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0·2 months agoI didn’t think to check the prolewiki - thank you, that version I did not find so easily and already started on the older version. You are right to the modern ear the PDF version does flow better. I may end up reading both versions! Thanks again; much appreciated
Thank you very much for the insights and recommendations! I will keep it in mind when I hunt for a copy - starred your comment
I just want to add that your comment is excellent and got me changing my reading order so that Clausewitz’ On War is higher up on the list (if not next).
Where do they come up with this stuff?
Projection
As it has been pointed out elsewhere, Native Americans have been in the America longer than most Europeans have been in Europe.
Theory deepens your solidarity with the oppressed, not whatever happened here.
You have to remember whatever the uniform people decide to wear for themselves, more often than not, their opinions reflect their relative class interests and marxist-leninists (MLs) have moved beyond a simplisitic bourgoisie vs proleteriat framework, understanding for example here that western proletriat and labour aristocrats engage in class collaboration with their bourgoisie against the proleteriat of the global south.
Furthermore, from a marxist-leninist perspective, national liberation struggle will mean collaboration between the oppressed proleteriat and their petite-bourgoisie/bourgoisie against the oppressor including the oppressor’s proleteriat who engaged in this normalised violence.
This whole thing where one postulates proleteriat of the oppressed and the prolteriat of the oppressor unite together like some Benetton advert against the bourgoisie is some idealistic nonsense you will only hear from the Western Marxist (whatever the colour of said western marxist) partly because it ignores the material gains that the oppressor’s proleteriat get from subjugating the proleteriat of the oppressed.
Brainwashing ain’t a thing; people instead seek narratives as license for their bigotry for which they get material gains for:
https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
Marxism is a science.
https://redsails.org/why-marxism/
What you described is a disease of the Westerner. The cure for which MLs are still working on (click on my username, order by most controversial to find the most relevant topics to get a flavour of different opinions on this).
They live in the privilege that COVID disproportionately affect people of colour due to inequal access to healthcare and comorbidities reflecting wealth distrubutions.
I wonder why that escaped you.
I wonder what the differences in lived experiences and demographics who read that Redsails article and say yeah that better reflects their reality versus those who feel they feel better served still by liberal concepts of indoctrination and brainwashing putting the ideal before the material.
Do you just… not believe false consciousness exists?
To choose to engage in such idealism warrants an insulation from the consequences that only orientialism could afford. The prejudice that allows the oppressor and his collaborator this leeway derives from a material privilege to accomodate such an apologism.
And that perception is rooted in reality. Western labour collaborate against the global south because they materially benefit from this exploitation.
We are talking about this in the context of attempting to convince someone off their fascist sympathies. I offered a mutually acceptable pragmatism in the context of persuasion with a focus on class analysis, which I would like to stress was my original point, but you want to double down on idealist concepts of indoctrination. I am not going to entertain Western Apologism.
If your paradigm of persuasion does not evolve past what a liberal can offer then it is not my burden to bear to rob the oppressor and his class collaborators of their agency.
When someone is so exposed to years of algorithmic lies and ideological programming that they actually do not understand their own material interests i.e. someone with preexisting conditions refusing to mask, even when they’re asked to and would only benefit from it and there aren’t downsides like heat or exertion. There are times when the material case will not reach someone because they have been mislead and miseducated.
I think that miseducation only sticks if there is an ongoing perceived material benefit.
No argument from me here against that.
What I would like to stress how we go about it in a more exacting way: make one’s case that adopting one’s perspective will provide a material benefit within the short term to the person or group you are targeting and if one fails to do so then consider the relative class characteristics that obstructs this, and thereby refining how and whom you approach.
Consider the role the ideological superstructure plays and don’t just reduce everything to the material base. The base and superstructure play off of each other, it’s not a one-way relationship.
I’m not saying otherwise.
Quoting myself:
The difference in a nutshell is this: using liberal methods in identifiying “logical fallacies” to “win an argument” vs understanding which material conditions you could appeal to make the case for your target that they will benefit from your perspective within the short term; ie a class analysis.
Science is not apolitical; it is not neutral. You will have to make the case beyond appealing to science (edited to add: as accepted by liberals), ie consider a class analysis? What are the privileges afforded to one that they can get away with not wearing a mask, for example.
I am not saying it’s a done deal. I used germ theory as an example precisely because despite its scientific basis people may have other considerations. You have to consider, for example, what material conditions those people who do not want to wear masks benefit from within the short term by not wearing masks. You have to make the case why in the short term they would benefit by wearing a mask, and if not then consider the class conditions that may make it challenging.
Germ theory is real. If you can make the case that washing your hands will extend your quality of life within the short term the person will be persuaded.
You have to make the case that whatever progressive concern you have, or socialist emancipatory project you want to engage in, will materially benefit the target audience within the short term. It is in that process you will discover who has revolutionary potential; we have to be dialectical materialists.
Yet I literally said “I am undoubtedly still somewhat brainwashed.”
I am saying you are not.
Because the internet…
What magic did you use that is not freely available to everyone else? :)
Propaganda are licenses to affirm the worldview one is seeking. They are not tools of control because it “brainwashes” people; they are tools of control because they allow licenses for a sizable enough of the western populations to discipline against those that want to usurp the current hegemony.
It’s better to think of these in concrete terms. Let’s use some stereotypical examples to drive the point home. I am going to assume you may know USAmerican socially conservative news outlet owned by Murdoch, Fox News. What would happen to the Fox News audience if Fox News started promote more progressive talking points such as the emanicpation of people of colour? Would the audience now become progressive? Or would they seek elsewhere claiming that “liberal media” has captured Fox News too?
Now there could be two answers to the above. One is decades of “brainwashing” cannot be undone quickly which then has the problem of unfalsifiablity and presumes the “duration of watching age to be brainwashed” of the population.
Or we could consider the material conditions of why the above is so. In doing the latter, one is then forced to consider which parts of the population has revolutionary potential and which do not (class analysis).
We would not for example consider the bourgoisie “brainwashed”; we have to extend the same considerations to labour aristocrats and western labour who engage in class collaboration against the global south.
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9961907/7400808