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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2021

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  • But does it really matter?

    This is where I should have stopped reading.

    A lot of what the CIA does is done through deniable means and intermediaries. Not knowing you work for the CIA, or being able to claim you do not know you worked for the CIA, is standard operating procedure.

    Some standard leftist paranoid purity testing. While partially true, I doubt Nina Simone was going to be tricked into hurting someone. But you knew that.

    “But comandante! did not know I was working for the CIA!” has been heard before in the jungles of South America, usually in the presence of a firing squad. Do you think claiming ignorance should immediately be a plenary absolution?

    Quite the jump from unknowingly performing your art for a CIA front to a firing squad. But you do you boo.

    Or do you think only people who are not famous are responsible for the outcomes of their actions,

    Gods damn, this is quite the jump of a conclusion. I think people are responsible, famous or not, for the knowledge that motivates their actions.

    comrade?

    Don’t “comrade” me. You sound like one of those self proclaimed vanguards that’ll shoot my dumb ass in the back of the head.

    I suggest doing some mutual aid. Make some solidarity irl. Because takes like this aren’t going to find it online.





  • blindbunny@lemmy.mltoCommunism@lemmy.mlReal Girl Talk -Nina Simone
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    2 days ago

    In the case of Nina Simone, the CIA had to use trickery. As Wilford uncovered, Simone was sent on a tour to Nigeria in 1961 by the American Society of African Culture, a CIA front organization. As Keefe notes, “It’s one thing for the government to pressure Louis Armstrong to go to Africa on a propaganda mission and have him grudgingly but knowingly go along. It’s a very different thing to covertly send an artist on false pretenses. And Nina Simone was no patriot. She ended up renouncing the United States and living abroad. She called it, ‘the United Snakes of America.’”

    https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/wind-of-change-cia/

    Way to bury the lead. But anything to disparage a woman of color I suppose.








  • (transcribed from a series of tweets) - @iamragesparkle

    I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”

    And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

    Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”

    And i was like, ohok and he continues.

    "you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

    And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

    And i was like, ‘oh damn.’ and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”

    And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.