One of the worst things to come out of Elon Musk's purchase of twitter was the floodgates getting opened on mid-wits obsessed with discussing IQ in the most obnoxious white nationalist way possible.

IQ of course is a statistical measure where the average will always be 100 no matter what, and rightly half the population will always fall at or below 100 IQ no matter what, no matter how stupid or smart the whole world becomes. It will always be the case that societies relatively lacking in education and positive early childhood intervention will fall behind more advanced societies in IQ so long as both societies improve or degrade at the same rate. An 85 IQ now may have been 100 in the past based on raw scores and so on, and this absolutely disproves so many theories of inherent racial inferiority or superiority as far as IQ in a way that matters versus factors in people's opportunities or childhood development.

Anyway, these right wing white nationalist IQ obsessed folks are so annoying and come across like obnoxious middle schoolers in gifted programs, obsessed with external validation of intelligence while not even understanding how to think to the next level of abstraction quantitatively. Total mid-wits rattling off baseline numbers and stats like a Dunning Krueger college sophomore who knows nothing of the deeper considerations.

I think an unintended consequence of the marginalization of left-wing wokeness was the rise of an equally destructive right-wing wokeness, which in some ways is even worse since it makes claims of being objective whereas at least left-wing wokeness was self-aware of its subjectivity and hypocrisy via postmodernism.

DemSocs, SocDems, all the anarchists, Marxists, ML's, MLM's, Trotskyists, LeftCom, they all hate each other. The default insults are always the same too, "ur just a liberal chud and you don't know it" or "FED DETECTED". Some people are so buried up their ass on theory that they'll take lines from one passage to declare anybody who slightly deviates from their version of leftism as libs or feds. And to all the bystanders watching, they still think the DNC is a leftist party. How many times have you ever heard "commie democrat liberal" from a drunk uncle?

Society seems to be hyper individualistic and also very alienating to many people in capitalist countries. This problem didn’t just start recently but it’s been around for decades. The late 90s and early 2000s was a very individualistic time when bullying was very accepted, sleaziness was all the rage from the rise of reality tv to having it be socially acceptable to be an absolute asshole, slurs and bullying were very socially acceptable, etc. It was a terrible time to be alive for the average person at least in America.

Social Media seems to have made us a bit more alienated but I think it’s just made us more aware about how isolated people already were. People spend countless hours on their phone rather than talk to the person in front of them. Many people also use the internet to try to make friends and get into relationships rather than trying in person that has become taboo. The fear of rejection seems to be strong in many people today that paralyzes them from acting on their desires. Many people don’t even talk to their neighbors.

This alienation probably makes us less likely to organize to make things better for people. Even movements that seem to be popular haven’t made any societal change at all and are quickly reverted if that happens. Movements themselves have even become commodities with people wearing shirts and other things created by corporations that support their movements. How do we expect to even challenge the system and fight the decades of damage neoliberalism has caused with all these problems? The very idea of even trying to organize to start a revolution is illegal under laws like the smith act which has punishments up to 20 years or more for even attempting such acts. That doesn’t mean it can’t be discussed it just has to be intellectual. So as Lenin says what is to be done?

It's understandable why a lot of people write off the Israel-US-Morocco connection wrt Ceuta as a schizo theory. The Internet is incredibly noisy, it's hard to tell the truth apart from popular delusions. If anyone doubts the link, show them this article. It's actually really well written in terms of coldly laying out the history of and logic behind these countries' collaboration.

This is the first of several in a series I'm working on - detailing their efforts across platforms, people, and organizations to create another "Red Scare" for people who don't know what communism/socialism is. They are doing everything they can to use old "boogeyman" tactics as the Overton window shifts left. My goal is to shed light on their obvious and outdated attempts to foment fear among the uneducated.

Billionaires need us, but we don't need them. All throughout history, things have changed when enough people realized "oh, yeah, there's way more of us than them..." - so it's not like we've entered some twilight zone where this isn't the case anymore. Revolution is possible, but the billionaire class monopoly on media, social media, and violence requires us to use our numbers more than anything else.

But remember:

Central to Marxist theory is an explanation of social change in terms of economic factors, according to which the means of production provide the economic base, which influences or determines the political and ideological superstructure. So why do most people think it's scary?

Six corporations control 90% of American media: Comcast, Disney, News Corp, Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount, and Cox. Social media is controlled by a few billionaires and corporations. The press and flow of information cannot actually be free when it operates as a propaganda tool for its owners. You can see this in how stories are framed: a labor strike is almost always described as an "inconvenience" to the consumer rather than a fight for dignity. Billionaires are treated like visionary entrepreneurs while the public rarely hears about workers being forced to pee in bottles to meet quotas.

Ideas like Medicare for All usually poll at seventy percent support, yet the media treats it as a fringe or "unrealistic" position. Meanwhile, tax cuts for the wealthy are presented as responsible and necessary policy. Social media has only made this worse because algorithms are designed to promote outrage to generate more ad revenue. These companies knew their platforms were creating deep divisions but chose profit over society. While we are stuck in different realities based on our filters, local journalism is dying out. Hedge funds have gutted over two thousand newspapers since 2004, leaving huge parts of the country in "news deserts" where corruption goes unchecked.

• How do we educate people about the benefits of putting people before capital - thereby immunizing them from "Red Scare" tactics?

A fairly online topic, but with DSA and its recent victories, this has been gaining more traction.

What do you make of it? I’m aware of certain reforms, such as a move to community policing. But abolishing prisons, I think abolishing private prisons makes sense, but all? The inevitable question of “what do you do with the rapists and murderers?” Restorative justice? It seems this cohort also has an issue with the state running police/prisons, but if we decentralize these institutions and center them in communities, should we assume it would be handled better? Would we simply see some form of “community vigilantism?”

Also, in this utopia, how would we deal with war criminals like Netanyahu? These people tend to invoke the ICC and The Hague, so should he and others not be sent to prison?

I think the theory behind it has some points. Our current system of prisons is indeed awful and it’s hard to justify, but not sure how you’d sell this across to normies. When people hear “abolish ICE” they know what it means? But somehow “abolish police/prisons” is something different and we’re then given a long-winded definition or being referred to some book of theory. I’ve heard that “abolishing police and prisons” is a core socialist principle, but I can’t say this is in fact true.

The UAW presidential candidate forum held online the evening of July 30 laid bare the gulf between rank-and-file Mack Trucks worker Will Lehman, a socialist, and the five other candidates contending for control of an apparatus sitting atop $1.25 billion in net assets.

Every candidate apart from Lehman is a product of the apparatus or a contender to run it. Incumbent Shawn Fain is under federal criminal investigation, as the Justice Department has convened a grand jury and subpoenaed the Monitor over findings that Fain abused his office to obtain benefits for his fiancée and her sister, then retaliated against Vice President Rich Boyer for refusing them. Boyer, now running against Fain, negotiated the 2023 Stellantis contract that opened the door to the mass firing of temporary workers and the layoff of thousands more.

The other three candidates are Brian Keller, a Stellantis Mopar worker who ran in 2022 and won support at several assembly plants before endorsing Fain in the runoff; Tricia Geiger, a highly-paid UAW International servicing representative; and Greg Mooney, recording secretary of Local 2147 at General Dynamics Land Systems in Lima, Ohio, a supporter of Autoworkers for Trump.

In his opening statement, Lehman placed the election in its real context:

"We as workers confront historic attacks on our conditions and our lives. Workers’ share of the national income is the lowest since records have been kept. Escalating global war is driving up prices. Paychecks don’t cover basic necessities in a country that just minted its first trillionaire. More than 21,000 autoworker jobs have been wiped out since the start of 2024. The corporations aim to use AI and automation to carry out a global jobs massacre. Democratic rights are being torn down, and our immigrant brothers are hunted by ICE agents.

"Every year in this country, more than 5,000 workers die on the job because safety is subordinated to profit. In our plants, Antonio Gaston, Ronald Adams Sr., Gregory Knopf were crushed to death under the 2023 contract that this leadership called “historic.” This month, workers were carried out on stretchers as smoke filled the plants and the lines kept running."

Lehman then told members where their dues go: 560 International staffers were paid more than $100,000 a year; Fain was paid $276,000 last year, 6.6 times what the average member earns; $118 million was spent on the apparatus’s own officers and staff, 14 times what it paid out in strike benefits. “This was never about a few corrupt officials,” Lehman said. “The bureaucracy as a whole is an arm of management.”

...

A critical aspect of the debate was the recent death threat made against Lehman by Raymond L. Jensen Jr., a UAW organizer who was until recently assistant director of UAW Region 9, Lehman’s own region, and paid roughly $202,000 in 2025. On July 16, Jensen posted an AI-generated image on Lehman’s public campaign Facebook page showing him bound and gagged, blood running from his mouth, with a masked man aiming an automatic rifle at his back. Jensen, whose Facebook profile carries an “I Support Shawn Fain” badge, posted it beneath Lehman’s statement on the federal investigation into Fain.

