"an entire year of people being ILLEGALLY deported or disappeared" true, state violence against anyone is only okay when it's done legally, with due process and for the good of the national people's
At the same time, for a lot of us that age it was a fundamental step into understanding "Oh. So our adults are fucking idiots" because we had so many allegedly smart people telling us "well. The PATRIOT Act can't be that bad and these are changing times. We need to be able to protect ourselves."
It wasn't until I went to college that I got good at expressing how specifically something that happened when I was in elementary school was a fundamental affront to my autonomy as a human being, and why that was a threat to everyone everywhere all the time. But it was still a seed that grew within me that we are fundamentally not seen by our government as contributors but as resources
Like I've said before, expecting empathy was just silly, these people and their ancestors have been empire-building forever and, if they express any moral values, don't think of them as anything but decorative disinfo cause what they really believe in is "might makes right"... There's always one here and there, the thinking dissidents with moral frameworks like miss Greta, Francesca Albanese and John Brown but not a plurality. Selfish fear? Now that we can trust, lol.
So if I'm the wrong skin color and have past relatives who didn't do anything that made a change, I can't participate in doing something now? If we could find a movement that had all the morality of the progressives while having the right's trait to let anyone join who agrees with the cause, we might have something that works. It seems to be a leftist thing to gatekeep anyone who tries to help.
It's the culture that wasn't reformed, not the skin colour, friend. It's the background attitude, the baseline amorality, the tolerance of violence as long as it doesn't directly affect me, etc. The fact you went straight into skin colour shows your misunderstanding. And no, of course you can, and I'm glad you are, but all of this wouldn't have gotten this bad if the American white folks had had sympathy for those that have been abused since the days of the colonies, and it might just take some white on white violence (another tragedy, ofc) to make people care and that's just the reality of things. You might not like it but the facts are pretty clear.
I mentioned color because of your phrasing, which would lead to that conclusion. It's pretty obvious. And it's not like I even disagree with the points you make, it's just how you made them. Don't blame the reader/listener when you use euphemisms you didn't intend to imply. Say what you mean.
Your previous statement was also a bit on the side of poisoning the well, so no matter what anyone says now, they've already been invalidated as being part of change. Attacking people who may be breaking from ignorance or finally pushed too far as part of the problem is dividing any potential resistance, and that's exactly what the powers that be want us to do: fight amongst ourselves.
American history is dark. As I've gotten older I've learned more and more of things that were simply not talked about, or worse, covered up. That doesn't mean most Americans are guilty of these crimes, or can't try to improve things. But it won't get better if there's so much infighting because of the past that most of us weren't even part of. "Sins of the father" is such a crock of shit.
You misunderstood. It's not "sins of the father" or "white people are evil because it's in their DNA", it's "the current generation who either fervently supported racially divided violence/tolerated it to a great degree until it was their turn to suffer it were raised by the previous ones who did the same", so why are we surprised that, besides the few lefties with a heart, white America for the most part had continued disregarding things like police brutality up until the victim shared their skin colour? Now, why haven't white Americans gone through a complete ideological change after all the sins the country has accumulated? Idk. But what I do know is that it's that attitude, that intellectual laziness and amoral selfcenteredness that's at the core of white American ideology (whatever that is besides "might makes right") that stopped them from being more active through the years, and now it seems like it's too late. It's just a very visible thing and I'm not attacking anyone, especially not people who are just opening their eyes. I'm happy every time anyone stops being a racist, am... show more
You misunderstood. It's not "sins of the father" or "white people are evil because it's in their DNA", it's "the current generation who either fervently supported racially divided violence/tolerated it to a great degree until it was their turn to suffer it were raised by the previous ones who did the same", so why are we surprised that, besides the few lefties with a heart, white America for the most part had continued disregarding things like police brutality up until the victim shared their skin colour? Now, why haven't white Americans gone through a complete ideological change after all the sins the country has accumulated? Idk. But what I do know is that it's that attitude, that intellectual laziness and amoral selfcenteredness that's at the core of white American ideology (whatever that is besides "might makes right") that stopped them from being more active through the years, and now it seems like it's too late. It's just a very visible thing and I'm not attacking anyone, especially not people who are just opening their eyes. I'm happy every time anyone stops being a racist, amoral POS who condones evil as long as it doesn't touch them, of course!
I really think class warfare is far stronger than any racial divide. And that's exactly why there isn't much momentum from any group, white, black, whatever. They've pinned us down for so long ensuring that any individual efforts can be punished. Now... how do you get a unified effort so they can't lock individuals down? That is the question to be answered. General strike? Not if it's some lame Friday and then back to normal. It's got to be a shutdown that's felt by the ones who are the problem, and it has to be outlasted long enough to matter. Can that be done by people living paycheck to paycheck, or by those already missing many weeks of food stamps? The rich hope not.
So sure, there's the inequality of black vs. white. But it's far deeper and planned than that, and this kind of arguing is what they want instead of a shared effort.
The racial divide is an aspect of class warfare though. Specifically in the US, so much of White America was willing to throw away/undermine the welfare and public services that they barely had for a generation just because black and brown people would get access to it too. It's wrong to just skip over that and demand solidarity.
Personally, I think we can embrace people who are late to the game, while also holding space for people who are frustrated that it seems to take a tragedy to activate some members of the populace
You say Well. I would but they mostly disappear like I'm some Stranger to expel ain't real thru fear. Cuz that ain't real even if you're delirious enough to just end up knot being the same. Oh but that returing Martian baby did it. Fly Burger Mic.
Fa epalm
I mean, when was the last time Prickard sang with tab in his hand??
I never get the "we were doing it first" toxicity. Why should it matter why the newcomers were ignorant if they want to join the cause? Why create new enemies just to protect your "pure" reasons? That kind of separationism is exactly what keeps the ones you should focus on in power, and they want it that way. A divided resistance will fail.
Because the majority of “leftists” are exclusively online and their entire lives revolve around internet points derived from having the best and purest ideologies
Where do you think the majority of "rightists", "libertarians", and "liberals" are spending their time nowadays? The mall? Everybody is terminally online, apparently including you.
yeah. for a lot of the attitudes i see on lemmy about how politics should work i'm like… where are you? i'm out in these streets and i don't see you. a lot of what people are calling for don't work until we have mass support and to have mass support we need people outside.
The PATRIOT Act was a fucking power grab, and obviously was in place in case a crisis came into play. No way something that couldn't be read in that short a time before approval was written that fast.
Its the cop-in-your-brain, which is of course all of the propaganda of the fascists. This is exactly what they want, and their choice rhetoric has worked its way into the leftist spaces to an extent
if somehow we make it all the way to a free and fair 2028 primary and gavin newsome is the nominee i will be a form of pissed you've never witnessed before. that dude is such a fuckin' unhelpful phonie. out here acting like Abigail Spanberger won Virginia because Virginians wanted neoliberalism. NO! Virginians already hated her when they voted for her, they only voted for her because the options offered were: ICE stays the same, or ICE gets way more violent. USW, UAW, and UMWA all refused to endorse her. Abigail Spanberger won despite not being liked, not because she was liked. but the DNC has refused to learn their lessons and eat their veggies for 18 years now. they took every losing lesson from Obama and jettisoned every winning lesson. ultimately, it comes down to that they are part of the conservative grift machine, but their grift is more subtle. the republican grift is to froth up anger and then demand money to go act on that anger. the democrat grift is to make money off losing.
it makes me so mad how many democrats are looking at 2025 election results and going "see
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if somehow we make it all the way to a free and fair 2028 primary and gavin newsome is the nominee i will be a form of pissed you've never witnessed before. that dude is such a fuckin' unhelpful phonie. out here acting like Abigail Spanberger won Virginia because Virginians wanted neoliberalism. NO! Virginians already hated her when they voted for her, they only voted for her because the options offered were: ICE stays the same, or ICE gets way more violent. USW, UAW, and UMWA all refused to endorse her. Abigail Spanberger won despite not being liked, not because she was liked. but the DNC has refused to learn their lessons and eat their veggies for 18 years now. they took every losing lesson from Obama and jettisoned every winning lesson. ultimately, it comes down to that they are part of the conservative grift machine, but their grift is more subtle. the republican grift is to froth up anger and then demand money to go act on that anger. the democrat grift is to make money off losing.
it makes me so mad how many democrats are looking at 2025 election results and going "see! we don't have to be more progressive. we just have to not be donald trump" and it's like… goddammit, that's been loser behavior since 2008 when the tea party tranformed the republican party.
so anyway.
in summation.
fuck the liberal excellence brunch crowd. we won't get out of this thinking the crisis is over unless we get true systemic change, not just small trinkets
It really was muddled through while Iraq was being drummed up, too. I remember working a protest in 2003 and there being this talk about DHS implementing fascism. At the time I felt the impending war was more important topic, not quite realizing how interconnected it all was.
It's good that you recognize how interconnected everything is. That's an important piece of the puzzle. These days it's that all the oligarchs are pedophiles, engaged in kidnapping immigrant children, and creating crises to justify those kidnappings. Everything is at the same time a distraction from everything else intended to keep you from uniting on what specifically should be protested, and also a genuine component of the overall mechanism by which we're all tortured
Maybe I'm just mostly in lefty circles, but who the fuck wasn't mad until Renee Goode and Alex Pretti? I've been seeing constant rage against ice for a couple of years now atleast.
No, you're right, plenty were mad before too. There seems to be a new push lately on trying to make this a race issue to divide the left. I've seen a major uptick in this framing lately.
You're right about that! But that's not what I meant.
What I mean is there's a seemingly organized effort to create infighting between those against ICE by attempting to create issues and sow discord. It distracts from the real conversation at hand. It's a common technique to fracture unity on an issue.
Completely agree, but I think with Goode and Pretti it gave our team a good hand to play. Like, "hey, all you All Lives Matter people. Where ya at?" and with Pretti specifically, it's like "Hey, all you 2A folk. Where the fuck ya at?"
I've been outraged and outspoken since the beginning, but these two incidents are really heavy hitting cards to play in order to expose hypocritical fascists. Not that it actually matters because these people are brainwashed mental gymists. But I like to think it at least puts cracks in their foundation. It's caused some amount of infighting, so that's a step in the right direction.
Are liberals allies to leftists, if liberalism supports the capitalist system? Leftists are aligned on overthrowing the present system, while liberals are opposed to that and seek to tweak it.
When the primary task is overthrowing the present system of late-stage imperialism, yes! I'm a Marxist-Leninist, but I consider anarchists and anti-imperialists of all stripes to be great allies. The problem with liberalism is that the underlying goals entrench imperialism and capitalism, not weaken it.
But that's the thing. That isn't the primary task. That's your primary task. Some people just need to get out of their struggle before they can help others. And if you think that will create more enemies than allies to you, then... I think you are grossly misinformed or you are lying about what you actually want.
Like, you might as well say we shouldn't have freed the slaves unless we destroyed the institutions that created slavery. Incremental progress is still good, even if it's not preferred, and people's lives benefit from it.
We can fight for benefits, but as long as we remain trapped by bourgeois ideology like liberalism, rather than proletarian ideology like dialectical materialism, then we will be hopelessly trapped by their cultural hegemony. The reason liberalism is propogated is because it rationalizes and justifies the present capitalist system, and we cannot actually move on to a better world as long as we hold to its ways of thinking except by accident. When we take a more serious approach, and actually analyze society as it truly exists, we find that overthrowing the present state of things is necessary and unavoidable.
Abolition of slavery was absolutely a good thing, but we have to know why it happend. It was mostly due to the north's desire for more proletarians for industrial labor, it was a war between agricultural slavery and industrial wage labor. In the present moment, the largest contradiction is between imperialist countries and the imperialized, as well as domestically the issue of settler-colonialism. If we don't actually take steps to combat these, we will be left
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We can fight for benefits, but as long as we remain trapped by bourgeois ideology like liberalism, rather than proletarian ideology like dialectical materialism, then we will be hopelessly trapped by their cultural hegemony. The reason liberalism is propogated is because it rationalizes and justifies the present capitalist system, and we cannot actually move on to a better world as long as we hold to its ways of thinking except by accident. When we take a more serious approach, and actually analyze society as it truly exists, we find that overthrowing the present state of things is necessary and unavoidable.
Abolition of slavery was absolutely a good thing, but we have to know why it happend. It was mostly due to the north's desire for more proletarians for industrial labor, it was a war between agricultural slavery and industrial wage labor. In the present moment, the largest contradiction is between imperialist countries and the imperialized, as well as domestically the issue of settler-colonialism. If we don't actually take steps to combat these, we will be left wondering why conditions keep deteriorating despite putting more liberals in office.
Ah... I think I see your problem now. You think nothing can happen unless the bourgeois will it. I, frankly, don't agree with that. I think you think the world is a lot more chess-like when it's really a lot more like poker with mostly idiots. That does explain why MLs want to go authoritarian to fix the problems, though.
Anyway, the reason why you're a fucking biscuit is you don't seem to be expressing ideas to convert liberals to your cause. You have written them off as unfixable, and, well, that sort of gives you fewer allies. How silly.
Ah… I think I see your problem now. You think nothing can happen unless the bourgeois will it.
