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Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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Your daily dose of 'does organising and protesting work?':
The Belgian government is delaying the decision making regarding retirement reforms after months of large protests throughout the country as they cannot find a way to get it through Parliament. They also struggle to reach an agreement on the general budgets for the same reason. They are feeling the heat we put on.
do we have a community for posting cringe? i cannot think of anywhere else to post what i am about to post, an image of an ex-president of mexico from the conservative party wearing a one piece shirt
c/shitposting?
the thing is that it is not shitposting, it's a thing that actually happened 😭
I kinda forgot what normal weather is supposed to be like. It's around freezing point over here already and there has also been snow. But I thought to myself: 'is snow supposed to fall this early?'. But I have now experienced 'exceptional' weather for probably a good third of my life so I don't know what it is supposed to be like. And I doubt it will get better.
Also, I hate how calling in sick to work makes me feel guilty. The system has pavloved me into that I guess. Nobody at work makes a problem out of it really but still. And seeing hundreds of people in a closed off space on a daily basis is not doing wonders for my health.
hearing every news org and politico in the country glaze that fucking ghoul cheney makes my fucking blood boil
"What is democracy?"
"Well, I was never very clear on it myself..like every other kind of government it's got to do something with young men killing each-other, I believe."
"Why don't the old men kill each-other?"
"Well the old men are needed to keep the home-fires burning."
"Couldn't the young men do that just as well?"
"Yah..well, young men don't have homes so that's why they must go out and kill each-other."
"When it comes my turn, would you want me to go?"
"For democracy, any man would give his only begotten son.."
I've been too busy to engage that much in social media these days. I've mentioned it offhand before but usually my main haunt is tumblr and I've made many "mutuals" (friends, I suppose) with communists(many whose stripes arent super apparent, but I thought I've been good at filtering out hohxaists trots and generally leftcoms) and leftists (mainly the anti-imperialist sort, avoid the anarchists and anticivs, naturally) - most of them lgbt - from both imperial core and periphery.
Anyways I've been relatively inactive(by my metrics) over there for about a month but had some more time than usual yesterday and, well, I shouldn't be so so surprised but turns out a lot of my mutuals (and I've very selective about who I decide to follow) who I thought were more ML really showing their leftcom colors in regards to the recent UNSC vote regarding Palestine. I've even got one calling anyone who "defends" China anything from "Chinese nationalists(bad)" to "traitors to internationalism" to "actually you're a Zionist"... very disappointed. Emotionally charged idealism over materialism (<- to be fair this is also common in Chinese social media too. maybe these tumblr leftcoms might be surprised that a lot of people they would denounce as "chinese nationalists" are unhappy with how conservative Chinese diplomacy is, and have been very upset about restraint in open direct support to Palestine - though lately of course their attentions have largely been on Japan wanting to (re)annex Taiwan - but I digress)
(Context:~~yes Hamas asked China and Russia for a veto in UNSC.~~ Correction below. China and Russia abstained. But if even Algeria and other Arab states who are actually in the same region would not vote against TRUST then why should China be expected to go against the consensus of the other Arab states in the area? Why should anyone expect China to turn into interventionist-style diplomacy, USA-style but communist?)
IDK, maybe I'm belittling what's happening but, why would anyone care That much about the farce/kayfabe/circus that is the UN/UNSC. Why does that feel like it's SUPER BIG to them and why have they literally forgotten things like the 2024 Beijing Declaration or brokering and re-establishing relations between Saudi and Iran, i dunno, like the Real diplomacy in MENA (which, surprise surprise, should include MENA states involved. emphasis states, unfortunately, that's the playing field). Why do western leftists get all the excuses when we have failed to reduce/eliminate support for the settler colonial project and literal weapon shipments to Israel but when China doesn't show their cards in the circus lions den and none of the other Arab states don't show either, suddenly aww China is a comprador, China is selfish, is imperialist collaborator (bwuh???), BRI is imperialism with chinese characteristics (if China doesnt bleed herself out in order to uplift global south nations then it's not anti-imperialist, or at least, it's not anti-imperialist enough), China is ~ Zionist ~ (lmao????), China is supplying a genocide (supposedly this statement is because China continues to trade with Israel, and has contracts building civilian port infrastructure. but??!? literally what are we doing here, running the NYT Atlantic? applying zionist logic that civilian infrastructure is also military infrastructure and legit war targets? US/West is supplying the weapons and tech. China does not sell or provide Israel with weapons). I can't believe I've seen all these things come out of self-id'd anti-imperialist communists the last two days. That said, it's only a portion of people, plenty of comrades have been reasonable about it.
