Theres enough racist people that hes a candidate
Thats it, lets stop putting our heads in the sand with 'economic anxiety'
thread locked. everyone put out their good faith arguments, but its devolving into hostility.
economic anxiety and racism go hand in hand. blame life stresses on the other simple as. classic demagogury.
I think sometimes people are just racist dude. Economic anxiety may exacerbate latent racism, but its not always the cause.
what a lack of dialectical materialism does to a mothafucka.
"Latent racism" as if this shit is an inherent property of humanity and not an instilled ideology, an "original sin". The christian moralism and idealism reeks from here.
making absolutist moralist denouncements instead of trying to see the chain of events, the cause, and to fix it
when Liberals and Idealists make racism into a “true” platonic eternal evil, all they are doing is admitting they will never fix or solve the issue and don’t know how to. They are even admitting that it’s somewhat correct or at least has a basis in reality because it’s an inherent law of the universe apparently that we can never escape. Racism was invented on a specific date, not too long ago, and it can be abolished. Anything that was created by people can be destroyed by people too.
thank you. "people are just racist" is such idealist nonsense and is itself a take playing into racist ideas. wild to see that shit on here, would think folks would know better by now.
the dangerous thing about moralism is it perpetuates itself. evil is never eradicated, it's an eternal battle. It's a resignation that contradictions cannot be resolved and that history is over
I’m not sure, I know a lot of enjoying life racists that love Trump. Country club going never been to a minority neighborhood but quote Tucker Carlson racist, own multiple properties and boats due to underpaying day laborers and call them wetback racist, north shore mansion Long Island Zionist that think the Dems are soft on Palestine racist.
Like economic anxiety my ass, most of the wealthy people I know love Trump and love being racist.
The ideology of every society is the ideology of the ruling class. The rich are the most racist of all. The poor and workers don't become racist until A) They are under severe economic pressure & B) They have the ideology of the rich drilled into their brain since birth
The ultra wealthy live in comfort because their racism has succeeded. That's the end goal of the system, and they have a vested interest to reproduce the system for the continued existence of their class.
Z_poster365:
leftist wall of text
1488_40acrecattlerancher
kill slurs lol
Don't get me wrong, i'd happily put a bullet between the eyes of a racist if they stood in the way of the revolution. Think of all the Nazis that hardliner marxists like me have put into the ground. I'm not morally absolving them, I'm explaining the mechanism to break the cycle of their reproduction so we can put one last generation into the ground and then be done with it.
Age of Napoleon Bonus Episode that examines the intertwined origins of capitalism and racism
https://soundcloud.com/user-279595680/bonus-episode
I mean ive heard all these arguments before saying capitalism is the sole cause of racism, i dont agree with it.
Racism will be here regardless of whether we are in capitalist shithead land or not, i think we have an obligation to speak out against it and organize against it.
I am saying it. Look at italians. Thye were swartly PoC and in our lifetimes they were upgraded to white because we needed more numbers to opress the other minorities with. Before that it was the Irish. Looks like pretty soon Brazilians will be white too. After them probably some Cubans than eventually all Cubans. The japanese were white for a while because we needed people to opress the Chinese with. They lost it when they stoped being a useful tool.
White is not about race. It is a class under cpaitlaism. So long as there is money to be made we will always racialize new and interesting outgroups.
White is not about race. It is a class under cpaitlaism
nah it's race. If you have a rich black in a community full of whites they'll just kill the rich black on the day SHTF
can't imagine being this scatterbrained
But which came first. Is he other because he is black? Or is he black because he us other. Compare a melungion person to a light skinned black person. In that situation race has almost nothing to do with race and everything to do with ses.
He's other because he looks different, which any 3-year-old, or non-human animal, can see
There are plenty of differences we don't create "race" around. Some of which are even more heritable than a skin color. I think though pi,king thr most obvious one despite it being much less informative or useful is a clear indicator race doesn't actually matter as such. It only matters in it's ease of use for capitlaism
Look at italians. Thye were swartly PoC and in our lifetimes they were upgraded to white because we needed more numbers to opress the other minorities with. Before that it was the Irish
you're disproving your own point here. Irish and Italians entered the US at the same time. Irish racism died out in the early-mid 1900s, Italians faced mild racism as late as the 1990s, and still do if they're dark enough
"Racism is economic bc we needed to water down the definition of white to ally against even darker hordes" isn't the winning argument that you think it is
Yeah, the Irish were made cops so that put them up the class structure. Turning men at arms into full citizens was a classic move. There is no fundamental difference between them, they just found themselves in diffrent places in the super structure and were treated diffrent as material circumstances would dictate.
Yeah, the Irish were made cops so that put them up the class structure
and WHY were the Irish made cops as opposed to the Italians?
Cause they were already partially converted by British colonization. The Irish were papists just like the Italians.
You are proposing the Irish were whiter so they got treated better? That ignores the times in which they were not treated better. I don't think you can construct a clear line through this data.
