My friend (hinduvata, somehow still less racist than most of the other white people I have to be acquaintances with for work purposes) keeps bringing up George Soros and how much he hates him.

Apparently, according to him, Soros helped the nazis during WW2 kill 60,000 jews, and also I am being paid by him.

My question of course is, who the hell is George Soros and why do I keep seeing random right wingers bring him up as if he is the final boss of communism?

So I was browsing reddit out of boredom, and I saw a random post on the hoi4 subreddit and I clicked it without much thought. It was about Chinese players giving bad reviews to the game due to India getting cores for Tibet but not China. I clicked on it due to my masochistic desire to see if anyone else would recognize how stupid it was, and was sorely disappointed.

There were the usual 'muh ccp' jokes there, also shit about 'west taiwan' (ah yes 'I understand history very well'), and then one guy who really caught my attention saying Chinese 'people' (savages) don't matter because they speak a different language from 'us' (the civilized white people). Now granted that isn't the most charitable interpretation, but... like... come on, this is reddit.

Shit like this makes my blood boil. Because libs will go, 'oh we accept everyone!' 'we hate the government not the people!' and drop the most disgusting garbage like this because they're proud little pigs knowing how much propaganda they can fucking shove down their own throats and see an entire race as subhuman. I've always thought reeducation was better than punishment and that a lot of these folks are simply misguided, but jesus christ they're not making it easy for me to suppress the desire to bind them to a rock with metal chains and beat their ribs to pieces with my bare fists and/or a metal bar while screaming "BEG FOR MERCY NOW YOU RACIST SHIT-FOR-BRAINS!"

It gets even more frustrating when it's people you know in real life. I have a trans friend who generally has pretty good takes on stuff like palestine, disabled rights etc, but even he regurgitates the same shit from the state department and about how he'd 'definitely kill xi if he got the chance.'

It's so fucking tiring that these assholes can just turn the 'counts as human' switch on and off whenever they want for whatever race they want and suffer no consequences whatsoever. Really makes me wish I could Diver Down their screens and remind them of the weight of their words by bashing in their pale distorted sweaty reddit faces.

rant over.

The most (or perhaps second most, behind their anti immigration and refugee stance) defining the European far right today seems to be their general pro-russia and pro-trump stance. But now with a possible peace deal underway, I wonder where it's going to go afterwards.

There's of course the most obvious possibility, that the deal goes through and Europe can get back to "normal" per se, thereby engedering parties that opposed the war or sought a deal in the first place. The parties would also possibly be buoyed by the success of Trump in not having the country explode 3 seconds into his presidency.

However, given how negotiations are going and europe bejng cut out, the general lack of incentive for Russia to go back to their previous relationship with Europe, and the fact that the economic policies of the far right are...not great, I wonder if we'll see the opposite effect after a time. If the war ends and even if Le Pen or the AFD or Reform UK come to complete or partial power in some form or another, and conditions dont improve, I wonder if Europeans will actually swing back to the left-left of politics. Communists? Idk, the French are eurocommunists, the British can't figure out what they're doing, and the Germans have they're own suppression of the DKP. But i could imagine Die Linke, Melachon's party and/or some left party in the UK (if Corbyn ever decides to form one) getting some traction.

In any case I dont see the mainstream parties like labour and the spd surviving (good riddance)

Note - Blowback is a ~~leftist~~ Marxist-Leninist-leaning American podcast, that critiques America's mainly 20th century foreign policy forays as the main and later sole most powerful hegemony, and its victim countries

As of now:

S1: Iraq

S2: Cuba

S3: DPRK

S4: Afghanistan

S5: Cambodia

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7056175

Seems every character is a noble or rich dude.

I'm playing Dynasty Warriors Origins. I love the game so far, a return to form for the series. That said, most of the characters are nobles. It's good that the main character is a commoner, of sorts. And Zhang Jiao was clearly commoner. But your sidekick makes a comment about how "Isn't it CRAZY that the Empress is a COMMONER?! Gee, that sure is strange!" and it reminds me that a lot of media nowadays has the ASOIAF / Game of Thrones problem where the main POVs are generally noble or not of humble birth or means. I mean, okay, Dynasty Warriors is based off of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is notorious for this issue, but that was a book from the feudal era of China. I mean, come on, it's not just ASOIAF / Game of Thrones, it's also all the TV shows we have nowadays about rich dudes or rich serial killers.