No, not at all. My point is that liberalism itself supports the system of capitalism, and as such we need to shed it in order to make progress, as it's essentially how the bourgeoisie legitimizes itself.
I think you think the world is a lot more chess-like when it’s really a lot more like poker with mostly idiots.
The world isn't chess nor is it poker. Classes generally act rationally, in their own interest, and proliferate class ideology to protect their interests. Ruling class ideology is meant to perpetuate that ruling class, which is why proletarian ideology needs to replace bourgeois ideology.
That does explain why MLs want to go authoritarian to fix the problems, though.
I don't know what you mean by this. Marxists do agree with using states run by the working classes as a transitional phase to communism, but that doesn't mean "going authoritarian," but changing the
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Ah… I think I see your problem now. You think nothing can happen unless the bourgeois will it.
No, not at all. My point is that liberalism itself supports the system of capitalism, and as such we need to shed it in order to make progress, as it's essentially how the bourgeoisie legitimizes itself.
I think you think the world is a lot more chess-like when it’s really a lot more like poker with mostly idiots.
The world isn't chess nor is it poker. Classes generally act rationally, in their own interest, and proliferate class ideology to protect their interests. Ruling class ideology is meant to perpetuate that ruling class, which is why proletarian ideology needs to replace bourgeois ideology.
That does explain why MLs want to go authoritarian to fix the problems, though.
I don't know what you mean by this. Marxists do agree with using states run by the working classes as a transitional phase to communism, but that doesn't mean "going authoritarian," but changing the class with authority from bourgeois to proletarian.
Anyway, the reason why you’re a fucking biscuit is you don’t seem to be expressing ideas to convert liberals to your cause. You have written them off as unfixable, and, well, that sort of gives you fewer allies. How silly.
I don't, though. I was a liberal once. I write off liberalism itself. As I explained elsewhere in this thread:
I'm not attacking people that aren't yet radicalized enough, or have been newly radicalized but haven't yet organized and/or read theory. It's important to attack liberalism itself, so that the radicalized liberals are freed from the shackles of that ideology. I'm more than aware of my liberal past, and I have to kill the liberal in my head every day.
It’s extremely common for people to combine their pre-existing biases from growing up and being educated in, working in, and living within the confines of bourgeois cultural hegemony with newly radicalized left-wing politics. Without going back and confronting our pre-existing stances, we actually end up warping our new radicalized beliefs to conform to our deeply instilled beliefs about existing socialism. This is how people that genuinely believe themselves to be socialists perpetuate liberal lines of logic and historical narratives.
Instead, we combat this through long periods of self-criticism and confrontation. We have to take our new knowledge, such as that of dialectical and historical materialism, and intentionally confront our pre-existing beliefs that came from liberalism. We all have this process to go through, and it’s never “complete,” either. It took me a long time to actually come around to supporting existing socialism, even after I began reading theory, because my frame of analysis was ultimately still liberal, and therefore my interpretations of theory were forced to fit in neatly with my existing world view, rather than uprooting the weeds and planting new seeds.
This process of dialectical growth and inward reflection is difficult and lengthy, which is why those that are in support of socialism tend to be far more knowledgable, well-read, and aren’t typically strangers to real political organizing. It takes tremendous energy to not only learn new information, but re-analyze existing conclusions that had faulty logic.
A handy analogy is looking at it through a computer program. If you have version 1 of a program spit out a bunch of outputs, and then fix a critical bug for version 2, you can’t just only rely on the new outputs, you have to confront the old outputs made with bad code and go through the new process. This is where people get tripped up ideologically.
We aren't at all immune to this, though, we aren't special people for having overcome it, and we aren't ever fully free of liberalism. We have to fight it daily.
This is the point I'm actually making. Radicalized liberals are comrades that have not yet become so, because they haven't yet shed their liberalism and as such ultimately go back to supporting the very system that oppresses them.
Liberals, as long as they cling to liberalism, do work against leftists in practice. In that sense, liberals are enemies, but they are enemies that can quite easily be turned into valuable comrades. My actual, original comment:
Are liberals allies to leftists, if liberalism supports the capitalist system? Leftists are aligned on overthrowing the present system, while liberals are opposed to that and seek to tweak it.
This is true, but I did not call them enemies outright. You've been rude this entire time, what's the point? Are you trying to get a cheap rhetorical win?
Correct, it was about a rhetorical win. Personally, I find being unnecessarily wordy pointless to furthering your argument, but when you fail to respond to the main argument, which is that you don't wish to push liberals to leftism and instead try to alienate them, I'm just gonna call you a moron and move on because the chances that you're a bot or troll becomes likely and because I need to go get food to people that need it.
That's not accurate at all, though. I asked if liberals could truly be seen as allies if liberalism is counterposed to leftism, precisely for the purpose of sparking a conversation to have liberals question why they are counterposed to leftism. I wasn't alienating anyone, I was trying to confront liberalism ideologically. You came in insulting me, and now you're dehumanizing me because you got caught out.
is who's under attack here liberals, or protestors who didn't realize how bad things were? i find the number of people who still don't see the problem frustrating, but we'll never get them to see the problem if the first thing we do when they start seeing the problem is call them fucking idiots.
i've seen way more success changing minds to leftism handing out soup to protests and saying "we're glad you're here" than i have when people hit the streets and they're immediately told to get back inside.
no one can undo the propaganda machine of the right but the left. we do not at present have the numbers to have the People Power to do the very most effective actions like large scale general strikes or even open rebellion with the hope of not being obliterated by the B-1 bombers that the air force has repositioned to loiter over our own air spaces. so we have to take the attitude of the mother goose teaching her goslings how the world works and violently attacking the threats to those goslings, not the goslings themselves for not knowing.
and so we're clear: i get the
... show more
is who's under attack here liberals, or protestors who didn't realize how bad things were? i find the number of people who still don't see the problem frustrating, but we'll never get them to see the problem if the first thing we do when they start seeing the problem is call them fucking idiots.
i've seen way more success changing minds to leftism handing out soup to protests and saying "we're glad you're here" than i have when people hit the streets and they're immediately told to get back inside.
no one can undo the propaganda machine of the right but the left. we do not at present have the numbers to have the People Power to do the very most effective actions like large scale general strikes or even open rebellion with the hope of not being obliterated by the B-1 bombers that the air force has repositioned to loiter over our own air spaces. so we have to take the attitude of the mother goose teaching her goslings how the world works and violently attacking the threats to those goslings, not the goslings themselves for not knowing.
and so we're clear: i get the frustration. i feel it, too. but killing your inner pro-cop lib means realizing that there ever was an inner pro-cop lib in the first place because it was specifically nurtured by a media environment that can only really be escaped in a Mennonite community.
so go ahead and critique the people who aren't out doing anything. they're awful. but attacking people who woke up later than you isn't helpful and is in fact harmful
I'm not attacking people that aren't yet radicalized enough, or have been newly radicalized but haven't yet organized and/or read theory. It's important to attack liberalism itself, so that the radicalized liberals are freed from the shackles of that ideology. I'm more than aware of my liberal past, and I have to kill the liberal in my head every day.
It’s extremely common for people to combine their pre-existing biases from growing up and being educated in, working in, and living within the confines of bourgeois cultural hegemony with newly radicalized left-wing politics. Without going back and confronting our pre-existing stances, we actually end up warping our new radicalized beliefs to conform to our deeply instilled beliefs about existing socialism. This is how people that genuinely believe themselves to be socialists perpetuate liberal lines of logic and historical narratives.
Instead, we combat this through long periods of self-criticism and confrontation. We have to take our new knowledge, such as that of dialectical and historical materialism, and intent
... show more
I'm not attacking people that aren't yet radicalized enough, or have been newly radicalized but haven't yet organized and/or read theory. It's important to attack liberalism itself, so that the radicalized liberals are freed from the shackles of that ideology. I'm more than aware of my liberal past, and I have to kill the liberal in my head every day.
It’s extremely common for people to combine their pre-existing biases from growing up and being educated in, working in, and living within the confines of bourgeois cultural hegemony with newly radicalized left-wing politics. Without going back and confronting our pre-existing stances, we actually end up warping our new radicalized beliefs to conform to our deeply instilled beliefs about existing socialism. This is how people that genuinely believe themselves to be socialists perpetuate liberal lines of logic and historical narratives.
Instead, we combat this through long periods of self-criticism and confrontation. We have to take our new knowledge, such as that of dialectical and historical materialism, and intentionally confront our pre-existing beliefs that came from liberalism. We all have this process to go through, and it’s never “complete,” either. It took me a long time to actually come around to supporting existing socialism, even after I began reading theory, because my frame of analysis was ultimately still liberal, and therefore my interpretations of theory were forced to fit in neatly with my existing world view, rather than uprooting the weeds and planting new seeds.
This process of dialectical growth and inward reflection is difficult and lengthy, which is why those that are in support of socialism tend to be far more knowledgable, well-read, and aren’t typically strangers to real political organizing. It takes tremendous energy to not only learn new information, but re-analyze existing conclusions that had faulty logic.
A handy analogy is looking at it through a computer program. If you have version 1 of a program spit out a bunch of outputs, and then fix a critical bug for version 2, you can’t just only rely on the new outputs, you have to confront the old outputs made with bad code and go through the new process. This is where people get tripped up ideologically.
We aren't at all immune to this, though, we aren't special people for having overcome it, and we aren't ever fully free of liberalism. We have to fight it daily.
part of where i'm coming from is that i mostly or even wholly agree with this message, however my understanding of effective propaganda tells me that the context of a message matters almost as much as the message itself. i appreciate and respect your desire to kill not just your inner liberal, put to also help others kill theirs, but what i see in this meme, and what the threadstarter saw as well, is an attack on a self organized resistance movement with a lot of potential to grow new leftists, kill inner liberals, and create an overall movement towards existing socialism.
my critique of your first comment was that i think it actually undermines your stated aims in your second comment because it creates the impression that the protestors should not be supported because it should be assumed the protestors are liberals.
is an attack on a self organized resistance movement with a lot of potential to grow new leftists, kill inner liberals, and create an overall movement towards existing socialism.
My goal is to connect that promising movement to the existing movement already organizing, to fold them into our shared movement. I appreciate your critique, but sometimes it is important for liberals to be exposed to genuine leftist theory and organizing work, otherwise they usually end up going back to brunch. I don't condemn the protestors, but instead those that protest and then let that be the end of their political journey.
My point is that liberalism traps liberals into not actually fighting their real enemy, the capitalist class. Liberals exist as potential comrades, but without overcoming their liberalism they will end up supporting their own oppression.
To all you libs on lemmy: "If it don't apply, let it fly" as they say. If you think this post isn't about you, it isn't about you. If this post is about you, maybe consider why that's an issue.
The Sao Paulo Forum condemned the new measure imposed by the US administration against Cuba on Friday, January 30, calling it “absurd coercion.”
[...]
The measure responds to an executive order signed by the US president declaring a national emergency and establishing tariffs on goods from countries that sell or supply oil to Cuba.
This action represents an intensification of the blockade, which has lasted for more than six decades, and is part of Washington’s maximum pressure policy against the island, justified under false pretenses of US national security interests and foreign policy.
Faced with this scenario, the Sao Paulo Forum called on defenders of the sovereignty of nations to act immediately in defense of Cuba.
The Sao Paulo Forum condemned the new measure imposed by the US administration against Cuba on Friday, January 30, calling it “absurd coercion.”
[...]
The measure responds to an executive order signed by the US president declaring a national emergency and establishing tariffs on goods from countries that sell or supply oil to Cuba.
This action represents an intensification of the blockade, which has lasted for more than six decades, and is part of Washington’s maximum pressure policy against the island, justified under false pretenses of US national security interests and foreign policy.
Faced with this scenario, the Sao Paulo Forum called on defenders of the sovereignty of nations to act immediately in defense of Cuba.
The Sao Paulo Forum condemned the new measure imposed by the US administration against Cuba on Friday, January 30, calling it “absurd coercion.”
[...]
The measure responds to an executive order signed by the US president declaring a national emergency and establishing tariffs on goods from countries that sell or supply oil to Cuba.
This action represents an intensification of the blockade, which has lasted for more than six decades, and is part of Washington’s maximum pressure policy against the island, justified under false pretenses of US national security interests and foreign policy.
Faced with this scenario, the Sao Paulo Forum called on defenders of the sovereignty of nations to act immediately in defense of Cuba.
Sao Paulo Forum Calls for Defense of Cuba Against Trump’s Coercion
Snip:
The Sao Paulo Forum condemned the new measure imposed by the US administration against Cuba on Friday, January 30, calling it “absurd coercion.”
[...]
The measure responds to an executive order signed by the US president declaring a national emergency and establishing tariffs on goods from countries that sell or supply oil to Cuba.
This action represents an intensification of the blockade, which has lasted for more than six decades, and is part of Washington’s maximum pressure policy against the island, justified under false pretenses of US national security interests and foreign policy.
Faced with this scenario, the Sao Paulo Forum called on defenders of the sovereignty of nations to act immediately in defense of Cuba.
Iran will defend its people decisively if it is pushed to war, reiterated Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday, January 29, after American President Donald Trump’s repeated ultimatums and threats of military strikes in the country.
