☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆Two Things Can Be True At Once!
OwOarchistBut also … just because something is used by the US as propaganda doesn’t necessarily mean it’s untrue.
Look into literally every war they supported, it’s always false pretenses. They instigated Kuwait to get in trouble with Iraq, then told Iraq they wouldn’t oppose them invading Kuwait, then after Iraq invaded the US media apparatus lied everywhere that Iraqis disconnected hundreds of babies from incubators, killing them.
Still with Iraq, they told the world that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, that they had to be stopped for the safety of all USAmericans. Even though the weapons inspectors said it was patently false. The US invaded, many European countries supported them. After a very painful invasion where it’s estimated between hundreds of thousands to a million Iraqis were murdered by the US and their allies (and many, many more when you count those who died from other factors caused by the invasion, such as lack of infrastructure, hospitals, food, etc), after all of this did they find WMDs? Take a guess.
The US told us that Gaddafi was using mass rape against his enemies, and people believed it until after they bombed Libyans to rubble. Turns out, they lied.
Amnesty International curiously enough lied as well, they echoed the claims about Kuwait babies killed by the Iraqi army and the mass rape by Gaddafi’s troops until after the US punished them severely. Then they went back on their word, because as it turns out they were lying. So if even organizations that occasionally do decent work can’t be trusted not to amplify imperialism, how can we trust those that are even worse?
Can you trust the same newspapers that have told us for years that no genocide is happening in Gaza? That we should condemn Hamas? That Israel has the most moral army? We saw with our own eyes what they did and still do to children in Gaza. And to this day BBC, NYT and others still frame Israel as victims of aggression, and the real victims as untrustworthy terrorists. We can’t trust a word about anything involving politics because even now they lie through framing, through omission.
True true, and their ‘justifications’ for war are entirely bogus.
But I just caution against over-correcting. Just because someone is an enemy of the US doesn’t mean they’re perfect. Or even good.
AntiOutsideAktionYes it does. Relative to the US they are good.
The primary contradiction in the world right now is US imperialism.
If you are talking about an enemy of the US in the context of anything the US is doing, they are the good guys.
Anything less is apologism.
A contradiction to what? You can’t just say something is a contradiction unless it’s contradicting something else.
the contradiction is between the imperialists and their subjects. That’s what they meant by the primary contradiction. It’s a term from dialectics.
“On contradiction” by mao zedong is a good introduction to the concept
I am familiar with On Contradiction, and I think it is a load of word salad.
As best as I can tell, people who have drank the dialectical materialism kool-aid fetishise the word ‘contradiction’ and use it in place of any number of more correct words and terms.
Imperialists and their subjects have contrary interests. Definitionally opposed interests, even. Things being opposed doesn’t make them contradictory the way everyone uses the word.
You can legitimately say that US imperialism is the biggest problem in the world. You can’t say the US imperialism is the biggest contradiction in the world because that doesn’t make any god damned sense in English.
Try George Politzer “Elementary principles of philosophy” maybe? Its a term coming from Hegel, it makes more sense in german (Widerspruch literally means contradictory statement, e.g. parents might say “I don’t want to hear a Widerspruch!” to their kids when they’re refusing to cooperate).
I also don’t know what you mean by “dialectical materialism kool-aid”, it’s a useful toolbox for analysing society not some belief system one professes. And yeah someone using that toolbox will use the names those tools are called by other people who use the same toolbox. If you don’t use diamat, then the names won’t make much sense to you. E.g. I had to present a math paper where the person destructed a graph into “blocks”, and called that destructure a “blockade”. Which doesn’t make much sense, when we think of a “blockade” it’s an obstacle, not something we want on our way to prove a theorem, but within this framework it’s a tool that was used to find a certain type of graph within the larger graph and not at all an obstacle.
I also don’t know what you mean by “dialectical materialism kool-aid”
It seems to me that dialectical materialism is a tool for post hoc analysis of society that is useful for constructing narratives and not much else. I can’t see that it is in any way useful for generating falsifiable predictions. Yet people call off-the-dome predictions “scientific” just because they have identified the two things that are in contradiction ™.
If you don’t use diamat, then the names won’t make much sense to you. E.g. I had to present a math paper where the person destructed a graph into “blocks”, and called that destructure a “blockade”.
Yes words have different meanings in different contexts. “Blockade” has a common meaning and a different meaning in graph theory. But if you used it in its graph theory meaning unbidden in an online discussion thread that wasn’t already about graph theory, and without introducing the context of graph theory into the conversation first, then I would say you are using the word incorrectly.
It seems to me that dialectical materialism is a tool for post hoc analysis of society that is useful for constructing narratives and not much else.
have you not heard of the russian and chinese revolutions or what am I missing here? Two of the largest nations in the world mobilised their masses, led them into war against the ruling class and won. They lead huge literacy and industrialization campaigns that allowed their nations to leapfrog most other nations and made them able to compete with europe and the us in terms of technological advancements. Their leaders, now famous worldwide, are thought leaders in dialectical materialism and how to apply it. As a more concrete example Marx successfully predicted the monopolisation of market segments for instance. Which was a wild prediction to make in the 19th century when every town had their own factories and competition among them was fierce.
Yes words have different meanings in different contexts. “Blockade” has a common meaning and a different meaning in graph theory. But if you used it in its graph theory meaning unbidden in an online discussion thread that wasn’t already about graph theory, and without introducing the context of graph theory into the conversation first, then I would say you are using the word incorrectly.
You are free to do so of course, but there are quite a few people around who have read about imperialism and got the meaning behind the comment immediately, making an outright statement like “i mean contradiction in the diamat sense” seem superfluous to me.