jason pargin on cults

tankies on letterboxd be like

😂😂😂

fixed it

"The Russians have succeeded in one thing: they have sold the world the idea that they represent socialism and the ideas of Marx, and we have done the greatest service to their propaganda by agreeing that that's what it is."

— Erich Fromm, Interview with Erich Fromm

"In everything we do we must begin by creating an image of what society must one day make a reality."

— Piet Mondrian

“Stalin’s logic was the same as that of any capitalist who faces competitive pressure from a bigger rival – to tell his workers to make every conceivable ‘sacrifice’ in order to compete. For Stalin the way to ‘catch up with the West’ was to copy all the methods of ‘primitive accumulation’ employed elsewhere.

The British industrial revolution had been based on driving the peasants from the land through enclosures and clearances; Stalin smashed peasant control of the land through ‘collectivisation’ which forced millions to migrate to the cities. British capitalism had accumulated wealth through slavery in the Caribbean and North America; Stalin herded millions of people into the slave camps of the gulag.

Britain had pillaged Ireland, India and Africa; Stalin took away the rights of the non-Russian republics of the USSR and deported entire peoples thousands of miles.

The British industrial revolution had involved denying workers the most elementary rights and making men, women and children work 14 or 16 hours a day; Stalin followed suit, abolishing the independence of the unions and shooting down strikers.”

— Chris Harman, A People’s History of the World

area ML gets interviewed

'According to their absurd programs, the statist socialists and communists have decided to "allow" man to emancipate himself socially, without its thereby being feasible for him to manifest that freedom in his social life.'

— Nestor Makhno

'Though ethnic Russians comprise the majority of deaths in absolute terms, Russia’s non-Slavic minorities and indigenous peoples are greatly overrepresented among the casualties relative to their share in the country’s population, ongoing research shows.

“The most dire situation is … with indigenous small-numbered peoples of the north who should be [legally] exempt from military service altogether,” U.S.-based Buryat scientist Maria Vyushkova, who is leading the research, told The Moscow Times.

“This is a terrible tragedy that no one is talking about. … In one generation, these nations will simply disappear.”

Russian indigenous and minority activists have long warned that the Kremlin is banking on using the country’s non-Slavic population as cannon fodder in its protracted quest for capturing Ukrainian territories.'

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/02/24/2-years-into-ukraine-war-russias-ethnic-minorities-disproportionately-killed-in-battle-a84170

actual idealism is when you don't think a capitalist dictatorship is going to build socialism especially considering that every state in the last 100 years that claimed it was doing that collapsed or devolved into regular liberalism but falling for this clear lie in 2024 is hard realism 🙃🙃🙃

"Chinese capital participates in the imperialist division of the world—sometimes in tension with the US, and at other times, in collusion with it. Its economic rise is fueled by its support and investment in exploitative and repressive regimes around the world, including but not limited to Myanmar, Israel, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kenya.

To genuinely build an effective democratic opposition against the authoritarian Chinese state requires us to strengthen our ties with movements from below worldwide fighting these interconnected enemies, not taking sides in an inter-imperialist conflict."

https://lausancollective.com/2024/mass-jailing-of-hong-kongs-pro-democracy-candidates-shows-beijings-fear-of-mass-militancy/