TheOubliette

joined 2 years ago
[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 0 points 6 months ago

Do you think the USSR and Eastern Europe were free from the tendencies of capitalism to create imperialist war? The only post-WWII wars in Eastern Europe were skirmishes by capitalist-funded nationalists (quasi-fascists) and the civil war in Yugoslavia exacerbated by NATO to balkanize the country. The wars that the USSR supported were all pre-existing national liberation movements against imperialist colonizers, and they nearly always entered after imperialists had thrown massive resources into oppression. For example, Vietnam.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I thought it would be implied that I'm speaking about modern times. The economic system is the msin driver in large societies, though. In Europe, prior to capitalism, the primary determinant was feudal interests.

Chimps don't have war. They fight, but is every skirmish a war? Wars come from creating and wielding armies.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Capitalism is the primary driver of wars, it determines the basic structure of what is and is not permissible, generates nation-states (these did not always exist, actually), and then creates the conditions by which the national bourgeoisie nation-states push for war in order to become international bourgeoisie (imperialists).

For example, the US keeps the middle east in a regular state of war to prevent them from having independent policies regarding oil. It is concerned about oil because of the petrodollar. It is concerned about the petrodollar because it is th3 primary financial war instrument by which it jeeps other countries sending superprofits its way and otherwise screwing with countries using interest rates. And it does those things because the US is the global seat of capital, it is where the big finance companies are based.

How many wars have there been in the middle east since 2000? How has the US been involved? Do they just do it for the thrill of domination?

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 12 points 6 months ago (10 children)

And in those times the causes were things like feudalism.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 10 points 6 months ago

The US invaded Cuba to try and stop its revolution following brinksmanship with the USSR on nukes. If the US today understood Mexico to be a military proxy it would be talking about nuking CDMX. The country is run by incredibly cold and violent people. It would run 24/7 propaganda about the necessity of invading Mexico for our defense and to make preemptive strikes. It would create false flags to justify whatever action they wanted to take. These all have precedent for going and destroying countries thousands of miles away.

Re: what you think you would do, the US has been doing a genocide for over a year. What have you done to ensure it does not happen again? Did you vote for Harria of the Biden-Harris administration carrying it out? If so, that is the exact opposite if what you said you would do.

Remember, no one is immune to propaganda. Wr must always challenge ourselves and be reqdy to receive and process criticism.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 11 points 6 months ago

Regarding Ukraine, there could be nothing further than truth https://youtu.be/7gxssycoxz0

Yeah I'm not watching a 35 minute video with no context or explanation. I also didn't say anything about NATO expansion, the apparent topic of the video.

Perhaps you could describe what you think it wrong about what I have said.

As for Israel the problem is more that it isn't a lapdog, it looks like US is Israel's lapdog.

Israel knows its value to US interests and leverages this to its advantage, but never confuse this for Israel being the lapdog. They are dependent on US "aid", weapons, investment, and diplomatic cover. Do you really think that tiny country is dominant over the global superpower?

Also, be careful when making this claim, as it is often made in antisemitic circles.

As it looks like Israel does whatever it wants even if it is against US interests, and US still supports it.

This is because it is otherwise fully aligned with the interests of the US ruling class. It serves a useful purpose. This is also because US propaganda would have you believe that it never tolerates, say, the killing of Americans. Of course it does, it just uses this as an excuse when it wants to do something terrible to another country.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 10 points 6 months ago

Never underestimate the incoherency of an American hog.

If anything, him getting caught by being an idiot ay McDonalds makes the story more believable.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 21 points 6 months ago (8 children)

The US has used Ukraine as a proxy against thr RF since at least Euromaidan. Their policy with Ukraine was and is to apply maximum pressure to Russia to isolate them from the rest of Europe. The US funding and arming the war to the last Ukrainian is therefore a continuation of decades-long policy and not a "decision to help".

This also applies to Israel. Israel is a lapdog of US empire that lashes out at targets in the middle eaat in ways that serve US ruling class interests. The US' support of Israel did not begin on October 7, it has been ongoing for decades. The US just provided even more money than usual and has withstood siding with genocide because it has a complacent, propagandized, and complicit population.

Hamas is certainly on the right side, which is to say, the liberation of Palestine from its racist settler colonists.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 19 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This is one of the problems with treating class as an inherent identity, not a person's relation to the means of production. A person that begins as a direct wage laborer is working class, but if they ascend the ladder they become closer and closer to carrying out the functions of the owner class (i.e. becoming upper management) they lose proletarian character and gain bourgeois character. So the UHC CEO may have started out working class but obviously he became a bourgeois monster.

There's a similar pitfall, which is the uncritical moralization of the working class. The working class has a world historical role to play and is the class oppressed by the bourgeoisie, but it can easily have reactionary elements that should not be embraced, esoeciskky not as "working class values". The working class exists in the society shaped by the bourgeoisie, with marginalizations baked in by the bourgeoisie that can become self-perpetuating (e.g. racism), so we must not simply accept whstever the majority opinion of the working class is, let alone some random guy that ended up facilitating death and pain for profit.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago

I gave you the specific, identifying terms for both things, you can easily look into them with a Google search. If you spend 5 minutes looking for each and come back and say you could not identify them, I will go fetch them for you.

[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

So what was Hunter doing in 2014?

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