darkernations

Ultimately it is difficult to brainwash people against their perceived material interests. People latch on to narratives where the perceived cost going against it is worse than going with it.

"Blame" may end up being an attempt to draw a clean line between a person and their environment where none such exists. If, for example a class of people refuse to support a peoples' self determination and progression then they probably have a vested interest against it, and then attempting to convince the former to against their perceived interests maybe futile.

If you can make a narrative reflecting the truth where the target person could potentially see benefits within the short term and ends up being a material benefit to the cause, then it may be worth it. I just have very little sympathy for those who managed to level up to the very minimum of humanity by being sorry for their participation in war crimes. If they are truly sorry then they can join the resistance* (actual not nominal).

We should be materialists and not based on vibes. Growing up in the west and attempting to shed liberal frameworks is not easy because for a lot of us it goes against our class interests.

(*I don't believe in idealistic nonsense about submitting oneself to some imagined neutral court to be "punished" for said war crimes. Make yourself useful instead.)

Implicit in their definition of white is the subjugation of the other, and therefore equality is perceived painful; the reduction of the exploitation of the other becomes a loss of a privilege and material benefits to the self, and this is true - the bourgoisie are class conscious.

Equality starts with reading speed :)

I was going to post BE's video on how the US inspired Nazism, instead some Redsails articles of interest:

• Mein Kampf: Hitler’s Love Letter to Western Imperialism, Joe Emersberger, 18 minutes: https://redsails.org/emersberger-on-mein-kampf/
• Really Existing Fascism, Roderic Day, 88 minutes: https://redsails.org/really-existing-fascism/
• Fascism at Home and Colonialism Abroad, Walter Rodney, 8 minutes: https://redsails.org/fascism-at-home-and-colonialism-abroad/

The perspectives espoused are relatively new for me; previously how free speech and "propaganda" was understood was influenced by Chomsky's Manufacuring Consent and Parenti's (better written) Inventing Reality. The latter is still a good book but the understanding of how this stuff works has evolved.

We have to sometimes take a step back in order to not overestimate an individual's agency/power over society's class relations (which is really damn hard for us Westerners - not matter the color - because of how much indvidualism is ingrained in our cultures); it is partly why class betrayal is a big thing. Learning dialectics (still learning, to be honest) and this article made a big impact:

https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/

Thanks for engaging and hope you have a good one.

In a nutshell socialism (at least the early stages) is state capitalism at the service of the proleteriat (Lenin), for more reading:

https://x.com/RodericDay/status/1247950065165111296

Hope that helps.

(If Giddaffi's Lybia was going to engage in scientific socialism in governance it would sooner or later would have to become marxist-leninist. Marxist-Leninism is the science of economic development; in the same way "Einsteinian physics" is just physics, we only have to put a qualifier because mainstream Western economics (which currently hold the most powerful cultural hegemony, though that is slowly ebbing away) is pseudo-scientific. If a Gaddafi's Libya did not make that hypothetical turn then it would have remained under the spell of capital and the bourgoisie: https://redsails.org/why-marxism/)

At this point for Russia to "betray" China would be economic suicide; the US and Europe would have to provide the cruical replacement trade which they clearly do not have the capacity to do so at this stage.

The capital factions in Russia that prefer trade with China over ones that prefer trade with the West now have the upper hand, and there is a massive sunk cost in establishing trade routes such as in the Arctic Circle for trading with the global south that is effectively enabled by China. What can the West offer at this point? Crypto? They can't buy gas, oil and metals at volumes that could replace a growing market of the global south compared to the stganant markets of Europe and US.

Everything else; such as concessions with Nato and territorial claims all hinge on the above trade concerns. Remember capitalists serve at the altar of capital, including Russian ones.

This is the man who tried to explain that the transatlantic slave trade could not have possibly provided surplus value for the industrial revolution. I still watch his videos in the same way I watch liberal media but with a critical eye. The reason he has any appeal is because we are signficantly uneducated in more sophisticated marxist economics growing up in the West so we latch on to the likes of Cockshott and Harvey when it is clear they are just different versions of the Western Marxist.

Maybe but includes more scalable societies including whole nations and alliance of nations, and censorship could be de facto or de jure.

The choice to opt in and out depends on the class perspective in bourgoisie society; the more subjugated one is the less of a choice that will feel. If one can imagine a censorship in favour of the dictatorship of the bourgoisie then why not in one favor for the dictatorship of the proleteriat?

