icon posted:ive been lurking for a million years but just wanted to say hello to another survivor of red deer’s gaetz avenue massacre
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shriekingviolet posted:I'm sure as fuck not going resort to wasting my time trying to sort wheat from chaff watching state department propaganda.
as soon as somebody posts an on the ground video from a non-imperialist perspective i would be happy to discard the vice one.
I'm going to put my energy into dismantling the genocidal settler state that I already live in, the political system that I'm actually a part of and have the most power to affect.
good, but it's also possible to discuss controversial things happening in other countries, no?
If I'm trying to further the cause of socialism in my own city, how is badmouthing and nitpicking contemporary socialist states going to help that?
that's why i don't critique China outside of these forums, here we have the perspective to criticize the mistakes of socialist systems while still understanding their superiority to capitalism.
If I'm fighting to end the ravages of colonial capitalism, what message does it send if I align myself with a political movement resisting the reintegration of Hong Kong, the iconic centerpiece of British colonialism?
just because i have a problem with excessive police checkpoints and cameras everywhere doesn't mean i'm aligned with imperialist forces trying to create chaos. posting videos from untrustworthy sources doesn't automatically make you a supporter. just like when people post articles from bourgeoisie news sites i don't expect them to defend everything in the article or website. i wouldn't get mad at someone for picking out 2 pieces of truth from a biased New York Times article.
third world mlms support hong kong protests btw
BEEP BOOP SOMEONE TIP ME OVER AND SET ME ON FIRE
Edited by karphead ()
marimite posted:https://ilps.info/en/2019/08/05/ilps-extends-solidarity-to-massive-protest-actions-in-hong-kong/third world mlms support hong kong protests btw
This really delegitimizes these organizations. China is complicated but there's nothing complicated about the color revolution going on in Hong Kong based on xenophobia and a middle class violently defending its privileges openly in league with the NED. The Maoist polemics about the progressive nature of reactionary groups that happened to oppose the USSR in the third world was tragic as was defense of color revolutions in the USSR and Eastern Europe. This is just farcical. If the ideology cannot evolve it will wither and die and China will be all that's left.
Synergy posted:your position is loud and clear. i didn't expect to see support for a developing police state but here we are. hopefully some of you will have the decency to reexamine this topic when enough time passes.
i'm afraid you have a serious case of leftcom. if left untreated it could turn into anarchism. please read Engels before it progresses
marimite posted:https://ilps.info/en/2019/08/05/ilps-extends-solidarity-to-massive-protest-actions-in-hong-kong/third world mlms support hong kong protests btw
oh that changes everything, i'm happy to upgrade the Hong Kong "very wrong" to "extremely, definitely, irrevocably wrong"
Synergy posted:what makes VICE worse than any other state propaganda posted on this forum? i'm sure i could find examples of other people posting similar content but without the negative response due to their reputation on the forum
when i used to post frank zappa videos 
swampman posted:ive also got a great Henry impersonation I've been working on. It goes like this "Hi, I'm Henry Krinkle" and continues in much the same vein
that's p. good, here's my getfiscal... *ahem* ... ELLLO OIM GAHTFAHSCAL OW YA DOIN GOVNUH
marimite posted:I think the article is a bit naive, but I still agree with critical support for the protests.... So in the end it's just a apolitical mobilization against police repression and for voting, and ultimately only useful to the Americans as a propaganda exercise.
In awe of your massive brane here mate
marimite posted:Hopefully the protesters get their heads out their asses and connect to a communist movement on the mainland (left wing maoists in the mainland support the protests as far as I can tell), but if not it'll end up being mostly harmless.
yes, i'm sure the protestors waving American flags, talking about how "the Queen made us the pearl of the Orient," and comparing mainlanders to swarms of locusts will definitely connect to mainland Maoist movements any day now. everyone's a $lave to that hate AmeriKKKa beat
marimite posted:Pepe here is not a symbol of an ascendant right wing but the very low political consciousness of the participants, basically the same as what it means in twitch streams for children.
not only do you compare educated university students, who undoubtedly have an understanding of western memes considering hong kong's relation to it, to children in an orientalist context, but you credulously dismiss the obvious reactionary bent of the protests as an element of low political consciousness. all around good job with this one.
aerdil posted:marimite posted:Pepe here is not a symbol of an ascendant right wing but the very low political consciousness of the participants, basically the same as what it means in twitch streams for children.
not only do you compare educated university students, who undoubtedly have an understanding of western memes considering hong kong's relation to it, to children in an orientalist context, but you credulously dismiss the obvious reactionary bent of the protests as an element of low political consciousness. all around good job with this one.
