PugJesus

PugJesus, 1 month ago

Democracy is when the president controls local police, and the more the president controls local police, the more democracier it is.

PugJesus, 1 month ago

Is lying just your first instinct, or your only one?

PugJesus, 1 month ago

And even if the Jews were to win the war, its end would find the unique possibilities and the unique achievements of Zionism in Palestine destroyed. The land that would come into being would be something quite other than the dream of world Jewry, Zionist and non-Zionist. The ‘victorious’ Jews would live surrounded by an entirely hostile Arab population, secluded into ever-threatened borders, absorbed with physical self-defense to a degree that would submerge all other interests and acitvities. The growth of a Jewish culture would cease to be the concern of the whole people; social experiments would have to be discarded as impractical luxuries; political thought would center around military strategy…. And all this would be the fate of a nation that — no matter how many immigrants it could still absorb and how far it extended its boundaries (the whole of Palestine and Transjordan is the insane Revisionist demand)–would still remain a very small people greatly outnumbered by hostile neighbors.

Under such circumstances… the Palestinian Jews would degenerate into one of those small warrior tribes about whose possibilities and importance history has amply informed us since the days of Sparta. Their relations with world Jewry would become problematical, since their defense interests might clash at any moment with those of other countries where large number of Jews lived. Palestine Jewry would eventually separate itself from the larger body of world Jewry and in its isolation develop into an entirely new people. Thus it becomes plain that at this moment and under present circumstances a Jewish state can only be erected at the price of the Jewish homeland…

• Hannah Arendt, 1948

PugJesus, 1 month ago

But if you treat drug users as human beings, where will the police get their justification for fuckmassive budgets to buy surplus military equipment painted scawwy black (because blue is SO civil servant, and olive drab just isn’t COOL enough) and pay grifters to tell them how hard their pp will get when they kill another human being???

PugJesus, 1 month ago

“We’ve investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong”

PugJesus, 1 month ago

Not for the deaths themselves, but he should be tried for authorizing ‘double-tap’ strikes. Depending on the exact justification and the level of scrutiny employed, it may not rise to the level of a war crime - but there is a very good chance that it does.

Sadly, it’ll never happen. If Bush didn’t get tried for much, much worse while being much, much less popular, Obama definitely isn’t.

PugJesus, 1 month ago

The Communist Manifesto, Critique Of The Gotha Programme, Theories Of Surplus Value, and various assorted letters and articles. I attempted Das Kapital, but it was dry enough and enough of a slog that I ended before the halfway point.

The Conquest Of Bread, State And Revolution, Anarchism And Other Essays, various 20th century articles and letters from socialist writers and theorists, ML and anti-ML.

Innumerable books and articles dealing with the actual history of socialist movements, especially anarchist movements, either in whole or in passing.

PugJesus, 1 month ago

Oh yeah, the nature of postmodernism means it’s very exploitable. I meant it more as justification for my broader disassociation more than something I bring up; I usually leave postmodernism out of it. Just outlining the internal thought process of why I wouldn’t describe myself as a Marxist.

PugJesus, 1 month ago

“You just want to write off anyone who disagrees with you!”

lmao

Sorry for not having a scientific study of Lemmy’s population ready to satisfy you. It’s funny - any time I bring receipts, regardless of how many or how upvoted, it’s always the same story - “It’s just a few bad apples! There’s not a lot of them! They don’t bother you!”

PugJesus, 1 month ago

Which makes the simping for China all the more inexplicable.

PugJesus, 1 month ago

The admins for fucking one. I’m about to go to bed, but you can check about ‘Sinophobia’ bans for talking about the Uyghur genocide for proof on the admins. I’ll dredge up some choice examples from Lemmygrad when I wake up, if you’re still interested.

PugJesus, 1 month ago

Alright, what exactly kind of evidence do you think is possible to gather in this situation? Realistically speaking? Am I to ignore my eyes and (metaphorical) ears because they aren’t a scientific study?

Rigorous studies trump anecdotal evidence, but anecdotal evidence trumps a complete absence of evidence.

PugJesus, 1 month ago

The simplest version of the postmodernist argument is that grand, overarching narratives are just pareidolia for academics - people search for shapes where there are none; and that perception shapes reality to such a degree that one cannot examine simply the ‘conditions’ of a society, even non-material ones, and expect to understand its contours.

It’s more nuanced than that I think, but honestly, it’s been almost a decade since I was last in college and read up on it, so I don’t know how much I trust myself to give a more in-depth explanation, lol.

PugJesus, 1 month ago

I wouldn’t count myself as a capitalist, personally. I may be more amiable to short-term solutions that acknowledge that we are still in a capitalist society, but I see an investor-driven economy as ruinous to both itself and democracy, and not something that can be sustained in a truly democratic society.

PugJesus, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

As for Lenin, Imperialism is probably his most important work when it comes to understanding a lot of Leftists on Lemmy, IMO. Many Leftists I see form most of their foreign policy positions on the conclusions Lenin provides in it.

I feel like a lot of Lemmy Leftists miss Lenin elsewhere on foreign policy, though. Not that I would regard myself as pro-Lenin in general.

Imperialism is as much our “mortal” enemy as is capitalism. That is so. No Marxist will forget, however, that capitalism is progressive compared with feudalism, and that imperialism is progressive compared with pre-monopoly capitalism. Hence, it is not every struggle against imperialism that we should support. We will not support a struggle of the reactionary classes against imperialism; we will not support an uprising of the reactionary classes against imperialism and capitalism.

God, I’ve seen so much apologia for Iranian theocracy on here that it makes my head spin.

Do you disagree with any of that? Do you believe it enough to consider me a fascist, or was that a one-off kneejerk reaction?

No, I don’t disagree. As mentioned before, I’m quick to snap, especially since many people on here openly salivate about the idea of a fascist takeover here in the US, because “Both sides are the same” or “It will move people left”.

I honestly don’t remember calling you a fascist (I’m sure I did, as I am quick to emphasize that supporting the rise of fascists like Trump, actively or passively, IS sitting at a table with 9 fascists, and quick to assume bad faith), but it was probably incorrect, and definitely spoken in anger rather than careful consideration.

PugJesus, 1 month ago

Yes, they’re truly behind every rock. It’s not at all that centrists point at anything to their left and scream “tankie!”

My favorite was when ToiletPaperUSA, a left-leaning meme group, definitely didn’t have half the mod team removed by a handful of tankies who replaced them with their own goons and then subsequently banned and removed all criticism of China until the long-inactive founding mod was reached and restored the old moderators.

I guess I’m just dosed up on shrooms or whatever.