Could be worse

If that was the horse:

Those were giant prayer wheels, spinning non stop since then.

Finally an universal left unity theory.

On one hand it is incredibly funny that after such question only two books and one movie got mentioned by title in thread and two of which are a work of fiction, but then again, LeGuin is still better than Proudhon lol.

On the other hand, this anarchist society in Disposessed is a pretty good analogy in how it is essentially entirely on the mercy of the people on the Urras. Even the anarchist utopia is vulnerable. Also for some weird reason Anarres seems to represent USSR since it existence means states on Urras are giving workers some rights, analogically to Western Europe building social nets.

I think you’re severely underestimating .world ability to move past the boundaries XD

You must realise you’re holding a very fringe position that’s more a conspiracy theory and will be considered trolling, right?

This is seemingly paradoxical when a real deal conspiracy theory is being mainstream. DPRK being hell on Earth is a conspiracy theory not supported by facts, but it’s not fringe, it’s held by the entire collective western media (though that is more of a 5 corpos in a trenchcoat) and it’s constantly fed to their populations. Information bubbles are real.

And there are many such cases in topic of communism.

And it’s not even the exploitation that steals the most value from workers, it’s just the illegal theft even according to bourgeois law.

Yeah i’m sure it’s a curse, and not centuries of colonialism, imperialism, uneven trade etc etc.

The Third World is not poor. You don’t go to poor countries to make money. There are very few poor countries in this world. Most countries are rich! The Philippines are rich! Brazil is rich! Mexico is rich! Chile is rich—only the people are poor. But there’s billions to be made there, to be carved out, and to be taken—there’s been billions for 400 years! The Capitalist European and North American powers have carved out and taken the timber, the flax, the hemp, the cocoa, the rum, the tin, the copper, the iron, the rubber, the bauxite, the slaves, and the cheap labour. They have taken out of these countries—these countries are not underdeveloped—they’re overexploited!

-Michael Parenti

Even Kaja Kallas called von der Leyen a dictator so on account of how EU stans believe her on everything they should better start calling EU accordingly.

I’m not an American but even i know there were candidates there who did not supported genocide.

Relevant essay by Parenti explains this.

31 people need to fill it ASAP

In-universe the Jihad was generally seen as a necessity. No one was really against it politically, even if they skirted around or violated it in actuality.

Not really everyone, Ixans viewed it as obstacle, but didn’t wanted to be nuked so they were making a lot of extra effort to comply even though they were actually violating it later during reign of Leto II. He allowed it because he needed the navigational computers which weren’t even close to thinking machines btw.

Basically all PoV’s were usually aristocracy, ubermench cultists or their cronies so they actually actively benefitted from the system put in place by the jihad, so no wonder they weren’t quiestioning it. Also 10000 years is A LOT of time to burn the supertistion in people’s minds, especially that author seemingly believed in some kind of biological species-wide memory that can be modified by social sciences.

Leto II said: “The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines. Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments. Naturally, the machines were destroyed.”

Not convincing, especially not from the galactic slaver and genocider. As example you can see when Duncan Idaho go to the village in and is shocked by how miserable everything looks and is informed that basically entire empire looks like that. Sense of beauty my ass, about the same as Narco Rubio or Heinrich Himmler telling about the western civilization.

With all his prescience he saw humankind dying out unless he followed the Golden Path.

Funnily enough unless we believe in Omnius literally the entire Golden Path was created to deal with the problems of Golden Path.

That is a kind of tragedy, to be very nearly all-powerful and all-knowing, to know right from wrong, and to have tyranny be the only way forward.

Yes now you get it, it’s a tragedy, though locked in place much earlier, during jihad. Also kwisatz haderach weren’t all-knowing, some in-universe characters expressed that and even Paul and Leto constantly complain that the prescience locked them in one vision, we don’t have literally any evidence that it was the only possible vision just the only one they saw, which they both admit. Also at least Paul had some possibilities to avoid and destroy that path but it would require him to die and he wasn’t willing.

and to have tyranny be the only way forward.

So sad, much necessary, wow, i bet no one ever in history used this excuse.

I don’t for a second believe that Frank made the jihad as a reference to Samuel Butler because he thought it was a bad idea. If the book had wanted to communicate that it was a bad idea, it would have been presented as one at some point.

Again you might refer to the genre of tradegy, the point of them is that there is some condition set up that make for a inevitable tragedy and that condition is usually portrayed just as existing fact, especially that Frank consistently portray the setting not as ever-knowing narrator but from the point of view of characers. So as i mentioned above barely anyone even have information or mindset to even question the jihad and those who do support it.

On the other hand, we also see complete ahistorical absence of any kind of socialist thought and we know authow was a lib, so he might just liked primitivism, feudalism and objectification of the masses. Again, we constantly see the PoV of elites and humanity in entirety or even smaller portions of it shown as the grey amorphous mass with barely any agency which need to be directed by this or that ubermesch cult.

Especially that it was more than one casino, it was certainly some fraud scheme.

COINTELPRO never ended

Lmao it is my favourite sci-fi book, it is a great Greek tragedy. And if anything, it is you who read it wrong since you took from it that a tragic event that crippled humanity is a good one.

Independently? Of what, humanity’s creations? Well, that’s true, jihadists destroyed basically entire civilization. 99% of humanity were slaves or serfs, the nobility and merchants were even more static than ever, the instant teleportation that eventually allowed for galactic or even multi galactic scale spread seen basically no use except making money since the distant planet Arrakis was just 200 LY from Earth and most of mentioned worlds even closer. Most “progressive” factions like Ixians or Tleilaxu took thousands of years to actually invent something, even entirely legal. Even maintaining the space civilization relied on impossible magical tech. Education and science were abysmal, superstition widespread, it made the cults inevitable, just they were real because of space heroin and magic.

they just made for a better story about power and politics.

This isn’t really the story about power and politics, it’s a classical Greek tragedy where everything is fucked no matter what because everything has been setup to fail by the story premise, which is precisely the butlerian jihad.

Most of the “falling to the dark side” episodes was caused by jedis recognising the reality, they just not only weren’t mentally equipped to face it, as they existed in peak of idealist thought, but the universe is also the prime example of the swerve and people on the dark side seemingly immediately kill younglings or massacre indigenous tribes or something like this, regardless of reasons they “fall”.

The Jihad was the basis for the development of mentats, navigators, prescience, most of what the Bene Gesserit could do, etc.

Supremacist superhuman cults and objectification of humans are good and empowering according to you? Wow how nice. Also you forgot nice tleilaxan things like turning every woman into breeding tank or genetically engineered slaves. Prescience? Did you missed literally every book constantly saying “prescience bad”?

The spice became a cause of atrophy as well when people became reliant on it, but that’s consistent with the theme.

Yes it’s consistent with the theme of butlerian jihad atrophying humanity to the point of being hooked on barely understood space heroin. The atrophy and decay of human minds went so far barely anyone even thought about that.

Fuck the Great Convention obviously, but the Jihad was (mostly) good actually.

Jihad literally plunged humanity into millenia of slavery and serfdom. I find it absolutely wild that any leftist would support this.

but discarding tools that atrophy us rather than empower us.

In the book it discarded tools that empowered us and ending up atrophying humanity basically forever, and even when the atrophy supposedly ended for the price of unbelivable suffering, it was only vulgar numerical and territorial growth, not empowerment. And it STILL required usage of not only forbidden tech but also technomagic required to even have a primitivist interstellar civilization.

Butlerian jihad was deeply reactionary war and every leftist should fight against the bastards that set up the Great Convention system.