Image is of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia and the fastest sinking city in the world. A new capital is being built elsewhere in Indonesia.
I was going to make Indonesia the COTW anyway (unless something really massive happened somewhere else) due to the elections that might really designate the end of an era in Indonesian politics. Michael Roberts wrote up a big piece on Indonesia about a week ago, one day before the election began, so a lot of this information is coming from him.
Indonesia has been ruled by President Joko Widodo for 10 years, but is now barred from a third term constitutionally. Under his presidency, the Indonesian economy has seen fairly good GDP growth overall - about 5% per year, or an average of 4% per capita - and is broadly popular with the electorate. The biggest problems are the common ones, such as a lack of jobs and a high cost of living. Widodo's successors have naturally promised more jobs and an economic plan that clearly draws at least some inspiration from China's rise from the periphery to the heights of the world economy and manufacturing, but this seems pretty unlikely for Indonesia because, well, Indonesia is ruled by capitalist bourgeoisie parties and China is not. Indonesia's main gigs are palm oil, nickel ore, and oil, with internal manufacturing of these primary commodities only slowly growing and reliant on foreign labour.
Indonesia has a rather big employment problem. On the face of it, things don't seem bad, with an unemployment rate of only 5% - but this is only because it counts anybody who works even a couple hours per week. 60% of the workers in Indonesia are in the informal sector, with no real labour rights, sick pay, or guaranteed wages. And half of the ~8 million unemployed are young people. Indonesia is the sixth most unequal country on the planet, with at least 36% of the population in poverty, and the four richest men own as much as the bottom 100 million. This was a natural consequence of the policies of the dictator Suharto, who came to power in a coup overthrowing the communist nationalist leader Sukarno and killing one million communists, a period covered by Bevin's The Jakarta Method. At a fundamental level, not that much has changed since Suharto, and the country seems doomed to a path of slowing economic growth and massive amounts of environmental degradation under a plundering elite who will presumably fly off to New Zealand with the rest of them once the seas swallow the country, unless a communist movement can be rebuilt from ashes and can learn the lessons of 1965-66.
Though results have yet to be officially announced, it seems that 72-year-old Prabowo Subianto is overwhelmingly likely to have handily won the election. Once banned from the United States for human rights violations - a truly phenomenal feat - he has been the Minister of Defense since 2019, was an army lieutenant under Suharto and was his son-in-law. While this is obviously a particularly bad outcome, none of the other candidates seemed likely to fundamentally alter the trajectory of Indonesia, so the game was rigged from the start.
The Country of the Week is Indonesia! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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 daily-ish 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 (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. - 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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
Alright question time.
My adventures on bluesky have led me to realise that an absolutely massive number of people, including soft-left who would otherwise usually be susceptible to what MLs have to say, are blocking me on sight for being a visible "tankie" now (openly ML and positive of lenin/soviet union being the main indicators).
So the question is under the climate that is being produced do MLs get more done by hiding their MLness so as not to trigger this insta-block behaviour? I could quite easily switch over to DemSoc mode and mostly saying pretty much anything and everything I already say when visibly ML.
I'm still leaning towards visibility, I think that hidden-ness of communists hasn't helped in the past and that something similar to the "pride" approach that helped lgbt people get normalisation has value. The anti-tankie atmosphere being generated is essentially a de-normalisation of communist openness in society and the counter to that seems to me to push normalisation even harder so that the approach fails. I am however interested in others' thoughts.
I would say the prime contradiction for communists of today is that communists primarily exist online and not in material reality, caveat this is an American perspective. Darn near everyone can say they have a member of their family or workplace that's a Qanon crank, a russia-gate Bluanon crank, etc. yet any one of us would be a unicorn witnessing another unicorn when it comes to knowing other communists. Sure it's becoming slightly more common, at least among millennial and younger generations, but the gaping wound of McCarthyism that has severed the linking of descending generations to their ideological forbearers has wrecked the American communist movement so badly that it took one of the last American social democrats with a public presence acting as the pilot light of new deal progressives to respark the communist and left movements in the U.S.
The best move I would say, besides the usual spiel about organizing, is to exist as publically as you're comfortable and able to, be patient and polite when talking to others, and understand that you are a representative of your ideology in addition to the fact that you are most likely the first representative of your ideology that damn near everyone you'll meet has ever met. So whatever community you're a part of, take part it as a fellow member of your community. And lastly remember that you don't have to be perfect, just be human.
in other words, you know how Hakim usually behaves? As best as you can, be like Hakim.
Always remember what Marx said: “What the fuck is bluesky”
The people who block you instantly are not soft lib. They are cryptofascists. They will sieg heil the fuhrer if that is the only thing keeping the ebil tankies at bay.
No you just don't go to Lib hives where they fled to escape any intellectual dissonance at all. These people are hopeless.
If we should be learning anything from the history and present-day tactics of the global south, it's that you don't defeat the hegemon by attacking its security apparatus directly. It's designed to frustrate you. What you do instead is attack or convert the vulnerable fringes. Over time it will starve itself by overextension.
Bluesky is full of comfortable libs. Let them be comfortable while they still can. They will isolate themselves when the alienated lower classes don't find any solace there and unsub for greener pastures (from what I've heard on the fedi, it's very white). You won't shape the world inside the walls but you can wait for them to rust and for the servants of the upper castes to come outside to join you.
Recently there was a burst of new mastodon subscribers because the CEO of tumblr personally insulted the entire trans community. Tiktok hosts a lot of minority and indigenous users who appear to get more reach there than on other platforms. There are mass media reports that young people are fleeing from the big platforms to use groupchats instead.
Building a stronger presence on the fediverse is much more doable, but hexbear has been hesitant about it in order to protect its own users (probably a second instance is needed with less ingroup focus). Users from a strong fediverse will naturally have groupchats, and leftist groupchat members are naturally going to try and get their friends on their side.
