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ladies and gentlemen, I say it without flinching...
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I understand venting frustration, but the American people are the way they are because of their ruling class.
are the israelis like this because of their elites or is it because they're settlers?
i am more of the school of thought that americans are smug jerks that seek out propaganda to justify themselves.
I don't totally disagree but this is a bit like blaming individuals who drive cars for contributing to climate change.
There is a possibility for individual americans and israelis to take a moral stand against their nation but the difficulty in swimming against the current is not to be underestimated.
I don't doubt it. A lot of Americans are smug jerks, including a lot of American communists I met. I don't blame them entirely; their ruling class keeps them divided and sapped of mental energy.
I don't see how that contradicts me. It did cause me introspection because lately I have indeed been feeling better about myself about how I'm right and most others around me are wrong according to objective data because otherwise I'd feel suicidal out of isolation. About how that attitude may not be productive to conversion after I had already tried for so long. What I object to is that tweets first sentence. "I wish no harm to the American ruling class". It's not something I'd think or utter in any circumstance. And as redsails remives the binary between people and the ruling class, so to can I remove the binary and say that the ruling class, in all their power, are still the ones maintaining and benefitting from this state of affairs. We don't exist in a vacuum. We're not biologically attuned to this. It's not mere human nature. We're a product of our material conditions.
I'll say it again. I understand wanting to vent. But I'll say that not wishing harm on the American ruling class is totally absurd, even if you consider them synonymous with the people. Especially so. If it's some kind of joke then firgive me for not getting it. Or maybe I misinterpret what "American people" are.
It is a joke, it's Twitter irony posting that honestly has no place here among respectable people
This isn't how dialectics works. You're walking blind and doing piss poor "analysis" because you're viewing the world via individualism
yea! americans are that just a handful of generations removed from their genocidal conquest.
read Settlers.
"uhh, I don't like settlers because Sakai criticized Lenin" - take I've heard before
a lot of people we appreciate in this community did. A criticism isn't a condemnation, but rather an acknowledgement of the difference in material conditions that make up the base of a revolution in countries that are settler-states or aren't in this specific case.
“In 1858 Engels sarcastically described the tamed British workers in the bluntest terms: "The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is to a certain extent justifiable."
(2) Britain was the Imperial Rome, the Amerikan Empire of that day - a nation which "feasted" on the exploitation of colonies around the entire world. Engels, as a communist, didn't make lame excuses for the corrupted English workers, but exposed them. He held the English workers accountable to the world proletariat for their sorry political choices.”
also give Conditions of the Working Class a good reread.
Actually, I heard something much more dubious than him criticizing Lenin. Did he actually praise Mein Kampf? /gen
Forget Settlers, read The Wretched of the Earth. The colonial situation divides humanity into two species, the colonized and the colonists. These two species exist in contradiction to each other and are in constant struggle. The US is still a settler colony, despite being so thoroughly reformed, and the decolonial struggle never reached completion. They are still divided into two species.
What is this referencing? I feel like I'm in that space of ironic internet humor that I lack the context for.
The post title comes from something Michael Parenti said: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11292604-communism-ladies-and-gentlemen-i-say-it-without-flinching
The tweet is the tweet. The only context needed is the apathy and chauvinism of the Amerikkkan populace.
The only context that's needed is a sore need for dialectical materialist discipline
A reference to reality. There is no irony behind it.
The title is indeed a phrase said by Michael Parenti: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11292604-communism-ladies-and-gentlemen-i-say-it-without-flinching
But it makes zero sense as a serious statement. Even if one despises the "apathy and chauvinism of the Amerikkkan populace" as the other person put it, that wouldn't mean excusing the ruling class??? The ruling class is that same chauvinism turned up to 11 and the apathy replaced with malicious violence.
Edit: Like please explain yourself because this sounds very reactionary right now.
I understand it as a joke, an ironic inversion of the "i am against the ruling class, not the people" trope. I don't find it particularly funny, but i understand why someone who is frustrated with the reactionary culture of the imperial core would.
But they said it isn't ironic and is "a reference to reality". I assumed joke inversion too, at first, which is why I didn't come out swinging. Now I'm concerned they are actually carrying water for some kind of reactionary thing of putting all of the blame on the people and siding with the ruling class.
putting all of the blame on the people and siding with the ruling class.
Oh, no. Absolutely not. The American ruling class is still American people.
The alienation of the working class is not the product of a conscious will of the bourgeoisie.
Edit: When I refer to "American people" I mean people from that country, not "pueblo" in the sense of the oppressed class.
I'm still not sure what you're trying to say. The US ruling class is not a separate species from the rest of the US people or something, but it IS a distinct form, that's part of what class analysis is for, is to recognize those distinctions and where they arise from. The development of bourgeoisie and proletariat is not by pure force of will on the part of the bourgeoisie, but it is also not arising from mechanical materialism inevitability either. There is a definite conscious choice on the part of the exploiting classes to develop and reproduce the exploitative form; members of that class consciously wage class war, even if not all among them are conspiring participants.
All I can guess is that you are trying to say that the US ruling class and US "people" are not distinct because they both partake in exploitation, but this only muddies the waters. There is already a term for explaining why the US proletariat is not more radical: labor aristocracy, the working class being bought off with the spoils of empire, essentially. But labor aristocracy is a different form than capitalist class and develops out of different conditions. If we muddy them together, we could think that every country with capitalists should also have a labor aristocracy, but that would not make sense because every country does not have imperial spoils, nor the same kind of unspoken racialized and gendered caste that the US tends to have.
"The American ruling class is still American people."
Then why not wish harm on the American ruling class?
Yes, I also disagree with that part of the tweet that specifies they don't wish harm on the ruling class. I would say more like "I do not wish harm only to the ruling American class..."
When I made a rant a while back while I was frustrated with how people talked undialectically, I was basically told "suck it up." I don't see why I shouldn't be able to say the same here
its twitter discourse alluring americans that put give out their lives to defend their pedophile overlords, also in some way its true most of the americans someone normally engages are regular working americans and they're shit, let's not pretend that the average american isn't a piece of shit.
He also posted this to Twitter. https://xcancel.com/slavomir_YU/status/2039989189043745135
There's a solution: to no longer be American, become an anti-American ie a class traitor
People acting like Lenin didn't consider the bourgeois proleteriat a thing. As others have noted the Epstein class ain't a layer above the west, it is the 10-12% of humanity that make up the West.
(Also I'm pretty sure that Parenti speech the title was alluding to was (at least one of) the Road(s) to Damscus that turned me ML)
You walk to wrong path on Lemmygrad and suddenly people are reccomending Settlers and are more irony poisoned than ultra-leftists.
I swear this comment section is completely vibes based and represents the worst of no investigation no right to speak.
I've said this before, i despise simple answers. Especially answers derived from "uhhh people were mean to me on the internet."
It's honestly disappointing because I came to lemmy for more...mature conversation and actual dialectical materialism instead of...this
