#Socialist Equality Party

[lilithism1848]

[axvoter]

Blatantly Partisan Party Review IX (NSW 2023): Group K (Oscar Grenfell / Socialist Equality Party)

Prior reviews of the Socialist Equality Party: federal 2013, federal 2016, federal 2019, federal 2022

What I said before: “Simply put, the SEP are the cranks of the Australian socialist space. That’s saying a lot given some of the weird units out there too. The SEP are still ranting that all other left-wing parties and trade unions, including other socialist parties, are on the ‘pseudo-left’. It’s tedious and childish. Just because you have minor ideological disagreements does not mean everyone else is some stooge of global capital.” (federal 2022)

What I think this year: The SEP failed to retain federal registration when parliament raised the membership threshold from 500 to 1,500 members, leading to a comical sequence of events detailed in my federal 2022 review. They did, nonetheless, run grouped independents at the federal election: in NSW, these were Max Boddy and Oscar Grenfell. Both of them are back for the NSW state election. Boddy is standing as an SEP-endorsed independent in the seat of Bankstown, while Grenfell leads a two-candidate SEP-endorsed ticket in the upper house. You need 15 candidates in a group to get a square above the line, so obviously this SEP tilt at office (like all their tilts at office) is a non-starter. They are whinging that they don’t get the SEP name on the ballot because of NSW’s “anti-democratic electoral laws”, when if they simply had 13 more friends they’d get an unlabelled square above the line and if they could sign up 750 members they would be able to get their name on the ballot. If they truly were a party of the workers, 750 would be no problem.

Anyway, the SEP is the most disagreeable wing of socialism in Australia. If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you know I think they are petty and narrowminded, habitually condemning everyone else for even the slightest disagreement. The hubris of their rhetoric is in inverse proportion to its persuasiveness. If you want a socialist option in NSW, go with the Socialist Alliance rather than this bilious not-a-party.

Also, predictably, the SEP’s rhetoric about the war in Ukraine is “look what you made me do” bullshit sympathising with Russia. Indeed, Grenfell claims in the above-linked article that this is a “US-NATO war against Russia”, which is so comical even the most craven Putin apologist would surely blush. It seems strange to me to need to reiterate to some on the left that sovereign states can freely choose their memberships of international organisations, and these choices do not justify military assaults, not even from Russia. But it seems some remain wedded to “the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and my enemy is always the US”, or to blindly supporting Russia as if the Soviet Union never collapsed. Yawn.

Recommendation: Give Group K (Oscar Grenfell / Socialist Equality Party) a weak or no preference.

Website: https://www.wsws.org/en/special/pages/sep/australia/home.html

[confusedgoldenflower]

The Free and Equal debate when landback came up.

Everyone: land back. Ppl hurt. Land back. Land back.

Jasmine: here’s what it means, I got a native vp, I’m hosting a PANEL of INDIGENOUS ppl for CREATE this policy. If you want in, hit me up

[faithslayer202]

I thank @socialismforall for giving a shoutout for Green Socialist Organizing Project which me, Garret & Chris are helping build the Green Party into a Mass Membership Party.

Please do share, we could use new people into the cause like for helping create video clips!

Accounts to reach me out too:

Facebook: (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100012525635124)

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Twitter: (https://twitter.com/Faithslayer202)

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Discord: (Faithslayer202#9316)

Examples of what videos were crafting for Green Socialist!

CLIPS: Ecosocialism 101 Session 2 (2022):(https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDTC9USV5d-FJB9d1XTJxl1Vt-Z-SepKe)

[nuadaargetlamh]

One is a convicted criminal that wants to institute a dictatorship “on day one only” (with majority support from his party!), would give a greenlight to Project 2025, use a weakened Schedule F to install THOUSANDS of cronies, was just given immunity for “official acts” (what counts as “official”? whatever his Project 2025-instituted judges want, of course), wants to institute military tribunals for his enemies (and allies!), will 100% support Russia in wiping Ukraine off the map, will use the combo of the removal of the Chevron deference/the Supreme Court allowing people to openly bribe them/Schedule F to extend the far-right’s reach into every government agency and deregulate everything to the benefit of his rich capitalist buddies, has already taken away so many freedoms from racial minorities/queer people/women/anyone-that-isn’t-a-rich-white-man that it would take hours to list them all in this post, and so so so so SO MUCH MORE.

