the earth is HEALING

I guess I still don’t really see what your initial comment here is supposed to contribute in response to OP, which isn’t really about being for or against child soldiers, or whether some child soldiers are good and others are bad.

OP isn’t really even about child soldiers per se. It’s about media narratives associated with images of children handling weapons in the contexts of two conflicts, one of the differences between which being that in only one case does the commentary on the image venture as to suggest that the child pictured has been conscripted as a soldier. It’s also about, perhaps more crucially, how allegations of child soldierdom are being used to justify killing children generally, across a whole, captive, civilian population, and that, again, in only one of those two contexts.

(My question was searching for an interpretation that connects GGP back to either of those, which are what the OP is about.)

Meaning

Child soldiers are children as well as soldiers

?

arm the moderate gays

My father was recently diagnosed with a form of cancer that will probably kill him. For the past few weeks, pretty much the only things I’ve thought about have been my father’s looming death, my virtual estrangement from him, the genocidal siege of Gaza, and the past hundred years or so of the history of Palestine. Needless to say, I couldn’t keep that up. I had to make room for some lightness in my life and in my mind.

The past few days have been a relief.

I’ve reconciled with my father somewhat. He’s still often stressful to be around, especially in his own house, but I feel better equipped to handle and pass over tense moments with him than I’ve ever been in the past. It’s been good visiting him and my mom. I’m only now starting to look forward to going home.

I’m reading fiction again for the first time in a long time. I’d forgotten how easy it is compared to history or political theory; how effortless reading can be when you’re not trying to take notes, when you’re not stopping after nearly every sentence to make sure that you’re paying attention and understand well. What I’ve been ‘reading’ is actually an audiobook. My mom and I have been cozying ourselves up next to a shared Bluetooth speaker, sometimes with a bowl of popcorn or candy like we would for a movie. It’s been a delight! The novel itself has already been thrilling and intriguing for both of us, and we must only be like a third of the way through. (This October, my mom expressed interest in educating herself about what led up to current events, and so she agreed to read three books on the history of Palestine with me. We’re still committed to that, but good God is this novel so much easier!)

I’ve been playing a relaxing, delightful, and sometimes very difficult videogame for at least a couple hours each day. A lot of my attention has gone to music, to the cool weather (which I love), and to the young puppy who moved in here recently (although my own dog, who is visiting along with me, kinda hates him).

It’s good to have a break from all my ruminations, from current events, and from my job. I wish I could have another week off somehow, but this’ll do.

I wonder what CPUSA’s policies and statements/principles were back then, and whether they then held to the ‘internal colony’ line. I don’t know the history well enough to place that, but maybe another comrade browsing does.

What year is that image from?

Let him know that you think those anti-communist materials are wrong or misleading. Offer to explore some of these topics in depth with him in some format(s) that’s agreeable to both of you (video, books, podcasts, whatever). Let him pick some sources, and you pick some sources, and then you both discuss them together.

Most people who are anti-communist are reflexively so, and have simply never heard a lot of key history. Just studying/exploring/discussing communism and its history can undo a lot of that.

As tempting as it might be, you don’t have to go through everything in the propaganda they’ve sent you sentence by sentence and then debunk it. Just have a conversation with them about it and take a look at the real stuff together.

It’s especially weird that they did so rather vaguely. It’s not like they were like ‘fascist figure X was right about historical fact Y in context Z, and here’s why I think that matters’. They just favorably compare fascist ‘geopolitical analysis’ to your blog post, in general. That does seem like more or less just praising fascists to me.

Made curious by some of the other comments here connecting that Redditor’s abusive language and refusal to really say anything of substance beyond ‘I don’t like this’ and Maoism, I just spent kind of a long time looking back through that person’s comments trying to figure out what about their thinking is particularly Maoist, especially in the context of that series of insults they wrote on your post, which don’t, to me, reveal any particular way of thinking so much as a temperament.

I did eventually find some Maoist language across their comments. They probably do self-identify as a Maoist or Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, though I didn’t see a comment to that effect.

But what I noticed more was that pretty much their only mode of discussion was verbal combat, and maybe in some cases declarations on certain questions or definitions of terms. There wasn’t a lot I could recognize as instruction, exploration, or listening, although I imagine they’d consider some of their declarations educational.

I’m tired. I can’t think. I don’t have a thesis here. But OP, I’m sorry that someone took it upon themselves to shit on your work instead of offering you feedback or simply saying nothing.

You repeat the phrase ‘in good faith’ several times here but what you’re describing is still just entryism

It’s just another iteration of the Eternal September. Nothing too surprising imo

The crackerverse would holler otherwise, but the crackerverse would holler anyway.

This is also true in Israel. Due to the current state of the West Bank, a two-state solution would essentially require partition all over again, an opening of a new instance of the same kind of wound as 1948 constituted.

When the Israeli Jewish settlements were removed from Gaza, there was a huge uproar inside Israel. If the Israeli government did that in the West Bank today, it’d be a huge reversal and they’d have to contend with a very vocal, very armed, right-wing religious extremist faction going absolutely nuts over it.

Alternatively, if the Israeli government proposed to do land swaps instead (which they’d probably want to do since the West Bank is of special religious and historical significance to Jews, much more so than most of the territory the state of Israel now claims for itself), that could mean further mass displacement for Palestinians living in the West Bank, plus the same kind of domestic problem for the Israeli government in whatever territory they would give over to the Palestinians in exchange.

There’s no way to do a two-state solution that doesn’t require mass displacement by force, possibly for both sides. I don’t understand how that inflames things any less than decolonializatlon/reconstruction/reparations to transition to a single multinational state or a confederation with free movement across the whole territory or something like that.

Israeli Jews certainly cry out loudly today if anyone talks about a one state solution, but there would also be a massive outcry from them if steps were taken to actually realize a two-state solution, too.

