Overthrow

 'In order to have any arguments for the priority of consciousness, one would need to take a cinema film of the history of the world, and to run it backwards. Since this cannot be done, the conclusion is irresistible. We know for certain that until a particular period in the development of the earth, there was no life on it. We know for certain that life arose. We also know for certain that the presence of life became a fact before human beings appeared. We know for certain that human beings arose out of other types of animals. Initially, life was little pieces of living protein with rudimentary forms of the so-called "psychic" among its properties. Are we being ordered to consider this the great "World Reason," "God," and so on? What rubbish! The same rubbish as the teleology that Goethe mocked wittily in his Xenia, with the ironic assertion that cork oaks were created so that corks could be made for bottles. It is obvious that such primitive views of...

“Mother Nature is doing her best to destroy that area (Africa)—it’s slop! Just in the last few years, he’s sent every plague, war, famine, drought, anything she can do to mute Africa!” (David Vincent of Morbid Angel, published in Kerrang! #440, April 24, 1993, pp.48–49) Here, if "Mother Nature" were replaced with the word "God", then one could hardly distinguish the statement from most evangelist preachers today. Many fans of metal and alternative life-styles really fancy themselves as rebels, as having rejected mainstream Christianity with their "edgy paganism" or "satanism", and so on. But what here is really different besides the name they bestow upon their "God"? They prefer the words used by ancient "European" pagan tribes when these primitive tribes still thought thunderstorms were punishments, and they worshiped nature, believing various aspects of nature are due to various gods.   But here where these alternative spiri...

 What is racism in it's purest form? If you distill it to its most basic concept, what is it? If you ask one person, you hear that it's discrimination based on skin color. (Part of it, but a minimization of the concept). If you ask another: "it's negative hateful stereotyping by the more powerful group." Others say that only those who suffer from its effects have permission to talk about such a thing. Almost everyone is convinced they know what it is when they see it or hear it, even if they can't precisely explain what it is. Today even racists who proudly proclaim the supremacy and excellence of "Western Civilization and values" and who praise ethnic homogeneity (that is, racial purity) as one of their highest values are offended by being called a racist. Racism is the idea that there are simply different kinds of people in the world who must be ranked and treated according to their place: There are high quality people and low quality people. It is...

 Religious/spiritual people will scoff at Marx's critique of religion, especially the infamous quip that "Religion is the opium of the masses". Marx points out that their need for God is a desire for consolation, a need for a reason beyond all particular reasons for any specific suffering that allows them to accept the reasons for their suffering. It is an attempt to explain and cope with their deprivation and misery, but not to get rid of these reasons for the misery in the first place. They want an ultimate explanation for suffering as such, which they are convinced is simply the condition of man in total abstraction from any particular conditions or relations. (Thus the gloomy obsession with death.)  Obviously Marx's criticism is simply scandalous to the religious mind because religion prohibits such heretical questioning from the start. Not questioning as such, but any questioning that calls this religious mode of questioning the world into question.  And, in tota...

When I was 16, I knew a girl from a small conservative town nearby. Politically, things seemed hopeless even then. Uttering the word socialism was enough get you dirty looks, and even spit on. This girl I knew would write newspaper articles for her school newspaper about how abortion is murder and murderers need punished; how sex outside of marriage and homosexuality is one of the worst sins; she attended young life, supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and would repeat all the usual Republican talking points of the time ("socialism poisoning the minds..."). She loved to debate. When I met her (we had mutual friends), she was convinced I needed saved. When I told her I was a communist, she was morally outraged and expressed all the usual prejudices: "you must be evil; you just want starvation and murder, and even if you don't, that's the unintended inevitable consequences of your kind of thinking" and so on.  Today, 20 years later, this person, has po...

  It is common to hear people say, "why is everything made so political today?" Some things are simply common sense, self-evident. If there is conformity and consensus, if a view or practice is widespread or normal, then this must mean the widespread view is not political and couldn't possibly be biased. The widespread view is seen as neutral, as just the way it is, as the simple facts of the matter. That is, it is not up for dispute. Like a fish in water, the water is not noticed by the fish swimming in it. So, it is only those who do not go along with the popular view who are "political".  "Political" has a negative connotation. It is someone who dissents from the prevailing opinion, which is understood as not being an opinion at all. To say that someone is making something "political" is  to accuse them of creating a conflict by denying what is considered an indisputable natural fact that ought not to be up for debate. It is the accusation...