Why have I seen a job application from the 1980s where the applicant could mark down "Caucasoid: Northern European" "Caucasoid: Asian Indian/Middle Eastern" and "Caucasoid: Italian/Southern European"
I don't think the hirer cared much about papism
I can't begin to guess. Is a sample size of one idiot a useful data set for considering American society? Usually not.
I have Italian friends whose parents couldn't find houses in WASP neighborhoods, this is a weird hill to die on. Most people can tell the difference between a group of Sicilians and a group of Irish. It's not hard.
Yeah, but no one cares any more to my knowledge. So you have a first order experience of them going from non-white to white. Without any phenotypic changes. You are seeing the fake system in fake action. If it was about any genetic factor that wouldn't have happened.
Yeah, but no one cares any more to my knowledge.
if racism against Black/Brown people exists, it also exists (to a lesser extent) against people who pass as Black/Brown
If you're applying to buy a house, they can see your name is Salvatori Giupetti
If you're walking down the street, they just see a Latino
Yeah despite being catholic the irish are still northern european, which is what most us anglos mean when they say "white"
No one is saying capitalism is the sole cause of racism, that's completely ahistorical. But what is historical fact is the capitalism greatly exacerbates existing racisms.
capitalism is the primary cause and engine of racism. Racialism was invented in the 17th century alongside the mercantile transition into capitalism. Capitalism and Racism were born together and will die together, they are twins.
This is class reductionism right here. Racism was around long before the 17th century lmfao.
No it was not, the concept of race was invented around this time. Perhaps you mean prejudice and ethnic sectarianism? That certainly existed. Race did not. Might behoove you to do some reading on this subject before pontificating with false confidence
Lol, now you are just arguing semantics.
The celts were considered a race apart from the anglo saxons.
The “race” part is essential to “racism”. This is not semantics this is purely the meat of the discussion
This only makes sense if you define "racism" exclusively as "white supremacism". But you're not saying much at that point. You're just saying racism as we currently experience it is a product of capitalism. Which, duh, everything is.
Racism existed before capitalism and can exist after. Examples: the Caste System, the Khmer Rouge. Shit even Christopher Columbus was about as racist as you can get and that's right before capitalism kicks off. The Racialism you're describing is just the ideological petina that capitalists put on their pre-existing racism.
No I define racism as prejudice based of the system of racialism, which was invented in the 17th century.
Other forms of sectarian prejudice existed beforehand. Not racism
the system of racialism, which was invented in the 17th century.
And that's somehow not White Supremacism?
Other forms of sectarian prejudice existed beforehand. Not racism
Not my fault you don’t know the historical literature and are redefining clearly defined words
"Its not racism without race science" is meaningless pedantry. If we accept your definitions then the broader topic of "sectarian prejudice" is the greater issue than your narrow definition to the current flavor of "sectarian prejudice". Your prioritizing dealing with racism as an ideology and not dealing with its material causes.
"It's not racism without race" is what you meant. Literally no concept of the ideas of "races" until this time. There cannot be prejudice along lines which are not yet drawn. This isn't needless pedantry, this is fundamental to understanding what racism is and how to address it.
Literally no concept of the ideas of "races"
People had concepts of different ethnicities and reasons for subjegating, persecuting, and enslaving them before race science was invented. Utterly ahistorical to believe otherwise
I never said people should not know the history and origins of white supremacism. What I am saying is people aren't going to give much of a shit about ending "racism" if you whittle it down to just "race science based persecution". They still want the persecution to end. If you get rid of the current ideological framework but don't address the underlying causes then another framework will re emerge.
This is an exercise in being able to relate to other people and not being an ivory tower pedant. If you told someone oppressed by racism that racism has ended but their oppression still remained they'll be perfectly justified to give you a beat down.
It seems like you fundamentally don't disagree with me, you're just really attached to using the incorrect words
That's why I keep calling you a pedant. If you say "capitalism invented racism" and don't specify "white supremacism" people are going to call you full of shit.
This might come a surprise to you but to mobilize the working class you have to be able to communicate to them. Being a smugly academic pedant is going to get you no where.
That's why I keep calling you a pedant. If you say "capitalism invented racism" and don't specify "white supremacism" people are going to call you full of shit.
Except that I'm correct, and what I'm saying is basically unanimously agreed upon among historians and there's ample literature of racism first appearing at this time. So if people "think I'm full of shit" I can then educate them on reality, as I'm doing here. And while doing so, it's a great time to also spell out dialectical materialism with a concrete example. This is why the difference is significant, cause your definition doesn't challenge the idealists while mine does.
Stop trying to change definitions. Just stick to what is universally understood. It causes confusion and misunderstanding and feeds into Liberals idealism, as seen in this thread.
