Yeah honestly I totally agree.

The idea that religion would be on the side resisting oppression or against it inherently is flawed. We see religion used to justify just about anything. Even within the same system and same struggles. You could replace religion with just about any societal construct and the issue comes from the leaders of said constructs and their own struggles, to be opportunistic and aid imperialism or to fight for the workers, and the workers in their stringent trust in the leaders. Just the same issues different name.

But because dialectical materialism is exactly that, materialism, religion as a concept tends to be a kind of antithetical thought.

I’d be okay with that just to have as a placeholder for all future events like this.

what on earth could have possibly happened. I wish we could still see comments that resulted in the ban cuz im so curious how people go so far offtrack they can get banned for a comment.

理由はアメリカの戦争ためと思います。あめりかはもっと兵器加工欲しいそうです日本で使いますよ。アメリカから日本は離すべきんですて自立するいりますよ、

The reason is probably so America can use them for more weapons manufacturing. Japan needs to gain its independence from the US.

Yeah opposition parties have been really rough. A vast majority of them are conservative with only 1-2 ones that could even be called reformist liberal. Japan has the oldest unmodified constitution in the world. It’s constitution was also modeled after America’s and it’s a prime example of why adding more parties doesn’t fix anything. It’s such a gridlock and even with the recent election getting a majority with one party, which has rarely happened, it’s unlikely to actually result in any meaningful change like constitutional amendments. Japan is really built for “status quo”

I live in an area where most of the population is religious including fellow comrades. The idealism portion might be a difficult hurdle to cross over for them. I’m not sure how I would address it honestly.

Pamphlets are mainly meant to educate and agitate those that are already willing so I really doubt this needs any changing. But may not be as useful within my area, but I’d still like to print and try. Thank you for creating this.

I wrote a guide for my community on how to build a movement and I had a section talking about prioritizing effort into those that would be easiest to convince over those that would resist. It’s better to recruit 10 willing comrades than save 1 nazi from their pit of hate.

Thank you a lot for this, you’re totally right. That’s how I’ve been handling it and I just started to kinda forget that. The way you described it is really nice I might screenshot it for others.

You’re totally right I think in my circumstances I’m predominantly encountering privileged class individuals. It does return the question to “how can you convince bourgeois to be a class traitor” to a degree.

When people are immediately inflamed by something I definitely step back on what I’m talking about. Especially with people outside the country I’m in I try to keep it more casual as I don’t have a big investment in discussing it with them. Totally agree with you’re suggestions. Thank you for the insight in your experiences with many difference people. It really helps me feel better about it. I think I’m speaking to a slightly privileged class most of the time and it created a kinda “survivorship bias” effect.

Honestly a lot of my Japanese friends are mostly just disengaged with politics. Its considered taboo to discuss with people so its hard to convert people among friends until you know they’re ok with it . Even when they want to talk about it, I have several friends who have told me its refreshing to be able to discuss Japanese politics with someone because it’s so …almost cringe to talk about it normally. Couple that with a government that seemingly never enacts meaningful change and participation and education is waaaaaay down.

I have a couple friends who voted for Takaiichi and all of them just gave superficial reasons like that shes “cool”. Online is different from reality always.

You’re correct in you’re total assessment but I wanted to expand the bombardment would have zero ideological effect. The US has constantly resorted to bombardment over ground invasion and the reality is that in every war it practiced this strategy it has not succeeded. Especially if we believe the emperor’s account that the USSR was cause for their eventual surrender.

The US is constantly bombarding civilian populations and failing to bring about victory and claiming it was because they hadn’t violated enough rules of war. That they hadn’t ye bombed enough hospitals, or children, or families, or historical sites. That if only they had been allowed to bomb a little more, they surely would have broken the spirit of the country. The reality is that none of these function as an extension of the military in any meaningful way. The targeting of the civilians is almost a punishment for a military that is able to secure themselves defensively. It can also result in the “Guerilla math” talked about in the Cuban, Vietnam, and Afghanistan conflict

A country with a fascist, liberal, or otherwise bourgeois controlled government in general will have little, if any impact from its proletariat dying in such numbers for a war. But the US’s really shows it’s severe weakness in these situations as a paper tiger. Huge displays of power that result in no meaningful progress towards their goals. Simply causing immense suffering.

IIRC the emperor at the time literally admitted as much in his diary. I’m having trouble finding a Japanese version of his diary online but ill amend this post to have it once I do.

https://apjjf.org/tsuyoshi-hasegawa/2501/article

you could read these anytime and im honestly shocked people thought japanese ppl were abnormal compared to the rest of the world.

I literally was seeing the view on the communist party and i saw a picture of a pamphlet i also recieved that said “The communist party is the enemy of japan” 「日本の共産党は日本の敵です」 (the pamphlet basically just had info on being anti war btw) the replies were full of crazy stuff like “its a crime we arent able to kill them in the streets”「街で殺すのが違法んですよ」 and “We should burn down kyoto, its where all the communists are”　「京都を焼き払う。そこで赤の元だ」

there shouldnt be any mystification of other people. Everyone is generally the same everywhere with the same values to different degree of intensity and different means to accomplish them.

I have a bunch of communist friends and I’ve made some new ones online through the irl ones that I have visited and done a little organizing with

Although you do have to like… beat them to capture them. So they have these abilities but you did defeat them in spite of it. Now if they could communicate with each other and work together that’s a different story

I think you may be focusing a bit too much on MAGA. Like yeah its a movement that is enacting change now but workers rights have been continuously stripped even before MAGA was even thought about. The reason why is because the workers have not organized a general strike for their own rights. (caused by a variety of factors; lack of support, distrust of others, union busting, union leaders betraying for capital interests, etc) but ultimately striking DOES hurt companies and demand better concessions within America. Many politicians are deeply invested in companies as well, take for example AI. If we had an organized general strike to prevent the use of AI in a majority of industries, we don’t even need the law to be passed to enforce it. This would tank investments in it and directly hurt capitalists. It would also empower workers to fight for more of their rights.

