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An explanation of how the modern Shia identity emerged post-1979 and how a small marginalized community basically became the face of anti-Israel jihad (by LargePenis) (hexbear.net)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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By request of @[email protected] , posting this three-part effortpost to this comm:

The Rise of the Collective Shia Identity: Part One

The year is 1978. Ayatollah Khomeini, the main voice of Shia Islamism has just been expelled from Najaf by Saddam Hussein. Najaf, the capital of Shia Islam and where the biggest Hawzas (Shia Islamic schools) are located, is a hotspot of political repression, executions, and arrests. The main Marja (basically Shia pope), Sayyid Abu Al Qasim Al Khoei is reduced to a strictly religious role, giving rulings about useless things like marriages and inheritance. His predecessor, Sayyid Muhsin Al Hakim, pushed the political buttons too hard with a ruling that deemed communists and Baathists as disbelievers, which made the Iraqi state go crazy and start a huge campaign of repression of anything political from the Shia elite. Khomeini’s development of the concept of Wilayat Al Faqih was very worrying for Baathist Iraq, so he was expelled from Najaf.

Shias in Iraq never got a place post-Sykes-Picot, with the Kingdom of Iraq being dominated by the Sunni Baghdadi elite. The period between 1958-1968 after the revolution was too chaotic and disjointed to produce an elite, with daily conflicts and coup attempts by adventurers with different ideologies. The Baathist period produced a new elite strictly dominated by Sunnis from Salahaddin Province, so the Shias just never got a seat at the table. Two ideologies penetrated the Shia mind, Islamism and Communism. Islamists were concentrated in Karbala and Najaf, two holy cities for Shia Islam. Communists where concentrated in Nasiriyah, Amarah and Basra, cities where poverty was rampant. Islamists were finally organised in the form of the Dawa Party, led by Musa Al Sadr’s cousin Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr. Musa Al Sadr would later rise as the spiritual leader of the Lebanese Shia community. Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr’s works and political activities really annoyed the Iraqi state, so he and his sister were executed by the state in 1980. Most of their followers were executed or exiled. Many of the influential families in Najaf and Karbala had some Persian ancestry, nearly all those families suffered from mass deportations as Saddam’s anti-Persian paranoia grew. The communists suffered from the same fate, with most communists either executed or exiled by the state due to their political activities.

Now we’re done with Iraq, let’s go to Iran. Shia Islamism is dead here too, the Shah’s security services arrests anyone with any political activity. Khomeini was successfully chased out 20 years ago, and there’s no organised political force that can even talk loudly without getting executed. The Shah is at least Shia Muslim on paper, he prays in public once every 10 years, visits the shrines in Qom and Mashhad occasionally, but to everyone with a functioning brain, this man is a disbeliever. There’s something brewing, but let’s wait with that story.

Let’s go to Lebanon. Shias in Lebanon are around half of the Muslim population. It’s hard to get exact numbers, but Shias are around 25% of the total population of the country. The Shia community here also never got a real seat at the table. The president holds most of the power and is always a Maronite. The prime minister gets fired every few weeks, but he’s always a Sunni and does nothing while the Maronite elite is pretending to be French and robbing the country. The speaker of the parliament is Shia, but toilet paper is more useful than that position. Feudalism didn’t really end in the Shia parts of Lebanon, most Shias were farmers who were getting fucked so hard on a daily basis that they didn’t have time to even think about politics. Remember we’re in 1978, where are the Shias in the middle of civil war? The answer is nowhere. The main sides are Maronites vs Sunni Muslims, communists and Palestinians. Shias were not a major factor here. The only notable Shia organization is the Amal Movement, led by Musa Al Sadr. Musa was a charismatic leader who would set the foundations of the modern Shia Lebanese identity, he was respected by all sectors of the cursed Lebanese society and his connections to Iran and Iraq were slowly starting to be important in a regional context. But nothing good lasts, as he was inexplicably disappeared and presumably killed by Gaddafi during a routine visit to Libya in August 1978.

Let’s go to Yemen and the Gulf. In Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Shias were an afterthought, they are 0% of the ruling families and have zero political representation. They’re allowed to do some rituals at home when no one sees, but if you open your mouth in public and say anything Shia Islamist, you’re getting disappeared and your whole family will probably be deported to Iran or something. Shias in Bahrain are the absolute majority and they’re significant minorities in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In Yemen, the Shias are not the same kind of Shia as in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon. The main group of Shia Muslims are either called Jaafari after the theological works of the sixth Shia Imam Jaafar Al Sadiq, or Ithna Ashari (Twelvers) due to their belief in twelve Imams after the Prophet Muhammed, starting with Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib and ending with Imam Muhammed Al Mahdi, also known as the Hidden Imam who according to Shia beliefs will reappear one day and basically set in motion the end of the physical world. The Shia of Yemen are known as Zaydis, after Zayd ibn Jaafar Al Sadiq, who the Zaidis recognized as 7th Imam, while the Twelvers recognized Musa ibn Jaafar Al Sadiq. The Zaidi Imamate in Northern Yemen continued for nearly a thousand years, but it could not withstand the post-WW2 chaos in the region and ended in nearly comic fashion after a coup led by local rivals and involvement from an exiled Iraqi officer. The Zaydi community here in 1978 is in disarray, with many converting to Sunni Islam out of convenience in a new world. There’s no organized Zaydi force or political party, they just farm in the highlands of Northern Yemen and chill out there. It is a fading group, but wait, something just happened in Yemen. Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Zaydi military officer from Sanaa, and one of the great adventurers of the 1900s in the Middle East, just did a military coup and took power in the failing state of North Yemen in July 1978.

How did this defeated religious group go from edges of the region to the dominant group in five countries and a political force that annoys America and Israel? We’ll find out in the next episode as we cover the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the formative value of the Iraq-Iran War, the failed Shaaban Revolution in Iraq, the rise of Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon, and the rise of the Houthi (Ansarallah) movement in Yemen.

The Rise of the Collective Shia Identity: Part Two

We continue the story around 15 years later, we’re now in the early 90s. Three significant events have taken place in the modern Shia story. The first and the most significant is the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the second is the Iraq-Iran War, the third is the formation of Hezbollah in South Lebanon and the real start of the Shia Lebanese story. We have to start with the Islamic Revolution. I won’t go into the details of how the Revolution happened and why it happened, but I will talk about what it meant at the time and what the consequences were. I will sum the events of the Revolution in three sentences. Mass protests break out in Iran against the Shah’s repression and economic inequality, which slowly takes a more Islamist character in opposition to the Shah’s pro-Western secular regime. The Islamization of the protests meant that some sort of spiritual leadership had to rise, Ayatollah Khomeini who was exiled in Paris becomes the spiritual leader and he manages to unify all sectors of the protest movement under his leadership. He then returned to Iran as the unopposed leader of the movement in the ending stage of the revolution and then consolidated the revolution in his vision of the new Iran working under his system of Wilayat al Faqih.

The success of the revolution in Iran led to the formation of the first modern Islamic state which draws its legitimacy from Shia Islam. Sykes-Picot created only kingdoms as in the Gulf and Iraq, and semi-functional weak republics like Syria and Lebanon. The establishment of Islamic Republic was significant on several levels. It was the first popular revolution which established an Islamic Republic, unlike the revolutions in states such as Egypt and Iraq, where military dictatorships were founded instead of the old comprador kingdoms. It also marked the end of nearly 2500 years of hereditary rule in Iran and old Persia. The events of the Islamic Revolution were frightening for the Gulf monarchies and for Iraq, as they realised the threat of Shia Islamism within their borders. One of Khomeini’s first promises after the success of the revolution was exporting the experience to other nations where “disbelievers” were in power and where Shias were barred from participating in controlling their destiny. The first seeds of a “Shia International” were planted by Khomeini very quickly. Shias in Iraq were very emboldened by Khomeini’s success, and political activities by the banned Dawa Party accelerated in late 1979 and early 1980, which ended after the execution of Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr in Iraq in 1980. If you were a Shia Islamist in Iraq in 1975 for example, you had nowhere to go, but if you needed to flee in 1980, you suddenly have a massive Shia neighbour that not only allows you to come as a refugee, but also fully supports your political activities and gives you weapons.

Saddam decided to not wait for the inevitable confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran and started a massive war in late 1980. The Iraq-Iran war is the most important moment in the formation of the “Shia International” and the formation of the first fully ideological generation of young Shias that would later change the world. Literally every single influential Shia character of the last 30 years had some degree of interaction with Ayatollah Khomeini or Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr or fought in the Iraq-Iran War. Qassem Soleimani fought in the war. Hadi Al Ameri, leader of Badr Brigades in Iraq fought in the war. Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah was a 16-year-old student under Al Sadr. The Houthi family lived in Qom in Iran after the revolution. Ali Khamenei was President of Iran during the war. Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis fought in the war. Even current president of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian fought in the war. Abdul Aziz Al Hakim, son of former Shia Grand Marja Muhsin Al Hakim fought in the war and later become president of Iraq for one month under the American occupation. Musa Al Sadr’s niece was married to Khomeini’s son Ahmed and Musa’s son was married to Khomeini’s granddaughter. The war itself was not that eventful, with both sides mostly in deadlock for eight years. The relevant part of the whole war was basically four battles. Iraqi capture of Khorramshahr and then the Iranian liberation of the city. Then the Iranian capture of Al Faw and the Iraqi liberation of the area. The Gulf monarchies went crazy in their support of Saddam during the war and gave him lots of money, mainly because they really wanted the defeat of Iran without shooting a bullet, which reminds us of a certain Ukrainian comedian who is getting duped now in a similar way.

The culture around the war is the most important part in the formation of the modern Shia identity in my opinion. In Christianity, the defining moment for the religion is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which presents Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice of humanity and the image of him bleeding on the cross is etched into the mind of every Christian. For Shia Muslims, the martyrdom of the grandson of Prophet Muhammed Imam Hussain and the wholesale murder of his entire family holds even more emotional value than the crucifixion of Jesus Christ does for Christians, because there’s no happy ending here and no Ascension to the sky. Hussain was slaughtered, his father Ali ibn Abu Talib had his skull shattered while leading morning prayers, and every single Imam was murdered in Shia beliefs. What the Iraq-Iran War did was a complete revival of the tradition of martyrdom in Shia Islam and the commemoration of martyrs became not only just an accepted practice, but also encouraged by the Iranian state. Iranian fighters that were deployed to the front wore headbands with Shia slogans such as “Ya Hussain”, “Ya Zahra” and “Ya Mahdi”, clerics held Qurans over the heads of the fighters when they were boarding trains and trucks to the front, and fighters didn’t only receive combat training at camps before reaching the front, but they also received religious lessons about the sacrifices of Hussain and his family and participated in the first sessions of state-sponsored “Matams” in modern history, where poems about martyrdom were recited while the religious Shia beat their chests. The official “music” of the Iranian state was no longer Googoosh in her skirt performing Persian Pop for the son of the Shah in his birthday party, but it was militarised and Islamised and became stuff like “Karbala Ma Darim” (“Karbala we’re coming”, a reference to the holy city of Karbala) and “Mamad Naboodi Babini” (“Mohammed you didn’t see it”, a reference to an Iranian solider that played a heroic role in the battle of Khorramshahr, but was martyred a few days before the liberation of the city). The names of the streets were changed, the names of metro stations were changed, the names of the city squares were changed. Pahlavi Street became Shahid Bahonar Street, the Tehran Metro now has over 15 stations named after some martyr, mostly from the Iraq-Iran War and the revolution. This complete transformation of Iranian society led to the creation of the concept of the Resistance itself in those years. What is the Iraq-Iran War called in Persian? Difaa e-Muqaddas, Holy Resistance.

