anarcho_blinkenist
When it comes to settler-colonialism — it literally is black and white. Both in the “epidermalization” of colonial dehumanization unfolding in history as white supremacy vs black and brown inferiority; but also in the fabric of colonialism and colonial relations in general. The colonizer makes the colonized into the embodiment of all evil, so the colonizer can be the embodiment of all good in oppressing them. “Civilization vs barbarity” as espoused by all European colonialists and likewise espoused by the earliest (explicitly settler-colonial) Zionists like Theodor Herzl, who wrote in such terms to arch-racist and settler-colonial genocidaire Cecil Rhodes asking for support; as well as stated explicitly now by Netanyahu in public international forums and to US congress.
Those “civilized” colonialists engage in worse barbarism than any of their victims could have imagined; and need necessarily for their victims to be made into an effigy of irredeemable unsolvable-but-through-violence evil to escape the dissonance and contradiction. And this contradiction between the inherent inner-demand of the colonized to embrace, embody, and express their humanity against the inherent and inherently violent colonial dehumanization perpetrated and perpetuated against them by the colonizer sharpens itself, by the resistance of the colonized producing fear and anger in the colonizer, and indignation that the “civilized good” would be challenged and assailed by the “barbarous bad,” and as such this is taken as PROOF of the inhumanity and savagery of the colonial subject; and so reprisals are carried out to reestablish the existing exploitation and dehumanization and further deepen and entrench it. And in doing so, the colonialist becomes more the embodiment and executor of the ‘barbarism and inhumanity’ that they project onto the colonized, which then spurs more resistance in the colonized against their own dehumanization.
In this way colonialism and the colonial relationship dehumanizes both the colonized and the colonizer, in very black and white ways. The colonized only regain their humanity by realizing and embracing the truth of their own humanity in defiance to the colonizer’s violence-backed assertions (in word and deed) of the inhumanity of the colonized. And in doing so, the colonized realizes that it is infact the colonizer who lacks humanity, by engaging in violently stripping and denying the humanity of the colonized for their own gain; and it is the colonizer who is the embodiment of the evil that is projected onto the victim; and hating them is righteous because to embrace and assert the colonized subject’s own humanity is to accept and express-in-full the total intolerability and grotesque violent reality of the colonial relationship. And the full expression of this acceptance means the full-frontal challenge and assault upon the very core structures of colonialism and the colonizers in the only language it and they understand — which is violence. The colonized is only able to embody and express their full humanity when they cease to be colonized; which means the ceasing, through any means necessary, of the colonizer and the colonial relationship. Which is and has always been maintained through extreme violence; and as such can only be overcome by more extreme and greater violence which is sufficiently organized and strategically, tactically, and politically educated and disciplined to overcome the immense power imbalance arrayed against them. This is a material reality, and a historically borne-out reality.
The colonizer likewise can only regain their humanity through being destroyed as colonizer. Whether that is through:
- destruction of the individual (in which they bleed and die like any other human being, they regain their connection to humanity, and to their own humanity; death being the great equalizer)
- or through surrender to the terms of the colonized and abolishment of the colonial relationship which means abolishment of the pre-existing power dynamic and total unequivocal submission to the new rule of the previously-subjugated, in which by accepting surrendering of any and all special privileges over another human being, they become equal to other humans, reconnected to humanity and to their own humanity
- or otherwise fleeing or being expelled in sufficient numbers that the colonial regime collapses, in which the previous-colonizers, in their new places of refuge, will not and can not maintain the same differential of violence and power that they had left behind over the local population, their new neighbors. The local population, established and entrenched with sovereign governance, would not tolerate those welcomed in to wage a violent colonial dehumanization campaign for exploitation, and the previous-colonizer, understanding this, accepts their new station as equal to other human beings, and so the previous-colonizer, is a *previous-*colonizer ie not any longer a colonizer, and as such regains their connection to humanity and to their own humanity.
As the colonizer, benefiting immensely in material terms from being the colonizer in the colonial relationship, is loathe to give it up, this can only ever be done through organized violence against them, combined with sufficient threat of its expansion and continuation out-competing and out-stripping the total capability for the colonial military, police, and settler-militias to continue on in the way they had previously, and out-stripping the ability for the colonizer’s foreign sponsors to maintain or justify domestically maintaining the colonial project which itself necessarily requires wildly disproportionate and extreme violence, oppression and repressions, in order to enforce the implicit understanding of “the proper place” of the colonized, and make the colonizer and the colonial relationship seem to the colonized as unassailable and eternal as if it were a fundamental law of nature.
