Dude’s an ultra
Bonus: https://nitter.net/uncle_authority/status/1721967810241335347#m
I guess the Deprogram guys are the Three Stooges now? But the joke doesn’t really work
It is a principle of dialectics that “contradictions are inherent in nature, the struggle between the old and the new is the process of development”. Mixing religion with Marxism is a fundamental contradiction (idealism vs materialism, as pointed out by RD) that many of us leftist struggle with due to our own unique material upbringings, but one that we will ultimately overcome and unfetter ourselves off the idealism that comes with religion.
RD take is the correct one here but this is not the way to address it, it is simply unempathetic to Hakim (we don’t know the source of his spirituality, might be related to his upbringing during war?). A private conversation + follow up post would’ve been the way to address this.
Of the 2 takes I’ve seen RD make on Twitter beefing with Hakim I’ve agreed with him both times but he’s really the embodiment of “incredibly insufferable ML that needs to learn how to ‘just vibe’ and not drone out class analysis” when people are just casually chatting/hanging out
he should use that skill to dunk on liberals not other less principled Marxists.
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we will ultimately overcome and unfetter ourselves off the idealism that comes with religion
And if that doesn’t happen? China, North Korea, and plenty of AES have religious movements even when atheism is the official stance. China especially can be a guide as many religions were illegal for decades, and people did not stop being religious.
I think China’s dialectical decisions about this reality makes sense, at least for their regulation of it in place of encouragement. For Christianity, they utilize the three-self motto: self-governance, self-support (i.e., financial independence from foreigners), and self-propagation (i.e., indigenous missionary work) to keep practices as indigenous as possible which seems helpful to me.
The material conditions that made religion bury deeply into the cultures of the world will slowly fade as the world progresses.
As marx pointed out religion is the opium of the masses, not as in a party drug but as in a drug that eases the pain and suffering off the oppressed.
Sure, and he’s right as far as religions – and especially state-run bourgeois religions – hampering and preventing revolution. But we have material evidence that (1) religion can and does give voice to and even assist revolutions (Marx and Engels both used religious imagery in their writings) and (2) post-revolution, the desire for spirituality and forms of religion persist even with upheaval and reorganization of material conditions from feudal to capitalist to socialist. Maybe it will die off completely in the future, but that hasn’t happened in any AES country to date and that’s really important to note.
This are my thoughts.
(1) religion can be used as a tool for our cause temporarily pre-revolution and early socialist development, but ultimately it has to be left behind because it is not compatible with the dialectical materialism outlook. Also for religion to work in our cause we need to adapt it, a great example is the liberation theology synthesis developed by latin american priests.
(2) is simply not the reality, in developed nations the trend is that newer generations are less religious than the last one. The transition to an atheist society is, just like everything in nature, dialectical. Religions will slowly wither away to give place to materialism.
We are mostly in agreement here. Yes, I 100% agree that liberation theology and other grassroots religious movements that incorporate dialectical materialism has to be incorporated at some level, superseding the bourgeoise strains of religions in totality. My username’s namesake is named after the guy who is credited with black liberation theology after all. No disagreement here.
But my argument is that we can’t look at capitalist countries to tell us what will happen in communist countries. Its the wrong dataset. We need to look at folks in AES countries to determine how materialism and religion have interacted post-revolution. China’s Christian population has grown significantly in the last two decades. North Korea has had presbyterian members of the upper cabinet, even having a Christian political working group at one point. Vietnam’s folk religion continues to grow, and over half of Cubans are religious. The theory that religion will eventually disappear post-revolution simply hasn’t happened and, in fact, many people have embraced religion post-revolution.
Lets remember that the conditions of these AES countries are still relatively bad, it is understandable that religion is still popular. It is still a fundamental contradiction that has to be resolved.
China’s conditions are not bad, and their dialectic has already taken reality into consideration as it seeks to solve this contradiction. Read “The Basic Viewpoint and Policy on the Religious Question during Our Country’s Socialist Period” released in 1982.
