The idea that you are being constantly surveilled is a bit of a propaganda thing. There is no doubt a bunch of data being collected from your digital signature. But the Idea that anyone is looking at it isn’t very realistic. Especially if you’re not actively participating/leading a large revolutionary movement.

They want you to fear so much that you never act. Have escape plans and minimize the information given and poison the information is just about the best you can do. But the sacrifices and practices you’ve made are inspiring and no doubt impactful on your safety. Not to mention the skills you learned doing such.

It doesn’t occupy my mind outside of stuff I try to keep hidden. For that you can always just have a conversation away from tech in the middle of the woods or something.

I love that Tankietube is a resource for socialist videos. But, I wish there was a way to embed it in platforms because most people aren’t clicking from that website title regardless of the content or video title.

The failures of socialists is something to be angry at. But acts of adventurism and accelerationism don’t help build a movement. If they did, places under extreme oppression would have spontaneous social revolutions. We find in history its quite the opposite. While harsh conditions might sharpen the contradictions, it is the vanguard party that is the missing piece to a successful peoples revolution.

I know it feels frustrating, and being in the west can make one feel hopeless and powerless. But it is this exact feelings capitalists want you to have. They want you to get so desperate you try to rile people in an act of adventurism or violence that only serves to satisfy yourself.

I totally understand the frustration, but this is a machine bigger than the act one one person. We have to stand together and organize. When we act alone we just fall. There have been several acts of terror done by single individuals in America against the ruling class. But they are caught or killed and it never sparks a wider movement. People must be agitated, and organized. If you must get this energy out, do it in radical agitation. If it just makes you angrier then direct it into a hobby.

Japanese X has pretty consistently hosted some horrible voices. I follow and engage with topics in Japanese as I speak it and it is not good.

Thankfully, like most of the internet, its not the norm. Most Japanese people are just liberals who don’t care like anywhere else in the west. They are also mostly pro Palestine and against their state and America supporting the genocide.

CURRICULUM OF THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MARXISM-LENINISM- This is a book that is translated from Vietnams education course on Marxism Leninism by Luna Oi.

Other Sciences don’t depend on you researching the original works (Which are usually early 1900 intellectuals discussing complex material to each other when they already have a baseline) to understand material. They’re dissected by scholars and made into a format that is easier to learn.

The translated books by Luna Oi, which is two books at this point in time, contains annotations to describe concepts that students in the curriculum would already know by the time they begin working with the books. Its an excellent starting resource for people who are just beginning understanding Marxism, and also for people who might struggle with some topics.

Invaluable resource and I believe the first book is archived but you can also support her efforts to translate by purchasing one. I cannot recommend it enough for new marxists. The first half of the first book is all about dialectical materialism.

I don’t need to see my opponent as evil, committing evil is enough. I do not need to analysis the character of someone who commits acts of genocide to find if he is truly evil, or somehow mistaken. It needs to be stopped first and foremost. The amount I call them evil or good does not change from my willingness to commit violence to stop their evil acts.

I think the argument over the label isn’t as important as analyzing the relationship between a suffering body and its perpetrators. Should a man be lynched by a mob it is natural for him and his folk to call them evil. But this does not increase violence against the mob. No the real requirements are both, identifying something as being the cause of suffering and also the power, and confidence to act.

While yes, reactionary figures can weaponize such labels for committing atrocious acts, the context needs to be considered. You are in a Marxist thread full of people who apply dialectical materialist analysis. Not a bunch of idle minded reactionaries. Just with a simple consideration of the context, America and Cuba, will tell you who is the aggressor and “Evil” in the relationship. One is perpetuating a genocide and killing the people of Cuba and its children for DARING to take control of their own future, and end the exploitation of America.

America, charged with multiple counts of genocide across the world across many people. Is not just undeniably evil, but also unapologetically so. Even beyond the context of Cuba, America is constantly imperializing the people of the world. Exploiting them for their labor, stealing their resources, and murdering any who resist, or simply are unable to find work.

Calling someone Evil does not make one more willing to commit violence. What is required is only the power and organization to commit violence. With calling someone evil only contributing to the support of the violence. If Evil was first required we would not have ever had slaves. Especially slaves born as slaves. How can one justify the violence of enslavement on a person who has yet to act in any regard on anything. No, infact love was used to justify violence just as equally in American History. The white man so “loved” the slave that rather than leave him on his own he had to act as a parent to the slave. Even at times the slave was considered “Part of the family”. Not to mention the violence parents may commit unto their kids. This does not require that the kid be labeled “evil” first.

