very normal person1d ago
so i guess all the western media are running with 'cluster bombs' and not bothering to define what that term means

another thing i've noticed is how they talk about " straining the iron dome' which is wild. Weeks ago, most of the US radar systems were taken out, so there is no more 'iron dome' at all, there are interceptors, and they are running out, and only work about half the time
Show threadJackie1d ago

@mook

Oh no, how will the Nazi government protect innocent Germans 🥺

Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen Israel got seriously fucked up yesterday, both from Iranian Missiles and Hezbollah, like Hezbollah destroyed maybe a hundred tanks in 48 hours, absolutely wild, and so they've pivoted from denying the damage, to 'boo hoo, what about our civilians' and whining about 'cluster municians' dishonestly, Israel has no problem using actual cluster municians, but they literally went to the UN to complain about this, when these Iranian missiles are not cluster municians at all

everyone at the UN has been done with their shit decades ago so idk what they think they'll get them.
Show threadJackie1d ago

@mook

Please please feel bad for German civilians 🥺

Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen the actual modern Germans are very concerned, volkswagen is now helping make parts for the iron dome, don't think that will be much help there
Show threadJackie1d ago
@mook im making fun of how Israel is doing terror bombings and committing a genocide and invading like 3 countries at once
Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen yes i understand lol
Show threadJackie1d ago
@mook the germans never met a Holocaust they didn't like
Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen they really do be tho, i just read about how west germany supplied the components for Saddam Hussein to gas kurds and iranians

truth is that 'denazification' was a myth and and the US heavily utilized former nazis and other allied fascist to build NATO and the post war order
Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen

Do you know about operation Gladio? shits crazy, basically every single post-war european state included secret paramilitaries made up of fascist gangs used to kill communists and serve as 'stay behind units' in case of a Soviet invasion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGHXjO8wHsA
Operation Gladio - Full 1992 documentary BBC

YouTube
Show threadJackie1d ago

@mook sounds about right

America also interfered in Italian politics to stop their communist party from ever winning government.

Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen yes, in several countries 'christian democrats' which still exist in many places were invented to white wash fascists and keep communists out

basically the entire European order has been a US occupation since after the war, there was always a fascist 'deep state' ( this is where the term came from actually, the underlying military dictatorship behind european democracies ) and for almost a century the US has directly intervened in almost every national election everywhere in the world.

Another really good documentary while we're on that topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYrznlDTE_M
Inside The CIA - On Company Business (1980) [COMPLETE] HD

YouTube
Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen what i think is a great irony is that if soviet style communism prevailed against american style capitalism in the last century, it would have just ended up as more efficiently managed version of capitalism like they have in china now

another irony, thinking about how Spain seems like the only European country willing to assert any autonomy against the US/Israel, and that's probably because they were never occupied and rebuilt in america's image, and that fascism was toppled from within rather than from without.
Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen i mean the irony in the first point it was really all so pointless, like with Vietnam or Cuba, the US could have just negotiated with them and they would have been open for business out of economic necessity. The US could simply lift the embargo and that would do more to undermine socialism than any of this coup shit.
Show threadJackie1d ago

@mook

The Soviet style system is a little silly tbh

Show threadJackie1d ago
@mook I would not say the Soviet style system is what we should do.
Show threadJackie1d ago

@mook but even then, I don't think the Soviet Union would have just been "efficient capitalism".

China is like that because of the success of neoliberalism

Show threadJackie1d ago
@mook I think the Soviet Union needed a second revolution tbh
Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen

i mean there was a second revolution in the 20's and the Bolsheviks brutally repressed that, and there were mass uprising in Soviet block countries in the 60's that were brutally repressed, and even the protests in the late 80's that led to the callapse were basically democratic socialist in character, but then Davos and the Clinton Admin had to support the coup de etat of Yeltsin which is how we got Putin.

I think it goes back to Lenin being basically a fanatic and having no conception of political pluralism or democratic process whatever, like had Lenin kept the Constituent Assembly and so not brutally repressed the SR's and Menshavicks, even if it was a sham and toothless parliament that were give some mechanism to channel popular resentment, and so they could have reformed and addressed issues. But the leadership was so extremely centralized, and the economy was so bureaucratic that it just couldn't adapt.