The other is a typical neoliberal politician.

Remember also, you’re not just choosing a president, you’re choosing their cabinet, potential Supreme Court justices, federal employees as well. With Project 2025 ALONE, Trump would do so much more damage than just what he can do himself. That’s not including everything else his Federalist Society Supreme Court would and have given him on a silver platter.

Project 2025 really deserves a part to itself just to list some of what it includes: complete abortion/contraceptive ban (no exceptions), destroying worker’s unions and protections, remove Social Security/Medicare/Affordable Care Act, eliminate the ENTIRE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, end civil rights protections in government, ban teaching the history of slavery, remove climate protections while gutting the EPA, end equal marriage and enforce the “traditional family ideal”, use the military to gun down protests, mass deportation of legal immigrants (especially Muslims), ending birthright citizenship, pack the lower courts, and plenty more. The far-right wasn’t able to take full advantage of Trump’s presidency the first time since it was so unexpected. They’re preparing so that they won’t make the same mistake again. THERE ARE OVER 900 PAGES OF POLICIES AND PLANS THAT THEY ABSOLUTELY WILL IMPLEMENT IF THEY WIN. READ IT.

Not to mention, if you care about Palestine (like I do, a lot), Trump would be MUCH WORSE for Palestine than the other candidate, supporting Bibi going “from the river to the sea” and already cut off millions in aid to Palestine in 2018 (which Biden reversed!). If you support a free Palestine and don’t vote blue, you have categorically hurt them more than if you did. There is no quick and bloodless peace deal that both Palestine and Israel would ever agree to. The road to an end of the Palestine-Israel conflict is going to be long and difficult, probably decades of dedicated de-radicalization in both states, and will involve far more than one person’s decisions in the end. Unless Trump takes power, and avoids all that by sending enough bombs to turn the Gaza Strip into dust.

There are a few reasons you would choose to vote third party in a FPTP system (support ranked choice voting btw) or not vote “in protest” while ignoring all the state and local elections that affect your area more than the president. Either you’re privileged enough to not be affected by what Trump would bring, you’re ignorant of the consequences, or you care more about doing nothing perfectly rather than doing something, anything that isn’t 100% ideologically “pure” to fight against the far-right fascist movement.

Every voter that still supports Trump is energized by every cruelty he enacts, while thousands of Democrats care more about purity tests and manifesting socialist revolution tulpas than avoiding a fascist dictatorship.

Have a brain, touch grass, and vote blue all the way down that fucking ballot.

[jewish-sideblog]

Clearly, y'all don't care about Jews, and the fact that Hamas is violently antisemitic doesn't seem matter to any of you. So let me go with a new approach, of equal truth and value. Hamas is violently anti-Palestinian.

This past week, Hamas attacked evacuation routes and prevented Gazan citizens from fleeing an active warzone. [1]

They did that because they routinely use Gazan civilians as human shields. Hamas intentionally builds military targets close to schools, hospitals, and mosques, putting soft targets in the way of both incoming and outgoing fire. Hamas encourages Gazan civilians and children to stand on the roofs of buildings they know the IDF is targeting. [2]

Hamas has refused to allow elections in Gaza since 2006. Not just Palestinian National Authority elections, mind you. No open elections for any office have been held in seventeen years. Palestinian rights to free elections and self-determination have been denied by Hamas. [3] (And good luck to anyone who tries to blame that on Israel, because elections were held by the PNA in the West Bank in 2012, 2017, 2021 and 2022. It's Hamas's intention alone to purge democracy.)

Hamas's track record on human rights is appalling. Palestinian prisoners in Gaza face unfair trials and death sentences after being tortured by police. Palestinian women are prevented from accessing the legal systems to escape domestic abuse situations. Political dissidents in Hamas, even ones who merely support the other half of the Palestinian government, have been summarily executed. [4] [5]

Peaceful organizers in Palestine protested Hamas's massive tax hikes in 2019. Hamas security forces responded by assaulting demonstrators, tracking them down, raiding their homes, and detaining them. And, as previously mentioned, prisoners in Gaza are not treated well by Hamas. [6]

Edit Nov.5, 10:30 PM: I forgot to add arguably the most important thing-- Hamas manipulates the humanitarian aid they receive away from helping Gazans and toward killing Jews. 5% of Hamas's budget actually gets used for humanitarian aid, while 55% goes to military use. Construction equipment intended to rebuild Gaza's crumbling infrastructure is used to build a complex series of underground tunnels. Those tunnels in turn are used to smuggle Iranian military equipment into the country. They were also used for human trafficking in the October 7th attacks. [7]

If you actually want Palestinians to be free, you can't just replace Israel with Hamas. But it's not like they're the only option for supporting Palestinian liberation. While Fatah doesn't have an immaculate historical track record, it now operates as a leftist, democratic socialist, secular Palestinian government that fights for a two-state solution. Similarly, Arab-Israeli political parties like the Hadash-Ta'al coalition support leftist, anti-Zionist, and two-state solutions from within the Israeli parliament.

You can and should support Palestinian liberation movements that abuse neither Jewish nor Arab human rights and dignities. Plenty of them exist out there. But if y'all continue to throw your weight behind an antisemitic and anti-democratic terrorist regime, Palestinians and Jews will both take note of exactly where you stand.

[uboat53]

You know, we talk a lot about the problems with the Republican Party as if they're entirely caused by the MAGA crowd, but we don't talk often enough about the issues with the non-MAGA Republicans who "grudgingly" vote for Trump.

One of the things I see over and over again is these type of Republicans hand-wringing about how they think Trump has poor character, but Biden/Harris has/have equally poor character and, if you ask them for examples of this, they'll talk about things like the expansion of government power or socialist economic policies.

If you want to know what is wrong with the Republican Party today, it's that even the Republicans who haven't yet drunk the Trump Kool-Aid cannot tell the difference between an issue of character and an issue of policy. Character is someone's core, their values, while policy is just how they plan to enact their values. I have many friends of differing political stripes and, while I disagree with many of them regarding the policies they plan to enact, we are able to maintain a friendship because I don't doubt that they truly believe that those policies would result in outcomes that a person of good character would desire.

At the end of the day, policy is superficial. If a person has good character, I can change their mind on policy by showing that the results are good or bad, but a person of bad character has no such moral grounding. By basing their critique of character solely on policy preferences, these non-MAGA Republicans are showing that they have lost sight of what character actually is, and this is dangerous because, while a person of good character who pursues poor policy can be checked by the other branches of government in our system of checks and balances, a person of poor character, even one who pursues good policy, will cause damage on a daily basis.

If you want to know the difference between character and policy, here it is: Kamala Harris will not likely serve time in prison for stealing nuclear secrets and keeping them in her bathroom if she loses this election. Anyone who thinks that economic policy is equivalent to that needs to be looked at carefully to check whether they have character of their own.

[milf--adjacent]

serious voting question: I'm an ml and generally I don't vote. can I ask what your reasoning is for voting third party? I'm curious to round out my opinion a little better

Seeing just how many people voted socialist back in the 19-teens was an inspiration to me as a baby leftist growing up in a deep red state. Even if they didn't win, I saw that I wasn't alone like I felt I was, that even the 'stupid' people of the past had some sense in their heads and supported policy and politics we still need even today. So no. 1 it's for the baby leftists to come who will feel trapped and alone and need a tangible connection to their beliefs: The number of people who simply didn't vote doesn't show up in textbooks, but minor party votes do.

Second: the democratic campaigning apparatus only serves to seperate those willing to organize from meaningful organization. By convincing people to put that same energy into the third party of their choice, we have countered at least a little of the Democrat's anti-revolutionary strategy. If you can convince a progressive to actually act and vote like a progressive, that's someone who might actually help when you need to set up a soup kitchen or protest in the future.

Thirdly: Many of these "I'm gonna vote anyway so I might as well vote blue" folks have never engaged in organizing. Getting involved with 3rd parties puts them in touch with others who are of a similar political slant, the first (and often most difficult) step in organizing. At least with the Greens in most places, they actively ask for help of all sorts, giving people experience in organizing they can build on as they become more politically involved. More people who know how to organize is never a bad thing.

Fourthly: If a third party can get just 5% of the national vote in an election, they are entitled to national campaign funding and a space in the official debates in the coming election. This would be a much needed shift in American politics. Democrats sound much more like republicans than leftists, and that's part of why they never get involved in the free and equal debates: the democrats are to the right of the fucking libertarians on a number of policies.

