Image is of German farmers blocking the road near the Brandenburg Gate in early January 2024.
The ruling German coalition - the FDP, the SPD, and the Greens - has been in dire straits since the war in Ukraine began due to their steadfast commitment to destroying their country as much as possible in solidarity with Ukraine destroying themselves too. Scholz is deeply unpopular, with a record low approval of 20%, and his party's approval is even lower.
The German left has been entirely unable to take advantage of this situation, with Die Linke fragmenting due to split opinions on what position they should hold on Ukraine, among other issues. As a result, the major conservative party, the CDU, has gained a lot of voters over the past couple years. Most worrying, however, is the gains that the fascist party, the AfD, has made - from 10% in 2021 all the way to ~20% today. A significant chunk of the vote is likely protest votes due to the lack of an alternative, but a vote for fascists makes you a fascist nonetheless.
Recent controversies with the AfD - including an allegation that they held a secret meeting discussing a plan to mass-deport millions of migrants in an obvious parallel to Nazi meetings planning to remove all Jews from the country - has recently slightly damped approval for the AfD. This meeting generated counter-protests and condemnation from many Germans. It was later revealed that the meeting might not really have happened as alleged, but it doesn't actually matter, because the AfD's stance is being increasingly reflected by the ruling coalition, who recently introduced a bill allowing faster deportations of rejected asylum seekers and significant new powers for authorities in that regard, including potentially the criminalization of sea rescue organizations and imprisonment for aid workers.
The German government is increasingly considering banning the AfD, with their anxiety and motivation to do so rising as the AfD maintains and improves its position as Germany heads towards elections in late 2025. There are intermediate steps that could be done, such as revoking state funding, but if that doesn't work, then the party might well be banned. While I will never argue with fascist parties being banned, this probably won't fix anything, as the underlying economic and social conditions that are fueling these electoral shifts in the first place are not improving. Germany, the largest industrial power in Europe, is mired in a recession, particularly a manufacturing recession, from which there appears to be no escape. It has so far carefully shepherded its natural gas resources to keep the population as mollified as possible, but this has come at the expense of industry. In a trend starting from July 2022, manufacturing PMIs are still well below 50, reaching 45.5 in January 2024, which indicates decline. I suppose if you wanted to look on the bright side, it's better than it was in July 2023, where it was a whopping 38.8, so the rate of decline is becoming a little slower.
And this is just the domestic stuff. Germany has also famously sided with Israel to support them during the ICJ genocide case, has kowtowed to Netanyahu as they bond over being Genocide Experts, and maintains its support of Ukraine, continuing to send military gear and money to be converted to scrap metal by Russian artillery - rather than spending money on doing anything about the cost of living. In the face of a historic economic downturn, it has only more fervently stated its desire to remain militarily opposed to Russia for decades.
The Country of the Week is Germany! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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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.
Rojava has always been a weird situation to me. As an American I know it's the fault of the US that the middle east is in the situation it is in. Hell, would even ISIS be a thing without US support? Would feel pretty gross hating any Arabs from my position, but even before I knew much about it I found it funny that Rojava seemed to be the "safe" group for Americans to like. People who would never say a word about Ansarallah or Hezbollah would praise or go support Rojava and there wasn't massive media push to slander it, it even seemed like the mainstream news was oddly positive about it. That always struck me as suspicious, but still i could see why it was compelling. I hope the individuals on the ground with good intentions can make it out okay whatever the outcome and everything works out great for everyone and the Daesh get deradicalized and Nasser comes back from the dead and they remake the United Arab Republic and the US is too busy civil warring with Texas to do anything about it.
