Rafidhi [her/هي]

  • 10 Posts
  • 34 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 11th, 2023
  • Rafidhi [her/هي]@lemmygrad.mltoGames@lemmygrad.ml•GTA VI trailer got released, It has women prepare for unlimited gamer cope.
    61·
    11 months ago

    Imperialist Cultural Offensive:

    "In analyzing a society and deriving its laws of motion, Marxism proceeds by studying its economic base, then also its superstructure (politics and culture) both in their particularity and in their interaction. The class that controls the economic base and appropriates the surplus product is the determinant factor in the long run, producing its own framework of political rule and dominant cultural precepts.

    As Marx aptly said in The German Ideology:

    The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. … Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.

    However, the superstructure can become crucial in intensifying contradictions within the economic base or in breaking deadlocks towards resolution and general advance. Thus to be a cultural activist, one must understand the underlying contradictions and define one´s class stand. On whose side are we? As cultural activists, we stand with and for the people. We expose and criticize oppression and obscurantism in any or many aspects of this vast mental, communication, and behavioral complex that we call culture, and espouse revolutionary changes in society in that same space.

    In the past two or three decades now, the world’s countries and peoples have been facing a renewed cultural offensive by the foremost imperialist powers. This offensive advances in parallel with their economic and political-military offensives. This cultural offensive is led by US imperialism. It is the “soft power” aspect of the US ambition for full spectrum dominance in the economic, political, military, social and other spheres, including outer space."

  • Rafidhi [her/هي]@lemmygrad.mltoMemes@lemmygrad.ml•Fuck liberal opinions about Nakba
    111·
    1 year ago

    Khaled Barakat discussed this at length. I’m glad to see you kept the sources I recc’d earlier 🙏

    "Barakat also responded to the narrative coming from certain quarters, especially from Western liberals, that Hamas was originally created by Israel to divide the Palestinian movement and to weaken the PLO. “Israel did not create Hamas. Hamas was founded on December 9, 1987, in the First Intifada,” he stated. “Since then, Israel has been targeting Hamas, killing its leaders, assassinating their commanders, killing and imprisoning their members… If Israel created Hamas, then why don’t we have not even one document that shows this?”

    He explained that Hamas originated from the Muslim Brotherhood movement which was established in 1928, 20 years before Israel was established. Israel did try to create a religious movement to replace the PLO but failed in the attempt.

    “Today the PLO and the Palestinian Authority leadership are traitors and tools in the hands of Israel,” he continued. “And Hamas is leading the Palestinian resistance, but not just the armed resistance. If you look at elections, let’s say the student movement elections or labor elections or any kind of really popular assembly elections, Hamas will win with majority. Palestinian people are voting for Hamas in the most prestigious Palestinian liberal universities, like Birzeit University, Hamas will win student council elections. Even in Christian universities, Hamas will win by Christian votes. Does that mean that the Palestinian people don’t understand Hamas? And these Western liberals understand the situation more than we do?… I do not think it is naive or ignorant when they repeat this, it is a calculated distortion. The idea behind these allegations is to say that Palestinians are not capable of creating their movement, someone else must have done this for them.”

    Barakat emphasized that Hamas is a national liberation movement of the Palestinian people. He recalled that Western media never mentions that Hamas was actually elected by Palestinians. “They say things like Hamas controls Gaza or Hamas did a coup, as if an elected government is going to do a coup against itself,” he said. “It’s just garbage that Western media put out to mislead people.”

    When consulted about the rejection expressed by some sections of the Western left towards anti-imperialist movements that have a religious base, such as Hamas, Barakat called it “an extension of a colonialist mindset.” “They want a Palestinian resistance that fits their image and their criteria, and not how reality is and how Palestinians are,” he said. He added that the same sectors used to criticize the Marxist-Leninist PFLP when it lead the armed struggle during the 1960s-70s, calling the organization “too extreme.”

    In this regard, he traced the history of the origin of Islamist anti-imperialist trends in the region. “In the 50s our people were shouting slogans for socialism,” he commented. “They supported Nasser in Egypt… And there were no religious groups anywhere in the movement carrying out any kind of national liberation tasks. Being affected by the situation worldwide—Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria, national liberation movements across Asia and Africa, Palestinians founded the PFLP, the DFLP, and other progressive forces. But that changed. And the reason that things change is not because people are wrong, but because these political parties or these political entities haven’t delivered what they were supposed to deliver. Whether it’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Arab national movements that were defeated in 1967, or whether the socialist organizations and political parties retreated in 1990 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc.”

    “The popular classes and the working classes are not going to rest until the left rebuilds itself,” Barakat stressed. “They’re going to support the forces that are still fighting. And when there is a vacuum, someone needs to fulfill the vacuum. In that atmosphere, with the 1979 Great Revolution of Iran, a new era began in the region,” and religious movements took up the task of the Palestinian resistance.

    He called out the inherent Islamophobia in the “anyone but Hamas” view, and stated, “We are part of the discourse of Liberation Theology. It’s not just churches, mosques can be revolutionary too… If a mosque is calling for the liberation of Palestine and for equality and for supporting the marginalized and the workers, then this mosque is playing a good role, a positive role. But if a mosque is calling for supporting the Saudi prince and extend the life of bin-Salman of Saudi Arabia, that’s a reactionary mosque and a reactionary imam. The way we look at churches, we should look at mosques with the same objectivity and the same way.”

    “Those who want to see the left rising and having military capabilities, they should go and support the left instead of saying they don’t like Hamas,” he advised. “It’s just a very bad position and not one Palestinian would respect that position, including any revolutionary leftist.”"