#what job are YOU doing on the leftist commune

[exbusinesspartner]

#pls pls reblog this <3 #i didn’t put grocery shopping bc i didn’t want to put things that require spending money #polls #housework #chores #what job are YOU doing on the leftist commune

[j-esbian]

so so so fucking tired of people who perceive working in an office as the only “”real”” jobs

#the equivocation of ‘’professional’’ to ‘’white collar’’ #the way people treat those schedules as ‘’the normal one’’ when there’s millions of people working outside those #me every weekend for the past seven months: i only have sunday off #my friends ​every time we want to hang out: can we do saturday instead uwu #and just the disparaging attitude ‘’business culture ‘’ has towards literally any job #tbqh i would rather die than work in marketing and that is. from what i can tell. most of the jobs available #in an office setting #idk maybe this is my outside opinion but a lot of those jobs feel superfluous or like. making their own problems to solve #like that post about the leftist commune where everyone was like ‘i can do admin and project management’’. how is that useful #it just feels very much like the american ideal of ‘if you work very hard you can be a self made millionaire’ #is a lot more prevalent among that class #and like i know it’s also a matter of ‘i make more than you so i’m more important. skill issue’ #but idk i just have the perception that i’m ‘’supposed to’’ go into a field i have no interest in and i’m Doing Something Wrong #and making my life unnecessarily hard on myself. because i have no interest in it #rant paused bc i’m gonna be late to work if i keep going lol #mine

[alastors-wife]

I have no idea how some of you guys are able to get super into politics & reading about communist stuff because accessibility wise??? it's been a nightmare for me

#that brain damage + dyslexia combo is kicking my ass #reading in general is uh...not easy but ESPECIALLY not big walls of text #i know its generally frowned upon for some reason but i actually like when things are explained in the simplest way possible #like explain it to me like i'm a kindergartner who doesnt know shit about anything. big word stressful #and i have little to no faith in able bodied leftists to look out for the wellbeing of disabled people #i genuinely like discussing this stuff like communism is actually interesting to me #but i have yet to hear a response from someone when discussing disability that isnt either very vague or dismissive #like yes of course we'd only be doing what we're *able* to do in terms of work #i know I would be able to if there were more accessible options #however that wont be the case for everyone #and if ''work'' would be different from how it is now - how? #what would that look like? and when you say people would be taken care of is it just like the bare minimum? or something better? #for some reason some folks get defensive but like its a genuine question man #not all disabled people are the same - some can do far less than i can and i more than likely will never be able to hold a traditional job #i care about the wellbeing of all of us and want to make sure people aren't just getting the literal bare minimum to stay alive #we ALL deserve to be able to live our lives and be safe #engage with our interests and our community and live as individuals able to express our personalities #and god nothing enrages me more than the white commies who try to get all condescending with you #and insist that there's no such thing as a disabled person who is COMPLETELY unable to work #completely & conveniently forgetting that there are people w mental / developmental / physical disabilities who cant care for themselves #at ALL. even if the extreme cases aren't as common thats not an excuse to not think about them?? #this is why i wont talk to white folks about politics. jesus christ #and they'll be the ones that are the loudest too #especially if you're an actual content creator and you're dismissing disabled people & treating them like shit?? you need your ass beat ♥ #i'd really like to find some good audiobooks about communism #especially if they're something you can find thru online libraries like libby or on the internet archive

[basingstokemercury]

anyway to completely digress from all-nighter fuelled semi-poetic character analysis

personal life is rapidly approaching the point of impossibility

yes thank you i know i need a job to get anywhere and it's unfair to expect parents to completely support me when i'm perfectly healthy and the things i need to go into serious theatre aren't exactly cheap

so uh

still waiting to find one single job outside the creative arts that can be performed while being:

lazy, selfish, socially nonfunctioning, irresponsible, unable to maintain focus on boring/repetitive tasks, conflict-averse to the extent of shutting down when confronted, completely irregular sleep schedule, allergic to routine that involves more than a couple scheduled events per week, unsuited to manual labour, and oh yeah absolutely terrible at interviews

"you're such a good teacher" thank you. i've been a student. not going anywhere near a room full of kids.

"you said yourself you want to work with animals" i do. i'm also nowhere near responsible enough to be in charge of caring for little squishy things that could die if my attention wanders.

"waitress -" spent years going to restaurants with the kind of person who annoys waiters. wouldn't be one if it were the only job on earth.

"cashier -" just a less intense version of waitress. and anyway i'd never be able to sit there for hours doing the same thing over and over.

it's awfully touching that people have faith in me but i do think i know my own flaws.

okay that was rough. have a fairfax.

