#left wing cultural imperialism

[just-late-roman-republic-things]

Things I look for in history books:

🟩 Green flags - probably solid 🟩

Has the book been published recently? Old books can still be useful, but it's good to have more current scholarship when you can.

The author is either a historian (usually a professor somewhere), or in a closely related field. Or if not, they clearly state that they are not a historian, and encourage you to check out more scholarly sources as well.

The author cites their sources often. Not just in the bibliography, I mean footnotes/endnotes at least a few times per page, so you can tell where specific ideas came from. (Introductions and conclusions don't need so many citations.)

They include both ancient and recent sources.

They talk about archaeology, coins and other physical items, not just book sources.

They talk about the gaps in our knowledge, and where historians disagree.

They talk about how historians' views have evolved over time. Including biases like sexism, Eurocentrism, biased source materials, and how each generation's current events influenced their views of history.

The author clearly distinguishes between what's in the historical record, versus what the author thinks or speculates. You should be able to tell what's evidence, and what's just their opinion.

(I personally like authors who are opinionated, and self-aware enough to acknowledge when they're being biased, more than those who try to be perfectly objective. The book is usually more fun that way. But that's just my personal taste.)

Extra special green flag if the author talks about scholars who disagree with their perspective and shows the reader where they can read those other viewpoints.

There's a "further reading" section where they recommend books and articles to learn more.

🟨 Yellow flags - be cautious, and check the book against more reliable ones 🟨

No citations or references, or references only listed at the end of a chapter or book.

The author is not a historian, classicist or in a related field, and does not make this clear in the text.

When you look up the book, you don't find any other historians recommending or citing it, and it's not because the book is very new.

Ancient sources like Suetonius are taken at face value, without considering those sources' bias or historical context.

You spot errors the author or editor really should've caught.

🟥 Red flags - beware of propaganda or bullshit 🟥

The author has a politically charged career (e.g. controversial radio host, politician or activist) and historical figures in the book seem to fit the same political paradigm the author uses for current events.

Most historians think the book is crap.

Historical figures portrayed as entirely heroic or villainous.

Historical peoples are portrayed as generally stupid, dirty, or uncaring.

The author romanticizes history or argues there has been a "cultural decline" since then. Author may seem weirdly angry or bitter about modern culture considering that this is supposed to be a history book.

The author treats "moral decline" or "degeneracy" as actual cultural forces that shape history. These and the previous point are often reactionary dogwhistles.

The author attributes complex problems to a single bad group of people. This, too, is often a cover for conspiracy theories, xenophobia, antisemitism, or other reactionary thinking. It can happen with both left-wing and right-wing authors. Real history is the product of many interacting forces, even random chance.

The author attempts to justify awful things like genocide, imperialism, slavery, or rape. Explaining why they happened is fine, but trying to present them as good or "not that bad" is a problem.

Stereotypes for an entire nation or culture's personality and values. While some generalizations may be unavoidable when you have limited space to explain something, groups of people should not be treated as monoliths.

The author seems to project modern politics onto much earlier eras. Sometimes, mentioning a few similarities can help illustrate a point, but the author should also point out the limits of those parallels. Assigning historical figures to modern political ideologies is usually misleading, and at worst, it can be outright propaganda.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. "Big theory" books like Guns, Germs and Steel often resort to cherry-picking and making errors because it's incredibly hard for one author to understand all the relevant evidence. Others, like 1421, may attempt to overturn the historical consensus but end up misusing some very sparse or ambiguous data. Look up historians' reviews to see if there's anything in books like this, or if they've been discredited.

There are severe factual errors like Roman emperors being placed out of order, Cleopatra building the pyramids, or an army winning a battle it actually lost.

When in doubt, my favorite trick is to try to read two books on the same subject, by two authors with different views. By comparing where they agree and disagree, you can more easily overcome their biases, and get a fuller picture.

(Disclaimer - I'm not a historian or literary analyst; these are just my personal rules of thumb. But I figured they might be handy for others trying to evaluate books. Feel free to add points you think I missed or got wrong.)

[the-library-alcove]

Ironic Parallels

For all that the political Left likes to claim that they're without bias or bigotry, just existing as a Jew in Leftist spaces will quickly demonstrate otherwise. And for maximum irony, the patterns of systemic antisemitism on the Left don't mirror right-wing antisemitism. Instead, they mirror right-wing racism. Imperfectly, for sure, but the parallels between how the Right treats Black people and how the Left treats Jews are striking.

Discussions of systemic bigotry are deflected with Whataboutisms so that the instigating issue isn't addressed. For African-Americans, it's often "What about Black-on-Black crime?" and similar by the Right-Wing, and for Jews, it's "What about Israel?"

Alternatively, a prominent political advocacy organization is attacked and defamed in order to again deflect and dismiss. "BLM is violent and engages in riots!" or the usual libels against ACORN, and "Israel is fascist!" or the usual libels against AIPAC and the ADL.

At the same time, prominent dead members have their words cherrypicked to make people feel good about themselves and their treatment of that group. Contrast how MLK's "I had a dream!" speech is used by the Right-Wing with how Anne Frank's "I believe that people are fundamentally good at heart" is used by the Left.

On that same theme, token members are held up to deflect accusations of systemic bias. African-American right-wingers prove that the Right Isn't Racist, and Jewish Antizionists prove that the Left isn't antisemitic--or, conversely, the extremist members of the individual group are cherrypicked to "prove" that the whole group is like them.

Furthermore, laws are proposed or passed to disrupt cultural practices; people of African descent face bias for having natural hair, while Jews routinely face people proposing banning circumcision, kosher slaughter, or the keeping of an eruv. But, you see, they can't be biased, because they know all about that group... based on what they saw on TV/Movies/Wikipedia, so they know that the group can handle these laws and rules just "fine".

The targeted group are treated as having an unfair advantage in the racial hierarchy. Consider the parallels between a right-winger complaining about Affirmative Action, and a Left-Winger saying that, since "Jews are White and therefore privileged, antisemitism isn't real discrimination."

But as soon as one shows up in a space outside of where they "belong", they're treated with suspicion until proven that they're acceptable... if ever. A POC in a store is treated as a potential thief, and a Jew in public is automatically acceptable to interrogate if they're a "Zionist".