Finally: if a 3rd party candidate did win the presidency, a lot of the good things the democrats have held over our heads like bait for decades would get done, and people would have more time and energy to commit to political actions. I support 3rd party politics because at the very least it shakes things up a little. The status quo is what's killing us and any effort to change that disorganizes and spreads our true enemies thinner. Center-left socialism will not save us, but it will at least address the social ills of our society in a helpful way and attempt to tackle crisies like climate change, policing, and ending foreign policy fiascos via slashing the bloated military budget (even the fucking libertarians are running on that).

The general population of the US will refuse to even consider actual leftist politics without some sort of shift in our electoral politics. Instead of apathy and middle-finger-hoisting inaction, I chose an action with lasting strategic value. If we want a real "the revolution will not be televised" moment, we have to slap the soma of blue-tie lies out of enough hands to get people to pay attention. 3rd party electoralism is a step in the correct direction for them and a path I have started many people down already. I plan to continue until there is no need for it.

[minipisi-is-dumb]

Yall have fun with your shitty right wing zionizt government you're trying to install, I'm sure it'll be soooooo much better for you dumbass

have you ever considered how desperate a nation has to be to rather have an ultra right zionist than to have a false socialist that destroys and kills it's people?

how performative is your leftism where you think that anyone branding themselves as leftist is inherently a good person? because history repeats itself, just as nazis were "national socialists" or north Korea is a "democratic republic", are you going to believe a party on discourse alone, or take in account their recorded actions for 25 years?

have you ever considered that the Venezuelan people, that have been for decades and who understand deeply the struggle of being a global south nation that is continually screwed over by imperialism, aren't the first ones to denounce genocide?

how come our genocide is justified to you? how come your sense of liberation is so transactional that you'd rather see us dead than support our liberation when one of our leaders is siding with an empire on an equally empty way that maduro did with Palestine?

when i point at people and call them out for colonial mentality and justifying what's happening to my country, pretending venezuelans are too ignorant to know what is happening, this is a tame example of it.

at least have the balls to accuse me of something as disgusting as zionism and to laugh at my nation's pain as a public account, and not like the anonymous coward you are.

I want a free Venezuela, free Palestine and every other nation from genocide, and I can say that without shame

[anarchistin]

Every single state created after a revolution by a socialist or communist Party has resulted in a continuation of capitalism. Often, the Communists were more successful than the capitalists at implanting capitalism in “less developed” countries like Russia and China (“less developed” being a phrase that is equally coherent coming from a Party bureaucrat or an IMF technocrat).

In the USSR, already in the early 1920s the Party abandoned its limited attempts to abolish capitalism. Lenin himself admitted that what they had created was a form of state capitalism. They had also destroyed much of the broader anticapitalist movement. In 1918, the Bolsheviks killed and jailed hundreds of anarchists in Moscow to stop them from carrying out expropriations and other attacks against the local bourgeoisie. In order to keep their grasp on power, the Bolsheviks at various moments needed to ally with the bourgeoisie, showing once again that no matter the color of one’s flags, the calculations of statecraft remain the same.

— Peter Gelderloos

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 19 July 1936, in response to a right-wing coup by general Francisco Franco, workers across Spain took up arms and launched one of the most far-reaching social revolutions in history. The ensuing civil war pitted the working class against the Spanish capitalists, who were backed by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. In the revolutionary areas, anarchist and socialist workers and peasants took over workplaces and land and began to run them collectively. Thousands of mostly working class people came from all over the world to aid the workers of Spain. One of them was British socialist author George Orwell, who described the scene in Barcelona: "It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties… Every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised… Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said ‘Señor’ or ‘Don’ or even ‘Usted’". Western democracies, including Britain and France, abandoned the republic and enforced a blockade on Spain which stopped the flow of aid and weapons to the anti-fascists. Meanwhile, Italy and Germany openly flouted the ban, and the US oil giant Texaco supplied the nationalists with oil and other supplies without even demanding payment while stopping any supplies to the republic. Ultimately, after nearly three years of bitter and bloody warfare, the nationalists with their superior weaponry and equipment, were victorious. Learn more in our podcast eps 39-40. We've also got books and more commemorating it, here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/spanish-civil-war?sort_by=created-descending https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=664426942397191&set=a.602588028581083&type=3

[anamericangirl]

State capitalism is capitalism, just not free market capitalism aka "pure" capitalism. Under capitalism, capital is privately owned (that's the literal definition of capitalism). Under state capitalism, the state privately owns the capital. Yes, the state can privately own things. Private ownership of capital just means the public has no direct effect on its operation. A privately owned company has no public stocks for example. Your mistake lies in believing capitalism necessitates a free market or ownership by an individual, when it actually doesn't.

