Anti-colonial Marxism is as good as a country breakfast.
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Pervasive racism, classism, queerphobia, chuavanism etc. The constant propaganda posts where we all get together to trash a poor person, Black person, or queer person for unsanctioned behavior.
Pervasive sophistry.
The pervasive allegiance to the political spetrum and to partisanship discourses. They police themselves to keep each other in line.
The pervasive scientism and technological optimism which is only countered by doomerism and dogma.
Honestly I just can’t stand the users.
Anti imperialism goes beyond states and their present ruling parties. Getting caught up in the political spectrum will not make anti imperialist positions clearer, but actually muddier.
The classes that rule “problematic” states are susceptible to the global system. Anti imperialist politics is a necessity, regardless of the contradictions is creates for these classes. The fallacy is to say it is entirely cynical because it is actually still threatening to them. It is perilous.
In Russia for example, Putin must both resist and protect neoliberalism, but this only fosters and enables more resistance to it because it both creates a path away from it while not taking it with satisfactory vigor. This is contradiction in action and it is dangerous to imperialism.
Anti imperialism isnt necessarily about being “based,” it’s about a process of history that is ultimately corrosive to the capitalist system. IMO getting caught up in “they are theocratic over there,” “they are nationalists over here,” “the rhetoric of these leaders is too problematic,” “these people here are not communists,” completely misses the forest for the trees. To me, when people distract themselves with holier than thou politics, it results in something quite similar to how people say China is strickly capitalist but then go on and ignore, or are ambivalent towards, how lethal rising wages in China are to the capitalist system.
What kind of emptyheaded debate-me-bro bullshit is this? “Well it appears the results of this poll, which will not be cited and the historical and contemporary political context for which will be fully ignored, says they like being a US colony so I guess I got ya lmao!!” Congrats on using google tho that must have been really stimulating for your massive brain.
Idk about a pure marxist take on new atheism written by a scholar or theorist but my take is that the whole thing is repackaged white supremacy. In its time (and now too) it has functioned so as to facilitate islamophobia, chauvinism, and dogmatic hatred of anything traditional.
What is curious about New Atheism is that it pretends that atheism generally is separate from Christianity. I am laughing at the thought as I type this. IMO this is an intentionally undialectical view that either ignores history, or cynically tries to create a new imperial religion. Atheism is better understood as a tradition of doubt that has manifested differently throughout the history of the Christian world. Expressing doubt is actually a deeply religious, Christian, expression that is part of the unity and struggle of opposing experiences within Christianity. This is how I view my own Atheism. It is directly related and inseparable from the culture, languages, environments, histories, and socio-political economies that have thrived or survived within the context of Christianity. It is not necessarily a proclamation against religion, it’s not a chauvinist’s callous hatred for anything traditional or “backwards,” it’s not a dogmatic disposition towards “science,” it is a very spiritual expression of deep doubt.
IMO to understand New Atheism you have to understand that modernity is the apocalypse. It is the systematic destruction of traditional ways in favor of capitalist social relations. The celebration of this apocalypse is the context New Atheism flourishes under because it is inherently colonial, imperial, and racist. I will touch more on that soon.
Of course, there are many responses to the apocalypse that problematize it, Marxism being a part of it (though many in the academy will disagree–a post for another time), Indigenous methods being another, and still there are even right-wing perspectives that are concerned about the death of the aristocracy. However, others laud the apocalypse of modernity as a new heaven, as civilization, as development.
The liberals promote “modernity” and scientism rather routinely (Liberals will say marxists do it too-- again, a post for another time). But indeed, marxists are not incapable of getting sidetracked by teleological fallacies regarding development, I certainly did early on anyway. Interestingly enough, I think Trots and the left (derogatory) are also quite capable of doing it with performative non-christianity, dogmatic or virtuous veganism, unquestionable concern over human rights, accommodationist politics directed at the third world and indigenous people, even environmentalism… the list goes on. All of these things can reinforce colonialism, imperialism and thus capitalist social relations.