Consider also how historical revisionism is rife as well. For POC, slavery and imperialism are erased from textbooks, as well as the backlash against Critical Race Theory, the 1619 Project and more. Meanwhile for Jews, pretty much nothing exists in educational curriculums between the start of the Diaspora (assuming it's even mentioned) and the Holocaust, which is treated as an aberration of bigotry instead of the culmination of centuries of hate. Even the admission of the real history is treated as an unforgiveable sin. Black people were never mistreated or enslaved, but were Guest Workers. Jews never came from the Levant and are Just White People From Europe.

And that's before we even get into systemic disenfranchisement. The original "ghetto" was the Jewish ghetto of Venice, and Jews are still routinely discriminated against for hiring, just as POC are.

But at the same time, everyone knows that "Blacks always play the race card" and that "Jews always accuse people of antisemitism."

And so on and so forth.

They're not perfect parallels--and I'm not saying that they are--but they are striking parallels in behavior.

__

I drafted this in April 2023, and it's been sitting in my drafts ever since, as I didn't have the courage to post it.

But given the current SURGE in Leftist Antisemitism, I somehow don't care anymore.

[txttletale]

niceys positive anon!! i don't agree with you on everything but you are so clearly like well read and well rounded that you've helped me think through a lot of my own inconsistencies and hypocrises in my own political and social thought, even if i do have slightly different conclusions at times then u (mainly because i believe there's more of a place for idealism and 'mind politics' than u do). anyway this is a preamble to ask if you have recommended reading in the past and if not if you had any recommended reading? there's some obvious like Read Marx but beyond that im always a little lost wading through theory and given you seem well read and i always admire your takes, i wondered about your recs

it's been a while since i've done a big reading list post so--bearing in mind that my specific areas of 'expertise' (i say that in huge quotation marks obvsies i'm just a girlblogger) are imperialism and media studies, here are some books and essays/pamphlets i recommend. the bolded ones are ones that i consider foundational to my politics

BASICS OF MARXISM

friedrich engels, principles of commmunism

friedrich engels, socialism: utopian & scientific

karl marx, the german ideology

karl marx, wage labour & capital

mao zedong, on contradiction

nikolai bukharin, anarchy and scientific communism

rosa luxemburg, reform or revolution?

v.i lenin, left-wing communism: an infantile disorder

v.i. lenin, the state & revolution

v.i. lenin, what is to be done?

IMPERIALISM

aijaz ahmed, iraq, afghanistan, and the imperialism of our time

albert memmi, the colonizer and the colonized

che guevara, on socialism and internationalism (ed. aijaz ahmad)

eduardo galeano, the open veins of latin america

edward said, orientalism

fernando cardoso, dependency and development in latin america

frantz fanon, black skin, white masks

frantz fanon, the wretched of the earth

greg grandin, empire's workshop

kwame nkrumah, neocolonialism, the last stage of imperialism

michael parenti, against empire

naomi klein, the shock doctrine

ruy mauro marini, the dialectics of dependency

v.i. lenin, imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism

vijay prashad, red star over the third world

vincent bevins, the jakarta method

walter rodney, how europe underdeveloped africa

william blum, killing hope

zak cope, divided world divided class

zak cope, the wealth of (some) nations

MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES

antonio gramsci, the prison notebooks

ed. mick gidley, representing others: white views of indigenous peoples

ed. stuart hall, representation: cultural representations and signifying pratices

gilles deleuze & felix guattari, capitalism & schizophrenia

jacques derrida, margins of philosophy

jacques derrida, speech and phenomena

michael parenti, inventing reality

michel foucault, disicipline and punish

michel foucault, the archeology of knowledge

natasha schull, addiction by design

nick snricek, platform capitalism

noam chomsky and edward herman, manufacturing consent

regis tove stella, imagining the other

richard sennett and jonathan cobb, the hidden injuries of class

safiya umoja noble, algoriths of oppression

stuart hall, cultural studies 1983: a theoretical history

theodor adorno and max horkheimer, the culture industry

walter benjamin, the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction

OTHER

angela davis, women, race, and class

anna louise strong, cash and violence in laos and vietnam

anna louise strong, the soviets expected it

anna louise strong, when serfs stood up in tibet

carrie hamilton, sexual revolutions in cuba

chris chitty, sexual hegemony

christian fuchs, theorizing and analysing digital labor

eds. jules joanne gleeson and elle o'rourke, transgender marxism

elaine scarry, the body in pain

jules joanne gleeson, this infamous proposal

michael parenti, blackshirts & reds

paulo freire, pedagogy of the oppressed

peter drucker, warped: gay normality and queer anticapitalism

rosemary hennessy, profit and pleasure

sophie lewis, abolish the family

suzy kim, everyday life in the north korean revolution

walter rodney, the russian revolution: a view from the third world

[arcticdementor]

One reason for their lack of understanding is that people like David Brooks and Ezra Klein may very well believe that it's their natural place as societal elites to be above those they view as the rabble and untouchables of society. A related reason for their indignation is that they cannot fathom the idea of people who don't think like them actually having a say in anything of consequence. The narcissism and arrogance simply goes too deep for people like that to be reasoned with. Brooks claims that autocrats use cultural differences to inflame tensions and so on. But what he's really saying in his passage is that he believes that Western liberalism and western ideas are so innately and obviously superior, that people in other countries should have no problem with having their culture destroyed and replaced with whatever Western elites find suitable for them. So consequently, he would believe that any resistance to Western imperialism is by definition illegitimate and morally wrong, since the West brings enlightenment and other cultures are just various shades of backwards barbarism. This is essentially not very different from the European colonizers and imperialists of yesteryear. The clever twist here is that modern Western imperialists are co-opting the local elite with shared interests and closer ties to facilitate control. You can see this in countries like India, Japan, and South Korea. We tried it with China but have largely failed in that effort.