#that post going around like what would you do on the leftist commune #(bunch of jobs with the only other option being too disabled to work) #glad to know there's no place for me in your utopia i guess #though considering how readily people online dehumanise those they see as contributing nothing to society it's not surprising #oh you see in our ideal world everyone will be happily employed because they'll have the job that fits them #very nice. what about people for whom there is no such job. #who just want to sit there in an artists' colony and have all their needs met because they're too lazy to do anything else. #but i suppose a perfect society has no more quarter for parasites than the system it's meant to escape from. only fair after all. #'you're just too pessimistic to believe people are generally nice enough to make it work because you're selfish and live off others' #fine. i'm a bad person. i admit it. is your society going to cast out everyone who doesn't - wait i've seen this on tng #don't suppose it really matters i guess #us useless little parasites get left behind either way #and nobody cares #because why would you want to look out for a perfectly healthy person who simply can't be bothered to pull their own weight #and you can only live off others for so long however kind they start out as #but of course we know that only the rich evil capitalists do that #and there's no such thing as people who would do it in a perfect society if they had the ability #so who cares right

[hightowered]

and you know i gotta say. the vast majority of the people losing their shit this weekend made it very clear that they do not understand the difference between "artists who want a measure of comfort in their lives" and "the billionaires actually being targeted by phrases like eat the rich." that is such a weird thing to be so proud to announce to the whole entire internet.

it's also extremely weird to behave as though any individual is entitled to an artist's work for free. or that the audience should be the final say in determining what an artist creates. there is a major difference between the betrayal of an artist who produces art and then banks on their social capital to engage in harmful, violent, bigoted behavior (like jk rowling) and the "betrayal" of an artist who decides that they should be or need to be compensated for their work. the latter isn't actually a betrayal at all. it's just a shift.

the thing is that the watcher boys didn't invent capitalism, they didn't invent the streaming model, they didn't invent youtube or patreon. they aren't getting 100% of the money from either. their merch doesn't magically appear as if made by elves while they sleep. their videos don't happen out of nowhere and without incurring bills. they have a business which employs people, and sure, you can say they employ too many people, but do they actually? a bunch of randos on the internet don't actually know that. they don't know these job titles, or how necessary it is to have everyone there. it's pure speculation. the entire company exists within a system they did not invent and are trying to stay afloat in said system while a bunch of assholes on the internet berate them for not acquiescing to their every whim at the expense of their artistic integrity, their ability to compensate their staff fairly, and their ability to keep making art.

and jumping from "i want to continue enjoying this artist's work for free" to "i think people should be fired and the remaining employees should be given greater responsibilities and more tasks to complete" is wild to me. there's nothing leftist in that and so trying to leverage leftist jargon to prove some sort of moral superiority is fucking wild, it's disingenuous, and it's sketchy as hell. you're allowed to be disappointed. you're not magically exempt from being told you're being an asshole if you decide your disappointment entitles you to take part in asshole behavior.

"but we don't want something heavily produced and we don't want these shows" then don't watch! that's it! don't watch! you are not being held hostage and forced to engage with this content. you have the choice not to. throwing a tantrum and launching racist vitriol at steven lim and demanding he step down as CEO shows a level of entitlement and childishness that, frankly, i wish they could have ignored, but they're both kinder & more patient than i am.

anyway congratulations to watcher on their new streaming service and their gorgeous new website, congratulations to the boys on a new step in their careers and on achieving something they've made clear they've wanted for ages, thank you to the boys for all their hard work and for sharing their creativity with us. thank you too for taking such a big and genuinely brave step to no longer be beholden to major corporations and advertisers so you can make the art you want to make. thank you to steven lim for taking so many steps back to keep the company running and for doing your best in a shit economy and while being targeted by this kind of nastiness online. and thank you to the entire team at @wearewatcher for continuing to do amazing work despite being treated like shit by the fan community at large on the internet while you're trying to make a living and create art. you all deserve better than you've been shown of late and i hate that such an exciting moment got overshadowed by so many temper tantrums.

because the whole fucking point, the dream, is getting to make the art that matters to them, without being held back. i'm sorry y'all don't want the heavily produced and high quality shit but your preferences as a member of an audience are not the law by which artists should abide. they are artists and they are free to, and deserve to, make the art they want to make.

#watcher #watcher entertainment #could this rollout have been handled better? sure! but for the love of god the way y'all have been reaching to demonize them #steven in particular #it's frankly pretty horrifying #like y'all actually behave that way? and are proud to have a record of it?

[iberiancadre]

I've talked about this before but I have a deep dislike of sentiment like this within "leftist" circles, regarding unions. And it's practically always from USamericans, go figure.

(Before anyone interprets this post on bad faith, which is inevitable, I am not against being in a union and I am not telling people not to join a union, it's the most inmediate form of protection workers have and that is, in fact, good)

It's this overbearing insistence on joining unions, treating it like the best (and only) way of achieving workers' liberation, and I think that shows either a bad understanding of what unions are or a bad understanding of how capitalism works. Unions are bargaining bodies for workers, that's it. They aren't revolutionary, and they aren't going to kill your boss. And I want to really hammer in this point. They aren't revolutionary. Precisely because their role is to bargain, and to achieve better conditions within the system of salaried work.

