Kautsky blech

Op

...right. I understand the concept, but cheers. I fail to see how it applies here. To a post criticising a socialist group for being undercover libs, the oppest of ops lol. A post you submitted mind. Come on.

Hmm. You gotta expain this one to me. Calling out these bozos (it's your post tho?) will ruin which community?

No need when they put the jackets on by themselves, knowingly or not.

People who get rhetorically close but don't cross were never going to in the first place.

I guess since they're federated you can comment across with the same account no? Is it better conduct to comment in a given instance with an account from that instance? Edit: he he, just noticed your account is from lemmy.ml so

Also for subscribing to specifics subs.

But yeah, multiple accounts is definitely an option.

I think this is sound reasoning and mostly I tend to agree. At the same time, there is this strange inverted sense of sincerity or honesty about Western Imperialism, where it seems to need to make real its caricatures of the "Enemy" in order to substantiate its worldview and justify its actions. This often makes it hard for me to know what the play (or even the Game) is. The US Empire wants world hegemony, sure, but it also can't get too far ahead while keeping the "Enemy" image realistic. It is worth considering how much of this plays out consciously, and to which extent, and in which (controlling or not) elements of society.

Maybe "limited hangout" is the wrong term and overly implies direct strategic action, but there is this need, for the system to work, for things to be in constant conflict, this "Enemy" following you beat for beat, always threatening to surpass you.

In some way, alarming everyone to the realities of mass wholesale spying, when combined with the ability to gaslight, deflect, distort, and invert and invent blame, ends up legitimizing it as a form of necessary or reasonable action. Again, not necessarily a classical "limited hangout" but it has similar normalizing effects.

An interesting thing about Snowden is that he seems to be or have been a pretty run of the mill "US master of the world" type moron, scared of the latest muslim/chinese/russian ideological threat, willing to do anything to stop this (to his mind) legitimate threat, and then had his wordlview challenged by seeing how seeing how the sausage is made. I think he still believes in that greatness and superiority, just doesn't think it's enacted correctly. The base is still rotten.

Some peripheral arguments I've seen made wrt limited hangout are along the lines of:

• The encrypted services people flock to (like Tor and Signal) are developed by US int and may be backdoored

• Migration to these services are signs of critical thinking/politicial dissidents/criminal activity, and makes it easy to filter and target those elements of society, even if all you get from those services is metadata (contact webs/networks, times, etc)

• Having people go to these platforms and use encrypted software gives a sense of false security as the communications data is still being sent through controlled/owned/surveilled entitities, continues to create value for the Empire (data collection and just regular business), and stops true political action -- controlled op basically

• The encrypted services allows CIA etc to operate covertly more easily, same with crypto to finance operations etc

Things of this nature. It gets a bit inviolved and conspiratorial, but worth considering, if not necessarily as actual strategically implement action, but in the sense that the society shaping effects are still there, and we are clearly far away from freely associating, speaking candidly, organizing politically etc.

Even if directly fighting surveillance through using encrypted, decentralized platforms and so on (all of which I support), is positive change, it still has the potential to neutralize and redirect potential political action due to a sense of achievement and intellectual satiafaction when it can be argued that the fact that a tiny fraction of a percentage of peoplr bother with it just underscores the futility of it.

What made you leave Islam? Did you find your way back?

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