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desire-mona · 1 month

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forgive me for leftist-posting abt the gay movie, but the dead poets society is soooo leftist-adjacent in my mind. "mona wtf does that mean" im not entirely sure! something about rebelling against a school with such strict rules and reliance on tradition just to read poetry in the woods seems very.. path to leftism to me. i feel like i can explain better with the original dead poets so ill do that.

warning: this isnt even speculation at this point, its me making shit up about the og poets for the sake of projection + i think it would be interesting + og poets being taught ww2 propaganda is smthn im always thinking abt. if u dont agree, thats more than fine, u have literally no obligation to esp considering this barely makes sense. also this isnt meant to be informative at all so if i get shit wrong then lmk, im neither a historian nor an expert in leftism.

to specify off the bat, ive always hced keating as an avid and involved leftist, although probably not publicly. is there any merit to this? absolutely not, it's entirely just me projecting, so take this with a heaping spoonful of salt.

so, around the time the original dead poets society was formed, we were in the sorta beginning of WW2 (if we assume the dps was founded in 1941, definitely couldve been later. u should read @pencileraser1's post about keating.), and if ur familiar with US history, propaganda surrounding the war was RAMPANT, most commonly in the form of "we want u to join the military!!!!1!!!!" ive mentioned this in a previous post from however long ago that pro-military propaganda was so rampant that they often taught it in schools, no doubt especially so in private schools. now this could ultimately mean nothing in relation to the og poets, they so easily could have eaten it up and thought nothing of it, they did essentially just do homework in the woods. but in my joe biden's america ass brain thats not how it goes, just cuz. to me its sort of a pipeline of start to rebel by forming the dps > slowly realise after talking that the things theyre teaching u in terms of "rahhhh military!!!" is kinda fucked up > growing distrust of us military in general > something something US wasting money on weapons and war and shit > something something anti capitalism.

is this a stretch? absolutely, but it makes sense to me so thats what matters. also the leftist-ness?? exists on different spectrums in my mind, ranging from being against US military propaganda being taught in class to straight-up socialism (keating socialist...) so definitely dont take this as the dps being some sort of mini socialist party, in my mind its just a group of boys who happen to agree abt some aspects of society (hah). i also dont think this translated to any permanent ideals for a majority of the og boys, especially since anti-capitalism didn't exactly mix well with the cold war, the red scare, and all variants of etc after WW2 ended. except for keating, keating stays a socialist, CPUSA and eventual SDS keating (if he chose to stay in the US) are real to me.

now, would this translate to the reprisal of the dead poets (the movie ones)? i doooont think so? originally i was gonna say this only applies in my mind when the US is at war, but the US is kinda always at war, sooooooo. lets just say it applies when the US being at war is sort of a main concern to the general population (ex both world wars, vietnam, war on terror if welton was still around, etc). as to why this sorta hc only applies concerning militarism? i have absolutely no idea, probably something to do with my views on the military sorta long term leading me to my political opinions. but also! the effects that the red scare and mccarthyism definitely were still prevalent in 1959 despite soooooorta dying down around 1957. no doubt the US population's fear of anti-capitalism = ur a russian spy was still there. was that sorta thing taught in schools at that point? not sure, this is also a fictional school so it doesn't really matter and im going on a tangent. i suppose if the dps reprise continued for more than ~3 months then they could've gone down a similar path under the right circumstances? but i doubt it. although leftist neil is quite special to me. neil for SAG! neil for unionisation!

i like applying this logic to other periods, like the 60s for example (i knowwww keating was gone by then, lets just pretend, make it an au i guess) i can definitely see the poets (or some at least) delving into the hippie movement on the down-low, although its easy to call into question whether hippies were an actual group of activists or just a sort of cultural movement. again - i dont know much about the history of hippies so i dont have much to add, lets go with a general "anti vietnam war" ideology to keep things simple. sorta similar to the og poets in terms of war bad > socialism pipelines, and the SDS was formed roughly around this time? peak was in 1968-69, but thats kinda all i got. if anyone enjoys this idea and knows a lot abt that point in leftist history then definitely feel free to add anything on if u want.

in conclusion: mona hates war and the military and projects it onto the poets because they wanted to and also they had a conversation with tristan about propaganda in relation to dps. this is a bunch of random sorta points just strewn together so my apologies for how messy this is.

