EcoMaoism: Animal Liberationist, Environmental Mao Zedong Thought

The internet is full of outlandish, cartoon-sounding conspiracies about a ring of satanic pedophiles running the government, anti-semitic theories about a certain ethnic group controlling everything, and even the idea of pizza places having secret sex dungeons underneath them where people are being abused or the ruling class being a bunch of lizard-people from space. When you stay consistent with your medications, you begin to realize the huge contradictions and issues in these theories. These people are correct to feel as if there is a corrupt elite pulling the strings in the United States, but their entire breakdown of why they feel that way relies on fantastical thinking, metaphysics, illogical thinking, cherry picking of facts and distortion of evidence to suit whatever they are trying to convince people of.

When we look at things from a dialectical viewpoint and begin thinking of more down to earth reasons for why the ruling class behaves in the ways they do, we have no need for illuminati theories or ideas of an alien race making deals with the governments of the world. The whole theory about satanic pedophiles controlling society is a fundamental misunderstanding of how bourgeois operate. They throw everyone else under the bus to increase their own profits, and if people then see this and desire socialism that means class struggle is taking place.

There is an element of criminality and abusiveness to the bourgeoisie, but this is more due to their wealth and subsequent impunity to the law in many cases. Jeffrey Epstein was a level 3 sex offender due to sexual exploitation of teenagers he committed in 2005 by paying them large sums of money. He was not harmed by this as a normal person would be because he had so much money and the law basically bent to his interest. He did not even follow up with the police department as other sex offenders would need to. Donald Trump would be in jail right now for sedition and if he was not a billionaire former president, and many activists end up political prisoners tortured in US jails for doing a thousandth of what that man did. Even Zionism, a criminal ideology comparable to apartheid or fascism, is made mainstream because the bourgeoisie benefit from it and will never use their own legal system to suppress it.

Why do the bourgeoisie do things that are against the law? Because they can. Because breaking the laws that an average person would have their lives ended for doing, is a status symbol for them. They can even afford the best lawyers if that’s what it comes down to. If the bourgeoisie got together over tea and bragged about how many felonies they got away with due to their wealth, I would not be surprised.

The average person believing in conspiracies is probably aware of all the things I said in the past few paragraphs, but they do not want to believe that millionaires are inherently bad, probably because they imagine themselves being that wealthy or desire themselves to be. They have no class consciousness, so they imagine the elites to be lizard-people from outer space. They imagine the elites as having made a pact with the devil or some ancient deity for wealth. They think about everything except that maybe the kind of personality who gets rewarded by capitalism through exploitation, landlordism, colonialism and upholding the bourgeois system is not morally good and is inherently predisposed towards the antisocial behaviors that they are infamous for.

Paganism has become associated with right-wing political movements and ideologies such as conservatism. Despite what some modern extremists would have you believe, the people of Europe thousands of years ago who practiced the worship of these deities did not have an understanding of race or racism as we have today. Those are colonial constructs and pseudo-scientific because the entire idea of race was made so Europeans could have a sense of solidarity with themselves as they went and plundered other nations and it made anyone not considered “White” as a valid target for plundering or war. Medieval people did not need such a justification

The vikings did not have any issues raiding or plundering other white countries, and even had issues with the United Kingdom. They had trade routes and colonies all over the world, which resulted in many foreigners living in their towns or coming over as merchants or for work. The idea that their faith would be implemented into any supremacist ideology seems to be more reflective of the desire of those involved to be seen as strong, warlike, or masculine (Or other traits associated with the vikings or Germanic peoples) than an actual part of the faith or lifestyle itself. Viking war bands themselves were also not ethnically exclusive. I’m not saying that Vikings lived in a multi-racial utopia or something we would consider inclusive today, but a lot of what reactionaries claim about paganism is historically revisionist at best and an intentional desecration at worst.

