Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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Sorry for posting here a lot. But I was just thinking about it, it’s so goddamn sad that Indonesia never had a revolution. I think it’s even sadder that even after the new order fell thay the PKI still hasn’t been unbanned and the left is still essentially prosecuted. Honestly, a communist Indonesia would’ve been beautiful
I’ve been reading The Jakarta Method. It’s very sad that neither Sukarno nor the PKI could rise to meet the moment. Mao told them both explicitly to arm up and prepare for violence but they were over confident.
The lesson here is to be armed and willing to fight because the reactionaries will kill you.
It’s a world-historic tragedy. Indonesia has the fourth largest population, but it hasn’t recovered from the trauma to this day. How differently things could have gone in that whole region.
We’re entering the second heat wave but it won’t be as bad as the previous of a week ago
It was almost 33 at 23:00, last night. It’s been so hot and humid during days that I felt cold, at 26.6 inside.
That’s horrible. A bit more to the south and it’s still cooking in France and southern Europe. I saw someone from Lyon say it has been 30+ degrees for weeks now. Absolutely horrible.
We had a week of 28-30 degrees indoor at night and it drove me nuts.
Yeah, that’s not fun. I feel really bad for Africa, Asia, Cuba, Mexico , Venezuela, and other locations whose people are suffering worse, especially places whose water and other critical infrastructure is destroyed by fascist nations specifically targeting critical infrastructure.
gosh
nobody says gosh anymore
Gosh darnit
Golly!
dadgummit
At this point I’m fairly convinced Platner was a psyop or something along those lines (not that I hold strongly to this opinion, since he isn’t in my state and not worth the time to do much research and analysis).
My question is, what is an ML’s place in this whole ordeal, or more generally when it comes to spectacularized electoralism? Speaking primarily of how we engage with (or sidestep) the discourse surrounding it, since obviously I don’t think our finite energy should usually be spent actively participating in electoral politics.
I’m pretty unconvinced of the utility of the contrarian-leaning anti-electoralist stance in the discourse. It seems better at fostering a feeling of superiority towards libs than radicalizing them. Which is counterproductive to our usual understanding that electoralism’s failures should be radicalizing events.
But a lot of people seemed to fall for the Platner thing. And I worry it risks shattering a lot of potential ideological pipelines. His problems seemed so obvious that it’s hard not to outgroup anyone that defended him but at the same time I’m not sure that’s productive. I dunno.
Overall I’m not satisfied with anti-electoralist discourse in general. It seems mostly reactive to and contained within manufactured discourse, unable to transcend it or really convince anyone of anything, in my experience. Personally I’ve moved more towards a passive optimism (in how I talk with libs, not internal beliefs), not shitting on people for feeling hopeful about Mamdani and the like, but trying to gently mention the limitations of elected individuals within capitalism. Doesn’t really work for a (in my opinion) deliberate poison pill like Platner.
I think there are two essences within the pro-Platner left/libleft. One is an underlying imperial-colonial (sub)consciousness, where non-white people and people outside the imperial core are implicitly valued less. The other is an (in my opinion) unrefined and misdirected pragmatism that views him as a lesser evil and sees criticisms as attacks from the establishment. The former needs to be excised and eliminated without mercy. The latter is salvageable and needs to be engaged with, I think. Because when it comes down to it, revolutionaries very often have to utilize “evil” people, and we should be very careful giving up any advantages we can muster. There’s a massive difference between tactically using them and investing time and energy into electing them into positions of power, of course.
And the two essences aren’t distinct or discernible, so it’s not like we can easily draw a line between people who supported a murdering rapist for “good” versus bad reasons.
To reiterate: I dunno. Every talking point pro or against gives me the feeling of getting played, getting trapped by the spectacle or manufactured discourse, rereading a scripted dialogue that’s already been read a thousand times. But it’s too late to just tell people to stop talking about it.
