Dmitry is really swinging a wrecking ball today!  Representing the Left wing of 
the Global Authoritarian Detente.  And here we thought it was only the far 
right that would be gasllighting us this week.

> On Jan 11, 2021, at 14:18 , [email protected] wrote:
> 
> I have great respect for Frank. I trust he wont mistake spirited writing with 
> insult.

This is like Trump saying he was "only being sarcastic."  It’s a lie. It’s 
gaslighting.

You dismiss his life experience living in one of the regimes you worship  

> "I lived in east Germany, blah blah,”


... even as you later demand that those living outside these regimes have no 
right to so much as comment on them.  You are using hypocritical doublespeak.  
And to be clear:  insulting him.  Your response to him is NOT respectful.  If 
you think otherwise, you need some therapy.

And of course, you can cry “tone policing” as an excuse for your behaviour, 
because you’ve appropriated a few key catchphrases to stay one step ahead of 
the people who call you out.

I hesitate to join a war of words with someone who seems to buy ink by the 
barrel, but Dmitry’s whole argument is sophistic and wrong.

He tells us that the CCP is doing the will of the Chinese worker but then tells 
us we have no right or ability to analyze the very topic he’s making such bold 
assertions about.  It’s Prima Facie nonsense.  Doublespeak.

Bullying people with long diatribes that explicitly deny their right to any 
thoughts of their own, while laying down page after page after page of his own 
thoughts.  All the while insisting that none of the work any of us is doing in 
our communities has any value, because we aren’t… what?  Falling in line 
blindly behind Dmitry, without having any opinions?

It’s just a terrible thing to do in a discussion.  It’s in terrible bad faith.

> On Jan 11, 2021, at 12:35 , Dmytri Kleiner <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> MST is certainly not, MST is a direct movement of the oppressed, and firmly 
> rooted in improving their material conditions. It is you that seeks to 
> instrumentalize them as a third party to "prove" that your judgments of China 
> are somehow interesting.


This sounds a lot like your analysis and judgment!  Which you keep saying are 
not interesting!

> On Jan 11, 2021, at 12:35 , Dmytri Kleiner <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> so trust them to overcome their contradictions there, while we focus on the 
> ones here, and that we do not judge them, but defer their affairs to their 
> leadership with respect and solidarity.

Trust them!  Don’t judge them!  Defer their affairs to their leadership!

How are we to trust them and defer to them if we are intrinsically incapable of 
even basic understanding?  How the hell do you know who represents whose 
interests?

Do you pretend that no one in China rejects the communist party?  While 
withholding your judgment, your opinions, have you somehow formed an immaculate 
conception of who are the “good guys” all while refusing to even look in their 
direction, lest you form a judgmental heretical thought?  Did this happen by 
magic?

There’s a lot to slam in Dmitry’s tub-thumper of a thread, but let me also hit 
with this:

> On Jan 11, 2021, at 07:55 , Dmytri Kleiner <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> blah blah both sides

Right here we have such a profound failure of analysis and imagination that it 
should be embarrassing.  And again with the childish, bullying non-rebuttal.

There’s more than two sides!  And as usual, the Marxist take discards race, 
gender and any other form of identity as a distraction.  Or should I say “Blah 
blah blah racism,” as Dmitry puts it.  Ask the Uighurs, happily marching into 
boxcars!  

"Did we say death camps?  We meant happy camps!”

I see a number of factions that don’t fit into the 2-node “us and them” form 
that makes it so easy to shut off your brain and just start pounding the faces 
of the people facing you.

On the one side, we have post-capitalist authoritarianism, as represented by 
Trump and co., by AfD, by Brexit and Farage, by Putin, by Bolsonaro, by Xi, the 
House of Saud, and by others.  Using the state monopoly on borders and violence 
to impose one-culture rule.  Destruction of the planet is a problem for future 
leaders.

On the other side, we have neoliberal capitalist imperialism, as represented by 
Bush, Reagan, in my country by O’Toole and Co., Boris Johnson, etc.  Using 
Democracy as a safety valve to solve social problems before they get too big to 
handle with force, but of course, using force when it’s the easiest.

On the other side, we have liberal capitalist democracy, as represented by 
Biden, Clinton, Trudeau, Macron, Merkel, et al.  Where mass movements can be 
organized and weaponized to keep core safely exploiting periphery while 
maximizing the return on human resource investment.  Antiracism and Feminism as 
methods of expanding the talent pool for core leadership and reduce friction in 
the economic equilibrium and growth.

On the other side (that’s four so far!) we have Social Democracy (like the NDP 
here, Bernie’s more pragmatic supporters), true believers in identity-based 
social justice and socio-economic redistribution who just want to get there 
without heads on spikes in the village square, perhaps fatally naive in 
believing their opponents subscribe to the same gentle doctrine.

And then we get (while still oversimplifying and skipping steps) to Communism, 
Democratic Socialism etc…  

But to the hard-boiled communist there’s only two sides: Communists, and the 
Bad Guys.

- Flick
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