Some people don’t believe me when I try to warn them about the content creator grift. I don’t care, I’m coming for all of them if they start spouting shit like this to their audience. They have a responsibility towards their viewers.
Second time I see him tweet shit like this.
At this point he should just stop pretending he’s any sort of leftist. His mental health will thank him.
archive link so he can’t scrub it off the internet: https://archive.ph/XWZD6 (still loading as of posting but should be ready eventually)
I commented on the thread on hexbear but I’ll say it here for the sake of perhaps starting a conversation, I think linking cognitive capacity to people becoming reactionaries, is itself a reactionary and ableist idea. Has lead/covid/microplastics affected the cognitive capacity of the population? Yes, most likely, but this alone does not turn a population towards reaction. Being “smart” doesnt turn you into a communist, being disabled doesnt turn you into a reactionary.
Mental impairment for physical reasons certainly exists, and there can be little doubt that some (at least) of the unfortunate persons who suffer from it hold absurd views on politics and many other things. But in general, I am not convinced that defects of the physical complex from which arises cognition – which complex we call, without really understanding it, the “brain” – are as common or as all-determining as most persons make out. Such people, having a smattering of what they think is Science, apply it crudely and mechanically, and believe that in reducing everything to a second-hand formula they have realized materialism; when in in their failure to recognize a concept as anything but a withered husk, a conclusion without the living sap of argument or struggle, they merely reproduce in themselves the immediate substantial world of belief. Thus, in a kind of miscarriage of Spirit, they give birth, not again to the living, multifarious world around them, but to a kind of stillborn and distorted image of the same; and their attribution of all opposition to what their stillborn conception of Science considers the most fundamental defect betrays only the poverty of their own conception.
How often have we met persons who, though given every advantage of culture, have yet failed to realize a full and living conception of the world; and conversely, have we not met persons who, though lacking in all the usual advantages toward knowledge, have yet realized in themselves the world as becoming! When the new world is born from the old, and further, its Notion has born fruit in the whole concrete richness of life, its essence is easy to grasp; when the old still exists, externally the same as ever but with the old meaning lost or changing, to grasp the essence is difficult, since it seems, the most real thing, to be unreal, fleeting, and with no genuine relation to substantial life. Who grasps it must do so in struggle, heroic and human, in concrete time; which is to say, such a one must be at the apex of the embodied struggle; and here we find the full essence of what is commonly termed “environment.”
(Apologies for the language. I was trying to crack Hegel last night).
Why is he treating it as a mystery? America literally did allow a thought-terminating virus to run rampant. There’s also our deliberately poor education. We have answers to this, Yugo. It’s not some incomprehensible phenomenon.
+ 40 years of cold war propaganda + times of heightened contradictions + living in the heart of the empire itself.
The CW propaganda was wild, someone once told me people in the USSR were “miming” working at the factory line (like the line was empty and they just mimed work) because there was nothing to produce. Like what? How does that even make sense lol. They were older, probably heard this as a kid in school. It was a real generational shock for me hearing this.
Yeah, it’s frustrating hearing this. We need to remember to stay vigilant ourselves. None of us are immune to thought-termination and propaganda.
I think this is a logical conclusion if one believes “brainwashing” on mass is a thing for an explanation of the bourgoisie proleteriat; it will lead to a biolgical determinist rationale for resistance to being “unbrainwashed” and then it’s a short hop from that to eugenicism echoing essentially fascist sentiments.
Instead consider a more dialectical materialist take:
https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
Ie narratives as a social license for bigotry along imperialist and settler colonial lines because at some level that individual benefits from those material conditions. The material always come before the idea.
(There’s all sorts of other problems with yugopnik’s take - like folks with learning difficulties who don’t lean right wing, removing the agency of the fascist, using ablism to explain fascism, where these Nietzschean takes of the untermenschen comes from, mechanical vs dialectical materialism etc etc)
Very disappointing. The ReProgram.