Just a Random Commentator

[determinate-negation]

what do you think of the argument that anti zionism is anti judaism because a high % of jews are zionists, so if you say youre anti zionist you just dont listen to jews and secretly hate people for being jewish. i feel like it's obviously wrong but also i dont know how to say 'its not wrong to hate fascism just because a lot of jews bought into nationalist fascist propaganda' without seeming hugely antisemitic as a goy lol

its a bullshit point. ideology is not an unchanging thing thats tethered to certain ethnic/religious groups. thats closer to a fascist, racialist worldview than anything else. if you said we cant criticize something pertaining to a group because the majority of this group of people believe in it or are ok with it you couldnt criticize capitalism or popular culture or american imperialism or really say anything thats not already a hegemonic belief. its also just factually a bad argument that relies on limited and biased data, and ignores that there has been a purposeful campaign to crush dissent and ostracize or persecute left wing jews and anti zionists in the jewish community for the past like 70 years, you cant say this is a natural ideological formation. i have some things addressing this tagged on my blog as zionism or anti zionism ill link them here in a second

[theriverbeyond]

have you seen any breakdown of the political situation on New Rho (in New Rho? is the rest of the planet also populated? I think at one point someone says "down in Ur" but maybe there is an application of 2-dimensional direction terms to 3d space I havent yet thought of). Like who do they mean by militia, who is the government (who is the police?), is there any official house presence, what is the status of the barracks, who manned the spaceport, what power does BoE hold and how are they viewed in the population (Hot Sauce denounces them but who is her faction-that Pyrrha saw her with-then?) and do they know how splintered and farspread it is? what is the siege the blurb is speaking of, just the imperial emissaries showing up?

Also assuming the BoE wings are all named after different planetary settlements which seem in turn to be named after cities in the ancient near east (ur, merv, ctesiphon), why isnt new rho? but i might be misinterpreting this.

Also where does the Empire want non-House humanity to end up? They seem to be turning planets left and right with no endgoal. And how many settled planets might there be?

Sorry I'm dumping this all at you, I havent seen any worldbuilding discussion here on tumblr at all really so maybe you can redirect me somewhere.

Thankies, keep up the good work (posting)

I HAVE seen posts about the political situation on New Rho including analysis posts that were very interesting and I have utterly failed to tag them appropriately, I am sorry -- if anyone who sees this has links to that meta pls add on/reply to help anon!

But to cover the rest of your points:

What is Ur?

Ur is mentioned twice that i can find, in ch 16: Ianthe says that the end has come to the "rebels of Ur", and a person in the crowd says "Ur is fighting".

EDIT: big thank you to @eskildit in replies: "There are four total references to Ur- Corona also says that Judith is in the Ur facility and Kiriona says that the 6th house is "parked outside the Ur system". Could be that Ur is the planet New Rho is located on. While we refer the nine houses as planets, canonically the houses are actually "installations" on each planet with quite small populations. New Rho alone, which is specifically stated to be just one city on a resettled planet, is 3x the size of the 6th house"

It may have been mentioned more times, but Kindle search is giving me the 2,320 times the letters "ur" were used next to each other so I'm ngl I cannot sift through that. Rather than being a city, though, I actually am assuming that Ur is another planet entirely! This is due to multi-planet SciFi in general treating entire planets like countries or even big cities. Like…. planets are huge. There are thousands of different cultures on a planet, but in SciFi planets are often like. One Big City. One Big Country, if you have a particularly ambitious worldbuilder. See: Star Wars, the Nine Houses themselves, etc. not saying that Ur cannot be on New Rho, just that I don't think it is because this is multi-planet Sci Fi.

The militia/civic government?

In chapter 6 a distinction is made between "the militia and the old civic govnerment". Following that, I think the civic government was probably installed by the Houses, as a ruling party that is friendly to them/House interests. I think the militia is a non-unified population of hired guns, that probably revolted at some point priot to the story. It does seem like at least some section of the militia is in power in most of the city, but I do not think there is one coherent government at the moment

Official house presence?

Yes, because there are official cohort barracks. I don't think they have much political leverage by the time NtN rolls around, though

Barrack status?

Under siege due to the people of New Rho hating them/political instability/possible militia revolt, doing badly otherwise because any and all necromancers are suffering from Blue Madness/RB proximity, as seen in ch 20 when Ianthe mentioned some of them were so poorly she had to put them down.

Space port?

I am assuming the civic government/House was originally in charge. unsure of who is in charge during NtN

What power does BOE hold?

Unclear. It seems like BOE itself is fractionated, with a lot of animosity held between different factions, and a lot of both animosity AND collaboration between different factions of BOE, the militia, the population, and the old civic government. It is a very decentralized resistance force, despite sharing a name. BOE do not appear to BE the official government, or BE the militia, though, but I would not be surprised if some groups had ties to one or both. It seems like they have influence both socially and politically but it is unclear what that power is... some factions have some amount of power. Over some parts. But!! it seems that during the events of NtN they had more power than in the past ("best hand they were ever delt", chapter 1)

How is BOE viewed by the population?

My guess is they have mixed reviews. I think a lot of people probably rely on them for resources/protection even if they don't like or fully trust them. I think a lot of people probably see them as extremists and wish they were less extreme (the liberals, u could say). Like Hot Sauce and the gang, a lot of people probably think they aren't radical enough and wish they would resist more, harder, differently. I think a lot of people probably deeply support them, either physically by being part of BOE or by providing resources/etc, or quietly because they are afraid of retaliation by the House or civil government. A lot of the population probably has opinions about BOE versus the militia, BOE verus House, BOE versus the civic government, based on their own interests/position/power. This is a really long answer that can boil down to "idk"

What is the siege?

I think the siege is the cohort being sieged into the barracks. I am guessing there was some sort of revolt in the local government, probably related to Blue Madness weakening the cohort, and they have pushed the cohort into the barracks. , as described in chapters 1 ("the cohort dies like anyone else under seige") and chapter 20 ("the barracks siege").

What group is Hot Sauce in if she denounced BOE?

Hot Sauce specifically calls BOE "fat cats" and "zombie lovers" in chapter 15, after noting that she, Honesty, and Born in the Morning, as well as Born in the Morning's father, are "active" in with an unnamed group at the park. It is unclear what group that is, if it has a name, or if it is organized in any capacity. From what little we know, it appears it is a group of people who are more radical than BOE, which I think is either ex-BOE members that were pushed out for their radial choices/beliefs, or civilians/other freedom fighters that aren't satisfied with what BOE is doing. But beyond that I have no idea

BOE wing names vs New Rho?

So BOE wings are named after historic Earth cities. Ctesiphon, Troia, Merv, Valencia (which is not historic to us, as it exists today, but WOULD be history in 10k years). They are named by BOE, likely to keep connection to Earth, just like BOE people-names. "New Rho", on the other hand, is likely named by the House. Rhodes is a place on the 7th house (see: 7th cavalier is the "Knight of Rhodes"), and I assumed that New Rho was like. The house naming shit. Like how New York is named after York in England, even though that area of land already had a name (Lenapehoking, I think?).

