PugJesus
History Major. Cripple. Vaguely Left-Wing. In pain and constantly irritable.
- 6.24K Posts
- 5.35K Comments
19·4 小时前It is funny how similar events keep happening under these similar regimes.
It must be coincidence.
Fun Fact! In the ~500 years of widespread skirmishing between Arabic and Byzantine forces on the Empire’s eastern frontier, herd rustling was a common pastime of part-time soldier-militia on both sides of the border, and could lead to feuds, kidnappings, and reconciliations, even during periods of official peace.
5·5 小时前https://taskandpurpose.com/news/navy-destroyers-strait-of-hormuz-mines/
Two U.S. Navy destroyers are now in the Persian Gulf after crossing the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, U.S. Central Command announced. The warships are now working on “setting conditions for clearing mines” in the important waterway.
Two Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, the USS Frank E. Petersen and the USS Michael Murphy crossed the strait earlier today and are now sailing in the Persian Gulf, also known as the Arabian Gulf. Axios reported that the move was not coordinated with Tehran, en as negotiations began earlier today. It’s the first major move by U.S. forces in the area since a two-week ceasefire in the war was announced on Tuesday, April 7.
Explanation: In 1956, Hungarian workers rose up against the repressive totalitarian apparatus that had been imposed on them by the USSR, and declared their intention to hold free and fair elections in the interests of creating a democratic socialist workers’ state.
There was some hesitation at the top ranks of the USSR, with the spirit of reform still going strong in the post-Stalin era. Notably, Soviet Marshal Zhukov, a hero of WW2, recommended that the Hungarians be simply allowed to find their own way. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev initially refused the demand of the hardliners in the Soviet Communist Party to take military action, but would eventually acquiesce. The decision was made by Khrushchev to crush the socialist revolution for fear of the USSR seeming ‘weak’, either to its enemies abroad or to domestic hardliners.
This display of the Soviet Union as a stronger power blatantly imposing its will on a weaker, fellow socialist country was the last straw for many Western Communists who had previously aligned themselves with the USSR. From this incident, wherein Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary, suppressing the protesters and workers’ militias with military force and re-installing the old undemocratic government of Leninist hardliners, we get the term ‘tankie’ - what Western leftists would increasingly call USSR-aligned bootlickers, emphasizing that their ideology was built not on the support of the workers as they claimed, but on brutal military rule and tribalism.
4·5 小时前Explanation: In 1956, Hungarian workers rose up against the repressive totalitarian apparatus that had been imposed on them by the USSR, and declared their intention to hold free and fair elections in the interests of creating a democratic socialist workers’ state.
There was some hesitation at the top ranks of the USSR, with the spirit of reform still going strong in the post-Stalin era. Notably, Soviet Marshal Zhukov, a hero of WW2, recommended that the Hungarians be simply allowed to find their own way. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev initially refused the demand of the hardliners in the Soviet Communist Party to take military action, but would eventually acquiesce. The decision was made by Khrushchev to crush the socialist revolution for fear of the USSR seeming ‘weak’, either to its enemies abroad or to domestic hardliners.
This display of the Soviet Union as a stronger power blatantly imposing its will on a weaker, fellow socialist country was the last straw for many Western Communists who had previously aligned themselves with the USSR. From this incident, wherein Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary, suppressing the protesters and workers’ militias with military force and re-installing the old undemocratic government of Leninist hardliners, we get the term ‘tankie’ - what Western leftists would increasingly call USSR-aligned bootlickers, emphasizing that their ideology was built not on the support of the workers as they claimed, but on brutal military rule and tribalism.
Oh thank God, you had me worried
“a bowl”
It’s concerning that it’s not specified if it’s your bowl of cornflakes or someone else’s.
Explanation: During the US Civil War, many troops from the North were ambivalent about slavery, or against it in only general terms.
