On this day in 2013, Turkish protesters began occupying Gezi Park to oppose its demolition, an act with led to widespread protests and strikes with approximately 3,500,000 participants, 22 deaths, and more than 8,000 injuries.

The wave of civil unrest across Turkey began after the park occupation was violently evicted by police, who used to tear gas, pepper spray, and water cannons to try and break up the protests, injuring more than one hundred people and hospitalizing a journalist.

The protest quickly grew in size - by May 31st, 10,000 gathered in Istiklal Avenue. In June, the protests became national in scope and transcended any particular demographic or political ideology. Among the wide range of concerns brought by protesters were issues of freedom of the press, expression, and assembly, as well as the alleged political Islamist government’s erosion of Turkey’s secularism.

Millions of Turkish football fans, normally divided by intense sports rivalry, marched in unity against the government. Protesters displayed symbols the environmentalist movement, rainbow banners, depictions of Che Guevara, different trade unions, and the PKK and its leader Abdullah Öcalan.

On June 4th, Taksim Dayanışması (Taksim Solidarity) issued a set of demands that included the preservation of Gezi Park, an end to police violence, the right to freedom of assembly, and an end to the privatization of public spaces. Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç met the group on June 5th and rejected these demands.

Erdoğan blamed the protests on “internal traitors and external collaborators”, demonizing his political opposition as the former. Despite the popular mobilization, Erdoğan remained in power and no major concessions were won from the government.

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  • Lerios [hy/hym]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    i was out in the town centre the other day and saw some anarchists staging some sort of protest. and i was like, fuck yeah! free palestine! until i got closer and saw that it wasn’t the ancom flag, it was a different half black half red flag that had some yellow symbol on it, and a bunch of people with ukraine shit. like bestie its been 2 years lmao, how do they not know its joever? genuinely, why the fuck are you wasting your weekend for a country being used as a nato pawn that we all knew never stood a chance in the first place?

    also, given that its a symbol being used for the ukraine i assumed it was some fash shit. i got home, googled it, and its the flag of the ukrainian insurgent army - and guess who they were shooting at during ww2? not the fucking germans agony-shivering

  • Hohsia [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    Lmaoooo I’m reading some old Norton anthology of American literature and liberals have always been extremely cowardly

    John brown’s raid at Harper’s ferry? Liberals agreed with the idea behind it but the optics were bad

    Ralph Waldo Emerson’s message to Martin Van Buren imploring him to rethink Indian removal? Liberals agreed, but there was nothing that could be done 🥺

    Lincoln voting against abolition in 1846? Uwu it could threaten the Union 🥺

    And on and on and on. It’s always been about a power struggle

    Amazing how nothing has changed in this country that is demonstrably beyond hope

  • mustGo [any]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    Anti-terrorism comparison chart

    Method USA China
    Invaded foreign countries blue-check border-diagonal-cross
    Mass murdered millions blue-check border-diagonal-cross
    Funded more extremists in Syria blue-check border-diagonal-cross
    Committed extreme torture blue-check border-diagonal-cross
    Detained innocents blue-check (Ongoing in Guantanamo) blue-check (Ended)
    Mass Surveillance blue-check blue-check
    Actually stopped the terrorism border-diagonal-cross blue-check
  • mustGo [any]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    I started reading Settlers. The first chapter was an easy enjoyable read, making clear points, citing Marx multiple times, not using many and difficult or outdated words. Here is a well formatted epub. Sadly the archive.org scans are as always a mess in epub.

    The first chapter had a class analysis of early settler society and listed how all branches of it’s economy tied into slavery, supplying ships for the slave trade and contracting slave work from slave-owners.

    Here is a quote that I liked

    When we point out that Amerika was the most completely bourgeois nation in world history, we mean a four-fold reality:
    (1) Amerika had no feudal or communal past, but was constructed from the ground up according to the nightmare vision of the bourgeoisie.
    (2) Amerika began its national life as an oppressor nation, as a colonizer of oppressed peoples.
    (3) Amerika not only has a capitalist ruling class, but all classes and strata of Euro-Amerikans are bourgeoisified, with a preoccupation for petty privileges and property ownership the normal guiding star of the white masses.
    (4) Amerika is so decadent that it has no proletariat of its own, but must exist parasitically on the colonial proletariat of oppressed nations and national minorities. Truly, a Babylon “whose life was death.”

    Especially this

    Amerika […] was constructed from the ground up according to the nightmare vision of the bourgeoisie.

      • mustGo [any]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago

        So far it’s mostly in the context of the 16-18 hundreds. Most owned the means of production and had non-euro-americans work them. Or had realistic prospects to do so soon. Which is a strong differentiation from other countries.

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

      I think it’s just language evolution at this point. Sort of a modern version of why all of Northern Europe calls bears “The brown one” instead of whatever the actual word for bear was because it was a taboo so long ago that the original word was lost.

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

      Similar vein, this month I got a bit tired of hearing Drake get called a PDF file but it is a funny thing to call him. IDK if maybe that’s not just for monetization but also to avoid libel claims. It’s also worth noting that even if they don’t rely on YT monetization they still don’t wanna piss off the algorithm and have their channel die, and the algorithm doesn’t like it when you say naughty words.

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

    CW: mental health sadposting

    spoiler

    Got in touch with an old lover who peaced out without much explanation like 7 years ago. I never held it against them, they’ve got real bad mental health problems, this sort of thing happens. It still hurts, but it’s the nature of the disease, sometimes you just drop out for a few years. And It’s got me thinking how little of the last seven years I’ve been meaningfully present for. How much time I’ve been knocked out by illness and trauma. It’s a lot of time. Other people’s lives go on, they heal, they get sick, they have kids, the meet new friends, they get married, whatever. But my life, and A lot of other people like me, it just pauses one day, and then two or three years later you start to piece yourself back together, everyone’s moved on, become more, and you’re less than you’ve ever been. Shit sucks.

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

    People who use Discord and demand you do so are my least favorite type of person. I’m not going into your quirky gamer dungeon no matter who the FBI sends.

    Like if you use Discord, stop. blob-stop

    oh shit the blob fucker comes from there. I hate it here.

    • Hohsia [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      Discord used to be kinda neat for chatting and gaming

      Enshitification has absolutely fucked the internet and I’m surprised that people are still using it tbh. For example, Reddit’s been shit for quite some time but the writing on the wall was there when it decided to ban all communist subreddits. Seems like all of them have “anarchist” mods that don’t even seem anarchist lol

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

        I guess if your only experience with other messaging + VoIP clients was Skype and maybe Facebook then Discord looks like a great place.

        But if you use GNU/Linux like I do. Discord literally can’t manage to update their electron version correctly for screensharing so KDE had to create a x11 -> wayland video bridge themselves for it to work (as well as for Zoom who have their own issues).

        Also Spyware Watchdog has a good writeup on it. It isn’t enshittification, it was always like this because it is proprietary and they managed to attract the most lucrative and foolish demographic: G@mers.

        • Hohsia [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          7 months ago

          Honestly, I should probably look into Linux now that I’m working as a software dev. It seems like computer stuff just make more sense when you’re forced to look at the most granular data structures all day 😝

  • WhyEssEff [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    every third tweet in the venerated ‘For You’ algorithm even though I continue to mark “Not interested in this post: this post isn’t relevant”: i-am-adolf-hitler

  • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    Came across a random Reddit comment that said, “Hasan Pikers fans got insane after October 7 to the point they put MAGA Republicans to shame.” Went into their posting history and saw comments on tankiejerk. One of which read, “ Oh don’t worry. These people had no idea Imperial Core was a term before this recent Gaza flare up. They’ll forget all about it by next year.”

    Fucking lol and then a response saying the USSR was the imperial core. Liberalism really is something you need to break out of because it’s so heavily reinforced that people in it can’t see how stupid the conclusions they come to about leftism are.

    Also surprised tankiejerk is anti-Palestine. I thought they’d do what some are doing and be pro-Palestine and saying it’s the same as Ukraine.

  • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    >build up a lot of nerve

    >post something

    >stare at it, lose nerve

    >delete it

    >build up a lot of nerve

    >post something

    >stare at it, lose nerve

    >delete it

    >build up a lot of nerve

    >post something

    >stare at it, lose nerve

    >delete it

    >build up a lot of nerve

    >post something

    >stare at it, lose nerve