touché

You’re an ignoramus and an idiot https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25495509/

lol seriously

pretty much yeah

Vice is pure garbage, but this is pretty hilarious and I hope it’s true.

US is the heart of the western empire, so it would be significant even if it was only happening in US. However, this is happening in other western countries as well. We’re seeing very similar trends in Canada. There’s also growing civil unrest across western countries. Protests are ongoing in France, UK, Germany, and other countries.

There is no end in sight for the pandemic, and economic fallout is already staggering. As western economies continue to crumble, that will translate into further unrest across western world.

lol yeah being baddies in a huge world blockbuster is definitely a new experience for Americans :)

It takes an amazing lack of self reflection to avoid asking why their ideology failed to achieve anything in over a century. Anarchism embodies the quote about doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results as a form of insanity.

One thing I like to ask anarchists is what specific mechanism they will put in place in order to prevent centralization and hierarchies from forming. This has literally happened in every society, and societies with more centralization tend to rapidly outcompete those that are more federalist efforts.

So, let’s say magic happens and anarchists find some way to abolish the state. Now, all the people who benefited from the original state structure get together and start rebuilding it. This is the core reason why Marxists insist on the dictatorship of the proletariat. When you bring this up then anarchists will eventually be forced to acknowledge that some form of central authority will in fact be needed to prevent this.

My impression is that most anarchists make the implicit assumption that vast majority of people are homogeneous and think as anarchists do. So, once you abolish the state people will just revert to this natural way of thinking and it’s going to be all ponies and rainbows going forward.

Another thing I notice is that most anarchists are highly privileged. They invariably live in the imperial core, they’ve never had to experience true hardship in their lives, and naturally the aspect of society that they care the most about are their personal freedoms. Anarchism is very much a liberal ideology at its core. Marxist view is more aligned with Maslow’s pyramid of needs where we say that material conditions must be improved before we focus on maximizing personal freedoms.

Sadly, this isn’t far off from what I’ve seen people argue completely unironically.

Yeah, I’m in Canada and it’s the same thing. I do some nature photography, and getting anywhere means having to drive. I dream of living in China and just being able to take trains places.

Actually, much higher in Russia right now. Here’s a recent poll from Russia:

75% of Russians have expressed increasingly positive opinions about the Soviet Union over the years. Only a small portion of those surveyed said they had negative associations with the Soviet Union. The economic deficit, long lines and coupons were named by 4% of respondents each, while the Iron Curtain, economic stagnation and political repressions were named by 1% each, the Levada Center said.

And here’s another poll showing that most people think the Soviet economic system was more correct

anarchists are the worst

The whole essay is pretty good https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm