Tag: leftism

I Think As Modern Leftists It’s Critically Important That We Look Closely At The Mistakes Made and Atrocities Committed by The USSR

Even if they didn’t kill or imprison anywhere near as many people as the USA does, and not just because a murderer who murders two people isn’t magically a good guy because he’s standing next to a murderer who murdered twenty.

I think it’s important because they were leftists.  Because in a lot of ways they were us and just because we say “oh that’s not my tendency, we’d never do those things” doesn’t mean we won’t, because 1. Read Lenin, because the USSR is very very thoroughly, very very clearly not what he intended to create but also you can see exactly how shit ended up the way it did. 2. You don’t know where the bucket’s leaking till you put water in it, most of us haven’t been faced with the reality of being in charge, we don’t know where our ideas leak and when you’re in charge and your ideas about agriculture turn out to be not quite right people die. 3. It’s really easy to write the Bolsh off as monsters but like most of them were idealistic people, most of them had the best of intentions.  Most of them BELIEVED in communism, and democracy and somehow this shit still happened.

It’s superbly important to look at the shit that went wrong with the USSR because we’re not going to make do the same shit the USA does, not committing those particular atrocities is kind of the point, but the mistakes and atrocities committed by the USSR… that’s shit dedicated, true believing commies did, stuff we could do and that’s worth looking at long and hard.

It’s much scarier to look at Stalin and Mao and see true believers rather than monsters, because Stalin especially but both of them did and caused a lot of unforgivable things.  It’s easier for us if they just had terrible intentions, easier if they were opportunists who didn’t believe in this stuff.  I’m not saying this as some dismissal of their crimes “oh they had good intentions” no, I’m saying that as with a lot of shit, intent isn’t the fucking point.  Results are the fucking point.  

Idealism won’t protect us from our flaws, our fear, our incapacities.  We have to look and we have to look hard because if we don’t work really goddamned hard to make sure we build something that isn’t just good intentions and a vague idea of how shit works, we have to build shit that works and doesn’t create an absurdly huge police state with people constantly informing on each other or famines or what the fuck ever.

Being a committed anti-authoritarian in your ideals isn’t enough to save you from becoming an authoritarian under the right circumstances and pressures

I think a lot of times we think of equality as “you’re worthy of no more respect than we are” which is actually pretty shitty in comparison to “we are all worthy of just as much respect as you”

I quite like ideas of equality that say “I am up here with you” rather than “you are down here with me”. Like IDK I feel like addressing everyone in the way people used to address their “social inferiors” is less cool than granting everyone respect and honor, if that makes sense? Like IDK I feel like one of the best ways to destroy symbols of hierarchy is to grant them to everyone. If you call everyone “your majesty” it takes away the meaning of social dominance, also like… it says something better in a way because you’re saying like “I see the truth, which is that we are all just as worthy of dignity and respect as royalty” as opposed to “I see the truth, which is that royalty are just as shitty as we are” and IDK that kind of sucks because like we’re not shitty, also this way you’ve eliminated a term which could be used to indicate “this person is superior to the rest of us” because it comes to mean an equal, you know? Am I making sense?

(Also this is my argument for using using princess interchangeably with comrade)

TW: CSA  What the fuck was going on in the 60s/70s?

What was going on in the late 60s/70s that allowed for like the 14 year old “baby groupies” to be a celebrated phenomenon, for Foucault (History of Sexuality I p. 27, 31, lots more  ) and Andrea Dworkin (Woman Hating 190-192 ) and Allan Ginsberg (noted for marching with NAMBLA) and Pat Califa (Public Sex contains an essay opposing age of consent laws) and Germaine Greer (The Beautiful Boy seriously read about that it’s FUCKED UP, also she advocated a bunch of other horrible shit but let’s focus on the pedophilia for now) and the International Spartacist tendency and probably a LOT more theorists/groups I haven’t read/heard of to say “it’s okay to fuck kids” in public and be prominant parts of the left/politically relevent/anything other than totally beyond the pale and not okay?  

And like I mean I don’t think we live in a society that handles CSA well by any means but like pedophiles are pretty well and thoroughly loathed by the vast majority of people.  They get murdered in prison.  People protest when one moves into the neighborhood.  A lot of people’d like to straight up murder them and like most relevant to my point, you’d be thrown out of… pretty much anywhere for saying the stuff these people said, and like that seems very much like the sensible response to me.  You shouldn’t listen to people who say it’s okay to molest children, that seems pretty obvious to me, and hopefully all of you.

So like how did we have a cultural moment where the radical left was like “you know, maybe it’s not only okay to fuck kids, but the radical, politically conscious thing to do”?  Like what was happening?  How did this exist?  How was there a time where Andrea Dworkin could say that “Curling irons are inherently oppressive (woman hating page 115), but adults having sexual interactions with children is an enlightening and positive thing”?  WHAT THE FUCK?  WHAT WAS HAPPENING WITH POLITICS IN THE 60S AND 70S?
HOW?  WHY?  CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON?