TheRedWedge

It's not an issue of moral superiority. Russia is not doing anything about the breach because it is on track to eventually win this war by methodically grinding down Ukraine's capacity to continue fighting. They do not need to escalate in any way, just maintain the current trend until its logical conclusion. Ukraine has spent the entire war doing this sort of provocations specifically to trigger an escalatory Russian response that the euroghouls on the sidelines can use to further escalate their own involvement in the war. Every time this happens nationalistic broenkors throw a fit for a few days and demand the nuclear annihilation of Lvov then it's just business as usual with the frontline slowly creeping westwards and tha AFU bleeding out more irreplaceable casualties. It's an ugly war.

It's bleak. This utterly cringe continent feels like it's dead set on suicide charging into Russia again. White Tiger was a documentary.

I understand the feeling, I've lost people to far right radicalization too, including one I had previously considered a comrade. He was also a decent person who went through a lot of shit and was genuinely anti-capitalist and supported the anti-imperialist struggle but they got to him with homophobia, transphobia and unhealthy ideals of masculinity. I would spend hours patiently explaining things to him and he would snap out of it for a day or two, then get back to ranting about how they are coming to trans our innocent children and indoctrinate them with gender ideology. It's terrifying how you can spend so much effort, patience and goodwill only for it to be undone over and over again by sensationalist fascist scare propaganda.

While it can be genuinely hard and painful to do so, please prioritize your own mental health and wellbeing and don't feel guilty about reducing contact if it gets too bad. You are doing your best as a friend and communist, but it's material conditions and class intrerest that have the greatest pull on what each person chooses to believe and if you find yourself in an unfavorable engagement it's fine to pull back from a losing battle.

Hugs and solidarity to you, I hope the dude snaps out of it, but if he doesn't remember it's not your fault.

Good morning, friend. Israel will perish.

It's extra funny because these are the types of people who were smuglording whenever any sort of high value Russian asset got hit by Ukrainian drones or missiles far behind the frontline. Whoooops, turns out this kind of threat is genuinely difficult to defend against and it's not just an issue with the inadequacy of the orcish brainpan, who would have thought.

I have ADHD and my own shame pile of half finished books so I empathize with how hard it can be to just sit down and read the damn theory. I definitely think you have a good basis with the idea of compiling short and impactful tiktok/insta/youtube content as a jumping board for delving deeper. In fact, the thing that pushed me to make the effort and start reading in my very own political journey was watching youtube videos in my lunch break that had a bibliography in the description and directly cited the works during the clip. These are significantly longer than what you are going for and I know he is guilty of his own fair share of cringe, but I give a lot of credit to Bad Empanada's videos on the historical link between the USian concept of Manifest Destiny and the Nazis' Lebensraum and the one on the invention of the modern concept of the white race on this. I distinctly remember watching him lay it out straight from the books and thinking to myself "damn this is crazy stuff I really need to read more".

In a way, the strategy I pursued above is simply emulating that experience with my friends when the opportunity arises, except that I play the part of the youtube video in real life and hope my analysis is good enough to prompt them to want to learn more for themselves.

Good luck in your endeavors, hopefully we both get some extra comrades out of this. I'm actually quite hopeful myself after hearing my friends independently question the narrative on Iran, it really feels like the world is slowly changing. Right now, as communists, we need to do our best to reach people who are willing to listen and help them get started on the path of liberating political education.

Lmao based, I hope this is real. Infinite trolling upon the western world.

Sadly, the state of LGBT+ rights in Russia and other formerly socialist eastern european countries is absolutely horrible. Homophobia and transphobia are extremely common among the general population, anti-LGBT legislation is actively being introduced, while even basic civil partnerships are illegal.

Progress is extremely slow and made worse by the fact that LGBT+ issues are seen as an alien element pushed by the West and subversive NGOs. I believe that liberation from imperialism is necessary for conditions to improve in any durable and significant manner.

With my past experience of trying to get people to read the most basic, short, easy and lib-friendly texts and 10-20 minute articles, I wouldn't go for the approach of dropping a reading list on them unless they are the types who read encyclopedias for fun, or they actually ask you for reading material. And I wouldn't go straight to communist theory with proletariat and classes and scary German philosophers and Russian revolutionaires either.

Theory is essential but you need to ease people into it. Make sure that you are up to date yourself with literature that deals with issues relevant to your friends, and that isn't just straight up Marx or Lenin because libs are primed to be hostile towards those. In the case of US aggression, I would recommend stuff like Washington Bullets, Killing Hope, Against Empire, or The Jakarta Method. Then, since you mentioned these are people close to you that you interact with on a regular basis, spend time with them, listen to them, and capitalize on every opportunity to drop more of your leftist analysis while pointing at the resources that you used to build it. Essentially, you have to market reading to them by being well informed on topics they care about and showing the work that got you here.

I know a few people similar to your friends who are starting to question the official narrative on countries like Iran and the DPRK. One of them asked me for a link to Killing Hope, but this was after he brought up North Korea himself in light of recent events and we spent some time talking about the Korean War, its many associated US crimes against humanity, as well as how this pattern of US aggression repeated throughout the post WW2 world. I have no idea if the guy will actually read it, but if he does it will be easier to build on that and pitch Lenin to him.

We are fighting against a wall of heavily reinforced anticommunist narratives and liberal civil religion, which is why I prefer the cautious approach. Marxist-Leninist reading lists are for people who have broken through and decided they want to make sense of the world after the liberal narrative has collapsed. You need to work with your friends at their own pace and drill at the cracks that form organically until they get to that point.

From my ttrpg experience, you can deromanticize aristocrats to the point where damn near every one of them enthusiastically shows off his prized PeasantGrinder9001 with live serfs thrown in for extra effect and people will still act as if they are ultimately well intentioned, legitimate leaders who are just a little out of touch maybe and they just need some gentle persuasion to do better for their subjects that they obviously care about. Monarchybrain runs deep.

Aside from the very cool stuff already posted, the Mansu Hill Grand Monument in the DPRK is amazing. It's so huge it's hard to do it justice with photos. Fitting for one of the greatest acts of resistance in human history.

I also really like the style of Vietnamese posters. They look so happy and hopeful.

Every single day I am on the brink of ragequitting my job but the absolute state of the world makes me stay because I can't afford the instability aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh