SweetLava

we are constantly moving closer and further away from socialism, at least since the French Revolution (which we didn't get to see the full results and aftermath of until the Scramble for Africa and World War I, and the later post-WWII neocolonialism).

the conditions are already present, too, from Kenya and Swaziland, to Cuba and Mexico, to Palestine and Syria. I can't name any continent sans Antarctica that has failed to produce some resemblence of progression towards socialism, and i'd even say it has happened within every state on earth by this point.

it is both fortunate and unfortunate that it is an international phenomenon. success in one country could be disasterous failure in another and, ultimately, it is our responsibility to elevate class consciousness and oppose our national bourgeois classes. but a social-democratic reform somewhere means a nationalism somewhere else, one progressive and the other reactionary in no particular order.

we had progress toward socialism this week, reaction against it today; last week was reverse. and so on and so forth.

you could've asked this question regarding 60 months, 60 years, 60 decades, 60 centuries - my answer would've been the same.

like the Russian Revolution completed the French, I see another revolution completing the Chinese, from the oppressed people of America and the oppressed people of Africa

I can't speak on individual journalists here, but connections, no matter how loose, to Russia Today (RT) and Iranian news is nothing new. There is, undoubtedly, a connection to the respective governments. I don't think we can deny it outright and it's at least partially true - this is something I keep in mind any time I read a news source with a similar background, and I supply those articles with additional information anywhere else I can obtain it.

As far as what to make of it? Of course they have to add in extraneous bullshit, that goes along with our (the US') support for Ukraine and Israel at such uncertain times.

It'd be a shame to lose a site that does, at least occasionally, bring out excellence in journalism that can be hard to find (except 30+ years into the future when The New York Times decides it's acceptable, or when the CIA claims it is no longer a National Security threat to release).

We should still seriously examine such claims and bat a critical eye to the underlying bias, is what I'm saying. Some of these same outlets and foreign governments would, for example, gladly accept people like Jackson Hinkle to speak up and we certainly don't have to give any credit where it's not due... let's just say the US and UK left some dirty international connections in the USSR and Middle East that were left unattended post-Soviet collapse and they have some interesting ideas about how to use left-wing groups for a certain agenda. Now that blowback is slowly settling in, the US isn't so proud her old friends from the good days.

Keep reading, but always read a little more.

No.

I assume "tankie" is a roundabout way to lump revolutionary leftists with those fomenting red-brown alliances. That is, a "tankie" in the modern day is a way to describe someone as Strasserist, NazBol, LaRouchite, etc.

The chances of me not being Marxist is as high as the chance imperialism collapses.

The shelf for Kautsky, Dugin, and Keynes is further down. It should be easier for you to digest.

Moishe Postone might have something interesting for you, when you're ready to come back to earth to discover my support for North Korea and Palestine (clearly from what I wrote, if anyone spent the time to extrapolate and use some thinking skills) is not an anachist position, but is almost verbatim what Lenin and Stalin would argue.

That's fair, I can give finishing remarks as well - I'll make it even shorter.

I see where Marxism influenced you, but that doesn't make you a Marxist.

You don't know class struggle, you know struggle of civilizations and races.

That's exactly what it is - competition. They don't want to cooperate with China, they want to compete. I'm not talking about the domestic "free market," I'm talking about the world economy and power politics. If the US keeps pursuing this path of foreign policy and no longer wants to play friendly, then, yes, either China or Russia (or some other country) will have to step up and be the competing imperialist power. Either that, or they have to choose the submissive role, a puppet government. There's no way around this. We live in the era of imperialism and globalization - all countries have to be interconnected by some way and we can't backtrack. Something like BRICS is an alternative, not a revolutionary new thing, but just a plain alternative to what already exists. That's not inherently a good or bad thing. But when we have the US pushing countries into competiting spheres of influence, what happens in a system like this? The same that already happened before.

This isn't a moral concept, this isn't a voluntary thing. This is just what happens when you have a bunch of sufficiently developed capitalist countries. They will all demand imperialism at some point, that's their aspiration, and those competing interests will interfere in the peace of all other (both capitalist and socialist) countries. People will be forced to pick sides at some point, that's the competition.

It just sounds like a long way of saying that China and Russia should function as imperialist powers using some type of Keynesian economic policy or war economy boost. This is undeniably what the US is trying to do. They want to drive competition. Either China or Russia hardens their stance into an imperialist bloc, or the US destroys them. That's the goal. The US will not collapse nor will the imperialist system lead by the US. Weaken, lost influence, lose relevance or merit - yes. Collapse is still a resounding no. It's the reason China is so careful with the US, so willing to go the extra mile to satisfy, the reason China wants to cooperate in international politics as a neutral player. China has reiterated time and time again that they are against bloc formation. This is why: China doesn't want to be seen as an imperialist power or even a competing superpower. They want cooperation with all, whether that be Russia, the US, the Eurozone, or major countries in Africa and Latin America.

If the US keeps pushing power politics, China will be forced to push back, just as Russia was pushed to do in 2022. No one seriously wants that. It will be devastating. That's not progress, that's reaction. The DPRK has even admitted peaceful reunification isn't possible in relation to the South (RoK). Of course it's the truth, but peace is always what we demand first. That can't happen in a world dominated by capitalism, and capitalism has to be taken down consciously with great effort. Peace holds off struggle for another day, it buys time. But we can't fool ourselves. That peace is as much of a facade as American liberal democracy. It's stable and looks good, maybe feels good, but it's fake, another way of obstructing reality.

Though peace can't be shaken out of regular conflict to get rid of capitalism. It has to be liberation, the wars have to be revolutionary wars. Otherwise we're back to step one, always on the edge of a new imperialist competitor, the ultimate aspiration for all capitalist countries at sufficient level of development. At the moment, only Palestine and the DPRK are really capable of fighting those types of wars. Even if the US adopts an America First policy (we all know this is just coded fascism), we know they'll still perform covert operations illegally and against their supposed policy.

It's socialism or barbarism.

When you were a kid (if you ever grew out of being a kid, that is), did anyone tell you the story of the apples and oranges? Did you ever hear someone talking about comparing apples to bananas? Anything of that nature? You still can't explain why you specifically chose to compare Hitler and Bin Laden to Raisi.

Let me break it down for you slow, in hamburger American terms.

Say I want to talk about America. Should I compare America to McDonald's and apple pie? Or should I compare America to shrimp and gyros?

Fill in the blank: As American as _______.

Did you say "apple pie" or did you say "shrimp and gyros"? Why? Reflect on this in your own time.

You mean to tell me that Israel, with all those billions of dollars, couldn't see with their own eyes people flying in to their territory with guns? There is no convoluted middle east history, at least not any more than anywhere else on this planet. There is no excuse to kill anyone in violation of international law, especially when the politicians guiding that policy see the enemy as less than human and makes reference to genocidial intent in doing so. If you want to talk about history, the history that is so convoluted and confusing to you, just start in 1947-1948. That should make it a lot easier for you to understand.

Every event in 'Israeli' history can be checked. They never acted in genuine self-defense. They always had ulterior motives, to drive their force as an imperialist proxy with a massive budget, extremist ideology, and settler-colonialism. There is no blame game. Palestinians have fought against occupation. Israel is the one occupying. Now this rougue state is claiming, implicitly, that they lay claim to a Greater Israel project that threatened the entire Middle East and North Africa region. Rather than occupying territory in war, they occupy territory in aims of extermination of the native population. If they were an occupying force in war, they would be required to ensure every citizen has access to food, water, security, and other necessities of life. Instead, they occupy territories and kill or displace the population there. Either it's not a war or this rogue entity is incapable of conducting itself without constantly committing war crimes.

I have to be honest. The only thing that will happen is either 1.) The US goes full mask-off fascism; or 2.) militant union organizing and popularization of left-wing, even explicitly Communist, ideas. Yes it's true that imperialism is broken, it's also true that the US is running out of force abroad. It's still an economic power house with a functioning (albiet backsliding) liberal democracy. No one really likes the government, but you can tell at least 30-40% of the population is on board 100% with pushing desired candidates and they believe the US has a chance in electoralism.

If you want to know the truth, we are essentially going to have to repeat the work of SDS, the Black Panthers, and all the other post-Civil Rights activisist left-wing movements. Now, instead of the Russian Empire going down as an imperialist force in favor of the Communists, we will have to organize to make that happen in the US or the UK.

As much as we clown on the Democrats and their supporters, it's true that if the Democrats fail we will not have a liberal democracy. Fascism is weak and fragile, but it gets the job done for whoever needs that job done. Bullets are cheap. Prison labor is already raking in plenty of cash and the US doesn't care about overcapacity in the cells or abuse of solitary confinement. Biden himself is already sliding away from the liberal democratic facade that at least Obama was able to keep up. Trump did real damage and pushed us away from keeping up our image, but, yes, there were real conditions behind it (namely between 1980 and 2009).

