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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   15200 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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There is not always a long arc of morality.

It depends how you define "morality" and "winning" in the long terms. Many causes marched towards to victory, and few of these victories looked as the founders of movement would imagine triumph.

If, for example, first century Christian fell asleep for 1000 years and woke up in 11th century, what would he think? He would be dismayed that Jesus hadn't returned yet, and he would be even more revolted by this barbarian world that reveres Jesus by worshipping golden idols and sheds rivers of blood in his name.

He would see history of this thousand years as complete triumph of satan and possibly started to question his whole faith.

The same with more modern examples. What would communist from 1926 think about world of 2026? He would see it as maximally degenerate and depraved world where capitalism won in the most decisive way possible and stomped the workers of the world to the dirt.

If, for example, first century Christian fell asleep for 1000 years and woke up in 11th century, what would he think?

What would communist from 1926 think about world of 2026?

A fascinating difference in standards between the to worldviews you're using here. If you asked for a description of "capitalism stomping the workers of the world to the dirt", would a 1926 communist describe a world where hunger essentially isn't a concern, the common man having access to healthcare that was beyond the reach of emperors at the time, yada, yada, yada? Don't get me wrong, I have lots of problems with modern capitalism, but the idea that early Christians would find be revolted by 11th century, but OG, materialism-obsessed, communists would think anything other than that they must have died and gone to heaven upon seeing the modern world, is a bit rich.

would a 1926 communist describe a world where hunger essentially isn't a concern, the common man having access to healthcare that was beyond the reach of emperors at the time, yada, yada, yada?

Were those 1926 communists true believers in fixing the plight of the common worker or were those causes instrumental memes to get the masses on his side. Because if they were anything like the modern champagne socialists they wouldn't be. They pay lip service to the workers of the world even as they hate everything about them.

world where hunger essentially isn't a concern, the common man having access to healthcare that was beyond the reach of emperors

After 100 years of scientific and technological progress, the workers are not starving any more, how great!

You mistake communism for trade unionism.

Communism was never about higher pay and longer lunch breaks for proletarians, and it was ever less about wokeness and LGBTQ+. It was about building new world, world free of all oppression and exploitation, world where man in brother to man, not wolf. This is what communists believed in, this is what they were dying and killing for.

(to quote famous post-Soviet "We tried the best, happened as usual")

Here is one very rare piece of history - interview with last pre-WW2 German Jewish communist (the ultimate devil for many ppl out there). The hypothetical man IRL.

“A Communist Doesn’t Whine — He Shows His Teeth”

Theodor Bergmann, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 101, was the last of his kind. Born to a middle-class Jewish family in Berlin in 1916, he gravitated to Germany’s explicitly socialist workers’ movement as a young boy and remained what he called a “critical Communist” for the rest of his life. Known among friends and comrades as “Young Theo,” he was, as Mario Kessler wrote, “the last participant and eyewitness to the German labor movement of the Weimar era.”

Most of the interview is about the vanished world of interwar Europe, but here is how he feels about modernity.

TL;DR: He does not think 62 different brands of toilet paper in every supermarket equal paradise on earth.

Everything in our society today is swindle and betrayal. Even the words are lies. “Social market economy,” “people’s shares,” “capital formation in workers’ hands” — everything is a lie today, there are no true words left. The “social market economy” is gone, now we have the “new social market economy.” Everything is a lie!

An expression of a defeat, an expression of our inability to create our own media and make ourselves self-sufficient, and an expression of our weakness. The Left back then had self-confidence — we don’t have that today. We have a deep depression. There are only a few who would write in the newspaper, “I’m a Communist”. What’s happening in America now — that this old man says, “I’m a socialist!” — is unthinkable [in Germany], but it must happen.

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