Hồ Chí Minh (1890-1969) was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary who led the resistance against French colonialism, and subsequently against the US invasion, until his death from heart failure six years before the liberation of Vietnam.(PW)

Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.

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  • SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
    4·
    7 days ago

    A socdem elected official will visited my place of work soon for god knows what reason and I am contemplating calling in sick that day because I feel like I will explode with rage for some reason

  • Nyx@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    I have not posted anything in awhile so I just thought I’d say hello! Very busy these days. Recently the app I was using for books died a tragic death and I have to rebuild my entire library up again. It’s taken awhile but I think it is almost there. I still lurk and read posts but commenting is scary :D Hope you all have a good week

  • KrupskayaPraxis@lemmygrad.ml
    17·
    13 days ago

    We had a huge protest in the Hague yesterday with 100.000 people protesting against the Dutch government’s stance on Israel. I was there as well. It got sort of coopted by liberals though with some political parties that were silent or supported the genocide taking part. But this protest shows that the people support the Palestinian people. But I feel like this protest was kind of wasted. 100.000 people could’ve shut the city down. We could’ve squatted the parliament building, but instead we were walking around the city and the government probably won’t listen to us. Although there is more pressure on them now, which is good.

    • redline@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      1·
      12 days ago

      what kind of rhetoric did the liberals politicians who participated use? im curious how about the tactics, because i imagine we’ll see more of it across europe soon

      • KrupskayaPraxis@lemmygrad.ml
        4·
        12 days ago

        I think a lot of people who were present don’t think that Palestine needs to be free, but just think that Israel went too far. Some people who shouted from the river to the sea, were literally heckled.

  • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    15·
    12 days ago

    You know, even with all the crazy xenophobia happening in the US, my mexican middle class circle is still eager to migrate to the US. The american dream propaganda is so deeply internalized that it’s frankly very sad to see.

    • Jin008@lemmygrad.ml
      10·
      11 days ago

      Oh my fucking god yea. I was talking to a person in their mid-to-late 20s who was going on a date with a US Marine who for whatever reason was going to be in Southeast Asia. And they don’t even get a visceral reaction when knowing the person is US military, but what’s more they said it might be an opportunity to get a green card.

      So I just stated what is happening to people to even people who are getting green cards in the US. And they don’t want to listen, and Americans said it was ok and still act like it’s just Trump. How fucking stupid can you be? You want to move to a county where almost everyone is barely getting by, nobody owns a home, your chance of getting killed just because you’re not white is so fucking high it’s not even funny, and he county is literally doing gestapo shit so blatantly now it’s literally unignorable. But apparently it can be ignored, I honestly believe if you still move to the US, you get what’s coming to you. You literally cannot be this fucking stupid and ignorant. If you want to stay in an echo chamber and not listen to people because you grew up watching Hollywood or whatever, nobody can help you.

      (Sorry for ranting comrades)

    • rainpizza@lemmygrad.ml
      9·
      11 days ago

      The “American dream” propagandists are working overtime in Facebook, Twitter and other social media to sell the “beautiful” life of working in the US with a TN visa. Due to “el aspiracionismo” fallacy, lots of people are still falling to those lies of “success”.

    • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
      4·
      11 days ago

      Reminds me of this one time, when I still used reddit, ran into somebody who was talking about being an immigrant and something about how they’d managed to succeed. I think I had tried to give them some socialist style commentary and it turned out that they were a landlord of a kind, and I was pretty blunt with them about the ridiculousness of their “success” being to become an exploiter.

      I guess I think of it because some people who are migrants can technically succeed, if we consider the “American dream” to be “become the oppressor.” But that’s nothing to be proud of and few can do that even if they all had so little of a conscience to try.

  • SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
    15·
    13 days ago

    For the first time since migrating I sort of miss home. Belgian people are really hard to connect to and they seem to be stuck in a perpetual state of misery for large parts of their lives. And that can be exhausting. I went home to celebrate my football team becoming champions yesterday and I realized I really miss dicking around with the people over there.

    I wouldn’t mind doing it all again or even migrating elsewhere again though. It has been an interesting experience. But I increasingly wonder what I’m doing here exactly. I will never be Belgian. I will never really belong here. And I will never be able to get used to whatever mentality prevails here. And I’m a white European too. Can’t imagine how much more difficult it must be for non European migrants.

    Anyway, tomorrow there will be a big strike again for the fifth month in a row. I am at a point where I wonder what the next step will be if nothing changes.

    • KrupskayaPraxis@lemmygrad.ml
      5·
      13 days ago

      What’s different in the mentality between southern Dutch and Belgian people? I thought that southern Dutch and Belgian culture was the same.

      Sucks to hear tho. Is there a Dutch immigrant community you can connect to?

