I'm surprised Gonzalo doesn't get brought up by anticommunists more. He's a Peruvian Pol Pot. Baby boiling is such an obvious addition to the regular 100 stallilion dead vuvuzela no iphone shit.
Because ultimately the Khmer Rouge doesn’t have a successful legacy that needs debunking. We all know how successful the USSR was and how China continues to be. The capitalists need to be able to see “ok sure the commies maybe had incredible growth and improvement of living standards… but they killed a gajillion people to do it.”
Anti communists never talk about this though. As far as their education goes, Pol Pot killed billions, and then they suddenly fell off from the face of the planet.
Vietnam had the history that made me reevaluate everything. Obviously nobody is perfect, but Ho Chi Minh must have had a fucking crystal ball. Even Mao has notable fuck ups like the 3 pest campaign. But Minh never missed
There's also the fact that America put Pol Pot in power and pressured China to back him as well. Right after Vietnam ended, the Vietnamese went to liberate Cambodia. Vietnam decided to fight China and the US at the same time over this.
Pol Pot makes America look horrible. Think about it from the chud perspective, America sided with China over a genocidal dictator. Plus, a soft expansion of the Vietnam war after there was already a treaty signed
They attack the ones that succeeded in achieving revolution. They're perfectly fine with leftists following the theory that fails.
Pol Pot should be THE thing that anticommunist bring first, but their brainpan render them unable to learn more than two (2) ebil gommunists names
I’ve heard the line “communists and marxists need to answer for Pol Pot”
It was a podcast though
“communists and marxists need to answer for Pol Pot”
Answer: "This is why you need to read theory"
did that actually happen, do you know?
I don't really know much about shining path, and I tend to automatically disbelieve anything a settler colonial state like Peru or the US etc says, especially when its blood libel level outrageous.
It's something that got broken telephoned into a meme. IIRC a village lynched a local party leader and in retaliation the local cadre violently attacked the village. In the attack they threw boiling water at people, including pregnant women, and later Gonzalo made a somewhat unapologetic statement on the attack.
ok, thanks. I did just look for what happened (although internet research is ofc limited) and it looks like that claim comes from a testimony (that I can't find but is quoted, idk the origin of it) given to the commission set up by the Liberal, US educated president, and that it claims that a group of 29 people (including men, women, children) were gathered into a house and attacked with machetes, hatchets, and guns, and during and after this (i.e while alive and while dead) were sprayed with boiling water.
I get killing people with weapons, but I'm a bit confused at the purpose of the boiling water? idk if there's some utility of boiling water that I'm missing?
Since it was in retaliation for a lynching I imagine it was just cruelty on the cadres' part they thought was justified
yes, I would agree, and that was my first thought, supposing it were a true testimony - sometimes people use acid or boiling water to scar people in order to terrorise them. The part I don't get about the alleged action, is why they allegedly did it to bodies too?
Me either! Its odd.
Incidentally, the other source I could find for claims of the use of boiling water (as an execution method - reminiscent of the claims that the Uzbek leader boils his enemies), as well as other similar claims of atrocities, is from InSight Crime a non-profit think tank with offices in Washington DC, and Colombia, founded by US journalists and funded by Soros' Open Society Foundation.
I've seen allegations of involvement by the CIA, but I haven't really looked into them much. It would be around when Operation Condor was in full swing though
I think you can throw a stone in South America and find the CIA. Actually, on looking a bit further, one co-founder is a US Journalist, and the other is someone who claims to be a journalist, but has an interesting background as a British Army Officer, who apparently 'saw active service in Northern Ireland and Bosnia'.
Given how remote and rural the conflict was, and given the state of Peru's politics and history, I'm not willing to believe any of what is said about the communist party and insurrection there. I'd be a lot happier if there was corresponding testimony from the communist side (and if it weren't a crime to express support for them in Peru), but given that the trial was conducted in secret, all I ever have to go on when I do look into it ends up being western or settler-colonial government sources. Similar is true for FARC.
We have testimony from the "communist" side and it's "we dealt them a blow by annihilating 80 people there". they don't apologize or obfuscate so I don't get why you are for them
80 people, but who were those people (if that itself isn't an exaggeration ofc)?
