What is an "Ultra"? This is a state of being where immediate change is desired, it can either be grounded on materialist (class consciousness) or metaphysical (false consciousness) analysis. Let us look at a few real world examples:

• You could be at risk of poverty or social exclusion
• You or your loved ones might be unable to access healthcare services
• You could simply be more likely to experience violence for being born a woman

What can a proletariat do to overcome poverty under capitalism? Only work, but alone worker is hopeless to change anything. In desperation they seek a solution. If you choose to do politics, be prepared to face these people, because you will inevitably run into them. People who are bitter, angry, lost, facing great illness, an ongoing tragedy. Are you ready to tell them what to do? "Sorry my hand's are full." doesn't cut it when your daughter is in the hospital.

You are prescribing a death sentence. This is very serious, especially when you are a spokesperson for a (dis)organized movement. Wearing a hammer and sickle is not just about being a fan, it's about being a member of a group who wants to change the world for the better. Every "I don't know" is a spit in the face of communism, if you don't know what are you doing there dressed up in uniform? Take it off and put on the civilian garb. At the very least have a "HQ" you can point people towards, to look for help.

Of course we are going to fail at this, you must be okay with that and pick yourself up again. But whenever you see an "Ultra" remember to always contextualize them, don't mock them and don't provoke them. If you must be ready to defend against them.

Don't:

• Assume the other person knows, no matter how trivial it may seem.
• Try to prove a point, you're supposed to educate.
• Put on that shit eating grin, communis is community first, go lib out somewhere on your own time.
• Be perfect, you are supposed to change and that's okay. (This rule applies to itself)

I have been writing this down as I've been facing a lot of reactionary sentiment on the online left space, including my own reactions that just turn into a tarpit of doom. On the internet we're extremely alienated and yet this brings us the closest together in our primary issue, a way to escape the armchair.

What is the main obstacle in our way? Well I can't even share where I'm from without, from what I understand, risking death or injury. Meanwhile I have been browsing the Chinese internet to contrast what we have here. My algorithm is literally chock full of people helping each other and doing practical work, literally seeing people being lifted out of poverty in real time. I've also ran into CPC members doing mukbang as they're taking a break from doing some construction work.

Shouldn't we be aimed to do something like this? We don't have a direct action online community and obviously we can't just go and make one, but like what are we doing here? Stewing in our own soup? How much more are we going to keep yelling "Do something" on the internet while refusing to connect it to the real world? Then it's no wonder all we end up with is react content, ultras and a few lucky ones in between, who don't fall through the cracks.

It's no wonder Breadtubes lesson of "Just ignore the haters and focus on yourself and what you care about." Lessons taught by the bourgeoise will only stick to the bourgeoise. And yet I bring you a lesson from Comrade Lei Feng:

• Embrace comrades with the warmth of spring.
• Temper work with the heat of the summer.
• Brush up your mistakes as you brush the autumn leaves.
• Treat your enemy with the harsh indifference of winter.

We don't need some petty bourgeoise liberal to dictate us. They can either adapt or face the harsh indifference of winter that they so gleefully been applying on those they deem below them.

We're not just numbers on a machine we're flesh and blood people. Always remember your message will end up reaching a person and we don't know what they're going through. There's people exhausted and giving up trying to maintain these money printing machines. If you want to struggle do it for the people.

Important : I am just a lumpenproletariat, therefore you should not rely on my advice, nor should you pass this forward to anyone, this is merely my thoughts on a page that I thought might be useful for the class conscious individuals to read and draw some lessons from. Please don't shame anyone for our lack of knowledge, there's nothing funny about someone trying to learn. We aren't going to hurt you just because our lives can't be immediately improved, just be honest with us don't lie, don't give us the silent treatment. At least tell us that you can't help so that we can learn.

Also if this is the wrong comm please just delete this.

I probably shouldn't be making this post. I hate getting involved struggle session highschool drama shit and I won't even point to specific evidence because frankly this shit depresses me. But here goes:

This might be a "wtf are you ranting about, Owl?" moment but there are some serious reactionary vibes in this place sometimes. Maybe it's a holdover from the dirtbag leftist era, I don't know, but it's gross. I see it trying to worm its way in here and it's a bad sign

If you ever catch yourself using the kind of shitty othering and ableism you'd see on stupidpol or a 2016 cringe compilation, go do some self crit or fuck right off

I've spent the past days reading extensively some modern historiographical works regarding the Spanish civil war and Soviet intervention, due to previous quarrels in this topic with lemmy "anarchists" (links on the writeup). Tl;Dr: go to the conclusions of the writeup if you want an extremely brief summary of what I've found out in my research, or just browse through the sources yourself to form your own opinion. Warning: this writeup is LONG. If you wish, first go through the quoted sections (excerpts from the literature) and read my interpretations on them. Hope you enjoy!

Intro: what led me to this

For the past decades and with the opening of the Soviet archives (which proved that the previously repeated figures for the Soviet deportations and great terror were overestimated), there has been an intensified campaign by European authorities to manufacture anti-Russian and anti-Soviet propaganda. Often times, this has taken the shape of promoting the Nazi-peddled “double genocide theory”, and revisionist interpretations of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. When discussing the latter read my effortpost about it, I often like to bring up, being myself a Spaniard, that in 1936, while France and England looked the other way, the Soviets were the only European power to materially help the Republican and Anarchists in Spain in their civil war against Fascism, even if Nazis and Italian Fascists were openly carrying out military action in the region against the non-intervention agreement. When I bring this up, libs normally don’t have any response, but self-described “anarchists” will present the Soviet support in the Spanish civil war as a plot to destroy anarchism, and will bring up the “massive repressions” carried out by the NKVD after the May Days against the anarchists, as a form of the “ML stab in the back to anarchists” idea that’s so popular in western anarchist circles. Example here.

I considered that I may be wrong about this, and maybe the Soviets had carried out a massive repression against Anarchists in Spain, so I decided to ask the Anarchists themselves: I made a post explicitly asking for numerical estimates of such repressions in c/Anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com. The only response I received (more upvoted than my request) amounts to saying I shouldn’t expect to find such accurate historical estimates. Having read plenty about the Soviet repressions, I’m aware that the Soviets kept extremely detailed accounts of such repressions because, unlike fascists, they weren’t ideologically murderous repressors, they were just paranoid of a Nazi invasion but their purpose wasn’t to control people through fear. To this day, organizations such as Memorial from Russia enable people to scour through the tons of available data on their repressions and to find their ancestors and what happened to them. This kinda triggered me because, why would the Soviets keep such extensive records even during WW2 times, but completely negate this for the Spanish civil war? So I decided to embark on my own research.

My research: repression in the Republican side, and the Soviet point of view

Listening to the ProlesPod Episode 70 in which they briefly discuss the Soviet intervention in the Spanish civil war, they mention (around 1:18:18) that the modern estimates of repressions by the NKVD in Republican Spain amount to 20 people. After hours of searching through their sources (available on their Patreon to free-tier subscribers), I stumbled upon some interesting authors, books and articles, which I will cite in the following text. Note that my focus will be on the Republican and Soviet repressions. This is far from an intent at condemnation of antifascist repression in the antifascist side, far from that. I just believe that everyone reading this shares my antifascist beliefs and doesn’t need to be told how horrifying and unjustified the Francoist repression was.

As it turns out: there ARE modern estimates of repression victims in the Spanish civil war. In the Bloomsbury Handbook of the Spanish Civil War, a very modern, well-researched and well-sourced work printed in 2023, Chapter 15 is entirely devoted to it. The chapter begins:

The repression behind the lines during the Civil War saw the rebels and Francoists consign at least 100,000 opponents to an early grave, with nearly 30,000 executed after the end of the conflict. [...] The bulk of the victims’ remains continue to rest in an estimated 115,000 anonymous mass graves. Meanwhile, nearly 50,000 people perished in government territory: the vast majority in the first few months of the Civil War.

The chapter continues with extensive description of Francoist repression in scope and methods, and follows with repression in the Government side. In contrast to the Francoist regime’s repression, mandated from above by General Mola, the book claims:

Much of the drive for the violence in the government zone that killed some 50,000 people emerged from below, as the Barcelona case helps to illustrate. Barcelona’s inner cities housed factory workers and groups living on the fringes of society such as street traders. Both workers and the urban poor shared the same experience of expensive rental properties, high food prices, and a dislike of state representatives such as the police. Together they often took part in raids on food shops and rent strikes, and banded together to prevent the police from clamping down on hawkers. Over time a firm anti-capitalist and anti-state attitude emerged within these groups which the anarchist CNT successfully mobilized. The same attitude rendered many CNT members hostile to the Republican state which continued to use the police against the urban poor and even placed those labelled as socially dangerous in concentration camps. The repression made conventional protest difficult and encouraged armed activists to take direct action which ranged from violent insurrection to ‘armed shopping trips’. When the July 1936 coup began, CNT activists forged in this environment took a prominent role in seizing tens of thousands rifles from military barracks and in suffocating the revolt. The armed activists, often joined by other political groups, began to purge their neighbourhoods of those they labelled reactionaries and fascists. […] This forms an important part of the context in which a total of 8362 people were killed behind the lines across Catalonia, a substantial number of whom were targeted as class enemies

The ground-up approach to repression of fascists in Barcelona has a very different character (and a strikingly similar scope) of the repression by Republican government forces against fascism in Madrid:

Trade unions and political parties feared the enemy in their midst and rapidly formed their own militia squads and set up security organizations. In confiscated buildings they created prisons which became known as Checas, after the Bolshevik internal police forces. By the high summer of 1936, there were 200 Checas at work in Madrid alone, although only around twenty-five took a prominent part in the violence. The most infamous operated at the Círculo de Bellas Artes. Members of the Checas often tracked down their victims through anonymous denunciations. Prisoners judged to be rightists or to have taken part in fifth-column activity were often executed. Their corpses were found in Madrid’s streets and parks shortly afterwards. The killers even left notes on some of the bodies explaining that the person had died for shooting on the people. In total, 8815 people would be killed in Madrid during the war. Unlike in rebel territory, however, the bodies were, in many cases, identified and relatives were able to claim their loved ones. The General Security Directorate kept photographs of all the bodies found. […] Before the Republican state could fully take control and put a stop to most violence behind the lines, a series of horrific killings took place in Madrid between November and December 1936. These murders of prisoners transferred from besieged Madrid to other prisons in Spain and killed on their journeys in the towns of Paracuellos and Torrejón de Ardoz claimed the lives of between 2200 and 2500 prisoners. They are notorious for both their scale and the involvement of the famous Communist Party leader Santiago Carrillo, who faced consistent accusations against him and the Republican government from the right for his role in Paracuellos

It seems that, after all, centralized communist repression (no mention of Soviet involvement in this) is well-documented, including exact numbers and pictures of the repressed except in extreme cases such as the polemic “matanza de Paracuellos” (quickly organized mass-murder of fascist prisoners upon foreseeing a fascist attack on the prison region). The chapter’s conclusions about this are very explicit:

Unlike the Francoists, rather than deny the violence, government leaders acknowledged it and campaigned against it. Moreover, bodies were recovered and documented and in some cases the authorities also oversaw the exhumation of victims and began investigations into the murders.

If the repressions are well-documented, where is the information on Soviet repressions? For this, I will move to Ángel Viña’s works. It’s useful to understand the Soviet policy with respect to the Spanish civil war.

The context is 1936. Hitler and Mussolini openly talk of extermination of “Jewish-Bolshevism” and make it clear, through policy such as the Generalplan Ost, that their intention is to eliminate communism and exterminate/deport all the non-German peoples between Berlin and the Urals. The Soviets have been pursuing the so-called “collective security policy” with France and England against the Nazis, meaning they’ve been using all their diplomatic tools to seek mutual defense agreements against the Nazis under the doctrine of People’s Comissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR Maxim Litvinov. The Spanish civil war has just started, and England and Britain hurry to sign a non-intervention pact with Hitler and Mussolini, which the western “democracies” will hold but the Fascist regimes will ignore and invade Spain together with the Francoists. The Republican government is therefore only left with one ally selling them modern weapons: the Soviets.

However, the Soviets do not desire to enter open conflict in Spain for fear of triggering a war against the fascists without the support of England and France. A Spanish republican diplomat named Pascua is sent to Moscow and received bv Stalin himself. The author Ángel Viñas, as explained in his 2007 book “El escudo de la república”, has recovered the notes of the meetings by Pascua. Stalin’s policy is clear: they do not wish to implement a Soviet-style government in republican Spain. This would directly make France and England not aid the Spaniards, and the hopes are that, when these western regimes react against fascism and see that they can collude with the Soviets against Franco, Hitler and Mussolini in Spain, they can do it outside too. From Chapter 9 “Stalin da una teórica”:

Stalin demostró una notable consistencia argumental y un conocimiento exhaustivo de los problemas españoles. No es de extrañar ya que era un trabajador auténticamente estajanovista. […] Stalin insistió en las confiscaciones y la libertad de comercio. Con ello aludía simplemente a los elementos básicos que tipifican un ordenamiento económico NO socialista. […] No es nada de extrañar puesto que constituía un camino imprescindible para promover el acercamiento de la República hacia los países democráticos occidentales.

Stalin portrayed a remarkable argumentatory consistency and a thorough knowledge of the Spanish problems. This isn’t surprising, given that he was an authentically Stakhanovite worker. […] Stalin insisted on the expropriations and freedom of trade. With this, he simply alluded to the basic elements that describe an NON Socialist economic system. […] This is not surprising given that this constituted and unavoidable path to promote a reapprochement between the Republic and the western democratic countries

So, Stalins is clear: he does not want to impose Soviet rule in Spain, he wants the Republican government to prevail. In fact, he promotes popular-front tactics joining Republicans, Communists and Anarchists in the antifascist struggle, explicitly praising the Anarchists:

Aludió ampliamente a los anarquistas y señaló que en las filas confederales había buenos elementos. Preguntó si podría haber una plataforma común entre socialistas y comunistas a propósito de la CNT. La respuesta de Pascua fue afirmativa, aunque con matices.

He extensivelty referred to the Anarchists and pointed out that there were good elements among the confederates [CNT, largest Spanish anarchist organization at the time]. He asked whether there could be a common platform between socialists and communist regarding the CNT. Pascua’s answer was affirmative, though with caveats.

However, Stalin also points out that the anarchist war tactics are failing, and harshly criticises them. After all, the Bolsheviks and Stalin had experienced something very similar during their own civil war some 20 years earlier, where initially the Reds attempted to organize horizontal worker militias as a form of fight against the Tsarist forces. This failed tremendously, and they were forced to conscript a regular hierarchical army with strict and disciplined command lines. Stalin is therefore very insistent on discipline. However he also understands that the path to discipline is not through violence but through ideology and common goals, as he explicits later:

Desde el punto de vista de la contribución al esfuerzo de guerra Stalin atacó duramente la táctica anarquista, propia de charlatanes, según la calificó. Durruti había sido un fracaso, por falta de organización y de disciplina. […] Reiteró que había que encontrar formas de acceder a las masas anarquistas e influir en ellas, lo cual sólo sería posible si los socialistas y los comunistas trabajaban juntos. Era preciso concienciar a los obreros de buena fe que seguían a los líderes anarquistas

From the point of view of the contribution to the war effort, Stalin harshly attacked the anarchist tactics, characteristic of charlatans as he described it. Durruti had been a failure due to lack of organization and discipline. […] He insisted that they had to find ways to appeal to the anarchist masses and influence them, which would only be possible if the Socialists and Communists worked together. It was necessary to create a consciousness in the good-faithed workers who followed the anarchist leadership.

Stalin continues warning against anarchist political intrigues and emphasizes the role of discipline:

Era necesario que el Estado se comportase de manera disciplinada y resultaba imprescindible que se incrementase la disciplina en el ejército. Los obreros comprenderían las ventajas. Había que desenmascarar la propaganda errónea y denunciar las intrigas de los anarquistas. Pascua anotó en mayúsculas el mensaje central: SIN DISCIPLINA Y SIN FUERZA NO SE HACE LA GUERRA Y NO SE CONSEGUIRIA LA VICTORIA. El armamento y la táctica no conducían necesariamente a ella. Los anarquistas habían ocultado armas de procedencia soviética, a pesar de que otras unidades carecían de ellas.

It was necessary for the State to behave in a disciplined manner, and that discipline increased in the army. The workers would understand the advantages. There was a need to unmask erroneous propaganda and to denounce the anarchist intrigues. Pascua noted down in uppercase the core message: WITHOUT DISCIPLINE AND STRENGTH WAR CANNOT BE MADE AND VICTORY CAN’T BE ACHIEVED. Weaponry and tactics don’t necessarily drive to it. The anarchists had hidden weapons of Soviet origin despite other units lacking them.

This makes the Soviet position in the conflict clear: the anarchists are valuable and necessary for the struggle, but discipline and unity are required in order to have a functioning government and army capable of defeating fascism. This position is far from the “repression of anarchists foremost” framework that has been presented to me in the past, and more in line with my thoughts on Communist and Soviet actuation during the war.

Repression against anarchists: the May Days, Andreu Nin and the NKVD

The main claim of Anarchist repression by the NKVD and the Communists is linked to the May Days, in which after some Anarchists in Barcelona in May 1937 forcibly took over some key businesses including telephone lines and weapon factories, government forces repressed the Anarchists using the force, disbanded them and turned Barcelona into a more government-controlled city rather than anarchist-controlled. This resulted in the deaths of some 500-1000 Anarchists. One of the most well-known episodes of this event is the arrest, torture and murder of Trotskyist party leader Andreu Nin (POUM party) at the hands of the NKVD, which we will get to later.

Often cited is Jose Peirats’s “The CNT in the Spanish Revolution: Volume 3”. Jose Peirats was a young CNT member at the time who lived through the May Days in Barcelona, and describes (without sources, as he generally does throughout the whole book) the activities of the Spanish republican secret police (SIM), which started operating in August 1937, some months after the May Days:

No one dreamed that a counter-espionage agency [SIM] could so promptly removed into a mighty political tool of one party to use against the rest. Nonetheless, this was the case with the SIM which turned from a government agency into the Spanish subsidiary of the Soviet GPU. For it is beyond question that the initiative originated with “Soviet advisors” […] like the Comissariat, the SIM too was of Soviet manufacture. […] The SIM also took care to probe state secrets in the realms of diplomacy, industry and armaments. The sole beneficiary of this sort of activity was the Soviet state.

