I feel like I understand communist theory pretty well at a basic level, and I believe in it, but I just don't see what part of it requires belief in an objective world of matter. I don't believe in matter and I'm still a communist. And it seems that in the 21st century most people believe in materialism but not communism. What part of "people should have access to the stuff they need to live" requires believing that such stuff is real? After all, there are nonmaterial industries and they still need communism. Workers in the music industry are producing something that nearly everyone can agree only exists in our heads. And they're still exploited by capital, despite musical instruments being relatively cheap these days, because capital owns the system of distribution networks and access to consumers that is the means of profitability for music. Spotify isn't material, it's a computer program. It's information. It's a thoughtform. Yet it's still a means of production that ought to be seized for the liberation of the musician worker. What does materialism have to do with any of this?

So, as far as I can see, the meme "summoning my pizza slaves with a bourgeois app" has achieved legendary status on Hexbear, mostly as a form of satire, to make fun of it. That's the full version I could find:

"I do self-criticism constantly because I’m trapped in a Maoist cult where comrades (white terrorists) criticize me mercilessly for having a fascist credit card (VISA Silver Signature Rewards). They won’t let me order vegan pizza anymore because the phone is fascist and “summoning my pizza slaves with a bourgeois app" is “bad vibes”

Now, I find myself in a country where these delivery apps have arrived relatively "recently", sparking a vast social and political uprising. Workers are indeed treated extremely poorly, with NO job security, and they operate in a legal grey area (like, they are de facto employees, but they are treated as auto-entrepreneurs... neoliberal dream to destroy workers' rights).

Adding to this, the working conditions can be quite perilous. In my city, traffic is notoriously chaotic, and cycling is dangerous. But not potentially dangerous, bodies-on-the-street-every-month dangerous. While we do have a well-established public transportation system, the city's bike infrastructure is still quite underdeveloped, and cars dominate the roadways.

I'm aware that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism and yadda yadda. However, I find this particular form of consumption especially horrible. This is a highly walkable city with a wide range of food options readily available, making it unnecessary to rely on food delivery apps. And it really does feels like “summoning my pizza slaves with a bourgeois app". Mostly racialized workers, working dangerously in grey areas of law.

Have you normalized food delivery in your lifestyle? How do you deal with it? How do you navigate these ethical concerns?

Just some nice clearing the air of ambiguities. Do not doxx yourself.

For instance, Lea CrossCode (my pfp) is my lofty transition goal, and that's one part of the reason I'm so attached to her as a character.

Look up a video in Shenzhen or Chongqing. Everything looks 2 decades out, and the giant crystal skyscrapers light up different colors. Sometimes the whole thing is a TV.

China surpassed USAmerica in GDP already, but it doesn't look close to tied in development and advanced technologies.

The trains there go hundreds of miles in less than an hour, you could commute across the country every day.

Meanwhile in America the "middle class" is struggling to have some walls and a roof. Record debt and crumbling infrastructure. How is all of this ignored and not talked about everywhere?

Was hanging out with my cousins the other day and learned they got some brainworms that need to be bullied out of them. One of them uttered the words "gender ideology" and I swear I almost slapped the shit out of him in his parents kitchen. The funniest part was that his lib dad actually was on my side for once and joined in ripping into him over his shit takes.

My partner keeps trying to read it and they keep stopping and reading me passages and then looking up actual historical fact and going wtf, this book is nonsense? Does it get better?

I don't know I haven't read it. I told them I'd ask here. Does it get better? Is it anti communist propaganda or is the ridiculous anti communist screed that starts this book serious off just setup for something better?

Thanks for all the good answers I showed them the whole thread and they said a lot of what you all said is in line with their understanding. So basically the first bit is a caricature of the bad parts of early Chinese communism and then that gets better but it turns misogynist instead. Fun series. They'll continue to read because we have a lot of family and friends who LOVE the book and they want to understand why but it's helpful to have the lens on it

I get that the rule-of-thumb for talking to cops is that you should have a lawyer present. But like, what if it's small shit? Hypothetically, what if I witness a hit and run and the cop is asking me what I saw? Should I really insist that I have a lawyer present?