bonus: FANTASTIC point by @lookingglasswolf

#desire mona #ough. idk why im so nervous to post this its not like there r many hardcore capitalist dps fans #leftist keating is so special to me #also tyson said charlie would be so down with anti draft / make love not war and i 100% agree #i debated making og poet propaganda part of a piece of og poet writing / fanfic / something? but idk where id go with it #anyway #ran this shit thru grammarly #dead poets society #john keating #i mentioned neil so neil tag #neil perry #libposting #< my leftism tag #banger

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anarchicarachnid · 1 year

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"20% are either just using any mention of Vaush to just shit-talk him as a default without any stated reasons" - Vaush has engaged in forms of Holocaust denial, using common nazi dogwhistles and believes the numbers are inflated as propaganda. Vaush said: “If you are not paying for child pornography there is no argument in favour of morally condeming people who view it. Vaush admits to being an informant when he lived in Santa Monica, California. He admits to revealing activist identities to the FBI. Vaush called the LGBT community ‘cancerous as fuck.’ because there’s a “ton of mental illness” and said they should be “excised from the left.” He also called them “less than human” and “fucking disgusting”. Vaush called trans people ‘bitches’ for taking offence when misgendered." - Vaush deserves to be shit-talked, he's less-than-human scum.

For anyone interested, this is a fantastic example of how many people who view themselves as The Most Progressive will join in on internet hate mobs using the shallow guise of criticizing leftist advocates "from the left", while in actuality they're just hate-mongering based on shit they heard second- or third-hand, and which they don't understand, and which is provably false.

It's just too bad it actually takes way more effort to do the research necessary to disprove a list of lies than it does to parrot a bunch of shit you read and immediately believed, or sometimes just lying on purpose. SO: I went to the trouble of doing the research necessary to settle this stupid shit conclusively.

First of all, I respect that you're the one and only person who didn't respond positively to my message on that post but actually provided even a single argument for why you disagree. Unfortunately your intellectual dishonesty immediately ruins that respect.

So with this person's vague allusions to Holocaust revisionism and nazi dog whistles, my first guess would be the debate against Maupin, which was an extremely frustrating experience involving a dishonest cult leader tankie who actively engaged in his own very obvious genocide denial, and after about 40 minutes of taking him to task for actually being reactionary despite posturing as a leftist, Vaush calls out his attempts to deny the Uyghur genocide by listing common ways in which Nazis will similarly attempt to undermine the narrative of the Holocaust. He did this explicitly and obviously as a way to point out how his debate opponent was engaging in denialism, and to draw parallels. If you had actually seen this play out and still believe Vaush was just unironically listing Holocaust revisionist talking points that he agreed with, actually it's impossible, you're JUST a liar. So I don't believe you actually saw this yourself, you heard somebody else tell you what happened.

Another possible but less likely example of nazi talking points being referenced might be when, during the NonCompete debate, Vaush tried to point out that NC had no actual ethical system, and was instead just repeatedly referencing common leftie terminology such as dialectics and sophistry. And he did so by asking several successive rhetorical questions, which utterly reinforced that NC had no ethical system, once he repeatedly confirmed that he believes it to be impossible to objectively determine whether an action is right or wrong, instead deferring to shifting material conditions. Vaush's point, explicitly, was that whether the justifications the Nazis used for their evil actions, such as Jewish people being over-represented in the banking industry at the time, were true or false, the actions of the Nazis were STILL EVIL AND WRONG. But NC literally couldn't say "the Nazis were wrong in their genocidal actions even if their justifications were factual"

As for the idea that he ever said that CP was okay if it wasn't paid for. First of all: ???? Are you fucking stupid? Second of all, he was clear and re-explained later for the uncharitable or stupid people who misinterpreted his point: he was using CP specifically as a point of ethical comparison to point out how we societally tend to ignore other forms of cruelty and exploitation against children, such as child slavery involved in our economy on a massive scale, though it tends to be in the form of global industries that export products to the US and other places that consider themselves above child slavery. There is a really obvious benefit to using highly contentious examples when debating someone, and it's that some people are willing to bite the bullet on something that is unethical, but if you bring up a contentious example of something directly analogous they will hesitate, even though often the latter example is nearly identical in terms of severity.

Now, when it comes to the claim that he admitted to being an informant, I will admit that while he was joking, it wasn't very obvious. It was easy to misinterpret. But after viewing it again, it's really super clear that his point was specifically about how extremist and other types of radical political groups are what they are, and aren't non-radical simply because they tend to contain dishonest actors such as informants, followed by a his joke that absolutely isn't sincere admission of something that obvious never happened. Cause like.. what group could pre-fame Vaush ever have informed on? He was just a 20 year old in college before blowing up on youtube, he wasn't a major actor in any groups whatsoever.