Remember that I said that Khomeini wanted to export to revolution to other countries. It did happen, but not fully successfully and not in a conventional manner. The first seeds were of course the Dawa Party movement in Iraq, which we previously mentioned, and it ended with mass executions including the whole leadership. The next organized group was the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by the 2nd generation of the Al Hakim family. The top brass managed to flee to Iran in 1983 and later fought in the Iraq-Iran War on the side of Iran. The rest of the Al Hakim family were brutally executed in 1983 by the Iraqi state, with literal kids getting executed. A very important detail here needs to be mentioned. The Shia Islamist ideology was powerful enough transcend borders here, Sykes-Picot was effectively broken for the third time since the establishment of the Middle East borders. It was broken by the Arabists under Nasser with the United Arab Republic which lasted for five stupid years. And it was broken by Communists who were popping up from Algeria to Oman fighting for each other’s causes. Then it was broken by Shia Islamists under the leadership of Khomeini. It would be broken again in 2013 by Sunni Jihadists fighting for ISIS. Only one of those projects still remains, and it’s Khomeini’s project. The third attempt of Shia Islamist uprising was in 1991, and it was the most successful attempt, but it still failed. The Shaaban Uprising in Iraq lasted for around a month and large sections of the country fell under Shia rebel rule, but Saddam managed to reorganise his army after the massive defeat in Kuwait and crushed the uprising. The sources of the uprising were both expected and unexpected. The Al Hakim family and their newly formed militias breached the Iraq-Iran border and stormed into the country, which was an expected source considering the semi-collapse of the Iraqi state after the withdrawal from Kuwait. The unexpected source came from the Al Thawra (now Sadr City) ghetto in Eastern Baghdad. Another Al Sadr family member, Muhammed Sadiq Al Sadr, had secretly organised his followers and unleashed them in the uprising. His eccentric son Muqtada would later form the Mahdi Army and fight the US during the occupation of Iraq. The uprising failed, but it confirmed how deep the penetration of the pan-Shia Islamist ideology had come in Iraqi minds.

In Bahrain, a Khomeinist group tries a failed coup in 1981. These seeds that were planted would later be the ideological backbone of the Bahraini uprising in 2011, which was mercilessly crushed by Saudi Arabia, but that’s a story for a later episode of this effortpost. In Saudi Arabia, a Shia group called Hezbollah Al Hejaz fought a low-level insurgency against the government and later bombed the Khobar Towers and killed a bunch of US soldiers. Now we have to go to Lebanon, what happened there? Well Israel invaded the country in 1982 and occupied everything up to Beirut. Musa Al Sadr’s group, the Amal Movement was ideologically disoriented and very disorganised following the disappearance of Al Sadr in 1978. The Shias of Lebanon were basically left without competent leadership for four years while Israel quickly the Shia heartland in the South. Enter Khomeini again. Hezbollah was basically founded in Iran, the group doesn’t exist without the efforts of the IRGC in organizing Shia Lebanese leadership from those who had prior connections to Khomeini or Al Sadr. The first real leader of Hezbollah was Sayyid Abbas Al Musawi, who studied under Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr in Najaf, Iraq. Hezbollah’s mission in Lebanon was very simple, follow the ideology of Khomeini, kick out the Israelis, and end the collaborationist South Lebanon Army who formed a fake state that was fully propped up by Tel Aviv. Hezbollah succeeded in all three tasks. Khomeini’s pan-Shia ideology is now the de-facto ideology for Lebanese Shias, Israel would finally be kicked out from Lebanese soil in 2000 after a successful guerilla war, and the SLA was crushed in the 1980s by an alliance of Hezbollah, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Lebanese Communist Party. Sayyid Abbas Musawi was later martyred by an Israeli strike in 1993, and his successor was Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah. In the 1990 Taif Agreement to end the Lebanese Civil War, Hezbollah was the only armed group who did not have to disarm and were allowed to control Shia areas.

Thanks for reading! Next episode, we learn about the Houthis who I was supposed to cover here but I was too lazy. We will also learn about the 2006 Hezbollah defeat of Israel, the Mahdi Army, the Bahraini uprising, and the 2nd shia identity formation post-ISIS.

The Rise of the Collective Shia Identity: Part Three

We move 25 years into the future with part three, we’re now in the period after the defeat in ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the Houthi revolution in Yemen, Hezbollah’s victory against Israel in 2006, and the failure of the Bahraini Uprising in 2011.

We start in Yemen, which was reunited into one state after the end of the Cold War. The first president of the new reunited Yemeni state is no one other than Ali Abdullah Saleh, former president of North Yemen and one of our favourite adventurers like we said earlier. The first real event in the history of Yemen is the start of the 1994 civil war, which ended in a decisive victory for Ali Abdullah Saleh’s Republican forces over the remnants of the South Yemen Communist Party. The republican victory could not be achieved without the strong support by Sunni Jihadist forces who received massive concessions by Saleh in order to secure their support in the war. The growing voice of the hardline Sunni Islamists in Saleh’s government angered the Houthi family, who returned to Yemen from Iran somewhere around reunification, with the aim of reviving the Zaydi traditions that were slowly fading away as Yemen took a more “Sunni” character. It is clear that the Houthis’ stay in Iran led to them being greatly influenced by Khomeini’s pan-Shia ideology, as they founded a youth group called the Believing Youth when they returned to Yemen. The Believing Youth was a loose collection of after-school workshops and summer camps for kids in the mountains of North Yemen, where they would read works by Khomeini, Nasrallah and Al Sadr. The Believing Youth would grow in size, and by the early 00s, their presence would be felt even in Friday prayers in the Grand Mosque of the capital Sanaa. Like a true paranoid Arab government, the Yemeni government would ultimately decide to arrest Hussein Al Houthi, the founder of the BY and brother of the Abdul Malik Al Houthi that we all know and love. The government failed in their attempt to arrest Hussein Al Houthi, who retreated to the mountains of Saada and started a large insurgency again the Yemeni government. He would be killed in late 2004, but a low-level insurgency continued until the Arab Spring hit in 2011.

Yemen had some of the largest protests in the whole region, which turned violent very quickly. The escalation of the protests wasn’t surprising at all, Yemen was the poorest and the least developed Arab nation out of all the relevant ones, and Saleh had been ruling the country in some form for 33 years while achieving literally nothing of note. The Houthis and their supporters would become one of the largest factions against the government in peaceful protest, and later in armed struggle against a government long past its expiry date. After around a year of clashes everywhere in Yemen, Saleh would resign and sign a power transfer agreement in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a place where no real peace has ever been established. An election was held in 2012, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, Saleh’s best friend and former vice president would win the election with 100% of the votes in a real democracy moment. Saleh was there again in Yemen for Hadi’s inauguration. The Houthis, the southern secession movement and the Islamists all rightfully boycotted this sham election. Two years later, the Houthis would launch an offensive from the mountains towards the capital Sanaa and capture the capital very quickly after the collapse of the government forces. The Houthis then absorbed the bulk of the Yemeni Army and essentially became the new government itself, they’re not an armed group anymore, but the Yemeni state itself. When did the Houthis become a real “Shia” force and a part of the Axis of Resistance? Good question. The founding principles of the Believing Youth were explicitly Khomeinist, in response to the gradual Sunnification of the Zaydi Shia Yemenis after the final collapse of the Zaydi Imamate in the 1960s. There’s no proof of direct Iranian involvement in the founding of the group, nor any proof of direct support until the explosion of the conflict after the Arab Spring. Shiaism itself evolved with the absorption of the Houthis into the wider Shia umbrella, as it followed a similar previous step with the absorption of Assad’s Alawite faith into a wider Twelver-adjacent umbrella. The Houthis aren’t Hezbollah, where the founding itself was influenced directly by Iran, but they became closer and closer to Iran as their war with Saudi Arabia started in 2015. Just like the Iraq-Iran War became the origin story of all of the heroes of the new pan-Shia ideology, the Houthi victory in the war against Saudi Arabia and the Arab Alliance became the mythological origin of the first “pan-Shia” generation of Yemen. One such hero is Saleh Al Sammad, the first president of Yemen under Houthi rule, who was killed in a Saudi drone strike back in 2018. He received the Khomeinist martyr treatment, which was a first in Yemen. Shia-style mourning ceremonies have entered the Yemeni mainstream, and celebration of the Prophet’s birthday is now a big day in Yemen, in a clear departure from the hardline Sunni position that forbids that. The Houthis, or Ansarallah as they should be called, are now a fully integrated member of the pan-Shia movement despite not having a direct line back to Khomeini or the Al Sadr family.

We travel to Iraq again now. In 2003, something called the Iraq War, and the American Occupation happens. The Americans basically allow anyone that hates Saddam on their team, so the team that takes over the Iraqi state post-Saddam is a very dysfunctional one where Communists, Khomeinists, Kurdish nationalists, Sunni Muslim Brotherhood members, Liberal CIA assets, and random minority representants were supposed to pretend to play politics while the Americans were robbing the country. There was one crucial group that the Americans missed while building the political playhouse. That group was the Sadrists under the leadership of Muqtada Al Sadr, son of Muhammed Sadiq Al Sadr. The Sadrists split in two sometime in the late 90s, but no one had noticed that under the media suppression in Saddam’s Iraq and the general American disinterest in Iraqi attitudes while they were planning to invade Iraq. One group of Sadrists stayed in the Dawa Party and adopted more Khomeinist and pan-Shia ideas, while poorer Sadrists under Muqtada’s leadership from the slums were more into nationalist and isolationist policies within Iraq’s border. Muqtada’s group would later be called the Sadrist Movement and its military wing, the Mahdi Army, would become the main player in the Iraqi Insurgency against the American occupation and later in the sectarian civil war phase of the occupation. Muqtada’s eccentric behaviour continues to this day and the Sadrists still get themselves into wacky situations, as the group slowly morphs into a cult that finds itself on the fringes of Shiaism itself, but that’s an effortpost for another day. The Iraqi state found itself under pan-Shia Dawa Party rule from 2005 to 2018, but nothing formative happened on a state level, mostly due to the failure of the American occupation and the grave incompetence of the new cast in Iraq. The most notable change during that period was that Iran was slowly becoming the main foreign player in Iraq, after several missteps by the US and their Arab allies. The war against ISIS is when large sections of Iraqi Shia society were absorbed into the Iranian pan-Shia network with the creation of the Hashd Al Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units, or PMU for short). The PMU was essentially Iraq’s own Hezbollah, an explicitly pan-Shia organization that was created with a clear religious background. The creation of the PMU itself came after a ruling from Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, who is the current Grand Marja of the faith. He issued a ruling that called for global Shia jihad against ISIS after the collapse of the Iraqi Army and the fall of large cities such as Mosul, Fallujah and Tikrit into ISIS hands. Iranian government support through the IRGC was open and direct, with PMU head Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis and IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani being on the frontlines together and forming a shared war room. The pan-Shia framework of open commemoration of martyrs with clear religious messaging was fully imported to Iraq and became the dominant ideological marker in the Shia south of Iraq. I remember visiting Baghdad with my wife sometime before Covid and literally every single street in the capital had some pictures of martyrs.

