Aside from the very cool stuff already posted, the Mansu Hill Grand Monument in the DPRK is amazing. It’s so huge it’s hard to do it justice with photos. Fitting for one of the greatest acts of resistance in human history.

I also really like the style of Vietnamese posters. They look so happy and hopeful.

Every single day I am on the brink of ragequitting my job but the absolute state of the world makes me stay because I can’t afford the instability aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh

I have no idea who these people are aside from Yugopnik (alhamdulillah) but the idea is solid. I’m terminally online enough to have spent some time around the dark recesses of the internet and it’s good to have a sober view of how bad things really are in there.

Those postcards are amazing. I’ve always loved the artworks that cherish the Soviet Union’s cultural diversity.

Okay, so let’s talk about practicality, class consciousness, and dealing with the enfocers of empire as a citizen of the imperial core.

The reason why class consciousness is low in the US is because the material conditions are stacked against you successfully radicalizing large numbers of people. You, OP and others vaguely point at these conditions but I feel that you fail to actually grapple with them.

I believe a serious analysis would center the fact that American imperialism is the primary contradiction in the world, that citizens in the imperial core are net beneficiaries of imperialism and they have an interest in keeping the exploitation going. This obviously includes troops. American citizens sign up with the armed forces because being a stormtrooper for the empire is currently a lucrative deal overall. As long as the deal stays lucrative they will keep signing up and your efforts at centering their humanity and potential to become reformed and principled revolutionaries are unserious at best and a tone deaf insult towards the global south at worst. Troops aren’t tainted by evil they are bribed with superprofits and you will have an extremely hard time presenting them with a persuasive argument for world commiunism for as long as these superprofits exist.

Obviously as Marxists we believe that the only constant is change and that the material conditions that make citizens of the imperial core much more likely to fall in line and do their part in subjgating the rest of the planet are not eternal. However, the driving force behind these changes is not going to be the western left refining its strategy and sharpening its arguments, it will be the neocolonies violently routing the US war machine, one by one, until the superprofits dry up and the privileged labor aristocracy can no longer be maintained.

Once the chain of imperialism starts breaking from its weakest links the conditions will become more favorable for agitating in the core. However, the US government is not incompetent. It has waged class war against communists for more than a century and will most probably not sit by as contradictions sharpen and simply let you have a revolution. History has plenty of examples to learn from. They will come for the communists before conditions change too much in your favor. They will outlaw your parties and imprison or execute your leaders. You need to seriously consider the fact that the overwhelming majority of enforcers will turn the colonial policing tactics they are currently sharpening on the global south inwards and violently purge you instead of joining the revolution to “teach commies to shoot guns build tunnels and avoid being seen by drones” and develop your strategy accordingly.

Saying that troops are human and can be reformed is a useless platitude that prevents you from forming a useful strategy informed by a correct analysis of class struggle and contradictions. You need to engage with material reality and correctly identify which groups have revolutionary potential and which are likely to be your enemies. I think focusing your efforts on the internal colonies and marginalized people in your country is superior to wasting your time on troops, and this is due to the practical reasons detailed above, not a misplaced sense of moralism or belief in some supernatural evil. I also think that if you are a serious communist, your main concern regarding troops should be protecting yourself from them not protecting them from being unfairly demonized and your preoccupation with the latter makes you seem off in la la land.

As a non westerner whose main concern regarding American troops is getting them out of my country and not being bombed by them if we step out of line, I actually prefer hearing infinite death upon amerikkkan stormtroopers rather than yanksplaining how they didn’t realize they were going to kill children when they signed up. From my perspective, a westerner saying fuck’em is not dehumanizing the troops but recognizing the humanity of their victims and engaging in the most basic display of revolutionary defeatism available. I would obviously prefer solidarity in deeds but I understand that the material conditions inside the core do not favor the left and I don’t demand that you put yourself in danger on a futile quest to materially sabotage your military.

Considering this, I think you should focus on unlearning chauvinism, american exceptionalism and western-centric thought. Much like Nazi Germany was not defeated by German communists who were taught military tactics by disillusioned SS deserters, the war against US imperialism will not be decided by American communists convincing jarheads to defect. I am sorry if this sounds harsh and I would like to be proven wrong because that would make our shared struggle easier but you and the other Americans in this thread are not making a convincing argument.

I rewatched Stalker with my partner recently. Absolute masterpiece from the cinematography to the acting to the themes. The kind of movie that leaves you excitedly discussing it instead of going to sleep afterwards like responsible adults who need to work in the morning.

Ivan’s Childhood is another good one by Tarkovsky. Not as high on my banger list as Stalker but stuck with me all the same.