USA is cringe for sure but I cannot imagine looking at what Americans do and thinking that the country is uniquely worse at critical thinking than the rest of world. Sure, their education system and the people coming out of it are abysmal considering its the wealthiest country in the world. But there are tangible reasons for it, like the underfunded public education system. I look at the people around where I live and most of them are not good at critical thinking either. It is not something that is taught in general.
The other sad thing is what made him surface this thought is the rambling of a weird nazi on X, the everything app. That platform is a cesspool of all varieties of fascists who inhale oxygen just so they are able to make atrocious bad faith posts on it. Now Musk even pays them for it. Content creators cannot fathom leaving that website because a big chunk of their self worth and income is tied to their follower count. Don’t use that website that all. Otherwise don’t use it to survey national mentual acuity. Just be normal.
Don’t drink and tweet, Yugo.
It almost feels like Yogo should go in SRS at this point
I once saw a tiktok leftist saying similar shit (though he had a degree in psychology). I did warn him though in the comments that even if the scientific facts are what they claim to be, we still cant fall or use the same rhetoric as the nazis did. luckily he understood.
doesn’t really matter when people are being shot dead on the streets chief
Who is this comment aimed at? Criticalresist or that other guy, yugopnik?
Edit: it matters because influencers are shitty people. Most of them are in the petite bourgeoisie class. Those who listen to them to learn about communism will have a petit bourgeois understanding of communism.
i think you’re giving these (influencers) people too much credit fr
tell them bad take go to the self crit corner and think about what you’ve done
People here should debate rightists instead of criticizing fellow leftists.
And more generally, as Viki1999 liked to point out, i’d personally go even further and ask for left unity in these difficult times :
My POV is that yugo has a big audience and should be mindful of what he says, especially since he knows his audience is mostly baby leftists. And secondly Johnstone has herself gone on unhinged rants before:
She herself is a weird hodgepodge of liberalism and mildly progressive views. She’s said several times she’s not a communist and actively refuses to become one.
And when they’re called out for it they double down trying to “explain” how they were right and then never change. They have 0 material analysis, they’re just doing vibes-based politics. Is this how yugo wants to conduct politics with the masses? Would he publish this rant under a party name? If not, then why publish it on twitter under his own name? This is the kind of stuff you say with friends, and they gently steer you in the right direction.
Why are our idols now streamers and youtubers? Why do we care what these petty bourgeois enthusiasts who try to make a living taking money from baby comrades think about how struggle is conducted? Of course they’ll defend their petty-bourgeois views when it comes down to it. That’s what makes them money. Viki herself took a long break because she made, you guessed it, deeply ignorant remarks.
Yet they call for left-unity and expect us to side with their shit views and opinions, sweep them under the rug, while they continue on thinking and spouting whatever words they want. But it’s us, the marxist-leninists, that have to be on our best behavior around them.
Like I don’t know, I don’t always have the right takes and I’ve made comments to people on the internet that I regret. I apologize to them and talk to friends to understand the problem and synthesize my own conclusion from it. I don’t tell more principled people that they’re the ones who need to change and not me, cause that’s what they’re doing here. Coming from caitlin and vicki, it’s deeply selfish and self-centered to say this. They think because they’re big names with an audience that automatically makes them right and everyone else wrong.
When Lenin said “Among the Jews there are workers, toilers, they are in the majority. They are our brothers, comrades in the struggle for Socialism, because they are oppressed by capitalism. Among the Jews there are Kulaks, exploiters, capitalists, just like amongst us all,” he preceded it with:
Only entirely uneducated and completely oppressed people can believe the lies and slanders which are being spread about the Jews. These are survivals from the times of serfdom, when the priests burnt heretics at the stake, when peasants were trampled upon and were blind. But these dark survivals of serfdom are disappearing, the people are beginning to see.
Notice Lenin didn’t say “you must have faulty genes if you believe otherwise you disabled r-word”.