I take it you're referring to the speech, but in that the 'victims' are referred to as combatants, so.
I'm for them because they're communists, and they're fighting against a US (and European) backed colonial government, whose ancestors genocided the people and took their land. That's enough for me, I don't feel the need to decry and condemn people resisting just because the US or a colonial government says they were bad - every side in a conflict says the other is bad, its expected.
thats certainly a claim I've read too, but then I suppose every revolutionary movement has had a conflict with local peasantry as well as the state - peasants are often co-opted to fight against such movements, and certainly landowners usually resist. From what I read about Peru, they were fighting cattle farming interests.
I was under the impression the lynching happened after the PCP had been occupying the village for months and had themselves executed several villagers.
It's been a while since I've refreshed myself on it, but I recall there being a longstanding beef between the two so that lines up.
They admitted to killing babies, and they were proven to have boiled peasants alive.
People have put two and two together, but there’s no concrete proof of boiling babies IIRC. However, the other two are damning enough without combining them
Do you have the source for those admissions and that proof by any chance? The ones I could find weren't very good.
Of course, many revolutions involve the death of children, and peasants. Obviously not a good thing, but the successful ones get upheld regardless - damned sometimes in part but not in whole.
Are the death of those children and peasants purposeful and done in cold-blooded executions? Are they added to the death count and bragged about unapologetically by the leader of the movement, saying they were "annihilated" there to "teach the enemies a lesson"?
Yes peasants and children die in wars and revolutions. But if the Red Army committed such a crime as executing a village full of peasants as collective punishment Lenin would have had them shot not bragged about it
Its difficult to find a good source, isn't it?
I don't really believe the claims made by Israel about Oct 7th either. Of course, clearly at least some 'innocents' did die in crossfire on that day. I also find it difficult to believe, on the basis of testimony alone, the claims from both sides that during the Nakba and also during the recent uprising, that children were cooked in ovens. Obviously (some few) people are capable of doing such things, but its also a very good lie to tell because it causes instinctive outrage and disgust that prevent people from investigating further - blood libel is a very old and common tactic, because it works.
I think the leader of the movement doesn't/didn't accept the tale we've been told by the Liberal settler colonial government, and by US agencies, about what happened. I don't think he was stupid, whatever else he was, and it would be a stupid thing to brag about if it happened as alleged.
It's almost certaintly made up, but it's not like that's ever stopped anticommunists.
Ah ok, thanks. I know there's a lot of dislike toward Shining Path, and like I said I don't know much - I haven't taken the time to attempt to properly investigate - but from what little I do know I don't see any particular problems, just that they were unsucessful in winning (so far).
I recall @CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml was working on a translation of a book about Gonzalo being a CIA asset from Spanish into English. I'm not sure how much progress was made on that though.
Where can I see the progress on that? I'm interested in reading it whenever it's translated.
We'll make announcements on the prolewiki twitter and lemmygrad community as it progresses!
Ah really? That's interesting - do you know who wrote the book?
but from what little I do know I don't see any particular problems, just that they were unsucessful in winning (so far).
Maybe investigate a bit further
Thanks, I will do - do you have any recommendations, especially ones not from a settler-colonist state or anticommunist source? Thats all I tend to find when I look.
I BadEmpanada might have a video on it, at least he's the first one I remember talking about how weird these gonzalo people are
yeah, to it seems like one of those things where if america or its allies commits war crimes its all ok and 'just the nature of warfare' and 'a few bad apples' but we still gotta support Da Twoops, but if foreigners do it, its a repudiation of their entire leadership, ideology, and humanity.
The leader of the movement admitting to massacring peasants and saying it was good and he would do it again does in fact repudiate his entire ideological strain that he invented
source? cuz others in this thread say thats a misinterpretation of the facts, like the dude gave a non-apology apparently more than it was condoned but idk
http://www.redsun.org/pcp_doc/pcp_0788.htm
Here is an interview where Gonzalo just outright states he murdered ~70 indigenous men, women and children in Lucanamarca village and called it “revolutionary excess”.
