Something which never sinks in with liberals (because it might bust their brains, I dunno) is “terrorist” just means “doesn’t align with state interests.” I would also add “and usually non-state actors” but Bibi has been calling Iran a “terror state” so I guess we’re scrapping the state actor part and just going with “they do things opposed to us dominating everything- that’s terrorism!” 2003 all over again.

I have noticed libs jumping over “unpatriotic” as was the claim in 2003ish towards anti war protesters and landing directly on calling them pro-Hamas and pro-terrorist which is just a zero-mask call for state violence on protestors (and they got their wish). I don’t think the more soft-hearted, mostly “well-meaning” liberals have let it sink in yet that if you call someone terrorist you aren’t only being hyperbolic and stupid, you are saying “this person is an enemy of the state and appropriate force must be used to eliminate them… immediately.” That’s just what it means, I’m sorry. They are quite literally saying “kill this guy!” Why? “For being an anti-genocide terrorist!”

I call them liberals so much and so instinctively at this point that I legitimately get confused when they get all pissy. We should keep forcing it into common American understanding though.

The term “conservative” as it’s popularly used 1) kinda means nothing (which is perfect for them) so 2) is an ever changing term.

A conservative in 1970 US politics vs now are very different in their approach and thinking… obviously some stuff remains unchanged, but in the 1960s/70s you could still just be like a Strom Thurmond KKK guy openly denouncing integration and rights for black people while serving in the senate until you’re 100 goddamn years old… literally. Richard Nixon signed the EPA into law which today would be off the table even for Obama, I imagine. It would never get to his desk whatever his personal philosophy would be.

So their ideas and way of speaking changes since their only true ideology is something boiled down to “support ‘free markets’” or allow capitalists to exploit labor maximumly and use any wedge issues which are beneficial along the way such as racism, abortion, etc. Maintain US hegemonic dominance around the world through soft and hard power, as required, in service to capital.

On the other hand, ask a hardcore fascist/Nazi or even KKK guy their thoughts in 1960 or today and it’s “we want a separate nation only available for white people…” blah blah blah, all the shit. Their ideology remains the same as always. They believe in racial supremacy of white people, however they break that down, and they want a “pure land” for their chosen race. The more politically savvy ones will swap words around for plausible deniability, but the core ideology is basically the same in the end. They hate communists, they hate non-whites, especially being forced to live around and respect them as humans, they blame all societal ills on non-white minorities and/or non-cis, straight minorities. Same old tale.

On the left, if you filter out the liberals LARPing (gotta similarly filter the more libbed up conservatives from their Nazi compatriots as well), you’ll hear the same arguments that communist-types have had since the 1960s, since the 1920s, and further back. Because it’s rooted in an ideology, so specific arguments of the time period change maybe, wording might change, but fundamentals like labor being the source of all value and thus capitalists having no right to the value created by others… remains core and unchanged.

[this isn’t a “give it to the Nazis for ideological purity” argument, btw, to the liberals in my walls. It’s about political terminology and ties to strongly held ideology which American “liberals” and “conservatives” both share in common. Just about the only thing Nazis can ever coherently express is their hatred for non-white people. Beyond that, good fucking luck finding any sense in their statements and beliefs]

Correction:

One is a boring, sleepy genocidal geriatric

The other is an entertaining genocidal geriatric

Your move, America!

Also I like how libs spend their time downvoting memes here. You guys could just go read your hug box “Joe is good!” memes on the entirety of reddit, twitter, or lemmy minus basically two instances.

If I put the cheese out too obviously the mouse will know what I am doing

But if I eat some cheese in the corner and, “oppsie” drop a small piece in a sticky trap area… I might just awaken to an angry mouse chirping at me.

You still haven’t given an example of wtf you’re talking about.

Who the fuck are these mysterious (assumedly) pro-Stalin, pro-USSR, etc. “tankies” who ALSO are pro-USA/pro-capitalism?

Just give a name! Find a person in history or today and type their name into your text box and hit send. Is this asking a lot?

