this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
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Palestine
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A community for everything related to Palestine and the occupation currently underway by the occupying force known as Israel.
Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. Existence is resistance for Palestinians.
Please refer to Israel as Occupied Palestine, or occupied territories. The IDF is a fascist and ethnonationalist occupying force. Israelis are settlers. We understand however that the imperial narrative (which tries to legitimise Israel) is internalised in the imperial core and slip-ups are naturally expected.
We always take the sides of Palestine and Palestinians and are unapologetic about it. Israel is an occupying power whose "defence force"'s (note the contradiction) sole purpose for existing is to push Palestinians out so they can resettle their rightful land. If you have anything positive to say about Israel we do not care.
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America's weird for never voting 3rd parties, i personally don't care to vote for someone who'll only get 1% in the end, and certainly wouldn't vote for the "lesser evil" as long as i have a choice.
Well, that's an american thing i never understood, i hope that France won't end up as much of a two-party system as the u.s., 🤷
We also get fucked by the Electoral College, so you can win the popular vote and still lose. It's basically legalized gerrymandering to make rural votes count more.
Yeah, it actually really confuses me that people say that your vote matters in the USA. Even if you're fully bought into the system, D's or R's, you can't fucking deny that the Electoral College is gonna do whatever it fucking wants. The electoral college mostly ignores what its people say ( Obviously, they mostly align, but some counties that flipped last election, they decided to ignore that, and some counties didn't flip, and they decided to ignore that too). There were electoral college members that voted third party in Trump vs Clinton. Like what? Talk about a protest vote haha.
Hell, if American Communists could get their act together and just get as many people secretly into the Electoral College as possible, we could totally fucking run a coup in this place ( Okay, okay. Once you become a part of the system, you tend to have a hard time fighting it. So, honestly, that probably wouldn't work).
Faithless electors are weird, because SCOTUS allows states to enforce laws that replace faithless electors, but some states choose to count the vote anyways. It's a whole mess and has its own NATOpedia article.
So, you'd have to get 270 faithless electors consisting only of states that do not void the votes... all for the FBI to assassinate the candidate who meets the constitutional requirements to be president that you've managed to get them all to agree to.
Ah, yeah that's a whole 'nuther problem. Comes after the initial problem of actually getting those 270 in their seats and to vote in unison.
Damn, that's true. so many problems with that idea haha!
The funny part is that in France the capitalist bourgeoise also control the government and just use different mechanisms of power to do so. France, like the rest of Europe, grovels at the will of the American Empire and does exactly what it demands of it.
Jesse, wth are you talking about? Even @[email protected] sounds more coherent than you at this point....
https://lemmy.ml/post/18928441/12863732
I'll agree that the comment above wasn't anti-capitalist enough to be posted here.
Seriously Im confused by the large amount of text, what is this?
If the real problem is only that it is too confusing, if i'm to believe the moderator, then here it is with explanations :
Answer to -6-6-6- about France as a vassal of the 3rd most populated country on Earth, the u.s.a., or, in his words, « France, like the rest of Europe, grovels at the will of the American Empire and does exactly what it demands of it. » :
Oh yeah(, the last paragraphs of https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1823393948775133302 stayed on my mind, and divided we(sterners) will be more easily conquerable), 100%, you won't find many people here to contradict you.
Answer to the rest of -6-6-6-'s answer about the influence of wealth in our society or, in his words, « The funny part is that in France the capitalist bourgeoise also control the government and just use different mechanisms of power to do so. » :
On medias ownership in capitalist-owned countries :
The most obvious is the control of the medias, it'd be different if every single french media was saying that Venezuela is awesome and mocking the awful capitalists for being conspiratorial about the elections of countries they dislike.
Instead, every single french media will underline that venezuelans need to be saved from a tyrant, the same goes for other countries.
That's why american medias could easily make Bernie Sanders president if they changed their definition of "objectivity".
That's why most people never heard of the awesome Jill Stein or other 3rd party candidates, France is obviously no exception with little candidates hardly spoken of.
On preventing citizens to present themselves in an election in capitalist-owned countries :
A less obvious one is that in France we don't even need to explicitly ban political opponents(, awful when it happens in Venezuela, but not in Ecuador or many other countries, they almost succeeded with D.Trump, and apparently succeeded with R.Kennedy), we only have to require candidates to have hundreds of signatures/endorsements from mayors.
Hence, only a handful of candidates manage to get these endorsements, and not only did this number of required signatures went up, but it's not anonymous anymore(, with the possibility of repercussions).
As expected, while anti-Europe or anti-imperialist candidates could have gotten enough signatures in the past(, strangely), they don't anymore(, and even if they did the medias wouldn't talk about such a little candidate, frankly never heard of by people i've spoken to).
Even very large political parties only get their signatures in the last weeks, weird.
My candidate would have been Clara Egger on this list of the citizens who tried to have these signatures, but i've never heard of most of them.
On election fraud in capitalist-owned countries :
And that's not even considering that they may be cheating, which wouldn't surprise me honestly.
Other influences of capitalists :
Obviously it doesn't stop there : you need money in politics, and the thieves/capitalists sponsors don't want 'to give back'/taxes. Medias aren't enough for our oligarchs, they also want control over the education, survey institutes, think tanks, as well as helping our capitalist-owned state in meddling in foreign countries, which is the real crime here i.m.o. : destroy your country if you want, but leave others alone.
Conclusion about elections :
People aren't stupid, on the contrary, but they don't have the time to document themselves, they don't know that we're being manipulated.
