What a shit way for the article to present this

From wikipedia on Kim Yo Jong:

She is the Deputy Department Director of the Publicity and Information Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK). Since September 2021, she has been a member of State Affairs Commission of North Korea

The article doesn’t say any of this. The only qualifier they give her for responding is that she’s Kim Jong Un’s sister, and that the announcement is somehow official. Making it look like North Korea is just a family business.

They can’t help themselves, they have to carry out underhanded subliminal propaganda at every opportunity.

Great write

There’s also the attached costs that come with the position of global hegemon. The US has been basically eating itself for the past 50 years to maintain power projection through military might. I think this is something China is acutely aware of. Even though they are spending a lot of treasure and manpower on building up their military force, they are doing it only as a deterrent to an ever-increasingly belligerent US (and this is obvious if one looks at what capabilities they are putting on their new hardware, that are primarily designed at defending and operating in Chinese space). They’ve stated many times that they’d rather be building commercial ships than aircraft carriers.

There’s a youtube channel called Socialist Swan that covers a lot of aspects of life and inner workings in the DDR.

I’d also suggest this book: “Stasi State or Socialist Paradise”

I don’t support multipolarity as a concept necessarily, but in the current material conditions, it is an absolutely necessary step for overthrowing capitalism.

The US and its system of vassals, world organizations, economic strangleholds, networks of operative and political/military/economic violence have been suppressing socialist projects all around the globe since WW2. That is the main priority of the world hegemon, as the aim is to prop up the US empire, and by extension its capitalist system, as long as possible and at any cost.

We should not forget that there’s been multiple attempts to dismantle capitalism at various degrees, in many different countries, in the last 80 years, but they’ve all been squashed by the US or its proxies. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assume that these attempts will continue occurring in the future, and if the reach of the US is diminished, then many of these attempts will survive and probably succeed.

Indeed, even in places where no attempts at socialism have been made, the local socialist groups and parties have all become extremely weak and diluted, to the point where some are even considered centrists nowadays. The reason for this is not just infiltration, or a “Western mindset”. A big motivator is the hopelessness they feel, as they consider that anything they do outside the permitted structure, will be doomed to fail due to US intervention.

Capitalism’s decline is inevitable. We are already experiencing it, and it is only kept alive by the exploitation of the imperial core population (which before largely enjoyed the fruits of imperialism) and the massive efforts at suppressing any form of dissent (which are becoming increasingly more and more direct and obvious). So if peoples are left alone to dictate their own future, it is very likely that much of the world will progressively abandon capitalism, particularly if PR China is around to help them.

As a recent example, look what happened in the Sahel in 2022-2023. With the US overstretched and its attention consumed by what was going on in Ukraine and Gaza, they couldn’t do anything, as Burkina Faso and others were throwing French and US soldiers out of their countries. They threatened, they sent some money to certain dubious groups and individuals, they tried couping the governments multiple times. But when all failed, the US could only just shrug and put a pin on it. Whereas before, you can be sure there would be deployments of fleets and possibly troops, bombing missions, drones visiting houses and weddings, operatives preparing assassinations, sabotage and coups, etc. And so, the Sahel countries kicked out the colonizers and are now on track on nationalizing the mines, eradicating imported western-sponsored jihadists and strengthening their independence.

On the other hand, if the US declines, but the world remains unipolar, i.e. another hegemon takes over, then that might not be ideal for Marxists around the world, especially considering all the top world powers, bar PRC, are capitalists. And also, most of them, bar PRC and Russia, are happy participants in the current US system. The ideal scenario would perhaps be PRC becoming the new unipolar hegemon, and they could certainly pull it off. But China itself does not seem interested in this future. They themselves promote multipolarity, which means they’ve probably come to a similar conclusion as what I describe above.

So, to summarize, multipolarity is good because: a) Socialism can take root more easily around the world, b) Nobody will oppose it, c) There’s no apparent scenario for a Marxist unipolar world right now, as the only nation capable of creating it does not seem to want it.

In East Germany, you could send a letter to any official’s office up to the chairman with complaints, suggestions, etc, and they not only had to read it, but had to respond back with the steps they took to resolve your issue, or explain why they couldn’t resolve it, within 4 week. By law, they had to prove to you that they put in every effort to help you. Then every few months, they had to submit to a committee of volunteers all the letters they received and the responses the gave. This committee published all the data of the amount of letters sent through this channel, and the % of letters that were successfully resolved. It’s estimated that at least 2/3rds of all households in East Germany had sent such a letter and got a successful resolution out of it, throughout the DDR’s history.