You are never going to "liquidate the ownership class" by getting longer breaks, paid holidays and an excellent health plan. Keep in mind, bargaining with the capitalist is necessary, and that in itself isn't non-revolutionary, not necessarily. But the only purpose of a union is to bargain. I really don't think people get this. A union's only purpose is to bargain, it is to negotiate. Negotiations also necessarily imply compromises and unsatisfactory deals. Unions are not a magic key to not being exploited, and they especially are not the way to liberation.*

I think this is especially prevalent in the US because of two things:

Their labor movement is so fucked that any kind of opposition to capitalism is by default radical. And therefore some people feel it's enough to just tell people to join a union. However, this isn't unique to the US and many places have it much, much worse

Living in the imperial hegemon makes it very easy to ignore any other place outside of their little sphere. People can go years engaging in left-of-DNC circles but without ever leaving their USamerican community, they end up not knowing who James Baldwin is, to give a topical example. This affects the US labor movement by allowing them to ignore other places' struggles, so it's very easy to see anything they do as the horizon of political action. They only need to look to their own country for examples in action, and the truth is that the labor movement in the US has been largely very mild. In the cases when it has not been mild (notable exceptions include the Black Panthers), it's largely forgotten, demonized or revised in bigger circles.

So you get people who call themselves communists just for being unionists. But a communist is someone who identifies the core of exploitation to be the very structure of capitalism and work and attacks it. You are not a communist, however, for believing the core of exploitation is your shit boss who refuses to pay for dental.

And what's funny is that 90% of what people on here claim to be communist and anti-capitalist is just the norm on most of the world. People will hype up the DSA or VoteSocialist2024 as if they're breaking ground, and then you read their programs and they're just socialdemocrats. They are nothing more than reformists, just another manager of capitalism.

My father works for one of the biggest textile manufacturers and distributors in the world, and unionization is the norm, it's a "union job" but it's still shitty and exploitative. There are in fact 3 unions, and they engage in petty electoralism within the workplace, only sometimes actually protecting worker's rights, and that's a country-wide norm. This is what unions end up becoming when they become established, especially with a friendly government in place.

CCOO was a union created in the late fascist dictatorship in Spain, and they were genuinely fighting (with guns!) against the dictatorship. And the moment the dictatorship ended and they became the largest union in the country, they slowly became less and less radical, and more complacent. Last year they signed a labor reform that legalizes highly precarious and inconsistent forms of work contracts. That's not "liquidating the ownership class", that's just social-democracy when it doesn't need to be the opposition anymore

To wrap up, a note on syndicalism, anarcho-syndicalism, etc.

Unions are by their very nature an organization that only operates within one aspect of the life of the working class, the workplace. Sure, it's the main one and the part that defines us as a class, but it isn't the only one. In order to actually "liquidate the ownership class", you have to take power by force, and that will have to involve intervening outside of the workplace. What syndicalists used to claim is that unions can be the base of a socialist society and organize the entire working class to destroy capitalism. However, at that point, you have created a party and called it a union. And not only a party, but a myriad of them, each with their own characteristics and desires. So a multi-party system. I will not get into the viability of multiple parties in socialism in this post, but they are not unions in anything by name.

Footnote under the cut:

*I know I'm repeating myself a lot these days on this topic, but if you live in an imperial core country, there is no way to have prosperity (as the example above puts it) without some of that wealth coming from imperialism. It does not matter if your particular country never had colonies, it does not matter if your country is stereotypically nice (fuck the Nordic countries). And no, the expoliated wealth does not only remain within the capitalist class, there is always at least some circulation of wealth from the capitalist to the workers within any welfare program. If your workplace can afford to have long breaks, that is at least in part because your capitalist is profiting from the exploitation of the third world, and because the entire economies of imperial core countries uses the wealth extracted to support their deficits and to stabilize their currencies.

It's not a hard concept. If you can understand that it's basically impossible to manufacture batteries for renewable energy without exercising violence on places like the Congo, it's not that hard to understand the same is true for most things.

#real marxist hours #unions #finally got (mostly) all of my thoughts on this into words #accidentally posted before I completed it and now there's two posts :(

[stealth-liberal]

Whew, I have a lot to say, and I know for a FACT that not a single non Jewish person on here will give a shit... but I have to vent.

Antisemitism in America is so bad that I honestly don't know if it's safe to send my daughter off to college in 2 years. She doesn't know either. Both of us have discussed her staying home and doing as much of her university education online, so as to keep her safe. She has sensory issues and an anxiety disorder... and already she has been rejected all over the place in her high school campus since 10/7.

The Women's Empowerment Club? The club leader has made it so that no female Jewish student feels safe there, and all of them quit. The little leftist neo nazi in charge of it probably cheered as they left and patted herself on the back for her "praxis". Maybe she can start goose stepping and yelling "Heil Hitler!" while she's at it. But she's not unique. Feminist organizations the world over deny mass rape of Jewish women. Why? Because it's Me Too Unless You're a Jew. They want us all raped and in the grave. Period.

The Pride Club? Forget it. All queer Jewish kids are persona non grata there. Apparently it's cool if Jewish queers are the subject of violence... and I can't say more or I'll start wanting to kill people. I am bisexual, my husband is bisexual, our daughter is lesbian. I have been part of this community since I was 12 as an ally and since I was 15 as a bisexual (took me some time to figure out what I was). My daughter came out in 4th grade for G-d's sake. We've been there, fighting the fight and now... queer organizations all over the world are abandoning us. They honestly hope we will all die, the more violently the better.

I was a proud intersectional feminist and a proud queer woman my whole life. Or at least ever since I could make decisions about that sort of stuff and what I believed. And I have been abandoned, my daughter has been abandoned, for blood sport. Her friends are pulling away from her and we all know why... because she committed the unpardonable sin of being Jewish.