As to where you get the specific claim that he "revealed activist identities to the FBI" the only thing I could find was a 20 second clip in a tweet specifically claiming that he did so as a way to get out of CP possession charges, the claim for which has zero evidence or further context whatsoever, and is a condensed clip of exactly the same video I already viewed again just to see if there was any possible way you could be misinterpreting this unintentionally. Again, you clearly read this shit out of context, were told what to believe, and immediately believed it because it confirmed what you already wanted to believe. Also that tweet is suuuuuuuuuper obviously dishonest hack shit. You should be embarrassed for this one.

He "called trans people bitches" as an extremely obvious joke in a tweet that he immediately added more context to with subsequent tweets, which specifically was about TYPOS, not actual misgendering. Typos get corrected immediately, misgendering is intentional. An explicitly pro-trans advocate who literally lives with two trans people and whose audience is full of at least tens of thousands of trans people who think he advocates for trans rights as well as anyone in his position is capable of, going on to make obvious trans-centric jokes sometimes, is uhhhh not transphobic probably??

Also in the other part of this, which you lumped together as one event, he called out certain parts of the online lgbt community as being toxic wokescolds who were actually really abusive, but hid behind identity politics to make themselves immune to criticism. And this is just objectively true, and further evidenced by the lgbt people who attempt to abuse him endlessly and dishonestly non-stop every single day and over every new incident of him being a progressive advocate but sometimes disagreeing with a fellow lgbt person, which I really shouldn't need to remind you.. He is. He is in the community. People love to erase that.

Furthermore in this instance he was defending Contrapoints, a trans woman, against abusive wokescolds, correctly. And of course later Contra refused to extend the same charitability to him when he was getting sexually harassed and character assassinated by a fellow trans woman content creator who similarly played up the IdPol angle to avoid criticism, and who also leaked DMs and physically mocked him, which is pretty disgusting behavior for a progressive public figure against another progressive public figure she just personally didn't like. And Contra admitted to not even having looked into the context before picking sides against him.

Furthermore, and I know he says it jokingly a lot because he's edgy and I really don't care about that, but your unironic vitriolic way of referring to him as sub-human scum who essentially deserves to have abusive hate mobs forever, because you saw some people on Twitter or whatever saying that he was an imperfect advocate for progressive values, well it's really telling of the way your extremely vitriolic feelings drive your every thought, utterly incapacitating your critical thinking. No doubt the reason why you straight up parrot such obviously dishonest sources of such obvious disprovable lies. And don't get me wrong, if my research into your claims had yielded any proof contrary to my prior knowledge, I'd have looked further into it. It's a good thing he just straight up isn't the caricature you're envisioning. ☺

This is of course all just to say that if someone is a confident and loud advocate for progressive values but reactionary elements of the supposed online left are *constantly* participating in an abusive hate mob against them, there is a good chance that those people are playing a neverending game of internet telephone in order to create confusion around the actual truth regarding various accusations, to the point that it's difficult to even know if someone saw something firsthand when they confidently throw out condemnations.

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kelluinox · 4 months

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Why does my family cling to Israel and Israel's continued existence? Simple. You see, when we were being persecuted and killed by the Nazis, and my family was chased out and was stripped of their citizenship, they tried to go to America. Only America turned them away. They had nowhere else to go. No one would accept them. No one wanted them. You know the only place that did? Israel

#lost more than half my family #a lot of people I will never know and will never meet #this is for the “destroy Israel” and “go back to Europe” morons by the way #we remember #Israel's existence does not mean that there can't be a palestinian state ffs #for many of us diaspora jews it's literally just a safe place we know we can come back to #if you want to have a mature serious discussion with me on i/p you drop the “death to israel” nonsense and educate yourself #on the holocaust on the thousands of years of persecutions and expulsions on the many forms of antisemitism #on the actual history of israel and our indigeneity to the region - noa tishby has an excellent book on it #and only then you can come back and debate policy with me like an adult #not a child stamping their foot demanding jews die or be expelled #antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #jumblr #jewish history

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snowberry-pie · 6 days

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You don’t like anders?

swinging a bat at a hornets nest here but not really unfortunately because i have a lot of thoughts on him. i’ve tried to like him but his fanbase outside of my mutuals/friends is kind of insufferable and his writing suffers from jennifer hepler’s ableism and bioware getting a hardon for demonizing any character that takes a radical approach to dismantling oppressive systems

