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On US education I remember in 8th grade the one thing I learned about Marx was one paragraph and was basically just “he wrote the Communist Manifesto and believed that history was a cycle of conflicts between classes.” And I was just like “Well what is communism? Isn’t that going to be important going forward?” I guess it wasn’t and I never learned what Communism/Socialism actually is or what the USSR did beyond “be authoritarian” until I was an adult.You probably didn’t actually learn what capitalism is either until later, given that Marx is the most comprehensive breakdown of how capitalism functions, so much so that even the economics courses at universities use Marx for that part.
The intentional avoidance of teaching how the system works is essential to making sure people don’t question it. You don’t want your workers knowing how it works, merely accepting it. Understanding how it works is reserved for the ruling class.
I remember I took economics 101 in college. The professor was explaining how growth is required for capitalism. Even as clueless I was back then, I raised my hand and said well nothing can keep growing forever, what happens then? He told me that would be a long time from now and to not worry about it.
and they wonder why young people uniformly hate corporations and what they’ve done to the environment
I tended to have communism/socialism condescendingly poopooed as “well-meaning” but “never really working because human nature”.
Anyways, time to learn about the french revolution and the reign of terror, which in no way should be viewed as an indictment of liberal revolutions the way the red terror does for socialism.
I remember almost my exact words when I was in high school “communism has a lot of valid criticisms about capitalism but their solutions didn’t work”
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shitlibs love posting that picture of the guy standing in front of the tank, as some kind of own, when if that happened in the US the cops would have gleefully run him over and then been made into a celebrity for it
Death to America
somebody actually did splice together the video when the Chinese tank goes around the guy, and the footage on the other side is from the BLM protests when a cop car just drives into the crowd
“Han Chinese are racial chauvinists” /r/politics libs, probably
And the comments would say: He sHoUlD hAVe JuSt CoMpLiEd
sTuPiD gAmEs StUpId PrIzEs
Jeff Widener, an American photographer with the Associated Press, won a pulitzer prize for that photo, precisely because it was a still image. He also took a video, but the video tends not to be shown, because it reveals that the man wasn’t run over. Then you have the fact that all the US press corps showed up right as the protests took off, a lot of dark money from NGOs and western think tanks was floating around, and then deliberate conflation of the worker riots (in which PLA troops were lynched outside the square) being confused with the mostly peaceful events inside the square. Then you have that interview with the protest leader where she was crying and basically saying she was trying to provoke a massacre so that the protesters could be seen as martyrs. She got her wish, even if the massacres didn’t actually occur, since that’s how the west depicts those events. Then there the highly suspicious fact that nobody talks about the fact that you had many different types of protester simultaneously. Some were opposed to liberal reforms, privatization, etc, (the workers rioting outside the square) while other protesters wanted more of that stuff (the student protesters inside the square). Then you have some racist elements mixed in with the student protests I’ve heard, i.e. that there were some Chinese who were protesting because they didn’t like the presence of African exchange students at their universities. I don’t know how true that is, but I’ve heard it a few times.
Agitprop repost from the massive china thread done two months or so ago:
- wikileaks published a private diplomatic cable stating that no one was killed in the square itself, although a smaller number of people did die in clashes elsewhere in Beijing, consistent with China’s own official account. (Here’s a Telegraph article on the cables).
- a spanish film crew was in the square all night and filmed people peacefully leaving the square in the early morning, singing the Internationale, here’s footage of a Hong Kong news report that includes the spanish film crew footage, which never appears in western reporting).
- one of the main organizers of the protest, Hou Dejian, states that no one died in the square and calls out other organizers for lying I Interview where Hou Dejian, a Taiwanese national and one of the leaders of the Tiananmen protests, says he was in the square all night and saw no one killed here is a twitter thread covering testimony by various organizers, including Hou Dejian).
- Numerous western media sources have stated that no massacre occurred in the square. (This article links to multiple western sources, including James Miles, attesting that no one died in the square.).
- various western massacre reports cite wildly different death figures, usually with little or no justification for the number.
- An attempt to collect all the names of the massacre victims ended early when they only found 155.
