Beautiful and inspiring statement.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but idgaf who is considered an "intellectual" or not. I engage with the material especially of communists who have not only put time into theory, but also put theory into practice, and anti-imperialist material that helps inform on history as well. George Jackson, Lenin, Mao, Parenti, for example.

So far, I'm not really clear on what any of this has to do with lemmygrad. It reads like something a person might say to the podcaster "left" who has no ideological grounding and may never have read a word of communist literature in their life. Though when you get to this part:

So, it is no trouble for you to deny the entire intellectual tradition.

You really lose me. Because then it sounds like you're saying there's some kind of school of intellectualism people should be valuing over theory and practice, which is strange to say in a place like this, to say the least.

left Nietzschians

What does this mean? Not criticizing, genuinely curious what category of thought(/action?) you have in mind here.

The zionist regime has been murdering very, very, very effectively the leadership of Hamas plus Hezbollah for a few months now so it’s not one of those things likely to be a lie.

Effectively seems like overstating it a lot. They've been genociding an entire people and bombing an entire infrastructure to go with it, including hospitals, schools, etc. What they are "effective" at is using blank check firepower and funding from the US empire to bomb and torment and murder indiscriminately. If they were "very effective" at targeting leadership, they would have done this long ago.

None of this is to disagree on the point about whether it's true, especially since it has been confirmed as true prior to my writing this comment that he has been martyred. Rather, I disagree on this exaggerative language that poses the zionists as somehow more clever than they are. If you want to say they are very very very genocidal, yes. Effective at targeting leadership specifically? I don't see how, at all. I'm not sure that's even their goal in the first place, much of the time. They love to claim secret military targets when they target civilians over and over, and naturally, in broken clock fashion, doing this often and thoroughly enough is going to hit military some of the time too because military can't operate in total isolation from everyone else and every other part of infrastructure.

As a chronic overthinker myself, you might be overthinking it a bit. I'm pretty sure the point was just that the comic is misrepresenting "the left" and they (the poster) just happened to focus on the angle they did, as to how; the comic itself doesn't make sense in the first place, so trying to think too hard about how a specific criticism of it makes sense is going to be a tangled web. I don't think it's any deeper than them trying to commiserate on the comic being a bad faith representation by focusing on anti-war angle of things.

I don't know what the original hippie movement was like, but I know the term has something of an association of being for peace in that sort of useless pacifist way that gets you demolished by fascists and imperialists. It also has some association with being anti-war in this way. So, misrepresenting leftists as being blindly pacifist rather than anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, etc.

I'm pretty confident the point is like I already said.

I think they are saying that the cartoon is misrepresenting leftism as a simplistic "anti-war" view, rather than anti-imperialism (a more nuanced view of violence that allows for support of liberation forces), by depicting the person as both Ukraine and Palestine supporter, which are two very different kind of situations, but in the simplistic anti-war view would be seen as the same.

I don't know about in other places, but when I joined here, I remember the questions giving me an opportunity to reflect on some things and put them more in concrete language. I'm not sure if it's the same amount of questions now as it was then, but I don't remember feeling deterred by it.

I could see it getting annoying if I was trying to join a lot of places in a short space of time that all did that, but for a one-time, rare thing, it didn't really bother me.

Beijing is conducting espionage activities on what Western governments say is an unprecedented scale, mobilizing security agencies, private companies and Chinese civilians in its quest to undermine rival states and bolster the country’s economy.

Reads like pure projection. Like if you change the wording to:

Washington is conducting espionage activities on what anti-imperialist governments say is an unprecedented scale, mobilizing security agencies, private companies and American civilians in its quest to undermine rival states and bolster the country’s economy.

It's basically just what the US has been doing for decades.

I'm sure China is doing some covert offensive things. It'd be a bit odd if they weren't considering they can't have any lasting peace while the western empire is still going. In that sense, it's more like defensive offense, most likely, in the same general meaning as Palestine trying to survive a genocide when they take out an occupier tank. Some of it's probably real, some probably fabricated to manufacture consent for cold war, but either way, the characterization of it reads like very clear projection.

The US: does terrible things for its entire existence, including fabricating crimes other nations are doing to undermine them https://youtu.be/NK1tfkESPVY?feature=shared&t=276

Other nation: allegedly puts some extra attention on terrible stuff the US is doing in secret as an op, according to US claims

The US: How dare you distract from the crimes we made up by supposedly calling attention to the crimes we are actually doing, other nation!