The Nazi party of Germany is partially responsible for distorting history to create the idea of a proud warrior culture as well. Esoteric Hitlerism is a thing, but is rarely discussed in conversations because nobody would admit to practicing such a thing to anyone who was not a sympathizer. Within the political party of Germany during the war, there were known occultists and this is the case with Japan’s nationalistic state religion at the time as well. Reactionaries have put a lot of work into distorting various forms of religion for their own political gain, and many religious figures are persecuted under them simply for knowing the truth. Being a legitimate Shinto priest in Japan under the Tojo regime and not being on board with state Shinto was dangerous. Not only are reactionaries desecrating their traditional culture, they are basically against it if it does not serve their totalitarian ambitions.

Germany today is considered one country and one ethnicity, but the origin is a bunch of different tribes like many countries in the world. The ethnicity, cultures, languages, and ideologies of people today are the result of nation-building whether we like it or not. In cases like Thailand, that’s cultural integration of a bunch of tribes at once. I bring this up because in order to properly understand that the ideologies and cultures we have now simply did not exist. If I said that Kemetic paganism is feminist or that Greek Paganism is Anarchist, you would be correct to roll on the floor laughing. I would be injecting not only my own interpretations onto it but also my ideas about it.

So to answer the question in the title, paganism is not an inherently rightist practice. You see extremists trying to claim it because they believe in some genetic component while neglecting to actually research and know what their ancestors would have actually believed. The extremist Norse pagan probably makes their viking ancestors very confused or ashamed in why they dislike foreigners so much. If the past was a different country only 50-100 years ago, then the past of thousands of years ago was a completely different world entirely with people that most likely would not have opinions about society or modern life that fit neatly into our political ideas or could be easily categorized by our modern ways of thinking.

Today I will be discussing the options we realistically have to live under capitalism. This is not a happy read and you should probably not read through this if you are in a vulnerable state of mind or triggered by sex work or poverty. This is not a self-help article or recommendation list despite being written as one, and serves as a critique of the systems we live under.

The first and most common option for survival is to stay with friends and family. This is not sustainable indefinitely unless you die before them. Neoliberalism is progressing in such a way that even older adults will become homeless, so this won’t last forever.

The second option and the most common is to become a sex worker of some kind. You can do this kind of work abroad in countries such as the Netherlands or other places that legalize this kind of work. You can also perform this kind of career in Vegas if you are not fortunate enough to be able to escape the United States. If you perform this kind of labor in places where it is criminalized you are at risk of being arrested and taken to prison where you would be coerced into forced labor. This is not perfect though, and leaves people susceptible to violence or trafficking.

The third option provides less of a standard of living than the second one, but is good for those who cannot make a living through sex work or prostitution. This is to live off the government through programs or disability. This is difficult because the bourgeoisie do not like their cattle living without making profit for them, so this option is made intentionally difficult, and more often than not you will be encouraged into sex work or even less reputable methods of making money anyway since you are unlikely to get enough money this way to support life. You will also be looked down upon because reactionaries believe lots of ridiculous things about people that need benefits to survive. This option is better in some places outside the United States.

The fourth and fifth options are basically living on the street or living in jail. These are actually interconnected because many police throw people in jail just because they are poor and they have nowhere to go.

If you haven’t noticed a pattern here, nothing good exists for those who live under capitalism. I could have added an option for selling drugs, but you get the point. The ruling class despises everyone who is not profitable for their system. These people despise you, and they want you to die. They wish they could physically kill you but they would be outnumbered in that way, which is why they use the police and the cost of living to cause as many deaths to society as they can. That’s why they cut funds for disability or food and give that money towards the state of Israel. Every single thing that is done is a result of class struggle, and this list of bleak possibilities for our people is the result of the bourgeoisie winning in the struggle. Whatever actions you take, whatever movements you support, choose the ones that will improve this list and give the people a more positive future.

In order to receive you have to give, because this is the rule of the cosmic exchange. So what happens when the bourgeoisie do not want to compensate people for labor that is necessary for the functioning of society? Nothing too drastic, just the complete breakdown of everything you have ever known. Some of the facts may sound hyperbolic, but we live in a society where private ownership has allowed the bourgeois class to completely control the economy at the expense of everyone else. If they don’t manage it properly, society is done and people do not eat or work. Liberalism as an ideology prevents the questioning of the government, so blame is passed down until it reaches the worker, who does not have extensive propaganda campaigns about the truth behind their struggles in society and therefore cannot scapegoat any other group as the bourgeoisie do.