The concept of race as a categorization of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) has an extensive history in Europe and the Americas. The contemporary word race itself is modern; historically it was used in the sense of "nation, ethnic group" during the 16th to 19th centuries. Race acquired its modern meaning in the field of physical anthropology through scientific racism starting in the 19th century. With the rise of modern genetics, the concept of distinct human races in a biological sense has become obsolete.
So do you believe skin color phenotypes actually adheres to racial categories? Because that’s what racialism is, and saying that melanin levels determine a biological race is outdated pseudoscience that came out of the US and Europe in the 16th to 18th centuries.
So do you believe skin color phenotypes actually adheres to racial categories?
Yes, I think that dark skin is associated with being socially recognized as "Black" or "Brown".
Your argument is the equivalent of saying continents didn't exist before 1890. I am a physical realist, I believe that things physically exist (because they do), even if someone wasn't there to properly document them at the time of existence.
and saying that melanin levels determine a biological race
Yes, Africans and Australians (real ones not mayos) have the same skin color but are totally different races on a genetic level. Racism is mostly not about genetics (although a minority of nerds will take it to that level). Yes, modern white racism is irrational on genetic grounds, but it is still real and existent, just like many modern beliefs today (people eat pigs but not dogs, which are further way from our species). I'm sure many ancient forms of racism were "irrational" too.
None of this matters because 99.999999999999% of the cattle out there being racist could not name a single ethnicity or language from Southeast Asia, India, Africa, or otherwise. Almost none of it has anything to do with science. The literal fucking global temperature has increased by 4 C or something and people still don't believe in global warming, why would biological race be even remotely relevant to anything?
So do you believe skin color phenotypes actually adheres to racial categories?
This is the load bearing word, as in actuality. Do you believe that racial categories are biologically or metaphysically "real". I'm not talking about social constructs, because that's the racialism i'm talking about. Of course it exists and is widespread in our society.
Real damage was done along racial lines, a systematic oppression of people was done along these fake lines, causing real divisions to arise. The way to eliminate racism is to first right these wrongs, create a true equality between the fake racial categories - that means equality of lived existence and material conditions, not just abstract rights. Only once these things are righted, communism worked towards, can racism begin to wither.
I'm not denying the social reality of racial categories, I'm pointing to the exact moment they were constructed and pointing to all the material harm done along these lines. The point is to destroy these categories and create true equality. Moral idealists who proclaim that all racist people are evil in the core of their soul need to realize these people arise from the system we exist in, not as a justification but as an explanation of a cause-and-effect mechanism we can shatter.
Do you believe that racial categories are biologically or metaphysically "real". I'm not talking about social constructs,
All racial categories are social constructs. And all of these social constructs are biologically "real". If I want I can create an arbitrary "American" race which is composed of all citizens of America at this very second.
It would require a dataset of 300 million citizen genomes, but assuming we have lightning-fast PCR, I can test any person to check if they're "racially American". And that American race would be like 60% white 12% black etc.
The way to eliminate racism is to first right these wrongs, create a true equality between the fake racial categories - that means equality of lived existence and material conditions, not just abstract rights. Only once these things are righted, communism worked towards, can racism begin to wither.
Yes
I'm not denying the social reality of racial categories, I'm pointing to the exact moment they were constructed and pointing to all the material harm done along these lines. The point is to destroy these categories and create true equality.
There is no exact moment, because the cognizance of those categories was always there to some extent as long as the people were observed. For example in ancient Greece, some guy recorded that South Indians were darker than North Indians. It's an obvious physical difference.
The boundaries are also constantly shifting as the "bosses" change. Right now we live in mayo boss world, but there used to be an Arab boss world. There are accounts from Moor Spain where white guys wanted to darken up to look more "tough" and "noble". An Arab supremacist structure would persecute blonde/blue whites but not the brunettes (because they can pass as Arab). Just as a Euro supremacist structure persecutes darker skinned Arabs but not the light skinned ones (because they can pass as white).
Moral idealists who proclaim that all racist people are evil in the core of their soul
Some racist people are truly evil in the core of their soul
Some aren't, and are just being "NPC" cattle skinner boxes of Garbage-in-garbage-out (seeing the effects of having half a planet's worth of wealth concentrated in 10% of the population, and thinking "white superior", without actually analyzing or understanding anything about why this reality exists)
The anglo saxons had apartheid laws against the celts in 6th century britain.
Sectarian and ethnic strife are nothing new. The concept of “races” is the secret sauce that makes racism racism
I am. Race isn't real. It is an artificial construction we shape to whatever we please. There is no connectivity tissue to it. If capitlaism didn't enforce it it would wither and die on the vine.
Yes race is totally artificial, and capitalism has invented an intense apparatus to justify it. But the belief in it and the economic forces that drive that belief will exist as long as there is inequality and scarcity. Communism would eliminate that but there are other systems than communism and capitalism. They just wouldn't be all pseudo scientific about it like the capitalists would.
capitalism has invented an intense apparatus to justify it
You have the causality backwards. Capitalism doesn't invent things to justify racism, racism is invented to justify Capitalism. Capitalism required slavery, so it required an ideology that made it OK for certain people to become slaves. The racism was post hoc justification for what Capitalism already intended to do.