Sorry if this question sounds really dumb, but I've always been playing this situation out in my mind. My feeling has always just to say what I saw, like tell the cop "it was a grey Mazda SUV". Should I tell the cop that I'll make a statement in the station with my lawyer present?

Also what if there's currently a crime in progress, like a shooting or something? I guess that's unlikely, and that cops are useless.

My prediction is that "Rebel Moon" will have enough Snyder treat hogs needing to make excuses for it that there will be future "this is leftist, actually, because the Big Bad if you squint at it can actually look like nazis I guess" or even "the Synderesque Cornfield of Burgerland Sentimentality can look kind of like a commune if you squint and hold your breath long enough" or maybe just boil down to "let people enjoy things" thought terminating cliches, all the while the movie will push cartoonishly blatant propaganda against straw communists. No one is immune to propaganda, least of all the "propaganda has no effect on me" believers, so I predict that'll be a struggle session.

I expect I will be told to touch grass a lot by that treat's future defenders if it has even a moderate amount of profitability, which would consequently make local hogs want to make excuses for it instead of admitting it's hog-feeding chud propaganda and just eating it anyway with acceptance, which I would respect somewhat more.

Mine's a tie between a near future and a not so near future sci-fantasy bazinga take:

"Self-driving cars are the key to a post-scarcity future!" (when asked how the fuck that conclusion was drawn, I was told "do the research.")

"Even if climate change is proven to actually be a problem, climate doesn't matter in space. We can have fully sustainable cattle farms in orbit producing as much meat as we need. Elon Musk." (yes, that bazinga fuck actually said "Elon Musk" at the end of that claim like it somehow stamped a seal upon the rest of the take)

Basically all I can think of for Red/Brown are the liberal members of the Boogaloos, Tucker on Ukraine but I'm not up to speed on this potential problematic alliance thst seems class reductionist. What are your takes? Is it because anti-govt leftists will search for allies. Do y'all consider Ancaps as Brownies. The biggest Red/Brown alliance I see is the toilet bowl after taco Tuesday

I lost the plot back when Chomsky broke with tradition and said it was a good thing the US was dropping bombs in support of the Kurds... I stopped following along then, but I don't think even then I understood that conflict.

Is there a good write-up somewhere that outlines the basics of this?

I've found some document from the PKK about "Democratic Confederation" which my anarchist acquaintances really talk up, but I also thought they were ML's?

My handlers are asking me to tell you not to link/tag the comment or post, to prevent accusations of brigading obviously, but there have been a ton that should be added as new taglines for the site.

The one that prompted this post:

I'm fine with interacting with people of different ideologies and cultures, but I feel like the hexbears mostly just want to harass us "tankies".

Huh? Do you mean "liberals"? Hexbears are the ones liberals and leftcoms call "tankies"

From what I can tell, which so far is decidedly little, everyone is calling everyone tankies.

My friend made me install Bumble. I want something that leftists will recognize but that won't immediately scare off liberals (I can fix them)

Does anyone have any cool Lenin quotes for this purpose or something

Even though we had a little bit of warning about federation, I think we're off to a rocky start. Maybe we should have compiled a list of things we think that may make other people very upset. That way they can quickly get to know what we're about and go hide in a social media bubble if it scares them.

I figure I'd start with a good one. America deserved 9/11. I'm burying the lede a bit with that one. I don't think random acts of violence really accomplish much and I don't think randos, albeit imperial core randos, should die. But this wasn't a random act of violence, was it?

There's a little something called Foucault's Boomerang. Basically it's the tools, means, and experiments carried out by imperial countries tend to make their way back home one way or another. Military gear gets tried out on the battlefield then next thing you know cops at home have the same equipment. It also works for cause and effect. America did 9/11 to itself.

