I appreciate your expansion of Aristotle's theories of rhetoric and agree that Obama was well-spoken, which I did find to be rather refreshing.

I'm basing this mostly off of what I've seen in the general discourse, either in popular debates or online. If you either do or do not have an opponent, the "winning" strategy seems to be to open with an all out attack and follow it with an allusion between yourself and something like a holy figure. If you don't have an opponent, the best conclusion seems to be an exercise in style, and, if you do, it seems to be to just make your continued attack more pointed.

I only surmise that this was perfected among aristocrats, but find for it to hold within the far-Left. Among sets of society not terribly inclined towards sectarianism, I think you would find that people do value good argumentation, but that so much of society is fairly sectarian leads me to suspect that good argumentation isn't generally effective. What I posit is that this is due to that human beings are not, by nature, rational.

A note: The purpose of the exercise in style is to cultivate a public image. As before, I'm not saying that any of this is good; it's just what I've pessimistically noted happens to be effective.

A rather strange anecdote: When I used to suffer the auditory hallucination of my supposed detractors within the intelligence community more or less either insulting me or whomever it was that I was ostensibly associated with, they used to refer to this with the backhanded insult of the "smack talking".

"These little things creep out to patch/ themselves hovels/ there in the marred shadow of your gift", y'know what I mean?

A psychological theory:

I generally understand and use the term "pathology" to refer to something that becomes as if it were true because it is believed to be so. Thomas Pynchon famously formulized this with, "paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations", which I can attest to, as, operating under the assumption that the intelligence community had been attempting to "incite a global clandestine civil so as to be given the legal and extra-juridical rationalizations and justifications for the establishment of a global crypto-Fascist totalitarian regime that bore only the semblance of liberal democracy", in the general course of my political life, I have produced a situation to where it is fairly likely that I am actually being monitored by some form of security service or another, if not multiple ones.

Anyways, I've also noticed that the general conduct of the far-Left does happen to be exceptionally elitist, which is how they don't really act in a manner that differs too much from the ruling class that they claim to despise, if not somehow worse. Freidrich Nietzche has that famous quote, "Whoever battles monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster himself. And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you." In thinking about the far-Left, I wonder if this can't be likened to something like "self-fulfilling antipathy". I don't happen to ascribe to the simplified variant of horseshoe theory, but have kind of noticed that, when people rail against something or another too directly for an extensive period of time, they do kind of become like it.

Take "lifestyle anarchism" for example. Originally, it was kind of an anarchistic countercultural movement in opposition to what they perceived as the selfish, materialistic, and vain culture of their time. Their original attitudes may have been somewhat suspect, as those attributes are often ascribed to women, but that isn't terribly relevant to the point I am making. Contemporary Punk culture does tend to be populated by egotistic libertines, less than scrupulous when it comes to generating a profit, and entirely fixated upon aesthetic trends. They do all of these things under the spurious guise of satire that don't seem to make them markedly distinct from the cultural hegemony in the 1970s, and, in some ways, granted the excuse of Dada-inspired parody, are almost significantly less amicable.

Anytime I try to explain this, I feel like some guy in Seattle who is still lamenting the glory days of Starbucks, but I do really think that it is this sort of thing that does happen often enough to be indicative of some basic facet of the human psyche, particularly as it concerns our means to cope with conflict.

No one ever seems to know what I'm talking about when I try to explain this, but that the Situationist International effectively became a living caricature of a spy ring, I think, at least, ought to explain it very well. By identifying the Spectacle as the entire political foray, they, at least, identified the problem, though.

Seeing that I think that the problem with politics is that everyone is just in some form of cult or another, it's not like I'm entirely lacking in the beaten way of irony, but I will say that I do, at least, try.

That's all that I suppose that I'll add to this. If you haven't noticed, I've taken to just adding editing my postscripts to the comments so as not to just move my threads to the top of The Philosophy Forum. It's a bit absurd for me to just keep talking to myself, but, as it is a clear courtesy, it doesn't seem like there's good reason to hold it against me. It's not like you have to read the whole comment or anything.

A final point of clarification:

I do get that the Situationist International was an art troupe that was run like an intelligence operation began in subversive jest. What I can never seem to get across about them, though, is that they became somehow otherwise. If you decide to actually learn about them, and, as I do consider for them to have been a great art troupe and to have greatly contributed to critical theory or whatever, as you read some of their exchanges, consider Guy Debord's habit of expelling people from the organization, and are willing to consider them with the minimal requisite skepticism for genuine critical thought, you will find that I do happen to be correct.

Oh, there's also the Rogerian theory of argumentation, which also happens to be completely mistaken. To use the sports metaphor, the general idea of beginning with the anticipated objection to your argument, is in accordance with that "the best offense is a good defense", but, when it comes to rhetorical strategy, the best offence is overkill and the only requisite defense is to somehow associate yourself with a veritable ethic, which can almost always be done with an aside or in passing.

