SpookyGenderCommunist

SpookyGenderCommunist, 11 days ago (edited 8 days ago)

no freedom of movement

Source?

• constant shortage of any goods

Think about why this might be, Friend. Really think hard about it. What large geopolitical things were happening at the time?

• being a dictatorship

Yes, of the proletariat

• (contrary to your first point) a housing shortage

Again, source? Also, wondering what you think happened before East Germany existed that might have contributed to this. Surely this changed over time

• a culture so dictated by work that people had little to no free time

Because people working 3 jobs under capitalism have so much free time? What does this even mean?

• political pressure

Again, what does this mean? All Political cultures and institutions exert pressures on their population… That’s how politics works.

• control over the media

I’ll agree that the siege mentality of much of former socialism led to a lack of press freedom, which was ultimately detrimental, but again… Why might this have been?

• the fucking stasi

Quick, name the West German secret police!

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Let’s assume for a minute that everything you’ve said is entirely true. If we’re to be thoughtful about this. East Germany was a historically poorer, agrarian, region of Germany, much less industrialized, artificially lopped off from the west (not by the USSR, btw, who wanted a unified, nonaligned Germany, like the allies had done with Austria), it was heavily sanctioned, had been bombed to shit, much like the rest of Europe, but was made to pay the USSR reparations, that it wasn’t as capable of paying, as a unified Germany would have been. The USSR even dismantled entire east German factories and shipped them back to rebuild their own industrial base.

How do you expect any country to not come out of that with considerable problems?

And the GDR did have considerable problems. I think you and I would disagree on what those problems were, but in the broad strokes, that much we can agree on.

But I would contend that, even with that in mind, East Germany ended up being a much more positive socialist experiment in many respects then say, Romania, which suffered a much more severe centralization of power, and cult of personality issues, then East Germany did.

In fact, looking at the makeup of the East German Parliament and its mass organizations, there was a much greater degree of representation of various social cleavages then in some other Eastern Bloc states.

While you could say argue that this was only ‘on paper’, that really depends on what period of East German history you’re looking at, as the electoral system was altered a handful of times.

Regardless though, this was an expression of the fact that East Germany had a more open Political culture due to its institutions being establisehed as part of an intended nonaligned, unified, German state. And due to the fact that it had received the socializing effects of industrial capitalism that gave it things like an incredibly progressive Queer movement, that other Eastern Bloc states, which were formerly feudal backwaters, hadn’t developed.

Tl;Dr - this shit is a lot more complicated than listing off bullet points for “why East Germany was Evil”, That I was taught in the 7th grade.

SpookyGenderCommunist, 14 days ago

I’m curious what do you think a Hexbear TikTok presence would look like?

SpookyGenderCommunist, 27 days ago

Everyone on Hexbear of a liberal, except for me

SpookyGenderCommunist, 29 days ago

Which is stupid in 2024 anyway, because animation across east Asian countries outsources labor between each other all of the damn time! Your Japanese anime is just as much Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese at this point, as it is Japanese.

Go look at the credits of most modern anime productions out of Japan, and large swathes of the names you see aren’t Japanese, but are from those other countries.

Even a fairly low stakes, low budget, slice of life anime, like Non Non Biyori has Vietnamese names all over its god damn credits, because globalization has impacted the east Asian animation industry in such a way, that there’s an large cross pollination of talent across borders, for better and worse.

And to the point of the post, it makes sense that the DPRK would be involved in that to some extent. The original Squirrel and Hedgehog cartoon, for example, has some pretty impressive visuals for a TV series, compared to the stuff coming out of Japan, at the same time, prior to the consumer electronics boom of the 80s.

SpookyGenderCommunist, 29 days ago

Reposting part of a comment I made in another thread about this, but:

animation across east Asian countries outsources labor between each other all of the time. Your Japanese anime is just as much Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese at this point, as it is Japanese.

Go look at the credits of most modern anime productions out of Japan, and large swathes of the names you see aren’t Japanese, but are from those other countries.

Even a fairly low stakes, low budget, slice of life anime, like Non Non Biyori has Vietnamese names all over its god damn credits, because globalization has impacted the east Asian animation industry in such a way, that there’s an large cross pollination of talent across borders, for better and worse.

And that’s not to mention the western animation that gets outsourced to these places, South Korea especially.

The fact North Korea is also involved in this complex outsourcing process shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who knows anything about how that industry works.

SpookyGenderCommunist, 1 month ago

I don’t even know what part of the franchise this screenshot is from but holy shit, could that name be any more on the nose?

It’s a screenshot from Andor, which is one of the few genuinely good, and radical pieces of Star Wars media to come out in a very long time. Please go watch it, it has a heist plot that was inspired by a passage in a biography of young Stalin, where he robbed banks to fund the Bolsheviks.

SpookyGenderCommunist, 1 month ago

I miss Me_IRA

SpookyGenderCommunist, 1 month ago

Right, this shit has already been normalized. We ought to be concerned with how to deal with it.