This entirely unsourced bunch of information is purely the author’s belief. The author being a CNT member himself, it’s hard to consider this an unbiased account based on evidence. The entire book is unfortunately written in this fashion. Let us see the extent of the Chekas organized by the Republican government and their results:

One of the most ominous sections was Section 13. It had charge of the arrest, interrogation and maltreatment of detainees. For accuracy’s sake, it needs to be lkaced on record that the SIM rendered some remarkable services to the anti-fascist cause, and that on occasions it dismantled Fifth Column organisations. For instance, at the start of 1938, it uncovered the lists of membres and leaders of the Falange Española [fascist organization] operating in Catalonia. The arrests numbered 3500. But it needs to be pointed out that the success of the operation was made possible with the use of torture. And the same methods were also employed on anti-fascists who incurred the wrath of the SIM’s putative fathers. In every instance, the terror and tortures inflicted upon defenceless men are a repugnant and damnable monstrosity

Leaving aside the moralism and goodism of not wanting to have a secret intelligence service harm fascist prisoners during a literal civil war, these “3500 fascists” is the only figure provided in this chapter for the number of repressed. What follows are pages upon pages of atrocity propaganda against the antifascists who lost the war. Despite this, we have seen that modern historians place the majority of Government repressions and murders in the first months of the war, and largely due to grassroots violence (especially in anarchist-controlled regions like Barcelona). The author does not once mention this in the “terror in the rearguard” chapter of the book, proving his lack of intent of measuring and condemnation of violence, and instead his political attempt at disregarding anarchist violence and condemning only centralized one, even if both were enacted overwhelmingly against fascists. Peirats now concerns himself with the murder of Andreu Nin:

With Lenin dead, and Trotsky expelled from the USSR, Nin made no secret of his sympathies with Trotsky’s teachings and he in turn was expelled from the ‘Soviet Paradise’. He came back to Spain when the Republic was proclaimed, and promptly organised an anti-Stalinist faction, before joining with Maurin, against the wishes of Trotsky, to form the POUM. […] But the suppression pure and simple of this party was not enough. It had to be demonstrated by fair means or foul that the main leaders of the POUM were enemies of the people and of the world’s proletariat: that they were fascist agents and these charges, as serious as they were unfounded, had to be proved. Orlov, the GPU’s chief in Spain, took this repugnant task upon himself. The trap, according to Jesus Hernandez, was quickly prepared.

We will see about the “unfounded” nature of such claims of fascist involvement in the Anarchist revolts. The author continues with his atrocity propaganda of Andreu Nin’s torture and murder, with only one caveat: this is all entirely made up. The vast descriptions of Nin resisting torture and not confessing to false crimes are not from any historical document or any account of the Soviet agents who did kidnap him. In fact, Nin’s whereabouts were only found out in the 90s with the opening of the Soviet archives, and the Soviet agents involved couldn’t declare about this because they were killed in the great terror. All in all: Nin was kidnapped and killed by the NKVD under fabricated charges, but the accusations of torture are a complete invention that I will not reproduce here.

Modern historical evidence, however, has shed some light into this. We will now leave behind Jose Peirats’s biased and unfounded accounts lacking any historical sourcing of figures and completely disregarding Anarchist violence, and we will move on to contemporary historiography on Orlov (the Soviet head of the NKVD in Spain), both by Ángel Viñas and by a the Russian author Boris Volodarsky, the latter having accessed new documents from the released Soviet archives on Orlov.

On Volodarsky’s account of Orlov, “Stalin’s Agent: the life & death of Alexander Orlov”, we find out that the Soviet intelligence was actually aware of Nazi activity pushing for the anarchist revolt in Barcelona. As it turns out, the Soviets had a spy in Nazi Germany by the name of Harro Schulze-Boysen, reporting on Nazi activity in the Spanish civil war from within the German army. In Chapter 17 of the book, we learn that Orlov did indeed manufacture false evidence to convict Andreu Nin and eventually murder him after the May Days took place. However, we also find out that Orlov had information about the Fascist plot to incite the revolts. On the one hand, from Grover C. Furr’s article published on Wiley Labor and Society titled “Leon Trotsky and the Barcelona “May Days” of 1937”, we find the execution documents of Harro Schulze-Boysen by the Nazis once they uncovered him as a spy:

At the beginning of 1938 [the Nazis got the year wrong], during the Spanish Civil War, the accused learned in his official capacity that a rebellion against the local red government in the territory of Barcelona was being prepared with the co-operation of the German Secret Service. This information, together with that of von Pöllnitz, was transmitted by him to the Soviet Russian embassy in Paris. (Haase, 1993, p. 105).

Ángel Viñas confirms this in “El Escudo de la República”, on the chapter about the May Days:

[…] no parece nada inverosímil que elementos profascistas y profranquistas contribuyeran a incitar la revuelta. Obviamente, no fue su acción la que la desencadenó pero, en una situación inestable, tensa, cualquier chispa podía tener consecuencias imprevisibles y no hay que olvidar que el 2 de mayo desde las filas de Estat Català se abrió fuego contra los anarquistas.

[…] it doesn’t seem unlikely that pro-fascist and pro-Franquist elements contributed to push for the revolt. Obviously, it wasn’t their actions which unleashed it but, in an unstable and tense situation, any spark could have unforeseeable consequences, and one must not forget that on May 2nd from the lines of Estat Català they opened fire against the anarchists.

Discrediting the view that the repressions on Anarchists were directed by the Soviets, he writes:

Para toda una tradición historiográfica, Rodríguez Salas fue, simplemente, el ejecutor de los designios del lejano y topoderoso Stalin. Conquest (p. 410) puso encima de ella el marchamo de su incomparable autoridad. Pero no parece que fuese cierto.

For an entire historiographic tradition, Rodríguez Salas [communist] was, simply, the executing hand of the designs of the far and all-powerful Stalin. Conquest (p.410) put on this the weight of his incomparable authority. But it doesn’t look like this was true

Well, if it isn’t Robert Conquest, the Anglo anticommunist propagandist who got awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush himself! Now we see the origin of such claims and why they’re repeated by Anarchists all over! Further discussion by Viñas describes the makeup of the Barcelona rebels, citing Orlov:

Orlov (p. 304) ofrece la composición de los levantados en armas: 1500 de la FAI, unos 3000 cenetistas amén de un millar de miembros del POUM. Obsérvese el pequeño número de estos últimos, quizá incluso abultado por conveniencias comunistas.

Orlov (p. 304) offers the makeup of the risen in arms: 1500 from FAI, about 3000 from CNT and some thousand members of POUM. Notice the small number of the latter, perhaps even inflated by communist conveniences

Viñas even directly and explicitly pushes against the pro-POUM anarchist version that has been so propagated:

Su tesis, coetánea de los sucesos y nutrida en el marco ideológico de la guerra fría, sigue coloreando la literatura. Los acontecimientos de Barcelona, afirman en síntesis, fueron provocados por Stalin en búsqueda de una confrontación que permitiera destrozar tanto a la izquierda comunista no estalinista como al anarquismo. […] Hasta el momento, sin embargo, nadie ha puesto sobre la mesa pruebas concluyentes

Their thesis [anarchists, trotskyists, POUMists], simultaneous with the events and nourished in the ideological framework of the cold war, remains colouring the literature. The events in Barcelona, they affirm synthesizing, were caused by Stalin in his search for a confrontation that allowed him to destroy both the non-Stalinist communist left and the anarchism. […] To this point, however, nobody has provided conclusive evidence.

The author explicitly rejects the anarchist and trotskyist point of view, which he claims is very represented in the topic’s literature and also sees as very influenced ideologically by the cold war. It’s a long chapter, you can read it if you want, but this section concludes:

Concluyamos esta sección afirmando que no hemos indicado nada que abone la tesis de una participación soviética en el chispazo del polvorín de Barcelona, según los documentos del NKID y del GRU

Let us conclude this section affirming that we haven’t indicated anything that supports the thesis of Soviet participation in the spark of the blowup in Barcelona, according to documents of the NKVD and the GRU

It’s worth it, in my opinion, to dedicate a little bit more of analysis to the topic of cold war propaganda influencing all of this. Where, then, have these unsupported ideas of machiavellian Soviet influence pervading everything originated, and who supported them? Back to the Bloomsbury Manual’s chapter 15 on the repressions, we see what the Francoists claim:

Franco claimed that 800,000 ‘martyrs’ had died in the government zone while denying the violence carried out by his supporters. He also maintained that his opponents’ violence was directed by the Comintern and government leaders such as Juan Negrín who became no more than the servile disciples of Soviet thugs.

From chapter 17 of the same book:

neo-Francoists have challenged this narrative, in the service of their efforts to rehabilitate the Nationalists. Thus, they have tried to minimize the Nationalist repression by challenging or parsing the numbers and to justify most of it as legitimate punishment. For the other side, they frame republican violence within a ‘revolutionary’ dynamic that could be traced back to 1931 but which culminated in a ‘totalitarian’ Soviet-style extermination carried out by ‘checas’.

[…] In terms of defining the identity of the Republican side, the neo-Francoist narrative of communist takeover revisits early Cold War arguments articulated by the dictatorship as well as in the memoirs of the disillusioned left in exile. It is hardly coincidental that a new Spanish edition of Burnett Bolloten’s classic 1961 book, The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution, appeared in 2004, to reinforce the conservative recovery of this narrative. Bolloten concluded that if the Republic had won the war, it would have been a preview of the Soviet-controlled ‘popular democracies’ installed in Eastern Europe after the Second World War. However, since the opening of Soviet archives after 1989, most academic historians who have begun to explore the vast repository of primary sources have argued for a much more limited view of Soviet intervention and control.

So: it was fascist and cold-war propaganda all along, which has been dismantled progressively after the Soviet archives opening up. As in the case of Molotov-Ribbentrop exposed originally, the origins are the same. Yet another case to the endless list of cold war propaganda molding the discourse of supposed people on the left of the political spectrum. As I often say: when you share your opinion on Soviet actions and attitudes with cold-war propaganda or Nazi/Fascist discourse, rethink your position.

[…] Likewise, those studying the behaviour and discourse of the Communist party within Spain have rejected the classic portrait of a monolithic, all-powerful and ruthless organization bent on destroying all its rivals as too one-dimensional and out of proportion to its modest resources on the ground

Lisa A. Kirschenbaum’s 2015 book “International communism and the Spanish civil war” also has sections devoted to this topic of the extent of Soviet control over the Republican government, and agrees with the extent:

Stalinism as an international culture drew communists together with shared narratives, heroes, holidays, emblems, and enemies. But for all they shared, local communist political cultures remained distinct. In Spain, officers and commissars had a penchant for labeling all sorts of behaviors as “Trotskyite” and for threatening to arrest or shoot malingerers, deserters, and malcontents.140 However, they rarely did – which is not to excuse or minimize the executions that occurred […]. The lower level of political violence in Spain underscores thefact that in the Spanish context, it was possible to think – or threaten – like a Stalinist, but it was not always necessary or possible to act like one.

Again, further support from modern historiography that the level of political violence in Spain was minor compared to the Soviet Union.

Conclusions

I believe I have provided evidence to affirm that the modern anarchist/trotskyist discourse on the Soviet repressions of anarchists are overmagnified, based primarily on unreliable sources that don’t use archival evidence but anecdotal evidence, and that the modern historiographic consensus demonstrates that the Soviet impact on Spanish politics during the civil war is very limited. The intentions of the Soviets are misconstrued and demonized through the usage of cold-war or directly Francoist propaganda, archival releases from the USSR period provide evidence of fascist influence on the May Days that justifies a certain degree of repression to maintain unity against the Fascist invasion and prove that the intent was not “the crushing of anarchists” as much as stability and discipline during wartime.

Sources

-International Communism and the Spanish Civil War, by Lisa A. Kirschenbaum

-The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Spanish Civil War

-Stalin’s Agent: the life and death of Alexander Orlov, by Boris Volodarsky

-El Escudo de la República, by Ángel Viñas

-Leon Trotsky and the Barcelona “May Days” of 1937, by Grover C. Furr

Saying Americans are too comfortable is just reinforcing US propaganda that the USA is this free capitalist paradise where food and luxury rains from the sky. It ignores the psychological war constantly being waged against the working class in the heart of the empire. Yes they have food, but they're malnourished because it's made of cheap plastic slop. Yes they have circuses but even cavemen had entertainment, that's not a luxury. I can't believe I have to tell leftists that 'but you have iPhone' isn't a sign your life is easy. Especially because half of these 'luxuries' are just tools that:

1. You can't take part in society without.
2. Everyone fucking hates them but you're damned if you do, damned if you don't (good luck getting a job and feeding yourself without a phone, car and social capital of being a good consumer).

Ask the people working three jobs just to afford rent if they're comfortable.

Ask the people living in tent cities in they're comfortable.

Ask the young people grimly joking that they're going to die before they retire if they're comfortable.

Ask the people on the kill line who are one medical bill away from being on the street if they're comfortable.

Are there countries where life is harder? Yes, but playing the suffering Olympics ignores the real material conditions that the US (and it's vassals) face and we would be stupid to ignore it. Ignoring mental anguish and the exsaution of being human cattle just because they aren't being physically bombed is downplaying the severity of psychological violence. Telling the single mother burnt out working multiple dead end jobs worried if her kids are going to ever have a home or even a habitable planet that she's too comfortable is fucked and isn't going to create the vanguard.

Nearly every single person I talk to (excluding the owning class) is running on empty. Everyone is sick. Everyone is depressed. Everyone is hopeless. They have seen countless protests amount to nothing. They have seen our rulers commit every single unspeakable crime and go unpunished. They've watched the surveillance state grow and record their every move. They know, they fucking know. But their hope has died. The lack of riots over the Epstein files isn't the inaction of someone who has it too good to care, it's the inaction of a beaten spouse who knows their place.

They're doing nothing because their spirits are broken, not because they're too well fed. From their perspective they're too busy making sure they have the energy to put food on the table to start a revolution.

My point is that downplaying the struggles of the US working class is ignorant, reactionary, and ignores material conditions and therefore is unhelpful in mobilising anyone. I think this rhetoric needs to change if we are to be effective.

cw: discussion of sa / csa and heavy use of terminology to describe the people who perpetuate that

I take an issue with the "ruling class" being dubbed "pxdo class" not because I don't think they are indeed rxpists and pxdophiles, but because of the implication.

As if it's only them and the majority of them who do it. As if the laws don't already favor rxpists regardless of their class. As if our parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts/uncles, their partners, and your partners arent also complicit and engaging in p*dophilia and rxpe.

There was an article here shared that read like it was written by a dude who has only now started to think about this topic, giving evolutionary reasons as to why "its the ruling class and not the lower class" who engages in pxdophilia (and I disagree with that assertion for multiple reasons.)

1.) The pillaging and ownership of bodies is essential to patriarchy, but is also the reward system in colonialism. This (sa/csa) is patriarchal (rooted in the nuclear family / enforced sex/gender binary) and colonialist violence (violence against those considered less than a person by the oppressor.)

2.) The reward for being a good lower-class worker bee is that you get your very own family to assault, to lie for you, and enable you.

3.) Those of us who have had the misfortune of engaging with the criminal "justice" system to punish our rxpists know that the courts will generally favor the rxpist or abuser, so it is no surprise to me that the rich also get away with their crimes.

As promised some time ago to a few comrades, here's my analysis of the book. I think it's a very important piece of socialist history since it reviews the ideology, both economic and political, behind the Czechoslovak "revolution" in the late 1960s, one of the most controversial moments of socialist history. The book was published in German in West Germany in 1969 (sus), and in Spanish in the same year in Fascist Spain (even more sus), and since I speak Spanish, all text quoted from the book has been translated by myself, so I apologize for possible mistakes. Let's get to it, shall we?

The focus of this analysis is on the economic, sphere as I’m not knowledgeable in the political situation of the Czechoslovak socialist republic. The author makes the classic criticism of lack of democracy, overcentralization of the political power, rigidity of the economic plan, and subordination of the interests of the private sphere to the state’s directives. Each reader can make their own analysis of this. The focus of the book seems to be to provide an analysis of the problems of the Czechoslovak socialist pre-revolts model and historical situation, an analysis of the so-called Stalinist model, and to outline the reforms proposed by the Czechoslovak “new socialism”. My analysis will follow the book in its written order.

The author commences the book with a description of what it calls the “Stalinist” model and its problems: it describes Stalinism as:

a State steered by dirigisme, with a strongly centralized administration, a monopoly of power by the Communist Party and a total bureaucratization of society, in which the principle of competition is eliminated. This concentrates the political power in the hands of the upper sphere of the Communist Party, which avoids social control and decides <> about any political question, both economic and ideological. In the field of economics, the Stalinist model implies a planned and centralized economy which has been disconnected of competition as a stimulus. This economic system supports itself on […] the substitution of the self-regulating economic mechanisms by a system based on orders, prohibitions and administrative directions, with economic plans being both the means and the end-goal, and carrying them out constitutes the criteria for all economic activity.

Notice the focus on “competition” and on “self-regulating economic mechanisms”. This will soon become the obvious core idea in the book and the foundation of the author’s analysis.

