Clippy [comrade/them, he/him] @hexbear.net

3w ago

"my enemy is the american people"

i wish no harm to american ruling class, my enemy is the american people

op admits it was a joke originally, but says after witnessing the contempt of the american people for gaza, is sad to say his joke was correct (unless i'm misreading this)

the user posting_forever writes "yeah well welcome to what happens when your country bombs and threatens half of the earth. feels pretty shitty, huh?"

barbarism critic continues their thread "If you have posted this as a joke that’s one thing, but there’s wayyyy too much of this sentiment expressed sincerely on here and as a signifier of being the “most radical”. It is not! It is poorly disguised misanthropy and nihilism!"

one person say that barbarism critic is "the brianna wu of 2025. Remember kids I called it"

i guess there is some very real perceived material interests of americans to continue the genocide in palestine, like the christian zionists, or the liberals who want to continue the american dominance via global hegemony, and the labor aristocrats in america who want the treats.

i was listening to rev left radio "The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism" with Torkil Lauesen and, probably gonna butcher it - but my understanding is that as we enter a multipolar world, the americans will not be able to blatantly exploit the over-exploited nations (global south) leading to increasingly deteriorating conditions in the imperial core, which will set the grounds very clearly between socialism and barbarism?

and we are to organize and help alleviate the woes of the people which also serve as a way of building relations that lead to building power via organizations.

(iirc the bolsheviks has above ground orgs and underground orgs for the law breaking stuff)

eh i dunno just over analyzing what do you peeps think.

103 comments

Reading into this too much is dumb. Random poster fight on the internet. Yeah, there's a lot of reactionary Americans. Hate them sure. Hating all Americans is obviously dumb and misanthropic, though I don't blame people who are victims of US imperialism for feeling that way.
That's pretty much it.
- Hating all Americans is obviously dumb and misanthropic
  It seems you have mistyped "based and correct"
- I think all white americans are evil [big headed scientist] creations and should be eradicated because they are not human.
  This is completely sincere if it doesnt get removed and it is completely a joke in minecraft if it does get removed

It's hilarious how much USAmericans shits their pants whenever anyone shows them the same sort of contempt they have for the rest of humanity lmao
You don't get to seamlessly go from "Glass the middle east/China/Russia/North Korea!" to "Why can't we all just get along?" without people asking questions
- A few settlers even telling on themselves in this thread by jumping straight to "Americans will be exterminated and put in camps" panic. I wonder what level of "collateral damage" these people are actually willing to endure to bring about change.
  
  God i wish we were exterminated

Maoist third-worldist that supports reactionary, bourgeois movements in the global north solely because it oppresses westerners.
- I made a joke a while ago about a MTW guy who likes the electoral college giving disproportionately more power to rural states because the countryside surrounds the city. If we work hard enough, we could come up with a whole ideology here.
  
  memeing posadism 2.0 into existence
- Critical support to the ghoul squad ✊
- Based based based

“Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.”
― George Carlin
- Politicians come from the bourgeoisie and not the labor aristocracy the vast majority of the time

I mostly just see the tweet as anti-americanism, which has become more popular as the US keeps trying to mantain its hegemony. Its true the material conditions of the average american will worsen with the lost of the hegemony
I don't really see how how the tweet is nihilism or misantropy.
Also i think postingforever is right in bringing revolutionary defeatism, because the USA should lose its hegemony and that will negatively impact the US worker and force them to either accept socialism or barbarism
- I also don't see how any reasonable leftist can't admit that a large chunk of the American population is an enemy to the workers across the globe. I think ultimately "trealerite" as a term really captures both domestic and foreign US politics, and policies that were and are broadly supported by the American public. It's uncomfortable to admit, but Americans by and large don't care if someone in the global south dies, or domestic deaths of despair as long as it saves them a few cents at the gas pump and electronics continue to be cheap.
  