SpookyGenderCommunist, 1 month ago

It’s “just” a video of two trucks, given what the headline claimed.

When I first read the headline, I figured the image would be a kinda jank AI generated picture of Biden bound and gagged. Like… The headline makes it seem like that’s the focus of Trumps post.

But it isn’t. The focus of the image are the trucks adorned with Trump memorabilia. That’s the thing he cares about in this case. The presence of the Chud Tailgate Murder Fantasy is incidental.

And for that matter, what do you mean “normalizing”? This shit is already normal. That’s the problem.

SpookyGenderCommunist, 2 months ago

I’m shocked no one has screeched about Strange being a lib, instead of just watching the damn video. I feel like that happens every time a semi-popular YouTube channel gets posted here

SpookyGenderCommunist, 3 months ago

Babe, you’re so close to understanding Commodity Fetishism.

Now you just need to understand that the solution isn’t in individual consumer choice, but to transcend Capitalism.

SpookyGenderCommunist, 4 months ago

Rent free

SpookyGenderCommunist, 4 months ago

I’m doing my part! o7

SpookyGenderCommunist, 4 months ago

https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/b905a844-b87e-4523-903f-c36b069f814d.jpeg

SpookyGenderCommunist, 4 months ago

Does anybody know why the PCV logo is a Rooster?

SpookyGenderCommunist, 4 months ago

Miyazaki was a communist until the fall of the USSR. And while he ditched ML like a lot of people unfortunately did in that post-soviet period, he’s since said a handful of times that he still considers himself a socialist, generally.

So, looking at most of his movies, they’re stuffed full of leftist themes.

Kiki’s Delivery Service is very much about Alienation under Capitalism. Kiki’s hard work ends up burning her out and straininh her relationships with others, because she’s commodified a thing she loves: flying, in order to survive. And the movie contrasts that with the lesbian forest painter Lady who works hard on her art, on her own terms, unburdened by the whims of capital.

Spirited away has too many themes to count, but let’s look at the design of the bath house. It’s mostly a Meji-era architectural style, but when Chihiro goes up to ask for a job from the witch who owns it, the architecture is suddenly very European. So visually, we’re being told that the west is literally lording over, and owns, Japan.

And a persistent theme is also the ways Japan is disconnected from its culture. Chihiro doesn’t recognize the spirit shrines, unceremoniously dumped by the roadside at the beginning of the film. And characters say of the train that it “used to go both ways, but now only goes one way”. The train is death. Spirits can only go further into the spirit realm, and never back to visit earth.

And put together, the film is pointing to Japan’s disconnect from its own history and culture due to US imperialism.

SpookyGenderCommunist, 5 months ago

I enjoyed the trigonometry unit in my highschool geometry class, but that’s because it was mostly proofs, and those were just philosophy about triangles.

SpookyGenderCommunist, 5 months ago

0/10, no Venezuelan Communist Rooster

SpookyGenderCommunist, 6 months ago

Richard Nixon’s head in a jar, from Futurama

SpookyGenderCommunist, 6 months ago

As a colorblind person, this new color palette is so much fucking worse

SpookyGenderCommunist, 6 months ago

K, but what about he and his son tracking each others porn habits?

SpookyGenderCommunist, 6 months ago

At least rage comics had charm. Wojacks just fell like a souless reboot

SpookyGenderCommunist, 6 months ago

Can you provide a source for this? No use in responding if we don’t even know if it’s real

SpookyGenderCommunist, 6 months ago

So, I want to engage in as good of faith possible, here.

The content of North Korean doctrine seems particularly discomforting to people here, lol. Not sure why this is the country people feel the need to stand up for.

It’s not about whether it’s discomforting, it’s about whether or not what you’re saying is even true. I have zero reason to believe what you posted has any basis in fact. You initially copy/pasted it with no citation.

Now, the links you’re giving are decidedly not Korean. The DPRK puts out works of theory and the like, fairly readily. All I’m asking for is a primary source for this.

But let’s assume it’s 100% true, for a minute.

Even if it is, and Korean socialism does look the way that these 10 points describe, why might that be? What would drive such an insular, personality-cult driven, set of doctrine?

Could it, perchance, be the fact that the United States set about occupying half of the Korean Peninsula? Reinstalling many of the Japanese colonial administrators the Korean people had just spent decades trying to kick out?

Might it have something to do with the fact that the US bombed the entire peninsula so heavily, that US pilots complained that they were no more targets, and that Koreans literally began living in caves and a result?

If you actually care about Koreans, and are unsettled by the centralization of power in the DPRK, then you ought to recognize that it’s US imperial policy that has irrevocably shaped the destiny of the Korean peninsula.

If there’s any reason to “Stand up” for the DPRK, it’s for the exact reasons you’ve laid out. If a society is too heal, and overcome the sort of backward despotism you’ve presented, then the answer is surely to not isolate it more. To not continue to fuel the siege mentality that drives the state ideology. But rather, to work for peace and unification, so that the whole of Korea might, once again, be able to shape its own destiny.