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The Rittenhouse effect
It’s gonna get worse, they are incentivised to murder anyone who objects to their genocidal plans. Gaza coming to America
I never want to hear chuds claim they’re the victims.
One can simply wave hello and ask how their day is and get merc’d but the chud will still get a standing ovation and millions of dollars just because “that’s what you get for not wearing a MAGA hat” and then lo and behold it becomes illegal to not be a republican.
This is a huge incentive for them to do murder under the color of authority. If fed agents’ incentive structure puts responders and protestors at jeopardy like this, it is important to keep that in mind when judging ones threat matrix at an action.
I think people here should be proud of themselves as a community for not saying a lot of crazy shit in the past couple of weeks with all the fear and righteous indignation that is going on. Unrelated though, I observe that all of us are merely made out of meat.
We’ve seen it as recently as last year. Money doesn’t save you from the rope when shit gets this bad, fucko.
You gotta think he’s gonna be paranoid the rest of his life, however long that may be.
The fascists will crowdfund the rope we use to hang them with
I’m forever amazed at the parallels between the late Roman Republic and contemporary American politics.
My fear is that this pattern continues, with Trump currently filling the Julius Cesar role
eh, caesar was competent and i think he also had a grasp of why there’s so much god damned tension in roman society and how to alleviate at least some of it.
but yes, late roman republic was under tremendous internal strain and its ruling class kept doubling down on never addressing any of it, at all, ever, until it blew up in their faces.
Can’t wait for the ayatollah make trump to drink molten gold
The late republic also had incredibly competent people who could take up the reins once Caesar got stabbed.
Modern America is more parallel to the Roman Empire after Constantine than the late republic.
Modern America is more parallel to the Roman Empire after Constantine than the late republic.
There’s no parallel in America to the split between the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, nor any new, ascendant hegemonic religious order. There’s a similarity in the empire over exerting itself, but that’s every empire in its decline phase.
There’s no parallel in America to the split between the Eastern and Western Roman Empires
The Empire didn’t immediately splinter when Constantine died.
Right wingism is not very different from rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire.
The Empire didn’t immediately splinter when Constantine died.
I wasn’t arguing that the division into the Western and Eastern empires was a splintering; it was an administrative and bureaucratic response to the crises of the third century, and a reflection of the shifting political economy in late antiquity. I just don’t see a good analogy to that in modern America.
Right wingism is not very different from rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire.
The rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire was a consolidation of cultural and political power in an institution that had been vital but decentralized. The pantheon was a constant in Roman life, but there was no Pope of Roman mythology. Each region or town had its own particular version of the mythology and practice, each had a particular god it focused veneration on. Christianity supplanted that with an explicitly hierarchical religion tied to the state.
Conservatism in America isn’t going through that because it’s already a hierarchical movement tied to the state. The centralizing has already been done and has been in place for centuries. If anything, the MAGA movement is less centralized and top down than the preceding neoconservative era. Trump opened up a conservative politics that succeeds on thumbing its nose at the establishment.
He seems more like a Sulla, or maybe even Crassus.
Either way, if the Roman Republic analogy holds we’re in for a few more rounds of intensifying civil war over a few decades.
At least we have a goth invasion to look forward to.
There is no real parallel between the late Roman Republic and contemporary America because the methods and means of production are completely different. The American empire is a technocratic empire whose power is based primarily on it’s (now declining) ability to technologically and financially overwhelm it’s opponents using multi-pronged attacks, where a military intervention may fail, bribing internal officials may work, where both those fail, years of propaganda may do the trick, etc.
The Roman Republic was, at it’s rise, successful due to it’s ability to marshall manpower from the massive surplus driven by it’s small holding citizen farmers, who had fought for and won their rights in previous civil conflicts. This more equitable than previously seen before distribution of wealth led to success on the battlefield, as the Romans were able to continue to muster capable armies even after catastrophic defeats. However, their practice of slavery would do them in, as the very free holding farmers that the Republic relied on for it’s tenacity and surplus, would slowly be replaced by slaves brought back from conquests and expansion of the frontiers, thus changing the mode of production from one of primarily farmers to a slave economy, which was much more inefficient from a calorie per acre standpoint, but much more profitable for the noble class of slavers.