I always felt it was weird how, for the past 50 years or so, every secular, left of center, and socialist force in the middle east was massacred by NATO and it's proxies. And then you had US generals supporting the PKK and telling it to rebrand into the SDF. Neither of these things never seem to feature in conversations about how Rojava is an anarchist experiment that is to be supported.
its totally not a psyop when america has been murdering every leftist movement for a century but then starts singing 'mother anarchy loves her sons' when an anarchist commune happens to sit on an oil field and fight their war against syrians
It's not that difficult, TBH. The U.S. will opportunistically support even secular, leftist groups if it is convenient for it at the time. The U.S. wanted to take credit for defeating Daesh when it was absolutely incapable of achieving that itself, and was happy to support a revolutionary group which opposed Assad (well, somewhat opposed him; what a shock that U.S. "support" of Rojava also fell off pretty abruptly every time Rojava actually made deals with the Assad government, however tense those deals were). Literally everyone—including and especially the Kurds in Rojava—knew that was the limit of the support they'd get from the U.S. And surprise, surprise: the U.S. was happy to give Turkey the green light to go after Rojava in any context where it didn't affect the U.S.'s own aims.
Hexbear MLs are honestly far too willing to trash any actual leftist unity/solidarity the instant there's conflict between actual leftists and governments which the U.S. empire wants to do away with, which they are far too quick to develop a parasocial relationship with like the most devout of Vaush fans. I think it's amazing how quickly the "critical" in folks' so-called "critical support" drops away.
That's an euphemistic way of describing what NATO did to Libya, and what it still wants to do in Syria.
Of course the Turkish proxies in Afrin and US proxies with the SDF/PKK have a ton of reasons not to trust the Assad government. Dismantling them outright is just the means of causing another migration crisis in Turkey, which in turn is likely to end with sectarian riots at some point.
At the end of the day however what we have is a country invaded in parallel by two NATO powers. This is not sustainable either, especially given that it's cover for NATO to support Israel, invite war with Iran and steal syrian oil. The longer this continues the more resentment is gona be bred over this issue.
No euphemisms intended, I assure you. Honestly sorry if it came across that way. I have no sympathy for imperial maneuvering and the atrocities it continually produces. Genocide and enslavement and every other horror we can mention are never surprises in the outcomes of U.S. actions.
Who gon' tell him
Lmao.
I still remember when it was pointed out that Afghanistan was not part of the Middle East and not Arab on Hexbear and a bunch of people showed their ignorance.
I don't think geography is taught in American schools anymore. Though maybe this quotation is still part of the jingoistic curriculum:
Damn, see this is why I don't have opinions. I don't know crap about shit.
It's fine for a person to not know something, it's impossible to know everything and teach everything, but there's no excuse for talking before knowing something as basic as why a region wants autonomy
What IS Afghanistan then?
Central and Southern Asian
Oh cool
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Nah what the hell happened over here.
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but muh oil puppets with leftist flavor
The usual cracker suspects showed up
That's because Ansarallah and Hizbollah are religious fundamentalist patriarchal organizations. Critical support for their struggle against US influence, sure, but they're still right wing movements. PKK on the other hand is an old but very dynamic hard leftist organization. Their goal is to crate a liberated, multi-ethnic international communist region, has been for a while now. They've been struggling against a genocidal state in Turkey for decades and still thrive.
They're the underdog that took an opportunity to create the first version of that region in Rojava, not even fighting the central government but filling a power vacuum that otherwise would have been (and in other parts of the country has been) filled by religious extremists. ISIS brought the war to Rojava, which was quite convenient for the US because desperate people don't ask where their weapons come from as long as they can stop an existential threat.
Rojava still is a beacon of hope for people in northern Syria, eastern Turkey, and the rest of Kurdistan. It has seen amazing cooperation between ethnic groups that clash in other parts of Syria, not to mention communist grass roots organization (as in communal soviets), women's liberation, and an end to persecution for Kurds.
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nice effort post
Kurdish and many other communists in Syria bled and died to stop US-backed ISIS under the flag of Rojava and here you are celebrating the co-option and demise of their project, fuck you. Your logic is the exact same as somebody who would celebrate the collapse of the USSR because they backed zionism throughout their history. You reveal yourself as nothing but a shameless, useless campist.
How about the syrian communities bleeding and dying to stop the current US-backed force in the region?
they're heroes. what about the majority of the SDF which has not fought against the SAA since their foundation and now works with the Syrian government in the vast majority of territories they hold? The US is squatting in the corner of the country on some oil fields, you're acting like all of NES is the fucking Green Zone
I am only glad we agree that all heroes fighting against this occupation and seizure of syrian national resources should be supported.