So, I mainly wanted to chime in on the phrasing and my comment grew into something longer. I remember reading vague things in passing that loli is a little more complicated of a term than it seems at first glance. This is one article I could find that goes into it: https://medium.com/thisvthattv/so-what-makes-or-doesnt-make-a-character-a-loli-85761716b152

This article also only vaguely brushes on the fashion/artstyle aspect of it too, called lolita, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sexualizing a person. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita_fashion

The origin of the term, if the etymology analysis is correct, is certainly a big oof for connotation to say the least, but the branching off uses of it in practice are more complicated.

It's probably simpler to just say that if people are openly pining after someone underage, that's not something that should be allowed on here and not make it any deeper than that, or we start getting into the weeds of anime and its art style. 😓 Though it's sounding like it's some kind of fandom in-joke in this case, from what commiespammer said. Not that that makes the look of it any better on the surface. In terms of the image itself, sans context, I could have believed it was an adult character and the caption was about the character being a vampire or something... anime style is cartoony enough with age like that. In this sense, if there is any underlying problem in the image itself, all I can see is the caption because of some interpretations of it. The image itself without caption is just an anime face in portrait. That said, if someone were to make a rule that said "no loli posting," based on the most extreme of what people seem to associate with the term, my mind would go to a place I'd rather it not go in terms of what I'd expect to be prohibited and viewed as the thing to stomp out, I'll put it that way; one that is many degrees more overt than the image in question and impossible to interpret as anything innocent. This is why I'm doing a "well ackshully" on the terminology. To disallow something you have to first be clear on what exactly it is that is being disallowed. Is the problem how the image was discussed? The image itself? The image with caption? At what point does it cross over from average anime girl into being a problem. I'm sure you can agree it would be a bit absurd to just say images of anime girls can't ever be posted. And "loli posting" seems far too vague to create a general rule out of, if this instance is the basis of it. "Don't post images of characters that are canonically underage with captions or comments that imply sexual interest, even if as an ironic fan in-joke" may be more actionable, albeit wordy as hell.

Because you said fun stuff, I'll give a mention to something that's non-Marxist, but seems relatively harmless in terms of ideology influence: comedy sketch channel Chris and Jack on Youtube. Mostly they seem to inhabit that nebulous area of comedy where it's hard to pin it to any sort of specific ideological goals and is more just goofing around with various premises. Of course, everything has some kind of ideology behind it, conscious or otherwise, but point being, I find it relatively easy to enjoy their stuff without worrying too much about it being a backwards influence.

Yep, this was the guy with the picture that came out of his room being full of accumulated fast food drink cups and the like. White imperialist who lives in literal filth because he can't even clean up after himself, who makes ranty internet videos for a living, saying others are an inferior culture. Western chauvinists have been trained to think like malignant psychopaths on a system wide level and they bark it out with mind-boggling levels of individualism, acting like they're bravely saying original things when they're repeating colonial tropes that are hundreds of years old. And I will take the opportunity to note here, in my experience, one of the benefits of reading communist theory is how humbling it is to realize how much shit has already been said by people who lived through it; at least for me, it helped with unlearning western exceptionalism brain. Mind you, I was already consciously trying to and still do, which is probably far from a full-throated genocidal colonizer like this piece of work, but I like to mention it as an aside because I know there's a tendency in western thinkers to reinvent the wheel of ideology, thinking they're so clever and independent of thought, when they're just regurgitating basic shit that makes them a ghoulish tool.

I had some impression of him as being a partially politically ignorant place, but I didn't realize he was this over the top. I don't know what Twitch's track record is like on stuff like this, but if they don't ban him, they're implicitly greenlighting a whole hell of a lot of awful. I mean, even by liberal decorum standards, weak as they are for protecting anyone, this is beyond the pale.

I forced myself to listen to it, too, to be sure I wasn't being misdirected by exaggeration and it's actually worse to listen to than the quotes make it sound.

Which makes it strange for the admin to raise account ages as a factor doesn’t it? Why would it matter what age the account was? People should be treated with respect and given thebenefit of the doubt regardless of their time here.

I cannot find anything regarding them raising it as a factor, especially not in a way that would imply you were treated unfairly for it. You seem to be the only one bringing age account up in this thread. I don't know why you don't simply quote the evidence of stuff if it's so important to what you're saying, unless you don't actually have any.

Because the classic “genuinely curious” redditism is always a lie, every time. There was no “genuine fucking question” as she put it. It was all a set up to throw a tantrum instead of simply correcting the mistake.

Again, this is mind-reading, not evidence of anything.