We Communists are atheists and must unremittingly propagate atheism. Yet at the same time we must understand that it will be fruitless and extremely harmful to use simple coercion in dealing with the people’s ideological and spiritual questions–and this includes religious questions. We must further understand that at the present historical stage the difference that exists between the mass of believers and nonbelievers in matters of ideology and belief is relatively secondary. If we then one-sidedly emphasize this difference, even to the point of giving it primary importance–for example, by discriminating against and attacking the mass of religious believers, while neglecting and denying that the basic political and economic welfare of the mass of both religious believers and nonbelievers is the same–then we forget that the Party’s basic task is to unite all the people (and this includes the broad mass of believers and nonbelievers alike) in order that all may strive to construct a modern, powerful Socialist state. To behave otherwise would only exacerbate the estrangement between the mass of believers and nonbelievers as well as incite and aggravate religious fanaticism, resulting in serious consequences for our Socialist enterprise. Our Party, therefore, bases its policy of freedom of religious belief on the theory formulated by Marxism-Leninism, and it is the only correct policy genuinely consonant with the people’s welfare.
North Korea has had presbyterian members of the upper cabinet, even having a Christian political working group at one point
This seems fascinating, do you know a source where I can learn more about this? Everything I’ve found about NK’s relationship with religion is filled with “you get executed if you have a Bible”-style propaganda.
Sure. Kim Il Sung grew up Presbyterian, his maternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, his mom was a deacon and lifelong Presbyterian, and his family especially his mom worshiped at a presbyterian church in DPRK. Several members of the dprk cabinet (or whatever it’s called) were Methodist or presbyterian ministers. As long as they were anti-imperial and supported the dprk, there was no issue. There was a Presbyterian seminary in Pyongyang until 1938 that resumed training in the 1970s though I don’t think it’s specifically Presbyterian any more, but it’s still open and training ministers within DPRK. Kang Ryang-uk was an incredibly important figure in the early DPRK. He was the vice chair and chair of the KSDP, the 2nd & 7th Vice President, and secretary and vice president of the People’s Assembly. He was a Presbyterian minister and maternal uncle of Kim Il Sung and studied theology at the Pyongyang Seminary. Kang also helped found the Korean Christian Federation which continues to this day.
You can read more here (best bits at the end): https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/48.3.659
Maybe it will die off completely in the future, but that hasn’t happened in any AES country to date and that’s really important to note.
There was significant decrease in religiousness in all socialist countries and its a steady trend as long as state remain focused on proper materialist education.
Really, looking at all the current and former AES, i would say that getting rid of religion is easier than getting rid of petty bourgeois sentiment (something that Lenin said it would be the hardest thing to do, and which was also not successful but with some progress in AES).
Sorry, I don’t really have the capacity to write the long response that this deserves but I can add few things that complicate that overall picture.
- Reported religiousness plummets when religion is outlawed but skyrockets when its re-legalized or tolerated again (e.g., China, USSR). This isn’t because a lot of people suddenly convert – proselytizing is almost always still illegal – but rather they feel safe enough to self-report and identify as religion followers on official and unofficial surveys. Religiosity has been resilient in most AES countries. See China and Cuba’s remarkably steady Christian population and folk religion adherents or Buddhism in Vietnam.
- There are many reasons people claim religions including national heritages, family history, spiritual connections to some practice, or genuine superstition. Education can address the latter but struggles with the former. As I recommended below, I’d recommend reading China’s statement on this from 1982.
Agreed on the petty bourgeois sentiment. Religion overlaps with that in huge amounts, of course, so if religion is to be allowed in AES countries, it needs regulation and proper education that both re-educates indigenous populations especially those that were converted from, say, American evangelicals and makes sure cults like Shen Yun don’t pop up – this obviously happens outside of religion too but it’s particularly insidious within it.
