Image is of Elon Musk giving the Nazi salute a week or so ago.
I didn’t really want to keep spotlighting American domestic events as I had assumed that shit would calm down pretty quickly, but it appears that the Trump administration, including Musk, are determined to bring down the empire from the inside.
One of the most important lessons of ruling a country - and especially an empire - is to never, ever believe your own propaganda; and yet now we have neo-Nazi failsons disrupting parts of the imperial apparatus and causing general government mayhem because they actually seem to believe in libertarianism; that the state and the capitalists are somehow in opposition, rather than working in lockstep to maximise profit and boost American hegemony around the world.
I’m not so optimistic as to believe that a national collapse is FOUR DAYS AWAY, like those weird anti-China cranks often speculate - the US has at least a decade or two left even under these conditions. But consider the damage being inflicted in these past couple weeks, and extrapolate that over the next four years. Does any living American political figure possess the competency to halt - or even meaningfully slow - the already ongoing decline? And could they achieve power (or even be allowed to do so) after Trump’s term is done?
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
this is classic liberal cowardice, like how the ‘migrant detention facilities’ are now seen temporarily as the concentration camps they are. As soon as a blue is elected, or they want to go to war, itll go right back to ignoring it like they want to. fucking brunchers.
While true, Liberals are fickle cowards who blow around in the wind, the high tides of revolution will include millions of such soft headed weaklings going along with the flow.
We have to unfortunately harness the pressure and extra bodies we have while we have it, before it goes away when Democrats get back into power to obscure everything and get a lid on everything again
I have little hope, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try our best.
I have much more hope when a GOP candidate is in power is my point, because the only way things improve in this shithole are from mass mobilizations and movements - and we simply cannot get Liberals off their asses otherwise
We don’t have enough on our own, and many of the Liberals might radicalize and gain class consciousness during that struggle. Not all, but perhaps enough.
I think the impact of some liberals being radicalized to the left is much smaller than the ones being radicalized to the right. Liberals inherently co-opt movements whenever they enter them, so I actually despise their participation when they still are libs.
some will, and we need all the comrades we can get. I’m just saying that the right wing is still winning, the vast majority of america is moving further right. It takes powerful socialist orgs to push people further left, which we dont have. Not saying to give up, quite the opposite, im just trying to have a balanced assessment of the current situation.
worker movements in the past have always started out a bit lib, then faced repressive crackdowns and ratfucking, and eventually pushed through that to emerge a honed weapon of the working class (or are destroyed in the crucible).
Our movement will initially contain a shitload of libs, and when the pigs are cracking our skulls many of them will learn consciousness through struggle. It is the only way forward. Hoping for eternal lesser evilism and parliamentarianism will never yield results, which is what tacit electoral opposition of the GOP results in.
I understand that, but usually that is the mass movement, there are always vanguard cadres pushing everyone further left as much as possible. Mass movements are really fragile and what matters is the parties that can take advantage of them. Usually those parties already exist.
I saw BLM change only very few minds, and many libs who walked the walk have like reversed their lukewarm positions.
That’s the “destroyed in the crucible” option that I mentioned. Unless the mass movement follows the lead of the advanced portion of the workers then it will be destroyed. Hopefully the next time around there is historical memory of that failure and a willingness to try something new.
Mao spoke about how China adopted communism as a last resort. The Chinese people exhausted every other option, attempting anarchism and social democracy and nationalism many times and getting nowhere. Eventually after enough failures people have to go down the route not yet taken.