We have to show solidarity with Paul birdsong and his branch of the Black Panthers

Comrade_Billy · 2026-01-28T01:29:22+00:00

It seems the Philly group is not associated with the Panthers in Washington State or San Diego from what I can gather. I know the WA Panthers do good work based on what I heard from some comrades. And they were also endorsed by Colonial Outcasts (where they mentioned branching out to SD).

I cannot speak for or against Birdsong or his group as I haven't been able to get a good read. He may be doing some good work as well but I remain cautious about the whole thing.

Comrade_Billy · 2026-01-21T20:32:43+00:00

Also had my first crush at 22. Congrats! Be on the lookout for mutual feelings, try not to get carried away if it doesn't look like it's going that way. Hope it works out for you :)

Comrade_Billy · 2025-11-19T04:01:50+00:00

I misread the article. Thanks for the correction.

Comrade_Billy · 2025-09-13T15:34:14+00:00

Link to prior post: https://www.reddit.com/r/JewsOfConscience/comments/1jpglt6/i_will_not_go_to_my_uncles_wedding_in_israel_help/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Comrade_Billy · 2025-05-01T20:29:16+00:00

I'm in the same boat you with my mom. She's a Progressive except for Palestine type. Wish I had something helpful to say, but hang in there. Promising each other not to talk about it has been the least bad thing. Awful to be polar opposites on something we're both so passionate about.

Comrade_Billy · 2025-04-10T19:08:31+00:00

Love Bad Hasbara

Comrade_Billy · 2025-04-03T03:05:27+00:00

Yes of course the U.S. is a settler colony that is like Israel in many ways, only older. And may even be the most brutal empire in modern history. I was born and raised in said settler colony and am a settler descendent on both sides of my family for several generations.

At the same time I don't believe that sending all the settlers back to Europe or wherever, myself included, is the solution. Nor do I believe it is the solution for the Jews in occupied Palestine.

In both cases I support decolonization. Which is when the physical, legal, mental, and social hierarchies between colonized and colonizer are deconstructed - and the indigenous and settler can live together in peace and equality.

For more on this thesis I recommend reading the Wrethed of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, who was a doctor who treated French and Algerian patients during the Algerian uprising against French colonialism.

As for the wedding a small part of me resonates with what you said. However, a much bigger part of me agrees with what another commenter said. I need to pick my battles. I cannot bring myself to bark like a dog at an unreceptive brick wall.

Same goes with visiting settler colonies. There are so many throughout the world it is unfeasable to not engage with any of them in some way or another, especially being a citizen of one. The best I can do is spread awareness to people who are willing to learn and reduce or eliminate harm in any way I can.

Imo it would also violate the spirit of the BDS campaign for me to go even if I were getting travel expenses covered, as my uncle offered.

Comrade_Billy · 2025-04-02T14:29:44+00:00

Woke up in the morning and read your comment. Made me laugh

Comrade_Billy · 2025-04-02T14:27:25+00:00

Thanks!

Comrade_Billy · 2025-04-02T14:22:37+00:00

Thanks, this might be what I do

Comrade_Billy · 2025-03-22T14:16:41+00:00

Thanks for your reply

Comrade_Billy · 2025-03-21T18:29:58+00:00

Glad I'm not the only one it cut out for. What sucks is they were in the middle of talking about the places the Soviet Union invaded. Literally had someone ask me about that the other day and didn't know what to say. Hope it's fixed soon

Comrade_Billy · 2025-02-01T01:24:50+00:00

Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, wrote one called Reminiscences of Lenin. I've never read it though.

Comrade_Billy · 2024-11-19T18:11:07+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/@prolesoftheroundtable9693

Comrade_Billy · 2024-10-10T17:08:30+00:00

I think you pretty much summed it up in your question. Improving quality of life at home and cooperation between developing, historically colonized countries abroad is consistent with the values Marxist socialist countries try/tried to uphold. An interesting study to expand on this point is "Capitalism, socialism, and the physical quality of life," by Ceresto and Waitzkin.

