I knew this story from the Dollop but they really made a joke out of most of it, building to the "religion is silly" punchline without much further to take away. I love this video for really digging into mid 19th century american radicalism. Spear is essentially advocating for utopian communism, was friends with Garrison, put his life on the line for the abolition of slavery, and fought for the rights of prisoners above all else.

Reminds me a lot of the utopian stuff Matt Christman loves to discuss. These people who fully believed they could save humanity, who saw acutely the same suffering Marx did, but took a different path. Much like Robert Owen, who Spears quotes at one point, he is still worthy of respect and analysis.

almost every single like modern account of john spear, every time you hear him being talked about it's as a joke right. He's almost always being you see the phrase "new england's dr frankenstein" or calling him frankenstein or some kind of madman all the time. Right that's all, that's the only way he's ever talked about now and you know i can't myself tell you that the guy was all there right; of course i can't and i can't tell you though some of the stuff i've been reading you isnt a little bit amusing right, but at the end of the day it may be funny to think "oh look at that crazy guy walking up the hill with that machine he thinks he's going to bring life to it he thinks it's going to be his new electric baby" right but you know what john speer thought when he was going up that hill?

He thought that he was going to save the world he thought that he was going to create a new society for all of us that was completely just this was a man who who has seen the absolute ugliest depravity of human society he has been assaulted threatened everything he has seen horrors that most of us will never see right can you really look a man like that in the eyes a man who has devoted his life to helping others and laugh at him i don't think so he john spear was trying to create a free limitless source of energy and power for him for his kids for his kids kids for you for me for our kids for everybody for all time and now 150 years later all we can really do is wish that it had worked

Of course I would say we CAN make that work, but not through his new motive power. We can do it by living up to even half the shit he did in life, and fighting to make that world. I think part of that nuttiness comes from seeing such depravity and seeing how little people give a shit. It makes you either break down, look for a divine source to fix things, or be John Brown and be that divine source yourself and grab a machete.

I have been listening to People's History of Ideas, which is a podcast on the Chinese Revolution. In ep 28 he covers a moment that in the 60s/70s was framed in a way that was probably correct politically, but was a bit of a lie. And how that correct decision for the moment, bolstering the cult of personality, unfortunately in the long term was part of what helped the capitalist roadsters discredit Mao.

The problem here is that there is no evidence for this account, and plenty against it. Simply put, Mao was not at that Congress. And by Mao’s own account, he did not get involved with peasant organizing in Hunan until the May 30th Movement broke out. Now, Han Suyin may not have been consciously lying. She did not have access to all the materials that have made modern scholarship on China possible, and she relied heavily on interviews with people in China. So it is quite possible that she was told this by a party historian or leading party cadre who wanted to paint the history of the Chinese Revolution in this light.

This is an example, one of many, I’m afraid, where the political imperatives of the moment, as understandable as they may be, even in retrospect, have left the history of communism as written by those sympathetic to socialism as sort of cartoonish (in the portrayal of revolutionary leaders as infallible heroes) and, in some essential points, basically false or untrue. I personally think the world would be a better place today had capitalism not been restored in China, and I do think that whoever at the leading levels of the Maoist wing of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1960s decided that it would not be possible to quickly educate tens of millions of people about the economics of socialist construction and their relationship to a larger project of human emancipation, that person was basically correct. However, their answer to that problem, the amplification of Mao’s cult of personality, has in itself been a factor which has been used to discredit the project of socialism globally.

So, an unintended consequence of the imperatives of the moment, in this case during the Cultural Revolution in China, but there are other examples which can be cited as well in the history of communism as written by those sympathetic to socialist aims, an unintended consequence is that much of the history written with momentary imperatives in mind contain easily demonstrable falsehoods and unrealistic pictures of leaders and the revolutionary process in general. In the longer term, this has made it much easier for the opponents of equality and freedom to discredit the work of supporters of socialism. After all, when one can point to one demonstrably false claim in a book, it serves to undermine the credibility of everything else that person has written. And we can see that in the long run, that lack of credibility has made it more difficult for humanity to get back on track with finding a path for ending capitalism.

Just a fascinatingly nuanced perspective and one we should all keep in mind. I've been thinking about this a lot recently, how the idea of unforced errors supposes that some errors are forced. That we have to make errors at times that are genuinely correct in the moment and needed to happen, but have bad outcomes down the line. The point is to adapt

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2419252

Insanely well done video essay on "modern" retellings and the subgenera of feminist retellings of Greek myths. Really respectful towards these modern writers, but she gives a fantastic classicist perspective and explores how often Anglo culture uses Greek myths and history as a plaything.

Really beautifully done and a good examination of HOW we approach mythology and how oversimplifications can erase the actual depth of stories.

Insanely well done video essay on "modern" retellings and the subgenera of feminist retellings of Greek myths. Really respectful towards these modern writers, but she gives a fantastic classicist perspective and explores how often Anglo culture uses Greek myths and history as a plaything.

Really beautifully done and a good examination of HOW we approach mythology and how oversimplifications can erase the actual depth of stories.

Could I, could we all imagine then that that year (1991) would bring such changes in two of my homelands, that here Dubrovnik, Rovinj, Sarajevo, and in Russia - Kiev, Crimea, Odesa, would become "abroad"... Bosnia, Herzegovina and Krajina... Nagorno-Karabakh and Chechnya... Thousands, millions of refugees, orphans, ruined lives, destroyed cities and villages, dead, maimed...

What is left of what we believed so much five decades ago and even during the war? What else am I destined to experience? Let me stop there...

This was from the memoir of Đorđe Lobačev a Serbian/Russian comic creator and essentially the only Soviet comic book creator until the 80s. He joined the partisans, survived WW2, got citizenship in the USSR, was deported by Tito to Romania, wasn't allowed to move to Leningrad because of fears over those who had worked in capitalist countries (least that's what bios say, I assume it was more specifically entertainment and artistic fields) until after the Thaw, only allowed back to Serbia decades later, only to watch all of it destroyed.

I was trying to find some communist comic history that wasn't defectors or dissenters driven, but came across this tragic fucking quote from an obituary of him. Sums up the helplessness of being an elderly person watching the collapse of both motherlands.

This thread was horrifying. Some good responses in there but holy shit.

An all time great episode for them in terms of anger. Aaron was cooking

I had somehow never heard this song. Amazing and sincere satire of the "civilized" way in which modern crime and punishment continues the oppression of old while applauding itself as enlightened. Obviously directly speaking to Alabama's Jim Crow laws. This line still works today, as we watch a man die for maybe having a fake $20 bill or previously selling dvds or having a dimebag

Last year a negro stole a dollar bill

The judge he said "We mustn't be severe

Instead of death we'll give him life imprisonment

To show there's justice here"

I've seen recommendations around before, but not having much luck with the search function. So I've played Crisis in the Kremlin and while I can't seem to win, I do like the tone/era. I'm wondering if anyone has specific recommendations for any rts or tbs games with late cold war era USSR as playable? Could be modern or old PC like the original Crisis game was or Red Alert, thanks.