this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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GenZedong
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Yeah, wow, that's wildly over the top. It also looks very forced from where I'm standing. I don't look at that and see soullessness or anything, I see a couple of people who actually look very normal and human. And it's important people understand that being rich doesn't suddenly make someone a sociopath or something. Sometimes people do sociopath things in order to get rich, or maintain their wealth, but it doesn't even necessarily mean they lack empathy. They could be very empathic to people in their social circle, while justifying their behavior as defending what they have, or be heavily insulated from the damage of what they do because of the layers of indirection involved in capitalism. There are also degrees of rich. Millionaire in this day and age can mean you had a high paying job, worked for decades, and saved well. Billionaire is you're basically a king without the title.
That said, one of the most important things to internalize, I'd say, is that the inertia of systems is far more powerful than what a few individuals decide. Which is why the ML line is "seize the means of production" and not "literally eat the rich because they are subhuman". There's just nothing beneficial about encouraging that kind of thought. It's at best wasted energy, directing people more toward fleeting, impassioned rage than long-term strategy. It's the kind of stuff you say when you want to incite a riot, not organize a revolution.
These people don't need to be humanized. They already have so much, too much actually, and will almost always act the way everyone expects them to act when reparations and transfer of means occurs. They will lash out, they will become violent, and they will hate you and every one else that isn't within their immediate circle. There are so many people that exist inside and outside your country that are barely given a thought. The homeless begging for simple acknowledgment and being denied even that, the unnamed masses (the statistics!) that die every day in the periphery of the empire to preventable illnesses and starvation. The victims of wars that were the lab mice for the brutality that has finally begun to reach the empire's doorstep.
So many more people deserve that sympathy that you're giving to people that will treat exactly the way Marx outlined.
Add: ygpk is using hateful language and is using the talking points of eugenics in his posts. Everyone itt calling him out on his hateful behavior is correct. I only made my comment because I just don't feel the need to direct sympathy towards the rich.
I don't see how I gave them sympathy. The point is that they aren't all ghouls whose eyes you can look into and see pure evil or something. It's much more mundane and systemic than that and if people don't understand that, they will be unequipped to properly challenge power; instead chasing after threats in the same way that liberals view Trump as an embodiment of evil and miss the evil behind the decorum of somebody like Joe Biden.
Rich people will tend to act in their class and caste interests, yes, which can be very blatantly, sometimes cartoonishly evil (more so in the billionaire class than somebody with a few million). That doesn't mean you can look them in the eye and be unable to find signs of a soul. It doesn't even mean that if you spent the day with them, you'd necessarily think they're a bad person. And if you go in expecting it to be obvious that they are evil, you will be confused during the times when they aren't.
I don't need to humanize them. They are human. That doesn't make what they are part of any less horrific. If people want to call em ghouls sometimes or whatever, hell, I've done that myself. But I see that more as venting. What I was talking about was a preoccupied screed about how subhuman a couple of random people are.
Your emphasis on the plight of the downtrodden is valuable, both morally and strategically. It needs to be emphasized just how bad it is for the oppressed. But that doesn't negate what I've said, which was directed at a specific context, not meant as some kind of sympathy for the rich.
Sympathy isn't a finite resource, just because I acknowledge the humanity of rich people (even tho on a personal level I detest them) doesn't mean I acknowledge the suffering of poor people less. Like the person above said, being so performative about your hatred towards the rich is ultimately pointless.
I get it, I don't believe anyone here is giving more thought to rich people than to others.
But if I can be so honest with you: these people probably don't care about you, so why on earth should you care about them? So they're at the receiving end of either unsavory or outright hateful rhetoric. Beyond calling out the use of hateful rhetoric, why should anyone go the extra mile and show them sympathy?
My personal opinion: ignore them like they ignore you