THS posted:

it owns that i dont have to do anything to bring about the revolution, i will wait here until the armies of the third world show up to execute me. and i will thank them for it

i say swears online posted:

lol next they'll hit kinky friedman's house and molly ivins' grave

i thought DOH predated RGA by a couple years

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

interesting thread: https://rhizzone.net/forum/topic/14698/

they are very politically developed relative to us IMO

Plutonis posted:

https://kotaku.com/socialist-tabletop-game-reminded-me-that-you-have-to-st-1832463653

Holy hell this is the most loving rose emoji I've seen about TRPGs. I'm gonna write a badass d20 Maoist RPG so we don't have to use storygame crap.

quote:

Ideological struggle isn’t allowed to “work” in the same way that it was during the 20th century. The existence of any class organization implies an ideological line and a political one; the dominant idea clearly exercises an influence on political action, and subsequent political action informs the further development of that idea. At certain junctures, the advancement of the political requires the transcendence of the idea. Strategies have to be transformed in order to meet new tactics suitable to a higher stage of development. The activity of a bourgeois-democratic revolution can’t complete the tasks of a proletarian one, for example. Up until the Soviet Union crashed and burned, and the internet was popularized, these struggles progressed in a more or less linear fashion, with trends and ideas clearly represented by individuals or groups in the same organization or contending ones. This is the format we’ve come to expect, simply because it’s sensible, translatable, and adaptable.

The actual, non-linear, and rhizomatic network of shiftless discussions on social media, that form the contemporary basis for the development of ideas, are something entirely different from the paper-based exchanges that structured the debates of the past. While an argument might be formed and expressed clearly in an essay, calculating the constellation of data-points that form a broad consensus on a particular argument, among thousands of people, is beyond basic human comprehension. Greater factors, like algorithmic bubbles and self-reinforcement, also contribute to the conception of half-baked ideas by leaving them unchallenged. The rapid cycles of discussion will generally out-pace the average observer’s ability to process and reflect on them, and the idea can easily come into the ownership of cliques and in-crowds. By the time it’s generalized, the premises and definition of the idea aren’t intended to be questioned; they are simply understood.

This is a totally memetic process. Sometimes people will assert ideas without an argument behind them, sometimes an argument without ideas, even against their better judgment. They’re so insecure whenever they’re criticized or questioned on those points, since the sole compelling reason for how they came to those beliefs is, “Because we all agreed that it was established.” Even if it’s relatively easy to explain why an idea came about, attempting to understand how it came about is almost inconceivable.

The popular emergence of this phenomenon is why Trump’s political successes hit the liberal commentariat like a rampaging dump truck in 2016; why there were attempts to indict Facebook, as if its code was anymore responsible for the election than Gutenberg was for the publication of Mein Kampf. “Trump won because White America is full of fascists”; “That day I noticed that everything was happening all at once.” Party leadership is bound to be in the same position soon. While the socialization of the technology that made these things possible is taken for granted, the reciprocal effect that technology has had on basic social processes isn’t taken into account whatsoever.

quote:

Nearly a decade ago, these were fundamental changes to social engagement and culture that no one could get off their minds. Nominal “left-libertarians” started lauding an emerging, consensus-based “mass democracy” with no leaders, hierarchies, or parties, derived from the apparent liberties and egalitarianism of social media; Facebook seemed to mobilize thousands of demonstrators on a dime to fight inequality and start revolutions; and, with the development of a globe-spanning social network that looked like it afforded all ideas equal value, big-tent strategies were implemented. Within a number of years, the intellectual leaders retired into “digital party” coalitions – collapsed or collapsing in on the weight of their contradictions – or the houseflipping business; the revolutionaries turned out to be fascists with State Department-funded PR teams; and the big-tents fragmented along political, class, national, and gender lines once everyone realized that they were living in a society. Today, their energetic, counter-cultural tech-optimism is the exclusive reserve of Taco Bell commercials and degenerate billionaires who pump their veins full of teenagers’ blood to live a little longer in their own paradise they’ve made everyone else’s hell. At the end of this episode, great humanity has come full circle to the horrifying conclusion that was only evident before our critical mass event: the internet is poo poo for despicable morons – please get the gently caress out.

Recalling these events is crucial: on one hand, they provided me with far more reasons to appreciate the merit of Marxism-Leninism as a political theory, even as an anarchist, in spite of the reputation of the parties; on the other, they depict events that did, objectively, occur in the real world and I didn’t imagine them, even if I fail to demonstrate the influence of the period on political discourse and social exchange.

Lightning Knight posted:

Can I ask what the deal with these Red Guard Austin folks is? I keep seeing people call them cop informants and it’s not clear to me what their goals even are or why you guys think that. I’m interested to understand since they’re not that far from me now.

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

interesting thread: https://rhizzone.net/forum/topic/14698/

they are very politically developed relative to us IMO

Autism Sneaks posted:

https://twitter.com/getfiscal/status/1094110107212877824?s=19


suffice it to say that socialism has been important to the rhizzone for more than *checks calendar* the last two years

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

the juche meme gang is apparently not well-appreciated by the DPRK

https://twitter.com/DPRK_KFAGreece/status/1093959642999410690

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

interesting thread: https://rhizzone.net/forum/topic/14698/

they are very politically developed relative to us IMO

apropos to nothing posted:

the op of that thread is complaining about how the PSL or whatever is disconnected from labor and only appeals to weird subculturists and then proceeds to write a billion pages about all the little maoist and ML parties that they know about and what problems they have and why. "wonder why we cant connect with normal workers" asks dude writing 10 page polemic about the red guards on an obscure spinoff politics forum

apropos to nothing posted:

the op of that thread is complaining about how the PSL or whatever is disconnected from labor and only appeals to weird subculturists and then proceeds to write a billion pages about all the little maoist and ML parties that they know about and what problems they have and why. "wonder why we cant connect with normal workers" asks dude writing 10 page polemic about the red guards on an obscure spinoff politics forum

freckle posted:

are you a swamp maoist now, brutalist?

apropos to nothing posted:

apropos to nothing posted:

apropos to nothing posted:

the op of that thread is complaining about how the PSL or whatever is disconnected from labor and only appeals to weird subculturists and then proceeds to write a billion pages about all the little maoist and ML parties that they know about and what problems they have and why. "wonder why we cant connect with normal workers" asks dude writing 10 page polemic about the red guards on an obscure spinoff politics forum

R. Guyovich posted:

they're also right about this specific moment being fertile ground for careerists and opportunists. but that's not some kind of revelation, as anyone who follows dsa politicking can attest.