I used or it used me for a couple of years. Then while looking for a replacement I found the snap version. I installed it in a fresh Ubuntu VM and it just works.
Nuh-uh. Organic/long established ethnostates may be frowned upon, but if they close off their borders to preserve their identity, that's their right,
since I belive in the self-determination of peoples.
It is arguable though, whether these even exist right now, or are there only nation-states and some wannabe ethnostates.
Trying to violently establish an ethnostate is of course something I can't agree with.
close off their borders to preserve their identity
If your ethnicity is your identity, you're by definition a xenophobic bigot.
since I belive in the self-determination of peoples.
Except for people who want to move to the ethnostates you support, of course 🙄
Trying to violently establish an ethnostate is of course something I cannot agree with.
You literally can't establish and maintain an ethnostate without the use of a lot of violence and oppression against people of other ethnicities. That's just how the world works.
Ethnicity totally can be part of an identity, but that doesn't mean you have to hate anyone.
Don't misunderstand "closing off borders". Making the people stay is not okay. Not letting the people that left back is also not okay. Not letting in a different ethnicity? Arguably racist, but I wouldn't count not letting them into your country as oppression. I'm a christian, so I can't visit Mecca, yet I don't feel oppressed.
That's why I said "long established" and that's why I pointed out that those aren't many. I don't think the violence you'd have to use to establish an ethnostate is in any way acceptable. If the ethnostate already stands though, you may use certain tools to preserve it, which are not many and are usually "not enough".
My take wasn't that ethnostates are good, but that they are not inherently bad either, it's just the tools usually used to establish and preserve them that we must condemn.
Dunno about China but surely AKs being the small arms of choice for many countries, rebles, freedom fighters, terrorists and partisans of every flavour must put Kalashnikov Concern pretty high up there.
Did you want me to say Norinco? They only have a license to make AKs but I don't think that should count or it gets real hard to calculate what arms company did what.
I mean it's a pretty academic question. Do the merchants of war drive global conflict, or are they necessary for national defense? Or is the issue more nuanced?
Russia historically makes up about half the world's arms trade. Though that has declined in recent years due to Ukraine. So who is the chicken and who is the egg?
Fwiw, I tend to agree that arms manufacturers do play a role in driving global conflict, but it's also clearly A responding to B and B responding to A.
This has also changed significantly since 2022 since Russia has effectively stopped exporting weapons. They used to be pretty close to the US in terms of total exports
How is this getting downvoted? Regardless what your opinion on the matter is, this is objectively true. Israeli forces and government have been pushing into Palestine more and more, forcibly removed Palestine people from their homes and settling people there.
So, Palestine literally would not exist in a few more years.
I would say it's valid to dislike this as an oversimplification. It's a super complex series of unintended and intended consequences, bad ideologies, and terrible behavior generally.
They say war is a failure of imagination, and it has been increasingly hard for either of the belligerents to imagine peace.
I think the only humane view we can take as bystanders is to support asylum seekers as much as possible and condemn war crimes no matter who does them. Most people are just caught up in the gears of history. Nobody deserves this.
It's downvoted because it's objectively false. Israel has been attacked since day on in attempt to remove it from the map. If they were to stop fighting they wouldn't exist. If it weren't for Palestine constantly fighting, there wouldn't even be a wall around Gaza.
You're right, simple and to the point messaging is for dummies. Sophisticated liberal mind requires propaganda that's full of sophistry and contradictions.
Hannah Arendt came from wealth and so unsurprisingly was anticommunist. Her work was financially supported and promoted by the CIA. This is a bourgeois liberal, anticommunist construct for the purposes of equivalating fascism and communism.
U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested in and promoted the “Democratic Left” and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell.
There is a quote by famous theorist of World Systems Theory Samir Amin on this term:
The concept of totalitarianism is itself a false concept, invented in the contemporary era for the purpose of confining social analysis and critique within the horizon of so-called liberal, democratic, and insurmountable (the “end of history”) capitalism.
stop being a shitlib and educate yourself about the meaning of words before using them. comrade davel gave you some wonderful resources and you are dismissing them.