As with all of this, though, I'm just talking about what is effective outside of what ought to be. If you have a contentious point of view, you really ought to be able to walk someone through your general reasoning after letting them know that you have taken their perspective into consideration. That rarely works, though. The quickest way to your point tends to be to repeatedly insult them, lay claim to the moral high ground in as chauvinist manner as humanly possible, provide the semblance of depth to what you have to say, and proceed to mercilessly deal the final blows in the beaten way of a rather cruel wit. To my estimation, the aristocracy has always been all too well aware of this.

Things really ought to be otherwise, though. It's all just however it is, though, y'know? I don't know. Someday, things will be different, I guess.

A brief summary:

As, in the case proselytization, the reigning rhetorical strategy seems to be to make as many incendiary statements in as quick of a succession as you can, briefly inextricably tie your weltanschauung to the immanentization of the eschaton, make an excessive enough display of intellectual superiority for it to be paradoxically be banished to near obscurity, and, then, proceed to ascend to the empyrean via a rather high flown exercise in linguistic aesthetics, which, again, does happen to remind me of the aristocracy, how to actually win an argument, to borrow a martial term, seems to be "shock and awe" in the case of a general audience and shock, awe, and further shock in the case of making a public spectacle out of your opponents, which does point to a certain poverty within the general discourse. As I suspect for such realpolitik to have been responsible for the former institution of dueling, it's not as if it doesn't face the certain perils of relative absurdity, but does quite clearly present a challenge to the established theories of argumentation, at least, as it concerns their efficacy, aside from that I think it ought to make us somewhat skeptical of the assumption that human beings are, by nature, rational.

"Oscric: I mean, sir, for his weapon. But in the imputation laid on him by them, in his meed he’s unfellowed.

Hamlet: What’s his weapon?

Osric: Rapier and dagger.

Hamlet: That’s two of his weapons. But well." - William Shakespeare

Anyways, that's all that I wanted to say about any of this. Like I said, maybe things will someday be somehow otherwise? Who knows?

As an aside, to explain Nietzsche and Marx, I will say, being one of them, that this is something that people with wildly unpopular ideas tend to figure out. So as neither to offer too much of an apology for either of them or myself, I will say that it's kind of like the dark arts of rhetoric.

As it concerns Aristotle, he effectively conceptualized a hierarchy of Logos, Ethos, and Pathos, which is how that equilateral triangle diagram is unfathomable to me. As it concerns politics, he also happens to have been completely incorrect. You would think that any old argument could fall apart in so far that it isn't logical as a reasonable person, but have quite obviously made the mistake of assuming that people are, by nature, rational.

I kind of just reject human nature in general, but, for all intensive purposes, would say that people tend to be capricious or tempestuous. Though I've always felt for this to be wildly unfair, I have just discovered why Romanticism has come to be blamed for the tragic climax of Modernity. You learn something new everyday, I guess.

Anyways, that's all of the musings that I have for now.

Eh, perhaps, but I still suspect for the whole idea of Continental Philosophy just to be a way for some philosophers to get everyone whom they disagree with in the same boat.

To add to this just a bit, perhaps you can say that there is such a thing as Analytic Philosophy. The supposed "Continental" Philosophy is nothing more than an empty signifier. When a philosophical category includes both Friedrich Nietzsche and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel it can no longer be held to have any meaning whatsoever.

I don't know. I'm taking off. Cya!

...

...

I'm just going to keep talking into the void, as I think that, at least, historically, the systemic elimination of entire sectors of the global populace is kind of the most important issue of our time and I do feel like a lot of people are grossly mistaken in these regards. When we talk about Maoist China, for instance, you will find people, at least, on the internet, who have nothing to do with either Mao Zedong Thought or Marxism-Leninism-Maosim, the two primary schools of thought under his regime, who will claim that these numbers have been fabricated by the West and even proceed to laud Mao's regime out of an appeal to some only so well meaning cultural relativism, which is kind of a serious problem, as the totalitarianism then has carried over into the authoritarianism there now.

Then, of course, there is the legacy of Stalin. It took a very long time for us leftists to do away with Marxist-Leninist sentiment and we really don't want for it to come back. The Right, however, on just about any given occasion, is willing to invoke the Black Book of Communism in more or less any political debate, which has led some, in, again, an only so well meaning appeal to some form of egalitarianism, to try and show that Stalin was only so much of dictator, which is just not true, as he is one of three case examples of just that. As much as I think that r/Communism should be ignored at all costs, as well as that I think it rather characteristic of the former, RevLeft, to have created the situation for this article to exist, which is to say that that place only gave credibility to the claim that "hell is other people", as it was one of the few web forums in the world where the denial of the mass extermination of millions was effectively tacitly encouraged, such developments within the Left do kind of have an effect upon the popular imagination.