The author proceeds by making a satisfactory analysis of the economic and political conditions of the pre-revolutionary Russian Empire and the reasons why the Stalinist model of centralized planned economy was implemented, primarily the lack of industry due to the feudal conditions of most of Russia and the external threat of invasion by capitalist powers. However, it does so with a focus on how the Soviet Union “had no choice” to do this, and less on the actual material results of this: the author talks of “painful sacrifices on behalf of individuals for the sake of the industrial revolution”. This is far from correct. The industrial revolution in the Soviet Union was not a “painful sacrifice”, almost the entirety of the peasantry and working class already lived in painful sacrifice, with a life expectancy of 28 years of age at birth, and a total lack of education of the most basic level for the vast majority. The Soviet industrial revolution is described correctly as opposed to the classic path of industrial revolution which starts “from light industry to heavy industry”, but this was not to the detriment of the working classes. The Fel’dman model applied in the Soviet industrialization correctly predicted that initial strong investments in heavy industry could make way for a faster growth of light industry in the mid-term, and allow for greater material living conditions of the peoples than an early focus on light industry which would rapidly stagnate without the industrial and infrastructure basis to support it. This led to yearly growths of 15% in the total economic output of the Soviet economy in the decade leading up to the Great Patriotic War.

In a revealing lack of anti-imperialist theses, the author claims that “as in every industrialization process, the USSR had to fund this process with surplus from agriculture”. This is a reoccurring topic in this book: we will not find a trace of analysis of western colonialism or imperialism. No, Mr. Selucký, British industry was NOT funded exclusively by surplus from agriculture, it was funded through imperial gains from slave-colonies in the imperial periphery.

After describing Stalinism and providing some background, the author follow with what, to me, is the most positive chapter of the entire book in my opinion. Chapter 4 focuses on criticism of the “extensive” economic development model instead of “intensive” development. The extensive model of development is roughly defined as mass investment in heavy industry means of production with low technological component with the main goal of moving as many peasants as possible from preindustrial farms to industry in cities without a primary goal of economic efficiency and technological development, whereas intensive development is described as a focus on the efficiency of industry and adoption of advanced technologies in industry. The author admits that for the first years of this model’s application, the results were very positive, but then goes on to criticize that upon the slowdown of economic growth after the country had been mostly industrialized in this extensive fashion (especially for Czechoslovakia as an already industrially developed country pre-WW2 as opposed to most of the eastern block) this model was not significantly altered.

I agree with the author that there was a slow response in general in the eastern block to the limits of extensive industrial growth, with this being one of the main reasons for the economic growth slowdown of the USSR in the 1970s. The author brings up data such as an exponentially decreasing efficiency between 1950 and 1963 in the growth of national income stemming from investments in heavy industry, which led to a reduction of 9.5% yearly national income figures in the early 50s to already 3.5% in the early 60s (though living in the contemporary EU, I can’t but laugh at 3.5% yearly national income growth being considered sluggish). I fundamentally agree with the author: Czechoslovakia, as a previously industrially powerful country, would have probably benefit from more intensive growth in industry after the 1950s.

HOWEVER, the brainworms that the author had advanced in his introduction in which he mentioned the self-regulating market mechanisms and the competition, start to be shown in full-swing: according to the author, the only way to carry out this intensive growth in industry is by:

involving in the restructuring not just the central plan but also the economic subjects: companies

Furthermore, the author goes on to say that:

the development had to be forcibly substituted by a model that 1) stimulates innovation; 2) forced the economic subjects [companies], by objective market criteria, to carry out efficient work; 3) protected intensive economic development; 4) started progressive structural modifications in which […] the dirigisme plan must be substituted by production for consumption by people […]

The author, in a total non-sequitur, takes his prior rightful critique of the efficiency of usage of means of production in the socialist planned economy, and uses it to for some reason argue that the only alternative possible must be based on “objective market mechanisms”.

The capitalist neoliberal brainworms continue, with the author literally using the words “homo economicus” to refer to citizens (the fallacy that all humans are market entities whose sole drive is to obtain the highest consumption power possible). I quote:

In the first phase of revolution, individual interests are trampled by collective enthusiasm. However, in a society which has reached a given material and cultural level, this situation cannot last for long. After a brief period, the revolutionarist romanticism gets tired […]. In general, after the first phase of revolution is extinguished […] each individual tries to act in such a way that they receive for their work the adequate equivalent which optimally satisfies their economic needs […].

The author has, in these short paragraphs, revealed that the basis of their economic analysis is bullshit neoliberalism and capitalist realism. He does not conceive a society in which individuals act for any other purpose than for the maximum satisfaction of material interests. What a socialist.
His line of reasoning leads to him arguing that, since this is the case, and planned economies subordinate individual needs to the collective, they lead men to act unnaturally and in contradiction to their interests. In what the author likely considers a dunk against planned economies, he claims:

The demand reflecting the needs of the population stops therefore to be the criteria for production and, instead, it’s substituted by a centralized and detailed plan through quantitative characteristics. […] There is no rational link between plan and market; both concepts exclude each other from an ideological standpoint [in planned economies].

Again, the author cannot conceive decentrally planned economies (such as proposed in Philips and Rozworski’s “People’s Republic of Walmart” or by the theses of the Marxian economist Paul Cockshott). In a glaring lack of understanding of the idea of solidarity, the author makes the following outrageous critique against planned economies:

Moral critics indeed mean that men must think and decide daily about their work and their goal. These critics reach as far as to request that each individual acts against its material interest as long as it collides against against objective economic utility.

Oh, how much has neoliberalism damaged the human mind. In my homeland of Spain, being a doctor is a tough thing. 24h shifts are commonplace, salaries are mediocre, and it requires constant training and study of the latest medical advancements. Medicine is chronically underfunded, resident doctors are exploited for years, medicine takes 6 years to study in university compared to 4 years for most other university degrees, it’s famously extremely hard, and doctors need to take a difficult state exam to be able to work in public healthcare. In spite of all of this, medicine consistently ranks the highest in the most requested university degrees, and every year thousands of students are left out of the possibility of studying medicine because there is too much competition. However, Radoslav Selucký is incapable of believing that people may routinely act against their material interests for the common good. Mr. Selucký: you are NOT a socialist, you’re a capitalist realist.

Moral criticism aside, let’s focus on the economic aspect: the only possible way according to the author of having an efficient representation of the amount of labor embodied in goods and services is through the laws of market. A cursory understanding of Marx’s Labor Theory of Value and the empirical power behind this proves that this is simply not the case. Socialist economic planners have consistently utilized measures (however rudimentary in their time period) of labor time to measure the actual human labor embodied in goods manufactured in planned societies, and with increasing technological and computing power, this becomes increasingly easy. It is possible that technological limitations of his era lead to his Austrian Economy School belief that only markets can truly represent average socially necessary labor embodied in goods, but I have the hindsight of talking from 2026: it is entirely possible to accurately measure the labor inputs in every single sector of the economy, and to instantly react to this using information technologies and widespread telecommunications. In fact, this is already the case in capitalism! When you click add to cart on your Aliexpress account on a product, an instant electric signal is transmitted to the storage unit in which it’s located, from there to its supplier, and from there through every step to the final manufacturer (and its suppliers and so forth and so on). Markets not only can be superseded by information technologies: they already have. Amazon or Walmart don’t operate by expertly understanding the market, but by having huge servers in which immense amounts of data are processed on the supply and the demand of commodities, and it’s exactly this that makes them capable of operating immense monopolies that effectively control entire supply chains NOT by market mechanisms, but by big data.

Limiting oneself as a socialist to rudimentary market mechanisms wasn’t just uncreative in the 1969 (time of writing of this book): it is entirely outdated in 2026. This is, by the way, criticism that I extend to market socialist economies such as China and Vietnam, not to minimize their immense successes but to extend them even further. The author firmly states that

This illusion [the possibility of finding the link between production and consumption outside markets] is the cause of all reform attempts of the market-less model which […] don’t alter the very essence of the system, excluding therefore any possibility of success.

This is the core of the Czechoslovak alternative of socialism in the 1960s: the belief that without markets there is no possibility of success. This chapter makes more criticism of rationing systems for goods and of some other aspects of planned economies, but the core criticism that is repeated over and over goes back to market worship. This is not socialism or Marxist analysis.

Chapters 5, 6 and 7 do some political and historical analysis of Czechoslovakia, Stalinism and the events of 1968. Enough analysis has taken place in other works about this that I don’t think I can meaningfully contribute.

Chapter 8 attempts to analyze the main reason for the deformations of the Stalinist socialist model as perceived by the author. Here, he makes clear what he believes to be the fundamental flaw of Stalinism:

[…] the absence in this system of the necessary permanent confrontation between the individual interests and social ones, which objectivizes the subjective ideas about future development. […] Said confrontation creates […] the real base for balanced relations in the economic and political sectors, and only it can guarantee the democratic modes of socialist society development. […] Its base is constituted by money-commodity relations, which in the history of mankind, are the only ones based in equivalence and equality, unique foundations for political democracy and individual freedom. I consider that the fundamental defect of Stalinism is having constituted itself as a market-less society. […] This defect must be attributed not just to the utopian elements of Marx’s theory, but also to the fact that a system applied on the reality and historical characteristics of a given country was transplanted to others, in which none of the conditions necessary for its long-term success existed.

There’s plenty to unpack here. First of all, the same market-worship reappears, going as far as to saying market relations are the only ones in the history of mankind that are based on equivalence and equality. The wonderful equality of the exploitation of workers, I guess? Furthermore, and perhaps even more painfully, the author declares that these are the unique foundations of political democracy and individual freedom. Democracy and freedom stem from markets. Not from worker organizing, not from the elimination of class society, but from markets. This argument destroys, in my opinion, the credibility of the entire work. When the author refers to “lack of democracy” , “human rights violations” and “top-down orders” in the so-called Stalinist mode, is he perhaps referring to markets and not to actual democracy and human rights as understood by socialists?

I will now invoke a passage from Chapter 5, where he’s discussing the origins of the Czechoslovak model:

[…] and to formulate the model that has become the hope of not just Czech and Slovaks, but too (if I’m not mistaken), of Western Europe.

The author is seriously telling the reader that he believes this socialist model has become the hope of Western Europe. Is he not aware of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in Europe? This is just one of many examples in the book of Eurocentrism and lack of critical analysis of European imperialism, some of which I’ll review later. Last but not least, the author has called to the “utopian elements of Marx’s theory”. Surely the utopian here is Marx for proposing a market-less economy, and not Selucký claiming that Western Europe will somehow transition to his socialist model without a revolution. This is pure revisionism and anti-Marxism, founded on the hegemonic dominance in the field of economics by the West and in particular the USA.

Continuing in his Eurocentrism, Selucký argues that:

In European countries, the money-commodity relations have a millenia-old tradition; it’s not pure coincidence that the democratic forms of society were born in social orders in which such relations had managed to develop. […] That’s why the dissolution by the dirigiste system of the market, that is, of money-commodity relations, destroyed not just the economic life of the society as a whole, but also its political life

So, according to the author, democracy existed in Europe before socialism was there, and it’s through the elimination of markets that this democracy disappeared. I don’t think I have much to add here: this is the purest form of Eurocentrism, of belief in bourgeois democracy, and entirely opposed to Marxist analysis.

Selucký had clearly never had to live in a market economy before he wrote this book:

If people work in diverse sectors of the national economy and exchange the fruits of their labor, they must receive, in exchange for their contribution to economic development, the equivalent or a susbstitute of equal value. Even though the market-less model of socialism denies this foundation of the market relations, it cannot suppress it

Selucký has never been a day laborer in agriculture in market society, neither has he earned his living taking care of the sick and elderly in a market society, if he had he wouldn’t be saying that people receive compensation according to their labor in markets. We could talk about econophysics here and how market societies inevitably lead to immense levels of inequality (even in socialist systems like China), not even because of politics, but because of thermodynamics and the physical need of the maximization of entropy in a closed system (see Paul Cockshott’s video “Thermodynamics of money and capital” based on the work of Soviet physicist and economist Victor Yakovenko, see “Statistical mechanics of money). We could talk about empirical evidence of wealth and income distributions in market economies being immensely more unequal than in planned economies. But all of that would take too long in this already too long analysis. There’s a lot more brainworms in my opinion in the chapter, but I will recommend that to get a fuller picture, you actually read it for yourselves, in the meanwhile I’ll skip to the final chapter in this analyis, which focuses on the proposals of the economic reform.

Chapter 10 focuses on outlining the basic policies of the economic programme of the Czech movement of 1968. The basic premise, as expected: market socialism.

The market, as an objective measurement of the subjects of economic activity, continuously tests whether the work used by companies coincides, both structurally and quantitatively, with the necessary work for society, whether supply and demand are balanced, and whether companies satisfy with their goods and services the social needs. […] the political rule must establish in law their [companies] equality by creating identical conditions for their activity, which means it must end the administrative preferences and ensure to all companies equal rights and obligations; ensuring too that companies have the right to act on their own interest with full powers, and to enjoy the advantages and endure the negative consequences of their own economic activity

After a lot more market apologism, this revealing enumeration is made:

Two factors deform the consumer-producer relations in the market-less model. The first is the rationing system, which only allows for the distribution of product as the relation between producer and consumer. Among companies there is no competition, because the artificial administrative agreements force artificial monopolies […].

In societies in Eastern Europe in the 20th century, scarcity was very much a thing and rationing as a method of distribution of goods was used. The author seems to believe that this is a negative thing, probably because he hasn’t received the short end of the alternative. The alternative to rationing is not abundance, it’s simply that the poor can’t access most goods and services. There is no “housing shortage” in the West because poor people are simply forced out of access to housing unless through eye-watering-priced rent. There is no “car shortage” in the West because if too many people want cars, the suppliers and produces will simply hijack the prices, leaving the poorer people again without access. No shortage of apples, or meat, or milk, or fridges, or electric drills: simply let the poors without them!
As for artificial monopolies, yes, this is actually an intended feature of planned socialism. Monopolies are intrinsically efficient because of economy of scale and the lack of unnecessary duplicities, the problem with monopolies is generally that we’re used to seeing private monopolies, not socialist ones. If competition is desired, the state also has the tools to create artificial competition, which has happened innumerable times during the Eastern Block, the easiest example coming to mind being the competition between aeronautics companies Yakovlev and Ilyushin.

The double standards applied are particularly enlightening when, just a few pages after complaining about systematic corruption in the so-called Stalinist model, the author goes on to outline this proposal in what to me is the most outrageous passage in this book:

Furthermore, the market model allows for the first time to implement the principle of freedom in choice of doctor and sanatorium even in public health services, or the possibility of obtaining, through additional payment, medical services of extraordinary character

Not only is the author advocating for literal private healthcare and leaving the poors without access to so-called “medical services of extraordinary character”, which is extremely alarming in and out of itself, but also frames this as “freedom of choice”. In the dreaded Stalinist healthcare system everyone is treated equally and if you pay your doctor to get preferential treatment, it’s a symptom of corruption and of the backwardness of the system. However, in the glorious market system, individuals have the freedom and right to hire doctors at an extra price to get extraordinary healthcare… that the poors can’t afford!

To be completely fair to the author, he doesn’t advocate for fully unregulated markets:

In the market model there’s no place (theoretically) for direct dirigiste decisions that impose determined tasks to companies through an authoritarian way. However, if the state wants to fix priorities in certain economic branches, it concedes these preferences in a general fashion in the following manner: <<To any company using this or that technology to produce this or that product or for the supply of this or that social service, or which carries out its activities in this or that geographical area, the corresponding general conditions that control its activity will be set>>. […] This form of economic direction cannot only be applied to make up for the economical differences between regions with a different developmental level, but also for the achievement of structural transformations.

One asks oneself: if it’s so obvious that the state can and should carry out legislation regarding production of certain preferential goods, services, or economic activities according to different goals (for example carbon neutrality) or in different regions (for example in order not to centralize the economic activity), doesn’t this violate the market principle? Maybe, just maybe, political decisions intervening the markets are fully necessary, and markets aren’t the perfect and efficient tool that the author has been proclaiming until now? The author again contradicts himself:

The separation between power and ownership is derived from the fact that the political goals of power stop making sense for the economic activity and, in their place, appear economic goals, so that the economy acquires a functional character

The author at least seems to believe that this market socialism is not at all a return to capitalism, and claims he doesn't want it:

The activation of the market model does not mean a return to the 19th century, nor to competitive capitalism, nor to any form of capitalism. Our ideas are based on comprehending that without the market mechanism it’s not possible to ensure the efficacy of the socialist economy- The market won’t make the plan disappear, nor will it have the same meaning than in the fully developed capitalist countries. […] the goal followed by the events after January 1968 was not to copy the western consumer society […] but a new model of a solution for the organization of the socialist economy. […] Besides the national companies, whose economic activity would be determined by the profit criteria, state and public companies should be created in the sector of supply and services […] for railway service, energetic economy, mail and telegraph services, woodlands and waters, for the construction of roads, etc.; and also public local companies in the local sphere, for urban traffic, for communications, for graveyards, heating networks, public lights, street cleaning service, garbage collection and similar

All of this sounds awfully like European social-democracy, but weirdly enough, the most fundamental rights of education, healthcare and housing don’t seem to be included. Perhaps because the author considers them luxury since they affect the people more than they affect the companies (unlike energy supply and road infrastructure).

I said I’d go back to the alarmingly Eurocentrist claims of the author, and that’s because he lays them out in full-swing in Chapter 12. Surprisingly, up to this point, there has been no discussion of how this model will defend itself from the ideological and economic onslaught of the imperialist west. Let’s see what the author has to say about this:

This system didn’t need (since its programme had convinced practically all the Czechoslovak people) to close itself up against the world, but it could allow for open confrontation against any present system or any country in the world. Thanks to its theory and ideology, this system could sustain completely open discussion with any opponent or critique […]. It wasn’t based on an artificially constructed base, but instead expressed the human desire of improving their fortune and deploying in a balanced synthesis all the viable values of the European civilization.

If this isn’t Eurocentrism and idealism, I don’t know what is.

But the author is even clearer:

In my opinion, the model of democratic socialism was connected with European thought, with European tradition and with the values of European civilization. In this sense, it can be qualified as European socialism, whose realization was started in a small country of Central Europe, a country in which during centuries the streams of European spirit flowed, and which often spearheaded the efforts of giving a humanist character to the society of men.