 I intend to tell you, dear reader, what democracy is: not as an abstract ideal that represents nothing but "The Good", which is something about which we have had to change our minds very thoroughly, but as it actually exists and as it is actually practiced.  Here is what the democratic state is: A society in which a man lives better when he has no strong convictions and claims there is no truth other than all convictions and truth are mere subjective opinions that must conform to what is permitted by Law. A society where this former statement is immediately contested by a chorus that says: "no, you live better when you are willing to die for the state which grants you freedom! Ask not what your country can do for you, but how you can sacrifice for your country! The nation must be your highest conviction and value, without it, nihilism reigns!" A society which looks down upon clarity, clear distinctions, and reasoned knowledge with suspicion.  A society which instea...

 Translated from: https://de.cba.media/683061 So, let's revisit the tiresome topic of nationalism – nationalism understood first and foremost as an individual, subjective feeling of belonging to a community, based on characteristics that certainly vary nowadays; but these are, in any case, contributed by the adherents of nationalism. Let's also start with the assertion that nationalism and patriotism are the same attitude towards one's beloved fatherland. "Patriotism" generally expresses a positive, approving stance towards this attitude, while "nationalism" conveys a negative or at least problematic one. Nationalism is often interpreted as an excessive form, as an excess of an otherwise desirable love of one's country, which by no means necessarily has to lead to the devaluation of other fatherlands – and that doesn't quite hold water. The argument for this lies in looking at the complexities of international relations and the question of how th...

Some tentative thoughts about "the culture wars", transphobia, "schools as a site of grooming", et al. Leftists generally seem to frame the “culture war” as coming from only one side: right wing bigots want to take back the social rights of gays and other sexual minorities in the name of the traditional family. At least that’s how trans rights is talked about by the left: as a sign of their goodness, as part of their agenda to expand “social rights” and inclusion, as the latest frontier in the quest to uncover and eradicate discrimination of any kind; anyone who objects -- regardless of what it is they have to say -- or even expresses reservations is said to be motivated solely by “hate” (according to many trans activists, they are undergoing a “genocide”). The conservatives and right-winger say the family, morality, and religion is under attack by the left. I wouldn’t deny there is plenty of old-fashioned “homophobia” (of which, transphobia is related) expressed by...

 Intro "We declare war against socialism, not because it is socialism, but because it has opposed nationalism. Although we can discuss the question of what socialism is, what is its program, and what are its tactics, one thing is obvious: the official Italian Socialist Party has been reactionary and absolutely conservative. If its views had prevailed, our survival in the world of today would be impossible." – Benito Mussolini One would be beating a dead horse today by claiming that a main feature of nationalism is to sort out and exclude people. When it comes to nationalism, one inevitably hears the bromide, attributed to Charles de Gaulle, that what distinguishes "ultra nationalism" from "healthy nationalism", or put differently, "nationalism from patriotism" is that nationalists hate others, and patriots simply love their own people. Ironically, this line about simply loving one's own people that is bandied about by today's democracy-lo...

1. "Brown terror," it is said, occurs when German right-wing extremists, operating underground, in their fanatical xenophobia, deliberately kill Turkish kebab shop or kiosk owners for more than a decade and then disappear again, without explicitly claiming responsibility in letters of responsibility that every Turk or Greek living in Germany is one too many for them. Therefore, there can be no talk of terror, especially of "brown terror," when, in the course of democratically legalized immigration policy, a "wall" is being built around Europe, intended to prevent the influx of unwanted foreigners, and where hundreds of foreigners die miserably every year – on land, but especially in the waters of the Mediterranean. Even there, there can be no talk of "brown terror" where the lives of people with foreign nationality are made so difficult in this country on the basis of the Aliens Act that they either voluntarily return to the regions where they ha...

"...it was demonstrated that one can live quite well here even without money. Would that be a perspective for critics of money if it became common practice?" I can't take the question very seriously. "...live quite well" by spending all day rummaging through dumpsters – here, no less, illegally, thus at the cost of punishment – frequenting food banks, asking friends and acquaintances for shelter, looking for discarded clothing at the Red Cross, etc. So, the "good life" is supposed to be spent entirely organizing the most basic necessities of life – food, drink, clothing, housing – without money. Don't you still have something planned for your life when food, clothing, and housing are somehow secured? Don't you have interests and desires whose fulfillment falls by the wayside when life without money inevitably fills your entire day. To voluntarily choose to live without money – the worst kind of poverty that the local economy has in store for wa...