Yeah, I did an orientalism on the people you think are literally all pb nativists anyway, got it. Pepe isn't seen as a alt-right symbol by most people in HK. That's just a fact. Obviously more advanced elements on the left and right are aware of what is means in the western political context, but avoid difficult discussions for whatever reason. It's like people carrying signs of mickey mouse, just bad taste. Mobilizing over a million people isn't possible without significant left wing and working class participation, who see voting and safety from police as immanent to their interests. And that wouldn't have happened if CCP and pro-CCP unions hadn't already allied with conservative business interests or had proposed alternative reforms or entered into some kind of negotiations or done anything at all except cheer the cops on as they beat people up. To reduce the whole thing to right wing nativists or american psyops is just dumb polemics.
marimite posted:aerdil posted:marimite posted:Pepe here is not a symbol of an ascendant right wing but the very low political consciousness of the participants, basically the same as what it means in twitch streams for children.
not only do you compare educated university students, who undoubtedly have an understanding of western memes considering hong kong's relation to it, to children in an orientalist context, but you credulously dismiss the obvious reactionary bent of the protests as an element of low political consciousness. all around good job with this one.
Yeah, I did an orientalism on the people you think are literally all pb nativists anyway, got it. Pepe isn't seen as a alt-right symbol by most people in HK. That's just a fact. Obviously more advanced elements on the left and right are aware of what is means in the western political context, but avoid difficult discussions for whatever reason. It's like people carrying signs of mickey mouse, just bad taste. Mobilizing over a million people isn't possible without significant left wing and working class participation, who see voting and safety from police as immanent to their interests. And that wouldn't have happened if CCP and pro-CCP unions hadn't already allied with conservative business interests or had proposed alternative reforms or entered into some kind of negotiations or done anything at all except cheer the cops on as they beat people up. To reduce the whole thing to right wing nativists or american psyops is just dumb polemics.
Good thing we have an understanding of the labor aristocracy here so we are not paralyzed by the existence of mass reactionary politics. Hong Kong is not even a nation and yet this is the level of resistance to an equalization of global wages by reincorporating it into the Chinese mainland (and even this is very gradual compared to a revolutionary decolonization, hence the accusation of collaboration between Hong Kong capital and the CCP). I agree opportunism is easier than class suicide, you screwed up though when you called for an alliance of the HK "working class" (not including immigrant labor) with the Chinese working class when Hong Kong exists because of the superexploitation of the Chinese proletariat, that makes the issue too real. You're supposed to pretend like Hong Kong is a self-contained capitalist system so that "inequality" in the Keynesian sense is the problem and social democracy is the solution.
The only interesting thing is the union movement which is heroically opposed to its own imperialist interests. This cannot last forever but it may save the day and could serve as a useful case study in the future.
tears posted:interesting, but can someone put this in harry potter terms so i can understand whats going on
tears posted:interesting, but can someone put this in harry potter terms so i can understand whats going on
turning my Woke White People Dial up to 11, helpfully labelled "Gay for Wizard Hitler"
Harry Potter removed from Tennessee Catholic school library
NASHVILLE - A Catholic school in Tennessee has removed the Harry Potter books from its library after a struggle session decided they could cause a reader to conjure evil revisionist spirits.
In an email obtained by The Tennessean , the Rev. Comrade Dan Reehil of Nashville's St. Edward Catholic School said he consulted dialectical materialist exorcists in the former U.S.S.R. and Rome who recommended removing the books.
Reehil wrote, “The State Department thinkpieces used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring CIA color revolutions into the presence of the person reading the text.”
Catholic Diocese of Nashville superintendent Rebecca Hammel said Comrade Reehil has the final say at his school.
Hammel said she thinks the books by J.K. Rowling are still on the shelves of other libraries in the diocese.
dimashq posted:Y’know I’m starting to think that ‘Y'know, I'm starting to think that the People's Republic of China isn't all that communist after all’ isn’t that great a thread after all.
isn’t so appreciative of the magical nature of this thread after all.
1) china raised a billion people out of poverty, in the past few decades. without china, global poverty has basically risen since the 1970s. whatever our ideological analysis of the ccp, this is a massive improvement in the lives of almost 1/5th of the worlds population. i don't see any HK break from china leading to an improvement in the working class of HK.
2) everything that moves isn't red. without a clear left vanguard, a mass movement--even with "well-meaning" participants--is pretty much doomed to either collapse or be co-opted by the imperialist powers. the leadership of the hong kong protests is clearly completely in bed with the US state department, NED, etc.
marmite's claim that we should overlook these facts because HK is "ultimately only useful to the Americans as a propaganda exercise," is fairly myopic imo. the western powers do not need to have some final objective in mind, they will be satisfied with constant chaos and the opportunity to place more and more spooks there.
elemennop posted:i'm probably not as convinced of the marxist idealogy of the modern ccp as some posters on this forum, but i think the two most important things to remember are
1) china raised a billion people out of poverty, in the past few decades. without china, global poverty has basically risen since the 1970s. whatever our ideological analysis of the ccp, this is a massive improvement in the lives of almost 1/5th of the worlds population. i don't see any HK break from china leading to an improvement in the working class of HK.
