- 0 Posts
- 1.21K Comments
5·5 days agoRomans copied the Greeks, and for the most part of human history the latter was not considered European and was effectively part of West Asia, especially when you consider they got their education from North Africa. Consider how Greeks weren’t even considered “White” to Western Europeans / the US till relatively recently (look up Operation Gladio for more cut throat dynamics as a microcosm of this). It’s more galling when we consider that Ancient Greek philosophy and culture was introduced to Europe via Islam (which modern europe has decided it will separate itself from with “Judeo-Christian values”) through the Iberian Peninsula of Spain.
The above is ignoring all the looting and pillaging both of culture and more tangible wealth from the Global South that makes up modern European cultures and ethnicities. All older European culturea have either become extinct or subsumed by the past couple of centuries of Western imperialism - they are essentially cosplaying older cultures at this stage (at best) when harking “authenticity”.
As it has been pointed out elsewhere, Native Americans have been in the America longer than most Europeans have been in Europe.
Thank you very much for sharing this
22·10 days agoIf the state is the people then the cost is borne somehow by the people. China’s method is to to deflate the cost of living by reducing the cost of production and services at every possible aspect (think for example getting to hospital and getting reviewed by a specialist - like the whole journey - and think about every single cost involved in that journey: the transportation, the power/energy poduction, all the professionals (the cost of their education and their living expenses), infrastructure, mineral and material supply chains, pharmaceutics etc)
6·10 days agoSo this is meant to be an exemplar of Whiteness as a response to their Great Replacement Theory.
It is interesting that fascism never ever really took off in Islam as opposed to Christianity/Judaism - in fact the usual US empire of supporting fascists (eg Americas / Europe etc) didn’t really work with Islam so they supported salafist/takfiri off-shoots instead.
If you ever get the chance, I would look up Fabian “socialism” as a microcosm to the answer to your question; its history and anti-marxism, and how those paradigms then fit into the below:
10·11 days ago“Poverty … is a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilisation. It is the lot of man – it is the source of wealth, since without poverty there would be no labour, and without labour there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth” - Patrick Colquhoun (absolute scum), commenting on pauperism/workhouses
I’m imagining they had some Malthusian perspective like the above if not outright mass murder.
No policies, no plans, no talk about healthcare or housing, just memes.
Then one has an understanding the type of people they are targeting.
For anyone who has read down this far, book recommendation: Thinking in Systems by Meadows (recommended initially by OP :) )
^Very much this.
Like any accusation of atrocity propaganda against anti-imperialist states, villifying of immigrants, or accusations of lack of democracy, we now have an easy new Western Magnum Opus to point to; it won’t convince anyone still benefiting from present material conditions but it may help any nasecent leftist organisations/proto-organisations in the west to help sharpen their political theory of attack ie who not to waste their time “persuading”.
Will likely just be replaced by a smarter/more ruthless fascist/liberal. This is not a lesser evil argument, just reflecting the direction of change.
Religion reflects material conditions. Hence why the Catholicism of US/France/Germany differs from that of say Cuba or Liberation Theology of South America (or you could make comparisons between feudal/slavery vs capitalism such as the differences in Christianity on either side of the US civil war but the similarities of persistant anti-black racism reflecting capitalist values in developing the bourgoisie proleteriat as a means of stablity to maintain growth).
The apparent purging in the very early stage of socialism in USSR and PRC was partly due to religious holdouts that reflected feudal/bourgoisie values and therefore effectively sided with foreign powers against the new proleteriat state.
Vanguard parties tend to be secular in order to especially cut through these reactionary tendancies. Purging religion completely prematurely will bring up its own contradictions that may slow the progression of socialism. I suspect organised institutional religion will wither away similar to the state over longer periods of time.
If one wanted to consider a more decisive take on where religion should be guided towards currently is the encouragement of breaking of religious “homegenity” so that you have multiple localised folk versions of any given religion otherwise you will just get religion developing further fascist ethnonationalism (take your pick of examples such as Christianity/Hinduism/Judaism as opposed to say Taoism in China - consider how the latter could even be disputed whether it is an actual single religion in the 21st century given the wide range of folk localisation ie people may say its a “philosophy” rather than relgion. The same would likely have happened to Hinduism if India became socialist instead of capitalist following nominal indepenence from Britain).
Furthermore, atheism, especially in the west did not reverse imperialism - it doubled down on the exploitative relationship with the Global South ie it was defined by its material conditions. (Went from let’s bomb those brown folks because they are the wrong relgion to let’s bomb those brown folks because they are religious). Compare that to the atheism of socialist countries and their strong anti-imperialist stances, again defined by their local material conditions (one could even argue the atheism of socialist states reflects lack of religion rather than a new religion in itself like in the West).
Dialectical materialism means the material always comes before the idea.
Open your eyes then.
(is there somewhere Christians have not done that?)
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10317859/7569446
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9650334/7254640