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I read the whole bible as an adult.

But the discipline that took, probably shows that I was starting to think more deeply about things

They can’t. Its not a matter of personal greed, its just how capitalism works, it creates immense wealth for a few on one end and mass immiseration for the masses on the other. Billionaires exist because of the system that creates them.

If he dedicated the rest of his wealth to fighting antisemitism, if he lent his incredible fame to reversing the horrible legacy of racist, chauvinist violence, if he really gave a shit and fixed himself and worked his ass off for years, then maybe, some people might begin to forgive him.

But dong a bunch of Nazi shit and then saying you’re not a Nazi, is Nazi shit. This is meaningless and pathetic, cowardly behavior.

Ukrainian children yearn for the mines

Sorry I deleted that comment, I didn’t like my tone.

Personally I’m not a prison abolitionist. I’d like to see an end to it, ideally, but realistically that would be an amount of practical work beyond just simple reforms, the whole of society would have to be changed. I’m into that, which is why I don’t ideally dismiss it.

I treated it better elsewhere, here I just said “you can’t snap your fingers” but what I mean is prisons and police they actually are the answer to a lot of problems in society. I agree with you, I would like to see much more reform programs rather than the USA prison system that “needs” prisons, which isn’t to say every prison is a social necessity, more like there are political and economic incentive structures that make meaningful progressive change extremely difficult. But my father was a prison guard, and we don’t agree much on politics, especially when it comes to carcerial justice, but that man had seen some absolute monsterous behavior from people who are basically unreformable by any modern standard – and as much as I wish that wasn’t the case and I wish they had been given the opportunity for a better life where maybe they wouldn’t have lost every bit of their humanity, that doesn’t change reality.

However I do think that a society that proliferates carcerial justice the way that we do in the USA, which is all my experience is about, I dont know about Aussie prisons, is not one that is able to restore or even preserve the humanity of all its citizens. A society that makes monsters needs a place to put them; however a place to put monsters creates a demand for monstrousness that must be met. This is what I think it is possible and realistic to abolish.

Thanks for the response, I did take it personally but thanks for clarifying your position

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I’m not false equivocating in order to take the fight off of fascism, both things are true. My point is we don’t fight fascism by allowing courts to make performative gestures outlawing performative gestures, its done by organizing against the worst tendencies of capital. By all means ban Nazi salutes it won’t affect anyone I associate with, and if it did I would no longer.

Lots of people seem to think having a slight criticism is the same as trying to bad faith rhetorically muddy the waters to give space for fascism. But no, that’s what liberalism does, consistently.

Why are you so rude and mean? I actually have an interest in philosophy, which you apparently do too? But I don’t use it to like make people feel stupid. I’m nobody. I’m just like a guy with a job and a family that reads hard books. I’m proud of what little intellectual accomplishment I’ve made, and I encourage others to study. But dude I don’t fucking care about reading Leviathan! I’ll read books by people who have read it, but not Alain de Botton because he is a turd, but despite a good measure of intellectual curiosity, more than most in my life at least, it isn’t something that will come up for me. I’m glad you got so much out of it. made it into your whole identity maybe, but it hasn’t come up for me in the way that will lead me to read it, at least not yet! All I can say if on my very long reading list, it isn’t on there and I don’t see that changing this year.

This book is so important and crucial to your point yet you can’t point to a single line or paragraph to support your non existent arguments, which amount to “ur dum”. Why not demonstrate how great a book it is by quoting a passage that is relevant? L

I’ve read more than 6 philosophy books in the last 6 months. You are strawmanning me, because I’m not who you have delusionally convinced yourself that I am. Its completely unnecessary and not at all about the topic at hand.

Alain de Botton omg and you thought I was funny.

Anyway you completely missed my point wrt false equivalence since both things are true. Its called nuance, dingus. I believe in the continual progress of human spirit, similar to Hegel’s formulation of freedom, but I’m a materialist and Marxist, not right wing liberal like Hobbes. Because believe it or not society has progressed since the 1680s when the ascendent English bourgeoisie seized control of the British empire and needed rational justification for their rule – which Thomas Hobbes Leviathan is. Its a piece of political philosophy, and certainly worth studying. I haven’t read it and might not, but I know others that have. I get the gist I don’t need Alain de Buttman’s watered down baby philosophy for online babies, please and thank you.

I’ve read thousands of pages of philosophy. You’ve watched thousands of hours of vaush and destiny. We are not the same. Come back when you’re capable of making a point or having an adult discussion. I’ll be here.

Actually if you could point to the place in the book where he argues definitively for carcerial justice over other forms, effectively addressing arguments that have come since from intellectuals like Michel Foucault and Angela Davis, as well as the abolition movement more broadly, that would be super helpful to a big dumb idiot like me a hurr durr

My dad was a prison guard, I’ve thought about some of these dynamics a lot over the years.

Well I say it elsewhere, but we need to really start to rethink carcerial justice as a solution to social problems. It doesn’t help, it just compounds the contradictions that lead to problems like crime, fascism in the first place.

I understand we can’t just snap our fingers to make it go away. But The first step is discussion.

