Honestly it makes me so fucking depressed when I hear people saying something as fundamentally disconnected from reality, something so needless and unthinking, something so flavorless and insipid as even ironically implying Gates is one of the “better” ones, that “as a person” he may be fine and that no one is “defending him.”

I don’t think his criticisms of the USSR or prominent cold war narratives actually helps him answer his question very well. Does he think that the Russian Federation would not or has not attempted to coexist with western powers? Is Russia no longer white now that it isn’t communist or something? Oh, and we are lacking leaders like Fidel etc.,… who took support from the USSR. Where such leaders just erasing their own struggle in favor of a East-West struggle by doing this? Were they racist against themselves by doing so?

Moscow is, geographically speaking, part of the West, the eastern edge of white Europe

A bit exhausting but needs some grounding to set this point up if he can make it better. The struggle against continuity with the Russian Empire is real, but I think there needs to be some way of addressing or challenging what the revolution achieved and what it means before we call Moscow the edge of white Europe. My understanding is that Eastern Europe has long functioned as a kind of periphery/semi-periphery to Western Europe. Interestingly enough, Cope writes about this haha. I don’t necessarily agree that Eastern Europe is white in the same way whiteness manifests in the west. I wish there was more clarity on this because its not like I don’t already have “this is a bit russiaphobic” already in the chamber, almost like I’m being baited so just make the point.

entirely collapsed into the so-called East-West conflict

By who? And who recognizes this? I’m not saying there isn’t a good point in here, I just feel like we are erasing what the rest of the world has to say just to make this point that the USSR failed. Maybe others around the world agree to an extent that liberation efforts have been flattened. Does he talk about this more in his book? I haven’t read it all. It does have some third world orientation but I’m 99% sure it was all quantitative.

Liberation struggles and revolutionary movements from Asia to Africa to Latin America are regarded as mere pawns of Moscow, without grievances of their own, without any agency of their own — this is not only absurd, it is also transparently racist.

Seems potentially flattening of third world experiences. Again, who regards these struggles so cynically? The struggling masses?

I don’t disagree that the cold war is often used to oversimplify complex global relations or that the USSR was ultimately unsuccessful in the liberation project it espoused. Its just that if you are going to leverage the global south like this, I think it should be more apparent that Smith is officially grounded by the right voices. Otherwise, it comes across as sanctimonious, that we should be centering this group that agrees with him because they are poorer or less “powerful” than the USSR or something.

The gift of pain, misery, and exploitation isn’t worth celebrating unless you are the one taking advantage of people

Christ… autism truly has no meaning whatsoever

No thanks lol I’m going to stay hyper vigilant until I know people are paying attention.

It’s true. But I am sick to my stomach listening to conservatives taking the high road and feeling sorry for him. Why don’t people want to destroy their enemies suddenly? It’s like they loved him the whole time and all their death threats were just in good partisan fun. I don’t want the left to end up in such a humiliating position that we can’t wish harm and pain on this man. Not because it is salvation but because dignity is at stake and I want revenge for his life of crimes of I can’t get justice.

It’s not hard in the slightest. It’s embarrassing to have to read this insanity. There is no amount of suffering this man should be shielded from and humanity gains nothing by lamenting his torment.

Stop making a fool of yourself. He should be dead. He should have been dead decades ago.

For a long time when I worked in restaurants and the boss would start blasting us with “faster!!!” we just all go “working hard, working hard” with no added enthusiasm or energy.

It has too much function to take it as a dismissive reply… unless it’s obvious.

For work I use it all the time to confirm I got an email. I can see how it may ruffle feathers, but my other colleagues don’t even confirm they got the message. Using the thumbs up also helps me organize what I need to do because half it is just in emails I gave a thumbs up to.

If I just replied 👍 to this post, I can see how that would be bullshit but that’s not how Im using it.

Its kinda like saying “sir” or “ma’am.” Some people are too good for it imo and some people may have good reasons to feel uneasy about it, but to me it is respectful to use it as long as you aren’t clearly a shit head.

It’s impossible to take people seriously that do what you are describing.

Half of them were too up their own asses to see the racism in their own families and used it as an outlet to express their “shock” so as to not face up to the fact that their upbringing needs to be critically examined instead of romanticized. These people, just like their QAnon family, are not mere victims and have their fair share of denial themselves.

Boohoo my daddy got more spoils from the empire than me oh boohoo so sad

Quite disturbing to see open support for our own dispossession rationalized this way.

Get the fuck out of the military.

How can something so vague and superfluous be reality shattering?

Union dues and used books.

Im saying people generally are deeply mistaken about culture and class formation in the US, and from that ignorance a multitude of mistakes are made, including the idea that the culture war is a distraction made up by the rich.

In order to believe that the “culture war” is somehow obfuscating class in a way that tricks workers into superfluous concerns you have to believe that the “culture war” is outside of the class interests of most Americans. IT IS NOT.

The “culture war” is a manifestation of tensions within the class structure of the US. Colonized peoples are making their voices heard and so the ruling classes along with the metropolitan and white working classes, are responding by arguing amongst themselves, once again, what is to be done with the colonized? Should they be silenced? Assimilated? Enfranchised? These are questions as old as settler-colonialism and are natural to class structures with global stratifications.

The cultural questions are emergent from structure and superstructure of capitalist and colonial relations. They were not invented by the fucking boogyman at Chase Manhattan who then forces the helpless poor to be racist or woke. Routinely the voices of the colonized are co-opted by working people on either side of the “culture war” for their own ends, to protect their class status. The subsequent contradictions then fuel the development of colonial political discourse.

The “culture war” and its vulgarity absolutely doesn’t just protect the rich, it protects white people and metropolitan workers from having to reckon with their own class character for the benifit of their class, which is stratified fundamentally differently from that of colonized nations within their own apparent borders, or the “4th world,” or from the rest of the world beyond their borders.

Not everything is about the dastardly rich people tricking the stupid workers into working against their own interests. What reductive thinking! Working people in the core are fine to argue with their uncle at thanksgiving, and ultimately advance colonial discourse, to assert an identity that can distract from the fact that THEY HAVE MORE TO LOSE THAN THEIR CHAINS.

By participating in the “culture war” they can ultimately engage in class struggle AGAINST the global proletariat, AGAINST the 4th world, and uphold the stratification that they enjoy. The “culture war,” therefore, is not a distraction, it is the redirection and co-optation of colonized class antagonisms by the American colonial project for its own purposes, including for its lesser classes.

Don’t vote