Bringing all this back to New Atheism, one of its biggest proponents was Christaphor Hitchens. This guy was a raging islamaphobe, a genocidal American exceptionalist, that played a role in bringing about and justifying the war on terror. This fucker is the shining example of the Trotskyist to Neoliberal/Neocon pipeline. He is a perfect example of how the “left” is a cultivation of empire that is seasonally harvested to better equip itself against the world.
Allow me to quote Allan Rosenbaum on Hitchens:
And in the person of Christopher Hitchens, writing in The Nation, the political left then sounded its voice. To Hitchens, anyone who refused to join him in celebrating with “great vim and gusto” the annihilation of the native peoples of the Americas was (in his words) self-hating, ridiculous, ignorant, and sinister. People who regard critically the genocide that was carried out in America’s past, Hitchens’ continued, are simply reactionary, since such grossly inhuman atrocities “happen to be the way history is made.” And thus “to complain about [them] is as empty as complaint about climatic, geological or tectonic shift.” Moreover, he added, such violence is worth glorifying since it more often than not has been for the long-term betterment of humankind–as in the United States today, where the extermination of the Native Americans–the American Indians–has brought about “a nearly boundless epoch of opportunity and innovation.”
One possible exception Hitchens allowed to his vulgar social Darwinism, with its quasi-Hitlerian view of the proper role of power in history, was the Euro-American enslavement of tens of millions of Africans. But even then, Hitchens contended, those centuries of massive brutality only “probably left Africa worse off than they found it.” Clearly, however–as with Krauthammer’s and Schlesinger’s moral codes–if it could be shown to Hitchens’ personal satisfaction that Africa was in fact “better off” following the enslavement and simultaneous mass killing of 40 - 60 million of its people, he would celebrate the abominations of the slave trade with the same vim and gusto that he did the genocide against the native peoples of the Americas.
New Atheism is a hatred of any traditional thinking. It hates Christianity because Christianity is seen as unable to advance the destruction of traditional ways. Colonialism is so deeply developed that certain sections of it have come to see its tools as outdated and many of its leaders to be caught up in “superstitions” that will not efficiently advance and maintain the empire. It will choose its Christian neighbors over its Islamic, or Tribal enemies, but it seeks to fully destroy the parts of the colonial system that itself have failed to bow down to capitalist social relations totally. It has nothing to do with the tradition of doubt that is dialectically instrumental to Christianity. Rather it is a parody of it that is designed to aid imperialism.
Edit: words, syntax
The South Korean state is run by US generals. RoK is as legitimate as the genocidal maniacs that facilitated it’s creation and development throughout the on going conflict. Pearl clutching about peace during a multidecade conflict that is part of an even longer decolonial struggle is like concern trolling about world peace during slave revolts in the colonies.
Investors are pissed about it. Its why tech bros are firing people by the thousands (same with Twitter kind of). Finance no longer cares about this kind of shit. They just want Facebook to focus on its massive 2 billion user base to make money for them. The thing about tech bros is that, perhaps more than other monopolists, they belive in their own bullshit visions. They probably dream about giving Ted talks and saving the world.
Honestly tho even it becomes half of what they want it to be it could monopolize a lot of shit. It’s like reinventing the internet so you can charge rent to Amazon. It will be tough without investor support though.
Zenz is such a clown. If these fascist states backed off from his narrative he would lose all credibility instantaneously. Very nice to see academics with the integrity and intelligence needed to properly look into this matter.
Meanwhile some universities in the US won’t even hire people with Russian names because they are racist slime and insecure chuavanists with zero intellectual credibility.
If you live in rural, isolated parts of the US and are a worker you still don’t necessarily need a truck. The people with trucks are usually land owners, ranchers, or business owners in my experience. The workers drive company trucks or they work at a diner or something that has no need for trucks at all. Or the community is dying and people are forced to move to a city, but that is a seperate issue.
As for snow, you just put chains on your tires (sometimes required by law) and only make the trek into “town” very few times during winter. Trucks or SUVs are not actually the most important part, in fact the larger vehicle can make it more difficult in narrow mountain passes. Also many residents in isolated areas are actually wealthy, especially ranch/business owners, and they are most certainly at their winter homes not dealing with snow while working people basically just drink alcohol all winter. None of the businesses I worked at were owned by legitimate residents of the area, but instead also owned property in other states like Texas or California, or in the “nearby” (like 300+ miles away) major metro areas.
