This article is indistinguishable from satire. I know that's cliche, but this is honest-to-god something someone here would have banged out in an afternoon as a niche joke. I don't have anything clever to say, you just have to read it.

Oh God, my eyes.

"Read theory."

We say this all the time. It's basically an expression, isn't it? It can be advise, bragging, scorn, mockery. It's all become a bit ephemeral.

That's not to say that people shouldn't read theory. Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement. Even so, isn't it a bit silly to suggest, even implicitly, that being a Marxist or communist boils down to a familiarity with the source material? If that's not book worship, I don't know what is.

I understand that this is, on some level, an accusation. I am suggesting that many of our communities are caught up in a somewhat liberal, idealist mindset. We all have an ideology, a set of opinions about the world which we express and propagate at the expense of our competitors. Can we seriously deny this is what we are doing?

If Marxism-Leninism is a science, there must be some technical aspect. What are we supposed to do in the world? How do we do it? And how do we know if it's working?

This article, written by a Taiwan-based "sinologist," has been copied and pasted over several major outlets and a dozen other Christian clickbait news sites. The pastor in question is John Sanqiang Cao, and was charged with human trafficking upon returning from a mission trip to Myanmar.

I don't know anything about the validity of the charges he's facing, and I'm quite certain that IF the events alleged by the article are true, then this is a clear miscarriage of justice.

There is something very funny about this story appearing all over American media, though. As if ex-convicts in the US don't deal with very similar problems...

At risk of beating the dead horse…

These god damn liberals keep harping over how Joe Biden is the “lesser evil” compared to Donald Trump, necessitating that we go out and vote for him come November lest our flawless democratic system give way to fascism. “Something something incrementalism purity test push him left do you want Trump to win???”

In 2020, it could be feasibly argued, if poorly, that Joe Biden was, in fact, the “lesser evil.” Donald Trump was the president, and Joe Biden was not. Given the dual assumption that Donald Trump was a “substandard” president and that Biden would likely be at least “standard” quality, this made some sense. But the cards are on the table now. All of our most fearful suspicions about a Biden presidency have been utterly validated, and that’s not even counting all the atrocities people scarcely imagined him committing or lacked the capacity to predict altogether. He is more evil than we could have possibly known.

All these same libs are now in a bind. Apparently, Biden HAS to be the Democratic ticket, so he HAS to be elected president, because otherwise Trump would win, and that would be bad, wouldn’t it? The only problem is that Biden, the Anointed One, quite literally has no redeeming qualities. So what do you do to convince people to vote for Biden in spite of literally every crime he has committed and every promise he neglected to fulfill?

The most popular strategy is seemingly to just insist, with zero supporting evidence or even reasoning, that Trump’s America is just an objectively worse version of Biden’s America. Everything will be worse under Trump. Everything. Yes, Biden has failed in almost every respect and has actively worked against what he promised to his constituents, and yes, nothing has improved under Biden and in fact almost everything has generally become worse, but Trump will do all those bad things even harder! So you have to vote for Biden. Or you’re making the world worse. You fascist.

At risk of being the Russian troll living inside everyone’s walls, can we take a moment to appreciate the degree to which the discourse has degenerated? “Vote for the lesser evil” used to mean that we were expected to make “compromises” with politicians we didn’t completely agree with or even took some issues with to avoid aggressive fragmentation within the Democratic Party, a sacrosanct institution representing all that is good in the world. This is perhaps the first election I’ve ever seen where we are not even being promised marginal progress. We are not even being offered different poisons to pick. The same toxic politics of the fascist right have been watered down by the “adults in the room,” and we are expected to not only drink but be thankful it’s not even more concentrated than it is.

Vote Biden 2024: It could be worse!

Anyone else noticing that the Zionists tend to be a bit hasty in taking a victory lap?

I try my best to be considerate and sensitive about criticizing Israel so as to not paint Jews in a negative light, but my patience is wearing so, so thin. I am extremely tired of having our sentiments and language policed by bad faith actors. The Zionists who won't shut up about how and when we're allowed to criticize and oppose apartheid, what words we're allowed to use and what arguments we're allowed to make, are not even remotely interested in protecting Jews from bigotry. They are just trying to deflect righteous anger away from Israel and onto the people who won't fall in line and support the colonial project, as evidenced by their itchy trigger fingers for calling everyone and anyone, including Jews themselves, rabid antisemites for opposing the indiscriminate slaughter in Gaza.

Do you describe Israeli settlers as violent? That's blood libel. Please ignore the definition of blood libel and please ignore the violent bigotry of Israeli settlers. Just shut up and listen to what I tell you to say and think.

Do you want to decolonize Palestine "from the river to the sea"? You're literally calling for another Shoah. How dare you. Shut up and allow the settler regime to complete its genocide and don't ever try to make me feel guilty for supporting it.

Do you liken the genocidal policies of Israel to the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany? That's so offensive. How dare you. Please ignore all the ways I am behaving like a fascist, genocidal lunatic. You're hurting my feelings. By the way, you're a Nazi for opposing Israel.

