🧵 Dialectical Materialist Analysis of Land Back / Indigenous Liberation: a Thread🧵
I have seen SO many communists display a range of misunderstanding ranging from honest ignorance to aggressive bigotry pertaining to the indigenous concept of LAND BACK.
So let's discuss!
First, indigenous people are NOT a monolith. I can't speak for all indigenous people. Land Back means different things for different indigenous people. This relates to the Dialectical Materialist concept which in Vietnamese socialism we call "private and common."
Just like with communism, Land Back manifests in different ways for individual indigenous peoples (private aspects), but there are also commonalities which exist across most indigenous movements.
Some have said I "make my content for an American audience" and appeal to USA viewers. One thing I'm proud of is how international my audience is. The people in the USA I'm most interested in reaching are the marginalized and oppressed: black, indigenous, trans, migrants, etc.
I make my content to try and offer a Vietnamese communist perspective that seldom gets heard directly. Unfortunately, NOBODY can live beyond the shadow of USA politics. I won't apologize for commenting on the largest terrorist nation in the world and how it threatens us.
In fact, I will talk about whatever the hell I want. I'm not here to serve your expectations of what a Vietnamese person should discuss or sound like. I interview comrades from Brazil, China, Thailand, Chile, India, all over the world. And we are all concerned with the USA.
🧵 A Dialectical Materialist's Guide to Social Change: A Thread 🧵
Any time I talk about secondary contradictions of class society - land back/indigenous liberation, dismantling patriarchy, trans rights, dismantling whiteness, etc. - I hear the same objections.
Let's discuss.
1. "These are all distractions! You are dividing the working class! Ignore this idpol and focus on CLASS!"
This is a gross misunderstanding of the dialectical materialist worldview. All things, phenomena, and ideas are defined by INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL RELATIONS.
The working class is not a static, monolithic entity. It is composed of objective social relations between real people. There exist secondary contradictions (many created and exacerbated intentionally by capitalism) which need to be negated.
Remember: If the colonizers won't join your side you can always send them packing, like we did in 1973
Hanoi Hannah invited them to join our side and help us fight for liberation but nobody accepted our lovely hospitality!
Today there are tens of thousands of foreigners living in Vietnam, and we welcome them. I even married one, and he plans to become a citizen, which I think is wonderful. But we won't be your slaves ever again!
We need SOLIDARITY against the pro-imperialist/anti-communist, white supremacist faux-left. Right now they are controlling BIPOC socialists & indigenous people through fear, silencing us with mass harassment, softening young whites up for fascism with "white genocide" mythology.
If you think land back "goes too far" then what are you going to do? Send indigenous victims of genocide a fucking gift card every year?
These people push white supremacist talking points and build fear and distrust of the colonized then accuse US of "dividing the left." Classic DARVO: deny, attack, reverse victim/offender."
Quick example of sophistry and rhetorical trickery to muddy the waters. In a 20 minute video discussing how Umberto Eco's semiotic analysis of fascism is being abused by certain leftists, Tali made ONE comment (not even close to the main point) that Eco was not a socialist...
The MAIN point was that the 14 points can't be used as a "definition" of fascism in the way many leftists use them, that they have to be viewed in the context of semiotics to be of any use. But we got dozens of comments fixating on the "Eco wasn't doing socialist analysis" aside.
This is obviously a deflection, ignoring the main point that semiotics can't be used the way so many leftists are using them, and that trying to shoehorn these semiotic "14 points" leads to misunderstanding and mislabeling of people as fascists who are not.