polite leftists make more leftists

☞ 🇨🇦 (it’s a bit of a fixer-upper eh) ☜

more leftists make revolution

  • 9 Posts
  • 744 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: March 2nd, 2024

help-circle
  • Seems likely to me the lunar lander will be there for aeons to come. The pyramids are also still there. The library of Alexandria may have burned, though I don’t think that was inevitable, and many of the written works and treatises from that era still survive. Euclid’s elements is still mathematically correct.

    Consider also the negation though – the burning of the library of alexandria still affects us to this day. Aristotle’s views on women and Christianity’s views on homosexuality still persist. Colonialism and slavery over the past millenium has negatively shaped the lives of billions. These are all actions by humans with enormously negative consequences that reverberate in the present. Surely we must admit that these agents had meaningful lives.

    And there may have been countless more such catastrophes averted, which we don’t know about because the lack of something bad happening is not terribly newsworthy. But people who stopped such far-reaching catastrophes must surely have had meaningful lives.









  • It came across wrong. I was inferring that you weren’t doing real-life activism because I don’t encounter people with the opinion I thought you had (that land back = ethnic cleansing) out on the streets in real life. But yeah, in another thread, it turns out I misunderstood you to begin with.


  • if this is what the Indigenous would want with their land reclaimed, then it’s not up to you or me.

    I was responding to you saying it necessarily means packing up and leaving. That is our point of contention. I agree with you that land back could lead to an ethnic cleansing in theory, though I agree also it’s very unlikely. Perhaps I misunderstood you, but this is what you said that made me think you meant something else:

    Motherfucker, landback means […] you GO BACK too, no one should give a fuck about which gen. you’re currently a part of.

    also

    if this is what you’re worried about.

    (a) I’m Canadian btw; US isn’t the only colonial country. and (b) I’m not worried about it, no. It’s a completely absurd and very improbable notion. Indeed, I often have to remind people who are worried about it that white genocide/ethnic cleansing/whatever is a total myth and conspiracy theory. So I’m shocked when I see on lemmy somebody talk about it as though it’s a real thing.




  • Reclaiming stolen land is not ethnic cleansing.

    Right. That’s my point. Land back ≠ ethnic cleansing. I’m not sure we actually disagree with each other? The comment I posted, which is now deleted, was entirely just saying “no, land back does not mean ethnic cleansing” in response to @Samsuma.

    what are you going to do

    I don’t have any rights to the land to begin with. I’m not a home-owner. What would be different? If nobody gives me a home, then I’m homeless. As a ~socialist, I don’t believe we should have homelessness, but that’s not what you asked






  • jsomae@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.ml"They're the same picture"
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    3 days ago

    I didn’t give impracticality as an excuse. I just don’t agree with ethnic cleansing. Everyone has a right to live where they were born. Furthermore, it just doesn’t track with the indigenous people I actually know in real life. I can’t imagine any of them wanting to expel most of their friends.

    do something more meaningful

    I help with language revitalization on occasion, there are places coders like myself can help there. I’ll admit it’s not exactly a full-time job, but it has its value. But in general I don’t want to bother people who live on reserves. Regardless, I reject the notion that you need to actually be helping in order to have an opinion.


  • jsomae@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.ml"They're the same picture"
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    3 days ago

    myself included, have absolutely zero right to comment on what that should entail

    Can you please explain why you said this, then?

    Motherfucker, landback means the LAND which is rightfully the Indigenous’ is taken BACK, and it means you GO BACK too, no one should give a fuck about which gen. you’re currently a part of.


  • jsomae@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.ml"They're the same picture"
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    3 days ago

    Are you familiar with “moral desert”? I’m legitimately quite curious about your system of ethics. I don’t really believe in moral desert myself; instead, we should try to improve the lives of everyone, and in particular increase equality and if necessary equity.

    In my opinion, land back is important because it will help bring equality back into balance. It’s just one of many steps to repairing society into an equitable state though. The “righting” of historical wrongs is not necessary for this; and I honestly don’t think such a thing even makes sense as a concept. Should we hunt down descendents of nazis and kill them for the crimes of their ancestors?


  • jsomae@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.ml"They're the same picture"
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    3 days ago

    Maybe you should get off your armchair and go to a protest

    (I admit I probably violated rule 1; my apologies to @Samsuma for that.)

    What I mean by this is that people who are actually involved in these issues out on the street talk very differently than people do on lemmy. Or reddit for that matter. I go to some Indigenous issues protests in British Columbia now and then, usually it’s street blockades; “land back” is a very common rallying call. I’ve chatted with many protesters; what they mean by this is “the landlords should be indigenous” essentially. And also that much more territory should be transferred back to the reserves. Some people even put the goal at replacing the government entirely. But nobody is talking about ethnic cleansing.

    By finders keepers, what I thought you meant was “it was done in the past, by different people, so it’s not a problem that can be solved anymore.” That’s different from “we have to completely erase all people descended from settlers/colonists.”