Do you know where this quote is from? I’m having a hard time finding it, but would love to read more.
Edit: Found the source right after typing this haha. It’s “Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate” by Jean-Paul Sartre. Here is a PDF. It’s on Page 13 of the book (Page 36 of the PDF)
If you’re interested in something fun, there’s an old blog post about how terrible the Thieves Guild questline is:
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=14422
It’s a bit long, but I think it’s very entertaining. Deep dive into every single plot hole, and nonsensical story beat.
I mean, what is competition? The entire point of a competition is that someone wins, and someone loses. When the entire structure is a competition, then if enough time passes most participants will have lost, and only one will stand victorious. The concept of free market competition will always end in monopoly, and every anti-trust mechanism is just a way to slow this down, not an actual solution. Capitalism will never create a solution to this either, as monopoly is the logical goal of capitalism. When monopoly exists, the capitalists have the most power. Of course capitalism will benefit the capitalists. It would be weird if it didn’t.
Yeah I agree. I don’t think he’s fully had a change of heart or anything, but the potential shame that he undoubtedly feels right now, might eat at him enough to eventually actually have a change of heart.
An example - that is of course much much much less serious than this - is when I was a teenager, and acted like a smug prick towards some friends, and acted like I was much smarter than them. They (rightfully) called me out, and while I was initially defensive, the shame of it made me realize that I had in fact been wrong, and when I made my second apology to my friends, I actually truly meant it. They accepted it, and I no longer behaved that way. Shame is a tool, and it can work wonders. However, if I had just apologized, and then continued to act this way, they should of course not have accepted it.
My point is just that shame can actually make people change, and if the person in question actually does change in their words, and their actions, then it is a good thing to, maybe not accept, but to acknowledge the apology. Reason I say acknowledge is that no one is required to just “accept” a person that has slighted them, I just mean in the societal sense, it’s good that people are afforded the opportunity to change.
It’s actually not named that originally in Danish. It’s named “Under Sandet”, which means “Under The Sand”. I think this title is a little bit more poetic, and less on the nose than “Land of Mine” hahahha. Just some context, if you’re interested.
The detached vibe is just a personality trait that he actually kinda has a hard time with himself. He’s said in multiple podcasts that people often find him rude the first time he meets someone, and his friends has to clarify that he’s really nice to the people he just met. He just has a hard time focusing on being actively engaged due to the way his ADHD manifests. Watch him on Sad Boyz with Jarvis Johnson and Jordan Adika if you’re interested.
Early piracy was just so fun. Like I’m glad that it’s more simple, and accessible now, and that you are less likely to use your dial-up internet to download a virus over 3 days… But, it was so exciting lmao. Like it felt like you were stepping into some underground club that no one knew about - even though you were a 12 year old nerd with no prospects of a girlfriend in the near future hahahaha. But it was really fun, and it helped me learn to like problem-solving, and the idea of piracy, and open-source software def also helped me develop some ideas about the world around sharing, and stuff.
Anyway I think that’s enough gushing about that hahaha, just wanted to indulge in my nostalgia for a minute.
I kinda miss the days of pirating a movie, burning it to a disk, and then popping it into a DVD player. Like it’s objectively more convenient now, with Jellyfin/Emby/Plex media servers that can stream to any device in your home, but it has lost some of the analogue charm of feeling like a hackerman dressed like Neo when you gave a friend or a family member a DVD with sharpie writing on it, and them thinking you were some tech genius lmao.
I remember some software where you could include like a custom DVD menu, where you could press chapters and subtitles and stuff before starting the film, and thinking I was the coolest person in the world when I showed my friends hahahha. Ah good times. Thanks for the nostalgia trip.
You are right that he wrote about it, but it was in his book To Kill A Nation, and not Against Empire. Here is the direct quote from the book:
As the war dragged on and NATO officials saw press attention drifting toward the contrary story—namely that the bombing was killing civilians—“NATO stepped up its claims about Serb ‘killing fields,’” notes the Wall Street Journal.2 Widely varying but horrendous figures from official sources went largely unchallenged by the media. Support for the bombings remained firm among Clinton supporters in Congress (including the one professed “socialist,” Bernard Sanders [Ind.-Vt.]), and among self-described humanitarian groups such as Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, and Concern Worldwide, along with “peace” groups, and various NGOs—many of whom seem to have convinced themselves that NATO was defending Kosovo from a holocaust.
Just searched through my copy of both Against Empire and To Kill A Nation to make sure 
I have all of it, and I will never share with any of you 
I just like to listen to Welcome To Night Vale while trying to fall asleep 
Ah I see. I just wanted to make sure that it wasn’t some specific thing that I wasn’t aware of. I appreciate the answer, thanks!
Can anyone educate me on what Spiritual Bypassing is, and how it relates to White Supremacy? I’m from a quite secular place, so I can’t say that I often experience people even being spiritual at all, so this is a blind spot for me. I Googled it, but could only find vague explanations on using Spiritualism to dismiss things. I’m aware of all the other concepts, so figure I might as well educate myself on the one I’m not aware of.
I think it’s fun to make very socialist comments in subs that are very much not socialist, but like not use any socialist words, and then get a lot of upvotes from people who would call me a tankie in a heartbeat if they realized. I don’t think I’m changing anyone’s mind btw, I don’t think I’m doing anything important, I just think it’s funny to write one of those a couple times a month lmao.
I also just need some outlet to disagree with libs on the internet, as lots of sorta-libs-who-don’t-follow-politics surround me irl, and I don’t want to be that guy to them, as they are my friends. It’s also just fun to practice arguments at random people, so you can see what works, and what doesn’t without any real consequence. There are people I actually want to convince in real life, might as well prototype my arguments when I can.
