Trump's victory, and the further mass oppression of minorities, is closer than ever before. May god have mercy on our souls.
previous preamble
The totalitarian capitalist dystopia which was created by the United States in the aftermath of the Korean War has increasingly experienced problems as the multipolar world is being gradually birthed.
Due to the widespread exploitation of the population, long work weeks, and high housing prices, the population growth of South Korea has plummeted, with the lowest fertility rate on the planet, and the highest suicide rate in the OECD. While a capitalist "success story" before the 2008 recession in terms of profit accumulation for the richest at the expense of most others, conditions have grown more dire in the Long Depression since the crash. GDP growth per year has averaged out at 2-3%. For more concrete figures, labour productivity has stagnated, particularly in the service sector. The rate of profit hit a peak when the dictatorship ended in the late 1980s, but has since massively tumbled. These dynamics are not unique to South Korea; they are happening throughout the West.
While South Korea is stagnating, perhaps even falling, its northern neighbour is rising. With Russia already persona non grata to much of the developed world and yet still maintaining fairly good economic growth and continuously albeit gradually moving towards victory in Ukraine, Putin sees no reason to be intimidated by the West's shunning of the DPRK, and Russia is establishing ties as well as military and economic deals. This seems to portend an end to the post-Soviet period of forced isolation due to UN actions forbidding the people of the DPRK to leave the country (which many westerners believe is a policy originating from the Korean leadership due to their propagandized education).
Many in the West are still, regrettably, unable to properly analyze the geopolitical situation of Korea due to their government programming, leading to bizarre takes about imminent collapse, or desperation on the part of Russia or the DPRK, unable to recognize that the DPRK has a powerful military sector all its own, and decades of autarky has created a durable society where limited resources must be used efficiently and effectively. The position of the Korean Peninsula seems likely to be a critical part of the US-China conflict, whether this is an outright war or instead a series of proxy wars. Indeed, Korea's position may soon become very important in global trade routes if the US tries to cut off the Strait of Malacca to Chinese-bound cargo ships, with vital resources like oil and food potentially transported both over land and via the Arctic Route over Russia and through the DPRK to China. Russia's leadership clearly sees the importance of Korea in the future, hence their actions now; and, of course, South Korea siding with Ukraine has also forced Putin's hand to oppose them more openly.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The "Country" of the Week is South Korea! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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.
I'm not American so the consequences won't hit me too hard but yeah. Like, my stance on the election hasn't shifted one iota, Biden is a senile genocidal clown and I wouldn't vote for him unless at gunpoint, but seeing Trump virtually just win the election as the team around Biden seems to now be accepting they will not replace him has made the reality of another Trump presidency sink in substantially more than it had previously.
A Trump presidency feels very real now, not some abstract future event where unspecified bad things will happen. And again, given the Democrats' complete lack of strategy and Biden's unwillingness to stand down and let a better polling candidate take the reins, the solution isn't to huddle into the arms of the Democrats now that it's scarier. They're either intentionally or unintentionally trying to lose here.
The pro-Biden people are still fascistic dipshits whether they're neoliberals or socdems, but we're gonna see the pitch of their pleas climb even further in the panic and that's gonna be pretty frustrating. As if the American left has a large enough presence to shift an electoral result either way, and as if the "Communist Party" of the US isn't going along with Biden anyway. They're gonna yell at a group of people online that maybe consists of a hundred thousand people (across various websites, of which Hexbear is a proportion) who are committed to not voting for Biden from an explicitly left critique, and aren't even all Americans, rather than try and actually gain voters from disaffected/angry people who number in the tens of millions who don't really identify as being on the left but are angry at genocide (or, more likely, cost of living and inflation).
on one hand his first presidency radicalized a lot of people, me included
but on the other hand his next stint at the presidency is most likely going to be a lot worse for everyone
Biden’s been a more fascistic president who has caused tons more damage than Trump did.
You would have to define fascism first.
