Category Archives: Brazil

Liberation Theology: Jesus Christ as Marxist Guerrilla in the Jungle with a Machine Gun

From the Sandinistas of Nicaragua to the URNG of Guatemala to the guerrilla column in Honduras led by the Irish Catholic priest in 1983 to Father Aristide’s Lavalas in Haiti to the ELN in Colombia to the Chavistas in Venezuela, all of these radical leftwing groups had one thing in common: they all came out of Liberation Theology, more or less a “Jesus Christ, Marxist guerrilla in the jungle with a machine gun” type of armed to the teeth Catholicism.

Liberation Theology came out a movement of Professors of Pedagogy in Brazil in 1964, especially an influential book written by a priest named Gutierrez. The argument was that teaching in Latin America was an overtly political act, and teachers should ideally by Leftist revolutionaries. Out of this flowed many documents laying out Liberation Theology or “the preferential option for the poor.” It was most powerful among lay workers, of which there are many in Latin America. In heavily Catholic areas, Catholic lay workers are nearly an army.

The French Communist Party in  France long had Catholic roots as did the PCI in Italy. Near the end of his life, Fidel Castro praised Catholicism and said he was a “cultural Catholic.” Hugo Chavez and the Chavistas were of course a ferocious part of the Catholic Left. Chavez Leftism was heavily infused with the social teachings of the Catholic Church.

Even the viciously anti-Christian Sendero Luminoso in Peru had many supporters in the Catholic Church, mostly at the lay and priest level but surprisingly all the way up to the bishop level. Sendero killed many reactionary Protestant missionaries in their war, but they left the priests alone.

The great Edith Lagos, a 19 year old year revolutionary woman who led one of the first Sendero columns, was killed in battle in 1982. Her funeral in Ayacucho at night a bit later attracted 30,000 visitors, nearly the entire population of the town. Everyone was in line for the funeral – the local police, the local government and of course the entire local  Catholic clergy. The line wormed all through the city for hours far into the night. She was treated to an actual Catholic funeral right there in the church led by the local priest. Her casket stood next to the priest as he delivered his sermon. It had a Sendero Communist flag on it.

A communist flag on a coffin in a Catholic church! The crowd then filed out through the town to the graveyard where she was buried in the middle of the night. Her tomb exists to this day, although it has been repeatedly bombed by reactionaries. Local Indians make patronages to the tomb on a regular basis, leaving flowers at it. Rumor has it that she has obtained informal sainthood and is now Saint Edith Lagos in the local Catholic Churches.

FARC called itself officially atheist, although they had the support of many priests in the countryside where the FARC held sway. Nevertheless, most FARC rank and file were Catholics.

In Paraguay, a former guerrilla was elected president. He was also a former Catholic priest.

The armed Marxist Left in Uruguay and Brazil also had deep links to the Catholic Church.

In the US, we have something called Cold War liberals. This is the pathetic Left of the United States,  people who would be rightwingers or center-right anywhere else on Earth.

 

 

 

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Jesus Was a Socialist

Modern Protestant Prosperity Doctrine is such a perversion of the spirit of Christianity that it can only be seen as a heresy.

Jesus famously said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into Heaven.” This comment is very poorly understood – most seem to think he is talking about a camel actually walking through the eye of a sewing needle, which is of course not possible. However, at the time, “The Eye of the Needle” was a pass high in the mountains of Palestine. It was indeed passable, but it was such an ardous climb over such rugged mountains that many camels simply could not hack the trek and were not able to accomplish the journey. Hence, it was possible for a camel to go through the Eye of the Needle, but it was not an easy task at all, and many simply could not cut it. And so it was with the rich and their chances of heavenly grace and redemption according to Jesus.

Liberation Theology, the Catholic doctrine of the Social Gospel updated and radicalized in Latin America to “Jesus with a machine gun” was utilized by many armed guerrilla groups as a religion of revolution, even armed revolution.

The philosophy of this doctrine was to preach for “the preferential option of the poor,” and this is right in accord with Catholic Social Gospel if not a supercharged form of it. It is seen in Latin America as a nearly subversive and even insurrectionist doctrine, and in a sense it is, although most LT preachers and lay people are not armed.

