ComradeRat [he/him, they/them]

The random people ive talked to leafletting on one of the big avenues have been far, far more receptive than the supposedly literate, intellectual students at my university tbh

The guy most supportive of leaving nato ive talked to was this homeless guy who had some weird ideas about the population of china (and the world) and effects of nuclear war, but also told me and the comrade i was with that NATO was an aggressive alliance trying to start ww3. He was very receptive to the party’s position of “leave nato, cut military spending, build houses”

At university is where we get all the “communism = 1984 no food free stuff is against human nature” takes and demands to debate abc historical event or xyz theoretical issue

Yes please destroy all the release valves on the class struggles tension

I am always thinking about how much i hate Rome. Unless i’m thinking about my hatred for Uruk instead. Or my hatred of the linearbandkeramik treekillers.

TOS has a chill, relaxed, weird vibe. TNG is space opera with less fantasy. It is to trek what the jackson trilogies are to the books

That said i do realise this is far from the consensus (“weird” as you put it)

First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a little girl isremovedd and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and “interrogated”, all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been instilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery.

And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific reverse shock: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers around the racks invent, refine, discuss.

People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind — it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.

Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive Hitler for is not the crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the Coolies of India, and the Negroes of Africa.

And that is the great thing I hold against pseudo-humanism: that for too long it has diminished the rights of man, that its concept of those rights has been—and still is—narrow and fragmentary, incomplete and biased and, all things considered, sordidly racist.

I have talked a good deal about Hitler. Because he deserves it: he makes it possible to see things on a large scale and to grasp the fact that capitalist society, at its present stage, is incapable of establishing a concept of the rights of all men, just as it has proved incapable of establishing a system of individual ethics. Whether one likes it or not, at the end of the blind alley that is Europe, I mean the Europe of Adenauer, Schuman, Bidault, and a few others, there is Hitler. At the end of capitalism, which is eager to outlive its day, there is Hitler. At the end of formal humanism and philosophic renunciation, there is Hitler.

— Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

TOS (including TAS) is the best trek, all the others are star wars wearing a better show’s skin

Unrelated, but it pisses me off that published Soviet lotr fanfic is the lazy “what if sauron was the good guy tho???” instead of the more interesting “how did the orc-proletariat work against sauron in the belly of the beast to help ensure his fall”

LotR isnt absolute tho, and explicitly rejects the morals the fash take from it lol. The reality is the fash will take what they like and coopt it (if they even read the book—my impression is most right wing engagement is with the whitewashed jackson movies)

Tolkien actually has a letter talking about this absolutist interpretation and how untrue it is:

That second last sentence in particular is key: we do not see the civilians of the East or South, their regular people. We see their soldiers who are allied with Sauron to wage a war for global domination. We see, repeatedly, that some of these soldiers (orcs included) have mixed feelings—but not so much as to lead them to desert or question bad or evil orders; much like the western soldiers theyre based on.

When enemy soldiers flee, as after the battle at the black gate, they arent chased down and exterminated and, unlike the movies, they dont just dissolve into dust bc, in the books, they are people (albeit extremely warped people, like the British of today). With time for their society to not be a slave-military of sauron, they will likely change.

The closest thing to a pure good LotR has is the Ents (and even they can go rotten!). The closest to a pure evil is Sauron who, again, explicitly, did not start evil and is not “ontologically” evil; he is a powerful being who has chosen to amass power to himself and destroy nature, becoming evil, and constantly choosing to do evil.

These two have interesting aspects of both his brainworms and his hatred of empire, industrialism, homogenisation, etc

He’s basically the last gasp of old school reaction (feudalism reacting to and rejecting capitalism) in the west imo, modern reactionaries dont have any opposition to the capitalist project

Yeah tolkien, for all his catholic and aristocratic brainworms, was a relentless hater of central government, industrialisation and empire in general

Like, theres letters where he calls british soldiers orcs, compares them to the nazis says many civilians are similarly orclike. He was also opposed to the spread of English at the expense of native languages, and expressed consistent hatred for the British Empire

i’m not sure how much angrier he could get tbh

(See also Tolkien endorsing direct violent action as the only bright spot at the bottom, the rest is tolkien explaining anarcho-monarchism)

This last one is one of the most interesting tolkien letters imo bc it has this brief expression of hope that whatever the ussr does, it cant be worse than the west

Same

Rest in piss cornman.

FUCK YOU AND FUCK KHRUSHCHEV BURN IN HELL

Fuck im so angry he took the nukes away fuck

My local communist group has doubled in size over the last 4 months

The rapid shuffling of butts through the seats of power in the last few years is reminding me of the leadup to the 1848 revolution, where no one wanted to be left holding the hot potato and take the blame when it all goes to shit

Instead of telling nd folks to mask their nd, belden should equip an n-95 mask so as to stop participating in and endorsing social murder, as well as protect his own health and wellbeing

The last question is about whether Trump will still visit China in April and the spokesperson says no answer.

Cmon china you know you wanna do a funny

Saruman is 100% spiritually british and imo we should applaud tolkien for rejecting (both in lotr and in his letters) the propaganda of britain/imperial powers having the right to rule the colonies to spread civilisation

Samwise isnt a hereditary gardener (see my reply to polandisastateofmind), but hereditary professions are actually pretty common historically