the worst thing about the second klan was it gave the founders of the third klan an opportunity to meet each other and go “oh! you’re a HUGE bigot, too?”

just be ready for what rises from the ashes. because it was from that collapse that the Indiana Klan reorganized into the group we know today

“the least problematic klan was the second klan, and other confusing things you don’t want anyone to say to you”

my great grandad was though. from the side of the family i never really much talked to because my dad wanted nothing to do with them after what they did to him in his upbringing

here’s the thing though. CE is an acknowledgement that this is the calendar that everyone has been forced to use in business thanks to colonial violence. Anno Domini and all its derivitive names prop up a theocratic hegemony that needs to be destroyed

first of all:

1. i would kiss this Vegeta
2. i would kiss channing tatum
3. also i’d kiss original recipe vegeta, but only after he got his life right. so like not original recipe but like… several arcs in

a coverup is considerably cheaper and less painful than a removal. also, a removal often comes with a lot of visible scarring so a coverup can end up being less noticable

hey at least he wasn’t a founding member of the third iteration of the klan (the current one)

the people who understand what’s going on have figured out that what the regime means is “brown people are, as a group, the worst of the worst.” the people who don’t understand that are more vulnerable to believe that the face value is the truth

is it known for that? do you mind linking some documented evidence for this claim? this is my first time hearing something like this

yup. right wing politics in many ways is rooted in the conception of the self as special, and worthy of explicit privilege based on that

Emmanuel Rohm was the leader of the Brownshirts during Hitler’s rise to power and engaged in almost exclusively homosexual relationships while publicly denouncing homosexuality

in order to have a popular uprising of the people you have to educate the people. we don’t have to exhaust ourselves recruiting unrepentant assholes, but we do have to teach well-meaning people where their actions are falling short if we’re to have any hope of getting out of this

The community (lemmy) is just small enough to be able to notice the same handful of people everywhere, but not large enough to let it the fuck go even though we all really should

Then are you American, or the colonized

Ultimately, like many Americans, I belong to both groups. “American” and “Chinese” work a little bit differently as monikers due to structural differences in both imperial projects. The Chinese imperial project is ancient and its cultural impact is more broadly understood by the people who live within the boundaries of the current People’s Republic of China (though per my understanding this exact nature of this cultural impact is felt and understood a little less directly by the people with privilege within the system such as the Jianghuai and the Shandong). Meanwhile “American” is a little more wibbly wobbly in its nature. There are times that “American” means “A profiteer of Americanism” and others that it means “An advocate of Pan-Americanism” which are both directly opposed ideologies, one being nationalistic in nature and the other being diasporadic in nature. So the only truly unifying “American” trait that is held across both left and right side of the aisle about what “American” even means is someone in the American continents whose ethnic and cultural background is so blended and so remixed that at any given moment they may not have any deeply rooted grounding in what the cultural origins of something they’re doing is. From this perspective I am having an American experience, and am thereby American.

However I also belong to a culture of people, the Appalachians, whose cultural heritage is rooted a little bit more deeply than most, and is currently undergoing a process of elimination by the dominant culture of America, Americanism, which is rooted much more directly in western Anglo-European ideals, norms, and standards. The roots of our culture are traceable back about 600 years when the Cherokee people, pushed from their native homelands in the Piedmont by Spanish, French, and English settlers, re-perpetrated the violence they were experiencing against the Osage who had lived in the Appalachian mountain range for ~6000 years. Even then, the Cherokee encountered escaped enslaved Africans (marooners) from the peninsula of Florida who spoke a pidgin language based on a mixture of Bantu, Appalachee (more on them later), and Spanish. From the very start, our culture’s roots are the preservation of cultures who were being actively eliminated by neighbors and invading forces from abroad seeking to enrich themselves through extraction economies. As the centuries have gone on, other diasporas have entered the mix of this region, notably Germans who found them persecuted in the coastal tidewaters of the early USA following the American War of Independence, eastern Europeans (then called