“If the American side is truly seeking negotiations and genuine diplomacy it must abandon provocative and escalatory measures and demonstrate in practice its commitment to the path of dialogue,” Pezeshkian told his Pakistani counterparts, Shehbaz Sherif and Qatari Sheikh Hamad Bin Thani, during separate phone conversations.
After softening his initial threats of military strikes over the Iranian crackdown of nationwide protests earlier, Trump renewed his threats against Iran this week despite widespread opposition to any such move expressed by the leaders from the Middle East region over the fears of wider regional consequences.
In a social media post
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Iran will defend its people decisively if it is pushed to war, reiterated Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday, January 29, after American President Donald Trump’s repeated ultimatums and threats of military strikes in the country.
“If the American side is truly seeking negotiations and genuine diplomacy it must abandon provocative and escalatory measures and demonstrate in practice its commitment to the path of dialogue,” Pezeshkian told his Pakistani counterparts, Shehbaz Sherif and Qatari Sheikh Hamad Bin Thani, during separate phone conversations.
After softening his initial threats of military strikes over the Iranian crackdown of nationwide protests earlier, Trump renewed his threats against Iran this week despite widespread opposition to any such move expressed by the leaders from the Middle East region over the fears of wider regional consequences.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump asked Iran to submit to his demand and make a deal on “no nuclear weapons”, immediately claiming “time is running out”. He threatened that if Iran fails to comply with the demands the strikes this time would be “far worse” than the strikes in June.
Iran responded to the threats made by Trump warning that its responses to aggression inside the country would not be limited and all American assets in the region, including the warships and Israel, would be targeted.
No talks under threats of war
During a press conference on Thursday, Trump repeated his threats while also expressing his willingness to talk.
“We have a lot of very big, very powerful ships sailing to the region right now. Hopefully, we don’t have to use it,” Reuters reported Trump telling the press on Thursday.
Iran has maintained, for years now, that it has no intention to have nuclear weapons and its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian purposes only. It has also expressed its openness for dialogue on the issue, however, refusing to talk under threats of war.
Pezeshkian reiterated on Thursday that his country believes in “dignified diplomacy based on international laws, mutual respect, avoidance of threats and coercion and pursuit of win-win outcomes.”
Changes of a successful diplomacy between Iran and the US have also gone down since the inclusion of fresh demands. Apart from asking Iran to denounce any nuclear ambitions the Trump administration also wants it to agree to restrictions on its ballistic missiles programs and end all support to its regional allies identified as “proxies”.
Regional diplomacy
After Pezeshkian’s conversations with his Pakistani counterpart and Qatari Sheikh, similar phone conversations were held by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi with his counterparts in several other countries in the region and neighborhood, including Turkey and Egypt on Thursday and Friday.
The US has military bases in most of these countries. Iran has declared that in case it is attacked these bases would become legitimate targets of Iranian retaliation.
Several of these countries including Saudi Arabia and UAE have already declared they will not allow their territories to be used in any military strike against Iran.
Meanwhile, Araghchi traveled to Turkey to discuss the issue with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday.
Most of the countries in the region, including Turkey have opposed possible US military aggression against Iran claiming that would have larger regional consequences. They have called for political resolution of differences instead.
EU sanctions
Meanwhile, close US ally European Union (EU) imposed fresh sanctions on several Iranian officials and designated its Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s Corp as a “terrorist organization” on Thursday.
The EU accused the individuals and IRGC of “serious human rights violations” and “killing thousands of protesters” during the recent nationwide protests.
Iran has called the EU’s move “spiteful, hasty and desperate” and “legally inconsistent with international law.”
Over 3,100 Iranians, including civilians and security forces, were killed during weeks-long protests which began over rising economic hardships in the country. Iran claims the protests were hijacked by foreign elements backed by Israel and the US seeking regime change in the country.
Reacting to the EU’s sanctions on Thursday, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament questioned their understanding of terrorism, claiming the IRGC is “one of the strongest and most effective anti-terrorism forces in the world.”
He also claimed that “only those who stand with terrorism deny the IRGC’s record in combating Daesh” or ISIS as it is commonly known and warned that support of terrorism will bring nothing but regret to the European countries, IRNAreported.
The EU has already imposed several sanctions on Iranian entities over Iran’s alleged violations of, now expired nuclear deal, its alleged supply of weapons to Russia and its human rights violations.
Iran will defend its people decisively if it is pushed to war, reiterated Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday, January 29, after American President Donald Trump’s repeated ultimatums and threats of military strikes in the country.
“If the American side is truly seeking negotiations and genuine diplomacy it must abandon provocative and escalatory measures and demonstrate in practice its commitment to the path of dialogue,” Pezeshkian told his Pakistani counterparts, Shehbaz Sherif and Qatari Sheikh Hamad Bin Thani, during separate phone conversations.
After softening his initial threats of military strikes over the Iranian crackdown of nationwide protests earlier, Trump renewed his threats against Iran this week despit
Iran will defend its people decisively if it is pushed to war, reiterated Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday, January 29, after American President Donald Trump’s repeated ultimatums and threats of military strikes in the country.
“If the American side is truly seeking negotiations and genuine diplomacy it must abandon provocative and escalatory measures and demonstrate in practice its commitment to the path of dialogue,” Pezeshkian told his Pakistani counterparts, Shehbaz Sherif and Qatari Sheikh Hamad Bin Thani, during separate phone conversations.
After softening his initial threats of military strikes over the Iranian crackdown of nationwide protests earlier, Trump renewed his threats against Iran this week despite widespread opposition to any such move expressed by the leaders from the Middle East region over the fears of wider regional consequences.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump asked Iran to submit to his demand and make a deal on “no nuclear weapons”, immediately claiming “time is running out”. He threatened that if Iran fails to comply with the demands the strikes this time would be “far worse” than the strikes in June.
Iran responded to the threats made by Trump warning that its responses to aggression inside the country would not be limited and all American assets in the region, including the warships and Israel, would be targeted.
No talks under threats of war
During a press conference on Thursday, Trump repeated his threats while also expressing his willingness to talk.
“We have a lot of very big, very powerful ships sailing to the region right now. Hopefully, we don’t have to use it,” Reuters reported Trump telling the press on Thursday.
Iran has maintained, for years now, that it has no intention to have nuclear weapons and its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian purposes only. It has also expressed its openness for dialogue on the issue, however, refusing to talk under threats of war.
Pezeshkian reiterated on Thursday that his country believes in “dignified diplomacy based on international laws, mutual respect, avoidance of threats and coercion and pursuit of win-win outcomes.”
Changes of a successful diplomacy between Iran and the US have also gone down since the inclusion of fresh demands. Apart from asking Iran to denounce any nuclear ambitions the Trump administration also wants it to agree to restrictions on its ballistic missiles programs and end all support to its regional allies identified as “proxies”.
Regional diplomacy
After Pezeshkian’s conversations with his Pakistani counterpart and Qatari Sheikh, similar phone conversations were held by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi with his counterparts in several other countries in the region and neighborhood, including Turkey and Egypt on Thursday and Friday.
The US has military bases in most of these countries. Iran has declared that in case it is attacked these bases would become legitimate targets of Iranian retaliation.
Several of these countries including Saudi Arabia and UAE have already declared they will not allow their territories to be used in any military strike against Iran.
Meanwhile, Araghchi traveled to Turkey to discuss the issue with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday.
Most of the countries in the region, including Turkey have opposed possible US military aggression against Iran claiming that would have larger regional consequences. They have called for political resolution of differences instead.
EU sanctions
Meanwhile, close US ally European Union (EU) imposed fresh sanctions on several Iranian officials and designated its Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s Corp as a “terrorist organization” on Thursday.
The EU accused the individuals and IRGC of “serious human rights violations” and “killing thousands of protesters” during the recent nationwide protests.
Iran has called the EU’s move “spiteful, hasty and desperate” and “legally inconsistent with international law.”
Over 3,100 Iranians, including civilians and security forces, were killed during weeks-long protests which began over rising economic hardships in the country. Iran claims the protests were hijacked by foreign elements backed by Israel and the US seeking regime change in the country.
Reacting to the EU’s sanctions on Thursday, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament questioned their understanding of terrorism, claiming the IRGC is “one of the strongest and most effective anti-terrorism forces in the world.”
He also claimed that “only those who stand with terrorism deny the IRGC’s record in combating Daesh” or ISIS as it is commonly known and warned that support of terrorism will bring nothing but regret to the European countries, IRNAreported.
The EU has already imposed several sanctions on Iranian entities over Iran’s alleged violations of, now expired nuclear deal, its alleged supply of weapons to Russia and its human rights violations.
Iran says if attacked militarily, its response will not be “limited”
Iran will defend its people decisively if it is pushed to war, reiterated Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday, January 29, after American President Donald Trump’s repeated ultimatums and threats of military strikes in the country.
“If the American side is truly seeking negotiations and genuine diplomacy it must abandon provocative and escalatory measures and demonstrate in practice its commitment to the path of dialogue,” Pezeshkian told his Pakistani counterparts, Shehbaz Sherif and Qatari Sheikh Hamad Bin Thani, during separate phone conversations.
After softening his initial threats of military strikes over the Iranian crackdown of nationwide protests earlier, Trump renewed his threats against Iran this week despite widespread opposition to any such move expressed by the leaders from the Middle East region over the fears of wider regional consequences.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump asked Iran to submit to his demand and make a deal on “no nuclear weapons”, immediately claiming “time is running out”. He threatened that if Iran fails to comply with the demands the strikes this time would be “far worse” than the strikes in June.
Iran responded to the threats made by Trump warning that its responses to aggression inside the country would not be limited and all American assets in the region, including the warships and Israel, would be targeted.
No talks under threats of war
During a press conference on Thursday, Trump repeated his threats while also expressing his willingness to talk.
“We have a lot of very big, very powerful ships sailing to the region right now. Hopefully, we don’t have to use it,” Reuters reported Trump telling the press on Thursday.
Iran has maintained, for years now, that it has no intention to have nuclear weapons and its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian purposes only. It has also expressed its openness for dialogue on the issue, however, refusing to talk under threats of war.
Pezeshkian reiterated on Thursday that his country believes in “dignified diplomacy based on international laws, mutual respect, avoidance of threats and coercion and pursuit of win-win outcomes.”
Changes of a successful diplomacy between Iran and the US have also gone down since the inclusion of fresh demands. Apart from asking Iran to denounce any nuclear ambitions the Trump administration also wants it to agree to restrictions on its ballistic missiles programs and end all support to its regional allies identified as “proxies”.
Regional diplomacy
After Pezeshkian’s conversations with his Pakistani counterpart and Qatari Sheikh, similar phone conversations were held by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi with his counterparts in several other countries in the region and neighborhood, including Turkey and Egypt on Thursday and Friday.
The US has military bases in most of these countries. Iran has declared that in case it is attacked these bases would become legitimate targets of Iranian retaliation.
Several of these countries including Saudi Arabia and UAE have already declared they will not allow their territories to be used in any military strike against Iran.
Meanwhile, Araghchi traveled to Turkey to discuss the issue with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday.
Most of the countries in the region, including Turkey have opposed possible US military aggression against Iran claiming that would have larger regional consequences. They have called for political resolution of differences instead.
EU sanctions
Meanwhile, close US ally European Union (EU) imposed fresh sanctions on several Iranian officials and designated its Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s Corp as a “terrorist organization” on Thursday.
The EU accused the individuals and IRGC of “serious human rights violations” and “killing thousands of protesters” during the recent nationwide protests.
Iran has called the EU’s move “spiteful, hasty and desperate” and “legally inconsistent with international law.”
Over 3,100 Iranians, including civilians and security forces, were killed during weeks-long protests which began over rising economic hardships in the country. Iran claims the protests were hijacked by foreign elements backed by Israel and the US seeking regime change in the country.
Reacting to the EU’s sanctions on Thursday, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament questioned their understanding of terrorism, claiming the IRGC is “one of the strongest and most effective anti-terrorism forces in the world.”
He also claimed that “only those who stand with terrorism deny the IRGC’s record in combating Daesh” or ISIS as it is commonly known and warned that support of terrorism will bring nothing but regret to the European countries, IRNAreported.
The EU has already imposed several sanctions on Iranian entities over Iran’s alleged violations of, now expired nuclear deal, its alleged supply of weapons to Russia and its human rights violations.
Iran will defend its people decisively if it is pushed to war, reiterated Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday, January 29, after American President Donald Trump’s repeated ultimatums and threats of military strikes in the country.
“If the American side is truly seeking negotiations and genuine diplomacy it must abandon provocative and escalatory measures and demonstrate in practice its commitment to the path of dialogue,” Pezeshkian told his Pakistani counterparts, Shehbaz Sherif and Qatari Sheikh Hamad Bin Thani, during separate phone conversations.
Iran will defend its people decisively if it is pushed to war, reiterated Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday, January 29, after American President Donald Trump’s repeated ultimatums and threats of military strikes in the country.
“If the American side is truly seeking negotiations and genuine diplomacy it must abandon provocative and escalatory measures and demonstrate in practice its commitment to the path of dialogue,” Pezeshkian told his Pakistani counterparts, Shehbaz Sherif and Qatari Sheikh Hamad Bin Thani, during separate phone conversations.