If you want to build a niche on the algorithm itself, appeal to the poor. Appeal to the oppressed. Don't worship heroes but use their words and actions to illustrate that you care about the oppressed. Don't show off armies and sovietwave music, talk about how they fed the hungry and cured the sick. Talk about the human-centric aspects of brutalism. Talk about the lives of average people in them and how they differed from our preconceptions. Talk about the pitfalls of individualist thinking and hustle culture. Have an honest conversation about depression, low wages, stress about finding your next meal. Talk about orgs aiming to solve these problems.
Support AES and historical socialist countries, sure. But if that is at the forefront of what you talk about, you'll look like a shill and not someone who's trying to help people. We know we're not nazis, but if our heads are stuck in glorifying a glorious past, we'll look like them to everyone else.
Both are useful depending on your audience. It's not just one or the other being intrinsically better.
Also keep in mind that you're probably not gonna hear from the people that your posts are working on but you'll definitely see the people that block you
I think it depends on how you're being blocked. Are you being blocked because of your tweets or because of your name/avatar? Are people manually blocking you or are you being autoblocked through third-party apps like how Twitter has ways of mass blocking people via third-party apps? It all depends on Bluesky blocking culture.
In general, I think you have to choose between saying demsoc stuff with commie aesthetics or saying commie stuff with demsoc aesthetics. "Demsoc stuff with commie aesthetics" gets more instablocks while "commie stuff with demsoc aesthetics" makes people's accusations of "tankies being duplicitous in their views" be true. Neither choices are particularly good although I would probably pick the first option.
Well I have the 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇮🇱 🇺🇦 flag combo on my name on twitter and I shit on all four of these countries on the daily.
I have been calling for this site to tone down its support for AES and most people here don’t like it. Fair enough, and that’s why Hexbear will remain a niche site.
But on other platforms, saying anything outright like that is just going to make people think you’re crazy. Even saying something as innocuous as “the DPRK isn’t as bad as being depicted on the media”.
Sometimes I feel like people don’t understand how they come across to normal people when talking and praising AES. From their perspective, you might as well be someone who believe in crazy Alex Jones’s conspiracies.
Oh look the one website on the english speaking internet where you can support AES. I know, I'll ruin it and make it zero sites!
Supporting AES is literally the primary and singular purpose of non-chauvinist western leftism, encouraging solidarity. If you give that up you are nothing, just a liberal
the reason we advocate against hiding any of our views is because that's what much of the western left has already been doing for decades (Many parts of DSA still try to do this, frankly), and it hasn't worked. we haven't grown, and we're still just as if not more chauvinistic
Leftist subreddits tried it too and it didn’t take long before liberals hijacked them. Appealing to libs will always give them just enough room to hijack and then from there the far-right come in due to the liberals insistence on “free speech.”
Full offense but why should we have to censor ourselves in a space that we carved out explicitly so that we would not have to censor ourselves.
We're already spooking away people with clips of Al-Qassam owning the IOF and critical support for the Islamic Republic of Iran. They're very few people in the world who would be down with us supporting Hamas but would draw the line at us supporting China. That demographic is basically a socially conservative non-diasporic Iranian who really dislikes communists for being atheists.
I'm not talking about changing my rhetoric. I'm not going to stop publicly defending the ussr, mao or anything else. If our demsoc MPs can do it on British television then there is no reason for me to stop doing it. The main question I have is a matter of form and aesthetic, is there value in doing this in the DemSoc form if it results in fewer insta-blocks or does simple honest ML visibility and lack of fear (because we've done nothing wrong and are doing nothing wrong) have its own benefits?
I think it depends on the audience you want to reach.
I have talked to many libs in Western countries throughout the years (in person, so I’m not so sure about online) and one thing I have noticed consistently is that any form of AES defense will immediately shut out like 80% of the people. The remaining 20% though will give you the time of the day, and if you’re lucky you might be able to convince a few of them.
I guess my point is the strategy you choose will largely depend on the type of audience you want to reach. If you want to teach accurate history of socialism, then be prepared to accept that you might not have a broad appeal.
The problem with this is that the people you're saying we need to "reach" are liberals. Liberals' #1 character trait is adherence to ideology over evidence. Liberals have to individually and voluntarily give up their ideology and face reality before any words here will reach them. Posters here can be as patient and civil and explanatory as possible, but so long as the individual liberal in question is living a comfortable life due to their privileged position within capitalism, nothing said to them will matter. They need to personally experience what happens when capitalism no longer finds them useful and discards them, before they can truly appreciate the merits of socialism.
I'm a relative newcomer here but my perspective is that Hexbear ought to be (among other things) a home-base haven for ex-liberals who finally faced and accepted reality, not a debate battlefield. Your various arguments for making Hexbear more welcoming to a broader liberal audience is akin to asking a cult-deprogramming therapist to no longer call out cults for what they are, and instead invite cult leaders to run the therapy sessions.
There's different kinds of forums. I'm happy that this is a place where the default expectation is that people are some flavour of anticapitalist instead of being a 101 space.
That’s what I’m saying. Hexbear is a unique platform but we will always remain niche because to people from the outside we look like “crazy tankies”.
The fuck is an a AES?
Actually Existing Socialism = China/DPRK/Venezuela/Cuba, from most to least problematic to libs.
Everyone forgets about Laos and Nepal.
We have to keep Laos a secret
Shhhhh
Any good resources on Nepal? Like its current material conditions and such. All I know is there was a communist revolution in 2006 and it has some Juche movements.
Nepal's completely outside my areas of study to be honest. You'd have to ask around for more knowledgeable folks, sorry.
One of the best gaming consoles of all time.