Funny part? The Muslim Student Union has done nothing to her or the other Jewish kids on campus. Ponder that thought leftists if you will.

My son is in 8th grade and for the entirety of his 6th and 7th school years he was relentlessly bullied for being Jewish. We live in a red town and it was right wing antisemitism. It was so bad that I had to remove him for his safety from the school for a while. Now? It's left wing as well, he's catching it from both sides and I don't know how to protect him.

No one cares. Frankly, if my 13 year old son committed suicide to get away from it all... they would throw a party. Another dirty Jew/Zionist down... am I right? None of you give a fuck.

I marched, I protested, I voted, I phone banked. I lived my beliefs in action, and the left betrayed me. They fantasize about me and my children being raped and murdered. The more graphically it could happen, the better for them. Frankly, I think they get off to the videos Hamas released in the privacy of their rooms at night.

There's nowhere to run. Israel isn't an option. I know everyone thinks Jews are dripping in wealth... but I frankly do not have enough money to move my family to the other side of the planet. My husband is in IATSE, the stage hand local. There are no jobs waiting for him there. There are no jobs waiting for me there. I have no family there. Neither does he.

Actually, my husband isn't Jewish. I am, our children are, but he is not. He supports us in our Jewishness 100%, but he is not a Jew and he never wanted to convert. Which is fine with me... but how the hell does that work in a country where there is no civil marriage?

I'm not Orthodox, I don't want to be Orthodox. I want full egalitarianism, so I go to Reform, Renewal, or Conservative synagogues, depending on what is closer to wherever I live. Israel is a VERY Orthodox country, and the options are Orthodox or completely secular. This is a criticism I've been laying at Israel's feet for DECADES.

And Jew Haters better not use this as a way to say how awful Israel is. Not when the countries surrounding Israel are either dictatorships or absolute power, divine right monarchies who kill dissenters constantly.

So... there's really nowhere for my family to go. So I guess I'll stay where I am being a liberal Jew and waiting for the sick marriage of MAGA and Leftists to come to my door and kill me and my family.

None of you care. All of you would cheer. I'll never trust any of you again for the rest of my life. Till the day I die... I'll never trust any of you in any part of my life (online or offline) again.

1 in 5 members of Gen Z think the Holocaust didn't happen. 2/3rds of Gen Z think stories of the Holocaust are exaggerated and that Jews were somewhat complicit in what happened to us. Blame the victim...amirite? The rates amongst Millennials are not as horrific... but they're still bad. You all are going to commit a 2nd Holocaust and pat yourself on the backs. And when history remembers you all as the Nazis part 2... you will babble in your nursing homes that you were "Just trying to save the world from the Zionist/Jewish scourge."

When that happens, I hope you die in a puddle of your own shit.

#sl speaks #jumblr #jewish #antisemitism #jew hatred #jew haters #me too unless you're a jew #holocaust denial #holocaust inversion #leftist antisemitism #right wing antisemitism #they're all the same #horseshoe theory

[unheavenlycreatures]

Another thing that The Murderbot Diaries makes me think about is the concept of someone's birth being unethical in and of itself, and how to reconcile that with loving and supporting them. Wells touches on it briefly in Rogue Protocol in regards to GoodNightLander and their laws surrounding SecUnits, but while I wouldn't call it one of the main themes, it just kind of weighs uncomfortably in the air-

A SecUnit is made to cause pain, to feel pain, and to be disposed of when it is no longer more valuable than the sum of its parts. It is made sapient so it can feel every ounce of boredom and pain that it is put through. There is an extent to which the creation of a SecUnit is, in and of itself, an act of cruelty by its creator.

Where we're at right now, Murderbot seems to have a rather low view of other SecUnits. It knows what it wants, and it knows who it is, to an extent, but what does it think about a SecUnit's place in society in general? What does it think of in regards to a long term solution? Does it think one exists?

Then, also: Murderbot is an invaluable asset to anyone that it offers its allegiance to. But that then begs the question for Preservation, for PUoMaNT: How do you support, love, and care for a person who has been traumatized by having been brought into the world in the first place? How do you heal the wound that is the crime of your birth?

Then, taking it to its logical conclusion: How do you draft up laws and policies so as to support a person while not condoning the act of their creation? How do you make it clear to the person in question that they are worth of love and care, while also wrestling with whether they should ever have been brought into existence in the first place?

Preservation can make laws establishing constructs as autonomous individuals, but what next, and what will those laws do in regards to the rhetoric surrounding them?

How do you reconcile making space for someone's existence in a utopian society, without saying the thing that you are thinking, which is: In a perfect world, you would never have been created?

And maybe this is just me being deep in the paint in regards to allegory for disability here. As someone who has been in leftist spaces where the existence of disabled individuals in post-capitalist society is a problem that needs to be fixed, as someone who grew up autistic in an anti-vax household, as someone whose existence is often rather inconvenient for the folks planning their jobs in the metaphorical post-capitalist communal homesteads.

I mean, to be certain, I don't have literal guns in my arms, but I am genuinely interested as to how the post-capitalist societies in TMBD intend to handle people whose very existence is, through no fault of their own, antithetical to their values.