We now move into Lebanon again, where Hezbollah have transformed from a religious militia into the most influential political party in the country. Lebanon after the end of the civil war was dominated politically by the Future Movement, which was founded by liberal Saudi-Lebanese Sunni Muslim businessman Rafic Hariri. Hariri was an interesting character, he moved to Saudi Arabia very early after finishing his university studies in Beirut, and even acquired Saudi citizenship and basically lived as a Saudi for a large part of his life, but he caught the “philanthropic” billionaire bug during the civil war as he realised how much power his money would give him in Lebanon. His companies’ re-built large sections of Beirut after the war, but he was an indecisive Prime Minister and his relationship with the Syrians deteriorated quickly in the mid-00s. Lebanon got rid of the Israeli occupation in the south after Hezbollah’s first victory in 2000, but the Syrian Army still had a presence in Lebanon until 2005. Hariri got assassinated in 2005, most likely by members of Hezbollah who were unhappy with how he’s dealing with the Syrians. What followed is the Cedar Revolution, where thousands of Lebanese civilians protested massively against the cancerous presence of the Syrian Army in Lebanon. I must add a personal anecdote here. As an eight-year-old, I was in Beirut with my family on a long summer holiday in the early 00s. We were in a Kaak (basically Lebanese bagels) shop with my uncle and my young cousins, and the streets were suddenly shut down by armoured trucks. It was the first time my diaspora eyes had seen an army on the streets, so I vividly remember literally being glued to the window of the shop watching the Syrian Army raid a nearby shop while my uncle tried to keep everyone inside until they were finished. A few years later, I learned that they were basically extorting the poor guy, and he refused to pay. Such incidents were very common, and the Syrian presence were viewed very negatively in Lebanon, so it wasn’t surprising that people took the assassination of the most popular guy in Lebanon as the last straw. The Syrians left after the Cedar Revolution, but fumbling Lebanon wasn’t the last big mishap by Assad, and more on that later when we examine Syria’s position in the pan-Shia world.

We move into the 2006 War now. I won’t go into the specifics of the war, but the whole mythology of the war is wildly exaggerated in my opinion. Hezbollah defeated Israel, that is certain, but it wasn’t an extremely bloody war for both sides. The number of dead Israeli civilians + IDF soldiers in that war was less than 500, and the number of dead Hezbollah fighters + Lebanese civilians was less than 2000. Israel’s mass bombing of Beirut generated no tangible military advantage and just made people hate them more. The current war has been bloodier on both sides already, and the number of displaced civilians in Israel + Lebanon is already way bigger and more permanent. The real victory was that Hezbollah once again confirmed that they’re the most successful anti-Israel side in history, and with that also confirmed that there is an existential conflict between the Axis of Resistance and Israel. A decisive Israeli victory like 1967 could not happen anymore. Egypt in the leadership of the anti-Israel axis had lacked the ideological discipline and were simply way too incompetent to accomplish a permanent victory over Israel. Arabism as the leading anti-Israel ideology was not radical enough to defeat the crazy settler-colonial state. But the pan-Shia Khomeinism was definitely radical enough to create groups that Israel simply can’t defeat. Hamas can still not be defeated, Hezbollah can’t be defeated, and Ansarallah couldn’t be defeated despite the combined naval power of the West. What 2006 did was confirm that the strongest and most disciplined anti-Israel ideology could be found in the pan-Shia Hezbollah. The psychological victory was enormous, and it couldn’t be achieved without the expertise and the weaponry of Iran, once more confirming the strength and unity of the Axis in the face of Israeli aggression. Hezbollah emerged out of the war as a heroic group across the Arab and Islamic worlds, and Hezbollah was probably the most popular army in the Arab World until the Syrian Civil War, but more on that later when we cover Syria.

We end with a little failure of the pan-Shia revolution. Bahrain had some of the most intense protests during the Arab Spring, with the whole island being crippled by Shia protestors demanding an end of the Bahraini Monarchy and the abdication of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. Bahrain is very special demographically and also occupies a special place in the pan-Shia heart. The majority of the population are Shia Muslim, and a large part of that Shia majority are people with Persian ancestry, but Shias have literally 0% real representation in Bahraini politics. If you visit an Ashura mourning ceremony in Bahrain even today, half of the service will probably be in Persian. Some of the most famous recited poems were written by Bahraini Shias and many of the highly regarded reciters are also Bahraini. Hussein Al Akraf would recite back in 2005 the famous poem of “In you Khomeini, the world taught me how to be free” on the anniversary of Khomeini’s death. A few years later he would recite another famous poem where the chorus were “You oppressed us with how oppressive you were, and you’re always against us in opposition, O government”. The government of Bahrain basically let Shia Bahraini do the religious stuff with all its political undertones freely in order to sort of ease the pressure, but that wildly backfired when the Shias were all charged up with pan-Shia ideology and poured out in the streets with Iranian flags and pictures of Khamenei and Khomeini. The pan-Shia connection into Bahrain is Sheikh Isa Qassim, who also studied under Al Sadr in Iraq and became the highest ranked Shia cleric in Bahrain after his return to Bahrain from Iran in the 90s. The revolution took the famous Pearl Roundabout as HQ, and things quickly snowballed into a situation where either the Royal Family abdicates due to the enormous pressure, or things could snowball into armed conflict very soon if Iran “accidentally” ships some weapons through the sea. The king instead begged some support from Saudi Arabia who were fighting their own Shia insurgency in Awamiya and Qatif in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis completely crushed the uprising through excessive violence and massive arrest campaigns. Influential Khomeinist voices like the previously mentioned Al Akraf and Isa Qassim fled the country, and even mere participators in the protests like football legend Alaa Hubail were arrested and imprisoned for years. Historic Shia mosques were razed and destroyed, thousands were arrested and tortured in prison, and nearly a thousand fled through Iran and had their citizenships revoked. The iconic Pearl Roundabout itself was bulldozed by the government. My commentary on Bahrain is “don’t do protests if you don’t have guns and an implicit threat of violence”.

That's the end of part three, hope you enjoyed reading this. We have one big and two small stories saved up for part four. The big one about Syria's alliance with Iran from the Hafez Al Assad days, then the Syrian Civil War and Iran's entry there. One small story will be about pan-Shia movement's religious business in non-Shia countries such as Nigeria and Egypt. The last story will be about the failures of the movement in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

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"Separation of Power", or "Checks and Balances": Why North Korea is a dictatorship and the United States isn't (hexbear.net)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

49 comments fedilink

Let me know if there are any more suggestions. Regarding certain role changes, please suggest a way to make the changes accessible. I'm not going to add any more walls of text, so the changes should be user friendly and understandable without the text.

Before 14-03-2024 7AM

Before 13-03-2024 11AM

Original

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I'm starting to hear a depressingly familiar sentiment from older millennials who have struggled (hexbear.net)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3564123

Much like a lot of Gen X, some of the older Millennials in my life (particularly the white working professionals) are parroting the age old mantra of "I don't care about passing my skills on to the younger generations or helping those in need, no one ever helped me in my life.". My response is always "That's not a good thing!" because I never know what to say. Debate is not my strength.

My working class grandparents were never like this. They lived through the great depression and two wars and never wanted anyone to suffer as much as they did. I miss them and their kindness dearly. It's only from boomers and younger that I've seen this attitude. Capitalism is crushing our instincts as a social species. If we can't stand on the shoulders of giants... well then we will stop advancing as a species. We will stagnate and go extinct because the challenges we face now need all of us. It goes against everything that is human to be this alienated and antagonistic to one another. Particularly frightening is the hatred and contempt modern society has towards children.

This is not going to end well.

I appreciate all the people here, whether you're 20 or 60, for not becoming the thing that hurt you. We need people with a soul more than ever.

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Til en proletar "anti-engelsk" / Towards a Proletarian "Anti-English" (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink

Norsk

Motstand til engelsk i Norge har vært i stor grad et høyrepolitisk fenomen i min opplevelse. Norske kommunister som jeg har møtt har ikke engasjert seg i språkpolitikk i det hele tatt — kommunister i Norge bruker lånord fra engelsk, og snakker engelsk, like ofte som liberalister, og har i stor grad de samme meningene om språkpolitikk som liberalister. Jeg ville da sagt at språkpolitikk er en stor blindsone for norske kommunister.

Denne situasjonen minner meg om Storbritannia, der motstand til EU ble så sterkt tilknyttet reaksjonær høyrepolitikk at progressive briter nektet å høre på venstrepolitisk kritikk av EU: "de onde toskene hater EU, derfor burde jeg støtte EU!" — man har vel bare så mye energi man kan bruke på å gruble over forskjellige problemer i verden, så det blir kanskje litt lett å falle inni denne tankemåten, ikke sant? Og siden motstanderne til engelsk i Norge er som oftest overdramatiske, rare, reaksjonære, eller "anti-moro", så blir det lett for progressive nordmenn å anta at reaksjonisme er et grunnleggende trekk til motstand til engelsk i Norge, og at denne posisjonen er derfor ikke verdt å vurdere om man ønsker å være progressiv. "Det kommer nye lånord, men sånn har det alltid vært," sier de.

For å komme til en proletar anti-engelsk må vi først utforske den borgerlige anti-engelsken. Jeg har lest en debattartikkel skrevet av en student som heter Elias Kristofer Sætermo, som jeg tror representerer den typiske borgerlige anti-engelsken — artikkelen var jo lagt ut på VGs nettside, og VG er en borgerlig avis. Gjennom hele artikkelen tar Sætermo for gitt at Norge og norsk identitet må eksistere, at "norske verdier" både finnes og er gode, og at disse blir "truet" av "ytre krefter" og at vi må "sikre en fremtid for det norske nasjonale prosjektet" (æsj!), og Sætermo oppfører seg nesten som om kulturell endring er i seg selv dårlig, om disse endringene er uten "norske røtter" (hva enn dette skal bety). Sætermos anti-engelsk har ganske klart mye tilfelles med reaksjonær motstand til innvandring, inkluderende sammenligningen med urfolk. Sætermo har tydeligvis merket overfloden av engelsk i vårt samfunn, men, uten kunnskapen for en god analyse, har tatt bekymringene sine i en reaksjonær nasjonalistisk retning.