First one must have the capacity to commit violence. This is the first and most important feature of it. Then someone must have a target, usually weaker than them. They then have a desired outcome of their violence, something they expect to happen once they unleash it. THEN they justify the violence, it is only at this point that the label might contribute to ones capacity. After they have already committed to acting, visualizing the desired outcome. Only after this point does one consider a justification for their violence. This is why it is not required to be called “evil” or to even have a reason.

America is cartoonishly Evil. The label does not make it so, but its actions do. This conversation and analysis would better serve a group of reactionaries who are falling to some kind of reactionary violence like Racism, Homophobia, Transphobia, etc

This is why liberal allyship is so performative: it’s not about helping marginalized people, whom they view as subhuman unless they happen to be in an overlapping demographic (white), it’s about making them feel like they’re good people without having to give up the illusion of comfort and safety.

Fuck that’s so fucking accurate and it’s insane that it’s been said for decades.

You’re absolutely right, I was actually missing my own advice in not focusing on recruiting people that refuse to learn, and instead focus on those willing to make a difference and organize, thanks.

I would love to collect info on these if you have any on hand. I’ve been having some beef in this Trans group with a couple people who are very against the idea we can move beyond the democratic party. I’m not even trying to tell them to all militarize right fucking now but do something to start their self liberation. Even taking the smallest peak into POC history, especially black movements throughout the United states history, would show what backing liberals does. This has all been examined before.

Thankfully most agreed with me, but the dialogue that’s been had has been depressing. I even had someone who’s organizing a YDSA chapter start bashing me about how “helpful democrats have been in stopping trumps plans from happening and he complains about it all the ti~me on truth social.” So much for solidarity while I’m actively agitating people. I have been arguing for Liberals historical abandonment of minorities, but that would really help with more recent bashing. I remember they did it but I have trouble finding it recently, I had asked in an actual post on trans topics but this would also help put more baggage on democrats.

Paywall so here’s this paste of the text. Hope I didn’t get this messed up.

ICE Is Running One of the Largest Anti-Left Surveillance Operations in US History ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations is engaged in far-reaching spying against left-wing activists that rivals the FBI and CIA crackdowns on the Civil Rights and anti-war movements.

Attorneys for 15 Minnesota residents facing federal conspiracy charges have obtained evidence of a sweeping, possibly unconstitutional spying operation carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement against left-wing social movements in Minnesota and beyond.

The high-profile Minnesota 15 prosecution makes clear that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), flush with federal funds and newly hired personnel, is now President Donald Trump’s primary tool against dissent, with a powerful array of post-9/11 investigative authorities brought to bear against everyday Americans organizing their communities.

Nothing of this scale has been seen in the United States, experts say, since the federal government’s counterinsurgency against the New Left and the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

Among the records revealed during the discovery process in these cases are dozens of reports, audio transcripts, emails, intercepted Signal chats, photographs, database queries, and more. They reveal the inner workings of the domestic terrorism investigations, running under the names Project Whipple Shield and Operation Puppet Master, authorized by the controversial National Security Presidential Memorandum 7.

Published following Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September of last year, NSPM 7 instructs federal law enforcement to use every tool available against organizations and people who criticize the administration’s policies and espouse “anti-Christian” ideas. The full scope and extent of the investigations it authorizes remains unknown.

Defense attorneys for the Minnesota 15 claim that the prosecution stems from a broader nationwide surveillance operation aimed at opponents of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. One attorney in the case directly compares the DHS-run campaign to the FBI’s infamous Counterintelligence Program, or COINTELPRO, which unconstitutionally surveilled, infiltrated, and blackmailed racial justice, civil rights, and anti-war movements from the 1950s through the early 1970s.

Three former law enforcement officials who reviewed filings concur, telling WIRED that the case is almost certainly part of a wider intelligence-gathering operation that began long before the administration invaded Minnesota in December 2025.

Dueling motions in the case over discovery of DHS’s surveillance program reveal that personnel with Homeland Security Investigations—one of ICE’s two components—repurposed funding mechanisms and investigative tools for serious criminal probes and turned them on domestic dissenters. Operation Keyhole, the HSI undercover program that bankrolled the Minnesota 15 prosecution, dates back to 2008. As of June 2026, it was underwriting a half dozen active undercover investigations in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area.

Around 120 HSI agents, many drawn from specialized units across the country that have served as the leading edge of the administration’s militarized immigration enforcement operations, were assigned to the case—including 11 undercovers. They used highly invasive surveillance techniques, including the deployment of Reaper drones and Patriot Act tools usually restricted to money laundering and terrorism investigations. Undercover operatives also infiltrated churches in apparent violation of a court order.

The Minnesota 15 indictment stems from the Trump administration’s demand that the Justice Department “go big and go loud” to crack down on community response networks during last winter’s Operation Metro Surge. Twin Cities activists organized volunteers to monitor DHS agents and their vehicles using encrypted Signal groups, homebuilt vehicle databases, and a centralized dispatch system. Government prosecutors claim that this amounts to a criminal conspiracy to block immigration enforcement, unlawfully identify and stalk federal agents, and even assault them.

Their defense attorneys say the heavy charges filed against the Minnesota 15 don’t align with their alleged conduct. “This is the first time I’ve had a client who’s accused of a conspiracy and went on a speaking tour,” says Kevin Riach, who represents defendant Isaac Sant.

An internal ICE document laying out the scope of Operation Puppet Master—which led to the indictment of the Minneapolis 15—ends by noting, “This case has also been accepted under CUC Op Keyhole.” According to prosecutors, Operation Keyhole is a long-standing program created by HSI’s Saint Paul office to fund “undercover activity”—primarily equipment purchases and personnel costs—in a region covering Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Iowa, and Nebraska. The program has funded at least 77 investigations into “narcotics trafficking, child sexual abuse, financial investigations, and counter-proliferation” since it started in December 2008.

The CUC prefix, per an internal 2008 DHS handbook unearthed by the independent media outlet Unicorn Riot, refers to Certified Undercover Operations, a formal designation with clearly defined oversight mechanisms, procedures, and reporting requirements. Operation Keyhole’s parameters are reviewed every six months by a committee comprising senior DOJ and DHS officials. As of June 2026, when it was last renewed, Keyhole funded six active investigations, including Project Whipple Shield, which was initiated in February to probe claims of assault, stalking, and doxing of DHS agents and other federal employees, and underpins the Minnesota 15 indictment.

At least 11 undercover agents working under Operation Keyhole infiltrated Twin Cities anti-ICE activists, participating in martial arts and know-your-rights trainings, marches, general strikes, and community meetings. They also infiltrated activists’ communications network for identifying possible undercover ICE vehicles and dispatching activists to tail them through the Twin Cities, and penetrated several activist group chats on Signal, transmitting their contents back to other HSI colleagues for analysis and eventual inclusion in the indictment.

Activist conferences as far away as Seattle, Michigan, Chicago, and New York City were placed under surveillance as part of the investigation, and HSI teams photographed and ran the license plates of every car parked in the lot of a meeting location or seen transporting activists. There is also drone footage from unarmed Customs and Border Protection Reaper drones of the activists moving around the Twin Cities area.

The undercovers were part of a much broader group of more than 50 HSI agents, including at least two dozen from HSI’s little-known Special Operations Group, that took part in the investigation and surveillance of the defendants, both digital and in-person. Feds with decades of experience on complex financial crimes, drug cartel investigations, human trafficking, and organized crime were pulled into the Minnesota 15 investigation.

Several of the Minnesota 15 case agents are from out of state and appear in court records for the prosecutions of anti-ICE activists in other cities. This includes Los Angeles–based HSI agents Robert Kurtz III, who specializes in financial fraud, and Ryan Ribner, who allegedly assaulted SEIU California president David Huerta at a June 2025 protest of an ICE enforcement operation, arrested him, and then claimed the then 58-year-old Huerta attacked federal law enforcement. (Huerta’s charges were dropped in July after videos contradicting Ribner’s account surfaced.) HSI records show Ribner was also involved in at least two prosecutions of Southern California residents who physically confronted ICE and Border Patrol agents last year.

Attempting to lecture on morality from a position of having never been a victim of violence is a very bold and privileged position. I hope you understand the limits of people to understand such a state of “nirvana”.

I would argue the dismissal of sources of violence and oppression as being “morally gray” is in itself a kind of simplification. If everyone and everywhere is morally grey, you never have to pick a side to bash and can always lecture the side committing violence at the time.

A slave is not wrong for falling for propaganda to call his slave master evil. The slave master is not morally grey, and so to is the system that perpetuates it. Yes, even if the slave master lives a better life because of this exploitation.

That’s a really nice setup! Are those little white foxes on that scarf? It’s so cute!!! Can I ask where did you get it?

