Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
On Sunday last week, Damascus fell to Salafi terrorists and other imperialist-aligned forces. Regardless of the flaws of the ousted government, this is a horrible situation for the Syrian proletariat as well as for the people of Palestine, Lebanon and others. We can only hope for the perseverance of the Syrian workers and the remaining anti-colonial resistance.
☭ Matrix homeserver and space
☭ Theory reading group on hiatus, will move to Lemmygrad next year
☭ Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna’s Archive, libgen
any thoughts?
I mean it’s hard to disagree. There are very few working class (read: poor) people who not only manage to have enough free time to write but to have the network to get published too.
I recently read a book on poverty written by a man who has gone through poverty himself. He only managed to get such a book published because he managed to get a university degree and a government job. He could be just a talented writer while working in a factory but he would have a much harder time getting published without the network he build over time.
Thanks to /u/ayjanibrahimov@lemmygrad.ml for this week’s picture.
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Anyone know how I can find my own DMs on here?
Edit: Found them— bell icon, messages, all.
I hate how many Arabs are celebrating what’s happening in Syria, and I’m not even talking about just Moroccans. This makes it hard to not want to just give up on them. It’s like they haven’t got a single clue, they just gobble up everything they’re being told by media just like before. The Arabs are so weak that a completely different culture in Iran are spearheading their own resistance.
At the end of the day they are not that different from westerners. People everywhere regardless of their religion, nationality or ethnicity are susceptible to being propagandized by their media and their ruling class establishment institutions. All that differs is the material circumstances, and these compel more people in the global south than in the imperial core to wake up and actually realize what is happening.
a ton of people just live in autopilot and parrot whatever they hear on media, i kid you not ive had mexicans tell me about “china does child labour” while there are kids working in the background.
Many Arabs are not celebrating, I can attest to this.
Well, I’m Turk, so maybe it’s just only what I see.
Unfortunately, as a Syrian vehemently against what is happening, most Syrians are celebrating.
Some of them are Syrians I spoke to a week before the regime fell and they held a position similar to mine.
I suppose for some it is fear of persecution from new regime, or a cope given that we’ve reached a point of no return. But it still terrifies me. Have we accepted Al-Qaeda rule of our country?
Is it true that people are forced to wear hijab again?
Not exactly forced, but there are people (often in camouflage uniform) in the streets calling (sometimes on megaphone) for women to cover their heads, and calling for men and women to stand separately in separate spaces rather than mix. Sometimes they give out scarves while asking them to cover their hair. However I haven’t seen or heard of any violence or forcing on this matter (though Idk if anyone tried to disobey either).
This is likely individuals doing it and not a state policy thing yet.
I have a very, very, very strong feeling that the complaints about how Gen Alpha is “ruined by screens, entitlement, permissive parenting” is nothing but nonsense that is not very different at all from how previous generations were complained about. They even complained about “today’s youth” in ancient Greece, Egypt, and Sumer!
It’s an outdated mindset that I sadly see all around me, even among many progressives.
Remember when when everyone said T.V. would rot kids brains? All the people who grew up watching T.V. are now saying Phones will rot kids brains. Either they have brain rot or they are making shit up just like their parents and grandparents did.
Idk I guess you could make a point about screens. I read the other day about how there is an increase of children with eyesight problems probably caused by sitting too close to a screen from a young age. Also, some of the content for kids is literal brainrot lol.
But I guess that then just boils down to what content they consume and not just screens in general.
Tomorrow I will join a general strike in Brussels against the government. Excited to see what will happen. Might be a good networking opportunity.
This is definitely one of those weeks where years happened…
muric*nts do anything to spread propaganda
I have a socialist classmate who believes that money doesn’t give you power, but ideology does. When I talked about capital he said that capital doesn’t equal power either, and that capitalists power can’t be just because of capital. He also said another time that HTS didn’t win because of capitalist reasons but because of their islamic ideology. I disagree with him, and you?
He’s kinda a debate bro type of socialist btw, who doesn’t go to demonstrations or is part of a party.