You’re basically right, but note even in the formerly AES countries, despite plunging into deep crisis, the number of atheists remain at much higher levels than it was before socialism - even in country like Poland. It’s most visible in Czechia iirc. So it does work. Few more generations (it was like not even 2 basically) and much more would disappear, though probably not entirely (see Japanese christianity emerging after Meiji restoration, though it emerged 95% reduced and heavily influenced with buddhism).
I think there isn’t much problem with disorganised and decentralised religions, at least as the party remains strictly atheist, but something like the catholic church is immense danger, the worse that every move against them, even for completely nonrelated reasons (again look at Poland where some priests were arrested for spying and other antisocialist activities) will be always portrayed as attack on religion, so the socialist country would necessarily have aim to remove their political power, most likely by expropriation of their property - something that for example again Poland failed to do (PRL even gave them some of postgerman land!) which caused unending trouble.
There are many reasons people claim religions including national heritages, family history, spiritual connections to some practice, or genuine superstition. Education can address the latter but struggles with the former.
All those aren’t as immutable as you probably see it, there are historical examples of all this changing more or less rapidly. I think it’s again that socialism simply did not had enough time and had too much outside opposition to properly adress that.
Lenin once wrote interesting article “On the significance of militant materialism”
Czechia seems to be an outlier according to the data I’ve seen (link), but granted that Estonia also has a near majority of atheist. But yeah, observance of actual religions rites are very sparse. But I really care more about how people identify as that is a powerful form if self-identification, especially post-revolution.
Re: Catholcism, I agree 100%. In that document I referenced above, the Chinese government talks about the danger of imperial influences in religions:
Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism, which occupy a very important place among our national religions, are at the same time ranked among the major world religions, and all exercise extensive influence in their societies… At the present time, contacts with international religious groups are increasing, along with the expansion of our country’s other international contacts, a situation which has important significance for extending our country’s political influence. But at the same time there are reactionary religious groups abroad, especially the imperialistic ones such as the Vatican and Protestant Foreign-mission societies, who strive to use all possible occasions to carry on their efforts at infiltration “to return to the China mainland.” Our policy is to actively develop friendly international religious contacts, but also to firmly resist infiltration by hostile foreign religious forces.
We must be vigilant and pay close attention to hostile religious forces from abroad who set up underground churches and other illegal organizations. We must act resolutely to attack those organizations that carry out destructive espionage under the guise of religion. Of course, in doing so, we must not act rashly, but rather investigate thoroughly, have irrefutable evidence at hand, choose the right moment, and execute the case in accordance with lawful procedures.
The entire document is worth reading, but this in particular was pertinent to avoiding reactionaries within religions. It still asserts that Marxism and religions are contradictory but that religion isn’t going anywhere even though it’s been illegal for over a a generation.
But as I mentioned to the other poster, we’re basically in agreement. I just don’t think that religiosity will ever just fall away like Marx & Engel’s optimism, but who knows. I’d be glad to be wrong, especially if China’s model of the long game in followed.
Most people who identify as Christians in the former Soviet Union visit the church about 1-2 times a year at most. In more developed Muslim areas situation is the same. Actual religious faith survived only in underdeveloped rural communities, and even there it is slowly bleeding support.
Yeah, Pew’s Report calls that “believing and belonging, without behaving” which I thought was a funny way to put it.
While Pew Research Center’s survey shows that majorities of adults across the region believe in God and identify with Orthodox Christianity, conventional measures of Christian religious behavior – such as levels of daily prayer and weekly worship attendance – are relatively low.
I wonder what it would take for people on this website to realize that their parasocial daddies can be and often are incorrect. Roderic took a poor communicative tact, but it’s obvious to any Marxist that what Hakim wrote is, well, rather silly in its implications. Being charitable, Hakim’s view is likely skewed by personal favoritism and this error would be much less likely to come up if he was discussing other religions. Otherwise, one would be forced to conclude that he was catastrophically ignorant about the political functions of religion and the social basis for its creation, and completely oblivious to this ignorance.
