hex_m_hell

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

Liberals would rather blame leftists than actually fight fascism.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

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hex_m_hell , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

There are folks preparing for armed insurrection. I would say there are probably enough of those folks already, I'm not saying they're wrong, just that it's easy to think of that as a default solution and miss the much more important foundation building work.

Collective disaster preparedness is indistinguishable from preparing the logistical side of a revolution. The art of was says that for every person on the field of battle, 7 are in support.

The idea of the revolutionary with a gun is attractive, especially for those of us socialized male. But there are a lot of critical roles that are revolutionary and are not that. In a lot of ways the glorification of the militant serves the state by making the resiatence easier to kill. Focus on the things that are harder to justify killing people over and harder for feds to figure out how to disrupt. The armed part of the Panthers were used to justify the attacks, but the breakfast program is why they were a real threat.

My favorite example from the past of a revolutionary project I worked on was our local GDC's food security committee. We started with a shared pantry for members. This allowed some members to engage in riskier things like striking because they knew they'd have food covered. Other times it just supported people through hard times. We did some guerilla gardening on some abandoned plots. I learned to forage. Eventually it grew in to a few folks regularly bringing canned food to houseless camps and providing them material support.

Houseless camps are a threat to the stability of the state. They are necessarily a lawless space which threaten the legitimacy of the state.

The biggest lesson we need to take away from the Syrian civil war is that whoever can fulfil the needs of the people becomes the regional power. The state will control resource (like food) to control people. If you can disrupt their ability to control those resources or provide alternatives, then the state has less power to leverage. Simultaneously, fascist terrorists will attack the infrastructure in order to inflict suffering and control people. In both cases, providing things like food to comrade makes resistence possible and undermines the legitimacy of an authoritarian state.

A state that cannot fulfil the needs of its people loses legitimacy. But the other pillar, aside from fulfilling needs, is the legitimacy of the infrastructure of violence. My other favorite project was an independent journalism and public records activism collective. Lucy Parsons Labs OpenOversight is a plarform for police accountability. Since police ultimately will never be held accountable, pointing this out weakens the state's ability to leverage them without losing legitimacy with the people.

So erode the narrative of the state and build it's replacement. If you read Che Guevara's Guerilla Warfare or any book like that, you'll realize that the literal fighting part is probably the smallest and least import part of a revolution. The fate of the revolution is decided long before anyone picks up a gun.

So go talk to your neighbors, find out what they need. Organize with comrades. Join food not bombs. Push local disaster prep groups to support houseless camps, since it's also indistinguishable from supporting people after a major natural disaster. If you do all the legal and easily justifiable things then if a fed infiltrates your group they just end up doing a lot of work without being able to disrupt anything.

Finally, go read as much as you can about the Rojava. Learn about Libertarian Communalism and think about how that translates to the US context.

To do any of this you need to organize. Start a book club or join one. Join FNB. Find other people. Talk to your neighbors. You would be amazed how many normal people actually want radical change. I've talked to liberals who are really radicals who haven't figured out how to make it actually work. Don't discount normal folks, because revolution is impossible without their involvement.

Edit: a note on foraging, one of the critical things for a revolutionary guerilla force is soap. Most US cities have abundant horse chestnuts (buckeyes or conkers). These are natural soap and can be used for laundry detergent, hand soap, or body soap. To anyone in an urban area, you're welcome.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Liberalism is driving off a cliff and killing everyone because a third of people voted to do it.

There are 9 people on the bus. Five people vote to get shit burgers even though no one wants that, just because they think it will save them from the 3 people who vote to drive off the cliff. One person obstains. Two of the three people hijack the bus and drive off the cliff. Four of the five people blame the person who obstained as they drive off the cliff.

Fascists don't care if they win or lose. Voting can't save you once you've reached this point. You don't have slightly high blood pressure that you can treat by eating right. You have cancer. You fight the cancer with everything you have or you die.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

You will never get a chance to vote for what you want became America isn't a democracy. It's not a democracy if a club of rich people choose who you get to vote for. That's literally how Chinese democracy works except it's the party instead of the oligarchs.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Fascists want to win because it means there will be less resistence from liberals, not because they will abide by the law. That's a pretty important distinction that I don't think liberals can integrate right now.

A successful coup is indistinguishable from a legal election, which is why they create as much chaos as possible and sew distrust before elections.

I'm not saying voting is completely useless but I am saying that you are deluded if you think voting will save you. It might not even buy you more time. Organize now. Figure out how you're going to eat while you're fighting. Download army manuals and start reading them. Start talking to other people about what to do when Trump takes power (acknowledging that he will claim power reguarless if he wins or loses the election).

A coup is less likely to be successful if you promise to revolt no matter how a fascist takes power. They rely on tricking enough people in to cooperating. If enough people will riot, some of the ghouls who back the fascist will back off and you lower their chances of success.

You don't have time. Sure, vote anyway because it's a low effort thing that might buy you time. It's basically a free lottery ticket. You probably aren't going to win, but it will be really great if you do and it's super low effort. But you wouldn't take out a loan assuming that ticket will pay off. Act like voting won't actually buy you time, because it probably won't.

At most it's gonna pull some of the people from it before it drives of the cliff.

Vote for shit burgers or don't. The time to build a movement was 4 years ago before liberals decided to go back to brunch. The thing is that fascism requires the complicity of liberals. A very small group of people could beat the driver to death, take the keys, and park the bus. Liberals will work with fascists to resist those people because they think they'll get the keys back later and get ice cream. Liberals can't accept that there is no ice cream and there never was.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

The bus is heading for a cliff. Someone stands up and says, "this is stupid! We should change the way we make decisions so this can't happen!" You hold that person down so they can't stop the driver because you want to tell the driver to get ice cream after the bus drives off the cliff.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

The US is not a democracy, it's an oligarchy. This is a fact. We talk about it constantly. The fact that oligarchs basically choose who can and can't run for the two major parties, and that the two major parties control the debates, mirrors the way the Chinese Communist Party controls who can run in elections. In both cases they let the people choose between the options that are acceptable to those who are actually in charge. This is just an observation of reality.

The US was built by slave owning oligarchs who didn't want to pay taxes for the genocide they'd been doing. They built a system od government around controlling the population. Only landed white men could vote. The facade of the system has changed over time but the system itself remains largely the same: a small group of landed white men get to control basically everything. This is just an observation of history.

The idea that any colonizer state can possibly be democratic is just absurd. Any system bult on genocide and oppression won't magically stop being built on genocide and oppression. The system must be completely replaced.

So the question to ask is if you advocate direct action to make sure this isn't something that can ever happened again, or if you just advocate direct action so you can go back to brunch until next time?

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

People in functional countries don't love their country. Only dictatorships do that, like Russia, China, and the US. People in normal countries acknowledge the problems and work to solve them, because there are actually solutions. If it is impossible to solve things in your country, why would you not hate your government?

Saying that anyone who points out flaws is an enemy agent is something cults and dictatorships do. It's how Xi and Putin maintain control, it's how Trump maintains control of his people, and it's how America has worked for generations. You are responding like someone who is in a cult.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Yeah, in emacs you use tramp to open the file with /sudo::

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

C-x C-f /sudo::/path/to/file

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

Myspace existed for a really long time after it ceased to be relevant. It actually only ceased to be relevant after they lost all the music that had been uploaded. That's when independent musicians finally abandoned it, and it basically disappeared.

Reporting on "X" is what's keeping it alive, IMHO. Stop reporting on it and it will stop being used. Alternatively, if there's some major incident, that would probably be enough to finish it. It may eventually go bankrupt between now and then, but it's actually pretty useful for people wanting to spread nazi propaganda so the far right will probably keep pumping money in until it collapses.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Yeah, no. This would become "8 hours for working, 8 hours for working while you're asleep, and 8 hours working because 'fuck you' that's why"

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

I've used lucid dreaming to solve problems in the past. It's not really that different from trying to solve problems while on mind altering substance. You get a mix of brilliant solitons you'd never think of any other time and complete nonsense.

There's also a lot you just forget. I don't know if it would be helpful to recover that stuff or not. It may just feel important or correct without actually being useful in any way.

It doesn't negatively impact sleeping for enjoyable things like designing. I can't imagine it would be useful for anything you don't actually want to do.

But then again, extracting value isn't really the point of a lot of work. Most of it is about power and control. The work place is basically non-consentual BDSM, so it would make sense for an employer to demand someone works while sleeping just to show that they can exercise power over them.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

He's a malignant narcissist. It takes a long time to escape that kind of programing. Being in a relationship like that is basically like being in a cult.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

Abusers are often victims first. You can't really look at Musk, or any billionaire, and think, "yeah, this person is totally fine." He's not. None of them are.

Patriarchy and capitalism reward the unhealthy coping mechanism he uses to protect his ego. Patriarchy specifically asserts that those coping mechanisms are not only normal but optimal.

