Beauty ravaged by fascism.

A potential approach: “Isn’t it funny how the demonic military-industry-complex that bombs and tortures people all around the world seem to have similar goals as you? I wonder how they managed to convince someone as smart as you that what they did was Christian? Matthew 24:24 - For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive”

However, be aware of the problems with theories of brainwashing -

1. https://redsails.org/dont-work-that-way/
2. https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
3. https://redsails.org/false-witnesses/

With regards to mental health: even in a capitalist society universal health care would go along way. However, we have to unfortunately contend whether that alone would help abolish the superstructures - including the institutions of imperialism and colonisation - that enable the license of bigotry.

For most things the majority of the world is on our side. And for the rest is partly why MLs aren’t tailists.

I think the author’s perspective is the solution should aim towards the social organisation of workers (in this case artists) as a group in a step towards the worker’s state; the technology is not the problem but the privatisation of the surplus value from socialised labour is. Art-luddites (if such a thing is even possible now) would actually be a good thing - they could threaten “machinary” to gain leverage for workers at large.

It is not one’s personal failure for attempting to survive in a system that exploits one and their labour, neither is a recognition of any classes that we fit in that is not exclusively proleteriat. As individuals maybe our only realistic solution be attempts towards becoming petty-bourgoisie or highly sought after labour aristocrats - if not already there - (which will not mitigate sufficiently the contradictions) but as an organisation the scope is much much more.

We have to remember when we are reading more radical writing that they are trying to push where we could be as a society ie the opposite of tailism. However, we should always place those ideas in the context of our own realities and trial them where appropriate, and learn on the feedback from this process - that is the more scientific and dialectic approach.

I found this article a really interesting read (52 min), it is a well-written dialectical take which one may find useful if not already read:

Artisanal Intelligence: What’s the Deal with “AI” Art? (2023)"

https://redsails.org/artisanal-intelligence/

Original from: https://polclarissou.com/boudoir/posts/2023-02-03-Artisanal-Intelligence.html

The same author has also written (which I have yet to read): https://polclarissou.com/boudoir/posts/2022-01-20-To-save-the-arts-we-must-kill-the-artist.html

Ultimately the defence of anti-communism is the defence of fascism. That is the road this takes. The volunteer nazi safety advocates must be getting desperate to be triggered this badly; I wonder if they are cognizant at some level of that tap of superexploitation slowly turning off and their economies imploding.

Tea a la Menthe was a nice touch.

The self help book - like many others - has no meaningful concept of externalities so fails to give the toolkit to find the solution to complex problems one may have, and has no real understanding of social cooperation to solve challenging problems. It is essentially relying on the luck of privilege; that your problems are sufficiently devoid of most people’s realities that neither tackling externalities nor real social cooperation or organisation is required to solve them.

The New York Times published an article accusing various journalists and activist groups (including Code Pink) who criticised USAmerican imperialism - including some Indian ones - were Chinese state proxies. I suspect this “information” had already been passed around US political elites resulting in Pelosi’s reaction.

The New York Times article was followed shortly by the Indian fascist government arresting / torturing journalists that were allegedly associated with those mentioned in the article; Indian governments have long accused journalists critical of them as Chinese proxies (eg “urban Naxalites”) because they document atrocities such as in Kashmir, and BJP-associated pogroms where they go to a village and kill every Muslim/Christian/lower-caste child and woman. The raids lasted over 100 days.

The liberals in the comments here do not understand or care the extent of depravity that is the American Empire.

I agree, there are much better systems of democracy.

Given your follow up queries - at this stage anyway - I am not sure you do know. For example, could you answer the following: why is China significantly more democratic than the US?

All liberal democracies are dictatorships of the bourgoisie no matter the technical processes of how they elect their political leaders and once you understand why and how then you will have at least the theoretical grounding to proceed further.

Maybe the first step is to understand how other nations could have systems more democratic than the West by letting go of the exceptionalism and bigotry that blinds one from this.

1. One lost Roe vs Wade under the Democrats. The defence against malevolence here is incompetence at best. The Democrats are malevolent.
2. the racist privilege displayed by US Americans (whatever the colour) at a chance (even then no guarantee) to divide the loot of imperialism more equitably is a sight to behold
3. a lot of us were liberals once; being aware of number two in one-self where appropriate is achievable without resorting to reaction

https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Reactionary

The Democrats are more keen on continuing the genocide than beating Trump. That is a democracy not beholden to the masses.

Harris is a vile racist piece of work.

Maybe but I am not sure ultras as a group have any sufficient political presence globally. I am not sure the author/editors are smart enough to target them specifically let alone WSJ be aware of their presence to merit propaganda aimed at them. Collectively western propaganda and intelligence win historically because of the sheer size of capital they put behind their schemes (backed by populations benefiting from the unequal exchange and security apparatus barbarism) - individuals may be evil and smart but as organisations they are large and blundering. You would think by now they would deftly versed in marxist-leninism - you know just from the viewpoint in defeating their enemy. However, their propaganda is so weak in substance that a superficial overview of an ML understanding of the world is sufficient for westerners to breakthrough their smokescreen (if they wanted to). I think one of Marx’s key breakthrough is how capital after being reified can defend itself “organically”.

This article is hilarious. I am not even sure who the target audience is meant to be -sinophobic liberals who know what dialectical materialism is? That seems very niche. Maybe it doesn’t have to make sense, maybe they were going for a word-salad vibes-based character-assassination.

Also the “shrodinger-style” attack; apparently Xi is both a very smart CPC president and also not able to explain dialectical materialism. Obviously no citations or proof offered for any of the allegations including the attacks of his higher education credentials.

The imperialist intelligensia must be getting more and more desperate as the contradictions of their parasitic economies draws on evermore deepening crises.

Addendum - I just saw someone else make a similar comment before me. I’ll just leave it here rather than deleting this.

Some people find transcribing songs in the target language by hand can accelerate their learning significantly.

We were never going to win them over even on their own terms - they are so virulently racist and fascistic; the malignancy need to be eliminated with the chemotherapy that is socialism. Let their tears nourish the revolutionary proleteriat.

Everyone will not agree.

Westerners aren’t helpless innocents whose minds are injected with atrocity propaganda, science fiction-style; they’re generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live. The psychic and material costs are rationally worth the benefits. As for those anti-imperialists who don’t participate in this festival of xenophobia — and here I include myself — we have our own elitist consolation: we accept the tragedy of masses of gullible sheeple falling for cunning propaganda because having overcome it flatters our own intelligence. The more we condemn society’s stupidity, the smarter we feel in comparison.

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

For all their bleating they would rather Trump win than stop the genocide.

If you would like some optimism: it appears the global south is slowly turning off that tap of superexploitation from the west and their vassal satellites; subsequently these outdated neoliberal economies are imploding from within as they increasingly do not have that subsidy of surplus value.