If a formal censorship is not declared it does not mean an informal does not exist, one which is dictated by class relations within that society (this is itself one of the criticisms against anarchist ideas of post-capitalism ie not based on science but on utopia/idealism of the assumption of lack of formal hierarchies would free mankind's innate nature for freedom or some such Bakunin nonsense. Our nature is in a relationship with nature outside us, each constantly changing the other - ie it is dialectical. )

Sadly I suspect this will enable a further turn into fascism.

Even before this there were 4-5 million children in poverty in the UK (we're talking either lack of nutrition or heated shelter) as per the Rowntree Foundation; you can imagine the next 4-5 million children above them aren't exactly living the easy life.

Every community has censorship to filter out its perception of noise or topics they feel are dangerous/ destablising/ upsets decorum/creates havoc with internal structures etc etc. We do it here for example with bad-faith liberal slop. It could be de facto or de jure.

In capitalist society it would be those that fit with their narratives and perspectives. For example, we live in a world of (crumbling) Western Hegemony so there will be self-censorship on the genocide or pro-Russian perspectives of the Ukraine war; from schools to newspapers to entertainment media - there does not need to be someone at the top pulling the strings, the associated communities (formal and informal) will do that themselves.

Education will not in itself lead to "enlightenment". One of the first organisations to discover climate change were oil companies but their class perspective did not take them down the path of environmentalism.

We have to a degree accept the fact the people intelligently seek narratives that they feel benefit their perceived material perspectives - including us - and it behooves us as MLs to understand this and allows us to better understand which class our audience is and focus our energies where it is productive.

Anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers could look up the same information we do but choose not to believe them. It comes from a level of privilege where they feel the consequences of their ignorance does not affect them. They create spaces for themselves to talk about the issues that are important to them and filter out the "noise" in those spaces.

In the wider community the above two groups fester as they are not a threat to capital. In a spcialist society such nonsense is stomped out for the greater good.

There are for example stories where "traditional" communities with overbearing patriarchal structures who were forced at gunpoint for their women to be literate and educated. There is a "generational trauma" but the outcome of good is exponential as a result for all the following generations. (This is not a specific example of socialist history, this was actually Kemalist Turkey. Socialists usually use more tactful approaches)

We have to understand freedom not from an idealistic conception but a scientific understanding of social sciences, and it ia from that true freedom is acheived.

The west has at its disposal significant access to vast volumes of knowledge through the internet but people voluntarily choose wilful ignorance for their perceived material benefits.

The above is not a nihilistic perspective, it is encouraging to know there is a scientific approach to liberation of the world despite what it seems like an unsurmountable obstacle of bad-faith ignorance. It just means we have to direct our energies towards the revolutionary classes.

(English was not initially my first language either; hope life at your end gives you a break!)

"Marketplace of ideas" means the idea with dominant capital will be dominant; it is not the "merit" of the argument that wins a person over. In a dictatorship of the proleteriat by seizing the means of production the socialist enterprise controls the capital and therefore "wins" the argument for the proleteriat. The perception whether an idea is good or not is always affected by bias; the point is for whom the bias should be in favor of.

That does not mean there is no objective reality or concrete solutions to real-world problems. Science is the method of figuring this out and marxism is a science. The problem is where and when people choose science in the day to day world. There are classes of people with sufficient privilege that perceive not to be affected by this ignorance, and therefore ignore the science when it suits them.

It is not a question of whether "censorship" is good or not; de facto censorship will always exist with every community and society - the question who gets to decide which censorship, what gets censored and which media it should take form in.

If one imagines a space with no formal censorship that does not mean it does not take place; a lack of a formal structure and hierarchy just means an informal one takes place instead, and in a capitalist world this means capital will dictate what those will end up being.

In early stages of socialism by definition it will have capital mechanisms such as markets; this is not maintained in a "neutral" environment, it will inevitably come with the culture of liberalism.

We should aim to have a scientific approach and understand of how things works and try to step away from the liberal frameworks we are brought up in which often conceptualises problems it does not really want to solve in absractions, rather than ground them in the concrete of the real.

My argument isn't for or against censorship; it is just a tool and to understand how and whether we use this tool we should understand the science of how ideas "win" people over.

One can think of a socialist country as where the standards enforced on an educator is enforced on every aspect of society and this includes what gets amplified and de-amplified for the progression of society. No individual has the correct answer, our collective knowledge and trials of how to apply this scientifically in a continually shifting landscape is the way forward.