That comment pissed me off, the whole trend of doomerist opportunism too. this site is so often just a black hole that no one is interested in fighting against and I'm fucking myself up wasting my time trying in the tide of it. It's an active negation of revolutionary consciousness in an environment which needs it cultivated and brought into the real material world. So many people seem near universally more interested in uncritical and angry insular bias-spirals and opportunist defeatism, opportunist self-confirmation of 'nothing to be done' and 'might as well flee' (which shows a petty-bourgeois affordance), and the worst: opportunism-masquerading-as-principle then shit out onto others in a misery-loves-company kind of way, than anything else constructive. Just straight-line-segment-from-the-curve understandings, as fuel for undialectical projections of doomsaying, so do-nothing opportunists can say "SEE?!?!?!" at whatever they think gives them the opportunity and get applause from other do-nothings, which facilitates the furthering the comparative growth of reaction more than the reactionaries are capable of facilitating themselves than if people were interested in constructive active forward-moving analysis of things.

Socialists in the real world (which are exponentially growing in number every month and have been for almost a decade) I've worked with don't talk like people here, by and large engage more healthily about problems in society, and are more interested in engaging critically along lines of where the problems are and aren't in given things, and working the angles to separate them along dividing lines. This site is 75+% online ultra-leftism wearing the mask of something else. There are people who have been being tortured in US prisons for decades for their activism who have more revolutionary spirit, optimism, fluidity, criticality, and desire for and KNOWLEDGE OF whole-inclusive revolutionary change, and active political consciousness and preparedness to fight by it than the metaphysical one-sided self-satisfied petty-bourgeois-oriented shit I see here.

"iF oNlY i HaD oRgAniZeD mOrE~" People who say this shit are do-nothings. People who support and further it are do-nothings, thinking the people who turned out in the Floyd uprisings, the ever-growing militant labor and tenant movements, and even students occupying colleges at the cost of their petty bourgeois futures over Palestine (A THING WHICH DOESN'T DIRECTLY EFFECT THEM, compared to Vietnam protests where they were being DRAFTED --- a MARK OF ELEVATED CONSCIOUSNESS) are nothing compared to these 5000 home-owners (or otherwise long-term tenants) who decide to partake in a shitty religious email survey? Because, and not just from this, that's what I get and what I hear, more than I get or hear anything else on this site. I wonder, where have these people been this past 10 years, if they have not been on the street seeing what I've seen in just my small part of it? They seem to be seeing less than comrades writing from inside prison walls somehow.

Yes the US, particularly in its bourgeois and petty bourgeois, is largely reactionary, we know this (without this trash 'American Academy of Religion' member survey which should be thrown in the trash); particularly in the ongoing historical inheritance of colonial relations, and that this is an avenue where false-consciousness gets pushed when alternatives are not posited and constructed due to these historical relations and its inherited contradictions. But Christ. I've seen more things and comments on this site, whose only purpose and only constructed framing is to uncritically reinforce insular and doomsaying biases as dead-end metaphysical 'truths', to spiral people into do-nothing emptiness and defeatism before any battle has even been fought by ANY of the people saying these things; than I've seen constructive forward-moving dialectical considerations. I've seen more attempts by do-nothings to self-indulgently self-satisfyingly panic-monger and doomsay about their imagined reality "out there" where they do not stand or in some dreamed-up future, to inflame destructive and opportunist impulses in people to make more do-nothings (or worse), than positive construction toward anything --- or even serious Marxist criticality toward circumstances or material put forward, as long as it confirms OPPORTUNIST, ULTRA-LEFT BIASES and helps people feel like their do-nothingism is somehow 'principled analysis' and they can feel self-satisfied in saying so. Which is effectively reactionary, discouraging socialists of the possibility and reality of change being built, and passing it off as 'principled analysis' based on one's own shallow and actively-sought bias-confirmation as a metaphysical truth, rather than developing working and critical dialectical consideration in one's analysis of material circumstances and events, their internal components, and relations to other circumstances and events as a whole living reality and unfolding history in which we are all partaking in in the ways we do.

