DengXixian [he/him]
Look up the jakarta method for an idea of the process/tactics abroad. Then skim over mkultra and then review cointel pro in more depth.
The left in the imperial core is at a severe disadvantage from the following:
Reason 1. outright active state oppression
Reason 2. decades of assassinations and sheepdogs
few elder leftists that haven’t been either murdered or co-opted into the system
3. Community devastation
the war on drugs, the AIDs epidemic, the mishandling of covid. All of these result in both loss of life and the ability to organize.
4. (almost) everyone in the imperial core benefits from imperialism
This creates a dynamic where dismantling the system would very likely worsen many’s immediate material conditions in the United States. As imperialism continues to “come home”, this force lessons in its influence on suppressing more coherent degrees of class consciousness.
5. Abysmal and broken education system + widespread propaganda through media manipulation
Americans are on the whole now some of the least educated and poorly trained populations of any imperial core country. This benefits the core so will only compound further.
6. Settler-colonialism + systemic racism
The class system in the United States is built upon the genocide of indigenous people, the enslavement of Africans, and the mass theft and privatization of all land in the United States.
This has created a dynamic where the white working class in the United States functions closer to a privileged labor aristocracy and is materially incentivized to lack proletarian consciousness.
On the whole, the white (and especially cishet) working class possesses a petit-bourgeois and reformist consciousness. The colonized peoples of the United States constitutes a more conventional proletariat. This can be seen in the success of black and indigenous liberation movements, and (to a lesser extent) queer liberation movements.
The Amerikan apartheid police state had to respond with overwhelming force to groups like the Black Panthers and even then, they barely managed to overcome them. This necessitated community devastation to heighten alienation and force individualism (see above)
The book Settlers in part outlines this, although it tends to upset white armchair leftists as it is not written in a “respectable” academic tone and it makes a clear case for why any coming revolutions will not be centered white men as the main heroes.
The chauvinism of :reddit-logo: is insufferable and makes even most of “left” reddit unusable. I saw someone call Lenin an opportunist and claim queer rights were “bourgeoisie decadence” in a single comment.
In contrast, Hexbear banning for chauvinism, sectarianism, and bigotry has made this site one of the only functional leftist spaces on the western internet. “Free speech” spaces are an idealist grift that only benefit entrenched power.
The rhetoric and ideas of oppressors, colonizers, and imperialists should be censored.
If leftist westerners trusted the CPC to institute zero covid, then they should also reasonably trust the CPC to wind it down and/or adjust it. China held out as long as they could, but it’s clear they did not win this fight in the global economy.
The US is now taking steps to re-establish productive forces in its own country. Holding out longer would mean disaster for China on a longer timescale.
I’m unsurprised that a Trotskyist website is upset that a communist party is adapting to material conditions. Their ideology is very fixated on orthodoxy.
This should be Deng and not Mao. Extremely lib, chauvinist, and ahistorical to be supporting Krushchev and presenting it as though China should have continued to acquiesce to a revisionist who literally desecrated Stalin’s body.
Deng’s own words on Khrushchev tells us all we need to know on that corn-obsessed traitor to the USSR.
Reporter: And Khrushchev?
Deng Xiaoping: Khrushchev? What good things did Khrushchev do?
Reporter: He denounced Stalin.
Deng: So you think that this was a good thing he did?
Reporter: More than good. I would say holy- for Christ’s sake, more people were killed by Stalin than by the whole of the Cultural Revolution put together!
Deng: I am not sure about that. Not sure at all. Anyhow it’s impossible to make such a comparison.
Reporter: So you prefer Stalin to Khrushchev in any sense?
Deng: I just told you that we shall never do to Chairman Mao what Khrushchev did to Stalin!
Reporter: And what about if I answer that in the West you are called the Chinese Khrushchev?
Deng Xiaoping: ( laughs very loud) Listen, in the West they may call me as they like, but I knew Khrushchev very well, I had to deal with him for 10 years, personally, and I tell you that comparing me to Khrushchev is a stupidity. Khrushchev only did bad things to the Chinese, Stalin instead did something good for us.
Shortly after our People’s Republic was founded, Stalin helped us sincerely in establishing or modernizing the industrial complexes which would serve as the basis of Chinese economy. Of course, such helps were not offered free, we had to pay for them, but, when Khrushchev came to power, everything changed. Krushchev tore up all the agreements between China and the Soviet Union, all the contracts that had been signed during Stalin’s time. Hundreds of contracts- Oh, this discussion is impossible! Let’s do so: You keep your view, I keep mine, and we stop talking about Khrushchev.
Source: Transcript from this 1980 WaPo interview with Deng
:deng-salute:
A GUIDE TO PROFESSIONAL DOUBLE DIPPING
Two-gig veterans have honed their craft over months, or years, on the jobs. Here are their tips for keeping the stress low, the payoff high and the whole thing secret.
• Avoid startups; they expect too much work. Your best bet is an older company that hasn’t quite mastered remote work yet but will let you work from home.
• Don’t start two jobs too close together, lest you find yourself trying to learn the lay of the land at two companies simultaneously.
• Hit that decline button. ‘Just because someone puts a meeting on your calendar in Outlook doesn’t mean you have to take it,’ one double worker says.
• When you do join a meeting, make sure everyone knows it. 'Ask non-questions, restate what someone just said in different wording,’ a post on the Overemployed website recommends.
• Have a story. You’ll want excuses and explanations at the ready for tricky moments. Need to dodge a meeting? Say you need ‘head-down focus time to finish another deliverable,’ Overemployed recommends.
• Stay under the radar. Tap LinkedIn’s privacy settings to shield your profile from search engines or hide your connections. Need an excuse for not updating your profile? You’re worried about hacking and trying not to share too much online.
• Resist overwork. Boss asking too much of you? You can always drop one job and find another—or just take a breather. One double-job veteran is currently on a break, working just one job and pursuing personal coding projects and playing videogames during the workday. ‘It’s great,’ he says. ‘I have so much free time.’
“Why did the chicken cross the road? Well what do you mean by a chicken? And what do you mean by a road? Well, traditionally chickens have been symbols of emasculation- you call someone a chicken, for instance, when they lack courage, which is typically a masculine trait. So if you re examine the problem under that reading- and it’s a strange reading- what you’re left with is quite profound.
(produces a small number of pills from his pocket and then swallows them)
Postmodern Neo-Marxists are attempting to control the “chickens” as they call them, because they don’t have control over their own lives. These moralists have ceded everything to feminine chaos, so they feel the need to have control over the lives of others. They are forcing these poor men- who, let me remind you, they refer to as chickens, to cross roads daily.
This is not something which occurs in a society which is doing well. This occurs in societies which are trending towards total collapse. Many people don’t know this, but chickens were forced to cross roads in the late Roman Empire.
Why does a man who has been stripped of his manhood do anything? Why does he get out of bed every morning (starts crying) to do impossible things for a society that doesn’t value his hard work?
Why would a chicken cross a road- fraught with danger, I mean he could be bloody well run over!- but why does he do that, as a being defined by cowardice? Well I’ll tell you why-
(dramatic pause)
Love. (more crying)”