A disconnect you might be having is this idea that the majority of profit doesn’t come from the workers. While yes most capitalist wealth comes from speculative ventures and investments allowing them to use as collateral on loans. Those are primarily backed BY the excess value that is extracted from the labor force.

Capitalist forces workers to make chairs for 1$/chair and sells them for 10$. He uses another 1$ to pay for materials. He pockets 8$. (Lets assume he simply sells 1 a day for ease of math) An Investor buys a portion of his business for 10$, expecting the growth to pay off. So now the Capitalist, uses this as proof of growth and takes a loan for 18$ to buy more materials and pay for more workers. Now he has enough workers and materials to make 10 chairs a day. (10 workers make 1$/chair with 1$ cost to materials per day) Now the companies profits has grown and the Investor’s share, which previously was purchased for 10$ has now grown 10 times that and is worth 100$. Instead of selling, he stays invested and uses it as collateral to take out a 200$ loan.

By exploiting the workers of 90%~ of their true value, the company has enriched the Capitalist, and the Investor, despite them contributing nothing to the process. But has enriched the worker. The Capitalist could hire more workers to grow, or could pay the workers less, or use cheaper materials to make the chair, etc. But ultimately the WORKER is the sole source of value.

It doesn’t matter how complex the chain becomes, the workers are always the ones with all the power and value that is being taken from them. If the workers strike and stop producing chairs, the profit of the company drops, its value drops, the shares drop and the investor and capitalist are unable to pay back their loans.

This is the basic idea, in America there are tons of bail outs for corporations that use government funds to prevent companies from going under but the money used to do this is primarily taxed from people’s pay and spending within the country. It always affects them and the oppression is not just from MAGA but from the ruling bourgeoisie class as a whole. ICE existed way before trump and was STILL killing people in detention and putting families in camps.

Overly simplified and also sorry for using the chair example again i just really like it. Pls anyone send corrections if i got something wrong with the theory.

-edit: formatting issues

Unfortunately imperialist actions like this don’t really “Wake people up” Most people are completely unaffected and the only ones who care are related to the issue or are already involved in anti imperialist messaging and organizing. If you ask anybody they prob have a very middle position of not wanting a war but also hating iran and thinking its justified. very “whats to be done” kinda ppl

The deaths are needless, to truly speak to the masses we ourselves have to go out and speak to the masses and organize.

Really don’t think we have to worry about “normalizing obesity”. There’s several markets that exist slowly to shame people into being thin, often through dangerous means.

Obesity comes with difficulties sure but people aren’t becoming obese because there isn’t enough shame for it, or its been normalized.

I learned Japanese in a year in a really really really intense study program I made for myself but you can chill on it and be able to be conversational on it p quickly. Same for spanish which i also speak. (Tried to learn it on duolingo for 5 years but gave up with little progress and did it this way, like with Japanese.

Apps and textbooks have trouble teaching you languages that are spoken in REAL life. To learn a language you just need comprehensible input. I also used flashcards to study words with Anki.

The strategy I had was: Step 0: have good motivation to learn it(have friends/family/partners who speak the target language) Step 1: Learn the alphabet of the target language Step 2: Begin Study of the top 2000 most common words Step 3: Learn simply phrases preferably with those words that I would use. Step 4: begin speaking as soon as possible. I started speaking to people when I only had like 600 words under my belt. Step 5: Listen and Read childrens media related to the language(this part suuuuuuuucks) Step 6: As you are nearing the end of top 2000 words you’ll encounter new words you might be curious about or you might want to use. Add these to your study deck. Step 7: Study simple common grammar rules. BUT DONT OVER DO THIS. (If you know 100 grammar rules but 10 words you cant say much, but if you speak 100 words and know 10 grammar rules you can communicate quite a bit. Think of it like grammar is a multiplier and words are the base number) Step 8: Speak, listen, read, and (if you like) write in the language as much as possible. Replace your TV with target language TV. Music with target language music. Try to focus on listening sometimes and other times just chill with it.

You have to be ok with embarrassing yourself. You’re like a baby learning, just keep going. Eventually youll find you can string entire thoughts and jokes together. Repetition is super important, input and use stuff over and over and it becomes second nature and you understand or speak it without thinking, much like your native language.

Around 10,000 words is what is known and spoken for most young adults. Focus on stuff your interested in or stuff you think youll need to talk about. If anki sucks to do and you cant keep it up just focus more on input with the language through other sources like media or books.

Depending on the difficulty of the target language you can get conversational p fast. Remember, babies are stupid and take like 18 years to get to 10,000 words. But we’re smart adults and can structure our study towards our goals.

As an artist I’d love to see suggestions in this thread. The specific recommendations might be different country to country or smaller districts. Something thats difficult for the US is that a lotta people are doing jobs related to tech and there’s not really a single unifying symbol for this. Hammer and sickle to represent farming and manufacturing is possible, and I believe adding a brush branches out to a wider movement.

But finding symbols to speak to the workers as a whole can be difficult with how diverse it all is. Theres so many hyper specialized machines and tools.

When making Icons before I’ve used my states iconography and Black panthers, and queer symbols like the pink triangle. This is extremely important and a good symbol will speak to the audiences you want and pull dedicated people into the movement.

It might be necessary to focus on smaller regions within the US and Unite those before creating broader movements. (OFC whichever is in the best interests of the end goal of revolution at that time.) I can only speak to the US however