Extincion Rebellion in Finland has withdrawn from a demostration due to police violence. The libs are calling this a smart move as it draws more attention to their cause. Mainstream media however rarely reports the demos or if it does, it typically frames these as the disrubtion of traffic. Today the liberal bourge paper Helsingin Sanomat has called out for the protesters right to protest safely.
Their next demo will start as planned tomorrow with a press release about the police violence. In the Finnish text based press release they report the police hitting people in the head, dragging them on the asfalt and other acts of physical violence. The police started forcefully removing protesters as soon as the demo started with no prewarning or commands to leave.
This is true. I am doing uni now with zoomers and it feels a lot safer. I am far more at ease now even though I am ancient compared to them and have a long history of being bullied. Noticed this when I did substitute teaching as well.
They also call you out on things like putting yourself down for your work just in case, a very gen X thing. And have also informed me that dating apps aren't really used anymore and people prefer in person connection more again, they are organizing a lot of get-togethers.
Also drinking. I am from a generation where getting shitfaced in a concert was supposedly "fun". Or heavy drinking in general. My kid and his friends genuinely prefer going to events sober or with light drinking, same with uni stuff. I mean they still drink, but not nearly as much. And non-drinking stuff is popular too.
Also openness to vegan food. It's a total non issue to make and eat vegan in an event. Go back ten years and even millenials I feel have far more brainwormy takes on "but muh meats!".
Edit. Now that I got going with the praise a few more things came to mind that I admire genuinely:
Far more principled takes on politics. Even things like boycotting I have noticed they follow through long term.
Making value based choices and sticking to them. Like buying clothes second-hand. Far less treat brained paradoxically. Often buying one good thing that will last years.
I know people keep saying the youngest generation is always most progressive, but I disagree. I have seen my own youth and been told about my parents hippie youth and neither ever actually engaged with anything more than being libs about the things. Or knew anything.
The kids these days are in a fundamentally different position with all the crisis and late stage capitalism. And the internet has made them aware of things in ways no generation before has been.
She sounds like me. Honestly I owe a lot of my deprogramming to my gen Z kid. He was the one who started to push againts my Soviet Union/AES brainworms and these days he finds it funny how I went a lot further into the rabbit hole than him.
Same. My kid introduced me to Hasan, it was a step in my path out of my lifelong liberal brainworms. I owe the younger generation a lot.
Ok yeah, flow from some auditory things I definitely get and also seek it. So maybe it was ASMR all along.
Great explanation. Explained like this I do get it better, for me it would be something like listening to music with the scratch of vinyl in it and sort of getting lost in that. Also have had this with peoples voices. Wind in certain types of trees and other auditory things like that that are just deeply pleasure inducing.
A lot of music does this to me, but not sure if this would be the same. In jazz music the sounds of the instruments on the tape for example.
Right?
We have this thing with my kid where we play music for each other and rate it, to expand our views and learn new music. Some of the stuff he has thrown at me has been really hard to comment on, but it is interesting.
Might be. It works great for my kid for sleep/making the head go queit, but for me it just causes unease We are both neurodivergent with loud minds. I personally need stories being read for sleep.
I mean I do get it, but it isn't for me. I know a lot of people my age who do like ASMR.
Tbh, always really disliked Jackass too.
- ASMR as well.
- Some of the Music, mainly stuff like Semetary. Also the incredibly short songs sometimes throw me a bit.
- Some of the memes just go over my head so much.
Otherwise I think the kids these days are great. Have learnt so much from them, about drawing boundaries, neurotypes, gender. I am very happy to be the parent of one of these younger humans, they make the best comrades.
A bit tired with studying and working full time at the same time. But doing better with it than ever before with my late arrived understanding of my neurotype.
Having conflicting feelings about the clients I have to try and help in my work when they bring forward fullblown nazi thinking, it also sometimes makes me feel a bit unsafe. Struggling a bit with that, but doing my best and hoping to nudge people towards a more material understanding of their position.
Glad that I have a decent paycheck finally and am now able to help my also neurodivergent kid pay their rent over the summer.
My little backyard garden tomatoes are looking amazing.
Yeah, this is a course in gender studies I am doing as a minor. Still has nothing on the course I did on the feminist revolution in Iran where we got a real life diaspora Iranian citing radio free europe links to us as study material.
