i’m hoping this is just because they’re on a hot streak of posting things like the tianamen square incident never happened, or that the most consistent senator to vote against israel is a zionist (which may or not be fair since i can only think of one politician who actively denounces the existence of an israeli state apparatus AND doesn’t support any form of genocide but she’s in congress)

then again a WHOLE lot of people not in maine all feel the need to chime in and have an opinion on Graham Platner and loving or hating him is the Great Purity Test of the Moment. my rule is that if i get drug into a conversation about Graham Platner, that means it’s time to go do something useful instead (today i’m taking supplies up to a UMWA solar kiln to help combat the water crisis in WV).

either way, posting pro or against platner is an easy way to get engagement right now. the thing i would remind people is that electoralism can only ever help you avoid the worst possible outcome. no politician who makes it far enough into the system to become a senator of all things will ever do anything so disruptive to the system to be worthy of praise. if you’re in Maine, assess is he would be better or worse than your current senator, Susan Collins. vote based on that. no more no less.

if you are outside of maine and you’re pro-platner, let me remind you that John Fetterman’s staff have all said he had a streak like what we’re seeing from him before his stroke. the stroke just made his conservative bad brain more obvious. Platner denounces the genocide in Gaza, yes, but he also supports increased military spending and the continued existence of ICE and the police state. we don’t have to talk about his tattoos or his texts to find he’s not someone to idolize, worship, or want to discuss.

stop blindly supporting politicians just because they “practice working class politics” but also probably stop discussing what the media apparatus wants you to focus on. out in the streets, no one is talking about him. we’re talking about Delaney Hall. we’re talking about the administration releasing a list of “terrorists” and it’s the most fucking gentle comedians and educatonrs you ever heard of. we’re talking about unionizing our workplaces. the only people talking about graham platner are 24 hour news channels and the chronically online.

if you are thinking about graham platner, go outside. meet your neighbors. look for problems in your community that need community oriented solutions. wherever you are in your life, there is something more useful for you to be doing than platnerposting. even reading a schlock book like the dungeon crawler carl series will be a more productive way to live your life than platnerposting

moving goalposts is their whole thing

/disengage

i firmly believe that the workers need to own the means of production to all be fed. it’s like… the very most core thing to my beliefs from growing up in a deeply impoverished community. but since you so firmly believe i act in bad faith i’m going to have to recommend we disengage as this conversation cannot ever lead anywhere productive.

just to build on this a little further, disillusioned people are more attracted to the familiar than something that requires more internal effort to change. in my observations many of the most adament ML/Stalinist adherents are more supportive of imperial structures with a liberatory aesthetic than they are of structures that are truly challenging to their named enemies. ML/Stalinist thought offers a form of resistance to capitalist structures that doesn’t require as much internal change than anarchism, zapatismo, or trotskyism.

what i find interesting though, and that i’m still examining, is that self reported MLs have a tendency to announce that ML/Stalinism/Maoism is the movement of the global south even though leftist movements in the global south tend to hew much more closely to anarchism and trotsyism with a little bit of maoism mixed in. i haven’t fully drawn a conclusion yet, but i think a form of confirmation bias is at play. they’ve divided in their heads the world into East vs West with East being the great global protector of South. they think themselves, as all people do, the good guys. so they look for things in the global south that confirms their perception that they’re the good guys rather than examining how leftist movements in the global south differ greatly from the ML model of vanguard revolution

Who gets offended at the term “normal people” did we persecute people for being normal or something?

in marginalized spaces we work to recognize that “normal” is only perceived as “normal” because of an established hegemony of violence. you perceive yourself as normal because of your privelege. we ask you, in our spaces, to leave that at the door. that you perceive this as persecution is telling. i’m starting to think this was never about you being uncomfortable with encouraging self harm and suicide, but instead the surrounding ways that you engage with minority issues.

you may not percieve yourself to be a bigot, and maybe you aren’t, but not being a bigot isn’t the bar you need to clear to be welcomed by marginalized people. you need to be an active anti-bigot. comments like what i quoted above are indicative that you are not quite there yet.

Still. It speaks to that no matter how much they try to prop up the coal industry for the sake of making the people with the broad form deeds rich, the future will be centered on abundant energy from the sun.

this has never been about just epstein. the phrase “epstein class” has been neutered of its original impact of “this is a way of life for a gertain group of uber wealthy people” and instead turning to focus on epstein and his gaggle of golf pedophile buddies.

there’s three prevalent ways to think of epstein’s death:

• to keep him from talking
• he wasn’t killed but was removed quiety from prison during the lost tapes
• someone was eliminating the competition

i tend to fall more into the first and third options, and also do give some credence to the possibility that accountability and consequences aren’t something monsters like him opt into, or that just someone really fucking hated him and killed him.

but the point is, it was NEVER just epstein running this business. he was one guy the uberwealthy used to launder their money and sex crimes. any languages he didn’t speak that an oligarch only spoke? there’s an epstein of that language, too

the electoral college and a federal government made up of the states rather than of the people along with simple plurality voting sometimes and majority voting others are, mathematically, the least power you can give people while still issuing a ballot. a binary party system is just a unitary party system where the final votes for the party leadership is more visible.