So why does nobody want to work? There are so many jobs where workers are unappreciated, get paid very little, are micromanaged and bullied by coworkers, refused any accommodations for disability, and go home smelling awful. Depending on your field, you may also need to smile at entitled customers or you may not even have a lunch break. Why would anyone refuse these amazing positions? The idea that nobody wants to work anymore also implies there existed a time where people wanted to work. People did not stop needing money, so what happened? 

There is not a single reason why people aren’t working, but a lot of them just can’t. There is no way to address this issue without looking at the large population of people with disabilities. 85% of autistic people are unemployed and this accounts for only one condition. People with any mental disorder. Even if they can get medication in the broken healthcare system that makes it so hard to see a psychiatrist or get the correct diagnosis, finding the right medication or combination of meds is a struggle in itself. Programs exist, but these are as effective as other programs for unemployment in the US which means they just give you a call every two months to let you know they’re searching for jobs.

And even for the able-bodied person, the jobs that cannot find workers are the ones that refuse to make employment with them worthwhile. The average person is not a communist who understands labor exploitation and only cares about the hourly rate they are getting, so it should not be so difficult to find somebody. When the bourgeoisie complains that they cannot find anyone to work, they are basically calling for help because they cannot win their own game. The same game that is rigged by the government so they cannot lose. 

When you see low wages from a major corporation, do not mistake it as anything besides the class struggle that it is. The entire “Cost of doing business” does not matter when corporations control the entire economy and the government is going to bail them out of any economic trouble they end up in. They do not need to innovate, do anything good for society, or even be profitable anymore. The whole propaganda campaign against the working class is so extreme nobody is even asking why the working class should put up with such horrible conditions or why the bourgeoisie is inherently entitled to our labor if we do not choose to work for them. People cannot sustain themselves off of work ethic and corporate events, they need food and shelter. If things keep going this way then unemployment will get worse, because everyone who works is going to starve to death or become homeless with the low pay they are getting. I wish I could see what the bourgeois do with themselves when everyone else is dead, and they have no one alive to live off of their backs.

The Bourgeoisie have doors open for them to live in most major cities in the world. If their presence was not bad enough on its own, many of them also gentrify neighborhoods that are historically primarily home to ethnic minorities. Architects in capitalist societies are also incentivized to design bourgeois cities that give the ruling class views on the rest of society or even build huge highways that hide the views of indigenous or minority communities of a city. While the city developments we see now may not be as overtly egregious as colonial developments that made white cities inaccessible to most native residents, the same concept is just applied along economic class lines (Which are intersectional with other demographics) which makes it subtle and less bothersome to those who aren’t familiar with class struggle or the conditions surrounding economic oppression that happens daily in cities.

Homelessness is met with spikes and railings on benches designed to stop people from sleeping. Encampments of homeless people are turned into parking lots if the police are not sent to brutalize them with batons. The regime even designs city centers in ways to make it easier for police to crack down on protests. Despite all of this, we do not see any improvements to the actual working class who are necessary for the continued functioning of the cities. The subways are still dirty, dangerous, and overcrowded since they are privately owned and during rainy seasons can even flood entirely. Infrastructure that benefits anyone except the bourgeoisie is so foreign to the United States that it seems alien and idealistic, despite it being ubiquitous in China or any place in the world that has freed itself from capitalist tyranny.

The world does not need another Dubai or Singapore where rightism, inequality and eugenics dictate infrastructure and city design. The world does not need another Tel Aviv or Washington DC where imperialist wars and genocides are planned. The world needs another Beijing, Pyongyang, Hanoi, or Havana where the masses are happy to live and have neighborhoods and transport designed for the benefit of the working class. Cities free from landlords, petit-bourgeois, and class enemies that are designed for the proletariat and only the proletariat. The masses must be allowed to defend themselves from gentrification, exploitation, police violence, poverty, and all the other inhumane practices of capitalist society.