- CIA and NED goons were known to be present in Beijing and involved in the protests. (Here is an article from the Vancouver Sun in 1992, showing western intelligence involvement was known in the west decades ago).
- during most of the protest, protesters were calling for a return to stricter communism, not for liberal market reforms. These were Marxists. Their signs showed Marxist figures and slogans. (This article shows some images of the protesters displaying Marxist slogans and iconography and discusses it a bit — careful linking this site though, some of the articles are pretty dumb).
- tank man: the tanks in the video are leaving the square (you can see this in the uncropped footage) and it is broad daylight, whereas the main violence occurred at night.
- the first violence was against troops, not civilians. On June 2, 1989, two days before the June 4 incident when the main violence occurred, multiple unarmed Chinese troops were burned alive and their corpses hung from nooses in public. ((CW: gore) here is a thread of photos showing dead and wounded troops, some being rescued by civilians. Multiple men were burned to death, others were beaten. Some protesters stole guns from the army and can be seen brandishing them.).
- the violence against troops was uncharacteristic of the previous tone of interactions between troops and protesters in the preceding weeks. Troops and protesters had peacefully coexisted, singing songs and sharing food together. (Here’s an article that goes into it a bit)
Then you have some racist elements mixed in with the student protests I’ve heard, i.e. that there were some Chinese who were protesting because they didn’t like the presence of African exchange students at their universities. I don’t know how true that is, but I’ve heard it a few times
From Another View of Tiananmen:
Concerns over prices weren’t solely due to absolute levels of privation, however. The complaints were heavily tinged with elitism. Students and urbanites were not happy to see peasants and farmers do so well relative to them. This “economic anxiety” had manifested itself a year earlier in Nanjing, where students affected by cuts to tuition subsidies took out their anger on African exchange students. “From December 1988 to January 1989, students in Nanjing, China waged violent protests against visiting African students.” The writing on the placards was very revealing:
Rachel Corrie tried that in Palestine.
The tank man image is relevant not because of the tanks but because of the dude. He stood up and made the whole line of tanks stop (momentarily). That’s the kind of energy i like in my protesters.
You’re 100% correct the cops in the US would probably just plow into him, though. Hell, they’d swerve to hit him.
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momentarily
no, for several minutes: https://nitter.cz/fedurante/status/1533099332496502786
he even climbs onto the tank, the tanks only keep going after other civilians remove him from the way
Tianamen claims
Reposted from elsewhere.
- wikileaks published a private diplomatic cable stating that no one was killed in the square itself, although a smaller number of people did die in clashes elsewhere in Beijing, consistent with China’s own official account. (Here’s a Telegraph article on the cables).
- a spanish film crew was in the square all night and filmed people peacefully leaving the square in the early morning, singing the Internationale, here’s footage of a Hong Kong news report that includes the spanish film crew footage, which never appears in western reporting).
- one of the main organizers of the protest, Hou Dejian, states that no one died in the square and calls out other organizers for lying I Interview where Hou Dejian, a Taiwanese national and one of the leaders of the Tiananmen protests, says he was in the square all night and saw no one killed here is a twitter thread covering testimony by various organizers, including Hou Dejian).
- Numerous western media sources have stated that no massacre occurred in the square. (This article links to multiple western sources, including James Miles, attesting that no one died in the square.).
- various western massacre reports cite wildly different death figures, usually with little or no justification for the number.
- An attempt to collect all the names of the massacre victims ended early when they only found 155.
- CIA and NED goons were known to be present in Beijing and involved in the protests. (Here is an article from the Vancouver Sun in 1992, showing western intelligence involvement was known in the west decades ago).
- during most of the protest, protesters were calling for a return to stricter communism, not for liberal market reforms. These were Marxists. Their signs showed Marxist figures and slogans. (This article shows some images of the protesters displaying Marxist slogans and iconography and discusses it a bit — careful linking this site though, some of the articles are pretty dumb).
- tank man: the tanks in the video are leaving the square (you can see this in the uncropped footage) and it is broad daylight, whereas the main violence occurred at night.