Of those killed by the Shining Path, eighteen were children, the youngest of whom was only six months old. Also killed were eleven women.
Why does he openly defend killing 29 indigenous women and child peasants as a good tactic? Like what the fuck?
In the face of reactionary military actions and the use of mesnadas, we responded with a devastating action: Lucanamarca. Neither they nor we have forgotten it, to be sure, because they got an answer that they didn't imagine possible. More than 80 were annihilated, that is the truth. And we say openly that there were excesses, as was analyzed in 1983. But everything in life has two aspects. Our task was to deal a devastating blow in order to put them in check, to make them understand that it was not going to be so easy. On some occasions, like that one, it was the Central Leadership itself that planned the action and gave instructions. That's how it was. In that case, the principal thing is that we dealt them a devastating blow, and we checked them and they understood that they were dealing with a different kind of people's fighters, that we weren't the same as those they had fought before. This is what they understood. The excesses are the negative aspect.
He’s talking about slaughtering peasant children to deal a “devastating blow”
Of those killed by the Shining Path, eighteen were children, the youngest of whom was only six months old.
You got a source for this part?
The interview doesn't seem quite as damning as you're making it out to be. He seems to be saying they dealt a devastating blow to the mesnadas.(which are supposedly government-run paramilitaries?)
He claims the army came in and
formed armed groups, called mesnadas
right before he says
In the face of reactionary military actions and the use of mesnadas, we responded with a devastating action
So he doesn't appear to be saying they murdered a bunch of unarmed peasants, he's saying they attacked an armed paramilitary group.
we weren't the same as those they had fought before
This also doesn't suggest unarmed peasants.
I'm not saying he's telling the truth, or that they didn't kill any innocent people. It's just far from him openly admitting they killed babies.
He seems to be saying they dealt a devastating blow to the mesnadas.
He did this by killing 29 women and children in an unrelated village? This is open revenge killing of the poorest and most oppressed in society. shameful to defend this shit. The reports actually have 69 deaths whereas Gonzalo claims 80. Basically half of the deaths were kids and random civilians? This is not how the Bolsheviks fought their revolution, nor the Chinese Communists. They didn't kill peasant children purposefully and include them in their "kill count" they "annihilated". This is bloodthirsty mania, out of control, aimed downward not at the rich.
I'm not sure it matters too much (if the events there are as presented by the commission) that there were women killed does it? A lot of the membership of the communist side were women, which possibly meant they didn't uphold 'chivalric' values (for want of a better term) in wartime.
As for indigenous, Mao of course killed a lot of indigenous Chinese in the course of his war. I'm not sure using these categories of people for moral outrage is useful for analysis, unless there's some kind of sustained genocidal campaign, which there clearly wasn't.
Children of course are usually somewhat different, but as we know the Romanov children died during that revolution, and I would be surprised if thats the only example.
I'm not defending these actions - its bad optics to do so and so you must always caveat with this - but war is always like this. I suppose all you can do is weigh the result against what it took to get there - like the Terror in France, or the purge of landlords in China.
where i come free we don't slaughter unarmed women with machetes and boiling water comrade. some say it's not their revolution if they can't dance, for me that line is slaughtering defenseless women and children especially those of the people you're supposed to be fighting on behalf of. If you fuck up and bomb an area or accidentally shoot up an orphanage or something, you don't proudly display it as a good tactic that you are unapologetic about. That's something to feel shame about that is a great crime. If your soldiers commit such crimes, they should be shot - as Lenin often did to any criminals among the reds who mistreated the people
Mao and Ho Chi Minh were part of the people. Gonzalo obviously was not if he had to resort to this sort of terror
Well no revolution is fighting on behalf of all the people is it?
You're admirably vehement in defending the official version of events, have you wondered if you might be wrong? Like, if your opinion and view of what happened aligns with the US state department (among other imperialists and colonisers, and anti-communists), what if this is another case of lies like the supposed Uyghur genocide, or the 'holodomer', or basically any of the things the US tends to say about its enemies? What about this particular case, Peru, convinces you that the US and the colonial government are correct and not lying?