If they use it to mean “person who doesn’t get bogged down in stupid details over the USSR (or China) just for the sake of hating a communist country” then fine. I don’t care. It just gets old seeing it used as “person left of me, which means they’re bad” by the most historically illiterate motherfuckers on the planet. The kind of fuckers who say they want socialism and then cry every time someone protests in a street. Do you see what I mean? It’s not the word, I don’t care in the end. I get like a death threat per day from random Nazis who (ironically) call me antisemitic for criticizing Israel. I’ll take tankie over that, given the choice. But it’s worth acknowledging the people calling me or us or whoever “tankie” are absolutely just the dumbest fuckers online. That’s all.

Bro, wtf is a tankie if not a communist? You’re just out here making up bullshit. I want a definition!

I’ve been led to believe “tankie” was referring to fans of the USSR, which, I suppose if you wanna be annoying, one could argue “weren’t communists.” But you didn’t do that. You didn’t say “Stalin betrayed Marxist Leninism” or whatever. I could assume that’s what you meant, but I’d rather read it from you.

It’s starting to feel like, to me, that tankie just means “someone more left than me, and that makes me angry!” Because I can say who isn’t calling people tankies. That would be Marxists of whatever variety. I can also say who does seem to be using that word all the time… socdems, liberals, sometimes outright fascists. It definitely seems to be the bludgeon of liberals who fancy themselves to be socialists though. I’m going to include most leftist anarchists under the umbrella of liberal because that’s just how I roll. Like a big ol’ tank.

Anti-communism has always been a reaction to communism (leftist movements broadly).

Anyone who unironically uses the word tankie… ever… is immediately written off in my book. They’re terminally online and have never read anything, never thought about anything seriously, they’re useful idiots for fascists at best and, a lot of times, just fascists.

I feel like they think I’m being hyperbolic or forcing a false dichotomy, but, no, if you self-label as anti-communist that’s basically the same as modern day “all lives matter” people which was a right wing, reactionary, movement against the movement for justice for black people in the US. There is a movement which is objectively on the side of people, justice, etc. and there is a reaction to that movement. Just how it goes. If you identify on the reactionary side… well, there you go. Not sure why this is so complicated for the “bBUT TANKIES” dipshits.

Not trying to read too much into this if it’s a joke, etc.

But

Marx was stating as an absolute statement of what he viewed as fact (and seems to be correct over a long enough timeline) that capitalism will fail due to contradictions

The Che quote is the less philosophical, more “in the shit” statement. Much like Lenin before him, these guys understood that the contradictions of capitalism lead inevitably, as Marx was getting at, to failures and collapses and it’s at those moments that revolutionaries spring up and rile their base of support within the labor force of the country. Until that moment of crisis things were bad, but tolerable. During the crisis, conditions are intolerable and people are willing to do anything, including overthrowing the government/capitalist class and possibly dying for that cause. Because the alternative is death anyway. Or a living death.

On a side note, this is why there will never be (for any foreseeable future) a socialist revolution in the US. 1) material conditions are broadly “good” (although they are worsening) 2) there is effectively no leftist political movement in the US. There are a few thousand people who are genuinely anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and want a revolution, but that might as well be zero in a country this size. Not anything new or crazy to point out that as people’s conditions worsen further they will turn towards more and more radical leftist ideas or right wing ideas. Considering the racist undercurrents of the US and lack of any desire for any international cooperation amongst workers mixed with the (unfortunately extremely effective) FBI/CIA ops against US leftists in the past, there’s only really one path that we’re likely to head down…

Doing monthly (or more frequent) inventory of the store will “check” the cashiers, as every store has to do. When employees go through and get a total accounting of items actually on hand vs what the system says. Well, it tells the entire story not just on cashiers. How well the stockers kept track of damaged/expired items, theft, cashier mess ups, etc.

I worked grocery, all departments, including receiving when I was younger and had to do inventory all the time. Of course it relies on the employee not being lazy (👀) and actually, you know, doing inventory. Usually the managers waddled their asses over if they wanted “real” inventory done because tbh I spent about an hour actually counting shit and then went and took a nap in the bathroom (had a bench for changing clothes) and just marked everything as matching. Something something pay minimum wage, get minimum work.

