memes

I explained to you why hexbear users can be so hostile. Dismissing our arguments entirely (with no sources or citation and if they exist it's shit like Zenz or U.S state dept) and constantly suggesting we're bots. In my opinion, the defederations are simply a side-effect, we actually attract quite a few disenchanted people that way when libs try to do the whole hostile actor and smug, ignorant "adults in the room" attitude they have and we just respond to it with a picture of a pig pooping on its balls. They check out who we are, what are beliefs are and they are either disgusted or interested in the community. If we tried to suppress that under a banner of civility, we'd attract more people that likely wouldn't mesh or understand our beliefs or understand the "internet community" that we have. It's not a communist organizing hot-spot...it's simply just a web-board that's very political.

The original space they had on reddit was far, far worse with a larger more "wider" community. I'm not as well read and educated on the history of this website, but I know a few things and if you're curious on more of that you can likely find a thread on it or use AskChapo. But in general, Chapo was even more aggressive and meme-like. It was a shitposting board mixed with hard-left themes. A bit cleaner than leftypol though. A lot of those traditions carried on. It does work for recruiting people, seeing that people are done hearing the same excuses for austerity and deteriorating conditions globally and in climate. They like seeing people get mad at it, but we do take it too far certainly. Combine that with the fact how hostile people can be right at us, it certainly paints an image of us being combative. In my opinion, it's just more insular.

Communists don't have necessarily a bad opinion on nationalism, all though we likely view it differently than the typical view same as with imperialism. All though, we aren't "nationalists" because a good chunk of our base is certainly not from Iran, Russia, etc. All though, we do have a few from the "second world" and a few posters from China/live in China as well. Marxism and the National Question by Stalin goes right into this, e.g-

"A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.

It goes without saying that a nation, like every historical phenomenon, is subject to the law of change, has its history, its beginning and end.

It must be emphasized that none of the above characteristics taken separately is sufficient to define a nation. More than that, it is sufficient for a single one of these characteristics to be lacking and the nation ceases to be a nation.

It is possible to conceive of people possessing a common "national character" who, nevertheless, cannot be said to constitute a single nation if they are economically disunited, inhabit different territories, speak different languages, and so forth. Such, for instance, are the Russian, Galician, American, Georgian and Caucasian Highland Jews, who, in our opinion, do not constitute a single nation.

It is possible to conceive of people with a common territory and economic life who nevertheless would not constitute a single nation because they have no common language and no common "national character." Such, for instance, are the Germans and Letts in the Baltic region.

Finally, the Norwegians and the Danes speak one language, but they do not constitute a single nation owing to the absence of the other characteristics.

It is only when all these characteristics are present together that we have a nation.

It might appear that "national character" is not one of the characteristics but the sole essential characteristic of a nation, and that all the other characteristics are, properly speaking, only conditions for the development of a nation, rather than its characteristics."

That's one excerpt. Further elaboration on each of these is had earlier in the book, but I posted the one that first came to mind. Nationalism can be a good thing when used as a tool for the proletariat to work towards liberation or socialism. It also can be used by reactionaries, however, so it is best to be careful.

What about it makes you distrustful? It goes without saying that support for these nations is a part of being anti-imperialist. It should be apparent too that a good chunk of what we hear about "hostile nations" is shit spun up by the N.E.D or State Department. Is all of it? No, of course not, that's what "critical support" means when we use it. No one, nation or entity/thing is perfect. Propaganda on these things and in general from the cold-war has warped the mentality of the American psyche when discussing these things. Something you can likely see from a lot of liberals.

Depends on the person you ask in terms of what we mean by that. A lot of Americans truly are ignorant in bliss and comfortable with the fact that they have an economic hegemony over the entire world and use it to extract wealth (with other nations like France, U.K, etc) and resources from third world countries while keeping them poor via the IMF and other mechanisms (like interventions, see how many there are in Latin America from America alone.) to keep the standard of living high enough and to extract the rest towards the top. You try to make Americans aware of this, there are a good few who get disgusted by it. Otherwise, most plug their ears and worse try to justify it. A good chunk of conservative thought is "fuck you, got mine" and general ignorant bliss. A good chunk of neoliberalism is justifying this via "creating opportunities and jobs in foreign nations, expanding their economies" while also ignoring the fact that the nations they're extracting from are growing poorer and poorer. When they do try to break away, like Allende for example, they are killed or deposed. So, yes. A chunk of American politics and the standard of living for the average western person is made incredibly high by our control of global economy and IMF. Not as many as their should be decide to actually work towards changing that.

But, there is also the fact more and more Americans are just apathetic and have been subject to cold-war propaganda since time immemorial. A lot of politics and law is built by the wealthy to defend and justify their extraction and a lot of Americans believe it. There could be a point in time where that changes. Some think accelerationism and think simply material conditions need to worsen. There are a few who think that we just need to be able to get a proper workers/vanguard party/political movement when the current political scene in the United States is shattered by an increasingly multi-polar world.

I also did just give you an example with Americans voting to keep punishing prisoners with slave labor. Proposition 6. So, a little bit of truth there for a uncomfortably large amount of Americans.