Is the situation complex? Yes, but considering that NATO has destroyed and occupied several countries in the region I don't think people here will develop a high opinion of US proxies - be they in Yemen, Syria, Libya or Iraq.
Lines were drawn in the sand when the western world led a decades long campaign to occupy and immiserate the middle east. Some in the region saw their fortunes in supporting that campaign. Far too many on the other side of the equation have been martyred already.
why didn't you mention the SDF are US-backed too? 🤭
all of you love to talk about how the kurds apparently single handedly defeated ISIS (lmao) but none want to talk about the ongoing occupation that they continue to facilitate. that they serve American empire really fucks with your narrative habibi
hoes mad, but it doesn't matter anyways. the axis of resistance is coming for the Zionist and American proxies in the region even if you don't want it, cope and seethe about it lmao (or call me more ableist slurs, up to you)
They're backing them against the turkish soooo hard.
how ? 50 Mraps and a rusty AK ? What did US do for them ? They dont even stop erdogan from bombing them daily with bayraktars ..note even the airspace they close and now they just toss them away like it was allways was clear they do ..
And because! everybody knew that they gona get thrown to the Wolfs .. all the US Support they got post ISIS was like 50 Mraps and a Rusty Ak ..
So you kind of Base your Hole opinion on Rojava on the Fact that they had "US Support" , which is wrong , they never actually had it..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Olive_Branch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Turkish_offensive_into_north-eastern_Syria
Boots on the ground, arms, funding, air support and propaganda. US support for them is not really a controversial thing. It's clear cut policy. The discussion at this point in Washington is wether a) US support is ultimately serving to strengthen Erdogan's base; and b) causing NATO's 'middle east bulwark' to rapproach with Syria and Russia. But the ultimate object in the middle east is to keep countries from stabilizing and to 'contain' russian and iranian influence. So in that respect the policy is working.
What makes this controversial in the minds of some in the West is that at one point in the timeline Turkey and NATO were partners in Project Assad, and the US didn't really want to help the kurdish militias fight ISIS. But that whole thing changed early into the Syrian War, when the Turks failed to keep their oil back deals with ISIS a secret. The ensuing propaganda push turned the Turks into a third faction in the Syrian War, and re-aligned the local kurds with the US military. Now the kurdish units there exist solely as part of a forever war project to further destabilize Syria and Iraq.
Now they exist there because of their Rovaja Project and for their dream of Selfdetermination in a Kurdish State ! Open a Window ! you do the same thing as the guy before .. you all subsize everything under "US support"
Do you really think Rovaja is a US Idea ? The Kurds never would have wanted that ?
Its Just as Stupid as calling Houthis or Hezbollah "Iranian Proxies" .. no they have agency ..
who are YOU to Judge it Frodo ?
that doesn't mean they're not a US proxy? ISIS are literally bombed by the US and they remain a US proxy
all your reasoning comes from "US did" / "US Supports" like thats the scale .. but its the wrongest of al frames for the Clusterfuck that is the Syria war...
Should they have refused "US airsupport - No! we rather die ? , Sorry Kobani !" ... what will @italktothewind@hexbear.net ...
hexbear is not sending our best no it isnt
?
there it is, all ya had to do
if i woulnt have give you a NATO Stooge (yeah it was a trap) .. you would have never known if it happend ? How can one Miss 2 Invasions and Still consier themselfs Ilustious enough to Cast Judgements anyway ?
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oh so because its on wikipedia .. turkisch invasions just didnt happen... well got me there , if thats how it works ... Damn what a Psy Op i fell for !
tell me the go to source then ?
its not that hard to find literally any other source for it besides NATOpedia
happy ?
What is "my narrative"? that it sucks when decent organisations with strong links to legitimately revolutionary orgs such as the PKK get co-opted and end up serving the interests of the American empire as a result of having to fight against US-backed ISIS and other western-backed Jihadists? what should the YPG have done differently, in your eyes, that would exonerate them for the crime of having to defend their homes from Jihadist barbarism because the legitimate government of Syria totally withdrew from the region when the war kicked off?
Are you even aware of that - the fact that the SAA totally pulled out of NE Syria in the early part of the war, leaving the locals to fend for themselves against US-backed Jihadism? What course of action should they have taken that would have preserved their lives and their homes while not also creating opportunity for the US empire to insert itself and then refuse to leave? Should they have been putting out principled statements against both ISIS and the US while they were beseiged in Kobani?
?????? is "campist" ableist or something???
I saw the comment you deleted, don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about
I deleted it because I realised it was the same person I was responding to twice. I don't remember exactly what I wrote - might have called you a dumbass or something? Which I would stand by, and is not ableist at all, unless you're suggesting that only disabled people have low intellect?
no you called me a freak which yes is ableist
im just going to go ahead and disengage, please do the same
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I don't know who that is. if he fought for America he is bad, yes
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Cheering for helping turkish genocide lol
Iraqis and Syrians killing American proxies is Turkish genocide folks
ok, we could do the thing where we hurl insults at eachother, but genuine question, why is Rojava different? the decades of history of the CIA and US carving up poor countries to make weaker and more easily exploitable states.
and the centuries of history of the west (Britain and France in particular) generally doing that to this very region. to heighten sectarian conflict. why is Rojava different? why should I support the partitioning of an already close to collapse country, especially when they literally host empire and give empire aforementioned countries' resources?
Turkish killing kurds, something they have been doing for a very long time is, yes, genocide, and you are cheering for it.
The struggle for an independent kurdistan started way before the US said let's steal Syrian oil. They didn't give a fuck about Rojava before, they don't give a fuck about Rojava now (they just gave shiny f15s to Erdogan he can bomb them with). Y'all are screaming compradors to a people struggling for survival who took the best choice for their survival (which is a bad one, but asserting that Assad would've defended them is laughable).
it wasn't turks? did you read the link?
I read the link yes. That's why i said "helping" Turkish genocide.
I see your point but you could probably make it without needlessly insulting @DivineChaos100
ok, I removed the insult
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This Crapdance is really uncalled for .. like what the Fuck ... ?
Do you you have just 2 colours in your Palette ?
okay, I will make it something less inflammatory
idk what you mean
is Rojava Bad because "America Bad" and they where Alinged ? Like Do you just have this Colour in your Colour Palette , so you simply can not draw better pictures of the World ?
Didn't ypg or someone make some overtures to assad like 5 years ago, what happened to that?
And also end of rojava is nothing good, jesus christ mate
There is an existing working relationship between the SDF and the Syrian government to some extent. The SDF actually sell a lot (if not most) of the oil it controls to the Syrian govermment, although quite a bit of it does go out of the country. They have collaborated in the past on tackling ISIS. There have been some reports recently that the US is considering a plan to "encourage" the SDF to ally with the Syrian government against ISIS again.
The whole conflict is very convoluted in a way that makes it harder to discuss, even here. I think a lot of people forget that the US was backing 2-3 different sides originally in this civil war, with the CIA backing 1-2 sides (depending on whether or not you want to argue that FSA and ISIS were actually the same or separate entities) and the Pentagon backing the Kurds/SDF. There's a lot of "sometimes allies, sometimes enemies" in the conflict.
Yeah come on folks we made a graph for this.
I'm gonna be honest, everyone in this comment thread got really hot, otherwise I would normally assume this is just a joke.
In case this isn't, I wasn't saying "it's complicated". When I say "It's convoluted", what I mean is that the sides are a bit less straightforward compared to Ukraine or Gaza. For instance, the US backing the SDF, but the SDF also being attacked by US ally Turkey.
Sorry, I was just trying to make a joke.
No worries, I figured you were. I wanted to clarify, just in case, since other people got so heated lol.
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🖤🇸🇾🤭
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white hexbears: 'oh my god my us backed proxy won but turned out to continue being a us backed proxy and morphed into a fascist aparthied state who could have predicted this'
@Al_Sham@hexbear.net who was telling them the whole time:
lol those are Barzani Kurds. Erdogan allies. Go educate yourself
30%+ of Israel's oil imports in the last couple of years have been Kurdish oil from Iraq (which includes Syrian oil thats exported to Iraqi Kurdistan from the US-SDF controlled oil fields in Syria)
Begone lib