"The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon wholesale massacre, is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar."
- Marx, "The Civil War in France"
There was nothing wrong with nationalism in Britain. It's just that there was something wrong with nationalism in Germany.
I don't see why no one should be allowed to love their country because the Germans mucked up twice in a century.
@DouglasKMurray
at the
#NatConUK
gala
Nice opportunity to remind everyone that the Mark Fisher "vampire castle" essay was all about telling people to stop being mean to Russell Brand, a true spokesman for the working class
I reiterate what I said before: I am no fan of NATO and not all of Putin's complaints are illegitimate (if we accept a geopolitical frame as legitimate to begin with). But that does not entitle him or anyone to revanchist territorial claims and aggressive warfare
@ryanaboyd
90% of so-called 'literary fiction' is garbage and people are absolutely right to prefer reading fantasy, sci-fi, and romance novels, which are generally better even by traditional Bildung criteria
Usher, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Julianne Hough will host competition series ‘The Activist’.
Activists go head-to-head in challenges to promote their causes, with their success measured via online engagement, social metrics, and hosts’ input.
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This analysis by Anatol Lieven is very worth reading. Really paints clearly the incredible duplicity of NATO and the EU in this: promising Ukraine and Georgia lots without intending to ever give it to them or to defend them from Russian retaliation
@athenogenes
@ryanaboyd
what we really need is more novels by elderly academic men about how desperate young women students are to have sex with them while being lectured about Plato. Clearly this is literary in a way Ursula le Guin will never be
Not to stir the pot but imho instead of arguing the US constitution says all sorts of things it doesn't and vice versa, it's a more sustainable and healthy argument to just point out that constitution isn't very good (any more) and should probably be replaced
Amazing how Western sentiment admires antiwar protesters in Russia, but despises them in our own countries. It depicts Palestinian activism as malevolent and discriminatory, but demands loyalty proofs from Russian artists (and others) that nobody in the BDS movement supports!
But this is all they have. The one thing that unites the Revanchist Nerd International is the seething, boiling rage at the (perceived) lack of recognition, power, and cultural prestige they think their genius deserves
All the liberals' super distraught posts about the Trump-Kim summit are interesting to me. It's really remarkable how there's an entire generally well-meaning class of people for whom the history of US imperialism just does not appear on the political radar. No vocab for it.
Sure is mysterious how the 'antisemitism crisis', which disappeared for several months, has returned on every news channel just as Labour is gaining (relatively) in the polls! I sure love media-enabled crass exploitation of a serious topic, especially with enforced credulity
Whenever I read about the 'culture war' I'm reminded of how radical and Whig people in the 18th century UK would make a point of refusing sugar in their tea when offered, because they knew it was produced by slavery. There was even a boycott! None of this stuff is in any way new
Just like with Easter, there is a lot of mythmaking around Christmas. Often it revolves around whether it's a Christian holiday lost to commercialism, or really 'originally' a pagan festival. In historical fact it is neither: modern Christmas is wholly a product of the 19th C.
It's really 'funny' how the Ukraine war has the Ukr nationalists and their Western cheerleaders inching closer and closer to saying "Nazi Germany should have won on the Eastern Front"
It's predictable but still depressing that the Ukraine war has led to a widespread legitimation of atavistic nationalism throughout Eastern Europe, and what's perhaps worse, a wave of naive liberals in Western Europe uncritically applauding it
we must have solidarity with the people of Ukraine who will be the primary victims of this inter-imperialist warmongering. I also do not believe for a second that most Russians want this or will benefit from it in any way.
I hate this disingenuous fallback position journalists use where they suddenly become mere mouthpieces for an 'image' obsessed vox populi they have themselves imagined in the first place
Enver Pasha is working on a plan that would allow Armenian civilians to go to the Syrian desert and from there cross the border to Lebanon or elsewhere. Now that is leadership
Amazing: President Biden is working on a plan with other countries that would allow civilians to safely leave Gaza and cross the border into Egypt. This is great news. President Biden is making sure that innocent people don’t die due to the actions of Hamas. That’s leadership.
As a comrade put it, "the Italian elections demonstrated once more that the safest way for the advance of the far-right is a centre left that implements neoliberal policies"
One big problem for the race-IQ folks is once you remove the cultism of 'we say the forbidden', the actual causal claim loses its allure. The epitome of Forbidden Scientific Knowledge turns out to be the claim: "white people are smarter because it is cold in Europe sometimes".