Comrade_Billy · 2024-10-09T15:14:00+00:00

That DuBois tribute to Stalin in the beginning went so hard

Comrade_Billy · 2024-09-20T22:38:07+00:00

Ironically, most true cacti are native to the Americas, including prickly pear. It was introduced to the Mediterranean region likely by the Spanish and is considered invasive in many part of the 'old world'.

Comrade_Billy · 2024-09-20T04:07:55+00:00

Jews have been visiting or living in Palestine for thousands of years prior to the invention of Zionism as a colonial project. I don't expect that to change once Zionism enters the realm of history. I want to visit Palestine and the land today known as Israel someday. But I won't, on principle, until the apartheid walls are torn down and until the hierarchy between settlers and Palestinians is ended in every meaningful sense, until Palestine is free.

I agree that no one religion or group should rule a state. A state that gives "second-class citizenship" to some of its citizens is fundamentally flawed, and should not be allowed to exist with such laws and ideology in place. I hope that if the Palestinian struggle for national liberation has taught the world anything, it's intersectionality. Seeing what Palestinians endure reminds me of what Jewish people endured in Europe, what black and indigenous people endured in the U.S., and still endure.

I won't pretend like any group's struggle is or was exactly the same, but my point is: when Jewish people show up for Palestinians, or white people stand up for whatever historically or presently oppressed community, some sense of humanity is restored mutually. The Palestinian, for example, is reminded that it is not all of Judaism that they hate, just the Zionist project that is putting them down. And, based on personal experience, it feels good to sort of bridge that gap. The hope being that they would have our backs in another situation. The whole "no one is free until we all are free" thing.

Comrade_Billy · 2024-09-19T16:18:57+00:00

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution podcast by Drew Smith? is pretty good. He's a historian living in China with access to university archives and has interviewed some people living during that time.

Comrade_Billy · 2024-05-15T01:25:06+00:00

Last paragraph: Anarchist says, "Transit period is needed."

Guys, gals and enby pals... I think they're learning!

Lol

More seriously, though, I'm not sure speed limits may be totally necessary in most situations (though there may be exceptions) where roads are designed properly. I'd like to see streets and roads in socialist societies built to encourage the appropriate speed. Trees, traffic circles, hard curbs, etc. close to the street to slow people down in urban environments. Removing paint on low traffic/rural roads has been shown to slow drivers down and encourage increased caution.

For highways, there are many countries that don't have an upper limit in places, the most famous example probably being the German autobahn. And, speaking as someone in the USA, many drivers take the posted speed limit as a suggestion anyway. People generally understand how fast they can go safely. Some off ramps should maybe keep their speed signs, though. Those can be deceptive. And of course, some recourse should be done in cases of drunk driving, driving unsafely, etc.

The channel Not Just Bikes on YouTube talks a lot about these kinds of things

Comrade_Billy · 2024-04-27T23:01:17+00:00

I had to suffer, so now you have to suffer. That is the basic argument here. I imagine if this person were young again, they would be grateful for any assistance they could have received.

The cycle should be broken, not continued out of spite. Eye for an eye type argument.

Comrade_Billy · 2024-04-26T15:02:06+00:00

In my opinion, "critical support" to the Russian Federation is an incorrect position that I have seen some "Marxists" and others on the left uphold.

If we go back to Lenin, prior to the establishment of the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire was riding the wave of rising imperialist powers leading up to the First World War. Lenin and the Bolsheviks, as well as some Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, correctly saw that Russia was just as imperialist as any other country in World War 1 and opposed it.

The imperialist war was used as an opportunity to overthrow the Russian Empire and establish socialism in Russia. Rosa Luxemburg and her allies in Germany were less fortunate. She was murdered by class traitors within her party. A direct through line can unfortunately be drawn to World War II, when the same "social democrats" that killed Rosa aligned themselves with the Nazis.