Unlike the Uyghur genocide lies there’s actually corpses here. Xi also doesn’t make speeches where he talks about how much he collectively punished the Uyghurs and “annihilated” them
That's your (and the US, Peruvian colonial anti-communist gov, and European) interpretation of the speech, in accordance with the same 'sides' claims about what happened - as has been pointed out to you, but you seemingly aren't in agreement with, although you haven't mentioned why.
Corpses of course occur in every conflict - it would actually however be useful as a piece of evidence as to what happened, provided of course we can trust the investigatory body that conducted autopsies, and there was nothing suspicious about the process (like in the Oct 7th case, or Bucha). Do you have a source for such autopsies or investigations, I couldn't find one when i looked?
We do have testimony, from members of the 'terrorist'/liberation group that operates in that region (as well as poor people who understandably will take money to say whatever is asked of them), regarding the alleged Uyghur genocide, and China has discussed previously its 'security' campaign in that area, which naturally involved killings - annihilations - of combatants (as well as police action, arrests and so on). There was also allegations of 'collective punishment' via mass arrests, seperation of families. Xi is unlikely to say such things, because of his position and circumstance - it would hardly be useful to brag about the defeat of a comparatively insignificant enemy force.
Of course, in the case of the Uyghur 'genocide' we can easily say that its a nonsense, that what happened there is not as the west alleges, for various reasons - mostly that we have more evidence from a wide array of sources, including the Chinese (and local government) side of the conflict. That isn't so in the Peruvian case as I'm sure you'll acknowledge - which is why I think leftists have been persuaded more easily to take the US state department line about savage murderous barbarian enemies of all that is good and right, who were supposedly hated by the people of Peru.
Incidentally, how do you feel, given what you've said previously (about the Red Army) about the so called Katyn massacres? The Russians admitted responsibility - though not that it was a war crime - in the 90s. Personally, my view of it is that it is likely that it was the Germans, but that it was expedient or useful to 'admit' responsibility (Stalin being long gone) for Russia at the time. Further, I'd also say that even if it did happen by the Soviets, I'm fairly indifferent to it - a bunch of military, aristos, and their sympathisers getting offed in the course of a war isn't a big deal.
Which comes to the point made by the Peruvian communists, that 'human rights' and 'war crimes' are a product of Imperial and Colonial governments. This is true, thats who drew the laws up. I don't think that means that there is no moral or ethical code, but rather that a concept of human rights must be the product of all of humanity to be meaningful. For example, its considered a war crime to take hostages, as Hamas (and the Peruvian communists) did. This is absurd of course - provided the hostages are treated well I don't see a problem, hostage taking is a very effective tactic in warfare particularly against a stronger and wealthier opponent, which is why its considered illegal by strong wealthy states. Collective punishment is another example - there are obviously degrees of such, and those matter when determining justification. Mass restriction of movement, while not ideal, is hardly the same as mass indiscriminate bombing (in fact is simply what happens at borders between states every day).
As for indigenous, Mao of course killed a lot of indigenous Chinese in the course of his war. I'm not sure using these categories of people for moral outrage is useful for analysis, unless there's some kind of sustained genocidal campaign, which there clearly wasn't.
It's a much worse look since Gonzalo wasn't Indigenous but some white settler. It just reminds me of CHAZ where they made so much about CHAZ being free of the US but a couple of Black teens got murdered by white settler guards, meaning that CHAZ managed to reproduced the settler-colonial plantation of the US.
Honestly, the main takeaway from Gonzalo is that decolonization has to be the primary focus within settler colonies (Peru is a settler colony as well) and if your so-called revolutionary movement isn't decolonial, it will reproduce settler-colonialism. That's what the whole killing Indigenous peasants represented in the end. It's just a reproduction of settler-colonialism, which is inherently genocidal towards the Indigenous and Indigeneity. Towards the end, Indigenous communities began to take up arms against the PCP. You could say that those armed militia are reactionary, but to me, it's just them wanting to chase out settler crackers and I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.
its important though to seperate the 'look' from the actual circumstances. Was he anti-indigenous, did he kill indigenous Peruvians deliberately because of their ethnicity, or because some were fighting on the side of landed interests?