Socialism on the other hand is when capital is completely publicly owned. For example, under socialism there is no single person in charge of any corporation. All people are considered equal shareholders.

The Nazis were state capitalists, since in Nazi Germany, things like factories were taken from the people who owned them, privatized, and became property of the state. That's state capitalism. Since actions speak louder than words, we can say they were state capitalists regardless of what they said, since in the end they did things furthered state capitalism.

As convincing as it is for you to just rehash all the claims I've already addressed with absolutely nothing new to add to the conversation other than your own misguided opinion, which you have more confidence in than I do, I must disagree.

Because you are wrong.

Your mistake is you don't know the difference between the public sector and private sector.

It's not a mistake to think capitalism necessitates a free market because it does. That's how it's defined.

Capitalism means private control of the means of production. The word private is from the latin word "privus" which literally means individual. It is inherently anti-state and anti-public ownership. Capitalism means private ownership, specifically of the individual. Otherwise it's not capitalism. State capitalism is an oxymoronic term that translates to "state non-state." Anyone who uses it, such as yourself, is just advertising that they have no idea what they are talking about.

Public ownership is defined by state ownership. That's what it means. If "state capitalism" is state ownership then it's socialism because state ownership and public ownership are the same thing. The word public is from the latin word "publicus" which means of the people or of the state.

Socialism is not all people are considered equal shareholders lol. That's the modern day socialist utopia lie. If all people are "equal shareholders" that basically means no one actually has a share. Except the state. And if everyone did equally have a share that would be dictated by....you guessed it...the state.

Socialism is state ownership of the means of production. There are different kinds of socialism but they all require the state to own the means of production. Which, remember, is public ownership which is the opposite of capitalism.

You explained yourself why it's not capitalism. If factories were taken from the people who owned them to be owned by the state that's antithetical to the very concept of capitalism. Something being "privatized" means something state owned becomes owned by a non-government party. A private party. An individual. Private ownership is the opposite of state ownership so claiming they can be done simultaneously just shows you don't know what those terms mean.

The Nazis were not state capitalists because state capitalism is an impossibility. They were socialists. Because socialism is exactly what you described in your attempts to define "state capitalism" lol.

What you really mean when you say the nazis weren't socialists is that they weren't marxists. Which is true. They weren't marxists. But they were socialists. And trying to rebrand socialism as an inherently contradictory phrase like state capitalism to try and distance socialism from the evil it led to just makes you look ignorant.

[hussyknee]

it’s rare to find a sinhalese person (online atleast) who is supportive of tamil self-determination. genuine question: among leftist circles in sri lanka, how common is such a stance?

I don't know whether I'm a reliable source to answer this question because I'm very jaded about this in general. A couple of days ago, someone on the Sri Lanka Reddit started up discourse about Maitreyi Ramakrishnan's choice to reject identifying with the country that tried to genocide her people, which I'm still chewing wire about. I'm a very isolated person with a very small social circle of like-minded leftist friends. They're mostly not SinBud and anti SinBud nonsense, but none of them are Tamil and I'm the one who really convinced them about Eelam I think. The people I learned from, who are out there doing the work of building inter-ethnic dialogue and overturning Sinhalese propaganda, might have a more hopeful view.

Thing is, there's no one "leftist" faction here because "left" doesn't mean the same thing as it does in the West. The Rajapaksas' party SLPP is socialist, a legacy of their ancestor the SLFP who was the party aligned with the USSR. They and their voters and their saffron terror acolytes (Buddhist priesthood) are all for public infrastructure they can rob blind and central government they can use to crush minorities, and build on the nationalist fervour of genocidal Sinhalese Buddhism that's served both major parties independence. There's quasi-communists, descendants of the ethnonationalist Marxist JVP that rose in opposition to the class corruption of ethnonationalist USSR-aligned socialist SLFP and enthonationalist US-aligned neoliberal UNP. They've since distanced themselves from their ethnic myopia, possibly due to suffering much of the same state terrorism as minorities via militarisation and policies like the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act. They're the most vocal about the abolition of the executive presidency, the defunding of military and police, and restructuring and executing the long-mismanaged socialist infrastructure. These are usually the working class and university students, but their base has been growing in other demographics too, since we "held our noses and voted" for the Yahapalana government in 2015 and it ended up fucking us over. But despite their sympathy with the suffering of Tamils and Muslims and favouring the devolution of power, most still cling to the idea that Sinhalese majoritarianism is a fair result of democracy.