Definitely blocking anyone who talks about "ZOG", or about "Talmudic" influence, or rants about Jews, or uses "Zionist" in such a way that it's clear they do actually mean Jews. The Palestinian cause is not your alibi for genuine antisemitism
I kinda hope SA survives. Almost everything funny and interesting online came from it; also a huge amount of really bad and nasty stuff happened on it. It's been a very formative experience for lots of people, and I'd hate to see that all lost forever.
It's quite astonishing just how many people capitalism has killed if you counted the same way as people do when they say "but communism has killed XYZ!". A grim exercise either way but at least it'd be honest
A new study came out: An unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths...the first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.
the point being, even at the time Brand was known as a misogynist ass but some people were defending him because he said Authentic Things on TV. And that was his shield for a long time
This is a perfect summary of the main German attitude. Whiny self-pity, vague moral statements that commit to nothing, making everything about German feelings, and all critics have fallen for "Hamas-propaganda", because German intellectuals are never wrong
Dunkle Zeiten. Ein thread in 20.
1/20 Ich habe am 13.11. mit drei Kollegen ein persönliches Statement zu Grundsätzen der Solidarität auf unserer Institutshomepage veröffentlicht, das unsere Haltung zum Anstieg von Antisemitismus seit dem 7. Oktober deutlich machen sollte.
THREAD: I don't know who needs to hear this, but can we talk about how this rhetorical style of posting sucks? It's actually very problematic (I don't like it but won't tell you why) but you're not ready to have that conversation. Do better, <insert gender> (1/273)
I'm not generally an enthusiast for IP law exactly, but there is something odd about how the Internet Archive gets (understandably) dinged for directly sharing IP, but private companies can use the entire internet as input for LLMs without compensation? Is it transformative use?
Hot take: we should merge economics, sociology, and anthropology into a single academic discipline. Everyone involved would hate it, but it'd be good for all of them.
@adamjohnsonNYC
I get this stuff endlessly about Palestine and I always say: do you think oppressing, bombing, and excluding people makes them like their own minorities more? Do you think keeping people under a permanent state of siege makes them more tolerant and free?
In general I think the big difficulty with the 'wokeism is making the young men fash' thing is that most millennial and zoomer men do not, in fact, support the Andrew Tates and Tim Pools e tutti quanti. A general model must account for the whole picture
can't believe im still seeing "buzzfeed feminism pushed young men to the alt right" take in 2022. it's not accurate. the algorithms didn't cut across political boundaries that often, they showed young men the "feminist cringe compilations" before they ever saw a feminist video
In Latvia’s capital Riga, dozens of elderly Russians wait to take a basic Latvian language test, as a proof of loyalty to a country where they have lived for decades. If they fail, they may face expulsion
This is peak Germany. After applauding an anti-mass murder statement jointly made by a Palestinian and a Jewish Israeli filmmaker, the German Minister makes it clear that the applause was only for the Israeli!
Zum Applaus auf der
#B
ärenverleihung nach der Rede von Yuval Abraham: Der Applaus von Claudia Roth galt dem jüdisch-israelischen Journalisten und Filmemacher Yuval Abraham, der sich für eine politische Lösung und ein friedliches Zusammenleben in der Region ausgesprochen hat. 1/2
Btw, just cause people are against Israel and its crimes does not necessarily make them allies. The ultraorthodox in Mea Shearim are misogynist fundamentalists. That War Monitor account is antisemitic fash. Be on your guard against false friends.
Nothing is so guaranteed to get 100k favs here as some post asserting that while the environmental concerns are very important, it is also very important to immediately reject the idea that you, the Western consumer, would, could or should have to do anything at all about it
@lilbabygandhi
my man, I encounter vaguely intrusive homeless people almost every day on Berlin public transport. I have yet to freak out or kill any of them
@NotABigJerk
"parental rights" 100% of the time means "I should have the power to force kids to pretend they're little copies of me, due to my narcissism"
NATO has used Ukraine to gain leverage over Russia, while having neither any regard for Russia's perception of this strategy, nor any contingency for how to resolve the internal conflicts this would cause there. Now they're leaving them hanging. They're no heroes here.
It's always so pathetic when people who were solid leftists have one grievance or conflict or pet topic and then they kneejerk themselves all the way into becoming bitter conservatives or tryhard rightwingers. It's so immature. Have a bit of grip on your own thinking and impulses
The more we learn about Epstein, the more apparent it becomes that the American oligarchy is as degenerate as any aristocracy that ever was, if not more so, and in a most American way
Hot take: there's really no reason to prefer BCE/CE to BC/AD, since the former is as explicitly a Christian reckoning as the latter. If you want a secular, objective count, you have to start it somewhere secular. Maybe the first agrarian settlement found? Or the first writing?