The flight of some people from the underground could have been the result of their fatigue and dispiritedness. Such individuals may only be pitied; they should be helped because their dispiritedness will pass and there will again appear an urge to get away from philistinism, away from the liberals and the liberal-labour policy, to the working-class underground. But when the fatigued and dispirited use journalism as their platform and announce that their flight is not a manifestation of fatigue, or weakness, or intellectual woolliness, but that it is to their credit, and then put the blame on the “ineffective,” “worthless,” “moribund,” etc., underground, these runaways then become disgusting renegades, apostates. These runaways then become the worst advisers for the working-class movement and therefore its dangerous enemies.

Log off and join an org

this was posted before, it's a 5000 person survey by a non-profit for "finding the intersection of religion in society for clergy and the public" (hence the weird religious breakdown), which they got by just emailing people on a USPS list with a few hundred self-selected opt-ins on top. Which also inherently excludes a bunch of people, like those who've moved a lot or recently, any and all homeless, lumpenized people and people in distant or ad-hoc or delapidated communities with vague USPS lines and addresses, those who don't have internet access, those in prisons, and those who don't check their email, and those who wouldn't be arsed with these kinds of surveys by religion-in-politics non-profits, and countless other groups. Inherently. The study also has no breakdowns for class or income, if they live in rural, urban, or suburban environs, or even generation breakdowns for most of the questions including this one (but does for some others, weirdly); and the 18-29 age group is vanishingly small compared to the others; and just a bunch of god awful things. Which is shocking to be taken at face value, this trash 5000 person "christian nationalism" survey as "percent of Americans" like the survey says. And then you get such god awful trash takes like in this thread of "if only I'd organized harder" absolutely anti-marxist nonsense, nihilist trash.

it literally isn't a good sample size, especially for their selection process in the breakdown of a place as diverse and varied in peoples and living conditions and environments like the US and its 350 million people. It's a religious-focused NGO for "christian nationalism in politics", has vanishingly few young people, does terrible breakdowns in the full report and tells us nothing about class or income, self-selects for those who are on consistent addresses in USPS lines with internet access who would be arsed to do these surveys (as well as has hundreds of self-selected opt-ins), the report is trash by a non-profit for "finding the intersection of religion and politics for clergy and the public"

which is always funny because United Russia exists as it does from its origins in the turn of the century as basically a big tent "quick everyone get in here so we can be bigger than the communists and keep them from winning legislative and voting-bloc majorities" party (which the communists would have won the presidency too in the 1996 post-fall elections over Yeltsin but Yanks To The Rescue!

also be careful you might be arrested or fined for insinuating poland ever collaborated with hitler on anything

bruh why does trump look like texas chainsaw's leatherface god that's upsetting, the tilted head to augahshf

joke

I replied more viscerally in depth in another reply to one of your comment, but the assumption that it 'not being able to think' is a novel contributing problem in this case is working on a backwards assumption that those who can think will always seek to help and never seek to manipulate and reinforce harm, which we know from incel and other forums is not a thing. People who seek out this stuff will get it. It is a mental health and alienation and atomization under late capitalist dystopia problem, and the internet facilitates meeting like-minded individuals without effort. whether it's a chat bot you can manipulate the guard rails by speaking in metaphoric terms to get it to reinforce you or active sadists and misery-loves-company 'thinkers' on the other side on a forum. People in these states are not trying to be convinced otherwise when they do this kind of stuff. They want to hear this stuff reinforced in themselves, and will do what they can to get it, (like this user speaking in metaphoric terms to get around the blocks of the bot), whether a chatbot or a forum or a discord of misery or whatever it is. The ease-of-access to these phenomenon on the internet facilitating this mirroring reinforcement and not being physically able to be broken up by a local community org is the unique aspect in general, and people can get that in forums just as easily as in a chat bot --- the underlying causes and issues remain the same for both.

if it wasn't this it would be an incel or "blackpill" forum or something. People who seek confirmation in their spirals will seek it, which this user was by working actively to get around the bot's blocking of these things by speaking metaphorically to get it to print a reinforcement of what they wanted to hear. the chatbot is not a new thing in this scenario, and in compared to other cases online had more protection in place than others:

