@DictatrshipOfTheseus
@hexbear.netDoes a link directly to the pertinent image work for you?
https://archive.is/tgXRb/66db743718e9277d76256a497f02785d141f979d/scr.png
Certain antivirus software seems to have been blocking the archive sites for no good reason. I assume the real reason is because those sites are the easiest way to bypass paywalls.
I don't know, I don't think there's anything really wrong with using the word as an insult because I don't think it's actually a slur. If anyone can point me to something that shows "troglodyte" in particular is used to refer to any disadvantaged group (like people with DS), I will retract this and never use it again. Like several other comrades who have already commented, I've used troglodyte for years to refer to the same people we all tend to call chuds here. In fact, cannibalistic humanoid underground dweller is pretty damn close to troglodyte. Speaking of which...
If you're going to dehumanize a person, I think it's best to call them something that's entirely unhuman (e.g. demon, ghoul, etc.) rather than something human-like (e.g. orc, ape, etc.)
That's not really the problem, as I see it. There's no line between "unhuman" and "human-like." How is ghoul or demon any different than orc in that respect? Not to be cliche, but it really is all about the context. Orc in general wasn't bad to use per se, but now that it's being used to specifically refer to Russians or more generally, Asians, it has become problematic. Ape is pretty obviously not a good word to use in most cases because of the history of it's use to dehumanize people based on race. But even then, I wouldn't consider it a slur if I were to playfully say to my large, muscular, white friend "you big ape!"
All that said, as always I'm open to being shown where I might be wrong.
If I'm understanding HornyOnMain (OP) correctly, she's not trying to say it shouldn't be used, just that it's odd and suspicious that libs seem to have suddenly picked up on it and are throwing it around incessantly. I fully agree on that.
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I think you missed the whole point of GarbageShoot asking you specifically about Allende.
just based on a small snippet of reading about them, I think in general [...]
I think this is the main problem here: a lack of knowledge about the historical context of "authoritarian" socialist projects, but nevertheless making generalized statements about them without even considering the material reasons why they were by necessity "authoritarian." Read up more about the history of Chile and consider what happened to Allende and the hope of a socialist Chile. Who came after Allende (and almost as important, who installed that successor)? Why do these events seem so familiar when learning about every other attempt, successful or not, to bring about a communist society? When you've done that, you will at the very least have a leg to stand on when criticizing so-called tankie authoritarianism.
I'd also suggest reading The Jakarta Method. Here's a somewhat relevant quote from it:
This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: “Who was right?”
In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?
Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington.
Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported -- what the rich countries said, rather than what they did.
That group was annihilated.
I would argue some also misplace their hopes in false solutions, such as multipolarity or the BRICS trading bloc (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa)… The idea that social revolution is inconceivable and that the best we can hope for is an end to US/Western hegemony and the emergence of a multipolar world has been gaining ground among opponents of Western imperialism around the world.
From my understanding, it's not that those who put their hopes in multipolarity/BRICS think that social revolution is inconceivable, it's that we recognize that you have to have the right conditions for revolution before it can happen. Multipolarity is the best way of bringing about those conditions. Like has been said so often here, it's about giving the global south the breathing room to be able to express its agency in the world, which in turn could allow the social revolution he's talking about to happen without it being immediately obliterated by the sole world hegemon. The author is talking like it's an either/or situation, when it's not that at all. It's a process that takes more than just a single fucking step, lol. And what (actual) leftist thinks an end to US hegemony "is the best we can hope for"?
In reality, a multipolar capitalist world, a world of rival hegemons and would-be hegemons contesting for power, is a world at war.
And a sudden world wide revolution wouldn't be?
Go get a mic and slap a on it and hold it up while you shoot some video with people going into the summit building over your shoulder.
Personally, I would look forward to hearing 72T trying to pronounce your name. "Thanks aaaaaaadjsf 'ayyyyy... aid-jeff ssfuh?' that was illuminating. There you have it, folks. In other news, stay tuned, because in our top story tonight..."
You could go be the on-the-ground correspondent for Channel Hexbear's NewsMega. Tell us what's happening with live updates and each time close with "back to you, SeventyTwoTrillion."
Im not liberal, im a socialist.
A "socialist" who believes capitalist propaganda and refers to the largest and most successful actually existing socialist state's functionality as "antics"? Sounds pretty liberal to me.
And im not American either :)
The person you're replying to wasn't suggesting that you were. He signs all his comments with that phrase at the end, and strangely enough, it's almost always fitting.
Anyway, yes, this instance does tend to try to talk about China accurately, and it does so in the face of overwhelming torrents of western propaganda cultivated by the capitalist's/imperialist's demonization of the state that poses the largest contemporary threat to their hegemony.
I just edited my comment to fix my use of "they/their" into "he/him" as per the other commenter's pronouns. I mention this specifically because you said in another comment for us to "stop being against lgbtq." This instance is the most lgbtq-positive space I've ever encountered on the internet. We frequently get hated on by transphobes because we include pronouns next to usernames. We were, and to my knowledge still are, the only instance to do so.
Tbf, seconds are defined by a fundamental physical property already, the properties of a caesium atom because that was the most accurate way of keeping time known. Seconds defined this way are part of the SI metric standard. If we were to meet ET comrades, so long as we could communicate what hydrogen is, which should be pretty easy, we could extrapolate what our time measurements are based on from there... probably more easily than using planck multiples, which to my knowledge has nothing in the physical world that oscillates by it. (Also, it's no better or worse than using any other multiple, but using multiples of 10 is arbitrary because of our base-10 system that we use as a result of having 10 fingers. Who knows how many fingers ET has!) 👽
If we're basing our units on something to appease potential aliens, I personally like the idea of using pulsars, which when discovered were thought at first to be aliens because they pulsed with frequencies more accurate than our atomic clocks.
Honestly, the dolphins should be making these decisions regardless.
It is true that there are plenty of people who use reddit that are not racist (setting aside the idea that everyone who lives in a racist society, which we in the west do, has at least some internalized racism). Some people on reddit even actively fight against it, to their credit. That said, as a platform, both in terms of the people who run and administrate it, as well as the larger majority mass of users, definitely tends towards racism. This can be seen in all kinds of ways, from admins always siding with of racists over bipoc to the frothing-at-the-mouth hatred of the "orcish hordes" that dominates in every popular subreddit (and the silencing of those who offer even the mildest criticism of it), to the understandable yet very telling rabid defense of the privilege so many of them insist they earned when it is nothing more than old fashioned white privilege. You seem to agree that reddit is bad for its corporatist bullshit and its laser focus on profit at the expense of people. We agree. But that alone is inherently systemically racist for sociological reasons that I'm assuming you're aware of, given some of your other comments. For all these reasons, it is hardly an overreaction or unfair to refer to reddit as "a racist website."
As for "authoritarian" communists, all I'll say here is that I hope you can learn to seriously, genuinely question a lot of what you have learned from what amounts to an ocean of propaganda deliberately spread for decades (even over a century) to demonize any successful socialist revolution. I'd encourage you to ask some of us "tankies" in good faith about some of that propaganda in other appropriate threads.