2) everything that moves isn't red. without a clear left vanguard, a mass movement--even with "well-meaning" participants--is pretty much doomed to either collapse or be co-opted by the imperialist powers. the leadership of the hong kong protests is clearly completely in bed with the US state department, NED, etc.
marmite's claim that we should overlook these facts because HK is "ultimately only useful to the Americans as a propaganda exercise," is fairly myopic imo. the western powers do not need to have some final objective in mind, they will be satisfied with constant chaos and the opportunity to place more and more spooks there.
It is true that Chinese development has been beneficial in alleviating poverty, but the point begs the question I think. Is the CCP interested alleviating poverty or inequality in Hong Kong itself? Uneven development has alleviated poverty in capitalist countries as well, but it can never do so totally and then that development is turned against workers domestically or abroad. The lack of debate on the nature or direction of development is symptomatic of the suppression of socialist democracy generally. Doesn't the capitalist road itself make China vulnerable to capital flight? And at what level of development does capital flight cease to be an issue? China is a lot more resistant to capital flight than it was 20 years ago, yet the same people run HK and will continue to run it 20 years from now when it's even less of an issue. I doubt any of us are very concerned with capital flight from the UK or France. Anyway, I still think the influence the Americans can have is limited, and whether progress can continue in a socialist direction will be decided by a struggle internal to China.
The issue of Gene Sharp style tactics is a more interesting line of critique. This stuff is really bad even when it's not in american hands. It's the reason that a actual left wing movement in HK remains an abstract proposal despite the disparate left wing elements participating in the protests. It's also an overlooked reason occupy failed and is probably an obstacle to leftist movements everywhere at this point. I can see one arguing that people should refrain from participating in all apolitical mobilizations in order to build some positive leftist political project. But that's different from blindly supporting the government and police and condemning all the protesters.
We are not talking about occupy, we are talking about the mass movement of millions of people who go to Trump rallies and were tea party protestors before that. Here's an article everyone should read if they want to learn about Hong Kong and not just use it as a metaphor for the struggle for civilization against China
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318040053_British_Colonialism_and_Illegal_Immigration_from_Mainland_China_to_Hong_Kong
There's a lot of important economic data but politically this is the key passage for me
the Immigration Department of Hong Kong in the beginning gave humanitarian treatment to allow minor immigrants to remain in Hong Kong, provided that both parents lived legally in Hong Kong and the minor was handed over directly to them. This policy measure however instigated the “smuggling” of children and gave rise to immigration syndicates in the PRC that offered “safe passage” of children from the PRC to Hong Kong for HK$20,000, so that the children could travel alone. Children were smuggled into Hong Kong with the parents hoping that once the child was able to get legal right of abode in Hong Kong, they as parents could also legally settle in Hong Kong. In one month from 1 October 1981 alone, 1,148 children under the age of 12 arrived in Hong Kong. Upon arrival, they enrolled in schools and applied for registration to remain legally in Hong Kong, obviously with the assistance of the im-migration syndicates. The parents in the PRC then applied to enter into Hong Kong for sake of “family reunification.” In addition, some pregnant PRC women “illegally” entered into Hong Kong to give birth to an infant, who could legally remain in Hong Kong by jus soli.
In order to curb this practice of using children as a tool to evade the immigration restrictions, a new immigration law passed on 9 December 1981 stipulated that the children smuggled into Hong Kong without parents should be placed under “protective custody” in a boys’ or girls’ home and then eventually repatriated. Further, on 27 April 1987, the Immigration Department introduced a stricter regulation, requiring parents who had already settled in Hong Kong legally to register their children within 26 hours of their arrival from the PRC.
In the meantime, control over the residents of Hong Kong was also strengthened. Every res-ident was asked to carry some form of identity, which was, for most of the residents, the Hong Kong identity card. The RHKP and the Immigration Department were given power to check this form of identity at any time. The RHKP did actually check the identity cards of ca. 750 thousand Hong Kong residents. Hong Kong thus became more of a surveillance society, using “illegal” immigrants as pretext
The entire discussion about Chinese democracy, surveillance, civil rights, etc. is just a distraction, these are actually issues internal to Hong Kong which the protestors support. And yes, these issues are identical to illegal immigration to the United States, even down to the same racist fearmongering about anchor babies. That this discourse could emerge in a couple of decades out of nothing and gain near unanimous support shows the power of materialist analysis.
Edited by babyhueypnewton ()