In fact, Venezuelan Bolivarianism or Chavismo was profoundly influenced by Liberation Theology and there is evidence that many of the other New Left regimes in Latin America were also. LT was a huge influence on the Sandinistas, the FMLN guerrillas and now politicians in El Salvador, the ELN in Colombia (founded by an actual priest with a machine gun, Camilo Torres), the PT of Lula and Dilma Youssef in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia, possibly Correa in Ecuador and certainly Paraguay under Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, a former priest and guerrilla who ruled that land until a US sponsored coup removed him.

The Lavalas Movement in Haiti of Jon Bertrand Aristide, also removed in a US-sponsored coup, was profoundly influenced by LT; in fact, Aristide himself was a preacher of Liberation Theology.

In recent decades, there has been a lot of discussion in Cuba about a “Catholic Communism” and now that believers may join the party, this movement seems to be on an upswing. The novel doctrine was that Catholicism and Marxism were indeed compatible with each other instead of being oxymoronic. Castro himself stated that he was a “social Catholic” a few years before he died.

The extent to which LT has influenced the regimes of Batchelet in Chile or Fernandez in Argentina, the former guerrillas in power in Uruguay under Jose Mujica, or Ollanta Humala in Peru is not known, although there were many LT preachers in Peru a few decades ago, and incredibly enough, many priests actually supported the Shining Path.

But the Social Gospel, Liberation Theology, and the “Catholic Communism” that developed in some European lands in the 20th Century have much more in common with a pure interpretation of Jesus’ teaching than the individualist and materialist Protestantism that developed in the US. “Jesus was a socialist” always makes more sense than “Jesus was a capitalist,” although most Evangelicals are loath to admit this. Nevertheless, they squirm and act uncomfortable when you bring it up, so it shows that on some level they at least worry it is true.

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The Mark of the Beast: Another Look

Interesting new view on the meaning of the Mark of the Beast in Biblical terms by commenter Judith Mirville. Turns out the Mark is not what we have always thought it meant. It is something else entirely.

Judith Mirville: This microchipping thing is getting creepier and creepier, but it is NOT the real mark of the Beast as referred to by the Bible.

First of all, it is no longer the ultimate state of the art in identity control: a microchip can be faked and hacked by the same ones who make a living producing computer viruses or phishing credit cards. In Nigeria, where it grew first very popular for night revelers to be able to go out drinking and womanizing in red light districts without the slightest change on them, it has proven unreliable as so many people discovered in that technology a way to dispose of infinite amounts of virtual money.

The latest technology is now purely digital identification by eye iris or even by fingerprint: the subject no longer needs carry any man-made piece of identity whatsoever.

By the way, that infamous IQ inferiority of Blacks no longer applies if a misdeed is what motivates one to solve a problem of the kind we imagine the Blacks the least fit for: quite the contrary, some faculties that might seem of paranormal nature are systematically at work.

The Beast referred to by the Biblical authors is not a man-made machine.

The Beast is the development of paranormal talents of the kind the occultists traditionally refer to and even more so the New Age system of spiritualism and occult magic, generally known under a neo-Hindu garb, but that can also be introduced to through many other currents, especially the Jewish Kabbalah. The so-called talents developed by New Agers have actually just no positive use: the more they are developed by often well-meant people trying to get evolved spiritually, the more injustice they produce of the kind India is champion.

All those who develop those talents participate in a real world totalitarian system that can actually get along without machines: there will come a time when you will need to practice the finest and nastiest forms of magic and paranormal power development just to carry on your daily survival tasks. That is already the case in some parts of India and other awful countries such as Haiti and Northern Brazil.

The problem is that you cannot efficiently use those paranormal powers without committing ritual crimes that provide you with the necessary psychic energy and without subscribing to an enterprise based on the deliberate causing of misery for the greatest number.

The problem also is that most talents nowadays used in the most advanced realms of human industry are of the same nature as were traditionally confined to explicitly magic acts: computer programming for instance is logically the same thing as witchcraft, though traditional witchcraft uses human brains for computers but with the same kind of results in view. Whenever you hear about Kundalini rising and chakra opening, you are facing the real Beast. Chakras are not a part of the natural body of man, nor are they the natural crowning of natural psychic growth. They are part of a system being installed in your body like a Windows or OSX operating system.