Them stopping customers has to be for lowering shrink from theft, but that shit is already negligible anyway. Smart management knows that it’s already baked into the profit margin for the store and harassing people, treating everyone as a thief, will just drive away regular customers. If I get continually hassled somewhere and my time wasted there’s no way I’m gonna keep going there. Even if they manage to catch a bunch of people stealing stuff it just kind of… doesn’t matter.

This is another one of those cases of individuals not understanding statistics and profit margins, etc. You see chuds crying all the time about “but you can’t just steal the chicken! Price go up!” and they seriously can’t comprehend that, as someone who worked in the store(s), they throw away more food (from damage or spoilage) constantly than hungry people could ever realistically try to steal. Like, yeah, there’s a threshold and if literally every shopper is stealing then sure the system breaks. But most people don’t. The people who do, overwhelmingly, are doing so because they have little other choice. It’s just incredibly stupid that managers and especially random employees or (the worst) random customers try to give a shit about theft like this. I’ve had more than a few times where I was working on something and some old guy comes up like “hey. I think that guy over there put something in his pocket.” And I’m just like “ok.” And go back to whatever. I mean wtf do they expect? Should I immediately man the store’s .50 cal turret and blow away the college kid or poor single mom who stuffed a steak in their jacket pocket? I’ve seen entire cases of chicken and other meats being crushed in the waste compactor week after week. That steak doesn’t matter.

I’m not so hopeful that this current eruption of visible violence (to the western world) will result in a free Palestine, although I do reserve a naive glimmer of hope for all good things somewhere in my mind. Two things I hope people everywhere walk away with are the humanization of Palestinians as worthy of life and being denied it by Israel and erasing the concept of “complicated” from this whole situation. Everyone who is paying attention sees an uncomplicated situation where one side subjugates another and the subjugated ones fought back and are now being collectively massacred as a result. Everyone can see the inherent injustice in such actions even within the “starting on Oct 7” context. Once people uncomplicate things the solution becomes clear.

Not unlike a materialist view of the world, once you strip away the bullshit film smeared on by neoliberals to mystify everything, it all becomes so simple that you wonder how you never saw it before. And you wonder how it is that all those around you can’t also see it.

That’s my super paraphrased, shitty, condensed Marx summary.

All the “it’s complicated” people just use that framing to either obfuscate the truth from you/others or to cope within themselves. Whether it’s economics or the conflict in Palestine, it’s rarely ever complicated at the core. I hope people learn to kneejerk reject that framing. That means the next step to solving things is really close.

“We should challenge students in these schools. We have this notion that somehow if you’re poor, you cannot do it. Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”

I think at a certain point you have to just assume he’s accidentally saying his real thoughts.

He also praised men like Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd. He gave the eulogy at Thurmond’s funeral after the motherfucker somehow lived to be 100 (LITERALLY).

For those unaware, Thurmond was one of the two senators from SC in the fucking 19 goddamn 50s up until 2003 when he finally croaked despite the daily injections of baby blood serum. His most famous moment in his career (one of them anyway) was vehemently opposing the civil rights bill and filibustered for 24 fucking hours trying to stop its passage. INSANELY RACIST. Dude was born in fucking 1901. He lived through WWI as a teenager and WWII as a full ass adult. Then he opposed rights for blacks which he had always been able to oppress for his entire life. He was in his 50s and 60s (!!!) when the fight for civil rights fully erupted. He saw the rise of Malcolm X and MLK Jr., their assassinations, the rise and fall (!!!) of the USSR. The rise of the US empire after the destruction of the pacific and European nations. He lived his entire life as a dog and a champion of capital. It’s most vile figurehead who not only supported subjugation abroad but also at home.

And Joe Biden eulogized this absolute demonic piece of human dogshit. I seriously cannot describe how big of a piece you have to be to even speak to a man like Thurmond, a living relic of virulent racism and a deeply held conviction that white people like himself are truly superior, much less be friendly enough to eulogize him and defend his legacy.

They don’t call Biden “Jim Crow Joe” for no good reason.

He’s such a piece of fucking shit.

Massive tangent there, but fuck Biden, seriously.