He's absolutely a victim of this system and in a functional one he would be given help instead of power, which is literally the opposite of what he needs to be able to recognize his problems and heal.

He is who he is because the only way he can see himself as valuable at all is if he's basically the savior of the world. Anything less than that is unacceptable garbage. Anyone who believes differently must be manipulated or destroyed.

There's no way he can ever be happy. He needs help. It's tragic that we live in a society where he can't even see how much he needs help.

None of that takes away from the behaviors he expresses. The fact that his manipulation of others comes from his insecurity doesn't take away from the manipulation, the feeling of unreality, that comes from experimenting that manipulation. Both of these things can and do exist at the same time.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

Also eBikes in the Netherlands don't have acceleators unless they're illegally modified.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

In the US it's really common to have an accelerator.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

That's also my understanding.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

your car is bricked

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

If I were malicious enough to design the system, I would make it a heartbeat. Skip too many heartbeats and your car bricks. It could be written in to the terms of the loan since companies are using in-car computers for repossession.

"Why is my car bricked?"

"Because you tried to disable our payment verification system."

"I live in a rural area."

"You're like 1% of customers. Your loan contact says you have to drive within cell range once a month. Fuck you, we're repossessing the car and keeping the money anyway."

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

Serious question, but like, does anyone think things are going to be OK? Like... Anyone?

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

That's good. But like.... How?

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

I mean, this is kind of like the meditation on death from the book of the five rings. Like, once you accept death as inevitable you can see that on a long enough time scale things will be fine.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

Yeah... As soon as you realize that slavery is a type of civil war because it's a war on people living in the country, you start to realize that there's never really been a time that the US wasn't in a civil war. And when you look at the Red Summer, you see that genocide that's being scheduled now is just part of the regular cycles of America... Like... Maybe a country built on genocide and slavery is a bad idea that can't ever be fixed.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

When the Romans and later Christians colonized Europe, they systematically exterminated almost all of the indigenous cultures there over the course of hundreds of years. During this process they brought the ideas of states, genocide, and colonization itself. When the Roman state collapsed, these colonized people rebuilt states that ultimately replicated the horrors they experienced across the globe.

Mabye the answer this time isn't "let's rebuild the same atrocity machine." Land Back is an option, and there's even a model we can look to in Norther Syria. I'm just skeptical of any attempt to replace an old state with a new one because it always seems to fail in exactly the same oligarchy/authoritarianism decline in to suffering...and the last few centuries have seen states start to speed run this. Like, AfD is on the rise in Germany and there are literally still WWII vets alive today. Perhaps you're right, but I just don't see how states could be the right option here.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

People who understand technology know that most of the tremendous benefits of AI will never be possible to realize within the griftocarcy of capitalism. Those who don't understand technology can't understand the benefits because the grifters have confused them, and now they think AI is useless garbage because the promise doesn't meet the reality.

In the first case it's exactly like cryptography, where we were promised privacy and instead we got DRM and NFTs. In the second, it's exactly like NFTs because people were promised something really valuable and they just got robbed instead.

Management will regularly pass over the actual useful AI idea because it's really hard to explain while funding the complete garbage "put AI on it" idea that doesn't actually help anyone. They do this because management is almost universally not technically competent. So the technically competent workers who absolutely know the potential benefits are still not able to leverage them because management either doesn't understand or is actively engaging in a grift.

hex_m_hell , 3 months ago

Capitalism is a pyramid scheme.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

It's necessary to hold two truths: liberalism always leads to fascism and accelerationism does not prevent fascism. So one should both delay the inevitability of fascism by participating in liberal democracy and do everything possible to make liberal democracy unnecessary as quickly as possible before the collapse.

The thing that can be especially hard for some people to understand is that not everyone experiences fascism at the same time. It's not a switch. It's a decline. Some people have been expecting fascism for decades or generations now. So people will be at different places in terms of interacting with the system. We are all trying to survive. We need as much time as possible to build a resistence movement, but, at the same time, no matter what compromises we get via electoralism those can be destroyed instantly if we only rely on the state to protect them.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

Authoritarianism is extremely vulnerable to natural disasters, ask Syria. Climate change will ultimately being about the collapse of all authoritarianism because there simply won't be enough excess to support hierarchy. The question is if we will be smart enough to being about that change before material conditions force it to happen.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

Also fellow emacs user, I see.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

Or be fascist, because they just escort armed fascists. Cops firing on fascists is just friendly fire.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

The US also doesn't have the right to exist.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

Read Abdullah Öcalan and Murray Bookchin are definitely worth reading here. Öcalan points out that states are fundamentally genocidal because it's easier to control one identity than several. Rajava is a really interesting example of libertarian socialism that doesn't attempt to confront the state, but basically just ignores it unless it's a threat. Rojava isn't a country, it's just an autonomous zone within the state or Syria (that isn't governed by Syria).