Criticism and self-criticism is a core component of marxism to progress forward. Normally it implies we find issues to remedy and then remedy them, so we all progress together. In this case, I’m not really sure where to even begin. I think it speaks for itself (esp. the “now I’m not calling them the r-word, just the diminutive that’s acceptable in your circles :)”)
But people don’t deserve to have their shit takes swept under the rug just because they’re nominally on “our side”. He chose to publish this on Twitter and leave it up, what are we supposed to do? Smile while he continues saying whatever unhinged shit crosses his mind that day under the shower, never getting challenged for it? What example does this set for the new leftists that watch him, who start to think communism is just about appearing edgy and being counter-culture?
I want to leave one last thought; you suggest to debate rightists, but why not rightist views and right deviationist views? Not everyone who calls themselves a communist is immediately our comrade, people don’t suddenly develop all the correct theory and ideas as soon as they proclaim themselves to be a marxist.
I wrote a long answer(, in which i agree with a lot of things you said, it was well-written and thank you for taking such a long time), but i won’t post it since you banned me.
I just want to say as my last words that i could have banned you for saying that C.Johnstone is a liberal with midly progressive views, or that yugopnik is defending petty-bourgeois views, clearly crazy opinions. Of course i wouldn’t do that because everyone makes mistakes, but i could have, and you think it couldn’t happen to you but i wouldn’t ask for your opinion, you’d just be banned whether it’s just or not.
Bye.
I didn’t ban you.
Then i owe you an apology.
(I still won’t answer you since that’d be going further in the ban evasion, and it’s too long you have better things to do, but in short they tolerate our leftism but we don’t tolerate theirs, sometimes cancelling them but we need numbers, so-called “antifas” tried to cancel people like Étienne Chouard or David Rovics, yugopnik could hopefully understand your point and his tweet wasn’t meant to be taken that seriously, he’s just saying half-jokingly “i can’t explain it otherwise because the far-right is not logical by any mean !”, good quote&point from Lenine, saying that people from the far-right ought to have lost some chromosomes would be an ableist joke ?, that post isn’t helpful to yugopnik in the way you’re presenting it since he won’t see it so that’s more like talking in his back, nor is it addressed in a loving manner, i don’t believe you intended to harm him though because you’d have been contented with knowing that he understood his mistake, and also because as you say you were opposing the rightist view and not the leftist individual)
I think it’s better to write that than nothing. I don’t intend to come back here because in that comment i ended up complaining about the downvotes solely because the mods were scaring me, it’s not an enjoyable feeling.
But please take care of lemmygrad, it’s an important place on Lemmy and i’m still glad that it exists.
Actually i was the one one who reported you and got you banned. It wasn’t for some arbitrary reason it was for using the r-slur then implying its acceptable as “its the official terminology” despite it being horribly offensive, ableist, and archaic. This is why I left the post explaining areas of growth that you should focus on.
deleted by creator
Id completely support you getting unbanned if you touch some grass and ask someone with an intellectual disabiltiy themselves whether or not the r-slur is acceptable.
It really depends on the criticism. I remember when I used to hang out on “left” twitter, on occasion I’d see stuff where it was like telephone game style personal spats that were impossible for an observer to follow and understand, and so it was more just the kind of conflict that might have been resolved with a proper sit-down and mediator, or at least clarified better what the problem was.
This case is pretty clear though just from reading the one tweet itself. It’s a problem of ideological line and that’s something we do need to crit in each other. Otherwise, we’re just doing the liberal thing of going along to get along:
To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_03.htm
Self-criticism is common practice among MLs:
Wells: Unfortunately, I have various engagements to fulfil and I can stay in the USSR only for a week. I came to see you and I am very satisfied by our talk. But I intend to discuss with such Soviet writers as I can meet the possibility of their affiliating to the PEN Club. The organisation is still weak, but it has branches in many countries, and what is more important, the speeches of its members are widely reported in the press. It insists upon this, free expression of opinion – even of opposition opinion. I hope to discuss this point with Gorki. I do not know if you are prepared yet for that much freedom . . .
Stalin: We Bolsheviks call it “self-criticism”. It is widely used in the USSR. If there is anything I can do to help you I shall be glad to do so.
Unprincipled criticism, backbiting, etc., can be a problem:
To indulge in irresponsible criticism in private instead of actively putting forward one’s suggestions to the organization. To say nothing to people to their faces but to gossip behind their backs, or to say nothing at a meeting but to gossip afterwards. To show no regard at all for the principles of collective life but to follow one’s own inclination. This is a second type.