As it concerns the ostensive death toll for capitalism, which came from many factions of the Left, including some Trotskyite circles, which only made so much sense to me, as the repudiation of these figures does play into the defense of a set of political philosophies proceeding from Marxism-Leninism, and some anti-capitalist circles, particularly those associated with Occupy, while you can cite the lack of universal healthcare in the general course of generating these numbers, it very clearly is not the case that other socio-economic plights did not exist particularly within the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, but, also, in a considerable number of nominally socialist regimes, some of which are still around in the world today. This is kind of a minority opinion within the Left, but the concept of "state capitalism" and these clearly unresearched figures on infographics designed to trivialize the mass extermination of entire sectors of the global populace on the part of Communist regimes really kind of is akin to a form of genocide denial. You may think that the Soviet Union and Maoist China were "Communist" in name only, which isn't actually even true, as the Soviet Union only considered for itself to be Socialist, but, in the former case, a person has created an entirely illusory scapegoat so as to shift the blame for crimes against humanity against a common enemy and, in the latter, they have fabricated, and I do, in good faith, sincerely doubt that any person citing these numbers has undertaken a historical analysis with any degree of rigor, which is to say that they are a fiction, statistics to make life in the West seem somehow analogous to that under totalitarian regimes, which is quite clearly a form of trivialization, and a phony one at that, as no person, given the choice, would emigrate from either the United States or the United Kingdom, for all of their many flaws, to the former Soviet Union.

What I've also tried to argue against in the general course of this are two forms of Western exceptionalism, namely an optimistic and pessimistic one. Though there are times when it, perhaps, could be meaningfully invoked, we ought to be somewhat skeptical of this idea that the West is a bastion of freedom and democracy in the world, with American and British foreign policy and the tenuous relationship that the rest of Europe has to the ongoing project of decolonization as exemplary counter-examples. I also think that it does stand to common reason that the somewhat illusory threat of so-called "global communism", by no stretch of any imagination, justifies the collaboration with Fascists, Neo-Fascists, or other authoritarian right-wing regimes or paramilitary organizations.

Being said, this idea that the quality of life in the so-called "West" isn't somehow better than that of more or less the rest of the world is just simply a lie. There are many contributing factors to this, as well as a certain cost in the quality of life elsewhere, but, even though the Democracy Index is compiled by the private organization, the Economist Intelligence Unit, a branch of The Economist Group, which does publish The Economist, we still kind of ought to think that, well, it is really better to score well than otherwise. You can take it with those grains of salt, but using the whole shaker is going a bit too far.

Then there's the idea of "critical, but unconditional", the International Socialist Organization's words and not mine, "support". That was the stance that they, first, adopted in regards to the Muslim Brotherhood during the Arab Spring, and, later, rather fervently extended to Hamas during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, though had tacitly supported them as such for more or less all of, at least, the oughts. For all that you can say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it just kind of is really the case that Hamas is not really all that great of an organization. Personally, I think that there ought to be a two-state solution, along what are often called the "'67 borders", that leads to an eventual one-state solution, wherein there are equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians, along with whomever else, and that Fatah is the only party there who is all that likely to agree to something like that, as it would be both a meaningful and effective peace process, but my opinions upon this matter are only really so relevant. The question of the ethical validity to critical, but unconditional support, becomes more apparent when you start to consider some of the more nefarious parties whom it could be extended to, such as the Taliban in the name of opposition to the War in Afghanistan or the regime of Bashar al-Assad in the name of opposition to the War on Terror. I happen to be a pacifist, and, so, see no real problem with opposition to the war, but, and this was something that was more common to Marxism-Leninism than Trotskyism, when you begin to defend war criminals under the auspice of "anti-imperialism", it does seem as if something has gone drastically wrong with the global discourse.

That's kind of a lot of qualms that I just have with the Left, though. I bring them up because I think that these sort of things kind of begin with the reactionary apologetics levelled against the more vehement strains of anti-Communism. They just give them what they want, which is just another bad example.

An aside:

As it concerns the concept of "critical, but unconditional" support, every now and then, within the beaten way of politics, not that I agree with such logic too directly, I do feel a need to echo Ayn Rand's interpretation of Aristotle and say that A is A and contradictions do not exist, which, I should hope the Left will understand is not something that I do because of that I sympathize or even agree with Rand, which I emphatically do not, but merely out of my general disdain for most of it.

A farewell:

I feel as if I have gone on into the void about this for long enough to return to my rather quiet life as an academic. As always, so long, everyone!

Speaking of genocide, the term itself poses a certain predicament, as what happened in the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China, though there were actual cases of the systemic elimination of ethnic minorities undertaken by both regimes, could moreso be characterized as either politicide or democide, which, to my estimation, is, but, isn't necessarily prohibited by international law, at least, as it seems, proceeding from the Geneva Convention. There's the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and all kinds of human rights law guaranteed by the United Nations, but there doesn't quite seem to be the same kind of prohibitions established akin to those against genocide in the wake of the Second World War.

I don't know that I am, though.

Sure, you can throw calculative assessments at any country in the West and, if you go back far enough into the only so bygone eras of colonialism, you can probably tally up some figures that are fairly comparable to totalitarian regimes in the Twentieth Century, but the oft-given counterargument of the ostensive death toll of capitalism, invoked by such dismissive statements, is a form of denial. Sure, perhaps the United Kingdom and the United States aren't subject to the same kind of scrutiny as the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, but, within the West, there really hasn't been anything remotely comparable to the concentration camps there. You can always cite the genocide in the Congo led by Leopold II of Belgium as a Western example of comparable scope, as I am so inclined to agree with the figure of ten million and you ought to at that, as, in Belgium, when Leopold III happened to have been a Nazi collaborator, the aristocracy there does seem to believe that it still ought to have some role in the political process, but, if we are going to relegate our discourse to the Twentieth Century exclusively, there is no comparison to be made between what you could call "social murder", a quite serious issue in its own right, and the crimes against humanity perpetuated by totalitarian states.