Europeans didn't go "look at these black Africans, I hate them so much I might as well enslave them" and then stumble accidentally into capitalism. They realized they required cheap start-up labor for the primitive accumulation of fixed capital and went out looking for it.
By "capitalism invented" I meant "capitalists invented", which is what you stated. Doesn't really change my point.
No I meant what I said, capitalism is a system which has outputs. The profit motive can never be fought. Capitalists are pretty much just along for the ride. If the capitalists opt out, then another will take their place.
What is the disagreement here? I'm tired of you telling me shit I've already known for decades as though you just learned it.
I'm having to describe dialectical materialism 101 in here because there are several non-marxist Liberal Idealists who are making very stupid arguments. I'm just spelling everything out very clearly because it seems some people don't know much at all about this subject
racism is invented to justify Capitalism
so then why did the Indoeuropeans kill every European male 4700 years ago
idt capitalism existed back then
Ethnic sectarianism. Tribalism. Xenophobia. Chauvinism existed. I'm not saying nobody was ever tribal and thought they were better than everyone else.
What didn't exist though was racialism, the entire constructed ideology of a hierarchy or races strictly defined by "black" and "red" and "yellow" and "white" where a pyramid was constructed and scrambled over for rights. Where everyone understood that "white" was on the top, etc.
There's a difference between a free-for-all of selfishness between tribes, and an enforced system of hierarchy built on invented racial categories that is universally recognized and enforced. Where people are forced to accept they are on the bottom tier, or in the middle, and that's their lot in life.
This is also a modern ideology used by Liberals in the modern age, so it is more important to deconstruct it and attack it than "tribal selfishness" or "chauvinism" more broadly as it existed throughout history. We are not living among tribals, we are living among modern Liberal racists.
That isn't racism. The defining characteristic of racism compared with cultural chauvinism is that race is a permanent biological feature that is transferred from generation to generation. In other words, once a [racial slur], always a [racial slur]. For cultural chauvinism, there was a broad understanding that barbarians can be civilized if they adopted the civilization of their civilized superiors and the civilized can regress to barbarism if they adopted the savagery of their barbarian inferiors.
Racism was originally invented to persecute Jews (the Spanish had to find a way to say "once a Jew, always a Jew" when Jews were converting into Catholicism in order to not get expelled for being Jews), but it found much greater use in the enslavement of Africans. There was a general understanding at the time that Christians couldn't enslave other Christians, and while the rule was never fully observed, the Atlantic slave trade was at a level where you couldn't sweep that under the rug. Obviously, Africans who caught wind of this would try to convert into Christianity in order to not be enslaved. So, that's where racism comes into play. It's with racism that an ideological justification can be put into service for the sake of chattel slavery.
Once Europeans can say, "once a n-word, always a n-word," they have the ideological justification to enslave as many Black people as they see. That's also where you start seeing other bullshit like how Black people are stupid (so they can only be used as beast of burden) or how Black people can't feel pain (so crackers don't feel as bad when they turned a disobedient slave's back into ground beef). But more importantly, the racial character of their oppression meant that the status of slave transfers from the mother to her children. It doesn't matter if the mother can read or is only 0.05% Black because as long as she's a slave, her children will be slaves too.
That isn't racism.
Okay so the caste system isn't racist either then
It is an artificial construction
the famous artificial construction of your skin's albedo
The race realist has entered the chat. Get your calipers out everybody.
race realism is when you state that Shaquille O Neal is Black
I'm asian and paler than many of my "white" co-workers. Aren't I supposed to be Yellow?
True, we should call "white" something else. Let's call it northwest asian, since europe's not a real continent
Yes, I am white but I am darker than several of my latinX friends. I still get white privilege they do not.
Sure, it's possible depending on the specific features and contexts which are so detailed that I won't even go into them. As well as family connections, accents, etc.
But if your Latinx friend is blue eyed and pale, and you're a very swarthy curly haired dark eyed "white" Sicilian, the friend can benefit from "white-passing privilege" relative to your white ass
Is it because of thr fair complexion? Or is it because of the resources and the legacy of being decident from the colonizer classes that provides that privilege?
both. Some people (of all races) would treat him better bc they mistake him for white, and everything nice and good they know is white, bc whites have had all the money/land since 1492
Some white people would treat him better not only because of the above implicit bias association, but consciously and explicitly because he's "one of their own", and this would be "evil" racism
Ive seen plenty of people even prominent marxists say this, doug and ben from Zero books for example, repeat this line.
I have never heard of Doug and Ben and don't know what they're all on about. Class reductionists are a thing but idk if that's what they are without reading their words.
Forget about class reductionism, how about any class analysis whatsoever? OP’s “analysis” is pure race reductionism and moralism without a single ounce of Marxist thought instilled.