“The people only have those rights which i allow them to have” — Dr DOOM

i’d structure it so the tutorial gives the impression you’re supposed to oppress your people but make it so the win conditions are easier to achieve if you don’t union bust

Urbek plays with this a little but certainly not to the degree i think you’re envisioning. you can implement policies that give you short term economic boosts but they almost always come with long term disadvantages. meanwhile you can also plan for long term prosperity in your city but that requires more patience.

i think i perceive what you’re describing as being more like Anno, Banished, or Timberborn but with short term incentives to overwork your workers and long term incentives to not. i think that might actually wind up hewing pretty close to dwarf fortress or gnomoria, just with some slightly different interactions

it’s not latin america’s fault latin america is a mess. latin america was much more stable before european colonization destroyed the social structures and societal infrastructure that had developed there for milenia. the fact we even call it “latin” “america” when those are both european constructs from the peninsula of italy should tell you something

they’ve also been kidnapping Palestinians and other indigenous levantine people since they first starting establishing kibbutzes in the 1920s, with it escalating with the establishment of an official israeli state in 1946 with the legitimacy lended to them by the US and UK. the focus Oct 7 as the start of Israeli/Palestinian history ignores nearly a century of prior abuse

what is your problem with the concept? i can put together more tomorrow after work but… what the fuck is this? and why the need to call me a halfwit? you won’t tell me, specifically, what your objection to the notion the a small number of people controlling the means of production instead of the workers creating favorable conditions for famine is. it feels on my end of the conversation like you just want to be mad and that i have received your ire.

to reiterate: it’s really far away from your usual leftist ethos, especially in leftist memes, that i need some input as to what your problem is before i put in the work because otherwise this seems like you’re just trolling to troll.

as for the first result thing, i was just trying to introduce you to the concept that it’s not just me saying this. i promise i can find more it’s just been a few years since i had access to academic journals. the idea that capitalist greed causes famines is not a new notion, it shouldn’t be hard to find more.

i’m not going to address the “developing field” “critique” since it’s patently absurd to expect academia to remain static, especially when it has such a white supremacist legacy. applying marxist analysis to food systems and political theory in conjunction should be catnip for a person proudly calling themselves a “tankie” in their bio. you’re attacking this is so absurd i don’t even know what to say. it makes me discount every tangentially leftist thing you’ve ever said, to be honest, because if you don’t want to investigate how capitalist greed causes famine… how do you even call yourself a leftist?

1. That’s the general academic consensus. Here’s just the first result I found from Radboud University: https://www.ru.nl/en/research/research-news/famines-are-largely-caused-by-human-action
2. The association between authoritarianism and famine is a developing field of anthropology: https://iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/news/2026/04/20260512.html (this paper’s conclusion that elections and media oversight is what makes democratization effective at famine prevention I think misses the forest for the trees. The ultimate conclusion I think when you factor in famines that are largely ignored by western media such as the dust bowl in the 1930s is that famines are structural and that it is when the workers who own the means of production, the means of production are used more effectively)

@[email protected] , I’m frankly a little surprised you find this to be bullshit when you’ve been so vocal about that workers must be fully compensated for their labor. Ultimately the reason authoritarian structures fail to meet the needs of a famished people is because of a capitalist class restricting the laborer from the output of their labor. Systems that encourage solidarity and mutual respect consistently do a better job of getting people fed.

So do you mind giving me more to work with about what your objection is than just “bullshit?” because it seems to me like this should be in alignment with your core beliefs that you’ve posted everywhere on Lemmy.

1. All famines are human created
2. The greater the degree of authority in a government structure the more common famines become

There are a variety of reasons for this but at the end of the day, if you want the people fed, you need to start by respecting the people’s human dignity.

I’ll give @[email protected] the benefit of the doubt. We had a disagreement of interpretation similar to this two months ago that I never followed up on because after I finished recovering from RSV I just didn’t have the energy to go over it anymore. I also believe based on recent posts that she’s really been going through it. I do not wish to change your mind, your mind is yours to use as you see fit. That’s just the approach I’m taking here.

I still fundamentally find there to be something concerning about what seems to me to be a fascist user getting gas like this in a leftist space, but I have to take it on faith best I can that other admins and moderators on DBZer0 believe that she is acting in good faith. Given this I will either continue to wait patiently while I work on growing [email protected] or accept that this is a fundamental disagreement with no resolution that I’ll have to bear in mind in future interactions within DBZer0 spaces.

💎💰️💵💸💲🤑

“if you want to fight nazis, the first ones you’ll have to fight live at home”

something said to me once about how to defeat fascism you have to confront that fascism appeals to everyone by making overly simplistic approaches to the world seem sensible. every country, community, group, and individual has a propensity to fascism. if you want to fight fascism the very first one you’ll have to fight is the one that’s living inside of you

https://youtube.com/watch?v=wregqksgJh8