Specifically this difference is important because like, the House is a imperial colonizing force here, and they are naming things after their home system as a part of the imperial violence they are enacting. In As Yet Unsent, Judith notes that the non-house people call New Rho, "Lemuria" -- HOWEVER, in NtN chapter 17, the Angel mentions Lemuria twice in a way that is phrased like Lemuria is Somewhere else, and is Not the city they are in right now ("I was born on Lemuria", "there's still a facility on Lemuria") I am not sure what happened there, honestly. Perhaps an oopsie?

Where does the Empire want non house humanity to end up?

Unclear. Coronabeth notes in As Yet Unsent that even she (who has studied the war in-universe) has no idea what the real goal is. My guess is nowhere, because a forever-war has no end goal. It's a war for resources gained only by literal blood and death. Many analysis could be made about this as an allegory to to oil based forever-wars of today -- I read a few of them and as said before unfortunately failed to tag them, so if anyone has a link and can share with anon that would be awesome! But anyway, I do not think I am smart or learned enough to say a lot beyond this but, yeah. I think there is no end goal to the war besides meaningless revenge and the resources gained via murder, because that's the point. We could learn different in AtN tho! who knows

How many settled planets?

No idea! Thousands. Hundreds of thousands? Hundreds? Unsure! 10k years is a long time, and there are a lot of planets out there in the fantasy universe that could be habitable. EDIT ty @eskildit, unclear how many planets were settled over the course of the Empire, but there are three settled planets by the timeline of NtN: ""Everyone was crammed on one of three planets now, and they all agreed that this planet was easily the worst", from chapter 2

-

Thanks for sending this!! I really enjoyed answering it, and I hope it helped -- sorry if I missed any. Ask more any time!!

[samselo]

A really big thing in 40k when we look at the primarchs is the amount that seem to mirror each other or are two sides of the same coin.

Fulgrim and Sanguinius

Dorn and Perturabo

Corvus and Konrad

These are primarchs that share aesthetics, personality, or upbringing and then change a few crucial aspects that end up putting them down a different path.

It's by no coincidence that each pair has its Loyalist and it's Traitor. So I'd like to take about why these pairings are so interesting(each with their own post) and hopefully cover why they mirror each other in the first place starting with the two brightest brothers, Fulgrim and Sanguinius.

In both Fulgrim and Sanguinius we see quite literally the brightest of all the Primarchs. They are both beautiful, they are wonderful artists, charismatic, fantastic duelists, and very empathetic. Sanguinius had angelic wings and could do no wrong, he was seen as the Emperors perfect Son and the best choice for warmaster, his return to his legion turned the blood angels from hated vampiric berserkers to lovers of art and poetry. He was friends with the most difficult of primarchs such as Khan and Magnus. But Sanguinius had one major flaw. His Geneseed. It left his sons with an addiction to carnage and he felt wholly responsible, he was deathly insecure and guilty and wasted no effort in finding a cure, and it's why he was only one step away from falling to chaos if meros had not sacrificed himself. Sanguinius wasn't the greatest tactician, he wasn't the most intelligent, nor was he ever free from his insecurity but he was the Imperiums Angel. The imperfect God.

Fulgrim on the other hand was brilliant in every aspect. He was a tactical genius, brutally intelligent and cultured, the most beautiful of the primarchs ahead of Sanguinius, and the most well liked. Cultivating a friendship with ferrus manus that was deeper then perhaps any relationship in the setting. Like sanguinius however, his greatest flaw was his geneseed. But instead of giving his soldiers a curse. It decimated his legion, for instead of returning to Terra to a legion of many thousands of sons, he only found 200. It is said that when he saw his sons there was no trace of disappointment. It is said he gave a speech so inspiring that the Emperor cried and gave the 3rd legion the Imperial Aquila and the title "The Emperors Children". Fulgrim spent many years playing second fiddle to his brothers, and when he finally rebuilt his legion he burst ahead brilliantly. The marines of the third legion were among the best duelists, tacticians, and artists of the imperium unlike the blood angels, were extremely well disciplined, and their father was a man who grew in a hellish planet and knew the struggles of the common man intimately. But he pushed himself too far to perfection. Which allowed Fabius bile to prey on his insecurity and mutate his legion over time. Instead of the instantaneous fall to chaos Sanguinius would have had. Fulgrims was slow and drawn out. Instead of Meros sacrificing himself to keep his father from succumbing to chaos. A marine in Fulgrims legion kept him from shooting Horus's fleet and ending the heresy by giving him the Laer blade and damning him completely.

Sangunius was the God who wanted to be a man and Fulgrim was the man destined to be a God.

It's funny how they never really interacted in lore. I think they would have gotten along very well.

[hussyknee]

Regular reminder that if you don't live in the Global North, nothing they have to say applies to the rest of us. Actually most things they say have little value anyway since the Global South and Eastern folks are afterthoughts to them, much less center us in their social justice.

- The USAmerican cultural hegemony has fuck all to do with us. Be aware of what they're trying to peddle you, but they have more power to harm and radicalise you than you have ever could to harm them. This applies to both the Western left and right wing. They are both equally racist, colonial and imperialist.

- Global North issues around capitalism, exploitation and piracy have nothing to do with us. Consumer activism might work to some extent over there idk, but if anyone brings it up over in the lands of the Black and brown people, you can laugh them out of the country.

- Their queer history is not ours. Congrats to Stonewall and all but that's just some shit that happened in the US. We need to dig past 18 different strata of cultural genocide and colonial garbage to mine our queer histories back into the light, and designing microlabel flags and fighting over colonizer language acronyms have fuck all to do with that either.

- Always pirate everything within reach. Save up and buy from authors and creators you really like (that's what I do – esp when it's a BIPOC creator), but people who can't afford to buy shit in the first place ain't stealing food out of anybody's mouths. Pirating is praxis and always has been since the days of the East India Company.

- Don't buy into the USAmerican theories of race. They aren't universal. "BIPOC" especially is a USAmerican specific term, it is not used in the UK or other settler colonies. Constructs of race and the tribal Other far predated European colonization; race as a colour system that exists today is simply one variation of it. The global apartheid against the mellanated takes many forms, histories and terminology. There are especially no "people of colour" in Asia, Africa, Caribbean and Polynesia. There are only people who live there, and "people of white".