FWIW, and keeping in mind this is only my personal experience with transitioning from lib to ML, I distinctly remember someone online who helped move me further left after Bernie faceplanted and their MO went something like: Being gently understanding of why people are supporting Bernie, but also being plainly a communist and talking about communism in detail, trying to educate people further, explaining why they don’t think Bernie is enough, etc.
I think there were some others I encountered who acted similarly to this too. In other words, there was no impression of condescension or superiority, but of being understanding of how someone would arrive at the position of supporting Bernie, while also being firmly not a soc dem.
The end result was that when Bernie failed, they were still there to pick up the pieces and explain what went wrong and why, with someone who was even more willing to listen to them now. In a way, I guess what I’m describing is what we talk about sometimes with regards to building relationships with people. These do not necessarily have to be close friendships. Even having a relationship of respect as acquaintances is worth something.
During an electoral campaign, true believers in the bougie electoral system can get swept up in the energy of the campaign and stave off doubt in order to push for a win. In the aftermath of a failed campaign, I think it is easier to get through to people, so long as they see you as someone who may be worth listening to.
Isn’t this broadly Marx’s original position on the organic spontaneous working class energy?
I.e. what you want and are fighting for is correct and just, but here are the limitations of doing it in the way you’re trying to - you should do it this way instead because of x y z.
My question is, what is an ML’s place in this whole ordeal, or more generally when it comes to spectacularized electoralism?
Basically, the ML take is “If you fell for this bullshit, don’t fall for it again the next time.”
It is meant to be a spectacle: Like a sport. Two teams. Lots of news about the ins and outs. Personalities and celebrity worship.
Any tiny wins or gains can be reversed by the next election until the system itself is thrown out.
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I absolutely get the psyop theory, and have been leaning that way myself when I consider Platner. That said, I never considered him much because I’m also nowhere near Maine.
I would see posts about him where people are legitimately yearning for the reformist policies that would lesson the tension the workers of the imperial core are under, and I desperately want to grow that inkling of class consciousness. Unfortunately, it was obvious that these people are still too trapped in capitalism-as-default to seriously imagine a real alternative.
To me, American Exceptionalism ™ is still the dominant narrative, even within the movement that is looking at Platner and Mamdani.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a solid recommendation for how to actually address this with people beyond the tender prodding you’ve already illustrated. Mostly, I just wanted to reply to tell you that I definitely understand that feeling/though.
Stay strong.
On the topic of electoralism, the ML position is simple: it is useful to engage tactically with electoralism, so long as it is done under the banner of an actual communist/socialist party. The real psyop is the DSA itself, as a pipeline into the Democratic party. The real psyop is “lesser evil-ism”. As for Platner, i haven’t really followed that situation because it was always deeply uninteresting and irrelevant in my opinion, but if the whole Nazi thing and having served as a murderer for hire for imperialism was not a deal breaker for the socdem/demsoc radlibs who supported him prior, why should this latest scandal be? That was far worse than him being a drunk rapist. The whole DSA project is fundamentally misconceived to begin with. The point of socialists engaging with electoralism is to build and expand the power base of their own independent party, not to attract votes to a neoliberal imperialist party. As it stands it’s all just a different name for “Vote Democrat”. Platner, Mamdani, all the same because the outcome is the same: leftists getting tricked into campaigning for Democrats. I thought the US left had learned their lesson after Bernie and the “Squad” betrayed them. Apparently not.
I don’t disagree but my focus is a step outside the ML theory position, on the ML tactical or agitprop position. We know we think those things, but how are we choosing to engage or disengage with people who don’t think those things or aren’t advanced enough in their radicalization/education to understand or be receptive to those ideas? It seems the broad unorganized left (whatever we want to call it) still isn’t inoculated against this kind of poison pill (I guess we’ll better understand the degree to which once we can fully see the Platner fallout). But I don’t think the ML left has enough cultural production/influence to take an explicitly hostile or exclusionary stance towards the broad unorganized left.
No, I’ll word that differently. I don’t know if the explicitly hostile or exclusionary stance serves us best. Or if that’s even how it should be labeled/categorized.
