yes

Orwell’s Animal Farm isn’t so much anti-communist as is it anti-authoritarian tbh. He makes it VERY clear that the animals are better off under communism - the issues arise when the vanguard party is commandeered by a power-hungry coalition/individual

So then why write the people to be bumbling buffoons and literal sheep who are easily swayed by "charismatic leaders"? This is speaking dorectly to the nature of the working class even if he is talking about some improvement to conditions. Again, he is indirectly saying the working class is too stupid to lead. This is an entirely anti-proletarian position. Great man theory is a liberal myth which supposes real big brainers are the leaders of history. This is, of course, false. It is the people who produce and push the wheels of history forward. This notion of "charismatic and corrupt leaders", too, is entirely anti-proletarian and also immaterial.

Orwell never once set foot in the USSR we was just as steeped in bourgeois propaganda as every other westerner so on what grounds does he have to write on the conditions of the working class there beyond from standard anticommunism pushed at the time? Orwell, knowingly or not, became as popular as he did precisely because of his anticommunism ehich is why his book was eagerly published by printing houses associated with both the united states and the british government. That's not even getting into how shit he was as a person.

Second, "authoritarianism" is an entirely useless term taken from the abstract world to be shittily plastered over the material world. Look around and you'll find that anything worth doing eequires authority. The revolution requires authority. The suppression of the bouegeoisie requires authority. Laws are backed with the authority of the state in the form of violence. By declaring all authority the enemy, you are effectively giving up entirely. You cannot form a foherent ideological position using "authoritarianism". Only when you look at the material roots of authority, its use, class struggle and warfare, and the material needs and positions of class society can you come to a coherent position.

Maybe this is the wrong platform to pose this question given the average tumblr user but

Is it just me or did our generation (those of is who are currently 20-30 ish) just not get the opportunity to be young in the 'standard' sense?

Like, everyone I talk to who's over 40 has all their wild stories about their teens and 20s, being young and dumb, and then I talk to my friends and coworkers and classmates, and we just... dont.

.

"This photo was taken many years ago on the Bund in Shanghai. I don’t know what it looks like now."

im not sure you know what ancient rome is

guys i need you to realize that smoking ANYTHING will cause damage to your lungs. inhaling smoke is just inherently bad for you im sorry.

every extrovert has an introvert friend by Listening⚡️

nothing frustrates me more than when adults refuse to even slightly indulge the questions and thoughts of children. i remember one time when one of my younger cousins accidentally stumbled across the concept of purchasing power parity because she realised 10 rupees which bought her 10 candies in India only bought her ~3 candies when we went on holiday to Japan, and when she asked her mother about “why the same things cost different amounts in different places” my aunt had the audacity to call her spoiled for not understanding the “”worth” of money, that’s not what she was ASKING damn it!! your daughter just set up her own big mac index and realised a key metric of macroeconomics!!! how do you not find that utterly fascinating !! why don’t adults talk to children !!

seeing anyone praise biden right now after the horrors he saw and dismissed with his own eyes for so long is disgusting. the only reason he's speaking up is the US government would lose credibility with allies from this specific incident of aid workers dying - he certainly did not mind all the aid workers dying before...it has to be "close to home" enough to cause a PR crisis for the white house for any concern to be expressed by his administration. and "threats" are not action. has the money flow to israel stopped? has the consistent military support? he could completely denounce israel and it would mean nothing when he's still aiding the genocide

I would also argue [...] that people exploit other people because they get something from it. They benefit from it. [...] Whenever you are the plantation owner who has slaves, or the feudal lord who has serfs, or you're the male who's exploiting women, or you're the boss who's exploiting workers; there's a reason you do it and it's not because you're kind of hung up and you're not in touch with your inner feelings and you can't cry. It's because you like it. You enjoy it. You get a lot of good things. [...] You live very well off the labor of others and I would say that female subjugation exists because it has worked to the advantage of males. It's a rather unpresupposing proposition and yet it's amazing how people get startled [...]. I mean it's important to say that because today there's a lot of talk about how men are victimized by their own sexism, they cheat themselves out of mutually gratifying relationships, that in the long run it will be better for them if they didn't do these things. Maybe so but nobody lives in the long run, they all live in the here and now and in the here and now we mustn't overlook the fact that patriarchal dominance provides its own gratifying privileges. The traditional patriarch has women, who do all the drudgery work and child rearing, who tend to his personal needs, submit to his sexual desires, do not question his right to extramarital indulgences, or economically dependent on him. [...] Husbands, fathers and employers, who have reaped the benefits of this victimization over the centuries and to this day, have not noticeably complained about feeling deprived of the deeper gratifications that come with gender equality no more than have the pimps who live lavishly off the labor of their victimized prostitutes. Male dominance, I think, extends beyond the family into other social institutions. Just like racists, just like class suppressors, the male supremacist develops an array of myths to justify their advantages. Oh, then you have a conspiracy about this too, Parenti? You think they sit there and they consciously say: "How can we keep women in their place?". Yes, yes, yes! [...] Yes, of course, they're conscious. How do you think people maintain hegemony? They consciously think of how they can keep you in your place. They're thinking just as hard as feminist fighters and revolutionaries are thinking how to get out of it.

Michael Parenti, The Political Economy of Gender Oppression.

What always gets me about learning about settler colonialism is how once you learn about it you cannot unsee the violence to the land itself. My home state was previously nearly 100% wetlands, apart of the wider Ohio river valley whose biodiversity supported such large populations of hundreds of different species that many contemporary source from settlers describe it as like the garden of Eden.

The Indigenous people who farmed and hunted here (and still farm and hunt in what land they have been able to keep and reclaim) were able to grow miles of upon miles of crops with multiple harvests a year, encouraging this biodiversity by creating forest gardens with incredible amounts of food from staples like corn and squash to local fruits like pawpaws to European imports like apples alongside controlled burns which allowed fields and buffalo ranges to expand.

Nowadays my state is known almost exclusively for its fields of nothing but corn and soy beans. Driving through in between the comparatively small cities you'll see nothing but fields where the plethora of different trees and plants were chopped down mile by mile, the remaining wetlands drained and flattened, and the rich black soils robbed of their nutrients through decades upon decades of monocrop agriculture now preserved through the life blood of petrochemical fertilizers which destroy the surrounding environment.

This process was done mile by mile as the tens of thousands of Indigenous people were killed and displaced by settlers and the US army, the land measured and sold acre by acre to white settlers who raped the land as described, filling the pockets of wealthy land speculators (like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) who bought the land directly from the government in schemes so corrupt historians have dedicated entire careers to mapping out their dramas.

It's like learning about commodity fetishism and suddenly seeing hundreds of strangers in the products that surround you. Once you learn how the land was destroyed for profit you'll never look at the miles of fields or the cracks in the concrete of buildings built on wetlands or the stench of now obsolete canals built solely for a once boat-dependent economy with no care for the environment the same.

More than 60% of the global population that are classified as the Phase 5 famine/catastrophe level of food insecurity and starvation are in the Gaza Strip right now, and that percentage is projected to increase to 95% by Februrary

ImmortalSamsara

“If one day you do regain your sight, will you be able to recognize me?” “I will.”

Muslims were so right for banning images of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH so they don't have to deal with a million shitty cheap Hallmark-quality biopics about him with awful wiglines and costumes 1000 years down the line. Thinking ahead of the curve.