Det interessante som Sætermo sier er at "norsk språk må fremmes i underholdning, i musikken og på sosiale medier" og at "et språk er et sosialt lim".

Hmm. Jeg selv ville sagt at Norge som en nasjon, samt norsk identitet, er begge borgerlige oppfinnelser, og at "norske verdier" er da borgerlige verdier — til og med det norske språket selv er en borgerlig oppfinnelse! Vi har i Norge mange forskjellige dialekter som kan være vanskelige å forstå, og om man kan norsk kan man vel forstå svensk og dansk til en grad også. Man kunne da like godt argumentert at trøndersk og sørlandsk er forskjellige språk, eller at norsk og svensk er det samme språket. Så "et sosialt lim" er nettopp hva norsk er: vi ser dialektnivellering i Norge fordi folk flytter rundt for arbeid, fordi mediene i Norge fremmer noen dialekter og gjør narr av andre, og fordi skriftspråkene selv representerer og fremmer "normative" norsker. Hva er da "tradisjonelt" med norsk?

Det norske borgerskapet vil forminske regionale identiteter for å fremme deres idé om en felles norskhet — dette er formålet til dialektnivellering. Det norske borgerskapet vil at vi skal snakke norsk og se på og høre på og lese deres borgerlige medier, slik at de kan propagandisere oss til å ha en norsk borgerlig mentalitet. Så dette er hva det norske borgerskapet frykter når folk er i dag så hektet på seppolandske filmer og kjendiser: "du er hva du spiser", og når folk sluker opp borgerlig seppolandsk kultur, så vil de få en borgerlig seppolandsk mentalitet — akkurat som når de sluker opp borgerlig norsk kultur, så får de en borgerlig norsk mentalitet. At kapitalistene innen Norges kulturindustri klager om at deres industri er ikke lønnsom nok, og fremstiller dette som "en eksistensiell trussel imot Norge", er da ikke så annerledes fra seppolandske kapitalister innen kabel-TV sin alarmisme om Internett og streaming: arbeidernes fokus på nasjonal-borgerlige medier er en nokså stor del av det nasjonale borgerskapets kontroll over landets arbeidere.

Men vi må fortsatt huske at det var det norske borgerskapet selv som valgte å la engelsk bli til en samfunnsmakt. Dette vil si at det norske borgerskapet tjener fra nettopp det som de klager om. Hvordan?

Første punkt: Vestlig identitet

Det norske borgerskapet kan bare beskytte dets imperiale interesser gjennom allianse med andre land i den imperiale kjernen. Dette nødvendiggjør en fellesidentitet for arbeidere i den imperiale kjernen, altså et fellesspråk og en felleskultur for hele denne alliansen. Denne "hvite" eller "vestlige" identiteten står da i konflikt med den "norske" identiteten: det norske borgerskapets frykt er at de mister kontroll over arbeidernes identitet, og norsk identitet blir da erstattet i sin helhet av den imperiale identiteten. Det norske borgerskapet må da holde disse to identitetene i en balanse. Denne balansen blir holdt gjennom bl.a. alarmisme om "amerikanisering".

Andre punkt: Mobilitet

Når nordmenn kan engelsk, kan norske bedrifter lettere etablere seg og markedsføre og spre propaganda i andre land, sende nordmenn til andre land for arbeid og få nordmenn til å jobbe sammen med folk fra andre land. Med andre ord, imperialismen med dens evig økonomisk utvidelse til andre land krever at medarbeidere kan snakke sammen, at sjefen kan snakke sammen med arbeidere, at kapitalister kan snakke sammen med hverandre, osv. Det som gjør det norske borgerskapet nervøs er at, når enn de selv tjener fra at nordmenn kan engelsk, så tjener Seppoland mer fra at deres språk har blitt verdensspråket. Det norske borgerskapet ønsker da selvfølgelig å maksimere makten som de får fra engelsk, og forminske makten som Seppoland får tilbake.

Tredje punkt: Eksklusjon

Norsk imperialisme er ikke bare bygget på at norske kapitalister utnytter resurser og arbeidere i utlandet, men at utenlandske arbeidere blir importert til Norge — arbeidere kjøpt gjennom investeringer i krig og krise i disse fremmede landene. Verdien stjelt gjennom super-utnyttelsen av innvandrer-arbeidere i Norge betaler for kjøpet av lokalfødte arbeideres lojalitet til kapitalisme. Denne ordningen krever at kapitalistene skaper en skille mellom "innvandrere" og "lokalfødte". Én måte å skape denne skillen er gjennom språk: å kunne norsk påfører mange privilegier, mest merkverdig er at naturalisering i Norge krever at man har nådd B1-nivå (tidligere A2-nivå) i muntlig norsk. At kravet ble hevd viser at det norske borgerskapet justerer naturaliseringssystemet når enn dette trengs.

Når nordmenn kan engelsk, skaper dette enda mer fleksibilitet for å utelukke innvandrere fra privilegier. Kassedamen snakker engelsk til deg, fordi du er en "utlending"; bussjåføren snakker engelsk til deg, fordi du er en "utlending". Arbeidsplassen din snakker engelsk, fordi du kan ikke skaffe arbeid hos en norsktalende arbeidsplass. Du søker opp norske artister, men halvparten synger på engelsk. Du ser på TV men mer enn halvparten er seppolandske filmer og serier. Når evnen din til å lære norsk gjennom poppkultur er forminsket, når stedet der du bruker stordelen av dagen din snakker engelsk, og når hvem enn du snakker til kan når som helst bytte til engelsk, får du rett og slett færre sjanser til å forbedre norsken din — som betyr at du er mer avhengig av klasserommet. Og klasserommet, selvfølgelig, finnes ikke for å lære deg norsk så raskt som mulig: klasserommet finnes for å lære deg norsk så raskt som er nyttig for borgerskapet, dette vil si, sakte nok at du vil ikke forstyrre balansen mellom "innvandrere" og "lokalfødte".

Konklusjon

Det engelske språket i Norge fremmer imperialisme. Nekter man engelsk og det språkets innflytelse på norsk, så nekter man "vestlig" identitet; nekter man dette, så nekter man profitt for borgerskapet, både i Norge og i Seppoland; nekter man dette, så nekter man utnyttelsen av innvandrere. Samtidig må vi nekte det borgerlige monopolet over kultur og språk i Norge, som har alltid vært fienden til Norges mangfold, og som har som sitt formål å fremme kollaborasjon med borgerskapet.

Når nordmenn lærer om kommunisme fra Adam Tahir, er dette ikke internasjonalisme, men heller importeringen av pseudovenstre hjerneormer fra en bosettingskoloni med liten sjanse for ekte klassebevissthet. Når nordmenn lærer om kommunisme men kan ikke si hva noen av Marx sine idéer heter på norsk, er dette ikke internasjonalisme, det er kulturimperialisme i venstrepolitiske klær. Den ekte internasjonalismen vil si at engelsktalende vil lære seg norsk, om de vokste ikke opp tospråklig, og vil oversette deres tekster fra engelsk til norsk. Internasjonalisme handler om samarbeid mellom land, og ikke at ett lands språk og kultur skal dominere over andre.

English

Opposition to English in Norway has been largely a right-wing phenomenon in my experience. Norwegian communists I've met have not been at all interested in language politics — they use loanwords from English and speak English just as often as liberals, and have largely the same views on language politics as liberals. I would then say that language politics is a big blind zone for Norwegian communists.

This situation reminds me of the UK, where opposition to the EU became so closely associated with right-wing reactionism that progressive Britons refused to listen to left-wing critiques of the EU: "The evil dipshits hate the EU, so I should support the EU!" — one has after all only so much energy to expend on contemplating the world's many problems, so it's perhaps a bit easy to fall into this type of rationale, right? And since the opponents of the English language in Norway are most often over-dramatic, weird, reactionary, or "anti-fun", it becomes easy for progressive Norwegians to assume that reactionism is an inherent characteristic of opposition to English in Norway, and that this position is therefore not worth considering if one wishes to be progressive. "There will be new loanwords, but that's how it's always been," they'll say.

To arrive at a proletarian anti-English we must first explore the bourgeois anti-English. I have read an opinion piece written by a student named Elias Kristofer Sætermo, that I think represents the typical bourgeois anti-English — the piece was after all posted on VG's website, and VG is a bourgeois publication. Throughout the whole article Sætermo takes for granted that Norway and Norwegian identity must exist, that "Norwegian values" both exist and are good, and that these are "threatened" by "external forces" and we must "secure a future for the Norwegian national project" (ew!), and Sætermo acts almost as if cultural change is in itself a bad thing, if these changes are without "Norwegian roots" (whatever this is supposed to mean). Sætermo's anti-English clearly has much in common with reactionary opposition to immigration, including the comparison with Native peoples. Sætermo has clearly noticed the flood of English in our society but, lacking the knowledge for a good analysis, has taken his worries in a reactionary nationalist direction.

The interesting thing that Sætermo says is that "the Norwegian language must be promoted in entertainment, in music and on social media" and that "a language is a social glue".

Hmm. I would myself say that Norway as a nation, and Norwegian identity, are both bourgeois inventions, and that "Norwegian values" are then bourgeois values — even the Norwegian language itself is a bourgeois invention! We have in Norway many different dialects that can be difficult to understand, and Norwegian speakers generally have the ability to understand some amount of Swedish and Danish as well. One could then just as well argue that Trønder and Southern Norwegian are different languages, or that Norwegian and Swedish are the same language. So a "social glue" is exactly what Norwegian is: we see dialect leveling in Norway because people move around for work, because media in Norway promotes some dialects and makes fun of others, and because the written languages themselves represent and promote "normative" Norwegians. What is then "traditional" about Norwegian?

The Norwegian bourgeoisie wishes to minimize regional identities to promote their idea of a common Norwegianness — this is the aim of dialect leveling. The Norwegian bourgeoisie wants us to speak Norwegian and watch and listen to and read bourgeois media, such that they can propagandize us to have a Norwegian bourgeois mentality. So this is what the Norwegian bourgeoisie fears when people are hooked on Seppolandic movies and celebrities: "you are what you eat," and when people eat up bourgeois Seppolandic culture, they will get a bourgeois Seppolandic mentality — just like when they eat up bourgeois Norwegian culture, they will get a bourgeois Norwegian mentality. That the capitalists of Norway's cultural industry complain that their industry is not profitable enough, and present this fact as "an existential threat against Norway", is then not so different from Seppolandic cable TV capitalists' alarmism about the Internet and streaming: the workers' focus on national bourgeois media is a pretty big part of the national bourgeoisie's control over the country's workers.