Vomit-inducing levels of Eurocentrism and borderline white supremacy. In one thing he is right: the idea of laissez-faire as a liberating and democratic force is definitely European. It’s just that this is not a good look for Europe. Those European values of “freedom, equality and fraternity” were only applied to the privileged ethnicities of their own countries. Basques, Irish, Occitanians, or Roma people were left out of this even within Europe, and there are no words to describe what the European continent did in Africa, America or Asia in those centuries. Why is Radoslav Selucký so eager to put distance with the Russians, but so eager to frame himself as morally European? How is it that this socialist left his socialist homeland and the following year was publishing this very book in West Germany and in Fascist Spain?

I will leave each reader to reach their own conclusions and I will welcome you all to read the book yourselves and share your insights. I think this analysis is long enough and, since I’ve commented along, doesn’t need any conclusions. Thanks for your time, and have a great day!

I wrote this as a comment reply here. Thought people might want to read it, since I don't think it's federated.

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Yeah, but you have to ask why the conditions exist to begin with. The idea that Maduro, or the Chavistas are to blame here ignores reality. You can be a Venezuelan and also reject the reality that created the conditions which forced you to leave. In some cases those same Venezuelans fled, like some Cubans had also done, because the system being implemented to root out the neocolonial apparatus impacted them due to their material ties to that system. Meaning, some of these people were reaping rewards as servants of the neocolonial apparatus, while working people in the country suffered.

So, for example, a study out of Lancet Global Health estimates that US sanctions applied to Venezuela cause the deaths of more than 564,000 people each year. More than half of the dead are children under the age of 5.

Mortality effects ranged from 8·4 log points (95% CI 3·9–13·0) for children younger than 5 years to 2·4 log points (0·9–4·0) for individuals aged 60–80 years. We estimated that unilateral sanctions were associated with an annual toll of 564 258 deaths (95% CI 367 838–760 677), similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict.

So, I fully understand why people would leave. The other thing that your statement also seems to not acknowledge the class character of those who are fleeing. A 2007 Reuters article talks about the initial class character of those fleeing:

As populist President Hugo Chavez tightens his grip on the oil-producing country, wealthy and middle class citizens [emphasis mine] are fleeing, just as their counterparts did soon after Fidel Castro seized power in Havana more than 40 years ago.

Those wealthy and middle class citizens being referenced in Cuba were plantation owners, managers, and operators of American corporate interest in the country. This wasn't all that different for Venezuela. From the same article:

"If you have young children, you want out. If you have assets that have been seized, or may be seized, you want out as quickly as possible," Roett added. "If you have land that will be expropriated, leave sooner than later. As the alta (upper) bourgeoisie becomes more and more of a target, you want to leave before Hugo Chavez shuts the door [emphasis mine]."

"upper bourgeoisie", those are not my words, those are the words of Riordan Roett, director of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University, who was interviewed by Routers for this story. The class character of those leaving in the Chavez era isn't even being obscured from you here, it is stated rather mater-of-factually. The destination for many of these people were places like the US and Europe, according to IUSSP:

These emigrants were predominantly members of Venezuela’s middle and upper classes, including businesspeople, highly skilled professionals—especially former oil industry employees—and first or second-generation descendants of immigrants to Venezuela. Their primary destinations included the United States, Spain, Italy, and Portugal (Freitez 2011). These outflows were predominantly female (55%), with a mean age of about 28.2 years.

But as time marches on, and the sanctions ramp up, the class character of those leaving also changes, and that class character comes with it different destinations. By 2016, when the poorer band of people within the country decided to leave, many of them fled to nearby countries, and often were binational which likely eased the process of moving, again IUSSP:

The onset of the crisis (2014-2017) marked a shift from highly skilled labor migration to family migration. The Venezuelan diaspora increased from 800,000 nationals abroad in 2014 to 2 million in 2017. The average age of these additional 1.21 million migrants dropped to its lowest level in 2015 (24.9 years for men and 25.4 years for women), and about 26% were under 15 years of age. These outflows largely consisted of entire families, often binational, seeking nearby destinations. Countries such as Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Ecuador emerged as primary destinations for Venezuelans. The incipient crisis also prompted a large number of young men to migrate; for the first time, the number of migrating men surpassed that of women (102 men per 100 women).

So I'm not shocked to see that many of the Venezuelans you encounter in Europe might be celebrating the kidnaping of Maduro, who, to them, very likely represents the early changes that drove them, or their parents, out of Venezuela. You don't, however, encounter the droves of people living in the region who left the country afterward. They might have a different understanding.

It's worth noting that, the sanctions as applied to Venezuela are not unique, and have some very specific timing. They follow a very similar pattern to many other sanctions handed out by the US over the years. They have the same kind of impact on the population from country to country. Access to food and medical care enter into a crisis state. This was true in Nicaragua, Syria, and Venezuela. They all have the same clear goal, regime change. This isn't the stated goal, but as was the case in Nicaragua, Syria, and Ukraine, these sanctions are only ever lifted once existing leaders and governments fall.

Specifically, in the case of Venezuela, you can see that these sanctions seem to have a very specific timing. Francisco Rodriguez, a Venezuelan opposition economist, in his study "Sanctions, Economic Statecraft, and Venezuela’s Crisis", find a pattern in Venezuela's oil production that highlights the direct impact of sanctions on the industry.

He notes that, joint ventures with foreign multinationals were the driving force behind the stabilization of oil output in 2008 to 2015. The economic sanctions explicitly hit these joint ventures:

these joint ventures became islands of productivity in the country’s oil sector and generated pockets of growth that contributed to the stabilization of output in the 2008–2015 period. It would be these joint ventures with foreign multinationals that would be particularly hit by the 2017–2020 sanctions.

Industry analysis at the time were predicting that Venezuela's oil output would recover by 2017. This would indicate that there were no economic factors within Venezuela itself that prevented oil production. The failure to recover seems to be a direct result of US sanctions:

oil industry analysts were predicting a stabilization of Venezuelan oil output, and economic analysts were predicting modest economic growth fueled by the recovery of oil prices as late as mid-2017.24 The severe decline in oil production was completely unforeseen even by the forecast models that took full account of the well-known decline in investment at the time

He concludes that "economic sanctions and other actions of economic statecraft aimed at the Venezuelan government have strongly impacted the country’s economic and humanitarian conditions” and that “it is hard to deny that they have had a sizable negative impact on living conditions in the country”.

This all really calls into question the idea that the Chavistas are at fault for the conditions under which people live in the country. One has to wonder what the country would be like if these sanctions were never imposed at all.

CW as the subject matter might be heavy for some.

To begin with I'll clarify that I have been the recipient of a lot of vulnerable people confiding in me in my life. I know what it is like to have people suddenly dump very serious and upsetting problems on me, unsolicited. I also suffer from a lot of trauma myself, and so being trauma dumped on can be triggering of my own trauma. So yes, I can understand why trauma dumping is frowned upon and considered toxic.

However, perhaps in the age old tradition of terms being taken by the general public and misinterpreted into something almost the opposite of it's meaning, I see the term now constantly thrown in a harmful way around by the general pubic. The term "Trauma dumping" is now used to shame those with trauma who are reaching out for help at their lowest. It's used in any situation where someone opens up about their traumas.

There is something very messed up about a society that pretends that "You shouldn't keep everything to yourself, it's okay to ask for help." That in turn punishes and shames people who finally do ask for help as "Eww, stop trauma dumping. Your problems are a burden on me actually, so shut up and suffer in silence or pay someone to fix you! You're selfishly dragging down us healthy normal people!". I think this will lead to a lot of people in society being taught to hide their problems out of fear and shame. It feels wrong.

Anyway, I can understand if this is a hot take and maybe I am projecting. I can understand both sides, but ultimately it leaves a sad pit in my stomach thinking that vulnerable people are made to think no one cares about them.

The demonising of empathy is scary. Real "Don't show pity for the homeless, they're just taking advantage of your kindness." hours.

Most peoples understanding of evolution in capitalist countries, unfortunately, is quite Victorian in nature. Particularly when it comes to survival of the fittest.

We are taught very vague notions of the strong winning and the weak losing in some grand death match, that evolution is a dog eat dog, every man for himself type affair. That superior and inferior are objective and that evolution is the culling of the inferior towards some sort of goal of the perfect being.

Most egregiously, we are taught that this is the case with individuals within a single species. It shouldn't take much thinking to understand why that is a terrible survival strategy even for the most brutal predator, as if wolves and pirhana would suddenly be more efficient survivors if they ate one another instead of working together.

And yet we in capitalist societies will often make assumptions based on outdated and pseudoscientific, even fascist, ideals of superior and inferior. In media, the fascist societies are often portrayed as evil, yes, but almost never as being impractical. Fascism, social Darwinism, whatever you want to call it. It is evil, sure, but it also doesn't work because it is based on a flawed understanding of reality in the first place. That is something I almost never see discussed in history education or in media.

Which brings us to our little herbivore I mentioned in the title. That dorky little pig lizard is called a Lystrosaurus. He doesn't look much, and he's not particularly strong or smart. He doesn't have any real unique talents aside from being decent at burrowing. He's not even a dinosaur, despite the saurus suffix (it just means lizard) he's a protomammal from before dinosaurs even existed, during the Permian period. This was an age of primitive reptiles and protomammals that weren't quite lizard, weren't quite mammal.

252 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, Earth underwent the worst extinction event in it's known history, the Permian–Triassic extinction event and it was much worse than the exctintion even that ended large non-avian dinosaurs 65-66 million years ago. This extinction event was so severe that it is referred to as The Great Dying. Exact causes are not certain, however the scientific consensus seems to be that massive eruptions started a chain reaction that unleashed a lot of greenhouse gasses, causing a sulphur poisoning and oxygen depletion. 90% of Earths species became extinct. It was also the only known extinction event to significantly impact insect diversity, with 9 entire orders (yes orders, not species) becoming extinct.

It took 5 million years for Earth to recover.

Big, strong, brutal and cunning saber-toothed gorgonopsids and other giant predatory animals? All gone.

But our little tunnel digging, vegetable eating lystrosaurus? It not only survived, but it ended up representing 90% of land fauna after the extinction.

Why? No one really knows, some say grouping behavior, or that carbon dioxide tolerance was high because it lived in burrows. But one thing is for certain, it wasn't because it was it was the perfect evolutionary machine winning in the marketplace of life. It just happened to be a silly little guy that liked digging holes.

Anyway I hope this rant was readable, I am very sleepy.

I sent a link to a news story about Trump speaking at the McSummit(tm) to my friend and said "Burgerland is becoming even more real and I hate it" and she said "Burgerland?"

so I replied:

burgerland is a derogatory term for America based on the idea that we are all treat-brained rubes who just want to grill and consoom borgor, more concerned with unsustainable and destructive luxuries than the human connections all around us, and around the world)

Then I thought about it for a while and started typing another message, then I just kept typing and typing and here's an essay, originally posted in the comments of a hexbear post but I wanted to post it elsewhere as well to share!

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Burgerland is a derogitory term for america based on the idea that we are all treat-brained rubes who just want to grill and consoom borgor, more concerned with unsustainable and destructive luxuries than the human connections all around us, and around the world

On a person to person basis you'll find this isn't really true- in reality the treat-brainedness, I think, is just the manifestation of each person's coping mechanism for the fact that we live in hell, and in this hell we are raised and groomed to desire products and wish to consume them even good things are a part of this pattern, like my [hobby redacted for opsec] for example, it is unambiguously only a thing I can do this easily like this because of American capitalism's relentless drive to commercialize every aspect of reality, and the fact that I am in a ridiculously lucky situation. I say 'the only reason I can do this as easily' meaning as I have been able to within the system of capitalism, buying amazon slop was the direct and cheap path, but in an ideal world it'd still be very easily possible but more likely through a communal center of some sort where we can all share resources and materials and working spaces to more efficiently use resources and create wide access to [insert thing here].

The reckless and unsustainable modes of production that simultaneously produce cheap goods while also marketing the fuck out of us to entice us and find ways to suck money from us condition all of us from birth (book about this: Capitalist Realism), I'm talking about the deep roots capitalism has worked into our collective psyche's* and common modes of thought reinforced and iterated/ escalated upon throughout the 'developed world' over the last 200 years of capitalism and imperialism, and its recent, slightly delayed by the Soviet Victory over the Nazis (yes I'm serious, idk if this will be contentious with you but we could talk about it more!), descent into fascism as a desperate attempt for capital to keep hold of its control over the masses. See also, Brainworms.

Is that why I got into [hobby redacted for opsec]? Because capitalism tricked me into thinking that I enjoyed doing things like that? No! But you've seen how mad I get when a single 10 second ad pops up (well, you, the girl reading this, haven't. but trust me, I get bigmad when I am subjected to ads), I have completely banished them from my life so any intrusion is offensive and noticeable, I am clearly not an average consumer of advertisements, but there are always outliers for one reason or another. But that doesn't change anything. Regardless of the fact that I started doing [Hobby redacted for opsec] because I like working with my hands and making things, I am still participating in the slop machine, many of my tools came from Amazon, or other infrastructure owned by billionaires.

Thus, one way or another, as a collective, as a broad class, the rule holds true that capital finds some way to ensnare almost all of us and drain our time, money, and agency.

That's what being treat-brained does, it makes us firmly attached to those few small scraps that most of us hold on to if we are atomized and lack community (as a near majority of us do), what more do we have to hold onto but those small joys? Those precious hobbies, or video games, or that hit of the vape, or bringing your children to disneyland so you can manufacture some joy (even if it means credit card debt) and pretend that the world your children are growing up into isn't a savage hell designed to tear at them and force them to only dream of a better future the way someone might hope to win the lottery.

It makes us fear that if we do something drastic to change the way things are, that we might even lose that small remaining sliver, and then what would we have?

We'd have nothing to lose but our chains.

anyway, in summary, Americans do be eating them BORGORS tho

Thank you for coming to my McDonalds Impact Summit Seminar Sponsored by Ted X

[WARNING: i am an amateur and not qualified in christian theology. everything here is written by a hobbyist.]

i'm not sure if anyone here is ex-christian like me (there's probably someone out there), but one of my favorite past times nowadays is digging into the bible and each and every issue that arises within it. the central aspect of christianity and what makes it unique is the way its god died. jesus of nazareth was born in 6-4 BC and crucified in 33 AD. he was nailed to a cross along with two other people (both thieves) and his body was placed in a tomb from which he rose on the third day after his death. christ's resurrection, as said in the bible, is proof of his divinity and all that he has claimed and said. as said by paul in corinthians:

1 Corinthians 15:14: And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is useless, and so is your faith.

everything in christianity revolves around their savior rising from the dead after suffering one of the most gruesome executions imaginable and forgiving everyone who took part in his death, no matter their degree of involvement. his forgiveness of his enemies and the entire world's sins is what defines christian faith before anything else. but the story of jesus' death is a lot murkier than you might've been told in bible school. when i found that out, my faith started crumbling, which is why i revisit this topic every so often.

there is only a handful of things that scholars can definitely confirm about the way jesus died. to follow the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, certain facts about jesus need a lot of hoop jumping to make sense. a lot of details about his death have ranged from "definitely true" to "completely bonkers", with each of claims falling somewhere in between. here are some of the key details that are debated about jesus' death to this day:

• the time it took for jesus to die: the bible states that jesus was crucified somewhere around 9 AM (mark 12:25) and died six hours later (matthew 27:46-50, mark 15:33-37, luke 23:44-46). the gospel of john claims that he actually died three hours later (john 19:14-18) and was then carried off to be buried. the usual apologetic for that claim is that john was counting in roman time while the other three gospels were counting in jewish time. okay, sure. makes sense.

• jesus' quick death from a slow torture method: if we're gonna go with the longer estimate of time it took for jesus to die, aka 7 hours, then it is a bloody miracle (no pun intended) that he died so quick. crucifixions take much longer than 7 hours to kill someone. that is by design. they are a torture method first and an execution second. all that's done to the body when crucified is the limbs being nailed to the cross. that's it. the whole purpose of crucifixions is humiliation and torture. criminals who were subjected to crucifixions were left there to slowly die of either exposure, starvation, organ failure or suffocation. their corpse was specifically left there to intimidate whoever sympathized with the victim. 7 hours is not nearly enough to kill someone via crucifixion. in certain cases, it would take days for someone to finally die after being nailed to a cross. how come jesus got it so easy?

• what was done to jesus' corpse: continuing on from the last point; if crucifixion, as a torture method, was specifically designed to humiliate the victim and intimidate the sympathizers, why was his corpse immediately taken down after his death? unless you had connections, or were important enough (which jesus really wasn't at the time), your body would at most get tossed in a mass grave or just left up to be eaten by vultures. so tell me why jesus was granted the privilege of a burial, but designated guards? what the fuck were guards doing at a random person's tomb? he was, at most, an apocalyptic preacher claiming the title of king of the jews, who was a mild pain in the ass to the romans; what did he do to deserve such treatment? (further reading on this issue)

• "jesus has risen" and the gap in mark: after three days of being dead (well, more like a day and a half), jesus' tomb was empty. jesus was gone. the women came to the tomb to... well, each gospel claimed they've done different things. and how many women came to the tomb. and who greeted them inside the tomb. and who they told, if anyone at all. each gospel says something different, so pick and choose what you want to believe. i can already hear young me say, "but one thing they all shared is that, in each of them, jesus came back from the dead!". oh how wrong i was. in the gospel of mark, which is the oldest out of the main four canonical gospels (mark, matthew, john, luke), the resurrection of jesus is only mentioned and never described. what also needs to be said is that in all four gospels we never actually see the resurrection happen; rather, we're shown a scene of the empty tomb, the opened gate and the animated jesus, alive as ever, preaching further prophecies and eventually leaving earth. but what is unique about mark is that while it mentions that jesus has risen, the earliest manuscripts of mark never actually tell us what jesus was doing after he came back from the dead. which makes it a possibility that everything jesus supposedly said after he came back from the dead was a later addition. mark 16:5-8 is where the earliest mark ends, and it reads as follows:

Mark 16:5-8: As they [the women] entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

• the 500 witnesses and the issue with hearsay: jesus died in 33 AD. after his death, he resurrected and stayed on earth for [less than a day (mark 16:9, luke 24:13), another 40 days (acts 1:3), unspecified (matthew 28:10, john 21:25)]. since then, the stories of the new testament entered circulation. they were initially passed down orally from person to person until around 50 AD, when the first book of the new testament was finally put to paper. 18 years is already an insane amount of telephone that was played with the most important writings in the world, but the canonical gospels were written even later, with mark's earliest copy written down around 66 AD. even putting that aside, 18 of the 66 books (in the protestant canon) were written anonymously, with the four canonical gospels, john and hebrews being a part of that number. the most prolific writer of the new testament, who wrote 13 books, is paul. paul was also the one to claim, in 1 corinthians 15:6, that there were 500 witnesses to jesus' resurrection. that number is mentioned nowhere else in the bible, including the four canonical gospels. it is not known where paul got that number from. the source of the original claim remains a mystery even to paul himself. we know nothing of the original 500 witnesses; none of them wrote their own accounts or were mentioned in the earlier NT books. the claim is essentially hearsay that somehow made it to the bible for no known reason.

