CleverOleg

I’m really trying to commit myself to getting a better understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of Marxism. I’m starting with the Vietnamese textbook on dialectical materialism that Luna Oi translated, before moving on to The Dialectics of Nature and Anti-Duhring.

My problem is I really struggle with philosophy. Marxian economics I can vibe with all day, but philosophy is something I’ve never been able to really get a hold of (but wanting to fix that).

So my first big struggle is understanding the difference between dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics. Is the former more of the worldview or viewpoint, and the later is more for explaining and analyzing specific processes? And if that understanding is correct, isn’t materialist dialectics the things we should be committing ourselves to as it’s what helps us better understand material reality (rather than dialectical materialism, which I guess would be more of a “belief statement?)? I don’t know I probably have a lot of this mixed up, just looking for any help on this I can get.

Of course it was that gusano Maria Salazar who introduced this bill.

Interesting to note that the text of the bill seems to focus on China and mentions Xinjiang in particular. Also how 1.5 billion people currently “suffer” under communism.

This actually seems like a bit of an own goal to me. Sure, tell a bunch of high school kids how China is an undemocratic totalitarian nightmare and that the Uighurs are currently having their organs harvested. Then those students can do literally 10 minutes of research to see that none of that is actually happening and that the people of China are pretty happy with the state of things (at least relative to US Americans).

I should point out for non-US Americans here, education in the US is decentralized. The federal government doesn’t actually have much authority. This bill just tells the Victims of Communism Memorial Fund (snicker) to create materials and make them available.

Death to America.

I think it’s remarkable just how comfortable white folks were to vote for an outright white supremacist. It’s important to note that while Duke did give some throwaway lines about how he became a born-again Christian and wasn’t racist anymore… I don’t think anyone believed him because everything else he promoted and advocated for was outright racist. Duke was nothing like Nick Fuentes or even Richard Spencer today - racists who trying and hide just how racist they are. Duke was literally a former KKK grand wizard and even though he was in his early 40s, he had a long track record of openly white supremacist comments. His campaign platform was still racist af and to the surprise of no one here, he got a solid majority of the white vote and only lost because of solid turnout of black voters who voted against him.

I was reading some comments on Reddit about this race and of course white people there try and justify it. A whole lot of “well most white folks didn’t agree with Duke but the other guy was just too corrupt”. Of course, white people are never just racists. As if people really care so much about corruption that they’re willing to vote for literally the worst person in the country. I honestly hate this attitude among white folks - this idea that you must NEVER assume someone’s just racist, and that you can make any excuse for their racist actions or comments by finding some other reason - any reason at all - for their racism.

Literally AmeriKKKa.

(Thanks to Gerald Horne and Tony on the Actually Existing Socialism podcast for making me aware of this)

Did a large procession wave their torches As my head fell in the basket? And was everybody dancing on the casket?

I don’t have any cash app or Venmo accounts, but I can give you like 5 Order of Lenin emojis.

(fyi this is the new badass logo for the Al-Qassam Brigades)

Interesting story about this artwork here

Link

Of course, I knew Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism (really, those two concepts are inseparable and feed each other) were very prevalent in American society going back a long time, with it really ratcheting up after 9/11. But ever since the Zionist entity’s terrorist pager attack last month, the sheer depth, pervasiveness, and how it’s just out there in the open and considered perfectly acceptable has genuinely surprised me. It seems to have started with that attack and subsequent events have only reinforced it.

White Americans just seem to delight whenever they think the Arab/Islamic “terrorists” are attacked. They do not care about who the “terrorists” actually are or how many people suffer. It’s not worth interrogating what the “terrorists” are fighting for or who was harmed because to the white folks, the Muslim/Arab people don’t matter. They’ve been dehumanized to the point where their lives are considered worthless.

To give an example, there is a person in my life who I’m about to cut out (should have a long time ago) who texted me something to the effect of “that pager thing was crazy, but looks like they got a lot of terrorists”. I tried to keep my cool and explain how normal people like doctors and ambulance drivers were hurt and killed too, because lots of people use those pagers. Dude literally just used a shrug emoji in response, because I guess those people aren’t worth giving a care about.

Everything I’ve seen especially in recent weeks really shows how bad it is. Brown people in Western Asia don’t matter because they have a different religion and they are “prone to violence” and they aren’t as “developed” as us. I feel like this is really where the support for Israel comes from. Not from ideas of Israel fulfilling apocalyptic prophesy, but just because white Americans can turn on the TV and see people in Israel who look like them, who have a religion that is semi-compatible with theirs, and who live in a society that seems to be very “Western” fighting off the “savage Islamists”. It plays into their already primed-for-racism-and-chauvinism” brains.

While I don’t think American media is the source of racism and Islamophobia, I do think the last 20+ years of movies, shows, and games has really fueled the fire. I think (hope?) in the future people will look back on this period of “corn-fed white bearded operators killing all the Muslim terrorists” media in the way we look at minstrel shows now.