But we must still remember that it was the Norwegian bourgeoisie itself that chose to let English become a societal power. This is to say that the Norwegian bourgeoisie profits from exactly the same thing that they complain about. How can this be?

First point: Western identity

The Norwegian bourgeoisie can only protect its imperial interests through alliance with other countries in the imperial core. This necessitates a common identity for workers in the imperial core, i.e. a common language and common culture for the whole alliance. This "white" or "Western" identity then stands in conflict with the "Norwegian" identity: the Norwegian bourgeoisie's fear is that they will lose control over the workers' identity, and Norwegian identity will then be replaced in its entirety by the imperial identity. The Norwegian bourgeoisie must then keep these two identities in balance. This balance is kept through alarmism about "Americanization" among other things.

Second point: Mobility

When Norwegians can speak English, Norwegian business can more easily establish themselves and do marketing and spread propaganda in foreign countries, send Norwegians to foreign countries for work and get Norwegians to work with people from foreign countries. In other words, imperialism with its eternal economic expansion into foreign countries requires that coworkers can communicate, that the boss can talk to the workers, that capitalists can communicate with one another, etc. What makes the Norwegian bourgeoisie nervous is that whenever they profit from Norwegians' proficiency in English, Seppoland profits more from that their language is the world language. The Norwegian bourgeoisie of course wishes then to maximize the power they get from English and minimize the power that Seppoland gets in return.

Third point: Exclusion

Norwegian imperialism is not only built on Norwegian capitalists exploiting resources and workers in foreign countries, but that foreign workers get imported to Norway — workers bought through investments in war and crisis in these foreign countries. The value stolen through the super-exploitation of migrant workers in Norway pays for the purchase of local-born workers' loyalty to capitalism. This arrangement requires that the capitalists create a divide between "immigrants" and "locals". One way to create this divide is through language: speaking Norwegian grants many privileges, most notably that naturalization in Norway requires a B1 (formerly A2) in spoken Norwegian. That the requirement was raised shows that the Norwegian bourgeoisie adjusts the naturalization system whenever this is necessary.

When Norwegians speak English, this creates even more flexibility for excluding immigrants from privileges. The cashier speaks English to you because you are a "foreigner". The bus driver speaks English to you because you are a "foreigner". Your workplace speaks English because you can't get a job at a Norwegian-speaking workplace. You look up Norwegian musicians but half of them sing in English. You watch TV but more than half is Seppolandic movies and shows. When your ability to learn Norwegian through pop culture is minimized, when the place where you spend the largest share of your day speaks English, and when whoever you talk to can switch to English at any point, you quite simply get fewer chances to improve your Norwegian — which makes you more dependent on the classroom. And the classroom, of course, does not exist to teach you Norwegian as quickly as possible: the classroom exists to teach you Norwegian as quickly as is useful for the bourgeoisie, which is to say, slowly enough that you don't disturb the balance between "immigrants" and "locals".

Conclusion

The English language in Norway promotes imperialism. If you reject English and its influence on Norwegian, you reject "Western" identity; if you reject this, you reject profits for the bourgeoisie in both Norway and Seppoland; if you reject this, you reject the exploitation of immigrants. Simultaneously we must reject the bourgeois monopoly over culture and language in Norway, which has always been the enemy of Norway's diversity, and has as its aim to further class collaborationism.

When Norwegians learn about communism from Adam Tahir, this is not internationalism, this is the importation of pseudo-left brainworms from a settler colony with little chance for true class consciousness. When Norwegians learn about communism but cannot say what any of Marx's ideas are called in Norwegian, this is not internationalism, this is cultural imperialism in leftist clothes. The real internationalism would be for Anglophones to learn Norwegian, if they didn't grow up bilingual, and translating their texts from English to Norwegian. Internationalism is about cooperation between countries, not that one country's language and culture should dominate over others.

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corruption is loosely defined in capitalism, and comparisons with socialism are inherently unfair (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3444788

TL;DR: actions that society considers morally reprehensible and "corrupt" when carried out by public institutions, are seen as normal and acceptable when it comes to private institutions, so traditional comparisons of "corruption" between capitalism and socialism put socialism at a disadvantage by definition.

1- Let us imagine that I'm a business owner, and I decide to carry out some renovations in my building. I decide that, since I have a reliable friend who owns a renovations company, I will simply carry out the renovation with their company. We sign a contract, the renovation is carried out, the work gets done, the other company gets paid. Nothing out of the norm here.

Now let us imagine the case in which this first business, instead of being owned by me privately, is socialized and owned by the state: a public entity. Some renovations are necessary, so I, as a public administrator, decide to order the renovation to be carried out by a friend... except that's corruption! I need to organize an auction and order impartially from a variety of firms, by lowest expense and by highest level of satisfaction! What is normal and approved in capitalism, is unthinkable and in most instances illegal under the principles of public ownership!

2- Another example: I'm a worker in a private company. One year, the CEO that is put in place by the stockholders, happens to be a former employer of mine, and because they know me and my performance, I get promoted. Meritocracy! Some people even call that "networking", which is a necessary social skill in capitalism and highly regarded in wealthy circles.

Now let us imagine the case of a soviet workplace, in which I'm a worker with excellent performance. The union-approved party member in charge at this time, sees my performance and my contributions and involvement with the union and party, and decides to offer me a promotion. Oh, what a blatant case of dictatorial bureaucracies, in which only party members giving each other favours get to rise to the top! What an unfair and corrupt system!

Whenever we hear these claims of "corruption", "bureaucracy" and such from socialism, please make it a point to compare these events with similar instances in capitalism, and how normalized and approved by the social majority they are. Why do we only expect transparency, efficiency and impartiality from public institutions, but normalize the opposite behaviours in capitalist enterprises?

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korea vs the american occupation zone (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

47 comments fedilink

*cross-posted from lemmy.ml

sources

on the dprk

right to housing and retirement, multi-party peoples democracy: constitution of the dprk
power checks and balances: infographic: why the us is a dictatorship and the dprk isnt.
welfare economy: prolewiki article about the dprk, section on economy (that whole article is generally really great and debunks a lot of western propaganda)
democratic since inception: kim byong sik. "modern korea: the socialist north, revolutionary perspectives in the south, and unification." 1970.

on the rok

poverty, slums: prolewiki-article on the term "hell josoen"
political prisoners: western source confirming the existence of the national security law, stephen gowans (2018). patriots, traitors and empires: the story of koreas struggle for freedom: 'the political partition of korea' (pp. 115–116) , and the prolewiki-article on the rok, sections "national security law" and "unconverted long-term prisoners"
widespread corruption: a lot of reporting can be found on this topic, even in western media. lets just take the government-sanctioned prostitution and sex trafficking as an example, though there is other equally horrific stuff, including the usage of disabled people as agricultural slaves.
worlds second highest suicide rate: katrin park (2021-10-5). "south korea is no country for young people" doreign policy.
tyrannical history: prolewiki-article on the rok, section "history" warning: very bleak read

debunking of anticipated liberal comments

norf korea no food

malnutrition was in fact a thing during the 1990s, though the portrayals of this time period, the so called "arduous march" in westen media are usually exaggerated. mostly omitted by american-allied media is the fact that those difficulties were caused by the inhumane and terrorist western sanctions and embargo against the dprk, as well as the cia-backed illegal and undemocratic dissolution of the ussr. nowadays problems regarding food security have pretty much ceased to exist in the country.

hermit kingdom

first of all, the term itself is nothing but racist, orientalist nonsense, but whatever... the dprk is in no way a kingdom, its democratic model of governance, while obviously imperfect and worthy of (constructive) criticism, is explained in the constitution and infographic linked above.

furthermore, the county is neither "reclusive", nor internationally isolated. the dprk enjoys very friendly relations with fellow aes china, cuba, laos and vietnam, as well as anti-imperialist nations like iran, russia and palestine. the reason you dont hear much from inside the country is due to western press not wanting to report the truth.

no lights, no electricity

the famous "no lights"-photo is a photoshopped fake initially circulated by a southern far-right tabloid. here is an actual image of east asia, including the korean peninsula:

haircut police

unlike south korea, the dprk never had such policies. here is a very entertaining video debunking that myth.

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We need a new version of The Anarchist Cookbook for a modern left. It would be self advertising and steal membership directly from the alt-right pipeline. (hexbear.net)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

5 comments fedilink

We need to make a new version of the anarchist's cookbook that still tells you how to do "naughty" things as a hook, while discouraging adventure-time and guiding young susceptable edgeladies and edgelads toward collective and organized action in support of their CLASS INTERESTS instead of whatever racist incel shit the right is selling them. It would have new sections about hacking, drones, gardening in urban settings, and primers on other things that work better for group organizations and recruitment than the original was geared towards.

It could be primarily distributed in a portable executable which is self encrypting for plausible deniability (I'm thinking something like tomb if you're familiar) and when your password is entered, lets you access the contents like a Wikipedia page.

People will read it because it makes them feel like a naughty hackerman/woman, but will be getting a healthy dose of communism on every page. I would say "without being too larpy" but I think maximum LARP is appropriate for this.

It would also greatly improve our ability to covertly fedposting by alluding to sections of the book withoutdiscussing exact plans. We can talk about things broadly and deniably while literally being on the same page.

Thoughts? Criticism?

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The New Atlas / Brian Berletic is a hard-right, reactionary source [cw: some antisemism] (hexbear.net)

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

15 comments fedilink

I sometimes see New Atlas videos popping up, and I have often needed to have the same struggle session with the poster of the video. So my problem, being an old fuck that I am, have been following Brian since the late naughts. Back in 2009-ish, being an internet nerd meant Indymedia, Blogger, and Geocities created webpages. He was a pretty open reactionary before Twitter and YouTube became big. He tied his wagon pretty solidly to Inforwars around 2010.

Brian Berletic used to go by the name of Tony Cartalucci. The original Tony C used to write HEAPS for Infowars [example] [example - he cites Paul Joseph Watson] [example]. Sadly the Wayback Machine doesn't have a search name feature, but you can still find Infowars when you type his name in. The message was very globalist, George Soros kinda stuff.

I hear you saying, hey ButtBidet, that was in 2012. Maybe the guy has grown in the last twelve years. Hey, many of us started out as libs.

To which I answer: with the name change to Brian Berletic, he's distanced himself from the Infowars garbage and gotten a better message, but he's still far right as fuck.

For example, he did the antivax thing hard during 2020-21. He's done a lot of climate change skepticism pretty recently. Lastly, he's very clearly pro-monarchy.

