This makes me angry. I encounter it online and in the wild all the time. People have a problem with billionaires and corporations owning everything. They don't have a problem with mom-and-pop landlords living in the neighborhood (whatever's left of it) and renting out a few AirBnBs. People feel this way because they can't see a way out of capitalism except saving up some money and getting their own AirBnbs to exploit the land and proletariat, even though small landlords are neither happy nor interesting people, and they are still trapped inside capitalism.
People with an anti-corporate and anti-billionaire mindset are moving in the right direction, but they're still beholden to capitalist individualism. It's the same with local small businesses, even though these businesses are buying all their products from big businesses, selling them for a massive markup, and (in my experience) cheating their employees far more often than big business. Government jobs are the only ones I've had where I didn't feel like I was going to be fired or screwed every single day I was there.
I saw a Sysco truck a few days ago outside the only restaurant in my very small town. This place was my first job (as a bus boy) a loooooong time ago. They stiffed me on my first paycheck (I had been working an unpaid training period without knowing it, I was also supposed to be a psychic at this place) and I walked out. In the second or third year of the pandemic I saw a girl who couldn't have been more than eight years old working in an apron there (she was related to the family that owns the place). I've lived here off-and-on for decades and almost no one ever went to that restaurant; everyone knew you'd get sick if you ate their food. We suspected that it was a mafia money-laundering operation, since the owners drive red corvettes and seem to be rolling in dough. Tourists do eat there more regularly now even though the place has noticeably bad yelp reviews.
In a colonial context, big or small bourgeoisie can be revolutionary. In an imperialist context like in the USA, they are almost never revolutionary.
Also, the phrase "during the pandemic" makes me angry! A friend living overseas just told me yesterday that they had gotten sick and lost their sense of taste. Look up recent online reviews for scented candles.
Using "childish" as an insult. Bruh, have you talked with kids? Literally any kids. Easiest group of people on Earth to radicalize.
"Israel" is to blame for everything but somehow the USA is still good. This is thanks to Hollywood and the fact that the USA is a far bigger and more successful "Israel." Very few people know that Columbus was a Zionist. People around the world still dream of living here and making it big because of Hollywood movies and friends or relatives who immigrated here and somehow made it work.
In my experience, Arabic speakers are ready for a revolution, as long as it excludes women's liberation / queer liberation. Spanish speakers have profound levels of liberal brainworms. Portuguese speakers are typically pretty aligned with hexbear without knowing it. White leftists seem uninterested in returning the USA to indigenous sovereignty and paying full reparations to slaves / the descendants of slaves, and this is one major reason why their movements always go nowhere. (I hate the term "leftist" but I don't know what else to call these people since they aren't communists and yet they're still a bit more radical than the average democrat.)
What are some of your left-ish peeves you regularly encounter online?
That. The colonialist and imperialist projects of Europe were all backed by clergy citing the Bible. Do you call the colonial empires in India and Africa Zionism? What about the non columbus conquistadors? What about the puritans? Fuck it dude the confederates were justifying the civil war with the Bible, was that Zionism?
That's only bizarre because you are conflating them with modern Zionists. To a medieval crusader a Jew was a Christ killer who refused the word of the Lord when they heard it, and possibly someone currently in possession of valuable stuff that would be theirs if they stabbed them a little bit, an action they were pre-forgiven for. Crusaders did not want a Jewish ethnostate, they didn't want an Israel, they wanted their own fiefdoms in the levant, religious salvation, and the inclusion of Jerusalem in Christendom.
Just to hone in on this example, they called America the promised land, the city on a hill, the land of milk and honey, even the New Jerusalem. Zionism is when Jews want to colonize Palestine using the Bible as justification, but it's not Zionism when gentiles use the Bible to justify colonizing other parts of the world. (The parts of the Bible they use are also usually the Old Testament parts.) It just seems so similar to me, and arbitrary to say, well, Jews aren't involved here and we're in a different part of the world, so although the process is basically the same (use the Bible to justify genocide), the differing locales and lack of direct Jewish involvement makes it different.
Currently "Israel" is attempting to build what it calls a "Greater Israel" which has nothing to do with anything written in the Bible—not just by grabbing territory from Syria or Lebanon, but by dominating as many governments as possible (Turkey, European governments, the USA, etc.). Their goal is basically to turn the entire planet into Syria. The Old Testament is integral to "Israeli" claims to Palestine, but it never mentions countries like the USA, since they didn't exist when the Old Testament was written. Does this then mean that the "Israelis" are no longer doing Zionism, that they're just back to regular European colonialism and imperialism? The result may not even be control of Palestine—after "Israel" collapses, "Israelis" could retreat to places like Cyprus, although obviously they would just be waiting for a chance to return to Palestine, which is their primary goal.
Do you follow Laith Marouf? He's called "Israel" a modern Crusader state. I also just found it bizarre that no Jews are even mentioned in a movie like Kingdom of Heaven, which was a pretty major attempt on Hollywood's part to address the "Israeli/Palestinian Conflict." Apparently not many Jews were living in Palestine at the time in which the film takes place, since the Crusaders had expelled or killed most of them, but Saladin allowed them to return once he took back Jerusalem. There are just so many contradictions here, it's difficult to untangle them.