in census data, but were often of various Eastern European ethnicities, including Ukrainian, Jewish, and Romani), Irish, and Jewish (here counted separately due to different diasporadic pressures than the initial population who arrived from Poland because persecution experienced by the Russian Empire in the 1770s was VERY different from the same empire in the 1880s) (more on this, and me personally, later). These cultures mixed together, brought their own tales of escaping genocide, and created something within the American Empire that isn’t quite like anything else anywhere on earth, though at the same time, very analogous to other hill cultures throughout the world such as Gorani, Kurds, Gorals, Jumma, Khmer Loeu, Laotians, Merina, Montagnard, northeast Subcontinental Indian tribes, Pahari, Pamiris, Pogorzans, Rusyns, and Vlachs. The American Empire doesn’t see value in this culture though. What it sees is the value of the Bituminous Coal, Anthracite, Uranium, and rare earth minerals that sit beneath our feet. From this perspective, I am colonized.

I disassociate from their label, esp. because they are colonists

I, too, dislike the term “American” because I much prefer to identify myself as Appalachian. However, I am also aware that I do not get to opt out of the culture I was born into. I have traveled all across this so called nation, and I have seen the many things that unite us and did participate in the monoculture that has been defined for us through mass media before I was old enough to understand that was what was being done to me. I watch baseball because I enjoy it. I’ll probably watch the next superbowl so I can catch the halftime show and discuss what messages my coworkers are missing in the iconography the performer put on screen the next day. These are things I am not necessarily proud of in myself, but things I find value in when organizing my neighbors because I’m not a scold telling them they’re wrong to like these things, but instead providing new directions for their frustrations that their cities aren’t safe because of Flock cameras and ICE agents. These are American things, and to deny this about myself would be delusional and counterproductive both when having discussions about the future of Appalachia and the possibility of a Post-American society.

At the same time, I am also aware of the harm of the homogenization of the American monoculture. I have participated in Appalachian dance and music since I was 5. This is something I continue to do. I play the bass, and I flatfoot. These are things that are important for me to do because they’re things that remind me that it is possible to have your own culture, to be a member of a community, and even to have shared cultural experiences that cross imaginary boundaries on maps with other people without those shared experiences being universal. I have become increasingly interested of late in the value of these things as counterprogramming within and without Appalachia as a form of counterprogramming to the American monoculture. The three musical genres that I think we do differently from anywhere else in the country, and that we have opportunities to share out into the world as an expression of an alternative future to Americanism and the American monoculture are Bluegrass, Egg Punk, and Dungeon Synth. I’m sure there are others, but these just seem to me to be the things we’re doing a little bit differently from anyone else that other people outside our region have the most interest in. We can attach messaging about what harms us to these genres of music that helps us to resist our demise, and to build international solidarity. Here’s examples of all three from here:

• https://thelocalhoneys.bandcamp.com/track/cigarette-trees
• https://powerpantsrock.bandcamp.com/track/be-the-change
• https://foglord.bandcamp.com/track/whispers-in-the-holler-2

What have they decided to called the land they are reclaiming?

The Cherokee called North America “Turtle Island” long before European settlers arrived on it. However, they have no name for a Pan-Turtle-Islander experience, especially because this leaves out South America as they have no name for that continent. So they call the people of these two continents “American” when they are referring to Pan-Americanism and citizens of the United States having an American experience American when they are referring to Americanism.

Glad to find a comrade here who isn’t a dengist

Fuck every hierarchy

Reflect if you’re truly American, or Cherokee

I am ABSOLUTELY not Cherokee. To call myself as such would be deeply disrespectful to my neighbors and the specific experiences they have within the American Empire. As a tangential metaphor, I am white. The specific kind of white I am is a mixture of Irish, Ukrainian, and Jewish. If I started calling myself Cherokee that would be like if I suddenly started calling myself Armenian. I am not of that culture, I do not have roots into that culture, none of my stories, songs, or recipes come from that culture. It would be cultural appropriation, and an example of white privilege. I exist with that privilege and do not get to opt out of it. It happens before an interaction even begins because it can be seen in the color of my skin when a police officer pulls me over (or even simply opts not to because of that privilege). Similarly, I do not get to opt out of some of the intrinsic benefits of being American I have received, such as an early life spent traveling Canada without a passport because a president negotiated a trade agreement that allowed me to do so by the coincidence of me being born in a building where doctors used to torture Cherokee children. So even if I don’t like that I’m American or the American Empire, that doesn’t change the fact that I am American and have received intrinsic benefits from this. The fact that I dislike these things means that I must work to ensure reparations are paid, and that when they are made, the land that must be returned is returned still as in tact as is possible from what is left of it. I can drive 1 hour from my house and find a mountain that is completely gone now. We can never return that mountain to its people, nor the cairns that represented ancestors who were alive as recently the 1970s, nor the paper birch that represented ancestors who were alive as recently as the 1990s. But we can maybe save the next mountain if we act in solidarity with each other to bring about a permanent end to all surface mining.

we have gotten along extremely well in the past
Wait where and when?