#.txt #tmbd #the murderbot diaries #murderbot #secunit #lotta thoughts

[qqueenofhades]

what gets me is whenever any of these people says not to vote, and you ask them what the alternative is, they usually throw some tantrum about how it shouldn't be their job to fix this country and they're not expected to know (or start calling you a neoliberal or a bootlicker lmao) and i just. i don't get that? not voting, especially in the current climate, is a big deal. i don't think it's unreasonable to ask anyone who advocates for that what the alternative is. i'm not expecting you, online leftist, to magically know how to fix everything. i am expecting something from you if you're gonna tell me not to vote, especially when we both know that helps the gop. like, how dare we ask them to defend this big choice they're telling us to make?

their position boils down to helping trump and the republicans but any time you remind them of that they get upset. what is the alternative? what plan do they have? it would be one thing if there was another option that they'd come up with, but they haven't and don't seem interested in doing so. mutual aid and organizing is only going to take us so far and it'll be a hell of a lot easier to do it with biden in office than trump

The whole "it doesn't matter who's president/in charge of the government because mutual aid and organizing is the only valid way to do community engagement" is the leftist version of the Brexit nutcases who, and I swear I am not making this up, argued that it was fine if the UK left the EU trading sphere/single market/customs union with nothing to replace it, because "Britain is a nation of farmers and can grow food in our back gardens!!!!" Yes, because you're so devoted to your stupid ideology that you think the large-scale collapse of society, a major world power, a western democracy, and everything else will have no effect, and you can just do your little Facebook mutual aid groups and happily shout on Twitter at anyone who disagrees with you. Never mind the fact that this would obviously and immediately harm vulnerable people the most and that nobody, not even the Online Leftists themselves, actually wants to live in the Violent Revolution Total Anarchy World they masturbate to. Maybe this makes me a neoliberal corporate shill, but I'd rather that the world got better, instead of worse. I would actually prefer that myself, my friends, my family, my whole life, the whole country, and the rest of the world wasn't sacrificed on the Great Revolution Altar, but I shouldn't worry. We have mutual aid. At least as long as a) you have never said anything the Online Leftists even slightly disagree with, since they're sure as hell not the kind of people I would trust to have my back in any large-scale societal collapse, and b) I guess they'll all be growing food in their back gardens too, rather than using any of those dirty "government" or "society" things to supply their basic needs. We're saved! No need to worry. Bring on the anarchy.

Aside from the fact that Online Leftists, as I have said before, think that moral action begins and ends with posting the Right Opinions on social media at the correct timeframe and any other action or engagement with a flawed system or basic reality is heresy, they don't like being challenged -- i.e. "if we don't vote, then what do we do?" -- because a) it questions their authority as supreme arbiters of morality, and b) it means that there should actually be an action in place of cutting out something so consequential as voting, which likewise clashes with their "everything will be fixed by Magical Thinking" viewpoint. They don't want to be asked what to do in place of voting, or in anything at all; they want to think their correct thoughts and judge anyone who doesn't, regardless of how logically incoherent these things are or the inevitable outcome of those decisions, because nothing bad is ever their fault, or even the Republicans' fault, or anyone else at all except for the Democrats and/or "the West." I mean, yeah, if they're going around to preach the Don't Vote Because It's Actually Evil gospel, it's the bare fucking minimum to expect that they have something to offer in return besides Ye Olde Bolshevik cosplay fantasies. Since they don't, they get tetchy when you point that out.

Also, while I know it's the social media fashion that everything has to be the worst thing ever and we have plenty of the "Biden is also a genocidal fascist but I guess vote for him or something" utterly-minimum-standard posts going around, I will point out why that rhetoric is a) wrong and b) unhelpful. (Not that I expect it will make a single difference to anyone who has to get their internet cred by yelling about how Biden is a fascist, but still.) No, Biden is not a fascist by any logical definition of the word, you would have to do a lot of work to convince me that he is personally genocidal beyond what is demanded of any post-1948 American president who exists in an extremely complicated international sphere with long-standing alliances (such as, yes, with Israel) and indeed not quite a bit more progressive than literally every one of his predecessors, and it makes those actual words useless. If you claim that "Biden and Trump are both genocidal fascists," you are utterly effacing those categories as any kind of critical or useful distinction. You can't argue for any difference, you can't point out policy essentials or nuances, you can't make the most basic of empirical observances or come to a judgment on whether any part of that statement is true, because language has been deliberately stripped of meaning and used to score Cool Internet Leftist points. How can we explain what fascism or genocide actually are and what to do about them, if it's just what you call everyone as a matter of course whenever they disagree with you? You can't. That's the point.

