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Civil rights defenders are there to implement Leninism? What? This probably sounded great in the 80's, but now it just sounds like more disinformation.

dijonman2 5y ago
What about it isn’t true today?
simonh 5y ago
He’s looking at things through a KGB lens. He doesn’t have any real clue what civil rights was about because he’s not part of western culture, but he was embedded in KGB culture and what he says about that is credible.
akagusu 5y ago
Today, everything different from the "common sense" spread through the media is considered misinformation. Think about this war. Everyone is condemning Russia, making statements supporting Ukraine, applying all kind of sanctions against Russia. Why did not governments do the same when US invade Iraq or Afghanistan?
- jhbadger 5y ago
  Lots of governments did criticize the US. However, there is a big difference between regime change and claiming that a country itself has no right to exist and intending to add it to your country.
gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
Leftists today love to parrot the Ukraine are neo-nazi dreck. Obviously, the USSR is gone but it did manage to demoralize enough people to shill for Russian foreign policy despite Putin being much more fascist adjacent, and enjoying close support from the bellicose Orthodox patriarchs who rail against western politics instead of sticking to droning on about God.
- drewcoo 5y ago
  Strange. I don't know any leftists who argue in favor of the capitalist oligarchs who rule Russia. What cave have your leftists been living in?
  - gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
    The cave where they hate the West so much that they shill for its enemies who are much more ghoulish. My leftists are British and Canadian however. YMMV based on geography.
    - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
      You seem to both know some very extreme individuals and also enjoy painting with extremely broad strokes.
  - WillPostForFood 5y ago
    That's a strawman - it isn't that leftists "argue in favor of the capitalist oligarchs who rule Russia", but that they make excuses for Putin (blame Nato expansion for causing the crisis), and accuse Ukraine supporters of fomenting war. The anti-war left is a weird (albeit smaller) mirror of the Tucker Carlson right. But we also acknowledge that the Russian government, oligarchic autocracy as it is, is right to say that endless NATO expansion, for which read extended US hegemony, is not the security structure Europe needs. The chance was missed to abolish NATO when the Warsaw Pact went out of business more than thirty years ago; instead we are left with the consequences of broken US promises not to extend the alliance eastwards. So Stop the War aims to provide the opposition that the Labour front bench seemingly won’t. The Tories have taken the lead internationally in talking up the crisis, announcing imminent coups, false-flag incidents or invasions almost every day, to the point where even the government in Kiev has asked them to tone it down a bit. More substantively, they have sent fresh arms to Ukraine and deployed more British forces into Eastern Europe—all the very things which Russia has said it finds most menacing. All this pointless provocation seems to speak of a government which would actually quite like a war to break out, for strategic and doubtless domestic political reasons, particularly since it will not involve any British forces fighting. https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/02/keir-starmer-guardian-stop-the-war-nato-russia https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/02/keir-starmer-guardian-stop-...
jahewson 5y ago
Not at all. Pivotal figures in civil rights, such as Du Bois [1] were anti-capitalist and much of contemporary social and legal theory emerged in the 1980s from post-modernism, a direct offshoot of Marxism. The general idea being that if you switch out “class struggle” for “racial struggle” then you get to borrow the rest of Marx’s theory about an oppressed proletariat and the need for revolution to overthrow an oppressive elite. Americans like to use “marxist” as a slur and to use it out of context to attack political enemies but there is no shortage of actual Marxist who label themselves as such, e.g this professor, found randomly by my Googling for 30sec: https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/06/17/black-lives-matter-as-identity-politics-and-class-struggle/?amp https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/06/17/black-lives-matter-as-... Most people have no idea that they’re regurgitating Marxist ideology when they repeat the phrases and arguments they hear, and of course would never identify as such - but there’s no sense in which making this observation is misinformation. Personally I lament the fact that people across the political spectrum are digging ideological holes for themselves instead of focusing on how we can all help each other. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois
- VictorPath 5y ago
  > post-modernism, a direct offshoot of Marxism The communists manifesto says "Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat." This grand narrative and ideology spoken with objective certainty with regards to binary oppositions, is the complete opposite of postmodernism. Milton Friedman's works in a similar vein although on the other side are the opposite of postmodernism as well.
  - jahewson 5y ago
    Yes, that’s why it’s an “offshoot”. The founding thinkers of post-modernism were former Marxists and left-wing radicals (in the proper, actual political sense), again this is not a slur, simply a statement of fact. Depending on your political persuasion it may not even be a bad thing! But it is, at least, a thing. In as much as Mormonism is an offshoot of Judaism. To revisit the original point, civil rights is deeply intertwined with radical left-wing and Marxist politics, for better or worse. Personally I think it’s a shame because civil rights should be for everyone, it is bigger than any political persuasion. The best thing we can do is de-politicise these movements, the entire political spectrum has become so toxic and divisive.
qiskit 5y ago
> Civil rights defenders are there to implement Leninism? What? This probably sounded great in the 80's, but now it just sounds like more disinformation. Not the 80s but 60s. Nixon blamed the civil rights movement of the 60s on the soviets/communism. Nixon's ability to pin the civil rights movement on the soviets/communism made him extremely popular. People forget how popular Nixon was. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/7/newsid_3697000/3697098.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/7/... This guy is all over youtube/social media, but he's just stating standard anti-communist propaganda we've had since mccarthy in the 40s/50s.
WillPostForFood 5y ago
In the Senate investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election they found that Russia was stoking racial discord and supporting Black Lives Matter. https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/12/17/18145075/russia-facebook-twitter-internet-research-agency-race https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/12/17/18145075/russia-fa... Anything that divides, causes upset, or is distracting is going to be a good propaganda target, regardless of whether the underlying cause is good or bad.
- rajin444 5y ago
  > regardless of whether the underlying cause is good or bad. Yeah, that’s the real issue. If we can find a way to be neighborly (literally and figuratively) with those who have opinions (not actions) we abhor we might get somewhere. But, all somebody has to do is say some opinion threatens their life and that plan is out the window.
otikik 5y ago
Oh that part is absolutely manipulative.