We’ve interacted in a few threads. I’ve enjoyed our interactions

conservative or a liberal rather than what i am: an impoverished anarchist who doesn’t think electoralism can save us, only buy us time to organize a robust insurgency movement
What part of this is «American»? I am all for robust insurgency anti electoralist action, but what even is «American» about that?

Nothing. Which is the point I’ve been making all along. “American” is not a monolith despite the American Empire’s attempt to make it so. And I still don’t know what anyone is talking about that “All Americans admitted they were terrorists”

look through my comments.

1. i live in an internal colony of america. i don’t just renounce it, i i act in resistance to it every day because it is killing my neighbors
2. i know
3. i know. i advocate for landback and work alongside cherokee elders to protect our water
4. i know
5. platner sucks. i’m not defending platner. the people who say platner is anti genocide ignore his comments about indigenous Americans. the way platner has been centered in Lemmy’s conversation of late is extremely frustrating. unless you live in maine, you shouldn’t be thinking about him. your focus should be in organizing your community. one of the things i’ve said relatively frequently is that any time someone talks to you about platner that’s a sign it’s time to go for a walk
6. european colonization in the americas. most specifically the petrostate is the war against the land that indigenous americans talk about. the surface mines around me, owned by china, poison our water, and the rare earth mines, owned by denmark, poison our air.

let me ask you this: what did your comment accomplish, other than painting me with the broad brush you use to paint all americans? am i who you thought i was, or are you blinded to me because you assume i am something i am not?

i am surprised, @alapakala@quokk.au. we have gotten along extremely well in the past, and today it seems you think i’m a conservative or a liberal rather than what i am: an impoverished anarchist who doesn’t think electoralism can save us, only buy us time to organize a robust insurgency movement

https://sociology.institute/sociological-theories-concepts/foucault-power-knowledge-discourse/

All Americans are terrorists by their own admission

excuse me? i’m american and i certainly have never admitted to being a terrorist. one of the things i hate about the right wing government i resist is that it fosters and supports the terrorists (ICE, the klan, various incel groups) i’ve been seeking to undermine since falling victim to their violence. so i have to ask, to what are you referring?

I’m glad you brought this up, because it’s something I want to make a distinguishment from. I do not want to fetishize or otherwise dehumanize indigenous people. I merely want to acknowledge that every culture has something they do better than anyone else. Us Europeans? We built pan-oceanic boats capable of traversing the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic Oceans. That’s absolutely incredible! We are however, dogshit at land management. Hence the constant European desire to colonize more and more of the planet, taking up more and more land to meet the material needs of an aristocratic class that required closely shorn lawns for leisure activities such as polo and croquet.

Meanwhile, I also do not think that indigenous north Americans were perfect. For example, the Cherokee committed a genocide against the Osage, the Inca, Aztek, and Mayans all had theocratic structures that were not great for a large number of people living in their territories, the various peoples of the Americas hunted mega-fauna they encountered to extinction. However, in order for any plan for a hopeful future, we must draw wisdom from many sources. We know this because the current European global hegemony is failing. So we need to start looking for wisdom from other sources. One of the things when we interrogate history is that prior to Europe leveraging military violence to place the global south into a perpetual state of underdevelopment is that the people of the Americas had INCREDIBLE land management strategies that were interwoven with their cultural heritages (food, language, social structures) and agricultural outputs leading to some extremely interesting crops that have become staples worldwide such as corn, potatoes, sunflowers, beans, and tomatoes.

In conclusion: my point is to draw sources from subjugated knowledge

generally speaking, that is not what landback advocates are calling for. landback means that it is the people who live in concert with the land who will lead its management, and it is the responsibility of others to listen and learn