Just to clarify, I don't believe any of the following arguments and I'm fairly sure they're all bullshit, but I'd like to bolster my understanding of how to refute them the next time I see them.

These are all paraphrased or "steelmanned" (as opposed to strawmanned) versions of arguments I've encountered elsewhere on the internet.

1. Israel does not unilaterally blockade the Gaza strip all by themselves; Egypt also has a border with Gaza and also participates in the blockade, and yet pro-Palestinians never seem to allocate any of the blame to Egypt, they always put it entirely on Israel. This is unfair and possibly antisemitic.
2. In 1948, the Zionists allowed Arabs who didn't fight against them to stay in their homes and become citizens of Israel. This population of Arabs became known as the "48-Arabs", and they and their descendants are still citizens of Israel today. The fact that the Zionists accepted these people into their new state proves that the Zionists were not aiming to ethnically cleanse all Arabs and that Israel is not a racist state, or at least not a foundationally racist one. If the Arab Palestinian militants of 1948 had just done what the 48-Arabs had done instead of starting a war, they and their descendants would also be full citizens of Israel today.
3. Western pro-Palestinian advocates make a critical error when they assume that Palestinians are primarily concerned with "civil rights". The main thing that motivates Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza (as opposed to Arab Muslim citizens of Green Line ‘48 Israel) is not their lack of "civil rights" (which are a largely Western notion, after all), it's that they resent Israel's existence as a non-Muslim-dominated society in what they see as "Muslim lands". They do not desire a secular democratic state with equal civil rights for all, they desire a Muslim controlled, sharia law state in which they can dominate Jews as a persecuted minority of second class citizens (dhimmi, infidels) or just drive Jews out entirely at their whim. Maybe in 1948 the Arab population of Palestine would have been satisfied with a secular, democratic state, but unfortunately extremist Islam has become a much more prevalent ideology since then and has changed the political equation.
4. During the period of the British Mandate of Palestine (roughly 1910s to 1940s), Jewish immigrants improved the living standards of the region and initiated a lot of new economic activity. As a result, many Arab Muslims from neighboring regions like Egypt, Syria, and Jordan immigrated to the Mandate of Palestine because they were attracted by the new economic opportunities, and today's Palestinians in Gaza & the West Bank are largely descended from these Mandate-era Arab immigrants. Given that their ancestors came to Palestine at about the same time that Zionist Jews did (and in some cases later), their claims of having a superior right to the land of Palestine over Israeli Jews don't make sense. (example of this argument can be found here and here)
5. Often pro-Palestinian advocates say that "Western countries should have accepted Jewish refugees in the 20th century instead of pressuring them to go to Palestine." This is true on a surface level, indeed a lot of things would have gone better if powerful Western countries had done that. But alas, they didn't, and that wasn't something that the Jews of the time had control over either way. Therefore the Jews who settled in Palestine at that time can't really be blamed for what they did, they were just looking out for themselves in the absence of any benevolent world power who would take them in.
6. Pro-Palestinians misunderstand the Haavara agreement and overstate its importance. The fact that the Haavara agreement occurred does not prove that Zionists supported Nazism, or vice versa. If the Haavara agreement "proves" anything, it is simply that for a few years the Zionists had just enough political leverage with the Nazis & British to help out some fraction of German Jews as their situation in Germany was becoming more precarious, and the Zionists took the opportunity to do this while they could. This does not at all prove that the Zionists "supported the Holocaust/allowed it to happen" or anything like that, and the fact that some pro-Palestinians interpret it that way is really rather disappointing.

The obvious response is that Gaza is a very densely populated place, of course there's civilians near any given location, that's not a conspiracy by Hamas. But are there any other talking points I should hit?

(I'm not really a lib in rehab, but this seems like the comm for getting talking points straight)

Hi Hexbear! I’ve been lurking here ever since you federated with Blahaj. I was already a chapo listener for a year, so it was kind of a twist of fate. Anyways, the other day I heard Matt Christman say something on one of his Cushvlogs that opposes the general sentiment of people here. He said, “China isn’t socialist, they’re not even social democrat; they are state capitalist.” I know you all here uphold that China is AES so I would like an explanation as to why China isn’t state capitalist or a social democracy. Why is/what makes China socialist?

Thank you!

I’ve been dabbling with the idea of communism for quite some time now, but one thing has always prevented me from being fully convinced. How do you allocate the inherently scarce resources. I strongly believe that a local person/company knows better how to allocate resources efficiently than a central government 100s km away. For example food. A central government will never be able to know the area as well as locals. How do you solve this?

hello! this is the first communist theory thing I actually managed to finish and fully understand, I'm gonna move on to other recommendations next, but I did get quite a lot of doubts that I noted in a little text file. none of them are gotchas just things I genuinely wonder about/don't understand

i apologize in advance if these are common annoying questions, feel free to point me to other resources that answer these things if it's too much you also don't have to answer everything

here's the text in case it's useful!! https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

Section 18

If competition is erradicated when every line of production is controlled by the state as Engels is proposing, will that mean an end of variety in consumer choice? I have indeed heard stories that people in socialist countries "only have one or two brands of X", I'm not sure to what extent that is true but it seems like the natural conclusion from doing this...

Do you think this is better for an average person? main things that scare me are that, much like with companies in a market, how could we ensure the state produces things that benefit us and not benefit itself instead? this is what worries me about only having a single national bank too. Ideally if we only have one choice we have to make sure it's the right one, no?

