No worries, glad to help! If there was one person who turned most people in the West marxist (there isn’t, Great Man Theory is not real) it would probably be Michael Parenti.

Please consider Inventing Reality by Parenti (I would argue one gets Manufacturing Consent if one attempted to write Inventing Reality without knowing dialectical materialism, and it preceded MC it by at least a couple of years) if you haven’t already. Then consider this:

1. https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
2. https://redsails.org/false-witnesses/
3. https://redsails.org/dont-work-that-way/

1. Yes. Not even in the same league :)
2. https://www.greanvillepost.com/2020/06/03/the-mainstream-and-the-margins-noam-chomsky-vs-michael-parenti/
3. He has a bunch of lectures on youtube that are worth a watch: Eg Against Empire: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3qFA0-wo3pg
4. His books are amazing. All examples of dialectical materialism. The most recommended around here to begin with maybe is Blackshirts and Red: https://welshundergroundnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/blackshirts-and-reds-by-michael-parenti.pdf

Against Empire: https://uploads.worldlibrary.org/uploads/pdf/20180112220352parenti_against_empire.pdf

Other recommendations to begin with include Sword and the Dollar. And the Assassination of Julius Caesar.

Didn’t have the energy in me to reframe it so it sounded more constructive than combative. “Being right” ain’t good enough; I have to hold myself to a better standard.

https://redsails.org/white-supremacy-and-magic-paper/

There is no fascism without liberalism; demsoc and anarchists without a scientific understanding of capital or socialism default to liberalism, the dominant power.

As a rule of thumb, when considering “outside” interference alone as opposed to willing collaboration with an oppurtunist intelligence service what characteristics of a given social group lends itself to align with the paradigms of US empire. The reason the CIA was so prevalent and effective is not just the brute force approach of the US but also the litany of collaborationist forces of non-western bourgoisie/petty-bourgoisie and their labour aristocrats with their class preferences.

The Catholic Church as a central institution has a similar strength of record in defending Liberation Theology as Chomsky does against imperialism.

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1. https://redsails.org/on-chomsky/
2. https://dashthered.medium.com/the-anti-chomskÿng-66dcd8224729
3. https://redsails.org/white-supremacy-and-magic-paper/
4. https://www.greanvillepost.com/2020/06/03/the-mainstream-and-the-margins-noam-chomsky-vs-michael-parenti/

The high perch from which Chomsky tells us how free we are was likely only vacant because state agents murdered all consequential Black leaders and squashed every other left-wing movement. In the ensuing years, white guys writing books supplanted visionaries with megaphones while the prison population grew

TLDR: the most lenient reading of Chomsky was that he was able to highlight some of the symptoms of the US empire but has no understanding of the pathophysiology or treatment. This would have to then ignore all the times he went to bat for imperialism, and despite portaying himself as a generalist for knowledge was willfully obtuse about even understanding dialectial materialism from the perspective of his supposed enemy, the tyrannical marxist-leninist. Not to mention all the times he denigrated the global south struggles against imperialism. Ie typical western liberal.

Thanks. Epigenetics and its importance in expression / penetrance is understood. One does not need to go as far to show a paper on its influence on agriculture to consider this. The DNA in say one’s hepatoctye (liver cell) may be the same as in their cardiac myocyte (heart cell) but the expression of those genetics is clearly different; one has to consider “switches” of not just what genes are expressed but the degree of expression.

I thought the contention with the Lysenkoism is that it rejected strict mendelian inheritance of what is now known as gene expression which epigenetics has shown is correct (ie epigenetics shows the dialectical nature of phenotypes as opposed to the positivist approach previously held)? Not that it “rejects” genetics as per western framing.

Non-western bourgoisie, and their collaborating classes - especially some of the graduate intelligensia - see their compass naturally aligns towards the commanding heights of imperialism, in this timeline the US. These particles of hitler willingly collaborate with imperial hegemony where the oppurtunity arises and don’t question liberalism as the erosion of Global South solidarity and identity.

So what was the question again?

Why should we consider comprador liberals as liberators?

