"As revolutionaries, we don't have the right to say that we're tired of explaining. We must never stop explaining. We also know that when the people understand, they cannot but follow us. In any case, we, the people, have no enemies when it comes to peoples. Our only enemies are the imperialist regimes and organizations." Thomas Sankara, 1985
International Anti-Capitalist podcast run by an American, a Slav and an Arab.
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nobody is right all of the time and people say stupid shit - expecting thought leaders like these guys to be any different is an exercise in disappointing yourself and ruining any cohesion a movement has. .
tell him it's a shitty take but people shouldn't be consigned to the trashcan for posting too hard
that being said do self crit yugo
It's bad, hopefully people close to him will reach out, etc. I think our part is to just not endorse it and move on, when Yugo invites our feedback we can tell him that this was a big L, just remember bad reactionary takes aren't equal to a long, consistent history of reactionary thought or action
People are allowed to be wrong or controversial every now and then. This is nothing worse than every lib has been saying for the past 30 years, if not longer. Marx himself had some not-entirely-materialist views on Blacks, Asians and other Jews.
I know I have at times blamed the peculiarities of people raised in my home town on Meth and rubber fumes, while I understand that the chief concern is and always will be economic. I wouldn't want someone taking those statements out of context and calling me a fascist.
Sad to see him double down on reactionary takes, hopefully JT or Hakim can talk some sense into him.
They might need to do a self-criticism episode where they examine their own shortcomings if they want to retain their credibility.
Making mistakes is fine, but you need to be able to take accountability and self-examine to be a "public figure" in this community.
Sometimes yugo posts cringe. It is unfortunate. Twitter has a way of doing that to people idk
Surely someone can talk to him about this personally? I don't think we can do anything about it besides bring this to their attention and then hopefully someone he has personal ties to knocks some sense into him.
If he made it this far he can be pushed further. He can dunk on America in more productive ways. He needs to be willing to learn tho' He is providing free ammo to anti-communists if he keeps tweeting shit like this, so I do really hope someone seriously pulls him aside and gives him a well deserved lecture.
Yugo also seems very rejective of praise and compliments on the Pod idk if this is just a personality he puts up for show, but he might be severely underestimating his impact on the world, but now I'm psycho-analyzing that's not very appropriate of me either honestly, but yeah JT, Hakim, please help out your boy.
Let the drunk Balkan shitpost once in a while, especially when he's talking about Amerikkka!!!
Sometimes it does feel like there's a break in our species between people who do and don't have the capacity for empathy. But then you can look at studies with infants and see that, no, everyone is born generous and caring but are trained out of it by their environment.
Would you be willing to share the studies with infants you're referring to? I do see search results online for infants and the development of empathy, but I'm open to reading specific studies you might have as a recommendation. I'd been taught (from other Americans) that infants are born without empathy and normally learn it very early as part of their development. "Infants are basically narcissists" was something I remember one particularly narcissistic person I used to know insisted on. I would love to know that the people who told me that were wrong.
Not knowing what how he'd elaborate beyond the confines of the length of a tweet, I'd assume he's talking about lead paint theory. Surely the issue American Republicans extends beyond a single cause like heavy metal poisoning, but I wouldn't automatically think that he's talking about something specifically genetic. There are plenty of other biological causes for changes in a population that don't include genetics. Stuff in the water, environmental contaminants, lax air standards, food additives...we don't know what the long-term effects of some of these things have on people, and studies to identify those problems are probably blocked the same way the effects of smoking were repressed for decades.
Capitalist-focused education systems that reward fitting into boxes over critical thinking wouldn't be considered "biological", but absolutely could be partially blamed for how Americans tend to act. Incentivizing financial success over anything else, including empathy could be partially blamed. Also not biological. Forcing the concept of "rugged individuality" into every aspect of our culture with no concern for community welfare could be partially blamed, and isn't biological. With the festival of different social structures all combining in the process of making an adult in the US, it's no wonder we've got such glaring problems. If you include lax environmental protections, food safety standards, industry lobbying to allow ultra-processed ingredients, sugar subsidies, additives to increase shelf life, those things all do become biological. Hopefully that's what Yugo is talking about.
He probably knows as well as most that with a genetically-diverse country like the US, you could never chalk the issues with conservatism up to something like genes. That still doesn't mean other biological causes aren't factors.
i think it's fine to post an 'L' once in a while. (i'm so up with the hip language :D) We're all human and he complains about AmeriKKKans of all people.
Seems like he's just saying right-wing ideology is a result of a lack of education, and lack of education combined with capitalist propaganda in the US has become such an issue that it is ingrained on a deeper level than what has been seen anywhere else - What that means more specifically has yet to be seen. Without knowing more he could believe that such an extent of propaganda could even affect mental development on a national level.
I must be missing something, because that's not incredibly egregious. It could be interpreted as some sort of eugenics-lite statement, but I don't see why it would, considering what else he's saying in the tweet and his general body of work.^[ I don't know if I agree the US is unique, it seems like it is in the modern world, but I'm sure things were worse for the bolsheviks or the spartacists with regards to education of the general population. It could also just be my anti-yank-chauvinism that makes it seem to me like americans are in some way more propagandised, but my general interactions with USians have been baffling]
Oftentimes online someone will phrase themselves poorly, get misinterpreted and dogpiled. The person getting dogpiled will get defensive and contrarian and take some odd position that isn't really what they were initially arguing and isn't what they really believe, but at this point they can't just let things go and they're tired of repeating themselves so they end up digging themselves into a rhetorical hole, trying to explain what they're not saying because they keep getting misunderstood, while getting more and more piled on. Seen it happen a bunch here. Happened to me too. I assume that's what's occurring with yugopnik too, considering the alternative is that he's some sort of chud doing a long con for no discernible reason.
Assume good faith and reread what Yugopnik wrote. What do you think he's trying to say?
edit: added more words + my own vibes about americans + a question at the end