did your post manage to quiet the little voice in your head that whispers about how capitalism is turning the planet into a charcoal briquette?
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Cake day: January 17th, 2024
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17·5 months agoGrapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit— and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate— died of malnutrition— because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
This was another very difficult question I had to ask my interview subjects, especially the leftists from Southeast Asia and Latin America. When we would get to discussing the old debates between peaceful and armed revolution; between hardline Marxism and democratic socialism, I would ask: “Who was right?”
In Guatemala, was it Árbenz or Che who had the right approach? Or in Indonesia, when Mao warned Aidit that the PKI should arm themselves, and they did not? In Chile, was it the young revolutionaries in the MIR who were right in those college debates, or the more disciplined, moderate Chilean Communist Party?
Most of the people I spoke with who were politically involved back then believed fervently in a nonviolent approach, in gradual, peaceful, democratic change. They often had no love for the systems set up by people like Mao. But they knew that their side had lost the debate, because so many of their friends were dead. They often admitted, without hesitation or pleasure, that the hardliners had been right. Aidit’s unarmed party didn’t survive. Allende’s democratic socialism was not allowed, regardless of the détente between the Soviets and Washington.
Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported – what the rich countries said, rather than what they did.
That group was annihilated.
—Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method
The American liberal, faced with this reality, tends to concede that truth is in fact drowned out by a relentless tide of spin and propaganda. Their next move is always predictable, however. It’s another lesson dutifully drilled into them in their youth: “At least we can dissent, however unpopular and ineffectual!” The reality, of course, is that such dissent is tolerated to the extent that it is unpopular.
Big-shot TV host Phil Donahue demonstrated that challenging imperial marching orders in the context of the invasion of Iraq was career suicide, when a leaked memo clearly explained he was fired in 2003 because he’d be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” [5] The fate of journalists unprotected by such wealth or celebrity is darker and sadder. Ramsey Orta, whose footage of Eric Garner pleading “I can’t breathe!” to NYPD cops choking him to death went viral, was rewarded for his impactful citizen journalism by having his family targeted by the cops, fast-tracked to prison for unrelated crimes, and fed rat poison while in there. [6] The only casualty of the spectacular “Panama Papers” leak was Daphne Caruana Galizia, the journalist who led the investigation, who was assassinated with a car-bomb near her home in Malta. [7] Then there’s the well-publicized cases of Assange, Snowden, Manning, etc. That said, I tend think to such lists are somewhat unnecessary since, ultimately, most honest people confess that they self-censor on social media for fear of consequences. (Do you?)
In other words, the status quo in the West is basically as follows: you can say whatever you want, so long as it doesn’t actually have any effect.
In 1991, in the context of the destruction of the Soviet Union (Cuba’s largest trading partner), with neighbors salivating at the prospect of capitalist restoration, a Mexican journalist asked Fidel Castro, “why do you not allow the organization of people who think differently, or open up space for political freedom?” He answers frankly:
We’ve endured over thirty years of hostility, over thirty years of war in all its forms — among them the brutal economic blockade that stops us from purchasing a single aspirin in the United States. It’s incredible that when there’s talk of human rights, not a single word is said about the brutal violation this constitutes for the human rights of an entire people, the economic blockade of the United States to impede Cuba’s development. The revolution polarized forces: those who were for it and those who, along with the United States, were against it. And really, I say this with the utmost sincerity, and I believe it’s consistent with the facts on the ground, but while such realities persist, we cannot give the enemy any quarter for them to carry out their historical task of destroying the revolution.
(This implies, for example, that political dissidence will not have a space in Cuba?)
If it’s a pro-Yankee dissidence, it will have no space. But there are many people who think differently in Cuba and are respected. Now, the creation of all the conditions for a party of imperialism? That does not exist, and we will never allow it. [8]
As far as I can tell, on this score, there’s only two main differences between Fidel Castro and Western leadership. The first is that he stands for anti-imperialism and socialism, and they for imperialism and capitalism. And the other is that he’s honest about what Cuba does and why, whereas capitalist states brutally crush communist organization with mass-murder and imprisonment — COINTELPRO, Operation Cóndor, Operation Gladio, etc. — then simply lie about embracing plurality. Just think here about the notion of white North Americans celebrating “Thanksgiving.”
And I tend to think that this is, in the final analysis, the crux of the matter. The question of “free press” and “free speech” is not separable from the question of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie versus the dictatorship of the proletariat. The idea of “political plurality” as such turns out to be the negation of the possibility of achieving any kind of truth in the realm of politics, it reduces all historical and value claims to the rank of mere opinion. And of course, so long as someone’s political convictions are mere opinion, they won’t rise to defend them. And so the liberal state remains the dictatorial organ of the bourgeoisie, with roads being built or legislation being passed only as commanded by the interests of capital, completely disregarding the interests of workers. Under regimes where political plurality is falsely upheld as a supreme virtue, the very notion of asserting oneself as possessing a truth appears aggressive and “authoritarian.”
not asking the guy who called immigrants “cockroaches” anything
America elected a dusky CIA person, therefore it is good and all past sins are erased
As a kid I always wondered what was up with the rise of Nazi Germany. How come all those people bought such over-the-top myths about Jewish people eating babies, despite no evidence to support it? [27] Where was the academic opposition? Were “educated” gentiles saying nothing on behalf of Jewish people?
Living in Canada in 2021 put these doubts to rest. Acceptable opinion, fit for print and polite society, ranges from utterly unrestrained sinophobic hatemongering (baseless accusations of bat-eating, organ-harvesting, etc.) to, at the opposite “extreme,” ambivalent fence-sitting. The left-liberal camp never seems to find enough time or energy to forcefully challenge sinophobic allegations. In an echo of the run-up to the “War on Terror,” people express fear that opposing racism too decisively will make them appear biased towards China. It’s a strange thing: people hand-wring about the proliferation of pro-China propaganda, yet cannot name a single network or pundit associated with that view.
Canadian liberals perform a national ritual of shame and guilt over their treatment of indigenous people, but it never translates into meaningful reparations or action. The Xinjiang atrocity propaganda blitz offers something valuable to Canadians: instead of improving the situation at home, they can therapeutically attack China. The more horrific the imagined crimes we project onto that far-away country, the more minor and forgivable our actions appear. Our collaboration with US aggression is transmuted into a form of atonement. This is routinely laid bare by Canadian pundits:
Have the US or Canada done what China did to Hong Kong or Tibet, and want to do to Taiwan? There are a ton of faults in our treatment of Indigenous people, and the US is failing, but it’s not a comparison at the moment. [28]
And Canadian politicians:
Canadian Greens are calling for the 2022 Olympics to be relocated from Beijing due to ongoing genocide against Uighurs. Canada should consider whether it is feasible to offer itself as an alternative host, given our experience and venues. [29]
This is how liberal Canadians cope with guilt, homegrown or imposed, over living on stolen land. [30] Over broken and disrespected treaties, sadistic police violence in the form of “starlight tours,” and recent flashpoints of violence against the Wet’suwet’en nation (to build a pipeline) and the Mi’kmaq nation (over fishing rights). Hearing these well-heeled Canadians speak of China transports us to an alternate reality where the explosive 2019 national inquiry’s report documenting the ongoing genocide of indigenous people in Canada never even existed. [31] Denial and projection go hand-in-hand.
from https://redsails.org/the-xinjiang-atrocity-propaganda-blitz/
not even close, really demolishing your own credibility and claims to have read anything
天安门工厂 is a place, not an event. btw in China it’s called “June 4th Incident” and common knowledge, easily findable on Baidu.
The Tiananmen Square ‘Massacre’: The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.