dijonman2 5y ago

What about it isn’t true today?

simonh 5y ago

He’s looking at things through a KGB lens. He doesn’t have any real clue what civil rights was about because he’s not part of western culture, but he was embedded in KGB culture and what he says about that is credible.

akagusu 5y ago

Today, everything different from the "common sense" spread through the media is considered misinformation. Think about this war. Everyone is condemning Russia, making statements supporting Ukraine, applying all kind of sanctions against Russia. Why did not governments do the same when US invade Iraq or Afghanistan?

jhbadger 5y ago
Lots of governments did criticize the US. However, there is a big difference between regime change and claiming that a country itself has no right to exist and intending to add it to your country.

gunfighthacksaw 5y ago

Leftists today love to parrot the Ukraine are neo-nazi dreck. Obviously, the USSR is gone but it did manage to demoralize enough people to shill for Russian foreign policy despite Putin being much more fascist adjacent, and enjoying close support from the bellicose Orthodox patriarchs who rail against western politics instead of sticking to droning on about God.

drewcoo 5y ago
Strange. I don't know any leftists who argue in favor of the capitalist oligarchs who rule Russia. What cave have your leftists been living in?
- gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
  The cave where they hate the West so much that they shill for its enemies who are much more ghoulish. My leftists are British and Canadian however. YMMV based on geography.
  - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    You seem to both know some very extreme individuals and also enjoy painting with extremely broad strokes.
- WillPostForFood 5y ago
  That's a strawman - it isn't that leftists "argue in favor of the capitalist oligarchs who rule Russia", but that they make excuses for Putin (blame Nato expansion for causing the crisis), and accuse Ukraine supporters of fomenting war. The anti-war left is a weird (albeit smaller) mirror of the Tucker Carlson right. But we also acknowledge that the Russian government, oligarchic autocracy as it is, is right to say that endless NATO expansion, for which read extended US hegemony, is not the security structure Europe needs. The chance was missed to abolish NATO when the Warsaw Pact went out of business more than thirty years ago; instead we are left with the consequences of broken US promises not to extend the alliance eastwards. So Stop the War aims to provide the opposition that the Labour front bench seemingly won’t. The Tories have taken the lead internationally in talking up the crisis, announcing imminent coups, false-flag incidents or invasions almost every day, to the point where even the government in Kiev has asked them to tone it down a bit. More substantively, they have sent fresh arms to Ukraine and deployed more British forces into Eastern Europe—all the very things which Russia has said it finds most menacing. All this pointless provocation seems to speak of a government which would actually quite like a war to break out, for strategic and doubtless domestic political reasons, particularly since it will not involve any British forces fighting. https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/02/keir-starmer-guardian-stop-the-war-nato-russia https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/02/keir-starmer-guardian-stop-...

