Me personally, I find the EZLN fascinating. (if there is anything bad about them, let me know because I do not know much bad things about them)

They are one of the few movements that anarchists praise that I actually think are based, although the Zapatistas have told westerners to stop calling them anarchists, communists, or anything else.

They also fight against drug cartels and seem to have created one of the most stable territories in the Chiapas region.

However, they are too small to do anything big like overthrowing the Mexican government. They would be crushed quickly.

Give me your thoughts on the EZLN and/or, as the title suggests, any non-ML movements that you support.

It was really annoying back when I was a rightist but it's even more frustrating now that I am a Marxist-Leninist that so-called "leftists" denounce pretty much every single successful socialist experience in history.

In case you don't know, Travis King is an American soldier who just recently fled to North Korea and the news here has been talking about him constantly.

Go on youtube and search about Disney's latest failure Elemental and you get all these insane videos about "Woke Disney" made by people who talk exclusively about the "woke mob".

Ever heard of Yellowflash, Clownfish TV, and those other reactionaries? I first heard about them during the Vic Mignogna drama. (whether those accusations are true or not is another discussion, but it made reactionaries insane).

It's such a shame and a disgrace. Kim il-Sung served the people well and wrote so many things praising them, even saying "The People are my God!"

But Western propaganda wants us to believe he is a crazy lunatic who just wanted to create a totalitarian hermit kingdom all along.

One day, history will absolve him.

My new favorite tankie earworm. It's such a gem to listen to.

Found this on the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_energy_intake Apparently, only five African countries have lower calorie intakes.

It could be misleading but if I search for similar statistics on this country I get similar results. I believe the embargo has something to do with it, if not most to do with it.

What insight or comments can you guys give?

So I heard that somebody shot Lenin and failed (thank god) and what happened was the Red Terror happened and many died as a result. Can I get some more details about this?

Both American and Chinese sources that I've read like to claim that the Soviet Union was an imperialistic, hegemonic power that wanted to dominate the world. Other sources claim that the USSR was more neutral.

Can you guys explain what Soviet foreign policy was like, especially how it changed over the years. (like how it changed from Stalin to Khruschev and so on.)

When I mean "more radical" I mean much greater worker ownership of society and less bourgeoisie. More social benefits such as free healthcare, free school, guaranteed employment, free housing, etc.

Basically like Mao but without the dumb mistakes.

I believe that anti-imperialism is definitely important, but are there any cases where that crosses the line?

Say for example a fascist government. Now, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were imperialist powers so it made 100% sense to oppose them. But take the Taliban, an extremely reactionary government that opposed the USA. Or India, ruled by a far-right nationalist party that is a member of BRICS. Or pretty much any other fascistic and/or genocidal government that opposes imperialism while not being imperialist themselves.

Now, I'm not saying we should support the imperialists, but are there cases where we should also not support the ones fighting the imperialists?

I understand fully that compulsory and guaranteed employment is both necessary and awesome in a socialist society in transition towards communism. But once communism has been fully achieved, would this compulsory employment still be a thing, especially since there is no currency that motivates many to work?

You probably know how this basically went.

So this guy was in class and he had a shirt of Karl Marx. I said "Based!" and told him that he should get a Lenin shirt next. He said that Lenin was authoritarian, so we argued about whether Lenin was good or not and whether "authoritarianism" was required to succeed in a socialist revolution. I even told him to read "On Authority" and he still didn't agree with me.

Some gems:

1. "He (Engels) is saying that authoritarianism is required DURING the revolution, not after." I tried to explain to him that such "authoritarianism" was also required to SECURE the proletarian state after the initial violent revolution, but apparently that went over his head.

2. "You're not a leftist, you're far-right. You just use leftist rhetoric. You're just like Nazis." The classic red fash tankie line.

3. "Killing fascists is bad because killing people for their different political beliefs is always bad. You are basically doing genocide." He literally (if I recall) said that violence is required in a socialist revolution but all of a sudden if we do violence against fascists, which are harsh enemies of workers, that's bad and us letting them off the hook totally isn't going to lead to them becoming stronger. He said Lenin was bad because he "murdered political opponents." (I assume he is referring to the Red Terror.)

4. "Wouldn't all the killing done in a Leninist nation cause similar destabilization as when the USA does imperialism such as in Iraq?" I have yet to see such destabilization in socialist nations, only exceptions being in Cambodia and when the Warsaw Pact nations fell to capitalism.

5. "You aren't fighting the bourgeoisie, you are fighting the workers."

6. I defined fascism as socialists define it: an open terroristic capitalist dictatorship in response to workers' movement. Therefore, former AES nations and not even the current USA (yet) can be considered fascist. But he said "You're just playing the definition game" or something like that.

This young man is very intelligent, I've got to admit. I can only hope he shares his wisdom with the socialists of the third world, to tell them why the evil Leninist line is just far-right and that they need to embrace his enlightened version of Marxism in order to succeed.

There are several illustrations out there about the torture of people in Khmer Rouge prisons, including chopping people's hands off.

This all started as a communist, or pseudo-communist revolution.

What the hell caused them to chop people's hands off? Among all of the other horrifying things they did.

In modern times, I know very few that even rival all the brutality that this regime committed, not by death count but by the sheer inhumanity of the deaths.

I need a detailed explanation of all this.

Ya know like the people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris? The "facts and logic" people who absolutely hated religion and blamed it for everything bad?

What's a material Marxist analysis of this?

Let's say that the many, many people who are needed to do (relatively) unskilled labor such as restaurants, factory, retail, etc. are not needed to do those jobs anymore due to them being fully automated.

It's relatively easier to automate those sorts of jobs, but what about the ones that require much more skill: doctors, lawyers, plumbers, electricians. These would take more time to automate compared to the more basic jobs. So when these basic jobs are all lost due to automation, but the skilled ones are remaining, what would a communist/socialist society do to solve this?

Would they force some people to learn how to do these needed jobs in case of a shortage? Would they allow the unemployed masses to survive without labor? What do you think?

So in the universe of Kaiserreich, the mod for Hearts of Iron, the Bolsheviks (sadly) failed in their revolution.

As a result, Marxism-Leninism became largely discredited. Hence, it was replaced by the Syndicalism we hear about in the game.

However, there is another socialist ideology (well, two, which is called Radical Socialism, but it doesn't have much to do with the following) in the game known as Totalism, which consists of a lot of authoritarian socialists in that universe. As a result, communists are often featured as Totalists.

Which would have been based if it weren't for the fact that:

1. The symbol for Totalism in-game is very similar to the fucking Strasserist symbol.

2. Benito Mussolini and Oswald Mosley and other literal fashies in OTL are depicted as Totalists.

So basically, in that alternate universe, horseshoe theory became a reality.