Once again: I strongly disagree with the idea of just giving Israel/Netanyahu a blank check to keep committing atrocities, but I also need to repeatedly point out that Biden isn't doing that. His initial unconditional support of Israel after October 7 (which at the time was the correct response) has shifted to a much more measured and conditional approach where he has muted the overtly pro-Israel statements and started talking about a two-state solution and the need to protect the lives of civilians and trying to keep a lid on what could become a REALLY bad situation with all kinds of war-hungry powers eager to jump into the Middle East and blow it completely to hell. As I have said in my other posts, Trump will not do this. Trump will do the exact opposite. Which is why Netanyahu, who doesn't like having his hands tied precisely in the way Biden is doing, is trying so hard to get Trump back in. This also extends to the people who think that the West/the U.S. is the source of all evil in the world, but they're somehow the only people that can make actual choices or have real agency. Everyone else is just an American puppet; everyone is being lied to or manipulated by America/the West; nobody ever chose anything of their own free will; America/the West could roll in and put a stop to everything bad if they "really wanted to," but choose not to because etc. etc., Evil. As such, this completely fact-free belief is basically the central starting point for Online Leftism, which as I have also said, is now beyond useless and verging on just as deranged and actively dangerous as the fascists, especially since they are 100% willing to enable far-right fascism however and whenever they can because something something, That Will Show Us.

Anyway. Yes. Whew.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #israel hamas war #okay i think i'm done talking about this for today #but yes

[bioethicists]

responding to this with my shitty redaction because i'm not comfortable posting obvious bait with people's names in them (particularly dead names) but i just wanted to point out the ways in which this ask is prototypical bait written to purposefully generate drama or controversy (idk if this is in a kiwifarms trolling with right wing motives sense or an 'i love drama' person) by trying to appeal to online leftist culture/the fear of being 'problematic'. i see ppl fall for this constantly + i need people to start learning to recognize the signs instead of either engaging or using this as evidence that leftists are stupid/petty/hypocritical (which many of us are, but in much less amusing ways, unfortunately)

the implication that there is a single founder of the "neurodiversity movement" + that evoking this movement at all (which i don't do + i think it's actually pretty evident that my politics are distinct from the much more bioessentialist politics of those who prefer that term, which is part of what led me to conclude that this is a copypasta) is supporting the founder. tracing a broad social concept to a single individual, then disparaging that individual as morally unsound (by evoking other explosive, petty pieces of discourse, like baeddalism + transandrophobia) in order to provoke doubt, fear or anger. demonstrates a hope that leftists will flinch away from anything associated with anyone 'problematic' without applying any critical thinking.

misrepresenting complex events (or fabricating them entirely- idk if these things happened + i simply couldn't care enough to find out) in a way that hits the pressure points of performative activism (she's being mean to an autistic person! other people of color agree with me! this other person is anti physically disabled people!) while also betraying reactionary opinions through language use/implications (claiming to care about 'transandrophobia' yet deadnaming someone? claiming to care about specific events at specific autism conferences but using terms like "severely autistic"? saying you have spoken to "Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, American Indians" lmao did you type this out based on census checkboxes from the 70s?). the author of this ask is clearly not a member of the activist communities they claim to be from because they accidentally slip into the speech conventions + opinions of a kiwifarms/4chan loser who does a lot of hatereading. this one did a good job of hitting the bingo card of divisive intracommunity issues rn- great research skills, bud! put them to better use <3

reframing reactionary beliefs using leftist concepts. this works because many of us do not have a foundational politic outside of "well, i want to be good, so I'm going to support the things that other people i trust say are good". which doesn't make you bad (there is no good or bad! learn this now + quick, if you really want to play a part in building a better world) but it makes you easy to manipulate + unlikely to be capable of meaningful change. notice that the claims this ask is asserting are, at their core, "people make up microaggressions to cause problems when really they could easily suck it up" + "people fake disabilities and being trans for attention". these are reactionary concerns, no matter how artfully they are dressed in social justice language. kiwifarms in particular was very, very good at this- they loved finding the people they stalked to be racist, homophobic, ableist, etc, not because they thought those things were wrong (it was their hobby to be these things!) but because they delighted in identifying hypocrisy, stirring up drama, + destroying people's reputations.

this is hard to explain bcuz i blacked out the names, but if you have a passing familiarity with fascist/reactionary online spaces, particularly the history of kiwifarms, you will know that reactionaries have their own 'pet leftists', just like we have our 'pet fascists' (shapiro, alex jones, tucker carlson, etc). that is, ppl they obsessively follow, harass, + scrutinize + come to believe are representative of everything that we believe. these ppl are rarely ppl who are actually prominent in our online spaces but online reactionaries often believe we are just as obsessed with these people as they are, but as unquestioned paragons of virtue + brilliance. namedropping these ppl is often an accidental tip of the hat, particularly when the ppl aren't on tumblr, haven't been a topic of community discussion for quite some time, or run in a different circle than us (reactionaries don't understand that there are actually thousands of leftist social groups which have very little overlap with some others- pronouns in bio does not mean someone knows or cares about contrapoints, for instance)

tl;dr this ask is a fantastic example of the rhetorical features bait that someone might actually take seriously.

[decolonize-the-left]

What is there left to learn?

All you need to know of any good branch of leftism is that self determination and freedom is above everything.

We stand against so much because so much has been created to get in the way of that.

Money often gets in the way by imposing literal pay walls to basic needs so we oppose it. Racism gets in the way when racist gatekeepers prevent POC from receiving equal care, equal service, and equal access to resources so we oppose it. The same goes for all the other -isms and bigotries such as misogyny and homophobia.

Human beings come in all shapes, sizes, colors, sexualities, and genders. We are beautifully diverse this way, it's literally human nature.