Yes. I don’t see the issue with this. It’s the only theory that makes her tantrum make sense, and as you’ll see shortly, she’s very sensitive about her kiddie porn for a very good reason.

And you continue to make insulting insinuations about her, even as you try to say you're the one who is being bullied.

That admin was repeatedly dishonest, insulting and was threatening to deny my right of reply in a comm created for this purpose. It’s just bullying and denying a simple process would be a lowlife thing to do.

I read nothing bullying. Only disagreement with you. If you consider someone not agreeing with you to be bullying, then it's no wonder you are having the out of proportion response to this that you are having.

No, I do not consider this person to be a comrade of mine, and you shouldn’t either. This is just a “No u r” response to my valid question.

Then don't try to gotcha an admin by asking if it's "comradely" behavior when talking about how another user acts.

This is an effective perma ban. How do you think I could possibly continue on here having been baselessly labelled as a racist with a target on my back for vindictive and emotional admins?

That's how you feel about it, not the reality of the situation. Tbh, I had forgotten it even happened until you made this thread and if you were truly concerned people would remember and hold it against you, you could have simply made a thread clarifying your side of the story, as I already stated. Instead, you have chosen to make it about attacking others.

I am self assured in my righteousness because I am me, I know I am not racist, I know I was not toxic and I know I was attacked. These are things I can’t not know. You’re damn right I’m indignant.

Incorrect. You can know you don't intend to be racist, first of all, but you don't define whether your behavior is. That's only something that people among groups subjected to racism can fully judge properly. Else white people would just be able to say "I'm not racist" and they'd get a pass, even as they do obviously racist things. And to the other points, even more so, "I was not toxic" is your personal judgment on the matter.

I had plenty of time to think about this and decide on this approach. Give the admins an opportunity to explain themselves and they failed this simple matter, being completely dishonest throughout.

I cannot see how this is what you did. From where I'm standing, you came in guns blazing, accusing people of things and throwing around words like abuser and thug.

I honestly appreciate the thoughtful way you’ve approached this. As I said above, I calmly and rationally decided that this was my only recourse. Give the admins a chance, they embarrassed themselves. Two tried to misrepresent the order of events, always erasing the abusive and toxic way I was responded to, the third has indulged in a new fantasy about me being ableist about dyslexia to add to me being called racist and transphobic. These conceited idpol attacks are so incredibly immature and the first refuge of a scoundrel.

Yeah I mean, I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt and you are using it to trash talk others more, while refusing to budge an inch. I see nothing embarrassing from the admin posts of the sort. I see them taking time they did not have to take, to walk through what happened, and explain their reasoning. That you call any of this "idpol attacks" only gives me reason to think that the original accusation of racism was touching on something real. I should have made that connection earlier, tbh. Sometimes the people most sensitive to being accused of racism are sensitive to it is precisely because they haven't unlearned their racist inclinations (sometimes ones they are unconscious of). I imagine this is the part where you'll decide I'm a bully/thug/scum/scoundrel as well now too, since my judgment is not in favor of your actions.

It's frustrating for sure. Prominent western atheists seem to suffer from much the same problems as other western "thinkers" who don't have any political education in liberation, in that they tunnel vision on a narrow lens (in this case, atheism) and think they're deriving everything from it, when they're really just doing imperialism, colonization, racism, etc., "with atheist characteristics." And they don't see it because the other parts are so normal to them and they're so unaware of any alternative that it simply doesn't occur to them their thinking is 90% the propaganda they are immersed in and only 10% atheism (to put it roughly, I'm not saying the percentages are exact). This is not to give them an out though, some of them probably are at least partly aware and are grifters and ghouls in their own right, but I don't get the impression they are all aware enough to be malicious; I think some of them are just really overly focused on atheism as a lens in itself.

I know one of the main takeaways I had in becoming more politically educated, was realizing that I need to make a distinction on colonizer religion vs. the religion of the colonized. That I've been almost exclusively exposed to colonizer religion and although it's likely nothing would change whether I believe in a god or gods at this point, I don't need to have any opinions about any particular religion I don't understand, especially among peoples who are being vilified by empire. And I am consciously more open-minded to the religions of colonized peoples, knowing I'm going to be dealing with a lot of lies to get through to the heart of how they are actually practiced and by who, and what factions and sects they have now or historically.

Proud of you all. Thank you for what you do. Keep fighting the good fight, that's great progress!

EDIT: Two responses from admins who dishonestly reframed the events of my ban and apparently refuse to explain it. Apparently “long time users” get different treatment.

As far as I can tell, you and the other person in question have accounts of about the same age, with yours actually being a bit older.