This is also why historically, in independence and decolonization struggles and uprisings, for every 10 colonizers killed, 400 colonized are killed and entire villages burned or bulldozed in reprisal, and their bodies made symbols of “what might happen to you if you raise your head like they did.” It is a deliberate reassertion of the colonial relationship of the superior vs the inferior, the human vs the inhuman, the powerful vs the weak. But the reality of this relationship is ineffable, can not be spoken of in these clear (real) terms, because the implication of its naked reality inherently proves the inhumanity of the colonizer and undermines their basis of being the ‘eternal good against the eternal bad;’ but and even more urgently, this real reality of the colonial relationship being known is damning for the colonizer, as it proves the necessity on the part of the colonized to engage in violent armed struggle with extreme severity against the colonizer to win the humanity that is denied them, and which will otherwise never be won. In all of this, it is very black and white.
I highly recommend reading Frantz Fanon for more understanding of colonialism and settler-colonialism in these ways; and the dialectical nature of the relationships and psychologies between the colonizer and colonized. Right now resources are up on the Internet Archive. The Wretched of the Earth (which should be required reading for anyone in the west to be honest); and Black Skin, White Masks are essential to speak with knowledge on these relationships if you’re not subject to them, and so live the experiences; though the texts can give language and concrete materialist analysis to those lived experiences and so are valuable regardless. Fanon was writing about the Algerian independence struggle but the concepts are as universal as European colonialism is. It has inspired many anti-colonial revolutionary struggles since his time, including as a core inspiration for the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army. It is necessary to engage with these works to understand colonialism.
If you then feel inclined to broaden understanding of the material interests of organized society and build out understanding of the underlying economic systems and frameworks behind the evolution of these colonial and imperial states coming into being into a ‘wider picture,’ Marx and Lenin can help; but I don’t think they are at all necessary precursors, as Fanon does an immense deal of his own unique legwork to illustrate everything cohesively without need for external resource; and does an excellent job of encapsulating and expressing his own analyses in a concrete historical and dialectical materialist methodological framework himself without additional work of the reader, and simply “stretching” Marxist conceptions where it didn’t reach far enough or grip the road enough in order to encompass colonialism and independence struggles in its actual internal relationships-between-peoples — as Marx mostly spoke of colonialism in broad terms of how it served the primitive accumulation of capital on which the industrial revolution was built and so followed the division of society into bourgeoisie and proletariat classes; and that the self-liberation of proletariat could only happen through first the liberation of slaves, as a necessity of historical evolution of societal social relations. Lenin wrote about nations’ right to self-determination and the capitalist evolution into capitalist-imperialism; though with a more external and structural perspective in broad political conceptions relevant to the revolutions in Europe and Eurasia during his time. Exceedingly incisive and still-valuable information, but is less focused and relevant to the topic of the relationships themselves. But if you struggle with Fanon, some basic Marx and Lenin might help lay a foundation.
What does that have to do with the internal collapse of the USSR?
you’ve still not made any actual assertions. “The internal collapse of the USSR” makes it seem like you’re gesturing toward having some actual knowledge, which you’re refusing to disclose, instead making smug assertions that this hidden vague knowledge that you refuse to declare means you’re right. So, what does “the internal collapse of the USSR” actually mean to you? What are you imagining (the pictures and words in your brain) when you say “the internal collapse of the USSR,” and what were the causes in your opinion for whatever you’re imagining?
It doesn’t seem like you actually know what you’re talking about, because you’re desperately avoiding making real substantive statements in any of these comments, instead throwing tantrums when pressed on what you actually think. Tell us your actual positions, without petulant ‘McCarthy-if-he-was-a-redditor’ tantrums, or otherwise stop pretending to have any.
But we both know that’s not why it collapsed.
okay, then tell us why you think it collapsed? These vague insinuations and gesturing don’t prove your point, they make it seem like you’re unsure of the basis of your own assertions.
Edit: And for the record, the first ever experiment of a modern socialist country in history, with no earlier examples to work off of, succumbing to a series of both external and internal contradictions doesn’t say anything concretely about the viability of socialism as a whole. In fact, their massively successful strides toward constructing new relations of society, and the betterment of living standards for the vast masses of its people, and the provided security of housing, employment, nutrition, community, and healthcare which was established after fully collectivizing and industrializing (industrializing in 1/10 of the time it took the west to industrialize, without the fundamental basis of primitive accumulation through global colonialism, settler-colonialism, genocide, chattel slavery, child labor, aggressive wars, and malthusian sanitation practices that under-girded the western industrial revolution; and doing so after suffering such destruction in WWI and the civil and counter-revolutionary-interventionist war no less) proves there are extremely strong cases for it being a model of success to learn from and build off of, while learning from its shortcomings and mistakes.