Anyways I don’t think it is always true accross all rural spaces that workers specifically need large vehicles. In fact I’d say advertising, and corporate currated identities play a big role in how people choose their car- especially when it leans on outdoor lifestyle branding which is a major fixture in the US settler imagination and of US nation building. It’s not true in the isolated mountain towns I have lived in, nor in the forgetten parts of the desert. It was usually business owners that needed trucks. Poor people were crammed into shrinking small towns while the rich lived on tracts of land. I think people forget that rural often means landed and thus not always poor, not always working class.
However, ultimately I appreciate your skeptism of the narrative of the video. It is easy for yuppies to say what is good for everyone and it is much less possible for people outside of the big city to just let go of their vehicles, big or small. I ended up getting an Outback Subaru because I had to commute 50-70 miles to work from a desert valley to various mountain towns and did not feel safe in a smaller car driving so much but had no need for something bigger. Gas prices are too high for a truck to be an option and I mostly worked in restaurants.
territorial waters
These are contested waters. Basically every single country makes huge claims to the SCS. It’s hardly just China. These islands would hardly be important if not for the fucking US 5th fleet.
Meanwhile the US is threatening its “allies” and neighbors. It destroys economies by flooding subsidied commodities into markets. The fucking Colorado River doesn’t even reach Mexico anymore. It destroyed a million farmers lives in Mexico and then litterally murderers them, rapes them, isolates them, kidnaps them, imprisons them, enslaves them when they try to migrate accross the border.
It murders its citizens. It let half of Black wealth get destroyed while bailing out bankers. It let COVID kill over a million people and sent the Seattle Indian Health Board fucking BODY BAGS when they asked for PPE.
It weaponizes disease. It weaponizes food. It weaponizes climate change. It weaponizes finance. It weaponizes oil. It weaponizes information. It weaponizes organised crime. It prevents land reforms around the world. It prevents social programs. It prevents measures to protect sovereignty. It prevents peace and enables war. It baits nations into war. It assualts peasants. It assualts Indigenous peoples. It assualts women. It assualts workers. It assualts its own allies.
The US literally does nothing good for the world.
Meanwhile China is calling for peace in Ukraine and is rising millions out of poverty. The only thing China is guilty of is successfully developing despite the extreme weight of the imperialist system while being Chinese.
A good point. Maybe bring this up in the thread about this map over at “always the same map” if you like.
I do wonder, however, how “UFOs” or “aliens” translate. Maybe it could just not be a thing, or is wildly different, in some cultures and so there is little language to describe “UFOs” as they are under with English. If I could investigate further I might look at India where there is plenty of English by no abundance of UFOs.
As far as I know it comes from this article
There is probably not a universal equation. I think generally extrajudicial killings are immoral in a way that is different from state sanctioned killings, although no state execution is necessarily moral.
If your state is run by a death cult it may be that legal and “legitimate” executions are done out of classist, racist, imperialist intentions. It is probably not controversial to say, without nuance, none of these can be moral.
Extrajudicial killings can delegitimize the state because theoretically it should be able to either execute legally, create a legal means, or, if such laws exist, be able to enforce the law forbidding executions/murder. If a state is oppressing the capitalist class via executions, it must do so openly and legally. If a state is opting to not deal out executions, it should find means of legal force. Otherwise, it proves itself untrustworthy, or unable to carry out its mandate.
I suppose there could be exceptions to this where the state needs plausible deniability among the (imperialist) international community. It’s hard to imagine something legal not being at least somewhat public, but maybe it could be done legally and secretly. I think resorting to this is ultimately a dangerous path to go down. Nobody needs a purge to get out of hand, it helps no one.
In the early 19th century, the Cherokee outlawed any sale of land by Cherokee people to the US under penalty of death. However, the state would not directly carry out executions. Instead, the state revoked any and all protections from the perpetrator, meaning any and all of the perpetrators’ compatriots were basically allowed to kill them at any point, essentially booting them from the nation and the states jurisdiction.
