SweetLava [he/him]

we are constantly moving closer and further away from socialism, at least since the French Revolution (which we didn’t get to see the full results and aftermath of until the Scramble for Africa and World War I, and the later post-WWII neocolonialism).

the conditions are already present, too, from Kenya and Swaziland, to Cuba and Mexico, to Palestine and Syria. I can’t name any continent sans Antarctica that has failed to produce some resemblence of progression towards socialism, and i’d even say it has happened within every state on earth by this point.

it is both fortunate and unfortunate that it is an international phenomenon. success in one country could be disasterous failure in another and, ultimately, it is our responsibility to elevate class consciousness and oppose our national bourgeois classes. but a social-democratic reform somewhere means a nationalism somewhere else, one progressive and the other reactionary in no particular order.

we had progress toward socialism this week, reaction against it today; last week was reverse. and so on and so forth.

you could’ve asked this question regarding 60 months, 60 years, 60 decades, 60 centuries - my answer would’ve been the same.

like the Russian Revolution completed the French, I see another revolution completing the Chinese, from the oppressed people of America and the oppressed people of Africa

No.

I assume “tankie” is a roundabout way to lump revolutionary leftists with those fomenting red-brown alliances. That is, a “tankie” in the modern day is a way to describe someone as Strasserist, NazBol, LaRouchite, etc.

When you were a kid (if you ever grew out of being a kid, that is), did anyone tell you the story of the apples and oranges? Did you ever hear someone talking about comparing apples to bananas? Anything of that nature? You still can’t explain why you specifically chose to compare Hitler and Bin Laden to Raisi.

Let me break it down for you slow, in hamburger American terms.

Say I want to talk about America. Should I compare America to McDonald’s and apple pie? Or should I compare America to shrimp and gyros?

Fill in the blank: As American as _______.

Did you say “apple pie” or did you say “shrimp and gyros”? Why? Reflect on this in your own time.

You mean to tell me that Israel, with all those billions of dollars, couldn’t see with their own eyes people flying in to their territory with guns? There is no convoluted middle east history, at least not any more than anywhere else on this planet. There is no excuse to kill anyone in violation of international law, especially when the politicians guiding that policy see the enemy as less than human and makes reference to genocidial intent in doing so. If you want to talk about history, the history that is so convoluted and confusing to you, just start in 1947-1948. That should make it a lot easier for you to understand.

Every event in ‘Israeli’ history can be checked. They never acted in genuine self-defense. They always had ulterior motives, to drive their force as an imperialist proxy with a massive budget, extremist ideology, and settler-colonialism. There is no blame game. Palestinians have fought against occupation. Israel is the one occupying. Now this rougue state is claiming, implicitly, that they lay claim to a Greater Israel project that threatened the entire Middle East and North Africa region. Rather than occupying territory in war, they occupy territory in aims of extermination of the native population. If they were an occupying force in war, they would be required to ensure every citizen has access to food, water, security, and other necessities of life. Instead, they occupy territories and kill or displace the population there. Either it’s not a war or this rogue entity is incapable of conducting itself without constantly committing war crimes.

Just admit you make awful comparisons and fail to make analogies work.

Hitler, for one, had a specific fascist ideology comparable to Mussolini. I’d feel comfortable comparing the two. Not only based on their alliance and ideology alone, but also their actions taken.

When we compare people to Hitler, we generally make the assumption that we are talking about genocide, fascism, and an extreme passion for exterminating and villifying the “other” (whether that be Jews or Muslims or Slavs or something else). I wouldn’t even make a comparison between Hitler and Netanyahu if I had to be professional and make time for an appropriate comparison.