- the first violence was against troops, not civilians. On June 2, 1989, two days before the June 4 incident when the main violence occurred, multiple unarmed Chinese troops were burned alive and their corpses hung from nooses in public. ((CW: gore) here is a thread of photos showing dead and wounded troops, some being rescued by civilians. Multiple men were burned to death, others were beaten. Some protesters stole guns from the army and can be seen brandishing them.).
- the violence against troops was uncharacteristic of the previous tone of interactions between troops and protesters in the preceding weeks. Troops and protesters had peacefully coexisted, singing songs and sharing food together. (Here’s an article that goes into it a bit)
FUCK OFF
MOVE bombings, what MOVE bombings? That’s not part of the history curriculum.
The hawaiian state had banned teaching hawaiian until the 90s
Hawaii has been occupied since the late 1800s
They only recently started teaching in schools that the overthrow even happened
The native Hawaiian military was oppressed so harshly, martial arts in general were declared illegal in Hawaii. The locals worked around it by disguising the basics of their military arts as dance. You might have heard of the hula…
Bro that’s fucking wild. Whattttttt?
Can I see a source for the similarities between martial arts and hula?
https://olohe.global/luahistory.html
It’s a bit more complex than I thought. Lua practitioners are expected to know how to hula before they learn any destructive arts. Any male hula dancer you see has a decent chance of also being a hardass martial artist.
I just read to my parents about the Haymarket tragedy and the origins of Mayday, and how the United States freaked out that people all over the world began recognizing that day and in order to cut it off in the US they made May 1st loyalty day and used red scare shit to make sure nobody would demonstrate or do anything on May 1st here lol. They had never heard of any of it.
Also here in the UK a large majority believe that “Empire” was a nice pleasant good thing that did nothing but good to the countries we merely ’looked after’.
We call the ones that haven’t fully told us to ‘fuck off’ the ‘Commonwealth’ and hold lots of PR events like Olympic-esque games and ‘rich monarch waves at people who’s country has a GDP less than their hat largely because we stole all their resources before they could use them to develop’ tours.
Jesus Christ, do not ever tell an English person that you think Winston Churchill was a monster. Worst mistake of my life. You’d swear I’d shat on his mum’s grave.
The guy who famine’d million of indians? Who wanted to use chemical weapons to put down rebellions in Africa?
There’s been a concerted effort to paint him as a heroic figure so that the blitz can be used as a rallying point for British nationalism.
The Welsh curriculum at least taught me about the time he sent the military in to gun down striking miners in Tonypandy. I don’t think the English education system teaches children about any of the shit he did.
The end result is he’s almost become a secular saint for some English.
I can confirm my English history classes very much did teach me that Churchill never ever set a foot wrong and is an unimpeachable war hero with no flaws, never heard about his opinions on India/Africa, nor what you mention about miners, I honestly never heard a bad thing.
I know some people were taught differently, but I was also taught the Soviet Union was basically useless and Britain was effectively the sole reason for the Allied Win of WW2.
In my US Classes, he was always a hero as well. We were taught that Neville Chamberlain kept concedingnthings to Hitler in hopesntht being nice would sway him, and when it didn’t, Brits got mad and voted in tough guy Churchill who really gave em the business. Stalin was a Nazi ally until the Nazis betrayed him, and that stopped the bleeding, then Roosevelt declared war after Pearl Harbor and the US won the war for the Allies.
voted in tough guy Churchill
Churchill wasn’t even elected. When Chamberlain resigned, Churchill replaced him as prime minister and then elections were stalled until 1945 as part of the emergency wartime powers that a prime minister can enact.
I remember that old black and white footage of queen whoeverthefuck (victoria?) tossing little pieces of food to the ground for african toddlers to scramble for in the exact same way you or I would feed pigeons in the park.
Wasnt able to find Victoria doing this (Didnt search very hard), but I did find this link of an English woman doing that with coins in 1899:
The worst part was that she had no dark hour of realization of being a monster while she lived and I have no faith in the afterlife. She just won life. Like it was a video game and we all didn’t matter.
“we sent the convicts to australia, and because we decreed that it was empty, everything turned out fine”
Everyone also thinks the queen was just a passive tourist icon and not an actively supportive participant and cheerleader of that colonialism.
At one time the queen of England was the most successful drug dealer on the planet.