Apparently using any class analysis whatsoever or referencing factual historical origins of things is “class reductionism” now?
Im not beholden to marx like you are, i just want better outcomes for everyone and saying racism would "disappear with capitalism" is dangerously ignorant of history.
i have no problem saying im just a non sectarian leftist who wants the best for everyone.
I don't want to hear anything about "class reductionist" from non-Marxists who reject Marx and reject class based analysis entirely. Go off and live in your idealist fantasy world of eternal platonic evils and leave material analysis of history to us who care to connect our ideas with reality and alter the world. Stop stealing our words and aping our ideas poorly. Stay in your own lane or learn.
I'm disagreeing with their "race reductionism" too if you read my earlier comments.
There was racism against celts and people perceived to be "others" long before the advent of capitalism dude, by all means keep screaming at me obnoxiously about how im a liberal who hasnt read marx (idgaf lol)
im not saying class doesnt play any factor at all, contrary to your weird straw-mans.
There was ethnic prejudice and strife. Can’t be racist if the concept of race has yet to be conceived
if that's what you got from "intertwined origins" you should really listen to it
capitalism is the sole cause of racism
anyone who believes this has the equivalent of horse-blinders biologically welded into their brain
this is idealist nonsense and is itself playing into/flirting with lending legitimacy to racist ideas.
literally not what I said, just pointing out your comment is idealist bs running away from having to actually explain social phenomena.
lol. sorry but "espousing dialectical materialism is making excuses for individual racists" is such a baby brained take i will not engage with it any further. you genuinely sound like a wrecker. read stalin.
It's true. America is such a segregated society it is almost inevitable, so long as the construct of race exists. The anxiety causes even good-natured people to do awkward shit sometimes. But the elites will literally use anything they can to divide us up. Skin is one of the easiest, humans are such visual creatures and it's the biggest organ, and we are segregated anyway. The construct of race works better than the elites could have even predicted though.
It's true not just economics anything that impedes our ability to empathize with one another will create the possibility of this. Though I think for demogogues economic stress it's the easiest to exploit and misdirect to protect from "levelling". Also geographic segregation makes it much easier to "otherise" people etc etc regardless. Look at the Brits and the Irish and they are all pale af but Brits wanted the land so they created a construct to legitimize it.
Yeah! Economic anxiety and racism go hand in hand, except for, like, half the time but every other instance than when it doesn’t
Yes of course even for the wealthy they are going to invent whatever construct they need to justify their own position in their own head. The capital is so concentrated though so there aren't too many of that kind.
As someone who is trans and queer, a POC, and coming from an immigrant family- I have to agree with u/Z_Poster365, this post and the comments come distastefully close to spoilerism (against the most basic simple stance against literal genocide).
Trump supporters are ghouls and whether they like it or not, racist through their willingness to stand alongside and fend for racism, yes- but the nasty, honest truth is that the same goes for all of Klanmala's supporters, with the disgusting caveat even that many more of those are not simply ignorant, but genuinely vile to their core, having seen the full extent of what they support and yet still making their peace with it.
Both sides (if the sides of 100% Hitler, orange flavor vs. 100% Hitler, coconut flavor are "separate sides) are truly and irreconcilably wretched. They might take minor detours in how they rationalize it, but at their core is imperial identity politics (that the lives of the "enlightened west" are worth infinitely more than those of the global south) and imperial anxiety (that those they would see as their slaves if not exterminated altogether are liberating themselves).
Thank you. Racism is not when white dudes with cowboy hats feel afraid of Black teens and call the cops on them. Racism isn't even when white ladies clasp their purse and feel afraid when they see an Arab at the airport. Those individual instances of racist behavior are part of the system of racism; racism isn't evil, it's not Darth Vader or Voldemort, it's a system. And, as a system, it's modular and multivariate. It's a complex phenomenon full of contradictions, like the liberal imperial identity politics you mention which exist in contradiction to the less hegemonic "white working class" aesthetics of the American right. But both aspects are part of the same social system. And like any social system, it exists within the broader context of our social structure, divided into its economic base and the superstructure, as part of the superstructure. And as we should all understand by now, the superstructure is shaped by the based. They are inseparable. Trying to explain racism without understanding that the system of racism operates within capitalism as one of several mechanisms that maintains the economic base is a fool's errand.
Racism is not when white dudes with cowboy hats feel afraid of Black teens and call the cops on them.
I don’t know about you but that’s the most salient part of racism. Not sure I give a fuck about the metaphysical analysis when my literal skin color is being used to impale me with gunfire or make my conditions worse than oh, I don’t know, fucking yours or the average white dude on this here site.
Palestine and Nicaragua are literally the last thing on my mind when im living my day to day life, talking about these things while I live in despair might as well be a form of escapism
I don’t know about you but that’s the most salient part of racism. Not sure I give a fuck about the metaphysical analysis when my literal skin color is being used to impale me with gunfire or make my conditions worse than oh, I don’t know, fucking yours or the average white dude on this here site.