After softening his initial threats of military strikes over the Iranian crackdown of nationwide protests earlier, Trump renewed his threats against Iran this week despite widespread opposition to any such move expressed by the leaders from the Middle East region over the fears of wider regional consequences.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump asked Iran to submit to his demand and make a deal on “no nuclear weapons”, immediately claiming “time is running out”. He threatened that if Iran fails to comply with the demands the strikes this time would be “far worse” than the strikes in June.
Iran responded to the threats made by Trump warning that its responses to aggression inside the country would not be limited and all American assets in the region, including the warships and Israel, would be targeted.
No talks under threats of war
During a press conference on Thursday, Trump repeated his threats while also expressing his willingness to talk.
“We have a lot of very big, very powerful ships sailing to the region right now. Hopefully, we don’t have to use it,” Reuters reported Trump telling the press on Thursday.
Iran has maintained, for years now, that it has no intention to have nuclear weapons and its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian purposes only. It has also expressed its openness for dialogue on the issue, however, refusing to talk under threats of war.
Pezeshkian reiterated on Thursday that his country believes in “dignified diplomacy based on international laws, mutual respect, avoidance of threats and coercion and pursuit of win-win outcomes.”
Changes of a successful diplomacy between Iran and the US have also gone down since the inclusion of fresh demands. Apart from asking Iran to denounce any nuclear ambitions the Trump administration also wants it to agree to restrictions on its ballistic missiles programs and end all support to its regional allies identified as “proxies”.
Regional diplomacy
After Pezeshkian’s conversations with his Pakistani counterpart and Qatari Sheikh, similar phone conversations were held by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi with his counterparts in several other countries in the region and neighborhood, including Turkey and Egypt on Thursday and Friday.
The US has military bases in most of these countries. Iran has declared that in case it is attacked these bases would become legitimate targets of Iranian retaliation.
Several of these countries including Saudi Arabia and UAE have already declared they will not allow their territories to be used in any military strike against Iran.
Meanwhile, Araghchi traveled to Turkey to discuss the issue with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday.
Most of the countries in the region, including Turkey have opposed possible US military aggression against Iran claiming that would have larger regional consequences. They have called for political resolution of differences instead.
EU sanctions
Meanwhile, close US ally European Union (EU) imposed fresh sanctions on several Iranian officials and designated its Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s Corp as a “terrorist organization” on Thursday.
The EU accused the individuals and IRGC of “serious human rights violations” and “killing thousands of protesters” during the recent nationwide protests.
Iran has called the EU’s move “spiteful, hasty and desperate” and “legally inconsistent with international law.”
Over 3,100 Iranians, including civilians and security forces, were killed during weeks-long protests which began over rising economic hardships in the country. Iran claims the protests were hijacked by foreign elements backed by Israel and the US seeking regime change in the country.
Reacting to the EU’s sanctions on Thursday, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament questioned their understanding of terrorism, claiming the IRGC is “one of the strongest and most effective anti-terrorism forces in the world.”
He also claimed that “only those who stand with terrorism deny the IRGC’s record in combating Daesh” or ISIS as it is commonly known and warned that support of terrorism will bring nothing but regret to the European countries, IRNAreported.
The EU has already imposed several sanctions on Iranian entities over Iran’s alleged violations of, now expired nuclear deal, its alleged supply of weapons to Russia and its human rights violations.
Iran will defend its people decisively if it is pushed to war, reiterated Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday, January 29, after American President Donald Trump’s repeated ultimatums and threats of military strikes in the country.
“If the American side is truly seeking negotiations and genuine diplomacy it must abandon provocative and escalatory measures and demonstrate in practice its commitment to the path of dialogue,” Pezeshkian told his Pakistani counterparts, Shehbaz Sherif and Qatari Sheikh Hamad Bin Thani, during separate phone conversations.
After softening his initial threats of military strikes over the Iranian crackdown of nationwide protests earlier, Trump renewed his threats against Iran this week despite widespread opposition to any such move expressed by the leaders from the Middle East region over the fears of wider regional consequences.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump asked Iran to submit to his demand and make a deal on “no nuclear weapons”, immediately claiming “time is running out”. He threatened that if Iran fails to comply with the demands the strikes this time would be “far worse” than the strikes in June.
Iran responded to the threats made by Trump warning that its responses to aggression inside the country would not be limited and all American assets in the region, including the warships and Israel, would be targeted.
No talks under threats of war
During a press conference on Thursday, Trump repeated his threats while also expressing his willingness to talk.
“We have a lot of very big, very powerful ships sailing to the region right now. Hopefully, we don’t have to use it,” Reuters reported Trump telling the press on Thursday.
Iran has maintained, for years now, that it has no intention to have nuclear weapons and its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian purposes only. It has also expressed its openness for dialogue on the issue, however, refusing to talk under threats of war.
Pezeshkian reiterated on Thursday that his country believes in “dignified diplomacy based on international laws, mutual respect, avoidance of threats and coercion and pursuit of win-win outcomes.”
Changes of a successful diplomacy between Iran and the US have also gone down since the inclusion of fresh demands. Apart from asking Iran to denounce any nuclear ambitions the Trump administration also wants it to agree to restrictions on its ballistic missiles programs and end all support to its regional allies identified as “proxies”.
Regional diplomacy
After Pezeshkian’s conversations with his Pakistani counterpart and Qatari Sheikh, similar phone conversations were held by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi with his counterparts in several other countries in the region and neighborhood, including Turkey and Egypt on Thursday and Friday.
The US has military bases in most of these countries. Iran has declared that in case it is attacked these bases would become legitimate targets of Iranian retaliation.
Several of these countries including Saudi Arabia and UAE have already declared they will not allow their territories to be used in any military strike against Iran.
Meanwhile, Araghchi traveled to Turkey to discuss the issue with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday.
Most of the countries in the region, including Turkey have opposed possible US military aggression against Iran claiming that would have larger regional consequences. They have called for political resolution of differences instead.
EU sanctions
Meanwhile, close US ally European Union (EU) imposed fresh sanctions on several Iranian officials and designated its Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s Corp as a “terrorist organization” on Thursday.
The EU accused the individuals and IRGC of “serious human rights violations” and “killing thousands of protesters” during the recent nationwide protests.
Iran has called the EU’s move “spiteful, hasty and desperate” and “legally inconsistent with international law.”
Over 3,100 Iranians, including civilians and security forces, were killed during weeks-long protests which began over rising economic hardships in the country. Iran claims the protests were hijacked by foreign elements backed by Israel and the US seeking regime change in the country.
Reacting to the EU’s sanctions on Thursday, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament questioned their understanding of terrorism, claiming the IRGC is “one of the strongest and most effective anti-terrorism forces in the world.”
He also claimed that “only those who stand with terrorism deny the IRGC’s record in combating Daesh” or ISIS as it is commonly known and warned that support of terrorism will bring nothing but regret to the European countries, IRNAreported.
The EU has already imposed several sanctions on Iranian entities over Iran’s alleged violations of, now expired nuclear deal, its alleged supply of weapons to Russia and its human rights violations.
How does this affect those nuclear deals where the price has been guaranteed for many years? We have a couple in UK. One of which isn’t even open yet. The price per KWh was set before it was built.
It would be deliciously ironic if solar ended up subsidising mothballed nuclear plants.
Well yes, so the taxpayer will subsidise everyone’s electric bill to pay the extortionate rate that was agreed upon.
The way China is going it could soon be so cheap that people will only pay a standing charge, and the electricity could actually be free. Like they promised with nuclear in the 60s.
Caracas, January 30, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan National Assembly has approved a sweeping reform of the country’s 2001 Hydrocarbon Law that rolls back the state’s role in the energy sector in favor of private capital.
Legislators unanimously endorsed the bill at its second discussion on Thursday, with only opposition deputy Henrique Capriles abstaining. The legislative overhaul follows years of US sanctions against the Venezuelan oil industry and a naval blockade imposed in December.
National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez hailed the vote a “historic day” and claimed the new bill will lead oil production to “skyrocket.”
“The reform will make the oil sector much more competitive for national and foreign corporations to extract crude,” he told reporters. “We are implementing mechanisms th
... show more
Caracas, January 30, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan National Assembly has approved a sweeping reform of the country’s 2001 Hydrocarbon Law that rolls back the state’s role in the energy sector in favor of private capital.
Legislators unanimously endorsed the bill at its second discussion on Thursday, with only opposition deputy Henrique Capriles abstaining. The legislative overhaul follows years of US sanctions against the Venezuelan oil industry and a naval blockade imposed in December.
National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez hailed the vote a “historic day” and claimed the new bill will lead oil production to “skyrocket.”
“The reform will make the oil sector much more competitive for national and foreign corporations to extract crude,” he told reporters. “We are implementing mechanisms that have proven very successful.”
Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez signed and enacted the law after the parliamentary session, claiming that the industry will be guided by “the best international practices” and undertake a “historic leap forward.”
Former President Hugo Chávez revamped the country’s oil legislation in 2001 and introduced further reforms in 2006 and 2007 to assert the Venezuelan state’s primacy over the industry. Policies included a mandatory stakeholding majority for state oil company PDVSA in joint ventures, PDVSA control over operations and sales, and increased royalties and income tax to 30 and 50 percent, respectively. Increased oil revenues bankrolled the Venezuelan government’s expanded social programs in the 2000s.
The text approved during Thursday’s legislative session, following meetings between Venezuelan authorities and oil executives, went further than the draft preliminarily endorsed one week earlier.
The final version of the legislation establishes 30 percent as an upper bound for royalties, with the Venezuelan government given the discretionary power to determine the rate for each project. A 33 percent extraction tax in the present law was scrapped in favor of an “integrated hydrocarbon tax” to be set by the executive with a 15 percent limit.
Similarly, the Venezuelan government can reduce income taxes for companies involved in oil activities while also granting several other fiscal exemptions. The bill cites the “need to ensure international competitiveness” as a factor to be considered when decreasing royalty and tax demands for private corporations.
The reform additionally grants operational and sales control to minority partners and private contractors. PDVSA can furthermore lease out oilfields and projects in exchange for a fixed portion of extracted crude. The new legislation likewise allows disputes to be settled by outside arbitration instances.
Thursday’s legislative reform was immediately followed by a US Treasury general license allowing US corporations to re-engage with the Venezuelan oil sector.
General License 46 (GL46) authorizes US firms to purchase and market Venezuelan crude while demanding that contracts be subjected to US jurisdiction so potential disputes are referred to US courts. The license bars transactions with companies from Russia, Iran, North Korea, or Cuba. Concerning China, it only blocks dealings with Venezuelan joint ventures with Chinese involvement.
Economist Francisco Rodríguez pointed out that the sanctions waiver does not explicitly allow for production or investment and that companies would require an additional license before signing contracts with Venezuelan authorities.
GL46 also mandates that payments to blocked agents, including PDVSA, be made to the US Foreign Government Deposit Funds or another account defined by the US Treasury Department.
Following the January 3 military strikes and kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration has vowed to take control of the Venezuelan oil industry by administering crude transactions. Proceeds from initial sales have been deposited in US-run bank accounts in Qatar, with a portion rerouted to Caracas for forex injections run by private banks. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed that the resources will begin to be channeled to US Treasury accounts in the near future.
In a press conference on Friday, Trump said his administration is “very happy” with the actions of Venezuelan authorities and would soon invite other countries to get involved in the Caribbean nation’s oil industry. Rubio had previously argued that Caracas “deserved credit” for the oil reform that “eradicates Chávez-era restrictions on private investments.”
Despite the White House’s calls for substantial investment, Western oil corporations have expressed reservations over major projects in the Venezuelan energy sector. Chevron, the largest US company operating in the country, stated that it is looking to fund increased production with revenues from oil sales as opposed to new capital commitments.
Since 2017, Venezuela’s oil industry has been under wide-reaching US unilateral coercive measures, including financial sanctions and an export embargo, in an effort to strangle the country’s most important revenue source. The US Treasury Department has also levied and threatened secondary sanctions against third-country companies to deter involvement in the Venezuelan petroleum sector.
Caracas, January 30, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan National Assembly has approved a sweeping reform of the country’s 2001 Hydrocarbon Law that rolls back the state’s role in the energy sector in favor of private capital.
Legislators unanimously endorsed the bill at its second discussion on Thursday, with only opposition deputy Henrique Capriles abstaining. The legislative overhaul follows years of US sanctions against the Venezuelan oil industry and a naval blockade imposed in December.
National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez hailed the vote a “historic day” and claimed the new bill will lead oil production to “skyrocket.”
Caracas, January 30, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan National Assembly has approved a sweeping reform of the country’s 2001 Hydrocarbon Law that rolls back the state’s role in the energy sector in favor of private capital.
Legislators unanimously endorsed the bill at its second discussion on Thursday, with only opposition deputy Henrique Capriles abstaining. The legislative overhaul follows years of US sanctions against the Venezuelan oil industry and a naval blockade imposed in December.
National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez hailed the vote a “historic day” and claimed the new bill will lead oil production to “skyrocket.”
