well, first of all, we can run that dumb fucking Orientalist train of "Putin the one-man tyrant dictatorship" off its war mongering rails? As the good ole Cold Warrior Stephen Cohen notes, it doesn't matter who is in charge of Russia, they would be *forced* to act the same way.
okay. i used the head of government's name as a cipher for the state, or the national spirit or whatever. i forgot to explicitly mention states act according to their material and historical circumstances and wrote something that may have smelt of poxy narrative to you, if you read it in bad faith. im super sorry i didn't read your mind and anticipate what words you were gonna put in my mouth. mea fucking culpa
Maybe a good way to build and strengthen a movement is to start cutting through to the core of imperial misinformation, distortion, and equivocation? Russian 'imperialism' is nowhere on the level of NATO imperialism, not even close, and this left-feint bullshit about "two rival blocs waving their dicks" (?) muddies the waters, so how about either try to fight against war-mongering propaganda or keep your opportunist cynicism to yourself. How bout that. lol.
what do you mean by a level here. russia would really like to have a stake in what happens on their own fucking borders, nato/the us/international finance capital would really like to make sure that doesn't happen. things are going russia's way because they've been smart and the circumstances are in their favor. it might have turned out differently. nothing you or i did would have affected that. an attempt to fight against war mongering propaganda or cut through to the core of anything is a waste of time even in its own terms because you don't own a TV channel, and neither do i, and nor does anyone else who agrees with you. on the other hand, there's plenty that we CAN engage with and do some good for, that we can reach out and touch. honking your horn when you drive past a walmart strike, ineffectual as it is, does more to free the world than all the Words you can scribble on the internet. imagine if you helped them picket
the west supporting outright fascist coups and IMF weaponized financial policy is not 'deploratory grumblings', it's aggressive provocation.
i know. it failed this time though. woo hoo. what are you going to do to stop it next time. write more words?
do you think its policy abroad is not a direct mirror to its policy at home?
probably. so what. we can usually do a lot more to disrupt that policy, blunt it, deny it space to work, when it happens in our backyards and not thousands of miles away. certainly in this case. it was happening in the backyards of the heros who rose to the defence of crimea, they stepped up to the plate and they won. they didn't stay at home complaining about it on VKontakte. hopefully we can stay vigilant enough to emulate them when similar opportunity arises for us
or are you so far down your own hopeless hole of despair and self-parody that you cannot imagine ever challenging any of these injustices? Fuckin beagle
you don't challenge an injustice by making noises with your lips, you do it by fighting, and preparing to fight
Crow posted:there is no way in hell i'm going to read that
who cares wins
tpaine posted:bippy died
rip
littlegreenpills posted:ok how are you going to fight it then. you will fail because you do not own a TV station and nobody in the state dept is listening to you. the men in donetsk contented themselves with protesting, grousing, and milling about, and they have to live with the fascists in Kiev now. the men in Crimea took action, and now they are free. discuss
To hear incorrect views without rebutting them and even to hear counter-revolutionary remarks without reporting them, but instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened. This is a sixth type.
Hitler posted:littlegreenpills posted:ok how are you going to fight it then. you will fail because you do not own a TV station and nobody in the state dept is listening to you. the men in donetsk contented themselves with protesting, grousing, and milling about, and they have to live with the fascists in Kiev now. the men in Crimea took action, and now they are free. discuss
To hear incorrect views without rebutting them and even to hear counter-revolutionary remarks without reporting them, but instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened. This is a sixth type.
"from within the movement", surely? Unless Subcommandante Marcos spent a lot of time rebutting Tom Friedman
w/e past the lazy mao quotes it's never bad to counter to imperialist propaganda. this whole "its not gonna make a difference unless u have a media platform" reeks of defeatist bullshit
littlegreenpills posted:Hitler posted:
littlegreenpills posted:
ok how are you going to fight it then. you will fail because you do not own a TV station and nobody in the state dept is listening to you. the men in donetsk contented themselves with protesting, grousing, and milling about, and they have to live with the fascists in Kiev now. the men in Crimea took action, and now they are free. discuss
To hear incorrect views without rebutting them and even to hear counter-revolutionary remarks without reporting them, but instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened. This is a sixth type.