The kind of pro-LGBT, anti-racist, feminist liberals that would pass muster with the western left otoh, are a minority of urban, English-speaking professionals. Their panacea for enthofascism is voting for the neoliberal party, whose idea of reducing corruption and increasing efficiency is privatizing everything, are against racism because it's bad for tourism, and coasts on the promise of never actively feeding ethnosupremacy, even if they won't do anything about it either. Both these groups hate each other but are equally deeply uncomfortable with if not entirely resistant to the idea that the North and East are Tamil lands colonized by the Sinhalese. Both groups are aware of the corruption and complicity of the Buddhist priesthood and are prepared to do exactly nothing about it.

What I'm trying to say is that Sinhalese Buddhist ethnosupremacy is baked in to the Sri Lankan political fabric. "Left" means jack shit when it comes to whether Tamils have rights, in much the same way that the western left agrees on everything except Palestine. It's a political no man's land everyone tries not to look at.

The fundamental problem is that Sinhalese people who know enough about 1958, 1983, or the full scope of genocide perpetrated against Tamils during the last push of the war, let alone all 26 years of it, are very much in the minority. It takes a particular education to understand that "Sri Lanka" is a post-colonial invention that took over from "Ceylon", which was nothing but a construct for the ease of British administration. As far as I know, this education is confined to activist organizations and whoever followed my sociology program. So my kind of anarchist leftism that calls the war a Tamil genocide with their whole chest and the priesthood saffron terrorists and recognises Eelam is, afaik, vanishingly small.

To be honest, I never really questioned the propaganda and narrative we've been spoon fed myself until I went to Canada when I was 23 to complete my anthro degree (became disabled and dropped out after). One thing that struck me was how racist the Sinhalese diaspora was. I was raised SinBud, my school didn't admit any non-Sinhalese, half my uncles were in the military, but these people that had left the country decades ago still hated Tamils and Muslims in a way that nobody else I knew did. I wondered whether this was what it had been like when it had all started; whether this hatred that seemed to have been preserved in amber was a true taste of what had ignited Black July. Suddenly the attitude of the Tamil diaspora towards the Sri Lankan government and Sinhalese people didn't seem so unreasonable.

Then, later in the same uni term, I went to an art exhibition of a white artist who travelled the world collecting information about their genocides and made art about them, and found a painting depicting Sri Lankan Tamils in 2008. Promptly had a meltdown. Went to the lady and told her tearfully that it was all propaganda, we didn't really hate Tamils, not even my uncles in the army hated Tamils, it was a war, the LTTE had terrorized us for my whole lifetime. Bless the woman, she didn't fight me, just let me cry at her and patted my hand and pretended to take me seriously. This made it easier for me to really think about what I knew once I'd stopped wailing and stamping. It prompted a years-long self-interrogation and fact finding that made me unearth how much brainwashing had been done to us by everyone, from our families to our school textbooks to news media. It's like the air we breathed was propaganda. And I still didn't know a fraction of what life had been like for Tamils (or Muslims) and the scope of atrocities perpetrated by the Sinhalese until I began my Society and Culture degree at the Open University when I was 30. The first year textbooks were only broadstrokes facts, but at last I found out about Gnananth Obeysekera, Prageeth Jeganathan, Stanley Thambaiya, Malithi DeAlwis. Their work on nation-making, ethnicity, historical revisionism, genocide and ethnic conflict and state terrorism...everything I should have been taught as a child. The chapters on the rapes and murders and shelling and war crimes and IDP camps were..indescribable. That was what properly radicalised me about Tamil self-sovereignty, because there's clearly no possible way the Tamil people will ever be safe and safeguarded under a Sinhalese majoritarian government.

I had to drop out of that programme too because of my health. But during the mass protests against the government in 2022, I learned even more about Tamil indigeneity, the extent of JR Jayawardena's crimes, and the persecution of Marxists and victims of the '71 and '89 insurrections. So much of the protests and their encampments were directed and galvanized by social media, that organised online and in-person lectures, teach-outs, and live discussions that anyone and everyone could attend right alongside the protests. I've never seen that kind of truly democratized, free, egalitarian civic education and discourse before. That was the very first time I saw academics, survivors, refugees and human rights activists being given a respectful platform, the masses hearing firsthand accounts from people of the North and East and witnesses of Black July. April to July 2022 was a truly golden bubble of time where I saw people finally start listening, believing, and challenging all their convictions. It was the closest we ever came to realising the hope that things could be different; that we could, as a society, understand how Sinhalese ethnosupremacy had been the black rot killing this country from the first, stop being racist Sinhala-first cunts and actually hold any of these murderers accountable.

Teach us to hope, I guess.

But I suppose it's no small thing that I learned about the Tamil resistance and struggle and taught all my friends about it. I'm sure they're informing their own circles in small ways too. These tendrils are hard to see, but they exist and grow. Especially with the fall of the Rajapaksas and their Bhaiyya contingent, more people can see ethnosupremacy for the grift that it is, and the younger generations are less defensive, more willing to listen and eager for justice and change. So I guess the answer is: not very common, but less uncommon than it used to be.

[decolonize-the-everything]

Reminder that liberals aren't leftists and are in fact closer to being centrists and conservatives. Leftists are people like socialists.

Leftists want everyone's needs met. Healthcare, housing, food, etc and within the USA where the GDP is 23 trillion those things should be provided by the government. Workers should equally own the businesses they run and distribute profit equally as well.

Being a leftist can look like a lot of things- like calling for the straight up destruction of a government- but most can agree that until that happens then everyone's human rights and basic needs should be provided at the very least. Lots of leftists work towards this.

Remember that when leftists ask you to vote for 3rd parties with platforms that include universal healthcare, housing, and police reform.

Because liberals who stopped their political growth in 7th grade will try to make leftists out to be "Russian psyops" or white supremacists because we vote with principles and values and that don't allow us to vote for people who commit genocide, let single moms and their kids starve, and/or call environmental protests terrorists.

They'll reduce all this nuance to us "being immature and splitting the vote"

Quite frankly, I refuse to fall for this narrative in 2024.

We are ALL exercising our right to vote for the person who represents us. No, my beliefs don't line up with Democrats so I don't vote for Democrats ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not "splitting a vote" because I can't split my own fucking vote and I'm not a member of your party. I don't owe your shitty genocidal party any of my loyalty, quite frankly idk why You even vote for them since you say you care about human lives but I digress.

If your guy loses that means your views aren't the majority.

It does NOT mean I'm a Russian Psyop. And because I've already seen a post floating around about how The-Russian-Tumblr-Bots-Were-Real-And-Pretending-To-Be-Black I'm asking y'all to use your brains and critical thinking skills this election.

There's a REASON why they specifically wanted to undermine your trust in BIPOC. So let's think about this for a second.

Why would anyone want to undermine your trust in BIPOC? What kind of things do BIPOC say about the government and it's history? What are the political leanings of BIPOC? What would happen if everyone started to agree with those politics? Which party would those views harm most?

It's crazy to me y'all think those bots were there to help Trump when it's obvious as fuck to me that the Real concern is that BIPOC would make y'all more left which would only be trouble for Biden/Clinton. The only people that would lose votes if y'all voted more left like BIPOC bots told you to would be Democrats. We want Republicans to vote more left, remember? That would be a good thing.

They were on the site to keep liberals from going left and voting for someone like Sanders or Claudia de La Cruz instead of Clinton/Biden. They weren't helping Trump. They were helping Democrats. Republicans aren't the people listening to BIPOC Tumblr bloggers, are they?

And that psyop is STILL working cuz now liberal goons put in overtime to accuse anyone who criticizes the 2 party system of being a Russian bot 🥴🥴

Yeah. I'm sure the two parties who rely on that system definitely didn't expect or want that outcome at all. And I bet they really didn't want you to refuse to vote for anyone outside those 2 parties either. I'm sure they hate how this psyop ended with you having more trust in a corrupted 2 party system and less trust in 3rd parties that challenge the corruption of the system. How awful it must be for them, that the Russian Bots Ordeal ended with MORE trust in the current government and people being less willing to change it :(