And so we must learn to live and accept people different from ourselves.

Nobody has more rights or humanity than anyone else. Nobody has the right to enforce their own determinations and truths on anyone else. There is no singular way of being that is Right or makes you more deserving than the rest, that gives you the right to control others because it's just such a Good way of living. There never will be.

There is no natural way to determine what a good, deserving human looks like. And that's why leftism supports and hears all oppressed people.

Every single excuse and method that attempts to control/feel superior are all social constructs. Ex:

You're rich, fiscally responsible and think you're better than others? Money isn't natural, it's barely even real. It's something that some human made up one day to feel better than the others. It may as well be called pixie dust. And without it you're just like the rest of us.

Being White didn't mean anything before some human decided they could gain self esteem by reducing the perceived worthiness of Black and Brown ppl. Without made-up ideas of race you're just like the rest of us, made of the same hunger and thirst and love as we are.

Cis and Trans or Gay and straight are just different ways for humans to be born and exist. Some people like their bodies, some don't. Some people kiss the same sex, some dont. You aren't superior for being cis or only kissing one sex. You won't get a trophy for denying the kind of human you are or for making others feel bad about the kind of human they are either.

There is no natural test for superiority in humans because human superiority is unnatural. For any of us.

The only measure of being Better than others was how much better you were at being a community member; how much you contributed to the betterment of your peers. You didn't brag about being white, you bragged about how you killed so many deer that your people certainly will Not be starving.

We were born to share this planet and our only ACTUAL job is to take care of each other and the planet in whatever way we can. It's the only thing we've ever owed each other.

Racism, ableism, colonization, capitalism, white supremacy, genocide, Nazis, Zionists, etc.

These are not concepts that deserve to be kept alive. Anything that makes you hate someone else or makes you feel more Worthy than someone else has no place in the future.

I say all this because I feel like I'm beating a dead horse on this blog so often. I really do try to stay educational and focus on solidarity. But there's only so much that words can do without action.

And words without action are as good as dust in the wind.

I love this blog, but I'm long over this. We need to act. There is a genocide happening and I'm starting to believe that everyone who wants to stop it Already knows about it. They do not need awareness. They don't need voices. They need direction. They need community. They need support and bodies to help intimidate police.

They need us.

And instead I blog on Tumblr trying to rally people that hardly reblog a call to action.

This blog is starting to feel like a symptom of the system. A time-consuming distraction for me. And a way for you to placate yourselves while the world gets worse.

Just following leftists doesn't make you a good person. Having the Right opinions doesn't make you a good person. Even believing in equality doesn't make you a good person if you don't do something about it.

I'm tired of begging for people to organize and protest and show up for each other.

I'm convinced that if you ever had the intention of doing so then you already are. And if you're not then that's a choice you've made.

You either support genocide or you fight it, you know?

I don't know what else there is to learn or say. What are you waiting for? An invitation?

Please go fucking organize and join a protest.

In other news....I am getting closer to deleting this blog every day.

#on all level but physical i am on my knees banging my head against the wall #leftist #Decolonize #whiteness #free palestine #socialism #anarchist #self determination #native sovereignty #sovereignty #liberation #revolution #Palestine #BLM #ableism #lgbt #capitalism #biden #ndn #palestine #democrats #republican #social justice #trans #abolish ice #abolish capitalism #abolish the police #abolish prisons #Decolonization #decolonize palestine

[copepods]

my job at the leftist commune will be the scientist in an obscure secret facility studying radioactive alien artifacts and theres this big room where all my scientist underlings are studying pieces of the alien spaceship and theres this long hall in the middle that me and the leftist commune FBI agent are walking down and hes like "what do you got for me doctor" and im like "trust me sir, youre gonna wanna see this" and we walk up to the biggest piece of the spaceship and i touch it with the tip of like a pipet or something and this green forcefield with mysterious symbols on it appears around the ship for a second and disappears and the leftist commune FBI agent takes off his sunglasses and says "my god..." and also im wearing a scientist white lab coat but it has a pin badge that says "FAG" on it

#text #f slur

[inqilabi]

I think people misunderstand marxism / communism and I don't blame them. In the dominant public perception it's just a mix of vague leftist principles. And I do think that the ruling class did a great job at blurring the lines between actual Marxism and what is their own ideology - liberalism, through academia and involvement in "revolutionary politics" themselves. Yes the ruling class was very much involved in civil rights movement and onwards. The woke capitalist politics you see today are not a co-optation. It is the ideology of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeois is very much "revolutionary" in their optics.

So the writers strike of Hollywood eg. People think that this is what a leftist revolutionary strike looks like. No. Hollywood is an arm of empire. So from a Marxist pov these are petty bourgeois or labor aristocracy (the folks who benefit from imperialism) fighting for top dollar wages (which itself extracted from imperialism ie dollar hegemony).

In the north america, marxism would look like reinvestment in production. Since imperialism resulted in deindustrialization. Hence the entire economies of US and Canada are service based. Not based in productive output. So this means investment in agriculture, industry, infrastructure. Labor. This is usually your American that is not urban. It's the rural folks doing productive labor. These are the people when they strike will strike fear. Like the UPS strike.