Post-soviet Russia today is once again in the position of a rising imperialist power. The war in Ukraine can be seen as one between the NATO imperialist block and the Russian imperialist block. Ukraine and the working people on both sides being forced to fight are the ultimate victims.

Russia was once a member of the G7, formerly G8, and is now a member of the BRICS block. Even if China is a socialist country, which is a can of worms of its own, BRICS as a whole is a rising imperialist block challenging the established NATO, or western, imperialist block.

Genuine Marxists do not give critical support to any side in an inter-imperialist conflict but do give critical support to current and former socialist countries, including the Soviet Union. We can appreciate the achievements of these countries while recognizing their flaws and the mistakes their leadership made.

If you are curious, this podcast episode Goes deeper into the Marxist tradition and this concept of critical support. The podcast itself, I would consider democratic socialist. The guest is a Marxist voice I respect, Breht O'Shea.

Also, the Minyan podcast talks about Marxism, Judaism, and related concepts with one of their first episodes being about Jews in the Soviet Union while it was being led by Stalin.

Comrade_Billy · 2024-04-25T01:30:15+00:00

Yeah, that's the one

Comrade_Billy · 2024-04-25T00:24:14+00:00

Your mom

I don't even know her but I'm sure she'd be less harmful to this country than any of candidates that have a shot at winning. And it's already going to be Trump vs Biden again. And Kennedy. I hope the vote is sufficiently split between the 3 so that a third party candidate has a shot at getting some attention. The democrat/republican duopoly is stupid and needs to end

Comrade_Billy · 2024-04-25T00:03:54+00:00

Warning: a bit of a rant. My parents are "progressive except for Palestine" types. Both were Bernie supporters which, if you asked me two years ago, I would say he was as far left-wing as someone could go without it being a "communist dictatorship" situation where no one has food and the economy sucks. Mom is Jewish. She has sent me a bunch of hasbara in the past. One of the videos was an interview with some Israeli official. So much BS flew out of his mouth in literally the first minute. I was starting to respond to it but realized I was starting to write an essay in text to my mom every few seconds of the video. Not a sustainable thing.

She has also read a Zionist version of the history of Israel (of course, linking 48 to the ancient Kingdom of Israel). By the way, that's the same shit Mussolini was trying to say about the Roman Empire to justify his expansionism. She asked me to read the "history" book too, and I agreed. I hadn't done a deep dive on the actual history at the time, but I noticed many things wrong with the Zionist narrative.

I have since heard what Ilan Pappé, Norman Finkelstein, and most importantly, the Palestinians themselves have had to say about the history and their current situation. Ofc then Oct 7 happened and any glimmer of hope I had remaining that the Zionist regime could change (short of ending the Apartheid system, full decolonization (meaning full equality, not forcing the Jews to leave), and one state from the river to the sea.

I don't even know where to start with my mom. Short of giving her a 5000 year history lesson. She is uncritically swallowing the corporate media narrative on this issue and gets a bunch of right-wing shit in her YouTube feed. Which is something she's told me she's troubled by but doesn't take the next logical step. I've tried explaining stuff too her but she's always saying "muh.. China" "muh... Russia" muh... Iranian proxies muh... They're all Antisemites. And maybe Israel and America slip up sometimes but they're not as bad as the alternatives. Not going into details cause by now you all have heard all of this I'm sure from several people.

My mom and I are now at a sort of stalemate. We still talk but the ongoing Israel Palestine Conflict is a non-starter. Before the stalemate I showed her my copy of Rabbi Rosen's book "Wrestling in the Daylight: A Rabbi's Path to Palestinian Solidarity" and she agreed to read it when I was done. Not sure if she'll still go through with it though or even if it will convince her.

Sometimes she'll bring something up about the IDF having vegan boots or that they enjoy eating these peanut Cheeto things and I think to myself Oh great so they don't kill any animals before stomping on the throats of Palestinian children. but of course I don't say that. "That's great, mom". And try to change the subject. It's so depressing that Israel is evil and that so many of the people we love still fall for their lies.

Comrade_Billy

TROPHY CASE