Sure. That's understandable. My objection to this is that, despite the fact that the immediate violence that you are forced to face is the most salient part of racism, not engaging with the entire system critically from a materialist perspective leaves you with a poor position to fight against it. Short sightedness is the essence of liberalism, being unable to see the forest for the trees. This is how you end up fighting racism with Black capitalism, instead of fighting racism, understood to be one of several systems that reproduce capitalism, with socialism.
Admittedly, I hadn't quite considered racism in the way you describe (though I'm aware of that take of discrimination + social power = racism).
I'd say I fall somewhere between you and @Lussy@hexbear.net in this regard, though I also feel that my own experiences with racism and racial alienation and how they have shaped my mentality in- well, just about everything, do also result in me having an immense bias I don't know if I can entirely overcome. Logically I agree more with you and that aforementioned (racism requires power) take- mentally it is hard to do, FWIW I will admit that I myself similarly cannot fully divorce myself mentally from identity politics (though "imperial idpol" as I described in my previous comment was in response to the "white idpol" mentioned in the post- and I do think is absolutely a thing, though idpol as an... atomization of the proletariat and humanity in general does probably have an infinite number of takes that can be derived from the concept- imperial idpol being just a particularly vile and ubiquitous one across the imperial cores).
Since I @'ed Lussy though, figure I'd respond also here in saying-
Palestine and Nicaragua are literally the last thing on my mind when im living my day to day life, talking about these things while I live in despair might as well be a form of escapism
While not dunking on you for that take, I have to infinitely disagree with it. Solidarity is not escapism, and if we cannot hold onto it even in the worst despair then we are both truly doomed, and at least somewhat wretched. We can't look away, particularly not if we want others to stand by us in turn.
I get what you're saying, 100%, in regards to living in despair (I do as well)- and sometimes we need to just live disconnecting from these things for a while, because it isn't healthy and we can't survive like that while living with our own despair ourselves. But we can't disconnect from it altogether, when it comes up (and it always does) we cannot keep silent and keep to ourselves.
Honestly on some level I feel if I were to do it- for those who do it as well- honestly, perhaps we would deserve it then. Surely we would have asked for it, by looking away from those in even further despair and facing literal industrial genocide or kill squads. Think about it and just what you said (though I don't think the full meaning of it was intended)- is this what we want to be? Are we any better than those who are persecuting us for our race if we do so? Maybe it's just me and my ex-Catholic mentality, but I reject it (the empire) in its entirety even when it is far away doing more horrifying things to others I don't know in Palestine and Nicaragua, I would like to think I would reject it and would not look away or shy from it even if it kills me.
And like any social system, it exists within the broader context of our social structure, divided into its economic base and the superstructure, as part of the superstructure. And as we should all understand by now, the superstructure is shaped by the based
And the base also shapes the superstructure.
Is there anyone here who really believes Kamala’s campaign core isn’t imperialist war and genocide and smug bourgeois paternalism?
There’s enough genocidal people that she’s a candidate
That’s it, let’s stop putting our heads in the sand with ‘harm reduction’
lol where did i say anything about that?
What a strange fella you are.
The implication of your brow beating is pretty clear. It’s to whip votes for the DNC, this shit always spikes right before elections around here
I dont give a shit about the DNC or Kammala i cant even vote im a drug felon, weirdo.
if that wasn't your intention and you also hate Democrats then you should have no issue with my comment and just agree and laugh along. The fact you took ire reveals your motivation for posting this
What? Is that how it works? If someone makes weirdly false accusations about me, they make me more likely to respond, not less.
where's my accusation in the original comment?
I just made a joke using the format of their OP. They took issue with that joke before I made any accusations of their intentions, confirming my suspicions
Yes, people can take implications as accusations and people absolutely do do this to "slyly" insult people they are responding to. It's actually not very subtle at all.
Exactly, OP did it first with their post and I understood the implication.
Turnabout is fair play, but neither of you seemed to like it when the mirror was held up to Democrats for some reason
This is actually bonkers. I just snarl when people say "Oho! I laid a conversational trap and have rused you!".
"neither of you"
What are you even talking about?
Actually, I'm tapping out. This is bullshit.
I dunno about that. Based on the osmosis I get from an old co-workers group chat, a dude from India is definitely voting for Trump after getting his citizenship last year. Another from Hong Kong is like 80% for Trump at this point. And that’s just what’s being discussed in the open.
I think you’re underestimating how much it is really coming down to “what is Biden (Harris) going to give me?” and that Trump is at least pretending to promise something.
Also, don’t be surprised that Trump has a solid hold on a certain bloc of non-white immigrants. The “Democrats are the party of handout for lazy people and going to bankrupt the country” and the “Republicans are the party for hardworking people” stereotypes continue to hold in the minds of many people who emigrated to the US.