Christman fucks up plenty too.
Christman fucks up plenty too.
But that’s because he’s our modern Harrier Du Bois. It comes with the territory
Even Tequila Sunset is only human, and I could never fault him for that.
guy named Hakim from Iraq is Muslim, white people are shocked and appalled
Who is surprised? Roderic isn’t, as far as this tweet goes. It’s just the mixing of idealistic reasoning with Marxist reasoning to try to bring people to Marxism from Islam. It’s a method that communists call opportunism and claim, because of materialist philosophy, can only lead to incorrect interpretations and failure of socialist movements. Palestinians have material and religious reasons to resist, but the marxist analysis should focus on the material and how religion connects, not the other way
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lol
Lol all you want. Hakim did a tailism.
it’s a youtuber linking the quran
I also feel like it was said with a level of tongue in cheek facetiousness. Pointing to HAMAS’ use of religion as an ideological underpinning, and then saying “I’m recommend a book on the subject” and the book is the fucking Quran is… Very obviously a bit about Hakim’s tendency to recommend obscure theory books.
I for one am shocked that members of the Islamic Resistance Movement find value in an Islamic text.
I do think Hakim’s take is pretty bad here. It’s a very idealist belief that’s fundamentally not compatible with trying to understand the situation trough a materialist lense.
Implying he’s a reactionary opportunist is just such a massive overreaction though. You’re allowed to criticize other socialists without being insufferable about it.
There’s a case to be made that their religion has become very ingrained with their day to day lives to the point that it’s indistinct from any other type of social organization they have. In that case the faith, religious ideology, and texts are a little secondary to things like their family structures, social infrastructure, support networks, and locations where they can organize. So in that sense their religion has become very material, which is often what happens. Religious belief can often be made very manifest in the world, reified through things like very tight social groups. Islam in much of the world, including Palestine, is as much a political organization as it is the more spiritual side of things.
Although I’d criticize Hakim for characterizing all Palestinians as Muslim, or saying that Islam is the primary thing that’s motivating them. Rather, it’s more the case that political Islam is the most organized game in town due to historical factors of the region. If it weren’t Islam, then people who want liberation would have something else, like how many Irish Republicans are Catholics. It is true though that 98% of Palestinians are Muslim, but that 2% who aren’t will probably also want liberation.
I think your comment is exactly showing something that we as communists should be aware of: calling someone an opportunist or a reactionary is not some heavenly stamp which forever makes that person incorrect or evil or some shit. Calling someone opportunist only needs to mean “currently in the process we call opportunism” and nothing more. We decide whether that’s true and expect the comrade to change or not depending on that result. If they don’t change after being opportunist then they are still performing that opportunism.
Roderic doesn’t think Hakim is evil or something, that’s more idealist than believing in religion generally, just that the claims to religious power are opportunistic and through that Hakim is performing opportunism. We can disagree, but the idea that we can’t call someone something because it’s mean, even when that thing is a concrete description of a process, is bullshit that we take from some western Christian beliefs of unwashable guilt (without Jesus or whatever).
Also to be clear, I disagree with Roderic only because I think that Hakim is doing the “their religion becomes material to their lives” thing and it seems probably true based on the form of resistance Palestinians are doing. The fact that he is also religious makes it complexer (and possible that he should not try to connect it to Marxism) but I’m not bothered by it until we’re already far enough in socialism that religion’s material presence isn’t necessary anymore.
That’s a really good point.
Maybe I read the tweet as being more aggressive towards Hakim than it was, because reading the word opportunism I just immediately assumed it’s accusing him of not being a real communist or whatever, instead of just criticizing what he’s doing right now.
Thanks for pointing it out, I’ll try to be more mindful of that.