I see that he writes from the maybe Russian funded journal NEO (according to Wikipedia which I'm too lazy to verify). Honestly I couldn't care less if Russia is funding him, but I just assume that he's an intellectual for hire.

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self criticism (and some criticism) on the topic of attitudes towards the west (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

1 comments fedilink

ive recently made an extremely cringe comment in a thread about the electoral victory of the (even more) extreme right in germany which i since removed. in that comment i accused the german people of being intrinsically inclined towards fascism and even called for measures of ethnic cleansing against that population, including children and elderly people. this statement was inhumane, destructive and just generally disgusting and inexcusable. so what led me to do such a thing?

(again, i want to reiterate that im in no way trying to excuse or justify my behavior in any way)

like with virtually all of the population of the former soviet union, my family history is defined by great tragedy that we suffered from the hands of the fascist invaders. many of my ancestors served in the red army (even the non-communist ones) and others still were part of one of the population groups that the hitlerites were brutally murdering in concentration camps. how this lead to a dramatic surge in germanophobic sentiment after 1941 is obvious.

but here is the thing: the direct victims of those crimes, those heroic men and women of the victorious red army that marched all the way to berlin, mostly dindt really fester this kind of sentiment. contrary to western anti-communist propaganda narrative they behaved themselves with almost unbelievable levels of humanitarianism, empathy and generosity towards german civilians, organizing soup kitchens and free abortions for women raped by western soldiers. i believe that the reason for this is that unlike reactionary ideas our worldview is humanitarian above anything else. i lost sight of that fact and this led me to say things that i now regret. and i believe that sadly this is a somewhat systemic issue within the global anti-imperialist left:

many people within the cprf, myself sometimes regrettably including, say death to america but actually mean death to americans. this tendency is unjust, as our hatred as anti-colonialists should be directed towards the genocidal american regime and not the population that also suffers from its governments vile actions. in leftist online spaces there are emerging similarly wrong viewpoints like people taking the unlimited genocide-meme way to seriously or even posting "apology forms" to vile figures like henry morgenthau. a user on lemmygrad recently stated that he would be fine with the west being "left to fester in its own fascism" and that antifascists should simply emigrate to china (i hope i dont have to explain the classist underpinnings of such views). a different person on that same instance speculated in all seriousness a few months ago, that westerners have a "racist gene" that makes them more inclined towards white supremacism.

such thinking led many western users, who form a majority on the english-speaking web, to engage in excessive self-flagellation, decrying their own cultures as inherently inferior and barbaric, denouncing even the most unproblematic of aspects like cuisine. those people should take a look at the gdr and ask themselves wether that government was trying to destroy german culture.

comrades! lets not loose ourselves to the darkness of racial and petty-nationalist hatred! justice for the criminal regimes? yes! reeducation for the propagandized? absolutely! but ultimately progress and socialism for ALL of humankind.

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On upvotes and likes (requested that I put this here, a short effortpost for your enjoyment) (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

the way I see it - "upvotes," "likes" etc are just a digital form of the verbal validation someone would get irl. Like if you told a joke, people would laugh, smile. If you made a good point, people would nod, say "uh huh" or something. A thread would look pretty weird if someone wrote something funny and there were like 30 people underneath going "lol" and "haha" so that validation is replaced with likes and upvotes.

People absolutely get too caught up with how many internet points they get, but idk I don't see that obsession as fundamentally different from being obsessed with social acceptance in general. We all have a desire to fit in and idk, I think it has the same root causes as someone who gets too caught up with trying to be funny irl or something. It's something we all have to work on, whether online or irl.

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I have an idea for a weekly thread (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink

I was thinking, we have a bunch of weekly megathreads that cover certain topics like trans megas, em poc megas, news megas, a reading club, etc

It got me thinking, what if we had another mega that gave people weekly organising and unionising tips? Like every week they could highlight a good leftist org or union and give people some basic tips on how to do some praxis and strengthen the western left.

I want to do it myself, but I don't know much about the subject myself, and I already have university assignments sapping me of my effort for that kind of thing.

But I just thought it was a good idea, and if anyone has the time and energy to make a weekly org thread, I say go for it.

Especially because recently liberals have been going "There is no alternative to voting, how do you possibly plan to get anything done?" we can say "this."

A lot of libs don't know how to organise or fall into despair when they realise the system is rigged because they don't see a way out. We can show them how organised leftists have done it in the past and what orgs to trust. Give people some hope.

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If liberals wanted to beat the right, they could do so very easily. (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

8 comments fedilink

It might sound silly but I honestly believe that the Democrats insistence on being civil with the right is the biggest thing holding them back to the point of self-sabotage.

Kamala, Biden, whatever could have got up on stage and mocked the shit out of them. "People can't even afford homes anymore and the right want you to care about what a cartoon M&M is wearing? You want to vote for that joke? You think those people are going to help you pay the bills? No, they're too busy tweeting about Potato Head dolls. 'I can't pay the bills but at least Elon turned the pistol emoji back into a real gun!' pathetic!"

Of course we know why they won't, because they believe half the dumb shit the right do, and because they aren't trying to win over the public, they're trying to win over rich donors, all of whom are economically right at the least.

So we get "I want to reach across the isles." civility towards the right and mild empty promises towards the public (barely do that anymore)

Anyway, fuck liberals for letting the GOP win time and time again. Their weakness towards the right proves that they have no interest protecting the marginalised groups that rely on them. They only people they have to blame when they lose are themselves.

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On Bodybuilding (a response to a moderated thread) (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

15 comments fedilink

I thought this was still worth posting:

I've lifted on and off since high school. I hit my 1/2/3/4 and beyond and continue to maintain my membership in the 1000lb club. My clean and jerk was higher than Arnold's ever was because I never learned I wasn't supposed to be able to do it. I did team sports and XC in high school. I primarily focus on combat sports these days. People seethe when I get their head in the clinch in muay thai. All this to say that I have a really good working relationship with my fitness. I don't think anybody ever quite hit the nail on the head when it comes to the downsides of body building as a primary pursuit as this guy, Braden Wellman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BhlgWZz7_w

Bodybuilding is a silly and selfish thing to put the glut of your focus into. ESPECIALLY if you don't like it. Vanity is not fulfillment. The reality of vanity is bringing your own cake to birthday parties (with no allergies), declining going out with friends because of your sleep schedule, you can't track your macros at the local pub, alcohol inhibits muscle growth, or white knuckling through shit sleep for an early workout. "I'm sorry your mother is mad at me, babe. I know that this food is something you've eaten for generations for celebrations, but I'm having chicken and rice again instead." Couple that with the Instagram game (which absolutely trickles down into your fitness forum) with photoshop, steroids, anglefraud, perfect lighting, etc. and it effects you.

There's nothing quite as ubiquitous as lifting as a means of finding affection. You could probably nick a couple rightoids from the gym for leftist causes if you explained alienation & atomization in an engaging way. They probably think socialism is when the government pays for Ozempic and takes 30% of your gains to give to people who watch Desperate Housewives. If you put dedicated gym goers in a society that isn't plagued by forever wars, where their extended family doesn't have 5 vets with PTSD, 8 people who can't afford healthcare, an upbringing defined by their parents' work stress and instead had a walkable city, nutritious food, and things to do, I bet 85% of them will find something else to focus on other than maintaining <10%BF.

Could many of us stand to be more active? We're on an internet forum, there's no doubt! It would not only be good for the body, but for the mind. But would there be diminishing returns? Not only would there be, it could leave you worse off than when you started if you obsess over it. Hiking is a beautiful thing that doesn't give you an aesthetic body. Traditional martial arts have a rich history and lore, but doesn't help you in the street fight they're always droning on and on about. Combat sports are the most fun thing I've ever done, but I get hit in the head, my joints hurt, and it's not anabolic. Yoga could help you with a bad back or a lack of mindfulness. Aerial sports/pole dancing will attract their ire despite being badass and thrilling. Regular dancing is the most consistent anti-depressant activity[1], but invaded by those same people trying to get female affection while they learn how to talk to a woman for 4 minutes for their progressive overload. Triathalons are. Swords are fucking sick whether it's fencing, kendo, HEMA, or LARPing.

The fash are obsessed with aesthetics. It's no wonder they'd be willing to do all the legwork it takes to be the one that stands above the others (for their body). That's their whole shtick. The difference is that I don't look down on someone for going to the party, eating a slice of cake, finding someone cute, falling in love by accident, and realizing it doesn't work 3 years later. I think for every 1 person who has truly made something special out of their life with aesthetics, there are 9 other people who scrubbed away magic and social fulfillment from their living. I think, for many people, they'd be better off really engaging with themselves and interrogating why what they have and who they are isn't enough. Maybe they'd realize that aesthetics aren't everything and a better future is possible.

TL;DR: Exercise is only as useful as it is liberating. If you like bodybuilding, you should continue, but if the sacrifice isn't worth it, then you'd make a rational decision to avoid it, likely in exchange for a different type of physical activity.

[1]https://www.leafie.co.uk/news/dancing-best-exercise-treating-depression-study/

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Reading Settlers and The Counter Revolution of 1776 shows how exploiting black ppl allows inter class solidarity within white people (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

6 comments fedilink

Like no white proletariat developed because there really wasn't a white proletariat. At least a sizable one for a significant period of time. The worst jobs went to (usually) black slaves. White labour either costed a lot more, or griped with over exertion as non whipped people tended to do. Putting white people as labourers tended to import a lot of the class problems of the mother country. As said in Counter Revolution of 1776:

For the absence of Africans would serve to allow class and ethnic tensions among Europeans to fester, replicating Europe on the mainland, which was not exactly the goal of many colonizers. Banning Africans would mean that Europeans would have to perform tasks they might not otherwise, while being bossed—perhaps menaced—by other Europeans. Adding enslaved Africans, on the other hand, meant that brute agricultural labor could be assigned to the degraded dark folk, which would boost certain Europeans up the class ladder and enrich others.

Whiteness afaik wasn't a common term before slavery. Europe before 1700 was filled with divisive hatreds between countries and religions. The English feared the Spanish and the Irish. Protestants despised Catholics. Whiteness was designed to create an artificial solidarity against the slaves who were, in many places, a majority and a real threat to the settlers of an area. Wrote Dr. Horne:

Then there was the developing notion of “whiteness,” smoothing tensions between and among people hailing from the “old” continent, which was propelled by the need for European unity to confront raging Africans and indigenes: this, inter alia, served to unite settlers in North America with what otherwise might have been their French and Spanish antagonists, laying the basis for a kind of democratic advance, as represented in the freedom of religion in the emergent U.S. Constitution.

I read this thinking about how European whites more feel a sense of class conflict compared to settler countries where it's been hidden for centuries. Or at least until recently as fascism has been rearing its head. White solidarity, and I assume a social pact, has reduced a lot of class antagonisms in settler countries, especially as non whites are often exploited harder.