(If, when they have a hand strong enough to actually meaningfully negotiate with Israel and hold them to account, Palestinians (including the Palestinian diaspora), should choose a ‘two-state solution’, you won’t find me opposing that. But I really struggle to see how that’s possible given current realities on the ground.)

In the ‘international community’ (i.e., among certain world leaders), this still seems to be the consensus. The idea is motivated not so much by a thought of what is most just, but what is (supposedly) most possible to get both parties to agree to. And China is here trying simply to echo that consensus.

I think at this point, though, it’s hard not to see that this ‘consensus’ is a zombie, and the territorial and political viability of such a solution is visibly, obviously dead. That does make renewed endorsements of a 'two-state solution’ untimely and even uncanny things to see, imo.

I agree that a single state covering the whole of mandatory Palestine seems more just. Palestinians deserve the right of return, full freedom of movement, and all national and civic rights, across the entire territory. I don’t see how a multi-state solution facilitates that.

I also don’t really know how to ‘help’ as an outsider, with a two-state solution. For a one-state solution, we have a model in the original anti-apartheid movement and an existing international movement in BDS. What would helping Palestinians ‘win’ a partitioned state even look like at this point?

the gradual technical changes, from bullets to gas to bombs to depravation of water

I’d like to emphasize with you just how gradual that has been, comrade. Israel has been using criminal siege tactics against civilians, like we’re seeing today, including the deprivation of access to electricity, food, clean water, and medical supplies, since at least the 1982 invasion of Lebanon— over forty years ago. But unlike the 1982-2000 war in Lebanon, of course, each time Israel has ratcheted up these techniques against Gaza, the Gazans were already and continuously surrounded, penned in, and totally dependent on the IDF for all of their infrastructure needs. The Gazans were pre-invaded, occupied ahead of time, pre-besieged.

In the particular case of water, contaminated drinking water had already been a major source of disease in Gaza for years before this latest episode of escalating deprivation. There has been an astonishingly prolonged, unremitting march towards this point.

The upvote/downvote numbers on platforms like this can be a powerful temptation to vanity, and addictive.

You have the right idea. Go spend time with people who love you.

Last week someone here called me a ‘fucking worm’ (repeatedly) and a ‘little baby’, and told me I should be ‘erased from existence’, along with a pile of other insults. (Someone else reported and the mods banned them, in addition to deleting the worst of their comments. Thank you.) That outburst was in response to me trying to voice what is, imo, another aspect of this same exact problem. That experience naturally got me thinking even more about this pattern, and my own relationship to it.

I’ve been cruel and domineering online before, especially in my late teens and early twenties. Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out how to be critical and steadfast in my criticism without ever being vicious.

Finding one’s way to communism means, among other things, becoming more intimately aware of horrible, painful facts about imperialism past and present. There’s also a real sense of alienation that comes with rejecting the dominant ideologies in one’s own culture and society. I think that unfortunately often, among young men especially, ‘conversion’ to socialism does less to challenge certain patriarchal attitudes to violence and domination than to direct those attitudes to new targets.

It’s perhaps an especially difficult thing when learning the real history of socialist revolutions involves coming to understand that revolutionary violence can be truly necessary, that ‘terrorism’ is a label that has been weaponized against righteous and successful liberation struggles, that failure to suppress counterrevolution has historically meant defeat at the hands of brutal, brutal, reaction, and so on.

Emphasis on the material as a historical force, as something which generates ideology as a kind of rationalization, can also be misused to downplay or turn away from the role of the subjective. If one is already so inclined, it is easy to dismiss any call to introspection as idealism— especially when one sees radlibs make such calls in bad faith and treat them as the limit of politics.

The road to socialist understanding for men and boys raised under patriarchy is riddled with pitfalls. The distance and abstractness of online interaction don’t help here, either.

Interestingly to me, and aside from the positions of the IMT (do they support BDS today?), some dissident Israelis like Shlomo Sand used to oppose BDS on similar grounds, advocating instead for change from within. Sand has said he had to give that notion up in the face of reality, that Israeli society is simply too racist to change or be overturned except with massive pressure from without. (That’s perhaps an idealist reading of the reality, confusing symptom for cause.)

I think he says it at some point in this interview. Apologies if I’ve misremembered the source! If anyone watches, they can let me know. :)

My guy, you just absolutely exploded into a vicious, personal attack in response to a reminder of some basic elements of male socialization under patriarchy and a suggestion that they might play into war voyeurism.

You just responded to a report that you failed to connect with a certain emotional dimension of a post in a comradeship community with an attempt to dominate and punish, via verbal abuse, the person who pointed that out.

I genuinely think there is something wrong with you if it doesn’t inspire you.

Jumping onto a post about the immense heaviness of reckoning with the human toll of this bombing campaign in Gaza and the discounting, detached way it is discussed in the media with what amounts to

What do you mean? We get to watch spectacular violence like the ground war, isn’t that enlivening?

is an empathy failure.

I’ve seen some footage like what you’ve linked. It’s true that the courage of the resistance fighters in Gaza is remarkable and inspiring, and that this courage stands in contrast to the hesitancy of the IDF to even set foot on the ground they purport to invade.

But does that really so uplift the totality of these events that it makes them somehow a pleasure to follow? And are clips like that really very informative about that totality? I think one can only answer ‘yes’ to those questions if one is selectively detached from certain facts as well as feelings.

If anger is easier to access than grief, why? If it’s easier to focus on the ground war than the siege, why? If justified violence is easier to witness or contemplate than suffering, why?

For someone fighting on the ground, the fight itself is the answer to those questions. But for you and me?

It’s almost like we were taught as little boys that violence and anger are our purview, but grief and care are not; that to countenance sadness is to approach defeat.