Also to add, distinguishing s person from their actions is also something we should avoid. He is criticizing Hakim AS the Hakim who is doing this. Not just Hakim as a person or Hakim’s actions. But redoing through self-crit changes the incorrect person too and makes this not some “heavenly stamp” as I called it. We just can’t be scared of being critiqued for our actions as ourselves, because our actions can’t be removed from “ourselves”
With comradely love
I’d claim Hakim has the correct take here, and Day’s is a vulgar materialist view that ignores the interplay of faith and material conditions.
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That might be a credible take if, for instance, Hakim’s post so much as mentioned material conditions, or Roderic’s post was about the engine of history rather than Hakim’s post.
Your assessment is totally disconnected both from the content of Hakim’s post and from the content of Day’s tweet.
I mean no, it’s not. The main anti-colonial group left in Gaza, which is massively popular, is an organization whose primary driving force is Islam. Religion is an incredibly important cultural force that is a key driving factor for Gazans and other Palestinian people in this fight. That is a materialist analysis of the situation lol because that is what the Palestinians themselves are saying. Just look at the wording used by the people there: the dead aren’t the dead but ‘martyrs’, and this isn’t just a conflict but a ‘jihad’ (righteous fight).
Hakim is very correctly noting the obvious here in that a vast majority of the Palestinians are Muslim and that their faith is a primary driver of this conflict for them. Painting in broad strokes isn’t denying that there aren’t any secular Palestinians, but talking about how Palestinians are fighting back and resisting in aggregate / at a zoomed out level.
Saying that the primary driving force behind Hamas is Islam is literally the exact opposite of material analysis.
Colonized people will resist their occupiers regardless of beliefs. The point isn’t that religion isn’t important to the people of Palestine, or that they can’t or shouldn’t find purpose or comfort in it. We should still not pretend that it’s the specific ideas they believe in that compels them to resist their occupiers.
Except it is the specific idea that compels them to resist their occupiers. Because they say it is. Saying otherwise is doing literally exactly the same thing that white Americans did that caused indigenous native Americans to have to change their practices, which they did not see as religious, to fit into the western white European understandings of the word ‘religion’ in order to receive government funding. Even if a Marxist or materialist analysis of the situation says in general that oppressed peoples ‘usually’ or ‘always’ react a specific way because of a specific force, you’re missing the point that that is a scientific theory. It is an abstraction. That does not mean it is reality or the only way of viewing a situation.
Your understanding of the situation and how it fits in with your worldview is different than the point of view of the Palestinians actually experiencing the situation. Again, I want to point you to the broad literature of the study of religion that shows just exactly what happens when dudes with white, western ideas of how the world works try to impose those on native indigenous populations.
Your point of view of how the situation works, or your understanding of the powers at play, is not reality. That is your interpretation of reality, a very useful abstraction that is very usually right. But that abstraction has contexts where it is appropriate to apply it, and contexts where it is inappropriate to apply it. And trying to apply it to deny the very real primary motivation that Palestinian people say is motivating them is not a great place to apply that abstraction.
The comment you’re responding is taking the opposite stance of what you’re accusing it of, it’s noting the importance of Islam, not trying to impose some sort of colonial mindset on the Palestinians.
But its point seems to be it really doesnt make much sense to read the Quran to understand the conflict when reading history or Lenin on imperialism or something would be far more useful. Maybe the Quran could give an interesting and more intimate perspective, but most westerners would be better served by history. Also the Palestinian struggle has been ongoing for a while and Hamas is not the only way to approach the conflict - even in the current conflict they are not the only ones involved.
Yeah, and what happened to the secular forces, I wonder? Did they just lack the stick-to-it-ness powers granted by religion, or were they actively trampled by forces that wanted the conflict in the region to have an ethnoreligious character?
They weren’t as popular
an organization whose primary driving force is Islam
What Islam? A collection of beliefs? A set of believers?
The defining contention of materialism is that ideas are not the primary driver of history. Hakim’s post says, without qualification, that Islam is the driving force of the resistance.