#anonymous #dissonant whispers #anders critical #debates about the explosion being either the Right or Wrong decision are in my opinion kind of pointless because of circumstances and #context and. in my experience really are only held to prove that someone’s fave is unproblematic thereby lessening the event’s overall #impact but. whatever #i think it’s more interesting to view as like. an inevitability of a really fucked up and deeply-rooted system that kind of had it coming #AND an interesting character choice #as opposed to like. a source of distasteful white leftist jokes #was it right? debatable. was it NECESSARY? probably yeah

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brokenorbornthatway · 4 months

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Man it drives me up a wall to come across an anti saying shit like "but the slendermen incident" (whatever that is/was), "but people who emulate fictional serial killers", but but but whatever people who saw something fictional and used it to justify their bad choices.

Just.

You do realize that none of that takes away from the fact that fiction isn't real and the rules of reality should not be imposed on fiction right? People do absolutely horrible things to each other for more reasons than either you or I could possibly think up. Someone choosing to enact something awful they read in fiction isn't any different than someone choosing to do something awful because they read a news article about it.

Think about that for a second. People absolutely have emulated serial killers that they heard/read about from the news. So then, by anti logic, would the solution be to never talk about serial killers on the news ever again in case someone uses it to justify hurting someone else? I sure fucking hope not.

The problem isn't with the news and it isn't with fiction. The problem lies with the people who actually commit the heinous acts and societal issues we have that make it so easy for people to feel for whatever reason that they can and should turn to committing real acts of violence.

Working as a culture to destigmatize having violent thoughts and urges, educating from a young age about these thoughts and urges (and what do about them if you feel them or think someone else is), and providing ample resources for healthy non harmful way to embrace those thoughts and urges would go soooooooooooo much further than arbitrarily trying to police things that are only tangentially related to the core problem.

Honestly, it's my belief that almost (we won't say every because nothing is a monolith) every human alive has violent thoughts and urges to some to degree. We are still animals. We are highly intelligent apes, but apes nonetheless. Look at the violence in other apes and in beings all throughout the animal kingdom. We still have the instincts/genes/biological coding that drives us to hunt, kill, fight for territory, attack any possible threat, do whatever it takes to stay alive and sometimes these instincts+our intelligence lead to people wanting to or causing harm. Some people, for a myriad of reasons, struggle more with violent thoughts and tendencies than others.

I just think if we embraced and acknowledged violence as part of our nature on a foundational level and gave people the tools to handle it without shame or causing harm, there would be a massive reduction in violent crimes. This is done a little bit through things like contact sports, fighting sports, violent fiction and video games, etc, but I think proper education about why people want violent things in the first place would make a huge difference.

I just wish antis would stop pointing the blame of people who do violent things "because fiction told them it was ok" on fiction and point it at the people doing the violent things and the society that allows it instead

-an annoyed researcher

#proship #pro ship #profic #profiction #anti censorship #anti anti #can we please just #cease with the bullshit #and work together for real change that actually makes a difference #just #Jesus fucking Christ #we're all supposed to be on the same side #we all (all is a generalization here) are leftists who want societal change #a large portion of us are prison abolitionists on both sides #do we want to reform society or do we not?#wasting time arguing about fiction when we could be putting energy to debating and discussing what changes we want #and how we want to enact those changes so we can actually work on BUILDING something #I'm not saying fiction isn't important #fiction is incredibly important #but I'm just remorseful #imagine if antis could focus on doing things that will actually keep people safe?#we could have our differences in opinion but not allow it to stop us from doing the work #so much wasted potential

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marshmellowtea · 3 months

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anti ai art arguments try not to be fascist or ableist for two seconds challenge

#challenge failed immediately.#i think i'd respect this side of the debate a lot more if y'all weren't constantly being so conservative and reactionary about it #but instead of arguments about the exploitation of artists we get y'all arguing about what real art actually is (which is pointless and #stupid and will circle back to fascist talking points eventually)#and people arguing that ai art is bad because 'you didn't work hard enough on it!!' (do you realize how conservative you sound.)#idk what i expected from the 'uses fascist rhetoric when it suits them despite claiming to be leftist' website honestly it just sucks #ai discourse #ai art #marshy speaks

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sorryiwasasleep · 4 months

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Because i hate myself (actually cause I saw a bumper sticker today that made me scream in pure rage) (and also cause like… because i need to be armed to the teeth with knowledge and facts because conservative right-wing family members love to parrot bullshit propaganda when not just being outright bigots🙄) I decided to take a read through the entire Wikipedia page concerning Trump’s 2024 run (and then I looked at his actual campaign website cause I hate myself more and wanted to see some of his actual rhetoric that was mentioned but not quoted) and it’s just like…

He fucking wants to appoint himself as god-king (wants to expand power of the executive (diminishing the separation of powers), turn govt civil employees status to ‘at will’ for firing, and to impose congressional term limits while also abolishing his own) and “root out” the “vermin” in this country (literal rhetoric he has used) and with this Court it probably won’t just go unchecked, but like I’m afraid it could be affirmatively endorsed using principles of originalism and ‘history and tradition’ (whose fucking version of history???? Huh???? Because it certainly wasn’t fucking mine when you overturned Roe in Dobbs) but in the fast and loose way that they like to, where sometimes they want to be textualist and sometimes they don’t.

Assuming he tries, I do think expansion of the executive might not get support from some of the conservative justices under principles of federalism which is— wrong math, right answer. But they 100% would justify his white Christian supremacist alloamatocisheteronormative patriarchal policies under originalism and ‘history and tradition’. As if letting the past guide the future isn’t a fucking BATSHIT thing to do. We learn the past to do BETTER in the future, not to fucking EMULATE it and use their standards to STAGNANT the lives of real people. EVEN THE FUCKING DRAFTERS OF THE GODDAMN CONSTITUTION KNEW THAT IN FUCKING 1787 SO WHY THE FUCK ARE WE STILL DOING THIS SHIT! But I digress from my originalism rant because this is a Presidential Campaign rant.

Like Trump literally said he wants to (and WILL BE) a dictator.

“He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’. I said: ‘No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.’”

“Baker today in the New York Times said that I want to be a dictator. I didn’t say that. I said I want to be a dictator for one day.”

*insert regina george* so you agree? You want to be a dictator? Pretty sure being one for “one day” is called establishing the dictatorship and suuure Jan im sure that it’ll stay limited in scope to the borders and drilling (as if that would fucking make it okay???) 🙄

And then the option on the ‘opposing’ side is Joe Biden, who, chief among his many faults, is aiding and supporting a genocide. The fact that he has no competition in primaries (literally only one other person is even trying) and will end up being the Democratic candidate has me so incensed and the fact that Joseph Biden is fucking painted as the ‘radical left’ by opposition is both objectively hilarious and just horrifying and dangerously (and probably intentionally) misleading so as to continue the shift of whatever “middle” exists to actually be further and further right wing.

There is not really a larger point here and I’m super not looking for discourse but if anyone is gonna try anyway— don’t bother me without a source.

Anyway I’m just fucking tired and fuck the electoral college and the fact that one of these two ancient men winning seems inevitable

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zhnnveuxpasdrmir · 1 year

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how can you be calling yourself a leftist if your notion of praxis is reblogging arguments about who's using the right words or color badges? selling crafts to each other is great! but it isn't mutual aid.

if you aren't taking shots at cops & soldiers you have to go ahead and face that you're not a revolutionary at all, I mean you might know about them. but you aren't one, that's fine too. revolutionaries need a lot of support and use a lot of resources. maybe providing those are a better role to be thinking about!

revolutionaries don't tend to work on the things that can be done in on or connected in any way to the internet? unless you mean the liberal adjective kind, revolutionary novelist or whatever,

it's okay not to be a revolutionary! if you'd be a distraction or obstacle on the dangerous actions, fuckin stay out of it. but it's bullshit to do all this fighting about MLs or anarkiddies or Mao, in that case, if you're not actually figuring out which army you should join (none).

One thing that really vaporizes disagreements about that kind of issue is getting attacked by police, or hiding from soldiers together, you know? Another is dinnertime.

it's not really a game you get points in. off of the web, the reason for this kind of discussion is practical and imminent. It's not theoretical or hypothetical.

There are really good reasons why there aren't all that many 'real leftists' on tumblr. Working these things out mentally is crucial whether you decide to be a fighter or a scientist or an occasional commenter, just, you know

get a hold of yourselves, okay? the FBI & cops & them can't tell that you're bullshit the way I can, and those motherfuckers will ruin your life or end it over nothing at all. It's way worse than just ha ha you were wrong.

donate to bail funds, if you're for real. donate your body to the streets.

#sorry I was eavesdropping #seriously I'm just watching tv but #there are no tumblr revolutionaries when you poor babies are debating nukes or who gets to be what kind of gay #honey 'real leftists' are fucking fierce people that don't waste time #none of us make the cut #the best we can do is support them with food and funds

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