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.

Democrats are more keen on being complicit in a genocide than beating Trump. Bourgois electoralism at its finest.

My whole life, I’ve only had one client: the people.

Which people?

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” - LBJ

I feel the above has been universalised to some of the colonised.

And your penultimate statement reminded me of another book to add to my reading list: The Mahatma and the Ism by EMS

Hindutva could be framed as an inferiority complex towards white people turned inwards and against minorities to feel more superior, backed by an economic system justifying fascism. With so much to be proud of from India it is telling of a person’s lack of inner strength to prostrate before such a failure of an ideology.

Maybe have Vijay Prashad play on the TV (or loudspeaker!) in the background? :)

/edits for clarity and levity

It sounds like as if he has an inferiority complex; his esteem is based on the supposed achievements of others. He is wilfully uneducated and proud of his pseudo-science.

If he is genuinely interested in further reading there is a whole host of books he can be introduced to (How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, A People’s History, The Jakarta Method, Darker Nations or more liberal books such as Inglorious Empire, Confessions of an Economic Hitman or 23 Things You Didn’t know About Capitalism to name a few). You could even potentially start with the fact that you are not a liberal?

However, you are up against an onslaught of propaganda to justify white supremacism. Relatively recent developments suggest that rest of the world may be slowly turning off that tap of superexploitation so expect to see a lot of coping and seething.

If he has made statements which have frustrated you because you instinctively knew were wrong but could not provide an immediate retort then take it as an oppurtunity for further reading and exploration.

Please take care of your mental health. In practice it will be challenging to persuade him off his delusions so you may want to invest emotionally and in time elsewhere.

/edits for clarity

Addendum - a word about privilege - one cannot choose one’s ancestors (biological or cultural) but one can choose not to defend their barbarism, and instead sincerely attempt to understand the world as it is to better it; guilt leading to empty nihilism is useless.

1. It may be that faced with overwhelming bourgois societal pressures including the culture of personal capital accumultation and a liberal/fascist education system both formal (schooling) and informal (media; news and entertainment) bends one’s personal worldviews towards a certain arc. Personal material wealth can of course be a factor here but one only needs to look in the west the perspective of some older poor folks and how reactionary they can be despite their experiences. Their experiences are real but they fail to understand the contradictions of their environment.

2. However, it is objectively not universally true especially when you consider the bulk of MLs in the west and global south come from backgrounds of bourgois indoctrination.

3. I suspect a significant amount of us MLs are labour aristocrats.

4. There are many older folks who are leftist educators including more famous ones whose books and articles we have read / reading, whose interviews and videos we listen and watch (I am going to include non-ML here as well because the perspective was people become more conservative as they grow older, this proves that it is certainly not the case)

5. “You can’t resist for very long a truth you discover for yourself.” ― Nikolai Chernyshevsky (via Roderic Day)

/edits for clarity