Statistics on the deaths of millions don't change due to this or that person's partisan politics. You can dismiss these claims again if you like, but, if we're going to cast our lot with Stalin and Mao just so that Jeremy Corbyn can win an election, then, I do kind of feel like we ought to reassess our priorities and attitude towards human rights.

Apparently, a woman is murdered by a man every 3 days in the UK. I blame the government. — unenlightened

Sure, but 122 people a year does sort of pale in comparison to the scope of the aforementioned atrocities, not that that isn't a serious social plight.

Apparently Churchill was responsible for the famine in India — unenlightened

...and he should have been held accountable for that, as it did constitute something like a genocide.

But i wonder if the conspiracy to undermine the science about smoking and lung cancer, and the similar one about asbestos and emphysema, are up there with the megadeath score? — unenlightened

This is a rather glib answer, but, to my estimation, all communists smoke.

But what are these arguments you speak of? Is there a Megadeath competition or something? — unenlightened

For some, I am sure. There are probably Nazis who paradoxically overestimate the scope of the Holocaust and Second World War just to claim that Mao, in point of fact, can not lay claim to the largest scale mass killing in human history. I bet that there's someone in the German underground who you could find at a Peter Murphy show with a t-shirt that says something like "WORLDWIDE GENOCIDE" who'd lament that the communists now get all of the credit for the largest scale human atrocity.

I mixed Zinoviev up with Bukharin, which I might have done in my essay on Lenin that I also posted here, as it was Zinoviev who confessed in regards to Trotsky during the Trial of Sixteen, the first of the Moscow Show Trials, which were the documents presented in this particular encounter. Nikolai Bukharin's testimony was what began the early dissident movement in the Soviet Union, as no one could believe that he had attempted to assassinate Lenin and Stalin, poison Maxim Gorky, had been engaged in espionage, with whom, I can only speculate would have been the Great Britain, though I don't think that they even gave another party, and, most notably, perhaps, had attempted to partition the Soviet Union to be divided amongst Great Britain, Germany, and Japan.

A clarification:

I did correctly cite Bukharin as the person to have testified during the Trial of Twenty-One in The Spectre of Communism. I merely confused him and Zinoviev in that it is Bukharin who we, at least, know to have been tortured before his trial in the above post. To clear up any confusion, Zinoviev is where the supposed evidence for that Trotsky was collaborating with Fascists comes from and Bukharin, due to the incredulous nature of his testimony, is how dissent within the Soviet Union began to take hold.

I should also like to point out that I have been saying "so-called "Communist" regimes" not because, like this author, I consider for authoritarian Communism in either the Soviet Union of the People's Republic of China to have been "state capitalism", which I think is another form of denial, but merely due to the poverty of American discourse, where socialism and communism are totally interchangeable and anyone to the significant left of its center can be accused of either.

Grigory Zinoviev, in a somewhat mistaken fear for his life, as he was going to die no matter what, and, in all likelihood, under torture, confessed to that Leon Trotsky had been collaborating with Fascists during the infamous Moscow Show Trials, which my opponent, in full sincerity, considered as good evidence of the longstanding Marxist-Leninist slander that he had been doing so.

That's a pretty cruel statement. — Thunderballs

Though I fear levelling too much of a charge against certain historians by saying so, I think it quite likely that organizations like the Central Intelligence Agency have used to upper estimates of the so-called "Communist" death toll to justify the policy of containment, with all of the coup d'états and arming, training, and funding of Neo-Fascist terrorist cells and the like that came along with it.

I do, however, think that a lot of people who come up with these figures, in good faith, just tend to err on the side of not leaving any of the victims out. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's figures in The Gulag Archipelago are considerably high, which I think due to his thesis that Marxism-Leninism was a mere continuation of the so-called "War Communism" of Vladimir Lenin. He very much so wanted to reject the idea that Nikita Khrushchev explicitly endorsed in his famous 1956 denunciation of Stalin, that Lenin was venerable, but Stalin guilty of crimes against humanity. He was right to do so, but, the idea that Stalin's reign was a natural consequence of Lenin's, I think, by that Stalin was notorious for the purging of "Old Bolsheviks", namely through the aforementioned Show Trials, and that they quite radically differed in terms of the economic direction of the country, with Lenin's New Economic Policy and Stalin's forced collectivization, as well as the extraordinary change in the scope of the repression from the Red Terror to the Great Terror, it'd be difficult to characterize Stalin's reign as anything other than a departure from that of Lenin's.

In short, I think that Lenin was fairly autocratic and that there is no reason to celebrate his legacy, as well as that he did quite clearly set in course to motion the series of events that would lead to Stalin's rule, but that Stalin's reign was somewhat uniquely dictatorial.

