alanjjohnstone
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In defence of the Ethiopian government, this leftist article
Sanders endorses the left-wing New Democratic Party
Obama and Hillary Clinton endorse Justin Trudeau
“The whole objective of improving the electoral system is to ensure patriots administer Hong Kong,” Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive.“I doubt very much that another government or country will allow the public election to their local legislature of people whose mission is to undermine the national interest or national security.”
Perhaps she is ignorant of UK history that even during the height of a civil war, Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, were permitted to participate in elections and their candidates got elected.
The Guardian describing the election farce
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/19/hong-kong-elite-vote-patriots-only-election-process
Ted Hui, a former lawmaker said Hong Kong’s political system was now “a rubber-stamp game completely controlled by Beijing…It’s more than a managed democracy. It’s an autocracy trying to pretend to be civilised,”
Nathan Law, a prominent pro-democracy activist
“All election runners will become puppet showmen under Beijing’s entire control…with no meaningful competition.”
No doubt our resident Beijing regime apologist will describe those as traitors and collaborators because of their political connections with foreign countries who have now given sanctuary to them.
I stand corrected, MS. False consciousness was what I intended to mean.
Sometimes it is useful to have someone that exemplifies the problem explaining our case for socialism.
MS, i am no longer engaging with TS, I am talking about him, but not to him.
His ignorance is such that he is incapable of even recognising his opinions constitute conspiracy theories.
There are wider implications for socialists on such belief systems and mindsets as portrayed by TS.
Marx talked about “false ideologies” but there have been further and deeper analyses made since his time and we should learn of their relevance.
TS has failed to understand my earlier statement, “goodbye and good riddance” and he keeps jumping up and down like a little man, shouting out, “look at me…look at me”, expecting a response.
the nuclear weapons budget President Biden submitted to Congress differs little from Trump’s nuclear weapons “modernization” commitments. Despite Biden’s election year and earlier statements that the “sole use” of nuclear weapons that he could imagine was in response to a nuclear attack against the United States, the budget he submitted to Congress includes funding to replace the country’s entire arsenal of first-strike—use them or lose them—ground based ICBMs. So too the budget Congress will be voting on includes funding to produce 80 plutonium pits (the fissile core of a nuclear warhead) per year—each one of which with the destructive capability to devastate cities as large as Shanghai, Karachi and Moscow. Biden and his Pentagon also expect to win funding for the extremely destabilizing “more usable” tactical (roughly Hiroshima sized) B-61-12 bound for Europe, the nuclear air-launched cruise Long Range Standoff Weapon, and new warheads for submarine launched missiles, all designed to hold China hostage to a U.S. first-strike attack.
Not directly related to Brexit but reflecting EU thinking on the UK, explaining why France has not made diplomatic protests over the new US-UK Australia defence pact, the French minister explained France had seen “no need” to recall its ambassador to the UK, as he accused the country of “constant opportunism”.
“Britain in this whole thing is a bit like the third wheel,” he said.
OUCH!
Wez, huge populist movements have been created through the manipulation of peoples’ emotions.
As you say Reich was one of the pioneers (before he too was victim to his own phantoms) with his ‘Mass Psychology of Fascism’. Then there is Erich Fromm’s ‘Fear of Freedom’.
People are very contradictory creatures which make us very interesting when it comes to the development of political ideologies. We may be full of paradoxes but in another way, we are very simple beings, motivated by some very basic stimuli.
Didn’t we have our own psycho-analytic critics with Harold Walsby and George Walford?
I’m always fascinated by how politics become quasi-religions. Sometimes, I even think of our own D. of P. as a version of the Ten Commandments.
What really has stopped us from becoming a cult is that we have avoided any messianic figure, and you cannot have followers if you have no leader to follow, no Pope, nor conclave of cardinals to obey.
Some may think we treat Marx as one since we call ourselves Marxists and frequently resort to citing his writings as an authority. But we do so just as those against religious creationism describe themselves as Darwinian evolutionists.
We have added to the ideas of Marx from the experience of changed circumstances and increased knowledge without undermining the general validity of Marxism itself.Why TS insists black is white and clings to disproven facts shows the difficulty we are up against. Is it possible to persuade a true believer that he or she is wrong.
Trump supporters have not been easily convinced that much of the ‘fake’ news is not all fake and that Trump indeed lost the election.
I find the same parallel with TS
That does not mean we don’t have our own issues with the media. But it doesn’t mean we dismiss the logic of the scientific method, of critical thinking and to make the world conform to our personal perception of it.
The promise – end of US support for Saudi Arabia offensive operations
The reality – $500 million contract to maintain Saudi Arabia’s attack helicopters
It is not the internecine dispute that interests me but the delusional adherence to Stalinism such as belief in the guilt of the early Bolshevik leaders accused in the Moscow show trials. I have indicated TS shares all the traits of a conspiracist and is beyond any reasoning.
He is no different from the followers of Natural News and Dr. Mercola other than he drapes himself in the Chinese flag.
Sorry for any ambiguity.
I mere saying that I can sympathise with left-wingers when Stalinists slander Trotsky.
I suppose she is focused on the peasant economy where women are subsistence farming for their immediate family and local village markets. Indeed, in many cultures they are deprived of formal ownership and often deprived of control of those small-holdings by patriarchal traditions.
Scaling up the food production to plantation industrial cash-crop agriculture and women do disappear from the issue, but as also do poor men.
Are those the fellow travelers? I don’t travel with those fellows
MS, I think intellectual honesty permits me, at least, to agree with Trotskyists that those who claim Trotsky was an agent of Hitler should furnish evidence and not assert that the absence of evidence means a plot cannot be excluded because secret conspirators don’t leave evidence.
I may not seek the smoking gun, but a sign of any gus would be helpful
We have to support the concept of critical thinking.
Claims are not evidence. Inferences aren’t evidence. Speculation is not evidence.
If someone makes a claim, the burden of proof is upon him or her.
Trotsky may well have been involved in a conspiracy to overthrow Stalin but was he collaborating with Nazi Germany in doing so? If it is asserted that he was, then the connection must be substantiated.
Accusations of Trotsky being in league with the Nazis is only really convincing if it is already reconciled with someones pre-conceptions.
It is common among conspiracists to connect dots that are unrelated (study ley-lines) or to imagine patterns that simply don’t exist or reach conclusions from coincidences.
As a member of an organisation that has been resolutely opposed to the political ideas of Trotsky, there is no need for us to invent a case against him.
