On McDonald's Marxism
(twitter-thread.com)
AlHouthi4President
theorySo many western Marxists suffer from a political malady: McDonald’s Marxism. You look at another nation patiently and strategically navigating the existential threats imposed upon it by US empire and whine like a spoiled brat when they don’t immediately go for broke and take an insanely stupid suicidal escalatory path because YOU want total armed revolution and you WANT IT NOW and you DEMAND that someone else MAKE IT FOR YOU and you DON’T CARE if it’s not currently available at this location or if it’s a seasonal menu item or if the soft serve machine is broken, YOU WANT IT and therefore THEY SHOULD HAVE IT and if it takes more than FIVE MINUTES you will throw a tantrum and get so angry that you SHIT YOUR PANTS. Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up!!!
If you live in the imperial core and you don’t like what decisions a certain anti-imperialist government makes under the duress of your genocidal racist rapist government, you don’t get to publicly criticize them. I’m sorry, you just don’t! It’s shameful, you should feel gross and ashamed by it! Shut up and organize. Learn your neighbor’s name. Find out what who’s hurting YOUR community and organize with them to struggle against that oppressor. If you’re doing anything right, you’ll start to see how fucking hard it actually is, how many compromises you’ll have to make, how many sacrifices you’ll have to make, how many risks you’ll have to take - and even then, you’ll still be risking just a tiny FRACTION of the risk you demand of communists in the periphery in order for them to remain compliant with your ridiculous standards of ideological purity.
And btw, everyone's favorite squirrel reached the peak of this brand of western chauvinism back in June 2025, where they said with utmost certainty that once Ayatollah Khamenei was martyred Iran would immediately fall into a Balkanized failed state which is why they had to escalate to total war NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW. They ranted for days about this, screaming that the window for major countermeasures was permanently closing and if they didn't establish deterrence RIGHT THEN by closing the Strait and bombing Israel and GCC countries' vital infrastructure, the US would strike and Iran would be FINISHED. They even had the gall to call Iran's strategic patience "suicidal".
What we know now, however, is that Khamanei's martyrdom precipitated the very conditions in which Iran's recent historic military achievements became possible. And while we will never know what was going on in his head at the time, judging by his actions and how he decided to spend his final days, it seems like Khamenei may have known this to be true! Contrary to zei_squirrel's arrogant, prescriptive, Henny Penny apocalyptic prognostications, Iran did not immediately implode into anarchy upon Khamenei's martyrdom: they exploded with rage, unified across every community squirrel insisted were hopelessly divided, and struck back at the perfect moment with remarkable precision on every front. They waited as long as they did because they needed this exact level of escalation from the US and Israel to have casus belli to strike back. Iranian leadership clearly knew they were held to a far different standard than almost any other country (even by many of their own citizens), and that in order for western vassals, European imperialists, and ambivalent allies to do what Iran needed them to do (or not do), something truly beyond the pale would have to happen to them. They couldn't simply respond with proportionate force back then, despite having every right to. Iran would need something bigger to unite their people around the common cause of defending the nation, and a situation where NATO imperialist partners would have no pretense that could justify them joining the fray. So they had to be strategic. They had to be patient.
That's right: Iran is where it is now not because they abandoned strategic patience, but rather BECAUSE of strategic patience. They prepared decades to be ready for this moment, whilst knowing something cataclysmic would have to happen to them before being able to finally shift the balance. This is a kind of wisdom, discernment, self-restraint, and patience that the vast majority of us raised and miseducated in the west lack - and I do not exclude myself from this indictment! We in the belly of the beast are intentionally surrounded by distraction and programmed from birth for instant gratification. Even when we are able to think critically about the best possible course of action, we often lack the self-control to build, to plan, and to WAIT for the right time to act. Thank God Iran has strategically patient people carrying out the Ramadan War, and not terminally online armchair experts with irritable, impulsive western dispositions!
Why do people take that unhinged squirrel seriously? Has that squirrel ever been right about anything?
Yes she has some useful research and other archival work. One can do good work sometimes while spreading enemy defeatism at others. This makes the latter even more damaging
(a) one counts chickens after the hatching
(b) not building a nuke or socializing economy, for iran/venezuela (or china), are fairly obvious boneheaded decisions, which works precisely on a generational scale. same for (not) sending couple of thousands people to train in drone warfare in russia/ukraine.