      Congrats on you team becoming champions btw. I wish it was us.

      • SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
        5·
        13 days ago

        Well we’re both Catholic and there is some overlap in cultural stuff in that. We both live a more ‘bourgondisch’ compared to Northern Netherlands. But we Brabanders are still Dutch so we still have that directness in us. The main difference is, is that everyone is really closed up here it seems. You very rarely get personal questions anywhere. I’ve worked in several different places and I rarely talk to my coworkers about my weekend for example. It’s difficult to become friends with Flemish people let alone find a friend group to get into.

        Most of my friends here are Dutch lol. They experience the same issues so it’s not like I am unlikeable or something. Belgian people have explained it to me as Belgian people getting ‘stuck to their local church tower’ in that all of their friend groups and most of their lives get decided by where they are born and they are hesitant to break free from that, so it’s very hard for people at a later stage to come into existing social groups.

        Maybe it’s the same for people coming to The Netherlands as well, idk. It’s not like The Netherlands is perfect or something. But in my experience at least the Belgians are far more reserved than I am used to as a Dutch person.

        Also, hierarchy is much more respected here. Where at home I would regularly chat with the ceo’s of the places I worked at, that is not done here. At my first job here I just walked into our CEO’s office to ask him a question and he seemed mortified lol. And I think that results in some rigid social structures as well where a lot of people seem sort of helpless or incapable of finding solutions themselves if an authority figure is not present. Idk you have to experience working here to understand it I guess. Some sort of ‘we’ve done this for ages now and we can’t change it’ mentality, even if things get outdated.

        • SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
          6·
          13 days ago

          Also, Belgian men, for the life of them, cannot seems to save themselves if their lives depended on it lol. Very rarely I see a Belgian guy with actual strong, independent opinions, who is able to cook, clean, whatever. There is like this insane passiveness surrounding a lot of them and I often find myself wondering if there is anything going on in their mind.

          Now, this all sounds very negative of course and I don’t want to be disrespectful or anything but sometimes you just need to vent lol.

        • Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml
          3·
          12 days ago

          Yeah this just sounds like capitalism’s effect on community not unique to your situation or location. Individualistic tendencies and competition kill community.

          Making friends is hard. I’ve lived in a few places and if I have been able to plug into a local community it has always been as somebody’s +1. Even if there is generally openness and welcome to the new community there is always a bit of hostility from several members.

          If you don’t move away from your family and childhood friend group, many of them will move away from your hometown. The ones that remain will bring their new connections into your community changing it’s fabric and sometimes causing unbrigable rifts. People will have drama and there is no accountability to resolve those differences for the good of the community. The elders who would traditionally mediate these sort of rifts are just as consumed with individualism and factionalism so the feuds never are resolved.

  • SpaceDogs@lemmygrad.ml
    12·
    12 days ago

    The seventh semester of my undergrad is almost half way through and I am already exasperated. My brain is unable to function well lol

    I hope everyone else is having a good spring! It rained earlier today.

  • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    10·
    8 days ago

    Its pretty funny that one of the rules of that BuyEuropean community is:

    Do not use this community to promote Nationalism/Euronationalism.

  • SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
    8·
    9 days ago

    Visited a book store in the city today because I have been on a reading streak and I want to keep it up.

    There was a whole table dedicated to anarchist books so I figured they are anarchist leaning. That’s okay with me. I usually shop at our commie store but I can spice things up I guess.

    What confused me, though, was that the table also had books on Navalny for some reason. I know we make fun of anarchist takes sometimes but this just genuinely confused me. They know he was a far right racist piece of shit, right?

    Anyway I got some books. Testaments by Atwood, Walden by Thoreau and Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto.

    • Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml
      3·
      8 days ago

      Idea for a tv show that’s never going to be made. A Tankie’s Curb your Enthusiasm.

      In this episode the character confronted the staff. It starts with him screaming “Islamophobic hate speech” as they shove him out into the street.

      • Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml
        3·
        7 days ago

        This is another episode of the show where a tankie makes everyone hate him.

        The Tankie Protagonist goes up to the guys flying the Ukraine and Palestine flags and says “ukraine is a nazi state.” and one of them says aggressively “They can’t be nazis, they elected a Jewish president.”

  • SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
    7·
    11 days ago

    At this point I’m seriously contemplating doing a rain dance or something. My plants need water. Please rinse off the thick layer of pollen from everything. Please.

    • Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml
      5·
      11 days ago

      Do it. Rain dances are an S tier spiritual/magical ritual. Even if it doesn’t work it’s pretty fun. Just remember to do lots of jumps, spins, and arm flinging. Oh and being high helps.

      Back in my occultist days the only thing that ever really felt like it worked was weather manipulation.