Truly the most unbiased academic learning.
I especially love how the author just threw the deaths and misery that resulted from the fall of the Soviet Union in there as some inevitable force of nature type event with zero analyzes of why, by who and to the benefit of who it actually happened. I am so annoyed with the ever present divorce of the historical analysis of the harms of capital and reality from all academic text.
Reading this article onward it does have some good stuff in it too, once it actually gets to looking at the garage culture and the men who participate in it. But it also credits neoliberalism as giving people some alternate path to agency, true Giddens brainworms.
I also hate how hard a time the author still has in giving credit to the collectivist form of human activity that is described.
And the jargon is just never-ending. The last two pages of this I was not even able to really understand, and afaik I understand things just fine.
It's all like this. I don't even understand where the stuff in this page is coming from, but "coercion and violence of communist rule" is once again just thrown in there.
Also this book seems to really be looking down on the working class from my reading, although I suppose it tries to highlight some issues. Not to mention all the discourse about social capital or other types of capital, but never actual capital.
This also reads like a weird sort of celebration of neoliberalism as inevitable, but then again I am just so tired of reading stuff like this that I am probably not giving it much credit.
Book is called "masculinity, labor and neoliberalism".
I read it. Oh my... to think this is from 1909 if I understood correctly. The bit about "beware of first-hand ideas" at the end chilled me to the bone, it was so "the times we live in".
If you ever remember the name I'd love to read this one. It seems like a very good description of social media today.
Going into someones house with shoes on would very much be considered so rude where I live.
I mean in winter shoes are covered in snow, in spring and autumn they are often wet. Or just otherwise dirty. Why would anyone do that to someones home?
My work puts me in peoples homes and the first thing I do is take off my shoes, because of course I do.
I used to have a AmeriKKKan partner for a while and the dude lived his life with shoes on. Like put them on getting out of bed. Even had them on lying down often. Seemed so uncomfy to me, but I suppose if the insides of houses are treated the same as the outside, you would want shoes on because the floor must be dirty all the time.
Oh boy it's so bad... and sadly this reads like most of the stuff I ever hear from revisionists around these parts.
I visited AmeriKKKKa once and the fireflies was the best, most amazing thing I saw there.
I currently make more than the median income where I live, but have been poor my entire life prior except childhood. Seen too much.
My wage labor position holds very little power over me now and I am doing it mainly to pay my rent, help my kid and eat. I have done so many jobs and also lost so many over the years. I own nothing and am too old to ever be able to, no matter how much I get paid.
Being late (un)diagnosed audhd I am very sensitive to injustice and have been all my life. I have no social circles that I am interested in apart from my partner and kid who are both just like me. I am dedicated to communism to my core, in my work it is the driver of most of the choices I make as I do have some power that can make a difference. I am in a position where I can spread the message so to speak.
So what are your plans for May Day 2024?
I am thinking we will go visit a Red memorial and watch the ceremony there, then maybe some marching and singing with comrades.
Maybe it isn't about good/bad, maybe consider anti-imperialism?
(An anarchist account from Masto that has quite the following so posting here, but without links.)
Edit. Added a link to the thread because it keeps getting boosted to my timeline by Western "leftists" and I think it deserves to be dunked on.
The fuck this Timo guy saying? This reads like peak Jordan Peterson thought aka thoughts from a pseudointellectual bullshit generator.
Been thinking about the weird embracement of all the circular economy solutions by the capitalist class.
This framing has enabled them to sell the same commodity many times over and then recycle it into even more commodities while maintaining an image of "being Green". Due to this the second hand market for things has become a lot less accessible and expensive. Also donations and giving out stuff you no longer need seems to be disappearing as a practise. This might also be because nothing we buy lasts more than a year anymore.
This post is inspired by me trying to find a few rocks or pavement stones for our backyard that a few decades ago you could just go source from the dumb or some construction site. Now those places are reselling the trash and have barbed wired fences around them.
Also feels like these systems have removed the slack aka maximized and optimized profit on food items, making the food given out to the poor and homeless disappear or become way too scarce.
Currently have covid, so does my partner, vaccinated and boosted as we can be in the country we are in. My partner is not doing so well. We got covid from my ultralib vaccinated relatives who bullheadedly want to do normal, whatever the cost. They announced the coughs they were sporting at the Christmas table were just "lingering symptoms from past colds".
This as the background to a post I saw on social media today stating that someone had avoided their anti-vaxx relatives for five years and this year went to see them and got covid. Like that is the sole reason they got it. The comment section was full of libs lolling at the stupid anti-vaxxers and wishing well to this vaccinated hero that was sick.
Not one mention of masks, of barriers to vaccination. Of the fact that to visit someone people sit in crowded planes unmasked without a care in the world, risking everyone who is immunocompromized for example. But yes, the anti-vaxxers are the only problem... (not saying it isn't a problem)
All this made me think on how "vaccinated for covid" has turned into a kind of VOTE! Once that bit is done, the liberal mind can turn its attention back to all the important consuming and status maintenance it needs to sustain its relevance. And the blame of everything is handily placed on a new outgroup, one that gets stereotyped and Othered much the same way all forms of perceived deviance have. I mean has anyone been able to aid with the obvious trust issues that people have in institutions by ridiculing them?
I don't know, the anti-vaxxer discourses have started to wear thin on me, just like the endless laughing at Trump supporters did. They seem to repeat a pattern that is just hard to overlook.
Just wow.
Also dudes talking about the market, which isn't the same as capitalism afaik.
Don't really have a take. These ghouls are discovering the Fediverse it looks like.
I can't even...
Trust the Ghouls to bring fat phobia even to war. This is peak neoliberalism.
Not to mention equating weight with health.
Then again this has come up as a justification of starving Cubans too, more than once.
Are you ready for your stressed out heroin chic body? It's good for you, trust me.
An update on the infamous Milgram obedience experiments reveals chilling results.
Discussion with a lib today and this came up, again. This experiment where people will just kill each other on command and how this in their worldview partly explains why the world is shit.
I was able to explain a bit about the way our surroundings shape us from the moment we come into the world and how this experiment would likely give different result if done in a society less driven like our Western hellscapes, but am not sure if I am talking bs on that. However I think psychology is in general very sus and the way human behavious has been explained by it is also sus, so I just don't buy this.
It becomes a problem when these Late Stage Capitalism Libs use things like this to hate other people and turn this "it is known because science" into misantrophy and nihilism. And it helps them not see any alternatives to the way things are, because if humans are shit then they must be shit in all circumstances. We know this isn't true, just by looking at the societies indigenous peoples had.
So isn't this just another way to use "human nature" as an argument for riding humanity of the cliff and be complicit in it? Is there any critiques of these experiments you know about. Thoughts on the whole Milgram experiment thing? It's very popular lore in the West after all.
I am taking part in a uni course about the Feminist revolution in Iran. The lecturer has been going over the Iranian revolution in 1979 in a very, shall we say, interesting way.
I do not want to discredit their pov on this as I am obviously a Westoid, but the way this is being framed is that before the revolution things were better for women. The lecturer said the revolution happened because people disliked the Shah having more than others, but she did not elaborate this in any way. One would think the complaints of people were pretty big for them to start a revolution? But I know very little about this.
After the revolution women were to have equal rights, but over the next years the dictatorship which is named as Islamic removed them and things like the hijab became mandatory. She stated that people were given false promises and betrayed and this is why the people sided with the revolution. Where does this framing come from? Was it the same people going for revolution that ended up in places of power?
Now my understanding is that the social democratic movement there was destroyed by the West in the 50s and the following twenty+ years under the Shah led to a sort of pseudorevolution that wasn't entirely progressive in nature. Is this correct or wrong?
Also how did the revolutionary force become so deeply conservative? The lecturer told us that before this there was no national religion as such and things like wearing a scarf were personal choices. This was then turned into a mandatory thing starting from workplace dresscode to eventually all public life, however at home people to this day do not follow these norms.
The Women Life Freedom movement is then a result of the way these last decades have eroded all womens rights.
I will include the following questions as well:
If this reactionary tendency in societies is always high, how do we make sure our revolution does not lead to something like this? Or was this all external influence?
If we accept that there always tends to be external influence, what can we do to make sure the reactionary force does not get on top and be in a position to dictate things like womens rights? (I am spesifically thinking of Hamas in Palestine now being the force that is driving change, if they stay in power, won't that easily result in a second Iran when it comes to Islamic nationalism/minority rights?)