• bonus point: the three-hour darkness: this is less important than anything listed before, but i still want to bring this up. it is said that during jesus' crucifixion, there was 3 hours of complete darkness that covered the earth, along with a zombie apocalypse and an earthquake. it is mentioned in all 3 synoptic gospels (matthew, mark, luke). the actual event that took place during the 3 hours of darkness is widely debated, but the usual position that believers might take in this question is that there was a solar eclipse that came over jerusalem. solar eclipses do not last longer than a few minutes. some may claim that the "three hours" is a mistranslation, but that still won't help the case. because in 33 AD, there were two solar eclipses, both of which both were nowhere near jerusalem. the first one took place entirely in the ocean, and the second one passing over inland asia.

religion is an odd thing, innit?

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SEPTEMBER 10 2025

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10:29 AM EST (8:29 AM MST)

Surveillance cameras allegedly capture Tyler Robinson arriving at UVU in grey Dodge Challenger. He is wearing a maroon t-shirt and light colored shorts and shoes.

Note 1: Video has yet to be made public

Note 2: NPR and other sources reported the time as 8:29 MST. Utah DPS says 11:52 AM MST. Without the video is it unclear which is correct. The earlier time came from Governor Cox while the later time came from Utah DPS. This could be a reporting error.

1:52 PM EST (11:52 AM MST)

A figure suspected to be Tyler, but wearing dark clothing now, is tracked by surveillance cameras as they walk through campus to the building from where the alleged shot was fired. Cameras also capture the figure using stairwells to access the roof area.

Note 1: Video has yet to be made public

??:?? PM EST (??:?? AM MST)

A passerby films a figure on the roof from where the alleged shot would later be fired. They note that they saw someone walking across the roof to that spot before filming.

Source: https://x.com/ChadFeldheimer3/status/1965883761045942482

2:20 PM EST (12:20 PM MST)

A single gunshot is heard and Charlie Kirk appears to struck in the neck. He collapses almost immediately.

??:?? PM EST (??:?? PM MST)

A student named Tanner Maxwell films a figure running across the roof of the building from where the alleged shot was fired, directly after the shooting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/us/charlie-kirk-shooting-video-roof.html

2:23 PM EST (12:23 PM MST)

A surveillance camera captures a figure running across the roof of the building from where the alleged shot was fired. The figure then climbs down the side of the building, drops to the grass, staggers for a moment, then jogs off frame.

Source: https://x.com/FBISaltLakeCity/status/1966320840544227680

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrfHme9Yhc8

??:?? PM EST (??:?? PM MST)

Moments after being shot, Charlie Kirk is carried away by his personal security detail and taken to a local hospital.

??:?? PM EST (??:?? PM MST)

The figure, now the main POI, is captured on surveillance video fleeing towards a wooded area and neighborhood adjacent to campus.

Tyler Robinson claims he went to the wooded area, changed clothes, wrapped the weapon in a towel and left it behind in the bushes before returning to his car.

Note 1: Video has yet to be released to the public.

Note 2: Tyler's texts were released without timestamps. They were also released as transcripts rather than screenshots or raw data from the text app.

??:?? PM EST (??:?? PM MST)

Event attendee George Zinn was arrested on campus after claiming responsibility moments after shooting. He told police "I shot him, now shoot me." Zinn later admitted to doing it as a distraction from the real shooter.

Police took him to a local hospital for an unnamed medical condition. Zinn was released from the hospital days later and then booked to Utah County jail. He was ruled out as a POI in the shooting. but charged with Obstruction of Justice.

Source: https://www.ksl.com/article/51373320/man-claimed-to-shoot-charlie-kirk-to-draw-attention-from-the-real-shooter-police-say

2:39 PM EST (12:39 PM MST)

First FBI agents arrive to secure the scene according to Kash Patel

??:?? PM EST (??:?? PM MST)

UVU Student Zachariah Qureshi left campus after the shooting only to be arrested at his apartment as a POI in the shooting.

Zach was a Charlie Kirk fan and had attended the even to hear him speak. Police released him hours later and stated he had no connection to the incident. However by that time, his personal information had spread on the internet. His family, from North Texas, received harassment as stated by his father Ahmed Qureshi.

Source: https://www.sltrib.com/news/2025/09/11/charlie-kirks-shooting-utah-police/

2:51 PM EST (12:51 PM MST)

Utah Dept of Pub Safety releases update on Kirk shooting.

• Shooting took place at approximately 2:20 PM EST (12:20 PM MST)
• Charlie was taken to Timpanogos Regional Hospital where he was pronounced dead
• Utah Dept of Public Safety and SLC FBI are co-leading investigation
• Event attendee George Zinn was taken into custody as suspect. He was later released after interrogation and has no ties to the shooting.
• Event attendee Zachariah Qureshi was also taken into custody as a suspect and released with no ties to the shooting.
• Shooting thought to be targeted
• Shooter allegedly fired from the roof of a building to the location of the event in courtyard
• Six university police officers working event
• Charlie Kirk had is own private security detail
• Approx 3000 attendees at the event

Source: https://us20.campaign-archive.com/?u=b6f3808e460194884d1da37a2&id=c220d507b8

Source: https://dps.utah.gov/press-releases/updates-on-charlie-kirk-shooting-at-uvu/

Utah Dept of Pub Safety announces press conference at 6:00PM EST (4:00 PM MST)

Source: https://us20.campaign-archive.com/?u=b6f3808e460194884d1da37a2&id=cc3b048937

3:02 PM EST (1:02 PM MST)

Trump mentions Kirk's shooting on Truth Social

Source: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115181549363103818

??:?? PM EST (??:?? PM MST)

Law enforcement comb edges of campus and a neighborhood that backs up to the campus. Police search yards, buildings, wooded areas, and cars. They also review and confiscate security camera footage from homes that have it.

3:43 PM EST (1:43 PM EST)

Tim Pool announces that his sources say Charlie is stable.

Source: https://x.com/Timcast/status/1965863622225309941

4:40 PM EST (2:40 PM MST)

Trump confirms that Kirk is dead on Truth Social

Source: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115181934991844419

5:09 PM EST (3:09 PM MST / 11:09 PM Rome)

Italian PM Georgia Meloni reacts to Kirk's death:

Source: https://x.com/giorgiameloni/status/1965885263189782709

5:21 PM EST (3:21 PM MST / 10:21 PM Tel Aviv)

Benjamin Netanyahu reacts to Kirk's death:

Source: https://x.com/netanyahu/status/1965888327938158764

5:52 PM EST (3:52 PM MST / 10:52 PM BST)

Kier Starmer reacts to Kirk's death:

Source: https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1965896152345415805

5:54 PM EST (3:54 PM MST / 12:54 AM Sep 11 Moscow)

Dimitry Medvedev reacts to Kirk's death:

Source: https://x.com/MedvedevRussiaE/status/1965896704290648566

6:00 PM EST (4:00 PM MST)

Press conference led by Utah DPS

Utah DPS Commissioner Beau Mason:

• Kirk shot at approximately 2:20 PM
• Immediately taken by private vehicle to Timpanogos Regional Hospital where he was pronounced dead
• George Zinn was arrested as a suspect but was released after he did not match the shooting suspect and was not a person of interest. He was booked in county jail for obstruction of justice.
• One shot fired and one victim
• Targeted attack towards one individual
• Video taken from CCTV of shooter
• Dressed in dark clothing
• Longer distance shot taken from roof
• Haven't decided if person in custody (who is not Zinn) matches person in video

SLC FBI Special Agent Bohls:

• Co-leading, offering resources
• Setting up digital media tip line

UV University Admin:

• UVU is a place to share ideas and debate openly and respectfully
• Does not condone violence

Utah Governor Cox:

• Chief Long is heading the investigation for local PD
• In contact with Kash Patel and President Trump
• "Completely aligned with federal partners as we work through this case"
• Tragic day for America
• "This is a political assassination"
• Utah is place where truth and ideas are formulated and debated
• Murder is a violation of the Constitution
• POI in custody but investigation is ongoing
• "To whoever did this, we will find you"
• "We still have the death penalty here in the state of Utah"
• Does not have the powers of necromancy
• People who celebrate on social media need to put down their pen and pray
• We have a POI in custody who is not George Zinn
• No reason to believe in second shooter

Utah Valley University Police Chief Jeff Long:

• Open venue
• 6 officers working event
• Over 3000 in attendance
• Bowl area in central campus
• Charlie Kirk was in bowl area surrounded by buildings
• Plain clothes officers in crowds
• Charlie Kirk's security team present
• Can't comment whether weapon was discovered
• UVU Police and Kirk's team worked together on security

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZMAIm73RIk

Text of Bohl's statement: https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/saltlakecity/news/remarks-by-sac-robert-bohls-at-press-conference-regarding-shooting-at-utah-valley-university

6:21 PM EST (4:21 PM MST)

Kash Patel announces that the alleged shooter is in custody.

Source: https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1965903392934633587

6:59 PM EST (4:59 PM MST)

NY Yankees holds moment of silence for Kirk

Source: https://x.com/Yankees/status/1965913114450501983

7:59 PM EST (5:59 PM MST)

Kash Patel announces that aforementioned alleged shooter has been released.

Source: https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1965928054712316363

9:00 PM EST (7:00 PM MST)

Zohran Mamdani mentions Kirk's death at the annual Jews for Economic and Racial Justice fundraiser event. Calls it a horrific political assassination caused by the plague of gun violence.

Source; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlT7Ny-oRDs

9:56 PM EST (7:56 PM MST)

Rep Luna (R-FL) requests social media platforms remove videos of Kirk's death.

Source: https://x.com/RepLuna/status/1965957600324796675

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SEPTEMBER 11 2025

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12:52 AM EST (10:52 PM MST - Sep 10 / 1:52 PM Tokyo)

US Ambassador to Japan calls Charlie Kirk true patriot and leader of young Americans. Lowers embassy flag to half-staff in Tokyo.

Source: https://x.com/USAmbJapan/status/1966001994474340468

4:40 AM EST (2:40 AM MST / 5:40 PM Seoul)

US Embassy in Seoul lowers flag to half-staff, apparently, over Kirk's death.

Note 1: This embassy has lowered the US flag to half-mast for other public shootings in the US

Note 2: I can't find a good source other than reporting by NBC as to why the flag was at half-mast. There isn't an official tweet from the US ambassador like with Japan. It could be at half-staff for the shooting or 9/11

8:20 AM EST (6:20 AM MST)

Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau threatens foreigners on American soil who praise, rationalize, or make light of Kirk's death.

Source: https://x.com/DeputySecState/status/1966114506116927972

8:35 AM EST (6:35 AM MST)

Steven Crowder claims to have been emailed an internal message from the ATF containing details about the weapon, the ammo, and motives.

Source: https://x.com/scrowder/status/1966118431511433267

Note: This was widely considered fake at the time. However, in retrospect, given the release of the bullets having inscriptions this may have been a real leak. It may have been leaked to get ahead of the public release 30 mins later and plant the idea of a transgender connection.

9:00 AM EST (7:00 AM MST)

Utah DPS and FBI give update on investigation

Utah DPS Commissioner Mason

• POI were were arrested and released on Sep 10 faced threats from public
• Able to track movements of shooter as they arrived on campus, moved to stairwells, and onto the roof.
• Tracked shooter after shooting as they moved across roof, jumped to the ground, and fled into a neighborhood
• Working with neighborhood residents for doorbell videos
• Have high quality video but will not release it
• Claimed the shooter arrived on campus at 11:52 AM (conflict with other info)
• Will bring to justice that one individual and anyone who helped them
• Suspect blended in with the college students and of college age

FBI Special Agent Bohls

• Recovered weapon
• Bolt-action high-powered rifle
• In wooded area where suspect fled
• Footware impression, palmprint, forearm imprints collected
• An attack on the 1st amendment is an attack on the nation
• Suspect is not believed to be hiding in the woods
• Community is likely not at further risk
• Have images of the suspect
• Have full support of Kash Patel

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gycHjziOr8M

Text of Bohl's Statement: https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/saltlakecity/news/remarks-delivered-by-special-agent-in-charge-robert-bohls-at-the-september-11-2025-press-conference-regarding-the-shooting-at-utah-valley-university

10:02 AM EST (8:02 AM MST)

Trump announces, at the 9/11 memorial, that he will posthumously award Kirk with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

10:50 AM EST (8:50 AM MST / 4:50 PM SAST)

Mourners is Pretoria South Africa pay respects to Kirk outside of US Embassy with wreath-laying ceremony.

11:52 AM EST (9:52 AM MST) to 12:01 PM EST (10:01 AM MST)

Utah DPS press release with photos of POI

Source: https://dps.utah.gov/press-releases/media-advisory-seeking-the-publics-help-identifying-charlie-kirks-shooter-at-uvu/

Source: https://x.com/UtahDPS/status/1966170180515663978

FBI releases two photos of the POI (Same as above).

Source: https://x.com/FBISaltLakeCity/status/1966169520403525760

Utah DPS press release details of investigation so far:

• No suspect in custody.
• Screen shots from campus security footage are released to the public. The screenshots are from before the shooting.
• Offering $100,000 reward.
• High-powered bolt-action rifle was recovered from wooded area where the POI appeared to flee after the shooting.
• Photos of the weapon and details have been leaked but no official comment on the details. Can not confirm authenticity of leaked data as it was not released by law enforcement.
• Forensic evidence has been collected: footwear impression, palm print, and forearm imprints.
• Warning to not send drones over the campus
• Someone was arrested on campus, unrelated to the shooting. They crossed the police tape onto the scene and began taking photos of the scene and officers. When attempted to stop and identify, the subject fled on foot but was arrested by officers. He was booked on felony charges for Obstruction of Justice and Trespassing.

Source: https://dps.utah.gov/press-releases/media-advisory-uvu-shooting-updated-press-release-9-11-25-pm/

1:07 PM EST (11:07 AM MST)

Retired ATF executive Scott Sweetow states that the shot could be easily made by person of minimal training.

It was a lone shot, fired from a distance of nearly two football fields, that struck its target in the neck.

But the killing of Charlie Kirk would not have required an expert marksman, according to multiple firearms experts. They said the weaponry available today would allow someone with even limited firearms experience to pull off such a hit, making such tragedies exceedingly difficult to prevent.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/charlie-kirks-assassin-likely-not-expert-marksman-former-atf-agents-sa-rcna230564

1:30 PM EST (11:30 AM MST)

Russell Kim Kennington was arrested on campus after crossing police tape to take photos and video of the scene. Kennington was wearing a lab coat and medical scrubs. He was charged with Obstruction of Justice and Trespassing.

Source: https://kutv.com/news/local/utah-man-accused-of-sneaking-into-assassination-crime-scene-taking-photos-of-evidence

3:15 PM EST (1:15 PM MST)

Former Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson says the effort and resources put into tracking domestic terrorism may ebb and flow based on administrations.

He says that most terror attacks int he US are domestic and homegrown violent extremism. He then compares political violence today to the violence of the 1960s and names such leaders as MLK Jr, JFK & RFK, and Malcolm X. He then suggests that drones may be able to provide security for events like these.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/charlie-kirks-assassin-likely-not-expert-marksman-former-atf-agents-sa-rcna230564

*Note: Leave it to a former Obama Admin employee to begin the comparisons of Kirk to Civil Rights leaders. Then he uses the opportunity to hock military hardware."

3:54 PM EST (1:54 PM MST)

Freshman UVU student Isaac Harris recounts what he witnessed at the shooting.

His aunt, who home lines the edge of campus said LE searched her home and yard, and asked for footage from her and her neighbor's cameras. She claims her cameras did not pick up anything.

Source: https://www.standard.net/news/local/2025/sep/11/the-bubble-burst-orem-residents-recount-the-manhunt-for-charlie-kirks-killer-that-unfolded-in-their-neighborhood/

4:22 PM EST (2:22 PM MST)

Steven Crowder claims to have been subpoenaed by the ATF for the leaked information he received earlier this morning.

Source: https://x.com/scrowder/status/1966236010381193388

8:05 PM EST (6:05 PM MST) to 8:17 PM EST (6:17 PM MST)

Utah Department of Public Safety release several new photos of POI.

Source: https://x.com/UtahDPS/status/1966291959074738448

FBI Releases more photos of POI (Same as above).

Source: https://x.com/FBISaltLakeCity/status/1966295141410373683

9:59 PM EST (7:59 PM MST)

Authorities release video of POI running across the roof and then jumping down onto the grass before fleeing off frame. The footage in question was captured at 2:23 PM EST (12:23 PM MST) on September 10th.

Source: https://x.com/FBISaltLakeCity/status/1966320840544227680

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrfHme9Yhc8

---

SEPTEMBER 12 2025

---

12:02 AM EST (10:02 PM MST)

Sheriff Nate Brooksby of Washington County Utah receives phone call from retired detective and deputy Matt Robinson (no relation). Matt knew Tyler Robinson's family through church. The family contacted him and told him that Tyler did the shooting and was having suicidal ideation.