Is an explicit schism between the people who fell for it and those that didn’t useful for pipelining? Is pipelining even a real process that we should care about?
Another angle to it that I’m having a hard time putting into words. In game theory, there are often situations where a strategy is the correct one assuming all players are also playing to maximize value, but becomes worse if another player is playing poorly. So in a three player game, player 1 might play “optimally” and lose to player 3 because player 2’s incorrect play changed the equilibrium.
Shitty way of trying to explain the concept but here the first-order optimum might be for us (player 1) to outright reject electoralists. But because so much of the unorganized left (player 2) swallowed the poison pill, the original strategy may no longer be optimal. If we continue to play without exploring the possibility of a second-order optimum, we risk handing a win to player 3 (bourgeoisie, fash, institutional dems, whatever). But it’s possible the first one is still optimal. Again, this is how we publically engage with discourse, not about what we personally believe.
Trying to process that abstract nonsense into concrete particulars, say some co-worker is excited about Platner or watches Hasan or whatever is currently an outgroup signifier that I don’t keep up with. Is the process to sidestep the issue because it’s a psyop, to nip it in the bud and correct them, to develop a tactical response that hopefully leads towards self-radicalization? What about for somebody in a mutual aid group? A family member or friend? Someone in your political party? A media influencer?
The in-group/out-group lines are getting drawn on social media of course but I’ve really grown tired of them and how either disconnected or parasitic they can be towards real-life organizing. My impulse is to sidestep spectacle, but since I’m not the whole of the ML left nor the unorganized left, my personal impulse isn’t necessarily what would work best if all ML’s decided to do it.
Hello good morning
I threw up last night (at around 1:30 AM EST)
I’m glad that I didn’t really freak out or have a panic attack even up to the lead-up of the vomiting.
I think I genuinely have emetophobia.
Keep in mind that I once OD’d (a few years ago, mind you).
I was scared for my life.
I was not in danger, at least immediate danger, I think, looking back… but I had immense raw fear and panic inside of me during that evening and then night. I was mortally terrified. It was quite traumatic. I was in the hospital for 3 days or so.
I don’t think anything really lead up to me throwing up last night.
It frankly could’ve been a stomach bug or norovirus but I usually rebound from those straight-away and feel 100% good later.
But there’s always that sense of anxiety saying that it’s “something more” now.
I give kudos to myself for being so composed and calm during the episode last night. I woke up, felt weird for 10 or 15 minutes, kinda knew what was happening during the last 5 minutes of those 10 - 15 minutes, and then threw up. Last for about a minute. Felt woozy afterward but luckily nothing else happened.
I, uhh, went almost immediately back to sleep (yes, I didn’t start cleaning the wooden floor till 30 minutes ago and that is dead-ass unsanitary I know)
I no longer take vitamins or supplements because I tend to abuse them. I also no longer abuse my prescription medication at all. I’m very adament about that last part.
I take only one cup of coffee nowadays (around 6:00 AM or maybe 7:00 AM at best since I don’t really believe in the “no more coffee after 2:00 PM” rule; for me, it has to stop at 6:00 AM).
I’m glad that I’m making these choices and trying to exercise more; also, change of diet (too much weight loss though).
I have been stressed immensely the last few months but have felt a great improvement in the level of stress and anxiety in the last two or three or maybe even four weeks.
I am looking forward to the next few months, in fact, which usually doesn’t happen.
I just want to know what could’ve led up to me throwing up last night.
I did have Imodium (which I try to avoid now) before I went to sleep because I was having whole dairy milk (which I shouldn’t have done; I’m lactose-intolerant and generally have Lactaid at best but now I stick to oat milk mainly now).
Admittedly? I had, I think, six 2 mg tablets but that usually doesn’t affect me that much at all, at least when it comes to side effects.
Let’s see…
My medications are Prozac (30 mg) and that anti-GERD medication that has never really caused me problems (outside of my now lower-dosage of Vyvanse).
It kinda makes me anxious that I just threw up for seemingly no reason last night. Usually, it’s after I do something stupid for the sake of my mental and physical health (usually out of desperation).
