a great ideology for if you’ve never had a boss or a landlord. I was mostly just glad to be rid of Bush, and I had some hope that Obama would end the war, prosecute people in the Bush administration for war crimes, and stop mass surveillance. I was very naive at that time.

I feel like this was a time before a bunch of movements or cultural tendencies became associated with the right. The problems were still there, but there were also some non-shitty people included in them:

• It was before Gamergate, but there was a lot of sexism in video game communities.

• I remember being into “transhumanist” ideas that would these days be associated with Elon Musk and his sycophantic techbro fanboys.

• Many prominent “New Atheists” either had or would break right and support the wars in the Middle East, with logic like, “We’ve already fixed sexism completely here in the West (and the feminists who don’t agree with that are just a bunch of dumb broads), the big problem is Islam,” ignoring the threat of Christofascism at home.

• Even stuff like 4chan, I had friends who were on /b/ back in the day who turned out normal and chill. There was an element of rebelling against the Pat Robertson, stick-in-the-mud, “D&D is witchcraft” types, and part of that was reveling in rule-breaking, and so they delighted in shock images and made fun of anyone who cared too much about things in response to that.

I guess the positives were that people were less divided and it was easier to have hope for the future. But like there were reasons why those things changed, either movements/groups showed their true colors, or valid criticisms of those groups became more widely accepted. I much prefer the division and conflict that we have now compared to the “post-9/11 world” where virtually everybody was in agreement about slaughtering Muslims. And yeah I had more hope for the future but it was because I though technology would fix everything for everybody and didn’t understand how it could hurt workers and benefit capitalists, it was based on ignorance.

The implication is that the Iraqis were not forced into anything against their will, that the invasion and occupation was in their interests and for their benefit, and so this is dissimilar and the Greenlanders would resist harder than the Iraqis.

The reality is that the Iraq War was similar because they were both imperialistic wars of aggression for the purpose of seizing resources.

I have no idea what you’re talking about.

No, I just don’t like unprovoked wars of aggression and decades long occupations. Including when someone not named Trump is doing it, including when it happens to countries outside of the imperial core.

This would not be the occupation of Iraq, which was difficult enough. U.S. troops would need to force Greenlanders, citizens of a treaty ally, to become American against their will.

The Atlantic always manages to squeeze shitlib bullshit into every article, like this ridiculous Iraq War apologia. I see the source and I immediately know it’s coming, every single time.

Right, because that’s possible.

Does original sin exist?

Everyone believes their cause is just. Every conflict ever can be framed as defensive. The US has compared every major conflict since WWII to stopping Hitler, even cases like Vietnam. My mother once quoted, “All that’s necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing” in the context of supporting the invasion of Iraq.

If You investigate and deconstruct the concept of “defensive” wars (as You are so wont to deconstruct concepts) then You will find that they are entirely dependent on socially constructed ideas about “legitimacy.” If Switzerland does not have “legitimate ownership” of Zurich, then to station troops there or to fight against Zurich being occupied by foreign powers would make Switzerland the aggressor. It could be argued that, when the US invaded Vietnam, it was merely “coming to the aid” of the Republic of Vietnam, which had requested our aid (nevermind that they were our puppet). Likewise, in Ukraine everything about how you view the conflict is dependent on who you think is legitimate - the “consensus” interpretation in the West is that the central government is legitimate and the separatists are just Russian puppets, while the pro-Russia view says that the separatists are legitimate and the central government just Western puppets.

So V.I. Lenin observes:

…the bourgeoisie [of all the imperialist nations] are always ready to say—and do say to the people—that they are “only” fighting “against defeat”.

Funny enough, this observation was shared by Leo Tolstoy, the Christian Anarchist/Anarcho-Pacifist, who writes:

For ever since the beginning of the world, the use of violence of every kind, from the Inquisition to the Schlüsselburg fortress, has rested and still rests on the opposite principle of the necessity of resisting evil by force.

World War I is a prime example of how things can go wrong. There had been a major socialist movement at the time across every major country in Europe, and there had been a significant fear that, should the imperialist powers start a major war like that, it would lead to a coordinated revolution across all of Europe. But instead, when war broke out, the social democrats all found reasons to rally around the flags of their respective countries. They were committed to keeping their positions within the realm of acceptability, and the war narrowed that realm of acceptibility to the point that coordination with ordinary people of other countries (or genuine opposition to the war) was considered treasonous. So, all the social democrats of Europe rallied around their flags and drafted proles to go out and kill each other for no good reason.

If Your “anarcho-antirealist” stuff is supposed to have any merit at all, then it ought to allow You to recognize that the concept of “defense” is largely arbitrary - or are You seriously of the belief that national borders have some inherent natural truth when even the law of gravity does not?

The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On.

I mean, the people did vote for her…

No they didn’t.

Or she’s just selling out and kissing ass in hopes that the invaders will install her as a puppet and grant her money and power.

Quisling

There’s 195 countries in the world and we’re engaged in like 7 different wars so that’s 188 wars that Trump has prevented by not randomly deciding to attack them /s