Annoying internet arguments aside, the people on the ground in the core also face the most expansive and advanced police state mankind has created yet. This makes doing anything close to truly subversive impossible without extreme precautions. Some Ferguson organizers dying (being murdered imo) comes to mind.
there were several post george floyd executions as well
can you link me to any reporting on that? I haven't read anything specifically but I believe it.
I'll have to do some research but the killing of Daunte Wright was sus and I think there was another Fed style execution of a blm guy out west around the same period
I searched Ferguson and got some stuff about BLM protests in reaction to the murder of an 18 year old. Was there something more recent or was this what you were referring to?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/puzzling-number-men-tied-ferguson-protests-have-died-n984261
yes the shooting of Michael Brown from 10 years ago. Weird to type out, goddamn
Two young men were found dead inside torched cars
Ah yes, a very normal and non-suspicious death that happens normally
No witnesses, no suspects. No motive could possibly be speculated!
found dead inside torched cars
Ah yes, a very normal and non-suspicious death that happens normally
Obviously not at all in this case, but it is normal for a certain car manufacturer 
I was extremely polite in that lemm.ee thread, admitted we could stand to tone it down a bit, even called out a rude post from one of our own, and I only got hostility from them in response. There's literally nothing we can do to not be called wreckers 
I feel like we need an independent thought alarm emoji
You're not wrong but I'm surprised it was an online forum thing that made you realize this
It hurts me a billion times more hearing absurd anti-communist and reactionary statements irl
It's frustrating, I agree. But "shitposting leftie site interacts with some other echo chambers for a week and has some non-constructive disagreements" is not really a datum from which to draw any wider conclusions.
Personally, I've seen at least five users on separate occasions ask questions in good faith and concede points. If anything I've been surprised by some of the positive responses to our community, rather than being 100% rebuffed from the get-go.
Yeah sometimes I'll see you guys engage with one of these people politely and informatively and they just go "UGH, can we defederate from Hexbear please? This brigading, trolling and propaganda is annoying.😤💅"
But I've also seen a couple come to us because "I wanted to see what you were about and you weren't as bad as people were saying."
Eh, this take is axiomatically unacceptable to me. Regardless of how absurd and hopeless it feels like achieving our aims in Western 'democracies' (and boy howdy does it feel absurd and hopeless), the abandonment of it is a tacit admission that billions of people are gonna need to die in rather catastrophic fashions before we get anywhere. Which, like I said, is a no go for me.
I always think of that Camus bit. One must imagine sysiphus happy. The prospect of revolution in the core is 100% absurd, but what the fuck else you gonna do? Give up?
Those people don't really believe in anything, when the US states department dumps Ukraine and moves on to other imperial projects they'll shift their whole "belief system" right along with it
In a years time you'll see these very same people begin concern trolling about the bad behavior of Ukrainian refugees, they'll start using words like "ungrateful", "authoritarian" and "mentally colonized by ruzzia"
But you're right there is no hope in the north until climate change begins wrecking property values in significant numbers
The industrial and revolutionary fulcrum of the world lies in the global south
There's a reason so many people believed the Iraq war lies. Propaganda works. Then and now.
Eh, I heard someone who visited Cuba being told that the US has a lot of revolutionary potential by Cuban communists so
That’s why we have an obligation to educate Cuban communists on this matter, because they haven’t spent enough time on Internet forums to have a proper understanding
They may have a lifetime of practice defending their revolution, but nothing compares to the horrors of the posting wars.
This is the attitude to have. Anything else is defeatist.
There is always "we can't do a revolution here but we can funnel resources to where a revolution could succeed" but that's an edge case and I agree with the sentiment.
IDK where I land between genuinely thinking a revolution will ever happen in the imperial core (at least in a meaningful amount of time before it all collapses due to climate change) but I think it's also possible to think, "We might never see a revolution here, but we can do our best to lay the groundwork for one and seed enough class consciousness as to prevent further US imperialist interventionism" which is different to defeatism IMO. Not that revolutionary defeatism doesn't also have its place.
They're so wholesome
It's important to remember that the Settlers critique of the U.S. is not shared by AES states.
I agree that the most revolutionary potential lies in the global south. Hopefully, more gains can be made through partnerships with China, particularly as the US position geopolitically seems likely to weaken. Even now the US seems only able to accomplish relatively short term gains while setting themselves up for longterm defeats (the proxy war in Ukraine dwmonstrates this).
Its not surprising that revolutionary potential, and the possibility of real gains is higher on the periphery than within the imperial core. I think a lot of western leftists deal with brainworms (for understandable reasons) the the West is the main character of history, so the revolution must happen here and lead the world. There's over a centuries worth of evidence to the contrary.
I say its understandable because its a less extreme version of the classic "left" liberal brainworm of "the US may be bad, but [target country] is worse." Its also seen throughout left anti-communism's stance and critiscims against AES. The unexamined assumption that the nations of the imperial core will be the leaders of the socialist revolution as opposed ro the last and most dangerous holdouts of a dying imperial order, is, i think, the last vestige of this way of thinking.
This isn't, and I'm not endorsing, a doomerist position for communists in the imperial core. A better world is possible, and we should do what we can to defend our comrades at home from rising fascism and support our comrades abroad on the periphery. Not being the "main character" does mean there is no role to play. Revolution is like an Eisenstein film, the people, the class, are the main character and we are united across boarders
This isn't, and I'm not endorsing, a doomerist position for communists in the imperial core. A better world is possible, and we should do what we can to defend our comrades at home from rising fascism and support our comrades abroad on the periphery.