Maybe it was food poisoning?
Just leaving this comment here so people could maybe help me out here and give me advice. 😅
Otherwise, I’m having a pretty good morning and I hope you all are too! 💜
I’m having a good afternoon so far too.
Do you eat often to line your stomach? I also take Prozac, alongside other medication and supplements, and I find myself nauseous if I do not eat.
Interesting
Currently, I am at 30 mg of Prozac.
However, I skipped breakfast today (which I shouldn’t be doing but I’ve been getting better at having it more and more lately) and that was after I took my Prozac for the day along with my Vyvanse and anti-GERD med.
That was around 6:30 to 7:00 AM and I had coffee five minutes into 7.
Didn’t have anything else till a little over five hours later.
I felt somewhat nauseous and anxious but didn’t throw up again and have basically 100% recovered, at least from what I currently feel.
Ah. Did you eat even a little bit of sugar or drink anything containing sugar? That is what happens when I do not eat beforehand (actual food), I will feel nauseous and throw up whatever I consumed; usually feeling relief afterwards. Maybe that is the same with you?
INTERESTING
I think that may be what happened!
Also, keep in mind that I have been ditching sugar for a very long time now (since my fatty liver diagnosis).
I’ve only had stevia at best.
That could be it? The Stevia, I mean. It is a sugar substitute but it can still cause nausea and puking if you did not line your stomach first. Just generally anything in regards to sugar, sweet, etc. I’m not an expert though, your situation just sounded similar to mine- especially in consideration of the medicine(s).
Yeah, and I just got out of four medication withdrawals at the same time since December.
I think you are honestly right.
I am so reckless and need to line my stomach up properly. I just seem to ingest everything.
But maybe that was the old me and I need to think about the new me.
This isn’t throwing shade on other games or anything, but something I really like about dwarf fortress is that infrastructure projects are hard. In something like city skylines, you just build a bridge with the click of a button and spend money. That’s fine, but even building a castle or aqueduct in dwarf fortress requires planning and organizing resources and workers which makes it feel a lot more special
What about ‘Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic’? I love that game so much. Makes me feel like a part of the central planning of a city(ies).
I haven’t played it yet, but I know there’s a hardcore mode that’s kinda like that
Yeah this is one of the best thing about DF. Like, in order to build down, you need to excavate each layer otherwise the whole thing collapses.
I hope you all have a nice week :D
You too Oppo!
Oh thnx Oppo
You too Oppo!
You too Oppo! ฅ•ﻌ•ฅ
Thank you Comrade!
🫵 You WILL have hope, comrade.
I certainly do now
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Have a good week everyone!
Remember, all work is progress, even if it doesn’t accomplish much external. Failure is growth when we practice crit and self-crit. Just do your best and keep your eyes open and you will find the way for which you can contribute to the real movement in your life. Dialectical materialism shows that to understand something, we must engage with it. So to understand how to change the world, we must try to change it, together, in our place and time. Thankfully, we are not alone, and have a wealth of wisdom from past revolutionaries. Stay curious and read, and find ways to act.
keiko fujimori is president of peru
If you apply for a UK visa they ask you if you ever committed a genocide like who will answer that with yes
They’re asking so they can provide VIP treatment to those who answer yes /s
It’s so wierd being like “okay so I believe that all the problems are caused by capitalism but still you are horrible at managing your finances” to my family.
I mean both can technically be true.
No one chooses to be poor but bad financial decisions can make a bad situation worse. Given that we live in a capitalist system it does stand to reason that we should try to avoid poor spending habits since that can make life harder for us. When capitalism is gone that may no longer be the case, but sadly capitalism isn’t gone yet and we have to operate within it by the conditions it sets for us.
Which sucks, sure, but this is a constant throughout history. The feudal lords didn’t care if the peasants were personally pacifists; they got conscripted into the levies regardless and it was either serve the lord in war time or hang by the neck until death and until the pacifists were ready to have the lord lynched, burn his castle, and seize his wealth the choice was death, service, or banditry.