Race is a fake, made-up conceptualization imposed by whoever has power within each region. It's ethnic, cultural and casteist, with no biological basis whatsoever. There is no uniformity, no universalism, no rhyme nor reason to any of it; the only people who know exactly who doesn't belong are the oppressors. I'm seeing concepts like "unambiguously black" floating around the terminally online Western left; any dark-skinned person of the Global South should split their sides laughing at it. Whites have no ambiguity on who the darkies are.

- Read, watch, listen to, play whatever the hell you want, just have the sense to pirate it, and to be very conscious about the narratives they try to smuggle.

- When the US and UK speak, listen with compassionate interest, offer what solidarity you can spare for their downtrodden, and then go back to reading and following your own fucking news. Focus on our own women's and reproductive rights, trans rights, queer histories, rise of fascism, militarisation, anti-blackness, class warfare, nationalist violence, imperialism etc. That is decolonization, that is emancipation from the Western cultural hegemony. Everything else is the bread and circuses of empire, in which both the left and right wing of the West are complicit.

We owe the Global North nothing more than we can each individually afford to extend to them on grounds of common human decency and compassion. Which is a lot more than they will ever reciprocate.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Khomeini’s Conquest

The months following the fall of the Shah was a springtime of revolution, a period of conflict and social struggle that provided a challenge to the new authorities. When workers returned to work, in many industries they did so under the control of the shoras (workers councils). Political organizations, suddenly free to operate after years of repression, began to flourish. Neighborhoods self-organized under the control of local committees. Universities became bases of left-wing opposition. The provinces were in rebellion.

How could such a broad based popular movement, with the oldest and largest left in the Middle East, result in the establishment of a clerical theocracy? While repression played a large role, the full story is far more complicated.

While the proletariat was strong and militant enough to overthrow the regime, they were not in a position to assert their hegemony over the movement. Moreover, almost immediately after the fall of the Shah, conflicts began to manifest within the coalition of revolutionary forces. While the movement was broad and popular, its leadership was drawn from the petit-bourgeoisie of the bazaari-clerical alliance. The problem for the new regime would therefore be to somehow establish undisputed political hegemony over this diverse patchwork of revolutionized groups, as well as the masses more broadly.

It was not merely through extreme violence in the streets that Khomeini and his supporters were able to solidify their leadership over the popular movement. Certainly, they did employ lumpen-thugs (calling themselves the Hezbollah) to attack opposition rallies and break strikes. But their success was equally due to ideological manipulation. If there was one overarching ideological trait of the 1979 revolution it was anti-imperialism. Far more than an outcome of some religious revival or resistance to modernity, the Islamic ideology of the day assumed the form of a Third Worldist populism, one which would become so hegemonic over the revolution that all questions relating to it would eventually be seen through its prism. This was especially the case for the left, who contributed to this ideological confusion. It was through the manipulation of anti-imperialist ideology that the Khomeinist clergy was able to secure and maintain its hegemony over the revolution.

A key factor in Khomeini’s ability to rapidly gain control over the movement lay in the near-total political vacuum that existed under the Shah’s dictatorship. The entire weight of the regime’s repression had been turned against the communist movement and the secular nationalists. For the masses of rural people who flooded into cities during the decade preceding the revolution, their traditional community having been disrupted by the land reform, the mosque was often the only place where they could find remnants of that community. However, mosques were not neutral, but under the control of the cleric, who found in this newly dispossessed population a ready audience. These cultural affinities were fused with a utopian-populist ideology that promised to end corruption and inaugurate a period of justice, uniting the various classes into an abstract people.

It is often suggested that the regime of Muhammad Reza Shah was hostile to Islam, or was pursuing a program of radical secularization. This is inaccurate: like his father, he was more interested in bringing religion under the control or service of the state. Although he sought modernization and national development, his approach to religion depended on how it served the state. For the Shah, the main enemy was the communist and left-wing opposition. Although the Pahlavi regime certainly promoted a nationalist ideology that emphasized the pre-Islamic past, the regime was not averse to using Islam when it served its purposes. It pursued a strategy that would be replicated throughout the region, encouraging religious ideology to counter the popularity of the Left. While the full repressive and propagandistic force of the state was wielded against the left, the Islamic forces enjoyed an incredible freedom, and even encouragement. Far from closing down mosques, the last Shah funded more mosques, prayer halls, and religious services. So long as they did not directly challenge the state or the monarchy, they were free to operate. This was especially the case if they directed their ire against godless communism. Many of those clergy who would be important figures in the Khomenist movement during the 1979 revolution featured prominently in magazines and newspapers, and regularly appeared on radio and television. Of course, there was repression against the religious political opposition, but only of groups that directly opposed the regime. Those figures who stayed away from direct discussion of politics were given room to maneuver, which was unthinkable for the left.

Khomeini’s intransigence and relative freedom of expression while in France soon made him the symbolic leader of the revolution — proof that symbols, when invested with enough power, become powers of their own. Khomeini enjoyed a network the communist movement could only dream of, with a strong following among middle and lower ranking clergy. As tapes of Khomieini’s speeches were widely shared and distributed, mosques everywhere soon became a platform for voicing dissent. During the revolutionary insurrection of 1978–79, the neighborhood committees that would later serve as an important base of the revolution were organized out of mosques in which the cleric was in control. These were increasingly controlled by a centralized revolutionary committee composed of Khomieni’s supporters. Those that had remained independent were soon brought under control. These committees soon began to organize militias.[19] Over time, these committees were all brought to heel, usually through violent repression. What they couldn’t dominate by means of loyalists, they broke through frontal repression. But it was in Kurdistan where the autonomy from the central government was maintained the longest. This partially explains the repression that the state has always levied against the people there, who never fully accepted the Islamic Republic.

On November 7th, 1979 Khomeinist students took over the American Embassy. The crisis came at a perfect moment, when economic problems and frustration with the revolution was beginning to grow. One cannot understand the hostage crisis unless one recognizes that it was less about conflict with the US than about defeating the domestic opposition, particularly the Marxist guerrilla groups. It had the dual outcome of both forcing the resignation of the liberal nationalist provisional government and defeating the radical left, who still battled for hegemony over the anti-imperialist revolution. Prior to the hostage crisis, the new regime had no intention of opposing the United States. In this sense, the embassy takeover was the anti-imperialist spectacle perfected: by drawing attention away from the struggles taking place in the rest of the country, students who only recently would have been seen by their Marxist counterparts as religious fanatics and rectionaries could now present themselves as the vanguard of the anti-imperialist struggle. In this way, the crisis helped the religious factions defeat the left and secure their hegemony over the revolution.