  Large chunk? The whole of america is the enemy
  No yank "communist" book clubs will bring about any change
- The American worker will accept barbarism 99% of the time
  Edit: ok maybe I'm being mean here
  
  No you were just 1% off, it sjould be 100%

A person who is okay with the American ruling class but hates regular Yanks is obviously imaginary, so the left being criticized here is the one that wishes ill on regular Americans (in this case probably the victims of those fires in California). I would compare those leftists to so-called anti-white racists or misandrists, in that they do not exist in any real social way and as far as they have an ideology it has absolutely no vitality. Similarly, criticizing them as if they are a danger to the movement is a form of white/male/Yank chauvinism, respectively.
- Im a real anti white racist and misandrist and i think i deserve political powet
  Sign my petitipn and listen to my podcast

I don't expect working class solidarity from the people at the imperial core while they are still benefactors from my oppression, even if it is indirectly. They should already know that their luxuries are in great part a product of our exploitation and if they are ignorant about it it is not my fault, fuck them. The day I see them organized and giving substantial help to our struggles in the global south I might change my mind. They are not willing to give up their privileges in order to enact real and concrete international solidarity.
"Workers of the world unite" is a nice phrase, but call me when there are any American blue/white collar workers organized with Congolese cobalt miners or Mexican factory workers.
The same amount of money that can feed a Global South worker for a month is spent in a weekend to buy useless shit for fun by an average American/Western-European worker, the latter is not prepared to renounce to their treats. Maybe one day they won't be able to afford them anymore... I wanna see how they will react.
- You do realize that most of the workers in the imperial core are also exploited right? And that our government has been proven to not represent us? We live in an oligarchy.
  
  Here's the thing: yes, a worker in the imperial core is exploited. You might be getting paid $14/hr to produce $25/hr of value for a corporation. This is how capitalist production works, we all know it and we all want to abolish it. But there's a few things that, from the perspective of a periphery worker, are incredibly relevant here:
  The vast majority of the productive labor in the world economy actually happens in the periphery and semi-periphery nations. The most relevant sector of economic production within the core is capital intensive production of technological goods and weapons. So it's the periphery that is actually feeding* the world and producing the world's clothes. (*Of course, there is plenty of agrarian production within the core too, but it often relies on the exploitation of undocumented migrant labor or just explicit slave labor through prison slavery, which I argue is significantly distinct from the capitalist mode of production)
  The US dollar's value is tied to the circulation of the natural resources and exploited labor previously discussed, not the United States' production. The US dollar is the world's reserve currency and as long as a supermajority of critical resources are traded in USD, every country will want to export goods in exchange for dollars, even if the US printed trillions and trillions of dollars. And US private banks have done exactly that, giving US consumers a ridiculous amount of buying power to consume the commodities produced abroad.
  Due to the hugely inflated value of a US dollar, a worker in the imperial core that gets paid in dollars, British Pounds, or Euro is simply not in anywhere near the same league as a Sri Lankan seamstress that's earning the equivalent of $270 a year to sew clothes that will sell for 40x that amount when they get shipped to the US.
  Is it in the seamstress' interest in any way for imperial core workers to become politically organized and overthrow capitalism in their countries? Yes, of course! But with the incentive structure at hand, labor unions in the core aren't political vanguards attempting to overthrow capital, they're willing accomplices in imperialism who want a bigger slice of the pie. The question should then be, how can we get imperial core workers to organize against their own best interest to overthrow imperialism, a system that benefits them?

lol slammer responded
- Lmao the clock is at 9:11
  
  I just like the Vlade jersey and bobblehead

The American people as a collective are our enemies.
That doesnt mean I wish harm upon all of them but there are probably parts of the population that we wont be able to reach even under the best possible circumstances.

I wish harm to the American ruling class

imo they're mostly just tone-policing this "Miroslav" person. Broadly if people outside the US say that kind of stuff I'm sympathetic to it because they've been on the receiving end of US economic warfare or military intervention.
If somebody had a sincere conversation with them rather than an antagonistic back-and-forth on hitlerite social media, they probably wouldn't elaborate their beliefs as a genuine desire to see every person in the US die or suffer.
- Yeah this. Zero empathy from the supposed internationalists. I think the issue is, and always will be, that white people are too easily offended.
  
  That isn't an internationalist, it's a libbed up honky.
  Idk what their actual supposed views are, nor do I care, but they come outright and say that they will refuse to work with the international proletariat if they say uncivil things about the same Americans that have unleashed hell the world over.
- they probably wouldn't elaborate their beliefs as a genuine desire to see every person in the US die or suffer
  but even if they did...
  
  I mean, as a Burger, I had someone from Sarajevo basically tell me she hates all Americans and especially anyone who was ever in the US military. I wasn't fully aware of US/western intervention and influence in the Balkans back then, so I didn't understand the resentment. I asked her and she told me about growing up seeing her country destroyed. All you can really say to something like that is "Oh... I understand then."
  We actually became friends after that. She was a bio student like me at the time and knew a lot of interesting stuff from the Soviet times. I would ask her to tell me more about her country, and she would ask me about...guns. Valuable cultural exchange?

i used to be way more bitter about Americans and the west having access to covid vaccines and refusing to give it to the rest of the world, thinking they deserve covid. even then i thought pharma ceos should go into the woodchipper though.
now i think American ignorance (and bigotry) comes from the political environment rather than anything 'intrinsic' about them.
- So you're saying human beings are products of their environment, and don't possess intrinsic properties based on which lines in the sand they happened to be born between? Absolutely wild!
- Okay, but where do we go from there? That political environment isn't going away, it's there by design, and soon their ignorance and bigotry fuels back into the machine that created it and the world suffers. People are genocided, people are conquered, people are displaced as their countries are coup'd and invaded. The ignorant and bigoted are there to tell you that it's right because it's being done by America and its interests.
  I believe we're long past the point where it matters whether it's intrinsic or not. The result is the same, because the masses do not have the power or will to break away from their political environment. And until they do, they're complicit.
  
  sure, but you can say that about other countries too, including ones in the global south. Why was Modi elected in India? Why is he still in power despite worst neoliberal policies being implemented.
  do most Hindus not care about repression of Muslims by the state and state-backed thugs? i'm sure many Hindus would say that pluralism is good then proceed to vote for BJP, many others do care but not enough to overthrow the Government, even if they did care, how should it start? many fear the state.
  Indian Government offers some 'treats' too right before elections, $40-$100 transfers. Obviously, nothing compared to the treats offered in the west (mass consumption) by the corps but still.
  of course, there are differences between India and the U.S. for example, U.S. was founded by white landowning men who didn't want women or non-whites to have any rights. Quite the contrast with how India was created, as a secular post-colonial state, and that sure has an effect on minds of the people.
- I think the distinction between intrinsic evil and taught evil is irrelevent, it's evil all the same

i just can't be one of those people to say "yeah lol line me up against the wall and blow my brains out, i'll even help!"
i do get people feeling this way. especially anyone on the business end of american Imperialism. i won't fault them
but yeah i've stated it before but genocide bad, no matter what. that's all i'll say.
- No one has ever seriously advocated for genocide against Americans
- God damn put me against the wall please, line up ally friends and family, we're leeches, evil, disgusting leeches and we need to be eradicated like such
  I dream of the day we're all blown away by nuclear fire or righteous PLA bullets
  
  Ok people outside the imperial core hating or wanting to kill kkkrackkkers is valid and/or based. But this specifically definitely is just weird misanthropy. It doesn't help the exploited south to wish death on those who care about you
  
  I dream of the day we're all blown away by nuclear fire or righteous PLA bullets
  preferably both at the same time

i mean someone on this site told me that sandy hook was good because those kids were growing up in Connecticut, so they're gonna turn out to be insurance execs and bankers anyways which is way worse than what this dude said
- I refuse to believe that isn't a bit
- I like that the last reply got 3 upbears
- Oh boy, that user was banned not too long after that at least. The early site was full of this sort of insanity.
  
  But not for this comment tho for some other bullshit a year afterwards
- While that dude ain’t wrong about Connecticut we’re talking about children here. If these kids mattered to our oligarchs they’d do something about our gun problem. But they don’t! Now if another Luigi happens I can see some gun control being demanded.
  
  6 year olds man

Not American, but from a western imperialist nation with a lot of similar incentives so I still relate to this a lot and spent a fair amount of time thinking about it.
Whenever I read public discourse I can't help but think my country is filled with insufferable, ignorant, smug selfish pricks who couldn't care less about other people's suffering. However, maybe this is a hot take, but does it really matter? Realistically you're never gonna make a difference anywhere else in the world. The people around you are what you have to work with, it's where you have to find like-minded people and organize and try to change minds and hopefully find friends and connections. You can go around and wish suffering on the people around you instead, but that's not going to achieve anything other than make people creeped out and not want to be around you.
It's also worth keeping in mind that violent, reactionary brainrot exists everywhere, and has plenty of political power most places. Western chauvinism is just the most uniquely destructive kind. You're probaly not going to be happy with the general population no matter where you go.
- I can't help but think my country is filled with insufferable, ignorant, smug selfish pricks who couldn't care less about other people's suffering.
  My true horror at this feeling is knowing that I used to be like them, which implies even more horrifyingly that I have some kind of duty to help them be more like me.

