Never seen that guy before

Pretty clear similarity to historical antisemitic tropes, even this one from the 1990s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Merchant

The most charitable interpretation of this guy’s face becoming viral is that the sneer is a sort of Kubrick stare, a depiction of the moment a person is debased from all morality and gives in fully to evil. This is the only reading that doesn’t make this phenomenon at least unconsciously antisemitic.

If we’re being honest, the image has likely gone viral because the guy looks almost exactly like an antisemitic illustration. There is little upside to weaponizing it against Zionism. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s an op to lend credence to the claims of the “antisemitic left” opposing Zionism.

For all share links:

• copy link
• paste into incognito tab
• go to expand the url
• delete every unnecessary url parameter. For YouTube, all that is necessary is the v=abc123 to identify the video

These objects that blur the line between star and planet are intriguing. It stands to reason that some weird physics might happen that doesn’t fit neatly into a standard story of accretion followed by either ignition or dud. For those edge cases, perhaps ignition can start and then choke, given some external impulses from the neighboring star, for example. That might explain the metal-rich composition, kinda similar to a car burning “rich” when the engine is not maintaining good combustion. Not basing this on any hard science, just daydreaming a bit

The presentation is misleading bc the question at the bottom isn’t what was asked to the poll participants. They were asked if they have a favorable view of socialism and of capitalism. It’s possible to say yes to both.

Poll question:

Just off the top of your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of each of the following?

There are minimalist eink phones these days. I haven’t used one yet, but people seem to like the Bigme Hibreak Pro.

I disable as many animations and flashing colors as I can, because it’s healthier for my brain

That’s a lot of unnecessary words blocking the way to the factual end of the sentence: “Estonia and Finland have almost fully closed,” (unilaterally), “their border crossings with Russia.” The lengthy paragraph is as many excuses. They won’t make clear that it’s not Russia deciding to make Helsinki–Tallinn travel difficult.

If race is merely a determinant of class then there should be no material difference between a black worker and a white worker.

Nobody is saying that the anti racist fight isn’t important

You are when you say there are 0 leftists in the US and they’re all Nazis. Logically you extend this to victims of US imperialism who live within the US. You don’t get to say shit like that and then claim solidarity with their fight.

nobody is denying ethic origins of an group almost always determine their place in the class struggle

Race is not subordinate to class in the American context. It is not merely a determinant of class.

It’s your industrialized, systemic, internalized, nazilike racism that I’m denouncing

Where’s your antithesis, Marxist? Will the current USian values lead to socialism? Also some of your takes reek of post modernism.

Any labor emancipation in the US necessarily must also be racial emancipation. Capitalism in the Americas is a racial capitalism. You cannot just take Capital volume 1, which presumes equality of labor, and apply it to a context of unequal labor on the basis of race.

Race is not an obsession, it’s a material fact in today’s world. You are saying reactionary things based on vibes. The utopian socialists thought money could be abolished by decree. Likewise it is utopian to think that race can be abolished by anything other than a struggle against its basis, ie the racial capitalism currently existing across the Americas.

Don’t you dare drop an Angela Davis on me, the intersectionality debate is still too liberalized in the US. I hardly believe your take is better than hers and even hers, a good one, isn’t the best one worldwide.

To be a good Marxist you have to analyze things in their context. You should be learning about America in its own context, not applying some universal theory of race.

stop being USAmerican

On one hand this is a privileged suggestion to make, on the other hand it’s irrational because where the hell will 350M people physically go? Or do you mean like “just have a revolution” lol

your values are all fucked up since birth

You keep regarding the whole people of the US as a monolith. Idealist, undialectical, arguably racist. In the first place, the US has a long history of racial and other internal struggles. Where does race figure in your understanding of the US? Do you understand US beyond the headlines you read, beyond a simplistic class analysis that flattens everything to worker and capitalist? This is why I mentioned Europe because this kind of “analysis” of the US is ubiquitous here.

Even calling themselves American is a filthy exceptionalism.

In the abstract yeah… but that’s the way history went. Complaining about a misnomer while ignoring historical usage is ahistorical and petty.

So what are you doing to fix it? What specifically can US left do better?

The opposite of essentialism isn’t individualism.

Marx wasn’t American, so what’s your explanation of his insight into the brainworm of essentialism?

Read for example his 6th thesis on Feuerbach, part of which says, “the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.”

You can’t get a theory of class society if your conception of society is one that reduces things into ideal categories or essence that says, in the final analysis, that the explanation of difference is essence, not the historical-material conditions in which an individual (or a class) is situated. Like that’s the whole triumph of Marx’s materialism over the Feuerbachian materialism. Both Lenin and Mao also had similar writings on this same problem so this isn’t some esoteric debate.

It’s a fact, not a view, that America has 350 million people with incredibly diverse social circumstances and class position.

You are making an argument of the same structure as any other essentialist argument, which is flawed thinking in all contexts including this one. Read what Marx had to say about notions of a “human essence” and think about why he disliked that reasoning so much. It gets right to the heart of his materialist dialectic and that’s why you are incorrect to make such a lazy statement about a society, as though each individual is reducible to an essence

Im way more suspicious of people who love to point the finger at others for not being “left enough”. America has 350 million fucking people in it, you can find every single type of person there. Including the most radical communists.

This is cringe and I’m rather sick of it after living in Europe for a while. I hear many European “leftists” complain about the US in the same way that liberals in the US complain about , it’s just a very annoying and lazy analysis. Communists are supposed to be concrete, not fall into dogma

The thing that is “somewhat different” is that time has moved forward and circumstances have changed. The US empire is declining and the Global South is on the rise. Time is running out before it becomes impossible for the US to maintain its position in West Asia, if it was even possible at the beginning of 2026.

I believe that Biden would have escalated with Iran, possibly militarily. It was reported, shortly before Trump’s transition, that Biden was considering options to strike Iran if they develop a nuclear weapon. I think that phrasing leaves a lot unsaid, because realistically what it means is that Biden considered striking Iran on the same pretense that Trump used, a pretense that we know is false.

Biden tried to force Trump into certain geopolitical stances on Ukraine, Iran, Russia, China, and probably others (Venezuela?) by escalating where necessary, eliminating any pivot.

All this is beside the point anyway. It does not matter if Trump is a special, unique little man who truly changed the direction of thought (lol) inside the state. The “waste” of billions of dollars is not important to anyone who cares about the human beings who felt the lethal side of that expenditure. The “waste” is by design, for the purpose of graft to the MIC. If this $300B was a waste, then so is every dollar we already spend normally, because its purpose is for graft.

Leninism didn’t itself generate the whole revolution. They were just ready to act when the conditions were there. In an alternate history, say if WW1 was delayed by 20 years, we wouldn’t have seen a revolution in 1917. The Bolsheviks would have been just a small party desperately propagandizing just like the rest of us. It’s not an indictment of the theory, just a recognition of how history turns and that individual effort does not act upon the world in isolation from the broader historical conditions.