But strong unity of the ML kind is forged by working through problems, not paving over them with social niceties in public while holding onto resentments in private (that’s liberalism).
If people don’t denigrate him, but criticize him in a friendly manner then i have no problem. It’s just the all too common “character assassination” i have a problem with(, especially for such little things, and even more among leftists).
If it’s just an occasion to discuss about the influence of genetics on behavior then i have zero problem with this, i just hope that people here won’t suddenly hate yugopnik just for that, which is probably unlikely to happen, so i shouldn’t have concerned myself with it.I suppose that i just didn’t want to resist posting that quote from C.Johnstone.
That quote was what i was alluding to(, while remembering one time when many people on Lemmy falsely accused Nutomic himself of being transphobic, with people exciting themselves over nothing and calling for his resignation, so stupid, the same thing happened for Linus Torvalds because he wrote a harsh email to someone working for him, let’s just focus our anger on more productive things than bringing down people on our side) :
To indulge in irresponsible criticism in private instead of actively putting forward one’s suggestions to the organization. To say nothing to people to their faces but to gossip behind their backs, or to say nothing at a meeting but to gossip afterwards. To show no regard at all for the principles of collective life but to follow one’s own inclination. This is a second type.
I don’t generally try to operate on hate, myself. Except maybe for the most obvious exploiters of the world, but then it’s more incidental hate as a result of finding out what horrific shit they’ve done, than an active preoccupied effort to hate. Hating someone takes energy. I’d rather put my energy into working out how to dismantle systems of oppression.
I am suspicious of people who purport to be on the left and say stuff like he did though. I feel I have good reason to be, given the history of internet-based “leftists” who are bad at sticking to a clear ideological line. It’s possible he can be corrected on this and change his ways, but his position as e-celeb (however small the level of celebrity may be) makes it harder to directly engage in criticism with him, as peers. So we have to correct and warn people as we can.
As i said in another comment, he most likely doesn’t really believe that people are born to be far-right, it’s more of an insult saying that they were born with some innate cerebral deficiency, and that otherwise they couldn’t possibly develop such p.o.v.
If i’m not mistaken he’s often shitposting, it’s an insult, that’s all, not that deep, nor someone calling covertly for eugenics.Anyway, if you don’t suddenly hate him now, then ok, i probably overreacted and should have ignored that post.
This sounds a lot like the “schrodinger’s douchebag” excuse:
One who makes douchebag statements, particularly sexist, racist or otherwise bigoted ones, then decides whether they were “just joking” or dead serious based on whether other people in the group approve or not.
A person who decides if they were being ironic or not base on how people react to it
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=schrodinger’s+douchebag
Anyway, insults are not just insults. They carry ideology with them. If I were to use a slur against you, it would be carrying water for the ideology of that slur, even if I don’t actively believe in it myself.
it would be carrying water for the ideology of that slur
That the far-right is mentally ret*rded
Yep, that would be a problem. Directing it at rightists doesn’t give it the characteristics of leftism. It’s still got the rightist stench clinging to it. This is why it’s so important to interrogate reflexes even long after conscious beliefs change. Our habits do not change overnight based on what we believe in.
proclaims unity
Uses divisive ableist language
Do better
Citing Viki is a bad idea considering how she ended up supporting Israels genocide.
- You’re going to have to prove to us that debating rightists actually accomplishes anything at all
- If you can’t combat eugenic speak in our own movement I have absolutely no hope that you will be able to combat it outside of our circles.
- You believe it’s useless ? Perhaps because you don’t see them immediately do a U-turn, “converting” to our side indecisive people would be useful as well. Criticizing the opposite side(, or denigrating people from our side for small sentences,) obviously seem less productive than debating them(, if one has the time for that).
- Don’t take it so seriously man, he most likely doesn’t really believe that people are born to be far-right, it’s more of an insult saying that they were born with some innate cerebral deficiency, and that otherwise they couldn’t possibly develop such p.o.v.