Something that could also be done in, again, a rather spurious defense of either Stalin or Mao is to incorporate both the population size and rate of murder, to which, I think, it important to point out that there are "lies, damn lies, and statistics". That the Nazis effectuated the Final Solution, the purpose of which was to eliminate ostensive races and other sectors of the population, aside from killing communists, which they actually began first, is unique to the regime, and, so, I would again stress the virulence of the Third Reich as a difference between them, though the regimes of Stalin and Mao were also quite vengeful. I'd also like to point out a difference between the comparison and equivalence. It's quite obvious that Marxism-Leninism or, for brevity's sake, Maoism, and Nazism radically differ.

I also forgot to point out that around eighty-five percent of Chinese citizens said that the pros of Mao's regime outweighed the cons in 2013, and, so, the concern over apologetics in his regard, I think, is a good bit more pressing than that of Stalin. It's not like it's the job of the West to deprogram and reeducate the Chinese populace, however. That poll also happens to have been conducted by Global Times, the state-run newspaper in China, and, so, its quite possible that people there were unwilling to give another response and that the data is inaccurate. I would, however, imagine that there are a lot of people in China today who do still view Mao somewhat favorably, which, I think, can only really be chalked up to his cult of personality and the political repression that still exists there.

As much as I don't want to not be able to cite books within an academic setting, I would like to come out in favor of the substantiated pure production of open access journal articles. In the full luxury lifestyle communism of my gradualist nonviolent anarchist future, they will actually sustain the habits of philosophers endlessly rambling into the void.

That's all that I have to say about this. I'll be taking off now.

This is @thewonder signing off.

As it concerns Marxists Internet Archive, it is within the spirit of the texts, in most cases, the legal time elapsed since publication, and because of that they are of historical importance that they very clearly should be in the public domain. As before, I highly doubt the academic concern over the website and think it solely to relate to an argument that relates to publishing rights, of which there is no reasonable basis.

As it concerns established publications, I'm not saying that it isn't somehow probable that the information that they give is somehow better; I'm only saying that that isn't necessarily the case. This whole sort of thing breaks down a bit more when you think about something like the difference between Verso Books, which would generally be considered as somewhat veritable, and AK Press, which may not. The status that the publications retain is more or less the sole determining factor in whether or not they are considered as veritable sources. Verso Books just so happens to publish more mainstream left-wing theory than AK Press. There is no good reason to discount the latter due to its general interest in the kind of political philosophy that it publishes. That's a comparison that I have drawn to my own experience, but, I think that, if you looked closely at a lot of contemporary publications, you would find something similar in what is considered as a good source, namely that the designation of one publication over another relates moreso to the status of the publisher than the veritability of the information.

I'd also like to point out that, while publishers vet books, there is no peer review process which they undergo, and, so, there is nothing that necessarily makes a book that has been published, at all, more veritable, which isn't to say that they may be more likely to be so.

Anyways, that's about that all that I have to say about any of this for the time being. I'll probably be wandering on again fairly soon.

Edit: There are, perhaps, things to say about the business models of Verso Books and AK Press that may play into both the popularity of certain theories and common perceptions about the publishers. It could be suggested that the moniker for AK Press is too incendiary, indicative of that they are lacking in political maturity by slating their publishing house as a revolutionary organization, and that the usage of the red and black flag, commonly associated with either anarcho-communism or anarcho-syndicalism, by a publishing house that primarily publishes somewhat high-flown autonomist theory is somewhat appropriative, whereas Verso Books, though somewhat boorish, in my opinion, is notably lacking in any of the aforementioned potential faults, but, within academia, it does seem that the sole consideration ought to be the veritablity of the information. Franco "Bifo" Berardi, for instance, has published After the Future with AK Press, who did a good job with it, I might add, whereas Paul Virilio is on the roster of Verso Books. As Berardi has never been within an academic scandal for having been singled-out as the primary example for the book, Fashionable Nonsense, he actually enjoys better academic standing than Virilio, but I do think it quite possible within a paper that cites both texts for the former to be called into question without the latter also having been done so, particularly if any given professor or person engaged within review doesn't happen to be well versed in left-wing politically philosophy vaguely proceeding from the work Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. I kind of actually like Speed and Politics, and, so, don't really want to knock Virilio, but I think that you get the gist of what I'm trying to glean here. What is relevant is the quality of the publications and not the manner in which a publishing house presents itself.

You have put the double entendre of the title phrase better than I could have.

It's a play off of a slogan by the Red Army Faction, "Everybody talks about the weather...We don't.", which, in itself, began as a poster for a West German rail service that was later co-opted by the Socialist German Student Union, SDS, the student union that was expelled from the Social Democratic Party of Germany for their opposition to West German armament.