There will come a time when powers such as recommended by practitioners of Reiki, especially energy transmission through hand-laying and creative visualization through third eye opening, will be the corporate norm of the day and absolute requirement for new recruits in the very same way acquaintance with electronics is now required or taken for granted.

And whenever these powers are known and used on a massive scale they require the sacrifice of any notion of social justice: you have to subscribe to a view where everyone’s ill fate is deserved or needed by his evolution. There will come a time when only possessors of those powers will be entitled to work for an organized society, and where those who refuse them will no longer be considered humans. Late Brahmanic India approached such a state, but American New Age promises even worse as it progressively replaces older religions.

The microchip is under the hand’s skin only, while the Mark of the Beast is said to be even better carried in the eye.

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Hobbes Versus Rousseau

Check out the video of a rather typical day in a large Yanonamo village as captured by legendary anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon. I read the book he wrote about these people, The Yanonamo – The Fierce People.

A massive whirlpool of sheer Cultural Left nonsense has swirled around Chagnon and his work with the Yanonamo. Turns out these were noble savages after all, and these evil White men went into their peaceful villages and stirred up a bunch of trouble just so they could make lurid films and make a White Supremacist  point about the inferiority of non-Whites.

None of the charges against Chagnon were true. All lies. But the toilet bowl of Cultural Left bullshit swirled around this poor man for many years. He was nearly tossed out of the American Anthropological Association over this.

Anthropology, after all, is one of the most Cultural Left-poisoned fields of them all. Linguistics, a close cousin (there is actually a sub-field called Anthropological Linguistics), is not far behind, right on the tail of the Students of Men.

So we come to Rousseau versus Hobbes. The field of anthropology is now on the side of Rousseau, and Hobbes is the man whose name must not be uttered, the Leviathan in the living room that everyone pretends is simply not there. Let’s look at the evidence based on this video.

Rousseau

Noble? Are you kidding?

Savage? You got it.

Rousseau is 1-1. Now let’s see how Hobbes scores.

Hobbes 

Short? Yo.

Nasty? Damn straight.

Brutish? Oh yeah!

Hobbes wins of course, 3-0, clean sweep.

Anyway, I don’t think this video has anything to say about superiority or inferiority of Whites or non-Whites. The Yanonamo are simply what humans are like in their raw, native condition once you take off the fake civilizational veneer. This is us – you, me and everyone else. Killers, born killers. A bunch of Goddamned animals. As if you needed reminding, we humans are indeed animals, giant two legged monkeys if you wish.

Hobbes redeemed once again.

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Is There a Language That is (Nearly) Impossible to Learn to Speak Without Growing up with It?

Answer from Quora

I recently talked to a man who is learning Min Nan, which is a Sinitic language often called a dialect of Chinese. He told me that Min Nan speakers say that the tones are so hard that no one who doesn’t grow up speaking Min Nan ever seems to get it very well.

Cantonese is a similar language that is very difficult. It is much harder than Mandarin, and many native Mandarin speakers say they tried to learn Cantonese and gave up on it because it was too hard. Cantonese has nine tones.

Basque is said to be very hard to learn unless you grow up with it. There is a joke that the Devil spent seven years trying to learn Basque, and he only learned how to say Hello and Goodbye.

Navajo would also be hard. Even Navajo children struggle quite a bit learning Navajo and don’t seem to get it well until maybe age 12. When Navajo children arrive at school, they often do not speak Navajo well yet.

Korean is a surprise, but apparently it is very hard to learn well. A native Korean speaker told me that Korean is so hard that no Korean speaker ever speaks it with 100% accuracy, and everyone makes errors.

Czech is also hard. Even most Czech speakers never get Czech all the way. They have TV contests in Czechoslovakia where they try to stump native speakers with hard forms in the language. If you can last 30 minutes without making even one error, you win. I think only two men have been able to do it, but one was a non-native speaker!

Piraha, spoken in the Brazilian Amazon, is also very hard. Over the course of a few centuries, several Portuguese speaking priests had tried to learn Piraha, but they had all given up because it was too hard. And these same priests had been able to master a number of other Indian languages, but Piraha was just too much. Daniel Everett learned the language and wrote important papers on it. He is only of the only non-native speakers who was able to learn the language.