“The reform will make the oil sector much more competitive for national and foreign corporations to extract crude,” he told reporters. “We are implementing mechanisms that have proven very successful.”
Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez signed and enacted the law after the parliamentary session, claiming that the industry will be guided by “the best international practices” and undertake a “historic leap forward.”
Former President Hugo Chávez revamped the country’s oil legislation in 2001 and introduced further reforms in 2006 and 2007 to assert the Venezuelan state’s primacy over the industry. Policies included a mandatory stakeholding majority for state oil company PDVSA in joint ventures, PDVSA control over operations and sales, and increased royalties and income tax to 30 and 50 percent, respectively. Increased oil revenues bankrolled the Venezuelan government’s expanded social programs in the 2000s.
The text approved during Thursday’s legislative session, following meetings between Venezuelan authorities and oil executives, went further than the draft preliminarily endorsed one week earlier.
The final version of the legislation establishes 30 percent as an upper bound for royalties, with the Venezuelan government given the discretionary power to determine the rate for each project. A 33 percent extraction tax in the present law was scrapped in favor of an “integrated hydrocarbon tax” to be set by the executive with a 15 percent limit.
Similarly, the Venezuelan government can reduce income taxes for companies involved in oil activities while also granting several other fiscal exemptions. The bill cites the “need to ensure international competitiveness” as a factor to be considered when decreasing royalty and tax demands for private corporations.
The reform additionally grants operational and sales control to minority partners and private contractors. PDVSA can furthermore lease out oilfields and projects in exchange for a fixed portion of extracted crude. The new legislation likewise allows disputes to be settled by outside arbitration instances.
Thursday’s legislative reform was immediately followed by a US Treasury general license allowing US corporations to re-engage with the Venezuelan oil sector.
General License 46 (GL46) authorizes US firms to purchase and market Venezuelan crude while demanding that contracts be subjected to US jurisdiction so potential disputes are referred to US courts. The license bars transactions with companies from Russia, Iran, North Korea, or Cuba. Concerning China, it only blocks dealings with Venezuelan joint ventures with Chinese involvement.
Economist Francisco Rodríguez pointed out that the sanctions waiver does not explicitly allow for production or investment and that companies would require an additional license before signing contracts with Venezuelan authorities.
GL46 also mandates that payments to blocked agents, including PDVSA, be made to the US Foreign Government Deposit Funds or another account defined by the US Treasury Department.
Following the January 3 military strikes and kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration has vowed to take control of the Venezuelan oil industry by administering crude transactions. Proceeds from initial sales have been deposited in US-run bank accounts in Qatar, with a portion rerouted to Caracas for forex injections run by private banks. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed that the resources will begin to be channeled to US Treasury accounts in the near future.
In a press conference on Friday, Trump said his administration is “very happy” with the actions of Venezuelan authorities and would soon invite other countries to get involved in the Caribbean nation’s oil industry. Rubio had previously argued that Caracas “deserved credit” for the oil reform that “eradicates Chávez-era restrictions on private investments.”
Despite the White House’s calls for substantial investment, Western oil corporations have expressed reservations over major projects in the Venezuelan energy sector. Chevron, the largest US company operating in the country, stated that it is looking to fund increased production with revenues from oil sales as opposed to new capital commitments.
Since 2017, Venezuela’s oil industry has been under wide-reaching US unilateral coercive measures, including financial sanctions and an export embargo, in an effort to strangle the country’s most important revenue source. The US Treasury Department has also levied and threatened secondary sanctions against third-country companies to deter involvement in the Venezuelan petroleum sector.
Venezuela Approves Pro-Business Oil Reform as Trump Issues New Sanctions Waiver
Caracas, January 30, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan National Assembly has approved a sweeping reform of the country’s 2001 Hydrocarbon Law that rolls back the state’s role in the energy sector in favor of private capital.
Legislators unanimously endorsed the bill at its second discussion on Thursday, with only opposition deputy Henrique Capriles abstaining. The legislative overhaul follows years of US sanctions against the Venezuelan oil industry and a naval blockade imposed in December.
National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez hailed the vote a “historic day” and claimed the new bill will lead oil production to “skyrocket.”
“The reform will make the oil sector much more competitive for national and foreign corporations to extract crude,” he told reporters. “We are implementing mechanisms that have proven very successful.”
Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez signed and enacted the law after the parliamentary session, claiming that the industry will be guided by “the best international practices” and undertake a “historic leap forward.”
Former President Hugo Chávez revamped the country’s oil legislation in 2001 and introduced further reforms in 2006 and 2007 to assert the Venezuelan state’s primacy over the industry. Policies included a mandatory stakeholding majority for state oil company PDVSA in joint ventures, PDVSA control over operations and sales, and increased royalties and income tax to 30 and 50 percent, respectively. Increased oil revenues bankrolled the Venezuelan government’s expanded social programs in the 2000s.
The text approved during Thursday’s legislative session, following meetings between Venezuelan authorities and oil executives, went further than the draft preliminarily endorsed one week earlier.
The final version of the legislation establishes 30 percent as an upper bound for royalties, with the Venezuelan government given the discretionary power to determine the rate for each project. A 33 percent extraction tax in the present law was scrapped in favor of an “integrated hydrocarbon tax” to be set by the executive with a 15 percent limit.
Similarly, the Venezuelan government can reduce income taxes for companies involved in oil activities while also granting several other fiscal exemptions. The bill cites the “need to ensure international competitiveness” as a factor to be considered when decreasing royalty and tax demands for private corporations.
The reform additionally grants operational and sales control to minority partners and private contractors. PDVSA can furthermore lease out oilfields and projects in exchange for a fixed portion of extracted crude. The new legislation likewise allows disputes to be settled by outside arbitration instances.
Thursday’s legislative reform was immediately followed by a US Treasury general license allowing US corporations to re-engage with the Venezuelan oil sector.
General License 46 (GL46) authorizes US firms to purchase and market Venezuelan crude while demanding that contracts be subjected to US jurisdiction so potential disputes are referred to US courts. The license bars transactions with companies from Russia, Iran, North Korea, or Cuba. Concerning China, it only blocks dealings with Venezuelan joint ventures with Chinese involvement.
Economist Francisco Rodríguez pointed out that the sanctions waiver does not explicitly allow for production or investment and that companies would require an additional license before signing contracts with Venezuelan authorities.
GL46 also mandates that payments to blocked agents, including PDVSA, be made to the US Foreign Government Deposit Funds or another account defined by the US Treasury Department.
Following the January 3 military strikes and kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration has vowed to take control of the Venezuelan oil industry by administering crude transactions. Proceeds from initial sales have been deposited in US-run bank accounts in Qatar, with a portion rerouted to Caracas for forex injections run by private banks. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed that the resources will begin to be channeled to US Treasury accounts in the near future.
In a press conference on Friday, Trump said his administration is “very happy” with the actions of Venezuelan authorities and would soon invite other countries to get involved in the Caribbean nation’s oil industry. Rubio had previously argued that Caracas “deserved credit” for the oil reform that “eradicates Chávez-era restrictions on private investments.”
Despite the White House’s calls for substantial investment, Western oil corporations have expressed reservations over major projects in the Venezuelan energy sector. Chevron, the largest US company operating in the country, stated that it is looking to fund increased production with revenues from oil sales as opposed to new capital commitments.
Since 2017, Venezuela’s oil industry has been under wide-reaching US unilateral coercive measures, including financial sanctions and an export embargo, in an effort to strangle the country’s most important revenue source. The US Treasury Department has also levied and threatened secondary sanctions against third-country companies to deter involvement in the Venezuelan petroleum sector.
Caracas, January 30, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan National Assembly has approved a sweeping reform of the country’s 2001 Hydrocarbon Law that rolls back the state’s role in the energy sector in favor of private capital.
Legislators unanimously endorsed the bill at its second discussion on Thursday, with only opposition deputy Henrique Capriles abstaining. The legislative overhaul follows years of US sanctions against the Venezuelan oil industry and a naval blockade imposed in December.
Caracas, January 30, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan National Assembly has approved a sweeping reform of the country’s 2001 Hydrocarbon Law that rolls back the state’s role in the energy sector in favor of private capital.
Legislators unanimously endorsed the bill at its second discussion on Thursday, with only opposition deputy Henrique Capriles abstaining. The legislative overhaul follows years of US sanctions against the Venezuelan oil industry and a naval blockade imposed in December.
National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez hailed the vote a “historic day” and claimed the new bill will lead oil production to “skyrocket.”
“The reform will make the oil sector much more competitive for national and foreign corporations to extract crude,” he told reporters. “We are implementing mechanisms that have proven very successful.”
Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez signed and enacted the law after the parliamentary session, claiming that the industry will be guided by “the best international practices” and undertake a “historic leap forward.”
Former President Hugo Chávez revamped the country’s oil legislation in 2001 and introduced further reforms in 2006 and 2007 to assert the Venezuelan state’s primacy over the industry. Policies included a mandatory stakeholding majority for state oil company PDVSA in joint ventures, PDVSA control over operations and sales, and increased royalties and income tax to 30 and 50 percent, respectively. Increased oil revenues bankrolled the Venezuelan government’s expanded social programs in the 2000s.
The text approved during Thursday’s legislative session, following meetings between Venezuelan authorities and oil executives, went further than the draft preliminarily endorsed one week earlier.
The final version of the legislation establishes 30 percent as an upper bound for royalties, with the Venezuelan government given the discretionary power to determine the rate for each project. A 33 percent extraction tax in the present law was scrapped in favor of an “integrated hydrocarbon tax” to be set by the executive with a 15 percent limit.
Similarly, the Venezuelan government can reduce income taxes for companies involved in oil activities while also granting several other fiscal exemptions. The bill cites the “need to ensure international competitiveness” as a factor to be considered when decreasing royalty and tax demands for private corporations.
The reform additionally grants operational and sales control to minority partners and private contractors. PDVSA can furthermore lease out oilfields and projects in exchange for a fixed portion of extracted crude. The new legislation likewise allows disputes to be settled by outside arbitration instances.
Thursday’s legislative reform was immediately followed by a US Treasury general license allowing US corporations to re-engage with the Venezuelan oil sector.
General License 46 (GL46) authorizes US firms to purchase and market Venezuelan crude while demanding that contracts be subjected to US jurisdiction so potential disputes are referred to US courts. The license bars transactions with companies from Russia, Iran, North Korea, or Cuba. Concerning China, it only blocks dealings with Venezuelan joint ventures with Chinese involvement.
Economist Francisco Rodríguez pointed out that the sanctions waiver does not explicitly allow for production or investment and that companies would require an additional license before signing contracts with Venezuelan authorities.
GL46 also mandates that payments to blocked agents, including PDVSA, be made to the US Foreign Government Deposit Funds or another account defined by the US Treasury Department.
Following the January 3 military strikes and kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration has vowed to take control of the Venezuelan oil industry by administering crude transactions. Proceeds from initial sales have been deposited in US-run bank accounts in Qatar, with a portion rerouted to Caracas for forex injections run by private banks. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed that the resources will begin to be channeled to US Treasury accounts in the near future.
In a press conference on Friday, Trump said his administration is “very happy” with the actions of Venezuelan authorities and would soon invite other countries to get involved in the Caribbean nation’s oil industry. Rubio had previously argued that Caracas “deserved credit” for the oil reform that “eradicates Chávez-era restrictions on private investments.”
Despite the White House’s calls for substantial investment, Western oil corporations have expressed reservations over major projects in the Venezuelan energy sector. Chevron, the largest US company operating in the country, stated that it is looking to fund increased production with revenues from oil sales as opposed to new capital commitments.
Since 2017, Venezuela’s oil industry has been under wide-reaching US unilateral coercive measures, including financial sanctions and an export embargo, in an effort to strangle the country’s most important revenue source. The US Treasury Department has also levied and threatened secondary sanctions against third-country companies to deter involvement in the Venezuelan petroleum sector.
Caracas, January 30, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan National Assembly has approved a sweeping reform of the country’s 2001 Hydrocarbon Law that rolls back the state’s role in the energy sector in favor of private capital.
Legislators unanimously endorsed the bill at its second discussion on Thursday, with only opposition deputy Henrique Capriles abstaining. The legislative overhaul follows years of US sanctions against the Venezuelan oil industry and a naval blockade imposed in December.
National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez hailed the vote a “historic day” and claimed the new bill will lead oil production to “skyrocket.”
“The reform will make the oil sector much more competitive for national and foreign corporations to extract crude,” he told reporters. “We are implementing mechanisms that have proven very successful.”
Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez signed and enacted the law after the parliamentary session, claiming that the industry will be guided by “the best international practices” and undertake a “historic leap forward.”
Former President Hugo Chávez revamped the country’s oil legislation in 2001 and introduced further reforms in 2006 and 2007 to assert the Venezuelan state’s primacy over the industry. Policies included a mandatory stakeholding majority for state oil company PDVSA in joint ventures, PDVSA control over operations and sales, and increased royalties and income tax to 30 and 50 percent, respectively. Increased oil revenues bankrolled the Venezuelan government’s expanded social programs in the 2000s.