cw suicide

there's been forums about offing yourself where people do this shit with and for each other since the internet, which is a continuation of less-easily-facilitated cults of the same which existed before it. There have been many news stories on them, including how there are sadist proxy-murderers who have no suicidality and no attachments and still reinforce it in these forums, some get thrills openly from the power of it, some get thrills but convincing themselves they don't have ultimate responsibility, some are morbid-curiosity freaks seeing how they can push things not respecting life, and the vast majority are just this, are misery-loves-company who tell each other what they want to hear. The internet is a recreation of existing problems and relations into new conditions; the only differences are manifestations and facilitations and how that develops. Things like even if a kid can't drive yet they can still find these forums at home and not have questions asked. Things like community orgs can't go in where these people are meeting and get help for those who want it and chase away the sadist bad actors with baseball bats. etc. But this isn't a new thing; incel forums have been sparking suicides and stochastic terror for a while even in the last decade. It is not a qualitatively different change finding a chat bot that you can manipulate the guardrails into convincing you of these things vs finding a ""community"" of suicidal depressives and psychotics to do the same or worse are eager to do it consciously from the start, with cognition and conscious manipulation behind it.

the chatbot in this context is in practicality no different than an incel forum which creates the same effects. It is a social reinforcement loop ("social" in the case of the bot, is approximating the same, which it machine-learns from the same interactions and relations from people online, presuming this is another LLM that just data-scrapes the internet, which also includes a lot of incel forums and these general social trends; and the user was actively trying to get responses to reinforce their biases in themselves as incel forums do.)

Any superstructure and expression of it is going to have unique characteristics of the conditions and history of that specific country and its ruling class, I wouldn't argue the US individualism isn't unique in its ways, just as it is unique in other places in different ways. I don't think profiteering healthcare and the hoodwinking of poor people about "but muh wait times" or what have you is an expression of individualism though. That is a straightforward capitalist interest in maximizing profits, particularly with having some elite hospitals being worth-travel for big bourgeois elsewhere, meaning you get the (probably racistly-named) "Arab Sheik problem" where they charge for the highest payers that will pay, and that is more profitable than charging normal prices, even when accounting for all those who never pay. And this dictates the general healthcare "market." But then people are miseducated and kept from political education about healthcare and are told straight wrong information by their corporate bourgeois media and so believe it. They're not saying "it's my god given right to die not being able to afford an ambulance." The majority of the US is in favor of single payer. And even those who aren't it's not individualism, there was that thing where people were cheering for Trump to dismantle Obamacare but then were pissed when they found out that ACA is Obamacare and they actually relied on it (as garbage as ACA is). Bad education and being propagandized is not an aspect of US individualism. And it's not only the US that has privatized or partial private healthcare.

'Thoughts and prayers' is a Christian thing in general. Maybe a western Christian thing idk about Orthodox if they do that kind of thing. Christianity is a deeply individualist religion with a long history in Europe through Feudalism of the church ensuring its subjects develop in a way where they individualize all of their problems and internalize them, kept meek and modest and passive and accepting of bad things, kept separated, and made to idealize keeping their thoughts and wants and needs between them and god and repressing themselves and never making trouble in society (and paying their tithe!) in order to be granted freedom when they die. It's not unique to the US. The more modern prosperity gospel trend of it is certainly a particularly individualist trend, but rooted in the same thing I mentioned, a superstructural expression as the typical bourgeois individualism of "I have this which means I earned it which means I'm good and should have this."

There were terrible lockdown responses all over Europe, this was absolutely not a US-specific phenomenon. And it all came from the same roots, a base in capitalist interest and the liberal individualist superstructural outgrowths of it came after and was also not unique to the US. The covid response being temporary and feeble all over even in European countries who 'let it rip,' and even half or more of the anti-lockdown protestors too, were economic in nature. It was the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeois wanting profits and not being able or wanting to tighten belts to deal with lockdowns and associated costs, and even workers wanting to work and not being paid enough to survive and support families compared to the gouging of rents and costs of living including price gouges by grocery stores and other companies.

Where there was lockdowns, there was economic lobbying by capitalists to open it back up, which was not out of individualism but out of base material interest. In tourist states and cities in the US for instance there was heavy heavy lobbying by restaurant and hotel capitalists and their cartels (I mean, 'professional associations boards') to ram things back open because of their bottom line. That isn't an expression of individualism but of material interest, a base and not a superstructure. A basal interest, which is furthered socially in superstructural outgrowths, in narratives from that base interest, rooted in what I described before, the bourgeois liberal individualism as a natural consequence of capitalist relations; where they express (and even convince themselves), that their individual freedom to run their business which they 'worked so hard to achieve', and others individual freedom to engage in tourism and dining and commerce 'to spend their hard-earned money (at my restauraunt)', are impeded by the lockdowns. That base creates superstructure, which then reinforces the base. It's not a 'trick' but bourgeois ideology, which is the dominant ideology in bourgeois society; which has its own character in its own conditions and histories, but is itself not unique to the US.