How would niche things, that benefit some part of the population but not everyone, be produced? Things like... fumo plushies, board games, or to put a less banal example, something that helps a condition that is uncommon and doesn't spread but still exists, like special shoes to help some kinds of foot deformation for example...

thing is in a market system, niche things can make just as much or even sometimes more money than stuff that is produced "to be useful for everyone", so they almost always appear in some way. but if all the production is controlled by the state, with very grand goals in mind, wouldn't it not benefit them in any tangible way to invest in these kinds of things?

also, what would inspire innovation if it's not competition? couldn't the state just be satisfied with the results something is giving and not be interested in giving it resources to improve?

Section 19

I'm curious what communists think about this with a modern lens? AFAIK a revolution in a single country did happen right? And in Russia so none of the places Engels proposed. It didn't really spread from there.

Section 20

do marxists think only economic class exists? wouldn't there still be political classes? here it says that classes would end up disappearing because they only form due to division of labour. But isn't there even in a fully realized socialist state a division of labour? even if everything is nationalized, isn't there still a difference in power between, like, a furniture factory worker and the bureaucrat that oversees the state's furniture building company? even if that bureaucrat is not monetarily richer than the worker per se.

also, it predicts here that education will give people the opportunity to understand the entire production system and thus jump from producing one thing to another, but since this book has written education has become a lot more universal, and that's not what really happened right? people still chose one thing to specialize on and do it all their lives (or they study something that doesn't have work opportunities and work something else). is there a difference in how marxists want education to work?

Section 24

I have one doubt about what Engels says about democratic socialists, mainly that small capitalists ("petty bourgeoisie") in general tend to have the same interests as the proletariat.

i think one of the things that has put me off about revolutionary communism is precisely the attitude towards small capitalists, to be honest my parents are part of them, and I've always struggled to see them as a big evil the same way I view corporate giants, mainly because it's just obvious their aims are not the same

I think the exploitation Engels is talking about where the workers always get the bare minimum that can be afforded happens mainly in big companies, especially the ones that have investors and seek infinite growth, but small companies like my parents's basically just want to get by and survive, they only want to maintain themselves at an earning level that can support my family and the families of everyone who works there, if they can't pay the wages with the weekly earnings they take out of their own savings to do it

in my parent's case they are over 70 so they couldn't really be part of the factory work either way, and I think what they do is still valuable (managing things, attending calls, organizing production and planning, supervising the design of new ideas, solving disputes, marketing, training new employees, etc...)

will these kinds of companies be treated any differently?

thanks a lot for reading, in advance!

Q: How should the working class organize to take class power?

A: This is dependent on your nation's material conditions, often in relation to the present state of international affairs. For colonized nations where the status quo is upheld through strict state violence, a violent people's revolution utilizing geurrilla warfare, sabotage, mass propaganda and the 'war of maneuver' is best, although a multifaceted strategy should be considered. For highly-developed nations where the status quo is upheld through not only state violence but also intricate institutions of cultural hegemony (religion, media, education) it is vital to first construct a revolutionary base within civil society. This is best done through improving material conditions (whether via organized labour, riots, sometimes electoral reform), challenging hegemony through the formation of counter-hegemonic institutions, raising class consciousness, forming alliances with all oppressed groups, all of these falling largely under the 'war of position'. Once conditions are sufficient for the working class to take class power, it should do so within the previously described framework of democratic centralism, although material conditions must shape the character of the vanguard party; revolutionary strategy is not entirely transhistorical.

I haven't touched any GamerGater content creators but I'm trying my best to flood my recommended with some more non-white let's players.

I watch Markiplier, and Cory. And I have some POC Vtubers but I want to try and find some others that I can show other people.

Full talk available here: Yellow Parenti

This is a pretty comprehensive list of sources that counter the pervasive US propaganda and present a much more accurate view of what happened at the Tiananmen Protests in 1989.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/280271

edit: Based on feedback, I'm considering changing the name to Well-Red. Let me know what you think.

Hi all, if this isn't the appropriate comm for this post then please redirect me to a better one.

I would like some constructive feedback on these articles. They're meant to serve as an FAQ-like rebuttal to common misconceptions, so that typical predictable questions (both good faith and bad faith) can be effortlessly handled by linking to the relevant page.

Because of this, the main target audiences are non-leftists and babby leftists. Feel welcome to crit the content but also the style, structure, theming, whatever. One question on my mind is if there is a good balance of clarity, succinctness and comprehensiveness, another question is whether the red-coloured links are a problem.

• https://wellread.miraheze.org/wiki/Communism_killed_100_million
• https://wellread.miraheze.org/wiki/Capitalism_is_voluntary
• https://wellread.miraheze.org/wiki/Defining_socialism
• https://wellread.miraheze.org/wiki/Defining_communism

P.S. Sorry if the wiki name comes off as arrogant, it's really just a pun on 'red'

Body.

Librehab mentioned, woo-hoo!

Feel free to add any feedback, questions or critiques!

While none of us were precisely born as liberals, the vast majority of us were raised as such.

If you could reach back in time to the past version of you that remained under the illusions of liberalism, what would you say?

The second of many.

This is from an accessible and highly sharable infographic about Marxism. Will be posting more, share it to your favourite liberals!