More like “lung” than “long”

I, for one, am glad that Iran is discouraging young people from enlisting.

The billionaire ruling class controls NATO, they killed Qaddafi, and now Libya has open slave markets.

That’s what they want for Russia.

So how come I can’t find as much stuff from the Ukrainian people about their government being nazis?

Russia’s war in Ukraine was preceded by mass demonstrations by ethnic Russians in the Donbas region against their government being nazis, which escalated into the masses seizing weapons and occupying buildings. It was only after this that Russia became directly involved.

Is Libya better off without Qaddafi?

Ukraine aligning with NATO is still a problem for Russia, with or without nukes.

Just ask Qaddafi.

Europe is the lesser evil for whom? Certainly not the victims of European colonialism and imperialism.

And when you look, you’ll see those former colonies are getting closer with Russia and China.

A seig heil is an open declaration. That was a clear, mask-off moment and denying it is a joke. You’re moving the goal posts.

And sure, they’ll deny it, but that’s because they’re lying liars who love to lie. They don’t lie because they think anyone will believe them, they lie because they think it’s funny. They love to make people mad by lying to their faces. It’s like the Sartre quote:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play."

The denial is literally a joke. The joke is serious too, of course, because that’s how Nazis always are. They’re always joking and serious at the same time, and they can freely switch between being serious and joking around as it pleases them. They take the mask off and put it back on for fun.

But they aren’t being censored. Wasn’t that your original point? That censorship makes them stronger? But, they aren’t censored.

Elon Musk did a seig heil on stage to a roaring crowd for Trump’s inauguration. He did it twice. His punishment? They appointed him the head of a government task force and then he wrecked a bunch of agencies in the name of “”“efficiency”“”

Did you forget? It’s only been a year.

Nazism is a stupid ideology that would not stand its ground were its mask to fall.

Explain the US, where there is no censorship of pro-Nazi opinions and yet mask-off pro-Nazi ideology made it into the government.

Your thesis, that censorship just makes ideology stronger, isn’t borne out by how Nazis are coming to power in the real world.

The world helped the US sanction and blockade Iran.

Now Iran is sanctioning and blockading the world.

Turnabout is fair play.

Do you think Japan should have continued to attack the US after the H bomb?

Categorically different situation, that was before the US empire was firmly established as the hegemon.

The US isn’t specifically just an evil bad guy country, it’s the imperial core in the current world system.

And sacrificing sovereignty to let the empire win is always bad, 100% of the time, no question.

This is not what I was contesting, even the most authoritative and controlling state can “do fine” and get 90% approval. But by principle, controlling and manipulating the working class is against the idea of letting the working class be the ones, in community, who decide their own destiny.

Right, you’re an idealist. You prefer the idea of not having censorship, and are not confronting the consequences of this idea.

I’m not an idealist, my politics are not based in ideas but on history and my understanding of the current historical moment. I understand that, without censorship, you get counterrevolution and imperial domination and slavery and death. If Cuba falls to US aggression, things will get much worse. My hope is that Cuba can survive long enough for us on the outside to provide a more global / international solution. They need censorship for that.

Is it better for the working class to starve/defend against the outside factor or to capitulate to the outside invader?

I think history can conclusively answer this for us - it’s always better to repel the US. No one benefits when the US comes bringing “”“freedom”“”. All levels of society must be mobilized to repel the invasion or risk being enslaved to the empire.

Anyone who sides with the US in their invasion is the enemy, and I’d prefer my enemies to be censored.

Yes, I explicitly said “undercover” because the minute the censorship is exposed then it becomes counterproductive. China has made censorship “business as usual”, you have a whole system of public officials doing the work without it being at all something that is “undercover”.

And China is doing fine, what are you talking about? It’s certainly effective to keep the censorship hidden, but it’s hardly necessary. I think you’re wish-casting, you wish that open censorship would make people rise up. It doesn’t. Censorship is an effective tool whether it is hidden or blatant. If censorship didn’t work, no one would do it.

This is exactly the problem. Fascism can only rise in situations where people have a need that has enough importance to silence reason.

But this can be imposed from the outside by factors outside of the system’s control, such as if there’s a global hegemon that can blockade the economy and make people suffer. There’s no populist answer for the oil blockade against Cuba, all the “anti-system” speech can do there is help the US siege war. I, for one, don’t want the US to win in Cuba.

If you silence them they will recruit in the shadows and now with an extra argument, since them being silenced is gonna reaffirm their position about the state being open to taking people’s points seriously

You’re contradicting yourself. By your logic the “undercover censorship the existing system is exerting” should actually make anti-system reforms from a left-wing perspective easier to push for, because by your logic the censorship should be helping. It should be easier to recruit from the shadows with an extra argument, we should celebrate being censored!

Except, that’s not how it works in the real world is it? In the real world, censorship works.

The other reason they get power is because millions of people listen to them. Do you think they could take over without being heard? It’s not that their speech is flawless and logical, is that people are hungry for answers that reaction pretends to provide.

If you don’t silence them they can recruit.

Fascists love to cloak themselves in the banners of kings and shit, and they’re kind of a problem.

Also you’re saying this in the context of reactionaries calling for reinstalling the Shah in Iran.

Reactionary, feudal-revivalist speech in a capitalist system is “anti-system” speech too.

We have no interest in defending their right to speak.

Yes it will, but statistically it would hurt older voters the most. 40% of voters 65 and older vote this way.

I’m not saying this is a good thing, I’m just pointing out that this won’t help him as much as he thinks.

I don’t think he can actually do that, but even if this works it mostly hurts older voters. He’s eating the chess pieces again.

This is actually consistent: the function of borders is as global apartheid, the ability for powerful people to engage in sex tourism and exploitation is one of the intended outcomes. The purpose of borders is so that Michael Banks can solicit sex workers while overseas.