BTW, if you're not yet a "read Settlers" person, I'm not saying that you white worker are not exploited. This is especially true now as Western hegemony is failing and internal exploitation is increasing. Maybe you're like me, had working class parents who did well because they were white after WW2, and you're struggling but doing better than other marginalised people.

Sorry to make you all read my book report. It helps to remember what I read.

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Hey libs, If the Dems aren't going to take the election seriously, why should we? (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

7 comments fedilink

Biden is now kissing the ass of Trump and crying about his ear booboo. Basically spitting in the face of every marginalised group that will suffer under Trump.

If the Dems aren't going to take serious measures to protect us, why should we vote for them?

Why should we vote for people who are going to feed us to the wolves?

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I've noticed a lot of libs around me are finally realising that the Dems are fash (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

2 comments fedilink

With the libs in my life, the reaction to Trump being shot at has been "It's a shame they missed."

They have been hearing that Trump is a threat to democracy for the last 8 years, so hearing the so-called opposition to Trump suddenly support him has made them go "Huh?" and you can tell they're getting frustrated with them.

Now would be a good time to remind the anti-Trump people in your life that the Dems/Labour clearly won't protect them from Trump and fascism, and that an alternative exists.

The status quo is losing it's appeal. The important thing is to make sure people don't fall into the nihilist trend of "Both sides suck, there is nothing we can do. The world is terrible." A better way does exist and it will win. communism-will-win

People need guidance right now and communism can provide that.

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What do you think the neoliberal leaders and media would be saying if the attempt had actually succeeded? (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

7 comments fedilink

Their response to this has been hilarious. I don't think they realise how fucking crooked they sound (or don't care?) when they pretend Trump getting a hole in his ear is a bad thing.

Like, my brother's in Christ, you have been saying this man is a threat to our Democracy. You repeatedly have failed to stop him. He is one of the most openly hated people on Earth and yet here you are telling people that you're horrified that his ear got a booboo. You sit there pretending to be anti-violence when YOUR OWN COUNTRY HAS BEEN PROTESTING YOUR FUNDING OF VIOLENCE IN GAZA.

It's like the Dems are doing everything in their power to remind voters "Don't bother voting for us, we won't protect you and we will lie about literally everything."

If Trump wins it will be 100% the Dems fault.

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Focusing on Biden's age is distracting from the fact that the Democrats are funding the genocide of Palestinians (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

2 comments fedilink

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2968910

As well as the other evils the right-wing Democrats have been doing. Even if Biden was young, there are more important things that would keep decent people from voting for him.

Funding overseas fascists and funding genocide.

Failing to protect abortion.

Failing to protect Trans rights.

Failing to protect the poor and allowing rent and basic living costs to sky rocket.

Failing to make a meaningful impact on climate change.

Failing to end predatory student loans.

Failing to enact universal healthcare.

Failing to handle Trump and the GOP in a meaningful way.

Working with the fascist GOP and "reaching across the isle" to the far-right.

Strong arming 'allies' and interfering with their sovereignty.

Failing to close the concentration camps at the boarder

Failing to properly lockdown against COVID and allowing the pandemic to continue to spread, mutate and kill millions and cripple millions more for life.

And much more.

Biden and the rest of the right-wing Democrats are just a big of a threat to democracy as Trump and the GOP. The Biden regimes refusal to enact the things the people voted him in for, as well as his prioritising of the wishes of the donor class over the wishes of the public show that the American plutocracy has serious corruption in both major parties that can't simply be voted away.

Blue MAGAs refusal to acknowledge this, and insistence on voting in a system that does not care about their vote is nothing short of cowardice. They are afraid of what living in a system where democracy has little meaning requires from them to defeat.

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An Introduction to Queer Theory: "The Beast in the Closet" by Eve Sedgwick (ereserve.library.utah.edu)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

0 comments fedilink

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2886858

I want to share with you all an essay that has been particularly influential on my way of thinking, kind of a skeleton key for how I think about a lot of issues of surrounding male sexuality, and one that might also serve as an entry point into people’s individual inquiries into theory generally or queer theory more specifically.

I encourage you to read the whole thing if you’re at all interested, but this is a work of literary theory. Sedgwick is interested in analyzing the literature of a time in which the conceptualization of homosexuality was changing, and drawing conclusions from them. It’s all great stuff, but I understand not everyone here may find extended analyses of Thackery and Henry James to be their cup of tea, so I’m going to restrict myself to glossing the first section which summarizes most of the key theoretical concepts that she uses in her analysis.

Sedgwick starts off by discussing the work of Alan Bray in order to situate the historical perception of homosexuality in England. Prior to the 19th Century, homophobia was intense, but also theologized, a manifestation of the ultimate disorder and the Antichrist, but simultaneously not something highly relevant to people’s everyday lives: “sodomy was … not an explanation that sprang easily to mind for those sounds from the bed next to one’s own – or even for the pleasure of one’s own bed” (Sedgwick 184). This began to change as the eighteenth century gave way to the 19th as a much more secular and psychologized homophobia began to develop. Readers of Foucault will note that he makes a very similar argument in The History of Sexuality, and indeed Sedgwick references him later in the essay.

This shift coincided with new kinds of persecutions. Gay men had long been subject to “‘pogrom’-like” legal persecutions, which had a disproportionate effect due to their random nature, but now, with this new secular homophobia, all men, whether gay or not, became unable to determine whether their bonds with other men were free of any homosexuality. Thus this relatively small-scale legal violence could now have an effect that ramified out through society at large. Sedgwick calls this “homosexual panic”: “The most private, psychologized form in which many … western men experience their vulnerability to the social pressure of homophobic blackmail” (185). It is precisely because what is “homosexual” as a concept is arbitrary and forever shifting, unable to be pinned down, that a man can never be totally certain that he is clear of it and the consequences that come from being labeled with it. This is particularly true in the 19th century because “the paths of male entitlement required certain intense male bonds that were not readily distinguishable from the most reprobated bonds” (185). On one hand, society virtually mandated intense male bonds (boarding schools, the military, etc.), but on the other hand, absolutely forbade that these bonds cross over into homosexuality, ensuring continual anxiety on the part of men about their relationships transgression this invisible and constantly shifting boundary: “In these institutions, where men’s manipulability and their potential for violence are at the highest possible premium, the prescription of the most intimate male bonding and the proscription of (the remarkably cognate) ‘homosexuality’ are both stronger than in civilian society–are, in fact, close to absolute” (186).

If you’ve ever wondered why many all-male institutions (sports, the military, etc.) are on one hand virulently heterosexual and homophobic, yet, on the other hand, homoerotic or in some undefinable sense “gay,” this is why. These institutions mandate close bonds while absolutely forbidding them from being erotic in nature, in a way that casts a constant shadow of homosexuality over them. In turn, these institutions and the individuals involved must be at pains to constantly assert their heterosexuality to the extent that it in turn calls their straightness into question. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” All male relationships stand under the shadow of homosexuality by their very nature. The desire for intimacy between men, whether enforced or not, is always under the shadow of the prohibition of becoming too close. Meanwhile the constantly shifting and arbitrary nature of “homosexuality” keeps men from becoming to comfortable that they are safely outside boundaries of the dreaded gayness. Is wearing your hair long gay? Maybe! Dressing nice? Maybe! Washing your ass? Maybe! Having sex with a woman? Quite possibly! Who knows? Paradoxically it is only the openly homosexual man that is free of this double bind.

This essay is particularly influential in queer literary theory, because it provides a framework for understanding the queerness inherent in texts that are not explicitly gay. Wherever men are, homosexuality follows them, relentlessly, inescapably. Those characters, good friends, is it truly totally platonic? Those two enemies whose hate for one another consumes them, say Batman and Joker, is there not something a bit erotic about their all-consuming obsession for each other? The domain of queer theory, then, is not merely the ghetto of officially queer texts, but rather everywhere. The very act of censoring, silencing and excising homosexuality from art only ensures that it is paradoxically ever present and inescapable, and this is true of the world, not only of the text.

I’ve long been interested in trying to expose people to a broader conception of theory on here (I’ve been" threatening to write an essay on what "The Death of the Author actually says for a long, long time ). If this stuff is interesting to you, let me know.

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Civilization is such a funny word (hexbear.net)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

10 comments fedilink

It gets bandied about as though it's in contrast to nature, separate from it. Like, "I'd take civilization over nature any day; there's lions and tigers and bears out there!" As if we left evolution, red in tooth and claw, behind. There's a reason Marx and Darwin are contemporaries.

I'd like to here propose a distinction; a difference in kind and scale. There's Generational Evolution -- Darwin outlined this while sketching finches and pinning insects to corkboards. It's slow. Generations upon generations, infinitesimally small changes seeping through populations bit by bit. He described it as "survival of the fittest" but I think "perpetuation of the first thing that just so happens to work" better captures it.

And then there's Behavioral Evolution. If the first sort of evolution was slow, this one is a lightning-strike. Genetic Evolution needs a bottleneck to up the pace - needs to crawl right up next to extinction for a new trait to propagate in only a lifetime or two. We, on the other hand, just need to talk to each other. We learn. Our behavior changes at the rate we allow it to.

Of course, it's not as if we're no longer subject to that older sort of evolution. Genes still do their thing - but, again, that wheel turns slow. It's got a great and terrible momentum. We don't harness it. Not this century, or the next. Hell, probably not even this millennium. We have a much more attainable goal - harnessing Behavioral Evolution.

At present, we use words like "civilization" as though we already have. As though we're not still stuck perpetuating the first thing that just so happens to work. As though liberal-democracy nation-states were some deliberate design and not just classes of people acting out of material self-interest, reacting to others doing the same, enriching themselves via the latest scheme that happens to work. It's funny; here in the US, the people who deny evolution and the people who champion market economics have such a broad overlap.

this, I believe, is how we frame the struggle of the 21st century. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the evolution of class struggles." Communism is the belief, the dream, of putting consciousness in the driver's seat. Of making dialog the defining evolutionary pressure, rather than a mere component.

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Rant: I am tired of people being so vague and weaselly when they speak on geopolitics... (hexbear.net)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink

It'd be fine and understandable if we're talking to the average person, but to anyone with some political knowledge, who willingly say things like this... it's less forgivable

Especially when they speak of two or more entities in a conflict, on the same footing... when the power between is asymmetrical

For example: When you say nationalism, do you mean national chauvinism (nationalism at the expense of neighbors; rightist) or national liberation (nationalism to liberate the many, or just an ethnic group; leftst)?

When you say criticism of {insert anti-west, if not socialist nation}'s government is banned in a nation, do you mean constructive criticism or regime change rhetoric?