The text approved during Thursday’s legislative session, following meetings between Venezuelan authorities and oil executives, went further than the draft preliminarily endorsed one week earlier.
The final version of the legislation establishes 30 percent as an upper bound for royalties, with the Venezuelan government given the discretionary power to determine the rate for each project. A 33 percent extraction tax in the present law was scrapped in favor of an “integrated hydrocarbon tax” to be set by the executive with a 15 percent limit.
Similarly, the Venezuelan government can reduce income taxes for companies involved in oil activities while also granting several other fiscal exemptions. The bill cites the “need to ensure international competitiveness” as a factor to be considered when decreasing royalty and tax demands for private corporations.
The reform additionally grants operational and sales control to minority partners and private contractors. PDVSA can furthermore lease out oilfields and projects in exchange for a fixed portion of extracted crude. The new legislation likewise allows disputes to be settled by outside arbitration instances.
Thursday’s legislative reform was immediately followed by a US Treasury general license allowing US corporations to re-engage with the Venezuelan oil sector.
General License 46 (GL46) authorizes US firms to purchase and market Venezuelan crude while demanding that contracts be subjected to US jurisdiction so potential disputes are referred to US courts. The license bars transactions with companies from Russia, Iran, North Korea, or Cuba. Concerning China, it only blocks dealings with Venezuelan joint ventures with Chinese involvement.
Economist Francisco Rodríguez pointed out that the sanctions waiver does not explicitly allow for production or investment and that companies would require an additional license before signing contracts with Venezuelan authorities.
GL46 also mandates that payments to blocked agents, including PDVSA, be made to the US Foreign Government Deposit Funds or another account defined by the US Treasury Department.
Following the January 3 military strikes and kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration has vowed to take control of the Venezuelan oil industry by administering crude transactions. Proceeds from initial sales have been deposited in US-run bank accounts in Qatar, with a portion rerouted to Caracas for forex injections run by private banks. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed that the resources will begin to be channeled to US Treasury accounts in the near future.
In a press conference on Friday, Trump said his administration is “very happy” with the actions of Venezuelan authorities and would soon invite other countries to get involved in the Caribbean nation’s oil industry. Rubio had previously argued that Caracas “deserved credit” for the oil reform that “eradicates Chávez-era restrictions on private investments.”
Despite the White House’s calls for substantial investment, Western oil corporations have expressed reservations over major projects in the Venezuelan energy sector. Chevron, the largest US company operating in the country, stated that it is looking to fund increased production with revenues from oil sales as opposed to new capital commitments.
Since 2017, Venezuela’s oil industry has been under wide-reaching US unilateral coercive measures, including financial sanctions and an export embargo, in an effort to strangle the country’s most important revenue source. The US Treasury Department has also levied and threatened secondary sanctions against third-country companies to deter involvement in the Venezuelan petroleum sector.
Sucks that they have to do this but whatever it takes to avoid US attacks. Unfortunately there's no magical defense system that can stop the US from destroying their infrastructure and killing people.
I wonder if Chinese companies will also be brought in, or if the US has told them no.
It's just so evil that this is basically the US saying "No, you are not allowed to develop your own resource extraction."
Because the criminals are running the country. We have an entire political party that's okay with defending every pedophile in order to defend "their pedophiles." A party that wants a pedophile king so that they can do away with child labor laws and lower the age of consent - or just do away with consent altogether. Half of our political system wants to pretend Epstein isn't important or just never happened because what happened at Epstein's parties threatens to unravel all of their careful plans that took decades to enact. They can't lose all of that "progress" back to the good old days JUST because some guys AND girls got caught!
A) In the “(insert dictatorship-style government with extreme censorship that claims to be “socialist”) isn’t authoritarian because that word was made up by the CIA.” kind of way, or
B) In the “this meme was likely made by someone who fits option A, where they purposefully try to make authoritarian seem meaningless to defend their favorite ‘socialist’ dictatorship” kind of way, or
C) in the “People throw authoritarian around so much to the point it basically has no meaning because multiple groups purposefully shift their definition of it around so it doesn’t apply to themselves or people/governments they like.” kind of way, or
D) purposefully vague so you reap upvotes from people who agree with any of the above
Sure, Successful in converting agrarian societies into state capitalism which eventually devolves into other forms of capitalism due to its own internal contradictions.
State capitalism refers to economies like the ROK and Singapore, where the state plays a large role in the economy but private ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the bourgeoisie in control of the state. Regardless of if you agree with it or not, socialist states where public ownership is principle and the bourgeoisie subservient to the proletariat or outright abolished as a class are qualitatively different, and lumping them in with countries like the ROK adds more confusion than not.
What does it mean to "play the role" of a class? You're confusing class with management and administration. It isn't at all accurate, otherwise we'd just call capitalism "feudalism." You're looking purely at surface-level similarities while ignoring differences, and using a descriptor for modes of production with clear basis in private ownership as principle to describe public ownership.
I understand if you want to make an anarchist critique of Marxist socialism, but it would help your critique if it didn't have holes like that.
Capitalism unchecked would indeed devolve into neo-feudalism if working class reaction didn't prevent that.
I'm not confusing anything
For anarchists, the idea that socialism can be achieved via state ownership is simply ridiculous. For reasons which will become abundantly clear, anarchists argue that any such "socialist" system would simply be a form of "state capitalism." Such a regime would not fundamentally change the position of the working class, whose members would simply be wage slaves to the state bureaucracy rather than to the capitalist class. Marxism would, as Kropotkin predicted, be "the worship of the State, of authority and of State Socialism, which is in reality nothing but State capitalism."
[quoted by Ruth Kinna, "Kropotkin's theory of Mutual Aid in Historical Context", pp. 259-283, International Review of Social History, No. 40, p. 262]
Even that argument is a bit confused, no? Ruth Kinna and Kropotkin here both admit that there would not be a capitalist class. State capitalism as a descriptor works very well for, as I said, very state-driven but clearly capitalist states like the Republic of Korea, which is 3 companies in a trenchcoat but has heavy state involvement in the economy. I understand that anarchists disagree with administration, but to call it capitalism is again to call capitalism feudalism.
As for neo-feudalism, it's similarly confused as a concept. Capitalism is not feudalism, and socialism (call it "Marxist Socialism" or "state socialism" or even "fake socialism" if you want) is not capitalism. Marxist socialism does not at all behave as capitalism does, has its own form of class struggle (though not what you're describing here), and has its own contradictions that propel it forward (and not "inevitably" back to capitalism).
It seems most like you're trying to use capitalism as a moral cudgel than a meaningful descriptor, which is why your critique would be sharper if you didn
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Even that argument is a bit confused, no? Ruth Kinna and Kropotkin here both admit that there would not be a capitalist class. State capitalism as a descriptor works very well for, as I said, very state-driven but clearly capitalist states like the Republic of Korea, which is 3 companies in a trenchcoat but has heavy state involvement in the economy. I understand that anarchists disagree with administration, but to call it capitalism is again to call capitalism feudalism.
As for neo-feudalism, it's similarly confused as a concept. Capitalism is not feudalism, and socialism (call it "Marxist Socialism" or "state socialism" or even "fake socialism" if you want) is not capitalism. Marxist socialism does not at all behave as capitalism does, has its own form of class struggle (though not what you're describing here), and has its own contradictions that propel it forward (and not "inevitably" back to capitalism).
It seems most like you're trying to use capitalism as a moral cudgel than a meaningful descriptor, which is why your critique would be sharper if you didn't resort to such phrasemongering.
No it's not really confused. I think you're just repeating yourself.
Marxist socialism does not at all behave as capitalism does
It behaves very much like Capitalism. Wage slavery for the working class. Luxury for the bourgeoisie (I.e. Chinese Billionnaires) and the state which enables them. When the Bourgeoisie doesn't nominally exist, it's because the state administrators simply act as the bourgeoisie by extracting the wealth and acting like parasites, like every manager in any capitalist company ever who claims they deserve their hundreds of multiples of the wealth of the working class because they are managing.
At its best a "State Socialism" acts like any other Capitalist Social Democracy. At its worst, it's practically indistinguishable from nominally "benevolent" feudalism (i.e. red fascism)
While I disagree with db0, db0's stances aren't uncommon among anarchists, so if i can try to raise the level of discussion I do think that would be beneficial. OP's post does have merit, in that all lasting revolutions have had to build up state power, including the Zapatistas. The Spanish anarchists were even beginning to develop more state-like structures towards the end as a necessary protection, and I believe they would have continued that trend had they been able to.
However, many users seem to be focusing overly on the meme format, ie the astronaut shooting the other one, when the focus of the meme is on unveiling a long-understood truth to a new audience. This focus on the form of the message, rather than the message itself, isn't particularly constructive.
Because it is still very much a false accusation used to justify the invasion and eventual genocide of Ukrainians? "Oh but there are neo Nazis in the Azov batallion". So? There are tons of ethno nationalists in the Kremlin & duma, who'd gladly do a bit of genocide - as a treat - so they can consolidate more land and power. Hows about them bananas?
Let's look at the evidence the past 30 years regarding russiafication, the para military groups in Africa and the promotion of oligarchy, the overthrowal of foreign governments the installing of puppet states - as well as the deep state corruption in Russia.
But also, let's look at the recent indoctrination of children into military school being taught that Ukrainians are mongrel mutts, Africans being used as suicide bombers, junkies and alcoholics sent to the front lines because of the "tried and true" meat assault tactic, Russian soldiers coming in on horseback and donkeys, the oligarchs of Russia being disappeared the last year to fund the war is especially prescient - while claiming the defeat of Ukraine is imminent.
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Because it is still very much a false accusation used to justify the invasion and eventual genocide of Ukrainians? "Oh but there are neo Nazis in the Azov batallion". So? There are tons of ethno nationalists in the Kremlin & duma, who'd gladly do a bit of genocide - as a treat - so they can consolidate more land and power. Hows about them bananas?
Let's look at the evidence the past 30 years regarding russiafication, the para military groups in Africa and the promotion of oligarchy, the overthrowal of foreign governments the installing of puppet states - as well as the deep state corruption in Russia.
But also, let's look at the recent indoctrination of children into military school being taught that Ukrainians are mongrel mutts, Africans being used as suicide bombers, junkies and alcoholics sent to the front lines because of the "tried and true" meat assault tactic, Russian soldiers coming in on horseback and donkeys, the oligarchs of Russia being disappeared the last year to fund the war is especially prescient - while claiming the defeat of Ukraine is imminent.
In short: there is so much lies and bullshit coming from the Kremlin & the duma, as well as a metric ton of evidence proving how degenerate and incompetent they really are, to the point that seing the ol' "azovs are Nazis" propaganda point is like a conspiracy to generate free energy from the amount of eye rolling it will generate.
If it was such an issue, why not point out ICE or the IDF? Heck, why not deal with the ethno nationalists in Russia? Oh right, they're the ones in power.
Believing any of their propaganda is tantamount to intellectual suicide.
Tankies finding one problematic aspect in any movement they oppose and blowing it all out of proportion to justify repression. Also see Kronstadt rebellion, Hungarian revolution etc.
However any problematic aspect in camps they support is just an "unfortunate mistake" nevertheless worth "critical support" to oppose Western imperialism.
We have streets and buildinga named after a known fascist dictator in Greece who privately complained that Hitler didn't ask him to join the axis. This proves nothing except that time and war fog glorifies figures that don't always deserve it. This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. Purposefully disregard all nuance to paint a narrative.
streets re-named after a fascist mass murderer, yes. so if the germans suddenly started renaming streets after adolf hitler, you'd dismiss that too. nothing to see here.
Bandera was also a national liberation actor. One person who understands nuance could usually understand that national liberation actors tend to be lionized and their misdeeds trivialized. It happens constantly. Campists don't have a problem with mass murderers like Bandera, or Assad, or, Putin, they only have a problem when they're not in their camp.
And for a national liberation actor, Bandera is receiving comparatively little praise, especially from the current government.
This line of reasoning is therefore purposefully simplistic to paint a narrative, while of course ignoring the rampart fascism in the Russian aggressor who would of course impose a much worse form of fascism over Ukraine
We have streets and buildinga named after a known fascist dictator in Greece [...] This proves nothing except that time and war fog glorifies figures that don't always deserve it.
It proves there is a sizeable contingent in Greece that idolizes fascists and has enough institutional power to express that idolatry, and that there is not enough pushback in the rest of the culture to oppose that openly fascist expression. All of which is deeply worrisome and none of which negates the fact that there is likewise rampant Neo-naziism in Ukraine and that it has tremendous institutional and military power.
Just a tiny, insignificant problematic aspect like widespread support for fascism. No biggie. Btw, why are all our governments turning towards fascism? Where could this be coming from?
Moreover, present day Russia is a creation by the West itself. It was your governments that wanted the USSR to collapse, your goverments that elevated individuals like Putin post-collapse. Now you get a brutal, capitalist, Anti-LGBT hellpit, that the people of the West somehow pretend just materialized out of nothing, and wasn't a result of their own negligence, their own unwillingness to prevent mass suffering in Eastern Europe and Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
You are constantly in conflict with your own self-made monsters.
