Second thought is a communist tho. Card carrying member of one of the communist parties of the US.

I don’t think I can agree with the TikTok trend of “sympathizing” with Bin Laden at all. His actions didn’t de legitimize Western hegemony. In contrast, it gave the US an excuse the expand its hegemony. It also did not weaken the US. And it painted the Islamic community in a bad light, making them a target of racism.

I regret to inform you that it’s not

Wait, people just now read it? David Cross even referenced it in a routine?

Bad things AES have done:

Communism is far from perfect, but it’s the only ideology that improves itself over the time rather than decaying into something way worse.

Too be fair, Maupinism-Chomskyism-BinLadinism sort of does describe the politics of some Haz orbiters

Internet weirdos have made it so that tankie basically just means “anti American but a lot” at this point so yeah he is now

Colorless green tankies sleep furiously

He is the lead guitarist of Rage Against the Machine. He is a real person.

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Interesting. So what is it that makes this… fictional character so “tankie?”

accurate

Tom Morello was the guitarist for Rage Against the Machine. Caleb Maupin is a sniveling, smug wet rag of a human whose claim to fame is attempting to form a sex cult from his in-name-only communist party, which itself is basically a status quo support party for the USA with themselves in charge instead, please, thank you.

Tom Morello (so I’ve been told) is a member of the band Rage Against the Machine, and also a character in Guitar Hero. Caleb Maupin is a reporter for RT and a self-proclaimed “American communist,” who was once pretty decent in his takes, and has since leaned hard into the whole patriotic socialism thing. In fact, he can probably be considered the originator of that whole tendency. I do owe him, personally, a certain debt, since listening to some of his early streams c. 2019-2021 helped me see that China post-Mao is not the revisionist hellhole ultras make it out to be. And his geopolitical analysis has always been excellent. Unfortunately, since about late 2021 he’s done a Trotsky and pretty badly degenerated. His think tank, Center for Political Innovation, was involved in a sex scandal with him at the center; exactly what happened is a little unclear, since the accusations were kind of inconsistent and he was already on the Mroytvorets hitlist, but he clearly wasn’t entirely guiltless. He and his followers still uphold the principled Marxist line on imperialism – they support, basically, all the countries we do – but his domestic politics have become more and more just tailing the Republican party. The Democrats right now are clearly worse on China and Russia, but supporting the other bourgeois party is not the way to go.

I defended the guy longer than I should have, because for a long time so many criticisms of him were just dumb: basically, people mad that he told them to present themselves professionally, and not try to “sell” communism dressed in ratty jeans and a cannabis t-shirt. And he insisted on the radical proposition that communists actually read theory and understand economics, which made the BreadTube people – remember them? – absolutely livid. But he if he ever was a positive force on the American left, he certainly isn’t any longer.