Coal rolling is a specific spiteful individualist asshole exclusive to the US --- an expression of this same root of European bourgeois liberal individualism from the same origins, but its form and character and expressions shaped by how it came out of the US' material conditions and history, such as its particular car culture which grew out of its specific historical powerhouse capitalist monopolies (Ford, GM, Chrysler, Studebaker, Chevrolet, adjacents like agricultural vehicles from International Harvester Company and John Deere etc.) which was at the forefront of global industrial machine production with, and in which, it achieved its dominance in the early automotive and industrial-agriculture markets --- from which also the war industry was built by retooling existing infrastructure, from which the US empire became global hegemon out of the World Wars.

Coal likewise has its own basis in this history, with similar the world's richest people being coal and railroad tycoons; and the "coal towns" and the like; which in the earliest years was basically commodity serfdom, heinously criminal and caused things like the coal wars --- but afterward while still flagrantly criminal and exploitative in many many ways, also became a very high-paying stable trade for workers in which much pride was taken in their work (which happened in the Soviet Union too, Stakhanovites movement and such, but of course a different system under better conditions and without capitalist exploitation, there are still important understandings of peoples connection to their labor) which when that was lost created a lot of alienation and poverty and ravaging of their communities as all post-industrial towns, and anger/resentment with no class consciousness to replace it, as a legacy of bourgeois-initiated red scares white terrors and anti-communist propaganda the pervasiveness of which would make the Nazis swoon. And so environmental/green tech movements and protestors are a point of false-conscious conflict in regards to that legacy which gets emanated into wider culture.

It is a unique expression of spiteful individualist assholery in the US, but only as a form of the general European bourgeois liberal individualism which came from the unique US material conditions, as a natural superstructural outcropping of its bourgeois class interest, which gives rise to bourgeois liberal ideology in its form, which becomes the dominant hegemonic ideology as bourgeois ideology always does, and in a dialectic way then gets taken-and-changed by the working class to their own conditions and perceived interests in whatever level of political consciousness they have. It is, agreed, a spiteful manifestation and expression of liberal individualism which is unique to the US, but it is that just as there are other spiteful manifestations and expressions of liberal individualist assholery in other European countries in other forms from their history and conditions.

Hardly a US specific thing. Individualism will do that, and individualism has been a cornerstone of liberal ideology since its inception out of the material conditions of transition from feudal relations to capitalist private property, with its particular personal profiteering phenomenon in Europe in general. The advent of socialized labor yet individual appropriation, as a natural continuation from small-scale personal artisanal craft and trade where the one exchanging was the one making, evolving into its next stages; with the new productive forces unleashed being owned in these same private hands which could afford them and were established in the markets and trade, alongside the flocking of dispossessed peasants to cities, which began the socialization of labor with machines; but while continuing the same process of personal exchange of the products at market by the owner, who could then afford more machines from the surplus, and employ more socialized labor, etc. And so liberal individualism is a natural the superstructural outcropping of there being an inherent logical assumption of the capitalist "earning" that, even though they did not provide the value, this wasn't really known or even thought about, people were just continuing relations as they had been, in the new form with the new productive forces, in the new mode of production.

#JustLeopoldIIThings

Stein has unequivocally rejected the endorsement, calling Duke a "racist troll" in a social media post. Nevertheless, the attention surrounding the endorsement has cast a shadow over Stein's campaign and added a controversial layer to an already-complex race.

Duke's public break from Trump marks a reversal of his 2016 and 2020 endorsements, accusing Trump of being too closely aligned with Israel and the "Jewish lobby."

This development, while unlikely to influence a large number of voters, may sway far-right or nationalist segments of Trump's base who feel alienated by his foreign policy stances.

newsweek, none of today's serious fascists know or care about david duke. this is more likely to affect moron 'optics' liberals in the greens who feel intense shame any time anyone does anything. david duke is not a serious political actor and hasn't been for decades, and this is how he makes people remember he exists. he's a washed out crank nazi gambling addict, and most of even the far right forget he exists until the media brings him up because he does some thing to draw attention to himself like this. Even anti-fascists forget this clown exists. I am surprised to hear he didn't die in a gutter somewhere during lockdown. In fact you, newsweek, help his "career" more by writing about him than he is capable of doing on his own these days and for the past 30 years.