Tyler claimed to be worried about his parent's home being raided by SWAT or being shot. Him and his parents arranged peaceful surrender in exchange for gentle treatment during the arrest. Tyler's parents drove him to the Washington County Sherriff's department.

Brooksby calls Utah County Sheriff's Department and informs them of Tyler's imminent arrival. Tyler is then transferred to Utah County.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W3GVCDhdxg

6:00 AM EST (4:00 AM MST)

Tyler is arrested by Utah County Sheriff's Department. The charges are:

• Felony Discharge of Firearm - Causing Serious Bodily Injury
• Obstruction of Justice - Capital/First Degree Felony Conduct
• Aggravated Murder

Source: Utah County inmate search, can't directly link it.

9:58 AM EST (7:58 AM MST)

Tyler is booked into the Utah County jail.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5602543

Hey Hexbears check out my pod! We’re just a group of pals with jobs trying to podcast through it. We do weekly news updates as well as a patreon only eps where we deep dive into various subjects, most recently we were talking LTV and the history of currency!

All our free eps are on the Libsyn feed and you can find the show on Apple/Spotify/Youtube

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/30028880

A community dedicated to taking back the wealth of the 0.01%, for the sake of human kind

The way the bourgeoisie see the world is purely as a zero sum game of 'most power wins'. According to them, everything, everything people do is to win 'the game'. You can't appeal to empathy because they see it as a manipulation tactic. You can't appeal to them with logic because they, again, see logic as another tactic to get ahead. Everything is a lie so they're going to be the best at it. If they oppose someone it's never because of a moral reason, it's because that person threatens their throne in 'the game'. For example, they see people protesting the genocide of Palestinians as simply people mad that they're losing. That's how warped their morals are.

They fully embrace the pseudoscientific idea of social Darwinism, no matter how outdated and disproven it is. After all, the reason they're rich is because they're special. God has favorited them, or if they're agnostic, it's simply the rules of the jungle that have chosen them. Yet, never expect them to look to close at nature and discover the nuances and success of social species that mutually work together. That won't help them win 'the game' so obviously any example of nature being nice is just some kind of trick.

To them, if people are poor, it's because they're weak and bad at 'the game'. In their eyes, losers of 'the game' are pathetic deserve to die, so being exploited as human commodities is actually kind on their part because in 'the jungle' they assume the poor would be dead. Of course, this doesn't apply to those who are like them, born of 'good stock'. If you're a billionaire and then lose some wealth you deserve some pity.

The bourgeoisie have an almost fanatical religious view of the world, approach them as you would a cultist. You can't explain that their greed is going to eventually destroy the environment and kill them too, because they will just think that you're a heretic trying to trick them into losing 'the game'. The idea that their god (greed) won't protect them as it always has is laughable to them. After all, their mastery of 'the game' allows them to commit any crime, to do things that are almost god-like, so of course it will protect them from any natural disaster.

So understand that these people don't see you as human. They don't care who they hurt, and you won't be able to shame them or reason them into reality.

Do not underestimate their dedication to this self destructive greed. This Spartan dead end. They will cling to it until they die.

I've been listening to Proles Pod, they have a new series of episodes called "The Stalin Eras" which I found extremely good for history of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the end of the Great Patriotic War. Using that as a source and a few other sources, I've compiled some main points regarding the Motherboard-Ribbedcock that dispels the prevalent propaganda that it was a "Soviet-Nazi pact to expand the Soviet Union because they were bad". I've used mostly Wikipedia in the links so you can use it against libs:

1) Most of the invaded "Polish" territories actually belong to modern Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus. In 1919, Poland started the Polish-Ukrainian war and invaded Ukraine, Belarus and part of the RSFSR. This so-called "carving of Poland by the Soviet Union" liberated many formerly oppressed non-Polish national ethnicities such as Lithuanians in Polish-controlled Vilnius arguably being genocided, or ceding the city of Lviv to the Ukraine SSR. Sorry for the ugly map, I made it myself and it's my first attempt (I made it with GIMP lmao):

Edit: added the following map (source) showing the majority-ethnicities in 1931-Poland for further reference. Funny how, comparing both maps, the rough boundary between Polish and Ukrainian/Russian/Belarusian ethnic majority seems to really overlap with the extent to which the USSR invaded Poland

2) The Soviet Union had been trying for the entire 1930s to establish a mutual-defense agreement with Poland, France and Britain against the Nazis, under the doctrine of the then-People's Commisar of Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov. This decade-long proposal for mutual-defence went completely ignored by France and England, which hoped to see a Nazi-Soviet conflict that would destroy both countries, and Poland didn't agree to negotiations by itself either. The Soviet government went as far as to offer to send one million troops together with artillery, tanking and aviation, to Poland and France. The response was ignoring these pleas and offerings.

Furthermore, this armistice between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany happened only one year after the Munich Betrayal. The Soviet Union and France had a Mutual Defense Agreement with Czechoslovakia, which France (together with the UK) unilaterally violated in agreement with the Nazis when ceding Czechoslovak territories to Nazi Germany. Stalin offered France, as an alternative to the Munich Betrayals, a coordinated and two-front attack to Nazi Germany, which France rejected in favour of the Munich Agreements.

3) The Soviet Union had been through WW1 up to 1917, the Russian Civil War up to 1922 (including a famine that killed millions) in which western powers like France, England or the USA invaded the Bolsheviks and helped the tsarist Whites to reestablish tsarism, which ultimately ended with a costly Bolshevik victory; the many deaths of famine during the land-collectivization of 1929-1933, and up to 1929 was a mostly feudal empire with little to no industry to speak of. Only after the 1929 and 1934 5-year plans did the USSR manage to slightly industrialize, but these 10 years of industrialization were barely anything in comparison with the 100 years of industrialization Nazi Germany enjoyed. The Soviet Union in 1939 was utterly underdeveloped to face Nazi Germany alone, as proven further by the 27 million casualties in the war that ended Nazism. The fact that the Soviet Union "carved Eastern Europe" in the so-called "secret protocol" was mostly in self-defense. The geography of the Great European Plain made it extremely difficult to have any meaningful defenses against Nazis with weaponry and technological superiority, again proven by the fact that the first meaningful victory against Nazis was not in open field but in the battle of Stalingrad, which consisted more of a siege of a city. The Soviet Union, out of self-preservation, wanted to simply add more Soviet-controlled distance between themselves and the Nazis. You don't have to take my word for all of this, you can hear it from western diplomats and officials from the period itself. I hope nonbody will find my choice of personalities to reflect a pro-Soviet bias (I have another post with many more quotes, these are just a few of them):

“In those days the Soviet Government had grave reason to fear that they would be left one-on-one to face the Nazi fury. Stalin took measures which no free democracy could regard otherwise than with distaste. Yet I never doubted myself that his cardinal aim had been to hold the German armies off from Russia for as long as might be” (Paraphrased from Churchill’s December 1944 remarks in the House of Commons.)

“It would be unwise to assume Stalin approves of Hitler’s aggression. Probably the Soviet Government has merely sought a delaying tactic, not wanting to be the next victim. They will have a rude awakening, but they think, at least for now, they can keep the wolf from the door” Franklin D. Roosevelt (President of the United States, 1933–1945), from Harold L. Ickes’s diary entries, early September 1939. Ickes’s diaries are published as The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes.

"One must suppose that the Soviet Government, seeing no immediate prospect of real support from outside, decided to make its own arrangements for self‑defence, however unpalatable such an agreement might appear. We in this House cannot be astonished that a government acting solely on grounds of power politics should take that course” Neville Chamberlain House of Commons Statement, August 24, 1939 (one day after pact's signing)

"It seemed to me that the Soviet leaders believed conflict with Nazi Germany was inescapable. But, lacking clear assurances of military partnership from England and France, they resolved that a ‘breathing spell’ was urgently needed. In that sense, the pact with Germany was a temporary expedient to keep the wolf from the door” Joseph E. Davies (U.S. Ambassador to the USSR, 1937–1938) Mission to Moscow (1941)

I could go on with quotes but you get my point.

4) The Soviet Union invaded Poland 2 weeks after the Nazis, at a time when there was no functioning Polish government anymore. Given the total crushing of the Polish forces by the Nazis and the rejection of a mutual-defense agreement from England and France with the Soviets, there is only one alternative to Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland: Nazi occupation of Eastern Poland. Seriously, what was the alternative, letting Nazis genocide even further east, killing arguably millions more in the process over these two years between Molotov-Ribbentrop and Operation Barbarossa? France and England, which did have a mutual-defense agreement with Poland, initiated war against Germany as a consequence of the Nazi invasion, but famously did not start war against the Soviets, the main reason in my opinion being the completely different character of the Soviet invasion. Regardless of this, please tell me. After the rejection of mutual-defense agreements with the Soviet Union: what was the alternative other than Nazi occupation of Eastern Poland?

Edit 2: 5) I, the guy who wrote this wall of text, am a Spaniard. The Soviet Union is the only country which sold weapons to and supported the antifascist side of the Spanish civil war in 1936-1939. The Soviet Union not only declared opposition to fascism in Europe, it is the only country pre-1939 to actually fight it outside its borders. While the Italian Fascists and the German Nazis bombed the cities of the republican-controlled areas of Spain, the liberal west looked to the other side, and the USSR was the only country to offer material support and actual troops to the Spanish partisans. So, as a Spaniard, fuck you if you diminish the role of the USSR in the antifascist struggle in Europe.

Thanks for reading :)

This is written in response to this thread here: https://hexbear.net/post/4704476

Democratization of Capitalist Values

Democratization is a word often used with technological advancement and the proliferation of open-source software. Even here, the platform under which this discussion is unfolding, we are participating in a form of "democratization" of the means of "communication". This process of "democratization" is often one framed as a kind of universal or near universal access for the masses to engage in building and protecting their own means of communication. I've talked at length in the past about the nature of the federated, decentralized, communications movement. One of the striking aspects of this movement is how much of the shape and structure this democratization of communication shares with the undemocratic and corporate owned means of communication. Despite being presented with the underlying protocols necessary to create a communication experience that fosters true community, the choice is made instead to take the shape and structure of centralized, corporate owned speech and community platforms and "democratize" them, without considering the social relations engendered by the platforms.

As Marxists, this phenomenon isn't something that should seem strange to us, and we should be able to identify this phenomenon in other instances of "democratization". This phenomenon is what sits at the heart of Marxist analysis, and it is the relationship between the Mode of Production and the Super Structure of society. These "democratized" platforms mirror their centralized sisters, and are imbued with the very same capitalist values, in an environment that stands in conflict with those very same values. If this means of democratization of online community and communication was to be truly democratic, it would be a system that requires the least amount of technical knowledge and resources. However, those operators that sit at the top of each of these hosted systems exist higher on the class divide because they must operate a system designed to work at scale, with a network effect at the heart of its design. This is how you end up with the contradictions that lay under each of these systems. Mastodon.org is the most used instance, and its operators have a vested interest in maintaining that position, as it allows them and their organization to maintain control over the underlying structure of Mastodon. Matrix.org is the most used instance for its system for extremely similar reasons. Bluesky has structured itself in such a way that sits it on the central throne of its implementation. They have all obfuscated the centralization of power by covering their thrown with the cloak of "democratization". Have these systems allowed the fostering of communities that otherwise drown in the sea of capitalist online social organizing? There is no doubt. Do they require significant organizational effort and resources to maintain? Absolutely. Are they still subject to a central, technocratic authority, driven by the same motivations as their sister systems? Yes, they are.

This brings me to AI, and it's current implementation and design, and it's underlying motivations and desires. These systems suffer from the same issues that this very platform suffer from, which is, that they are stained with the values of capital at their heart, and they are in no means a technology that is "neutral" in its design or its implementation. It is foolish to say that "Marxists have never opposed technological progress in principle", in that this statement also handwaves away the critical view of technology in the Marxist tradition. Marx spends more than 150 pages---A tome in its own right---on the subject of technology and technological advancement under Capitalism in Volume 1 of Capital. Wherein he outlines how the worker becomes subjugated to the machine, and I find that this quote from Marx drives home my position, and I think the position of others regarding the use of AI in its current formation (emphasis mine).

The lightening of the labour, even, becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not free the labourer from work, but deprives the work of all interest. Every kind of capitalist production, in so far as it is not only a labour-process, but also a process of creating surplus-value, has this in common, that it is not the workman that employs the instruments of labour, but the instruments of labour that employ the workman.

---

Capital Volume 1, Production of Relative Surplus Value\Machinery and Modern Industry\Section 4: The Factory

What is it, at the core of both textual and graphical AI generation, that is being democratized? What has the capitalist sought to automate in its pursuit of Large Language Model research and development? It is the democratization of skill. It is the alienation of the Artist from the labor of producing art. As such, it does not matter that this technology has become "democratized" via open-source channels because at the heart of the technology, it's intention and design, it's implementation and commodification, lay the alienation of the artist from the process of creating art. It is not the "democratization" of "creativity". There are scores of artists throughout our history whose art is regarded as creative despite its simplicity in both execution and level of required skill.

One such artist who comes to mind is Jackson Pollock, an artist who is synonymous with paint splattering and a major contributor to the abstract expressionist movement. His aesthetic has been described as a "joke" and void of "political, aesthetic, and moral" value, used as a means of denigrating the practice of producing art. Yet, it is like you describe in your own words, "Creativity is not an inherent quality of tools — it is the product of human intention". One of the obvious things that these generative models exhibit is a clear and distinct lack of intention. I believe that this lack of "human intention" is explicitly what drives people's repulsion from the end product of generative art. It also becomes "a sort of torture" under which the artist becomes employed by the machine. There are endless sources of artists whose roles as creators have been reduced to that of Generative Blemish Control Agents, cleaning up the odd, strange, and unintentioned aspects of the AI process.

Capitalist Mimicry and The Man In The Mirror

One thing often sighted as a mark in favor of AI is the emergence of Deepseek onto the market as a direct competitor to leading US-based AI Models. Its emergence was a massive and disruptive debut, slicing nearly $2-trillion in market cap off the US Tech Sector in a mater of days. This explosive out of the gate performance was not the result of any new ideologically driven reorientation in the nature and goal of generative AI modeling philosophy, but instead of the refinement of the training processes to meet the restrictive conditions created by embargos on western AI processing technology in China.

Deepseek has been hailed as what can be achieved under the "Socialist Model" of production, but I'm more willing to argue that this isn't as true as we wish to believe. China is a vibrant and powerful market economy, one that is governed and controlled by a technocratic party who have a profound understanding of market forces. However, their market economy is not anymore or less susceptible to the whims of capital desires than any other market. One prime example recently was the speculative nature of their housing market, which the state is resolving through a slow deflation of the sector and seizure of assets, among other measures. I think it is safe to argue that much of the demands of the Chinese market economy are forged by the demands of external Capitalist desires. As the worlds forge, the heart of production in the global economy, their market must meet the demands of external capitalist forces. It should be remembered here, that the market economy of China operates within a cage, with no political influence on the state, but that does not make it immune to the demands and desires of Capitalists at the helm of states abroad.

Yes. Deepseek is a tool set released in an open-source way. Yes, Deepseek is a tool set that one can use at a much cheaper rate than competitors in the market, or roll your own hosting infrastructure for. However, what is the tool set exactly, what are its goals, who does it benefit, and who does it work against? The incredible innovation under the "Socialist model" still performs the same desired processes of alienation that capitalists in the west are searching for, just at a far cheaper cost. This demand is one of geopolitical economy, where using free trade principles, Deepseek intends to drive demand away from US-based solutions and into its coffers in China. The competition created by Deepseek has ignited several protectionist practices by the US to save its most important driver of growth in its economy, the tech sector. The new-found efficiency of Deepseek threatens not just the AI sector inside of tech, but the growing connective tissue sprung up around the sector. With the bloated and wasteful implementation of Open AI's models, it gave rise to growing demand for power generation, data centers, and cooling solutions, all of which lost large when Deepseek arrived. So at its heart, it has not changed what AI does for people, only how expensive AI is for capitalists in year-to-year operations. What good is this open-source tool if what is being open sourced are the same demands and desires of the capitalist class?

Reflected in the production of Deepseek is the American Capitalist, they stand as the man in the mirror, and the market economy of China as doing what a market economy does: Compete for territory in hopes of driving out competition, to become a monopoly agent within the space. This monopolization process can still be something in which you distribute through an open-source means. Just as in my example above, of the social media platforms democratizing the social relations of capitalist communal spaces, so too is Deepseek democratizing the alienation of artists and writers from their labor.

They are not democratizing the process of Artists and Laborers training their own models to perform specific and desired repetitive tasks as part of their own labor process in any form. They hold all the keys because even though they were able to slice the head from the generative snake that is the US AI Market, it still cost them several million dollars to do so, and their clear goal is to replace that snake.

A Renaissance Man Made of Metal

Much in the same way that the peasants of the past lost access to the commons and were forced into the factories under this new, capitalist organization of the economy, the artist has been undergoing a similar process. However, instead of toiling away on their plots of land in common, giving up a tenth of their yield each year to their lord, and providing a sum of their hourly labor to work the fields at the manor, the Artist historically worked at the behest of a Patron. The high watermark for this organization of labor was the Renaissance period. Here, names we all know and recognize, such as da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Botticelli were paid by their Patron Lords or at times the popes of Rome to hone their craft and in exchange paint great works for their benefactors.

As time passed, and the world industrialized, the system of Patronage faded and gave way to the Art Market, where artists could sell their creative output directly to galleries and individuals. With the rise of visual entertainment, and our modern entertainment industry, most artists' primary income stems from the wage labor they provide to the corporation to which they are employed. They require significant training, years and decades of practice and development. The reproduction of their labor has always been a hard nut to crack, until very recently. Some advancements in mediums shifted the demand for different disciplines, 2D animators found themselves washed on the shores of the 3D landscape, wages and benefits depleted, back on the bottom rung learning a new craft after decades of momentum via unionization in the 2D space. The transition from 2D to 3D in animation is a good case study in the process of proletarianization, very akin to the drive to teach students to code decades later in a push for the STEM sector. Now, both of these sectors of laborers are under threat from the Metal Renaissance Man, who operates under the patronage of his corporate rulers, producing works at their whim, and at the whim of others, for a profit. This Mechanical Michelangelo has the potential to become the primary source of artistic and---in the case of code---logical expression, and the artists and coders who trained him become his subordinates. Cleaning up the mistakes, and hiding the rogue sixth finger and toe as needed.

