Besides almost passing references to Italian giants like Gramsci and Togliatti, one is left with the impression that Western Marxists are either academic ethno-chauvinist hucksters, Eurocommunist revisionists, or unimportant. This does a disservice to history and to struggle.

I suspect this part is pointing at the real motivation behind this criticism: the author is a Communist Party of Canada member, i.e., unimportant (like it or not, let’s be real here), and so doesn’t like the heat that Losurdo has for Western Marxists for obvious reasons (he is one). He wants Losurdo to

show the ways that Western Communist Party theoreticians have criticized opportunism and chauvinism!

and, generally, show deference to the Western Communist Party theoreticians (like him), making the point only about the “frauds from the academy”. It’s not just about the frauds from the academy though. Our parties and party-like formations are also failures. This is demonstrably true, and if we can’t wrestle with that fact, and seriously investigate its causes, we’re never going to get anywhere.

As it happens, being a Canadian also makes the issue he takes with the colonialism lens pretty suspect. It feels a bit class reductionist to demand that Nazi expansionism be explained in terms of class conflict and only class conflict. Frankly, I think it’s valid to be suspicious of such ideas, particularly when they’re coming from a white man in a settler colony. This criticism reeks of defensiveness in general, and though it may be correct about some weaknesses in Losurdo’s work, I think it’s fundamentally reactionary.

In addition to what others have mentioned, this analysis completely ignores the massive trade imbalance that is the underlying cause of the entire situation.

The US keeping higher tariffs doesn’t simply mean that they’re punishing China more than vice-versa, because the US putting tariffs on Chinese imports screws over the US economy dramatically more than it does the Chinese one. This is one of the main reasons why this trade war is so ridiculous (and hilarious), and is a theme going back to the first Trump administration.

It’s of course true that China backed off in a sense when they could have turned the screws, but considering this any kind of capitulation (or cessation of resistance or whatever) is a very crude and superficial look at the situation. More time for “as business as usual as possible” only benefits China. Given everything about China’s character as a geopolitical actor (long-term thinking and level-headedness compared to the west in particular) I don’t think this is surprising at all. China is not the sort of country to continuously react and escalate to a buffoon like this. They’ve demonstrated that they’re the adults in the room, shown the US to be weak, and can return to a relatively normal and non-escalatory position because they know that the more time goes on, the stronger their position is, and the more the imperialist monster will eat itself.

China is playing go while the US takes a shit on a checkers board in their own house and whines about the smell.

You mean the machine trained on bulk data from the internet, which is now filled with hallucinated nonsense generated by the machine? Yeah, weird how that process results in an even dumber and more hallucinatory machine over time, truly one of the great mysteries of science.

Define “online”? Us old bastards don’t tend to hang out in places full of teenagers. Different social media platforms tend to be pretty age segregated, and the older people are, the less likely they are to have grown up terminally online and in the sort of places where most of the online left congregate, like Discord.

Also, you can’t really blame normal, horny people for thinking about banging anything

Wanna bet?

Destiny is such a dipshit proto-fascist that his contributions derail any valuable discussion that can happen

True, but on the other hand, getting to see Finkelstein dismiss him as “such a fantastic moron” to his face is a great contribution to comedy.

I see. That’s good propaganda strategy, and I agree that cutting people who have potential out in “some sort of purity testing way” is bad. That’s the sort of thing insufferable shitlibs do and is a big reason why people all across the political spectrum despise them so much.

… although the “who have potential” part there is important. Fascists, famously, don’t care about the norms of polite conversation or the marketplace of ideas or any of that, debating with them only legitimizes their ideas and is a serious mistake. The modern-day full-blown MAGA chud is the same way, even though they may not be a self-aware fascist. Unfortunately, many of our families are full of these people. They don’t respect this nuanced discussion and compromise stuff at all. Quite the opposite, they think it’s weak and gay or whatever and will use it as a weapon against you. These are people who literally don’t respect facts or material reality itself.