Think of it in the context of that “we should improve society somewhat” comic.
You shouldn’t have to be “good at managing your finances” in an economically just world. You would have all your basic needs provided for at no cost. Money would only be used to buy things that you want but don’t need. The worst you could do if you were “financially irresponsible” is squandering the money you get for spending on leisure and recreation, on things that don’t fulfill you. No one could go broke because there would be no bills to pay. Oh, and gambling would be banned of course.
I think the major problems I am resolving (at various levels of progress or success but still very very early) are:
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my anhedonia
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OCD
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core beliefs
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C-PTSD and trauma (religious, familial, etc.)
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financial independence
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learning how to work well and consistently again
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learning how to stim and regulate my nervous system and avoid dysregulation
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getting my Master’s degree
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Maybe avoiding my stalker dad but I guess that isn’t really the case
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resolving my co-dependency issues with my siblings
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learning self-trust after having been gaslit a lot
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exercising and physical activity (and not getting trauma flashbacks or over-stimulation doing so)
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DBT for Borderline Personality
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ascertaining whether or not I do have an alter ego or persona (similar to a fursona)
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resolving the spectrophobia and paranoia (so it doesn’t rule my life, though I do realize that the NSA and FBI and police departments spying is a very real thing)
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reversing my cyberchondria
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Re-learning the Spanish language
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Transitioning and starting HRT (soon!), maybe getting a uterus, idk
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reducing my “screen-fatigue” so I can maybe stop getting over-stimulated
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Learning to forget
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And learning to resolve the tension between my justice sensitivity and when or where to forgive someone
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Discovering who I am and what was fake
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Realizing that every second is worth it
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Thinking in the here and now
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Reversing or concluding my dark anger
Honestly, I could use all the advice, suggestions, reassurance, etc. in the world at this point if you all have any.
Still, I am quite excited for the future at this time.
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I used to scoff at this idea, but I really think European liberals might be more racist than American liberals. American liberals have a special kind of ignorance simplistic world view, but my god, interacting with some European liberals and so many of them are just overtly racist
That’s not a hot take at all. Europeans as a whole are lowkey probably more racist than Americans.
We actually have a continent-wide leaderboard for rasicm. Balkan countries are usually at the top. Racism isn’t a small thing here, it’s the norm for everyone (that isn’t Romani) While Romani people live on the streets, unable to earn enough to eat, we call them slurs and act like some sort of superior beings and treat them like human garbage. It’s disgusting to see.
Balkan countries are usually at the top.
I’ve travelled all over Europe and i can’t say i agree with that take. I mean, yes, you’re absolutely correct about the Balkans being extremely racist toward the Roma, but the Balkans hate everyone, especially each other. And at least they’re direct about it.
But when it comes to general racism my experience has been that Scandinavian countries are actually the worst and where it’s most insidious, precisely because they pretend to be all progressive but in really they have a massive superiority complex.
And they have by far the worst islamophobia problem, even compared to the Balkans where they fought centuries of wars with the Turks it’s not as bad as what i encountered in Denmark or Sweden. And then you take a look at the kinds of parties they elect and the whole “progressive Nordics” act really falls apart.
But when it comes to general racism my experience has been that Scandinavian countries are actually the worst and where it’s most insidious, precisely because they pretend to be all progressive but in really they have a massive superiority complex.
Sigh, I’d say that you’re generally right sadly. It is hard to argue against it when around 20% of people vote for a party that is a whitewashed literal Nazi party (and the current leader joined when it was branded as such).
massive superiority complex.
Yes, and I’d also claim that we are among the most propagandized people on the planet. I have a hard time actually thinking of a people more propagandized, possibly the Germans – but I feel like even for them there’ll always be a tiny tiny hint of doubt since they actually DID do the Holocaust once. For swedes there is zero guilt, zero introspection and total belief that your outlook on the world is correct.