Ok, if you really want to ignore my point about memes and how they reflect poorly on those who use them for political messaging, we can talk about words.
Stating that a word was inventing by a rich person doesn't make it invalid, stating that the CIA promoted an idea also doesn't make it invalid. Nevertheless, if totalitarian isn't a word we are allowed to use in you doubleplusgood circles, how about you give me a word that describes a country with a single party, ruling in perpetuity? I would say memes are useful for [insert your word here] propaganda
your question was stupid and essentially just buzzwords. rebuttals to absolutely everything you said can be found in comrade davels resources. also im not sure wether you want to reference orwell, considering that he was a snitch, a cop and a rapist (and his books are bad.)
Rebuttals to memes lacking context and being appeals to emotion? That's all I actually said. You folks haven't talked about anything except the impurity of the sources of my terminology.
how about you give me a word that describes a country with a single party, ruling in perpetuity?
You’re still trying to construct the thing we’re saying is nonsense. Typically attributed to Julius Nyerere: The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.
The US has has been ruled by the bourgeoisie since the 1776 bourgeois revolution. The wealthy, white, male land-owning, largely slave-owning Founding Fathers intentionally constructed a bourgeois democracy, which was never meant to represent us, and never has, despite eventually allowing women and non-whites (who aren’t disenfranchised by the carceral system) to vote. BBC: [Princeton] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
In socialist states, the “one party” is the party of the working class. The two major parties today in the US are parties of the capitalist class, as were the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, and Whig parties before them.
Excellent, the US is also one party. I don't disagree. Now have you noticed that things are actually getting worse there now that all discourse is in meme format?
pure idealism. what kind of brainworms do do you have in order to attribute the determination of material conditions in the us to fucking memes of all things instead of the decline of the empire, as well as the sharpening contradictions of capitalism? clown shit
I would say that political discourse has become shorter, more emotional, and less informed and complex, and this very visible in the use of memes rather than arguments in modern politics. As a theory heavy person I would have thought you would agree that this is contributing to worsening conditions all around.
Our theories are materialist ones, not idealist ones. We believe that ideas fundamentally arise from material conditions. Those ideas do affect the material in turn, dialectically, but the material conditions are still the prime mover. Dialectical materialism (and historical materialism) are fundamental to all Marxist theory.
We reject the popular liberal theory that, if one presents one’s case well enough in the “marketplace of ideas”, that those ideas will win the day. That doesn’t mean ideas shouldn’t be presented—because that’s clearly what I’m doing here—only that it’s not sufficient. The capitalist class spends billions each year pushing their propaganda and suppressing any that oppose it. They know very well what works. Just having a good idea and presenting it cogently won’t cut it.
Memes aren’t even a new thing. 18th century memes don’t look alien to us. And we’re not spending all of our time in the meme mines.
I would say that political discourse has become shorter, more emotional, and less informed and complex
I’m not sure how I’d go about trying to prove or disprove this. Online social media ain’t everything. I think most people are abysmally uninformed/disinformed and disengaged, but I don’t know how I’d measure these or compare them to the past. In 1993 Noam Chomsky wrote, ”the general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know.”
That is not why things are getting worse in the US. I could go on at great length on why things are getting worse, but I don’t think this is the time or place for that.
This post is actually a great example of how memes can be effective. The meme is the hook. The conversation that’s being had around the meme is the meat & potatoes (apologies for the mixed metaphor).
Going back to an earlier comment of yours:
Memes are short, contextless appeals to emotion and thus the perfect format for propaganda
By “context,” I think you mean something different from what I’m about to say, but memes are densely packed with context: our shared cultural context. They are effective at communicating so much out of seemingly so little by leveraging our shared context. The a-ha moment of perceiving the meme through recognition of the implicit context is the hook.
You're right that that is not at all what I mean by context. I mean the kind of context that can make what appears to be a simple question much more complex.
I would say this thread supports my position more than yours, in that the only engaging discussion happening here is a result of attacking memes as propaganda. The actual content of the meme （socialism and memes are both about sharing) has been almost entirely ignored, probably because it is so shallow and meaningless (as are all memes) that there really isn't much to say about it.
One has to have more brain worms than RFK Jr. to think that democracy is measured by the number of parties. What actually matters is whose interests the parties represent.
Lest anyone accuse Yog of voting for Trump, rest assured, their post history strongly implies they're not American and have zero understanding of American politics.
nobody made this argument except you, what was said was that Biden supporters are just like the people whom this flag represents, they're ok with an actual genocide being committed against other people as long they're comfortable
I'd be surprised if opponents of genocide would vote Republican instead, given how some GOP reps seem to be opposing even the half-measure of delaying arms shipments.
A two party state where you choose between "fucked up" and "less fucked up, but constantly ceding ground" just does a poor job of accurately representing the opinions of people favouring actual progress, so they're doing what they can to pull the Overton Window their way.
This is what perpetuates the insanity in US. When your choices are Hitler and 99% Hitler, then the vote is meaningless. A lot of people will just choose not to participate in this circus.
If you support Biden then you are supporting a genocide that US is currently involved in. Period. The fact that you can't even admit this just further underscores your utter lack of morality and intellectual honesty.
Ok, but if I don't support Biden, the other guy is going to continue doing the genocide. Maybe even at a worse pace. So what's the answer than? Voting on every other decision
Genocide sucks, but America dug this hole for generations. It's not all on Biden
Your actions are what matter, and if you're going to vote for the guy who is conducting a genocide then you are complicit. No amount of hand wringing will change that.
Not voting is also an action. And if your refusal to vote allows someone to take power that will not only continue the genocide, but also start more genocides, then you are complicit. No amount of hand wringing will change that.
Yeah, not voting for either genocidal scumbag is indeed an action. To frame what's happening in US as the fault of people who refuse to vote for either scumbag is the height of idiocy. No amount of liberal sophistry will change that.
It's the trolley problem with a single track: you can pull the lever and the trolley will run over 5 people before it stops, or you can not pull the lever and the trolley will run over 10 people.
If you're standing beside the lever with your arms crossed refusing to pull it, saying "the fault is on the person who tied the people to the track. Getting involved makes me complacent." Then yes, people are going to blame you because even if you didn't cause the problem there is something very easy you can do to make it less bad.
You can't save all 10, but you can save 5. So you do what you can, and then you also go after the guy who tied the people to the tracks.
Learn how resisting actual repressive regimes works instead of making a clown of yourself here. You're not saving anyone here. Biden is the one doing a genocide as we speak, not Trump. But I suppose racists like you don't even consider Palestinians to be humans, so you won't lose any sleep over that.
Nah, it's just people who use a trolley analogy to dismiss an actual genocide they're supporting who are racists. Clearly you place no value on the lives of Palestinians that the party you keep telling people to vote for is massacring. At least have the decency to own up to your beliefs openly little fash.
Change comes from outside the ballot box. Vote for Biden, sure, but join and support the ongoing protests forcing his hand currently. Historically, meaningful change has come from collective action.
If your choices are Hitler and 99% Hitler, you still do what you can to stop 100% Hitler. Less bad is less bad.
Nobody cares about your smug sense of superiority when 100% Hitler is in charge and you proudly announce "I did nothing to stop this, other than try to encourage other people to also do nothing to stop this."
Considering I specifically suggested doing something is better than doing nothing, I'm going to go ahead and guess that listening to what other people are saying isn't a strength of yours.
Doing something is what the students protesting the genocide are currently doing, not voting for the guy doing the genocide. The fact that you don't understand these basic things is truly phenomenal.
I understand that the people protesting are doing something. This is the first time you've actually advocated for an action.
