Stomp out the authentic revolutionary impulse and you're left with inauthentic revolutionary impulse. You don't kill people's impulse to rise up and push for change, you just get them doing it in weird, ridiculous, ineffective ways. Hence the pseudo left and "populist" right.
Most of the bizarre things about western politics in general and US politics in particular ultimately boil down to this. "Okay we need to overthrow our oppressors and change things... let's elect that rich casino guy for president." All the IDpol and shitlib stuff, same thing.
If the door to real leftward movement hadn't been bolted shut, you wouldn't see one side trying to change things by freaking out about immigrants and trans people and the other side freaking out by punching them in black bloc without either threatening power. You'd see change.
Which of course suits those in power just fine. They're happy to have the right advancing their own interests and the left shrieking impotently at anything that moves for all eternity. That's why they spent generations deliberately turning that into the existing reality.

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More from @caitoz

11 Jul
Space colonization will never happen. It's a delusion promoted by billionaires who have a vested interest in marketing the idea that the ecologically unsustainable nature of status quo capitalism can be resolved by turning humanity into a spacefaring species. They are lying.
Further reading on the fact that space colonization will never happen:
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1411304…
Space Colonization Is A Capitalist Perception Management Op

"If space colonization isn't possible, then the people who are destroying our environment for money are just deranged lunatics who must be stopped at all cost.
But they are. And we must."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/space-coloni…
Read 9 tweets
11 Jul
Sunday Funny Pages: Notes From The Edge

"A military which can afford to spend trillions on a twenty-year war which accomplished literally nothing besides making horrible people wealthy is a military that needs its budget slashed to ribbons."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/sunday-funny…
Got some fun and relatable comic strips for people to share on social media:
Read 8 tweets
11 Jul
If it had just been "let's end racism" instead of "let's end racism by supporting horrible corporate warmongers" there'd be a lot less racism today.
Any time I talk about racial justice I get people calling it identity politics when it's really not; becoming conscious of racial injustices in our society isn't about promoting any political agenda, it's about consciousness. But people think that because it's been so exploited.
If people weren't so acutely aware of the disgusting ways in which race and racism have been used to promote the political agendas of absolutely horrible people and parties, that aversion to seeing this stuff would not be there. They made institutional racism impossible to heal.
Read 4 tweets
9 Jul
The next anti-imperialist voice to rise to a position of prominence will with absolute certainty be the subject of many news reports informing us that that person is problematic for some reason, be it antisemitism or Kremlin loyalty or something else. But they will find a reason.
Try to think of an influential voice who consistently opposes western imperialism but hasn't been smeared as an antisemite, a Kremlin asset, a closet right-winger or a kook at some point. Such figures simply are not permitted to emerge without being viciously smeared anymore.
If western leftists ever want to be more than a glorified group chat, we need to stop letting this happen. We need to stop letting them use the fact that we care about things and have principles to concern troll every important movement into division and impotence.
Read 4 tweets
8 Jul
A big part of the problem with Yemen is that the photos of starving kids are too often captioned with "Ohh, look how sad" instead of "Your government is doing this on purpose."
"US assistance to the Saudi-led coalition attacking Yemen continues, even though some observers don't realize it."
commondreams.org/views/2021/07/…
The solution is to do nothing. Literally just stop doing things. This problem is caused by western interventionism, not by a lack of it. This war would've ended years ago without the US and its allies actively intervening to keep it continuing.
Read 4 tweets
8 Jul
Wait, so Tucker Carlson said the NSA is spying on him, and everyone including the NSA said he was crazy, but it turned out it was completely true, but that's fine because Carlson was trying to set up an interview with a foreign official the US doesn't like? Do I have that right?
Oh and also it's fine because it's Tucker Carlson, pardon me I forgot that bit.
Read 5 tweets

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