Tsez, spoken in the Caucasus, is also murderously hard. Every verb can have over 100,000’s of possible forms. I understand that even native speakers make regular errors when speaking Tsez.

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Judith Mirville on the Perils of Braziliafication for the Jews

Very nice comment from Judith Mirville showing that if Jews are promoting Braziliafication in the hopes that it will be good for the Jews, they may be sorely mistaken.

That will prove to be an especially bad move: in a Brazilified society such as Brazil, the various cultures of that multiculturalism cannot agree together safe onto one point: the Jews are the main responsible for the present state of affairs, even people such as the Japanese of Belo Horizonte, the German of Porto Alegre, the Negroes from Bahia and the White Trash rednecks of the chaparral of Sertão can agree on that.

I am now practicing Portuguese, listening to various videos to study various local accents and slangs, and everybody is inveighing against Jews each one for their different reasons.

The Negroes accuse them of having organized the slave trade, which in the specific case of Northern Brazil was true. The rednecks of Sertão accuse them of having geared the whole musical culture of Brazil towards hedonistic and then gay values.

The well-to-do Portuguese of São Paulo accuse them of having subverted the monarchy to install a de facto British colonialism in the form of a Republic as well destroying the military regime which was the last rampart against the tide of Cultural Leftism everywhere in the intelligentsia. The Germans there are of a type that was never morally bullied into repentance for WWII.

And the Japanese, though not big haters of Jews, all want them to be put back into ghettos for practical reasons and accuse them of having organized the whole of Western colonialism in non-White countries and robbed Asia of its traditional technological superiority and intelligence by programming so many other Whites beyond their real innate capacity to feel inventive and superior.

It comes to no mystery that cultures in an multicultural environment tend identify with their most reactionary elements, and therefore are more inclined to look for a culprit or archetypal symbol of evil from without. And it turns out that in Brazil the most rabid antisemitic movements are decidedly multicultural chic, not White Power, especially since the traditional White racism of Brazil claimed that the core of the nation was made up of mythical Jewish ancestry.

The Extreme Left to Center Left culture that still refuses most the conspiracy-justified antisemitism is monocultural non-Catholic Portuguese (mildly anti-Black de facto, though praising mulatto women for their supernatural beauty but only in their own role of providers of sentimental entertainment), and they are the ones who communicate the least with other cultures in their own country and prefer to communicate with other White nations in the world (France for the culture, the Anglo-Saxon countries for business) than with their own co-nationals of different hues.

All great antisemitic bouts of the past started out in rather multicultural environments. Austria, for instance, used to be the most multicultural part of Europe, and further back in time, you can find Spain and Portugal, which at one time used to be the most diversified countries: in both cases, mythical antisemitism could develop unchecked for being the only political language common to so many diverse groups even though not the ideal one to that many individuals.

How do the Jews let that happen to the point of loving it as it may seem?

That is very simple: first, as you put it, their intelligence is grossly overrated. They are emotion-driven more than many others. It must also be known that Jewish identification with the intellectual superiority of openness of mind is a very recent and atypical thing in the course of history. That identification began only as a byproduct of the Enlightenment culture and only among Jews that wanted to get free of their traditional ghetto culture, which turned out into a majority at a certain point.

Before that point, intellectual curiosity was far more severely repressed in Jewish culture than in Christian culture, the rabbis had far more tolerance of and liking for magic: even the study of too much geography was deemed dangerous. The general morality among them used to be that one must as an individual make plans for the day, as a family for the week, and as a Jewish community for the year, but NEVER beyond, since all promises of the preceding years were to be overridden at each Rosh ha Shanna. What is good for Jewish prosperity this year only is the real good, the rest is goyish daydreaming.

Even if the consequences of what is done this year are evidently ultra-negative for your own descendants, such as destroying the environment or installing a future millennial totalitarian regime just to make sure your tiny few talents are employed and well-paid, that is none of your business as a Jew. You must think of those descendants as of imaginary non-Jewish beings.

When for instance you adopt Communism as a Jew, the important thing is to enjoy a higher life through it and also a good relationship with many non-Jews for a few years’ space at most. You must not inquire too seriously about the ultimate consequences of your ideological choice. It is a fashion among many others to have to dress your own brain and others as well as their bodies according to a taste that sells right now.