I think that model offers a lot. It could even offer a path beyond Israel and the US. Öcalan's Democratic Confederalism is like 100 pages and worth the read IMHO.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

They are :)

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/abdullah-ocalan
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

Becoming "native" isn't as simple as not having a culture. It's having a culture specific to the region. Settlers never develop this because they believe that not having ties to a region and exterminating those who do is sufficient.

Becoming native historically has generally meant adopting the language and customs that evolved in the region, or staying in a region long enough to evolve customs and culture. That takes several thousand years.

But there are also both nomadic and diasporic people. The existence of nomadic people is directly threatened by the existence of borders, making borders, in and of themselves, a tool of genocide. Diasporic people are not native but also not colonizers. Antisemitism is one example of persecution of diasporic people, while ant-black racism is another.

We have been migrating for thousands of years, which kind of invalidates the legitimacy of borders and by extension countries. If the existence of a county requires a border, by definition, and borders are genocidal, by definition, then countries are genocidal by definition. If we accept that genocide is a bad thing (perhaps the worst thing) then how could we accept the right of any nation to exist? At the very least we should demand the abolition of all nations that exist within the same space as nomadic people.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

Yeah, there are lots of people who've said this and are not also fascists. There's no reason to platform this scumbag.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

Why is "the most incompetent fascist alive can't use Windows" a Linux meme?

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

graffiti saying "Capitalism is shit" and "CCP (Chinese communist party) is capitalist" next to Chinese characters.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

Russia always was capitalist, that's kind of the point of Animal Farm. If you look at the company towns of the Kentucky Coal Miners historically, it's the same structure as the Soviet Union: the company (or the state) owns everything and enslaves the workers. One used debt, the other pretended to represent the proletariat, but the ruling class extracted labor from the workers and only supplied them the minimum necessary to survive. Lenin was a reactionary pretending to be a revolutionary.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

The political compass is literally a propaganda tool created by right wing "libertarians." It's complete bullshit.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

Lemmygrad is tankies, which is exactly the point. You can't tell the difference between anarchists and the people who murdered them. The political compass exists to create that confusion, equating "libertarianism" (by which, they mean right wing "libertarianism") with the original definition of libertarian socialism.

Even the choice of "libertarianism" as a name was intentionally chosen to confuse things, to steal a word and destroy it's meaning. IIRC, Murray Newton Rothbar literally said that he was intentionally stealing the word "libertarian" for the right. The whole thing is about propaganda and confusion, and the political compass is part of that.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

Potatoes are also really easy to grow. If you ever forget about your potatoes and they sprout or you leave them in the sun and they get green, you can put them in a pot and grow fresh potatoes.

Fava beans are also extremely easy to grow.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

Potatoes grow well in shade. Fava beans can grow in containers just fine, but may need a balcony. I would also get a short variety. A lot of things can grow in a window sill.

There's also guerilla gardening, where you plant on an abandoned plot. Potatoes are great for this because they'll basically grow on their own as long as they aren't overtaken by blackberries.

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

The subject is called "economics."

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

Robotaxis are a bad idea. They are the flying car of this generation. They fulfill no function not already better fulfilled by already existing technologies, while having numerous, tremendous, and probably intractable problems.

https://youtu.be/GcKUYbChE3A

hex_m_hell , 4 months ago

Cars are absolutely going somewhere. Cars won't exist in 100 years (or will be so rare they will be basically negligible) because either we will have phased them out or they will have brought about the collapse of the complex society needed to support them.

The problem is not just Internal combustion, but a myriad of issues with the most fundamental and intractable being that the fact that geometry hates cars. Car based society has been an experiment that's only been going for less than 100 years, and it's already failed. Even with essentially infinite cheap energy, cities like Detroit and Flint, early adopters of car-centric design, are showing us what the future looks like for any city that doesn't radically change course.

There will be massive suffering, reguarless of the course we take. People will lose massive amounts of wealth. Lots of people will die as the collapse of car infrastructure displaces massive numbers of people. The question is only if we aggressively mitigate the impact of the collapse of car culture, or keep pretending that cars aren't going away and allow the humanitarian crisis to grow beyond the ability of society to absorb, manage, and recover from it.