This is especially true for fantasy novels, even now. Forget bloodlines and mystical mumbo-jumbo, it's not just that. They're literally nobles or some bastard noble. I was in a forum where they outlined all the fantasy nobles that year that came out where everyone was specifically not a commoner (again, it wasn't just the "mystical bloodlines" stuff, it was their very status in politico-societal order). Brandon Sanderson has this problem where the prose and descriptions come off as classist too, despite dealing with the subject of class head-on (I read up to book 3 of The Stormlight Archive and then stopped 'cause the books were taking too long to come out). Classism is just rife, it's not just the racism (and sexism, let's not forget that) or the transphobia (like in Book 5 of A Song of Ice and Fire, near the end).

Granted, some of the novels reflect the "times" that they're set in (like Dynasty Warriors) but I wish we could have a discussion about class representation. Even the BIPOC representative characters seem to be rich at times. And whites are specifically rich in a lot of these tales.

Anyway, I'm working on a guide that I can show you all here (and if you have recommendations for what to add to it, please tell me so I can add stuff).

But that's for specifically communist and socialist and other leftist literature and media.

I now want media or literature that's anti-classist or non-classist in any way at this point.

It's like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate where the majority are sword users (and white and pretty much non-Black).

(Also, again, please tell me what to add to the guide that I'm making through the hyperlink above, kthnxbai)

Okay, but seriously, I can't be the only noticing and I'm going to say that line that's usually not true anyway, but whatever, I'll say it: NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT THIS!!

(There, I said the line, happy now?)

(...Ugh, I hate it when Uyghur genocide believers say that shit.)

(Obvious answer is socialism but I would like more specifics)

Often China, South Korea and Japan are treated as the "big three" of stress and expectations. Between their similar college entrance exams, demanding work schedules and environments, and social expectations for people to work hard and get rich and such.

But looking at suicide rates (which are only one piece of the puzzle of course) China places fairly low, at about 6.7 per 100,000 according to Wikipedia, half of Japan's and nearly a quarter of south korea's. Interestingly this is not just a cultural difference, as the Chinese province of Taiwan reports about 16 per 100,000 people, which is even higher than Japan. It also isn't the just case of a high density population compared to low density like Finland and Iceland, since Japan and the ROK fit this designation as well (as well as India, who has a rate even higher than Japan's)

The obvious answer is socialism, but that's a little broad and not how you actually solve things. Not to mention that cuba has a decently high rate too (although considering their current impoverishment it's not surprising). So what happened specifically? Poverty alleviation sure but that can't be all of it, I don't think so anyway.

(Additional notes and questions

A.The DPRK has a rate of 8, nearly a third of the ROK, suck it fake korea

B.Why is venezuala's rate so low? From the source Wikipedia uses its one of the lowest in the world, despite the generally high poverty and instability

C.Why is Afganistan's so low? Unsure if anyone has a concrete answer to this but I'm curious)

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7054973

Check it out. Video is about 17 minutes long. What do you think?

It loos... 'ight. But honestly, is it fast and does it have the same security as Firefox?

I just don't know anything that tops Firefox, but at the same token, Firefox seems to lag behind in certain features and even the addons/extensions seem limited to Chrome. I don't mind "digital minimalism," but I also just want something that does "everything" well because it seems that hopping onto another browser always seems like a trade-off of some sort.

I see many people commenting that the US is trying to pull a reverse Kissinger, wooing Russia away from China, completely missing the obvious truth right before their eyes: if there's a split happening, it's a Euro-US split.

That's a common flaw in human nature, we're often incapable to conceive that the status quo we've lived with our entire lives has fundamentally changed. We look to patterns from the past, seek to refight the previous war; it's far easier and more comforting to believe you're still in the box even when the box has disappeared.

Russia isn't going to split again from China, there is not a single chance in hell, it learned that lesson the hard way... Putin, as a famously keen student of history, understands how much damage that did.

And why would he? What benefit would Russia possibly derive from this? The world has changed: as we've seen during the Ukraine war the West unleashed its entire economic arsenal against Russia, only to demonstrate its own impotence. Russia last year was Europe's fastest-growing economy even when completely cut off from Western markets. So if the West's maximum pressure amounts to so little, its maximum friendship isn't worth much more.

It's utterly delusional to think that the two torch bearers of the Global South would split just as the emergence of the long sought multipolar order is finally coming true, all in exchange for a return of Western trade which they now know is dispensable, and an end to sanctions which they now know don't hurt much.