I got to know many Chinese immigrants in the US when I used to live there and most first gen immigrants were solid Republican voters. They really bought into the “government spending billions on handout for lazy people is why our economy is going so badly” narrative.
I hate a lot of the immigrants the US lets in because they are all these ultra-capitalist greedy bootlickers from around the globe. the US has been doing this for the last century (since the russian revolution), and I think it is making the US an even more right wing pro-capitalist hellscape.
That is the entire point of this immigration, as Samir Amin states:
Successive waves of immigration also played a role in reinforcing American ideology. The immigrants were certainly not responsible for the poverty and oppression that lay behind their departure for the United States. But their emigration led them to give up collective struggle to change the shared conditions of their classes or groups in their native countries, and adopt instead the ideology of individual success in their adopted home.
Adopting such an ideology delayed the acquisition of class consciousness. Once it began to mature, this developing consciousness had to face a new wave of immigrants, resulting in renewed failure to achieve the requisite political consciousness. Simultaneously, this immigration encouraged the “communitarianization” of U.S. society. “Individual success” does not exclude inclusion in a community of origin, without which individual isolation might become insupportable. The reinforcement of this dimension of identity—which the U.S. system reclaims and encourages—is done to the detriment of class consciousness and the forming of citizens.
Communitarian ideologies cannot be a substitute for the absence of a socialist ideology in the working class. This is true even of the most radical of them, that of the black community.
its wild that a few people in this thread are acting like racism is like an unexplainable part of human nature lol. literally falling into a racist idea because you just refuse to understand dialectical and historical materialism i guess. idealist nonsense! read stalin!
idealist nonsense! read stalin!
This reads like one of Lenin's quips
high praise lol thank you it's just one of my favourite things to call people out for on here (and happens all too often)
I just said i don't think capitalism caused racism and that racism was around before capitalism.
Sorry, im not into giving chuds excuses for their venomous hatred of sexual minorities or POC
It's not about "giving excuses." It's about scientifically analyzing and breaking down the reality of the world around you.
For example, I (hope) you'd never say "I'm not giving that thief an excuse for stealing!" You understand that society, under a capitalist economic system, drove that person through a variety of ways to desperation that led down that path. We all recognize that attributing actions like stealing to "human nature" is inherently a reactionary way of viewing humanity. People, for the most part, would much rather cooperate than compete.
Further, racism the way it exists in the modern world was essentially invented. No that doesn't mean white Europeans in 1400 meeting darker skinned American continent natives didn't immediately have whatever crazy thoughts about their nature and wonder "Are these even the same as me?" We know pretty absolutely that they did have racist thoughts, beliefs and of course actions.
However, the way racism evolved from that time period up to today follows a deliberate path set out by people who weren't capitalists, correct, but also not far off in their views of humanity, human nature, exploitation of human labor from any capitalist that came along shortly after them (couple hundred years or so).
For example, without rewriting books from memory (trying not to anyway...) Catholics, the religion of the first Europeans in the Americas, at the time basically had a system that was Catholic-exclusive. Ie you could enslave a non-Catholic. But if someone converted to Catholicism they could no longer be enslaved. That's what the Church laid out basically. Race was irrelevant on paper. A black Catholic or indigenous American Catholic was supposed to be treated the same as a white European Catholic.
Obviously that presents a problem if your name is Cortez or Columbus and you want to enslave and rob entire continents. So long story short, "race"-based (skin color-based) systems were soon implemented to override the "problem." Instead of religion determining your worthiness of freedom and rights such as they exists society shifted to race, skin color, ethnicity being the determining factor. This was a great change for those involved in the slave trade and generally involved in exploiting labor. Now people were permanently locked out of personhood, legally, based on their skin color. A system the United States took its inevitable heights in the hundreds of years prior to the civil war. And clearly the remnants of that system of American Apartheid still exist.
Anyway, none of this gives excuse to anyone, then or now, for their actions and beliefs. But if you have a system that at its core is built upon exploitation of labor, as we do, and that exploitation of labor leads to horrific outcomes like extreme poverty causing starvation, homelessness, lack of medical care, etc. Meanwhile you have "opportunists" telling the exploited masses "Hey, you know why your life sucks? No, no... not your boss! It's actually that transgender teenager in another state on the swim team! Isn't that fucked up?! Aren't you really angry about that?!" Mix in purposeful defunding and de-emphasis on education for decades and decades resulting in functionally illiterate adults, living in ever-shittier standards, with no material analysis or knowledge to guide them... and you get people freaking the fuck out, some cynical and some legitimate, about "transgender Mexicans" invading the US.
It's a long path to get people to this point, and obviously they are, due to their actions and beliefs, an enemy of humanity currently. It's still extremely important to always understand how people get to that point. And understand that society and economic systems organized by political forces drive to these reactionary tendencies. If we change the political system, we change the economic systems, we will see differences in how people act.
ill just say i fundamentally disagree with your premise that the advent racism was in the 1400s.