That person doesn’t sound like a socialist at all. Marx rejected ideology as false consciousness. Ideology is the polar opposite of materialism.
HTS won because they had the money to bribe generals and Assad didn’t have the money to pay them to keep them loyal. If Ideology is more powerful that material concerns why didn’t ISIS win the last war? Sunni supremacy was far more acceptable in Syria back then. Anti imperialist ideology is at an all time high in the region.
Not sure what his point is really. Like money, or capital, or possession of something in general, gives you power. Especially in a system that is designed around money, or capital, or possessions.
Also not sure what he means with the HTS thing. Like, they won because they are a US proxy and managed to get aid through one of the most powerful military forces in the world. Not sure what them being Muslims has to do with that. Allah didn’t guide them to victory.
Does he ever elaborate on his claims? Or is he just trying to sound interesting?
Could have meant that the struggle was ideological rather than (just) over capital simpliciter. There’s a point to be made there. Marx and Engels argued that people do things other than for economic reasons. I’m unsure if that’s quite what’s happening here, though.
Because you can be a capitalist at heart but if you don’t own any capital what power do you have?
I think he’s an idealist and thinks ideas matter the most
You can be the biggest bootlicker at work, the bosses can even like you, but you can still get fired. The “ideas” at play here don’t matter, since the capital owners will do what they need to expand their capital - and their ability to do so is because of their ownership/control of capital.
It’s a cool experience to see so many union members dressed in red going to Brussels today. A big wave of red just cramming into a train, proper working class people✊🏼
never underestimate labor unions
Too much of the left does.
In What is to be Done Lenin warned about overestimating the revolutionary potential of labor unions.
Labor unions are a great staging ground for agitation and radicalization but they are not revolutionary by nature.
I’m already aware.
Some criminals allegedly targeted a shop in the city of The Hague with explosives and they managed to explode an entire block of appartments instead. Multiple people died.
An 8 year old boy survived but lost his parents and sister in the explosion. The boy is of Chinese origin and the Dutch Chinese community stepped in to help raise money for him.
People find a way to be racist about this. Maybe some people are beyond redemption.
What the absolute fuck is going on in Europe? This sounds like a farfetched heist movie!
The Netherlands and Belgium are major drug trafficking hubs, mostly due to hosting Europe’s biggest ports. Drug gangs doing hits on eachother is not unheard of. In my city for example you often have grenade attacks on houses. But it’s not entirely sure this is drug related.
Maybe I’m just missing it but I must wonder why that doesn’t make the international news so much. Must be a bit scary to live there.
Probably it doesn’t make it to the news because it will ruin Europe’s image of being the dream place(very different to my homr country Mexico where news about cartel fights are hears everywhere in the world). Same as what happens with the “American dream” being promoted to latin americans.
That does explain things, unfortunately.
Love this tiny bit of theory from an old Soviet film about the revolution, between Tanya the nurse and the political comissar Ignatyich:
Tanya: Listen, Ignatyich… Why isn’t there Soviet power abroad? Are they stupid?
Ignatyich: Go to sleep.
Tanya: But how come, Ignatyich?
Ignatyich: Seems they don’t have the strength for it. And they live better than we do. They’re not desperate enough, haven’t ripened for it yet.
It’s a great film, shame there doesn’t seem to be a version with English subtitles on YT.
I am sick again. I feel like getting a job in which I see hundreds of people each week has not been great for my immune system. Bird watching while getting wind blasted yesterday probably didn’t help either.
Anyway, I will join the general strike this friday against the new plans of our new regime. It’s my first ever general strike so curious to see what it is like. I have joined smaller strikes at picket lines of specific companies to talk to the workers for our party but that’s on a much smaller scale.
It would be extremely Funny if the New Syrian Government Have their first election, and the results are Majority Pro-Assad
No chance, they’re likely not going to hold an election until they’ve made sure to destroy any remaining sympathy for the previous government.
yup this is how these things go, cant throw elections until the opposition is purged.