It's also kind of a mediation upon reckless abandon. The narrator is somewhat fascinated by the other character because of his lack of concern for the consequences of his actions. I think that he feels a certain guilt due to that he develops a petty bitterness towards the other character for having put the rest of them through what they have on account of his having joined a terrorist cell when he very well understands that he is suicidal. In a way, he is almost envious of him, despite that he knows better than to be. The interpersonal dynamic between the two characters within the story is somewhat odd, as they barely knew each other and most of it occurs within the narrator's imagination. The idea at the very end of the story is that he becomes somewhat liberated through the experience he has put himself through, depicted by the metaphor of his last hallucination of the other character, despite that he was as a mere disaffected witness to the course of events to have occurred throughout the story and that almost their entire dialogue occurs within his own mind. I'll let you draw your own conclusions, though.

I appreciate your attentive listening and response. Creating this took a good while and, I think, if you give it the time and effort that it may or not be worth, it really could be some of my best work. The references are somewhat intentionally arcane, as I had wanted to depict a world that would be somewhat foreign to most. You can look them up if you feel like doing so, but I hope that my audience doesn't feel compelled to to get anything out of the story. There's a certain degree of clandestinity to left-wing terrorist cells that the relative obscurity is intended to evoke. I don't really expect for most people, even users of The Philosophy Forum, to have been aware of all of them in advance.

Anyways, I will actually be leaving now, and, so, if you or anyone else wants to chat it up about this, then, do feel free to, but it's very likely that I won't have anything else to add for a while.

All the best and, again, so long!

As this is clearly still within the domain of this thread and I am sure that you are all so dreadfully curious, you may, at this juncture, wonder, when I have no allies within the libertarian Left, and do advocate for gradualist nonviolent anarchism, as to why it is that I don't just become a left-wing liberal.

The reason for this is that I would, first, have to abandon both the teleological project of anarchism, which I define as "libertarian socialism", but, here, am willing to invoke the more common "abolition of all hierarchy", and the political praxis of civil disobedience, which, though my status as a law abiding citizen could be used to my advantage, would ultimately alienate a number of my nearest allies, particularly within the libertarian Left. I, then, wonder, in the beaten way of pragmatism, if I wouldn't someday end up as the kind of person to engage in lengthy political debates with other middle-of-the-road would be political analysts on the comments sections of New York Times articles. I will say that my doing so is both a matter of principle and praxis. Within the context of this thread, however, all of that is neither here nor there.

As I have stated before, I think we ought to support Afghan refugees. It'd seem to be the only thing that any of us can really do about any of this, anyways.

Anyways, I will be taking off now. So long!

As an Australian, he enjoys freedom of speech. Just like you and me. — ssu

It's a difficult point to get across as I ultimately think that @StreetlightX is pretty alright enough of a person and am emphatically against excessive counter-terror measures and spurious definitions of "terrorism". Nonetheless, however, regardless as to what nuance and clarifications there are to such theories, when Theorie Communiste speaks of "communinising [[i]sic[/i]] measures", what they do effectively turn out to be is to do something like purchase a black leather jacket on consignment, somehow find an Israeli sub-machine gun, and make an attempt at an armed robbery. They, I am sure, would never do so themselves, as I assume for them to be left-wing intellectuals who live with a certain degree of luxury, and ought to, like anyone else, be able to say or write whatever they feel like doing so, but it is kind of a problem that left-wing intellectuals generally aspire towards a somewhat mythic furthest left, as, following all of the way through, which almost no one would ever dare to, with any revolutionary, insurrectionary, or transformative political project that advocates for extreme, which is to say coercive, direct action will just result within the needless loss of civilian life, the eventual suicides of members of groups who carry out such acts, and the excessive expansion of various security apparatuses globally, and, so, out of concern for people within the far-Left, so as to retain a veritable ethic, and even in a pure consideration of an effective strategy, I think that people not only should have rejected such notions, but, also, that they should have done so some fifty years in our political past. Convincing the Left to give up on revolution is like engaging someone on a street corner prophesizing annihilationism in a debate on atheism, however, and, so, there's no real point to even going on about this.

My real kvetch with @StreetlightX is that he'll take preliminary shots at my nearest allies, the aforementioned "bleeding heart liberal" pacifists, before engaging within any debate, which is, I guess, fair enough on his part, but that people on the left are likely to do this does kind of leave me stranded without allies. There's no real talking anyone into anarcho-pacifism, anyways, though, and, so, I really ought to just follow through with my plan to become somehow a-political.

I just felt a need to clarify all of this for some reason.

As before, and finally this time, I will be taking off. Do support Afghan refugees, The Philosophy Forum. 'Til we meet again!

If anyone is curious about the insult that I previously levelled at @StreetlightX, it plays off of that my choice of examples is redundant to get the audience to think about the variegated set of interpretations that there are to be drawn from it. There isn't much of a difference between the 2 June Movement and Action Directe, as, though I would caution against this to a certain extent, there is a way of seeing both organizations as being a part of the same organization, the former Red Army Faction. The general gist of it is that any attempt at following all of the way through with a political campaign that does not consist in the creation of nonviolent alternatives to what communists will call "capitalism", nonviolent protest, and/or civic reform will just simply play out like German Autumn, which we ought to know by now, as the political violence to have occurred in the wake of May of 1968 in France or in response to any number of attacks on protestors by the security apparatuses of any number of nation states, depending upon who would like to frame the course of events and how, is something which already happened, all of which is to say that it is actually because of so-called "terror chic", namely that engaging in such actions is a fashionable cult phenomenon, that people, particularly within the far-Left, haven't moved beyond them by now.