If anything my poltical stances have granted me MORE friends. Before I was only friends with a small circle of people directly related to the area around me and I would lose them as they moved away or became interested in other things. However I have gained a ton of friends just for being unapologetically communist. Everything from other ML’s, Professors, and people who arent interested in politics.

My agitation comes from a place of understanding so I don’t really ever end up with arguments with people and always take the position of I could be wrong. But I’m sure I’ve also gotten very lucky in the people I meet. Obviously there are people who are too aggressively reactionary to really get close with and it might be that by being outspoken I’ve attracted people who are more accepting to the ideas.

Ads like this are allowing me to do a pretty good job agitating my Trans American friends and acquaintances. I can’t seem to find political ads at all let alone democratic ones. So please if anyone finds some posting them here allows really easy access for agitation.

I was too don’t worry (*ˊᗜˋ*)

あ、ごめんねー。急に英語話せないのになりました！「ゼルダはマルクス主義」と私たちは同じことを言ってと思いますね～

Zelda is communist comrade dw.

If we never speak to those who disagree we’ll never recruit new members. It sucks sometimes, and obviously there are people who will refuse to acknowledge the objective reality they live in. But assigning labels to others do dismiss was exactly the mistake the Mensheviks made towards the peasants. I still argue for spending energy on recruiting 10 easy candidates rather than 1 difficult one but isolating to only like minded people wont build revolution.

Artists are petty bourgeois. Amusingly once one knows the basics of dialectical materialism its pretty easy to parse and I did so in my studies when I was learning of how proletariatization comes to artisans. It actually drove me to find a career in this to be in control of my means of production. This was even prior to AI’s large popularity boom. When I use the term artists I think I’m being far more liberal than most. I think a distinction should be made.

“Professional artists” more adequately fill this position. However, because anyone can create inherently and its a form of expression. I’ve been interpreting and using “artist” to mean anyone who makes anything, including memes. A “creative” probably defines better what I was referring to and I wont interpret these such a way again.

Ultimately however petty bourgeois is a subcategory that explains certain groups tendency to capitalist idealism over working class consciousness, despite they themselves not taking part in wage exploitation(or of course smaller business owners but this isn’t the focus here.).

I mention the part implying artists are bourgeois collaborators as being laughable because I’m heavily involved in punk culture. Nearly all artists I know are Anarchist, Marxist, or at minimum hate capitalism. So while I agree with artisans filling this petty bourgeois label, I believe they are able to be pulled into either bourgeois idealism or proletariat materialist struggle. We often see rich and famous artisans, but that is only because they have the money to constantly advertise their work and are in close relation to other bourgeois. Yet most of those who create art are primarily getting their income from the sale of wage-labour.

This is primarily why I thought it was laughable to assume they are incapable of becoming revolutionary. I’m an professional artist and a Marxist-Leninist. I create propaganda and organize for a revolution. I already prove that it is possible to be aligned with proletariat liberation thus the absolute is immediately disproven, let alone any anecdotal evidence of the people I personally know.

The essay is not discussing me for the terms I listed before. I do not fall into the categories of critique it is listed for. I don’t support copyright laws. I’m not arguing against AI for the sake of artists market share. I do not argue that human art has a “soul” only that AI has a reputation, and interpretation that will influence its spread.

I’d argue there’s some reactionary sentiment to anyone who is not 100% backing AI in every place it is implemented in. I’m discussing the reasons I believe it will fall short of expectations and why I think most of AI functions is a honeypot. The linking of an essay as to why artists are bourgeois collaborators despite the reasons I submitted being unrelated I think falls in line with this “Pro AI reactionary” behavior. It’s not a perfect technology. Much like using a hammer to put in a screw isn’t effective even if it works. Which is the initial discussion.

However, it’s actually a really good essay and thank you for giving it to me. While it wasn’t related to my discussion it did help me hone and develop why I disliked those arguments being used before. It also helps with understanding class relations of artists in general of course.

I’m wondering if you read the article somebody else gave you to read (granted, it is kinda long) because the history of Luddites has nothing to do with being bourgeoisie collaborators and the article does briefly touch on the history of them (I think near the end IIRC). Luddites are commonly misunderstood as anti-industrial or anti-technology, when they were something more like militant resistance to misuse of automation. I did read it, but the essay is as you said. Luddite is used derogatory by most people praising AI for any one who isn’t sold on it, or really any negative opinion. Honestly I apologize for the dramatization you didn’t imply this and I was only reminded of conversations in the past over AI.

I would say we need to distinguish the anti-AI movement that is organizing against data centers or breaking flock cameras as something distinct from the other one, even if there may be some overlap, since one is more related to artists as artisans and the other is more about people seeing direct infrastructural intrusion in their communities.

