Communists do not fight for personal military power (they must in no circumstances do that, and let no one ever again follow the example of Zhang Guotao), but they must fight for military power for the Party, for military power for the people. As a national war of resistance is going on, we must also fight for military power for the nation. Where there is naivete on the question of military power, nothing whatsoever can be achieved. It is very difficult for the labouring people, who have been deceived and intimidated by the reactionary ruling classes for thousands of years, to awaken to the importance of having guns in their own hands. Now that Japanese imperialist oppression and the nation-wide resistance to it have pushed our labouring people into the arena of war, Communists should prove themselves the most politically conscious leaders in this war. Every Communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create Party organizations, as witness the powerful Party organizations which the Eighth Route Army has created in northern China. We can also create cadres, create schools, create culture, create mass movements. Everything in Yenan has been created by having guns. All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the “omnipotence of war”. Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic. Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the labouring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed. We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.
—Mao Zedong, Selected Works Vol. II, pp. 224-225
I am the original creator of this meme, lmaooooo. I love how often it is circulated. It’s
Thank you for your service compa! Miss seeing you in the literature threads.
Avatar’s setting is just a crappy orientalist version of WWII in Asia. Imagine if some Chinese cartoon was set in a thinly veiled version of WWII europe where one of the main characters is Hitler’s Son, the thinly veiled Russia/Slav equivalents are constantly demeaned and mocked, and it ends with the Soviet Union giving up Kiev to be jointly ruled by Nazi Germany. They didn’t even try to hide it. In the Avatar Lore Republic City used to be called “Crane City”. Crane City is the nickname for an actual city in Northeastern China close to where Unit 731 was.
All you need to know about Legend of Korra is that r/neoliberal recommended it as “a good show about the dangers of populism”
Not surprised they liked it. One of the characters is a billionaire weapons dealer who worked with terrorists to sell more weapons, push a strategy of tension, and ignited a bloody war. He’s also the good guy, married his secretary, and is rewarded with a state award
Dude is just Charlie Wilson and NATO, the character
also he literally has a pablo escobar style luxury prison constructed so that when he is inevitably imprisoned for his corruption, he ends up in what is essentially a cozy hotel room. This would seem like a satire of capitalism, but it is played off like he is a clever and sympathetic character for doing this
They really do be thinking that USA is some philosopher king of the world, don’t they?
The original series gets by on being very well written, but it’s still an essentially liberal story. Look at the handling of Jet. The freedom fighters are kids, yeah, but they’re also written as intelligent and empathetic characters. And their plan to rid the valley of Fire Nation is to… kill at the locals and make the village uninhabitable?
I understand the story deals a lot with obsession and doing things without consideration for the cost. But these characters were an incredible chance at the kind of nuanced storytelling that Avatar managed to sneak into a kids show and it always rubbed me the wrong way that Jet was kinda one-note in this way.