And while i still believe that nurture is more influential than nature, i’ve also discovered that true twins were sometimes separated at birth, raised in two different families, and ended up despite that with remarkable similarities, forcing me to conclude that there may have been more to genetics that i initially presupposed. I know that political affiliation isn’t determined by genes, and yugopnik as well.
In any case, don’t hate yugopnik for that while ignoring all the things he’s done previously. He’s on our side, remember ? Perhaps that not losing should be more of a priority that some “leftist purity”.
Well, that’s only my opinion, feel free to disagree 🤷
deleted by creator
Man people need to go out more often or you’ll eventually talk some dumb shit like this
This but also… I kinda feel the same about people that treat these “influencers” as if they are supposed to be infallible, and then freak out over every instance of imperfection. Has their been a left side “influencer” in history that didn’t say some unhinged shit in their life or have some bad habit or acts? I mean shit, imagine what kind of tweets Marx would have had? He was a great man but he wasn’t a saint. I’ve seen plenty of people on here say we need to not like, worship influencers and treat them as infallible, and yet those same people rant when some influencer shows themselves as having faults. So what is it? Are the supposed to be perfect or aren’t they?
Some people have shit takes. I’m not gonna defend a bad take, but I’m analytical enough to know people aren’t perfect. I sure as fuck am not. So I look at it like this, Yugo and the dudes on that podcast have done more to bring more people into communism, real actual communism, then I have, so I’m not gonna cast no stones. And I’m sure as fuck not calling him a Nazi for having a rage fit over how fucking crazy Americans and chuds in general are. I hear these people every day. If an intelligent and learned communist can hear the things I’ve heard, and not at any point think, even once, “there might be something wrong with these people” , then I’d have to question if that person was real.
Hot take…?: Marx having Twitter would’ve been bad…?
But also Marx had bad takes occasionally anyway. That’s the nature of being a person. So what do you do when someone makes mistakes? You criticize them and you work on it. And I’m certainly going to criticize someone who talks about a “sub strata” of humanity. The op didn’t say “yugo is a nazi” they said “yugo tweets nazi shit.” Which…he did. At the very least it’s extremely ableist.
Also, there’s a difference between “something might be wrong with these people” and “there’s a substrata of humans who can’t think correctly.” In any case, it’s just extremely shit logic, and even more shit logic to go “should I post this to my audience? Hell yeah!”
I think I kinda get where you’re coming from on this. Yeah, nobody has the “correct” take all the time. I would say one of the problems here with the influencer type crowd is how many of them don’t take the gravity of their position seriously; when they see themselves more as “shitposters” than as columnists, more as memelords than propagandists, more as shock jocks than thought leaders.
Part of this goes back to systemic stuff. The western, english-speaking internet (can’t speak for elsewhere) is such that it’s easier to be seen by being shocking, memey, and ridiculous than by writing long, well-thought-out essays. In fact, by some you can viewed as annoyingly academic and wordy just for writing a couple of paragraphs. So not only is there an incentive to reduce your communication to soundbite shock value stuff, algorithms drive that stuff to the forefront and make those people more popular compared to the more plodding, “boring” ones.
These kind of people do have something going for them, which is an understanding of marketing. But I do think they need more serious communists in their corner, with an in-depth understanding of theory (and preferably practice too) who can help shape their marketing into more pointed propaganda. Rather than them posting every “hot take” they have for the views.
Edit: Also, this problem that Conselheiro outlined comes to mind:
This is what substituting a party for a podcast does to a mf.
I’m pretty sure Marx was actively involved in the struggle along with doing heavy observation of its developments. Lenin for sure was, as was Mao. The kind of people that are thought leaders in marxism are people who put it into practice and learned from that practice. “Influencers” can only go so far if they aren’t out there organizing. But doing so also puts them more in the crosshairs and so would give them more reason to be cautious about what they say. It’s insulation that empowers recklessness.
These types of “people are stupid (or any ableist slurs)” talking points always bother me because outside of alienating people by saying shit like that, it’s also incredibly harmful rhetoric that legitimizes eugenics and normalizes genocide against disabled people (well actually people in general, not just disabled people).
