I don’t just mean outrage or regular rage, I mean shock that someone was to the left of “legal weed and free college but only for those that operate a successful business for 3 years in a disadvantaged community” top-cop takes.

I think federating took them by surprise, looking back. For about a week, those smug liberals were at a loss to even fathom what Hexbears were saying, and could only chant bullshit about how we’re Russian/Chinese bots.

Sure they still do that but they’ve slightly adapted to Hexbear presence.

    • CaptFeather@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Thanks! I’ll definitely look up the Jakarta Method. Can you clarify about Allende, though? What does the massacre have to do with democratic socialism? Everything I could find talked about how the US DEA put it’s grubby paws on them and upset the cartels

      • I’m just going to toss out a relevant excerpt from The Jakarta Method:

        This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: “Who was right?”

        In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?

        Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington.

        Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported – what the rich countries said, rather than what they did.

        That group was annihilated.

        I would also suggest Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth which we happen to be reading right now in Hexbear’s book club. We’re a couple chapters in already, but it’s a slow schedule so easy to catch up for anyone interested. (Thanks to @Othello@hexbear.net for cluing me in on it).