Black Tulip
One of Lemmygrad’s original admins
Marxist-Leninist-Llyrist.
He/Him
May the sea bless you, and may Marxism-Leninism guide you.
- 141 Posts
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if you’re looking for a genre with a large selection of liberal naratives. look no further than the shooter genre. From games like Call of Duty to more obscure titles like “Freedom Fighters” where you fight against a Soviet invasion of New York as a guerilla partisan the genre is drenched in “well achktually communism is when evil and it’s always based to kill them”
Almost every popular shooter that even so much as hints at real-world politics has a strong liberal bias, seeing American “democracy” as the penultimate form of political expression, and taking all of its arguments to heart. The enemies are almost always both foreign and “authoritarian”, to boot.
In games like CoD, Battlefield, etc. the enemies are almost always Russians, and often of the Soviet variety. Even games like the Metro series depict the ideological poles as a “both sides” narrative. The far-right Fourth Reich, literal nazis, are shown to be just as evil and scheming as the “Red Line”, an ML “”“Stalinist”“” faction. (Stalinism in this case following the idea that uncle Joe was a power-hungry tyrant that killed all of his political opponents and personally starved his people for fun)
exterior to shooters, the next genre that tends to have some extremely liberal takes are Real Time Strategy games. Men of War sees the Soviets as an oppressive force, following “soviet waves” propaganda. The Hearts of Iron series is perhaps one of the worst offenders, seeing “Democracy” - being a stand-in for Liberalism - as the one true virtuous ideology. While seeing the “extremes” under a horseshoe theory light. The only real difference between Fascism and Communism in the game is Communism is when hammer and sickle and Fascism is when swastika. Otherwise, the two ideologies function relatively the same, to the point that choosing between them comes down to personal preferences - essentially turning the game into a left or right litmus test. (no surprise the fanbase for the game is littered with Nazis).
If there is one singular game I’d have to say is the most liberal, I don’t believe I could come up with an answer. The entire industry is to its knees in liberalism, to a point that most if not all games have some touches of liberalism in them. And virtually all of the major titles can serve as ideology booklets for pro-capitalist propaganda. The industry is so bad with liberalism that actual Nazi games, such as HP Hogwarts Legacy, still sell well despite online protesting and boycotts.
boy howdy I keep seeing things from people acting as though Russia and China have any real chance of going to war against each other. It really feels like western media is trying to drive a wedge between the two superpowers, and it seems like that starts with convincing westerners that there is already one.
short version of the M&R pact; Soviets needed to buy time to build up resources, knowing war with Germany was inevitable and being led to believe the western powers were going to ignore Germany in Europe. (US, France, and the UK refused to go to war with Germany. The UK’s line on it was “peace in our time”, and they tried to stick to that until the invasion of Belgium in 1940). A source nerd can provide the proper sources for this, I can’t be dicked rn.
According to this article by Grover Furr (not the best person for sources, but it’s a compelling article) the USSR did not invade Poland. Rather they upheld signed and agreed on promises made with Polish representatives, and did so to protect Polish citizens from Germany’s oppressive rule. The USSR also armed and aided Polish freedom-fighting groups and after the war returned their sovereignty to their rightful control. Germany invaded, the Soviets liberated.
Also if we need to come up with justifications for the invasion of Poland, the Polish government was leading genocide and harassment against the ethnic Ukrainians whose legal territory was wrongfully given to the new Polish state by the western powers following WWI in the breakup of the German state. The USSR’s “invasion” of eastern Poland ended that.
this was no doubt made by a white cis-male who was born between 1995 - 2005, who has never researched political science and only has the confidence to make these videos because fellow losers told him he was right.
digging further, I’m right on them being a cis-male and might be right about their age. They have an accent that is slightly different from one you might find in the UK, so they must be from the commonwealth. That can be narrowed down to either Australia or New Zealand, and my money would be on the latter. They seem to hold radical liberal views and unless they’re taking the piss out of their own political position, this video would imply that they see themself as a centrist. They also compare Marxist-Leninists to Nazis in multiple videos and have a video titled “Tankie Stupidity” with a thumbnail with strawman saying for MLs. As well, they believe that “communist countries do not exist”.
It is disgusting to me that most people have no idea that European business leaders - notably the ones in England - strongly supported the south. Further, it upsets me that most people don’t know that workers demonstrated and held strikes to force their bosses to stop supporting the southern war effort.
The US civil war was not a self-contained conflict, it was not just a concern to the United States. Every nation that benefitted from US products was involved in the southern war effort in some way, even if their governments officially supported the north or banned slavery. Hell, Brazil celebrated the confederates, and used fleeing confederates to colonize parts of Brazil. There are STILL pro-confederacy festivals in Brazil.
piggybacking to remind people that the far-right only gains traction when they’re reposted.