Lots of bolsheviks were Jewish, of course that doesn't mean that in killing Russian opponents they were carrying out an anti-Russian campaign - although that is a common rightist accusation, presumably because of how it 'looks'.
As far as I understand Peru, a lot of the rural areas have indigenous populations, partly because many fled there during the European conquest. I don't think it is possible that the resistance movement could have done what it did without the support of a large amount of indigenous people. Of course, some will have opposed the communists - the armed militia, referred to as 'peasant patrols' seem to me to be paramilitaries assisted by the state and fighting for landowners, particularly cattle ranchers.
A true revolutionary prevents cross-contamination in the kitchen by properly sanitizing anything that may have come in contact with raw meat before proceeding with the rest of the food prep
A true revolutionary washes their chicken in the sink and splashes salmonella around their kitchen
very angry yall apparently don't know how to clean your kitchen
im a marxist-bidetist
if you're not washing your ass you're just another agent of capitalism
Jordan Peterson: you aren't allowed to have a political opinion until you clean your room.
Me, a Marxist-Bidetist: you aren't allowed to have a political opinion until you clean your butthole.
I tend to reject gatekeeping, but this is one gate I think we should keep around.
Hot take: I have been in a few leftist org meetings where it felt like there were a number of members who could have benefited from some personal hygiene lessons.
Yeah, I've experienced this as of late too. I don't think it's classist to require folks to have proper hygiene, even if it'd be embarrassing to enforce, I don't want to go down the "respectability" pipeline but if you smell like shit and you don't have a good excuse what the fuck are you doing.
and you don't have a good excuse
this is the important consideration
Frankly in my experience their excuse was mental health. Respectfully, if you're in that position, you shouldn't be organizing unless you have a real strategic reason to do so; you should be getting help from friends, comrades, and loved ones.
Edit: and I realize this sounds exclusionary, and that when you're in that bad of a place it's hard if not impossible to get friends and help. But you should focus on that before you ought to focus on trying to bring about whatever ideas you've got in your head. This is directed at real life people I've had to deal with, if that's you I hope you got the help you needed.
How ripe we talking: local Friday Night Magic? Anime con? Melee tournament?
The western leftist need for moral purity in their political strain that serves as little more than a religious effigy. Because we're so far from actually gaining any sort of power as a communist in the imperial core, people attracted to communism right now basically just have the "at least I'm on the right side of history" as one of the few benefits of becoming a communist. And if you're going to be on the right side of history, you want to be on the most right side of history.
Many western leftists see politics as a personal quest for atonement and personal virtue, and have little concern for things like pragmatism or seizing power. In fact, doing those things would sully their general utopian purity by marring it with specific pragmatic actions and imperfect policies
Babies are pure reactionary id. Only through studying marxism can you not become counter-revolutionary.
Those little kinder kulaks and their comprador mothers, hording the Pokemon Trading Cards from me at the Target... Just because I wish to resell them at a profit, marxistly.
While the Peruvian revolution failed, the PCP (CPP is usually Communist Party of Philippines) are notably the one of the only communist parties to have successfully organized and waged a people's war after the 80s (the only other one I can think of is Nepal, who were MLMaoists themselves) and deserves to be studied in the spirit of scientific socialism.
There's a current among Maoists of elevating the PCP and Gonzalo in particular above any of the other active Maoist movements in what's referred as "Gonzaloism". Gonzalo himself has an arguably important place within communist history, but I would not say he's of the particular importance of Marx, Lenin, or Mao like Gonzaloist adherents claim.
I'm not sure you understand scientific socialism then. The scientific part requires communists to apply dialectical and historical materialism to improve their revolutionary methods. If you only look at the successes you don't see what not to do or patterns of failure your movement might be falling into.
What you're saying is tautological, why bother attempting any revolution if there's a chance of failure? Surely living under oppressive bourgeois and semi-feudal regimes is acceptable if you can't guarantee you'll win, right?