Oh, you called me a Zionist just because I'm a self-described Zionist? You're such a bigot. That's an antisemitic dogwhistle. You are never allowed to use the word Zionist. Please don't ask me what I call Israeli nationalism.

Oh, you're NOT a Zionist? How dare you. Half of all Jews live in Israel. Are you saying you don't support all Jews unconditionally regardless of their actions? You're halfway to hating every Jew, and that makes you fifty percent Hitler. If there's two of you, that's one whole Hitler! Unacceptable.

And around and around we go. There is no end to it. I am thoroughly unimpressed by what they consider bigotry and what they fail to consider bigotry. I do not care anymore if they hiss and spit and curse when I refuse to cater to their settler-colonial sensibilities. I have seem what makes them cheer. I have seen the horrors which bring smiles to their faces. I know I don't hate Jews, and that's good enough for me.

I'm planning to attend the march in DC on January 13, and I need some advice both on what to expect and how to prepare.

I am not a stranger to protests. I attended a few during the George Floyd uprising, some of which were quite large, but I have a feeling this one will be more massive than any I've participated in before. With that in mind...

What are the most common threats protestors will face? What steps should I take to ensure the safety of myself and others? How do we defend ourselves from cops, counter-protesters and other aggressors? Are there essential supplies or tools I should bring to this end? Is there anything I should not bring under any circumstances?

Are there any environmental hazards I should be aware of? How do we avoid them?

Are there conventions and strategies employed in very large protests that I should be aware of, so as to more effectively coordinate my efforts with those around me?

What are the tactics and methods of disruption used by cops and others looking to disrupt the march? How do we counter them?

How do I identify plants, saboteurs, and other state operatives? What steps, if any, should I take to expose them?

Will my ability to reach the protest be hampered deliberately or incidentally if I need to drive several hours to the site of the protest? Are there any legal ramifications to moving out of state to join a march?

Is there anything I have failed to consider?

Thank you, comrades, for any advice you can muster.

I'm interested in the transcript, preferably in both Arabic and English, due to a comment Assad made about the Holocaust and who died in it. Namely, he allegedly says "there is no evidence that six million Jews died in the Holocaust." I'd like to see his words in black and white and verify this statement myself. If any Arabic-speaking comrades could assist me in the endeavor of obtaining a literal translation of this comment, that would be greatly appreciated as well.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3035303

We've all expressed immense frustration over being lumped in with Nazis and other rabid bigots over our opposition to apartheid and settler colonialism. The cynical attempts to crush opposition to Zionism by browbeating anyone who opposes the American empire with accusations of secret antisemitism can be seen both before and since October 7. It is somewhat ironic that Zionism, especially among evangelical Christians, is itself an unconscious expression of toxic and deleterious antisemitism from which they have failed to liberate themselves.

Among Evangelical Americans, a popular belief posits white Israelis as not only being indigenous to Palestine, a bizarre contortion of reality in itself, but as being the "chosen people" with a separate covenant with their god which guarantees a Jewish ethnostate in the "Holy Land." In the same way that their god promised the New World to white European settlers from coast to coast, he has promised Jews all the land in Palestine from the river to the sea.

On its face, this belief seems to be pointedly not antisemitic, but a clean inversion of the idea that Jews are inferior. But this inversion of antisemitism is not the same thing as the abolition of antisemitism.

Importantly, "chosen people" is not and has never before been an expression of supremacist thinking, at least not traditionally among Jews. The true meaning of the phrase "chosen people" refers to the special obligations, or "mitzvot," which Jews observe in obedience to their god. They are the "chosen people" because, unlike in Christian doctrine, these laws are not universally applicable. No Jew in their right mind will claim eating pork, for instance, is an offense to God independently of one's own religious identity precisely because non-Jews do not have the same obligations to God. We gentiles have no mitzvot to follow. That is what actually makes Jews "chosen."

The insistence that Jews' unique relationship to the divine reflects a supremacist worldview is, in fact, an antisemitic contortion of Jewish doctrine to justify the oppression and extermination of Jews. Antisemites are very fond of invoking this imaginary Jewish doctrine to claim that Jews are the originators of the ideology of racial hierarchy. It is a bold-faced lie engineered to justify genocide. "If we don't do it to them, they will do it to us."

Rather than parting with this bigoted idea, non-Jewish Zionists have preserved their erroneous antisemitic belief with the additional caveat that Jews are, in fact, "chosen" in the sense that they have not just special obligations, but special rights, namely the right to all the land in Palestine. They have not parted with antisemitism whatsoever, but have merely inverted it to justify yet another genocide.

When these same people accuse us of antisemitism, it is wholesale projection which suggests since that they are the self-appointed opposite of antisemites, and since we oppose their Zionist regime, we must be antisemitic. In reality, in agreement with true Jewish doctrine, we reject all claims of racial supremacy.

So don't let anyone tell you that you're antisemitic for not being a Zionist. Zionism is antisemitism. Do not forget this for a second.