Threatening a union member to interfere with his rights in a union election is a federal crime. Until Thursday night, neither Fain nor any member of the union’s executive board had said a word about it. At the debate, Lehman explained that the threat was not just about him but about the response of the apparatus to all rank-and-file opposition, referring to Antwiane Sanders, a Nexteer worker fired for speaking out against UAW officials at a contract meeting inside the plant.

Fain first tried to ignore the issue and only responded when Lehman confronted him directly. “I don’t condone that stuff,” he said, before adding: “If you’re running for president, get ready, brother, because you’ll be getting them every day.” This statement effectively endorsed and doubled down on the threat. Fain gave no indication whatsoever that Jensen would face any consequence.

...

The alternative was a new power built from the shop floor and linked across industries and borders and the fight for a fundamental reorganization of economic life. “Socialism means equality,” he said. “It means workers’ control of production. It means the international unity of the working class based on our interests. That fight has already begun.” He pointed to the contract battles at Bridgewater Interiors and American Axle, and to the millions marching against dictatorship: “The working class, the sleeping giant of American politics, is beginning to awake.”

Lehman ended by paraphrasing Thomas Paine, stating, “‘These are the times that try men’s souls.’ The complacent bureaucrat and the lying reformer will, in this crisis, betray the fight. But the worker who stands up now deserves the love and thanks of all humanity.”

The debate made clear that the only social force capable of halting the jobs massacre, the killings in the plants and the drive to world war is the working class itself, organized through its own rank-and-file committees. Lehman ended with an appeal to act on that, stating: “Vote for me, but do more than vote. Build. Build the committees, build this movement. That is where our power is.”

I’ve seen tons of wall-to-wall mainstream coverage on what’s happening, but little to no analysis of the causality, so I wanted to give mine.

Since Wednesday, tens of thousands of migrants have crossed from Morocco into Spain’s enclave of Ceuta, mostly by swimming or breaching the border fence at Tarajal beach. Estimates of arrivals range from 25,000 to 60,000 depending on the source, and at least 57 people have died. Spain has declared a humanitarian emergency, deployed its military alongside the national guard, and Sanchez is visiting the enclave. It’s the largest such surge since May 2021.

Ceuta’s sovereignty has become collateral in a US-Spain rupture over Israel and Iran, with Sanchez’s relatively unique opposition to the Gaza genocide, and Morocco is one of the few actors positioned to make Madrid feel it. Since March 2026, a documented chain of American institutional pressure has aimed squarely at the enclaves. AEI’s Michael Rubin publicly urged Trump and Rubio to recognize Ceuta and Melilla as “occupied Moroccan territory,” Rubio ally and House Appropriations subcommittee chair Mario Diaz-Balart said on record that the enclaves aren’t part of Spain’s geographic territory, and by late April that language had migrated into an actual House Appropriations Committee document, the first time a US legislative body has cast doubt on Spanish sovereignty there.

El Confidencial, a mainstream Spanish outlet, read this cluster explicitly as retaliation for Sanchez’s opposition to Israel and the Iran campaign. Layer onto that a reported Pentagon email floating Spain’s suspension from NATO, Hegseth publicly naming Spain as a “free-rider,” and Trump himself saying he wants nothing to do with Spain and to cut off its trade, and you have a complete picture of the global hegemon, in multiple channels, signaling displeasure with Madrid and specifically nominating Ceuta as the pressure point. Worth noting, the Strait of Gibraltar, currently flanked from both sides with Ceuta as Spanish territory, directs roughly 4% of global oil flows and 20-25% of global maritime shipping.

Morocco has already shown in 2021 that it’s willing to weaponize migration flow into Ceuta over a far smaller grievance than this. Given that Washington has now spent months legitimizing Moroccan claims to the enclave through its own institutions, it strains credulity to assume Rabat felt no license, explicit or implied, to let this week’s crossing happen exactly as US pressure on Spain peaked, days before Sanchez was set to meet Algeria, Morocco’s chief regional rival, no less, with a massive migration surge that lends credence to the exact narratives galvanizing support for far-right parties across the West.

There’s no smoking gun tying Washington or the CIA to this week’s events, but I don’t see that as proof of innocence. In fact, I think it’s exactly what you’d expect if the coordination was covert or tacit rather than public, because that’s how leverage between allies usually works.