Out-of-topic : On Israel and the medias :
I do have to acknowledge that i expected more support for Israel, but the latter only said that it wants to take revenge for the (very partial )revenge taken by palestinians on Oct.7th. Israel tried to argue that it was more than revenge that guided its actions/'useless murders', but the argument of protection wasn't bought by our medias, and since we agreed on our previous western wars that revenge was enough of a motive, Israel thought that it didn't need to do more(, we did pretend that the hostages weren't released because of "Hamas", and not because Israel refused to agree with a permanent ceasefire in exchange).
Still, i expected more support for Israel, not sure if/'how much' it helped in restraining israelis.
Out-of-topic : On the medias and the islamists fighters/separatists/heroes/terrorists/rebels/martyrs/humans/murderers/victims/..{choose your denomination} in western Africa :
A good example of propaganda is that islamists in the Alliance of Sahel States are now progressively painted as the good guys since they're fighting Russia(, even if i don't expect us to go very far in that direction, we didn't talk a lot about them in the past and will continue to do so, but the shift of narrative is very obvious, they're promoted from terrorists to rebels now). Unbelievable i know since we fought them until very recently, and at least as late as president Hollande, but it's similar to what we did with Bin-Laden in Afghanistan against the soviets after all(, or in Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Xinjiang, ..., whatever serves our temporary interest).
To be fair, a reminder that censorship/bias/manipulation isn't only anti-communist, but on both sides of the Overton window(, which doesn't have only two directions b.t.w.) :
And the propaganda isn't only anti-communist, but anti-fascist as well(, the far-right doesn't identify itself with fascism though). Of course, you're not going to like this obvious statement, and rightly state that at least far-right movements are supported by some billionaires, it's just that the censorship&manipulation is directed towards both sides of the Overton window.
A reminder that more direct state censorship is also practiced in western countries :
Then there's also direct state censorship, with so many examples(, "disinformation", anti-"terrorism apologia", "foreign actors", even Rumble has been banned), but oligarch manipulations is probably more influent, not as if it was a competition.
Sure, things could be worse, especially since we still have the Internet(, for now ?), but keeping power isn't that hard to do, even if the global distrust towards (legacy/mainstream )medias is a growing thorn is the side.
Here, i'm trying to add nuances to what i wrote, i guess that i don't have time to really argue on the Internet with people who'd disagree with me, yet the desire is still very much there, i don't like echo chambers :
We'll regret our current republic if times go 't/r'ough, since that usually means a more authoritarian governement.
Without robot-slaves, it'd also seem unavoidable that the wealthier will desire a higher rent to sustain a way of living and live above the peasants, if they need 10 times the peasant's salary to do so, then we'd tend towards 10% of (neo-)nobles and 90% of (neo-)peasants.
It's true that every(?) society of large enough scale was divided between the workers, (the soldiers, the clergy, ...), and the privileged class, who didn't have to work(, except for taking care of h.is.er fortune). One could argue that nobles of the past had more responsabilities than nowadays capitalists(, as well as an even more pronounced inequality in the face of the judicial system), but it'd be more interesting to know if technology will avoid the return to the "natural" order between the laborious class and the noble/annuitant one.
There's a future in which capitalism could still lead to a utopia, e.g. with robot-slaves, that'd make my/our fears wrong :
Despite what i wrote in this comment, better times are ahead, in particular thanks to these "robot-slaves", and while everyone wants more, i don't think we're evil to the point of refusing a mostly labor-free life to every human on earth if we have the capacity to do so.
Capitalism wouldn't announce an horrible future if we can still eat freely, if money/'renting your body/time' stop being a necessity, it could lead to some socialist ideals in a utopia.
I refuse to be cynical to the point of believing that the capitalists' greed would be more important to them than allowing technology to free wo.men from (the loss of their entire lives to )work.s they hate.
Perhaps will i be old enough to see that happening, i don't think that we're evil, and i dare think that nobody is, we could very well be allowed to live in a utopia, they don't hate their population.
Hence, i don't really care of what we're doing in our countries, if capitalists want to stay in power and enjoy their privileges, then so be it.
The solution to our fight against other countries, to our desire of security, to the threat of cultural hegemony, would be to be united in diversity, it's doable&desirable :
What's annoying is refusing to allow/'live with' countries that want to walk a different path, we need this diversity to think ouside the box, if every creation is a little birth then every synthesis is a little death.
We have to cohabitate, and while i'd prefer to live in a communist utopia like everyone on Lemmygrad, i wouldn't want capitalism(, royalism, etc.,) to disappear all over the world, it's their problem, and it's interesting to know how they'll evolve.
The usual counter-argument is that we have to coup/"convert" other countries because it makes us more secure, i don't think that cultural hegemony is the only way to prevent military invasions, and i'd go as far as to say that it's also not the only way to prevent covert operations and foreign propaganda, we need to have rules against them and a way to enforce them.
Capitalists would have to be certain that their privileges wouldn't be overthrtrown by a communist revolution for them to accept socialist countries.
Or perhaps that these "robot-slaves" will make useless this need for a superior monetary/social position, having your basic needs met should be enough for everyone, independent communities with their own rules could flourish in the "land of the free", who knows what the future has in store.
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If the only reason for the moderator to have deleted my comment is that it was confusing h.im.er as said in the modlog, then i hope that these titles quickly written will have solved the problem. If that really was the only motive for deletion.
Oh, i was thinking that the confusion you were alluding to was about the last paragraphs that were added.
It has been deleted but you can still read it in the modlog if you want me to develop 1-2 paragraph.