In this case we have sanctioned killings that are not carried out by legally designated, professional court authorities but rather anyone that is willing and able. The state is more nebulous in this situation. It is still the “state” in a very broad sense that is executing them because it is enabling anyone to do it for them which differs from Anglo/Western legalisms. But it is not like the court sentences anyone to die on a certain date and then enforces it to be done by a sanctioned official. There are not really any police to hunt down perpetrators, only community members to jump them. These indirect executions killings, where anyone can kill you if the state wills it, are probably more moral than an unsanctioned murder done by a state agent because the victim is legally ignored by the state in the popular interests of survival and maintains its legitimacy.
During this period the state of Georgia sought to undermine the Cherokee Republic by outlawing Cherokee laws, among other things, in an effort to make their lives as miserable as possible so they would agree to sell their land and leave. So here is an example of perhaps needing to take care of things inconspicuously, with some plausible deniability to perhaps confuse the settler states. In this case, if the Cherokee did something reasonably extrajudicial as a means of carrying out the spirit of the law designed to ensure survival, it would not necessarily be immoral, because there are unique circumstances.
Yes. All of them.
But I don’t speak with them willingly. There is only moral outrage, pearl clutching, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Ya know, the basic white supremacist talking points. We come from a long history of anticommunism.
We were there fighting for the US during the Russian Civil War. We were there aiding the KMT during the Chinese Civil War. We were there in Reagan’s army. It is a baffling, shocking development that now I have so much respect for those who have humiliated my family for over a century.
I think our goal should be to prioritize national liberation of colonized people within the core. Stronger Native Nations, Black liberation for example.
It does take a lot of resources to radicalize lumpen because you have to reorient their interests by changing their social relations to productivity. I think the Panthers had some focus on lumpen as an act of nation building. The revolution they wanted to build was also a struggle for national liberation. So I support this and I see it as viable given the circumstances.
But it seems easier to enfranchise lumpens into efforts for national liberation than it is for raw organized revolutionary defeat, which is what I’d like to see from the settler lumpen. It’s difficult enough to get workers on board for it. Reactionary tendencies will probably be more intuitive.
Maybe this can be softened with a good platform and good rhetoric, but unless we have organizations that are strong enough to enfranchise lumpens (thus changing their class character) I don’t see what they have to gain because at the end of the day organized crime, and the other qualities the lumpen usually have, won’t necessarily be tolerated under a proletarian regime.
Further, lumpen are often used by bourgeoisie security state agencies to terrorize other states, Indigenous peoples and union workers. There is some risk getting too involved with them without other factors that can play to our advantage. Even if we don’t tolerate crime lords, the ultimate crime lords are oftentimes the opportunist alphabet soup agencies.
Multipolarity helps from a global perspective but it also intensifies contradictions, especially in the core. This makes transnational revolutionary potential greater but it also makes imperialist nationalism harder to counter. It creates a world of many possibilities which is what we desperately need, but some of the possibilities are still quite horrific.
Imo it would take a lot of effort to mobilize the lumpen and if you could they would no longer be lumpen. With strong organizations that are capable of enfranchising people it may be possible to change their class character. No such organizations exist today although some have tried in the past.
When someone has figured out how to survive within the system, they will cling to it and identify with it. Whether that is through organized crime, gaming the system etc, it is not easy to shift a person’s orientation away from this and toward revolutionary change without a lot of resources and patience.
The question remains how is the bourgeoisie state looking to create a new deal to insure the future of the Empire and how will it relate to the privileged workers of the North? It seems it will come through war mongering and intrigue built upon war mongering and intrigue.
Narratives about covid in China are used to manipulate energy prices so that the US gets low petrol prices (the narrative that there are either too many covid restrictions or too much covid in China). The narrative around the war in Ukraine is used to distract from the role sanctions are playing, obfuscating the destruction of European enterprises which will likley be replaced with US monopolies (Not to mention the racism against Russians and the aryanization of Ukraine). Oil/gas oligarchs have reveled in the chaos, launching a coup against financial oligarchs such as Larry Fink, and his loyal following of investor greenwashers.
It is possible that all of this will bring about a better position for US citizens relative to the world. It will bring cheap commodities, energy dominance, and a head start against competition.