It takes effort to make aliens actually feel alien, and then build a good story around them.

It’s far easier (and possibly more engaging for most people) to make aliens by exaggerating human characteristics, and then have a story about humans facing against their worst or best traits.

They decided to abolish it, but left it up to member states. The reason being DST doesn’t work usefully in the north, but it works in the south.

TLDR: I went through the whole story, from Hitler joining the German Worker’s Party, to becoming chancellor and tried to be as factual as possible, regarding the events. I steered away (and disproved where possible) the “great man” theory regarding Hitler. I emphasized giving context regarding the social, economic and political situation at the time, the prevalent ideological movements among the Germans, how WW1 and the Depression shaped German politics. I tried to show in a materialist way, why the Nazis developed the beliefs they held and why many other Germans were sympathetic to their message.

The original question was that he didn’t know that Hitler was Austrian and how come an Austrian became Germany’s chancellor. He then asked why the Germans were willing to follow him.

I explained that he was born in Austria but his family were ethnic Germans. Austria-Hungary was a melting pot of cultures, but the state at that time was dysfunctional, resulting in hatred between different population groups. Many Austrian Germans wanted to secede to Germany, viewing other cultures as holding back the rest of them. Hitler was exposed to this rhetoric throughout his early life, especially when he was studying art in Vienna.

I then went through the economic and political effects of the aftermath of WW1 in Germany, and the stab-in-the-back myth (“the German army was going to win, but Marxist and Jew politicians capitulated before that happened”). I find that explaining this myth, is the easiest way for people to understand both how Germans were willing to follow Hitler, and how fragile German politics were becoming before his rise to power. Although, if you use this, you should probably state that it wasn’t the only reason.

I explained how Hitler joined the German Worker’s Party (precursor to the Nazi party), which by that point had already embraced anticommunism and antisemitism, which appealed to him. However, this kind of rhetoric was already prevalent in Germany, following decades of cultivation of German nationalism and jingoism, the Spartakist uprising, and the stab-in-the-back myth being used widely by the right-wing opposition parties.

I talked about the Munich coup, and how the goverment, especially the military, were sympathetic to it, and how the Nazis escaped with easy penalties.

I then explained how corporations and other nationalist entities supported and financed Hitler and the Nazis, as a way to bust unions, dismantle the worker movement, and to stop (violently) the communists from attaining power. His oratory skills and his actions at the coup quickly gained him supporters everywhere, but especially soin Bavaria and Saxony, which led to the Nazis joining the parliament.

We talked a bit about the Nazi paramilitary thugs and how they were used to suppress worker strikes or outright assassinate leftist figures. I also emphasized how the Nazis, by their own admission, were using leftist iconography and anti-capitalist rhetoric to attract workers to their cause, but that they hardly believed much of it. They also gained a lot of popular support by targeting with propaganda, and aiding financially, people in areas most hit by the depression. Especially farmers and war veterans.

Finally, I explained that following the 1929 referendum to annul the Versaille treaty, organized by Nazis and their allies, gave them a lot of support, which weakened the other traditional parties at the next elections. Chancellor Bruhning started ruling by decrees, to deal with the financial crisis, since the parliament basically could not pass anything. Following this breakdown of politics, and taking advantage of the massive financial and political support that the Nazis enjoyed from the capitalist class, Hindenburg was pressured to hand the chancellorship to Hitler.

Wherever possible, I tried to establish how the capitalist class was very much linked to the Nazi rise to power.

During break, a colleague today (at a school) brought up Hitler after watching a documentary about it. We started talking, and he admitted he knew very little about Hitler and how he came to lead Germany, and wanted to know more. I analyzed the whole thing. Other colleagues in the area started jumping in and asking questions. They were appreciative of the way I talked about it and praised me for knowing so much about history and politics, while admitting that they also knew very little.

Now, I’m not saying this story to tout my own horn, but to emphasize what happened next. Bear in mind, nobody at the workplace knows I’m a communist. They know, I’m left-leaning, but that’s it.

Anyway, someone then jumps in and says communism and fascism are the same thing (“communism is red fascism and you have to be an idiot and not know any history to be either one”).

I bite my tongue and laugh inside. Here they are admitting they know very little history and praising me for knowing so much of it, then saying communists don’t know history.

At any rate, I don’t think I’ll reveal my politics any time so. It’s really effective injecting them with historical materialism without using the buzzwords.