If it turns out that by so doing you will progressively install a Nazi-like regime first courting and then turning against you, so be it, que sera sera, that was God’s intention for you to bring it about. It is a culture based on the principle of pure prostitution and on the faith that such an attitude alone can bring about joyful survival to a group: they are actually not so racist towards strangers provided they share that very same mentality.

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Anatomy of a Lie: All Latin American Revolutions Came from Cuba and the USSR

Jason: Also, the left not only believes the other side will torture them like on Hostel, but they believe the US is aiding the right. I suppose at one time, the right thought the USSR was aiding the left, but I think the real facts were exaggerated.

They have good reasons to think that. Do you realize that hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have in fact been tortured like in Hostel? All with the approval, coaching, cheerleading and assistance of the US?

The USSR was aiding the Left only in a sense. In only a very few countries had an armed revolutions had sprung up and Cuba was aiding them. Russia gave the Cubans lots of arms and the Cubans smuggled them to Nicaragua and then to the rebels in El Salvador. That was it as far as I can tell.

The revolutionaries in the following countries never got one bullet or one nickel from Cuba or the USSR:

Guatemala: URNG and others 1954-1994
Colombia: ELN, FARC 1964-present
Peru: focos in the 1960’s, Sendero Luminoso 1980-present, MRTA 1984-1996
Ecuador: Sendero Luminoso 1990
Venezuela: small focos in the 1960’s and 1970’s
Brazil: urban guerrillas in the 1960’s
Uruguay: Tupamaros 1970-1983
Bolivia: Sendero Luminoso 1990, MIR 1960’s
Paraguay: recent guerrillas supported by the FARC 2012-present
Argentina: Tupamaros 1970-1983
Nicaragua: Sandinistas 1964-1979
Honduras: small guerrilla bands in the 1980’s
Chile: Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front 1970-1989, Lautaro Front 1990’s

As you can see, armed revolutions started up in all of those countries at one time or another usually for very good reasons. The Right tried to blame all this revolutionary activity on the USSR bogeyman. But the USSR never gave any of those groups one bullet or one dime. The Right also claimed and still does that everything was peachy clean and hunky dory in all of those countries except for the evil Soviets coming in and stirring things up by giving those university students all those funny ideas. This is complete nonsense. The truth is that if you have a decent country, you never get Left guerrillas, rural, urban or otherwise.

You only get an armed Left when your country is a complete Hellhole. The way to defeat an armed Left is to create at least a semblance of a decent society. If you do that, the Left will lay down its arms and even join the government.

The US always wants to say that rebels have no agency.

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Latin American Politics Finally Comes To America

I guess Chile has their version of the mighty keyboard warrior like the US. No shortage of white shit for brains running around say they’re going get rid of all the Jews and blacks.. then you have a fair number of blacks running around saying they’re going to get rid of their white oppressors.. etc. Totally delusional twats. Maybe rightists are a serious problem in Chile but I don’t consider YouTube comments a proper gauge of sentiment and support.

I have been engaged off and on in deep study of this region since 1989. 28 years.

You don’t understand Chile. You don’t understand Latin America.

Really the entire rightwing down there is exactly like this. The rich, elite Whites’ basic attitude in almost every country down there is “All Communists must be killed.” And Communist means anyone even slightly left of center. A huge % of the population in Chile is still pro-Pinochet, and this is precisely how they think.

The Left stages marches and protests all the time, often is support of Allende. Rightists, of whom there are many supporters still meet them and there is wild street fighting. Rightists then stage marches often in support of Pinochet. The Left shows up and there is wild street fighting.

Did some searches.. looks like the bigger demonstrations were over education and state (or lack of it) support. Seem to follow the US model – most of the protests are peaceful but then you have “the hooded ones” raising a ruckus. I couldn’t find anything that indicated there were large counter protests by rightists – not saying that didn’t happen but I just couldn’t find them If you have a link or links I’ll take a look.

Ok, well I think I may have read this some time ago. I do remember reading it, but it could have been a while back. It could well have been years ago, or a decade or more ago. But at one time in recent history, this is how it was.