I was randomly attacked by a bad faith troll who later let slip that she was bearing a grudge based on some other encounter from 8 months ago.

If you are talking about this:

…oh hey, weren’t you the same person who had a problem with people liking anime stuff - to the point you called them “predditors” for it and even scared away a trans person from the Touhou community while I was away?

The way the post is written, it is not clear whether she was aware of who you were until that moment and this part would imply that at worst, she was aware and was trying to give the benefit of the doubt and not fight at first:

Bold of you to think that I was trying to “pULL a GoTcHa” when it was a genuine fucking question from my end.

But something about your comment:

akhon dekhaite porbe stronger it’s mot…

Set her off. Why, I don't know. This appears to be where the exchange breaks down and you decided that she was someone who was trying to misrepresent and slander you on purpose, and so you should respond in kind. You could have as easily said, "I misread and thought X was Y." Personally, I still don't understand what the "reading error" even was because you don't seem to have said that.

they were just operating under a long simmering grudge about their ephebophilia hobby being criticised, months ago.

(In another post in this thread) you take a dig at her even in the process of trying to say it's her who is holding a grudge? And please don't say I'm trying to cherrypick, I'm reading to see if you explain the reading error and this is the sort of thing I find.

permanently damn yourselves as a group of thugs without integrity or honour

And this to an admin.

Was it comradely to leave a comment up telling me to “eat soft shit”? Do you endorse that treatment of comrades?

Is it comradely to make sweeping proclamations that condemn others as trolls, abusers, and/or thugs over your personal reputation in one exchange on the internet? I'm sure it sucks to feel painted as the sort of person you despise if you only meant well, but I'm trying to put this in perspective. This isn't a committee for the afterlife banishing you from eternal paradise, it was a temp ban on an internet forum. This could have been a thread where you explain what the misunderstanding was derived from and that you want the record to be clear as to why you were never intending to come across how you did; or a thread where you politely ask for clarification as to what the misunderstanding was, if it is not clear to you. Instead, you have been very confident in a strong "you message" that others are mistreating you and actively intend to do so, with mind-reading and a singular shaky interpretation of their words and actions as the primary evidence behind your claims.

I know enough about how internet exchanges can go to know that it's possible for you to be in the right here, while still going about it completely the wrong way, in a way that makes matters overall worse. I've had to learn that lesson before, in other online places. I'm doubtful this person or anyone else in this thread is the bad faith attacker you think they are and not just part of a misunderstanding with things getting heated, but either way, your approach to this says a lot that is demanding and accusatory with little to back it up in substance. If that is your way of resolving the feeling of being targeted by targeting others in kind, recognize that it's what you're doing and learn to put it aside for those you want to be comrades with. If anyone deserves a chance to resolve a misunderstanding, it is them. It's not always fair. Sometimes you have to be the more patient one and do what you can to deescalate. Find someone you love and get a hug, then give this another look; I mean that literally, or figuratively if there are other things that help you more. Make sure you feel safe and loved. I mean nothing demeaning by this either. The point is to ground yourself, to ensure you can approach this from a position of clarity and readiness to handle the conflict without escalating unnecessarily. Take care.

Hopefully someone with a better understanding will chime in if I'm at all off here, but from the standpoint of entities who are working on a larger scale, I believe the argument goes something like that a two state solution is incompatible with israel's settler extermination goals, while also benefiting Palestine and Palestinian people vs. their current situation, and so sometimes it makes more sense as the position to take, even if it seems weaker on the surface than it is; because it is simultaneously the more diplomatic and peaceful position, while also being one that materially runs counter to what israel is about. For israel to truly embrace peace and accept the sovereignty and self determination of those they have dehumanized and targeted for extermination for decades implies losing the point of being out there in the first place, it implies having to give up on their ingrained culture of superiority and entitlement, it implies facing accountability on a large scale system level for what they have done in order to make the peace stick.

So often, the language of the imperialist class reads like straight out of an abuser's handbook:

"You don't know how good you have it."

"If you don't like it, you can leave."

"If you left, they'd gut you, unlike here."

"Do you have any idea how much worse it could get if you don't do what I say?"

"They don't care about you like I do."

"You're so childish when you complain."

"Siding with me is the mature thing to do."

"If you're not with me, then you're helping my enemies."

"You're scaring everyone by opposing me, stop being so dramatic."

"I am the best you will find. You really think you can do better? You're delusional."

Note: Although I am paraphrasing, none of this is outside the spirit of things I've seen written/said by imperialists/capitalists/etc. and those who defend them.