From 1980 to 1983 the state launched a “cultural revolution” with the intention of purging the universities and educational institutions of radical left influence. Schools were shut down, faculty purged. Resistance was met with severe repression, leading to fierce battles between leftist students and Islamist thugs. The same was the case with the worker’s councils in the factories, although in this case the initiative lay with the left-wing parties. Although the councils developed spontaneously out of the strike committees organized during the mass strike of 1978–79, they enjoyed the participation of the Left, who were invited to play a role in their direction. Whereas those workers councils that were dominated by the Khomeinists often tended to be corporatist in ideology, the more radical worker’s councils were democratic in nature.

This difference points to the decisive question — by no means unique to Iran — of the internal diversity of the working class. The rapid and uneven character of capitalist development over the previous decade had created a significant though not unsurpassable chasm, a phenomenon common to many nations in the global south, particularly where development is marked by advanced technology, as opposed to more primitive forms of accumulation. This chasm meant that there was an important cultural difference between “new” and “old” workers, one that the Islamists played upon and used against the left and working class movement. There was a marked difference between the newly-proletarianized manual laborers or unemployed workers and second generation urbanites, who enjoyed different sources of entertainment and tended to support the secular parties of the left. This included white collar workers, but also “skilled” workers in modern industries including oil, gas, and petrochemicals, which were central to the state and economy. Similar differences existed at the level of education, as well as in lifestyles. The clergy played upon this difference with their ideas of cultural imperialism. Imperialism was affiliated not merely with the rule of capital, but with all facets of Western culture, Marxism included. The upper sectors of the working class were characterized as Westernized, a trend consistent with Third World populism elsewhere, particularly in nations that are not among the farthest flung regions of the periphery and underdeveloped, but which are developing more rapidly in the direction of the global system.

Like fascist regimes before them, the Khomeini regime used disorder to establish order. They did not merely conquer the state but also seized power in the street, through the action of their revolutionary committees. By 1983 they had defeated all their political opponents. From the beginning, the Islamic Republic always incorporated a segment of the population into its police apparatus to surveil and repress the rest of the population. This policy allowed it to channel the cultural resentment of the lumpenproletariat into the regime’s repression, and marked an important departure from the preceding regime.

[radiofreederry]

Happy birthday, Victor Jara! (September 28, 1932)

Victor Jara of Chile was a folk singer, activist, and martyr. Born to a poor family of tenant farmers, Jara learned to read and play music from his mother, and he would keep playing for the rest of his life. Originally planning to attend seminary and become a priest, Jara became disillusioned with the Catholic Church and subsequently left to pursue folk music, his true passion. He also dabbled in the theater, particularly attracted to plays with socially conscious themes. Very socially conscious himself, Jara injected progressive and left-wing themes into his music, becoming a leading figure in the Latin American musical movement of nueva cancion. After visiting Cuba and the Soviet Union, Jara became committed to socialism and joined the Communist Party of Chile. Supportive of Salvador Allende's 1970 presidential campaign, Jara performed for free at Allende rallies, and wrote "Venceremos," the campaign's theme song. After Allende became President of Chile, Jara supported his efforts to spark a Chilean cultural revival. When right-wing forces overthrew Allende's government in 1973, Jara was arrested and held with thousands of other leftists at the Chile Stadium in Santiago, which had been converted into a makeshift concentration camp. While imprisoned, Jara wrote his last verses and suffered torture from the guards, who broke his fingers and then ordered him to play the guitar. He was ultimately murdered and his body displayed. Jara's death made him a martyr to progressives and leftists around the world as they protested Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, and he has been honored in story and song. After the end of the dictatorship, the stadium where he was imprisoned was renamed for him, and a cultural center in Santiago bears his name.

"The cultural invasion is like a leafy tree which prevents us from seeing our own sun, sky and stars. Therefore in order to be able to see the sky above our heads, our task is to cut this tree off at the roots. US imperialism understands very well the magic of communication through music and persists in filling our young people with all sorts of commercial tripe. With professional expertise they have taken certain measures: first, the commercialization of the so-called ‘protest music’; second, the creation of ‘idols’ of protest music who obey the same rules and suffer from the same constraints as the other idols of the consumer music industry – they last a little while and then disappear. Meanwhile they are useful in neutralizing the innate spirit of rebellion of young people. The term ‘protest song’ is no longer valid because it is ambiguous and has been misused. I prefer the term ‘revolutionary song’."

[read-marx-and-lenin]

If Mao was communist, why are the stars on the flag of the PRC?

I'm going to assume you're referring to what the stars on the flag represent (four social classes under the leadership of the Communist Party) and you're not just saying "why does the flag have stars".

While Mao's New Democracy has been criticized as revisionist class collaboration, Mao himself never intended for such collaboration to last as long as it has. You have to keep in mind that during the revolution, China was fighting for independence against multiple imperial and colonial powers that sought to subjugate it. It wasn't unreasonable for Mao to want to appeal to the nationalists in this context, and he still stressed the importance of democratic centralism and Party leadership. He wasn't simply handing the reins over to the national bourgeoisie, but instead saying "you can either make yourself an enemy of the Communists or join the fight on our side", and as the tides turned in the favor of the Communists, the latter became an easy choice.

After the end of World War II and the Civil War, Mao began the transition away from New Democracy and towards a more traditional socialism, but there were many hurdles to overcome and events did not always play out in Mao's favor. From the famine to the Sino-Soviet Split to the Cultural Revolution, Mao and his left-wing followers gradually grew out of favor within China, leading to the rise of Deng Xiaoping and the market reforms that would entrench the class collaborationist aspects of New Democracy within the PRC. Even so, it is clear that Deng's reforms were conservative enough to avoid a full-blown descent into neoliberalism as was seen in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. Regardless of your opinion of modern China, the interests of the working class are still much better represented under Chinese democracy than under bourgeois democracy, and despite Deng's revisionism, the spirit of communism still thrives in China and the Chinese working class are poised to inherit its legacy.