How then can we engage in critical support of operators who have a high chance of creating systems of oppression?
Any history on Iran, feminism and ML and other thought very welcome.
Could tell them stories from a country bordering Russia that slightly put to question this "alleged", but what do I know, I'm probably just a Russian troll.
So, going to be taking part in a protest next week against the cuts our right wing gov is pushing. This will be a university protest, essentially a campus takeover that doesn't really take over anything.
The organizers want to do it in ways that doesn't really disrupt classes or cause any real disturbance, but is instead a "statement" on how the students are againts the proposed austerity policy.
This feels very in line with the civilized socdem way that changes absolutely nothing. I will go, but am thinking if there are ways to make this be more effective. Maybe use it as a place to spread the ideas of Marxism?
Currently in a country that is working its way into banning communism, not for the first time.
I have spent some days deep in the rabbit hole of reading the stories of the communist in my country from the beginning of the 1900s up to WW2 and the way they were treated. About all the things that actually happened here that I was never taught in school. Horrible violence.
And I am just so angry. And feel deeply betrayed. And somehow soiled. I have cheered on the war veterans and heroes due to my f'n programming in the past. I have shat on those who this fascist regime left behind on purpose after being fed literal lies about my own history. Pretty sure the other half of my family has literally taken part in the fascicst project here and they always played the victim.
And I have lost the opportunity to listen to my other grandfather who was Red, to really talk to him, ask questions and understand. He is long dead now, when he was still here I probably wouldn't have listened and maybe he was too scared to ever really talk about all that really happened in his lifetime.
I am just angry. And sad. We were absolutely on the wrong side of history and turned it into pride, it's disgusting.
And if I try to mention any of this to the brainwormed people around me they look the other way or roll their eyes. And at the same time spend incredible amounts of time and energy at being outraged with the right-wing government while at the same time advancing Othering and cheering on war. It is literally the same path we were on in the 1930s.
How has an entire country been able to whitewash its own history so completely that almost nobody in it no longer understands what is going on? How has the capitalist class been this succesfull at this.
Just a rant, not going to fall into despair, but boy am I just angry.
Yesterday had a long conversation with a labor aristrocratic family member, age millenial and working in tech.
He announced things like: -China is a horrible Orvellian surveillance state, you (talks to me) have no idea how horrible it is there. Haven't you seen the videos?
I try to cautiously reply that surveillance capitalism is pretty intense in the West as well and that we don't really get good or balanced information from China. He goes:
-So you sayig something like Zero Covid was the right choice?
I am hesitant to reply with a yes as this person is clearly already very fired up and confrontational. But I try to point out things about how nobody in 2020 knew how bad it might and how many will die, how people in the West are still dying, how the virus isn't in any way bening even now and how it's pretty dystopian too that here we are just sacrificing people for capitalism now and choose to ignore it.
I did say I think it was better to save people to which he said that I am a nihilist.
I also tried to explain the State outside the capitalist project and protecting multitudes not individuals, individualism and such, but he was not receiving it.
He then told me how bad the country is as he saw in the Grand Tour how they have built a highway over a rainforest that nobody uses.
I asked him where does he think all the roads and buildings in the West are built if not on top of nature. The argument as critizism of China made no sense to me whatsoever.
Later this same person said to me that we as a society have no hope and there is no point in protesting, no point in doing anything but riding out the rest of our time to climate disaster. I tried to point out to him that a socialist state can be born from capitalism, but only if we the people develop initiative for it and understand our current condition.
Same guy also did admit that voting no longer works, the EU was a mistake and it's grim how all our state systems have been privatized and are now in the hands of corpotations like Microsoft.
Now, I don't even know where to start with this one. He very much represents his part of the population here and the deep apathy and negative thought that they harbor.
He still understands and thinks that the regulated capitalism of the 70-80s here (keynesian) was the best part of our history, but when I told him that it still was always going to lead to fascism and monopolies (told him to read Marx) he ignored this. Very much the "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism" mindset.
And my question is, how do we as communists reach these people? These people actually have power (capital), but the petty bourge status has made them like this. However climate chance does not discriminate so I feel this part of society is facing a new conflict from a historical standpoint where nature says no to exploitation. And this seems to lead to apathy.