When you say dictatorship in a world, the dictatorship of fucking what... no man rules alone... is that of the capitalists, the feudal lords, the proletariat? Baby-brained dickhead... you could just think of, idk, some random political movement and that's it

Like Idk... the Schiller institute ruling Belarus or something... then we can pretend you actually have a clue about the damn country

And lastly, but most recently, 'both sides badism'

I swear, this is the last resort pipeline libs go to, when even their western allies are reprehensible as fuck...

For example:

When you say both sides have committed atrocities in Israel-Gaza war, with Israel undoubtedly causing disproportionate series of massacres against Gazans, in their war against guerillas.

Yet you can't apply saying the same courtesy to the Russo-Ukraine War... even though the morality of war between them is more comparable... relatively

Honestly, fuck you...

And don't get me started about how you can just label your enemies Hamas, and that's the end of the argument

Also, fuck western-funded NGOs, may NED's HQ in Washington DC be bombed, Eglin Air Base nuked...

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Hexbear's Guide to Free Software, Avoiding Algorithms, etc. (Unofficial, Subject to Change) (hexbear.net)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

4 comments fedilink

Many of you may or may not wonder what software to use. People may provide walls of text as a response, but you may just want something to reference without having to look into how the software works. I hope this can be that reference for all of you and anybody else who stumbles upon it. This is up for discussion and change, but I hope this can be a good baseline, as I myself have been making the changes to FOSS for a long time now, and it would be a good idea to have a recommended software/services page on Hexbear.

(The [*] marks the better option)

Workstations:

OS: Linux, I reccomend Fedora with GNOME (for a new, but efficient and simple feel) or KDE (similar to Windows with more customization), but I know some people like Mint for new users. Install as much software as possible on flatpaks.

For maximum anonimity and safety, use Tails. Runs on USB, wipes data when removed.

Browser: Firefox with Arkenfox, Tor Browser (For reliable anonimity; DO NOT ADD EXTENSIONS TO TOR BROWSER)
Browser Extensions: Ublock Origin (add Adguard URL Tracking Protection and Easylist Cookies blocklists), Libredirect.
Office Suite: Libreoffice, OnlyOffice
Password Management: Secrets on GNOME, KeepassDX on KDE. DO NOT REUSE PASSWORDS OR IGNORE THIS STEP!!!
Music Downloading: Nicotine+ (Soulseek Client), make sure to use VPN
Music Listening: Gnome Music (GNOME), Elisa (KDE)
Network Permissions: Flatseal on GNOME, System Settings on KDE (search for "flatpak").
BitTorrent: Fragments (GNOME), Qbittorrent(KDE)

Mobile Devices:

Phone: Google Pixel + Graphene OS*, Divest OS
Browser: Vanadium*(Only on GrapheneOS), Mulch, Tor Browser* (For reliable anonimity; DO NOT ADD EXTENSIONS TO TOR BROWSER)

Mull can also be a good browser option with better content blocking. It is also not chromium, which while avoiding the monopoly, does leave it without site isolation (security feature) like other firefox mobile browsers.

App Stores: Fdroid Basic*, Aurora Store (Google Play replacement, use as needed)
Password Management: Keepass DX, DO NOT REUSE PASSWORDS OR IGNORE THIS STEP!!!
2-Factor Authentication: Aegis (Android, 6 digit codes), Hardware Keys ($$$). SMS Verification is better than nothing, but avoid it if you can. DO NOT USE GOOGLE AUTHENTICATOR OR MICROSOFT EQUIVALENT
Music Streaming: Harmony Music
Music Listening: Auxio, Fossify Music
Network Permission: Graphene OS is the only OS that has this functionality, find it in permissions settings.
Camera: Graphene OS Secure Camera*, OpenCamera
Notes/To Do: Fossify Notes
Weather: Breezy Weather (Fdroid Version)
Navigation: Organic Maps
Voice Recordings: Fossify Voice Recorder
Keyboard: Helioboard
Lemmy: Jerboa
Youtube Front End: Libretube, Poketube (Web App)

Proprietary Apps (Social Media, Banking, etc.) are best used as Web Apps, as privacy and security benefit from the browser sandboxing.

General:

Search Engine: DuckDuckGo (more consistent, proprietary), SearXNG (open-source, less consistent).
Chats:
- Large Groups (Like Discord, DO NOT USE DISCORD): Jami, Matrix
- Small Groups/Individuals: Briar* (only on Android), Signal (Struggle Session on Signal, I know there might be something wrong but at the same time Signal seems to encrypt everything)
Email: Proton Mail + SimpleLogin Aliasing, try to avoid email as much as possible, Chat options are more private and secure.
File Sharing and Syncing: Syncthing, but don't forget that you can directly transfer files from devices with usb-c and usb-a cables.
File Storage: Store files locally, sync between devices with Syncthing as needed. If you really need cloud storage, use Proton Drive.
Password Management: Bitwarden, more convinient than keepass, while eliminating the risk of losing the file or having to manually sync. Only downside is that data is stored on their servers if not self-hosting, meaning it's a bit more vulnerable to data breaches.
VPN: Proton VPN for free, keep an account for each device as the free tier is limited to one device, Mullvad VPN* at a premium for reduced hassle and faster speeds(5 Euros per month)
Social Media: Cut down on big social media as much as possible. Relocate to the fediverse, and be careful with what you post, it's still public. Do not post too much identifiable information, do not dox yourself.
Front Ends: Invidious (Youtube), Poketube (Youtube), Redlib (Reddit), and many others for a ton of different websites, all avaliable with the libredirect extension. I feel like the "datura.network" are pretty private and reliable, with a rotating IP to bypass blockage.

Got a lot of my info from here privacyguides.org, though some of this is based on my own experiences and suspicions.

If anything can be added, let me know! Love you all meow-hug

UPDATE: I'm bad at titles, so that's up for a struggle session.

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Friends Don't Let Friends Use Discord (archive.is)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

72 comments fedilink

TL;DR Discord loves to present itself as a company run by a few gamers just like you. The service aggressively advertises itself as "for gamers" with the hope that this "reputation" alone will propel Discord to the top. This has worked really well. The Discord team has refused, however, on multiple occasions to take certain steps to protect their userbase, described in more detail above such as adoption of E2E encryption or going open source. Instead, the Discord team states clearly in their privacy policy that they will gladly hoard a plethora of data about their users indefinitely, loosely claiming to only delete it when its no longer needed. The data they collect and store includes (but is not limited to) full chat logs, all chat media, a list of who you chat with, email address, IP address, device ID, behavioral analysis, activity tracking on the service, pulling info from social media accounts you link, and much more as stated above and in their Privacy Policy. Discord shares this same data with all of its partners, affiliates, agents, and "Related Companies" while lazily instructing you to check their privacy policy to find out what happened to your information, as its no longer any concern to Discord. In addition, Discord goes further to say "Developers using our SDK or API will have access to their end users’ information, including message content, message metadata, and voice metadata". Their very vague "information" wording allows Discord to send whatever they please while, of course, leaving it up to you to go check their privacy policy and figure out just where and to who Discord sloppily throws your data around. Discord continues to show little to no progress or effort in considering open source code, strong end-to-end encryption adoption, or even something as simple as allowing the deletion of an old account. It is important to note that while Discord allows the "deactivation" of an account, their support team will happily inform you that they do not delete your data and your account cannot be deleted. This data is again stored for an indefinite period of time.

Discord is proprietary spyware. Using it means endorsing and legitimizing it.

Discord relies on its reputation to lure its victims. Despite just starting out as a way for freeze-gamer to mingle in chatrooms and VoIP rooms, Discord has now expanded to any sort of purpose, even extending to schools where students will use Discord for clubs as well as online projects where communication is done over the platform.

The reliance on Discord is dangerous. Any thing you type or do in this program is recorded for the highest bidder (that be your government or private data brokers). The interface and UX is designed to keep you in the app for as long as possible.

There's no way to "smartly" or "responsibly" use Discord. One way or another, Discord will extract value from you. It's not just about you, but about everyone who uses the platform.

Solutions

There are no "alternatives" to Discord. I'm not going to try to fool you by saying there's a magic bullet to defeat Discord's presence in western society (other than socialism and gamer-gulag ). But that doesn't mean there aren't ways to help.

Matrix: A decentralized messaging protocol. It supports video conferencing on its main instance as well as support for the Discord "Server" functionality. Easiest solution for a drop-in replacement.
IRC: The one that came before Discord, community networks can be used if you need to communicate and is just as secure as Discord (public chat rooms with zero end-to-end encryption besides TLS)
GNU Jami: If there was a magic bullet, this would be it. Completely decentralized, peer-to-peer messaging network that is device based. It is a GNU package, possibly the most guarantee for freedom you can get in this world. The team is small, but if you need somewhere to host your leftist activities that will require more than a court order (or a simple bribe) to de-anonymize by state and non-state (those funded by other states) actors then this is it.

Conclusion

This is a post for self crit. If the service is free of charge, then you're the product. Any leftist should take steps to eliminate their dependency on Discord and proprietary messaging programs. Also any leftist should spread this message and inform others about the risks of using proprietary software.

We should also take Discord as a lesson in how to identify the dangers of proprietary programs and why it could make us vulnerable to abuse (which as we know in a capitalist society, is coming one way or the other). Discord isn't the lone offender, but an example of how nonfree software will always pose a threat to a free and democratic society and only benefits the bourgeoisie.

Let this be the last thing I have to say about this accursed program

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Avoid the liberal tendency to blame a single "bad guy" for systemic failures. Israel was doing genocide long before Netanyahu was in charge. (hexbear.net)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

29 comments fedilink

You could get rid of both Biden and Trump, whoever replaced them would be beholden to the same imperial corporate interests and be just as vile with their policies.

You could do Putin or Zelenskyy in, and another capitalist oligarch would just take their places.

If Netanyahu disappeared tomorrow, Israel has plenty of genocidal politicians ready to fill his boots.

The real world isn't a Marvel movie, there is no single "ultimate bad guy" to rally against. The entire systems of these places need to be overcome.

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The internet has become nearly impossible to use for information. (hexbear.net)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

61 comments fedilink

I need to write a zoology paper on bugs

All search results are for pest control businesses or are AI generated garbage that have wrong information.

Yes, the internet always had problems, but I cannot stress how much worse it has gotten for information over the last ten years.

I used to be able to search a species and get scientific papers or at least articles that referenced scientific papers in the results. None of that anymore. All search results are for someone trying to sell you something, and articles are regurgitated AI monstrosities that waffle on with no real information and no references. If your search even manages to direct you to news articles every news site will have identical, poorly written tabloid hidden behind a paywall. All of it useless for even the most basic academic research.

I literally can't do my job if every search result for species identification is behind a paywall, or an AI generated image of a bug that doesn't really exist.

It's no longer the information age. But not because of Trumpism and other things liberal whine about, it's because capitalism has hollowed out the internet into a husk of what it was meant to be.

I literally had to go and buy an expensive field guide from a museum to finish this paper. I haven't had to do that before.