Also it’s entertaining to yell at fascists. Like yeah, I should touch grass, but Redditors being mean to me doesn’t really bother me, so it’s not like I’m losing anything doing it. It is nice however to have this place, where I can go to relax a bit, if I don’t feel like having /r/europe people in my replies.
Yeah… why do we do that? Like why do I literally forget completely that I wrote a shopping list. It’s so consistent
I appreciate the kind words, thank you. Might as well use my experience with Social Democracy for something, because it always bothers me when people think it’s the solution.
The problem with dictionaries is that they describe the popular use of a word, not necessarily the academically correct one. I only used the dictionary because it was honestly too easy to do a gotcha there.
A great example of dictionaries being “wrong” is the word “factoid”. A factoid originally is a popular piece of information that is actually incorrect or false - a popular lie. Now the word factoid is in many dictionaries described as being “an insignificant or trivial fact”, which is like, the exact opposite of the original meaning of the word. I’m 100% sure that in certain universities, I would be marked down for using “factoid” as “fun fact”, even though dictionaries seem to think this is fine.
The original meaning of the word Social Democrat was a heavily discussed topic even in the beginning of the Soviet Union. After WW2, it was even popular within Socialist/Communist circles to call SocDems, “Social Fascists”, as the enabling of the SocDems in Germany (SPD) helped the Nazis attain power, since they positioned themselves against the rest of the “left”. SocDems will always rather align themselves with capital, rather than the “actual left”, because the entire ideology reinforces capitalism. The reason people are mad at you here, is that SocDems have historically, every single time, helped the fascists rather than the socialists when push comes to shove. It’s the reason for the quote “Social Democracy is the moderate wing of fascism”. Now you can disagree with that last part, but this is history. Schumacher did betray the socialists. And he always would have, because Social Democracy is a capitalist ideology, which is why Marxists refuse to let them call themselves socialists. You cannot believe in capitalism, and socialism at the same time. They are opposites.
DemSocs on the other hand, are Reformist Socialists. They are who the dictionaries should actually refer to. They are the people who believe that a peaceful reformist transition from capitalism to socialism is the way to go, even though it has never worked. They believe that if you just vote hard enough, the capitalists will just let the poor take away their power. I don’t actively dislike them, but I think it is very very naive.
Marxists are usually Revolutionary Socialists, who believe in revolution as a way to make change. This has worked several times in history, and there are several countries in the world right now that still exist after a socialist revolution, and are doing as well as you can considering that the entire western world is sanctioning them.
Marx hated Social Democrats btw. When one of the founding figures of the ideology does not think that a Social Democrat is a socialist, then I dunno what to tell you.
In short, the dictionaries are wrong. In an academic setting those definitions would be rejected instantly. People just do not understand what these ideologies are, so they use the words the wrong way. These words get used the wrong way enough, and the dictionaries will change to fit, as that is what dictionaries do. But the original meaning, that is part of the books that many of us read about these subjects, do not match with the dictionaries. If you referred to dictionary definition in a Political Science class, you would not pass, I assure you.
Social democracy, noun
a democratic welfare state that incorporates both capitalist and socialist practices
So, uh, capitalist, according to Webster. It is very funny to say “I totally know the difference between SocDem and DemSoc”, and then go on to not know.
However, I’ll write something up here. I’m from Denmark, a SocDem country. The current prime minister is Mette Frederiksen of the Social Democrat party. We are almost at SocDem as you can get.
This Social Democracy of Denmark formed around the time of the Soviet Union starting to get more influential, as the capitalists of Denmark found themselves needing to provide concessions to the working population, since an example of better worker rights was right next door. This was the birth of Social Democracy in Denmark. It expanded to have free healthcare, education, and a pretty strong social safety net. Now these things are of course nice for the people living in Denmark, however the second that the USSR fell, austerity started happening. I cannot remember a time in the last 20 years where the government wasn’t trying to “save money”. Now our healthcare system is crippled, education is getting defunded, and social safety is the same.
The only reason that the capitalist class of Denmark gave the concessions they did, was because the Soviet Union was next door. This is the reality. The capitalists will never give you anything, unless their security is threatened. To be a Social Democrat, and rejecting revolution as a concept, is to just play into what capitalists want. Social Democracy is just another way to preserve capitalism. It’s not a solution, it’s a band-aid for a bullet wound - might stop the bleeding for a bit, but it sure as hell will get infected if it’s not treated properly. At best it’s harm reduction, at worst it’s a detriment to the rights of the working class.
I’m not even getting into the exploitation necessary to uphold Social Democracy, and some of the other more icky elements of the ideology. I’m just giving you an example of what has happened to every single Social Democracy currently. I understand that it’s nice to think about, but I promise you that it’s not the solution to the problem.
The DemSocs at least have a problem with capitalism, however while their insistence on pacifism, and reform sounds very nice, it has literally not worked once in history. Not a single time. One of the only time it got close was with Allende in Chile, and the US fucking killed him, because you cannot fight empire with just words. I’m sorry, but that is the truth. You need to be able to fight counter-revolution, sabotage, sanctions, threats, war, espionage, etc. You cannot do this within the system that is funding all those things. You have to move away from capitalism entirely, suddenly, and forcefully, otherwise you will be crushed.
Call me a tankie if you want, I don’t care. But if you are going to call me this, at least tell me why. Tell me what part of what I just wrote is wrong.
Oh I just found it 10 seconds before you answered, but I really appreciate the help!