On to Bin Laden, now. Why isn’t he similar to Hitler? Back in the day, the US had a strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia. Backing the dollar with gold wasn’t the best plan for us, we didn’t gain a strong advantage doing so. Saudi Arabia was happy to help us with new US policy abroad. We went above and beyond to treat Saudi monarchs to the best life available, all at our expense. We even ignored the Saudis backing of people like Bin Laden back when we first knew of his type, all the way in the 1970s. We even used his allies and people with the Mujahideen that fought against the Soviets in the 1980s. Long story short, we had a blowback incident. 9/11 came around to hit us, likely with Saudis allowing it to happen while US intelligence was too incompetent or bogged down to act effectively (or maybe we knew and couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything). We went to war with Iraq and Afghanistan - not Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan was a failure the US contributed to actively for about 20 years, not including the interference from years prior. The Taliban is still governing Afghanistan today in fact. It wasn’t anything like Hitler, except for the brutal anti-Communism. It certainly wasn’t like Raisi either, considering that Iran and Afghanistan’s Taliban aren’t on the best terms.

I would compare Raisi to General Torrijos. Why is that? Because they were both nationalists, both concerned with sovereignty and not bending the will of their country to the US, yet each of them were not inherently accepting of either far-right extemist ideology or Communism (or other explictly left-wing political movements or ideologies). In spite of ideological differences, they both had a desire to stay neutral, choose key allies, and were rather accepting of liberation movements. People didn’t really celebrate the death of Torrijos, at least in Panama. I wouldn’t say people were exceptionally happy in Iran about the death of Raisi either. They weren’t good leaders per se, but they stood on principles. I don’t care for either figure myself, but I recognize who they were and what they fought for as humans.

Again, I know what an analogy is. We already established that. So, that means I do know Hitler is not just a nom de plum or alias for Raisi, or vice versa.

It’s just not a good analogy. Look at the names I wrote and think about it for a second.

Why do I think comparing Hitler to Bin Laden is not a good comparison? Why do I believe comparing General Torrijos to Raisi is a good comparison?

Then, back to you. “[Celebrating] the death of horrific people is not necessarily a bad thing.” You didn’t even clarify what made Raisi a horrific person comparable to Hitler. You sound like everyone else in that Reddit-esque circlejerk.

If you read closely, you can see I don’t really mind the act of celebration itself. My problem is that there is no acceptable reason to compare Raisi and Hitler, first of all; and, secondly, the people celebrating don’t even know who Raisi is. Your comparison alone tells me you’re in that group, the people who are celebrating without even knowing.

I can celebrate the deaths of Hitler, Mussolini, Kissinger, Pinochet, Reagan, and so on. That’s because I actually know who they were and what they did.

I understand what an analogy is. But you know (and I know) that we don’t make analogies at random. There’s a specific reason you chose Bin Laden and Hitler to make the analogy. Even comparing Bin Laden and Hitler is dishonest and lacks appropriate context.

I’d say Raisi’s death celebration is more akin to celebrating the death of someone like Omar Torrijos (Panama), and I’m not speaking of similarity of death itself or the conditons that created the death. I’m talking about their respective policies.

Death happens everyday and you chose to make the specific comparisons you did. It wasn’t an accident, no one forced it into your brain. You did that.

If you think Iranian leaders are equivalent to Biden Laden and Hitler, you still have a few years (or decades) of brain development left. Please at least make an attempt to sound educated when making comparisons. This place is going to be more embarrassing than Reddit soon…

It’s not the fact that they celebrated his death that is most important. It’s the fact that the people celebrating have no coherent understanding of who he was. All they know is “Media told me Iran bad. Iran bad means Iranian dying is bad man dying. Funny meme death of people I don’t see as human.”

You can tell based on responses they haven’t read even a single article in full about anything even tangentially related to the man.

Lowest approval out of all recent presidents and people want me to believe my single sympathy vote can save them. I don’t think I have the heart to tell some of them my voting habits when the time inevitably comes. Investors and major leaders already accepted the good numbers for a Trump victory and they’re hoping for a good year in business when he rolls around again, some fresh profit margins. They don’t understand that I’m not rich enough to decide, the rulers of the country already made their picks and they won’t accept less without some serious promises from Biden

The numbers are going up and there are far more campuses involved, iirc.

Colorado, Arizona, Louisiana, South Carolina, Oregon from what I can see. Check the latest NYTimes article. And yes, there are already mass arrests being made at these more recent campus protests. They are taking this very seriously.

I really thought Israel was gone in 2022 and was going to accept a silent death. Look how wrong I was to assume…