Also tax the rich is a useless phrase. Taxing the rich wouldn't do anything. That's just even more powerful ruling class families making a couple of multi-millionares into a scapegoat for public placation. China has billionaires ever since market reforms but they answer to and are beholdened to the party. Taxing isn't the answer. It's a total overhaul of production and who owns they production.

#idk if this makes sense or I'm using even the right Marxist terminology since I stopped reading marxist stuff now i cant really be bothered

[sexhaver]

I think humanities people resent that some people's vocations lead them to likely employment in a relevant field with good pay whereas their own, the only thing they can or want to do well often leads them to unemployment, having to work for poverty wages in unrelated fields and have basically every person in power deem their craft a waste of time despite it not being the case. I think if engineers are upset that humanities kids are ribbing them a little they can seek comfort in knowing no engineer in the history of the planet has told someone their job and gotten as a response "but what do you do for money" "but what's your real job"

getting bitter about people enjoying their STEM jobs because they make more than you instead of getting mad at the economic system that devalues your artistic labor is, as the kids say, "cringe". capitalism is your enemy here, not engineering

my post was in response to the "what would your dream job on the leftist commune be" trope in particular, wherein the open hostility towards STEM ("if you say engineer i'll kill you") makes even less sense than normal. maybe if the question was "what would your dream job in some utopian future be", all of the art/cooking/farming/Doing Fuck All responses would make sense, but, like. have you seen a commune? you know communes need, like, running water and electricity and housing, right? if anything a leftist commune would need to be positively SWARMING with engineers or everyone would either die or wish they were dead within a month. everybody rolls their eyes at the STEM guy who's really passionate about water filtration until they're shitting their intestines out from dysentery

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

So I recently saw a video that moist critical put out where he explains that US immigration services has denied his esports team the ability to come into the United States twice. And I believe that either most of them or all of them are from Australia. Another first world nation that we are on good terms with. And yet somehow all this going on, all the while Biden's administration admitted to flying over and dropping off at random locations 300,000 plus criminal aliens. And what's even more fun and interesting is the fact that Tyson the company that makes chicken products will be effectively or has effectively laid off American citizens who were born and raised in this country mostly and replacing them with criminal aliens instead.

Do you know why I love leftists? *Clearly that statement dripping with sarcasm*. Because these people want criminal aliens to work in every job position because they think that'll bring about their proper communist Utopia. All of the black and brown people will be servants serving the whites. Weirdly so brilliant and yet the KKK never came up with it. Oh wait sorry that's right the Democrats were the party of the KKK.

Except now they're disguising their white supremacy as bleeding heart sympathy. Leftists are honestly some of the most disgusting and vile people on earth. Now mind you just a reminder, I'm saying leftists not people on the left these are two very different and distinct categories.

But no I just find it funny in a awful way and ridiculous that somehow we've gotten to the point where people from a first world country cannot come here for a short duration of time or potentially stay here with a Visa for a duration of time and yet we can Mass import criminal aliens and drop them off in random undisclosed locations around the United States. Destroying communities with people who do not care about American culture at all. If you want to talk to me about the US immigration system and the asylum program be my guest. But all I'm going to say is this if people from another first world country can't come over here to visit or to compete in a competition or even stay here for a duration of time on a Visa clearly there are some very very very broken things going on.

I really just wish that the leftists would admit that they want this people who are non-white coming to this country to be their servants. I mean they pretty much admit it tongue-in-cheek all the time when they say shit like, "But who will mow our lawns and clean our houses?". And frankly the fact that so many people just don't see the writing on the wall is actually kind of sad.

[queeranarchism]

I hope by now people realize that Patreon isn’t going to create some sort of utopia of independent artists making independent shit. Like, what we see is:

You have to do unpaid work for years to maybe one day make enough money to live. Like unpaid internships: it takes privilege to do this.

If you can’t work unpaid for years you have to scrape by on sponsorships, which are just like employers but worse. A lot of artists have already shared stories about how hard it is to commit to a contract to produce a specific amount of sponsored content. It’s burn-out hell.

To get to any kind of success and stay there you have to please the algorithm. This requires persistent productivity without getting into topics that are too controversial. You’re overworked and on a leash.

If, If you get to a point where you can live from your patreon income: congratulations. Your employer is now your audience. So you better not rub them the wrong way. Your art can only be controversial so long as it doesn’t make your subculture of followers uncomfortable. Challenging your own subculture could threaten your survival. Pitching ideas that would genuinely improve your own community is very risky. You’re overworked and on a new leash.

Within 10 years, your time has probably run out. Like a show that has had too many seasons, people become bored with your specific style and move onto something else. Unless you have foreseen this and build a new future: you’re back to square one, looking for a job with 10 years in your resume that just says ‘podcast’ or ‘youtube channel’.

Is that better than some of the other options artists have? Yeah, probably. But let’s not pretend it’s perfect. Let’s recognize that constant burn-outs among  patreon-funded artists for what they are: signs that there working conditions are not working well for most artists.

Personally I am glad that I took a regular paid job and never tried to live by monetizing my content (not that I ever had a serious chance). Half the posts that I am most proud of would never have been written if I had to worry about being liked by thousands of strangers on leftist social media. In that alternative reality I would probably hate writing about anarchism by now.