With regards to this, I literally was talking to a woman the other day who readily admitted things like: how behind every successful man there are countless women who do unpaid emotional labor, how companies are taking in too much in profit for no reason, how companies will cynically shield themselves from criticism by appointing a POC ceo, etc. etc. She even said that workers should get a share in the profits of the company. I jokingly responded that her idea sounded kind of like socialism, and she immediately replied, "no it's not socialism, I believe in capitalism, just not with so many excesses." And this is a black woman who fully understands intersectionality, the problem of corporations, etc. So I'm a little doomer not just online, but IRL as well...
I definitely understand, and have personally felt what you're talking about. And if you're just looking at the US/imperial core its pretty depressing. The most propagandized people who have ever lived. Everyone alive in the US right now has been exposed to the most advanced and coordinated and pervasive propaganda campaign since birth. The person you're describing who gets so much, but is still "oh no not socialism" is maddening for us but also a sign of how greatly the contridictions of capitalism have intensified that her position and people like her exist.
The real hope for the future is in the periphery obviously, but remember our worldview is based on dialectics. The contradictions inheirent in capitalism intensify as things get worse, and that's what ultimately breaks through propganda and brainworms. Ideas do not shape reality, material conditions do, and as people in the imperial cores material conditions change, their ideas will change. Part of why it looks so doomer is because for many people their material conditions are still too good to want to change their belief system, and because propaganda evolves to at least keep them from blaming capitalism itself or the US (crony capitalism, we need more of team blue in change, or the current "Bidenomics is working" bullshit).
Theres more hope in the periphery because material conditions typically are worse there, not because things are better. That's an important thing for comrades struggling with doomerism to remember. Trust me i get the emotion, i think most of us do here, i think we'd be crazy not to. But having a marxist veiwpoint is understanding that a better world is possible. Not because of any idealistic notion of human goodness, but from an understanding that history, historical change, is a process governed by class conflict defined by the contridictions in the mode of production. The workers of the world will prevail, not because we are morally superior, not because we a better, or smarter, and not because the class as a whole will even necessarily understand the process they are involved in while it is happening. Material conditions and our relationship to them is what defines this conflict and causes historical change.
I'm really curious as to what she thinks capitalism and socialism are.
That's a great question. Most people don't even know what supporting capitalism means. Propaganda being what it is, capitslism just equals good in most people's eyes in the west
The unexamined assumption that the nations of the imperial core will be the leaders of the socialist revolution
To be completely fair, even Marx concluded similarly, and it took about 130 years of new theory and new evidence on top of it to get to where we are now.
It's fine, I think some comrades here don't remember how long it took for them to snap out of the capitalist worldview. Going through a naive stage of anti-AES pro-West Progressivism/Reformism/Anarchism/Trotskyism/Leftcom is pretty normal for new members of the left, as is a later sudden uncritical swing to being an ML followed by backsliding because it wasn't based on theoretical understanding.
Eventually if we work on them, a lot of the people there will settle into more mature examples of whatever tendency provides the tools they need in their conditions.
a later sudden uncritical swing to being an ML followed by backsliding
I'm in this picture and don't like it. I doubt I'll ever get over my philosophical distrust of hierarchy, but somehow this made it finally click that I should at least read some theory (and not short versions, or long explanations of the current systems at play in China) before continuing being critical of MLism.
Tbh, I think seeing how insufferable libs are, and how the so-called anarchists of blahaj prefer them to us, really primed me for this awakening. Thanks.
I think distrust and constant critique of existing hierarchies and authorities is always healthy + good no matter who is in charge frankly. Even if Lenin himself were leading America any good socialist must be constantly aware of the potentialities for leadership and once-revolutionary structures to go awry.
Please do not draw conclusions from how people post on a niche internet forum.
True, though it's arguably worse in the general population. Western indoctrination runs deeeeep.
Idk may just be my personal experience but I've never heard anyone irl say anything close to as weird about geopolitical stuff or communism as I've seen from liberals since federation. Closest is my dad saying once that he agreed with Patton that the western allies should have "kept going" (like the opposite of our "Stalin shouldnt have stopped at Berlin" thing) but that was a one time thing.
Maybe its because I haven't really bothered to say things that challenge liberal perspectives about geopolitics I guess? But it says something that they certainly haven't volunteered that kind of weird shit.
That said I haven't had much human contact since I lost my old job so maybe my experience is limited.
I've tried to talk to libs about China because I'm Chinese so maybe that's why I have a different perspective.
Its like everyone around you refusing to believe that the sky is blue because BBC told them that the sky is green. After a while you start to question even yourself.
Trying to convince white libs that insert Bad non white country isn't cartoonishly evil and out to get them personally as a poc is like banging your head against a wall
They see us as blinded by loyalty and discard our feelings because only us dirty coloreds can be influenced by propaganda
You tried to play nice with the fediverse and it blew up in your face. Where did that bring you?
Back to me 
you shouldn't want to save the west
But black dynamite, I live in the west
I'm a bit hopeful, but more in the sense of forming dual-power in the face of eventual balkanization. It's why I'm a bit softer on anarchists. I don't necessarily believe in a communistic revolution in the United States, but that this shithole can fall apart well enough for the global South to gain a sigh of relief. And in those ruins we may see a better world many smaller communist and pan-Indigenous movements that warm my heart enough to strive for a better world.
Some of the people I've encountered over the past few weeks feel like such relics. I don't mean that they seem old or out of touch, but their politics seem to have ceased moving around 2009. It's the feel good liberalism without specific policy goals. It's so empty that I have to wonder what sort of lives they've had to be so just...liberal.
Like a lot of us were galvanized by the 2008 economic crisis, or perhaps we were part of anti-war movements, or labor movements or maybe we slammed head first into realizing just how anti-LGBTQ everything is.
But for some of the folk I've encountered, you'd think the primary three problems of the world are Russia, China, and liberals being uncomfortable online.
Protests, dual power, and even electoralism.
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