Lyndon LaRouche has entered the chat.
Ah Laroche. Truly one of the oddest people around.
Am I remembering right where William and Kate tried to visit somewhere with one of these bullshit tours and were told to fuck off pretty much?
Yes, I forget where but it was in the Caribbean I believe.
US PUBLIC EDUCATION HISTORY CLASS: And today kids, we are going to learn about all of the native indians, the Southwest Indians, the plains indians, AND the forrest indians. Are you excited to learn about all the indians that were here, kids?
“Adobe!”
-Me in fourth grade, demonstrating complete mastery over the curriculum
gold star placed next to your name on the poster of all the kids in the class
There are some pretty radical US teachers who don’t teach American mythology, and unless they’re in Florida or another state banning CRT and gender-affrming sex-ed, they aren’t breaking the law in the process.
When I was in I think 2nd grade I gave a presentation on the Civil War while wearing a costume of a confederate soldier.
I was taught that factory workers in the north had it worse than slaves, that the
Civil WarWar Between the States was about states’ rights, that Confederate generals were noble and honorable while Union ones were incompetent drunks who relied on essentially human wave tactics and burning down cities to win. Gone With the Wind was presented to me as an accurate and unbiased depiction of history.Growing up I definitely had a couple awkward dinner conversations with certain “history buff” relatives where I was like, “Well sure, but still, I mean, obviously we can all agree the South was wrong, right?” and suddenly people start exchanging looks
I actually got a similar reaction once for saying the Crusades were bad, Catholics are fucking wild I tell you.
I was taught that factory workers in the north had it worse than slaves
In Marx’s “Theories of Surplus Value” which he never published while he was alive, but was instead compiled from his notes by Kautsky, and then later Riazanov, he called out 1700s reactionary anti-capitalists like Linguet who made these kinds of arguments.
Linguet however is not a socialist. His polemics against the bourgeois-liberal ideals of the Enlighteners, his contemporaries, against the dominion of the bourgeoisie that was then beginning, are given—half-seriously, half-ironically—a reactionary appearance. He defends […] slavery against wage-labour.
(Linguet was guillotined by the Jacobins lol)
(Linguet was guillotined by the Jacobins lol)
The kind French Jacobins would have guillotined everyone here
“Wage slave” is the modern equivalent. I get the point is to emphasize how deeply exploitative low-wage work is, but my boss can’t cut off my foot if I don’t show up.
yeah the term “wage slave” is certainly an exaggeration that minimizes slavery. I would point out that even Frederick Douglass used the term, but this alone does not legitimize it. It became popular because it’s short, to the point, sounds almost poetic (assonance), and gets at the heart of the coercive element of capitalism (you sell your labor power, or you become homeless and starve). But yes, it’s certainly not the most nuanced or sensitive thing to say.
I actually got a similar reaction once for saying the Crusades were bad, Catholics are fucking wild I tell you.
Papists still getting off from the sack of Constantinople
I actually got a similar reaction once for saying the Crusades were bad, Catholics are fucking wild I tell you.
My convert Catholic dad once told me that all the crusades were “self-defence” against Islam. I guess there must have been a really big threat of an islamic invasion of Europe from the Baltics.
i’m pretty sure at least one of those crusades resulted in christian armies sieging/looting/pillaging/committing atrocities in christian majority cities on their long march to Jerusalem, with most of them starving or dying of dyssentery or deserting along the way. Most effective form of self defense I’ve ever seen. And even when they made it to Jerusalem, surprise surprise, turns out there was a lot of christians and jews coexisting with muslims and they all got treated as muslims by the invading armies.
Just gonna use this post as an opportunity to link this piece from one of my favorite writers of all time, since it’s an article which covers the absolute state of both public education and homeschooling in the American South in depth (CW for extreme racism and general bigotry)
“Uyghur people are being GENOCIDED simply for their culture of having knifes to demonstrate their manliness (which the CIA used to agitate for terrorist attacks)”
vs
“actually US settlers were right to kill natives because they were scary and had sharp obsidian knives” :scared:
Manifest Destiny was just a heroic and triumphant settling of new land.