Just a tiny, insignificant problematic aspect like widespread support for fascism
"widespread"
Moreover, present day Russia is a creation by the West itself. It was your governments that wanted the USSR to collapse, your goverments that elevated individuals like Putin post-collapse. Now you get a brutal, capitalist, Anti-LGBT hellpit, that the people of the West somehow pretend just materialized out of nothing, and wasn't a result of their own negligence, their own unwillingness to prevent mass suffering in Eastern Europe and Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Sounds to me USSR revolution wasn't that "successful" afer all
Sounds to me USSR revolution wasn't that "successful" afer all
Reducing the USSR to a "failure" because it collapsed is ahistorical idealism and the height of liberal nonsense. We should judge a formation by the contradictions it resolved, not by whether it achieved eternity. Tsarist Russia was a feudal wreck where peasants starved and most couldn't read. Within decades, the Soviet project doubled life expectancy, wiped out illiteracy, and industrialized a continent-sized country, dragging millions out of poverty.
Women gained full legal equality in 1918: abortion rights, divorce, workplace access, while Western women were still fighting for the vote. Socialized childcare and mass employment pulled women into public life on a scale capitalism wouldn't match for generations.
And let's not forget who actually broke fascism: the Red Army fought four-fifths of the Wehrmacht, lost 27 million people, and took Berlin while the West sat on the sidelines and even continued to trade with the nazi beast for years into the war (see the history of ford f
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Sounds to me USSR revolution wasn't that "successful" afer all
Reducing the USSR to a "failure" because it collapsed is ahistorical idealism and the height of liberal nonsense. We should judge a formation by the contradictions it resolved, not by whether it achieved eternity. Tsarist Russia was a feudal wreck where peasants starved and most couldn't read. Within decades, the Soviet project doubled life expectancy, wiped out illiteracy, and industrialized a continent-sized country, dragging millions out of poverty.
Women gained full legal equality in 1918: abortion rights, divorce, workplace access, while Western women were still fighting for the vote. Socialized childcare and mass employment pulled women into public life on a scale capitalism wouldn't match for generations.
And let's not forget who actually broke fascism: the Red Army fought four-fifths of the Wehrmacht, lost 27 million people, and took Berlin while the West sat on the sidelines and even continued to trade with the nazi beast for years into the war (see the history of ford factories and IBM).
Collapse doesn't retroactively erase what was built. "Anarchists" like you who dismiss seventy years of concrete progress because the state eventually fractured aren't radical they're reactionary. Material gains for millions don't vanish because the system that produced them later unraveled.
The aftermath of the collapse proved the stakes that people like you refuse to grapple with. The 1990s were catastrophic. Life expectancy cratered, millions plunged into homelessness and destitution, women and children were trafficked by the tens of thousands, and the entire country was looted by oligarchs with IMF blessing. The chaos bred Yeltsin's drunken comprador regime, which paved the way for Putin's rise as his right-hand man a direct product of the Soviet collapse. When you cheer the unraveling of a workers' state even a deeply flawed one, you're not celebrating freedom. You're celebrating the road that led straight to oligarchs, fascists, and some of the worst reaction imaginable. But you don't really care about anyone but yourself.
Reducing the USSR to a "failure" because it collapsed is ahistorical idealism and the height of liberal nonsense
'Tis what MLs perpetually do for every Anarchist revolution.
Collapse doesn't retroactively erase what was built. "Anarchists" like you who dismiss seventy years of concrete progress because the state eventually fractured aren't radical they're reactionary. It achieved the same great improvements for living standards all other such capitalist revolutions did throughout history. Material gains for millions don't vanish because the system that produced them later unraveled.
I'm not erasing anything. I consider the USSR revolution a great success for capitalism, as it turned an agrarian society into an industrialized capitalist nation. It also imporoved the people's living standard like any society becoming industrialized through capitalism. It's the only thing all such ML revolutions every achieved and the only thing they can achieve.
It's an abject failure at achieving communism (and anarchist argue, even socialism) though.
Daily writing promptWrite about your first computer.View all responses Here’s the thing about my first computer. It didn’t coddle me. It didn’t autocomplete my thoughts or ask how I was feeling today. It sat there like a beige brick with delusions of gran
Daily writing prompt Write about your first computer. View all responses
Here’s the thing about my first computer. It didn’t coddle me. It didn’t autocomplete my thoughts or ask how I was feeling today. It sat there like a beige brick with delusions of grandeur and dared me to figure it out.
It was a Commodore 64. Used. Already scarred. Already suspicious of me. Perfect.
I was 13, which is exactly the right age to be given something powerful with no instructions and just enough danger to ruin your sleep schedule. This thing booted up to a blinking cursor. No icons. No friendly mascot. Just a prompt that basically said “prove you’re not stupi
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Daily writing prompt Write about your first computer. View all responses
Here’s the thing about my first computer. It didn’t coddle me. It didn’t autocomplete my thoughts or ask how I was feeling today. It sat there like a beige brick with delusions of grandeur and dared me to figure it out.
It was a Commodore 64. Used. Already scarred. Already suspicious of me. Perfect.
I was 13, which is exactly the right age to be given something powerful with no instructions and just enough danger to ruin your sleep schedule. This thing booted up to a blinking cursor. No icons. No friendly mascot. Just a prompt that basically said “prove you’re not stupid.” Most days, I barely managed.
Before there was the internet, before people argued with strangers for sport, I ran a BBS on it. One phone line. One modem screaming like it was being tortured. If someone picked up the house phone, everything died. Entire digital civilizations erased by Aunt Linda calling to chat.
Running a BBS meant learning patience, troubleshooting by rage, and understanding that technology does not care about your plans. You learned by breaking things. You learned by staying up too late reading messages from people you’d never meet, typing back like it mattered. It did.
That machine taught me more than school ever did. It taught me curiosity. It taught me how systems work. It taught me that if you want something, you better build it yourself. No app store. No updates. Just manuals, trial, error, and a lot of swearing.
Kids today tap glass and call it skill. We had to earn our fun. We had to know why things worked. Or didn’t. That old C64 wasn’t just a computer. It was a gateway drug to obsession, independence, and the kind of problem-solving you can’t download.
If you know, you know. If you don’t, start with Commodore and dig into BBS. That’s where the real internet started.
Ordained Pastafarian minister. Spy vs. Spy fiend. Tech-tinkering, people-dodging geocacher with punk roots and hard-earned dev chops. Runs Mad Cow Social Labs.
I make my own writing prompts because WordPress and Jetpack keep recycling the same tired questions. I pull mine from real life, irritation, and whatever won’t shut up in my head. If it’s boring, it’s dead. The results end up here:
Commiunism
in reply to Salamence • • •like this
NoneOfUrBusiness likes this.
PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]
in reply to Salamence • • •The Quuuuuill
in reply to PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him] • • •At the same time, for a lot of us that age it was a fundamental step into understanding "Oh. So our adults are fucking idiots" because we had so many allegedly smart people telling us "well. The PATRIOT Act can't be that bad and these are changing times. We need to be able to protect ourselves."
It wasn't until I went to college that I got good at expressing how specifically something that happened when I was in elementary school was a fundamental affront to my autonomy as a human being, and why that was a threat to everyone everywhere all the time. But it was still a seed that grew within me that we are fundamentally not seen by our government as contributors but as resources
YappyMonotheist
in reply to Salamence • • •Rhaedas
in reply to YappyMonotheist • • •So if I'm the wrong skin color and have past relatives who didn't do anything that made a change, I can't participate in doing something now? If we could find a movement that had all the morality of the progressives while having the right's trait to let anyone join who agrees with the cause, we might have something that works. It seems to be a leftist thing to gatekeep anyone who tries to help.
YappyMonotheist
in reply to Rhaedas • • •Rhaedas
in reply to YappyMonotheist • • •I mentioned color because of your phrasing, which would lead to that conclusion. It's pretty obvious. And it's not like I even disagree with the points you make, it's just how you made them. Don't blame the reader/listener when you use euphemisms you didn't intend to imply. Say what you mean.
Your previous statement was also a bit on the side of poisoning the well, so no matter what anyone says now, they've already been invalidated as being part of change. Attacking people who may be breaking from ignorance or finally pushed too far as part of the problem is dividing any potential resistance, and that's exactly what the powers that be want us to do: fight amongst ourselves.
American history is dark. As I've gotten older I've learned more and more of things that were simply not talked about, or worse, covered up. That doesn't mean most Americans are guilty of these crimes, or can't try to improve things. But it won't get better if there's so much infighting because of the past that most of us weren't even part of. "Sins of the father" is such a crock of shit.
YappyMonotheist
in reply to Rhaedas • • •Rhaedas
in reply to YappyMonotheist • • •I really think class warfare is far stronger than any racial divide. And that's exactly why there isn't much momentum from any group, white, black, whatever. They've pinned us down for so long ensuring that any individual efforts can be punished. Now... how do you get a unified effort so they can't lock individuals down? That is the question to be answered. General strike? Not if it's some lame Friday and then back to normal. It's got to be a shutdown that's felt by the ones who are the problem, and it has to be outlasted long enough to matter. Can that be done by people living paycheck to paycheck, or by those already missing many weeks of food stamps? The rich hope not.
So sure, there's the inequality of black vs. white. But it's far deeper and planned than that, and this kind of arguing is what they want instead of a shared effort.
Ocean
in reply to Rhaedas • • •The racial divide is an aspect of class warfare though. Specifically in the US, so much of White America was willing to throw away/undermine the welfare and public services that they barely had for a generation just because black and brown people would get access to it too. It's wrong to just skip over that and demand solidarity.
Personally, I think we can embrace people who are late to the game, while also holding space for people who are frustrated that it seems to take a tragedy to activate some members of the populace
Chakravanti
in reply to Rhaedas • • •You say Well. I would but they mostly disappear like I'm some Stranger to expel ain't real thru fear. Cuz that ain't real even if you're delirious enough to just end up knot being the same. Oh but that returing Martian baby did it. Fly Burger Mic.
Fa epalm
I mean, when was the last time Prickard sang with tab in his hand??
belastend
in reply to YappyMonotheist • • •HappyFrog
in reply to Salamence • • •like this
Rhaedas likes this.
Rhaedas
in reply to HappyFrog • • •like this
tiredofsametab likes this.
gustofwind
in reply to Rhaedas • • •The Quuuuuill
in reply to gustofwind • • •Tinidril
in reply to gustofwind • • •gustofwind
in reply to Tinidril • • •True but my political existence actually isn’t and I do stuff irl
Too many people just preach dramatic purity online and nothing else
The Quuuuuill
in reply to gustofwind • • •nodiratime
in reply to Tinidril • • •HappyFrog
in reply to Rhaedas • • •dreamkeeper
in reply to Rhaedas • • •Rhaedas
in reply to dreamkeeper • • •Chakravanti
in reply to Rhaedas • • •In case McZipper Unflies his tight walking two 16's in a double deck knot-real via some stupid gayMe trick with some cubs over a century old.
Then be like, "Told you so. They made that shit up a dick a half ago and if you think I'm the one then check me in another deck and a half*
Tell Lima I saw the first one too but not with my ice. Just all this natural AC signing it the first time we did it again.
Math, Time, Logic, Lumbly and Love do well advise to swap it for Meth, Magic and Möbius Strip Doors to...
...Drumroll Mofos...
...Eat the Rich...Like a Cruise Pitt.
Dippy
in reply to Rhaedas • • •nodiratime
in reply to Rhaedas • • •joby
in reply to HappyFrog • • •Tinidril
in reply to joby • • •The Quuuuuill
in reply to Tinidril • • •if somehow we make it all the way to a free and fair 2028 primary and gavin newsome is the nominee i will be a form of pissed you've never witnessed before. that dude is such a fuckin' unhelpful phonie. out here acting like Abigail Spanberger won Virginia because Virginians wanted neoliberalism. NO! Virginians already hated her when they voted for her, they only voted for her because the options offered were: ICE stays the same, or ICE gets way more violent. USW, UAW, and UMWA all refused to endorse her. Abigail Spanberger won despite not being liked, not because she was liked. but the DNC has refused to learn their lessons and eat their veggies for 18 years now. they took every losing lesson from Obama and jettisoned every winning lesson. ultimately, it comes down to that they are part of the conservative grift machine, but their grift is more subtle. the republican grift is to froth up anger and then demand money to go act on that anger. the democrat grift is to make money off losing.
it makes me so mad how many democrats are looking at 2025 election results and going "see
... show moreif somehow we make it all the way to a free and fair 2028 primary and gavin newsome is the nominee i will be a form of pissed you've never witnessed before. that dude is such a fuckin' unhelpful phonie. out here acting like Abigail Spanberger won Virginia because Virginians wanted neoliberalism. NO! Virginians already hated her when they voted for her, they only voted for her because the options offered were: ICE stays the same, or ICE gets way more violent. USW, UAW, and UMWA all refused to endorse her. Abigail Spanberger won despite not being liked, not because she was liked. but the DNC has refused to learn their lessons and eat their veggies for 18 years now. they took every losing lesson from Obama and jettisoned every winning lesson. ultimately, it comes down to that they are part of the conservative grift machine, but their grift is more subtle. the republican grift is to froth up anger and then demand money to go act on that anger. the democrat grift is to make money off losing.
it makes me so mad how many democrats are looking at 2025 election results and going "see! we don't have to be more progressive. we just have to not be donald trump" and it's like… goddammit, that's been loser behavior since 2008 when the tea party tranformed the republican party.
so anyway.
in summation.
fuck the liberal excellence brunch crowd. we won't get out of this thinking the crisis is over unless we get true systemic change, not just small trinkets
tidal.com/track/449459951/u
Against Me! - Baby, I'm an Anarchist!