Perhaps the Left vs. Right riots have quieted down in recent years, but that’s the way it was not long ago.

Protests in Chile have historically been far more riotous and violent than demos in the US. There’s not really any comparison. Anyway, violent riots on the US Left are a relatively new phenomenon. Trump is a corrupt, vicious, evil ultraright dictator ruling in a typical Latin American model. All of the Latin American Right is exactly like Donald Trump. That’s why the Left is so violent down there. Trump has succeeded in finally bringing Latin American ultraright fascism to America. So it follows that we are following the Latin American model in that the Left has grown militant, and Left demos now often turn riotous and violent just as they do in Latin America.

This sort of thing is so predictable that you can write near mathematical laws of political science predicting it. A nation can only go so far to the extreme right and it can only become unequal to a certain level. Once it passes that level, it has crossed some sort of Rubicon and now in most any nation you automatically get a militant, riotous and violent Left. It’s as close to a law as the sort you can get in mathematics and physics.

In Chile, the Indians are treated horribly and engage in continuous demonstrations which usually turn into riots.

I was following Latin American politics a lot on the Net a few years back, and most demos in Chile seemed to turn into the typical Latin American demonstration -> riot progression. Most demos in Latin America turn riotous from my observation, at least in Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, and even Mexico. The conditions are so insanely unequal down there that any working class demo quickly turns into a riot.

Violence, riots, coups, extremes of Left and Right politics, lack of democracy and extreme instability are typical of the entire region and now we are importing precisely this model to the US.

I am leaving out Argentina, but the Argentine Right was recently calling for a military coup against Kirchner.

In Paraguay, a legislative coup threw out the leftwinger.

A legislative coup just threw out Rouseff, the left president of Brazil.

There have been many coup and quasi-coup attempts in Venezuela. You could well say there has been a continuous coup since 2002.

In Colombia, yes, left demos usually turn violent or riotous. On the other hand, if you are on the Left down there, you can be murdered by the government at any time.

There was a military coup in Honduras, and now anyone on the Left can be killed at any time. Death squads have killed over 1,000 people.

A US coup removed Aristide in Haiti. The new US installed government quickly murdered 3,000 people.

Why the commenter is trying to polish this Latin American turd is beyond me.

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A Few Countries Where US-Style Conservatives Are in Power

Juan: The Filipino government.

Center-left economics but far-right socially (law and order, etc.)

This does not remind you of Trump?

There is absolutely nothing even 1% left or even centrist about Trump. He’s basically the most rightwing man on Earth, and the Republican Party is one of the most rightwing ruling parties on Earth.

There are some contenders now in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil, Honduras and Haiti, but they have vast opposition among the people. I doubt if they have majority support in any of those countries.

Two of them came to power in legislative coups – in Paraguay and Brazil.

Honduras is a military dictatorship, as is Haiti. Both governments are hated by the majority of the population.

Yes, far right parties were elected in Argentina, Chile and Colombia.

But in Argentina the far right was replacing the Hard Left with Kirchner and the government has huge opposition.

There is a lot of support for the Right in Chile, but I doubt if it’s the majority. Chile has been governed by members of the Socialist Party for most of the last 20 years. Furthermore, the Left is radicalized, activated huge and often violent in opposition.

Colombia has long been probably the most rightwing country on Earth. Probably the majority of the population supports the Hard Fascist Right. Why this is, is not known, but it is a long tradition down there. Nevertheless, the Left is huge, extremely radicalized and activated, and in fact, they have taken up arms. Actually, they have been armed to the teeth for the last 52 years. The armed Left is powerful and deadly, and they have killed 10,000’s of soldiers and police. They are so powerful that a while back, they fired mortars at the Capital building at the very moment that the new President was being sworn in. Some of the mortars actually struck the building.

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Alt Left: Civil War? Bring It On!

Well, low level civil war in the present form of pre-civil war or civil strife anyway is just fine. It’s not ok to promote anything beyond that right now though.

Here.

A new article in Salon says that Trump has set off a civil war in America. As a supporter of the very similar Revolutionary movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s, which also erupted into a near civil war, the Alt Left supports this low- level civil war (civil strife) completely. Right now what is going on is like a pre-civil war or what is often referred to as civil strife. The civil war will pretty much only start if and when people start killing each other, and that’s not happening…yet. Hopefully it will not come to that because not only will the enemy start dying but we will too. That means you, me, our friends and loved ones. It’s generally better if civil strife does not move to a shooting civil war level barring extreme circumstances.