I definitely remember reading about the trail of tears in a small town US high School
Ok, is that the only broken treaty you were taught about?
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the average american sees the rest of the world as subhuman
I think liberals extend some courtesy to other
white“Western” nations.no, they really don’t
they will consider us human as compared to more marginalised people
but ultimately, we aren’t american
and therefore lesserAgreed. We are “exotic” to them at best, a kind of “almost American” or “honorary American” but they just never quite bother to actually learn about us in any meaningful way. The sheer number of Americans I’ve had to teach basic facts about my country (like which city is the capital, or the size of the country) is mind boggling. They honestly don’t seem to be interested in anything except in order to compare it to America.
I can’t even imagine what it would be like for non-white people, Africans especially, trying to educate Americans on their nation.
you must have never met the liberals who act like Europe is devoid of “dumb racist hicks” who don’t “vote against their own best interests”. Some Americans consider Europeans more human than the Rust Belt, or the Deep South, or Texas.
i’m not american, so of course i haven’t
i’ve experienced americans purely online
and most of you dont see anyone outside your borders as people
Most Americans hate American politicians and the shitty things they’ve done.
it wasn’t “american politicians”. it was americans. even if the government helped, it was common americans, poor and rich, who murdered and repressed natives every day until the land was solidly occupied. and while everyone in the country can be perfectly able to recognize the shitty things they’ve done, they’re absolutely incapable of admitting the terrible things they’re supporting and doing today. they live in a constant cycle of “oh we’ve done a baddie” into “no i’m not doing anything bad this time” into “oh i guess that was bad as well sorry” into “no i’m sure i’m not doing anything wrong this time”
the average american was evil back then and remains evil as fuck to this day, because that’s what not being an anti-imperialist leftist tends to mean if you live right in the middle of the imperial core
it was americans. even if the government helped, it was common americans, poor and rich, who murdered and repressed natives every day until the land was solidly occupied.
Even so, there have been Americans who opposed what their country and countrypeople were doing, and fought to oppose it. Were they in the minority? At times, sure, but the American political system has always given disproportionate power, first to landowning Anglo-Saxon Christian men and now to (still predominantly the same group tbh) rich people and the people they get to follow them.
the average american was evil back then and remains evil as fuck to this day, because that’s what not being an anti-imperialist leftist tends to mean if you live right in the middle of the imperial core
If you view everyone who isn’t actively radicalized as evil then I think you’re losing touch with some of the very people that need to also be radicalised. The “average American”, when polled time and time again routinely profess to have viewpoints waaaaaay to the left of mainstream discourse. Is it not our job as socialists to get to the see the full extent of what it means to really believe in equality and justice?
The “average American”, when polled time and time again routinely profess to have viewpoints waaaaaay to the left of mainstream discourse
for domestic issues, sure, especially because most of those would favor them in the end
but when it comes to the expansion and maintenance of the empire (in territorial, military or even ideological terms, as in believing and/or helping spread the belief that these actions are commendable or in any way fair, deserved or justifiable) i have never seen this
If you view everyone who isn’t actively radicalized as evil
i only see them that way if they live in the 1st world
and i do believe evil people can become good or even just, i don’t know, better, but i can’t see them as anything but evil until they realize how the modern western mindset - their mindset - is built upon a supremacist worldview. how is a person whose worldview is built off supremacism not evil? until they start dialing back on that shit, which i can’t see happening before radicalization, i can’t think of them as good
That’s like saying, “if only the school shooter didn’t have a gun”. True on the surface, but an effect of a larger, more serious issue. The average American was stupid back then, and is stupid today. Hell, I’m sure plenty of them went out there just to kill those pesty redskins. Why? Read a book that you weren’t given in school. That was like the 78th Thanos snap.
Two centrist options 💀💀💀💀💀💀💀 HOLY SHIT THEYRE BOTH RIGHT WING WTFFFF
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Some states are passing rank choice voting which is a step in the right direction and will allow smaller political parties to win votes.
hear me out:
downvotes
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having a bad day?
May I recommend eating an ice cream? That always helps.
Why you want to simp and be a bitch for colonizers?
Tulsa What? Kent State Who?
How is that they never post pictures of the students killed on Kent State
