Bobby. wrote Yesterday at 11:21pm:


Also what to do and what to say,

That would be me bobby. I do that myself

Bobby. wrote Today at 10:42am:


Quote:


Na thats just silly.

Quote:


Me.

Bobby. wrote Today at 11:20am:


You have known for a long time that I am indeed a Marxist - A Groucho Marxist. From the comedy / Movie culture.

OH I watch almost no TV except sport and only Music on the radio - in the car. I couldn't parrot TV or radio if I wanted to - I am not exposed to it.

Bobby. wrote Today at 11:31am:


You are living in the past, it's time you started to educate yourself.

Marxism quickly split into two forms : eg, democratic socialism envisioned by Eduard Bernstein soon after Marx's  death, after he noticed - contrary to Marx's predictions - the capitalism's ability  to raise the incomes  of middle class workers in late Victorian England (but he forgot England's success was partly due to the spoils of empire).

Whereas Lenin understood  revolutionary Marxism would be required to lift living standards of the workers in Russia; unfortunately Stalin later added murder as a method of state control.

Note:

(google)

"Lenin actively advocated for the Marxist concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." In his view, this was not a personal autocracy, but a transitional, democratic state run by and for the working class to suppress the bourgeoisie and facilitate the shift toward socialism".

Fast forward to today: recently capitalism has reverted to oligarchy in the world's most powerful capitalist nation, resulting in the election of a democratic socialist in New York, where average wage earners can no longer afford to rent or buy houses....go figure.

Bobby. wrote Today at 12:22pm:


I will certainly (correctly) accuse you of ignorance of the history of Marxism and of the subsequent diverging schools of 'Marxism'.

Of course you can't even begin to address causes and effects, eg,  the election of a democratic socialist in capitalist New York. 

Dnarever wrote Today at 11:13am:


Meh. A proper Marxist would never make such a claim. Ideology tells us what to think and feel. Ideology is defined by specific class interests. ABC and SBS are public, free-to-air dinosaurs. The real players in the ideology business are Elon (X), Jeff (Amazon), the Zuck (Meta, Facebook, Instagram) and Sundar Pichai (Alphabet, Google, YouTube).

If we add tech bros Tim (Apple), Satya Nadella (Microsoft) and Jensen Huang (Nvidia), we have the magnificent seven. Collectively, they own 42% of the US markets, dominating the Nasdaq and S&P.

Globally, they own 23% of the world's equity - nearly a quarter of the world's wealth. What do they do with this wealth?

They buy up the farms and plough us with their algorithms. Elon, for example, saw a nice little opportunity in Twitter, once pitched as the world's "town square". In its earlier incarnation, Twitter facilitated massive social change, such as the Arab Spring, a series of social uprisings against authoritarian Arab regimes in the early 2010s. Along with Facebook, Twitter was also responsible for a number of riots, pogroms and attacks throughout the world.

Elon saw the potential and snapped it up, turning Twitter into his own mouthpiece - a white South African billionaire's vision for a brave new world. He fired the moderators and turned Twitter into the global town square for white supremacists, far-right agitators and bots, who now post up to 60% of the content.

When Elon turned Twitter into X, he changed the algorithm and removed the moderators. The medium is the message, no?

Over the past year, we have seen the rise of One Nation in Australia, Reform in the UK, the ADF in Germany and a spate of white nationalist riots triggered by far-right influencers. This is deliberate, and just what Elon intended.

When DL was erected, the Zuck removed Facebook's moderation in the interest of so-called "free speech". Jeff started playing tricks with the Washington Post and Amazon. The CEOs of the magnificent seven volunteered to become DL's oligarchs, attending his inauguration and posing for pics.

Tim Apple gave DL a cute gold plaque and attended the opening of Melania, an infomercial for the first lady's brand of jewelry, skin care products and a new line in memecoin, a currency used by cartels, foreign governments and money launderers to buy influence with DL.

Elon kindly offered to run the US government. DL tried him out on DOGE, his old Project 2025 plot to destroy the government from within. Elon ended up spitting the dummy when the Tesla share price tanked and DL refused to appoint his preferred NASA boss. Have a nice day, DJT, he said, and split.

DL gave his donor friends, the Ellisons, the right to create the biggest media monopoly in history, giving them Warner Bros-Discovery, HBO, CNN and CBS. In the lead up to the takeover, the networks went about firing everybody on DL's enemies list.

The late-night talk show hosts were the first to go - right after DL's FCC chair threatened their broadcast licenses. The networks settled DL's frivolous law suits. They pulled stories critical of DL. The fake news lost centuries worth of talent, losing ratings and hastening the demise of network television. Shows like 60 Minutes were sacrificed at the alter of DL.

Over on cable, Fox News continued its relentless barrage of propaganda. Not even the Murdochs can stop it. When they fired Tucker, he merely went out on his own, propagating his own brand of white supremacy, chumming up with Nick Fuentes and pushing his pro-Russian talking points. When DL invaded Iran, Tucker flipped, taking his audience with him. He is now using his platform to run for prez.

For much of history, the church controlled the medium, feeding the monks who copied the message out in long hand. Once the printing press was invented, alternative messages appeared - pamphlets and books, then newspapers and magazines. But imagine a world where there were less than ten printing presses, all of them printing the same message. If you did, you would imagine the world we have today.

DL has turned the US into an oligarchy. The American dream, as Steven Bannon taught him to say, is dead. Today, the oligarchs control the medium and the message. In so doing, they control the ideology of the entire English-speaking world. The Ellisons, Elon, Jeff and the Zuck tell us what to think and feel. They are able to do this because they either employ the heads that appear on our screens or they own the algorithms that compute what is possible for us to share. They own the feed - what appears on our screens and is delivered to our minds.

Chi-na, coming second, owns 20% of the world's wealth. The CCP runs its Great Firewall, controlling much of the Chinese language and farming the Chows.

So I'm curious. Ever get the feeling you've been farmed?