Also urging everyone to not sleep on The Ascent. It’s less of a war movie and more of a psychological drama and biblical parable set during the fascist occupation of the Byelorussian Soviet Republic. Director Larisa Shepitko was married to Elem Klimov who later went on to make the more famous Come and See and the influence is palpable. Her death in a car accident while scouting out sites for her next movie was a tragedy and a great loss for Soviet cinema.

Exactly this. I don’t remember seeing threads about reforming ICE agents when they were executing American citizens in America. Nobody was concern trolling about moralism and demonization when American citizens were rightfully enraged at being murdered in the street by voluntary paramilitary death squads. Why is it that when American troops are engaged in an active mass murder campaign across West Asia the attitude suddenly changes? Do Americans realize how dehumanizing and alienating this is for everyone else?

Come and See and it’s sibling The Ascent. Tough to watch but essential.

The White Tiger. It’s a weirder and mostly metaphorical WW2 movie about the incomplete defeat of fascism and how it’s bound to return. Hits harder and harder every year that goes by. ;_;

Stalker and Solaris by Tarkovsky.

Apocalypse Now

Scarface

Animated stuff: The End of Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Akira

Not an American and I feel like the past few weeks have been an absurd fever dream with the constant imperial troop apologia going on around here.

Yes everyone can be theoretically reformed given enough time and resources. Even the einsatzkommandos who were burning soviet villages to the ground in 1942 were probably reformable but focusing on that while they were in the middle of enacting a genocide would be obviously extremely dehumanizing towards their victims. Puyi was reformed after he was put on trial for war crimes and was no longer a threat to anyone else. We can focus on reforming imperial troops after they have been disarmed and routed and are not an active threat to the majority of the world. Western leftists need to take a break and ask themselves why out of all possible battles they are picking this particular one at this time and consider how tone deaf it feels to everyone else.

Yes, people sign up due to their material conditions not out of some moral inadequacy. The material conditions in this case are the superprofits the imperial core sucks out of the rest of the world and the fact that they have enjoyed several decades of unrivaled military hegemony. Yes some imperial troops do get got but for most of them war has been a fun human safari where they get to call overwhelming firepower on poor brown people. And yes, troops are still net beneficiaries of imperial explioitation, I can’t believe we are actually debating this. The imperial war machine being defeated and driven out of its neocolonies and made unable to outsource the worst of the suffering required to keep capitalism running to the global south will change those material conditions so your support is better directed towards the axis of resistance.

I am begging americans to stop, take a deep breath, then make a serious effort at considering the perspective and struggles of the global south that is actively being bombed, starved and terrorized. Ask yourselves if writing paragraphs upon paragraphs about reforming the people actively engaged in dropping bombs is really the best you can do right now as communists who believe in international solidarity.

I wish yanks would just shut up. Shutting up when you can’t do anything better is praxis. The burgerreich is participating in a genocide, kidnapping heads of state and pushing us closer and closer to WW3 just as my life was somewhat stabilizing for the first time in years and I’m not even allowed a little Death to Amerikkka as a treat without getting scolded by some western “leftist”.

Happy International Women’s Day, comrades. We hold up half the sky.

Neurodivergent individual who used to be the weird kid then wrecked their mental health masking here, trying to shape yourself into something you are not in order to blend in is not sustainable and will leave you burnt out and hating yourself. Try to find your people who feel safe to be around. It’s much better for your well-being. It gets easier as you get older and learn to just not give a shit but it’s an uphill struggle until you reach that point. Remember that you are not defective, just stuck in a society that is actively hostile to anyone who differs from the norm.

After realizing the history of the past century I’ve been taught in school was incomplete at best and a malicious falsification at worst and the Soviet Union wasn’t a looney tunes cartoon dictatorship that oppressed everyone around them because they were evil and cruel. Eventually decided to look up the actual history of Taiwan because libs kept libbing about it and I was getting the suspicion it wasn’t just a random smol bean island minding its own business that the evil CCP is oppressing for no reason. Turned out it was a government in exile ruling through martial law and murdering dissenters.

The comfortable euromurderghouls who sit on twitter all day cheering on as thousands of ukrainians are sent to their deaths deserve a millenia of humiliation.

Much like how you are supposed to ask eastern europeans about communism except for the ones that tell you it was actually good, which are obviously brainwashed or just grumpy old people who are nostalgic for the times they were young and their gentials worked (literally heard this one on redditfront a few years back).

I don’t think you fucked up by taking care of your health. Anyone who values you as a human being should support you and respect your need for space when you are struggling medically. I myself experienced a rough mental health crisis a few years ago when I felt like my friends were downplaying it and feeling entitled to me being present and functioning at my usual baseline while I was struggling to keep myself together. It felt horrible and dehumanizing and I am sorry you are going through this.

I remember hearing rumors for a few years now that the US military is full of evangelical doomsday cultists in the higher ranks. Always seemed like one of those actually entirely plausible conspiracy theories but I wasn’t quite ready for it to be actually true.