Politics
From Adfki
ADF is a Communist, and he would like you to know this. But he isn't just any run-of-the-mill Communist, oh no. In his opinion, his idiosyncratic take on how Communism and LGBT issues intersect makes him a Communist thinker and ideologue on a par with Marx, Lenin and Mao. His doctrine of 'LGBT Socialism' isn't all set out in one place, but our crack team of researchers has been able to disentangle his beliefs somewhat. Read on, comrade.
Contents |
Origins
Back in 2008, our hero was a fervent Obama supporter. He drew Obama. He drew Naruto exhorting people to vote for Obama. He drew a certain picture which was critical of John McCain. But he became disillusioned with Obama after he became president due to his inability to instantly fix everything wrong with America, and after that effectively stopped mentioning politics for a while. Everything changed in August 2010, when ADF received his Axis Powers Hetalia China costume. ADF characteristically takes on certain mannerisms of whatever character he's currently cosplaying, but here he went somewhat further. On 10 September, he suddenly declared he was now a 'Socialist' (later retconned to 'Communist') and changed his DA profile picture to a red star. Thus began a few months of poorly-informed rhetoric and amusing cosplay photographs. An accusation frequently hurled at ADF was that his Communism was based on no solid foundation, that he had converted to it overnight. This of course being true, in the manner of all the great Communist dictators he then went about creating a Communist history for himself, showing that he was always a revolutionary. In actuality, he described himself as 'socialist' once on an ID picture and made a video of Sasuke pictures set to the USSR national anthem. That's about it.
Militancy
One factor which is consistent with ADF, regardless of what his political stance happens to be at the time, is his militancy. During the Proposition 8 furore in late 2008, ADF was fairly unequivocal in stating how he felt was the best way for gays to secure their right to marry: Joseph McCarthy had nightmares over shit like this.
In his opinion, defeat of the Proposition through 'civil unrest' was just as valid an avenue as seeing it defeated in the courts, and that if it were to be upheld then California should 'bleed red with blood.'
Fast-forward a couple of years and ADF is now appealing to the LGBT community with the cry of 'queer socialist revolution now!' We must assume the revolution he envisages is one where plenty of people get killed.
'LGBT Socialism'
Communism and gay rights aren't the most natural bedfellows. The former is a long-established political ideology dealing with, at its heart, the need for the working classes to secure for themselves a fair and equal society based on collective ownership of the means of production and the abolition of private property. While the modern gay rights movement is generally considered to have begun with the actions of the mainly working class inhabitants of the Stonewall Inn in 1969, it would be somewhat more difficult to define the movement as a class-based one, as homosexuality, by its very nature, cuts across class and other social boundaries. Proportionally, and theoretically, there should be as many gays among the bosses as among the workers. And the ultimate objective of the gay rights movement is considerably more limited: equality under the law (and eventually equal treatment by society at large following a gradual change of attitudes), as opposed to a complete overhaul of the entire political, economic and social systems.
Being, presumably, dimly aware of this problem, ADF presents the concept of the 'gay bourgeoisie' as an answer. The term long pre-dates him; as just one example, the Gay Liberation Front in 1969 described their outlook thusly: 'we will not be gay bourgeoisie, searching for the sterile "American dream" of the ivy-covered cottage and the good corporation job.' What these pre-ADF uses of the term have in common, however, is their use of 'bourgeois' in the colloquial sense, as opposed to the technical Marxist one. To ADF, the 'gay bourgeoisie' aren't just gays who are middle-class and conventional, they're, in keeping with Marx's dialectic, a hostile class who are enemies to his cause. They also control the media in America, apparently, which is an argument you could see falling out of somebody like Fred Phelps.
While many (most?) LGBT rights groups operating at the moment aim to firstly be inclusive with regards to members of that community, and secondly to seek non-LGBT 'allies,' ADF takes a rather different approach. Most of the LGBT community are, in his eyes, the aforementioned 'gay bourgeoisie' and so are class enemies, and the revolution which overthrows the American system must be a 'queer' one, which presumably leaves little possibility for co-operation with the heteroes. While particularism is nothing new to Communist organisations (for example, Lenin's refusal to co-operate with other left-wing parties in 1917), this policy of taking an incredibly niche approach and then shunning most of the people who might be sympathetic towards it is suicidal, to say the least.
