Goast posted:

oh boy we circled right back into podcast critique using the telephone method

gradenko_2000 posted:

okay this is a take I kinda disagree with because Germany settling their score with France doesn't seem as central a theme to the conflict as anti-communism, and also doesn't jive with the (hopefully not that controversial take) that WW2 has its origins set earlier than Sep 1, 1936, such as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

gradenko_2000 posted:

okay this is a take I kinda disagree with because Germany settling their score with France doesn't seem as central a theme to the conflict as anti-communism, and also doesn't jive with the (hopefully not that controversial take) that WW2 has its origins set earlier than Sep 1, 1936, such as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

gradenko_2000 posted:

earlier than Sep 1, 1936, such as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

Grand Theft Autobot posted:

My wife read it and made me read it. She likes it. I think it is the most racist book I've ever read.

Frosted Flake posted:

I mean, he could be saying The Second World War was decided in the East, and won through the struggles of the Soviet people. God knows how long it took mainstream historiography to get there.

Atrocious Joe posted:

I feel like from the US perspective, the real grist for hot takes is the Pacific Theater, but that doesn't seem to be the direction he's taking.

gradenko_2000 posted:

1. dropping the atomic bombs was completely unnecessary...

2. ... but the US would have just incinerated Japan anyway

3. landing at Peleliu was completely unnecessary, and liberating the Philippines was just dick-waving for MacArthur

And this last one is not a hot take at all, but MacArthur sucked as a general

Majorian posted:

Well, your thinking is wrong here. That is not what they're saying.

Trabisnikof posted:

I wish this article was available for free online: http://harpers.org/archive/2011/05/0083402

That’s by far the best hot take on WW2.

(Also not wrong.)

gradenko_2000 posted:

okay this is a take I kinda disagree with because Germany settling their score with France doesn't seem as central a theme to the conflict as anti-communism, and also doesn't jive with the (hopefully not that controversial take) that WW2 has its origins set earlier than Sep 1, 1936, such as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

i say swears online posted:

lol but what if it's the opposite

https://twitter.com/mikeduncan/status/1273556158922489858

V. Illych L. posted:

the issue re: race and class is basically a thing of base and superstructure, i think - the socialist will tend to accept that race exists as a cultural phenomenon, but that there's material reality to it. to be explicit: race exists only through cultural customs, not in any strict biological or instrinsic economic sense the way that class does (you literally cannot imagine capitalism without an objective class divide; you can imagine it without racial constructions, e.g. in totally ethnically homogeneous polity)

this is not denying the social reality of racism, but it's a way of contextualising it in society. so, this fundamental irreality of racial categories has consequences - if it really is about a cultural phenomenon, how may it be overcome? the classic socialist answer is 'by building on the objective', i.e. by effectively trying very hard to build solidarity between the majority and minority working classes in such a way as to make race redundant. at its worst, this can indeed manifest itself in denying also the social reality of racism.

this concept has real weaknesses, e.g. the abandonment of historical justice in the form of direct reparations, a legitimate desire people can have. however, the idea of solidarity will tend to strive for real equality between humans, and so the murder of black men by state violence, despite being a social manifestation of racism, is an obvious target for socialist mobilisation precisely because it involves a difference in treatment that will undermine our commonalities and destroy our ability to meet as equals, i.e. in genuine solidarity

there's a big difference between this and the racial realist take, in that the racial realist will focus on racial politics as a given, rather than something which should be overcome. if race is an objective interest, then the that idea majority and minority groups should stand together is on its face ridiculous and you can only behave in the interests of justice by accepting dogmatically the perspective of a minority representative in a given situation, because you simply cannot hope to empathise - this brings you into calculus issues in determining who exactly is the minority representative, with the attendant positioning and oppression olympics etc

this isn't a crazy perspective and it has real value in many cases. we shouldn't be arrogant facing with minority perspectives, and to a great extent the promise of racial abolition has masked some heinous poo poo. it is possible that the socialist concept of objectivity is wrong and the idealists are correct! i don't think so, but it's important to understand where they're coming from and what traps they're triggering, and to try to figure out where they're right and if one can integrate that into one's own world view.

i remain an optimist: i believe that race can be abolished, though necessarily in a different social structure which has fewer objective contradictions. in this view, being overly moralistic about it is just not helpful - antiracism stops being a basically ethical issue and becomes one of self-interest

zynga dot com posted:

This is a good post, and I saw this play out in the primary posting wars post-SC. I saw a lot of really gross comments, like accusing black people of not understanding their material reality, or "can't you see we're trying to help you?". I think the problem isn't they don't understand or want to change their material reality, but that there's also a deep need to see racial and restorative justice, and at the end of the day, they didn't believe that Bernie's movement was speaking to or actively trying to accomplish that.

The Muppets On PCP posted:

that was working on the now discredited assumption that like past sc primaries the democratic electorate was mostly black. turns out it was a bunch of conservative old whites who handed the election to biden

V. Illych L. posted:

one that SC civil society was pretty uniformly for biden and one that a lot of southern black people are just otherwise pretty conservative

StashAugustine posted:

Actually I'm re listening to Revolutions and I'm now saying WW2 started in 1848

StashAugustine posted:

Actually I'm re listening to Revolutions and I'm now saying WW2 started in 1848

Often Abbreviated posted:

*Roman soldiers march across a wooden bridge. It is the Rhine. The year is 9CE*

Me: Ah, the opening salvos of WW2

mastershakeman posted:

1848 is born out of the july revolution, born out of the french revolution, which is born out of the american revolution which is born out of french indian war

Doc Hawkins posted:

the empire never ended

MizPiz posted:

Rome is the material, cultural, and spiritual progenitor of fascism, therefore fascism can't be defeated until Rome in all it's forms has been sacked.

Doc Hawkins posted:

the empire never ended

uber_stoat posted:

pdog posted:

Reminscent of the chapo folks in that episode, some seem to be expressing an inherently self-centering aversion to race issues and discussion of such. The lack of self-awareness is uncanny. Like how we call out economically well-off liberals who are unconcerned about notions of top-down economic warfare (because it doesn’t affect them, as much), many white leftists, including the chapos, are falling over themselves to fulfill the stereotype of class sycophants unconcerned about & utterly infantile with regards to race issues.

As a POC leftist that hates how the liberal oligarchy has weaponized idpol to kill mass class consciousness, it’s unfortunate to on the other hand see white leftists reinforce the very out-of-touch behavior that’s functionally exclusionary to the project of expanding the leftist movement, making it more inclusive, and making it less homogenous.

We (you) can be predominantly focused on class warfare politics, while still not being so tone deaf when it comes to race issues —we’re really showing that the left is also culpable of the toxicity of self-interest and the consequent aversion to consideration of the lived experiences of the ‘Other’.

one would have to have their head deep in the sand or be wholly self-interested to view the current situation in the us re: rampant race-based police brutality/injustice and utter disregard for black life, and to respond to that by saying, “man, can you americans shut the fk up about this race poo poo? please just focus on the class politics that I’m more comfortable with and actually care about.” In my book, a ‘race-blind’ leftist, an unironic class reductionist, is no progressive.