There were apartheid laws against the britons in britain by the anglo saxons and against the gauls by the franks in france.
Racism has been around long before modern capitalism and we will still need to fight it after capitalism is gone. I feel like its a moral obligation and is also praxis.
i think class trumps everything at the end of the day of course.
Capitalism doesn't cause racism any more than it causes markets. But it takes advantage of both to maintain control over society.
you literally said "sometimes people are just racist". do you not see how that is an idealist statement? do you understand the difference between materialism and idealism?
That's his core, yeah, the people who will vote for him no matter what. But I don't think those people alone are enough to give him a victory. If he wins, it's because it's that core plus the people who feel economic pressure, which generally translates to voting for whoever isn't currently in the White House.
That was his core demographic that won him the 2016 primaries. He had a bigger coalition than that for the 2016 general. But he ain't got shit but that core now.
"Economic Anxiety" is just liberal weasel words for economic failures of capitalism, but those are real and they do cause racism. Some people are just raised racist. But the worse the economy does the more racism you well see.
Most of the Harris voters I know also talk a lot about economic anxiety. But they do the same shit...Yes Harris will be bad for the economy but Trump will be WORSE! Libs are incapable of genuine thought
Good thing i cant vote for harris because im a felon and wouldnt anyways.
The small whites are for sure afraid they will be treated economically like a minority. That is the anxiety. They don't want to lose the benefits of their white privilege. So kidna
The small whites are for sure afraid they will be treated economically like a minority
No, they're afraid they'll be treated equally. Equality feels like oppression
If you actually treated them like a minority they would all sudoku in like 3 days from the shock
no, they don't think they will be treated equally; it is an inherent part of colonialism (from which white supremacy arose) to condition a projection of a 'reversed consequence' if power is let go by making the colonized subject into a 'dangerous' and 'unpredictable' embodiment of 'barbarity,' against whom the colonizer is instead a 'civilized' and 'rational' embodiment of 'good' in dialectical antithesis to it. It is where the ideological dynamic of 'civilizing the savages' comes from in the material relation of colonialism and its white supremacist expression in history (how European colonialism unfolded and reified its relations). ie. there is an underlying understanding in the white supremacist consciousness that "they want to do to us what we did to them or worse, and will if we let them" (the implication being, we can never 'let them,' meaning never give up vigilance and power over them, securing the colonial relation).
It comes out very obviously from white liberals in conversations about decolonization when they are pressed that they are not to and can not insert themselves into deciding 'how' the colonized 'should' carry out decolonization. There is a deep primal fear in this projection which dialectically necessarily grows out of the material relations of colonialism and colonization; as for there to be a colonizer there must be a colonized --- which inherently necessitates dehumanization and justifications for 'why' maintaining control and dominance over the colonized subject is "right," "natural," or "the only option." Which then cyclically reinforces the material relations to the material base --- land, resources, labor, means of production and subsistence and reproduction of labor. Cyclically because then every act of defiance and resistance against this colonial relationship by the colonized, in the perspective of this superstructural ethos, 'justifies' the claim of the 'dangerousness' and 'barbarity' of the colonized and so the colonizer's need to 'keep them under control'. As we saw it also with oct7 in Palestine. As we see in every uprising and riot of colonized people or major push against the structures and systems of their subjugation.
I recommend The Wretched of the Earth by Fanon for a good understanding of colonialism and decolonization and all its inter-relations.
I've seen plenty from his campaign, or the general republican campaign, that hammers on economic stuff
Whats the majority of what you hear about? An 'invasion' of immigrants and how they are 'poisoning our blood'
that is economic stuff, it's about people who are "cutting in line" for the american dream when many americans feel left behind. if those americans didn't feel left behind (by 40 years of neoliberalism) they wouldn't be looking for someone to blame and trumps BS wouldn't work.
This seems a lot like youre making excuses for them to me.
Im trying to be charitable.
im not trying to word that in an assholeish way
I'll refer you to this insightful discussion with a sociologist. https://hexbear.net/post/3698136
Well, lemme put it this way, beyond serving rentier western hegemonic capitalist masters of shareholders and lenders (Ego)
Trump appeals to the petit-bourgeois (read: "small" business) settler-colonial descendants of Amerikkka, that promise further radical rightist change to the nation, regardless of how dirty or feasible it is (ID)
And Kamala appeals to the labor aristocrat PMC tendencies of it, that hope to maintain the bloody imperial hegemony as is, and its image (Superego)
Both still further Amerikkka's interest in different faces, under the same Ego...
Are you talking about like old stock american's of british ancestry when you talk about the settler colonial stock?
My fathers family were scots irish who have been here since the late 1600s and a large number of them are very racist
That's the core of Trump's movement, but the cultural and political membrane surrounding it stands in for industrial American conservatism which alot of non white nationalists buy into
I swear
had a bunch of episodes about this but I can't find them now
