DictatrshipOfTheseus

I know it was deployed against Iraqis during the first Gulf War, with Hillary Clinton claiming Saddam was issuing his troops with Viagra specifically so they could [redacted] more.

I don't doubt r**e was a claim made against Iraqis too, but it's the absurd claim about soldiers taking babies from incubators that most sticks out in my memory when it comes to Iraq and the first Gulf War. However, Hilary Clinton talking about soldiers being given viagra was definitely about Gaddafi. Keep in mind who was in power when those respective conflicts were happening.

I don't mean to refute that but they do have somewhat strict laws around nazi apoligia.

Yeah, about that...

https://hexbear.net/post/720421

1. Mostly it was about fooling you into thinking that, as a worker, you have even an iota of power within that company.

2. You: "The owners deserve all the value that results from owning the company and not the workers because the owners own the company, duh." Reread what you said and note the ridiculous circular logic.

3. The company would continue to function perfectly fine without the owner(s), yet would immediately cease to function or even exist without the workers. The only role the owner plays in the company (that the workers operate), is to siphon the value away from the workers who made it and unto themselves.

Hi JT. I think it's safe to say, you've had a good deal of success in reaching people online and opening them up to socialist concepts. But are there any instances in real life where you've felt you "got through" to someone in some significant way? I mean that in terms of just straight up talking to someone in person who wasn't aware of your online work and making real headway, but also if anyone you know "in real life" has told you that your online work is what helped change their perspective. In either case, did they have anything specific to say about what it was that "won them over"?

Just to add a little context, I remember you mentioning on the podcast that you and some old college buddies still on occasion get together and do powerpoint presentations for each other. First of all, my god, that's some wholesome nerdiness. If I remember right, those friends were more receptive than you had expected, and I always wondered about what they thought much later on, after you became a reasonably big online persona.

In addition to my above serious question, I wonder if you might just maybe indulge me a little further with a second one? Would you be willing to nudge Hakim & Yugopnik into doing an AMA here too? I don't know if that's socially/parasocially uncouth of me to ask, but it would be awesome if we could pick the brains of all 3 of The Deprogram boys I have jokingly said that since Hexbear was fortunate enough to get you, we should let our comrade instance, lemmygrad.ml, have the honor of hosting Hakim's AMA. But then Hexbear and Lemmygrad need to have some sort of posting battle, and only the winner gets to host Yugopnik. Regardless of the particulars, Hakim & Yugopnik may really enjoy it as a respite from the monotony of being forever stuck in your basement, yeah?

(Apologies if any of this was asked before, I'm still working my way through the thread)

Alright, like I said, maybe I need to learn more about MMT, but as I've understood it so far, it's a way of understanding the nuts and bolts of what's actually going on with things like inflation, dollar hegemony, etc. It's not contradicting Marxism at all, just delving into the ridiculous cult-religion of neoliberal economics and attempting to materially explain all those things that are taboo to classic western economists. It's not a refutation of a Marxist concept of economy and it's not advocating for social democracy. Do you think Michael Hudson is lying or do you think he's confused, or is what he talks about not actual MMT?

I think all of that is a gross mischaracterization of what he's doing. Have you watched his videos or listened to The Deprogram podcast? None of what you said is required to meet people where they are at. As I said upthread, I think it's best to have a multitude of different approaches. But to act like going immediately from "socialism is when the government does stuff" to "Death to America" is the only correct way of introducing people to concepts and realities that they have been taught to despise and reject since they were old enough to speak, is naive at best. (Btw, they often say "Death to America" on The Deprogram, only it gets bleeped just barely enough that they won't get instantly banned from every podcast platform.)

I don’t see the utility in convincing a bunch of people in the imperial core that they should be investing more into the long term interests of the western bourgeoisie. That they should be concerned about stabilizing capitalism and reforming it.

I completely agree. I just don't think that the dude who runs Second Thought is doing that. That channel is among the best there is, if not the best, for getting liberals to start considering things outside of their bullshit worldview. The guy is as at least as radical as most people here, but he's cognizant of the fact that the typical western libs aren't capable of going from supporting "the lesser evil" blue team to calling for a protracted people's war against the US. Pipelines are real, and JT as well as the other Deprogram boys have made an excellent opening for people to jump into it, people who would otherwise just scoff at anything that seems to resemble gommulism.

I admit I don't know enough about MMT and am willing to learn about where I'm wrong. But from my limited understanding, MMT is narrowly just theory about how economics works without anything prescriptive to say about revolution. You can recognize that MMT explains a lot of the things that western "economists" are utterly blind to (and outright refuse to look at) and still be a dedicated Marxist/ML. Doesn't even Michael Hudson talk a lot about MMT? Should we write him off as not worth paying attention to because of that?

I don't know what JT's views are on MMT, and I am skeptical it even matters. But I do know he's not a social democrat, he's a radical Marxist and has openly and frequently said so. If I remember right, even said so here during the last AMA.

people just get trained in Marxism right away. Why can’t we just do that and skip the cringe stage?

A multitude of strategies is a good thing. Different tactics work on different people.

We’ve been trying the succ dem slow pipeline for 200 years in the West and it hasn’t worked.

Tell that to all the people here who started their journey to radicalization because of . Also, JT doesn't advocate for succdemery, he explicitly states it's not socialism and actual socialism is what's needed. The fact remains, one of the best strategies for getting people in the core to even begin questioning the water they've been swimming in their entire lives is to meet them where they're at, then go from there.

I don't know how to go about it - currently it sounds a bit like a left wing Wikipedia. In my head, I can see it more like a giant 4D map, or a big messy case file sprawling out over a desk.

Well to butt in again, I don't know enough about it, but people here have said good things about Obsidian. This is the place I know of that shows how it might be used to build an interconnected knowledge base. I think it would be better for the kind of thing you're describing than a wiki would. There's no "4D map" but it does have a rotating 3D map of how different sections connect. Just a thought.

Country of the week.

After some discussion in the last megathread about building knowledge of geopolitics, some of us thought it might be an interesting idea to have a Country of the Week - essentially, I/we choose a country and then people can come in here and chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants, related to that country. More detail in this comment.

I am actually tempted to put some feelers out for the starting of a community researching project. I think we have a varied knowledge base and if we could put our collective minds to use in mapping the history of a country/region/issue in a similar way to the Ukraine stuff.

I think this is an excellent idea and believe that @[email protected] has said something very similar. It was the major impetus behind the COTW thing that was started a few weeks back. It might be worth hitting him up to discuss further.