Principled Marxists might not be swayed from their solid ideological ground when clowning on fascism, but new leftists can be. Especially the new leftists who’re within the scope of far-right propaganda (white, cis male, teen-20s) who haven’t yet fully embraced Marxist ideology. As well, reposting hateful content harms the communities the content is harmful towards. Marginalized people don’t usually want to see posts that were written against them, even if the post was reposted to make fun of it. The result of the “shit x says” communities could be repulsing those comrades. (note, communities like “Shit Liberals Say” are more annoying than harmful and are excluded from this statement, I’m talking about things like “Shit Fascists Say”)
If we’re going to share screenshots of fascist posts or redistribute fascist memes, we need to mark them NSFW and members need to be in the comments explaining why the content is harmful. If we fail to do our due diligence LG could become a leftist ➔ patsoc/nazbol pipeline, we don’t want that.
I have argued this for years, but a lot of people don’t like to hear it.
at its most basic, all the separatists wanted was freedom from the imperialistic core, which stole their resources and pushed for legislation that made their worlds more dangerous. If we were to bring this into the real world, the separatists could represent the third world, and the core could represent the western first world.
Like, sure, the CIS was heavily funded by banks. but the politics of the star wars galaxy don’t pair 1:1 with our politics, and they were quite literally waging an anti-imperialist war against a deeply corrupted political elite who used a cult of space wizards to carry out their bidding, then utilized the equivalent of a child slave army for crushing resistance.
Yes, Palpatine manipulated the situation, but the CIS would’ve happened without him. Palpy simply abused a long-rooted problem of the republic to make the inevitable war happen the way he wanted it to. Without him it still would’ve happened, and there are good odds the CIS could’ve won. They’re only the “bad guys” because Palpatine needed them to appear that way, so republic citizens would support the rise of the empire and the dawn of space fascism. Remove Palpatine, and the outcome for the galaxy would’ve likely have looked a lot more like a decentralized confederation that allows the rim worlds to flourish, while levelling the playing field between the core and the rim.
(also the added actual lore of the only race that came anywhere near communism was in the CIS)
The issue with the logic of “converting” people on the western left is that as people learn about leftism, their sources lean away from our viewpoint. Thus enrooting anti-communism within the core of their views. If we want people to come around to our view, they either have to get here on their own or we have to get to them before the counter-revolutionary left can.
With the existence and popularity of “pan-leftism” the latter is virtually impossible at scale. There is no “converting”, only screaming at a screen in the hopes that one person out of 100 listens. And in the communities where anti-communists hold the power, there is no “converting” because our voices are actively removed.
In most cases, it doesn’t matter how many times you explain the living conditions of the USSR or debunk anti-communist propaganda. Western leftists would rather death-grip onto anti-communism than ever budge an inch to a “tankie”. Those who end up on that side of the left are essentially forced to educate themselves and radicalize out of the tarpit of “pan-leftism”.
edit; an additional point to “educate themselves”
Often those who fail to leave said tarpit end up going so deep into it that they make their anti-communism a concrete part of the ideals. This has the effect of either making them a permanent anti-communist anti-capitalist (better known as an individual who knows what is needed but refuses to do anything to achieve it), or they leave anti-capitalist ideology and drift back to the right wing. The former often taking the monicker of “post-leftist”, and the latter often being referred to as “social-democrats” in the best case, or altogether falling into Fascist ideology blocks (as anti-authoritarianism in the US is deeply rooted in the Nazi movement. If you are anti-authoritarian but not anti-capitalist the likelihood is very high that you’ll spend time in Free-Market Libertarian spaces - an ideology that took the hatred of the American Nazi movement, but removed the desire for a strong government). “Pan-Leftism” can, effectively, function as a pipeline for young people to have their valid anger distorted against them, pushing them back into supporting the system that created the things they radicalized into the left in the first place.
You can not convince these people to read Marx unless they choose to, because these spaces are filled with people telling them to read anti-Marxists, or worse telling them that reading is “ableist” and therefore not something they should do. You can not convert from Pan-Leftist spaces, at best you can only hope to find people who want to know about the things those spaces refuse to talk about honestly, and help them radicalize.
Poland claimed the US told them it was a cruise missile, but according to a twitter post the US has denied this
The remains of the explosion don’t line up, at all, with the pattern left by a cruise missile. Rather it looks much more like a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile, which have crash-landed in Poland before during the course of this war - mind you they’re being used by Ukraine, not Russia (who prefers to use more sophisticated means for taking down Ukrainian aircraft)
What seems to be happening is a conservative Polish tabloid has baselessly accused Russia of targetting a civilian target in Poland, and NATO-aligned news sources have ran with the story. This isn’t unlike DailyMail claiming Covid started in China because “evil yellow man eat bat”
There are a few means of distorting your voice for anonymity, but a sophisticated enough algorithm can reverse anything you try. The most secure thing you can do is to blend things, pitch your voice, add audio distortion, use multiple samples, shift accents / cadences / ways of speaking, change modulation at random points in the audio, etc. If you’re trying to evade the government they will eventually figure it all out, but your average schmuck will probably never get a fully clean audio out.
the radio in the store my gf works in plays war updates every hour on the hour. Also every time I ask alexa for news from Russia it tells me about Ukraine.
it seems most discussion on it has died down a little on MSM, but they’re still talking about it and the liberals still haven’t fully shut up about it.
seared salmon with alfredo.