The backflips folks are doing in this thread (including obliterating the very distinction between the ideal and the material, which is revisionism) to reconcile these two blindingly obvious, incompatible things are incredible.
That is a materialist analysis of the situation lol because that is what the Palestinians themselves are saying
Self-report (unadorned by any commentary or context, even) is ‘material analysis’ now? What?
Roderick being terminally online is normal for him, like that time he wanted a teacher sitcom to have a school shooting episode and triple down
Wow he would love this site. Get a lot of kicks calling people fascist for kinda enjoying a Netflix show or something.
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His ultimate point was also not really about it being good or bad in quality, he just has the position that artists have a social responsibility and got mad that the show decided against portraying a reality(school shootings in the USA) because it would be discomforting, as a basic summary. He doesnt like slop.
What are his thoughts on Turning Red not mentioning 9/11
I think that dissertation is on hold currently due to the Hakim opportunism situation, sadly.
If he wants to make a point about artists having a social responsibility to accurately portray reality, he should’ve just said sitcoms are a reactionary genre and artists with a desire to produce revolutionary work ought to not be involved in the production of sitcoms. Because sitcoms make most of their money through syndication, reaired episodes aren’t shown in order. This means sitcom episode always reset to a status quo, which means you’ll never be able to portray the effects of lasting change. From this, a school shooter episode wouldn’t work because the following episodes would all have to pretend a school shooting never happened, and while that could be used as a commentary on school administration, even the characters would have to pretend the school shooting never happened.
This is what I meant earlier about him being a pseud. I don’t know if he’s genuinely this pig-headed or if he’s just purposefully being edgy, but the effect is still the same.
It would have been right in line with 90s TV. You’d just replace the gun with a toy knife and run a Much Ado About Nothing plotline where everyone accuses each other of owning it in a silly mix up with a serious message.
they shot carlton on prime time in the 90’s
Assuming you’re talking about Fresh Prince, that was Will. Carlton then gets a gun in a promise of revenge.
right yeah, carlton gets spun out on pills i think
wasn’t that Jessie on Saved By The Bell?
her too, the fresh prince one was called “Just Say Yo” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0583000/
I would maybe shut up and listen to someone who is closer to the situation, but then again I’m just a corgi with a laptop, the fuck do I know?
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i love red sails, but RD needs to shut the fuck up on twitter. or maybe focus on promoting theory and engaging in legitimate, helpful criticism instead of smearing other socialist content creators on the pettiest straw man shit
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it’s not that he shouldnt be critiqued, it’s that this “critique” is just an uncharitable misinterpretation backed up by a Lenin excerpt that’s only relevant in the context of the misinterpretation
I don’t understand, Zizek has good and bad information that can be easily taken from his analysis like taking the wheat from the chaff, but patsoc? What does that even mean in this context? I know what patsoc means, but how has that come forward in any of their creations or their perspectives? As far as I can tell as an enjoyer of their media (all three, not even sure if you mean Yugopnik or Second Thought) I’ve not encountered any sense of anyone having a PatSoc perspective.
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For all the criticisms of the CPUSA, of which I have many, I don’t think ascribing him the entirety of it’s failings is quite fair; especially when considering that he is simply a contributor to and not a member of the CPUSA as far as I’m aware. I think you’re putting the horse before the carriage, he’s simply a ML, Jackson Hinkle and Infrahaz are examples of explicit "Patsoc"s and the gap between them and Second Thought is comically wide. If the charge is simply that he’s contributed to CPUSA, then, okay? I don’t think that’s the same as being able to accurately label him as under the same banner as these kinds of ramblings below
PatSocs are bad because they adopt ML ideas and twist them into allowing racism, sexism, and queerphobia to run amock in their communities. They don’t build anything and instead create cults with leaders like Lyndon LaRouche; as much as I disagree with CPUSA’s direction and completely ineffectual leadership, I think considering JT due to his proximity to be on a similar level to Lyndon LaRouche is a wild overcorrection.