Music on TIDALj_elgato
in reply to Salamence • • •notastatist
in reply to j_elgato • • •lemonmelon
in reply to notastatist • • •Alwaysnownevernotme
in reply to lemonmelon • • •ZombiFrancis
in reply to j_elgato • • •The Quuuuuill
in reply to ZombiFrancis • • •Chakravanti
in reply to The Quuuuuill • • •The Quuuuuill
in reply to Chakravanti • • •OneWomanCreamTeam
in reply to Salamence • • •feddylemmy
in reply to OneWomanCreamTeam • • •Tinidril
in reply to feddylemmy • • •feddylemmy
in reply to Tinidril • • •You're right about that! But that's not what I meant.
What I mean is there's a seemingly organized effort to
create infighting between those against ICE by attempting to create issues and sow discord. It distracts from the real conversation at hand. It's a common technique to fracture unity on an issue.
MIDItheKID
in reply to OneWomanCreamTeam • • •Completely agree, but I think with Goode and Pretti it gave our team a good hand to play. Like, "hey, all you All Lives Matter people. Where ya at?" and with Pretti specifically, it's like "Hey, all you 2A folk. Where the fuck ya at?"
I've been outraged and outspoken since the beginning, but these two incidents are really heavy hitting cards to play in order to expose hypocritical fascists. Not that it actually matters because these people are brainwashed mental gymists. But I like to think it at least puts cracks in their foundation. It's caused some amount of infighting, so that's a step in the right direction.
dreadbeef
in reply to OneWomanCreamTeam • • •catsarebadpeople
in reply to Salamence • • •Evotech
in reply to Salamence • • •Cowbee [he/they]
in reply to Evotech • • •webadict
in reply to Cowbee [he/they] • • •Is anybody an ally of you if they have other goals that are not yours???
So deep. Much thought. Philosopher. Wow.
Truly, you also participate in society, you fucking donut.
Cowbee [he/they]
in reply to webadict • • •webadict
in reply to Cowbee [he/they] • • •But that's the thing. That isn't the primary task. That's your primary task. Some people just need to get out of their struggle before they can help others. And if you think that will create more enemies than allies to you, then... I think you are grossly misinformed or you are lying about what you actually want.
Like, you might as well say we shouldn't have freed the slaves unless we destroyed the institutions that created slavery. Incremental progress is still good, even if it's not preferred, and people's lives benefit from it.
Cowbee [he/they]
in reply to webadict • • •We can fight for benefits, but as long as we remain trapped by bourgeois ideology like liberalism, rather than proletarian ideology like dialectical materialism, then we will be hopelessly trapped by their cultural hegemony. The reason liberalism is propogated is because it rationalizes and justifies the present capitalist system, and we cannot actually move on to a better world as long as we hold to its ways of thinking except by accident. When we take a more serious approach, and actually analyze society as it truly exists, we find that overthrowing the present state of things is necessary and unavoidable.
Abolition of slavery was absolutely a good thing, but we have to know why it happend. It was mostly due to the north's desire for more proletarians for industrial labor, it was a war between agricultural slavery and industrial wage labor. In the present moment, the largest contradiction is between imperialist countries and the imperialized, as well as domestically the issue of settler-colonialism. If we don't actually take steps to combat these, we will be left
... show moreWe can fight for benefits, but as long as we remain trapped by bourgeois ideology like liberalism, rather than proletarian ideology like dialectical materialism, then we will be hopelessly trapped by their cultural hegemony. The reason liberalism is propogated is because it rationalizes and justifies the present capitalist system, and we cannot actually move on to a better world as long as we hold to its ways of thinking except by accident. When we take a more serious approach, and actually analyze society as it truly exists, we find that overthrowing the present state of things is necessary and unavoidable.
Abolition of slavery was absolutely a good thing, but we have to know why it happend. It was mostly due to the north's desire for more proletarians for industrial labor, it was a war between agricultural slavery and industrial wage labor. In the present moment, the largest contradiction is between imperialist countries and the imperialized, as well as domestically the issue of settler-colonialism. If we don't actually take steps to combat these, we will be left wondering why conditions keep deteriorating despite putting more liberals in office.
webadict
in reply to Cowbee [he/they] • • •Ah... I think I see your problem now. You think nothing can happen unless the bourgeois will it. I, frankly, don't agree with that. I think you think the world is a lot more chess-like when it's really a lot more like poker with mostly idiots. That does explain why MLs want to go authoritarian to fix the problems, though.
Anyway, the reason why you're a fucking biscuit is you don't seem to be expressing ideas to convert liberals to your cause. You have written them off as unfixable, and, well, that sort of gives you fewer allies. How silly.
Cowbee [he/they]
in reply to webadict • • •No, not at all. My point is that liberalism itself supports the system of capitalism, and as such we need to shed it in order to make progress, as it's essentially how the bourgeoisie legitimizes itself.
The world isn't chess nor is it poker. Classes generally act rationally, in their own interest, and proliferate class ideology to protect their interests. Ruling class ideology is meant to perpetuate that ruling class, which is why proletarian ideology needs to replace bourgeois ideology.
... show moreI don't know what you mean by this. Marxists do agree with using states run by the working classes as a transitional phase to communism, but that doesn't mean "going authoritarian," but changing the
No, not at all. My point is that liberalism itself supports the system of capitalism, and as such we need to shed it in order to make progress, as it's essentially how the bourgeoisie legitimizes itself.
The world isn't chess nor is it poker. Classes generally act rationally, in their own interest, and proliferate class ideology to protect their interests. Ruling class ideology is meant to perpetuate that ruling class, which is why proletarian ideology needs to replace bourgeois ideology.
I don't know what you mean by this. Marxists do agree with using states run by the working classes as a transitional phase to communism, but that doesn't mean "going authoritarian," but changing the class with authority from bourgeois to proletarian.
I don't, though. I was a liberal once. I write off liberalism itself. As I explained elsewhere in this thread:
This is the point I'm actually making. Radicalized liberals are comrades that have not yet become so, because they haven't yet shed their liberalism and as such ultimately go back to supporting the very system that oppresses them.
webadict
in reply to Cowbee [he/they] • • •Cowbee [he/they]
in reply to webadict • • •Liberals, as long as they cling to liberalism, do work against leftists in practice. In that sense, liberals are enemies, but they are enemies that can quite easily be turned into valuable comrades. My actual, original comment:
This is true, but I did not call them enemies outright. You've been rude this entire time, what's the point? Are you trying to get a cheap rhetorical win?
webadict
in reply to Cowbee [he/they] • • •Cowbee [he/they]
in reply to webadict • • •The Quuuuuill
in reply to Cowbee [he/they] • • •is who's under attack here liberals, or protestors who didn't realize how bad things were? i find the number of people who still don't see the problem frustrating, but we'll never get them to see the problem if the first thing we do when they start seeing the problem is call them fucking idiots.
i've seen way more success changing minds to leftism handing out soup to protests and saying "we're glad you're here" than i have when people hit the streets and they're immediately told to get back inside.
no one can undo the propaganda machine of the right but the left. we do not at present have the numbers to have the People Power to do the very most effective actions like large scale general strikes or even open rebellion with the hope of not being obliterated by the B-1 bombers that the air force has repositioned to loiter over our own air spaces. so we have to take the attitude of the mother goose teaching her goslings how the world works and violently attacking the threats to those goslings, not the goslings themselves for not knowing.
and so we're clear: i get the
... show moreis who's under attack here liberals, or protestors who didn't realize how bad things were? i find the number of people who still don't see the problem frustrating, but we'll never get them to see the problem if the first thing we do when they start seeing the problem is call them fucking idiots.
i've seen way more success changing minds to leftism handing out soup to protests and saying "we're glad you're here" than i have when people hit the streets and they're immediately told to get back inside.
no one can undo the propaganda machine of the right but the left. we do not at present have the numbers to have the People Power to do the very most effective actions like large scale general strikes or even open rebellion with the hope of not being obliterated by the B-1 bombers that the air force has repositioned to loiter over our own air spaces. so we have to take the attitude of the mother goose teaching her goslings how the world works and violently attacking the threats to those goslings, not the goslings themselves for not knowing.
and so we're clear: i get the frustration. i feel it, too. but killing your inner pro-cop lib means realizing that there ever was an inner pro-cop lib in the first place because it was specifically nurtured by a media environment that can only really be escaped in a Mennonite community.
so go ahead and critique the people who aren't out doing anything. they're awful. but attacking people who woke up later than you isn't helpful and is in fact harmful
Cowbee [he/they]
in reply to The Quuuuuill • • •I'm not attacking people that aren't yet radicalized enough, or have been newly radicalized but haven't yet organized and/or read theory. It's important to attack liberalism itself, so that the radicalized liberals are freed from the shackles of that ideology. I'm more than aware of my liberal past, and I have to kill the liberal in my head every day.
It’s extremely common for people to combine their pre-existing biases from growing up and being educated in, working in, and living within the confines of bourgeois cultural hegemony with newly radicalized left-wing politics. Without going back and confronting our pre-existing stances, we actually end up warping our new radicalized beliefs to conform to our deeply instilled beliefs about existing socialism. This is how people that genuinely believe themselves to be socialists perpetuate liberal lines of logic and historical narratives.
Instead, we combat this through long periods of self-criticism and confrontation. We have to take our new knowledge, such as that of dialectical and historical materialism, and intent
... show moreI'm not attacking people that aren't yet radicalized enough, or have been newly radicalized but haven't yet organized and/or read theory. It's important to attack liberalism itself, so that the radicalized liberals are freed from the shackles of that ideology. I'm more than aware of my liberal past, and I have to kill the liberal in my head every day.
It’s extremely common for people to combine their pre-existing biases from growing up and being educated in, working in, and living within the confines of bourgeois cultural hegemony with newly radicalized left-wing politics. Without going back and confronting our pre-existing stances, we actually end up warping our new radicalized beliefs to conform to our deeply instilled beliefs about existing socialism. This is how people that genuinely believe themselves to be socialists perpetuate liberal lines of logic and historical narratives.
Instead, we combat this through long periods of self-criticism and confrontation. We have to take our new knowledge, such as that of dialectical and historical materialism, and intentionally confront our pre-existing beliefs that came from liberalism. We all have this process to go through, and it’s never “complete,” either. It took me a long time to actually come around to supporting existing socialism, even after I began reading theory, because my frame of analysis was ultimately still liberal, and therefore my interpretations of theory were forced to fit in neatly with my existing world view, rather than uprooting the weeds and planting new seeds.
This process of dialectical growth and inward reflection is difficult and lengthy, which is why those that are in support of socialism tend to be far more knowledgable, well-read, and aren’t typically strangers to real political organizing. It takes tremendous energy to not only learn new information, but re-analyze existing conclusions that had faulty logic.
A handy analogy is looking at it through a computer program. If you have version 1 of a program spit out a bunch of outputs, and then fix a critical bug for version 2, you can’t just only rely on the new outputs, you have to confront the old outputs made with bad code and go through the new process. This is where people get tripped up ideologically.
We aren't at all immune to this, though, we aren't special people for having overcome it, and we aren't ever fully free of liberalism. We have to fight it daily.
The Quuuuuill
in reply to Cowbee [he/they] • • •part of where i'm coming from is that i mostly or even wholly agree with this message, however my understanding of effective propaganda tells me that the context of a message matters almost as much as the message itself. i appreciate and respect your desire to kill not just your inner liberal, put to also help others kill theirs, but what i see in this meme, and what the threadstarter saw as well, is an attack on a self organized resistance movement with a lot of potential to grow new leftists, kill inner liberals, and create an overall movement towards existing socialism.
my critique of your first comment was that i think it actually undermines your stated aims in your second comment because it creates the impression that the protestors should not be supported because it should be assumed the protestors are liberals.
Cowbee [he/they]
in reply to The Quuuuuill • • •My goal is to connect that promising movement to the existing movement already organizing, to fold them into our shared movement. I appreciate your critique, but sometimes it is important for liberals to be exposed to genuine leftist theory and organizing work, otherwise they usually end up going back to brunch. I don't condemn the protestors, but instead those that protest and then let that be the end of their political journey.
Evotech
in reply to Cowbee [he/they] • • •Cowbee [he/they]
in reply to Evotech • • •dreadbeef
in reply to Salamence • • •BananaIsABerry
in reply to Salamence • • •Yeah! You're right! They should continue not caring about it because their reason for doing so wouldn't be perfect.
Don't repost stupid shit posted by trolls on ml. The OP is a troll account.
Juice
in reply to BananaIsABerry • • •timbuck2themoon
in reply to BananaIsABerry • • •BananaIsABerry
in reply to timbuck2themoon • • •dreadbeef
in reply to Salamence • • •