As Union forces entered the slaver states of the South, and encountered more former slaves, their stories, and their scars, the abstract opposition turned, in many men, from abstract and detached, to a burning hatred of the entire system of slavery imposed on their fellow man. Some choice quotes from Northern soldiers taken from the original OP’s explanation:
“With these old people were a few small Negro children from two years old up to six or seven years. There was no money in these poor old worn out slaves and the cruel and barbarous master had abandoned them to their fate. As I looked at their worn out hands and fingers and bodies I thought of the long cruel years of bondage while under burning suns and in cold and heat they had labored for this hellish system of human slavery and now in the close of nearly a century they were only a few hours from absolute want and the misery of hunger.”
“Oh! hardened depraved man, to think of owning property in men, women and children. Man, the last and noblest work of God, possessed of body, mind and soul, of passions, love and hate. All bought and sold by man for a concideration and computed in dollars and cents. Is there a just God, and will he always see his creatures thus oppressed, and not send retributive justice with a sword of vengence to teach traitors their duty, and punish them for passed offences?”
“I thought I hated slavery as much as possible before I came here, but here, where I can see some of its workings, I am more than ever convinced of the cruelty and inhumanity of the system. It has not one redeeming feature.”
Explanation: During the US Civil War, many troops from the North were ambivalent about slavery, or against it in only general terms.
As Union forces entered the slaver states of the South, and encountered more former slaves, their stories, and their scars, the abstract opposition turned, in many men, from abstract and detached, to a burning hatred of the entire system of slavery imposed on their fellow man. Some choice quotes from Northern soldiers taken from the original OP’s explanation:
“With these old people were a few small Negro children from two years old up to six or seven years. There was no money in these poor old worn out slaves and the cruel and barbarous master had abandoned them to their fate. As I looked at their worn out hands and fingers and bodies I thought of the long cruel years of bondage while under burning suns and in cold and heat they had labored for this hellish system of human slavery and now in the close of nearly a century they were only a few hours from absolute want and the misery of hunger.”
“Oh! hardened depraved man, to think of owning property in men, women and children. Man, the last and noblest work of God, possessed of body, mind and soul, of passions, love and hate. All bought and sold by man for a concideration and computed in dollars and cents. Is there a just God, and will he always see his creatures thus oppressed, and not send retributive justice with a sword of vengence to teach traitors their duty, and punish them for passed offences?”
“I thought I hated slavery as much as possible before I came here, but here, where I can see some of its workings, I am more than ever convinced of the cruelty and inhumanity of the system. It has not one redeeming feature.”
26·6 小时前https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_(enslaved_man)
In this transcript Peter mentions “salt brine, which Overseer put in my back”.[8] This practice, sometimes called salting, was attested in many accounts of slave torture reported over many decades.[16] Other substances, including turpentine, hot-pepper juice, and dripping candle wax, were also used.[
All identities are arbitrary though.
For that matter, nationalism was *anti-*reactionary in its strongest period, in the 19th century.
Nationalism is reactionary today because it is established, and anything already well-established is a target for reactionaries, who use concepts with pre-existing attachments to dupe useful idiots into thinking that the enemies of the reactionaries and the enemies of the establishment are one and the same. Nearly any period of significant political or cultural upheaval will show that simplistic narrative flies in the face of facts. But they aren’t targeting engaged, politically aware folk. They’re targeting people who are scared and don’t want to think about it too much.
Not that nationalism is all that great to begin with. But it’s not particularly different than any other conception of identity.
No matter how stupid a position is
There is always someone stupid enough to take it up sincerely.
For a less-digital example, see: American politics recently
I mean, on one hand, yes.
On the other hand, that seems like a lot of work tbqh. I feel like exercise is something you have to already have a passion for to keep it up. Is filtering out morons a little faster really worth it?
Some days I feel overconfidence has killed more revolutions than reactionaries
Explanation: For all of Napoleon Bonaparte’s many, many flaws, including being a thin-skinned autocrat, he was, ultimately, a child of the Enlightenment and an enemy of the old, feudal way of governance. Over the course of his wars with the European Coalitions, one reform he embarked one was an attempt to unfuck some of the more gruesome German borders which had arisen over the past ~1000 years of inheritance fuckery through his puppet state of the ‘Confederation of the Rhine’.
It was still pretty fucked.
But LESS so!
Moderates
More brutal, more umlauts