@StreetlightX, whom, I am sure, like most people somehow taken by Giorgio Agamben, along with any number of anarchists, is probably not an actual terrorist, however, and is correct to have stated that this is "wildly off-topic". As I am just going to leave at this point, he will just have accept that I will have the final say in this manner and carry on otherwise. As I have put more time, effort, and thought into this than he has, he can, at least, be left with the quiet consolation in the eventual revelation that I am just simply correct.

Anyways, I will be leaving now and just wanted to say that The Philosophy Forum should support Afghan refugees and convince other people to do so as well. Let's hope that the international community will both be welcoming of them and apt in their response.

That, I guess, will have to suffice as my closing remarks.

So long, everyone!

Where does the world stand on Afghan refugees?

Who is Welcoming Afghan Refugees?

The coming U.S. political fight over accepting refugees from Afghanistan

Advocates Call on Biden Admin to Move Faster on Resettling Afghan Refugees

Afghanistan Refugee Crisis Explained

It seems that there needs to be a global effort to get whomever there is that is willing to to take in as many refugees that they can. I would suggest that the international community should work together with human rights organizations, charities, and activists in order to welcome as many Afghans as we can bring to wherever it is that they will be welcome. In the United States, we will need Republican support to adequately cope with the crisis, and, so, will have to hope that the sentiment of the likes of Mitt Romney will win out over that of the sixteen Republican members of congress who voted against extending greater support to the people there in the wake of the Taliban victory.

As I have said before, I think that we should welcome the former people of the Republic of Afghanistan with open arms.

Eh, @StreetlightX just wants his place in the sun among the left-wing European intelligensia. Without their mythic Goliath in the form of the United States, they would have to concern themselves with politics in their countries, thereby ultimately abandoning their favored catholicon of revolution in favor of peaceful protest and civic reform, all of which is wildly out of vogue within the far-Left. If there was a broad-based grassroots movement in the United States that stood a decent chance of changing its foreign policy, you'd hear nothing but excessive and castigating critique from them, for fear that the success of such a movement would challenge their cultural hegemony and result in a decrease in sales from the likes of semiotext(e). They have an entire industry of critique that completely relies upon their fascination with politics in the United States and generalized invocation of anti-Americanism.

Anyways, I came back to again divert this thread to the attention of the refugee crisis in Afghanistan before leaving, which I will do in the following post.

If anyone wants to discuss Some People Worry About the Weather, they're more than welcome to, but I'll be off for a while, and, so, won't get back to you in any near future.

So long!

Eh, any time there are any people who can be characterized as "anarchists" rioting anywhere, some commentator or another, as well as some anarchists, warn of an impending civil war, but I wouldn't be too worried about it.


Well, my Shoegaze motivated decision to support Scottish independence was considerably less informed. That decision was purely based off of My Bloody Valentine and the film, Trainspotting. It's just a notable absurdity to what some people consider for political choice. I don't know. You can't follow everything that happens in the world.

Alas, though, I will be off, and, so, this debate will have to continue without me. ☮︎!

Because the character suffers from schizophrenia and psychosis, there are sections of the story that he hallucinates, and, so, it can be a bit difficult to understand what is going on. It follows a group of anarchists, one of whom, Sebastian Albright, joins a French political terrorist cell and the effect that this has on them. Iain Xavior, the narrator, addresses Sebastian in the second person throughout the narrative. It's a reflection upon the effects of political terrorism on the daily lives of the people who find themselves around it. Overall, I wanted to illicit a certain poignancy to that anyone is driven to become a political terrorist and to ultimately deliver a message of creating nonviolent political alternatives. There's a lot to the story, though.

I'm glad that you listened to it, anyways. It's not something that most people will hear everyday. Thanks!

That, too, of course.

Anyways, I'll be off. It's been fun, in ways. All that we can do now is to hope for the best. I, or one, am somewhat hopeful. So long!

Alright, well, if there is no further commentary, I'll be off. Thanks to @jorndoe for letting me blow up this thread and @ssu for his apparent willingness to offer consistent and detailed political analysis.

So long, The Philosophy Forum! Best of luck to everyone in Afghanistan!

I thought that it was an interesting perspective to present and fairly good analysis from the ground of the war. I also liked his concluding remarks.

As much as I have political qualms with Crimethinc, such as the naivete of their approach to being "home free" or their interpretation of the "diversity of tactics" in that it ultimately does preclude strict nonviolence, I think it rather laudable of them to have published a piece written by a former intelligence analyst and veteran of the War in Afghanistan. You couldn't find such a voice of dissent anywhere else.

