There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is Palestine! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The weekly update is here.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
"campist" really is just "tankie" for leftists, huh
I don't think any principled Marxist-Leninist would disagree that Russia is, strictly speaking, an imperialist nation according to Lenin's definition. The conversation seems to always stop there though, with the automatic assumption that therefore neither side is worth supporting. I find this, at best, an extremely lazy position for a socialist to hold. As communists, we don't get to just sit in our perfect bubble of enlightenment decrying any effort to meaningfully improve conditions because they are flawed, even seriously flawed, or because they don't immediately lead to communism. For those who denounce "campism", I do wonder what their plan is meaningfully improve conditions is. Worker/union power, and worker conditions, in the West has been in decline for at least the last couple decades, and we have never seen a revolution in a financial capitalist country. Meanwhile, countries in the developing world go from crisis to crisis without any meaningful improvements as they are so mired in debt (on purpose). Revolutions are destroyed and revolutionaries are cut down by the unchecked power of American hegemony. Russia and China disrupting this system even if purely out of selfishness leads to opportunities for the working classes.
I also think that the concept of superimperialism needs to be considered in contrast to the regular imperialism that countries like Russia exhibit, especially because modern Russia is a direct result of the United States' efforts anyway. What the United States does and what Russia/China do are both quantatively and qualitatively different. Finally, I would argue that forces and classes can be progressive in certain circumstances and reactionary in others. Capitalism was, of course, a progressive force once upon a time, but now is reactionary. I believe that Russia and China have, overall, a progressive role in the world (in the sense of "progressing between stages of development", not the social sense). In 20, 30, 40 years time, perhaps they will then be reactionary forces, but by then we should be in a new global paradigm.
No, it's a term with a long history and a specific meaning regarding a deficiency of proper analysis of competing national bourgeoisies, and a tendency for Marxists in one country to align with an oppositional country instead of embracing a proper revolutionary-defeatist line. Nothing like "tankie" at all. Do you understand the term yourself?
I don't think you read what I wrote properly. At no point did I say we shouldn't support the development of previously dreadfully exploited regions in Africa, such as in the Sahel, via their opportunistic alignment with less advanced imperialist powers in order to get a leg up on the others. It is the right of oppressed nations to decide who they wish to deal with. What I am saying is that the kind of cheerleading you're doing for Russia is unseemly and strange if you are seriously committed to internationalist revolution - Russia is an anti-communist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie which would and has stamped out actual revolutionary movements in countries it holds a degree of influence over. Look at Kazakhstan for example, where a revolution nearly toppled the government not long ago, one which was directed against American interests and investments in the country as much as against Russian ones - but the CSTO sent in troops to massacre rebelling proletarians regardless.
You claim that no "principled Marxist-Leninist" (what does this actually mean, just MLs who agree with you?) would disagree with the notion that Russia is an imperialist nation, but you were quite literally telling people to "SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT RUSSIA BEING 'IMPERIALIST' ". Which is it? These are contradictory statements.
What is my plan for "improving material conditions"? Well, it's not really a valid argument to demand I present a fully workable theory of world revolution in the 21st century when all I am doing is criticising your position and pointing out that it's not a workable theory of world revolution, which is of course what all communists are working towards. But if I have to, my own view is that the severe and total crisis being experienced across almost every bourgeois-capitalist nation represents a truly final crisis, one which is driving us into a Third World-Imperialist War, and the eventual consequence of this war is going to be global proletarian revolution (complicated by the fact that a huge proportion of the world's industrial proletariat is concentrated in the PRC, which is not simply a bourgeois-capitalist state, but something more complex).
Sorry, are we Kautskyites? Super-imperialism is not a phenomenon that exists, the theory was completely dismantled by Lenin, it was one of the main reasons he wrote Imperialism. There are competing imperial interests and some of them have more influence, a larger theatre of exploitation, than others. This is not what super-imperialism is.
You also muddy the waters here by bringing the PRC into the discussion, a far more complicated case than Russia in terms of whether they represent an imperialist-capitalist state. I wasn't talking about them. It is demonstrative of a lack of thoughtful analysis that you conflate the two states and their relationship to the third world.
Tankie was a specific term regarding people who sided with the Soviets crushing the uprisings of 1956 and 1968. It has now morphed into "anything I don't like, which is typically people being anti-American". The same thing, though to a lesser degree, is happening with "campist".
Of course it does! It's an oligarchic nation ruled by people who the United States literally installed into power! It also happens to be at the beginning of a long period of change which none of us know the end result of but seems to be geared towards an anti-American role, even if primarily fueled by those oligarchs' selfishness.
No, I didn't. That was a different person.
While Lenin's descriptions of imperialism are pretty good, the mechanism of how imperialism operates now as opposed to the 1910s and 1920s are obviously extremely different and involve different mechanisms. Superimperialism is a real enough theory that the fucking CIA bought up copies of Michael Hudson's book to better understand what the United States was doing in the world today. Call it whatever you want - hegemonic imperialism, blorglepong, whatever - the United States is the hegemon, the world virtually revolves around it, it invades and pillages other nations on a scale far beyond what non-western states are doing, and so state actors weakening that hegemon and bringing back multipolarism (which is an unstable global order and thus gives us opportunities for revolution) and strengthening industrial capitalism (which communists have a pretty good idea about how to overthrow) is meaningfully progressing us towards world revolution.
I think we're describing the same thing but from different perspectives. I unequivocally do not support multipolarism as an endstage for societal development - such a thing is incompatible with communism from the basic definitions of words. You are describing the exact same crisis that I am - I (and others) are merely making the observation that the world, in the crises facing western nations currently, is transitioning to multipolarism, which will allow communists in that relative chaos to enact a revolution. Multipolarism is thus the arena in which we can take power. If we do not act or are unsuccessful, the world will transition to unipolarism once more because that is what monopoly capitalism dictates.
Given how the two countries are becoming ever more closely interlinked, I do not think you can have a complete or even really adequate description of geopolitics by discussing one without bringing up the other most of the time.