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Arbitrary Support, the Illusion of Change, and Systemic Racism
Progress is a farce under bourgeois democracy and the capitalist superstructure.
With the advent of the protests against police brutality and the fight against oppression against the African-American community and other people of colour in the United States due to the murder of George Floyd by police, moderates have, once again, resorted to fantasizing about the supposed benefits of voting. This coupled with the faux support by corporations and celebrities makes for a rather troubling combination for social justice movements.
We see corporations and celebrities who have rather questionable pasts (regarding social justice issues) changing their profile pictures on social media networks and using hashtags to demonstrate their alleged support, but it goes without saying that this support is nothing but virtue signalling and pandering to communities that are actively being hurt and abused.
Examples include Amazon (and other similar corporations) “standing in solidarity” with the Black Lives Matter movement and being committed to “the fight against systemic racism and injustice”, while simultaneously selling facial recognition artificial intelligence technologies to police departments, often times being used for the purposes of racial…