Anyway, I'm glad to not see that kind of nonsense discourse appear here. Thanks for reading my small rant
edit: nvm lol. everyone's acting like Russia and China voted FOR if they didn't veto (they both abstained). anyway you can actually read what China has said about their reasonings here instead of thinking or saying frankly weird stuff like "china is zionist"
2nd edit/correction: this is on me for not seeking primary sources and just relying on what the naysayers were saying. Palestinian groups did not ask for it to be vetoed specifically, but asked for it to be condemned and an alternative put forth (Russia is doing that/has penned one) and yes Russia and China both abstained and condemned it. Now I'm even more confused why people were so mad. PFLP's statement | I can't find a definitive statement BEFORE the vote was called from Hamas - if anyone has it, please point me to it thanks
I agree. I actually didn't know if anyone else was thinking this today. It's not even particularly on tumblr, I've started turning a side-eye towards a lot of sources I have based upon this new rhetoric being wedged into our circle.
Even Ali from Electronic Intifada was ranting about how Russia and China "betrayed" Gaza. Like how would vetoing the deal stop the genocide? and you know that behind closed doors usa was saying "if this gets vetoed we will let israel go back to how it was a coupple months ago."
I completely understand the frustration. But unfortunately a veto wouldn't realistically achieve much other than leave Gaza with no peace plan at all.
I think that the people who criticize China the harshest for not doing enough for Palestine are overestimating China's power and influence in this specific situation, and they are putting an impossibly high standard on China that they are not putting on their own governments, or even on the governments of the Arab countries who are much closer to Palestine and have a much bigger responsibility and obligation to involve themselves than China does. It is happening in their backyard, not in China's, so why aren't they doing more?
Like Egypt has 100 million+ people, their army is stationed right on the border with occupied Palestine. Except for the US, no other country has the ability to launch transcontinental naval campaigns.
Exactly. and because trump put his name on it you know he would be next level nasty if it got rejected.
I'm of the opinion (echoing analysis I've seen recently but can't remember who said it, sorry) that a veto in this particular case is actually worse than abstaining because
I agree with this analysis and I think your point about the main subjects of international diplomacy being state entities is very important, as is the point about Russia and China not being in a position to be "more Catholic than the Pope" as the saying goes, i.e. in this case they cannot come off as believing that they know better what is good for the Palestinians than the PA and the Arab countries of the region. That would be seen as very paternalistic and disrespectful.
China in particular has carefully cultivated a non-interventionist image, and made a point to emphasize the importance of respecting national sovereignty and not imposing from outside onto the people who are native to the region.
How the fuck can you betray Gaza as China, realistically, short of an actual military intervention?
Like what the fuck do these people want? I see @cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml other comment about the frustration but what the fuck has any nation-state or the previous warlords before the Communist Party of China done historically for Gaza until now?
They do not think in realpolitik.
edit: should specify by now I mean in the past few decades. Very short-sighted of me but I will admit I am a bit intoxicated.
They have been bamboozled by a clever anti-communist line.
The us played this really well. They presented a no win scenario and China and Russia did the best of bad options and the us managed to have people in place to push the "stabbed in the back" line and people are eating it up.
American left got entirely enthralled by a soft zionist faux-obama mamdani is already celebrating opportunism as the next October Revolution. Nicki Minaj speaking about Christians being killed in Nigeria, somehow means america needs to invade nigeria. Every theatrical outburst colored with militant language is endlessly fanned over and memed.
Its tiring, honestly.
I don't fucking understand the immature shit-bag that keeps downvoting your comments. Seems to be a persistent ghost.
They did indeed. Now for most people they genuinely seem to cannot put two-to-two together and realize that the entire fucking ORGAN THEY ARE VOTING ON IS ENTIRELY SUBSUMED BY IMPERIAL INTERESTS SINCE IT'S INCEPTION.
“stabbed in the back” line and people are eating it up.
We are truly living in the times of Weimar Germany, except it's almost psychedelic at this point. We are witnessing the creations of columns that serve the interest of every facet of capital. Losurdo, of course.
since Electric Antifada was mentioned earlier... ok so I'm not super familiar with them and I'm not pointing fingers at them specifically, just English-language news media overall, but - maybe a bit conspiracy theory-brained of me, but - I'm questioning where this wave is coming from. China and Russia have been nothing but consistent, and really this is nothing unusual, especially to people who have been actually paying attention and ability to remember milestone events.
the tumblrinas I've seen buoy the "China and Russia are traitors" thing have been, yes, the usual suspects (anticommunist leftists/people with "tankie" as a pejorative in their vocab, tho lately they've been nitpicking since I guess they now identify as 'tankie' and been using "chinese/russian nationalists" as their pejorative, and just straight-up leftcoms) but among them are people who I distinctly recall espousing afro-pessimism* and calling other tumblr users from the periphery (particularly latam) "antiblack" for using the word "usamerican" (to distinguish US americans from other people who live in both continents) -- and for a long time I've suspected these people to be plants at worst but more likely convenient stooges to vector anticommunism and disunity - against budding communists in the imperial core to make connections with those either more seasoned or from the periphery. UGH, name-calling is just such an easy way to shut down peoples' brains and stop them from turning on analysis functions and critical thinking or even just looking for sources.
*uh oh I'm feeling ranty again... alright. you've been warned. afropessimism. whenever and wherever I bump into it, it makes me feel like im going insane, like these people will go onto xiaohongshu and tell chinese people they're all racist against black people because they think chinese people are basically white which automatically makes them antiblack, ,, antiblackness is king, it's above all and it's immutable, but also it's incomparable to racism that nonblack people experience and because they could never intimately understand or experience real true racism at the heart of this world which is antiblackness. please, tell me more about how oppressed peoples of the world could never understand each other and should be forever divided, until maybe some world savior perhaps of the black variety instead of white comes to liberate us all. did i ever mention that afropessimists hate marxism for some reason, hm, maybe that's by design!! maybe, just maybe someone doesn't want a Black Panther Party 2.0, reading ML literature and all, to come back in the heartland of imperialism (edit for moderation: black struggles are real and hard! and yes I can't say I fully understand because I don't live it but it doesn't mean I or any other nonblack folk can't try to understand, including understanding enough to make a difference, and nor is it the struggle that has primacy over all others)
I mean black americans arent exempt from being manipulated by the empire. Afropessism is basically just early stage black zionism. Especially since there has been a cultural drive to assimilate them into the empire - see Beyonce dressed as a cowboy, or Nicki Minaj speaking to defend Christians in Nigeria, or Queen Charlotte, or Kamala discourse, where people justified the genocide of Palestinians via the historic arab slave trade & anti-black racism in the middle east.
The E.I. crew are nearly beyond reproach. I have immense respect for them and the work they do. This was the bigest L I have seen from them. The guest who was pushing the narrative was Craig Mokhiber who used to work at the UN. Ali kept referencing an article mokhiber wrote so I think that is where his bad takes came from but I suspect mokhiber got that bad take from someone else.
I imagine a "source" at the UN is the one who poisoned the well on this. I suspect they have been stirring this this anti-China/Russia play by carefully worded "leaks" to certain members of the alternative press.
it’s above all and it’s immutable, but also it’s incomparable to racism that nonblack people experience and because they could never intimately understand or experience real true racism at the heart of this world which is antiblackness.
[insert that Trotsky quote about hitler particles here]
In general though, it's really weird seeing those who have stood by and supported China suddenly twisting into a pretzel to condemn them despite they haven't even had a break from their usual behavior.
Why should anyone expect China to turn into interventionist-style diplomacy, USA-style but communist?
It does seem like this is essentially what some people want China to be, without considering the resulting ramifications or required logistics. Whether we like it or not, that does not appear to be the path they have planned for and they do appear to be big on planning, so why would they throw away plans and try to rush into a different direction that they haven't planned for? It's their careful planning and manufacturing positioning that has made them so powerful to begin with; this within a globally anti-communist, capitalist world order led by the western empire. They've been building and transitioning for decades. They don't benefit from destruction in the way that imperialism and capitalist led order does. Capitalism and imperialism can work together to level a whole region and then swoop in to profit off of rebuilding it and create tendrils of control in that rebuilding process, and the west has done this before. China's socialist mode rejects such a process, instead trying to form mutually beneficial ties, so they don't have a motive to court hot war the way imperialist nations do.
In other words, what I'm trying to get at is part of the reason the US is willing to act "interventionist" in the first place is because it can profit off of doing so, even if the process to get there involves millions of deaths and infrastructure in ruins. Socialist projects are going to be much more reluctant for the common humane cause reason that they don't want more death and destruction.
Still, China has intervened before in history when the conflict was close enough, in Korea. But that was also a much closer (geographically) existential threat. Trying to intervene more directly in Palestine might win them praise from the same kind of people who praise Che Guevara and reject Fidel Castro, but I don't think they are positioned well at this stage to accomplish much in that form. They don't have hundreds of military bases from which to stage global interventionist operations. They could do more in the form of cutting trade ties, but this practice also means isolating themselves more in trade and manufacturing power, which is the main form of leverage they have in anti-imperialism outside of being ready for hot war, if it comes to that.
Like say they cut all trade ties with israel. Okay, but the US is what's funding israel, so shouldn't they cut trade ties with the US too? And what of the EU NATO members who also play a part in it? Should they cut trade ties with them as well? What about all of the comprador states that serve the western empire? Where does it end? China decades ago chose the path of "dealing with the devil" (roughly speaking) in order to shift the global balance of power and so far it seems to be working. It doesn't mean they directly support what imperialism is doing. It means they're working through the contradictions of engaging with global capitalism while trying to build local socialism, in order to shift the form of the world order away from empire. Until the empire has declined sufficiently that is less of an existential military threat, I don't see how they can logistically do much intervening beyond diplomacy without isolating themselves.
I don't expect this to be a permanent state for them to be in. It's all about transition and it's just nightmarish that things have escalated against Palestine while the multi-polar world order is still finding its feet. As I write this, I am thinking it is possible that this is the very rising shift the zionists fear and this is part of why they're trying to escalate, but they are overextending even as they genocide and court wars in the rest of the region; they displayed this when they picked a direct fight with Iran. A multi-polar world order led by a communist vanguard party government cannot, in the long-term, accommodate a lawless colonial project, whose existence is fixated on endless wars and expansion.
Things you can say to the haters: "You want China to be more Arab than the Arab nations?" "If they vetoed it the world's media would be saying china blocked the only path to peace in Gaza."
maybe these tumblr leftcoms might be surprised that a lot of people they would denounce as “chinese nationalists” are unhappy with how conservative Chinese diplomacy is, and have been very upset about restraint in open direct support to Palestine
China has been very supportive of Palestine, Hezbollah and the axis of resistance. Chinese weapons show up from here to there, in Iran, supplies & material are obviously being given considering the cargo jets from China during the Iran-Israel salvo. They've even been outspoken as to why they've abstained from this proposal. Beyond that, you have listed countless examples of their geopolitical actions. It will be, of course, "refuted" by the tired old Maoist/leftcom claims.
China is selfish, is imperialist collaborator
Ultimately, I think a lot of westerners and in general seemingly people online overall don't understand is that China is never going to intervene directly with psy-ops or with overt military support. They stand in a precarious balance, trying to prop up a multi-polarity world into existence based upon the machinations of a capitalist world order in terminal decline. Actions like these would only lead into being tools to use against the CPC as those same people tend to underestimate the psychological capabilities of the Beast, no I don't mean mind control. China doesn't owe anyone or us anything.
Perhaps one day the soft-power of China's undeniable cultural and economic influence in a multi-polar world will force their hand into directly arm-wrestling the Beast into submission judging by the fact that the West is headed right into an uber-totenkult. But who knows. Until then, those who want to levy undue criticism as above, just like those who advocate for dangerous, public direct action fed-style to an impressionable board of big-tent leftists because what we collectively do is never enough in the smaller or bigger picture, should practice what they preach.
Why does it feel like everytime something happens, I only hear about it 2 days later?
the rock I live under has a time dilation device preinstalled (non-negotiable, un-tinker-able), what about you?
You don't donate to any Pateron accounts so you only get the podcasts 24 hrs after they are released. (this is a joke)
Yeah i have a Feeling december gonna Be Chaos in the Country (Aka Protests) . Indonesian Government Threaten to Block Cloudfare, Blocking Cloudfare meant Im Afraid i couldn't access Most websites..
My Government is So fucked up Man.
Either The Government Back down and let it be or be Really stupid and go for it, ignoring the massive consenquences (i.e Like what happened in Nepal)
Even if they block cloudfare you can still get on best place on the internet, lemmygrad!
Why would they want to do that? Any specific reason for this?
We should have a QOTT to give everyone a conversation starter. Maybe there’s a reason there isn’t though, I can’t say.
Have a great week, everyone!
As always, communism will win.
I feel demotivated by party work again because I cannot seems to convince anyone of taking some more action. Our recent project will include more of a fund raising thing for a niche group and even though that is very noble and all I do not, to put it bluntly, see the benefit of it when it comes to party building.
If I think back on the mission the party asked me to complete, which is attract people 'like me', and see what we are planning to do, then I simply conclude that this is not it.
I feel very arrogant saying this, because I know fuck all really, but I also know that the current sequence of events does not motivate me to do stuff. We are not a charity, to put it harshly. If I look at our demographs and if I look at who are currently not in our demographs, I feel like different things need to be done.
But I cannot get the party to see this. And I don't know what to do.
It absolutely sucks not being listened to and feeling demoralized by your org. One tactic you might try, if you haven't already, is to talk one on one with people who are influential and might be receptive. That way you could build a coalition around what you want to do before proposing it in a group setting.
Because leaving the party and not being organised does not seem like an option
Write a resignation letter saying you are unable to complete the task assigned to you with the resources and support the party can provide. Say that you need to step aside so someone more capable can take up the project. Try to lean into the personal failure aspect with an undertone of having not gotten enough support from the party. Say that you aren't wanting to leave the party but you understand if they don't need someone who was incapable of running a simple project.
Its passive aggressive as fuck but sometimes that's the only way to deal with having your suggestions ignored.
Sometimes I'm reminded that the French speaking part of the country, despite their recent ideological struggles, has a general media censorship on right wing talks, preventing them from getting to the media. Which I would die for over here.
I go to my first day of work at my new job today!
Oh boy...
Welp, I'm nervous, but I'll persevere.
In Dutch we have a saying that is translated into 'Let them smell a poopy' which means good luck
My dutch mother in law tells me sun bleached dogshits good luck charms so this probably has something to do with that?
Nothing like having your internet cut off right before a national holiday weekend.
Recently I've had no time to read the ML classics I recently bought because I'm constantly studying for my Exams, but hopefully this weekend I'll start with the manifesto and state and revolution. Hope y'all have a great week! If y'all got any reading you'd like to send as recommendations to me, I'd be quite thankful. I already have a book by Rosa Luxembourg I'm gonna read too as I haven't seen many people talk about her and my main source of information are videos and short "theory applied in X situation" or "analyzing X countries history" or ofc, listening to the magnificent voice of Hakim
You might want to check out my intro ML reading list and see if it helps!