infuziSporg [e/em/eir]

You’re thinking of bigotry. White people don’t experience systematically unfavorable outcomes from the perception of their skin color.

The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

Dates for the articles:

“Ukraine has lost its first F-16” - August 29th

“Ukraine’s F-16s have arrived” - August 4th

“Any day now, Ukraine will finally get its F-16s” - December 24, 2023

Press F [16] to pay respects

Oops! All Ws

The orthodox version of the meme literally has a tree as a focal point.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/anthony-adams-rubbing-hands

Never had that problem, maybe because I have the thigh-gap body type.

I wonder what AI-generated Thai script looks like, whether it end up resembling Latin script a bit more, or something else.

If you like doing your job and going home

You enjoy your employment and you even enjoy your commute. Then what’s the problem? Are your coworkers having an even better time at work than you are? I don’t understand.

My agreement with you is deep like a mineshaft.

Every ad represents, in the final sense, a missed opportunity for a meaningful communication, displaced by redundant consumption.

Crises and snap actions do need specialized point people, but I don’t think those specialized point people need to be the same ones that keep the meetings running smoothly or that set the standard for partisan self-education. That’s the beauty of it, the diversity of humans makes it possible for everyone to contribute more of what they’re best at.

A lot of it is paraphrasing another Imaginary Partisan, but I put my own direction on it by emphasizing how the push for “strong leadership” (rather than just strong systems of coordination) in these movements can lead to serious vulnerabilities.

If you have one person who is The Big Leader, there’s a huge target placed on them. It becomes clear that there’s only 1 person who needs to be bribed or blackmailed or (less likely) accident-ed. Plus, you have the whole burden of deciding all the things under one person, and this can burn people out, stratify the organization, and make cadres feel less capable of action.

Someone posted an infobox yesterday on the Party of Bulgarian Communists, and while everyone was smiling at the vidya game logo, I was smiling at how they had a collective for top leadership.

Another thing that is important is making sure that there is a near horizon as well as a far one. Trying to build up a movement around “agitating and educating specifically for some time generations in the future when material conditions reach a breaking point” is a losing prospect; this is asking for people to put their whole lives aside for a revolution they won’t have any experience of. If you can find a way to enrich people’s lives in a way that is clearly moving toward a more equal society, that would be part of a winning strategy.

There are a couple persistent internal problems that communist parties face in the US.

One is that people are in the habit of fragmenting over minor differences in ideology; meanwhile, the two main capitalist parties are giant tents, not tethered to any specific political position, evolving but always drawing support from capitalists and effortlessly maintaining a funding base and a dominance in democratic organs.

Another is that after a century of existing alongside state intelligence, it’s fairly clear that the intelligence services have been running wide circles around the communist parties, and at this point the communist parties have settled in to a form of being that is benign to the American system. This may be through ranks being infiltrated and leadership being compromised, or through hegemonic liberal ideology that partisans accept to the point where their main activities are peaceful^TM protests and electoral campaigns.

Without any desire to sound particularly sectarian, I would say that there is a strong cult vibe to American communist parties. They are largely opaque and insular, and tend to sound dogmatic more often than not.

It could be that all of these problems are closely linked. In any case, for any successful proletarian movement in this country, there needs to be a deep change in strategy that is able to compose diverse political forces, maintain a strong working-class appeal by embedding itself into relevant and winnable struggles, and frustrate all attempts by state and reactionary forces to decapitate or pacify it.

maybe later, honey

We had a user who would uncritically support Russia and Operation Z. A “Z poster”, if you will. They were banned on several accounts and no one really missed them.

Some of us tepidly support the CPRF, which is largely controlled opposition. We recognize that counting since 2014, there’s a lot of propaganda, civilian strikes, and land mines coming from both sides. Most of us favor an immediate armistice along the present LOC that follows pretty closely a “dividing line” for the plurality ethnicity as evidenced by the past 30 years of linguistic, electoral, and poling data. And we favor quick peace as opposed to continued hostility that likely will go nowhere.

It sucks that Ukraine’s self-determination is being jeopardized by Russia. It sucks that Luhansk’s self-determination is being jeopardized by Ukraine. It sucks that there’s a geopolitical standoff between the two strongest military powers that overlays this. It sucks that the only imaginable ruling party in Russia is a reactionary capitalist one that was ushered in by Clinton’s intervention. And it sucks that they’re all probably just going to die in a field to resolve it, and make the situation in Bosnia look like a vacation resort in comparison.

There is a silver lining in that we are seeing a great power struggle to subjugate its neighbor, and also in that the wearing down of NATO and Russia allows the less belligerent, more progressive, emerging superpower to have more sway in the world. Some might say that makes it “worth it” but I certainly don’t.