jahewson 5y ago

Not at all. Pivotal figures in civil rights, such as Du Bois [1] were anti-capitalist and much of contemporary social and legal theory emerged in the 1980s from post-modernism, a direct offshoot of Marxism. The general idea being that if you switch out “class struggle” for “racial struggle” then you get to borrow the rest of Marx’s theory about an oppressed proletariat and the need for revolution to overthrow an oppressive elite. Americans like to use “marxist” as a slur and to use it out of context to attack political enemies but there is no shortage of actual Marxist who label themselves as such, e.g this professor, found randomly by my Googling for 30sec: https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/06/17/black-lives-matter-as-identity-politics-and-class-struggle/?amp https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/06/17/black-lives-matter-as-... Most people have no idea that they’re regurgitating Marxist ideology when they repeat the phrases and arguments they hear, and of course would never identify as such - but there’s no sense in which making this observation is misinformation. Personally I lament the fact that people across the political spectrum are digging ideological holes for themselves instead of focusing on how we can all help each other. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois

VictorPath 5y ago
> post-modernism, a direct offshoot of Marxism The communists manifesto says "Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat." This grand narrative and ideology spoken with objective certainty with regards to binary oppositions, is the complete opposite of postmodernism. Milton Friedman's works in a similar vein although on the other side are the opposite of postmodernism as well.
- jahewson 5y ago
  Yes, that’s why it’s an “offshoot”. The founding thinkers of post-modernism were former Marxists and left-wing radicals (in the proper, actual political sense), again this is not a slur, simply a statement of fact. Depending on your political persuasion it may not even be a bad thing! But it is, at least, a thing. In as much as Mormonism is an offshoot of Judaism. To revisit the original point, civil rights is deeply intertwined with radical left-wing and Marxist politics, for better or worse. Personally I think it’s a shame because civil rights should be for everyone, it is bigger than any political persuasion. The best thing we can do is de-politicise these movements, the entire political spectrum has become so toxic and divisive.

qiskit 5y ago

> Civil rights defenders are there to implement Leninism? What? This probably sounded great in the 80's, but now it just sounds like more disinformation. Not the 80s but 60s. Nixon blamed the civil rights movement of the 60s on the soviets/communism. Nixon's ability to pin the civil rights movement on the soviets/communism made him extremely popular. People forget how popular Nixon was. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/7/newsid_3697000/3697098.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/7/... This guy is all over youtube/social media, but he's just stating standard anti-communist propaganda we've had since mccarthy in the 40s/50s.

WillPostForFood 5y ago

In the Senate investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election they found that Russia was stoking racial discord and supporting Black Lives Matter. https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/12/17/18145075/russia-facebook-twitter-internet-research-agency-race https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/12/17/18145075/russia-fa... Anything that divides, causes upset, or is distracting is going to be a good propaganda target, regardless of whether the underlying cause is good or bad.

rajin444 5y ago
> regardless of whether the underlying cause is good or bad. Yeah, that’s the real issue. If we can find a way to be neighborly (literally and figuratively) with those who have opinions (not actions) we abhor we might get somewhere. But, all somebody has to do is say some opinion threatens their life and that plan is out the window.

otikik 5y ago

Oh that part is absolutely manipulative.