Yeah, I can see presidential assassinations becoming the preferred outlet for misanthropic rage for those who don’t like the sound of children screaming.
Our position hasn’t shifted that much from the pod’s position.
The pod has a semi-ironic veneration of China, per the Wolf Warrior episode. It hates the entire US establishment. It wants Iran to get a nuke. Much of its stance is based on opposing what the most awful people in Amerikkka support.
That’s not to say we follow the pod’s marching orders. Rather, we get to the same place for much the same reasons.
The Ukrainian issue is probably the best example of this. No one here’s super pro Putin or his brand of Russian nationalism. When the war started, we were deep into ‘lol there’s not gonna be a war’. We had to eat humble pie, hard.
You know what changed?
Ukrainian flag emojis.
The worst people in the world, with the absolute worst takes, went hard on the Ukraine side.
Was the war a bad idea? Quite possibly. It’ll likely settle into a frozen conflict again, much like it was before, with similar territory, at the cost of a lot of lives.
But seeing people go around, pretending there wasn’t Ukrainian shelling of the Donbas? Pretending Putin hadn’t been pushing for Minsk II to be implemented as agreed? Saying that Putin wants to wage a genocide against Ukraine? Seeing everyone bend over backwards to apologise for literal neo-Nazis?
Fuck that.
Where’s the site to generate these?
You’ve quoted the right leaning party members at a conference during the height of privatisation. Ofc there’s gonna be some dumb shit said.
If you’re assessing China, you need to look at its direction presently, under Xi Jingping, not it’s direction thirteen years ago under Hu Jintao, especially given that the Shanghai Clique of Jiang Zemin only started to lose power in 2006-2007.
Instead, let’s look at some of what Xi says.
Here’s a document distributed to all high level cadre outlining ideological trends to be wary of.
Neoliberalism advocates unrestrained economic liberalization, complete privatization, and total marketization and it opposes any kind of interference or regulation by the state. Western countries, led by the United States, carry out their Neoliberal agendas under the guise of “globalization,” visiting catastrophic consequences upon Latin America, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe, and have also dragged themselves into the international financial crisis from they have yet to recover.
This is mainly expressed in the following ways:
[Neoliberalism’s advocates] actively promote the “market omnipotence theory.” They claim our country’s macroeconomic control is strangling the market’s efficiency and vitality and they oppose public ownership, arguing that China’s state-owned enterprises are “national monopolies,” inefficient, and disruptive of the market economy, and should undergo “comprehensive privatization.” These arguments aim to change our country’s basic economic infrastructure and weaken the government’s control of the national economy.
Not to mention this hilarious headline: China’s Latest Crackdown Target Is Liberal Economists.
Alright, so there’s at least some ideological pushback. But what about reality? After all, didn’t they privatise a bunch of stuff like those economists wanted?
Well, the holding entity for state owned entities is the largest economic entity in the world at approximately 7.6 trillion USD, so whatever they’ve privatised, there’s clearly a hell of a lot they haven’t.
But what about the general trend? And what good are those entities if they’re just running according to market principles?
Well, let’s just check the news:
An agency led by President Xi Jinping to advance institutional changes in China has approved a new plan to make state-owned enterprises “stronger, better and bigger”. Monday’s decision by the Central Commission for Comprehensive Reforms to “optimise and restructure the state economy layout” – a euphemism that generally points to government-led mergers and the consolidation of various state-owned companies, with ornamental participation by private investors – came after Beijing found its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to be more reliable in answering the government’s calls during the coronavirus.
China’s “adjustment” of its state sector is aimed at “serving national strategic goals and adapting to high-quality growth”, and state firms will dominate areas of “strategic security, industrial leadership … and public services”, according to an official statement released through the Xinhua news agency.
So what we see is that SOEs were better able to respond in a pandemic situation, where market allocation just wasn’t going to cut it, and use value needed to be pushed to the fore.
No one’s denying there are capitalists in China, or that they haven’t been allowed to flourish. What’s important is that they remain under the control of the Party, and that the Party retains its control over police, military, and the commanding heights of the economy. It says a lot that even at the height of their power, the capitalists had to couch their arguments for privatisation in Marxist terms.
Being paid to be in shape, being able to fire a gun, and having knowledge of effective command structures would all be useful af.
Anything on top of that is a bonus, and comes from specialisation. Bomb disposal very quickly can become bomb creation, etc.
One difference is the people they’re trained to oppress.
Cops are trained to oppress their own countrymen. Soldiers are trained to oppress people on the other side of the world.
It’s why in revolutions we see the military flip long before cops do. Cops are always the last holdouts.
I see your TumblrInAction and raise you KotakuInAction
Trump doesn’t affect that and neither does Biden. It’s a wash on that front.
Brains are material, and that aside, the superstructure is influenced by and influences the material.
The material conditions can promote fascism, but having them surge elsewhere also feeds into it. It allows fascism examples of what tactics and messaging works. American cultural hegemony means any shift in American culture also affects overseas.
If you’re familiar with the war of position, having Trump in the bully pulpit is a big win for fascism in that war. It also so happens that it harms liberals, which we like. It’s a Mexican stand off.
I figured ‘use various measures to target people prone to far right extremism, teach them why that’s wrong, then provide employment, while investing in the region to address the material conditions that led to the unrest’ was the nuanced approach.
I’m sure there are ways it can be improved, and I’m sure their approach has its excesses. I’m just so far unconvinced that there’s any better historic approach to draw upon.
If you know of any, please let me know.
Imagine you could go back in time and have an actual state power in Iraq, instead of the hollow shell US contractors left it with, and implement adequate deradicalisation programmes.
Would you do so? Or would you wait a few years, then bomb Raqqa to rubble?
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Link to the acc? (Ideally archived)