Reflecting on my time as a liberal and all the rather wretched things I believed has forced me to really interrogate what kind of person I would've been in previous epochs of American history. One of the reasons tropes like the "White Savior" gains so much traction is that it allows modern audiences to say "Well, I wouldn't have been like those other guys - I'd be one of the good ones like the hero!" and the more I think about this mentality the more I realize that I would not have been one of those "Good Ones" (who did, in fact, exist but were not as impactful as fiction likes to suggest).

When I was a liberal I held many prejudiced beliefs about people I didn't know anything about and had little to no experience with. I was never the white-hooded-racist type; rather I was the condescending chauvinist who unironically believed in the power of the "civilizing" mission even though I didn't realize that was what I believed. I believed in backwards, savage, barbarian countries ruled by evil tyrants that oppress the people and that we were the guiding light there to liberate these people and save them from their wicked governments. I believed in the dishonesty of the Far Left; that complaints about injustice or advocacy for alternative systems was just certain people trying to manipulate others into giving them power. I believed in American Democracy as a real thing that existed and in this country as a real beacon for freedom, justice, and tolerance.

I believed these things because that was how I was taught to view the world. This was how the media taught me to view the world, how the adults in my life (especially my mother) taught me to view the world, how my peers taught me to view the world. It's largely because of the Internet that I was able to escape this way of thinking; to research and learn and engage with alternative perspectives. It took a long time to deprogram and I'm not even sure if I've been fully deprogrammed yet but I've made quite a lot of progress.

Yet knowing what I know now, how this insidious worldview was constructed for me and instilled in me at a young age, and I can safely say that I'm glad I never lived in some of the darker periods of American history because I know that if I had been raised the same way then I can safely say I would've spent my childhood, teen years, and even part of my young adulthood being against the progressive forces. I would've supported Manifest Destiny in order to spread civilization and opposed the Civil Rights movement because they were too radical. I would've celebrated the violent crushing of the labor movement because I thought they were criminals and welcomed the annexation of Hawai'i into the Union as being beneficial to Hawaiians. I probably still would've been against the Confederacy but not because of anti-racism and more because I grew up in the North, in a state that had little to no slavery, and would've seen the Confederates as traitors.

If I had been born in these times and raised the exact same way that I had been now I very much would not have been the type of person who thought John Brown was a hero, who listened to the music of Woody Guthrie, or saw through the propaganda around Jimmy Carter. I wouldn't've been a Klansmen or anything like that but rather I would've been the white liberal that Malcolm X talked about; the white moderate that MLK Jr. complained about. Ignorant of the world and how it really works. Hateful towards people that I thought I was tolerant of.

Maybe at some point in my life I would've become more progressive, as I still would've grown up poor and working class in the end, but I definitely wouldn't have started my political journey anywhere in the Center just as I didn't in reality. I was raised to view the world through a paternalistic lens. It's only in the past few years I've been able to challenge that viewpoint and it took well over a decade to dismantle many of the pre-conceived notions I had about the world - which again was largely thanks to the Internet.

So no, I don't trust myself in the past. I don't think I would've been one of the progressive heroes of those times that I idolize today. I think if I had lived in their time I would've thought they were too radical or too dangerous. Like many liberals I was taught to adopt a worldview that promoted white supremacy, patriarchy, imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism while living in a society that ostensibly condemned these things. To have been raised in a past society that openly celebrated these things? That didn't consider them evil but rather a natural part of life? I wouldn't've stood a chance, dawg. I would've been another bootlicking moderate convinced in the power of voting or, at the very least, nihilistic about alternative prospects.

I am ultimately the person I am today because I was born at the turn of the century and I am very thankful for that. I got lucky and I appreciate my good fortune. I am extremely thankful to be born into a time when unfettered access to information was available, unrestricted, and which hadn't yet been muddled by the mass disinfo networks we see today. If I hadn't been I very likely would've remained a run-of-the-mill Yankee liberal assuming I never evolved into something worse or didn't somehow break out of that delusional mindset.