As an aside, Karl Marx had nothing to say on the matter of LGBT rights, which of course makes sense, such a movement being near-completely beyond the comprehension of the mid-19th Century, and Engels described the thoughts of proto-gay rights activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs as 'turning smut into theory.' Capitalism
But why, apart from giving ADF the opportunity to crack a few heads, is there the need for an LGBT revolution?
"There is a ghost lurking in the LGBT Community amongst us... and is responsible for Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, and this ghost that divides our community into competing factions and petty bickering even within those factions...This ghost is Capitalism."
That's all the explanation that's been provided. Why are all these -phobias caused by capitalism? We don't know, he hasn't told us. Some would argue that the above quote can be explained pretty simply: due to his various foibles ADF doesn't get on well with most of the other LGBT folk he encounters. Is that his fault? Of course not, it's capitalism's. Much easier than having to introspect about your own failings, which, as seen elsewhere, he isn't exactly fond of doing.
What's so bad about capitalism anyway?
Not only is it the root cause of 'homophobia, biphobia and transphobia,' it's also responsible for the deaths of exactly 1,559,657,267 people (as of February 2011, it's presumably gone up a bit since then). While this is obviously bullshit, some claims are more bullshit then the rest and demonstrate ADF's complete lack of knowledge of anything:
- US Revolutionary War: 35,000 killed by capitalism - A rag-tag bunch of irregulars who believe that 'all men are created equal' defeat a wealthy and powerful country to win their independence: all sounds a bit Communist to me.
- Indonesian anti-Communist purges: 100,000,000 killed by capitalism - Just let that sink in. A hundred million people. That's about one-and-a-half WWIIs, one third of the American population, 1.25 times the population of Germany. The obviously capitalist-controlled Wikipedia reports a somewhat more conservative figure of about 500,000.
- Cigarette-related deaths worldwide since 1960: 300,000,000 killed by capitalism - Nobody ever chose to smoke cigarettes, nobody ever enjoyed cigarettes. The bourgeoisie forced three hundred million people to kill themselves for their own amusement.
And finally:
- Palestinians killed by Israel: 826, 626 killed by capitalism - Says ADF, the hard-core Israel fan. Many would say there's a slight conflict of interest going on here, and somebody was brave enough to ask how he could reconcile having a major hard-on for Israel and considering it a major worker of capitalist iniquity, but ADF just deleted the comment.
In contrast to his horror at the deaths supposedly caused by capitalism, ADF is somewhat more blasé about those Communism was responsible for. He trots out the old Stalinist line that the famines of 1932-33 were the fault of the notorious Kulaks, and makes casual 'send you to the Gulag' jokes. An estimated 1.5 million political dissidents and other criminals were worked to death there.
Communism and fan works
While ADF's grasp on the finer points of the ideology is somewhat tenuous, he certainly understands that Communism looks cool. Following his political epiphany, he devoted himself near-exclusively to drawing his OCs and Naruto characters dressed as Red Army soldiers or Communist guerillas, and taking endless photos of himself in his China costume. All of which would seem to indicate that Communism appeals to him for its superficial aspects and charged language, not its complex interpretation of history and class relations.
Miscellaneous points
Despite being a supposedly devout Communist (and a Jew), ADF took time out to draw Naruto character Itachi Uchiha dressed as an SS officer, complete with the words of SS marching tune 'Sieg Heil, Viktoria!' lovingly (and somewhat slopingly) rendered in the bakground. Ss officer itachi uchiha by adf fuensalida-d34wdam.jpg
Also, his professed Judaism is generally at odds with the Communist view on religion being the opiate of the people and all that Conclusion
Having read all the above, you might now be thinking, 'maybe this ADF chap doesn't know quite as much about Communism as he claims to.' In the David Koresh AIM conversation, this was put to him directly:
<David Koresh> you don't seem to really know a whole lot about communism
<David Koresh> I think you're more interested in the visual aesthetic more than the politics
<Ahuviya Harel> Yes, I need to study communism a bit more
And that's the most in the way of a concession he's ever offered.