You're 100% correct about assessing the conditions and the gravity of guerilla warfare, but I don't think any of the extant maoist movements have made presumptions about their progress. The Naxals and CPP-NPA didn't launch their PPWs on a whim and while there's discussions to be had about the length of their PPWs the fact they haven't lost yet is notable when you compare them to how the PCP waned after Gonzalo's arrest. Even the underground group behind Austin Red Guard never had delusions that they were ready to launch a people's war.
Cuba, Vietnam, and Korea were/are not MLMaoist because MLM did not exist at the time and they don't identify as such now, so Maoists don't claim them when discussing the international Maoist movement. That's why the PCP, CPP, CPN, CPI(m), TKP/ML, etc gets brought up as common examples, because those are parties that directly contributed to the development of MLM and have adopted it as their ideology. Also Maoism is more than just PPW (and even that is still in debate), so Cuba, Vietnam, Korea, etc are all contextualized as part of the MLM continuity, but not as examples of the ideology which evolved after them.
The average Maoist is not an 18 year old white college student, they are from the third world of various ages and backgrounds. I think it's extremely dismissive of ongoing communist movements to call them romanticist and idealizing struggle after stating how heavily revolution weighs on you while people are choosing to continue their revolutions. If you're talking about your perception of western Maoists, sure, there's probably a fair number of MLM romanticists same as there are in anarchist and ML circles. I don't think it's fair to tar one particular tendency with something that's symptomatic of all western leftists to some degree.
In science you use a null hypothesis to determine like, is the thing I'm proposing even worth doing? Is my hypothesis completely wrong?
To give an example because my plain-english attempts to explain stuff are usually cruddy: I see two doors, 🚪A and 🚪B. One door, 🚪A is of average width and height and the other, 🚪B is about 2/3rd's the height, same width.
People walk through the 🚪doors, I look and think I see a pattern. What I think is that people who are tall, will not go through 🚪B, why? Yeah maybe because tall people really really don't like it. Maybe they are entitled since they are generally viewed favourable in terms of dating on average at least. Maybe tall people just don't see the 🚪B, they only see things at a certain height.
Really I know it's physically possible, I just need to start somewhere, so I put people into two bins, tall and not-tall. I count 100 people walking through the 🚪doors and my null hypothesis, is something I can be confident in saying is not true. Like the opposite of what I want. My null hypothesis then is that no tall people go through 🚪B
Ok let's look at the data to see if we can reject my null hypothesis or not. Excuse the table formatting
🚪A 🚪B Tall: 46 3 Not-Tall: 37 14Oh wow look at that! Ok now I can move on to my real question, which is, do people who are tall like to go through 🚪doors which are of lower height? This is much harder. Maybe I'll say if there is a preference of like 90%, so 90% of tall people go through regular height 🚪doors that means that they don't like going through shorter height 🚪doors. I also need to know how many people generally like to go through 🚪doors of shorter height. Because if tall people prefer regular 🚪doors as much as non-tall people, then height of the individual, tall or not, would not play a role in the difference.
Since I was able to eliminate the idea that tall people do not go through shorter 🚪doors, I can move on to other questions which depend on the initial null hypothesis to be false. Because, why waste time if our hunches or guesses (i.e our _hypotheses) are not on the right track?
Ok, does this relate. I'm skipping stuff for brevity, and I think you can still get it bcuz of scientific socialism & all that goodness. These 'failures' can tell us what not to do. And more importantly, these 'failures' failed in a specific way! Why that specific way? Because the overall 'failure' is the result of a ton of smaller 'failures' and 'successes' and we will say stuff that didn't really affect anything. Did the weather during a specific guerrilla attack lead to the end failure? Did a comrade in a mid-level position decrease the fighting power of the fighters? Are guerrilla tactics different in the 80s (I think it was the 80s?) and because tactics from the civil war in China were used, that was what ultimately led to failure?
The thing is there is likely some useful information. You're not wrong when you say it is a failure and thus not worth studying or that there is no point considering it. And others with different knowledge may find something useful. The trick is–you cannot know until you try. Because a presumption or prediction is a model, or something in your head. And as dialectical materialists we must accept that what is in our head is not the same as the external world, i.e. the stuff _outside of our head.
Again it's not that you are wrong; it's only, that is a difficult, perhaps impossible thing to know without actually putting in the work and effort.
