I hope this belongs here, since it’s not a news article.
I live in Europe and I’ve mostly been the guy people listened to when they admitted to not feeling well informed on international conflict situations like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and US/NATO’s more secretive and subversive conflicts/coups and backroom deals with autoritarian regimes around the world, all in the name of democracy and freedom.
Can’t help it, I’m curious, I like reading books and I think connecting the dots is rewarding for my ADHD. The NATO connections to post WWII-nazis, GLADIO and other stay-behind groups, the CIA ties - it was all thrilling and interesting, but unfortunately part of our reality. During the Wikileaks days even the people most critical of my assessments came and admitted that they were wrong and that they now understood they had been duped. And now, they said, “we know better”. They all went back to reading the very news that consistently lied to them.
There still was a semi-reliable left/left-centrist press in Europe that you could point the few normies allergic to “not verified by authority” reporting to, mostly written by a few journalists who didn’t bend as much to pressure of falling in line with drumming for the democracy exporting business.
What happened? Of course the big media companies always always bent to the will of the warmongering establishment but there were always some sane voices doing somewhat decent investigative journalism targetting the common narratives, even if just to be able to deflect criticism by pointing to their work. How did they get rid of almost every sane voice? Did the mostly senior editors just die off/retire?
Today I am surrounded by people telling me obvious lies with a blind conviction of almost religious zealotry that can often be debunked with 2 minutes of research in spite of the downfall of major SEO and “24/7 breaking news repitition” infested search engines.
I always knew that most people wouldn’t spend the time on research to get an understanding of how this world functions and that Western democracy and liberty are basically strawmen that can be weaponized against anyone who stands in the way of Western interests. But I also always knew that I could rely on some people being receptive of well sourced information. My convincing of some people of course didn’t put a dent anywhere but you at least felt like it was still possible to reach people and breakt through the programming.
Even the people calling themselves antifascists are now ignoring the obvious neo Nazi-ties of Ukrainian Banderites while chanting OUN slogans. People are openly calling for censorship of the Internet in the name of “safety” and if you equate “fact checks” by the very people opposed to investigative journalism with the obvious risks of centralized Ministries of Truth being erected in front of our eyes, they vehemently disagree and demand that “freezepeach” must come to an end.
I’ve never been this worried about the world I’m living in. The US and Western elites are hellbent on provoking a war with every nation that’s no longer willing to bend to their unipolar world order, with Europeans taking the brute of it, whether it be economically or, should the war escalate, even on future frontlines.
Is there any serious opposition left? How do you cope with the reality we’re headed for? I’ve never been an optimist but I managed to keep my pessimism in check, until now.
The culture wars are extremely useful to distract people into meaningless nonsense that will change nothing.
I avoid using that term. It has nothing really to do with ‘culture’, it’s just hateful people getting mad.
Hmm, I need a replacement for it then. It’s commonly well understood.
Listen to this podcast ep on the topic, I forget what they recommend: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-157-how-the-culture-war-label-is-used-to-trivialize-life-and-death-economic-issues
Thanks, I’ll give it a go but I’m already deeply sceptical of this from reading the summary. It looks like some liberals are annoyed with our name for their relatively trivial liberal issues.
It reminds me of this thread from earlier today.
The point of “trivialising” these things is that they are trivial, in the context of the wider world. The USA is less than 5% of the world and people will try to convince you that their domestic issues of screeching at each other about manspreading is important and that you need to vote for one side of their global death-cult mass-murdering regime or 1) The woke mob will make you gay or 2) the “democracy” will fall… and other hysterical ensuing dramas will unfold unless you enable them.
Yes, LGBT issues etc. are important in the USA, to Americans. But they’re nothing, nothing compared to the malign activities of the USA around the world. The people there are kept constantly raging about relatively minuscule issues compared to what they enable to happen by supporting their rotten regime.
This comment puts it well, though there are others in there.
They are not trivial in the context of the world. Colonial powers have suppressed gender/sexuality around the world for their benifit for centuries. You are basically just repeating the corrosive nonsense that gender and sexuality are only issues for those infected with a fabled bourgeoisie decadence, which itself is a narrative that is backed by western power brokers and leveraged by bourgeoisie nationalists.
Ffs, two spirit people were fed to giant war dogs by colonizers in California. The violence surrounding these issues cannot be understated, and reducing it down from anything but genocide is indeed trivializing it.
They are trivial in the context of the world. The USA is less than 5% of the world’s population.
And still do, yet they use gender/sexuality at home to justify their continued imperialism abroad. Take Uganda, the USA has sent its Christian missionaries there for decades to inculcate them with homophobia, now when it’s convenient, they sell pro-LGBTQ rhetoric to help them justify more imperialist control over their victims. If you t honestly think that American ruling classes give the slightest shit about LGBTQ rights then you’ve been successfully conned.
Is that all? Really? Far, far worse has been done across the globe by America’s butchers. That’s nothing in comparison.
Fuck you. Get some fucking reading comprehension skills or fuck off.
no u
Comrade, I suggest you investigate the episode before you make a judgment, as you are literally falling into the trope episode discusses. Also, I don’t get what you mean by “our name” considering the podcast is a socialist media criticism podcast and the term was coined by right-wingers, are you a right winger? They are US based, but it’s applicable worldwide. And like the other ‘country breakfast’ said, law enforcement or vigilantes murdering people and getting away with it is not an issue of “culture” as right-wingers would have people believe. The gist of the episode is how right-wingers and liberals downplay the real material roots of these issues and how they are used as a smoke screen for minor electoral wins, changing little and obfuscating the evil Imperial nature of America and western countries through media manipulation. I sense if you would listen to the episode, you would agree with what it is saying.
As far as I can tell it’s purely a liberal podcast. Neither of its contributors claim to be socialists and the premise of the podcast you linked is literally liberalist manipulation.
This is quite literally right wing liberalism. The notion that emancipation of the individual is a rope that can be pushed to emancipate all peoples. What’s the idea here exactly? That if you make life easy for LGBTQ Americans then they’ll cease being reactionary and stop their support for the USA? I really don’t get the angle here.
It’s an issue of American culture, white supremacism and chauvinism.
This was my point. FFS. You just disagreed with the term and offered nothing in replacement.
lol did you actually listen to it yes or no.
I did not.