A collapse is still a pipe dream, either way. Even when the feudal order was weakened and unable to sustain itself, we still had many bloody conflicts and revolutions to push through. The monarchs didn't care, they fled or escaped along with the aristocrats and landowners and landlords. Even some decades after the French Revolution, people were lamenting the death of the old order. To this day we have anti-revolution propaganda from monarchs.

In all honesty, we can exploit external conditions but we still have to realize those conditions alone are not revolutionary or even necessarily progressive. What the US is doing right now is exactly what we expect in a weakened state that used to be so powerful. But this exact policy is also going to force China and Russia to be more agggressive, more competitive, and even form alliances and tighten up on separating their sphere of influence from that of "the West" or the US. This is very bad. This will push China to align more with the right-wing of the CPC. We don't want that. Thankfully we have Xi Jingping as prevention, but I don't trust whoever is going to succeed. It's too shakey, too unpredictable.

I still follow in my belief that we need fresh revolution. If Americans or the British can't do it, there's going to be some serious issues. It will be the equivalent of the German Revolution failing. The US wants China and Russia to get into the politcs of bloc-formation, while the US is also pushing to allow Western Europe to go fascist. Then we have Nigeria playing too neutral. The US has Argentina, Peru, Ecuador in their pockets as well. The Sahel is too weak at the moment.

I won't entertain an idea of collapse for these reasons alone. It's too dangerous to spread that idea. We have decades to keep pushing.

Just admit you make awful comparisons and fail to make analogies work.

Hitler, for one, had a specific fascist ideology comparable to Mussolini. I'd feel comfortable comparing the two. Not only based on their alliance and ideology alone, but also their actions taken.

When we compare people to Hitler, we generally make the assumption that we are talking about genocide, fascism, and an extreme passion for exterminating and villifying the "other" (whether that be Jews or Muslims or Slavs or something else). I wouldn't even make a comparison between Hitler and Netanyahu if I had to be professional and make time for an appropriate comparison.

On to Bin Laden, now. Why isn't he similar to Hitler? Back in the day, the US had a strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia. Backing the dollar with gold wasn't the best plan for us, we didn't gain a strong advantage doing so. Saudi Arabia was happy to help us with new US policy abroad. We went above and beyond to treat Saudi monarchs to the best life available, all at our expense. We even ignored the Saudis backing of people like Bin Laden back when we first knew of his type, all the way in the 1970s. We even used his allies and people with the Mujahideen that fought against the Soviets in the 1980s. Long story short, we had a blowback incident. 9/11 came around to hit us, likely with Saudis allowing it to happen while US intelligence was too incompetent or bogged down to act effectively (or maybe we knew and couldn't or wouldn't do anything). We went to war with Iraq and Afghanistan - not Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan was a failure the US contributed to actively for about 20 years, not including the interference from years prior. The Taliban is still governing Afghanistan today in fact. It wasn't anything like Hitler, except for the brutal anti-Communism. It certainly wasn't like Raisi either, considering that Iran and Afghanistan's Taliban aren't on the best terms.

I would compare Raisi to General Torrijos. Why is that? Because they were both nationalists, both concerned with sovereignty and not bending the will of their country to the US, yet each of them were not inherently accepting of either far-right extemist ideology or Communism (or other explictly left-wing political movements or ideologies). In spite of ideological differences, they both had a desire to stay neutral, choose key allies, and were rather accepting of liberation movements. People didn't really celebrate the death of Torrijos, at least in Panama. I wouldn't say people were exceptionally happy in Iran about the death of Raisi either. They weren't good leaders per se, but they stood on principles. I don't care for either figure myself, but I recognize who they were and what they fought for as humans.

Again, I know what an analogy is. We already established that. So, that means I do know Hitler is not just a nom de plum or alias for Raisi, or vice versa.

It's just not a good analogy. Look at the names I wrote and think about it for a second.

Why do I think comparing Hitler to Bin Laden is not a good comparison? Why do I believe comparing General Torrijos to Raisi is a good comparison?

Then, back to you. "[Celebrating] the death of horrific people is not necessarily a bad thing." You didn't even clarify what made Raisi a horrific person comparable to Hitler. You sound like everyone else in that Reddit-esque circlejerk.

If you read closely, you can see I don't really mind the act of celebration itself. My problem is that there is no acceptable reason to compare Raisi and Hitler, first of all; and, secondly, the people celebrating don't even know who Raisi is. Your comparison alone tells me you're in that group, the people who are celebrating without even knowing.

I can celebrate the deaths of Hitler, Mussolini, Kissinger, Pinochet, Reagan, and so on. That's because I actually know who they were and what they did.