Additionally, I should note that when I was a member of CPUSA everyone was very clear that all the LaRouchites, Haz fans, and Borgar King Caleb Maupin appreciators had no place in that space. I think you should criticize CPUSA in order to find the correct line, but I think you may not be using a common definition for Patsoc when it includes CPUSA
I’m in favor of expanding “patsoc” to really any american socialist who tries to latch on to ambient americanism instead of toeing the hard
line of dismantling the project, renouncing its legacy, redistributing the piles of imperialist loot, and retreating into the backgrounde.g. from former cpusa chair sam webb
A big challenge for sure, and crucial to winning the American people to engage in such a[n anti-imperialist] movement, is re-envisioning our role in the world community. The point isn’t for the U.S. government to simply to crawl into a national shell, but to reinsert itself into world affairs on the basis of cooperation, peace, equality, and mutual benefits.
or current co-chair joe sims
In reading “No Room for Patriotism,” it’s as if Eugene Debs never went to jail to protest the First World War, the communists never risked life and limb to organize the mass productions industries while helping free the Scottsboro defendants and sending thousands to fight Franco in Spain. Did not our grandmothers and grandfathers fight the good fight in WW 2, keep the red flame alive in the heat of the Cold War while marching to desegregate swimming pools and restaurants and bathrooms before it became popular? Were we not on the front lines in demanding an end to the Vietnam War, the embargo of Cuba and freedom for Mandela?
And what about the hundreds of millions of other plain ordinary folk who comprise the vast majority of our class and people: Christian and Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist, citizen and immigrant, gay and straight, workers, professionals, black, white, brown, Asian and Native American – simple decent minded individuals who strived to “do the right thing” as they understood it by upholding democracy and fighting war and repression?
Do they count for nothing?
Eugh, Sam Webb, what a dickhead. Yeah, no, I don’t know if patsoc would be the correct term or be translateable to other people as it’s already got a pretty set definition, but there is no room for “American” patriotism. It’s weird, frankly, maybe I’m abnormal but the US just makes me feel icky now. I don’t know what comes after but I hope it’s not the United States.
sam “she will fight for the full range of democratic rights – collective bargaining rights, wage rights, job rights, women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, voting rights, immigrant rights, and, not least, health rights” webb
Why are people latching on to this one tweet by Hakim lol
Latent Islamophobia tbh
Muslim man: says something positive about Islam
Westerners:
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This is of no consequence, you’re getting mad at a Muslim youtuber for twitting out Muslim beliefs. Reavalute why this bothers you.
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Are you even organized? Because this doesn’t matter, you’re not forced to become an atheist when you join a ML party and no one cares as long as you don’t break democratic centralism and don’t act like a reactionary. A lot of Marxists in South America and in the middle east are religious, no one gives a shit. You can also disagree with Marx and Engels on certain issues and still be a Marxist because, ironically, it’s not a religion and Marx is not a prophet. Demanding this level of ideological purity from other people is silly and I’m not convinced it doesn’t come from a western-centric and Islamophobic worldview, since you’re basically dismissing a huge portion of comrades from the global periphery.
Edit: To add to this, I guess you also think Malcom X, all the liberation theology people and a huge portion of Cuba are “tailists”, even though they probably have done more for the socialist than you have. I’m not religious either and I don’t believe in god, but you’re not going to win the hearts of the people by being a reddit atheist.
This is just regular Roderic, he takes things to peak seriousness and is allergic to not standing his ground on shit he thinks are fundamental matters of principle and theory.
Pretty much all his other recent posts are about the Palestinian genocide, he just thinks for whatever various reasons that this kind of thinking is opportunism and harmful rather than helpful, and because he is the way he is he feels he has to stand his ground on that point of theory.
Roderic is probably the most principled and learned marxist I know online. He’s a cool dude and he is definitely not taking an L here.