This very contradiction is what propelled the political rise of Caesar, as he was able to learn from Cincinnatus and Sulla, both elected dictators who were unable or unwilling to consolidate power, to recognize and play both sides of this political-economic divide. To the slavers, he would promise slaves from his conquests, and to the now dispossessed farmers he would promise land reform and bread. These two are things are, of course, at political-economic odds with each other. One way to temporarily resolve this contradiction then, was to assume a permanent dictatorship and use the military to dictate terms to both classes. This, of course, then eventually lends to its own set of contradictions, and the history of Rome after the Republic is primarily one of inequality, technological stagnation, hardship, and perpetual civil war between different military factions. Imperial Rome spends much more time fighting Romans than it does anyone else.
The U.S. has toyed back and forth between being openly imperialistic or not. However, it has much different material forces at play, with significant bureaucratic and technological investment. Imo, we have already been at a point where Congress essentially defers to the Presidential agenda since about 2000.
However, until we actually fight a war with a near-peer power, the affects of these contradictions will be suffered primarily by the poor. The primary contradiction clearly is between our manufacturing power and financial power, and if we are no longer able to maintain the technological edge that contradiction will have to be resolved one way or another, and that is where America will, at the moment, likely break towards an imperial system.
Thanks for the write up. Lots to take in
No problem. I am personally not a huge fan of cross-societal historical comparisons when they aren’t of the same time period, as political forces that seem similar are ultimately different based on their methods of production.
There are certainly lessons to be learned from understanding the end of the Roman Republic, but part of the reason that it went the way it did was to solve the political-economic contradictions that existed within Roman society particularly. Alot of the same historical forces are certainly at play in the U.S. but how they manifest themselves and play out will be particular to our own political-economic contradictions, which differ significantly from that of the Roman Republic, as we are (to a 4th or 5th degree) historical downstream inheritors to their solutions.
An interesting pair of videos to watch regarding the economics of the late Roman Empire, particularly the nucleus of industrialization and mass production:
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Semi-related, the weird network of servile techbro apostles around people like Peter Thiel gives heavy Roman patronage vibes. “I help you establish yourself and then you’re my guy for life”.
uh so this is kinda like how the US and Israel funds ISIS but it’s in the US
basically ppl are financially incentivized to do terrorist shitin Iran terrorists were told they would get a lot of money if the Iranian gov was overthrown
20 year old folk punk version
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Ruin him, his life and everything he is or ever was. No mercy
With this many bootlicking simps, your options to make people like this suffer is uh… very limited
Nah, you’re just not using your imagination.
Imagine putting this plant in someone’s food
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Those donations were all from bourgeoisie rich assholes, right
Just a few donations from the ruling class, right?
Is he? so we got his name then, yeah?
If this isn’t just a comment about the title excluding his name, it’s Jonathan Ross.
I’m gonna say it again and again and again:
Every time one of these little twerps makes the headlines, you have a small window of opportunity to make a LOT of money that would otherwise go to these freaks.
The legality of it isn’t something I’m knowledgable of but I’m sure you can get around it with some creative fine print. Besides, most of the time sus fundraisers will get frozen indefinitely rather than pay out.
You could even just bounce the money back or close the donos before it’s up; no one gets hurt apart from the companies that support fascist organising with these fundraisers. The chuds get their money back once its blown over and don’t feel driven to performatively donate to shit that harms their class interests.
"And as the island slowly sank
The loser finally broke the bank, in the gambling room.
The dealer said ‘it’s too late now’
You can take your money, but I don’t know how
You’ll spend it in the tomb’"