After WWII America courted the monarchy of Saudi Arabia, who had some really "interesting" religious ideas at the time, to ensure a source of oil. Oil was very important to American manufacturing and the war effort. Our domestic reserves helped us get through WWII. We needed more. So the US decided to look the other way on Saudi foreign policy while they ensured us first dibs on the oil. The UK also made deals on building their infrastructure and finance needs, to which the US eventually pushed them of the back rooms where such deals were made. But that's another story.

The US also backed anti-Soviet/anti-Communist groups in the Middle-East as they had in other parts of the world. This meant giving aide and weapons and training to those groups. In exchange they would beat up all the communists and pro-soviet people in their country and keep the borders open for US trade.

Not to "yadda yadda yadda" through a lot of interesting history but the US made a lot of enemies and ruined former alliances in these places because we valued the exploitation of their resources more than the actual relationships formed. Once the Soviets were gone, we could just do what we wanted to them and there was nobody left to oppose us.

So our former (and some current) friends stabbed us in the back. The imperialism boomeranged back home and we got a terrorist attack on US soil.

The people who died didn't particularly deserve it but people die when an imperial power does imperialism. That's part of why it's bad. Imperialism will never benefit the common person, it will only hurt us in the end. You best believe all this funding, weapons, and shit going into Ukraine will come back on us too.

What are some other real-ass takes for our visitors who need disillusioning?

Especially if you write essays, articles, or video scripts. I am looking into using the zettelkasten system with Obsidian but figuring out a workflow for that seems confusing, especially for historical research.

like it's the most specific shit, there are roughly 300 people globally who are insane enough to be here

all these posts that are correctly like: it's absurd to call russian de-nazification of ukraine a genocide(correct)

china ugyhr genocide? obviously nato propaganda garbage(correct)

but then, you come to trans shit and it's all of a sudden defcon 5, this bill in florida saying you can't put kids on hrt means the trans are being heckin geknowcided

it's like, how do you hold these 2 views? doesn't the cognitive dissonance rot your brain? you know it's bullshit, you know what the word genocide means. so why are you pretending that "trans genocide" has any merit?

What are the go-to subjects for revealing the true, regressive beliefs of reactionaries who don't consider themselves reactionary? Off the top of my head:

-Trans people in sports: Major gateway to transphobia and misogyny. Complaints about trans athletes inevitably lead to sexism towards literally any woman with muscles. Pretty sure this is how Joe Rogan and a ton of his supporters became so unhinged.

-Affirmative action: So, so many liberals and "leftists" will complain about how they would've totally gotten into Harvard and Yale if not for The Blacks^tm^. Love to bring up SAT scores even though they've been proven to be racist and classist and a shit metric for intellectual value.

-Shakespeare authorship question: A bit niche. Basically, Curtis Yarvin and other Dark Enlightenment dweebs don't think that Shakespeare was capable of penning such timeless plays because he wasn't rich, and according to them, not rich=dumb and uncreative mental husk.

One time, when I was working at a summer camp as a specialty staff, my coworker/roommate who I barely talked to and barely knew randomly pulled out his switch and asked me if I could do a part of Celeste he was stuck on. I said sure, and did it for him, but then asked why he asked me in particular. He just said I 'seemed like the type of guy to have beaten Celeste'. I haven't started socially transitioning, so I don't know where that vibe came from, and I still think about it

For me, it's the drive thru-- makes the boomer kids lazy, wasting gas, environmently unfriendly, no thank you. I'll physically walk into the fast food lobby for reconstituted pink chicken slime as nature intended.

I'm sure I can find the answers to these questions in google individually, but other people in the fediverse might benefit from having these questions answered as well.

Why is Trump a "Wet Boy"?

Why is a defecating pig a "PBB"?

Why do you, a chapotraphouse discussion forum, only discuss something called "citations needed" instead of the chapo podcast?

How is El Chapo's trap house in any way related to leftism?

Why are your emojis so big?

What's the limit for your big tent left? Maoists? Trotskyites? Demsocs? Socdems? TERF socialists? Progressive Democrats? Monarchist socialists?

To widen the topic of the post, feel free to post any other questions regarding Hexbear as well.