Your relative, for example, hates rich people. Assuming this is actually true (a sort of faux-populist hatred of “elites” is an integral part of far-right propaganda and doesn’t count), that’s already much more potential then some of the absolutely hopeless bootlicking trash that many of us have to deal with. Even so, you said earlier (and I agree) that if something is never going to make any material difference, then it’s pointless, so… have you convinced this relative to significantly change their political alignment? Did you get them to stop prioritizing triggering the libs (i.e., bigotry), over everything else? If not, then nothing was achieved, because that’s the main mechanism that the fascists use to mobilize the right.

Sometimes, open hostility, ostracism, and other things that aren’t nice are actually the most effective strategy. I’ve spent plenty of time doing exactly what you suggest, and in retrospect, in most cases I should have simply told them to go fuck themselves and seriously rethink their entire world view if they ever want to talk to me again. Personal consequences are the only thing that these people understand.

instead find an aesthetic compromise that is grounded firmly in your beliefs

What is an “aesthetic compromise” in this context? Do you have an example?

It sounds like you’re just doing “tolerate people’s insane right-wing delusions and be civil above all else, never imposing negative social consequences for people spreading fascist beliefs” but obscured with lots of fancy words.

Propaganda has a very real effect on material circumstances anyway. To suggest otherwise in 2025 is wild.

This is essentially saying that the western patriarchal family unit is a force against fascism. If that were the case, then fascists would be against “the family”, but exactly the opposite is true. You also more or less directly say that compromising with reactionaries will somehow make people less fascist, which is ridiculous. Someone who’s estranged from their family specifically because they’re reactionary isn’t going to somehow become more fascist as a result of that, that doesn’t make any sense. A deranged ultra or something, perhaps, but that’s not the same thing.

I get that this is a thread about your most right-wing opinion, but yeah, this idea is reactionary as hell and trying to clumsily graft on an argument about isolation doesn’t make it any better. Isolation is deranging and that is a societal problem, but this idea is absolutely not a solution to that. If anything it’s a description of the problem - yes, a society where community and public spaces have been destroyed makes for a situation where this “family or isolation” dichotomy exists, and that can lead to derangement and ultimately fascism. The solution to this problem is to fix that situation, not decide that it’s a good thing.

and on top of that: why the fuck are grown adults playing nintendo anyway? their systems have been kiddie coded bullshit past the n64, and that was only good because of goldeneye, perfect dark and the THQ wrestling games. it’s the video game nerd version of watching marvel films

Calm down, tough guy, not everyone plays video games to live out chud fantasies.

Have you tried kill all the poor?

Voting is not a moral act, and not voting in the current material conditions on Ontario isn’t going to bolster some revolutionary cause. That can be the case sometimes, but it’s certainly not here and now. Actual conditions and the possible effects of actions matter, to suggest otherwise is idealistic lib shit.

… that said, I can certainly understand not voting in this utter sham of democracy, but the difference between a shitlib and a principled socialist is that socialists care about real things in the real world, not idealistic nonsense that only serves to make them feel good and pure, so I suggest checking out https://www.notoneseat.ca/ to see if votes in your riding even matter, and who the most likely ABC candidate to win is. If your riding doesn’t matter (which is pretty likely), then there’s no point in fussing about voting at all. If it does, well… anyone is better than this comically corrupt clown government, if you ask me. Even the fucking Liberals.

“In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.” ~ Stokely Carmichael

EDIT 2: I have no qualm with down-voting, but I would prefer a comment explaining what parts specifically you did not like, so I know how to not make the same mistake in the future.

Political compasses are silly and pointless brainrot. Yes, this includes trying to make new and better galaxy brain political compasses. It especially includes that. “Meritocracy” lol.

Which license is good for what purpose(s) and under what condition(s)?

Exactly this. It really depends on the goals of the project. For example, if you’re trying to establish some standard where the most widespread possible use/support is the goal (because in the grand scheme of things the goal is to replace a proprietary standard), then a permissive license (BSD and friends) is appropriate. If the code itself is the more important thing and you want to protect it from being appropriated/exploited by proprietary software, then a copyleft license (GPL and friends) is appropriate. If the latter and it’s a web app and you want to protect it from other servers/services as well, then the AGPL is appropriate. Sometimes (configuration, “just data”, and so on) the whole idea of copyright restrictions is silly and counter-productive, so one of the “closest to public domain as is legally possible” (0BSD, CC0, etc) “unlicenses” is appropriate.