Also, kind reminder that Kissinger didn't actually split Russia and China: he took advantage of an already existing split. Geopolitically speaking, it's incredibly hard to split powers - especially great powers, but it's much easier to leverage an existing split. And looking at the landscape, those that are already split - or rather splitting - aren't Russia and China, but very much the U.S. and Europe.

A Euro-US split was bound to happen sooner or later, as the cost of the alliance increasingly outweighed the benefits on both sides. Especially with the rise of the Global South, China in particular, which initiated a profound identity crisis: suddenly you had countries "not like us" being far more successful, taking over an unsurmountable lead in manufacturing, and increasingly science and technology.

At some point there are three choices in front of you: join them, beat them, or isolate yourself from them and slowly decay into irrelevance. The West has been trying the "beat them" approach for the better part of the past 10 years and we've seen the results: an increasingly desperate series of failed strategies that only accelerated Western decline while strengthening the very powers they meant to weaken.

It also tried the "isolate yourself" approach with the various plans of "friend-shoring", "de-risking", "small yard, high fence", etc. That wasn't much more successful and the West undoubtedly sees the writing on the wall: the more you isolate yourself from a more dynamic economy, the further behind you get.

This leaves us with "join them", and here Trump's calculation seems to be that if the U.S. does so first, it undoubtedly can negotiate much better terms for the U.S., much like China did with Kissinger back in the late 1970s when it joined what was at the time still the U.S.-led international order. With Europe, like the Soviet Union back then, left with no choice but to accept whatever crumbs remain.

The situation of course isn't exactly similar. We're outside the box, remember... For one the U.S. isn't remotely in the same conditions as those of China back then and, unlike the Soviet Union, Europe lacks both the military might to resist this new arrangement and the economic autonomy to chart its own course. Which means that in many ways, geopolitically speaking, the U.S. is in better conditions and with more leverage than China had (and therefore able to get itself a better deal), and the EU ends up in worse conditions than the Soviets.

Still, the fundamental reality remains that Trump, for all his faults, seems to have understood earlier than Europeans that the world has changed and he'd better be the first to adapt. This was clear from Rubio's very first major interview in his new role as Secretary of State when he declared that we're now in a multipolar world with "multi-great powers in different parts of the planet".

As a European though, I can only despair at the incompetence and naivety of our leaders who didn't see this coming and didn't adapt first, despite all the opportunities and incentives to do so. They foolishly preferred to cling to their role as America's junior partner, even as that partnership was increasingly against their own interests, something which I've personally warned about for years.

Turns out, strangely, that the Europeans were in fact in many ways more hubristic and more trapped in the delusions of Western supremacy than the Americans. The price for this hubris will be very steep, because instead of proactively shaping their role in the emerging multipolar order, they will now have to accept whatever terms are decided for them.

From @RnaudBertrand

US envoy Kellog assures us that Ukraine will be at the table in the peace negotiations, just not specifically sitting on it 😂

The cool VTOL aircraft.

https://lemmygrad.ml/c/marxistculture

I wanted to find a proper Marxist Leninist instance/community to ask this, because everywhere else people may not care.

I've been slowly moving my close people and even the people I work with to Matrix for messaging, and I have been suggesting that they download Element for it. And for me this is beyond privacy reasons. It's to stay away from Meta, Google, and the like.

But recently I've been doing some digging and Element has been proudly posting about it's work with NATO, US armed forces, and German armed forces. They also have an "ethics" page that clarifies that they don't just work with anyone. For example they said they don't work with countries sanctioned by the US, EU, or UK. They've also mentioned they don't work with governments that have "human rights issues".

I'm feeling very conflicted about this whole thing now and I'm not sure what to do. It might have been even fine and I might have written off Element as a private entity and just switched apps if not for the Matrix Foundation also being closely working with Element, sharing resources, people, and also boosting each other on social media like Mastodon.

I even questioned the Managing Director of the Matrix Foundation on mastodon and they first said they don't see how NATO is imperialistic, then said anyone using Matrix is a good thing because we need to fight "authoritarian enabling Big Tech". Which I agree with if they weren't actively collaborating with said authoritarians.

Please redirect m e if this is not the right place for this.

Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.

☭ Matrix homeserver and space
 ☭ Theory reading group on hiatus, will move to Lemmygrad later this year
☭ Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna's Archive, libgen

I think even us aren't talking about this as much as we should.

Another lovely video by DPRK Explained, about the Rason Special Economic Zone :)

I don't know how this comm works but it seems appropriate for uncategorized stuff