“If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black”

“The Ukrainian Nazi SS divisions were defending themselves and their culture, their religion from the invaders like the Jews who took to communism because they were poor and jealous and wanted to legally have the wealth of the non-Jewish Ukrainians. You know people get caught up in the race science, but if you ignore that part, the Jews were still bad because they were poor and they wanted to steal wealth! Maybe the Germans and Nazi Ukrainians went too far, but can you blame them! Look at history you tankie! The Russians and Jewish communists did the same to the more “Aryan” types!”

You gotta smash up the obvious antisemitism and repackage it with more contemporary divisions. And toss in some “feels vaguely true” lies to the Americans (mostly, but westerners generally). Few people will openly state they “hate Jews” now days or that they equate Jews with Communism (probably few even know of the history of this equivalency based on how Jordan Peterson has been saying it, in slightly different wording, for like a decade now), but if you tell them some ethnic group is poor and wants their jobs? Well, suddenly border detentions, torture, and even some murder becomes easier to swallow. Different packaging for the same product… liberals love optics and they love defending fascism. Give them a shiny box to place all their terrible ideology in so they can pretend it’s justified and they’ll be plenty happy. I mean, just look at the fucking world.

Thanks I hate it

Most obvious monopoly since Ma Bell. Even worse than Microsoft which was also obviously a monopoly. Break them all up. Microsoft, ATT (for the… 4th time? Maybe just abolish them at this point…), Comcast, Verizon, Google, Apple, the list goes on. All those food corps that end up being 3 parent companies owning everything else. Break it all up. Force unionization also while going through the legal processes.

Cuba has been extremely successful despite the US fucking them over for 60 years. They’ve sent doctors across the world and even offered to help the US after hurricanes. They also sent anti-imperialist soldiers to African nations to fight for liberation on another continent. Nelson Mandela once famously openly praised Castro and his government for always being there for black South Africans in their struggle to end apartheid. He did so in response to some ignorant dumbass asking why he liked Castro or something like that.

The USSR and China were/are extremely successful. USSR was undermined at every turn by the US and generally western capital, plus some collaboration internally to make very bad economic decisions (moving towards private markets). China… well, look at them. Results speak for themselves.

The DPRK was very successful even post that whole US genociding them ordeal. Under Kim Il-Sung through the 50s until the 90s and post-USSR collapse (a major trading partner) they outpaced the US-propped South Korean state in basically everything. All of this after the US had leveled, effectively, the entire country and placed genocidal sanctions on them. For simply wanting to be a true democracy, btw. There was never any “actual” justification for war in Korea. Well, there was certainly justification for a war to remove the southern puppet(s) but not the war hero Kim who was and is beloved by his people, Chinese people respect him for his personal efforts to help liberate them from Imperial Japanese rule, and he’s still seen as a revolutionary hero today to people paying attention.

And killing or “disappearing” reactionaries is overstated by… reactionaries. But, for any amount that does happen, it’s generally justified because you can’t have an insurgent group of reactionaries, always foreign funded (by the US CIA…), actively undermining you. No government on earth can tolerate such shit. Go start a group with funding from China (good luck with this part) with the explicit goal of destroying whatever western hellscape you inhabit and see how long the government allows you to continue.

Oh no, the libs who commented here went “bye bye, folks.”

Well this was my response to one of the dummies arguing against “authoritarianism.” You can’t even begin to talk with these people because they don’t understand what authoritarian even means or the control mechanisms under which they already live. One of those control mechanisms is the illusion of freedom, which is rather ironic considering “but freedom!” seems to be this one “anti-tankie’s” entire ideology. Anyway this was my response.

"You took on anarchist esthetics, but all of your political opinions are just liberalism.

Liberals, famously not authoritarian.

You’re a tankie by your own definition. Whomp whomp"

I keep rereading this but it never makes sense. Is it missing text or a poor translation to English?

Remember that time Christopher Hitchens said water boarding wasn’t torture?

And then he stupidly agreed to be water boarded and immediately tapped out and admitted he was wrong?

Well, maybe we could arrange that for this author. But they don’t get a choice. Let’s see how they feel about starving after they’ve actually missed a few meals. Sick fuckers.