So I read through his links. There isn't a citation to any of these interviews (a necessity for actual academic journalism) to make sure things aren't being taken out of context. The first document even says that "North Korean experts disagree with these things because they view North Korea through the lens of their propaganda." And even then there are only three uncited interviews, one which is obviously an absolutely outrageous lie that breaking the frame of a photo of Kim Jon Il while polishing it is grounds for the execution of an entire family.
For context, the atrocities of the Pinochet regime are backed up by literally hundreds of recorded, cited interviews, some even by guards who participated in the violence admitting their culpability years later (though usually with the excuse that they weren't the ones committing the mass rape, etc.).
This is nothing. This is unsubstantial.
No, because much of the legitimacy of their entire state nationalist project rests on them being able to 'protect Russians and Russian interests'. They have tried, multiple times, to end it in a way that ends the war and does that, only to be rejected by Ukraine and the West. But this is a capitalist conflict, which means that 'Russian interests' will not allow it to end until they have what they want at the bargaining table.
I mean, it's been awhile since I read his biography, so I don't think he was stupid, it was a symptom of both forced errors on Stalin's part, his whole 'man of steel' imagery is very powerful in Russia still. But it's really reflective of where Russian ideology around communism was at, one of constant struggle against alien forces not by.your own design, unrecognizable and strange. A never-coming promise. Communication or lack of it is a huge theme in late Soviet early Federation artwork. Idk, I should really get back into reading this stuff myself. Post about what you find!
Because Gorby was all about 'admitting Soviet mistakes' which mostly meant accepting Western narratives (which were not accepted by mainstream Soviet Russian historians, and were incredibly controversial) with the idea of 'bridging the gap' between East and West. Like when you read Gorbachev, you get the idea that he was a liberal western-style communist, who saw inefficient parts of a system that did have aspects of Russian chauvinism and said, 'Well we can do better, look at those Nordic social democracies, let's transition to be more like them.' And then proceeded to unintentionally set the stage for the entire thing to get blown up by the vastly empowered criminal class.
Also, his entire legitimacy kinda rested on being reactionarily anti-Stalin.
It's literally not a stretch, in his memoirs Hitler refers to the taking of Eastern Europe as his 'Manifest Destiny' and the clearing of the slavs as the clearing of his 'removedskins'. He mostly thought that the U..S. wasn't thorough enough, with the Boer War encampments being the direct experience that the S.S. would draw from to create the concentration camps.
It's not 'today's' reservations, because there was a major reformation and native rights movement that was tied into the larger civil rights movement in the 1960's, with it's own occupation movements, marches and sabotage groups, which I am sure you know about.
However, what is always interesting to me is that they only started winning cases and gaining significant independent rights with the neo-liberal turn of the 1970's and 80's, because they provided the blueprint for corporate-run independent entities. There is a reason that justices such as Niel Gorsuch are so big on native rights, because it gives a legal precedent for the creation and maintenance of powerful non-state entities within U.S. soil. I'm not going to argue if this is a good or bad thing, as it's very grey, but the goal of the conservative empowerment of reservations seems to be eventually allowing the legal precedent for the development of a U.S. Hong Kong, an entity that is part of the U.S. but not the U.S.
However that being said, when larger corporate interests are at stake, native rights always get thrown to the way-side.
If you actually read real revolutionary texts by real revolutionaries, it's pretty easy to tell the difference. It's all about the initial axioms they are operating on.
I am begging people to actually read Marx or Proudhon. There are way more classes than just proletariat and bourgeoisie. Hakim does not fit the class description of either (even though he is closer to being a proletarian than bourgeoisie).
He is likely what Marx or Proudhon would consider to be a 'skilled or professional artisan worker', the class that Proudhon saw as the primary revolutionary class, who would lead the social revolution because proletarianization would upend and degrade their living standards, but they also had the systemic knowledge to 'separate from society' and live within a social and commodity production amongst themselves. Marx believed that only when they were proletarianized would they be able to achieve the nessecery class consciousness that is required for a social revolution, otherwise they are too ingrained in the competitive logic of their class, competing for the larger scraps at the table of the bourgeoisie.
That and he is also a working doctor, so definitely in the skilled professional category, regardless of how you slice it.
It is in this precarious class state that people like Hakim find themselves in, and why they have a class consciousness, but one that expresses itself through works of artistic documentation, not direct organization or class struggle.
Also, it is amazing how much economic and political illiteracy is required to have that understanding of Marxism. It is in fact possible for most people in the world to have a low-end non-precarious Western middle class commodity life, provided that efficient public services are developed and available. You will lose out your high-end western luxuries, but let's be fair, do we really want to live our lives of toil for a couple days of happiness, if that?
Hell, no one has dealt with the failures of non-planned economies, they are just called 'market ineffeciences'.
It's really important to actually read through Lenin's Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism. There are a lot of people who have said they've read it, but then they make incredibly elementary theory mistakes like this.
Imperialism is primarily defined by the separation of economic zones of control, where different economic laws and mores are applied. Essentially what defines the core, as opposed to the periphery. It's not just taking land, it's taking land and then immediately applying a different standard of laws, rules and regulations towards it than you do your own 'citizenry'. Now, we can then discuss how aspects of fascism is 'imperialism' applied towards the core, but again, it is about differences in legal, social and economic rights, duties and expectations of subjects, a definition that literally stretches back to the Persians but I am digressing from the point. The point is that, so far, Russia, despite being a right-wing populist kleptocratic oligarchy, has not done 'imperialism', with the biggest reason being that they don't really have a large enough economy or international prestige to commit to maintaining an actual imperialist project. They can take and hold land that is directly adjacent to them but they can't take, hold and subjugate the citizens of that land to a whole new economic regime, they can only incorporate it into their core, which is not, by Lenin and historical definition, imperialism.
Does that mean that what Russia is doing is good and nessecery? No. But it doesn't compare at all to what the U.S. does on a global scale with it's sanctions regimes and wars. If anything, what the U.S. and NATO are doing to Ukraine is imperialism because they are incorporating an economic regime that would not be used in even the most batshit libertarian states in the U.S. into the country.
Not really? We just generally have past history to point to for what happens when democratic socialists and communists attempt to be on the same side throughout history. Eventually, if push comes to shove, your particular political logic comes around to ally with the fascists you say you are against. I mean, you already are demonstrating the logic through your very discourse it's not a stretch to say that if there was an actual class revolution in the U.S. (as unlikely as that is) you would inevitably be on the side of 'law and order'. You seem to side against any socialist project that takes any kind of measures to defend itself against the imperial state's extractive capital.
Good luck with that democratic socialism though, I'm sure it's incredibly likely in the near future.
I took public transit from and around impoverished areas for years in college, and can count the number of incidents that I have witnessed on one hand. It's not 'that' common, it's just jarring when it happens because it completely pierces the artificial bubble you can place around yourself in society.
That being said, after years of driving the amount of absolutely batshit insane stuff I have seen I have lost count (though I have been driving longer). It's just that you pretty much still always have the car cocoon around you.
Ah yes, as if anarchism, liberalism, libertarianism or really any other human ideology and methodology centered entirely on egoism don't engender some strange communal cargo cult behavior. It's almost as though they too are full of shit?
It is funny to believe in 'self-determination' when you can't even recognize that all the important decisions have already been made for you. It is rich to pretend to fight against the nihilist when you only believe in yourself. So go egoist, live your life as you please, blissfully unaware that you are just as stuck the very herd of individuality that we all find ourselves in.