Who is your hero from history?
For me it has to be Malcom X, I'm not American, but I read his autobiography when I was young and it left a life long impression on me about justice and resiliency. He grew up in an extremely oppressive society, his dad was murdered and his mother was sent to the loony bin and he was clearly lost and traumatized. When he went to jail he was smart enough to be like what the hell, why am I here? Educating himself and channeling his energy into caring about others and justice transformed him into one of the most powerful and well respected leaders of his time.
He is often denigrated by Americans as violent and contrasted with King Jr. but by all accounts whenever he was in a position to project violence he chose de-escalation like during the Harlem riots and saved lives as there were people in the US in positions of military power who would have loved an excuse to do to them what they did to the indigenous across the entire country.
He was angry but principled and really set a template for me about how to be a leader and help me process my own anger and channel it into something more positive.
Cassius Marcellus Clay was the son of one of the wealthiest slave owners in America and grew up to be the single most influential and most dangerous abolitionist in American history. He had so many duels with slavers, and won so many of them, that he became statistically the most dangerous duelist to ever exist in North America.
When his cousin, Kentucky senator Henry Clay ran for president, Cassius wanted to come campaign for him down South. Henry vetoed this out of concerns that Cassius would come down south and duel so many slave owners to the death that it could be considered election interference.
The Fat Electrician has an excellent video on the life and times of Clay, I highly recommend it. And if you're wondering, yes, Muhammad Ali was named after this Cassius Clay.
The Fat Electrician's video was great but he I feel left out a couple of things that I think are important to add. First is that he used his influence in the Russian court to advocate for the end of the surf system. Slavery was his primary focus but he actively opposed all forms of indentured servitude and was involved in the freeing of more forced laborers than any other single individual in history. Also he negotiated the purchase of Alaska.
Second is Clay's Battalion. When the Civil War began Washington DC was undefended and there was an order to evacuate because of fears that Virginia would get soldiers there before the Federal Army. Clay was in Washington to be appointed as the ambassador to Russia and, during the evacuation, he started grabbing men off the street to defend the capital. He organized about 300 defenders and occupied the White House and the Navy Yard until federal troops arrived to take over.
It sounds by all accounts like he went over to Russia and just continued being the exact same man that he was back home. And the Russians of the time loved him.
I aspire to have principles that I stick to with the gusto that Cassius Clay exhibited. I didn't even know about Clay's Battalion but I believe it on sight because that sounds like exactly what he would do in that situation.
King was largely reviled in his time. The almost universally loved King of today is a sanitized, defanged, ahistorical version. Mandela is another example, but there are many.
V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution:
I was hoping you would expound on the King bits about being sanitized.
It’s been done by those more knowledgeable than me.
I dunno know what the Marx quite has to do with King. Very different kinds of revolution, the main one being non violent.
Furthermore is kind of tragic what happened with Lenin's legacy, his thought being blunted similarly into stalinist autocracy.
MLK Jr.'s march was more violent than the BLM protests were, and MLK Jr. was the moderate option compared to the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. MLK Jr.'s radicalism is intentionally blunted and obscured.
It was more Kruschev onward where the Soviet system started to meaningfully diverge from Lenin.
Lemmitors would've called King a tankie
Quit trying to pretend "tankie" means "communist" and not "authoritarian bootlicker." MLK wasn't even slightly a "tankie" regardless of how leftist his views were.
As soon as Liberals stop using it to mean Communist.
Tankie was originally a Trotskyist term for the people that supported tolling tanks into Hungary in the 50s.
Of course, the term "authoritarian bootlicker" is a funny one, as its purveyors have a habit of recycling and promulgating the propaganda pushes of the US State Department and opposition to that tendency is often what gets one labelled a tankie. Like when MLK spoke positively of Castro's revolution or a Vietnam united under Ho Chi Minh rather than targeted for bombing by the US. Though I am being generous: so many people using the term are so politically illiterate that they apply it to basically anything vaguely left that they disagree with.
I think you'd be calling him a tankie.
You're correct about the definition of "tankie," but you're taking MLK way the Hell out of context to falsely accuse him of being one.
That's twice in a row you've just made something up on my behalf rather than criticize what I actually said. The first was that I allegedly say tankie means communist (I obviously disagree) and now you say I am calling MLK a tankie, lmao.
For your benefit, I will remind you that I said you would have called him one, as in back when he was alive and organizing. This is for the reasons I already stated and that you have not responded to in any way.
Alan Turing. My government did him dirty.
Honestly it is embarrassing. Fucking over a literal hero because he is gay???
Yeah it’s crazy. Imagine the contribution he could have made to CompSci or Mathematics had he not been driven to suicide.
Feynman, taught me it's okay to question people, people grow when they're questioned, and it isn't wrong to speak up when you don't know something even if everyone else seems to know that thing, because maybe group think has everyone assuming everybody else knows what's going on, and that's when shit can go seriously wrong.
Marquis de Lafayette
Fought in American revolution, key figure in French.
Born into aristocracy them said fuck that let's go see what liberty is about. Tried his best even through events spun out of control. Always stuck up for the people despite his position.
Abolitionist. Tried to get Washington to free slaves as example, left Lafayette on read.
"If I had known that by fighting for America I was creating a nation of slaves, I would have never raised my sword." - butchered to a certain degree but sentiment remains.
Guy was pretty neat, found himself in some of the most important events I'm history and stuck to his ideals his whole life. Admirable.
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.
Thousands of generations knew the moon as a light in the sky. They went to the sky and saw the Earth.
Martin Luther King Jr
Those Chinese astronomers who documented a supernova from which we can now study the remnants of with precise timing.
Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, “The Man Who Saved America.”, hands down. He single-handedly defeated a fascist overthrow of the U.S. government in 1933. AKA, the Devil Dog. He is not in history books because fascist are still in control.
John Stark, one of the rescuers of the Donner Party.
That's nuts. I've got to look up how far he carried them.
I recent did a snow hike with poor gear, intentionally, and boy gee is that an incredibly draining and slow exercise.
Rosa Parks, full stop ❤️
Harriet Tubman
Richard Stallman
Who else can survive for years on eating their own foot-skin? :-P
😭 that was so weird
Marcus Aurelius and his reflections on stoicism.
Lenin, architect of the first successful Socialist revolution and state.
What are your thoughts on lenin involvement in the Kronstadt rebellion and in the executions of anarchists?
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-alexander-berkman-bolsheviks-shooting-anarchists
Even if the ideals of the rebellion were founded in good intentions, fighting against the newborn Socialist State played into counter-revolutionary hands and aided the fascist White Army in the middle of a brutal civil war. The Anarchists placed ideals over material reality in this instance. It was also led by Petrichenko, who one year prior tried to join the White Army, and joined the White Army after the rebellion failed and the sailors turned on the rebellion.
Had it been a time of peace with no internal or external pressure and the same measures employed, my feelings would be different on the matter, but the facts are that the stated aims and the methods employed by the rebels were at direct contradiction in the middle of a civil war.
It's not like Lenin hated Anarchists especially, Kropotkin was given a large State funeral and the largest rail station, Kropotkinskaya, was named after him. The Kronstadt Rebellion also factored in the transition between War Communism into the NEP.
I found this interesting read about Kropotkin funeral and Kropotkinskaya
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/allan-antliff-memorializing-kropotkin
Interesting to hear the Anarchist's perspective, still doesn't change my analysis. The Anarchists weren't simply "true leftists" and the bolsheviks "fake leftists," they disagreed entirely on Marxism vs Anarchism and as such some Anarchists decided to take up arms against the Communists. It's a complicated situation, but it's also important to note that many Anarchists joined the Bolsheviks, it wasn't a case where 100% of Anarchists detested the Marxists.
If I were to be equally as disingenuous, I would ask you your feelings on Stepan Petrichenko, who tried to join the fascists and succeeded in joining the fascists after failing to overthrow the Communists during the Kronstadt Rebellion. I won't, though, because that's pointless. I suggest you read accounts from the Marxists as well as the Anarchists, the Marxists were not guilty of failing to be Anarchists because they never intended to be.
I asked your thoughts on Lenin involvement in the Kronstadt rebellion and in the executions of anarchists, i didn't claim Stepan Petrichenko to be my hero.
I answered. The vast amount that Lenin contributed to Marxist Theory and his vital role in creating the first Socialist State, which uplifted hundreds of millions of people and supported numerous anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements the world over, is absolutely worthy of praise. He managed to contribute meaningfully to Leftist theory and put it to practice.
The subset of Anarchists that decided to fight the world's first Socialist State, rather than join the other Anarchists in supporting it, were certainly not innocent, as proven by high-profile leaders being aligned with the fascist White Army.
I just find it disingenuous that you use Lenin's indirect involvement with suppressing a rebellion led by a fascist against a newborn Socialist state during the Civil War it was still solidifying its existence to be disingenuous. What was your purpose in asking? "Just asking questions?" If I am mistaken, please let me know.
Some of them were fighting against a government that engaged "anarchists" in this fashion: "the Communist Government attacked, without provocation or warning, the Anarchist Club of Moscow and by the use of machine guns and artillery “liquidated” the whole organisation"
You claim Lenin to be your hero from history so i asked your thoughts on his involvement in the Kronstadt rebellion which was suppressed with blood. It's the first example that came to my mind of one of his shady actions that i personally wouldn't consider heroic.
The Communists fought against the Black Guards, a millitant organization that was anti-bolshevik, after the Cheka believed them to be planning a major strike against the Communists. These were not simply random, innocent Anarchists reading theory and making tea, but a millitant organization opposed to the Communists in the middle of a Civil War.
For clarity, this implies you would have supported the fascist-led rebellion in the middle of a Civil War, while Russia was being invaded by a dozen Capitalist nations. I hope I am misinterpreting your words here.
"Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, in April, 1921, at which Lenin declared open and merciless war not only against Anarchists but against “all petty bourgeois Anarchist and Anarcho-Syndicalist tendencies wherever found. It was then and there that began the systematic, organised, and most ruthless extirmination of Anarchists in Bolshevik-ruled Russia. On the very day of the Lenin speech scores of Anarchists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, and their sympathisers were arrested in Moscow and Petrograd"
All i said is that i wouldn't consider heroic lenin involvement in the Kronstadt rebellion which was suppressed with blood. You praising repressive methods that resemble that of fascists has bigger implications if you ask me.
Yes, after the previous events had happened. Ie, the millitant Anarchists had been fighting against the Comnunists. It was a Civil War, and Anarchists opposed the Communists. Had the Anarchists won against the Communists, perhaps some Marxists would be making the same argument that you're making, that the Communists were innocent and the big bad Anarchists repressed them, and they would be equally guilty of misframing the context of a civil war. Again, many Anarchists joined the Communists, the ones who didn't stood violently opoosed to them.
Is it fascist to be antifascist? You have an uprising led by a fascist in the middle of a Civil War, and you're siding with the fascist? Or do you think the Communists should have let the fascist-led anticommunist rebellion continue in the middle of a civil war?
In all this time, you're specifically quoting Bolsheviks Shooting Anarchists, without any added context or framing. You're suggesting that the Communists were simply evil people killing peaceful anarchists well into the USSR, and not in the context of armed conflict in the middle of a civil war where 14 capitalist nations had invaded them. It's a myopic and idealist, rather than materialist, framing of history.
I'm suggesting you that executing anarchists as bandits without trial or hearing is far from being heroic
Heroes have a way of always disappointing. There's people like Malcom X, John Brown or Thomas Paine who I'd say were the good guys of their time, but I really try not to lionise them beyond the flawed humans they were.
Diogenes
Smedly butler
Benkei
The bezerker at Stamford Bridge
Now playing Amon Amarth - Bezerker at Stamford bridge
Lenin
Henry Agard Wallace
Galvarino! The fiercest Mapuche warrior. He was captured by the spaniards at the Lagunillas battle, then they proceeded to mutilate him by cutting off both his hands and released him back to his people. There he planned his vengeance against spaniard occupation and became their leader. He headed the Millarapue battle with two machetes tied around where his hands had once been. Talk about badass! He was captured and executed quickly but remained a rebel icon forever.
Julie d'Aubigny
Hans and Sophie Scholl, brother-and-sister members of the White Rose resistance movement within nazi Germany, who were executed for producing a series of anti-nazi propaganda leaflets at the ages of 24 and 21 respectively. I always have a soft spot for people who use art and language to combat fascism, and Sophie in particular had a real way with words:
And her final words before being executed:
NB: I should note that there's a bit of conflict about this, as the nazi executioners were not meticulous record keepers. But it seems that it was either this or "Your heads will also roll", but either way she apparently said both and either one is great IMO.
Enkidu. Dude was pivotal in providing companionship to the king that stopped, or at least slowed, his general rape and molestation of the lower classes.
John Brown Fidel Castro Joseph Stalin
I really liked the Behind the Bastards-podcast about Stalin
Churchill. Without him it's not unlikely that the UK would've accepted Nazi Germany's peace offer.
Neville Chamberlain originally did try appeasement with Hitler, yes, but he did declare war when peace talks broke down. He massively scaled up the armed forces before war broke as a signaled deterrent to Hitler.
Once it became entirely clear that the enemy could not be reasoned with, he stood down, having exhausted all the power he had to stop further escalation.
Churchill, in contrast, was an escalator. He took the armed forces that Chamberlain built up, made a lot of speeches about grit and sacrifice, and thankfully his bluff paid off when the US got involved in the war.
Perhaps Churchill what the country needed at the time, but so pig-headed was he that he wanted to keep the war going long after support from home had dried out.
Teddy Roosevelt
Fernand Point, Chef, La Pyramid.
Besides the champagne every morning, this chef was one of the first to emphasize mentoring young cooks.
"You may be born to cook, but you must learn to roast."
He was generous with others as well as himself. In an era of obsessively secretive chefs, he shared his knowledge freely. He loved serving large portions to his customers, and roamed the dining room making sure that everyone was satisfied. He assigned young chefs to work side-by-side with their most experienced colleagues. "It is the duty of a good chef," he wrote in Ma Gastronomie, "to hand down to the next generation all that he has learned and experienced."
Read More: https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/daily-meal-hall-fame-fernand-point/
Just what kind of health does one has to have to drink a bottle of champagne each morning? How did his liver handle it?
He was a big dude...and health was his last concern.
Cincinnatus
Pier Capponi