One other way, think of these as experiments, not all experiments succeed, and why they fail helps you figure out how to run the experiment next time.
Speaking purely personally, "the most advanced form of scientific socialism" is because this is the main tendency attempting to grapple with failures of past and present communist movements (including it's own). Most of the time I get in conversations with MLs about these MLM parties, especially the ones involved in armed struggles, there's often heavy resistance to paying them any sort of mind or any because the PCP lost or the CPP haven't won yet or the CPI(m) call China imperialist. I just want some comradely critical analysis instead of "Gonzalo personally ate one million babies, checkmate ultra" 😔
well, we at least ought to study them to see what went wrong and why they thought it would work
I think Ansarallah in Yemen is more socialist and revolutionary in character than either of those. Same with Hezbollah and the axis of resistance writ large
You just said “for the region”. Yemen used to be communist and split like Korea. They collapsed with the USSR. Nowadays the Shia population is very progressive and non-sectarian “for the region” much like Hezbollah. Much of the socialist base remains.
Basically everyone that was in the South was driven out during the civil war, it's all mixed up now. You can't think in fixed geographic borders, ideas and people were shattered and scattered about
I've not really investigated the socialist character of Yemen, so I can't speak on that. The PCP, CPP, and CPN did/are waging active people's wars so I'm not sure it's worth comparing how revolutionary they are when that's a common feature. I'm not aware of Hezbollah having any socialist stances either, is that a historical thing or has there been some shift?
There are good Maoist groups, like the guerillas in the Philippines or India (whatever might be said of the inefficacy of the latter), but it seems like all the worst groups that claim ML heritage all call themselves Maoist, including several different cults in the US (Austin Red Guard, Black Hammer, and Avakian's cult)
How do you feel about the Palestinian resistance groups, and their strategies? Failed, stalled, indeterminate after nearly 100 years? Are there better strategies that they're opting not to take, given the circumstances?
You could have said this before October 7th but it’s absurd to argue the Palestinian resistance is stalled or doomed now. The entire region is moving into revolutionary and de-colonial footing and movement is happening to destroy Israel. The axis of resistance is extremely pragmatic and non-utopian, so critiques of MLMs don’t apply here
Ansarallah (Houthis), Hezbollah, Iraqi resistance, Syria and Iran are boiling the frog. The axis of resistance is past the point of no return and they will not let off the pressure until the Palestinian question is resolved. They are receiving military support from Russia and DPRK and diplomatic support from China.
The west can do nothing against this Eurasian superbloc. They will have to fold and withdraw from the region, leaving Israel isolated and alone. Israel will make desperate moves like invading Lebanon that will result in their eventual downfall.
Yea the nukes are a concern but they always have been. Give nuclear weapons to genocidal fascists and it’s never going to end well
So the options are: Take down Israel and risk a nuclear incident, or stand by and let Israel genocide Palestine and then spread throughout the Levant into Greater Israel, absorbing Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. Let them become the next USA of the Middle East, genociding and colonizing with the backing of the US keeping the hegemonic empire alive.
The axis of resistance is choosing option 1, and hopefully allah will be with them
If Israel started to lose what's to stop them from using nukes?
Absolutely nothing. But at the end of the day, you have to have the audacity to risk it all for the sake of freedom. As Mao said, "dare to struggle, dare to win."
Well conservative Islam seems to have worked for the Taliban. I think its more that national liberation movements align themselves with what will gain them the most or the best foriegn and domestic support.
What options would you say Peru had but didn't take? Castillo dressed up like a western cowboy but that still wasn't good enough - do you think those recent events vindicate somewhat the armed struggle?
I doubt the communists there were completely alienated from the people, or else the conflict would have been over very fast - in fact it is still ongoing. Its difficult to assess however, being illegal to show support for them there.