The only thing that is happening now is street fights between the Left and Right, similar to the Left vs. Right street thugs fighting in the streets in Germany in the 1920’s and 1930’s. It also similar to civil strife that goes on in Latin America. Particularly in Chile, left vs. right street fighting is very common. The Right is fascist and supports Pinochet. The Left is almost Communist or socialist and supports Salvador Allende and his followers. A woman from Allende’s own party is now governing the country. The Left regularly stages what can only be called pro-Allende demos, which are regularly raided by fascists who support Pinochet. Similarly, fascists regularly stage what are more or less pro-Pinochet demos which are regularly invaded by leftists. Street fighting between the two is very common.

People do not realize it but rioting is very common in Latin America. Venezuela had regular riots, often led by university students, even before Chavez came to office. After Chavez came in, the Opposition staged regular riots and demos in their neighborhoods. After a while, the Chavista police just sat back and let the Opposition trash their neighborhoods. The Chavista police must have had one of the most hands-off approaches to rioters in the world.

In Chile once again, high school students are now staging regular demos which typically turn into riots. This is because in this wealthy country, the schools are literally falling apart. These riots have been happening about once every three weeks now. The Chilean Indians are a much discriminated against population and popular racism against Indians is at a very high level.

I had a friend in Chile whose father worked for Allende and considered himself a progressive guy. He was majoring in sociology and he planned to go to the Indian regions to do fieldwork. However, this anti-Indian racism was off the charts from an American point of view. He also had wildly classist views which would be shocking in the US. Obviously any country afflicted with crazy high levels of classism and racism along with some of the worst wealth inequality on Earth is a pretty shitty place. In a shitty country, you might as well demonstrate and riot all the time because that is exactly what shitty countries deserve. If they ever clean up their act and turn into decent countries, I think the rioters in general should knock it off.

Rioting should only be for protesting truly noxious systems, not, for instance, against Swedish social democracy. It’s a very civilized and decent system and there’s nothing to riot about. But rightwing shitholes can have all the riots in the world for all I care. They asked for it by being rightwing shitholes. If they don’t want riots all the time, all they have to do is create a decent country.

Needless to say, the Chilean Indians riot on a very frequent basis. And Indian riot is almost banal down there. That’s how common it is.

I was very close to the politics of Peru for a while there and I got regular updates of the situation on the ground. Even leaving aside the fact that there was an armed and very deadly insurgency going on, besides that, on the Left in general (which did not necessarily support the insurgency at all) there were regular strikes and demonstrations.

A lot of the strikes were by people like teachers and physicians. Teachers’ unions are very militant in Latin America, they go on strike all the time, have regular demonstrations and they even riot quite a bit. Schoolteachers rioting seems odd in a US context but down there, it’s just normal. There are also almost constant demonstrations against mining and really for all manner of leftwing causes. It’s quite common for these to turn into riots. Even setting aside the insurgency, Peru struck me as a place where leftwing riots were quite common.

I don’t know much about civil strife in the rest of the continent. I saw a recent video of young people mostly in their late teens to mid twenties who appeared to be actually demonstrating in favor of the FARC guerrillas and against death squad activity directed at civilian supporters of the guerrilla. I was surprised that the FARC had that much support. The demonstration was quite violent to say the least.

I believe demonstrations are very common in Brazil and if I am not mistaken, they regularly become riots also.

This low level civil war or civil strife is a good thing in the US right now. Bottom line is we deserve it. We are turning into a true rightwing shithole along Latin American lines, and shitty countries deserve all the riots that rioters can unleash against them. Don’t like the rioting? Fine, put in a halfway decent government. Unless and until that happens, I say let the riots go on.

All of the following are important:

  • Calling or writing to your Congresspeople.
  • Attending town hall meetings of Congresspeople.
  • New laws at the state level
  • Anti-Trump lawsuits by states
  • Anti=Trump lawsuits by individuals and aggrived parties, often being taken by the ACLU right now.
  • Appearances by Congresspeople at areas of controversy, such as Congresspeople who tried to get travelers released from airports
  • Journalists writing highly critical and rabble rousing articles
  • Openly defiant and angry press organs, even such staid venues as the New York Times. There’s nothing with the NYT calling Trump a liar on the front page.
  • Letters to the editor
  • Signing petitions
  • Refusing service to Trump supporters in the workplace
  • Ending as many friendships with Trump supporters as you can handle
  • Various organizations leading peaceful demonstrations of all sorts such as the women’s march. Those demos can get pretty loud and rowdy, but without overt violence, they are still peaceful
  • Blocking highways
  • Walkout strikes
  • Wildcat strikes
  • Boycotts
  • Shopping strikes

And also nonpeaceful protest would seem to be in order. If we are truly turning into a nightmarish Latin American style rightwing shithole, then this country deserves as many riots as rioters can stage. Shitholes deserve nothing less until they clean up their act and turn into decent countries.

Among forms of nonviolent protest:

  • Looting of noxious corporate venues, especially window smashing.
  • Bonfires
  • Fireworks
  • Smoke bombs
  • Rocks, bricks and police barricades at windows of some venues, the purpose being merely to break windows at the venue.
  • Vandalism, especially of corporate property. Window smashing is just fine.
  • Arson, particularly of corporate property but especially of the property of our class enemies, such as the limousine burnt on January 20.

Violence against people.

  • Generally not recommended at this point.

This is a very tricky area and I am wrestling a lot with this one. In wars, the civilian supporters of the insurgency or state are supposed to be left alone. They seldom are in wars anymore, but they are supposed to be. This is why the fire bombings in Germany and Japan were so wrong. Even if Germans were supporting Nazis, it was not ok to set their cities aflame with the sole purpose of incinerating as many civilians as possible. Something very similar but much worse happened in Japan.

Of course the purpose of the atom bombs was to slaughter as many civilians as possible in order to end a war. The argument is typically raised that it was worth it to murder 300,000 Japanese civilians in a couple of days to end the war and that alternatives would have been more costly. Even with a goal of ending a war and supposedly saving lives by ending a war prematurely, it’s awful hard to justify mass slaughter of civilians, even if they are supporting a noxious regime. Killing thousands of civilians even for this purpose seems wrong, not to mention 10,000’s. Killing 100,000’s of civilians even for some supposedly noble goal gets very hard to justify under virtually any circumstances.

So if civilian supporters even of armed insurgencies and noxious regimes are not to be killed or even harmed for that matter, how is it ok to beat up Trump supporters. Now granted, things are much worse in hot wars. If all Assad’s army and supporters were doing was punching out rebel supporters, I doubt if anyone would care. I doubt if many would be bothered by German patriots clocking Nazi supporters during the war, assuming they could even get away with it. Likewise in Japan. The main argument in all of these cases is that state are actually mass murdering civilian supporters of insurgencies and civilian supporters of enemy states during state to state war. The argument never gets down to the level of if it’s ok to punch out guerrilla supporters or people backing a state in wartime in a state to state war.

Nevertheless, attacks on Trump supporters leave me a bit queasy. It may come down to that at some point, but for now, political violence against Opposition civilians doesn’t rub me the right way. Of course the antifa will do it anyway, we don’t have to stamp our approval on it. And it’s a thin line that separates a right hook from a group beating stomping someone to death. Single punches can turn into fatal beat downs faster than you can think.

For right now, nonpeaceful tactics should be limited to property damage, particularly of noxious corporations. Destroying the property of class enemies such as limousines is certainly acceptable. Even arson is ok against their property and that of noxious corporations, especially if you clear out the civilians just stick to burning stuff, not other people. A lot of limousines deserve to be torched and a lot of banks are asking for it too.

But I am going to butt out of attacks on people of the opposition. And surely, attacks with guns, bombs and whatnot are completely out of line at least at this stage. Now it may come down to a 1970’s revolutionary scenario where as late as 1972, 1,900 bombs went off in the US. That’s six bombs a day. Very few of them killed or even hurt other people as they were often set off late at night or preceded with warnings. Nevertheless, once you step it up to setting off bombs, it’s a whole new ballgame. We aren’t there yet, so such activities are not acceptable at the least.

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