Literally, nothing is better to me than that.
My second favourite, for whatever odd reason, is white rice with brown gravy with tilapia. My mom would make it for me when I was a kid. Now that I’m an adult and I know how to cook (my mom was a garbage cook) I make it a hell of a lot better. But all around it just gives me so much nostalgia.
apparently its founder was outed as a Nazi
Since the 90s NATO’s doctrine has become increasingly focused on counter-insurgency, favouring decentralization of military leadership, weapons and technologies that favour attacking cells rather than fronts, etc.
This explains NATO’s complete failure to get a win in Ukraine.
NATO is in the process of retooling to better meet the challenge of Russia and China, this is most evident in the US and the UK. And of those two, it’s far more evident in the former. If Russia had waited just another year or two the war in Ukraine would be going differently.
Though we also have to mention, prolonged states of war are highly profitable to the military-industrial complex. 20 years of Afghanistan made a small handful of people billions of dollars, they like when conflicts get drawn out. The longer a military needs to be supplied, the longer the warmongers get paid. If all of NATO’s conflicts ended today, the entire military industry would collapse under its own weight.
The genocide of Palestine can’t and won’t end until the MIC is dismantled, the same is/was true of the genocide in the Donbas and of the war on terror.
Military spending being so high isn’t for the production of weapons, it’s so oligarchs can get paid.
Word of mouth is the easy answer.
Social media might censor most discussions on the revolution, but there are still plenty of places online where people can discuss these things. Also the most likely source for a person to learn about revolutionary demonstrations (or what have you) is an irl comrade.
The purpose of the phrase “The revolution will not be televised” is media will not publicise the revolution, nor market it, nor control the narrative on it. The revolution will be undeniably proletarian, undeniably our voices, and undeniably happening. At the same time, they will try to distort the revolution, they’ll keep the masses from seeing the status quo’s response. They’ll publish hit pieces against the leaders. They’ll bend the aims to be as unapproachable as possible. The revolution on television will not be the revolution in the streets.
The television will try to convince viewers that people peacefully marching in the streets to make themselves heard are violent looters. The television will spend too much time likening the revolutionaries to thugs, gangsters, and the sort. The television will say and do what it must to make old white voters terrified of accepting the voices of the oppressed. The revolution will be on TV, but it will not be televised.
This was true in the 2011 OWS protests, and 9 years later it was even more true during the 2020 BLM protests. What MSM has control over made sure people were more aware of looters, squatters, and the shady sort. They were only accurately documented in the places MSM has little grasp of. Which is why streams and Twitter posts were so important two years ago, and Facebook was so important in 2011. The revolution will not be televised, but it will be live-tweeted and twitch streamed. It will be on Reddit and Tumblr. This is one of the reasons decentralizing the internet is so important, all of those mentioned websites actively censored the BLM protests. Lemmy, Utreon, Mastodon, and others would never.
The answer depends on what you want out of defence.
Just be aware that travelling with a firearm could get you in trouble, and if the police search your vehicle at any time, the firearm could be grounds for them to take further actions against you. esp if you’re a minority.
Any 9mm pistol will do you just fine. They tend to be compact enough to be kept in a convenient place, have decent compacity, and the ammunition is plentiful. The hubbub about “stopping power” is unscientific “fudd-logic” hogwash, there’s little reason to go for anything more than 9mm unless you’re expecting to be shooting at people in armour vests… which is very unlikely in your case. If you’re 21 or older you can own a pistol, if not then I guess I’ve gotta suggest a long gun.
If you’re looking for a rifle, there are many options. my suggestion would be something that either folds or disassembles. Like a Kel-Tec SU16, a Ruger 1022 breakdown rifle, an AR-7, etc. .22lr is the best round to go with as a beginner on a budget in my opinion, but the round you go with should be your preference. You’re not likely going to be shooting passed 50m or against armour in a self-defence situation so you don’t really need an intermediate or a full-size cartridge.
For shotguns, I’d recommend a break-action or the shortest pump action you can find within your budget (the shortest legal length is 26in with an 18in barrel). 12g can be difficult for beginners, but it provides the shooter with a lot more options in terms of ammunition load.
mind you, I’m suggesting small or folding firearms because size is a big factor when you’re living in a vehicle. The smaller the firearm, the less space it takes up. and the less space it takes up, the more comfortable you can be within the space.
Every politician linked to the tiktok ban invests in facebook and google.
Every single one of them.
I know this doesn’t add much of value to this thread, but fuck it needs to be said more. It’s not about any of the things they’re talking about, the ban is for money.
Also the ban (as i understand it) isn’t so much about tiktok, but is moreso a ban on anything the government doesn’t like in the digital & tech sectors. I.E. a legal means to push out foreign and startup competition so the monopolies can make bigger profits.