The population is also just…ignorant. Our current prime minister literally wrote a book about his ideology a couple years ago where he equaled the Swedish wellfare state to apartheid and stated his life’s purpose to be the destroying of it – but people still vote for this guy and then are chocked when he does just that. Don’t worry, 44% of adults have a university degree, surely this means they can read one book.
I could write a lot about my people but it’ll probably amount to a book (and I fear it’ll be even harder to make them read two books).
I have a hard time actually thinking of a people more propagandized, possibly the Germans
They are definitely a contender for top place.
but I feel like even for them there’ll always be a tiny tiny hint of doubt since they actually DID do the Holocaust once.
The problem is that they’ve turned that into a superiority complex too, like there is this pride in how “well” they think they have dealt with their historical guilt and that makes them better than others who don’t do the same amount of performative self-flagellation.
The fact that they did that reinforces their belief that they are now the most democratic and most liberal and most introspective society ever as a result of it, and every other society is less progressive because they didn’t go through what the Germans did (and often times it even feels like they think they were the biggest victim of the Nazi regime).
And it’s this sense of liberal superiority that has them convinced they cannot be wrong again because they already did the worst thing possible and “learned from it”, so their support for literal Nazis in Ukraine and for a genocide in Palestine has to be moral and anyone who says it’s wrong are actually like the Nazis.
there is zero guilt, zero introspection and total belief that your outlook on the world is correct.
Like i said, i’m not sure which is worse, no sense of guilt or guilt-pride. But yeah, it’s very hard to get someone to acknowledge the deep seated issues in their society if they are convinced and if so much of how the world talks about them reinforces the belief that they already have the perfect system that is the most advanced and most “civilized”.
*(By the way, they also briefly address Sweden and its racism toward the end of that linked video discussion, you can check it out if you’re interested.)
Yea the point was spot on. And I don’t even know how this course should be reversed, one of the most pressing issues is that is the same (class of) people still running the countries (in both Germany and Sweden). Denazification in West Germany was a joke, and in Sweden there never was anything of the sort – which just leads to unconditional chauvinism. You start to understand why Lenin just shot people, and why the cultural revolution was necessary.
Ah, I am so done with all of it.
While recognizing all of these issues i think it’s still important to maintain some semblance of optimism and avoid giving in to the temptation of doomerism. Doomerism is, at the end of the day, not revolutionary, it’s a way of detaching emotionally and feeling “above” the masses. As Marxists we understand that these attitudes are not innate but a product of the system, of the hegemonic culture and of the material conditions. We also understand that change is inevitable and sooner or later the decaying material conditions will sharpen the contradictions between the chauvinistic outlook and the lived reality to a point where some kind of reckoning must happen.
This means on the one hand that far right forces are going to gain in power, that is already certain and baked into the fabric of European society, but it also opens up opportunities for the left to provide an alternative vision and narrative if it can manage to finally set aside its Western chauvinism, embrace real anti-imperialism and internationalism, and stop falling for the liberal-imperialist “anti-authoritarian” psyop.
I’ve been interacting with a lot of them because of the World Cup and they say absolutely vile things about Muslims too. Even in the USA, it isn’t that extreme
Oh yeah, for sure. Islamophobia is pervasive in Europe.
I don’t know if the following is much of a thing in person or more an internet thing, but it reminds of some years back seeing some Europeans on reddit talking about the Romani people in a way that was extremely similar to how racist Yankees talk about black people, and upon pointing this out, I remember there being a sort of a “how dare you” reaction to the comparison being made. But that was a clue to me, I guess, of like, yeah they’re not exactly squeaky clean over there. It may be the principal difference is just that US policies tend to be worse for the country’s own people than (some parts of) “western” Europe are for theirs, but from things I hear, this is in decline.
and upon pointing this out, I remember there being a sort of a “how dare you” reaction to the comparison being made
You were lucky. The reaction i got upon pointing out the same thing was, and i quote:
“Well if the blacks in America are as bad as our [Roma] then it’s no wonder they don’t like them over there.”
Except they used a slur instead.
Yikes, wow.