"from within the movement", surely? Unless Subcommandante Marcos spent a lot of time rebutting Tom Friedman
Right, we should only work to make sure that comrades have good politics and correct knowledge about the world, it just ain't important for anyone who isn't already aligned with your politics.
The only movement that attitude produces is the kind that goes into a toilet.
Hitler posted:um To be among the masses and fail to conduct propaganda and agitation or speak at meetings or conduct investigations and inquiries among them, and instead to be indifferent to them and show no concern for their well-being, forgetting that one is a Communist and behaving as if one were an ordinary non-Communist. This is a seventh type.
w/e past the lazy mao quotes it's never bad to counter to imperialist propaganda. this whole "its not gonna make a difference unless u have a media platform" reeks of defeatist bullshit
yes, cool. Lets be honest here were not effectively "countering" anything. No propaganda worth the name is being conducted, nobody except fellow-travelers is being agitated, im buggered if anyone outside Ukraine is doing much in the way of inquiry or investigation, and dear God if "showing concern" extends to vocally wringing your hands instead of getting them dirty. it's not "bad" but in this case it's vanishingly unimportant next to things we can more directly affect
shriekingviolet posted:littlegreenpills posted:Hitler posted:
littlegreenpills posted:
ok how are you going to fight it then. you will fail because you do not own a TV station and nobody in the state dept is listening to you. the men in donetsk contented themselves with protesting, grousing, and milling about, and they have to live with the fascists in Kiev now. the men in Crimea took action, and now they are free. discuss
To hear incorrect views without rebutting them and even to hear counter-revolutionary remarks without reporting them, but instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened. This is a sixth type.
"from within the movement", surely? Unless Subcommandante Marcos spent a lot of time rebutting Tom FriedmanRight, we should only work to make sure that comrades have good politics and correct knowledge about the world, it just ain't important for anyone who isn't already aligned with your politics.
The only movement that attitude produces is the kind that goes into a toilet.
Coming back to one of the few successful leftist revolutions ever; I'm sure Mao thought the bombing of Guernica was downright awful and the defense of Madrid heroic when he had occasion to think about it, yet I doubt a noisy concentration on how mean the fascists half a world away were would have won over many people to the cause
Don't just masturbate here about how shitty things are, take what you learn in communities like this and drop burning hot truth on the sleepy liberals around you.
Every ally gained contributes to building a base necessary for greater action, and I don't know what you do outside this forum so I ain't gonna judge but you are talking like a lazy crybaby defeatist.
tpaine posted:there's a weird aspect of being basically a shut-in and not having real contact with people which is that you start to hold them in higher esteem than you should. it happened to me for a while too, the less contact you have with actual people, the more you forget how fucking stupid they all are. call it wddp syndrome
I think it's just a form of narcissism where you're so isolated from society that you start believing all the ethical qualities you believe you actually posses/embody (because such judgments are not challenged by any sort of social reality) are actually universal truths about all others. Beautiful Soul. Notes from Underground w/e
Edited by wasted ()
wasted posted:tpaine posted:
there's a weird aspect of being basically a shut-in and not having real contact with people which is that you start to hold them in higher esteem than you should. it happened to me for a while too, the less contact you have with actual people, the more you forget how fucking stupid they all are. call it wddp syndrome
I think it's just a form of narcissism where you're so isolated from society that you start believing all the ethical qualities you believe you actually posses/embody (because such judgments are not challenged by any sort of social reality) are actually universal truths about all others. Beautiful Soul. Notes from Underground w/e
yeah this. it's a lot harder to love human beings when you actually have to put up with their bullshit in your life instead of just distantly reading about it. still important to try.
owned idiot