This is honestly an interesting discussion I’d love to have albeit it goes beyond the original conversation. I believe dividing the movements isn’t in the best interests, but I oppose copyright law. Even when I make exclusive content I leak it to image booru’s and forums around the topic. So I as an artist I know that Copyright isn’t protecting me from anything. Yet when I explain this position it is hard for people to understand and I haven’t pushed it particularly strongly in favor of more glaring contradictions. There’s a thing people in the creative community like to use to refer to AI scraping as stealing their work without permission and while it does suck to see your work used in something you don’t agree with, the idea of “theft” being taken place when most have the contrary opinion for piracy. It seems to follow a line of “Large corps and capitalists are evil and are to be judged by different morals than workers” and I actually think this is more productive for revolutionary agitation. Not every person needs to totally understand the entire Dialectical historical materialist conditions in the relationship to come to the conclusion capitalists need to be stopped. But I digress before taking this too far beyond the initial discussion of its perception and usage for agitation.

My argument has never been that AI is better than in-person organizing. It’s more just a barebones call for people to not dismiss it out of hand and hate it on sight regardless of the form it takes.

Yeah honestly my only intention with the initial statement was to give perspective on the core of community who would not engage with AI. I don’t even think making AI memes would “Taint the movement” as people usually see it on an individual basis.

Using it to agitate is fine if not less effective for the reasons I described in these replies. I would encourage the consequences of its use to be taken into account for the intended audience and message. Because Creative hobbys have intersectionality with racial and sexual minorities, because they usually have reach to an audience, and because of the lives AI effects in some rural communities. These groups are more likely to have a negative association with the imagery (although not guaranteed) and it’s more likely for the meme to have stumbling blocks in relation to those groups. But ultimately I do not believe them to be a majority of people, but a kind of “light house” for content that hits multiple gazes at a time.

This is getting beyond speculation. Anti-AI sentiment has some intersectionality among people you might not expect to inherently be anti-AI. I guess it’s my role to organize and agitate the anti AI crowd, and leave the ones neutral to AI to others.

So yes, that is not the same as saying it is violent, but it is implying that it has associations with violence that need to be ceded to, when said as a reason not to use it in agitprop. Unfortunately art content and creation directly relate to its relationship and engagement with other people. So in this instance I would argue its relation to agitprop is limited by this relationship. I gave an example here: You don’t make a poster of workers wearing fascist like uniforms to encourage them to rise up against capitalists. You manipulate the medium and context to your advantage. I’m trying to say how a medium and its content is related to these relationships, conveys specific messages. There are many who accept that Pepe is part of an alt right movement. Of course not everyone will know this, but those that do will see its use in memes and associate it with alt right. regardless of the attempted portrayal of it. Art exists as a relationship with other art. AI exists, not in a vacuum, but in a relation to the tools that bourgeois use to oppress the working class. Things like; replacement of jobs, surveillance, state propaganda, misinformation, disruptions in education, scamming, etc. Play a distinct role in how AI is perceived. When you are trying to infiltrate a system that is made up of these relations they need to be taken into account for the intended message to be communicated.

I’d argue theres a lot of things that distinguish AI from typical advancements. One of which being the Data centers are incredibly intrusive and nobody wants to be near them. Driving up cost of living, polluting local environment, providing little to no benefit to the region. This is perfect territory to agitate people into disenchantment with Capitalism and it actually has succeed as such in my local area as well as other contacts I have. You’d do far better to agitate on these lines than most AI generated images anyway. While it’s hard to quantify, I believe proper practice like that also agitates more people than paper propaganda.

I call it a honeypot because its much like the large democratic socialist groups in america like DSA being a honey pot for revolutionary movement to fizzle out into reformism, AI ultimately is divisive, impractical for most applications, and actually effects many peoples livelihoods in a variety of ways. Yet there’s a weird insistence among some that if you dislike AI you’re a Luddite-bourgeois collaborator.

AI does paint class lines very clearly, the ones forcing its adoption upon the working class, the heavy investments, the fear over a “investment bubble”, the interfering with local government to push its creation, its use for data collection for surveillance, etc. Hell even conservatives and liberals are taking arms against flock cameras. It’s not like most of us can create surveillance networks that connect with the histories of people that interface with it. I do not argue AI is uniquely “bad” as a tool. But its showing contradictions very acutely and we’d be foolish to not act on this line, just for the sake of using text instead of a pen for making a meme.