All I can see is libs getting mad at god-tier posting, as usual

At a certain point, many people of diverse backgrounds who languish under American yoke, WILL eventually ask themselves; do I want to die, to suffer, to burn my life for a people who will put me in a concentration camp?
It's a self-evident truth; solidarity has to be a two-way street, otherwise it dies, simple as
- There's an interesting dialectic here because the literal meaning of solidarity is to help without expecting anything in return. It originally is the farthest thing from a two-way street. However, it's obviously true from a political perspective that there is absolutely no reason to expect socialists in the Global South to have solidarity for the people who act as the consumer base of a genocidal empire. How is it even possible to promote international solidarity when, as the situation stands, the white proletariat in the imperial core quite literally sits comfortably on the necks of the international working class? I feel like the concept of solidarity just doesn't apply in a situation that's so asymmetric.
  
  The answer lies in capitalism's propensity to destroy the working classes of both the north and south, and it's tendency to accumulate contradictions while it manages the crises born out of the asymmetric north/south divide
  Eventually as those contradictions build up, the supply chain that sustains the comfort base of the empire will break down and the true condition of the north will manifest
  At that point the divide becomes moot, because without any bubbles sustaining the illusion the two working classes will naturally seek alliances with each other against whatever imperial monstrosity emerges to try and reconstruct the divide. Imperial reconstruction that will require the north be subjected to torturous militarization and rationing
  Of course this is all just hypothesizing, and it could just as easily end in nuclear holocaust.......

one person say that barbarism critic is "the brianna wu of 2025. Remember kids I called it"
Idk if I'd go that far, but her radicalism is very selective at times. There are so many issues on which I'll see a barbarism critic take and go "yeah, this is 100% something a well paid software engineer working remotely in a low cost of living area of the US would think".
- Her views constantly oscillate between radlib and communist, and you can tell she'll go radlib when it's an issue that may affect a relatively well off software engineer lol.

Most people in the global North but especially Americans only seem to get indignant over consumer issues. Like the arguments of not being able to afford quality boots or 1000 hour lightbulbs. Or whining they can’t afford eggs in response to prospect of the US expanding its borders and all the bloodshed that could lead to.
Without real theory, these ideas collapse into ur-fascist nostalgia.
- Like the arguments of not being able to afford quality boots or 1000 hour lightbulbs
  This shit is beyond absurd to me, an American. Like why the fuck are you having an aneurysm over the store not having the right brand of bread
- My favorite is complaining about “Biden’s gas prices*” while driving tanks to run errands
  *I hate biden but he has no control over the gas prices

I'm just skimming all of this but as a communist I'm interested in also improving the lives of people I don't like. Not like...class enemies but I am trying to make the lives of some less well off chuds better because I'm not a moralist. There is a line that can't be crossed and generally you need some degree of power to cross it. Americans mostly suck, I'm candian we mostly suck and I'd rather see our more harmless naysayers eat crow and fall into line by seeing their material conditions genuinely improve, there's some Renfields in the mix and they can get the pit but I think most people are just following the money at the end of the day and would be hard to mislead down these garden paths if they had their basic needs met, without a foreign entity to blame for a problem that no longer exists, most people will default to apathy. People won't suck if you make it so the things around em don't suck, and most people will just kinda go with whatever status quo works for them until it doesn't. Powerless randoms on the wrong side of things can be obstacles, but if they aren't picking up a gun then they're propaganda obstacles, culture war obstacles. You got to know who your enemy is and also when to attack and when to bypass. Online do whatever but irl be tactical and tactful, pitch what communism can do for YOU

I had a contempt that kicked in today, as it does off and on lately. All this agitation and activism, and so many people around me shrug their shoulders or go out of their way to justify repeating the Holocaust on other people, again and again. And then these spineless pieces of shit claim to be "good people", or "Christians".
Some of this activism is the only thing keeping me feeling like a human lately. I want my family and my estranged friends to suffer as badly as the people in Gaza suffer. But I try and shove those thoughts down and plan my schedule out for more org work.
Some boomers in their boomermobile locking eyes with you while you're waving a Palestine flag and flipping you off. The American people deserve suffering.