I mean free speech is a deeply contradictory concept, which i largely support, however, people having the “right” to harm others as fascists mean to do is not a human right but a right of domination, which I am actively and deeply set against. And prison justice is just a “right” to harm others, only one that we are conditioned to live with.

It does create an opportunity for a little irony, which I can’t pass up.

But part of my criticism is not just “Nazis exist in prison” but “carcerial justice is just as fascistic as anything we associate with fascism” which never gets even thought about let alone discussed anywhere but the fringes of the prison abolition movement.

And things like prisons and police, the existence of many kinds of crime, particularly property crimes, need to be considered historically contingent, so that no matter how much we want to just delete all prisons they do serve as a solution to contradictions that arise within our society. So that the struggle to abolish carcerial punishment has to be simultaneously replaced with something better. Which is just and worth fighting for.

Getting rid of heil Hitler hand gestures in public might prevent the public proliferation of “signs” of fascism, the actual causes of it are institutional and function in cooperation with systems of institutional racism, Etc., and until those tendencies are abolished, and that is the worst expressions of class domination within capitalism, fascism will always be a problem to contend with.

In other words, we have fascism because we have prisons. Or rather, the underlying logic of fascism is just the underlying logic that justifies carcerial justice, taken to its natural conclusions.

So its not just irony, its like a double irony

Sending people to jail is a great way to make sure they don’t spend time embroiled in Nazi ideology on every level. Probably the best way to make sure someone never comes in contact with a single particle of Nazism, is to send them to prison.

(Can you tell I’m american?)

That they have it

Let’s dissolve them both in a vat of acid

Tankie Obsession: an Infantile Disorder (and its not a wonky translation, I mean they have the political education of a baby) by V.I. Lenin

Whatever, i should have just left it alone. I don’t get why you go to every instance taking the name communist, and then engage in a form of anti communism. You give power to our enemies ammunition. You may have a particular definition of what a tankie is, but we are about to enter an era of repression most likely, and you wanna pick fights with people who hate your supposed enemies. If you want to defeat "tankieism (what kind of vaushite language is this) then you would find the good faith ones and try and figure out why they, in good faith, have questionable views, and try to engage politically. Instead you otherize them just like any objectivist bourgeois liberal. And you wonder why I say you stand with libs?

Maybe I don’t know what you’ve read or whatever, but (for example) a biologist would know if someone who wasn’t a biologist was just like making biology noises, or if they were legit. I’m not trying to gatekeep, but this anti tankie behavior is lib behavior, its the same one sided “authoritarianism” that the stalinists believe in, justification for purges.

When two contradictory sides mirror each other, like positive and negative, they are one thing, thats basic dialectics. You can steelman all you want, a steelman is just a strawman made out of something shiny (and it prob took the owner too long to put together, but just stands there.)

If you want to move past where the tankies are, because you’re stuck with them now, then you have to dump your objectivist worldview.

Okay so reading your comments you are clearly very undereducated when it comes to what I would consider basic knowledge of communism. I guess that’s okay, I called myself a communist or a socialist when I was knew nothing too. And to be clear, I woke up in a foul mood, and you seem to have irritated it, so I’m sorry for being an ass.

But communism isn’t something you believe, its something you do, and messing with tankies only helps the liberals. You should want to educate others about communism, but you don’t understand it; so your very communist urge to educate is good, but the subject you are concerned with is a liberal bugbear. I don’t doubt there are fake “tankies” on social media, its well documented that right wing groups try to infiltrate the Left, as well as state/military/police all have large social media teams used to manipulate public opinion. But taking this on as a project you are just becoming the dialectical opposite of a “tankie”: a bourgeois liberal, which is 1000x more bloodthirsty and destructive of an ideology. Because when you fight something without understanding it, you just become its dark reflection, or many times you become the thing you are opposing. This is apparent because you keep thinking I’m accusing you of being a tankie, you’re so worried you’ll get confused with them you engage in your own grassroots form of authoritarianism, underwritten by bourgeois liberals.

There are real Stalinists, and I have disagreements with them (and they can’t stand me) but they at least are trying to move away from liberalism (except when they become liberals per the mechanism described above), whereas your path to “communism” is just moving you closer. I stand with Stalinists on picket lines, in meetings, in actions, just as a function of the similar work we are doing. Stalin would have purged my ass, but they stand in actual solidarity with workers. What are you doing writing about “tankies” as your passion project? Which is funny since on your beehaw acct you just copy paste the same 3 paragraphs when discussing tankies, so i dont think you actually don’t care about writing or understanding anything.

I will never stand next to you with the work you plan to do, because I don’t stand with liberals against the boogeyman. So I just think you should either stop calling yourself a communist or actually start trying to do the work to become one.

Feel free to look for pro-tankie comments? Why would I look for that, I really want to see your anticommunist comments, where are they? Other than what you wrote above, throwing your lot in with neo-McCarthyism.

I’m not a Stalinist or subscribe to any “tankie” views either, though what those views are is determined by the aims imperialism so that could change. But I sure as hell don’t waste my time with “anti-tankie” documents, there are actual problems beyond some 14 year old Hexbear calling you a liberal