I think a lot has already been said about why dehumanizing any group of people is very dangerous, but yeah I agree with you on touching grass. Take some time off the internet and go outside every once in a while. I’m also glad to have not been on twitter for years lol.
Extremely disappointing take. Comrade Yugo needs to self-crit over this.
We’ve all been wrong and said cringe things. It’s important to acknowledge and correct such behavior whenever it’s pointed out.
I think he was almost doing alright until the last bit.
I do think that people who engage in the mental gymnastics required to maintain a right wing or even liberal ideology are doing damage to their brains.
If you don’t use muscles they atrophy, if you over work them they can become deformed, same goes for different parts of the brain. Its called neuroplasticity. If you don’t practice empathy you become incapable of it, the parts of your brain involved in empathy will atrophy and the space will be taken up by parts of the brain that do other things.
The “sub strata” as he calls them are nothing special just a more extreme example of individuals who have ideologically programed short circuits in their reasoning. We all have brain worms some people just have a way larger infestation.
Kinda like how Yugopnic is showing he has an eugenicist brain worm that is confusing cause and effect.
It’s telling that if you swapped out “right wing” for “left wing” in his post, it would be indistinguishable from eugenics style stuff that the right gets up to. So at a glance, it looks like pushing rightist ideology under the guise of “hello fellow leftists” (I don’t know much about him otherwise, so I don’t know what his other takes look like, if they are consistent with this look).
He’s one of the co-hosts of the Deprogram podcast and this eugenics take is simultaneously consistent with some of the edgy stuff that the hosts of the pod say for humor, and inconsistent because they usually hold the line on some basic things like queerphobia, ableism, misogyny, etc. (in a broad sense, they’ve probably always been flawed)
It’s the second time I’ve seen him tweet shit like this. I can probably dig up the previous time if I go looking in my discords.
I can understand being exasperated esp when you’re an somewhat known figure you probably get a lot of trolls and content of this sort sent your way, and sometimes you just quip something back at them. but to take the time to type out all of this and then decide “yes, I shall now send this. It’s a good idea” is something else.
Believe people when they show you who they are. Anyone can appear however they want when they control the camera, but posts like this are off-the-cuff moments where they feel like they’re talking to their friends around the campfire.
Here was the last time actually (archive):
his defense was the person in the video is a millionaire nepo baby so that makes it okay. Like again there’s a difference between saying “eat the rich” and making an entire eugenics screed over a video.
Yeah, wow, that’s wildly over the top. It also looks very forced from where I’m standing. I don’t look at that and see soullessness or anything, I see a couple of people who actually look very normal and human. And it’s important people understand that being rich doesn’t suddenly make someone a sociopath or something. Sometimes people do sociopath things in order to get rich, or maintain their wealth, but it doesn’t even necessarily mean they lack empathy. They could be very empathic to people in their social circle, while justifying their behavior as defending what they have, or be heavily insulated from the damage of what they do because of the layers of indirection involved in capitalism. There are also degrees of rich. Millionaire in this day and age can mean you had a high paying job, worked for decades, and saved well. Billionaire is you’re basically a king without the title.
That said, one of the most important things to internalize, I’d say, is that the inertia of systems is far more powerful than what a few individuals decide. Which is why the ML line is “seize the means of production” and not “literally eat the rich because they are subhuman”. There’s just nothing beneficial about encouraging that kind of thought. It’s at best wasted energy, directing people more toward fleeting, impassioned rage than long-term strategy. It’s the kind of stuff you say when you want to incite a riot, not organize a revolution.
They could be very empathic to people in their social circle, while justifying their behavior as defending what they have, or be heavily insulated from the damage of what they do because of the layers of indirection involved in capitalism.
These people don’t need to be humanized. They already have so much, too much actually, and will almost always act the way everyone expects them to act when reparations and transfer of means occurs. They will lash out, they will become violent, and they will hate you and every one else that isn’t within their immediate circle. There are so many people that exist inside and outside your country that are barely given a thought. The homeless begging for simple acknowledgment and being denied even that, the unnamed masses (the statistics!) that die every day in the periphery of the empire to preventable illnesses and starvation. The victims of wars that were the lab mice for the brutality that has finally begun to reach the empire’s doorstep.