Long gone are the days of Patronage, and soon too long gone will be the days of laboring for a wage to produce art. We have to, as revolutionary Marxists, recognize that this contradiction is one that presents to artists, as laborers, the end of their practice, not the beginning or enhancement of that practice. It is this mimicry that the current technological solutions participate in that strikes at the heart of the artists' issue. Hired for their talent, then, used to train the machine with which they will be replaced, or reduced. Thus limiting the economic viability of the craft for a large portion of the artistic population. The only other avenue for sustainability is the Art Market, which has long been a trade backed by the laundering of dark money and the sound of a roulette wheel. A place where "meritocracy" rules with an iron fist. It is not enough for us to look at the mechanical productive force that generative AI represents, and brush it aside as simply the wheels of progress turning. To do so is to alienate a large section of the working class, a class whose industry constitutes the same percentage of GDP as sectors like Agriculture.

I have no issue with the underlying algorithm, the attention-based training, that sits at the center of this technology. It has done some incredible things for science, where a focused and specialized use of the technology is applied. Under an organization of the economy, void of capitalist desires and the aims to alienate workers from their labor, these algorithms could be utilized in many ways. Undoubtably, organizations of ones like the USSR's Artist Unions would be central in the planning and development of such technological advancement of generative AI technology under Socialism. However, every attempt to restrict and manage the use of generative AI today, is simply an effort to prolong the full proletarianization process of the arts. Embracing it now only signals your alliance to that process.

I'll link to the comments here but I'll copy-paste them in comment format below in the comments so that it's easier to follow.

THEM: original comment

ME: quick response

THEM: Russian Lib response

ME: quick response to that (was busy with work)

ME: more elaborate response to that (had more time later, actual effort-posting)

THEM: response to my quick response

ME: final response to that response (also effortposting, interesting comment)

Thanks for checking it out. I'm saving this here for reference, because many Russian opposition libs are anticommunist in nature and these are some good responses (IMO) to some of their main points, that usually disarm them through the power of the immortal science.

I wrote this in reply to this post: Fentanyl: China's Double-Dealing. (00:16:45)

China is the manufacturing heart of the world, everything you would need to make nearly anything you wanted, has to pass through, be processed in, or be manufactured by China. So how exactly do those "raw materials" find their way into the USA? The answer might come as a surprise to you: Fentanyl is smuggled into America for Americans, by other Americans. (CATO Institute, 2022; NY Times, 2024).

Not only are the majority of the traffickers American, but also "over 90 percent of fentanyl border seizures occur at legal border crossings and interior vehicle checkpoints".

When it comes to sourcing the materials necessary to make Fentanyl, you can thank organizations like the Express Association of America, a lobbying group for FedEx, UPS, and DHL for making it that much easier by lobbing to have the de minimis rule's value increased.

This change to trade policy has upended the logistics of international drug trafficking. In the past few years, the United States has become a major transshipment point for Chinese-made chemicals used by Mexico’s cartels to manufacture the fentanyl that’s devastating U.S. communities, anti-narcotics agents say. Traffickers have pulled it off by riding a surge in e-commerce that’s flooding the U.S. with packages, helped by that trade provision.
-- Reuters, 2024

The de minimis limit was raised in 2016, which is what created the conditions that made transporting these chemical compounds through the US so ideal. There is a clear profit motive in raising that minimum. "The rollback [of de minimis] would snarl supply chains and raise consumer prices" (Reuters, 2024). According to John Pickel, a former U.S. Customs official and now senior director of international supply chain policy at the National Foreign Trade Council, the de minimis rules do not enable smuggling, stating "traffickers would continue to sneak boxes into the U.S." even without the rule. Though, even Reuters admits that the rout being taken now by smugglers is a "streamlined system", and that this system is so dense that "just a tiny fraction of the nearly 4million de minimis parcels arriving [...] daily are inspected by U.S. Customs." This motivation is echoed by the head of the Express Association of America, a lobbying group for FedEx, UPS and DHL, stating they "want to keep the [de minimis] channel open for as many goods as possible because streamlined entry saves them money."

You can see the impact of this desirable, streamlined port of entry by looking at the stark rise of synthetic opioid overdoses (other than methadone) in the US:

This rise aligns with the 2016 rule change, which seems to indicate that a cheaper more streamlined port of entry doesn't just benefit shippers, it also benefits the manufactures of Fentanyl.

This, however, is naturally just a byproduct of a more profound problem. What drives a maintenance worker from Tucson to "[ferry] about 7,000 kilos of fentanyl-making chemicals to an operative of the Sinaloa Cartel", a quantity of chemicals "sufficient to produce 5.3 billion pills"? (Reuters, 2024)

The New York Times seems to have picked up the scent,

A college football star was lured in by a friend after dropping out of school. A mother raising three special-needs children took the job while facing eviction. A homeless man was recruited from an encampment in a Walmart parking lot. [...]

“The cartels are directly recruiting anyone who is willing to do it, which typically is someone who needs the money,” said Tara McGrath, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California. “The cartels spread their tentacles and grab ahold of vulnerable people at every possible opportunity.” [...]

One woman met her recruiter while in rehab in Los Angeles, where the two struck up a friendship [...] The woman, who asked to be identified by her first initial, M., said that her friend started pressuring her to smuggle drugs only after they spent years getting to know each other. When M. resisted, her friend flew into a rage. [...]

The job offer reached Gustavo in San Diego after he drank too much beer at a party and confessed to a friend that he badly needed money. At the time, he was the main provider for his mother in their San Diego apartment. His brother had moved out, and his parents were divorced. Gustavo was working at a grocery store, but struggled to pay the bills. “I want to be a boss,” he told his friend that night. “This job isn’t feeding me and my mom.”
-- NY Times, 2024

Yet, the New York Times has nothing to say about the conditions that drive these people to risk their lives. Each of them sentenced to jail time. M was sentenced to 18 months in prison, Gustavo spent 32 months in a federal prison. The question always seems to be "Who is providing the fentanyl?", "How do we stop the fentanyl from getting into the country?", and never, "how do we ensure citizens are not self-medicating with things like fentanyl?"

The profile of those entangled in this scheme to traffic materials and fentanyl across the boarder seems to be of the desperate and vulnerable type. Those with economic hardships, or battling their own addictions. This whole conversation about China's role in all this is moot when you get to the heart of what drives people to substances and to quick cash. It is a cyclical demand, where the poorest among us traffic the materials needed to make the narcotics that the rest of the poorest among us used to cope with their material conditions. Statistics from Addiction Group show how bleak this reality is:

• Individuals living below the federal poverty line have about 36% higher odds of developing substance abuse issues than those in the highest income brackets.
• Drug overdose deaths among adults with no college education grew from about 12 per 100,000 in 2000 to 82 per 100,000 in 2021, far outpacing increases among more educated groups.
• 85% of the U.S. prison population either has an active substance use disorder or was incarcerated for crimes involving drugs or drug use.
• Lower-Income Prevalence: National data consistently show that people in households making under $20,000 per year have significantly higher rates of illicit drug use and alcohol misuse than those earning $75,000 or above.
• Poverty Overlaps: High-poverty neighborhoods often see compounded risk factors: poor access to healthcare, elevated stress levels, and limited supportive services.
• Cycle of Financial Strain: Addiction perpetuates financial instability, as funds meant for basic needs may go toward substances, leading to deeper poverty and, in some cases, homelessness.

If China stopped being the most cost-efficient supplier of the materials needed to produce Fentanyl tomorrow, the whole trade would simply find the next most cost-efficient supplier. In a time when car loan defaults are at an all-time high, where 1 in 3 Americans say they rely on credit cards to make ends meet, 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, and an estimated 29 million American adults lack the ability to pay for needed medical care, it is no wonder where the Fentanyl Crisis really comes from. It is a crisis of despair, with millions of Americans coping at both ends, creating an interdependency feed back loop, like a snake eating its own tail.

※This was originally written as a comment to someone "disgusted" at Hexbears having flag-burning emojis and saying "death to XYZ"

On December 26th, 1862, 38 Dakota men taken as prisoners of the Septic ("US") Army were, by order of President Abraham Lincoln, led to a specially-built gallows in the city of Mankato (located on Treaty of Traverse des Sioux lands / July 23rd 1851) before an audience of some of their relatives, forced by Septic soldiers to watch their own flesh and blood die, along with 4,000 bloodthirsty white settlers — more people than even lived in the city of Mankato at the time — who had come to watch the 38 men die as pure spectacle. As these "Dakota 38" approached the scaffold, they sang one of their traditional songs in defiance, and with the ropes tightening around their necks, they grasped each other's hands, preparing to embrace Death together. Their corpses were buried haphazardly after an hour, but were soon dug up for (obviously non-consensual) use in medical experiments by the white settlers. The hanging of the Dakota 38 was one of the largest mass executions in world history, and the single largest mass execution in the entire history of the Septic colonial project, and this execution of 38 Dakota men had indisputably genocidal intent.

And I have personally been to that city Mankato, you know. I enjoyed my time in that city very much, I'd say, although it was only a short visit with some relatives. The hotel had a swimming pool and some arcade games, I remember, and the TV in the hotel room had Teen Titans Go! playing, which wasn't really my "thing" but still fun to riff on. The complementary wi-fi was good, too, and the streets of Mankato had some fun sculptures. And the main street of Mankato, indeed, had Reconciliation Park just opposite of the actual site of the gallows, and I went to this park together with my relatives. I have in fact found a picture of myself — a teenager at the time — reading the names of the 38 martyrs on a large "scroll" in Reconciliation Park. I'm not going to share this picture, but I will attach someone else's picture of the scroll, such that you can read the names for yourself. I have transcribed the names in the alt text, too.

---

You know Patlabor? The animanga franchise that started in the late '80s. I have frankly never read nor watched any Patlabor thing, but I was once shown a famous scene from the Patlabor 2 film, which has stuck with me ever since.

English dub — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2sqdudEle4

Original Japanese — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5drqzTAx18

"Just war, unjust peace."

The Reconciliation Park in Mankato has another scroll, bearing the poem "Reconcile" by Katherine Hughes (who has "no Native American ancestry"), and "Dakota Prayer" by Dakota elder Eli Taylor. Hughes' poem, which is physically placed above Taylor's, reads—

''Reconcile'' by Katherine Hughes

Remember the innocent dead,
Both Dakota and white,
Victims of events they could not control.

Remember the guilty dead,
Both Dakota and white,
Whom reason abandoned.

Regret the times and attitudes
That brought dishonor
To both cultures.

Respect the deeds and kindnesses
that brought honor
To both cultures.

Hope for a future
When memories remain,
Balanced by forgiveness.

---

Hughes' poem was written in 2012 because the poem originally planned for that scroll — an untitled poem which was performed live by a Native man, Conrad Balfour, in the middle of downtown Mankato on December 26th, 1971, but never published — was deemed to be "too divisive," "not in the spirit of reconciliation," in other words Balfour's poem's focus on the whites' hypocrisy and its comparison of the Dakota 38's martyrdom with Jesus', was seen as upsetting "white sensibilities". Thus a predominantly white city council, and a single white would-be poet, decided on the Dakota people's behalf how they should remember the genocide of their own people — thus it remains today, and thus I stood as a teenager reading a mediocre poem, not knowing anything about the poet nor the context under which that poem was selected for the monument.

''The Balfour Poem''

On Friday morning, 10:00 AM, Eighteen Hundred Sixty-Two, a scaffold plummeted to the Earth, killing 38 Great Sioux. The day before, the countryside had mourned the death of Christ the Jew, then went to bed to rise again and crucify the captive Sioux. There were 300 due to die. This, the governor clearly knew. But he washed his hands of the grim affair and said, Abe Lincoln, it's up to you.

When Lincoln paired to 38 the screaming Romans sent up hue, we don't want only 38, we want 300 wicked Sioux. The 25th was a silent night. The pastor's chant, Christ died for you. Now, in his name, we send to death the souls of 38 Great Sioux.

There was [INAUDIBLE], Ho Tan Inku, Waxicun and Do wan' s'a. There was Baptiste Campbell, [INAUDIBLE], Maza-bomidu, and Aichaga. Tip of the Horn, One Who Stands Clothed, Wind Comes Home, Rattling Runner, and One Who Walks Clothed in an Owl's Tail, Tinkling Walker, and Little Thunder.

All waited for drummer Major Brown to give the signal for patient death. Then Captain Dooley cut the rope, and 38 were cleared of breath.

On Christmas Day, the children laughed, and churches prayed his blessing send. And in their cells, the 38 heard, "Peace on Earth. Good will to men."

---

"Just war, unjust peace."

Could my teenage self have drawn under the circumstances, any conclusion other than that the Dakota and the whites had for most intents and purposes already reconciled on the matter of the Dakota 38? That the monument was progressive, a way for two peoples to move past historical traumas together, rather than seeing it for ritualized crocodile tears, a celebration of conquest dressed as somber remembrance? The hotel had a swimming pool, a video game arcade, TVs and wi-fi, after all. There was no threat of war there, no, no fighting in the streets, no riots, I felt absolutely, completely safe in Mankato — but was that really peace? Is peace simply the "perceived absence of war"? The money my family spent to stay the night in Mankato, the money spent on food and games and gas, certainly ended up in the hands of the same settler bourgeoisie that saw nothing wrong with building pipelines through Native land and having its police crack down on resistance to this.

A whole nation, the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ the Seven Council Fires whose motherland is so wide and beautiful, has been denied the freedom, the natural right to even just grieve! Can you even imagine that‽ And many nations around the world are denied this freedom, in fact! And this denial is not passive, but very actively carried out by evil forces — the Sámi, the Palestinians, the Mapuche, these are among the nations that my country Norway is playing an active role in dispossessing at this very moment. The state-owned corporation running the dam on the sacred Pilmaiquén, the windmills in Fosen, the investments of the sovereign wealth fund in the Zionist project, all of these monstrous acts are supposed to buy my complacency in systems that deprive whole nations of their due. And I will not accept this! Principled Uprightness will not allow for such complacency!

What does a nation have if it cannot grieve? Such a nation has anger — righteous, unbridled anger, absolute rage in fact — at all the wrongs done unto it. Such a nation burns flags and wishes death upon its oppressors, and sympathy demands that anyone who wishes to see all nations win the freedom to grieve, all the individual people of the world win their due, should feel the same rage at the same systems of oppression. I quote the first page of Fanon's The Wretched of The Earth:

National liberation, national reawakening, restoration of the nation to the people or Commonwealth, whatever the name used, whatever the latest expression, decolonization is always a violent event. At whatever level we study it — individual encounters, a change of name for a sports club, the guest list at a cocktail party, members of a police force or the board of directors of a state or private bank — decolonization is quite simply the substitution of one "species" of mankind by another. The substitution is unconditional, absolute, total, and seamless. We could go on to portray the rise of a new nation, the establishment of a new state, its diplomatic relations and its economic and political orientation. But instead we have decided to describe the kind of tabula rasa which from the outset defines any decolonization. What is singularly important is that it starts from the very first day with the basic claims of the colonized. In actual fact, proof of success lies in a social fabric that has been changed inside out. This change is extraordinarily important because it is desired, clamored for, and demanded. The need for this change exists in a raw, repressed, and reckless state in the lives and consciousness of colonized men and women. But the eventuality of such a change is also experienced as a terrifying future in the consciousness of another "species" of men and women: the colons.

In conclusion: may Seppoland and the Zionist Entity be wiped off the world map in their entirety, may colonizers know even a fraction of the suffering they have inflicted upon others. Death to the oppressive, regressive, and reactionary forces of the Earth. May all people get their due, and may we not take one step back until this happens.

I say this as someone raised Christian.

You can, and many people do, take a progressive interpretation of Christianity, but I don't think it's the INHERENT interpretation of the faith, in fact I think taking an progressive interpretation of it requires focusing on specific teachings of Jesus and Jesus alone, which many left Christians do but they are not the majority interpretation of the faith.

And even the teachings of Jesus, I basically view it just as Millenarianism, he told people to purify themselves for a coming apocalypse, that I honestly think he thought was coming much sooner that most Christians today think it is. Yes the things he told people to do to purify themselves are mostly good things that are pretty compatible with socialism, but it is still mostly individualist charity for the goal of spiritual purification. I don't think any of that is incompatible with a conservative worldview.

I'm just saying this because I see a lot of people try and "hypocrisy own" American conservative Christians right now by pointing to snippets of Jesus' teachings, when I don't think that shits ever going to be effective, because when you take the Bible as a whole it's still overall a conservative text, making a progressive interpretation of it basically requires editing out massive chunks (like basically everything Paul said, which again a lot of left wing Christians basically throw out Paul).

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4435465

Dia daoibh a chairde!

Have you ever found yourself wanting to read a good book about queer feminism but you weren't sure where to look?

I have spent more hours than I would care to admit studying, writing about, and educating on the topic of gender and sexuality, and I've realized that I could lend a bit of my educational development work to you kind folks by prepping this here reading list.

I hope you can find something to interest you--and I would love to talk about any of the works listed. The categories are not hard and fast, with many books belonging in several of them, but I figured there had to be some way to organize this, so bear with me. I also tried to narrow inclusion to books relating to queer/feminist studies.