Information was a blessing for me. It saved me from the depressing dead-end of liberal politics and prevented me from spiraling into the hate copium of fascism. I am a Leftist today only because I had the means to learn and had more learned comrades to challenge my worldview; things I might not've had otherwise had I been born even a decade earlier.

Very informative, nuanced video that goes over the Soviet-Afghan War. I don't think the guy is a Marxist but the quality of the video is surprisingly good given how politicized the topic often is. He seems to be just genuinely interested in making sure people understand why the invasion happened rather than just pushing an anti-Soviet propaganda line. If anything the politics of the video read as more anti-war than anything else, which is perfectly fine by me.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11009443

Very interesting video that goes into far more depth about the situation of queer people in China than a lot of English-language media does. It's actually nuanced and researched; not just "China Bad" nonsense (it does mention the state surveillance meme and there's a brief jab at "Tankies" in the beginning - somewhat deserved IMO - but other than that it's mostly nuanced).

The big takeaway I got from it is that nationalism, patriarchy, Confucianism, and the birth rate are the biggest factors for why queer rights aren't expanding. Basically there are systemic issues but it's largely cultural & social taboos that are the deciding factor. In general I'd say it looks like China is behind the West on queer rights but only by maybe two or three decades and not anymore near the level of somewhere like Uganda or Saudi Arabia as anti-China libs keep trying to claim.

Not great, but room for improvement. I have faith that conditions will improve.

Very interesting video that goes into far more depth about the situation of queer people in China than a lot of English-language media does. It's actually nuanced and researched; not just "China Bad" nonsense (it does mention the state surveillance meme and there's a brief jab at "Tankies" in the beginning - somewhat deserved IMO - but other than that it's mostly nuanced).

The big takeaway I got from it is that nationalism, patriarchy, Confucianism, and the birth rate are the biggest factors for why queer rights aren't expanding. Basically there are systemic issues but it's largely cultural & social taboos that are the deciding factor. In general I'd say it looks like China is behind the West on queer rights but only by maybe two or three decades and not anymore near the level of somewhere like Uganda or Saudi Arabia as anti-China libs keep trying to claim.

Not great, but room for improvement. I have faith that conditions will improve.

fuck this place to hell and back

excessive amounts of overtime, piss pay, broken machines, cruel anti-worker policies, incompetent management, and my supervisor's a lazy dick

good fucking riddance!

Very good analysis of how Americans collectively struggled on a psychological level with the defeat in Vietnam and how First Blood reflected this.

A while back a friend of mine lamented how the US Left had a much more robust tradition of radicalism when compared with her country, Britain. There's a long history of violent/armed struggle by socialists and other leftist factions in the USA that the UK never seems to have had.

Black Panthers, Venceremos, Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation Army, even the old school labor revolts like the Battle of Blair Mountain. To my knowledge the British Left has nothing remotely similar to these things and what I've heard of the CPGB hasn't been very flattering as far as their activity and messaging goes.

Are we both just missing this history of violent/armed labor struggle in Britain or is there really a dearth of radical activity from the British Left and why is that if so?

Not trying to smear my British comrades, to be clear. Just looking for clarification. I don't know much about the history of British Labor.

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Growing up poor and working class you are inevitably exposed to violence regularly.

This can be public school bullying, abuse & neglect at home by parents, violent crime like street gangs, police brutality, and so on.

Much of this violence comes from the same few sources: people who've been isolated and exploited, unable to provide for themselves or others, feeling inadequate and depressed. Deprived of a life worth living in addition to the time and energy to enjoy life they turn to drugs/alcohol as escapism, take their frustrations out on others, and in general develop anti-social tendencies as they lack the social network needed to provide for them and the capitalist state provides no aid.

When you're surrounded by violence you yourself have to embrace it as a matter of survival. I've been both the victim of violence and the perpetrator of it; the bully and the bullied; the one who started fights and the one who ended them. I didn't have a choice in the matter as that choice was already made for me. When violence was done to me I was forced to respond with violence for no one else seemed willing or able to stop it. Parents, teachers, employers, law enforcement, etc.