So many more people deserve that sympathy that you’re giving to people that will treat exactly the way Marx outlined.
Add: ygpk is using hateful language and is using the talking points of eugenics in his posts. Everyone itt calling him out on his hateful behavior is correct. I only made my comment because I just don’t feel the need to direct sympathy towards the rich.
I don’t see how I gave them sympathy. The point is that they aren’t all ghouls whose eyes you can look into and see pure evil or something. It’s much more mundane and systemic than that and if people don’t understand that, they will be unequipped to properly challenge power; instead chasing after threats in the same way that liberals view Trump as an embodiment of evil and miss the evil behind the decorum of somebody like Joe Biden.
Rich people will tend to act in their class and caste interests, yes, which can be very blatantly, sometimes cartoonishly evil (more so in the billionaire class than somebody with a few million). That doesn’t mean you can look them in the eye and be unable to find signs of a soul. It doesn’t even mean that if you spent the day with them, you’d necessarily think they’re a bad person. And if you go in expecting it to be obvious that they are evil, you will be confused during the times when they aren’t.
I don’t need to humanize them. They are human. That doesn’t make what they are part of any less horrific. If people want to call em ghouls sometimes or whatever, hell, I’ve done that myself. But I see that more as venting. What I was talking about was a preoccupied screed about how subhuman a couple of random people are.
Your emphasis on the plight of the downtrodden is valuable, both morally and strategically. It needs to be emphasized just how bad it is for the oppressed. But that doesn’t negate what I’ve said, which was directed at a specific context, not meant as some kind of sympathy for the rich.
Sympathy isn’t a finite resource, just because I acknowledge the humanity of rich people (even tho on a personal level I detest them) doesn’t mean I acknowledge the suffering of poor people less. Like the person above said, being so performative about your hatred towards the rich is ultimately pointless.
I get it, I don’t believe anyone here is giving more thought to rich people than to others.
But if I can be so honest with you: these people probably don’t care about you, so why on earth should you care about them? So they’re at the receiving end of either unsavory or outright hateful rhetoric. Beyond calling out the use of hateful rhetoric, why should anyone go the extra mile and show them sympathy?
My personal opinion: ignore them like they ignore you
I know that “Just like le consumer franchise!” is a massive liberal meme, but this is essentially just the Imperial line of thought in Warhammer. If you’re spouting the same rhetoric as a satirically Uber fascist ethnostate, especially as a leftist, then you’ve officially lost the plot.
If Mao was able to organize the masses who were living in feudal conditions, westerners have no excuse. The ableist thinking from that tweet is pure cope.
Maos peasants weren’t people propagandized from birth to worship capitalism and be good little nationalists that believe every other nation on earth is a shit hole, and taught that communism is the literal devil incarnate. I’d take the peasant over that any day. You could actually talk to those people without the threat of semi-automatic weapons being pointed at you. It’s easier to start with a nearly blank slate then one that’s had this level of propaganda drilled into their being.
Chinese people also lived under much worse conditions, including a century of humiliation and two Japanese invasions. USians aren’t yet living under deprivations anything like early 20th century Russians, Chinese, Cubans, Koreans, or Vietnamese.
Another good point. People still have things to lose. It takes extremes to get ordinary people to be willing to fight. Not only that. From weapon standpoint it takes more and more people willing to fight, in order to combat the technology superiority against us. Literally the entire US military is designed for this. Fighting against a lesser armed foe.
Appreciate that you didn’t double down on it. I think Americans have no excuse, because people living in conditions far worse than anything Americans can even comprehend came together to build a better society.
But I’m no one to speak. I’ve barely done enough to further socialism in my own country. All I’m doing is talking to people and slowly propagandizing then to build class consciousness. Tiring process, but we play with the cards we’re dealt
“A bowl is most useful when it is empty” - Lao Tzu