Then again Vietnam or China or Cuba don't really have these same problems, so whose to say, if Communists in Italy took over i doubt it would be rigidly Stalinist, probably Eurocoms would split with the Soviets over some bullshit.
Show threadJackie
@mook lenin had some good ideas, but ultimately he fell prey to the same thing Robespierre did
Mar 27 at 12:44pmWeb
Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen what? being a fuckin dick?
Show threadJackie1d ago
@mook I mean, I like his criticism of imperialism.
Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen he just stole that from Bukharin https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1917/imperial/

lenin's intro here actually applies to a lot of the faux anti-imperialists who defend one imperialist against another
Nikolai Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy

Show threadJackie1d ago
@mook I mean, lenin was a fucking jerk, and did a lot of bad things. I don't idolize the man
Show threadJackie1d ago
@mook but he's better than, say, George Washington or something
Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen i think if it wasn't for Lenin we'd have global communism right now
Show threadJackie1d ago
@mook I heavily disagree
Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen that's cause you haven't read the theory

Read all of this and get back to me https://www.connexions.org/CxArchive/MIA/lenin/works/cw/index.htm
Lenin Collected Works

Volume Index to the Lenin Collected Works

Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen you just don't understand dialectical and historical materialism, comrade, you gotta do a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, begin at the beginning again, one step forward, two steps back, ya know?
Show threadvery normal person1d ago

@burnoutqueen

This Imperialism shit is different yo, it's not like the other capitalism yo, it's the highest stage, the highest stage - Lenin

Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eDOJ4L0Edk
The Big Lebowski - Lenin

YouTube
Show threadJackie1d ago
@mook I don't have the energy for this right now.
Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen there are days when time happens and there are times when days happen
Show threadjohn.brown_typeface1d ago
@mook @burnoutqueen
"There are decades where nothing happens because I don't pay any attention to what the masses are actually doing; and there are weeks where decades happen 'cause we speedrun crushing the proletariat for rising up."
Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@johnbrowntypeface @burnoutqueen

"There are poos where pee happens and there are pees where poo happens." - V. I. Lenin
Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@burnoutqueen Vladimir Illich Ulyanov
Show threadQuasit1d ago
@mook @burnoutqueen
Higher than fascism? Or are fascism and imperialism inextricably intertwined?
Show threadvery normal person1d ago
@Quasit @burnoutqueen

​​ Yes?

i'm making fun of Lenin, i don't think Imperialism is the highest phase of capitalism, i think imperialism is a precondition for the emergence of capitalism to begin with. Lenin assumes a very silly model where first come national economies and then Imperialism, when the world market created by merchantilist empires is what led to the development of wage labour, how else do you get primitive accumulation without Imperialism? A modern reader might interpret this as more of an 'era' of capitalism than a 'stage' but it still doesn't pan out historically, like Finance Capital emerged in the late Middle Ages, prior to wage labour becoming dominant mode of production.

2nd International marxists believed all types of very silly things, most of that 'stageist' shit has been abandoned by marxists, but you can't really understand that book without it

idk if Lenin ever wrote about fascism explicitly, tho the Whites or Black Hundreds were not too different

I tend to think the concept of fascism is overly complicated by people, it's like they assume there's some mysterious extra to what makes someone 'really fascist', but I think fascism was just another word for reaction or counter-revolution or restorationism, which appears with various levels of power or depravity. It isn't a doctrine, or a 'stage' more of a positionality within the social war.

Basically i think fascism is 'capitalism in decay' it's a response to a global crisis, or cluster of crises: in response to the threat posed by socialists, immigration, inequality, etc. the reactionary elements of the bourgeoisie support violent counter revolutionary upstarts to defend class rule against these threats, real or perceived. There are many psychological and cultural factors involved, but that's basically it. The particular content of the reaction, whether they are modernist or anti-modernist, or republican or monarchist or whatever, that's all basically decoration for naked class interests.