I tried, once, to follow the rules and not fight back just as the bourgeois mouthpieces always tell me to. I relied on the existing authorities to resolve the conflict. They completely failed. I was assaulted at my workplace (multiple times in one day) by a co-worker for no apparent reason (maybe because I was small and thus an easy target or maybe he was just bored, I don't really care regardless) and my employers did nothing. He would go on to harass me for several months and despite multiple complaints the issue was treated as a "teamwork issue" where the entire team was apparently at fault for being unable to "work together". For management the issue wasn't one employee harassing another but a whole group that just couldn't work together. For once I took the pacifist route and it completely failed me; I did as I was told and as I was expected to do and nothing happened. The system in place was disinterested in my plight and, in effect, told me to just "get over it". No one around me stood up to speak in my defense; everyone treating it like it was just an issue of two people unable to get along and not a co-worker being bullied by another.

I can't afford non-violence. If I fight back I might get fired, my ass kicked, maybe even arrested but if I don't I'll have to stomach further abuse that could eventually lead to my death. I can't rely on apathetic authorities. I can't rely on apathetic bystanders. I think about all the instances where I didn't fight back and wish I had. I think about those few times where I was victimizing someone else and they didn't fight back and I wish they had. People need to be able and willing to stand up for themselves.

But the bourgeoisie don't want us to. When we're facing violence we're supposed to walk away, grab an authority figure, and let them "fix" the issue. We become dependent on authorities; nice and docile. This works to the benefit of the ruling class when those same authorities are used to suppress dissent; be it in the workplace or in public. They tell us "violence is wrong" so that we allow the baton to come down on our skulls. That is to be expected though, right? Obviously they don't want us fighting back against their oppression. But there's more to it: some of them actually, unironically believe that all violence everywhere is actually wrong out of moral principle.

Because of course they can say this with a straight face: they have walls and cameras to keep out burglars, security guards to protect them from assassination, lawyers to take their abusers to court, et al. They can afford to be non-violent. They have the means to cut themselves off from the parts of society inflicting violence against them. They never have to worry about things like drive-by shootings, muggings, etc. They can switch schools if they're being bullied, cut toxic people out of their lives, uproot their entire life and start over elsewhere. They have the privilege to avoid violence if they don't want to face it - the kind of privilege proles like me will never have. Even the authorities who do nothing for those of us at the bottom are more useful and compliant to those coming from wealth and status; more helpful and cooperative.

And always these privileged types have the same privileged opinions: increased gun control, talk to an adult if you're being bullied, call the cops if you're being threatened, vote for different leaders if you want political change, etc. Even self-defense - usually the one act of violence that is universally deemed acceptable even by many self-proclaimed "pacifists" - sometimes isn't acceptable to them. I can only imagine what kind of life can lead someone to develop these kinds of views and attitudes toward violence because they're not my lived experience. It's a common trope in media that people exposed to extreme violence end up swearing off violence as they grow disgusted by it. I hate this trope not only because it's often used as preachy way of saying "violence is wrong" but also because the people most opposed to violence are often those who've never experienced it first hand. They never had to actually defend themselves before in order to safeguard their own life and well-being so of course they can say it's never okay. Maybe they did face violence but the same authorities that neglect the violence proles face actually a gave a shit this time because the victim was someone of wealth and status.

(To be clear: this isn't to say people with PTSD from violence don't ever swear-off violence; those people absolutely do exist and it's perfectly understandable as to why. They're just not the norm and are usually people who experienced war or genocide, the two most extreme forms of violence there is.)

I can't be a pacifist. I tried and that didn't help me at all. If anything not fighting back just made things worse. I don't have the privilege that allows me to evade the violent reality of my violent surroundings and especially not the inherent violence necessary for the class struggle. The capitalist society is one built on violence at its core; the violence of the state against the workers to keep us down and also the violence between workers to keep us divided. The poverty we exist in serves not only as a consequence of our exploitation but also as a trap to keep us hostile & aggressive, further justifying state violence.

Only those who live outside the reality of the proletarian experience can really truly live as pacifists; selling their violence to others and cutting themselves off from it entirely. Their pacifism is born out of privilege.