• Kasama ☭@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    25·
    16 days ago

    I saw my family over the weekend. Up until now, I thought I was the only communist in the family, then I had a long conversation with one of my cousins. It started with Sydney Sweeney’s “jeans” ad and then we talked about how the empire has always been a settler-colonial project, how its genocidal history has inspired every fascist regime in existence. She’s actually been reading about all this for a while.

    I don’t know if she’s a socialist right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she was reading Marx, Lenin, etc.

      • Kasama ☭@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        9·
        15 days ago

        Thank you! I think her radicalization started last year after she had a falling out with another cousin.

        So last summer my family on my dad’s side was on a family vocation(I wasn’t there, but I’m aware of what happened during the trip), and my cousin (to maintain privacy we’ll call her Elisa) had a friend over. From what I’ve heard her friend didn’t have a good time being there because my other cousin had very racist things to say to her face and admitted that he was proud to be a white supremacist; he’s also a zionist, I’ve seen him wear a zof shirt. Elisa was very upset and started yelling at him and apparently the entire house was quiet for hours after the argument.

        I’ll say this though, it was one of the few times I actually discussed politics with a family member since I have boundaries where I don’t have conversations about politics with family members.

        • Makan@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          4·
          15 days ago

          That’s horrible. I’m also dealing with a bad family member who is also racist.

        • LeninZedong@lemmygrad.ml
          1·
          15 days ago

          Good to hear! At least you can talk to someone else in your family (I cannot talk to anyone in my family about this because I can hardly talk to them at all).

    • yunah-knowles@lemmygrad.ml
      4·
      14 days ago

      that’s how the tankies get ya (speaking from experience as someone who basically stumbled into ML politics from a previously ‘radlib’ experience, mostly ‘alone’ [no personal friends steering me that direction])

  • yunah-knowles@lemmygrad.ml
    24·
    13 days ago

    someone just said xi has a massive ego, comparable to trump’s. and i’m not even glazing when i say this but i think you have to be on a bit of hallucinogens to think that. we straight up don’t know shit about this man, really. granted, it was on the apple subreddit, (sue me i love spectating bullshit, i don’t even know how i got there) where they have a pro-ROC lean (chips), but every time i get insights into the median american voter’s mindset, i’m really shocked.

  • LeninZedong@lemmygrad.ml
    211·
    16 days ago

    So… I might be homeless within a week or two. There is really some pressure from my parents to apply to a different college, and it is really annoying me. I got no resources, so moving out will be difficult (I do have a small amount of money, though).

    Edit: Weird random downvote? If it is because my reason for wanting to move away sounds shallow, I must add that this is just one example of the bad parenting they have displayed throughout my childhood (and it can get much darker but I would rather not get into that here).

        • Makan@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          9·
          15 days ago

          I think you are. I kinda consider everyone on Lemmygrad to at least be companions so idk.

          Also, yeah, a lot of my friends on social media are now homeless…

          • LeninZedong@lemmygrad.ml
            6·
            15 days ago

            I appreciate that you consider me and these peeps here friends! I am a bit worried about the prospects of homelessness and all…

            • Makan@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
              6·
              15 days ago

              Yeah, I’m worried too, but I shouldn’t because I literally have a good opportunity to go to Spain.

              You have it worse and I’m so sorry for your situation. Not sure what I can do to help but if you have fundraisers on Twitter or whatever…

              • LeninZedong@lemmygrad.ml
                2·
                13 days ago

                Thank you for the best wishes, and yeah, my future seems pretty grim. I am not sure what I am going to do if I end up going homeless, but maybe I could consider a fundraiser (though I am a bit unsure of what I would do with the money if I end up not getting a job anymore…).

  • KrupskayaPraxis@lemmygrad.ml
    17·
    12 days ago

    Whenever I see like 19 year old communists, I think ‘‘damn why couldn’t that have been me at that age?’’ At that time I was still a clueless liberal lol.

    • Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml
      13·
      12 days ago

      The time you spent holding the ideology you were indoctrinated with from birth isn’t your fault. Seeing young communists should make you hopeful because it means that agitation efforts are going better now than when you were that age.

    • guolai@lemmygrad.ml
      9·
      12 days ago

      I am the same. It took me quite a bit to become more communist. I was liberal -> to anarchist for most of my youthish life.

    • LeninZedong@lemmygrad.ml
      8·
      12 days ago

      I became a communist at a young age, but you should not sweat it! Some people stay libservantives their entire lives thinking that homeless people dying due to malnutrition is due to their own personal failings.

  • SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
    17·
    15 days ago

    The Met Gala is the umpteenth reminder that celebrities are shit and no matter how much virtue signaling they do to cater to their audience they will show up at a billionaire’s gala after said billionaire cut thousands of jobs and has the remaining staff running around pissing in bottles or dying on the floor.

  • Sherad@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    16·
    14 days ago

    Sort of cross-commenting from a smaller post for more… commiseration? Understanding? Lol.

    Stalin and Mao remain constant blockages for when I talk with my more soc-dem friends. Was with some comrades at the May Day rally in my city recently and my more soc-dem friend noticed one of them handing out pamphlets to a reading/analysis of On Contradiction by Mao, and they immediately brought up how “Mao killed millions and was a ruthless dictator etc etc etc” and in the moment we just kind of brushed it off because the speeches were starting - it makes me wanna scream sometimes.

