https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9nPVkpWMH9k Informative video on this topic

assume that humans are inherently irrational and can be emotionally incepted/brainwashed, then there’s no point in educating people at all because the empire will always have more resources than us and just pump out funny memes associating that “good feeling” with empire. Even worse, if people can just gobble up stuff based on vibes, why should the working class rule at all?

The answer to this problem is that humans don’t generally believe things because they are bombarded with extreme amounts of high quality propaganda, rather they accept (and seek out) the information that gives them license to feel good about themselves and the situation they are in and ignore facts that don’t fit this narrative. I’d say almost all racist/colonial narratives work by this mechanism. It’s not that people turn racist because the media paints e.g. Africans/Asians as barbarians or whatever, rather people need to justify why the Global South is still impoverished and thinking of them as inferior (a racist trope) solves the contradiction. The truth of imperial plunder leads to dangerous conclusions: “I can’t keep my cheap stuff!”, “We’ll be poor like them!”

Your brain associates the good feeling you have from a funny meme to the message within the meme. If those memes are leftist memes they will associate the left with not being so bad, good even. The same thing happens if the memes are rightoid oriented. They get pulled in the direction of the underlying message of the meme.

I don’t think this paints an accurate picture of how humans work, in fact I think it paints humans as quite irrational, almost “Pavlovian” in nature. Here’s a good article that tries to debunk the “emotional inception” theory Ads Don’t Work That Way.

Why is this distinction important? Well for one, in order for our propaganda to actually be effective, it’s important to know how and why propaganda works in general. Is agitprop just a matter of handing out good vibes or do we need to convince people in a way that resonates with their lived experience? Roderic Day has a good article that argues against “brainwashing” being a thing (which is quite related to how “emotional inception” is supposed to work).

Apart from giving us directions on what method to employ there’s also a kind of problematic view of humans that’s associated with this Pavlovian narrative. I will try to paint a picture: assume that humans are inherently irrational and can be emotionally incepted/brainwashed, then there’s no point in educating people at all because the empire will always have more resources than us and just pump out funny memes associating that “good feeling” with empire. Even worse, if people can just gobble up stuff based on vibes, why should the working class rule at all?

I’m not dissing what you said in general or insinuating that you actually believe people are fundamentally irrational, I just wanted to push back on this particular narrative because even though it seems harmless at first glance, it can do real damage (e.g. Orwell is famous for this, arguing that the working class are stupid sheeple).

In the margins, definitely, spreading memes can give license to people that it is “OK” to have these opinions because they will feel that they are not weird and have company. However I would say that for the vast majority (in the core), if they do not see how they can materially/socially benefit these kinds of memes will just get ignored or even attacked. Think about the reactionary memes that you see in the wild and I’m sure you just scoff at their stupidity or moral depravity. This is probably what the average liberal also thinks when seeing communist memes.

These are my own thoughts but I believe that the right-wing pipeline (on YouTube etc) works by slowly giving you a social context which you are afraid to lose rather than convincing you directly of the facts/opinions. I’m not sure if we should employ this same tactic mainly because it’s a brittle relationship. If someone finds another social context it is quite easy for them to de-radicalize because the main thing deciding is how they appear in front of their peers. For us, I think the answer lies in trying to base our “pipelines” in class. What this entails for the western proletariat (who gives license to empire to do whatever as long as they get some of the spoils) is a bit trickier. But in summary: I believe communist memes might weakly convince those on the margins but never the majority. If, however, their material circumstances or standing in society changes (for the worse) memes can be an effective tool which resonates and educates. The main problem regarding how receptive memes are to the majority is not the quality or quantity of memes (yet), but whether they believe/reason they could gain more from communism than the status quo.

I would say that the lack of progress in educating the people in the imperial core is not due to “brainwashing” or any mind-control apparatus (see Roderic Day’s essay on “brainwashing”), but that the populace understand or implicitly acknowledge that they gain from the imperial setup of the world. By hating on other kinds of systems/nations you can feel better than the rest of the world (which the West is materially: better off).

Now if people in the West think they have nothing to gain from socialism because they at least don’t have to work in neo-colonial mines, then what hope is there for us to effect change in the imperial core countries? Well the contradictions of American hegemony are increasing and de-dollarization is around the corner. The rise of China and an alternative to the “rules-based order” of pillaging and looting of the overexploited countries by the IMF and the world’s bourgeoise is slowly coming to fruition. Since profit needs to keep coming and the exploitation will drop off in the third world, that exploitation needs to move somewhere else, and where it will move is most likely into the imperial periphery. The imperial periphery will now have a choice to break the bonds with the core so eventually the exploitation needs to ramp up in the imperial core: we get fascism. (Roderic Day argues that imperialism is fascism every day for the exploited countries which I agree with, so I’m using the term here as the phenomenon of the raw exploitation of capitalism replacing the liberal democracies in the core).

Most people will not accept fascism since it sucks for the majority, and that is where the communist parties have a role to play. When the material consequences of fascism arise people will look for answers to their material conditions worsening, and we need to be there to explain how they can get out of or avoid fascism by building socialism instead. Mobilizing the people and workers at this stage should be at lot easier since they have a lot to gain.

There’s a nice Red Sails related to this phenomena: https://redsails.org/the-swerve/

It’s this post’s video auto-playing on the front page (scroll down on the front page to see it)

Innan vi ens gått med ser vi hur Sverige påverkas av Turkiet att göra dittan och dattan, det är endast en försmak på vad som kan komma att vänta efter fullt medlemskap. Suveränitet? Aldrig hört talas om…

Yes, we have been operating as a “NATO-aligned non-member” for quite some time which is a shame. One of the arguments I’ve heard: since we are practically already in NATO but not formally, we should just join fully so that we also get the protection from Article 5. The better course of action would be to move away from NATO and actually uphold the neutrality that we collectively lure ourselves that we still have. That won’t happen though as the Social Democrats just let the capitalists get away with almost everything these days (as is expected).

There is a campaign in Sweden that’s a coalition of the Communist Party and people generally on the Left. However with only two of the parties (The Left party and the Greens) in the Riksdag being against joining NATO, the future looks bleak. The Social Democrat leadership haven’t officially stated their intention to join (decision tomorrow), however everything they have said and the way they are acting point to them saying yes tomorrow.

The mainstream media debate has mostly been focused on the need for protection against Russia by joining NATO and what Sweden can contribute to the alliance. The critics (that gets most airtime) saying that we shouldn’t throw away our 200-year long intention for neutrality in haste. The for-campaign is mostly playing on the collective Swedish fear of the “big bad Russians”, but no serious analysis have been made on what the countries of NATO has brought onto the world. There were a small minority saying that we should think twice about joining an alliance that has Turkey in it, but why not expand on that and ask yourself why we should join an alliance that is the imperial army of the Empire, the US. No analysis of that sort anywhere to be seen in the mainstream.

I really fear for what Sweden joining would entail, from eventual banning of anti-imperialist dissent, to us becoming a nuclear target in the upcoming war on China.

Ett annat förslag är att ta konturen av Sverige och göra röd, kan försöka koka ihop något

Sveriges SSR låter bra, ska försöka hitta en snygg flagga.

Tänkte att det kan vara bra att undvika att använda ett enskilt partis logga vilket är en av anledningarna till att jag skrev inlägget!

Do you have a link to the audiobook about Malcolm X?