RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • So the NYPD planted the fake IDs, wrote a manifesto, and snatched this random guy, who had a clear motivation based on his own posting history? A guy who just happened to go off grid for several months before getting randomly picked up by the cops at a McDonald’s? A guy that friends were worried about because he stopped communicating with them? Just got this incredible golden goose right out of the clear blue sky, and reported by a guy working at the McDonalds. Was the McDonalds worker actually an undercover NYPD officer or something?

    The NYPD is either highly militarized, trained by the IDF in both surveillance and urban combat, operate outside the law using unconstitutional technology and techniques, are the 8th largest standing army in the world, operate in a city with the highest number of CCTV cameras in the US, or they are all the Springfield Police Department operated by Chief Wiggum and his band of merry men.

    The reality is, whether you like it or not, is that A) the public aided in capturing this guy and only the terminally online were projecting themselves onto him, and B) The NYPD is more capable than you would like to admit, which frankly is a bad assumption to make.

    Listen, I get that we all want a new John Brown for a modern age, but this guy isn’t him. You can have a good plan that has no long-term exit strategy. You can have a long-term exit strategy that falls apart after trying to come to terms with what you just did. If anything, playing up the idea that this guy was some methodical mastermind only plays into the NYPDs position that he is a methodical mastermind. It is very likely the NYPD will attempt to plant evidence on him to make him live up to the larger than life image the country and media projected onto him because it only makes the NYPD look better. The nation couldn’t track down Ted Kaczynski for months in the 90s, and here is the brave and violent NYPD catching Kaczynski’s disciple in just over a week.

    Ultimately, he performed the most brazen act of propaganda of the deed in well over 100 years in this country. He exposed a commonality that crosses the ideological borders of the left, and right within the working class, even if accidentally. Recent history shows us that rightists are far more likely to take direct action against a perceived enemy than leftists. This guy is clearly a center right liberal with a real personal grudge against the medical industry. His reading intake was nothing but descriptions of symptoms with no real conclusions. The book referenced by the casings is not an anti-capitalist book, and it explicitly states it’s not anti-insurance either. It’s a manifesto for more federal regulations, ignoring all contradictions that exist outside the industry that leads to it operating the way it does. It has no actual concrete plan on “what you can do about it”, despite the subtitle. Unless “you” are some regulatory golden goose who can live outside the contradictions of capitalism. It summarizes perfectly this guy’s center right liberal perspective. It’s like killing a CEO and writing “Disappointment”, “Interest”, and “Money” on the shell casings as a reference to John Keynes.
















  • RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.nettoMemes@lemmy.mlAre we the baddies?
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    10 months ago

    Yes this is exactly my point. Zaheer is a vague shadow that represents Anarchist ideology. He says he wants to bring “Chaos” to the world because somehow that is a preferable world state to order. Except Anarchism isn’t about “chaos” or “lawlessness” its about building horizontal organizations instead of vertical ones. Its about dismantling unjust hierarchies and being vigilant in your critical view of hierarchies. I’m not even an anarchist and I understand that much. Even if I’m talking out the side of my mouth, I’m being more generous then the show.

    At no point is Zaheer interested in sticking around to educate the Earth Kingdom citizens in how to reorganize their society in a more ethical and equitable way. He just wants to do wacky disruptive assassination while quoting vaguely Zen Buddhist philosophy about detachment from worldly possessions.

    Kuvira is attempting to restore “order” as a result of Zaheer’s Chaos, and they paint her as an “authoritarian” as if her actions are some how philosophically different then Zaheer’s, who enforced his own authority over the Earth Kingdom by killing the Queen. She has no “ideology”. She’s not trying to build an Earth Kingdom ruled by the proletariat. She’s not trying to build a Fascist Earth Kingdom bent on exploiting its citizens for capital gains. None of that is explicitly stated. They simply drag out every anticommunist trope and have her do them all.

    • reeducation camps
    • forced labor camps
    • forced starvation
    • one party rule as a smoke screen for her singular authority (part of the deal with Yi was the governor would stay in place under Kuvira’s “supervision”)

    Again, it’s a shallow exploration of these “ideologies” or worldviews, it’s clear the writers had no intention of understanding them or struggling against them.

    But also what is to say about the first season and equality? That equality can “go to far” or that behind every equality leader there is an evil intention? Are we to then look at the equal rights movement and ponder in what ways it went “to far”? Should we look at people like Malcolm X and say they were the Aamon in this situation? We should be skeptical of equality movements? At no point do they address the concerns of the non benders who clearly believed they were second class citizens. Was there a kernel of truth there or did the inequality only exist in their brain washed minds? Which is something people say to minorities today, that there is no inequality it’s just your bad mindset…


  • RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.nettoMemes@lemmy.mlAre we the baddies?
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    10 months ago

    And most of this critique of empire is completely lost in Legend of Korra. A show that does nothing to reconcile the past with the present. Instead it preaches literal horseshoe theory as the over arching message of the show.

    "what did Amon want? Equality for all. Unalaq? He brought back the spirits. And Zaheer believed in freedom. […] The problem was, those guys were totally out of balance and they took their ideologies too far. " - Toph, EP 43, “The Calling”

    Each of these villains, including the final one, Kuvira, represent a kind of ideological boogie man.

    • Amon is the minority rights Boogie Man, he espoused the ideals of equality. One could interpret him as the white genocide boogie man but there is little evidence of any kind of true class division between bender’s and non-benders. A shallow caricature at best.
    • Unalaq was the religion or spirituality boogie man, or could be interpreted as the “return to tradition” boogie man.
    • Zaheer is the anarchist boogie man.
    • Kuvira is the totalitarian dictator aka Communist boogie man.

    At no point in the show does Korra have to struggle against any of these ideas and combat them in any ideological way. They are all metaphorical punching bags. Each of them “to extreme” to allow to exist. Each contrasted against each other as though they were equals.

    Republic City stands at the center of the show as the only constant and good political organization. A representative democracy. Tied explicitly to Aang to drive the point home, if you had any doubt’s about its goodness. A stand in for America with its own statue of liberty.

    In the end, the heir to the Earth Kingdom Monarchy gives up his throne to install a representative democracy in the Earth Kingdom. The result of this shallow attempt at writing leaves the shows saying almost nothing at all. It’s as if it was written to tell 13 year olds that their anarchist or communist curiosities are misguided and simply a phase.