I linked this video for another anon asking about Chinese socialism, and my post here is basically a summary of what this video explores. It goes into a lot more detail than I did, and I recommend watching it to learn more.

[gilgamish]

WIP Whatever - The Great Chapel of Julianos

i vastly overestimated the brain cells and spoons that i would have by wednesday of last week lol but we stay silly and we fight the brain fog :> tagged by the illustrious: @thequeenofthewinter , @nuwanders , @mareenavee , @kookaburra1701 , @paraparadigm , @saltymaplesyrup , and @tallmatcha (i will properly tag people for the meme when i am not horrifically late in posting again. i'm afraid may have already blown up enough people's notifications for one day, i think, lol)

some wild headcanoneering beneath the cut :>

What had once been the Great Chapel of Julianos in Skingrad was a lonely building. A bird’s eye view showed the Chapel square in the center of a massive forum of pale stone, gleaming in the rain as if to cry. For now built around the Great Chapel, were buildings that housed various wings of a hospital. That hospital and its four wings saw more patients than any other healing houses, almshouses, or clinics in Tamriel, save for the Faculty of Chirurgeons of Cloudrest, whose numbers went unreported by the Aldmeri Dominion. The Elder Council could boast the numbers of lives saved by the School’s efforts with its small army of healers, and so they continued to ply the School of Julianos with tithes to run these clinics. Then, the Council saw room to boast further. After the Elder Council had learned through an inquiry that the Empire’s youngest laborers couldn’t name ‘Akatosh’ as the God of the Empire nor identify their Emperor, the School of Julianos returned, promising to educate all citizens of the Empire in a renewed crusade against all ignorance. No citizen would go without knowing their numbers, letters, and names and prayers to the Divines. It seemed an investment of recursive benefits. The School of Julianos received a never-ending supply of children to fill the ranks of their clergy. The Legion received a steady stream of volunteers. The Elder Council ensured generations of loyal citizens, who were culturally Imperial before all else. But the Great Chapel didn’t know any of this. There used to be warmth and life and people in its walls. Shrine candles went unlit. The carpets were heavy with dust. Molder climbed the walls and the pews and books. Rain sloshed against the colored glass windows, drowning the saints and gods cast in them. Rain’s Hand was always thrust unevenly on the West Weald, with half the days carrying up the warm, coastal winds from the Abecean, and the other half arriving in a tumult of freezing rains without the thunder and only the clench of winter. On one of these days where the forum between the Great Chapel and hospital-basilica flooded ankle deep, worshipers, pilgrims, and clergy alike hurried for shelter under the basilica’s eaves. As they rang out their clothes, a door banged open. They peeled away from the hooded figure, dressed in the white and green of a Primate, who floated past them. Deluge slid off their frame, a Weather-ward spell shimmering in the humidity. They cut across the forum, straight to the Chapel all to ready to welcome them, and within, found a figure already seated in the second pew from the altar. “Arturo,” the figure said without turning their head and confirming him by the entry. Time had left the mer gnarled, skin drooping over his emerald eyes, and painful, twisted hands reached up to usher him into sitting. They were marked by sunspots from the harsh Nibenese sun, burnishing the gold. “Taelorm,” Arturo said back, taking a seat next to him. Long nails clicked on the dusty wood. “You’re Primate, now, as I understand it?” “Yes.” He wouldn’t mention that this happened nearly ten years ago. Something about the perception and movement of time in the minds of Mer. Settling down in pew next to him, he didn’t feel much older than the Acolyte that Taelorm had known him as. Hardly older than a boy, and speaking of… “And you’re still taking on acolytes, aren’t you?” “One.” A tired, airy chuckle. “A human, who is terrible at being a human. I’m afraid I’ve only shown him how to be a mer.”

so happy i could rework this section >:]

[communistkenobi]

Fascism is therefore inconceivable in the absence of a mature and expanding socialist Left. Indeed fascists can find their space only after socialism has become powerful enough to have had some share in governing, and thus to have disillusioned part of its traditional working-class and intellectual clientele.

(Anatomy of Fascism, chapter 2)

This… doesn’t seem true lol? At least not today. The United States has made sure over the past several decades to completely eradicate any formal left wing movement, whether that be internal (eg, the Black Panthers) or external (eg, couping/bombing/etc every fucking country on the planet). And I focus on the United States here just because of its status as the global imperial power, and the fact that it appears to be on the verge of a fully formed fascist movement.

I think it’s fair to say that the left has much more significant cultural purchase - civil rights, women’s rights, gay and trans rights (huge asterisk on all this that I’ll come back to). Like, broadly speaking, capitalism has found a market in commodifying progressivism. There are rainbow stickers in the windows of banks. People of colour are gaining ground in media representation. It’s becoming common practice in some professional settings to state your pronouns in your email signature and on zoom. Etc. While the right wing controls the official organs of the state, the economy has found a permanent market in more socially liberal ideas that people are exposed to on a daily basis, an innovation that I think is historically unique. Now, I have doubts about if that actually translates into a more liberal culture overall, or to the extent that this exposure produces more progressive values in people (probably more than zero, but still limited). But there is certainly a cultural perception that society is more progressive than it used to be, and that perception is primarily based on the proliferation of progressive merchandise that is available for purchase. This is not to downplay the role of activism or civil rights movements, but that realistically, progressive values are most palatable to people when packaged as a product, and that trying to realise greater equality through the formal structures of politics seem to be increasingly rare and distant.

So like, is the fascism we see on the rise today a new ‘type’ of fascism, one that is neoliberal in a way previous movements were not, or is this historical assessment Paxton is giving incorrect? Because despite these cultural gains, we are still grappling with deep structural problems - trans panic, police brutality, the deeply ableist responses to the pandemic, the ongoing dispossession of indigenous land and rights, ever increasing economic inequality, etc. Socialist movements have been almost universally destroyed by the United States over the past several decades - we are immeasurably farther away from realising international left wing political power than we were fifty years ago. Only a few socialist states have managed to endure. So why does fascism appear to be on the rise again, despite a near-global absence of socialism?

[determinate-negation]

What made you become anti-zionist? Were you raised with a certain vision of "Israel", did you know a lot of people who lived there? Obv it's the correct position but curious about the journey

I just ended up on some posts about antisemitism after 10/7 and it made me wonder if the "left" has been too harsh or w.e. But it seems like to those posters Palestinians don't exist at all and people are only against them as opposed to for Palestine. Idk.

my family isnt zionist, were interfaith and not really observant, and the jewish side of my family never was that interested in israel. when i went to college i wanted to do more jewish stuff and learn more about judaism so i went to the jewish center and was a bit weirded out by the israel stuff. i just happened to meet some other left wing jews in freshman year who told me they were forming a jvp and we connected easily and i thought itd be a good thing to put my time into since our university has a lot of ties to israel. really i was a communist before anything else, i think it just follows from that if you are principled about imperialism and colonialism. a lot of people from my high school were zionists and a lot either visited israel, were israeli, and a few joined the idf. it was also an unpleasant environment indicative of a particular culture and socio economic class of america so its not that hard to be opposed to.

tbqh i just have no tolerance any more for all this soft zionists online who as you said just dont see palestinians as existing in their conception of this discourse. no amount of palestinian suffering or history is even part of their perspective at all, and what they do talk about verges on the hysterical and paranoid. its not that i think antisemitism isnt rising or a problem i just dont care what they have to say about it at this point because their perspective sucks. and if u (general you) dont feel alienated from mainstream jewish institutions rn i question ur morals

[german-milfs]

in the same way how revisionism in the soviet union arose from opposition to and flawed policy from its initial governments, so did revisionism in the p.r.c., with ideologically oppositional figures like deng xiaoping and liu shaoqi leading the struggle against proletarian power on the one hand, and mao zedong's mistakes sabotaging class conflict on the other.

one of these (theoretical and political) mistakes was the three-worlds theory, which pushed the chinese government (still under mao) to open their arms to the u.s. and its allies, under the understanding that soviet social-imperialism was more dangerous than classical, old and decaying western imperialism. china would go on to opportunistically (in all the meanings and senses) try to gain their seat at the u.n. by giving foot to western hegemony. later, deng xiaoping would further sink china into this mistake under his own leadership.

misunderstanding geopolitics and using communist language to cover their tracks, they would condemn the portuguese revolutionaries in the carnation revolution, claiming their sponsors to be the soviet imperialists and not the portuguese people. instead, supporting the left-wing of the portuguese anti-communist, pro-western bloc.

china would halt its support for the revolutionaries in oman, who were fighting against a sultanate that was propped up by the british, jordanian and persian monarchies. instead, they would claim that the c.i.a.-backed shah was a patriot of his nation, his country a bulwark against the u.s.s.r. and its puppets.

under the cultural revolution, china would be one of the first to recognize the newly formed government in chile, after a violent coup d'état had taken place, which deposed allende and placed augusto pinochet in power

[cowboymaterials]

"im not jewish myself but i think that the proper way to deal with the jewish population of israel would be—" please don't be so idealist. im unlearning zionism myself, but no one wanted us after the war and no one wants us now. we don't want to go back to france, romania, poland, russia... the antisemitism there never went away. it isn't better there. and my extremely left wing, pre-1967-borders-wanting cousins in israel are so far removed from our romanian roots that they would be strangers in a strange land there. the majority of israelis aren't even from europe but other middle eastern nations, to whom it's extremely unsafe to return.

i get where you're coming from but it's really, really not so easy.

I appreciate this message, thank you for sharing your perspective, but I do want to challenge you on this.

You are right, of course it is not easy. I never said it was. My post was a reflection on what justice beyond the settler colonial nation-state could look like. There are no easy answers to this, but the obligation to end colonial occupation globally requires us to try. Just because it is hard doesn't mean it is impossible. Just because it is hard doesn't mean it is necessary.

It is not idealist to call for the end of genocide, occupation, and apartheid. And calling for this requires thinking in new ways about what true justice and safety looks like for Jewish people, otherwise the state of Israel will seem to be the only place that Jewish people can be safe.

But are Jewish Israelis safe? Not physically: Palestinians fight back to reclaim their occupied territory, Israel makes war against its own people, forcing its people into military service, building homes in areas of conflict, promoting violent racism that results in crimes against Black and Brown Jewish people. Not emotionally: the trauma of permanent war and the ideology of racist militarized nationalism are scarring. Not culturally and spiritually: Israel's ethnonationalism privileges Orthodox Judaism and Ashkenazi tradition and the banning of Yiddish resulted in a loss of culture only being recuperated now.

The fault lies in the state of Israel and the antisemitic colonial powers that facilitated its creation and its continued existence. It is an injustice for Jewish people to be forced to replicate the same genocide, displacement, and dehumanization they face in order to feel safe.

Many of the countries whose antisemitism forced Jewish people into diaspora are supportive of Israel, and many of these countries are also colonizers. This is not incidental. Instead of real reparation, these countries chose to benefit from the displacement of Jewish people. The British created Israel not to bring justice for Jewish people but to widen their geopolitical sphere. British politicians called for the "restoration of the Jews" to Palestine in the 1840s, prior to the political zionist movement. This was motivated by antisemitism and by Britain's ambitions to expand their empire. Since its inception, Israel has fought colonial wars internally and externally, acting as a militarized arm of European imperialism. Exporting arms India to be used in the occupation of Kashmir, to Hutu militias carrying out the Rwandan Genocide, and to the Guatemalan army aiding in the massacre of Indigenous Mayans. Allying with Apartheid South Africa, training the Serbian soldiers carrying out the Srebrenica genocide (and then granting them citizenship to protect them), training US police (and FBI, CIA, ICE officers), refusing to recognize the Armenian genocide while arming Azerbaijan's military to continue ethnic cleansing of Armenians. This is not a complete list. There are many other explicit instances where Israel has supported genocide and police violence globally.

I say this to demonstrate how not only is Israel not safe, but Israel makes the rest of the world less safe too. Israel reinforces colonial conquest, not acting in service of Jewish people but in service of imperial powers.

I do think there is another question in here too: Where do Jewish people go if Israel does not exist? This is a question settlers globally ask in response to Land Back. The answer is varied. Pam Palmater speaks to this, while referring to Canada this can also be applied to Israel. Maia Ramnath offers some insight from an anarchist perspective, saying that decolonizing may result in the replication of the nation-state, but this is not symptomatic of the decolonial effort, but rather the global dominance of the nation-state form, requiring global revolution.

And FYI Majority of Israelis are from Europe.