Would she hold it against a Palestinian from Gaza who prays that the fire completely consume LA?

that often posted redsails brainwashing article is probably relevant here

I will defend this man with my life

even being an empoc and trans hostage of this hellstate i can't really fault the global south for feeling this way and wouldn't care to argue about it. that said i am absolutely discounting it when it comes from eurolibs in the imperial bloc (this includes canada and au/nz) and self-flagellating americans, that shit is goofy as hell.
- That is to say, when that type of rhetoric comes from residents of Canada, Australia, Europe, and Aotearoa whose anti-Americanism reflects the national-bourgeois envy in these regions for the USA's economic hegemony; and when this type of rhetoric comes from US residents who need to self-flagellate to ritualistically absolve themselves of any responsibility to actually work against the systems they benefit from, right?
  Edit: For that matter, the Canuc-Kiwi-Aussi-Euro types who need to always point out how America Bad in order to distract from their own countries' atrocities.
  
  yes? though i'm additionally saying that the rest of the imperial bloc is often also playing at absolution from responsibility in working against systems from which they also benefit, which put charitably is disingenuous. western europe isn't solely 'envious', they actively benefit from imperialism -right now-, as do the other anglo settler colonies besides the US.
- Hey I'm not a "self-flagellating American", I just have my own reasons to despise the United States

Best I can do is share some jumbled thoughts, cause I’m still wrapping my head around that episode. It was really good, but I should listen again because I think I missed a lot. it definitely got me interested in reading his work though. His latest book is actually free on the publisher’s website
Undoubtedly, the American ruling class is an enemy. But we also have to contend with the complicit masses who, even if they have a world to win, believe that they have more to lose when the world moves beyond capitalism and overthrows American hegemony. These complicit masses (whether it’s the petit bourgeois or the white proletariat or another) also represent an enemy to the revolution. Whether the continued decay of capitalism and the desperate barbarism of American hegemony emboldens their reactionary moment (fascism) or creates a progressive/revolutionary moment (post capitalism/socialism) is TBD, and I think we’re seeing movement in both (good and bad) directions.

Honestly, just being an American's made the American people my enemy. Increasingly convinced that even the well-meaning ones have never actually accomplished anything. They're either evil or just some of the most useless pieces of shit on the planet. (I'm a bit of both)

The ruling class has no power the American people don't give them. They aren't kings or warlords. If the president wanted to take a cookie from me he could not do it. No small part of the American people take it for him though.
- The valorization of capital creates capital, and capital creates the power of the American ruling class, not the will of the people. Because capital valorizes itself and creates institutions of exploitation of the proletarian, the working class can only combat the growing power of the ruling class by stopping the valorisation of capital. You are somewhat correct that the ruling class' power stems from the American people only in the sense that the assets to maintain empire and power require the labor of the working class.

This guy sucks, it's actually very easy to hate both of them
- Right, the American ruling class are Americans too.

The imperial core has already been hollowed out. Multipolarity doesn’t even matter we’ve been quickly hollowing out since the 1970s as the ruling class learned they can get nearly slave labor abroad and they shipped all of our manufacturing to cheap or worse labor elsewhere.
As an American I hate Americans. I feel bad for those misled and manipulated but a good chunk of them think we should just nuke the Middle East and be done with it.

What is going on in this thread? We're just going to argue over the idea of hating the American people instead of the far more glaring issue of them (joking about) not hating the ruling class? As far as I'm concerned they should hate both

Speaking of "calling it", I wonder if there was anyone on here who called out that tweeter months ago for being the civility lib that they are.

The only good yank is a dead yank
- Following that logic there are millions of good yanks and we all end up good in the end :(.
  
  We should all try getting good sooner

Living in the imperial core I make not that much more than @slavomir_YU@twitter.com, less than a factor of 4 in nominal terms, less than a factor of 2 in PPP. Yet I consider myself fairly well-off; I have the chance to advance myself due to not engaging in the shocking level of hyperconsumption that most people around me engage in.

103 comments