(c) seems fairly obvious striking desalination plants will become valid in the course of a war, they still don't do it
not building a nuke or socializing economy, for iran/venezuela (or china), are fairly obvious boneheaded decisions, which works precisely on a generational scale.
Respectfully this is based on misinformation and misunderstanding. I encourage people to move beyond streamer talking points.
Calling martyr Ali Khamenei "boneheaded" is not acceptable.
Re Venezuela economy. (article)
Re Iranian Nuclear weapon (article)
Re Iranian Economy (book)
dont siege the nuke, take it immediately
there are ways to enrich uranium with strategy of patience (over a decade), with shitty old mass separator, where you can do it with like 5-10 people in the know, and some outsourced components that don't look like anything unusual to the rest of country and cia. or lose some centrifuges ~~from the back of the truck~~ due to wear and tear and do same with small cascade.
uranium bomb is dumb due to it's unwieldy mechanism and yield, plutonium is much better, but oh well
Adjacent to this, I'm aso a bit sick of the people chomping at the bit for US troops going into Iran proper so they can get the FPV dronecam edits of US troops getting blown into bloody chunks while Katy Perry songs play that some leftists online have been salivating over for two or three weeks now (I'm guilty of this too to a degree). Even besides the whole thing that gleefully watching people die is bad for the soul (even if they deserve it), its just horrible to wish on US troops going in to murder a ton of civilians just because many of the US troops will die too - anyone who took history at school's seen that fatality table with 60,000 dead us troops and like 1.5 million dead vietnamese.
To a degree its a mirror image of NAFO freaks fetishising the idea of ukrainians fighting to the last men and women to hold back the kremlin while they sit comfortably in Berlin.
Kinda hate the way this starts tbh. I'm still gonna shit on China for not doing more to export revolution with the enormous resources it has.
I agree that Zei_Squirrel is a doomer in basically every conflict that opens up though. But I think we need those types of people, the arguments provide a sobering back and forth.
A Brit (people who actively colonized China and poisoned their people) spending literally a moment of their life "shitting on" China is absolutely backwards in their thoughts and priorities. China's internationalism is not enough, supposedly, but where is your internationalism that you would have even a moment to spare to criticize the people your government oppressed, a nation that is responsible for 90% of all poverty elimination since the 90s?
I’m still gonna shit on China for not doing more to export revolution with the enormous resources it has.
Do you really talk like this about revolutionary governments and peoples? Like when you talk to people, comrades, friends, neighbors? ... "I'm gonna Shit on China".... who said it Hexbear user or stormfront user???
We can have a dialectical conversation but I want to ask that before.
Criticism of AES states is fine, but I think this article is a good reminder that criticism should be heavily balanced with an understanding of the practical issues those states face. There are tons of examples of people who flirt with support for leftist movements only to abandon them because they don't immediately deliver the best results -- I see this as pushing back on that.
I don't think this is about China at all tbh
I've been wanting to write something about how the US left has a deeply embedded Trotskyist current of opportunism that in our current moment has latched onto a vulgar anti-imperialism and this is one characteristic of that.
I look forward to reading.
What do you mean "vulgar"?
Vulgar like the language people (even in this thread!) use? Or something else?
I mean it's underdeveloped and common. It's a vague anti-war sentiment without real material analysis of the conflicts and the contradictions underneath them that pervades the masses. As the last half-century has shown us, it's paper thin for most Americans and they can be turned into bloodthirsty (or at least indifferent) imperialists with ease as long as they won't personally end up in the line of fire.
"Vulgar" as in unrefined and general, I would assume. As in they are anti-imperialist but their analysis is undeveloped and superficial.
Sounds like the person is talking about several of the posters here.
INCREDIBLE post.
You might not think this is theory but what this user is calling McDonald's Marxism must be engaged with honestly. Its a disease
This is a common recurrence in the news mega for sure. Comfortable settlers calling anti-imperialists cowards and traitors at the drop of a hat. Endlessly infuriating for people who aren't willing to risk so much as their jobs or an arrest demanding entire peoples be subjected to aerial bombardment and sanctions and endless escalation.
But don't expect them to stand up to their government, because they are the most policed and surveilled people in the world, they will tell you, and it's just too dangerous.
Agree and I think this is perhaps the core of Yankee ideology and culture.
You're so right, those people are infuriating, they really want a world revolution down to the last person in the global south
Very well-said.
