I understand your frustration, but it saddens me that it makes you want further divide. Hungary is currently a captured state where lawyers are rewriting constitution on their whims and are the head of the maffia as well. Orbán is using every dirty trick to hold on to power. They have already circumvented the parliament and have been ruling by decree since the immigration wave from the Syrian war (and keep extending it for covid, for the ‘ukraine’ war).

I urge you to look upon us with empathy. We are a pluralistic people who are locked under tyrants. The ruling party is extremely careful to not initiate any state aggression during protests, otherwise we’d have similar clashes as Belorussia had during the last elections. Very trying times.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t irony, but rather a reaction from the population that is realizing the shit their government is doing.

The EU link broke during copypaste.

I think it’s worth a read, it hits harder when you read about this stuff in beaurocratese. Here’s the part about Europe, but it might also interest people, that US is still adamant on Taiwanese independance. Anyhow, here ya go:

On Europe, the 2025 NSS lists, among the top security priorities for the US, reestablishing ‘strategic stability’ with Russia, enabling Europe to develop military capabilities to defend itself, preventing Europe from being dominated by an adversarial power, and ending the perception of NATO being a perpetually expanding alliance. The document’s rhetoric on culture wars targets Europe unlike any other region mentioned in the NSS. Europe is criticised both for its economic decline and for its ‘migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating … loss of national identities’, and for facing ‘a real … prospect of civilizational erasure’. The EU is only mentioned once, when it is associated with ‘other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty’. At the same time, Europe is described as ‘strategically and culturally vital’ to the US, and the NSS proposes ‘cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations’, and supporting European nations operating ‘as a group of aligned sovereign nations’

Yeah, but that beats making another freemium app or rowing Bezos’ boat. Keep your chin up, and make sure you and your own are OK. There will be no revolution if all the altruists are already bled out, you hear me?

Probably. We might all be brains in jars.

How’s the ‘deep cut’ of the post healing over? Any insights to share?

Orbán really is a trailblazer. Defanging NGOs since 2012.

Yeah, but these were a group of random civilians, not frothing anarchists.

Many people are fretting the Gestapo (and the communist counterpart), but their black cars came in the night and were pretty efficient.

This video just goes to show that the powers that be have not totally eroded the fabric of society in the US (where they are doing there their best to ‘individualize’). Everyone was being smart as to not touch the henchman, but people were still risking their wellbeing in the face of a militia.

Great video, thanks for sharing. People are good.

Are you devil’s advocating? If we just look at health care, we can see the dollars added to the ledger from kids not dying in polio.

A healthy adult likes being productive, but we are not really healthy as a whole nowadays.

Everything can be rationalized away, but if you can answer hate and fear with love and understanding, nothing in the 'Verse can stop us.

I can rationalize the top monsters behaviour back to childhood trauma, and I can see how even the last factory worker can be the same level of responsible as the president of the United States.

The key for me is finding personal responsibility for myself. I was never taught how to take proper care of myself (emotionally mainly), and I think this might be endemic to society. I might be projecting.

Because those times are over.

If you want to start a diner and pay fair wages, you will need to charge so much that people will go elsewhere. Or some shit like that, I’ve never really owned anything.

Living in squalor is bliss compared to whatever 996 might mean.

At first I thought it might be a standing point for Orbán to point out that they want this (but the bad EU, yadda yadda), but after actually reading that garbage of a propaganda piece, I can only imagine that part is boiler-plate, and noone along the chain caught it or could be bothered with correcting it.

Trump is serving up the distmantling of most US soft powers. Like how is this not a game of chicken for us to bunch up on Ireland and tell them no more fucking around with appl and alphabet. I’d love nothing more than a third level bureaucrat tucked away in Strassbourg to calculate exactly how much societal and global harm these companies cause. We could shift that into dollars (somehow?), and make sure they pay that tax, or we start filtering their sites. I rarely believe restriction is the way to go, but nothing would really be lost here.

I don’t consider anything true aviation before the squirrel suit.

“Revolutionary solidarity is always an active attack; it always involves the recovery of our own active powers that multiply in combination – in solidarity – with the active powers of others,” the document reads.

It encourages anarchists to store up anger when they witness perceived injustice, so they can turn it into violence later.

“I again open up this special compartment and put the anger of some new atrocity in it, all in anticipation of the day when I shall need this anger to bring the Empire down.”

“I perceive my anger calling me from inside this compartment, I hear the door unlatching from inside, and this new terrible question approaches me: How shall I know when it’s time for insurrection?”

It is so amazing how one side is using war-time speech to promote peace and the other (unquoted voice of the article) is using peace-time phrasing to sustain the war. The former emphasizes the urgency, the latter manipulates towards isolation with internalized shaming tactics. Truly leopardsatemyface level of journalism, 8/10, good luck with the ad revenue on that one.

Worst pirate ever, but also the best kind of person!

Well, thanks for being open. I feel we still didn’t really address my concern, but that’s alright. I see OP’s post as a legit reaction to the emotions I got from there, even if they are clearly bad faith posting here.

Hey, maybe I’m just butthurt you didn’t spoon feed me where I’m wrong, so no love lost.

I did get kinder responses, that is true. Though my main take-away wasn’t a ‘wow, these guys are awesome, I wanna read everything’, more like a ‘I’ll only comment on anything political when and if I get past the literature they recommended’.

It is alright, I am sure the revolution will do just fine without my organizational skills. I am just arguing that OP is right to troll in this instance.

Again I want to emphasize, that I am really digging this convo, but I guess I have very little to lose as well. It feels like we are communicating, but I don’t think I need to ‘be the bigger man’ by understanding the other side (these are my neuroses, no shade towards you, just where I’m coming from).

I feel you do understand me, yet don’t really concede any points or validate them.

Goodness, does it ever.

But my problem was that the group put me in a box. Nobody wanted to know my level of education, just if I read this or that book on communism.

It is a totally fair reason not to engage in argument. It’s just… How can I put it…? Just because I didn’t read a book, I can’t be knowledgable on a subject?

My guesses are that your community is so exposed to bad faith arguments, so you cannot give everyone the time of day. I haven’t gone back to reread the thread, but you can probably see how I was basically backing into a corner through the whole thread.

The intensity of the argument isn’t the problem, the illegitimacy of the argument is.

Yeah, I know OP is trolling. I see it is causing calls to not pull apart. Sure, maybe not every thread goes for the jugular on the hex server, but it fept by going against the grain I was a pariah immediately.

I mean at the end of the day it is petty squabbles on the internet, I just feel that we’re missing out if we don’t make a connection. Like, you seem smart, well read, and have a pretty novel world view that would interest me. I grew up in the context that communism is not of the devil, so it was terribbly disjarring that I finally saw a safe space to talk about the fallies of communism with hobby scientists on the matter.

I dunno, maybe I was devil’s advocating and triggered a healthy response. It still feels off that I felt shut up there and now I see members of that community pleading for more open communication here.

Yup, that was me. Sorry for mixing you up. I guess you spoke to me like a human there first, that’s why your name stuck.

I feel it still doesn’t take away too much from my argument. While OP’s post is outright malicious and is meant to start a fight, I wasn’t doing that on what I thought was a proper place for discussion.

Again, I don’t want to jump to conclusions, and I did make a mistake, but don’t you see what I’m trying to get at?