James Connolly, born on this day in 1868, was an Irish socialist revolutionary, founder of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), and leader of the Easter Rising rebellion, for which he was executed by the British government.

Connolly was born in a poor Edinburgh neighborhood and spoke with a Scottish accent. He joined the British Army at age 14 to escape poverty and developed a hatred for the institution from firsthand experience. He deserted when his regiment was set to deploy to India.

He was also member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and founder of the Irish Socialist Republican Party. With labor radical James Larkin, he was centrally involved in the Dublin lock-out of 1913, after which the two men formed the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) the same year.

Connolly was opposed to British rule in Ireland and played a leading role in the Easter Rising of 1916, signing the “Proclamation of the Irish Republic” and serving as Commandant of the Dublin Brigade, the regiment that played the most substantial role in the Rising. Connolly was executed by firing squad following the Rising’s defeat.

“If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.”

James Connolly

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  • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    It’s borderline embarrassing how long it took humans to discover germ theory, like compared to counterintuitive nonsense like miasma, humors, or spontaneous generation, little bugs you can’t see good is not exactly high concept, talk about a collective L for the species

    • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      Me when I try to explain to my uni professor that he should not compare the pro-palestine protests to Tiny Man square as a way to say that China bad because american police didn’t kill any students.

  • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    Me brawling with my uni professor and it’s so fucking funny. This man is willfully missing the point just so he can say China “is not as great as I think it is”

      • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        You condemn the violent suppression of peaceful protestors who don’t want genocide, yet you excuse the violent suppression of a bunch of anticommunists who strung up and burned negotiators sent to talk to them? Curious! very-intelligent

        Leaving aside christian-tinted moral questions about “good country or bad country” (as if such a framework isn’t deeply embarrassing for someone who considers themselves a serious opinion holder), can you fucking imagine the military response if a bunch of leftists lynched some national guardsmen here? They would be sending death squads after everyone who’s ever liked a “fuck cars” post. They would open fire with everything they had. They might very well airstrike the crowd like Argentina. It would be the real version of what the most deranged radlibs think happened on June 4, gutter hoses and all. The chuds would cheer, the libs would wring their hands and tut tut that if only we hadn’t become so irrational and violent, maybe we could have voted in some real change, but now they’re forced to support the fascists, because we just got too unruly.

        Deeply unserious intellectual and moral cowards who refuse to game out the logical implications of their ideology, which they don’t think they have.

    • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      Not to play Devil’s Advocate, but it’s fine to admit that China made a mistake about 40 years ago. Is he that bad of a lib that he thinks China would do it again right now so China is comparable to the US in terms of suppressing protests?

      • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        He believes that the US is a freer and more democratic country because he can say the president is a big dumb baby on x dot com and not get arrested. He is so lib but is willing to listen to everything I have to say since he likes me and I’m his student next academic semester.

        I did say that no one should have died that day, but the bigger point was how the West completely erased all cultural and historical context to the point of absurdity so that no American could actually connect with their Chinese counterparts without this awkward “um aktually did u know u live under a totalitarian regime.” I’m also still trying to deprogram all the Xinjiang lies so I’m using coverage about 6-4 in the West to demonstrate the willingness of MSM to distort the truth and face no consequences for doing so.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      Show him the pictures of pla soldiers who were crucified and burned alive and ask him when the last time 10% of the people killed during a protest in the west were police and soldiers.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    In America you can pay the government for the privilege of skipping most of the airport security lines. America solved corrupting by making it official policy.

  • Sebrof [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    Oy. I heard a coworker of mine talking to another about some art museum exhibit that had Soviet underground art from artists who were “not on best terms with the government, but, really, who was…”

    Another day some radio host was shit talking John Brown and talking about the South just defending it’s way of life against the “failing north” and their “industry” during the civil war.

    And finally last week my coworkers were talking about Kim Jong Un being an “asshole” who “killed his own men by tying him to a missile.” Like a literal comic book villain lol. People believe that shit.

    This place hurts my soul so deeply.

      • Sebrof [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        I’m too much of a lib. Mao would be disappointed

        I also have this feeling like I need some basic stats or facts or numbers to pull up in any argument, and since I can’t remember any on the spot I just boil inside. Idk if it’d do any good. Wish I was better at arguing because it also sucks to just keep the rage inside and stay quiet when people say shit like that

        • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          Statistics can be used to make any arguments you want and are worthless without historical context or materialist dialectics so I don’t bother citing cold stats outside of a few select ones.

          I’m a child of Bangladeshi immigrants to the US so I can hit chalk demons with “China built a bridge in my country, the US funded Pakistani death squads to ethnically cleanse us” or how the DPRK has always been on the side of Palestinians since the occupation and they can’t say anything I can’t immediately use to call them racist (which is the biggest fear of the ham sandwich peoples which is to have their em_poc peer call them racist because they love respectability politics so much).

          I’m guessing if you’re white it might be harder. But honestly, I do it for the love of the game and not much else.

          • Sebrof [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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            5 months ago

            I appreciate the comment about stats. I (pretend to) do stats for a living and am aware of how they can be misused ;) And I’m surrounded by STEM people who tend to be very historically ignorant and arrogant. Maybe that’s also why I think I need stats to convince them. But I’d feel more comfortable going the route of the USSR freeing it’s population of homelessness and providing basic needs, and providing aid and assistance to national liberation movements the world over. But I guess I lack confidence in my ability to persuade, or maybe I’m being defeatist. I feel getting Americans to care about decolonization movements or to look past their ideological nonsense beliefs about China and the USSR is a tall order. I wish I had your gumption for the game ;)