EXTRACTS from
WHY SOCIALISM? by Albert Einstein, an article published in the US magazine May 1949

1/ Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.

Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has—as is well known—been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.

2/

Extracts from "Exterminate All the Brutes" by Sven Lindqvist

The title comes from "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

Book is about genocides carried out by European colonialists who (despite their high-flown rhetoric) considered indigenous peoples inferior or non-human
1/ Hannah Arendt showed how racism is central to imperialism, colonialism, occupation

#Gaza #WestBank

2/

"When the Israelis pick up guns, or the Poles, or the Irish, or any white man in the world says “give me liberty, or give me death,” the entire white world applauds.
When a black man says exactly the same thing, word for word, he is judged a criminal and treated like one and everything possible is done to make an example of this bad n____ so there won't be any more like him"
- James Baldwin "The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their "vital interests" are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the "sanctity" of human life, or the "conscience" of the civilized world"
- James Baldwin

Extracts from "Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims" by Edward Said (1979)

Very little is said about what Zionism entailed for non-Jews who happened to have encountered it; for that matter, nothing is said about where (outside Jewish history) it took place, and from what in the historical context of nineteenth-century Europe Zionism drew its force. To the Palestinian, for whom Zionism was somebody else's idea imported into Palestine and for which in a very concrete way he or she was made to pay and suffer, these forgotten things about Zionism are the very things that are centrally important. Edward Said (continued)

Present political and cultural actualities make...an examination extraordinarily difficult, as much because Zionism in the postindustrial West has acquired for itself an almost unchallenged hegemony in liberal "establishment" discourse, as because in keeping with one of its central ideological characteristics, Zionism has hidden, or caused to disappear, the literal historical ground of its growth, its political cost to the native inhabitants of Palestine, and its militantly oppressive discriminations between Jews and non-Jews.

“It is often very illuminating...to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion?”
- Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion “...we can best understand the furies of war and politics by remembering that almost the whole of each party believes absolutely in its picture of the opposition, that it takes as fact, not what is, but what it supposes to be the fact”
- Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

"Silence in the face of injustice is complicity"
- Henrik Ibsen

#Gaza "The measure of a civilised society is how it treats its dissenters"
- Henrik Ibsen

#repressionofprotest

George Orwell, Politics and the English Language: -
"The words [fascism], democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides ... Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different" George Orwell: -
"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?"

"Love of Zionism in West has always had a troubled relationship with genocide. Its origins as a political ideology lay in an era when European empires routinely justified the exterminability of what they considered to be inferior people & uncivilised barbarians"
- Article by @UssamaMakdisi in @jacobin
1/? "The latest instalment of philozionism [Oct to Dec 2023] exposes more clearly than ever the ruthless double standard that underlies it: Israeli history and life are cherished; Muslim and Christian Palestinian history and life are fundamentally devalued"
- @UssamaMakdisi
2/?

Hannah Arendt was one of the most brilliant writers on the human condition of the 20th C. She wrote this about PROPAGANDA. Very relevant in 2023.

"Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.” “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil”
- Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind

Otto Rene Castillo was a Guatemalan revolutionary and poet. He was executed by the Guatemalan Army on March 19, 1967. This is a translation of his poem Intelectuales Apoliticos.

1/? APOLITICAL INTELLECTUALS

One day
the apolitical intellectuals
of our land
will be interrogated
by the poorest of people.
They will be asked what they did
while their community
was extinguished,
like a sweet fire, small and alone.

2/?

The great Bertrand Russell on my political hero Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine, though prominent in two revolutions and almost hanged for attempting to raise a third, is grown, in our day, somewhat dim. To our greatgrandfathers, he seemed a kind of earthly Satan, a subversive

1/? infidel rebellious alike against his God and his King. He incurred the bitter hostility of three men not generally united: Pitt, Robespierre, and Washington. Of these, the first two sought his death, while the third carefully abstained from measures designed to save his life.
2/?

“Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father’s store or farm”
- C. Wright Mills “If you do not specify and confront real issues, what you say will surely obscure them. If you do not embody controversy, what you say will be an acceptance of the drift to the coming human hell”
- C. Wright Mills

Oliver Cromwell dismissing Rump Parliament,
20 April 1653

"It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.

1/? Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.

Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

2/?

The Tory Govt EXPECT mass protests

That is why they are lining up the most illiberal, brutal, anti-freedom laws to criminalise protestors

THIS MUST NOT STAND The Tory Govt EXPECT mass strikes

That is why they are lining up the most draconian, illiberal, anti-freedom laws to curtail union rights and the right to strike

THIS MUST NOT STAND

"George Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Aldous Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history.

1/2 As Huxley saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think"
- Neil Postman

2/2

THIS EXTRACT from Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail", 16 April 1963, is for all the COMFORTABLE, COMPLACENT, DUNDERHEAD media commentators criticising @JustStop_Oil

King addresses "white moderates"; let's just say for current purposes "moderates"

1/? "First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not ... the Ku Klux Klanner, but

2??

The Problem Is Civil Obedience
By Howard Zinn (extracts of speech, Nov 1970)

I start from the supposition that the world is topsy-turvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail & the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and
1/? the wrong people are out of power, that the wealth is distributed in this country & the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth. I start from the supposition that we don’t have to say too much about this because
2/

Just finished #FordeReport

Some thoughts
At the centre of the Report is the toxic relationship between the Party "Civil Service" (HQ) and Corbyn's Office (LOTO)
Forde does a great deal of blaming both sides BUT LOTO had a democratic mandate that HQ were trying to obstruct
1/? A number of times, Forde is concerned about a "hierarchy of protected characteristics, a hierarchy of racism..."
I think he means antisemitism cases were given higher priority than say anti-black racism or sexism or Islamophobia, for example
2/?

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken" Carl Sagan “Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception”
- Carl Sagan

"If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion"
- Noam Chomsky "All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume"
- Noam Chomsky

THREAD on monarchy taken from Common Sense written in 1776 by my political hero, Thomas Paine

"But there is another and great distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is the distinction of men into KINGS and SUBJECTS. ...

1/2 how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth inquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind"

2/2