You are correct in that a focus upon the actions of the United States in Western and Central Asia and Central and South America, of which the reasons for being critical of and in active opposition too are many and justified, does too readily omit the reasons for our support amongst people in Europe, primarily located in what was formerly called "Eastern Europe", though, albeit lacking in an alternative term, I think the characterization of the world as having been divided into a somewhat mythic "East" and "West" was motivated by an odd kind of what you might call "occidentalism". The support of dissidents, publication of banned texts, aiding and abetting of expatriates fleeing the former Soviet Union and its satellites, offering of amnesty, support for human rights, and even, I would argue, to a certain extent, creation of Radio Free Europe were all very beneficial to the people there. There were a lot of things that we did during the Cold War that I don't agree with, but, it's not as if the United States' presentation of itself as a bastion of "freedom and democracy" in the world was a complete façade. On some level, it was to an extent, as I kind of suspect for activists to both have taken more initiative and better followed through with some of the aforementioned virtues of Western exceptionalism than any Americans in office, occasionally without or even in opposition to them, but it is the case that we do, at least, have some American policy to thank for certain gains that have been made in the protection of the free press, international amnesty, and, though I would express more caution in this regard, the development of human rights.

There is an interesting review of Frances Stonor Saunders's, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, "The Cultural Cold War: Faust Not the Pied Piper" ultimately, as I am, in favor of the so-called "third camp", that adds some interesting nuance nominally inapt dispute between the "East" and "West", that I will post here if you are curious.

Alas, however, I have staged this press junket for long enough and now must attend to my life outside of The Philosophy Forum, and, so, either now or after another post or two, will be off.

If anyone reads any of this, thanks to whomever I mentioned in my previous posts for their support of Afghan refugees. Here is an op-ed piece published by New York Magazine.

Here is a Crimethinc article written by a war veteran.

After a lengthy analysis of the war and American society, he concludes:

"Now is the time to listen to the Afghan people, to support refugees, to support aid organizations, and to rail against those responsible for the catastrophe of the past twenty years—to open our hearts to new possibilities and new potential accomplices—to develop the skills and mindsets that will keep us safe as we go forward into the unknown."

In a less humane appeal, Fox News host, Tucker Carlson, has attacked none other than former Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, for posting on Twitter, "the President must urgently rush to defend, rescue, and give and expand asylum."

Spencer Ackerman has written a piece on his blog in favor of "a life they can live, resettling them in the United States if they so choose" and "reparations", though I'm not entirely sure what reparations could even look like, given the transfer of power.

Knowing nothing about the circumstances surrounding or motivations for doing so other than that George Orwell once authored a text called Homage to Catalonia, I supported Catalan independence. I also supported Scottish independence because of that I thought that the "scene that celebrates itself" was too good for the United Kingdom. All that they did was put forth a referendum, though. It seems an injustice to have jailed them.

Taliban seek no ‘revenge’ and all Afghans will be ‘forgiven’

Also from the Guardian:

On women’s rights, Mujahid said the issue was “very important”. He told journalists in Kabul:

"The Islamic Emirate is committed to the rights of women within the framework of sharia.

Our sisters ... have the same rights, will be able to benefit from their rights. They can have activities in different sectors and different areas on the basis of our rules and regulations, educational, health and other areas.

They are going to be working with us, shoulder to shoulder with us, and the international community - if they have concerns - we would like to assure them that there is not going to be any discrimination against women, but of course within the frameworks that we have."

Who knows as to with what degree of veracity we can consider these claims?

If we take them at their word, I think that the conference is more promising than anyone could have hoped for. That's, of course, if we take them at their word.

There's even more to the paintings than you'd expect.

Oh, and that is an image of Joan of Arc on the cover. Originally by Albert Lynch for Figaro Illustre. I just wrote the title over the flag.

Fair enough, but that quip is pretty goddamn clever if you ask me.

There was no justification for the invasion of Afghanistan in the first place and we were there for long enough for even me to forget about it, and, so, there is no real reason to applaud Biden for the withdraw, though it is kind of a relief that we finally left.

I don't know. The transition seems to be going fairly well at least.

I suppose that they could be a Green Party or independent candidate. Assuming that they come from one of the two parties, though, there's only one likelihood.

I don't really like the Democratic Party either, but, in so far that our foreign policy is to change, it is probably them who even can effectuate that.

You probably have some communization inspired invocation of insurrection or something. It's très chic, but what it ultimates in is either starting a terrorist cell à la the 2 June Movement or starting a terrorist cell à la Action Directe.

Besides, what difference would there be were we to trade places between the United States and Australia, anyways?

You just make snide remarks like this so that you can score more acolytes of whatever your particular left-wing cult is. Anyone on the left who is with it enough to figure all of this out just does the same thing.

The point being, here, is that, aside from the very time consuming gradual reform of the Democratic Party, what can, otherwise, be done is to find a senator, congressman or presidential candidate who is willing to wage a unilateral campaign that relies upon putting every potential legal prohibitive measure into effect against the Central Intelligence Agency and convince our Congress to approve a defense budget that may have even been reduced by a tenth.

Contrary to the wisdom of the Left, which is to offer castigating critique of the Democratic Party, what should instead be done is to find, among its members, a person who is willing to engage in their role as an executive or legislator as if they were on a mission from God. It is the very idealistic bleeding heart liberal whom they present as representative of pure ideology who can change American foreign policy.

It's also, perhaps, notable that they would happen to be a pacifist.