But the question remains if this is actually enough to buy off US citizens. Is relative wealth good enough for entitled colonizers even if standard of living does not necessarily increase? Does Joe Biden’s regime, the congress, their handlers, have it in them to unifiy the empire? The younger generations seem to expect the same golden age that their (grand)parents used to advance up the ladder of labor stratifications. They expect the post war golden age, which collapsed and was reformed into neoliberalism before they were born. They are, in a moralized, performative way, against war.
However, leading up to WW2 we might say the US was in a similar position. Though today their are fewer communists and labor organizations. There was little desire for war or concerns with the world. Colonies were becoming seen as a burden on the empire. The great depression ravaged US citizens, even those that for generations prior were swimming in cheap land and the spoils of colonialism. Yet despite all of this, the ruling class was able to lead the US into war where it unquestionably usurped the colonial empires and brought about the proceeding the neocolonial modernization and neoliberal eras. The anti war and isolationist sentiments were not enough to stave off xenophobia, orientalism, nationalism etc., nor was it enough to impede the moralized rhetoric that paints white supremacy as an objective good for the world.
This means we may be in a similar position that the US was in before the great wars. Idk that the general masses understand the world in terms of “colonize the world then a golden age comes” but this is how they have historically prospered and it seems that regardless of how on-the-nose their colonial class consciousness is, their are mechanisms that bring privileged workers into the imperial project regardless because ultimately it is in their class interests, their national narratives, and their colonial onto-epistemology.
It’s genuinely terrifying. A comrade of mine that is a Russian citizen also goes to my university here in amerika and their teachers called the fucking pigs to do a “wellness” check. That they are Russian adds an extra layer to this kind of terrorism and I have no doubt it is like this for Chinese students and teachers.
Yes I think you are onto something here. I think their concerns are primarily that their ability to speak and be heard is being compromised, which seems slightly different than explicit concern for women, LGBT persons etc that are clearly oppressed, especially in Qatar.
I’d like to see more from these wealthy jocks than complaints about being controlled. They have power that many don’t have and if they have convictions about this that go beyond what affects them and their brand then they may be able to do some good.
To add to this, I have also read about instances where Chinese affiliated projects in the Caribbean were stopped because people spoke up about environmental problems it would cause and danger it would pose to endangered species .
The PRC and local government (I believe it was Jamaica iirc) responded by replanning the project around these critics. This is not how the west has typically approached these things. Usually they just fund the mob, kill journalists, or strong-arm local politicians.
My point is that Chinese companies have been more adaptable and more interested in feedback than the alternatives. Neglecting this is also to be fixated on China and the problems it causes instead of the bigger picture, or even the specific place development projects are happening.
Sure. But what this means is that Europe must go its own way to maintain what sovereignty it has. It can’t just go along with the US unless there is a clear and quick path towards regime change in Russia. Right now, it is easy to say they don’t need Russia to function because it isn’t quite winter. The protests will probably increase. Every second that passes the two ideas become more closely tied. I’m not sure that individual European nations will quickly begin to betray western civilization, but something has to give. Europe will either be the property of US capital, will plunge into unhinged fascist violence, or it will give in to the Eurasia’s drift towards interconnectivity. We may see some nations chose one path while others chose another, causing a powder keg situation in Europe yet again.
Life beyond Earth is superfluous because all of this still affects life on Earth.
Edit: Also I think its irresponsible to see “lifeless” spaces as places that we have a freedom from responsibility to. Space and the beyond is part of us, still connected to us. It is colonial sensibilities that push static and sanitized ideas of place. This is why the questions of life beyond Earth, questions of space exploration, cannot just be asked in the context of STEM, which oftentimes reproduces colonial sensibilities by default because it separates itself from humanities and social sciences.
Like all of your comments on this matter, your incrediblely late reply speaks to absolutely nothing I or any of our other comrades of said. Further, you don’t really substantiate your claim that Russia has symmetrical goals with the US. You don’t even substantiate Russian imperialism, and absolutely you do not substatiate it within any Marxist terms. Anyone one of us could use the exact sophistry you use to make the outrageous claim the Dominican Republic is imperialist or South Africa is imperialist. But you very clearly do not understand the dialectic, you do not understand imperialisms of the last 100 years, you only understand ideology.