[masayomi]

i just finished reading Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China by Leta Hong Fincher and during this part where the author discusses the central role woman played in the development of revolutionary thought and activism in the early 1900's and the eventual founding of china's communist party (part of her broader argument that women's rights in china have actually decreased in the last 50ish years) this passage really stuck out to me:

Liu argues that the “liberated” images of women presented through Socialist Realism and the bare faces and colorless uniforms—designed to further the goal of equality—“end up denying difference to women.” “The category of women, like that of class, has long been exploited by the hegemonic discourse of the state of China,” she writes. “In the emancipatory discourse of the state, which always subsumes woman under the nationalist agenda, women’s liberation means little more than equal opportunity to participate in public labor.” Ding Ling joined the Communist Party in 1932 after her husband, the author Hu Yepin, was murdered by the Nationalists. She was then kidnapped by the Nationalists and kept under house arrest for several years until she escaped to Yan’an, which became the Communists’ base after the Red Army completed its legendary Long March to escape Nationalist forces. As a prominent Communist Party member, Ding Ling renounced writing about sexuality and romantic love and embraced the Socialist Realist form of literature for the revolutionary masses. Even so, for International Women’s Day in 1942, Ding Ling vehemently criticized the Communist Party’s gender politics in a damning essay about the Party’s treatment of “women comrades.” “When will it no longer be necessary to attach special weight to the word ‘woman’ and raise it specially?” she began. She discussed the pressure on women comrades to marry, as single women were the target of “slanderous gossip”: “So they can’t afford to be choosy, anyone will do: whether he rides horses or wears straw sandals, whether he’s an artist or a supervisor.” Ding Ling pointed out the Party’s double standards, with its expectation that women have children, only to deride the same women for “political backwardness” and insufficient devotion to the revolution. “I myself am a woman, and I therefore understand the failings of women better than others. But I also have a deeper understanding of what they suffer,” she wrote. “Women are incapable of transcending the age they live in, of being perfect, or of being hard as steel.” She called on men in the Communist Party to consider the suffering and “social context” of their female counterparts: “It would be better if there were less empty theorizing and more talk about real problems, so that theory and practice are not divorced, and if each Communist Party member were more responsible for his own moral conduct.” Party officials accused Ding Ling of having “narrow feminist” feelings and holding “a nonrevolutionary view of the relationship between women’s liberation and class struggle,” according to Rebecca Karl. In retaliation for her criticism of the Party, Ding Ling was fired from her position as editor of a literary journal and ordered to re-educate herself. She later recovered politically, only to be sent for re-education among the masses during the anti-rightist campaign in 1957 for speaking out about women’s “double burden”: “Women were celebrated in their public role as ‘iron women,’ for their heroic contributions to production. Meanwhile, they were forced to silently struggle with household chores.”

all men across literally all of space and time, no matter their race, religion, or political views, have relied on women's physical and intellectual labor to prop up their movements then turn around and denounce them for not meeting their standards. never forget that any male-centered political movement, no matter how feminist it may seem, will find its own way to exploit women

[probablyasocialecologist]

Anti-Zionism is still a tenet of faith for many ultra-orthodox Jews, who view the creation of the state as heretical before the Messiah’s return. In fact, the Agudath Israel World Organisation which had official pre-war recognition in the parliaments of Poland, Lithuania and Romania, actually petitioned the UN against recognising Israel in 1947. Moreover, the largest secular Jewish party in swathes of pre-war eastern Europe was the Bund, a socialist and fiercely anti-Zionist party. On the eve of the Holocaust in 1938, it won 17 out of the 20 Warsaw city council seats taken by Jewish parties.   Most of these Jews – including members of my family – died in the Nazi genocide. Were they antisemites? Would this Congress not have made a distinction between them and the fascists who murdered them? Apparently not.  To please Tel Aviv and its backers in Washington, the 5 December Congress resolution spits on their memory and goes after their spiritual descendants, the thousands of anti-racist Jews who blockaded New York’s Grand Central station and the Manhattan bridge in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.  

[...]

The tragic bad maths of the stripped-down equation that ‘anti-Zionism = antisemitism’ answers no questions posed by oppressed people. It is just applauded by pro-Israel lobbies in the US such as AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League. The equation is banner-headlined in Israel by the Jerusalem Post, in the US by the Wall St Journal and, here, by the Spectator and Daily Telegraph. It turns reality on its head to label opposition to ethnic cleansing and apartheid as racism.