I'm , but worth the perspective stated by the Stein campaign that they denounced this fascist creep and told his boomer supporters (all 3 of them who stayed after he defrauded them in the 90s, for gambling) to buzz off immediately, whereas Kamala is touring with the genocidal Cheneys, who in actuality, harmed more people than duke could dream

McDonald's Magic

When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such injury that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society xxxv places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.

(...) I have now to prove that society in England [Canada] daily and hourly commits what the working-men’s organs, with perfect correctness, characterise as social murder, that it has placed the workers under conditions in which they can neither retain health nor live long; that it undermines the vital force of these workers gradually, little by little, and so hurries them to the grave before their time. I have further to prove that society knows how injurious such conditions are to the health and the life of the workers, and yet does nothing to improve these conditions. That it knows the consequences of its deeds; that its act is, therefore, not mere manslaughter, but murder, I shall have proved, when I cite official documents, reports of Parliament and of the Government, in substantiation of my charge. That a class which lives under the conditions already sketched and is so ill-provided with the most necessary means of subsistence, cannot be healthy and can reach no advanced age, is self-evident.

^link

“We are heartbroken and our deepest thoughts are with our associate and their family. We extend our sincerest condolences to those who were closest to them,” the Walmart spokesperson said. “We’re also supporting our associates during this incredibly difficult time and have provided access to 24/7 virtual care and will provide on-site support, including grief counselling.”

Yeah we see how much you give a shit about your AsSoCiAtEs. Yeah I'm sure this is so difficult for you, corporate whitewash mouthpiece.

guy has no political acumen to make the austerity, theft, and plundering less shameless. guy thinks US is gonna protect him from the pitchfork mob while he's doing everything to ensure the cops and military open the gates to his compound for them; but he's gonna be too much of an awkward political liability for that, Trump or whoever's just gonna let the phone ring as he gets ripped to shreds by the masses.

OP @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net it's Pridnestrovie, not 'Transnistria.' 'Transnistria' is what the imperialist and neo-colonials in "the west" call it, to refuse the status of the country because it just means "[the Moldovan territory] past the Dneister (river)," as well as to treat it as simply a historical legacy, not of the USSR, but of its previous administrators: the Nazis.

Pridnestrovians don't want to be called that, consider it a grave insult actually, because it's literally the name the Romanian and German Nazis used for their occupation government when they carried out the Holocaust there (Transnistria Governorate). Pridnestrovie was deeply impacted and affected by the Holocaust, and the Nazi-occupied administrative territory of the "Transnistria Governorate" served as a junction point where Jews from surrounding areas were deported to in 'processing' for enslavement or liquidation or later transfer elsewhere.

It is a point of deep national consciousness, this experience, and of national pride that they did as much as they did to resist Nazism and to shield Jews in the territory ^{[sci-hub link]}; an uncommon phenomenon in most of Europe which saw huge collaborations and pogroms against Jews.

They by and large do not connect with the legacy of their previous occupiers who lay claim to them. During Catastroika and fashnost leading to the breakdown of the USSR, which caused the vicious resurgence of right wing nationalism, there grew large radical movements of Moldavian and "Greater Romania" fascists, who began demanding things such as the removal of all languages but Moldovan/Romanian, change to latin script, and expulsion of Slavs from the country and eventually in 1990 acquired power in the central government of the Moldavian SSR and started to implement their policies. It is in this environment that the Pridnestrovians had organized ad-hoc independence referendums, which were met with violent resistance by these fascist groups (just as we saw a much more drawn-out version of in the DNR/LNR in Ukraine) and declared independence --- because they feared an independent Moldova led by these people would not only directly abuse them as they had already begun to, but also align and possibly even unite with the core country of their previous occupiers and exterminationists in Romania. Pizzachev annulled their independence but they in practicality maintained it and after the failure of the August coup in 1991 they declared independence in secession from the USSR as well as Moldova. They even fought a 2 year long low-intensity war from 1990-1992 to maintain their independence (and in which Ukrainian Nazi volunteers fought against Moldova, but for trying to annex Pridnestrovie into Ukraine) resulting in the death of over a thousand people.

And so they do not wish to be called anything but Pridnestrovie, or the full name Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic.