Chronicles of SpaceDogs

Class started with my professor asking if any of us watched the debate between Harris and Trump, or at least saw parts of it. He made fun of the whole “immigrants are eating your pets” thing Trump did and then talked about Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala, which led into Elon Musk’s tweet about giving her a child. Then the lecture actually began.

We talked more about what history does: it is supposed to denaturalize the present—things don’t have to be a certain way. History is supposed to provide a collective identity to people and provide a moral check with regard to leaders. As in force leaders to think about posterity. History teaches manny skills such as critical thinking, research, writing, and communication. It can also train empathy and the want to document everything. We looked back at our previous lecture going over the species of history and he wanted to bring up the differences between National and International History as stories that inform collective identity: “are we Canadians or members of the same species?”

Next was just an overview as to what Historiography is, which I guess I will repeat here for the sake of filling this post out a bit more: it is a critical assessment as to how historians try to construct the past; it deals with the methods historians use to gather, analyze, and communicate the data; and it is the history of history, the methods used by past historians and how that has evolved over time.

Then we talked about events in history (old and recent) with differing perspectives between historians, many examples were given but I will list the relevant ones:

The Cold War — Americans/the West have a very different view to it compared to the Soviets.

The Space Race — which is related to the Cold War but more about who won.

Soviet Gulags — my professor gave this one and talked about how American historians compared the gulags to Auschwitz’s while Soviets claimed the gulags were non-brutal rehabilitation centres for people who lost their way. After the archives were open to westerners it was revealed that the Soviets “romanticized” the gulags but they were also not nearly as bad as westerners claimed. I honestly don’t really trust his perspective on the gulags, because even though he seems to be focused on imperialism and incarceration (not normal prisons, but concentration camps) heed doesn’t know any Easter European language to read the archives, I feel like he gets most of his information from English speaking historians. I also don’t know a Eastern European language (although its on my list to learn) but I do try to get my information from people who actually lived in the USSR or know the language/culture. Whatever.

The controversy over North Korean athletes — the difference between people claiming that athletes are killed in the DPRK while dissidents claim they are well regarded back home. My professor chimed in that he would like to learn more about that and while it wouldn’t change his mind on the DPRK being a totalitarian dictatorship, it’s probably not killing off its athletes.

Two readings were assigned for this class, one was by Kim Wagner about the Indian Uprising of 1857, and the other was by Kühne (forgot the first name) about Colonialism and the Holocaust. The Wagner paper talked about various perspectives over the events of 1857 and the disparity between them, was it a mutiny or a war of independence. Wagner even promotes his own book in the paper which is weird but kind of hilarious. The Kühne paper talked about the various arguments lining European colonialism to the Holocaust, I don’t really remember what he said but I got the vibe that he didn’t approve of the idea of colonialism being a major drive for the actions during the Holocaust. I don’t know if Kühne has a chip on his shoulder but I would have to read it again to come to a proper conclusion. Or at least I’ll ask my professor about it.

Why did we read those articles? So we become more familiar with the study of Historiography and how it’s done.

That was school, and I got a hair cut too, so thats cool. When I got home I was hoping to do some textbook reading (my Early Europe class assigns so many pages…) but my back was hurting so bad (I had to stand the whole bus ride home with a heavy backpack) and there was so much mail for me to go through. One of the letters was actually from my school and it was interesting, I might post about it once I figure out more details.

Day 5 was fairly boring it’s nothing of note, this day was my Europe classes and we haven’t reached anything super interesting. For early Europe we talked a lot about royal stuff and it was incredibly confusing since every king has the same name and it’s all so weird. There is also a lot of reading assigned for that class which makes it a bit annoying but the textbook is probably easier to follow than the lectures, whatever.

Since there’s so many hours of free time before my modern Europe class I hand out in the library to read assignments for my historiography class. The library has two sections, the quiet area and the normal area, the quiet area is obviously for SILENCE. You go there to study and read or whatever quietly, while the normal area is whee you can talk and do other things. So tell me why I settle in the quiet area and three guys sit across from me YAPPING! Oh my god what a nuisance! Why are you all over on this side of the library being annoying while everyone is not talking, when you could be in the loud part not bothering anyone? This really sucked and came across as inconsiderate but maybe they just lack social awareness? Then again, they did say themselves that this was the quiet area when helping one of their buds navigate around. I was not thrilled at all. I don’t like wearing both earbuds at thee same time, I like to have only one so I can hear what’s around me, especially out in public, but I needed both of them to try and tune out these guys. The library does have closed off “study rooms” that you can book ahead of time, I might utilize this for next time since I hate not getting my favourite spot and be around loud mouths.

I probably sound like a whiny asshole so I’ll stop and move on to my modern Europe class, which thankfully doesn’t require textbook readings, although I will have to read The Communist Manifest (which I will be writing my paper on), All Quiet on the Western Front, and Survival in Auschwitz. The amount of books I had to BUY this semester infuriates me… I needed specific editions and I was only able to get ONE book out of the list for free. What a bummer. Anyway, my modern Europe class was fine but nothing to write here about. We learned about important Philosophes during the enlightenment and whose work inspired the inferential stages of the French Revolution: Diderot, Voltaire, and Rousseau. All I’ll really say is that it was nice of Voltaire to help the Calas family clear Jean’s name, and Rousseau was kind of a paranoid weirdo (but so am I, for different reasons). Nothing much else happened so I’ll end the post here. Although when I looked back at my syllabus for the Russian Revolution week and apparently it’s online? So maybe there wont be a physical lecture… oh well.

Note: sorry this post was late, I got bogged down by exhaustion and stuff at home.

Day 4 was Historiography, soon you should sense a pattern as to what classes happen on what days so I probably wont have to specify as often.

My professor started the class by talking about the presentations that we will have to do. While we have to read the whole book, our main goal isn’t to analyze the events talked about but more so the methodology the author used when writing the book. The presentation is supposed to be around 5-10 minutes so we have to be concise with what we show the class. In the end I chose Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States for obvious reasons. I will also be working alone, mostly due to my need to practice lecturing since professors tend to do so solo. You could call me out as using that as an excuse for my social anxiety but I feel like it’s a bit of both. I don’t know how to approach a partner for this project and I need practice with being on my own, I could also realistically just rely on my partner doing most of the talking.

Before I get into the lecture material I will just say that this part will probably not interest any of you as it does not talk about Marxism. If you want to read something interesting I suggest going near the end to read about my meeting with my professor as we talked about quite a bit and it might mean more to you all, both for getting to know me more and what my school life is like outside of lectures.

With that out of the way let’s get into the lecture material. After talking a bit about how the presentations should go he then asked us a question related to the reading: why are we forced to take this class? And while the students gave various answers the main idea was students who take a historiography class need to learn how to be historians, thats also why these classes are required for history majors, although other majors can take it as well. Next we talked about the different “species” of History, the three we talked about were political, social, and cultural history although there are many more. With political history students gave examples as to what that entails: party political statements, minutes of diplomatic meetings, government documents, military, etc.; for social history students tried to distinguish it from the political by saying it was studying people without politics which was a bit confusing to me in some regard because politics effects the lives of people even if we don’t know it. Economics, diaries/journals, census/police records, and oral history also fit into Social. Cultural history has o do with religion, traditions, art, materials (tools, clothing, etc.) differences in standards, pop culture, and while it wasn’t said by anyone I wrote down language, should I have said it? Sure, but I was too nervous.

After that we looked at what makes History distinct to other disciplines. There was comparison to other disciplines, like philosophy, classics, literature, social sciences, and hard sciences. The main ideas shared were that historians deal with real people, they focus on specifics vs the philosopher on the general/universal, they look at how the “truth” has changed over time, different questions are asked, and history is diachronic. Historians also don’t use the scientific method, but use empirical research. That essentially ends the lecture, this class is only 50 minutes long, vs my European classes that are both over an hour.

After class I went straight to his office to discuss the presentation, paper, and other things that I needed to set straight before I could comfortably move forward with this class. Not that I was going o drop out but more so that I could continue going to lectures and doing the assignments without a feeling of dread. First thing was telling him about wanting to do the Howard Zinn book for my presentation and that I’d like to do it on my own. I already detailed that in the first paragraph so I will skip it. I then talked about the book chapter we had to read for this class and that it got me thinking about dialectical historical materialism and how maybe that could be a form of analysis that fit well. He talked a bit about how Marx is a lot more complex than the stereotype of him (which was nice to hear) and that he makes his analysis based on economics as the main issue, class analysis and all that. He mentioned that it was mainly based in the 19th century. I pushed back, not in a rude way, just in a curious manner, that there are recent people that have used dialectical historical materialism like Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Sankara, and others. He agreed with me and talked about how many Marxist historians do turn their focus on to Africa as materialism has been very prominent there. I was a bit worried at this point, because my tone and questions may have come off weird, so I made sure to say that I was only asking these questions out of curiosity and understanding rather than me just being a dick, no matter how my tone sounds. He told me he understood and gathered that, so I was worried for nothing.

Next I asked him about the critic he called an asshole, he said this on day 3 if you’re confused. He laughed and specified that he was joking, which I knew, but he said that because it was a negative review that was unfair in its assessment as it focused very heavily on elements of his book that he only mentioned briefly, elements that were not the main theme of the book. I will not name the critic as it would out me, but my professor said that Mr. Critic was angry with him because while my professor referenced the Soviet Gulags, according to Mr. Critic this referencing was not good enough and my professor should’ve been a lot harder on the USSR which was a baffling statement to me because, while I have not read the book, my professor is not friendly to the Soviets (he is soft on Trotsky). I asked him to remind me of the name of the critic and where I could read the review, I clarified that I only wanted to read it due to curiosity and not because I will agree with it and become an enemy. He laughed and said he was sure that him and I would agree on quite a lot, while the critic would not. When it came to the presentation I asked if I could briefly outline the background of the author to add a bit of context to how they might analyze certain situations, and he said yes, as long as I don’t use it as filler since apparently some students will do that. I assured him I would not and in a PoliSci class I gave a brief background on John Mearsheimer, so I had a bit of experience. So far this meeting was going fine, and since I didn’t need to be home right away I decided to discuss more with him.

If you remember from day 3, you’ll recall my anxiety surrounding my previous class back during winter term with this professor and how stressed I’ve been. My opening was talking about how he called me reticent, he clarified that I was reticent in my unwillingness to speak in class. I told him I wasn’t offended by it because at the time I didn’t even know what it meant and that when I looked it up it was incredibly accurate, we both shared a chuckle at that. I then explained that I wasn’t always reticent, while yes I am shy in the beginning, once I get comfortable I do open up quite a bit but recent circumstances forced me to be that way. Either I will get yelled at, not at school but at home, or I get an email. I told him I knew he was trying to be helpful with said email and that he already apologized which is fine but it still bothered me and stressed me out enough that the paper I wrote about the Donbas turned out really bad. I did sense he was about to speak but I really needed to finish what I was saying before anything else, so I just signalled that I needed to keep going and did just that (I did try to be polite about it). I told him that the email caused me to question a lot and made me scared to write in a specific way, so I ended up screwing myself over by handing in a paper that was not up to my standards. I would’ve used many other sources, like Donbas newspapers that would require translations, but I rushed my paper and was too paranoid to write what I know would’ve made for a compelling paper. I just didn’t want him to take what I wrote in that paper and think less of me because of it since other papers I have written for other classes have done quite well. He told me that there were good elements of my paper and problematic ones, I guess he gave me some comments on it but I said I didn’t look at them because whatever he could’ve said, I’ve said much much worse about myself and I just don’t have it in me to check those things. He seemed a bit concerned about that but continued on that he could sense that I had a political axe to grind while writing and that statement freaked me out, he may have sensed this because he said that many historians and authors have their own political axes. I didn’t want to show my axe in the paper, of course I have one, but I guess my fear in revealing my axe made it inevitable that it would show, which sucks. He also said that the only reason why he talked to that guy (with regard to the email) was because I had raised concerns about a subject he is not an expert in (Ukraine), so he went to one without revealing my identity, he only did it for guidance purposes and not to alienate me. He remembered that I had expressed my fear of being arrested and that I shouldn’t have these worries as university is a place for growth and learning and for multiple opinions to be shared and challenged. I replied that I was worried about my standing at the university because even though that may be true on paper, it isn’t in reality, I did not want to provoke anyone and that fear caused my paper to be subpar at best.

I confided that I wanted to rewrite that paper but much better one day and maybe I’d even consider retaking the Genocide class if I have the space in my schedule, because even though I passed and got the credits, I know I can do better. And he believes me. I don’t want him to think less of me and he reassured me that he teaches hundreds of students and I am in the higher cut of them, which did make me feel better. Although, I did say that I was going to prove it anyway, because he can say that but I need to materially show it as well with a good grade for this class. During this whole discussion I, unfortunately, was crying. Not openly sobbing like last time but the tears did fall. Even writing this part of the post is making me tear up, which is so stupid.

Talking about writing a good paper for this course naturally led into more questions about it, like could I use a work by a non-historian if the methods fit what is required. The paper has to be a peer reviewed monograph, so primary sources must be used by the authors and that my idea of non-historians could work but he would need to watch books first before I could proceed. As examples he brought out a few books from his shelf, two of them about the Soviet Gulags and how each could be used in a paper because their themes are the same but are apparently analyzed differently (I apologize but I don’t remember which two he showed me). Another book he brought out was one by Orlando Figes called A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924, which is a book that uses mostly secondary sources so it would not be good for the paper. He then said that Figes actually got into some recent controversy so maybe there are things to avoid there. I wrote down his name in my notes because of that comment and when my professor sat down he specified that the controversy was that Figes was writing his own amazon reviews and we both expressed how embarrassing that was. He then made a brief comment that Orlando Figes is not hard on Marxism, and in a lighthearted tone I said I didn’t know why that would matter to me, and he replied that he’s just making comments. He then laughed because, in his words, we keep doing this dance around politics, which is true and I laughed too. The meeting essentially ended there and I went home with a renewed sense of relief. I am not stressed about his feelings towards me anymore since we got all of that out of the way and I feel a bit more confident in writing what I want without fear of being penalized. One thing I still worry about is the presentation, but that’s mainly due to public speaking.

Day 3 was my Historiography class, so the class with the same professor who taught my genocide class. I’pm just repeating this so it adds context. Anyway, class began with a small quiz, I guess every class will start with these to both get attendance for class and also to test our reading comprehension to make sure we are doing the readings. It was quite literally two questions: what our name is and something that happened in the readings. This whole class was just related to what we had to read beforehand: a section from Stolen Focus: Why you Can’t Pay Attention and How to talk About Books you Haven’t Read. He assigned these so we are made aware of how to focus as we, as historians, need to do so to do our job well. On of the readings talked about focus and how people aren’t actually mentally equipped to handle “multitasking” and how when our brain turns its attention to another task it actually has to almost reorient itself for the new task. Even if it’s brief. This attention issue was mainly centred on technology, it was quite interesting. The second reading was about how to know about books even i y haven’t read them before; since we cannot read every book that exists we need the ability to locate a book within a larger category to talk about it (an example used in the book was how the author has never read Ulysses but can talk about it because he’s read the Odyssey). It was also about reading books selectively, instead of reading the whole text you can read the table of contents, the abstract, keywords, introduction, book reviews, etc. Funnily enough when my Professor was telling us about book reviews he brought up the reviews oof his own book and while most of them were positive I guess one of them was pretty bad because my Professor straight up called the reviewer and asshole. Anyway, we have to learn how to be a cultivated person.

Sorry if class was fairly uninteresting, in a few weeks Marxism will be discussed so that’ll make for a more engaging post. My discussion during office hours with this Professor might hold your attention. We mostly discussed the assignments for this class and personal issues (no life details of course). For this class here is a paper and a presentation. The paper can be on any topic, so a person or historical event are all good, the only thing is that it has to do with historiographical methods. I have to write about two books that cover the same topic but go about it in different ways, when he told me this my immediate thought was Timothy Snyder vs Grover Furr, I did not tell him this but I did ask if an academic taking down another’s work would be okay for this assignment and he said yes but we will have discuss it in depth. I don’t know if my paper will be on Snyder vs Furr but it was a thought I had. Maybe using Domenico Losurdo’s book on Stalin vs someone else’s? Those are the two ideas I have but they are not set in stone, this paper is the last assignment and is due in December. I just like to get ahead of the game.

Next I asked about the presentation because I was going to have a BIG problem with it. This presentation is supposed to be a group project, which means I have to work with others. I am not good at doing that. I am quite shy in real life and have major social anxiety. If anyone remembers from semester three I had to do a seminar which gave me horrible anxiety, same thing is happening here. How the group thing works is that he will post the books that we have to read (only the segments provided, not the entire text) and people will just pick which one they want to present about, being grouped with others who chose the same. When I expressed how unhappy I was with this group situation he did allow me to choose to do one on my own if I really want to, semi-special treatment but other students can receive the same if need be. He said I could choose a work and he would allow me, and only me, to present on it. One of the books is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and I told him I was interested in that one, he said that it was a Marxist perspective and I would probably do well, or something along those lines I can’t really remember. I told him “who’s to say” as I am very uncomfortable bing explicit in my enthusiasm for Marxism because god forbid I get a lecture or penalized. I’m trying not to make my professor’s hate me but it’s hard to keep a sweet disposition when I am always on alert. Last time I was slightly open and “excitable” I got that terrible email and it really ruined my outlook on university, at least here in Canada. With that I actually did ask him if we were going to have issues as I was still on edge from the last time we had a class together, I really needed to know, and he said “I hope not,” so really it’s just a me thing. During our discussion he described me as reticent. I had never heard that word before but when I looked it up I fear it is incredibly accurate. I feel bad because when I talk to him (after the email incident) I am incredibly monotone and stiff (except for that one time I cried, embarrassing) which I don’t want to be like but its what happens. Even when I was doing breathing exercises before entering his office I still had my metaphorical hackles raised.

When I got home I just could not stop thinking about this presentation, and when I do my anxiety spikes and I even shed a few tears. This is so stupid. I think I will do it alone since professor’s usually run solo, but group or not I am so fucking stressed… I might have to talk to him some more about it, not to waive it from my grade but just to give me tips or something.

NOTE: I had to publish this post today because I didn’t have time to finish writing it yesterday.

Welcome to day 2 of semester 5. Today I had two classes, “but wait!” I hear you cry, “didn’t you say you had three classes?” Yes, I did, but considering the Political Science class I chose was done so when PoliSci was originally my major, I decided to drop it since I actually don’t need it for a minor. Plus it gives me more time to study and focus on my history courses as they will all be research, reading, and writing heavy, I need all the time I can realistically give myself. So now I only have to worry about three classes: Historiography, Early Europe, and Modern Europe. I know my studies seem very focused on Europe, and honestly they are, and that is because I am interested in the USSR and Portugal (where my family is from). Do I expect to get the best education on the Soviet Union at this Canadian university? Hell no, but it’s worth a shot, and if I have to debunk anything in my papers then so be it, as long as my sources are good I should be fine; also, a class in pre-modern history and one in modern history are required for the degree so why not take the ones related to each other? Next semester I have a class focused on East Asia so I will be leaving the Eurosphere soon, don’t worry. I am interested in all socialist counturies, in every continent, but available classes do not venture very far so I’ll take what I can get, if that makes sense. you’ll be happy to know that whenever I can I do mention socialist states outside of Europe in my papers as much as I can when relevant.

With all that out of the way let’s move on to how day 2 went. As you can imagine, it was all just introductions and syllabus stuff. I start my day with Early Europe and this class will focus Europe from 1450 to 1789, as my professor (and I am assuming the school as well) consider the French Revolution as the start of the modern age in Europe. We will begin with the Renaissance and continue from there, with the bulk of our study being in the 16th and 17th century. So we will be learning about the foundational period of time for modern Europe to emerge. We then moved on to the dreaded icebreakers… the professor introduced herself first with a few fun facts, I wont go into most of them but one thing is she specializes in 17th century France and Louis the 14th. I was the last person to go and when she got to me I just said “my name is Adrik, and thats it.” Thankfully that was enough as I was honestly expecting her to push for more as everyone else essentially gave their life stories. (Fun fact! My name is not Adrik, I literally just used a random name generator for an alias since I was having a hard time picking one)

I was honestly surprised that we didn’t get into the course content as class time is an hour and a half, but we ended early since it was our first day (for this course). So after Early Europe I headed to the bookstore to pick up a required workbook (can’t believe I had to spend money on this…) and headed to the library. Since I am not taking that PoliSci class this term I have THREE HOURS between classes which means I can eat lunch, study, and write the first half of these posts. So I have time to do whatever I need to. Before we get into my next class I’m just going to complain for a second: students have a special website where all our courses are listed with the content we need, this includes the syllabus, lecture slides, readings, etc. basically anything the professor chooses to give us for the class. So while one professor may provide slides, another might not. But what is always given is the syllabus, but for some reason every time I looked at my Modern Europe course the syllabus is not there! Which was very frustrating as I like to have an idea of what reading materials we will need so I can download them (I have purchased very few books unless I think they will be worth it for the long term, like Plato and Aristotle). Girl, give me my syllabus! Anyway…

I got the syllabus half an hour before class. Anyway, this professor also specializes in France, more specifically the enlightenment and revolution. So because of this I’m a little worried that France will be at the forefront of both my Europe classes… It’s not that I don’t want to learn about France, its just that other countries exist and have done important things. But it’s only been one day so there’s still time, I also need to recheck the syllabus schedule. Anyway there are three books required for this class, none of them are textbooks, she actually gave us a textbook if we want to use it but it isn’t required, I will personally use it (there’s one online through our library, so no money spent) just for further information in case I accidentally miss anything during a lecture. The three books we need are The Communist Manifesto, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Survival in Auschwitz. We have to choose one of these books to write our essay on, obviously I will be choosing the manifesto. On the syllabus one of our lecture weeks will be about the Russian revolution “Leninist Communism to Stalinist Totalitarianism.” So that’s something. This first class had no icebreakers, probably because there were too many students, and after the syllabus we just moved into lectures. We just learned about the enlightenment period in France so we have context for the revolution. Nothing of note was said so I’ll just end the post here.

Welcome back to the chronicles of SpaceDogs! Semester 5 has begun and I feel like it’s going to be a doozy of a semester. Actually, these last few semesters will most likely be hectic as I am hoping to finish my undergrad by the end of of next year (2025), so I can do my masters in 2026 and swiftly move on to my PhD. Yes, I have my near future somewhat planned out.

I am taking four courses this semester: 3 History and 1 Political Science. I only had one class today, while the other three are tomorrow. Today I had my Research History class; tomorrow will be Early Europe, Modern Europe, and Canadian Policy. So let’s just move on to what happened today.

While I love the autumn weather and aesthetic (it’s my favourite season, I can wear my nice clothes without overheating although right now it still feels like summer) I absolutely despise fall term, why? Because it is the busiest one of the year, winter is also busy but not too bad, spring/summer are chill. So many damn people walking around, it’s like a stampede wherever you turn, it’s an absolute nightmare. I also go to a small university but it’s still packed. Anyway, class time. We, unfortunately, began class with icebreakers just like last time I had a class with this professor. For those who don’t know the professor for this Historiography class is the same professor who taught the Genocide class from semester 3.

The icebreakers went like this: give your name, why you like history (since this class is a history major requirement), and what you did over the summer. When he got to me he actually called me out by my name (I’m a bit surprised that he recognized me). He literally went “alright SpaceDogs, can I call on you directly?” And I couldn’t help rolling my eyes because I know he knows I absolutely hate icebreakers. So I gave my name, said ”I like history for a lot of stuff,” and ended it with “I did a few interesting things over the summer.” I was hoping he wouldn’t push me on it since he did with the student before me, if they weren’t specific enough he’d push for more info. When I finished he laughed and told the class that for our essays he will scrutinize the use of words like “stuff, interesting, and fascinating,” he then said he’d let me go this time and continued with the rest of the students. I was a little embarrassed by this because I do know how to use other words and I don’t think I’ve ever used “stuff, interesting, and fascinating” in my essays because I know I have to be specific. Whatever, we both know I hate icebreakers so I guess thats the context for that interaction. I was very very annoyed throughout the whole ordeal, I don’t want to be a dick to my professor, despite our differences (that he’s probably not even aware of, to be far), I just hate this.

While my reactions were a bit overblown I will give a little more context as to why i acted this way: before class I skimmed the syllabus and I saw that there is a group presentation we have to do, as in I have to partner up with a fellow student and do a presentation together. This fact, plus the icebreaker, made me die inside and I felt miserable. I was already on edge because I had another class with this professor, but now I have the impending doom of a group presentation weighing on my shoulders alongside a damn icebreaker. Wow. I am also aware that it is very silly and contradictory for me to be a Communist and an anxious introvert.

This whole class was just the icebreaker, his own introduction, and then going over the syllabus. This class is less about “cool stories” and more how history became a profession and the shift in how history is studied/written. It’s a class about Historiography and, again, is required for the major. My professor goes on to say that this is a “removed of a class” and it is quite difficult because of how focused it is on analysis. This course is also a rite of passage for history majors.

Theres nothing else much to say as this class was just basic first day stuff. While it is going to be mostly analysis, there are historical events that will be covered. From what is on the syllabus we will cover different forms of history and how it evolved, for example we will learn about the Annales and Mentalités, emergence of social history (will cover Marxism), cultural history, gender and sexuality, etc. This is also the first class that requires a school exclusive workbook which means I have to actually buy something for class rather than finding them online. When I went to the bookstore to go and buy said workbook, there was a giant line outside, so I just needed up buying it online and will pick it up in store hence available because my ass was not going to stand in line for that long, I just wanted to go home.

That was my first day, nothing super noteworthy so I apologize to those who read this hoping it was going to be interesting but really it was just me whining. I honestly don’t know what to expect from this class, it’s probably going to be my most anxiety inducing one considering I am being forced to do a presentation with another human being. I already struggle with this in general but to have to interact with another person, I don’t know… it makes me scared as hell. I might see him in office hours to talk about that project a bit more and maybe he can give me something. Then again, I may have made him hate me due to my attitude. Who knows.

Day 2 will most likely be more introductions and syllabus reading but it should be longer and maybe more interesting considering it will be three courses in a day rather than one.

Note to self: pick a better alias than “SpaceDogs” to use in these posts because it sounds awkward as hell in dialogue.

Semester 4 has been over for a month and yet I haven’t made a post here yet. Many probably are well aware that I am still around due to commenting on other posts but I felt it necessary to make a post here since semester 5 is approaching and I haven’t even talked about how 4 went.

Well, it was painful. Not really due to course content but because of how it was an accelerated semester, meaning 13 weeks of content is condensed down to only a few days. I took three courses: two history of politics classes and one history course. How it works is that the history of politics classes are split in two: part 1 and part 2, separate classes worth their own credits but part 1 must be taken to take part 2. So in May I took part 1 and once I was finished and received the credits I took part 2 in June. My history of Canada course spanned both May and June, so it was slightly longer than my politics classes.

Part 1 was all bout ancient philosophy, so Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, and Socrates. We read The Republic, Aristotle’s Politics, and The City of God (not the whole book, just a few relevant pages). We then had to write a paper dedicated to one chapter/book of The Republic. This class was fine and nothing to write home about, my professor was fantastic. He was not what i was expecting, he made these ancient philosophers easy to understand and spoke in a very engaging way. I was worried this would be a very dry and difficult class but it really wasn’t content-wise. Unfortunately it was difficult due to the time constraints placed on us. Having to learn this much content in such a short amount of time was a pain in the ass so I didn’t do as well in these classes as I’d like. I didn’t do terrible but I would’ve liked to do better. Hopefully next time I take accelerated semesters I will be better prepared due to this experience.

Part 2 focused on more modern political philosophers: Machiavelli (The Prince), Hobbes (Leviathan), Locke (Second Treatise of Government), Rousseau (A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and Of the Social Contract), Marx and Engels (Manifesto of the Communist Party), Mill (On Liberty), and Rawls (A Theory of Justice). I was psyched but also worried that we were going to cover Marx and Engels but I was pleasantly surprised. I was struggling a bit with the content in the beginning as Hobbes talks in a way that is difficult for me to understand and I was unsure of what thee hell I was doin in the class, he helped me through it and at some point I mentioned that I was very interested in Marx and Engels and my professor just straight up said that I could write my paper on Marx even though the topics listed on the syllabus were about Rousseau. He really pushed the idea of pursuing what you’re passionate about which is great for me as I believe it helps keep students engaged, at least it does for me. I don’t really like having to write papers on topics I am totally uninterested in, but I’ll do it if I have to, but since he gave me he go ahead I was super happy. Not only that but he was enthusiastic about me making arguments on the midterm and final from a Marxist perspective. For the midterm and finals he would give us statements from the philosophers and we would have to argue for or against it. Basically the question would be like “Rousseau said this… do you agree or disagree,” and the format of the exam was to first say whether we agree or not, then write in detail what the philosopher was arguing (displaying that we have knowledge on what they are saying), and then the last section is our argument.

My only issue I had with this class, besides the lack of time, was some comments made here and there about Stalin, Lenin, and the USSR. It was the typical “totalitarianism” thing plus a comment made about how Stalin really loved The Prince and how apparently that is something to think about. I guess some people call The Prince the most evil book because so many tyrants loved it. I don’t know what to do with this knowledge but maybe you have something to say about it, I don’t know.

My history class was standard, were learned about Canada from 1867 to the 90s. I was pleasantly surprised about this class with regard to communism and the USSR as both the textbook and professor did not talk shit even during the Cold War era. When it mentioned the paranoia the Soviet Union was going through it was stated as being rightful. When talking about the red scare it didn’t shy way from saying the Canadian government was friendlier to the fascists as they hated communists more, although I wish the course talked about how the Prime Minister during WWII was chill with Hitler and how Canada sent Jewish refugees to their deaths. There was quite a bit missing that should’ve been talked about. I know why you’re thinking, “well just write about it for the paper you were assigned,” and I definitely would have if the paper was a topic we could choose but UNFORTUNATELY the paper had to be about solving an unsolved murder: William Robinson. There is a whole site dedicated to this murder, and my god, was it a pain in the ass to write this paper. Theres the fact that i did NOT want to write a true crime paper, but also by the end of the paper I was left with more question than answers. I would’ve had a better grade if the paper was on a different topic, but c’est la vie.

Again, I didn’t do terrible (I got higher than B minuses in all three), but I just didn’t do as well as I’d like. This next semester should be better, I am definitely stepping up my game since I am getting into the stretch of courses that future universities will be looking at (according to one professor masters and PhD programs tend to look a t your last ears rather than the early ones, so since the courses are getting more focused so am I, although I did do well in my earlier classes so its fine).

I am hoping that doing super well in the last stretch will get me into the schools I’d like within the time frame I want.

Anyway I hope this was a nice post to update everyone on whats going on and I look forward to semester 5 posting. I also wanted to get this post out of the way so I can start posting my questions and discussions, I figured it’d be best to do that after making this one.

Yesterday was my first day of semester 4 and I am taking 3 courses spanning May and June. Due to the nature of these Spring/Summer courses being severely expedited I cannot write my typical posts, I just wont have the time as condensing 13 weeks of content into only 13 days is a lot. Although I will briefly go over what I will be learning:

I have two political science classes and one history, Spring/Summer does not allow students to take a full course load (5 courses). The two political science courses I am taking are linked, as in you need one to take the other and you need both to get a degree. The first, the one I am taking right now, is History of Politics Part 1 which focuses on ancient/medieval polishers like Plato, Aristotle, and St. Augustine. I’ve been assigned to read Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Politics, and a chapter or two of City of God by St. Augustine.

Part 2 will be in June and will focus on modern political Philosophers such as Nietzsche, Kant, Hegel, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Machiavelli, and Mill (not all will be covered but this is a general list of what to expect). I don’t know if I should be happy or disappointed that Marx and Engels wont be taught, unless the professor does so anyway, I guess it varies on who is and isn’t covered. I dont have the syllabus for this class yet but when I do get it I will make an update post on the content if it’s interesting enough lol

My history class is about Canada post-1867 and actually spans both May and June, its way less condensed but there is weekly quizzes and a paper due in June. The paper is supposed to be about the unsolved murder of William Robinson and who I think did it. While my history class is much more manageable, my polisci classes on the other hand are only 2.5 weeks long which is insane to do and is the reason why I wont be able to write these posts for this semester, I just do not have the time or energy, I have to read a lot which is time consuming enough on it’s own but I have to be active as well.

Anyway, just thought I’d write this to let everyone know why I wont be posting here for a while.

Today is my last day of classes (then it just exams) and thus my final History class of the semester, that is, until May.

I haven’t had a history class in about a week as class time was reserved for consultations. Anyway, this class we had to read around four out of the following seven articles:

Secrenica 25 years later

Uyghurs: Settler Colonialism Meets the War on Terror

Genocide Fears in Darfur

The Persecution of Myanmar’s Rohingya

Russia’s Genocide Handbook

Both Israel and Palestinian supporters accuse the other side of genocide

Is what’s happening in Gaza a Genocide? Experts Weigh in

Funnily enough, the last two articles were changed from the original assignment. He did this because after 6 MONTHS of Israel’s assault on Gaza he figured it would be appropriate to change some of the articles. Here were the old ones:

A Genocide is Under way in Palestine

How the term ‘genocide’ is misused in the Israel-Hamas war

Okay so the lecture was basically us going over every article. We started with Srebrenica. What was said in class was that it was a mass killing against Bosnian muslims, specifically the men and boys, committed by Christian Serbians. It happened during the break up of Yugoslavia. This event led to international outrage resulting in NATO getting involved. No, it was not stated what NATO actually did. A student brought up a statement made in the article about how remembering past genocide will not prevent future ones. Thoughts and prayers mean nothing.

Next was Darfur. Not much was said except that there is ethnic prejudice against the Bantu speaking people and 2 million have been displaced. The article also talks about the Principle of Sovereignty. I guess it did get me thinking about when the provincials of sovereignty should be upheld and when it doesn’t matter. Where does it apply?

Rohingya was next and this one had almost no class time dedicated to it as barely anyone is class read the article about it. It was another genocide against a Muslim group and it has a colonial legacy. My professor made it an important note that we can’t blame modern/current crimes on previous colonial powers, which is this case was Britain. We can’t say that if Britain was never involved then this would have never happened in the first place. I don’t think thats what anyone in class as saying, I think they meant that Britain holds part of the blame. Weirdly defensive haha.

So about the Uyghurs… holy shit. So aa student said that there are muslims stuck in concentration/reeducation camps in China and he motive behind this was because of an “incident” involving a few Uyghur terrorists that resulted in China going overboard and over securing all Uyghurs rather than just the few radicals. He said this persecution includes sterilizing Uyghur people. The class, including the professor, talk about how China is doing settler colonialism in Xinjiang because they are displaying the Uyghur minority and replacing them with Han Chinese. The Uyghurs used to be a majority but aren’t anymore. While it hasn’t risen to physical genocide, it s definitely a cultural genocide as Uyghurs aren’t allowed to speak their own language, practice their religion, practice their culture, have beards, etc. My professor said that Uyghurs can’t even text their friends a passage from the Quran or they will get arrested due to the mass surveillance they are suffering under. Apparently Canada had a vote in parliament in whether to call what is happening in Xinjiang a genocide, the liberals hesitated to say yes while the Conservatives overwhelmingly said yes. China then got mad and brought Canada’s residential school problem to the UN. My professor said that the residential schools are very similar to the camps but in Canada’s case it has acknowledged and apologized for the atrocities and is trying to make up for it. Although they probably can’t truly ever make up for it. At least in Canada you can talk about the residential schools but the same cannot be said for China. Okay…

Ukraine time! Of course it’s a Timothy Snyder article… So the Ukrainian girl in my class was kind of heavily relied on during this discussion. She said that Russia is using this narrative of Ukraine and them being sister/brother nations, a single people. She also said that Russia is pushing the story of nationalists in Ukraine being emboldened by the west (the way she said it implied that Russia was lying) and that there are Ukraine separatists that justify its war; she calls all of that rhetoric and does not bring up the atrocities that happened in the Donbas. So thats super cool. My professor then said there is a cult of antiquity (an aspect of genocide we talked about a lot in this class) when it comes to Ukraine as was proven with the Tucker Carlson interview where Putin drones on and on about the past and erases Ukrainian identity. Also Ukraine is very agricultural so there’s that too. He called Putin a 19th century imperialist and that genocidal perpetrators always try to justify themselves by saying they are acting defensively. He then goes on to say that Canadian media is free so we can see what is truly happening in Ukraine (bullshit) but Russians have been propagandized for many years and don’t know anything. Well that sucks for me, I guess I cannot use Russia sources for my paper because they’re all little confused babies. Anyway, he tells us to read the Genocide Handbook Snyder talks about and that he himself read it on the bus, he says there are explicit genocidal language used in it against Ukrainians. I don’t know what handbook he is talking about. When I looked it up just more Snyder stuff came up.

Last was Palestine. This one was… a lot, to say the least. Not in terms of content but with the comments made. So what was said in class was that certain government outlets (not the head himself) in Israel have made calls for extermination of Palestinians and, for some reason, he brings up how the Russian media also makes statements of explicit intent (for genocide?). A student saiid the situation is complex as many are debating if it is or isn’t genocide, some say that not enough damage has been caused to constitute genocide (they’ve had 75 years, there been enough I think). Another student talks about the targeting of aid workers and media personnel, with Israel brushing it off as the “nature of war.” Comments were made (by Israel, not the students) that the Palestinians should have just fought against Hamas instead of electing them but a student said that in desperate times there are desperate measures, if the terrorist group is their only option then they will take it. My professor seems fairly connected to this issue (as he is with Ukraine, for some reason. Russophobia, maybe?) because he has Israeli friends and he personally believes Israel has a right to exist, as does Palestine. He also mentioned that he is very critical of Netanyahu as he empowered Hamas to use them as an excuse to escalate violence. He also said that a majority of Israelis are against Netanyahu and are protesting on mass. He then asks if there is a settler colonial aspect to this conflict: yes, obviously. Students talked about Palestinians being kicked from their homes and concentrated into the smallest spaces ever, real estate events being held to sell Palestinian land, and etc. My professor says this a bit of historical irony as the Jews of Europe were a people with no land and once they got it they did so much with the agriculture (unlike the Nazi view of Jewish people as cosmopolitans) and how they expanded.

But that is where the class ended. He thanked us for being a part of this course and he felt bad about how depressing the content was.

So what do you all think? I know I’m a bit sad and disappointed. I wanted more than what I got but I don’t think I should complain so much.

So why am I writing four days in one? Because two were very very boring short lectures, the third was literally just a movie, and the fourth was only seminars. Day 10 was a little interesting, though.

On day 10 my professor started the class by handing out country placards to everyone in attendance. He did this because he believes this exercise would help explain foreign policy. We were essentially made to play pretend-UN and I was given the role of Estonia. He defined foreign policy as how states behave in the international system. The goals of foreign policy is to ensure national security, economic policy, and diplomacy for political reasons and to establish ideological linkages. We only talked about three strategies in foreign policy: multilateral organization, economics, and military. There are three sources: individual, state, and systemic. Individual sources come from either leadership and idiosyncrasies; state sources come. Fromm economics and military; systemic sources come from geopolitics and the balance of power. If you’re confused, so am I. He then wanted us to put all of this into practice via role play.

He basically just went around asking everyone where their country is located, including neighbours, and then a question about either its economy, multilateral organizations they are a part of, and any military things they are involved in. I got nervous to be honest because I know net o nothing about Estonia’s economy, military wise I know they are “passionate” about the Ukraine/Russia war and the multilateral organizations it is a part of is the UN, EU, and NATO, but thats it. When he did get to me I was barely paying attention, and he had to call on “Estonia” a few times before I realized he was talking to me. My name is not Estonia so it didn’t register. He asked me where Estonia was located and I said was a Northeastern European country that borders Latvia and Russia. He seemed confused when I said “northeastern” but I defended myself by saying that it’s in the eastern part of Europe and quite high up so I think I’m correct about that. He took my word for it and asked his second question which was what multilateral organizations is Estonia a part of. Again, all I knew was the UN, EU, and NATO, but he also mentioned the Council of Europe and a student said the Nordic Council where Estonia is an observer or something. He moved on from me and I will say, most of the rest of the”countries” were pretty uneventful, expect for the girl who had Ukraine. She gave a little spiel about how it was a country that has had o fight for freedom for so long. A little bit of comments here and there but afterwards my professor asked the class this question about the war; “who do you think is right in the war, Russia (denazifying) or Ukraine (freedom)?” No one said anything but a guy who sits directly behind me laughed and said he doesn’t think anyone supports Russia here. Speak for yourself motherfucker. When the person representing Argentina was up next my professor said that Argentina is in a very bad economic state and is trying to make changes with a new leader. What does he mean by that? I guess Argentina wasn’t doing well before Milei so the people elected him hoping for a change and what they got was so much fucking worse. My professor also believes that Argentina not joining was a huge mistake, I agree. After this it was presentations and nothing really stood out so let’s move on to day 11.

So this day was about international law, but it was still very short. What makes this day worth reading about is my brief overview of one of the presentations as it peaked my interest. I don’t know why this lecture was so damn short as I figured international law was super important but I guess it might be too in-depth and requires its own dedicated course, or its a law school thing. Anyway, we started off with the definition of international law by Gerhard von Glahn: it is a set of principles, customs, and rules accepted as obligations. Is that the direct definition? Probably not but it’s what was said in class. Then we briefly went over the sources of international law: treaties, UN resolutions, and ICJ rulings (stare decisis precedent). When treaties are signed they must be honoured, something about “pact servanda.” But there is the doctrine of changed circumstances, “rebus sic stantibus,” which can override an initial treaty. Next we went over the challenges with international law: enforcement and jurisdiction. The only example given for enforcement was sanctions, thats pretty much it I guess. Do we really not have any other methods for enforcement besides sanctions? If so, thats kind of a bummer but maybe its for the best all things considered...

Several things were listed for jurisdiction: universal jurisdiction (crimes against humanity), nationality jurisdiction (nationality principle?), passive personality principle, and protective principle. None were really detailed but I guess they’re easy to look up. The UN was brought up during this section as it’s the best example to use when discussing it, with that he brought up the US proposing a ceasefire. We all know how this went as both Russia and China vetoed it due to the very vague language and how it was essentially a nothing resolution. My professor explained the proposal as the US going against its ally Israel, but we know thats not the case.

I do wonder if my professor ever actually reads the UN resolutions themselves rather than relying on sensationalized headlines. He seems to do the headline thing as whenever he talks about present matters and news its never with deeper context, just what some reporter said on TV or wrote online. I’m not dogging on journalists, it’s just that the more “mainstream” news sources always bend the truth and hide the very real and important context. Like when a few weeks ago my professor said that Putin threatened to use nukes, and when I brought it up here you all gave the full truth which was that he actually just reiterated reality for what it is: two nuclear powers going head to head will most likely result in nuclear fallout. And, honestly? Based on what we learned about nuclear war in class, “threats” like that happen all the time and are used as a deterrent, mutually assured destruction and all that. I just find it a little frustrating that my professors are supposed to be this beacon of knowledge but, Jesus Christ, they never go deep. Ever. They peddle the same bullshit as everyone else when they have the ability to actually learn more. They have access to sources the general public isn’t allowed to have and yet they don’t use that power. They have the “brain power” to know what the fuck they’re reading in those UN and other legal documents (the language is inaccessible to most people, legalese is hard) but they don’t do it! WHY??? It is so frustrating. It’s not just my political science professor, it’s my history one too, and I wonder if the entire departments do the same shit. They’ve been helpful, of course, giving me advice on sources and such, even my polisci professor encouraged me about teaching Marxism (he told me I could), but this as far as it will go. I guess I’m just disappointed in my lectures. You lot already know this so there’s no point dwelling on it any longer. Let’s move on to the seminars.

One of the seminars, a girl (her article: stigmatizing the bomb) emphasized how NATOs existence exacerbates the threat of nuclear war and the US itself as a problem. The guy, who sits behind me, asks her about Putin’s recent threats to almost try and minimize the US as a perpetrator. She did really well during her critique but struggled with answering him, and I honestly wanted to defend her and argue for her against both the professor and male student talking about Putin. Her main statement against the guy was that while Putin’s words are to be taken seriously and its possible to come true, she focused on the US as the main issue because of their position in the world, the US calls the shots. I wanted to say Putin actually said nukes were a possibility if NATO drops troops in Ukraine, he’s not going to use them without threat from NATO, if two nuclear powers go head to head nukes are most likely to be used. Saying Putin is just going to nuke Ukraine willynilly is very silly because that is not what he said and thats not what he will do, accusing him of such is very dishonest. The same guy asks another presenter (her article: the Culture of Fear in International Politics) if Russia is purposefully polarizing the Middle East against “us” (the west) and she said no. He laughed under his breath, seemingly unconvinced. He seems to see Russia as a big problem. How annoying.

Day 12 was movie day as my professor was out of town for the week. The movie that was played was Race to Oblivion made is 1982. I will be completely honest, I did not pay much attention to this movie. I just spent my time writing. I did tune in here and there, one thing that made me internally laugh was how the narrator was talking about the USSR being rightfully paranoid but made sure to walk it back by saying “I’m not defending the Soviets!” And I just thought it was hilarious.

Day 13 was the final day and nothing happened except seminars. Our final exams were released for us to take as well. Obviously I cannot discuss it but I can take my time with it, if that makes sense.

So that is my semester 3 political science class. I know the last four weeks were rushed but I know you can all understand why. I get swamped with assignments so I neglect posting these. Also the last two days were nothing so I’m sure none of you mind. My mind is now more focused on my history paper and how the hell I am going to write it.

A few days ago I made a post on Comradeship about my anxiety surrounding the upcoming meeting with my professor. This meeting was a graded consultation related to the research paper. Essentially, we had to make a research proposal and present it to him privately in his office, he would grade this proposal based on the topic, the grammar, and whether he believes we seem to have a decent grasp on said topic. This proposal had to be 250 words describing our topic (in the form of a research question) and we had to list two sources we would use for our paper (one primary and one secondary). He wasn’t going to grade us just on that, though. This consultation had a verbal component as well where he would ask questions and gauge for himself whether we spoke with enough confidence. This consultation was really just a way for him to judge our topic (is it related to the course or not) and see if we could handle it, or something like that.

I was incredibly nervous (rightfully so, in my opinion) due to the nature of my topic. I was, and still am, going to write about the “alleged” genocide in the Donbas. My actual question I wrote in my proposal was “I would like to write a research paper about the 2014-2022 period of conflict in Ukraine with regards to the Donbas region and whether the events that have taken place there constitute genocide coinciding with the UN’s definition codified in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The paper will also look into the role of leadership in Ukraine, Russia, and the Donbas region, the far-right, and xenophobia that may have exacerbated this conflict.” Of course, the proposal was, and had to be, more than just that but that’s the main point. I then said while the bulk of the paper would look into the 2014-2022 time period, sources post 2022 would also be used as “supplementary” material. the two sources I listed were Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism Edited by Boris Kagarlitsky, Radhika Desai and Alan Freeman, and the UN Document Security Council, 69th year: 7157th. I briefly explained what each source was about and that was pretty much my written proposal. It sounds pretty good on paper, I was incredibly neutral and tried my best to not sound accusatory. As You can see I didn’t even call the events in the Donbas “genocide” as my research is supposed to see whether it is or isn’t. I was prepared to go into this consultation talking about the UN definition, while it isn’t the be-all-end-all definition it would be a good one to use for the situation due to the UN being involved in the conflict. I was also going to stress to my professor that I knew what I was doing, and while I am aware of the sensitivity of the issue and the school’s stance on it, I needed him to trust me on this.

I tried to keep it cool but as I was walking to his office I could feel my heart rate skyrocket. I am not joking. I help my fingers to my neck pulse and it was beating incredibly fast. I can’t say the exact BPM (I wouldn’t know how to measure that) so just trust me when I say it was fast. I made sure to choose the last time slot for the day as I know, even though I am quite shy and anxious, I tend to talk a lot when it comes to certain topics (I am a storyteller at heart). Anyway, I entered the room and he greeted me, asking how I was but I didn’t really say anything back, my face and demeanour could fill in the blanks for him. He told me to have a seat and I did, handing him my proposal. It was folded and I apologized but thankfully I wont get docked marks for wrinkled/folded paper (I know some professors are weird about that kind of stuff). He unfolded the paper and began to read it silently, this just increased my anxiety more. While he was doing that I just opted for reading the book spines on his shelf, nothing too remarkable but there were two copies of E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class which caught my eye. I’ve never read those books but seeing something about the working class was interesting. As he was reading he began to type on his computer which made me even more nervous, did I do something wrong? Are my sources bad? I asked him if he was looking up the UN document as I know it’s a weird one to list. He said no and that he was actually looking up the Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism one. It’s a good source so I don’t know why I was freaking out, but then again I do know why. It’s a book that challenges the western narrative on Russia and that could realistically get me in trouble. He finished his reading and things were silent for a few seconds, I then asked if this was it for the consultation because I thought that there was a verbal component. He said that no, this wasn’t the whole consultation and that yes, there was a verbal component.

He then said, quite loudly “so you want to write a paper on the-“ and I, hopefully somewhat politely, cut him off going “wait, wait, wait! Please, just…” and gestured with my hand to lower his volume. He got the hint right away and didn’t seem offended (thank god) and proceeded to say his statement quieter. “So you want to write about the alleged genocide against ethnic Russians by Ukrainians in the Donbas.” And I am so sorry everyone, I really did try, but the second he said that the tears immediately welled in my eyes, my voice go watery and all I could muster was a pathetic and weepy “yes.” Right after that I began to full on cry right in front of him. He was stunned and flustered. I mean, who wouldn’t be? He’s probably never had to experience this situation much, most adults don’t cry in front of each other, especially not over something like this. I immediately apologized for sobbing but that really didn’t stop the tears and fear. I was honest with him, how could I not be? I told him how scared I was for choosing this topic because I know how he and the school feels about it, I didn’t want to get in trouble or expelled or arrested or deported. He was, again, just stunned and really tried to calm me down a little. He said that this wasn’t something to be scared about and that it’s a great topic to write. He told me that it’s true that our media has neglected to cover this issue and that it’s not a bad idea for me to dig into it. I tried to justify my fear by telling him that his email to the guy in our school, while I understand he probably had good intentions, really fucked me up. It made me even more fearful. He apologized for that and said that the only reason he went to that Ukraine “club” guy was because my professor is not an expert at all on that side of the world and wanted to talk to someone who (apparently) was. He reiterated that he did not give away my identity, but I replied that it doesn’t matter because now they know there is a “dissenting” voice. He sent that email because while Katchanovski’s thesis was compelling there were people who disagreed and believed he was over exaggerating elements of the Maidan “rebellion.” I should be careful when citing him, “because he’s fringe,” I said.

I told him that he has to understand where I am coming from with my fear, that I am rightfully scared, and he somewhat agreed. What he doesn’t understand is my fear of arrest or deportation, how would that ever happen? I did try to downplay my statement by saying that I was an extremist in terms of looking at the worst case scenario, but I went to those extremes because there’s a war going on and any dissenting voice could very well be seen as a threat, I could be labeled a Russian spy even though me and my family aren’t even from that side of the planet. I told him that there were other people who had similar “ideas” as me and they got into big trouble but nothing came of it because they were in positions of authority (Radhika Desai) while I was a mere student. He kind of laughed at that and said “I don’t have the authority to hurt you in that way. I am not a Ukrainian secret agent, which is exactly what a spy would say, but I can promise I am not in the KGB.” Which was kind of weird to say since the KGB doesn’t exist anymore (I think). He said the worst that could happen to me for writing this paper is that I get a B-, which is a much higher grade than I thought but he must somewhat believe in my writing abilities (I know it doesn’t translate here very well but I can assure you that my writing is decent). He promise me that no one else would read my paper and the only reason another would get their hands on it would be if some special forces broke in or something like that.

He did go on to say that he worries that my paper might parrot Kremlin propaganda as Putin has been using this situation to justify the “invasion.” He wants me to be careful that I don’t fall down any rabbit holes while doing my research, but then again based on the sources I have listed he doesn’t think I will. He then said there needs to be a big ass question mark at the end of my statement of “is what happened in the Donbas a genocide.” Is there an outcome where the answer to my question is “no?” I said maybe. He said “that good, and hey, maybe the answer isn’t no, and thats fine too but you need to be careful that you are not justifying anything, two wrongs don’t make a right.” I was kind of annoyed at this as it felt like a lecture and I truly know what I am doing, so I said just that: “I am well aware of all of that.” And he said thats good. After that he attempted to quell my fears again and reiterate that I would be fine, that writing this paper wouldn’t hurt me and that at the end of the day all I had to worry about was a bad grade. But he said there probably wont be an issue with that as my sources are good and so is my writing (based on how I wrote the proposal). He said that even if he doesn’t agree with my ideas/paper, that will not cloud his judgement of it, and hey, maybe I will change his mind a little if my evidence is good. If not change his mind then make him think a bit more. He told me that he will grade disagreeable papers well if they are written properly with god sources, and he will grade agreeable papers poorly if they are written badly with shoddy sourcing. That’s all there is to it. I wasn’t completely convinced or comforted (considering everything I’ve been through with this school I think I have a right to feel this way) but the tears did stop and I, embarrassingly, pointed to and asked for the tissues on his desk. He quickly brought them to me and apologized for not doing so sooner. After a bit more chatting and decompressing our consultation ended and I went home.

I am not entirely convinced by our talk but I guess, in the end, it doesn’t matter. I’ll write my paper as well as I can and he will grade with or without judgement. I am not writing this paper (or any of my papers) to change my professors’ minds, I don’t think I ever could based on what I can see of their behaviours, I am using these opportunities to go through an incredibly liberalized institution without compromising on my principles. I’ll answer the quiz questions the way they want me to (even if it’s historically incorrect) but papers? I can write about whatever I want as long as my sources are good. Because here’s the thing: I am not going to stay in Canada for forever, hopefully I’ll be able to go overseas for my PhD (I will do my masters in Canada, hopefully in a different province) and I want my work to reflect myself rather than my institution. I will hopefully move overseas too, so why would I write papers that appeal to an institution of a country I wont live in anymore? Does that make sense? Yes, writing my papers makes me incredibly anxious to the point of crying but at the end of the day even that isn’t going to stop me. I’ll go through my rightful panic attacks and then move on. I am a sensitive person, almost anything makes me cry, and if I let my tears stop me from doing something I wouldn’t get anything done.

Anyway, thats what happened. I hope this was semi-“enjoyable” to read and you can all understand where I am coming from.

Holodomor week has concluded in my history class and I figured I would write about everything that was said and has happened. This wont just be about the class material but other things said to us in and out of class. Everything that happens in this class seems interconnected to me, even emails about events being held at the school feel very much related (and this is self admitted by my professor). I highly suggest you stick around and read this whole post, because it’s not just the course materials that are a problem, but the institution and professor as a whole.

Day 2 of what I am calling “holodomor week” happened the same day I received that god awful email from my professor (he actually sent it after class so it felt almost targeted since I was not behaving as I usually do, maybe he noticed). While the first class of the week played out the Bolshevik revolution and Soviet stuff in a more generalized sense (here’s the post about it if your curious) this class dove “deep” into the famine itself. And by “deep” I mean it sarcastically because this lecture did not, in fact, wade into darker, more nuanced, waters.

He begins the class saying Stalin targeted ethnic minorities that he suspected to be traitors (pro-German and/or anti-Russian). He goes on to cite Timothy Snyder who said that the most persecuted European minority at the time were Soviet Poles. My professor then calls Stalin anti-polish and talks about the ethnic cleansing campaigns of the 1930s. He admits that there was a famine across the Soviet Union but it hit Ukraine especially hard. My professor asks if the holodomor was intentionally called that so it could sound more like holocaust, he directs this question at the one Ukrainian girl in class. She said that it was a coincidence. Fun Fact, he directs his questions at the Ukrainian girl a lot during this class, treating her like an absolute authority.

He talks about how there are still debates on whether the holodomor was a genocide or not. The west says yes, but Russia says no. He pokes fun at this, because obviously Russia would deny it as a genocide because they don’t want to be prosecuted. He then says that Putin is trying to erase Ukrainian identity as a whole.

A quote from Norman Naimark was shown:

The Ukrainian killer famine should be considered an act of genocide. There is enough evidence—if not overwhelming evidence-to indicate that Stalin and his lieutenants knew that the widespread famine in the USSR in 1932-33 hit Ukraine particularly hard, and that they were ready to see millions of Ukrainian peasants die as a result. They made no efforts to provide relief; they prevented the peasants from seeking food themselves in the cities or elsewhere in the USSR; and they refused to relax restrictions on grain deliveries until it was too late. Stalin's hostility to the Ukrainians and their attempts to maintain their form of "home rule" as well as his anger that Ukrainian peasants resisted collectiviation fueled the killer famine.

My professor then says that the first half of the quote was indisputable. He then shows a quote from Stephen Kotkin who says the famine was not intentional:

"There is no question of Stalin's responsibility for the famine" and "many deaths could have been prevented if not for the insufficient and counterproductive Soviet measures, but "there is no evidence for Stalin's intention to kill the Ukrainians deliberately... the Holodomor was a foreseeable byproduct of the collectivization campaign that Stalin forcibly imposed, but not an intentional murder."

My professor says that the famine was man-made and that the soviets knowingly put into place policies that would cause the famine. That is indisputable. Stalin knew the famine was starting and intentionally seized crops for the cities and to send overseas. He then played a video from this website for the class: http://sharethestory.ca/index.html

The specific video he showed was “Halyna’s story” for those curious. After the video ended I could hear people crying. A girl spoke up (she does that a lot in this class) that her grandmother is Estonian and had a very similar story, so the video is accurate. He then says that it’s been 80 years but the emotions are still so raw.

So why was this woman persecuted, he asks the class. Some of the answers given were because she and her family did not collectivize but also because of some unknown sin (i think this last comment was alluding to her possibly being persecuted because she’s Ukrainian); because Ukraine is very agricultural; kulaks and Ukrainian were conflated; and the last reason was Ukraine identified with feudalism and the Soviet Union wanted to get rid of feudalism.

Raphael Lemkin, the guy who coined the term genocide, says the holodomor was genocide (I am so disappointed in you, Lemkin, I thought you were cool). What a bummer. A girl spoke up saying she was, at first, not sure if the famine was an actual genocide but now she’s convinced it was because even though the Soviets said they wanted to end the church itself, they actually only wanted to replace the Ukrainian church with a Russian one, so like a form of imperialism I guess. My professor then said that Stalin only really tolerated the Russian Orthodox Church, not really supporting it. The Ukrainian girl said that the Soviet Union wanted a rootless people, to create a new man, the soviet man, a human that is loyal to the state and if culture gets in the way of that then the culture is to be liquidated. My professor jokes that maybe this was a genocide against everyone.

Under the UN genocide convention you cannot commit genocide against a class, that is because when the convention was being created the USSR vetoed class as a target. The girl with the Estonian grandma piped up again saying that she was researching the USSR and the UN and said that it was the one country that did the most vetos because had they not vetoed anything then they would have been implicated in many crimes.

He made a comment about the famine invigorating nationalism (i did wonder if this was directed at me). He then shows a quote from Stalin that proponents of the famine being a genocide use as proof:

”The main thing is now Ukraine. Matters in Ukraine are now extremely bad. Bad from the standpoint of the Party line. Kosior... Chubar…(and) Redens [Ukrainian Bolshevik leaders]…lack the energy to direct the struggle with the counterrevolution in such a big and unique republic as Ukraine. If we do not now correct the situation in Ukraine, we could lose Ukraine. Consider that Pulsudski [a Polish leader who wanted to create an independent Ukraine aligned with Poland]...is not daydreaming, and his agents in Ukraine are much stronger than Redens or Kosior imagine. Also consider that within the Ukrainian Communist Party (500,000 members, ha, ha) there are not a few (yes, not a few!) rotten elements that are conscious or unconscious Petliura [Ukrainian nationalist who fought for an independent Ukraine during Russian Civil War] adherents and in the final analysis agents of Pilsudski. If the situation gets any worse, these elements won't hesitate to open a front within (and outside) the Party, against the Party... Set yourself the task of turning Ukraine in the shortest possible time into a fortress of the USSR, into the most inalienable republic. Don't worry about money for this purpose.”

He brings up Stalin’s 1932 order against Ukraine and the NKVD blacklist. He said that the soviets had a stockpile to feed the Ukrainians but chose not to. He then mentioned Stalin’s secret decree called “Preventing the mass exodus of peasants who are starving.” What does this mean? I have no fucking clue. He also did not go into details about it.

Intent vs Outcome: students argued that the intent doesn’t matter as the outcome was the same, what happened in the Congo and this famine are similar. There was not enough food in the Nazi camps so the prisoners hoarded food and fought each other over it, there wasn’t enough food in Ukraine so people hid it from each other. I guess both are the same. He then conflated Israeli nationalism and Ukrainian nationalism, that what happened to the Jews fuels Israel and what happened with the famine fuels Ukraine. And I guess thats just a-okay.

Day 3, aka the final day. In my opinion this day was way more of a shit show even though the main topic wasn’t the holodomor, why? You’re about to find out, don’t worry. For this day we had to read a chapter from Mike Davis’ Late Victorian Holocausts. The Chapter we were assigned was “Victoria’s Ghosts” and it is all about the 1876-1878 Indian Famine.

He began our class by saying this week is all about famine and how it may intersect with genocide. So I am sure a lot of you are familiar with this famine, is coincides with the global El Niño that caused other famines too. 10 million Indians died from this famine. He said it was called the largest tragedy at the time. But was it a natural disaster or man-made?

There was a monsoon failure which led to a drought. Crop yields did decrease but there was still enough food to feed everyone, there was also lots of money too. But even so food was being shipped out not kept, food was going to everyone else except the hungry. He said something about failures in mechanism of supply. It happened because of policy failures, but there were also Indian “kulaks.” The policies in place were those to starve people. Why were the British exporting? Well, the small government let the market make the decisions, who ever can pay more gets the grain. So capitalism is the problem, glad we agree (he did not say that, thats all me baby). Theres also this thing called cash crops, where agriculture was a taken up by opium and grain for the global market rather than to feed those who are starving, you can’t eat opium. There was also deindustrialization of India, the British wanted to flood the market with cheaper English goods and Bengal industries got wiped out. The market economy replaced the moral economy, a Marxist economist came up with the term “moral economy,” he said their name but it was hard to make out. Revenue collection, taxes from India were not really being used properly, they went towards railroads, camps, etc. He then says that weather was more of a factor in this famine than in Ukraine but it was still man-made. Famine is a tool for genocide, for example many Holocaust victims died of famine as it was used by the Nazis to kill off those who were not sent to gas chambers. A girl brings up Ukraine again saying that before she was iffy if it was a genocide but now she’s convinced because the Soviets were actively repressing and replacing Ukrainian culture with Russians.

This part is incredibly weird and quite insulting: he goes on to say that Mike Davis is a Marxist and asks us to picture what he might look like, repeating that this man is a Marxist scholar. Then a photo of him is shown and everyone (except me) laughs. The girl with the Estonian grandma said he looks like someone’s peepaw. What the fuck is going on? Why would he do this? He literally didn’t do this with anyone else we’ve studied in class so why with Davis? We all know why… He then reads off a quote from Davis from I think the first pages of the book:

"In her somberly measured reflections, Reading the Holocaust, Inga Glendinnen ventures this opinion about the slaughter of innocents: 'If we grant that 'Holocaust', the total consumption of offerings by fire, is sinisterly appropriate for the murder of those millions who found their only graves in the air, it is equally appropriate for the victims of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden." Without using her capitalization (which implies too complete an equation between the Shoah and other carnages), it is the burden of this book to show that imperial policies towards starving subjects were often the moral equivalents of bombs dropped from 18000 feet. The contemporary photographs used in this book are thus intended as accusations not illustrations."

So basically, Mike Davis is using the word holocaust to make a connection between what happened to the victims of the (upper case) Holocaust to what happened in India in the late 18 hundreds. With this quote he is trying to be provocative (profs’ words, not mine), it is well written but polemic to get people to think. He then says he’s not entirely comfortable with everything he’s said in class (as in what he lectured and read off to us), why? Is it uncomfortable to hear the thoughts of a Marxist?

He then asks us if we thought this book belonged on our syllabus. So students piped up here and there; within the authoritarian context they compared Stalin and Viceroy: Stalin had his quote about how western countries industrialized due to exploiting their colonies but the USSR had no colonies to exploit, so it would treat its country side like colonies. Britain exploited the shit out of India, so I guess they’re both the same because both did colonialism.

What about capitalism vs communism? A girl said they become the same thing in terms of whatever goes along with their ideology (money vs the revolution). Both ideologies saw people as disposable. In the USSR, Marx was right and because of that anything is justified to reach a communist utopia. If it takes a famine then so be it. He then says that Marx was help up as almost like a biblical figure in the Soviet Union. Adam Smith was held with the same regard in the west, so I guess they are the same. The ends justify the means. Both ideologies are not applied consistently, work camps established in India go against their philosophy or “small government.” Both lack empathy, the British pushed famine refugees away and Stalin did the same apparently. Racism was a factor for the British but it wasn’t really talked about when it came to the Soviet famine.

We then talked about the banality of evil with a guy named Richard Temple. This wasn’t discussed too much so we will move on.

The holodomor and this famine are both obsessed with ideas: liquidation of the rich was compared to the elimination of the poor… what? How the fuck is that comparable in any way? The systems put in place targeted and affected Indians, not white settlers. Both famines claim higher ideological goals but warped it. Both Soviets and the British had food but exported it rather than feed those who needed it. My professor then makes a comment that he hopes this reading (of Mike Davis) doesn’t turn us into communists because of everything communism has done… fuck you, dude! He goes on to finish the lecture saying that the two famines are very different still because there was no monsoon failure in Ukraine, so he doesn’t like to compare them too closely. If you opposed policy in the Soviet Union you got sent to the gulag, if you opposed policy of the British nothing would really happen to you. This last part was very weird to hear, it was almost as if he was downplaying what happened in India, because Ukraine had it so much worse. At least in India there was the weather aspect but Ukraine was entirely man-made. What a situation sentiment to have, at least be consistent with your shit ideology.

Even though the lecture ended, the day did not. I exited the class, absolutely disgusted with what I had to listen to, and went straight to the library. During my time doing work I saw I had an email from my history professor, this time it wasn’t directed at me but the whole class. In this email he alerts us to some events: a student in our class is going to give a “talk” comparing Nazi germany and North Korea with regards to sexual violence and concentration camps, he is encouraging us to attend this dumbass presentation as it relates to the class material. The other event is about a film screening of 20 Days in Mariupol that is gang to happen soon, he says the movie is “sadly” relevant to our class. He then ends the email telling us to enjoy the weather over the weekend since our class is so depressing.

Have any of you watched that movie? Is it worth it? I will not be attending that student’s talk. She is incredibly annoying and I’m not about to learn about the DPRK from some white girl that has never been there who wants to compare it to Nazi fucking Germany. Womp Womp. Also I have class during her little event so thankfully I’ve got a great excuse not to attend.

That’s all from me. Sometimes I feel like I’m being personally targeted now but I’m probably just being paranoid, it’s an institutional problem not just a professor thing. I will be having paper consultations soon and I am staying firm on my topic being about the Donbas, no matter what he or the head of the Ukrainian “club” think about it. I will not be bullied into submission.

Usually I only write about my Political Science class on here as my History courses so far don’t talk about “relevant” issues, if they do I (try to) reliably bring it up. What different for this week is that my history class is going to spend time talking about the holodomor. For a quick refresher, this history class is about Genocides, so that gives you an idea of how this whole thing will be talked about.

For this week we have to read Kiernan’s Blood and Soil chapter 13, Douglas Irvin-Erickson’s “Raphael Lemmon, Genocide, Colonialism, Famine, and Ukraine,” and Mike Davis’ Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famine and the Making of the Third World. I have no idea if that last one is about the holodomor but it is being covered this week. I will also have to watch accounts from these two websites:

http://sharethestory.ca/index.html

https://education.holodomor.ca/rhea-clyman/

Today was the first class and we didn’t talk about the holodomor but went over a very bastardized history of the Soviet Union. He starts the class by saying he is introducing the Soviet Union and their multitudes of war crimes, some of which might be considered genocide. So we begin the week with Nazi Germany’s “totalitarian” neighbour (yes, he really said that). He briefly goes over the Bolshevik revolution and this concept called “war communism,” he does not talk about the Tsars at all. Lenin institutes a new economic policy, my professor calls it a “recognition of reality,” this went on from 1921-1928 and were, in his opinion, the best years. Lenin dies in 1924 and there is a power struggle that Stalin eventually wins. He then goes on to say that Stalin doesn’t believe in anything except what directly supports him, so he bounced back between factions depending on who supported him. Some girl then asks about Trotsky’s assassination for some reason, her exact question was when he was killed. After finding out the date, which someone had to look up, he decides to say, while he’s not a Trotskyist, he believes that Trotsky was an alternative route that wouldn’t have been as bad as Stalin.

Then we talked about the 5 year plan. According to this lecture the 5 year plan was supposed to transform the Soviet Union into full communism. It would remove the peasantry from their farms to turn said farms into collective ones, which would theoretically increase agricultural output, but that output would not actually happen, chaos would ensue and the famine would become a reality. the 5 year plan would liquidate, exterminate, those who resist it, AKA the Kulaks. The Kulaks are defined as land owning peasants who were the targets of violence due to their resistance. Throughout this lecture he and other students make parallels between the Soviets and the Nazis so prepare for that. If the Nazis targeted the Jews as scapegoats and the origins of suffering, then the Soviets did the same but with the Kulaks. He says Stalin’s Soviet Union generates mass violence and suffering like Nazi Germany, Mao’s China, and Polpot’s Cambodia. He then shows a slide with the apparent death toll, I would share the exact numbers but the slides aren’t yet available.

In 1937 there would be mass political purges due to Stalin’s paranoia. There was the Katyn massacre that killed around 22,000 politics military officers, intellectuals, and leaders. This is considered an elimination of a people’s identity. I guess the Soviets initially blamed the Nazis for the massacre but when the archives opened in the 90s it proved the Soviets committed it. With the famine the death toll was between 5 and 8 million, he also calls it “man made” so thats cool. At the end of this slide he states that there is a case to be made that these deaths were genocide. He also calls Stalin a mass murderer.

We learned in this class that genocide occurs during times of rapid change and societal upheaval, which is what the Soviet Union was going through beginning with the Bolshevik revolution. He said that the Soviets saw people as plants in a garden, some were to be cultivated while others were to be exterminated. He said the Bolshevik revolution happened in the wrong country as, according to Marx, it was supposed to happen in industrialized countries. Later he states the Soviets had an inferiority complex as they were constantly paranoid of enemy infiltrators because they considered Russia incredibly weak, he compares this with the Nazis and the Ottomans. The Nazis thought Jewish people controlled everything, that they were incredibly powerful, and the Soviets shared this attitude but with a social class rather than an ethnicity. Is he fucking for real?

Stalin portrayed Russia as a continuous victim throughout history, being conquered and losing to many different enemies. Everyone beat down on Russia because of her backwardness. The 5 year plan would try to achieve 50 years of progress that she missed out on. 1984 (because of course this cursed book was brought up) satirizes the Soviet slogan 2+2=5, which was a real slogan that was supposed to breed exceptionalism, the idea that “anything is possible.” This is a common sentiment in “totalitarian” regimes. He then makes fun of Stalin for trying to grow oranges in Siberia, because apparently Stalin thought genetic engineering was “capitalist” and that the Soviet science of gene cooperation would yield results better. Stalin had lemon trees in his yard that his servants would bring into a secret greenhouse during the winter. This is implying that Stalin was an idiot. Cool. A student brings up how Stalin once bragged about having tea time with Machiavelli (or someone), this was said to further dunk on him. A girl then asked about how “wasn’t there an incident where Soviet scientists accidentally released a bunch of anthrax?”, my professor couldn’t answer this but he did say it wouldn’t surprise him. The agriculture yields in the Soviet Union were very bad due to Soviet bunk science. According to Stalin, suffering was okay, because the ends justified the means.

The Soviet Union is a peculiar case study as all of the ones we want over so far have a nostalgia for the past, a cult of antiquity. But the Soviet Union was the exact opposite, it focused on an ideal future. A girl then says that left wing genocides are the opposite of what we know (what we learned in class) as with the Nazis, they wanted to revert back to the ideal German past, progress was bad. With the Soviets and left wingers in general the past is seen as bad while the future is good. The idea of the “good old days” does not apply to this case. My professor then brought up the family structure: Nazis idealized the nuclear family while the Soviets sought to break up the individual family unit because it was a bourgeoisie concept. This, of course, misses all of the analysis of the idea of family but okay, let’s just say the Soviets broke families up. Stalin also wanted to destroy peasant culture/communes, he did not want that life to be admired. He brings up an NKVD guy being killed (exterminated) as an example of the revolution eating its own people, which the Soviet Union did I guess. The Nazis had one target (Jewish people, and while they did have many victims they focused on one group), the Soviets, however, had many targets. A girl, who is actually from Ukraine, said that it was like the “freedom from religion” thing in France but in this case it was “freedom from culture.” The Soviets (mainly intellectuals) looked down on the peasantry and they themselves had very little support from the countryside. The 5 year plan was a war on the countryside, to steal agriculture to build cities. The ideal Soviet man was a factory worker, not a farmer. The Soviets had a cult of modernity rather than a cult of antiquity.

Next we moved on to “imperial expansion.” The Soviet Union is considered an empire but i did not have colonies to exploit like western nations. He brings up a Stalin quote about how the West exploited the people of their colonies to industrialize themselves, he asked if that was true. I nodded my head explicitly but everyone seemed hesitant to agree with big bad Stalin. Even my professor awkwardly conceded that Stalin was kind of right about that. Instead of doing imperialism outwards the Soviet Union turned its imperialism inward, it exploited its own people, the peasants would be subjugated by the proletariat. My professor said that Stalin did not see the peasants as people. There was settler colonialism in the far east, the Indigenous nomads of that end were forced to settle in the region and people who were purged were forcefully deported to Siberia.

Racism was complicated in the USSR. It initially cultivated ethnic and cultural difference, supporting the regional languages and cultures while they could live relatively autonomously. Social class differences were placed above ethnicity. This all changed coming up to WWII when xenophobia and Russia chauvinism reared its ugly head. This was the last two minutes of class, he briefly brought up the tartars in Crimea but not much was said except purges.

Next class we will dive into the holodomor, which he says some historians argue that it was a purposeful targeting of Ukrainians.

Day 9 we still learned about nuclear war stuff, but this time we focused on arms control and disarmament. Before class started he asked us if anything happened politically and someone mentioned the Houthis bombing a ship, first time I’m hearing of this, but other than that comment not much had been said. When the lecture started he defined Arms Control as the process of reducing/minimizing the risks of war. Vertical Proliferation is the building up of arms/nuclear capability in a singular country while Horizontal Proliferation is the spread of capabilities among other countries. When talking about vertical proliferation China was brought up (uh oh) because apparently they haven’t signed the Arms Control agreement and thus the world is more unsafe. Weird conclusion to come to as I highly doubt China would be the country to drop nukes Willy Nilly, but thats just me I guess. When talking about horizontal proliferations my professor talked about how some Pakistani guy (a scientist or similar) spread nuclear knowledge to other countries which included the DPRK. He then asked the class if wee can walk back nuclear arms. Most said it was too late and too far gone, there no going back to before nukes. We have them, we’re stuck with them. Even if we trashed every weapon on the planet we have the knowledge on how to build them so its too late.

Next we went over Arms Control Strategies: categorical disarmament, nuclear free zones, and arms control agreements. Categorical disarmament is a ban on weapons, outlawing the use and production of weapons; some weapons that have been banned are chemical weapons, biological weapons, and land mines. Obviously land mines are still used as they’ve been used in Ukraine, in reference to this my professor said he is very worried about Ukraine as they have been heavily mined and this has been a big problem on the war front but will also be an issue in general. Doesn’t Europe have a problem with land mines still? As in there are still some strewn about and because of that governments make PSAs about them and have signs warning of mines? Anyway, a students asked about nukes in space and how Russia wants to put nuke son the moon. My professor admitted he doesn’t know enough about this situation but apparently nuclear power is not allowed in space, so whatever.

Nuclear free zones are areas where nuclear weapons and power are banned. Africa was a big example of this and he brought. Up Nkrumah and how he wanted an indigenous form of nuclear research/energy. There was a school/institute built but it was either never completed or just never came to fruition because of other issues, nothing specific was mentioned. He then said that when it comes to nuclear weapons the G7 countries are the problem, they are inspiring “smaller” countries to take up nuclear arms which just makes everything worse. He mentioned Ukraine and their nukes again but this time with a bit more context: they were given up for security guarantees and pressure from the United States.

Arms control agreements are just treaties and such like the ones between Russia (USSR) and the US: SALT and START. He again says that he wants China to part of Arms control and that it’s not good that they are not a part of it. He seems kind of attached to China which is strange. Other treaties talked about were NPT (non-proliferation treaty) and CTBT (comprehensive test ban treaty). He says the CTBT is a very good treaty and that the DPRK is not a signatory. With the DPRK being referenced he of course says that the DPRK does not care about sanctions, they’re just the way they are, it’s just how they are. Nothing really deters them. What a strange thing to say…

Arms Control agreements are difficult because: enforcement, verification, and non-state actors. Verification can be done via on site inspections and/or national technical means (like satellites). A Gorbachev and Reagan interactions was reference with the quote “trust but verify” which I guess Reagan said a lot because it was a Russian saying? I don’t fucking know, anyway the lecture ended and the seminars began. This last sections sounds weird but that because I was typing here and there while the seminars were going on, I did not write the summaries of the articles so yeah, but the critiques were interesting to say the least and you might be interested in seeing what was said.

During a seminar on reducing nuclear risks by Alex P. Schmid, the person doing said seminar mentioned in her critique section that apparently Ukraine giving up their weapons for security guarantees was a bad move because Russia ended up violating it anyway, maybe if they dint give up their weapons then the situation over there right now wouldn’t be as bad (because I guess Russia would be shaking in their boots?). But we already know that Ukraine’s weapons weren’t theirs to begin with, they were stationed in the region but no one there had the codes. I know people want me to call this information out but, Jesus Christ, this school is not okay with this kind of stuff. If I have time next week I will talk to my professor during office hours about this. I can’t do more than that right now.

Illusion of geopolitics. American propaganda, very up Americas ass. NATO closing in on Russia, sort of explaining the pushing past Crimea. Student asking questions says that China is following in US footsteps in putting military bases in Africa like how the US has a shit ton of bases globally, Russia is doing so in the Middle East too. It’s America’s game and everyone is just playing it. China’s rise in the global economy will grow more and US domestic polarization. Called China authoritarian and controlling how people think, but west is the same but less institutionalized. These seminars are strange.

That’s the end, I’ll be back next week for another entry. Sorry this one was boring but it is what it is. Better boring than distressing, right?

A lot has happened in my history class but I haven’t been writing “journal” entries due to being busy with other things. For the most part nothing much has happened, that is until now. I currently have amassed a bunch of comments and weird discussions happening in class that I will write about here. I think you’ll find it very interesting and maybe even enraging too. I’pm going to fire them off one by one, with important context from the lectures if needed:

back in January Alaska was mentioned, my professor believed it should be a part of Canada but ever since Putin’s invasion (his words not mine) he’s glad Alaska is American, because apparently if it was a part of Canada that would make us geographically closer to Russia and thats a problem?

Okay this one is kind of insane, this was during a discussion about the Algerian genocide. My professor brought up the Palestinian genocide (he didn’t call it that) and how he doesn’t see it as a black and white situation as Israel has an arsenal of good defence and Hamas is explicitly genocidal.

During our discussion about the Armenian genocide my professor joked that often times Russians are the villains but in the case of being a protectorate of Armenia they weren’t, at least to Armenians. Also during this lecture my professor claims to have spent his career criticizing imperialism (press X to doubt). He also brought up the Uyghur “genocide” and how Palestine is not black and white.

The first lecture on the Holocaust my professor mentioned the non-aggression pact between Stalin and Hitler but failed to mention how Stalin tried to unite with other European leaders and this pact was a last ditch effort to buy time for all out war, he also failed to mention how other European powers made pacts long before Stalin even did. He called the pact “strange” and then made a weird comment about the “joint” invasion of Poland. Later into the lecture a student low key compared modern Russia to Nazi Germany because of expansion.

This lecture was about the genocide of disabled people in Nazi Germany. He made a comment about totalitarianism in relation to Nazi germany and said China is a totalitarian state that used COVID as a reason to do mass surveillance, but had to pull back due to protests. Totalitarian states have a thing about surveillance and stuff like that, that is why he talked about China.

Banality of Evil was what we had to read for this lecture. During this lecture my professor brought up Origins of Totalitarianism by Arendt, and he claims it is an absolute classic. He seems to push back a bit to criticisms of Arendt, as when a student brought up how she read papers from Arendt’s critics he got kind of weird about it, sort of going on the defensive if that makes sense. George Orwell and New Speak was referenced as well, relating it to how the Nazis called their killings/murders different things to downplay the horror (this obviously isn’t a problem but George Orwell sucks).

He had us watch SAMSARA food sequence before starting the lecture. This isn’t a bad thing but it was weird, though it as related to that day’s discussion.

Today the lecture was about the Jedwabne massacre. When we were trying to figure out why something like this would happen a student said that the Soviets screwed the Polish so they massacred the local Jewish population because of the perceived link/relationship between the Soviets and the Jews. What did she mean by “screwed?” We will never know. Later in the discussion (not really a lecture tbh) a student said that Stalin was famously antisemitic and Trotsky was smeared as Jewish, he brought this up to say that the perceived link between the Soviets and the Jews was “wacky” because the Soviets hated Jewish people. The totalitarianism book by Arendt was brought up again to illustrate a link between Soviet antisemitism and Nazi antisemitism, and to also briefly mention this thing called the “Doctors’ Plot” which I’ve never heard of before but apparently was some type of document/action taken against Jewish doctors in the USSR? This lecture was not great…

That is all I have for you in terms of weird shit said in my History class so far. Thoughts? Feelings? Knowledge to share? All comments are welcome.

Day 8 of political science this semester is all about nuclear war. My professor began the lecture talking about how Putin’s recent speech threatened the usage of nukes if NATO sends its troops into Ukraine. War, as he describes it, is a condemnation of humanity. War just doesn’t make sense to my professor, killing for territory and to relive the glory of the Soviet Union is just wrong and nonsensical. He is, personally, very anti-war (sort of) and is hoping our generation will be different. After this he started the lecture.

We first learned about strategic bombardment, which is concerned with targeting the centre of an enemy rather than the periphery, you attack the capitals. This was a strategy from Giulio Douhet. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were brought up as examples of this strategy being utilized, yes Tokyo is the capital but it was already bombed to hell at the time so I guess the next best targets were those two cities. Apparently my professor visited Hiroshima and saw the site, so when he hears Putin talk about nukes he knows it’s serious. Before this section ended we learned about Massive Retaliation, AKA Mutually Assured Destruction. This led to the Russians (he never really refers to them as Soviets) developing their own arms to keep pace. Mutual assured destruction denies the enemy from achieving their goals and imposes huge costs. He then asked us if we were comfortable with countries having nuclear weapons, like the US. Do we trust Biden? No one really answered. There was then a tangent about hope North Korea has made itself very impenetrable, they cannot be messed with. He then told us that Ukraine used to have nukes too but they gave them away to Russia for safety guarantees. A student then made a joke that the deal was clearly violated by Putin and not upheld. My professor then said that he believes Ukraine should’ve kept its nuclear arsenal.

Next we learned about ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missiles. Im sure you all know much more about this weaponry than I do but what was said in class was: ICBMs have the capability of destroying humanity and civilization, the can have multiple war heads in jut one missile (MIRVs), and that ICBMs make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like playtime. He then mentioned the other acronyms: ALBM, ALCM, and SLBM, all different kinds of missiles. Next there was the differences between passive and active defence; passive meaning stuff like bunkers, he mentioned how political leaders and the billionaire class will be saved during nuclear fallout (yes, he used the term “billionaire class”); active defence is shooting down missiles, basically the “Iron Dome” which failed due to being overwhelmed by Hamas rockets. Then we looked at the targets of nukes: counter value targets and counter force. So counter value targets are your cities, communication hubs, intelligence areas too; counter force is related to the nuclear first strike, thats all we really went over. First strike is just if you want to win you have to hit first. He then gave an example scenario that if you were in a nuclear war with the US you would target Washington D.C. He then went on a tangent that the White House was very disappointing to see, in the movies it looks so clean and nice but in reality it is apparently located in a very shitty neighborhood. He then talked about how in the 70s and 80s the Americans developed a bomb that would kill all organic life while leaving buildings intact, this bomb was called the Neutron bomb. When people found out about this bomb there were mass protests against nuclear. Protesters in Germany became MPs and eventually formed the Green Party which was environmentalist and promoted peace. Nowadays the Green Party is less about peace but still focuses on the environment. Little do they know war is detrimental to the environment and continuing to support both Israel and Ukraine goes against their environmental values they supposedly have.

Next is limited nuclear war, which is fairly self explanatory: doing war with limited means. Nuclear weapons would be used only on the battlefield, so only tactical nukes, short range. Anyway he went on about Putin again, he seems absolutely terrified about nukes being used. A student asked if the reason America has so many military bases around the world is because they want to plant nukes there for potential use, my professor said no and the reason for those bases is promises of protection. He then mentioned how America has a Nuclear Umbrella over Canada… what? I don’t know how comfortable I feel about that, to be honest. I understand it’s supposedly for protection, but if we didn’t ally ourselves with the Americans so much we probably wouldn’t need this umbrella. Maybe I’m being overdramatic…

The last things we covered before the seminars were extended deterrence and minimum deterrence. Extended deterrence is what South Korea has, using nukes to deter attacks on allies; minimum deterrence is a country having the minimum ability to cause damage via nukes. Rationality, capability, credibility, and commitment are needed for proper deterrence. He then asked the class if Kim Jung Un was rational, no one really answered expect one student saying “it depends on your stance.” What did he mean by that? Maybe what your definition of rational is, I guess. The discussion didn’t goo further as we kicked off with seminars.

Tuning out the seminars is quite difficult for me. I tried to do so anyway because these seminars just can’t stop taking digs at the DPRK, China, Russia, etc. To me this whole thing is exhausting. Coming to school everyday is exhausting, and not because of the assignments.

I feel like I have to do extra work compared to other students because I am on my own. I cannot rely on fellow students or even my professors as my existence in this school is a contradiction. My being goes against what this university seems to stand for (see the library display) and I am unable to be my authentic self unlike my fellow students. They can be honest and have support but I can’t. If I spoke up in class against any misinformation/propaganda I would get clobbered. I can’t seek mentorship, proper mentorship, and support from my professors because if they knew they would pull away. I can only rely on myself and it’s so hard.

Yes, you all help me with whatever I ask so much and I appreciate it more than you could possibly know, but it’s different. I have no one in my physical vicinity and that sucks. Sure, I told my political science professor about how I wanted to teach Marxism, but thats as far as it can go, he doesn’t know more than that except for what I write in my papers. I see reactionary nonsense and know I have no one here in my corner. If students dogpiled me in class my professors would shut it down but that doesn’t stop them from doing it outside the class too. I can only be myself in secrecy and in my papers/assignments. That’s not feasible in the long term and it’s already taking its toll. I will graduate, but I wont come out unscathed. I’ll keep my head down to avoid physical harm, but the mental scars will be deep and prolonging, if that makes sense.

Anyway thats the end of my notes. Apologies for the personal rant at the end. If you’re curious about what transpired with the library display and what my professors had to say about it, look out for an update post in comradeship soon.

For those interested, one of the seminars was covering the paper “Beyond the pivot” by Kevin Rudd and it was the only seminar that had a proper and well thought out critique of the article.

Also, please feel free to point out any spelling/grammatical mistakes! My keyboard is ass and I want to make sure my posts aren’t too insane to interpret.

Where is day 5 and day 6? Nothing happened, day 5 was midterm review plus seminars and day 6 was the midterm. I will say, I did struggle with the midterm, during the essay portion I ended up running out of time so the last bit was incredibly messy and just bad in general. I did write a note on the end explaining why the quality took a steep dive so maybe it would make my professor be a bit more understanding when marking it. Who knows, he did say that he will take into account and reward us for effort so maybe I didn’t do half bad, I’ll never know because I refuse to look at my marks. I’d rather not cause more psychic damage to myself.

Anyway let’s get on with day 7. This day we talked about war and, my god, were comments made. These comments may be of interest to you so stick around for them. He began the lecture with a little speech about war and how he hopes that our generation will be different when it comes to violence. In my opinion I kind of doubt it since we have some warmongers in this very class so… yeah. He went in on the definition of war: organized violence. Is there more to it? Of course, but this is the simplest explanation. War is a human flaw, he says. There are interstate wars and intrastate wars. He then brought up Clausewitz’s Trinity: people, government, and army. We didn’t talk about Clausewitz in depth at all, all he told us was that he was a Prussian military guy who came up with this trinity. My professor also introduced us to the term “casus belli” which means something like “the cause of war.” He then asked us what was the cause of the Ukraine war: a student said territorial expansion (as in regaining soviet land) and denazification. This was a good enough explanation I guess and my professor just went with it, he also considered both to be terrible reasons for going to war, stating that denazify doesn’t mean anything in this context. “What does he mean to denazify?” He then asks us about Gaza, the Zionists pipes up immediately with “October 7th attacks.”

We then moved on to going a bit more into the trinity, starting with people. People have hatred: and with that my professor said he believes that Putin hates Ukrainians. That’s right, not the government but the actual people. He said so because during the Beijing olympics Putin was scowling something horrible when a Ukrainian athlete won. Moving on, governments use reason and policy to enact war and armies deal with chance, for example when hitler went to invade the soviet union he got screwed over by winter, aka chance. The Ukraine war was brought up as an example again. In this war governments are the most important aspect; Putin wants previous USSR territory while Zelenskyy wants to be in NATO; my professor thinks that Putin is the main problem and if he was gone today the war would end very quickly; when it comes to the army, Russian civilians hate their military and this is proven due to their support of Prigozhin’s coup attempt and the fact that they are forcefully conscripted; Ukrainians love their military and government which gives them a huge advantage. No, he did not talk about conscription in Ukraine and the fact that Zelenskyy made a call for refugees to come back and fight. Oh well.

So what are the justifications of war? This is explained by the Just War Theory, which we split between Jus in Bello and Jus ad Bellum. Lots of Latin. Jus in Bello is about the conduct of war and Jus ad Bellum is about the just cause for war. Jus in Bello deals with whether the war is proportional or not and whether there is discrimination between combatants and non-combatants. With this he brought up how Trudeau is in trouble due to being caught between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel members, he even b talked about how recently there were pro-Palestine protestors in the House of Commons, interrupting the session and then getting kicked out. The Zionist in my class speaks up and asks about discrimination when an “army” hides among civilians, what then? My professor straight up said that this is difficult to answer and its hard to out legal terms into practise. The Ukraine war is clear cut, Russia is bombing civilians knowingly while with Palestine Israel claims to be discriminating, but is that true? Who knows. Another student asked about the Houthis discriminating between ships, of course the US and UK retaliated horribly and with that my professor said that Canada came out in support of these attacks at first but then next turned around against it, he thinks this was a terrible mistake, we never should’ve been involved in the first place. Canada has no business involving itself with the US and UK, it’s a bad diplomatic move and makes us look really really bad. He said that Trudeau wants to look good on the international stage but lacks substance. He doesn’t think things through.

Jus ad Bellum deal with what conditions give reason for war. He then asked us a weird question: if the Mexican government kidnapped Canadians, is that war worthy? Some students wholeheartedly said yes, the Zionist was the loudest in this proclamation. For the most part it was agreed that outright invasion on Canadian soil would be just cause for going to war. Another reason given by my professor was to prevent genocide. With that he brought up the “genocide” in Xinjiang, and asked us should we invade in this situation? The Zionist laughed and stated it would be a waste because we’d get absolutely destroyed. We then moved on learning that war must be carried out by competent authorities (Hamas is not a competent authority, says my professor) and it must be a last resort after diplomacy has failed.

Next is typologies: preemptive war, preventative war, total war, limited war, civil war, international war, cyber warfare, hybrid warfare, war of inequality and war of rivalry. When we were talking about all this Turkey was brought up and I learned that Turkey is not in the EU because of the Armenian genocide, lack of democratic governance, treatment of Kurds, and them being a Muslim majority state. We then went over peacemaking, peacekeeping, and pacific settlement. These terms weren’t described in detail, most likely due to time running out. He then ended the lecture asking us if war would become obsolete, most said no and he replied that that was quite discouraging. He really wants us to be the generation that will not be warmongers I guess. He then asked what we would do to stop war, a student said he’d kill all world leaders. Professor then asked if we replaced all world leaders with women, would there be no more wars? I say absolutely not, other students seem to be of the opinion that while war would not go away there would probably be less so as women are more logical and not looking to posture, unlike men. It was argued that diversification in general would be better for lessening war. Other students said it depends on the woman. Another student said that environment plays a bigger role than gender and used Danielle Smith (Alberta Premier) as an example: she’s a woman but isn’t less combative; she is the leader of the UCP and that environment fosters animosity; her gender is meaningless. It was then stated that men have an ego that women do not seem to have (I guess?) and that is the biggest reason for war, my professor took to this and said that Putin has an ego and that fosters the war he is carrying out.

Then we moved on to the seminar portion and only one person went. This seminar was about Russia-China collusion, the US must be careful with its policies against China and Russia as they will work together and undermine the West. In her ending critique of the article she believes Russia and China need the US and its allies more and cannot rely on each other. She thinks they are independent from each other and don’t need that relationship. Professor pushed back against this, stating that now they are relying on each other a lot and their relationship is getting stronger and stronger. This was just a weird seminar, I felt bad for her to be honest, not in a mean patronizing way, but in the “I know you just want to get this over with, I get it” way.

Anyway that was day 7, we’re moving into the break so that means I can relax a little bit. By relax I mean work on my research paper (I have to compare Putin and Xi Jingping) and get caught up on readings/assignments. Maybe I’ll be able to play some video games and draw too.

This first little bit was written before class began. I get to school quite early, and since there are no other classes scheduled in my polisci room I just sit and do whatever in there. As time gets closer to when class starts students trickle in and the Zionists are always the first, and instead of staying quiet like tee rest of us they just have the loudest conversations about whatever. Anyway here is when I started to write about what theey were saying (is it rude? Maybe):

The two Zionists in my class aren’t very bright. Yes, obviously because they’re zionists and re anti-communists, but I’m talking about separate from that. They’re complaining about my professor and the course content, they don’t understand the online portions when is on the site. They also don’t seem to utilize office hours which would help answer their questions better than sending an email. I guess I’m a bit protective of my professor, he’s good at his job and even if I get frustrated with the course content or some comments but I do feel safe discussing things with him.

One of the zionists wants to be a lawyer, like his dad, but the way he speaks and how he is going through this course tells me he wont be good at his job, my god. I hope I don’t see him in future political science classes or I might off myself (not seriously but it’s going to be a nightmare). They’re talking about the recent court decision regarding Trudeau’s utilization of the Emergency Act when the convoy happened (bank accounts frozen and whatnot). Does anyone here have opinions about that whole situation? Anyway, I really wish they wouldn’t speak, I get here early because the room is empty and it makes for a good study/work room. But then they come in here talking so loudly and annoyingly it’s hard to get shit done. Do they not see how no one else is speaking? Conscientiousness who? They don’t know her!

Anyway class finally started and, just full disclosure, the lecture was only around half an hour long (this class is an hour twenty minutes) the rest of the class time was spent on the seminar (yes, this day was my seminar). The lecture itself was about the Cold War. Post-WWII the world was bipolar and had sustained conflict between theUS and the USSR which of course culminated in the Cold War.

You probably already know everything about the Cold War (you probably know about everything I’m being taught) but i think its important to talk about so then you can see how its being taught. The Cold War was defined by multiple factors: arms race, space race, espionage, proxy wars (the Korean War, Vietnam war, Afghanistan, South Africa and Angola were brought up as examples), Olympics boycotts (due to invasion of Afghanistan), Arab-Israel conflict, and many others. Some other things that were said was that emigration of Jews to Israel was opposed by the USSR, there was a limit on cultural and trade links, and that the Cold War would consume our attention for decades after.

We then talked about the Post-45 time period: there was thee Berlin blockage/airlift, Cuban missile crisis, Hungarian revolution and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, martial plan, iron curtain speech from Churchill, and ended with how the Cold War informed thee relationship between both sides, east and west. It defined who was on whose side, essentially. Then we learned about this thing called détente: rapprochement; period of cooperation; the real sources of this is in Europe and the first to push for it was Willy Brandt. He came up with the term Ostpolitik, pushed for non-aggression pacts, came up with SALT and exchanged ambassadors with east Germany. Just a bunch of stuff. Then attention was turned to Gorbachev: He was the only university educated Soviet leader since Lenin, he had his perestroika and glasnost (I spelt these so wrong in my notes) things, apparently his glasnost went well but his perestroika was a disaster, because of all that he was eventually usurped by Yeltsin and then Putin. My professor made it a point to say Putin has been in power for forever and due to changing some stuff around (term limits) he will probably stay in office till he dies.

With this Cold War stuff my professor asked, not really looking for an answer, if the US was going to do everything again but this time towards China. That was to segue into our seminars since mine deals with Cold War China stuff (sort of) and another talks about China too. First I will explain what these seminars are: each student in class was randomly assigned an article from a book of “debates” and I was assigned “China’s Unpeaceful Rise” by John J. Mearsheimer, we then had to create slides of the article to go along with our talk; the talk is around 5 minutes of summarizing thee article and then 5 minutes of our critique (strengths and weaknesses) of the article and taking questions from the audience. I was dreading this since I am terrified of public speaking and I just don’t do well socializing in general (unless we’re friends). I made a post on here asking for help with my project and you all came through. I was the third person to present; the first person talked about realism in general, the second person talked about maybe the US declining as a superpower against China (jabs were thrown China’s way), then I went, then thee last person’s seminar was about technology/the internet and how it interacts under a democracy and authoritarian regime (China caught strays here as well).

The summary of the article I posted on here was a first draft and I edited it quite a bit for my speech. My professor told me before that I should go into detail about Mearsheimer himself in the beginning and then dive into the article itself. I’ll share my script here:

(Meer-Shy-mer) (this was to remind me of the pronunciation)

John J. Mearsheimer is an American Political Scientist who has been teaching at the university of Chicago since 1982. He is a realist, specifically an offensive realist, and in his own words this means that he “believe(s) that the great powers dominate the international system and they constantly engage in security competition with each other, which sometimes leads to war.” Also apparently he opposed the 2003 Iraq War before it even happened. He wrote this specific article back in 2006 and opens it by answering his own question “Will China rise peacefully?” And the answer is absolutely not. He goes one to say that his theory of international politics is the best way to explain why that is. It’s because the “mightiest states” will inevitably establish a regional hegemony and attempt to prevent others from doing the same.

THE CONTEST FOR POWER

According to him the international system has three characteristics: one is that states operate in anarchy; another is that all the great powers must have destructive military capabilities; and lastly you cannot trust one another because you never know what their true intentions are. Under a system like this states are constantly uncertain of each other and therefore fearful which leads to the conclusion that to survive one must become as powerful as possible, hopefully that means the most powerful. To do this you must become a hegemon, much like how the United States has regional hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. When one state dominates a region they will seek to prevent others from duplicating their results. No friends, only enemies.

THE AMERICAN HEGEMON

He goes on to explain America’s journey over the course of 115 years: from its independence in 1783, Manifest destiny, the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, and how by 1898 the US finally succeeded in becoming a regional hegemon. Many battles were fought to make this happen and no other nation would be allowed to do the same. Some other “formidable foes” cropped up in which the United States worked very hard to dismantle: Imperial Germany - the Americans aided in their defeat; Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany - the US was a part of the Allies who defeated the Axis, also post-1945 American Policy makers ensured Germany and Japan would stay militarily weak; he did not go into detail about the Soviet Union but of course there was the Cold War and in 1992 the “Defence Guidance” was leaked that emphasized the US as the most powerful nation in the world and it would remain that way. In 2002 the “National Security Strategy” would say the same thing but also reference “preemptive war” which garnered some criticism at the time. Mearsheimer then goes on to say that America is likely to behave toward China much the way it behaved toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

PREDICTING CHINA’S FUTURE

He believes that China will attempt to establish its own hegemony unchallenged like the United States has done in the Western hemisphere, mainly going head to head with both Russia and Japan. But unlike the US, China will most likely not go on military rampages, but it’s not an impossible scenario. He also says that China will dictate how its neighbours behave and will only get Taiwan back through regional hegemony. Similar to how the US pushed European Powers out way back when in the 19th century, China will push the US out of Asia. It will also come up with its own version of the Monroe Doctrine, like Japan did in the 1930s. Because the US appreciates a militarily weak Canada and Mexico, China will want the same for Russia and Japan. Since no self-respecting superpower will ever allow others to exist in its vicinity. American policy makers become enraged when foreign militaries are sent into the western hemisphere, so why would China give the US any amount of grace? It wont, US military presence in Asia will not be tolerated. He goes on to say “In the archaic world of international politics, it is better to be Godzilla than Bambi.” In the end, China will just imitate the US.

TROUBLE AHEAD

Based on America’s track record it is obvious what the reaction will be towards China if it tries to establish a hegemony in Asia: No “peer competitors” will be tolerated. The only hegemony that is allowed to exist is the United States, and therefore China must be contained and weakened. He reiterates that China will be treated the same way the Soviet Union was. Neighbouring nations will also join the US in preventing China’s regional rise, this includes: India, Japan, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam. Taiwan will also be used as a pawn to better control China and gain the upper hand, which of course will cause further security issues between Beijing and Washington.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

He ends his article with this: “The picture I have painted of what is likely to happen if China continues its rise is not a pretty one. I actually find it categorically depressing and wish that I could tell a more optimistic story about the future. But the fact is that international politics is a nasty and dangerous business, and no amount of goodwill can ameliorate the intense security competition that sets in when an aspiring hegemon appears in Eurasia. That is the tragedy of great power politics.” Which just reinforces his realism.

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

Main criticism: The title is a bit misleading. This article is very America-centric. Which makes sense since he’s an American political scientist but that also gives a very restrictive view of the situation he is trying to analyze. He goes into detail about America’s history and how that contextualizes its modern behaviours but doesn’t do the same for China, the titled character. China itself plays a secondary role here. It comes across as projection more than proper analysis. China is a very old country so there’s a lot to work with, its history is also very different from America’s.

His analysis makes no room for the internal contradictions in a state that would play a part in its behaviour.

The relationship between Russia and China is not how he describes it would be as trade between the two is very high. If China wanted a militarily weak Russia it’s doing a bad job at it.

With him being a realist and this being written in 2006, poor guy could’ve never predicted BRICS. Russia, India, and China are literally founding members. They’re the RIC. (BRICS had its first formal summit in 2009 but it’s been in development since 2001)…

With regard to Vietnam, Xi Jinping recently went to a summit there where both leaders agreed to bolster their strategic relationship and cooperation. I also find it hard to believe that Vietnam would follow in the US’s footsteps in subjugating China after the Vietnam war.

Cold War 2 and escalations with Taiwan in the form of military ships.

John Mearsheimer also seems, personally, very enthusiastic about “dealing” with China.

When I walked up to the podium I was terrified. My anxiety was at an all time high, the whole time waiting for my turn my stomach was making weird noises (not loud enough for anyone else to hear) and I felt sick. I tried to calm myself down, I swear, but it was just not working. As I stood at the podium my professor introduced me as “Professor (NAME) from (random university)” I think he chose Toronto or something, I don’t remember, he did this for everyone. I stumbled hard with my words right at the beginning, I literally could not get them out. I had to take a few breaths before I was able to get the words out. I was also on the verge of tears the whole time, you know that voice people have when they’re about to cry? That was literally what I sounded like. As I kept talking I got a little better but I didn’t hit my stride until the criticism section where I could finally rip into him a little. I guess having the chance to defend China even a tiny bit soothed my nerves a tiny bit. By the end of it thankfully no one asked me questions (I think they could tell how fucked up I was), the only one who did was my professor. He asked me something about continued aggression towards China, I can’t remember exactly what he asked, but I just straight up said “I don’t know what you want from me” because I really didn’t. My seminar was very explicit and I tried to explain Mearsheimer’s thought process as much as possible including his predictions, I even said at the end that the utilization of Taiwan was true, so technically I answered his question in my seminar. After I was done someone else went and then the seminars were complete. In general there were four seminars total, three mentioned China to some extent, to were anti-China in their conclusions, and I was the only one who didn’t talk shit about China.

He then told us all to stand in front of the class (I guess it’s related to people getting PhDs, I don’t know…) and asked us more questions: the first was what the main point of our articles were, and the second was what our articles said about the conception of power. At this point I was annoyed because I thought I was finished with the humiliation but apparently I needed to be tortured a bit more. Instead of being a cry baby like I was during my seminar, my voice changed to a monotone robot voice, I clearly sounded exasperated with my answers: my article was about how China will not be allowed to gain strides because the US is determined to remain the world’s only hegemon, my article states that true power is obtained when you become a hegemon and stop any others from doing the same. Then we were applauded and class was dismissed.

As I was packing my bag to go home, a girl came up to me and told me she really appreciated my criticism of Mearsheimer and she thought I did a good job. I was not expecting that at all. I was the last to leave since, to be honest, I really wanted to hear what he had to say about my seminar since he knew how much I was freaking the fuck out about it. Before I could talk he just straight up said I did really well, I pushed back (because of course I did) that I almost cried. Of course he noticed I stumbled but I guess that didn’t matter to him since I gained my stride after I got going, he was really happy with the criticisms I had which was nice to hear. I have to give credit to all of you since you helped me a lot with it. I really couldn’t have done it without you!

Anyway, that was it. I just went home after and my seminar is done, I wont have to do this again until maybe next semester (fall, not spring). I sound terrible and resentful, and I can’t deny that I am, the whole ordeal made me want to die and I’m low key still shaken up about it, but I know this is just the first step into becoming a professor. I need to get used to public speaking and shit if I ever want to do well in my masters and PhD. He did this to help us, give us an early start so we’re not taken off guard in graduate school, and although I appreciate it I’m also dying inside. One day I’ll get over it, but for now I’ll wallow in my shame.

That’s all that happened, you’ll be hearing from me again in a few days.

First I have to start with what happened yesterday. It wasn’t a super big deal, not enough to make a journal entry about it, but I feel the need to talk about it here as it is related to my polisci class. So even though my day starts in the afternoon I left home earlier as my Political Science Professor’s office hours are in the AM, I hate when office hours clash with my class times but thankfully this isn’t the case for me so far. I went to see him to drop off the book he lent me, the one that has our seminar subject in it. I figured it be best to drop it off as soon as I could rather than wait for class, I also wanted to chat with him for a bit. I asked some questions for the seminar just to clarify some things; I have to summarize the given article for 6 minutes and then criticize it for an additional 4 while also taking questions from the audience. Just thinking about it is genuinely making me tear up but I’m not about to cry in the middle of the library. I also asked about the research paper, we were given 5 topics to choose from and I asked if I didn’t like any of them could I make up my own (as maybe you’ll recall that last semester my professor allowed me to come up with my own if he approved of it, which he did) and it was a big fat “no.” He said it wouldn’t be challenging enough for us if we just made up our own topic, and while I understood where he was coming from I mentioned that the topic I came up with last semester was incredibly difficult so… you know. But yeah, I gotta take what I’m given. Since I like to take advantage of my one on one time with my professors I asked him non-course related questions, all about my future PhD.

Even though I asked my previous professor about studying abroad I still had more questions that I forgot to ask at the time. First I asked him about the whole process of doing it somewhere else and he told me I’d need to get a masters degree first. Which kind of blows as I was hoping to skip it to save time, I don’t want to waste more years of my life. Maybe it’s not a waste but I truly feel like I am on limited time. I pushed back a little, stating I was hoping to skip the masters but he told me that it would be problematic, that I would face a to of difficulties due to missing classes. But I genuinely thought that if you skipped the masters you could just take those classes while doing your PhD. I didn’t ask him about that though, he did reassure me that I could finish a masters in one year rather than the typical two so I guess thats fine… After that I asked if I had to be enrolled at a University here before I could transfer to a foreign one and the answer was no. He did ask why I want to study abroad, with no judgement, I told him that Canadian universities were kind of useless for what I want to study. Not now, I don’t hate my school obviously but what I want to do for my PhD would be very troublesome to do here as Canada doesn’t have the archives I want/need. I really tried to make my statement not rude and he seemed to get where I was coming from but he did ask what I wanted to study so in-depth that I can’t stay here to do it. It took me a little bit to answer and I kept looking outside his door in fear of others listening in, he was nice about it and could probably sense my anxiety so he spoke kindly and encouragingly. I did just say “Marxism” finally, I’m sure you all can understand why I hesitate to say it out loud especially in that particular setting, and he didn’t seem shocked by my answer one bit. He seems to agree with my previous professor that Europe is my best bet, he did mention some UK universities and I brought up Germany as an option I was given by my other professor which he agrees with. He did ask if I knew German, the answer is no but I’m more than willing to learn the language once I choose a country. When I told him I wanted to read the Soviet archives he told me If I wanted access to them I would have to go to Russia, and he wasn’t judgemental of this at all but he did say that international relations between Canada and Russia may pose challenges for me. He did say before that government relations didn’t really matter but with this scenario it really really does.

He worries that if I get my PhD outside of Canada I will face challenges in the job market, they will refer people with Canadian degrees rather than foreign. I figured by having a Canadian bachelors (and masters) that I would be fine but that may not be the case, he says there will be unconscious bias as they look at résumés. If I am to study abroad I will have to be accepted into a very good school (I wonder if going to Cuba would be in thee cards now that I think about it, they may not have soviet stuff but Cuban archives seem just as good). He then asked me if I wanted to become a professor and, honestly, yeah I think so, with that he just gave me my options, I have to do the masters and I have to be careful studying abroad. He is optimistic about it though and thinks it would be good for me, I just have to do well now and then. When I started school I thought I was going to be a clinical psychologist, I figured being a Marxist psychologist would actually be very helpful, but with my aspirations to get more active and educate the masses, maybe being a professor would be better for me. I am now pursuing a double major since I’m passionate about both psych and polisci. Maybe I could use my psychology education to help them with their stress and other woes without crossing the boundaries of professions. At my school there is a senior level course that focuses strictly on Liberal thought so I asked why that one was allowed but other schools of thoughts weren’t. It’s mainly because the professor who teaches that class is an expert in it so they teach it. I asked if I wanted to teach a Marxist course, since Marxism is never taught in depth, would I be allowed to. He doesn’t see why not and that I should ask the Liberal professor myself. I visibly grimaced at this and he told me not to be afraid, that they wouldn’t argue with me or be aggressive but I was still uncomfortable asking some random professor I don’t know. He then said that he would ask for me, which was a relief for me. Before I left he told me not to give up on Canada, that there was a lot of Marxist history here, even his supervisor during his PhD was a hardcore Marxist. All that to say is that I shouldn’t abandon hope and I have a place here if I want it. The conversation ended soon after this and I headed off to my history class.

Nothing super crazy happened in History yesterday except when I put up my hand to mention the Okinawan people during the “Japan and settler colonialism” section. He was pointing to Hokkaido but I mixed it up for Okinawa and brought up the Indigenous population of the island, he was actually looking for the Ainu but my answer was still relevant. I was incredibly embarrassed and will not be speaking up again. I did go to office hours to reassure him that I wasn’t an idiot and to ask questions. He doesn’t think I’pm an idiot and appreciated me speaking, I just straight up told him it would never happen again. I then asked him if during the course we would ever talk about Churchill and the Bengal famine: the answer was yes, as we would go over a ew sources that talk about late Victorian holocausts and to what extent a famine is intentional, wth that he stated that he believe Stalin did the holodomor on purpose (I had to really try my best to stop myself from cringing). I then asked about the Belgians in the Congo and while he thinks it’s a good topic, we only might talk about it during a lecture or two. He then encouraged me to read King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild if I’m interested in what happened as it’s the best book on the subject. My last question was about the research paper, if there were any topics off limits, any that would make him uncomfortable: not really, he does caution us against making the paper a political position and avoid making an opinion piece. We have to do consultations with him for the paper s by then he’ll let us know whether our topic is good or not, we just have to start off with an intellectual question we want to learn more about and go from there. I asked about death counts as the event I want to look at may not have as big a death count as other genocides and if that would affect my paper. He said no and that genocides were more qualitative than quantitative; you can have a genocide where no one died. He asked what my topic was about and I straight up told him I was too uncomfortable to tell him as I don’t know him well enough to say, which was far in his eyes but I’ll have to tell him eventually.

That was all yesterday so let’s talk about what happened today as my Political Science class got spicy. We started the class with midterm prep, it wont be until February but he still wanted to get us ready anyway. There were some mock questions and for one of them, it was about soft power, he brought up Zelenskyy as an example of someone with a lot of soft power as whenever he speaks or gives speeches everybody listens. Another practise question was what were the criticisms of globalization: a student answered with democratic backsliding, with that he asked what an example of that was and another student said Argentina with Milei. My professor didn’t really agree as he was elected seemingly democratically, so another student piped up saying Venezuela. He did mention Milei’s speech at some conference where he went to the podium and lectured everyone about socialism or whatever, my professor thought it was very funny. After that we started the lecture continuing with different -isms. We did go over Realism and structural realism, but I wont regurgitate it as it was covered last week. But a conversation was started in this section about how Canada should be taken more seriously: a student said getting on the UN Security Council, professor asked how, the student said just don’t do what Trudeau did. I don’t know how Trudeau fucked that up but I don’t really care at the moment. Another student, one of the zionists, piped up that he agrees with getting on the council and that he would increase our military presence in the arctic. My professor then says that our military is very bad, its not as funded as other countries, its so bad that even though we promised aid to Ukraine we couldn’t even provide it (didn’t we send a shit ton of money their way?). He says the world is sick of Canada as we are very preachy but we never back it up with action. He then asked the class if we should better fund our healthcare or military, only one student answered and she said healthcare.

We continued thee lecture with Liberal Internationalism: it is optimistic about human nature; it promotes cooperation, multilateralism, international law, international regimes (rules based order); seeks to establish international institutions (UN, EU, AU, etc.); it believes that democracies do not go to war with each other (democratic peace theory); economic interdependence leads to peace, free trade, and mutual sensitivity; there are globally shared values and norms that unite us all. When talking about democracies not having war with each other he asked us if that was true and if we should make everyone a democracy: a student answered that you can’t just impose democracy on a nation when they’re not ready for it, that usually doesn’t end well. We then had a class critique about Liberal Internationalism: its too optimistic and naive, it doesn’t consider the differences in people’s needs, it assumes that everyone will play nice (with this it was said that China, Russia, and NK have no interest in being friends, to that I ask “why is that?”), and the last critique was the view from the Global South; they don’t want to hear about “interdependency”o as they have been made dependent and have been exploited, to them the Global North has ulterior motives.

Next we talked about Social Constructivism, which is anti-foundationalist. It is a social theory that believes our reality is socially constructed, unlike realism which believes in material power, social constructivists believe in ideational power: ideas shape interests and identities. While realists believe that the world is in a state of anarchy, anarchy is to social constructivists what state’s make of it. The state reproduces global structures and structures can remake states. Norms are standards of behaviour, and after this we learned about the “logic of consequences (cost/benefit)” and “logic of appropriateness.”

We then talked about the Norms Cycle Theory by Sikkink and Finnemore: norms emerge, cascade, and then become internalized. Because this generation, our generation, is so environmentally focused, it’s our norm, he asked us if we believed in banning plastics. Some students spoke up saying no as it wont help the environment or it’s just not the biggest change that could be made. With that he asked us why Trudeau was so adamant on banning plastics. Some say it was because he wants votes, others say he’s out of touch, the “out of touch” comment sparked a guy to talk about how many politicians are just too old for the job, they’re old and out of touch, Trudeau is this. Which doesn’t make sense because isn’t Trudeau only in his 30s-40s? My professor even laughed at this and said Trudeau is in his prime so definitely not too old. This age things had my professor expressing his desire to see younger people more involved in politics and that there are too many old people taking up space. To my professor Biden is way too old for the job and he reminds him of a Soviet leader that could barely walk, apparently two other leaders passed before him (they were also old) and to remedy that they replaced them with a super old zombie guy. When he died the people were frustrated and brought in Gorbachev. I don’t know which old leader he was talking about but, yeah, that happened.

The lecture continued with Feminism. Since its such a large and diverse topic we didn’t go too in depth, he just emphasized that there were many types of feminism (Marxist feminism all the way baby) but the gist of it was feminism assess the role of women in the political realm and what unites the different types in the state of women being diminished; also the subordination of women (someone made a sporting sound to this and I can’t tell if they were laughing or sneezing). Ann Tickner was mentioned here as well. My professor asked if we could realistically see a female president happening in the next ten years, a guy visibly nodded and he was asked to elaborate, he said something about Kamala Harris. Yeah maybe when Biden dies. My professor then said that Kamala is very disliked by democrats and they are seeking to get rid of her. For Canada, while there was already a female prime minister (who only lasted a few months) some guy thinks Chrystia Freeland would be a good PM (absolutely not!), there was audible disagreement from quite a few people and I did not hide my grimace. If she ever becomes Prime Minister and isn’t kicked out rapidly I’m leaving. There was then a weird discussion about feminism in general after this, which clearly showed that nobody really knew what the fuck they were talking about, and it made me a bit uncomfortable.

We then completed the lecture with Marxism (I drew hearts). Again, this is a caricature of Marxism: it focuses on economic systems and classes; economic determinism; society is composed of the superstructure and economic base; the base is the means of production and relations of productions (the 2 classes); bourgeoisie and proletariat; the proletariats will have a revolution which will establish a dictatorship of the proletariat which will lead to socialism and then to communism. My professor then asked if Marxism was relevant in 2024, no one piped up but he knew that I knew the answer. He then said that 5 billionaire own 40% of the global wealth,a den due to the disparity between the classes Marxism is for sure relevant. He then asked if we re comfortable with socialism and if it was relevant: a girl said “why not?” Another student said that capitalism was not working, why? Some say over consumption, others say the monopoly issue, a few stated that there were too many choices for the same shit. One of thee Zionist guys piped up stating he didn’t see a problem with this, that’s its fine we have seventy options for the same product, that one is cheaper than the other and its up to consumer discretion. The girl then said that it was a problem due to the monopoly issue and that there wasn’t really an ability for people to freely participate in the market, he then argued back that capitalism allows that and they can do whatever they want, she attempted to interrupt him and he snapped back at her asking if he could finish “holy shit” he ended his statement with. This was the spice I was taking about. He says the problems with our capitalism is because socialism has been infecting it and creating entitlement within people, it’s ruining the market. What a btch ass btch. My professor finally stepped in to put an end to this stupid debate, stating that we weren’t here to argue theory, and that in reality true capitalism doesn’t exist as most systems have a mixture. In China there is state capitalism, AKA socialism with Chinese characteristics, and even in the US (the bastion of capitalism) provides school lunches and food stamps, that sounds like socialism! So in actuality, the whole capitalism vs socialism thing doesn’t exist. Class then ended, thank god. I did linger because it seemed my professor wanted to speak with me. After everyone left he told me that the Marxism we discussed was caricature and I assured him I knew that very well. He asked if I was prepared for the seminar, I asked him to clarify whether he was talking about my materials or emotional preparedness, he said both and I said no, I wasn’t ready. Specifically emotionally, I haven’t written my slides but I’ll be fine with that, it’s the actual presenting part I’ll have problems with. I told up front that I would cry and have big issues, he was kind about it and said I’d do fine and reiterated what I needed to do for the presenting. He said I’ll need this for grad school, too. I then told him I didn’t want to answer questions from the class he said that he would jump in and answer if need be and support me which was nice. He said to remember that I was only presenting for one person, yes there are a bunch of students but I’m only presenting for one (which I’m assuming is my professor himself). He ended this mini pep talk telling me that he was certain I will do well and that I know more than the rest of the class so it’ll be fine. That made me feel a bit better, but every time I think about the seminar I tear up. Oh well.

January 12 2024

This winter has been very mild up until this week. We hardly had much snow like normal, it was maybe an inch at most, but this week we were plunged into a deep freeze, which is more typical of the Canadian winters I’m used to. On my way to school my hair and eyelashes frosted up, my scarf and jacket hood too. Thankfully of all the stops I make on the journey to school, only one is non-heated and that one I only wait at for five minutes and the walk is not long at all (I am a very fast walker, but a slow runner).

Majority of my school days open with History and this day was crazy, sort of. By crazy I mean comments made, there weren’t fights or rioting in class. Maybe one day one will break out. There were less students than usual, this may be due to people dropping as the deadline for dropping classes without penalizing was coming up, or because of the extreme cold. Either way we were praised by our professor and I was pleased, judge me all you want but I need praise. The lecture. Opened with a brief talk about South Africa and the ICJ, he made sure to tell us the difference between the ICJ and the ICC: the latter charges individual while the former charges states. A guy in the class who was wearing a keffiyeh (spelling?) brought up Nelson Mandela to highlight the connection between Palestine and South Africa; the quote about how South Africa will never be truly free until Palestine is free. This then continued with my professor stating that the way this whole thing will proceed in the court will be very interesting and that he cannot definitively state that what Israel is doing is genocide, but apparently Hamas is genocidal against Jews.

When we finally started the lecture properly we learned about more “reasons” for genocide which includes nationalism; that inclusion and exclusion are synonymous, as in when one happens so does the other. According to some historians, not named, they believe that there was a genocide committed against monarchists in western France. If you include political ideology in your definition of genocide then this is accurate. Personally, I’ve never heard of this happening but I wouldn’t be surprised that monarchists in post-revolution France were hurt.

So this next part of the lecture gets spicy. We were talking about semantics and metaphors being utilized in genocide and one of them was gardening/medicine/agriculture. The metaphors being shaped like “the survival of some plants while others will be exterminated” and likening certain groups to a contagion/disease. With the gardening metaphor we were shown several quotes as examples and here where the ones that caught my interest:

“You can’t uproot all the weeds hidden among the crops in the field one by one. You need to spray chemicals to kill them all.” (Chinese official in Xinjiang Province) This official is noticeably left unnamed. When reading this quote he asked if we knew the Xinjiang province, then proceeded to very briefly mention concentration camps, forced sterilization, and other forms of violence committed against the Uyghur population. Does anyone know who said this quote?

“Desiccate the seedlings of counterrevolution, pull them out by their roots, exterminate every last one of them.” (Kim Il Sung) I understand this as an example of the garden metaphor but is this genocidal? This seems like the standard attitude against counterrevolution in every state revolution has happened, both communist and fascist.

We then went over hygienic/sanitation metaphors but there was nothing of note there, just the standard fascist rhetoric we are all familiar. This was all given to emphasize the fact that language has power. Almost like how Israel calls Palestinians cockroaches and the children of darkness. Funny how that works.

He then talked about ultra nationalism and then i got confused because he brought up Putin. Here’s what I wrote verbatim in my notebook:

“I’m confused. The conversation now is that because Putin is an ultranationalist therefore Ukrainians cannot exist? What did he imply that? That you can’t be Russian speaking Ukrainian? Is that not something from Ukrainians killing those in the Donbass?”

What I meant was, he claims Putin believe Ukrainians shouldn’t exist and that no Russian can speak Ukrainian, but wasn’t that rhetoric used to commit horrible violence to Russian speaking Ukrainians in the east? Why is nobody talking about that? While i would love to ask him about it during office hours I’m terrified at what will happen if I do.

After this we moved on to the History of genocide and looked at the violence of Chimpanzees and the peacefulness of Bonobos, both our closest relatives. Chimpanzees I guess are more patriarchal and incredibly violent, something about that Y chromosome, says my professor. Bonobos, on the other hand, are very matriarchal and the hornist creatures on the planet (he said this lol). To diffuse conflicts Bonobos will straight up just have huge orgies and there is no discrimination (they will bang both females and males). Why is this horniness relevant? because there is something to be said about genocidal repressive regimes and sex. Germany before the Nazis was actually fairly sexually free but then that all changed under the Nazis (they put gay men in concentration camps). Putin has recently banned LGBT “propaganda” while he is doing his invasion of Ukraine. The connection between sexual repression and genocide/violence is interesting, He made sure to state explicitly that he is not advocation free love as a solution for the world’s problems, but it is something to think about.

We then looked at Palaeolithic genocides very quickly as class was coming to an end; what happened to the Neanderthals? Did they die off due to a skill issue or were they mass slaughtered? I recently heard that Neanderthals practised cannibalism and that might be the reason why they died out, because I guess humans didn’t really do that on mass like they did.

After class I went to the library to do my usual stuff, mainly writing these posts. Listen, they’re school related so I think it’s fine. I also use the time to do other class work and figure out how I am going to survive this year. I technically have a schedule but one of my classes is completely online asynchronous (prerecorded) so trying to fit that in is difficult for me. I do have executive functioning problems due to ADHD so, yeah, it can make studying hard. After this long ass break between classes I went to one of my Psychology classes (I’m taking three). Nothing super interesting happened material wise but because of the low student turnout my professor sent around an attendance sheet and said that we would all get a extra point on the midterm due o our commitment to showing up during shitty weather. That’s what I’m fucking talking about! This is why I don’t stay home because of a sickness or the weather (this is not admirable behaviour).

This post was written from January 10th to the 12th:

January 10 2024

My symptoms still persists, this has been going on since December 26th, but it seems to be simmering down quite a bit. My cough sounds horrifying so I try to stifle it as much as possible to not bother or scare my fellow students. So Ive had two history classes since my last entry and not much has happened but there were some interesting tidbits bits I’d like to share. I’ll actually give that before going into “personal” stuff.

So for class we were supposed to watch the movie Watchers of the Sky which is about Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term Genocide. It is a very long movie that mixes in a biography of Lemkin and genocides such as the one in Sudan to paint a picture of international justice and inaction. I’m not going to go on a deep dive into this movie but I’m sure you can find a way to watch it if you’re curious. Again, it is around 2 hours long so keep that in mind. While we did make references to the movie in class we mostly focused on lecture material that wasn’t directly from it. This first week will focus on defining what genocide is, which is why the movie was assigned. We also have to read passages from the book Blood and Soil before each class to discuss, for now only the introduction has been covered.

January 11 2024

Okay I was unable to finish writing yesterday and am continuing today. Anyway, the lectures: we talked about what genocide is. While it is a crime against humanity, not all crimes against humanity are genocide; there are politics associated with calling something “genocide.” We then talked about what isn’t genocide via examples: Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not acts of genocide, they were horrible crimes but not genocide. Stalin’s Gulags were brought up, they were concentration camps but were not genocidal, although Stalin did commit genocides (plural). The Holodomor, was of course brought up as a case of genocide…. I wonder if my professor is a fan of Anne Applebaum. It can be argued that the transatlantic slave trade was cultural genocide, but it was more so an outcome rather than being sought out directly. For me, weren’t slaves stripped of their individual cultures deliberately?

Genocide is very particular, not every atrocity is a genocide. This isn’t to say they’re not as bad but we have to be accurate with our terminology. Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide in 1942, and it was first published in 1944. He was the founding father of genocide studies and it’s why we talk about him. When he was just a young boy he was always troubled by mass violence, like the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Young Turks. This made me think of the YouTube channel, why would they call themselves that? Many of you probably already know about the details of the genocide so I wont go into it, but the perpetrators got away with it and its mostly due to Woodrow Wilson’s philosophy of self determination; Turkey can do whatever it wants within its own borders. My professor then asked us if we thought Wilson was a good guy and it seems most of the class says no, mostly due to his antisemitism. I wonder, what is the sentiment here? Canadian education doesn’t talk much, if at all about Woodrow so I can’t say personally. Anyway in 1939 Lemkin flees to America, from Poland, and is surprised/disturbed by the fact that Americans at the time didn’t seem to be too bothered by what was happening in Europe at the time. According to my professor Americans were not thrilled but refused to get involved, that was until Japan attacked them. Despite this track? I’m not going to sit here and say the entire American population supported the Nazis but wasn’t there a good chunk that did?

The word genocide is composed of two: Genos = tribe, ethnicity, race; Cide = to kill, exterminate. The Nuremberg trials did not have the mechanisms to charge the Nazis with “genocide” so they were charged with other crimes. The UN eventually adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. The UN definition in article 2 is fairly rigid and a bit limited as it on killing members off a group; causing serious physical or mental harm to members of a group; deliberately inflicting conditions of life on a group to bring out its destruction; preventing births within a group; forcibly transferring children from a group to another. Lemkin includes banning a language as a form of genocide but this is not included in the UN. Pretty much all countries signed but some did not ratify: Japan, Indonesia, some African countries, and it took the US 40 years to ratify the convention. The USSR did sign but not when socioeconomic class was included due to the Kulak situation. He described the Kulaks as being private property owning peasants, and if socioeconomic class was included then the Kulak thing would be considered genocide…

That was the first lecture of the week on Monday, the second was on January 10th. I did make it a point that these lectures would be personal but these lectures makes for good material to share so I feel somewhat obligated, they also take up a good chunk of my day so I’pm gonna talk about it though maybe not as detailed.

We started the January 10th lecture by talking about the ICC and how it goes after individuals inn violation of International law. Currently Putin has a warrant out for his arrest due to his transferring off Ukrainian children into Russia which constitutes genocide. What bothers me about this is that many other leaders, specifically in the west, have done this and much much more yet they don’t have warrants. What gives? We know…

We got into small discussion about how Putin is not stupid enough to travel to countries who are signatories, its why he didn’t attend a BRICS summit in South Africa due to them being obligated to arrest him. My professor asked if Putin came to Canada would we be brave enough to arrest him? I really don’t think so and that seemed to be the sentiment among the rest of us. A student piped up that most wouldn’t want to arrest him. With that my professor said Putin’s army is crap (what?) but maybe 1 out of 10 of nukes work so no one wants to risk arresting him. If his army is crap why are they holding their own so well? My professor is English so that may explain his perspectives…

We talked about UN peacekeepers for bit and their general ineffectiveness. With regard to the Rwandan genocide, some official guy (I don’t remember his name) said that 1 American is worth 80,000 Rwandans, and isn’t that just so telling. We finished off the discussion of the movie and moved on to Blood and Soil, which is synthetic global history. What does that mean? I have no clue but it is going to be like our textbook for the course and it covers a whole bunch of genocides; one of the chapters is called “Soviet terror and agriculture” so thats great. I wont go into too much with this discussion but my professor did say that revolutionary dictatorships are more susceptible to commit in genocides than democracies. Some historians argue that the Haitian Slave Revolt was a genocide perpetrated by slaves against white slave owners. What. Strange thing to believe…

During this lecture i learned the term “subaltern genocide” which is when a people who feel weak revolt against those perceived as strong, he said the Nazis were this. They labelled the Jewish population as being wealthy and Toronto and controlling everything and the Germans had to defeat them. That plus a multitude of other things, of course.

It looks like thats where the lecture ended for January 10th. I had a lecture today, January 12th, and it had some bangers so I’ll write about them in a separate post. Before I go I must apologize for any spelling errors, I swear I know how to spell but this keyboard is very odd and it will double letters even though I only press the key once. E is the letter that gets doubled the most so you will see me talking as if I’m from Shakespeare times. O also gets doubled frequently, but sometimes I end up hitting two keys as once which isn’t great either, somethings the press of a key wont even register so letters don’t end up getting typed. Autocorrect can either make me of break me. So I’m sorry about all that and I apologize for my complaining.

Political Science around 12:30

Israel guy in polisci class, looks like there are two now actually, and they’re having a conversation. They are “critiquing” the girl who said Israel is colonizing Palestine, in reality they are talking shit about her while she is not in the room. One guy said bringing up the conflict was out of place. How so? There’s nuance? Thousands of years? It is a colonial project but you can’t bing in the idea of privilege? I don’t know why the one guy is bringing this up, he’s trying to discredit “activists” as the Jewish people weren’t privileged as 80% died… two white men talking about this by the way. He’s mad that privilege is brought up during discussions of Palestine but I don’t know what he’s talking about as the girl who called Israel a colonial state did not bring up “privilege.” He’s trying to shit talk “activists” because they aren’t “historians.” Apparently Israel’s colonialism is different from Canada’s and therefore it’s okay I guess? I’m writing down as they are talking so if it sounds weird thats why. He’s now bringing up how the Cree people displaced another group of indigenous people? I couldn’t catch the name but he’s playing semantics about what “native” means, according to him it is meaningless. They now think definitions and who uses them is playing a political game. These two dudes suck ass. I’m going to have to learn how to cope with this class. This guy is saying it’s so hard being concerned about “dialectics” and “facts” due to people being attached to “definitions,” what a strange thing to say. I wish they would shut the fuck but at least I get to share what I’m dealing with. To give you an image of one of these guys, he’s very self important and speaks with an authority he does not have, like he’s better and smarter than everyone. He also doesn’t seem to have a note book/tablet/laptop/etc so thats something. The other guy is a dudebro.

Their chat slowly fizzled out as more and more students trickled in coming to a stop when my professor entered.

He opened the class by asking us if there was anything international politics related that we wanted to mention. Of course, Israel being taken to The Hague was the big one. My professor believes there will been peace in our time, when he was young no one thought that the Ireland situation would’ve been resolved but it was, so he is optimistic.

(It looks like there are less students than the first so that may be good for me.)

Is Quebec too economically reliant on Canada, if they separated what would happen? This is asked because Quebec separatism was brought up as a thing that may happen once again in this lifetime, it was stated by the same guy crying about dialectics and definitions. Canada also relies on Quebec? A student said this. Canada without Quebec wont be the same country, my professor says. I agree with that, my main concern if with the Indigenous people within and around Quebec, honestly all Indigenous peoples within Canada.

(Okay maybe there is the same amount of students but they’re just late…)

Individual levels of analysis - looking at leaders.

State level of analysis - Palestine’s ownership of its territory has been decaying. In Israel NetanyahuPs leadership is not doing well, as in he is low in the polls. When Israel was asked about its fine, but when the girl bings up Palestine as an example for state analysis suddenly we don’t want to talk about the Palestine conflict, interesting….

International/systemic level of analysis.

Maybe there is a fourth, Global level of analysis - climate change as an example. Overpopulation was brought up as an example, but professor shot it down as not everywhere is overpopulated but also when there is migration to less populated countries that is considered State level. Self-important Israel guy tried to push back against this but professor stated that these problems with migration are dealt with on a state level, not global.

In Britain today there are groups slashing tires of SUVs in protest of climate change. Zionist guy agues that slashing said tires does more to harm the environment more than just driving SUV. The people gluing themselves to the ground in protest were called idiots by the dudebro Zionist. Very cool.

Globalization is the process of connecting all levels, it goes beyond the state. Technology, financial flow, trade, compression of time and space, it is all subsumed in globalization. Global governance where processes and approaches are created to solve global problems. Globalization is leading to Democracy backsliding in many places. How does globalization impact the state? It negatively affects the state via trade, negating choice due to trends in trade, according to student. Race to the bottom was brought up by my professor as an example of this phenomenon. The state is subject to many global competitors, which can be negative but it may be positive as well. For developing states there is a loss of sovereignty and one must fall in line with the Capitalist global order, The IMF puts certain terms on their loans which keeps developing countries in line, this is what we call neo-liberalism, says my professor. States lose power from globalization, you are being driven by forces outside your borders, multinational companies, etc. come in to disrupt. There is also the problem of populism, globalization generates backlash and thus leads to the rise of populism. Globalization removes the state as a middle man. My professor wants to see a world where we can travel without passports, I agree wholeheartedly. As an example, if someone from Mali came to Canada, no questions asked, how does everyone feel? I honestly just shrugged, I don’t mind at all.

We don’t want American attitudes coming to Canada but they due because of technology, AKA globalization. I would argue that “Canadian values” and “American values” are the exact same thing, what is truly the difference? We just like to weaponize our “nice” stereotype.

We then talked about forms of power: soft and hard power. Joseph Nye said if you combine both you get “smart power.” I’ve talked about this in my first semester.

Right this moment, writing this, I had to skeddadle out of class because of a coughing fit. I’m less embarrassed about it now than I would’ve been before, character development I guess.

Anyway I just got back and my professor used the “Russian Propaganda” ban as a form of thought control, either Putin is trying to use thought control or the Canadian government trying to exercise thought control. I guess you could argue it’s both. Thought control was alongside Agenda Setting and another thing that I could not make out (Deanm making?)… Hopefully the textbook has something for me.

Edit: turns out what looked like “Deanm” on the board may have been “decision”

Now on legitimacy, is Putin’s invasion legitimate? He asks. The question was derailed with discussions about the Taliban.

Instrumental power (Decision making), structural power (Agenda setting), and discursive power (thought control). Fungibility is the power to transfer from one place to another: China and the Bellt and Road initiation was brought as an example by student, its a projection of power in Africa. China always gets support from those countries because of this, apparently.

We’re in a multipolar system; the US, China, India, Russia, and EU existing are all examples of it being a multipolar world. Unit Veto (created by some guy) - if every country has nukes, is the world safe? A student says no as some countries would take this power for granted. What if everyone in class had a gun, would it be a safe classroom? Maybe not. Everyone who has nukes has veto powers, each unit has a veto. Would the world be stable if everyone had nukes? If Ukraine had nukes would Putin have attacked? They used to have nukes but gave them up for territorial sovereignty.

All of this above was written as my professor was talking. For some reason I continued to type after listening in on the Zionist conversation, so all of that is half my notes that I’ll have to write down by hand later. That’s also why it sounds so weird and disjointed. Being a court stenographer (or live transcribing person in general) is not in the cards for me, clearly.

The rest of the lecture was about theories. We went over what empirical theory is vs normative theory and theories that question the essence of the truth. This opened up to discussing foundationalist and anti-foundationalist theories. Foundationalists accept the world as is and anti-foundationalists do not. Classical Realism is a foundational theory that sees the world in a very pessimistic way and seeks to “understand” human nature. Humans are inherently evil, and because humans run the state then the state is also evil. States pursue self-interest and nothing more, they seek to maximize their own power. They view the international system as anarchical as there is no common power, and conflictual. It is a win-lose, zero sum game. Classical Realism believes in the security dilemma. An example given was how North Korea is developing nukes and that has made South Korea consider getting nukes. The USA says they will provide South Korea with protection so there is no need but the South Korean government is still thinking about it. Another example is Taiwan building forces via the US to deter China but, in my professor’s words, Taiwan is a very small island so fighting China would not work out; also Xi is a realist, therefore if needed he will “invade.” One of the Zionist guys piped up stating that he doesn’t think the US will use nukes to defend a foreign country as it goes against they own interests, as in why would they help another country by opening themselves up to return firing of nuclear weapons. My professor disagrees with this sentiment. It’s essentially mutually assured destruction. The other Zionist said we as Canadians have to be worried and take the US seriously with their threats as we share a border.

Some of the critiques of Classical Realism we talked about were how it goes against liberal values of “fairness,” it promotes mistrust, and creates a system of winners at the top and losers at the bottom. Don’t we already have that? No, seriously, don’t we ready have that? We couldn’t continue with critiques as class was coming to an end and he wanted to go over Neo-realism a little. Neo-realism believes that structures influence state behaviour. There are two types: defensive realism and offensive realism. Defensive realism seeks to maintain the status-quo while offensive realism seeks to dominate and create a hegemony. He then asked us if we that China was defensive or offensive, most students said “offensive” and that is where we ended class for the week.

He reminded us about our upcoming seminars that we have to prepare for class and that our assigned articles are posted. Essentially, what we have to do is make a PowerPoint summarizing the assigned article and what type of theorist the author is. After class I lingered to ask him more about the seminar but before I could he asked me if I joined the UN club this year, showing that he did remember me! I said no as I didn’t apply in Fall and therefore it’s too late, they already have their New York team. I told him I would join this year in the Fall. Which is might, hopefully I’m not nearly as socially anxious and have enough knowledge to defend and present my country of choice. Anyway, after that brief exchange I asked him about the seminar as I was freaking out about it (yes I told him that, I am an honest person), he asked when my seminar was and I said I was one of the first (which sucks for me), he gave me the run down and I asked whee I was even supposed to get this article. It was in a book he assigned on our syllabus, separate from the textbook, but i could not find this book anywhere for free. He then just straight up gave me his copy. He looked up my article for me and said to give him the book back next week when I finish making my own copy of it. That was very kind of him and I appreciate it. He’s a good professor and a nice person, even if I get frustrated with his statements and his clear… uhh… “dislike” of China. Funnily enough my article is about China so thats neat, I will share it soon enough as I will probably be seeking advice on how to present since I suck at these. He wants to prepare us for when we have to do public speaking in the outside world but I’m not ready! I want to be left alone!

Today was the first day of my global politics class, I’m only taking one political science class this semester due to needing the other course slots for history and psychology which is my major. I actually have the same professor from my first semester political science class so I’m treading in familiar waters. I’m still not completely healthy, a cough and sore throat maybe bronchitis, so I wasn’t confident and worried I’d have to dash out if a cough attack creeped up. I got to class early and waited with two others. When the time for class was getting closer obviously more students came in and I noticed this class is bigger in terms of amount of students, the room is normal size.

My professor arrived and it was very nostalgic to hear him talk, I had the passing thought throughout wondering if he remembered me. Unfortunately, just like in my history class we did icebreakers. This time he wanted our names, program, and for us to state something that happened post WWII related to international relations. When the students were doing their intros I noticed that they kept referencing recent events and for a moment I got confused, was it any even after WWII or recent events which are obviously post-WWII. Thankfully my question was answered when a student mentioned the US invasion of Afghanistan. While there were many events I wanted to use for my icebreaker I decided to play it safe and hope that nobody else talked about the expansion of BRICS. Most people mentioned Israel-Palestine, Ukraine-Russia, Taiwan, and apparently the Philippines and China are having a dispute; thankfully no one mentioned BRICS. By the time it got to me I was the last to go. He seemed pleasant when I brought up BRICS and proceeded to briefly educate the class on it, I then helped him with remembering the five new member states, which would’ve been six but Argentina refused. My professor then stated that in his opinion it was a very bad move for Argentina to not join BRICS and if it were him he definitely would’ve said yes.

Because the topic of Palestine was brought up quite a bit and Canada’s role in the world in general my professor told us that the government plans to take in one thousand Gazans. With that he asked if that was enough. Most of us said “no” for obvious reasons and he agreed. He said it was not enough, we did so much for Ukraine why can we not do the same for Gazans. We have to be consistent and Canada is huge, it doesn’t make sense. He then went on to talk about change and continuity; that thee have been many changes since WWII but there have also been continuous activities. Sufi Generis vs déjà vu, we were asked to provide examples for each. A girl spoke up, and I believe she was in my political science class last semester, sand said colonialism as a continuity. There was brief reference to neo-colonialism from my professor and the girl cited what Israel is doing to Palestine as a form of colonialism with their settlers. My professor was kind of resistant in a way that maybe she was stretching the definition of colonialism, I was thinking maybe imperialism was a better descriptor but I don’t disagree with her. Then some guy piped up attempting to argue in favour of Israel stating that they tried to give land back but Palestine refused the offer, he then said that calling what Israel is doing “colonialism” is hateful; that this isn’t colonialism, its a war. What the fuck? A real life Zionist in the flesh in my class… this semester is going to be a nightmare…

Anyway with that war was added to the continuity side and we shifted focus to changes. Multipolarization with reference to Russia and China relations, before there was the Sino-Soviet conflict but now they are working together. There are Arab and North African countries supporting Israel for economic purposes; globalization; importance of non-state actors; and global governance has emerged. Just so you know this wasn’t part of the lecture/course material, we were still doing intro stuff and we haven’t even cracked open the syllabus. Actually after this we did get to the syllabus.

So he made sure to emphasize that deadlines (specifically for the research paper) are fixed no matter the circumstances. Something terrible could happen and it would not change. He said he does this to prepare us for real world deadlines in the workplace. Well that just makes me believe that workplaces should be more accommodating but what do I know? Moving on, 10% of the grade is from a seminar we have to doo in front of the damned class. Are you fucking kidding me?! He said this was to help with public parking but it only makes me want to die. I don’t know how I held myself together but I was about to cry, once again. This shit is just too much for me… How this seminar presentation thing will go is that he will give use a topic thing, a reading, and then we have to make a presentation about it. This class has me questioning my entire life choices and maybe I’ve followed the wrong path… obviously I may be overthinking this and clearly I’m in my feelings but damn, i cannot catch a break… I don’t know how Im going to reign in my social anxiety before the seminars…

After that he actually dove into course material. This usually doesn’t typically happen with other classes but I guess this professor is built differently. We went over the definition of what international relations is and non-state actors. I don’t think t is relevant to go into i as its repeated information but one thing that was interesting/new was learning the terms “Dunantist” and “Wilsonian,” the former meaning a humanitarian organization that is politically neutral, and the latter meaning a humanitarian organization that is political. We learned them when discussing NGOs. He then asked us which humanitarian organization does the Ukrainian government prefer? Most of us said Wilsonian and he said so as well, then stating the Ukrainian government does not want a humanitarian organization that is neutral to the genocide of Ukrainians… what? Correct me if I’m wrong but is it a genocide? Comparing it to what Israel is doing to Palestinians (they even say it out loud) it doesn’t seem like it…

Let’s move on before I get side tracked. We talked about what a state is, which all of us here know, and went into what makes up each component of a state: what makes up territory, what makes up population, and what makes up sovereignty. When referring to population and citizenry passports were talked about; how passports are later to the relations between countries. Someone with a Canadian passport is going to have an easier time than someone with a Mali passport. He told us that this is kind of a colonial mindset due to the mindset with “club membership” of passports. Certain countries have it easier and don’t make the effort to ease relations with those that are seen as lesser (this is my own tidbit). Weirdly enough, apparently the Singapore passport is the best in the world and he doesn’t know why. Does anyone here know why that is? With that he ended this off with encouraging us to get NEXUS because it makes crossing borders easier, you can skip lines.

When talking about sovereignty he asked us if Taiwan was a state: many said yes and I was one of few that said no. It has weak sovereignty and contested statehood; Taiwan has good internal governance but not external. Some guy spoke up saying everyone except China sees Taiwan as a state which I don’t think is accurate. At all. Don’t many UN members deny Taiwan as a state? Just because western states see Taiwan as sovereign, not because of “freedom” but for western advantages, leant mean the rest of the world agrees. Many UN members recognize Palestine but they aren’t granted statehood. The logic is flawed is what I’m trying to get at.

We need the lecture talking about Metonyms, aka shorthand. They are used frequently in international relations like “Foggy Bottom” meaning the US state department.

Thats all I have for you for day one of semester three, I hope this was an interesting read. I’m going to try to be more personable with these entries rather than just robotically typing down material. While that may be good for some people I feel it would be in my best interest to deviate from that structure. It might also be more entertaining to read and comment on, but who knows?

Note: Also my illness is improving! I still have a cough (I had to fight it during class) but by the end of the day there is no congestion so thats good. My throat is sore though…

January 3, 2024

So as I specified in my previous post that I decided to start doing journal-ish entries about my experiences during school. I think this will be a neat little insight into what it’s been like for me personally during my studies rather than just posting about lecture materials. This semester I have not only another political science course (I will be starting it tomorrow), which will be about global politics, but my current history course (I’m taking it to fulfill breadth requirements but I might also take it up as a second minor, who knows) is about genocides. Today I had my history class and will have my psychology course in a few hours. I have another psychology course but it is completely online so I gotta make my own hours. I did want three psychology courses but one of them I’m on a waiting list, I am first in line so once someone drops out I’ll take their spot. For now I just wait and deal with my other classes.

My day was already off to a bad start as I’ve been battling a cold (I think its a cold or lingering allergies) which means I am super congested and that leads to coughing at the worst times. I am one of those people that, unfortunately, when a cough begins it lasts for quite a while so I was obviously stressed about coughing in the middle of class. I took some medicine before I left and packed myself some chamomile tea, and some crackers to snack on before buying lunch (I usually pack my own lunch but I forgot so…). Anyway let me tell you a bit about what happened in my history class. It wasn’t an actual class as the first day of the semester is always dedicated to going over the syllabus, course outline, and getting to know your professors(s). So this class is going to focus on genocides and this is apparently a new course for my professor as he’s never taught it before. He handed out the course schedule (not the syllabus, that will be provided online) and then, of course, asked us to do stupid icebreakers: our name + our major + and interesting fact = so fucking annoying for your good comrade SpaceDogs. I actually started to tear up while waiting for my turn because I hate this kind of stuff so much. Can you tell I’m insanely introverted? Because of this my professor is now on my shit list, too bad so sad. What made this worse was my sickness, talking is harder when you’re congested.

While people were doing their introductions I felt a coughing fit coming up, that horrible itchiness in your throat, and I just got up and left, speed walking around the corner and crouching down. I huddled into my jacket, shirt, and mask (of course I was masked, who do you think I am?) and just coughed. I tried to keep it as quiet as possible, hell even now as I writ this in the library I’m trying to muffle my agony. When I entered the classroom it looked like we made it to the last batch of icebreakers, I thought maybe he’d just let me off the hook but once the last person went he turned to me and urged me to do my intro. All I said was “my name is ____, major psychology, there’s nothing interesting, last name ____” (he kept asking for last names after people said their piece so I just added it in). He seemed slightly rattled from my delivery, I will admit my tone was clearly not thrilled or enthusiastic, but said that he wont put me on the spot and he is sure he’ll find something interesting about me as the semester continues. You can scold me for being rude, I probably deserve it, but I was/am not doing great today. Being sick + icebreakers + seeing “Holodomor” on the course schedule is not a good mix.

After “getting to know each other” he went on to discuss the schedule, which we had physical copies of, and the syllabus which he has yet to upload to our student system thing. This first week is essentially nothing as our next class after this one is nonexistent, as in he wants us to watch a movie on our own time before the class next week and so there will be no actual lecture. The following weeks will be about defining genocide; settler colonialism; ethnic cleansing in North America; residential schools and cultural genocide; genocide in colonial Africa; the Armenian genocide; the holocaust; the “Holodomor”; Cambodia and Rwanda; and genocide today. The two major texts we will need for this class is Blood and Soil by Ben Kiernan and Neighbours by Jan Gross, he told us to “please purchase these books” but I absolutely will not, I will find other means because school is expensive enough and feeding my dog is more important than buying a book I’ll use once. Maybe I’ll actually enjoy these books, and if so I may purchase them but having a free copy is just as good. There are other readings and sources for the course that ill be provided online and h encouraged us to print physical copies, if we want to do well thats what we should do because its way different than reading on a screen. Does he think I’m made of money? I don’t have aa printer at home and printing at the school costs real life money, so no, I will not be printing them off, I will read them on my tablet like god intended, thanks.

While going over the syllabus participation is unfortunately 20% of the damn grade! Um, excuse me? He did specify that “morbidly” shy students can discuss this with him during office hours which I will definitely be doing because Fuck That! Attendance is a part of the 20% and he will count us taking notes as well but he emphasizes us speaking. What a nightmare but hopefully I can get him to make arrangements when I talk to him during office hours. The movie we have to watch for next week is called Raphael Lemkin: Watchers of the Sky, it’s about the guy who coined the term “genocide” which, according to my professor, didn’t exist until the holocaust.

The genocide today section of the course schedule is interesting as it specifies that we need to read four of provided links. One is about Srebrenica, another about “enclosure of China’s Uyghurs,” genocide fears in Darfur, Myanmar’s Rohingya, “Russia’s genocide handbook” by Timothy Snyder on substack, Israel and Palestine supporters accusing each other of genocide, genocide underway in Palestine, and ending off with “How the term ‘genocide’ is misused in the Israel-Hamas war” by the Economist. I really have my work cut out for me with this class, I expect I will be fuming quite often during this semester.

That’s essentially the gist of it, I have my psychology class later today but I doubt it’ll be worth writing about here. Not that it’s going to be bad but I don’t expect it will get me hyped up like history and political science. If something does come up, trust it will be posted. For now this is the end, thank you for reading!

Day 35 was on December 6th and was the last lecture, we still had class on December 8th but he stated that it was for review (and it actually was). This lecture continued discussing welfare states and while we didn’t finish this chapter in class he gave us a video lecture to complete the course (it was about healthcare) but I won’t be writing about it here. This was our last proper lecture and it was also the last day for office hours so I made sure to take advantage of it. First let’s get the class material done.

We began with Christian Democratic welfare states: states whose social policies are based on the nuclear family with a male breadwinner, designed primarily to achieve income stabilization to mitigate the effects of market-induced income insecurity; Germany is a key example. The most common social program is social insurance replacing a family’s market-based income when it is disrupted through unemployment, disability, etc.; benefits are tied to contributions funded by payroll taxes rather than general taxation; in corporatist models of economic governance social insurance programs are administered by and through sectoral-based organizations.

Liberal welfare states are those whose social policies focus on ensuring that all who can do so gain their income in the market; more concerned about preserving individual autonomy than reducing poverty or inequality; the United States is a key example. They utilize means-tested public assistance but some poor people don’t get assistance, only those labelled impoverished can get benefits, and benefits do not raise people out of poverty. Not all programs are means-tested, e.g. retirement benefits via social insurance. It is more concerned with encouraging market participation.

There are many explanations for welfare states. The “Power resources theory” is a structural arguement by Esping-Anderson that describes welfare states as reflecting the strength of the working and lower-middle classes. Social democratic welfare states have strong labour unions and powerful SocDem parties; Christian democratic welfare states have strong Christian democratic parties appealing to working and lower-middle classes; Liberal welfare states have weak working classes. In proportional electoral systems there is facilitating the creation of the more generous social democratic and Christian democratic systems. Majoritarian electoral systems are associated with Liberal welfare states.

Cultural theorists believe that long-standing values, religion, and ethnic or racial diversity explains the differences in welfare states. Anglo-American countries have stronger liberal traditions emphasizing the importance of the individual and individual autonomy; Protestantism, especially Calvinism believes that the wealthy are morally superior and has less sympathy for the poor; Catholics are generally more generous due to their beliefs in preserving social and family stability. Are there differences in generosity of social spending based on racial diversity? Well, many white people, specifically in the US, have a misperception on who exactly is on welfare and this misperception leads to them unwilling to support. Policies to assist non-white people. This is in part due to the “welfare queen” label that was thrown around to stigmatize those on welfare, specifically black women, but in reality the majority of people on welfare are white. There is the belief that diversity puts a strain on social services but this is empirically wrong. Sympathy for immigrants in Europe is waning because of these false beliefs.

Will the different models survive or converge in the globalization era? Well, competition for investment from mobile capital by lower taxes has resulted in the pressure on social expenditures; demographic changes like an aging society, dropping birth rates, and increasing burden for workers to pay the benefits for the elderly (dualization of the workforce). Dualization of the workforce is a split between the typical workforce and the gig economy, and how the service industry skews younger and female. The response after the Great Recession was an emphasis on “social investment policies”: encouraging employment and greater flexibility in the labour market; lowered welfare states’ effects on inequality, reducing traditional social spending (e.g. retirement) with more investment in job training.

Comparing welfare states Social democratic are the most generous while Liberal are the least generous, but differences have narrowed over time. With poverty reduction Social Democratic welfare states are better than Christian democratic which are better than Liberal. These differences have narrowed and inequality has increased in all reflecting the effects of globalization and demographic pressures. Social Policy in the Global North is like air, it’s natural, this is not the case for the Global South due to resources being limited (this was lecture material not my own thoughts). Neoliberal economic policies saw that economic growth was the best means of reducing poverty, it was implemented in the 1980s and 1990s cutting both social services and government subsidies. Since then social policies have been an important issue. In the Global South social policy is not provided by the state, but by informal security regimes: social needs provided by a combination of private markets, formal/informal community organizations, and family. Democratization expanded social policy previously limited to social insurance. The most successful policy so far has been Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) which is a means tested program that provides cash grants to the poor and in exchange require particular beneficial behaviour from the poor, such as children’s attendance at school and visits to health clinics. I guess CCTs first came from the Mexican government and has been effective in avoiding poverty traps, they have also been big in Brazil.

That’s where the election ended, sort of. We did briefly go over health care policy but not much as it would be provided via video lecture. After class I went straight to his office. While I was the first one there he arrived it’s another student in toe, i encouraged said student to go first and i waited outside. Another student came by and we waited together, when the first student finished I told the other to go ahead as I had no other classes and could wait a little longer. I said this because its true but I also don’t want to feel rushed, as in I like to take my time and i had aa lot of questions, I wouldn’t want to take up time that another student needed. After that student was done I was in and the first question I asked was related to my paper, I asked the same question here but wanted to see his answer:: “who said that the revolution would begin in industrialized countries and then spread too non-industrialized countries?” I rephrased the question a few times for him to really get the gears turning but he didn’t really know, he did say it was most likely Marx and definitely not Lenin. I asked about Engels as someone on here shared a quote from him for me and he said it was entirely possible, but Engels was more philosophical and focused on economic analysis while Marx was more dialectical.

After that, since it was my last office hours with him, I asked him about the PhD process and if I could go somewhere else to do it. With my focus of studies staying in Canada is not great and he agreed. He asked me why I wanted to stay in Canada, I corrected him saying that I don’t (he misunderstood). He asked just to be certain that what I was interested in was Marxism, I saiid yes, and with that he told me that Marxism is in a crisis of survival in this part of the world and Northern Europe and that my best bet were to go to Germany. I asked if any other countries were on the table, like those in Asia, and he said no. This was most likely due to the language barrier but he didn’t tell me why. He encouraged me to study in Europe, staying more central like Germany, he is familiar with that country specifically so I’m assuming thats why he was emphasizing it, but I’m assuming others are good places as well. I then asked him about living expenses, travel, and if I’d be able to take my dogs (judge me all you want), so far living expenses I’d pay myself and if the country is chill with it I should have no issues travelling with my dogs, and i think I remember him saying that the school would pay for travel but i may be misremembering (I unfortunately didn’t write it down). But this wont be for a while so I have some time to think about what I’m going to do. Personally I think it’d be great to study abroad but I worry a lot about everything that comes with it. Mainly the dog problem but also choosing a country and the expenses. should I just stay in Canada? My province has nothing to offer, really. This has been weighing on me for a while. It’s far away still but it’s making me anxious anyway. If I do study abroad learning the language is incredibly important and if I don’t start now how bad will it be by the time I leave? Anyway I’m getting a bit off topic, essentially he was not judgemental and answered my questions with equal weight, he didn’t make me feel silly for asking any of them and my ideology didn’t seem to put him off at all.

After our discussion I went home to stress about my research paper and upcoming finals. Fun fact, my finals were the following week, I barely had time to properly study so that was cool. So that was semester 2, what a rollercoaster, and semester 3 starts tomorrow! I actually don’t have my Political Science class until Thursday but I do have another history course that might be worth writing about, but we will have to wait and see. If you have any questions about pretty much anything please comment them, I like interacting with people on here.

Some posts on here from now on may be more like journal entries of the day and not focused on lectures, they will be properly labeled so if you want to skip out on those you’ll be able to see clearly which ones not to read.