Cases in point:
- These NATO Generals Had Unusual Backgrounds: They Served in the Third Reich
- When the CIA Bankrolled a Nazi Spy Chief
- (Said spy chief and his organization)
- Documents: CIA concealed Nazi war criminals
- Revealed: How the CIA protected Nazi murderers
- How [CIA-hired] Nazi butcher Klaus Barbie helped kill Che Guevara and unleash global cocaine scourge
- CIA ORGANIZED SECRET ARMY IN WESTERN EUROPE
- How Nazi Billionaires Thrived in Postwar Germany
- Loyal to their Class, Unhinged from Democracy [US political economic elite connections with German Industrialists & Nazis]
- Revealed: How Israel Turned Nazi War Criminals Into Mossad Agents
There’s a long and ongoing history of this; for the US, UK, and Israel.
- [DECLASSIFIED] - CIA INVOLVEMENT IN UKRAINIAN NATIONALISM
- {2014: Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call [where they hand-picked new regime; Oleh Tyahnybok is Nazi leader of Svoboda party]
- [2014:] How the far-right took top posts in Ukraine’s power vacuum
- [2014:] TORCH-LIT MARCH IN KIEV BY UKRAINE’S RIGHT-WING SVOBODA PARTY - BBC NEWS
- [2016:] Congress Has Removed a Ban on Funding Neo-Nazis From Its Year-End Spending Bill
- [2018:] Israel is arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine
- [2018:] Ukrainian neo-Nazi C14, known for racist and homophobic attacks, gets public funding for ‘patriotic education’
- [2018:] Ukrainian Militia Behind Brutal Romany Attacks [Nazi group ‘C-14’] Getting State Funds
- [2019:] The Russians and Ukrainians [operating out of Ukraine] Translating the Christchurch Shooter’s Manifesto
- [2019:] How to Mainstream Neo-Nazis: A Lesson from Ukraine’s New Government
- [2019:] MASS Neo-Nazi Marches in Ukraine today to honour Stepan Bandera
- [2020:] Nationalist marchers [including Tyahnybok’s Svoboda] in Kyiv say Ukraine is under ‘occupation’ by ‘Jewish clan’
- [2021:] Like, Share, Recruit: How a White-Supremacist Militia Uses Facebook to Radicalize and Train New Members
And just for fun, and just in case
The “middle class” never existed. The “middle class” is an invented wedge to split the working class and try to turn segments of itself, against itself. It has no material basis. It is the ‘myth of upward mobility under capitalism’ distilled into a propaganda phrase to obscure the dualistic and antagonistic class relations in capitalist society between the PROPERTIED and UNPROPERTIED (those who own capital and those who do not), and the contradictions and conflicts therein.
It is false consciousness; personified by and in the ‘middle manager’ who is PROPERTYLESS (proletarian), but paid more and promised the “opportunity of more to come” to align themselves with the interests of the PROPERTIED, and take on the role of a low-level overseer – to function as both a compliance enforcer and a mediative focus-dulling pain-sponge standing in the middle of, and soaking up the conflict between, the ONLY REAL TWO CLASSES IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY: The Worker, and the Capitalist.
“Middle class” is liberal sleight-of-hand in its core and conception, and a term to be derided and discarded in all use, except as a magnifying glass to show the ways capitalism distorts and deceives about the real nature of its own properties and relations; and how the ruling class generates and contributes to the development of false consciousness through their reframing of production’s own characteristics, in order to reify into political “identities” to be captured and capitalized upon those roles which naturally manifest out of the laws of functional industrial-productive logistics, ie. the need for ‘managers’ to administrate complex or large-scale productive and distributive tasks. This serves double roles in the laws of colonial and imperial relations in places like the USA, as this distinction is also in practice highly racialized and rooted in the ongoing historical unfolding of these basal-and-superstructural systems of exploitation.
