They’re not the same, but it’s easy to see how people become too jaded and cynical to vote.

There is no such thing.

In the sense that the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is visible from every point in space. No matter where you are you can determine your position relative to the CMB, making it a common reference point for the entire universe.

I get what you’re doing and that’s totally your right to do whatever with your body, but you shouldn’t go around saying it’s completely safe. You’re taking a risk with your health that others should be made aware of when you choose to share advice.

Campism is Trotskyist criticism and not a term we use.

That’s not a response to the criticism, just a dismissal of it based on who it originated from. I personally think it’s a valid criticism of many who consider themselves marxist-leninists, and I am not a trotskyist. People I’ve spoken with in the past have had a tendency to dogmatically subscribe to a campist mindset in total disregard for the particulars of any given situation, and for how much shit MLs give liberals for practicing lesser-evilism, many sure seem to love their own version of it.

Accelerationism is an edgelord meme that some baby leftists might subscribe to, but is generally a very dumb concept.

It’s far more prevalent than you’re giving it credit for, and in my experience many MLs’ understanding of revolutionary defeatism tends to boil down to accelerationism when questioned.

However, I’ll give props for knowing about revolutionary defeatism, which is a factor in our analysis. It was, pretty indisputably, the correct position to take in WWI, when it was developed.

Indisputable suggests it’s largely undisputed now, which you must know is absolutely not the case. I am currently disputing it. There is no significant historical pattern of countries that faced a military defeat becoming socialist or even having better revolutionary conditions afterwards.

Only in Russia did the socialists stay true to their promise and used the opportunity to turn the imperialist war into a civil war, and eventually managed to nope out of the meat grinder everyone else was stuck in.

Starting a civil war while the country is in the middle of an imperialist war is not an example of revolutionary defeatism working. If Russia had been defeated in their imperialist war and then had a socialist revolution that would be an example, but even then one example is not a pattern.

Furthermore, history cautions us to be skeptical when our country tells us a war is justified, as we see many examples throughout history where people fell in line behind narratives that did not hold up, whether it was WWI or Vietnam or Iraq - whenever any country goes to war, there is a strong pressure and lots of propaganda that is able to convince the vast majority of people to support it, everyone always thinks, “but this time, it’s different,” and more often than not, they’re wrong.

I agree completely, but this is just an argument for being anti-imperialist and anti-war, not an argument for revolutionary defeatism.

Generally speaking, arguments that are grounded on things like territorial integrity or national sovereignty don’t really have traction with us. Revolution involves aggressively violating national sovereignty, after all.

Those sorts of arguments don’t have any traction with me either, I’m an anarchist. I don’t believe I have made any such arguments, unless you conflate collective self-determination with national sovereignty.

What people tend not to realize is they don’t support Russia because they think it’s still communist, but because of a combination of campism, accelerationism, and revolutionary defeatism. If you want to argue with someone in good faith you should try to understand their position first, otherwise they will just see you as a reactionary and dismiss what you say. I still occasionally get my comments removed from .ml but I’ve been able to get through to people somewhat by leading with an actual understanding of where they’re coming from.

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Man, reading a Robert Evans Cracked article from 2016 takes me back.

If you’re going to do business with someone it’s completely reasonable that they set their own terms. Elon Musk does not have the right to force his business on a country that does not want to do business with him, no matter the reason. South Africa’s BEE regulations are intended to re-balance the scales after decades of brutal apartheid and oppression. People like Elon Musk notice the loss of privileges they once enjoyed and interpret it as an infringement on their rights equivalent to or worse than historically oppressed (because disadvantaged does not do justice to what they suffered) groups.

And let’s be very clear, if he wants to do business in South Africa he should comply with the regulations and grant a 30% ownership stake to historically oppressed groups. He is not compelled to do so just as South Africa is not compelled to grant him a license.

This is nothing more than a feeling that you have, and has no basis in fact. All the worst atrocities committed in the name of communism throughout history cannot possibly compare in scale or cruelty to the actions of even a single fascist state.

In addition to the difference in scale there is a difference in motive. Communists have noble goals, but atrocities result from threat-induced paranoia and selfish opportunists co-opting revolutionary fervor. The atrocities of fascism are pure evil in both motive and action. Fascists seek to eliminate those that they deem inferior, and they carry this out with unimaginable cruelty and glee.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Europe is sliding into fascism too, just not as quickly. Regulating capitalism treats the symptoms and not the disease, and so it can only ever bring temporary relief. The problems we are experiencing now are not the product of a broken system, they are the inevitable result of capitalist economics, no matter how restrained.

If I did that where I live a mob of MAGA hats would descend on my home within a week, if my neighbor doesn’t shoot me first.

I unfortunately have to spend a considerable amount of time around racist Americans and you are very wrong.

I get that it offers a bunch of features that you can’t get anywhere else, but I just can’t shake the uneasy feeling that it’s all a trojan horse for something more sinister. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop and see it suddenly explode in controversy after someone exposes something not quite kosher going on under the surface.

It’s just too good to be true.

Exactly! It’s really disheartening to me to see so many youtubers who are otherwise insightful be so uncritically supportive of Ground News because they “like what they’re trying to do.”

This is partly why I don’t trust Ground News. They’re putting way too much money into advertising for me to believe they’re genuinely interested in providing an unbiased factual categorization of news sources.

I also simply don’t believe it’s possible to be unbiased, so anyone claiming to be is immediately suspect to me.

Even if they have a covid-related autoimmune disease?

900 people is a fairly small sample size for a study like this, and the data is entirely self-reported. Given that long covid is suspected to be autoimmune-related and the 17.9% that reported worsening symptoms after vaccination, it seems premature to recommend everyone with long covid immediately get the vaccine.

I’m not a medical professional and you probably aren’t either, so we shouldn’t be taking one study and running with the shaky conclusions it draws. Let the scientific community do their work.

I honestly think we are in agreement on most of the details here, but though I reject the US propaganda stating that a massacre of tens of thousands of peaceful protestors took place I remain skeptical of the Chinese state’s claims that the PLA was entirely unarmed prior to June 4th, that only around 300 people died (most of which were soldiers), and that the student protestors were the instigators in every case of violence.

First and foremost, however, I take issue with the ongoing censorship of all discussion of the events surrounding the protests in Tiananmen Square. I’m sympathetic to the goal of combating disinformation, but the simple fact that we could not be having this discussion if we were in China is one of the reasons it’s so difficult to overcome the US propaganda surrounding these events. If the only counter-narrative Americans have access to is the official narrative presented by the CCP it’s nearly impossible to get through to them with the truth.

Saying this as an American myself who had great difficulty trying to unravel what actually happened in Tiananmen Square and who still has a lot of skepticism towards the very simplistic narratives I keep seeing parroted around by those on either side of the issue.