Hmm, time to click on this thread about airhead social media personalities. Surely it’ll be lighthearted fun!
gets bowled over by a hundred post arguing about mmt
MMT deez nuts
MM whataboutism T
Edit: tryna trigger the bot
MM whataboutism T
whataboutism 
We should unite with all progressive forces including religious ones. My full critical support is with the PIJ. It totally makes sense for us to look into Islam to understand that perspective and the role it’s played in history and the present. However, ultimately we are materialists and it’s kind of weird to evangelize to Marxists. In this instance Day is principled, but
kind ofannoying.Edit: I don’t think Hakim is proselytizing anymore
principled, but kind of annoying
Day 24/7
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Yeah, that’s not just somewhat insulting to Palestians of different or no faith, it also just feels like a weird attempt to evangelize on the back of a tragedy. Someone was doing it in the news mega last week and it honestly kinda creeped me out.
Tbf, in the youtube comments on this post many people did point out the Christian and Jewish Palestinians and how this kind of bowls over them and Hakim admitted fault to it.
Religion is the opiate of the masses. There are people in pain. What medicine do you use on people in pain?
Even in medicine, what ultimately fixes you is an actual procedure/treatment not the opioids.
Yeah, but you tell me how well your surgery recovery is gonna without them? Sometimes managing symptoms is important to the healing process.
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You have a jinn’s lamp to rub? Precisely what do I have to offer that hits stronger than kind words?
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That is my current plan, and because I have no power over the system they are doing what fills their otherwise painful lives with meaning and hope. Which, objectively, gives them more strength to resist their oppression than me tediously explaining how Allah doesn’t actually care about them and how meaningless their lives are in the long run.
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Snake oil implies a medicine doesn’t work. This medicine clearly works. It just has side effects that have been proven to be unfortunate. In this moment though, it is hard to find a treatment with a better clinical profile than this.
Religion is the opiate of the masses. Opiates are good medicine to help people get through pain People in the middle east have alot of pain to endure. Hakim as a doctor would understand this
Last sigh of the oppresed? how bout you do class analysis
Gaza is a bunch of lumpenproletariat and kids, jesus christ mate, they don’t have anything else to be strong outside of hope of religion. they dont control their lives in any way, israel is the camp guard counting their calories like the fuck
they don’t have anything else to be strong outside of hope of religion
This doesnt seem right to me. Palestinian people resist and persist because they are colonized people wanting liberation, self determination and through their will to live. Just like the Koreans did, just like the Vietnamese did, just like the Haitians or Algerians did. Just like hundreds of millions did under as bad or worse colonial or imperial opression. Palestinian resistance is admirable but it isnt something historicaly unique that needs the “hope of religion” or the “importance of islam” in order to exist or be explained. At best those are of symbolic importance and manifesting due to the particular superstructure in Gaza but the actual struggle and anti-colonial martyrdom and bravery is something that has been replicated again and again across massively different religious and cultural contexts.
Palestinian people persist and would have persisted just as much in the absense of Islam. If they were cristian , atheist or buddhist. As tens if not hudred sof thousands of non Muslim palestinians do and did. The Quran no matter how beautifuly written doesnt actualy provide any insight for a marxist in the analysis of how and why Palestinians persist and reading the biography of the Prophet and some book by a white dude that converted to islam are anything but foundemental in understanding or interpreting the palestinian struggle and neither are they particularly usefull for building or expanding any other struggle, neo-colonial or otherwise
Palestinians have everything most other opressed and colonized people had in order to be strong. And they are strong and would be strong outside of the “hope of Islam” .
I think you’re confusing critique of Gazans with critique of someone who is openly Marxist utilizing religion to explain the Gazans WITHOUT mentioning how their religion is material to them. It’s the fact that the tweets talk about Islam as a force above the material conditions. Hakim believes it, and I’m not bothered by that at all and support it, but do not appreciate the mix with materialism without being clear about that relationship. It’s kinda impossible to avoid as a believer and is a clear contradiction, but we have many more of those that are more important than religion/materialism at this point.