Make note of the conspicuous absences and obfuscations when duopolist-exploiter X or Y says they “fight for the middle class;” that they are not fighting for you or me in the working class, but pandering to those “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” that they’ve bought off enough or otherwise tricked into this false consciousness, to give them their ever-shrinking electoral margins they require and fight each other over so they don’t have to pay any mind to the working class masses who make up the majority; because they in reality work for the big bourgeois, the capitalists, and the petty-bourgeois “small business tyrants” who think of themselves as capitalists — all at the expense of the working class domestically and abroad.
I’ve come to realize that a significant portion of people just think other people should die and that’s fair and they’re OK with being the ones to do it.
It has always been this way. Particularly because there are people and groups who actively materially benefit from the enforced poverty/slavery and oppression of other people and groups within the social organization of our societies. The enforced poverty/slavery will never stop without sufficient and sufficiently organized, centralized, disciplined violence to overcome those who actively benefit from the enforced poverty/slavery by means of the same; and then maintaining that authority over the exploiters until their interest and strength are no more.
It’s the same reason why there’s never been a “peaceful bloodless decolonization.” Why would the colonizer ever willingly permit that? They would be, from a standpoint of their own material interest as a societal class, complete morons to do so and make such a willing choice. Which is why (and this is historically borne out) they must be not given a choice by an organized militant anti-colonial resistance. This is also why the “authoritarianism” criticism of the doctrine and practice of revolutionary groups like Castro’s revolutionaries or Lenin’s Bolsheviks is laughable; the liberal peanut gallery can only have that criticism because they succeeded and survived to be criticized; having overcome the oppressors who, in the event of the revolutionaries’ failure (historically borne out in how every failed revolution played out including the previous ones in those countries); would show the truth of themselves as 1000x more vicious, having honed that capability for 100x longer.
Look up any countries’ “Red Terror” in history, then look up their corresponding “White Terror.” You will see [wiki:NSFW images if you click on them]. Or read about any decolonization struggle. Like in Algeria, where every uprising that killed 10 Frenchmen resulted in a colonial reprisal with hundreds of butchered Algerians.
We live in a material reality with material interests which are enforced by people who will use your pacifism as a means to exploit you easier, and kill you easier if you even are seen as inconvenient or ‘in the way’ of those interests, let alone if you resist and struggle against them. And that argument has been happening since Marx and Engels’ time in the framework of materialism; and was exactly the realm of rationale behind the policy of terror with the Jacobins before that in the French Revolution; from which many later revolutionaries took lessons and learned from the mistakes and refined within their contemporary material conditions and circumstances.
Stop acting like liberal Trumpers and the name wouldn’t mean anything. “Blue MAGA” didn’t come from nowhere. The “agenda” you’re speaking of is holding up a mirror to you and the near-entirety of your party and its hypocrisy and dishonesty, and its corporate arms-dealer backers in the Miliary-Industrial-Media-complex, and uncritical upscale-college-liberal footsoldiers and the tantrums you throw to avoid confronting uncomfortable realities
You don’t seem to allow yourself to be a very deep thinker when it comes to your electoral “team.” Have you considered maybe that communists are anti-genocide and anti-fascist? Are anti-colonialism? Are anti-imperialism and anti-death-merchantry from these private arms manufacturers? All of which happens with open handshakes and benefits and with the eager help of the majority of establishment Democrats? That communists criticize the Democrats who participate in these things, for their active participation in these things?
Unlike Liberals who can only think in abstract ideals and empty rhetoric to then be indignant and status-quo defending at being confronted with reality, or can only see things in terms of individual identity politics instead of material class relations and material historical context, Marxists have a scientific methodology for approaching politics, events, information, etc. which is rooted in class interest and material conditions. These are criticisms based on their material actions, and when a politician’s material actions are good — are against these bad things; when their actions are anti-genocide, anti-imperialism, anti-war, anti-arming extremists in proxy wars, anti-nuclear brinksmanship etc. (Almost as rare for Democrats as it is for Republicans), then those actions are said to be good, but there are held no other illusions or delusions or weird idealist or identity fixations like Liberals have — like you clearly have.
Communists are against these bad things — are against genocide, imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, war and proxy war, etc.; but and also realize that all of these things are inherently and inexorably linked to the growth of the capitalist system and the interests and needs of its ruling class for defending markets and cheap sources of labor and resources for capitalists to exploit, and control and crush competition or resistance to that expansion and theft; and that these things arise due to the inherent and irreconcilable contradictions of the capitalist system (which the bourgeois politicians depend and defend and are agents of; and whose police and army are the enforcers of) and the capitalist social relations; such as the need for constant growth to stave off crises and collapse even if all markets are saturated by capitalists; the need for profits necessarily maximized and costs necessarily forced (often through direct or indirect socio-economic systemic violence) to minimum in order that the capitalist can extract as much surplus value to make active as capital as possible in order to reproduce capital and expand their capital and markets in order to not “lose” in competition and be cannibalized by other capitalists; that this capital which is inherently concentrating in the hands of the few and the most vicious and the most cost-suppressing due to the private extraction of the surplus value provided by socialized labor and the ‘jungle-law’ of capitalist competition.