    For me it was as easy as distrusting the current system and understanding how deep the propaganda goes, alongside understanding the breadth and depth of actual history - but when trying to explain that all it took to radicalize me was simply reading accurate history to libs they look at me like I just did a Nazi salute.

    It’s becoming my latest obsession honestly - understanding how to communicate the fact that history isn’t just one sided, and that people then acted as they do now: with limited info and hundreds of complications that need to be taken into account; that history isn’t some flat chain of events but actually a huge yarn ball of cause and effect and that yes, sometimes things devolved into unnecessary chaos and gasp even necessary violence.

    It makes me so frustrated sometimes, like people don’t engage enough with history to understand the why. It’s so much easier to simply say this thing bad and therefore all things attached to it bad.

    I just want to shake them out of their placated stupor and make them understand that 1. An entirely new system of organized society is being tested and there will be mistakes and 2. Motherfuckers I know you hate were the ones fighting against it violently and sometimes can only be met with in kind. 😤

    • LeninZedong@lemmygrad.ml
      1·
      12 days ago

      I am not sure you can really do much for them beyond educating them on how the myth of evil authoritarian communism is an excuse for evil capitalist misdeeds, and how the neoliberal worldview is simply unscientific in many ways (it uses authoritarian and totalitarian as buzzwords with little meaning and much hypocrisy). If they are your friends, you could try to chip away at their misunderstandings, but you should really consider how willing they are to accept convincing.

      Oh, you can also point out how liberalism tends to support fascism when they are able to control it (Ukraine and West Germany), so their moral high ground is unfounded (I know your friends are social-democrats, but they are still afflicted with some of the same propaganda): Such will likely give them quite a shock! :>

    • the rizzler@lemmygrad.ml
      1·
      12 days ago

      honestly for some people they have to get a bit into communism before they’re able to see mao and stalin as anything. i know for me it took a couple years of study before i was willing to hear anything about them. hopefully they dont stagnate as socdems but maybe the solution is to start them off with more “sympathetic” figures like marx or lenin. hell, anarchist pamphlets could probably be useful in pushing them left enough to at least be open to these things

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmygrad.ml
    16·
    17 days ago

    Have a great week, everyone! Try to keep yourself from losing momentum, and be sure to relax when you can.

    As always, communism will win.

  • SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
    14·
    14 days ago

    Trying to set up a substack for my upcoming trip and holy shit is it filled with edgy wannabe intellectual people lmao. I do like the format of substack, though.

    • La Dame d'Azur@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      10·
      13 days ago

      The format is really good.

      Sadly I had to stop using it because of all the fucking Nazis. It was made worse because Substack not only allows the Nazis but actively promotes them.

      Nazi bar.

      • SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
        6·
        13 days ago

        No Nazi shit for me fortunately. Maybe because I just quickly selected arts and culture when I set it up. My page with the notes just reads like a ‘I’m 14 and this is deep’ quotes fest combined with overly serious artsy people. Basically early days of Twitter.

        What I do find odd, though, is that the idea of the platform is to make newsletters yet I can’t seem to find a page dedicated to finding said newsletters. It’s just these note things.

  • Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml
    13·
    16 days ago

    This White Empire is not just a real physical thing (the empire right now) but as a real historical thing (the empire for centuries). Understanding things this way, you can become insufferable dinner company. You are zoomed out so far that things make sense, but in a world full of mad men, this only makes you seem crazy. We live in a White Empire and have for centuries and don’t even have a name for it. I just made that name up. It’s the greatest trick the White Devil ever pulled. Convincing the world he didn’t exist (the Devil is definitely he/him).

    -Indi.ca (emphasis mine) the guy makes me laugh.

      • yunah-knowles@lemmygrad.ml
        3·
        14 days ago

        he has really good geopol takes and i don’t generally disagree with him except he does like to proselytize a bit and also i remember looking at old articles of his, he spoke of the ussr’s dissolution as ‘democratization’ or the return of it, and also said ‘soviet empire’ more than a few times. i’m not saying this to say we should ‘’‘cancel him’‘’', i’m not even being really down on the guy, since he does have his head on straight and he’s got a good heart, it’s just a bit funny. he’s very good for news. just wanted to throw my two cents into the big old hat

          • yunah-knowles@lemmygrad.ml
            2·
            13 days ago

            oh, no lol… millennial through and through. he seems to have had an interesting route to discovering his own politics, sort of hippy adjacent mixed with surprisingly incisive and lucid takes on geopolitics, and seems to have become a third worldist in no small part due to being brought up in the usa, but he seems to be pretty young comparatively. for some of his reflexive anti-communism, i think it’s just typical anti-soviet sentiment for his generation, especially given his background as usa diaspora )who migrated back to country of origin but he acknowledges he spent a good while in the empire. he has an interesting piece on almost being recruited for like, i forget what it was but pro-usa ‘journalism’)

  • SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
    11·
    15 days ago

    Five more days until I leave on my 2300km adventure. And my drought complains have been heard because it will be miserable weather for the first two weeks lmao. Real test of character.

    • Makan@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      2·
      14 days ago

      Where I live, we’ve been getting dark and cloudy days non-stop (with lots of rain here and there).

      I don’t know what’s happening or what’s causing it.

      I mean, yeah, global warming and climate change, blah, blah, blah, but I mean, why now?

  • SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
    11·
    11 days ago

    Well, last day at home before I hit the road for some months. I can’t wait to face the adventures and challenges ahead.