The anti-decolonial tendancies from certain Hong Kongers is not much more than this:

• England no longer wanted to trade ill-gotten silver from the Americas for Chinese wares so they brutally forced Indians to farm opium, and when the Chinese did not want to trade with opium the English bombed their coastline to submission, and the English as further prize for winning that war resulted in the annexation of Hong Kong and the creation of HSBC bank to launder that drug money.
• The crumbs of that wealth was used to develop Hong Kong, and instead of having solidarity with mainland chinese, indians and global south who effectively subdised their quality of living they instead see solidarity with brutal fascists of empire. There is not much saving these particles of Hitler.

Needless to say this may not go down well but it may be satisfying.

Leftist infighting as a performance

True but given the limitations of being (terminally?) online it may help battle test our framings for the non-online world.

Second one I am familiar with but the first I am not; thanks for the recommendation

For What Is To Be Done: I don’t think we collectively we have an answer that does not end up being waiting for Global South spearheaded accelerationism but the latter is not good enough from a Westerner perspective - a materialist political movement also has to come from within as well. But as marxists we should make/stake claims in theory, even with the risk of being “wrong”, and feel the response/heat we get from it to fine tune our practice (ie dialectics).

Lemmygrad is still susceptible to westernism (despite it being arugable one of, if not the best, reddit-like forums on the anglosphere. And I too am guilty of this) and comments like yours are excellent analyses of symptoms.

I prefer that over people asking an unreliable “AI” bot.

Sometimes asking it to use a decolonial/eastern marxist perspective can help but always keep in mind it is - to quote another lemmygrader - a lossy information retrieval tool.

It is sometimes an oppurtunity to advertise for those lurking how awesome being a tankie is.

https://redsails.org/tankies/

https://redsails.org/dont-work-that-way/

Oh wow, that’s a very big question that I’m not sure I have the time to dedicate to properly researching and writing up a whole essay about. Maybe someone else can recommend some good sources on this? Sorry if this is a disappointing answer, but this is too important to give a half-baked answer.

No worries, that’s cool - let’s be honest, isn’t this partly me taking a chance in shortcutting my own research! Thanks for responding nonetheless.

There are broadly two recurring styles in my view. One is the riot: spontaneous, emotionally charged, sometimes violent, often met with sharp repression, but lacking durable organization, coherent leadership, concrete demands, or any capacity to sustain itself beyond the moment. The other is the parade: non-violent, usually permitted or tolerated, more organized on the surface, but structurally hollow, no leverage, no escalation strategy, no consequences for being ignored. I focus on the “parade” not because riots don’t happen, but because parades are culturally and politically dominant in the West. They are normalized, celebrated, taught as the legitimate form of dissent, and elevated in the cultural zeitgeist as the model of “good protest.” That makes them far more analytically significant. They shape how people understand politics, what kinds of action are deemed acceptable, and crucially what kinds are ruled out in advance. Neither form, however, really qualifies as protest in a meaningful political sense. Both lack what actually matters: mass organization, enforceable demands, and a credible threat of escalation if ignored or repressed. One burns hot and collapses; the other marches safely and dissipates. The state can absorb both without fear. That’s the core issue. The problem isn’t tone or terminology, it’s that Western protest culture is seemingly structurally incapable of converting mass discontent into anything other than showmanship.

This is such a banger of a comment that if you ever get the chance please flesh it out into a post/substack/essay series etc and also with what you propose should happen from a dialectical materialist perspective (with citations etc). Only if you ever get the chance/time.

(If the person you’re replying to reads this: please don’t take this personally from me against you. I too am still learning and your posts are always an interesting read.)

English-language Wikipedia is being edited to present Estonia’s history in a more Soviet-friendly light, Estonian journalists and Wikimedia volunteers say, and it is difficult to compete with Russia’s propaganda resources.

The truth reflecting actual material conditions has that tendancy; if one is not going to concede then may as well take off that barely-there veil masking fascism.

But when it enters the territory of dehumanization that’s when it crosses a line.

It is the point where changing the material conditions to sublimate the “fasciopathy” becomes insurmountable by the individual.

Excellent share/find! Thanks! Starred.

As a tangent, what would you think are the concrete changes of Kruschev vs Deng reforms that allowed the latter to maintain a successful dictatorship against capital and the former to erode it? Or did Deng’s reforms need further course correction under Xi? (The latter not being an argument against Deng: https://redsails.org/marxism-is-a-science/ ).