If you just mean total overall violence then okay yeah Biden is more of a warmonger. At least compared to Trump's history in office since I don't think his isolationism is as fixed a feature as others do.
If you mean establishing a personality cult appealing to a shared reactionary feeling of victhood and humiliation, especially in white males, focused on redemptive violence and domestic purification, then Trump is absolutely more of a fascist.
Trump spent the first term installing judges favorable to him, not just in the supreme Court but those matter the most.
They recently decided that he can call upon citizens to commit violent acts as long as he does so "officially".
Trump is absolutely going to further his control of the judicial system, and now that scotus gave him the green light, start directly addressing oathkeeper/threeper types to effectively make them his paramilitary force.
Warmongering from imperialists IS fascism. The distinction is interior core cracker delusion. What you put out will come back. Biden is actually putting people in camps and doing a genocide. I don’t get your quibbling about “white males” both are genocidal maniacs. You sound infantile to people in the global south under your boot
It’s the result of never having spent any time in the global south or any of the more oppressive countries in the global south. A lot of these predictions sound like the fantasy of a YA author. A trump victory would head the country in the wrong direction but he’s no Bukele and honestly a pretty standard Central American president. Our former president Jimmy Morales was a lot like him and there were no paramilitaries running around gunning down minorities. Instead he just made shit worse and pardoned war criminals.
What makes a fascist society so scary is how normal it all seems. It’s not going to be some big event that turns a switch on. It will be a number of small things that slowly chip away at society while you gradually just accept it as the way things are.
I grew up in Egypt and lived through the Arab spring. You live in Guatemala I believe. These Americans just will never understand and will keep thinking there’s a big fascism switch that is gonna be pressed as if it hasn’t been mashed already 100 times. We are in fascism already! This is what fascism looks like from within the center of it. They are in the comfortable eye of the storm and act like we haven’t been in the thick of it for decades already. There were US-funded fascist gangs going around extorting us, stealing our stuff, sexually assaulting women and children. They have no idea what they truly are on a visceral level.
I'm trying to sound like someone who wants your definition of fascism.
Just because both the wolves and the foxes try to eat your chickens it doesn't make them the same.
Biden is absolutely a warmonger with a higher death count but hasn't been cultivating a domestic cult of political purification after weakening what already pretty flimsy checks and balances still exist.
History has shown that external expansion comes after domestic purification so maybe Trump will still be an isolationist, which would be better for everyone not in the imperial core, who knows, but based on his playbook I'm very skeptical in that regard.
I would define fascism as Liberalism in crisis, or war-mode of Liberalism. The fighting force of the bourgeoisie.
As the American empire is a Liberal empire perpetually at war, it is and always has been a fascist empire. Neoliberalism and austerity IS fascism. They are identical things.
Then everyone since FDR has been a fascist.
The definition I'm using is a Mashup of Paxton's and Eco's and is international but tends to focus on domestic affairs first.
The violence of a colonial power initially turns inward to purify itself of political opposition and then when that stage is complete seeks to constantly expand its borders.
Biden is just focusing that violence outwards like has been done since WWII.
Trump is focusing inwards and building those nationalist cults of redemptive violence while weakening the already feeble checks on executive power.
Whether or not that's good for the third world depends entirely on if he's different irt expanding his borders once the internal purification is complete.
That's where I differ with a lot of leftists.
They take his isolationism as an unchanging known quantity.
I don't.
So suppression of communists under McCarthyism, violence against the civil rights movement, the anti war movement, BLM, etc. none of that was fascism at home? Persecution of whistle blowers like Assange, Manning, Snowden, who were reporting on illegal acts of the government wasn't fascism?
It was absolutely the stirrings, McCarthyism especially, but never congealed into a mass nationalist movement outwardly condoned by the executive branch.
Edit: you also missed cointelpro
Yeah, I meant that Trump will be worse in his second presidency compared to his first. One can only hope that the incompetency that clings to Trump continues.
Lol let me post something fresh out of them to the mega