People are fully capable of both protesting and voting to keep someone worse from doing worse things. The fact that you don't understand these basic things is truly phenomenal.
Protesting a genocide is real tangible action, voting for a guy committing the genocide is the opposite that action. Hope that helps clear things up for you since you seem to have trouble grasping this concept.
Stalin and Mao liberated hundreds of millions of people, provided them with food, healthcare, education, and jobs. Imagine comparing that to a senile manager of the empire doing a genocide. What is wrong with you?
Meh, you and I both know that we cannot have an honest discussion of Mao or Stalin's flaws on this instance, the same way we can have an honest discussion of Biden's.
Whatever is written in a book is right — such is still the mentality of culturally backward Chinese peasants. Strangely enough, within the Communist Party there are also people who always say in a discussion, "Show me where it's written in the book." When we say that a directive of a higher organ of leadership is correct, that is not just because it comes from "a higher organ of leadership" but because its contents conform with both the objective and subjective circumstances of the struggle and meet its requirements. It is quite wrong to take a formalistic attitude and blindly carry out directives without discussing and examining them in the light of actual conditions simply because they come from a higher organ. It is the mischief done by this formalism which explains why the line and tactics of the Party do not take deeper root among the masses. To carry out a directive of a higher organ blindly, and seemingly without any disagreement, is not really to carry it out but is the most artful way of opposing or sabotaging it.
The method of studying the social sciences exclusively from the book is likewise extremely dangerous and may even lead one onto the road of counter-revolution. Clear proof of this is provided by the fact that whole batches of Chinese Communists who confined themselves to books in their study of the social sciences have turned into counter-revolutionaries. When we say Marxism is correct, it is certainly not because Marx was a "prophet" but because his theory has been proved correct in our practice and in our struggle. We need Marxism in our struggle. In our acceptance of his theory no such formalisation of mystical notion as that of "prophecy" ever enters our minds. Many who have read Marxist books have become renegades from the revolution, whereas illiterate workers often grasp Marxism very well. Of course we should study Marxist books, but this study must be integrated with our country's actual conditions. We need books, but we must overcome book worship, which is divorced from the actual situation.
How can we overcome book worship? The only way is to investigate the actual situation.
Yes, which is and has been practiced in AES countries. Just because higher-stage Communism, ie a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society hasn't been reached globally yet doesn't mean we don't know if it will work or not.
Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn't that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?
It also keeps being built in third-world countries, usually blockade, sanctioned, or regime changed by Western countries so it's also hard to tell without those variables. Although so far it has a pretty good track record for equal levels of starting development.
Real everyone-eats-ice-cream-and-dances-all-day hasn't been tried either. Just because you describe a set of circumstances doesn't mean those circumstances can exist, and it especially doesn't mean they can be stable long term.
Scarcity is a fact of nature. You cannot rationally distribute scarce things without knowing people's preferences, so you either need to continuously solve the economic knowledge problem (which requires a huge state apparatus, which will be taken over by a dictator), or a means of exchanging goods between people to better suit their preferences (at which point you have invented capitalism).
I know, also I didn't say I'm a communist fan, all I'm saying is that they rebranded totalitarian form of governments under communism so we don't actually know if Marx communism works or it's a flop
The Western concept of totalitarianism was constructed by Hannah Arendt, who came from a wealthy family and so unsurprisingly was anticommunist. Her work was financially supported and promoted by the CIA. It’s a bourgeois liberal, intentionally anticommunist construct that lumps fascism and communism in the same bucket.
U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested in and promoted the “Democratic Left” and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell.
I love how everyone is trying make up some ‘logical system’ or magical thinking about the completely arbitrary and random nature of the problem.
It’s not like there’s a big hairy USB god in the clouds who is going listen to all your jibber-jabber or that there’s some hidden alchemical formula that will turn the wrongly oriented USB connection into the golden correct orientation everytime.
It’s all bullshit. I don’t care if you are offended. It’s not the Bronze Age anymore. Just grow up and look at your damn USB connector, and then the socket.
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