Communists have also been vehemently anti-Obama and anti-Clinton and anti-Kerry, not because they “are Democrat” but because they, as Democrats, used their mandate to for instance utterly destroy Libya — previously the richest country in Africa, instigating multiple ethnic cleansing campaigns and turning it into an open air-slave market; and trying to do the same in Syria, even allowing ISIS to take root and grow and capture cities to use as proxy warriors and turning both of these regions into an Al Qaeda and ISIS playground which was supplied by US weapons rubber-stamped by the Democrat president and most Democrats in congress.
Communists have hated Obama and Trump both for being nearly indistinguishable in their barbarity toward immigrants, just as communists see as an enemy Biden for continuing to do the same and worse. Communists also hate Obama and Trump for their indistinguishable bipartisan also-genocidal arming and funding and participating in slowly genociding Yemenis for a decade, one hospital, wedding, and schoolbus full of children at a time.
Communists pointed out that Obama’s cabinet was hand-picked by Citigroup and his bailing out the banks was not an anomoly, not because “Democrat,” but because of the material interests that, in material reality, Obama shamelessly represented and furthered; regardless of any advertising rhetoric out of his and his supporters’ mouths – it was and is his actions that matter. Same when communists point out that Biden brought into his administration a bunch of the most bloodthirsty neo-cons he could find like Nuland and Blinken; and that he reappointed a Trump-admin judge who was Chevron lawyer who defended destroying the Amazon and poisoning Indigenous people and jailing their most prominent vocal opponent. Same when communists point out that Biden went around congress twice to ship guns and bombs to the Zionist occupation faster than even they were already bipartisanly moving toward hoping they’d would wipe Gaza’s inhabitants off the map before election time so they wouldn’t face such ongoing political consequences and the mass-defections from their party and mass protests demanding an end to this genocidal atrocity they support.
I’ve seen many of your comments, and you’re remarkably bad-faith when it comes to politics. It often comes across as petulant. And it is very telling and indicative of where your values and interests actually lie that you spend more time and energy lashing out at those who criticize the Democrats for their participation in genocide, neo-colonialism, imperialist nuclear brinksmanship sponsored by arms-manufacturers, and far right and mass-murderous economic and immigration polices, and who advocate for starving them of the working class margins that they take for granted and rely on for a mandate; than you ever spend advocating for the sufficiently-near-unanimous-to-just-say-Democrats Democrats to stop this genocide which they could with a phone call.
Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are anomolies, exceptions to the rule in these kinds of cases, and communists support their (and any) action against exploitation, imperialism, genocide, colonialism, war, etc. But they stand and have stood alone in a party of vampires, and for taking these stands they’ve faced endless persecution and betrayal and slander and maligning and sidelining by ‘their own’ party, including even their former allies of the “Progressives” (don’t laugh!) of “the squad.”
When a 3rd party rises, with my and others’ support, Ilhan and Tlaib would probably abandon the Democrats like ‘rats from a sinking ship,’ along with every other progressive-minded individual communist-or-not who haven’t already (which many have over the years, me included, and will continue to). Stop lashing out at the 3rd party voters and critics who have a conscience, and a material understanding, and a memory longer than that of a goldfish; and instead force your own ‘team’ to reckon with what they are and became; or otherwise admit you’re a nationalist that likes these terrible things being this way because you benefit; or otherwise admit that the critics are right and join them.
Makes one think who all has been benefiting from the expansion of militarism and conflict, doesn’t it? But no need for us to worry, because I’m certain the peace-loving Democrats, who I’m assured by very democracy-valuing liberals, are despite all appearances definitely not nearly-indistinguishable from the open-fanged right-wing Republicans, and will stop this US militarism which is destroying the planet faster than anyone.
Pay no attention to the 3rd parties who actually come out against militarism; If we just give the wing of the bipartisan-imperialists who actually rely on working class margins whatever votes they want regardless of their actions forever, then surely because of how appreciative they are of us that they will gift to us some result that’s remotely different than all of exactly this and exactly what brought us here… right?