Armed struggle occurs between class enemies, once you have the majority of the working class and (if it exists) peasantry on your side. If you are fighting a de-colonizing war or anti-imperialist war, then you may also need the national bourgeoisie in a temporary alliance against comprador classes and imperialists. It's a war, of the masses. Socialists do not support all armed struggle just because it's armed and a struggle. It's often adventurism, it's often intellectual and disconnected from the masses and the working classes. That is not the phase of active armed warfare, and if you do start to have armed cells of socialists struggling it should be against the state, the bourgeoise and fascists, not against peasantry and other left factions. That's the difference with the path of the Shining Path, it's ultraleftist and doomed because it's minoritarian and elitist. It never had the broad support of the people, it waged terrorism and adventurism and actually attacked all other factions.
Compare that to the red army. The broad coalitions of all the socialists. The peasantry's support of Mao or of Ho Chi Minh or Fidel.
Perhaps - personally, I support many independence movements even if they're not socialist or communist, because often its impossible to progress while occupied or colonised, so its a necessary first step. Afghanistan is a good example of this - its objectively better having the Taliban back in control than the US occupation and their pet warlords.
I see what you mean in a strategic sense - its not a good idea to fight against too many opponents at once. I'm not sure that Shining Path did attack those who they should have allied with however - all the sources I can find are dubious, and I wasn't there, so I can't really make a good judgement about who did what and the types of people they are alleged to have killed, only apply the usual rubric that if the US says one thing about communists, the opposite is probably the case.
From what I've read, it seems like they did have a lot of support (and what they did achieve would be frankly impossible without that). The difference I can see between them and the Maoist case, is that Peru wasn't being occupied by another power at the time, and the urban centres didn't like them so much (except in the very poor areas). But then Peru isn't/wasn't particularly industrialised, being a resource extraction colony, so I wonder if there was even a significant urban proletariat to really bother trying with.
If there isn’t an urban proletariat, and you don’t have support of the peasant class, then what are you even doing playing at a “revolution”? It’s unserious adventurism that gets people killed with no hope of victory.
I don't think there is anything 'unserious' about an armed conflict with a state, and I don't think you can be serious about portraying it that way - its a flippant thing to say.
Again, I don't think its true that they didn't have support from the peasants. Certainly that's been claimed by the anti-communists, but they always say that about their enemies.
I don't think conflicts occur on somebody's whims, there is always a reason. A long (and ongoing) conflict of this kind could not have occured without there being a good reason for it, and also a possibility of victory.
This might be bumping against the sectarianism rules, but what is with people (in the west) who call themselves MLMs or Maoists?
It's like declaring "I'm useless in my local context"
maybe they (in the west) yearn to be in a position to do more than they're able or is wise to do in their circumstances. Some people are desperate or eager and impetuous and don't have much faith in, or find their circumstances too pressing for a slow approach the fruits of which they'll never personally see, the Unionise/organise/electoralism/protest stuff that has also of course manifestly failed in the west.
it'll come down to armed conflict in the end, there's no other way, so I guess some people just kind of jump the gun.
I have a part Peruvian friend. He's definitely left wing like Che and Fidel, but when we saw some pro Gonzalo graffiti, he was like wtf?
I wonder what his reaction would be if he saw that protest on an American campus where white leftists were chanting about how good Gonzalo is a couple years ago
Idk. They tried to organize another friend of ours work place through vibes. They said just to make a speech in front of the store and workers would join.
Libs walking around with their noses got, unwiped shit in their pants, and morning breath that could smoke out a beehive
Bow down to their calculating rationality
A pasta of the caliber only the type of pasta chef that has its own Italian name, use exclusively by interviewes in over produced youtube videos make.
serious question: what did Gonzalo write? I keep seeing maoists telling people to read Gonzalo, but I literally cannot find a single thing this man wrote
that's actually a good point. People complain about baby boiling, but what if those babies grew up to become hitler?
I don't particularly recommend reading the work of the baby soup guy, but here you go
Usually they mean read Collected Works of the Communist Party of Peru, General Line of PCP, or interview with Gonzalo. Think there's some stuff directly attributed to him that's mostly based on expanding Mariategui.
Fun fact, nobody in history ever had a sense of humor or had sex or really did anything other than what you heard about in public school.
As we all know, one flaw of the Bolshevik revolution was that they all shit their pants constantly, Mao corrected this and furthered the immortal science of Marxism.
Maybe if the fascists read his works, they wouldn't smell like shit