1. Introduction to Feminism

The Second Sex - Simone De Beauvior

This Sex Which Is Not One - Luce Irigaray

In the Beginning, She Was - Luce Irigaray

An Ethics of Sexual Difference - Luce Irigaray

Speculum of Other Women - Luce Irigaray

The Political Economy of Women's Liberation - Margaret Benston

Women and Economics - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community - Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James

The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution - Shulamith Firestone

I am Woman: Native Perspective of Sociology and Feminism - Lee Maracle

I Myself am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling - Ding Ling

Living a Feminist Life - Sara Ahmed

Philosophical Trends in the Feminist Movement - Anuradha Ghandy

Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women - Silvia Federici

Compañeras: Zapatista Women's Stories - Hilary Klein

Chinese Femininities/Chinese Masculinities: A Reader - Susan Brownell and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

Women in the Sky: Gender and Labor in the Making of Modern Korea - Hwasook Nam

Outsiders Inside: Whiteness, Place, and Irish Women - Bronwen Walter

2. Intersectionality and Black Feminism

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches - Geraldine Audre Lorde

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color - Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective - Keeanga-Yahmatta Taylor

Women, Race, and Class - Angela Y. Davis

Women, Culture, and Politics - Angela Y. Davis

Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology - Margaret L. Anderson and Patricia Hill Collins

Intersectionality - Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge

Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice - Bonnie Thornton Dill, Ruth Enid Zambrana and Patricia Hill Collins

Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment - Patricia Hill Collins

Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound - Daphne A. Brooks

3. Trans* and Gender Diversity

The Transfeminist Manifesto - Emi Koyama

Transfeminism: A Collection - Emi Koyama

Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us - Kate Bornstein

Gender Outlaws: the Next Generation - Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman

Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender - Riki Wilchins

Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue - Leslie Feinberg

Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman - Leslie Feinberg

Beyond Gender Binaries: The History of Trans, Intersex, and Third-Gender Individuals - Rita Santos

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity - Julia Serano

Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive - Julia Serano

Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back - Julia Serano

Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism - Julia Serano

Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People - Viviane K. Namaste

Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism - Viviane K. Namaste

My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage - Susan Stryker

The Transgender Studies Reader - Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle

The Transgender Studies Reader 2 - Susan Stryker and Aren Aizura

Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution - Susan Stryker

We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics - Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel

Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category - David Valentine

Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality - Jay Prosser

You've Changed: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity - Laurie J. Shrage

In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives - Judith Halberstam

How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States - Joanne Meyerowitz

Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality - Gayle Salamon

The Lives of Transgender People - Genny Beemyn and Susan Rankin

Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad - Hil Malatino

Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love & Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary - Morty Diamond

Queer and Trans Madness: Struggles for Social Justice - Merrick Daniel Pilling

Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of Transgenderism - Patricia Gherovici

Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach - Suzanne J. Kessler and Wendy McKenna

Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture Among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes - Don Kulick

Beyond Emasculation: Pleasure and Power in the Making of hijra in Bangladesh - Adnan Hossain

Badhai: Hijra-Khwaja Sira-Trans Performance Across Borders in South Asia - Adnan Hossain, Claire Pamment and Jeff Roy

Beauty and Power: Transgendering and Cultural Transformation in the Southern Philippines - Mark Johnson

Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America - Will Roscoe

4. Understanding Intersex

Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men - Anne Fausto-Sterling

Sex/Gender/Biology in a Social World - Anne Fausto-Sterling

Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality - Anne Fausto-Sterling

Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex - Alice Dromurat Dreger

Intersex - Catherine Harper

Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex - Elizabeth Reis

Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud - Thomas Walter Laqueur

Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis - Georgiann Davis

The Spectrum of Sex: The Science of Male, Female, and Intersex - Hida Vilori and Maria Nieto

Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity - Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub

Queer Embodiment: Monstrosity, Medical Violence, and Intersex Experience - Hil Malatino

Critical Intersex - Morgan Holmes

Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience - Katrina Karkazis

Intersex Matters: Biomedical Embodiment, Gender Regulation, and Transnational Activism - David A. Rubin

Intersex Rights: Living Between Sexes - Nikoletta Pikramenou

Transgender and Intersex: Theoretical, Practical, and Artistic Perspectives - Stefan Horlacher

Expanding the Rainbow: Exploring the Relationships of Bi+, Polyamorous, Kinky, Ace, Intersex, and Trans People - Brandy L. Simula, J. E. Sumerau and Andrea Miller

Challenging Lesbian Norms: Intersex, Transgender, Intersectional, and Queer Perspectives - Angela Pattatuchi Aragón

5. Queer Theory and Philosophy

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity - Judith Butler

Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex - Judith Butler

Undoing Gender - Judith Butler

Performativity and Performance - Andrew Parker and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others - Sara Ahmed

Deleuze and Queer Theory - Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr

Epistemology of the Closet - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Tendencies - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, and Performativity - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland: Dissent and Disorientation - Fintan Walsh

New Feminist Perspectives on Embodiment - Clara Fischer and Luna Dolezal

Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism - Elizabeth Grosz

Sexual Subversions - Elizabeth Grosz

Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power - Elizabeth Grosz

Sexy Bodies: The Strange Carnalities of Feminism - Elizabeth Grosz and Elspeth Probyn

Beyond the Periphery of the Skin: Rethinking, Remaking, and Reclaiming the Body in Contemporary Capitalism - Silvia Federici

Thinking Through the Skin - Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey

Differences that Matter: Feminist Theory and Postmodernism - Sara Ahmed

Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-coloniality - Sara Ahmed

Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction - Elizabeth Grosz

A Rave at the End of the World: The Politics of Queer Hauntology and Psychedelic Chronomancy - Sean Michael Feiner

Queer/Early/Modern - Carla Freccero

6. Exploring Sexuality

The Straight Mind and Other Essays - Monique Wittig

Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town - Esther Newton

Margaret Mead Made Me Gay: Personal Essays, Public Ideas - Esther Newton

Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America - Esther Newton

Sapphists and Sexologists: Histories of Sexualities - Mary McAuliffe

Witchcraft and Gay Counterculture - Arthur Evans

Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader - Gayle S. Rubin

Conditional Spaces: Hong Kong Lesbian Desires and Everyday Life - Denise Tse-Shang Tang

Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China - Hongwei Bao

Maid to Queer: Asian Labor Migration and Female Same-Sex Desires - Francisca Yuenki Lai

Oral Histories of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong: Unspoken but Unforgotten - Travis S. K. Kong

Tongzhi: Politics of Same-Sex Eroticism in Chinese Societies - Chou Wah-Shan

The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China - Tze-Lan D. Sang

Tongzhi Living: Men Attracted to Men in Postsocialist China - Tiantian Zheng

Queer Women in Urban China: An Ethnography - Elisabeth L. Engebretsen

Backward Glances: Contemporary Chinese Cultures and the Female Homoerotic Imaginary - Fran Martin

Queer Politics and Sexual Modernity in Taiwan - Xianyong Bai and Hans Tao-Ming Huang

Queer Sinophone Cultures - Howard Chiang and Ari Larissa Heinrich

Boy-wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities - Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe

Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature - Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe

Gender and Sexuality in Muslim Cultures - Gul Ozyegin

Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland - Anthony Bradley and Maryann Gialanella Valiulis

7. Cultural Critique

Cultural Sites of Critical Insight: Philosophy, Aesthetics, and African American and Native American Women's Writings - Angela L. Cotten and Christa Davis Acampora

The Dress of Women: A Critical Introduction to the Symbolism and Sociology of Clothing - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety - Marjorie Garber

Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice - Mark Thompson

Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback - Susan Stryker

Women in the Chinese Enlightenment: Oral and Textual Histories - Zheng Wang

Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture - Lisa Rofel

Transgender China - Howard Chiang

A Society Without Fathers of Husbands: the Na of China - Cai Hua

Queer/Tongzhi China: New Perspectives on Research, Activism, and Media Cultures - Elisabeth L. Engebretsen, William F. Schroeder and Hongwei Bao

Queer TV China: Televisual and Fannish Imaginaries of Gender, Sexuality and Chineseness - Jamie J. Zhao

Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture Under Postsocialism - Hongwei Bao

Queer Media in China - Hongwei Bao

Boys' Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Culture in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan - Maud Lavin, Ling Yang and Jing Jamie Zhao

Trad Nation: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Irish Traditional Music - Tes Slominski

Celtic Women: Women in Celtic Society and Literature - Peter Berresford Ellis

The Irish Novel at the End of the Twentieth Century: Gender, Bodies, and Power - Jennifer M. Jeffers

Contemporary Irish and Welsh Women's Fiction: Gender, Desire and Power - Linden Peach

LGBTQ Visibility, Media and Sexuality in Ireland - Páraic Kerrigan

The Poor Bugger's Tool: Irish Modernism, Queer Labor, and Postcolonial History - Patrick R. Mullen

Women and the Irish Nation: Gender, Culture, and Irish Identity, 1890-1914 - D. A. J. MacPherson

Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Smut: Erotic Reality/Obscene Ideology - Murray S. Davis

Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society - Lila Abu-Lughod

Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories - Lila Abu-Lughod

Gramsci, Migration, and the Representation of Women's Work in Italy and the U.S. - Laura E. Ruberto

Queer Bangkok: 21st Century Markets, Media, and Rights - Peter Jackson

8. Queer Marxism

Transgender Marxism - Jules Joanne Gleeson and Elle O'Rourke

Transition and Abolition: Notes on Marxism and Trans Politics - Jules Joanne Gleeson

Lavender and Red - Leslie Feinberg

Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body, and Primitive Accumulation - Silvia Federici

Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons - Silvia Federici

Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle - Silvia Federici

The Problematics of Heterosexuality: Marxism, Psychoanalysis, and Mother Nature - Hilary Manette Klein

The Politics of Everybody: Feminism, Queer Theory, and Marxism at the Intersection - Holly Lewis

Raya Dunayevskaya's Intersectional Marxism: Race, Class, Gender, and the Dialectics of Liberation - Kevin B. Anderson, Kieran Durkin and Heather A. Brown

Queer Marxism in Two Chinas - Petrus Liu

Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1964 - Zheng Wang

Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era - Xueping Zhong, Wang Zheng and Bai Di

The Women's Revolution: Russia 1905 - 1917 - Judy Cox

Social-Democracy and Woman Suffrage - Clara Zetkin

Lenin on the Woman Question - Clara Zetkin

The New Soviet Man and Woman: Sex-Role Socialization in the USSR - Lynne Attwood

Revolution, She Wrote - Clara Fraser

9. Abolition

Abolition. Feminism. Now. - Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners and Beth Richie

Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color - Andrea J. Ritchie

Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation - Beth E. Richie

We Do This 'Til We Free Us - Mariame Kaba

Abolitionist Intimacies - El Jones

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States - Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie and Kay Whitlock

Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex - Eric A. Stanley

Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law - Dean Spade

Transgender Sex Work and Society - Larry Nutbrock

Revolting Prostitutes - Molly Smith and Juno Mac

Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State - Judith R. Walkowitz

The Social Construction of AIDS Issues - Suiming Pan

Thinking Differently About HIV/AIDS: Contributions from Critical Social Science - Eric Mykhalovskiy and Viviane K. Namaste

Insurgent Love: Abolition and Domestic Homicide - Ardath Whynacht

Written on the Body: Letters from Trans and Non-Binary Survivors of Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence - Lexie Bean

Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea - Eunjung Kim

10. Anti-Imperialism and Internationalism

Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times - Jasbir Puar

Class, Gender, and Neoliberalism - Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale

Gender and Colonialism: A Psychological Analysis of Oppression and Liberation - Geraldine Moane

Gender and Imperialism - Clare Midgley

The Beginning and End of R-pe: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America - Sarah Deer

Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide - Andrea Smith

Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance - Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel

Do Muslim Women Need Saving? - Lila Abu-Lughod

Anti-Veiling Campaigns in the Muslim World: Gender, Modernism and the Politics of Dress - Stephanie Cronin

Embodying Geopolitics: Generations of Women's Activism in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon - Nicola Pratt

Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism, and Palestine - Nada Elia

Palestinian Women's Activism: Nationalism, Secularism, Islamism - Islah Jad

Israel/Palestine and the Queer International - Sarah Schulman

Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique - Saed Atshan

Even a Freak Like You Would Be Safe in Tel Aviv: Transgender Subjects, Wounded Attachments, and the Zionist Economy of Gratitude - Saffo Papantonopoulou

Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: A Palestinian Case-Study - Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

Decolonial Feminism in Abya Yala: Caribbean, Meso, and South American Contributions and Challenges - María Lugones, Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso and Nelson Maldonado-Torres

Positioning Gender and Race in (Post)colonial Plantation Space: Connecting Ireland and the Caribbean - Eve Walsh Stoddard

Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries: A Campaign for Justice - Claire McGettrick, Katherine O’Donnell, Maeve O'Rourke, James M. Smith and Mari Steed

Family and Gender in the Pacific: Domestic Contradictions and the Colonial Impact - Margaret Jolly and Martha Macintyre

Oceanic Encounters: Exchange, Desire, Violence - Margaret Jolly, Serge Tcherkézoff and Darrell Tryon

Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific - Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly

Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism - J. Kēhaulani Kauanui

There's a tendency in Seppoland to conflate "being American" with "living in America (as a settler)". This idea is necessary to uphold settler-colonialism: settlers' claim to the land must be seen as natural, necessary, and just; and materially, settlers must comprise a majority of the colony's population, to keep the structure from collapsing. But if a settler-descended American like myself can in fact just live outside "America" as a minority, then this disproves the colony's whole raison d'être, doesn't it? This is what frustrates many Seppolanders when I call myself an American without having ever lived in the colony — for that matter there's Americans' relationship to Seppolandic foreign policy, necessitating the colony distancing itself from Americans.

Americans being negatively impacted by Seppoland's foreign policy and hegemony isn't necessarily coincidental, however: I'd argue that Seppoland is actually materially aligned with not only Americophilia, but also, "paradoxically", with anti-Americanism, insofar as these phenomena discourage settlers from leaving, and encourage the settlers who left the colony to return. The tactic of making "diasporans" feel like perpetual foreigners to vindicate the idea that their "rightful place" is in the colony, should be a familiar strategy from other settler-colonies.

Indeed, if fully quitting settlerism wasn't made as difficult and burdensome as uninstalling McAfee, we might expect a lot of settlers to quit for "light and transient causes" once the treats started running out — and that type of "settler hemorrhage" would certainly prove fatal for the colony.

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The contradictions I've described between Americans and Seppos in this post aren't very prominent at the moment, but these contradictions will certainly grow more prominent as the Empire turns necrotic. There's a lot more I can get into about this topic, but those other more specific aspects of the contradiction can maybe get their own separate posts...

...In any case, yes, I'm proposing flipping the idea of "true Americans live in America" on its head as "true Americans live in diaspora" — I don't know how much this makes sense, or if this is cringe and I'll reach a different analysis later, but in any case I hope this is at the very least interesting for you all.

I was listening to music on youtube and I got one of those low-view video recommendations for some Japanese jazz fusion band. I click it, because the genre is nice and because I like to discover new music, but right off the bat I start to get that uncanny feeling. Just a quick glance at the details in the thumbnail image and I can see the nonsensical asymmetry. The music sounds okay, but I can feel that it's just... not right. So I go to check the description, and it has a kind of micro-biography for this band, describing their motivations for creating music, the history of their coming together and their first album, the name of the music label that produced it, their inspiration, complete with each individual band member's name and role.

So I look up the band. Nothing. I look up the members. Nothing. I look up the music label. Nothing.

The band, the members, the music, the album, its cover, are all computer-generated. There is no disclaimer in the video, or its description. It's the opposite, in fact, it's all pretending to be real - to be human.

A deception, but also something worse. In this instance I was able to discern that something uncanny was going on, but I know that many people would not, and do not, the same way people are constantly falling for obvious lies in news, social media, etc.. So for those people, they're listening to a Japanese jazz fusion band from the early 90s. They like the music, the sounds are smooth and comforting but groovy, and there's a false promise that behind the beat there's a group of musicians from a time before the internet was even known to the vast majority of humanity, expertly working to express the combination of many years of practice, their various inspirations drawn from other humans and the world around them, and their cooperation with one another - their human relationships.

It's a mockery of art, and of human expression. The presentation isn't merely a lie; it's an insult. An assertion that that band, those people, their inspirations, their relationship, doesn't actually matter. And for every person that clicks the thumbnail, enjoys the music, and then moves on to the next thing without realizing it's an artifice, the assertion is unchallenged. The insult is justified.

But of course, this isn't limited to music, and it's not limited to art. Every single day, imitations replace more and more of what we see, undercutting with each manifestation the value of human interaction.

I could distinguish that this album and this band were counterfeit, but if all I had been presented with was the music - no thumbnail, no description, no fake names - I wouldn't really have been able to tell that it was pretending to be a product of human expression, I wouldn't have the comfort of being able to confirm any suspicions - I would only be left with that sense that something was wrong. And what fills me with this creeping sense of dread is that I know how much money and effort is being pumped into this technology to make it more and more convincing, and that every day more of it is generated and dumped into social media, videos, music, chats, image-hosts, even little forums like this, like garbage into the ocean. Meaning that as time passes, from now and onward, I will fall for that sickening lie more and more while becoming increasingly paranoid and distrustful of every conversation I have, every game I play, every video I watch, every piece of music I enjoy.

It's a wildfire, but no one's fighting it - and the people with the most power to do so are air-dropping accelerant into the flames.

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This is the video that inspired this post.

I'm sure some will try to pick apart the things I've said here, but just so they know: I'm not posting this to elicit any debate, I'm only sharing a newly-attained level of awareness of something that truly disgusts and unsettles me, in the way that sci-fi horror does. Invention not to benefit humanity, but to replace a crucial component of what's important about being human with something artificial.

Footnote: my browser tried to tell me "accelerant" isn't a word, so I did a search to make sure I wasn't wrong about the spelling, and underneath the definition confirming I wasn't wrong, the first link is to some AI-based site called "accelerant ai".

So, the book is called "El modelo checoslovaco de socialismo" (the Czechoslovak socialist model), by Radoslav Selucký, published in Fascist Spain in 1969 from a translation of the west-German version of the same year. Radoslav Selucký is one of the intellectuals behind the proposed reforms in the 60s that didn't come to fruition because of the Soviet intervention. I'm reading the book and I, as a Marxist-Leninist, am finding it appalling, I expected to see better ideas and effort but honestly I just wanna fucking dunk on it (at least on some chapters) because I find it infuriating. Anyone interested in a more-or-less thorough critique?