Good article by a Pakistani Socialist, which talked about Imran Khan signing with IMF, social conservatism, repression of trade union and farmer groups and military backing to stay in power.
Big disappointment for the 0% that thought that Pakistan had a principled socialist as a PM.
Baffling why people are dismissing this article. Lot of what's being said is backed up by what other leftists in Pakistan have been saying for years about IK, from what I've read on the subject.
The biggest issue is where does Pakistan go from here? The army remains second to none, and that isn't set to change anytime soon. IK was not good, but Pakistan has had much worse leaders.
Without a concrete agenda for challenging neoliberalism and for redistribution of wealth, talk of foreign conspiracies can lead to delusional thinking manufactured by socially regressive forces in order to avoid discussions on internal contradictions.
This is a salient point in a vacuum, but it would seem to me that foreign conspiracies are pretty much part and parcel of what has largely been a unipolar US hegemony since the USSR fell. I think those would also be part of the internal contradictions of any country, especially one that is of strategic interest to the US. Maybe three letter agencies didn't get involved in this instance, but the US has clearly been unhappy with IK for some time now. Maybe I'm mistaken, but this seems idealistic to me.
The author seems fine. The topics of his other articles are good, his organization seems fine. The article seems fine. I don't think I've seen evidence that the allegation is true outside of the email.
This post is declared good.
no shade to the author but I really do not trust Jacobin's foreign policy so I'm going to take this with a grain of salt
Ya, I trust them about as much as the NYT at this point
Which is to say not at all
yep interesting headline, and I was gonna click to have a read, but once saw it's jacobin, I said nah
Jacobin have both good and bad articles depending on the writers and just dismissing it out of hand is ehh :shrug-outta-hecks:
It's like the WSWS, you know the topics that they'll have bad takes on, and you can get some good analysis from them without having to throw your monitor across the room.
ITT: The virgin "I read the article and it makes fair points" vs. the chad "Jacobin is an imperialist mouthpiece, i'm not reading this shit"
BTW i haven't read it so i don't know which way Khan went but Assad isn't a communist dream leader either and that's not why he is considered an "anti-imperialist hero" but because he's helping to build an anti US-hegemony bloc. So, umm, you know, critical support.
:shrug-outta-hecks: critical support but the "critical" part is silent is the vibe I'm getting from the people who dismiss this article without even reading it tho
Damn, well I guess if Jacobin says I shouldn't sympathize with a brown democratically elected leader being ousted by the US because they don't pass purity tests...
The writer is a brown, on the ground Pakistani socialist, so it's better to just see what they have to say instead of hand-wave it away as being from Jacobin.
I've completely given up on anything published by any western media outlet, including all the supposedly "leftist" ones, and I do not give a single shit about who wrote it
Yes, they do occasionally report the truth, but who the fuck cares
They all serve the reaction
Sure, Jacobin should be treated as an unreliable source and you should verify their shit before you believe it, but this r/politics-esque attitude of "no I didn't read the article, now here's my opinion on it" just causes conflict. If a comrade shares an article in good faith, it's usually worth reading it so that you can then respond in good faith. If an article is bad, tell them why it's bad.
I'm brown, I read the article, I give you all permission to dunk on it, it's trash
Unfortunately, the forces of the status quo in Pakistan that have replaced Khan represent a moribund social structure that continues to exploit the public, suspending politics between uninspiring democrats and an insurgent authoritarianism.
The author buries the actual fucking point most people have made concerning this coup to instead construct a phantom group of "neoliberal populist anti-imperialist nationalists" who leftists somewhere apparently sympathize with
The rest of the article is made up of tedious truisms like "Anti-imperialism must remain at the core of progressive politics to reimagine a strong global left" (thank you captain obvious) and wikipedia grade history paragraphs of Khan (you won't believe it)......doing capitalism! dun dun dun :shocked-pikachu:
Triangulating, liberal comforting hack work you could have gotten out of a graduate pol-sci student, typical Jacobin
Just throwing things but i am pretty sure that the " “neoliberal populist anti-imperialist nationalists” who leftists somewhere apparently sympathize with" is supposed to mean Assad.
There are brown, on the ground Pakistani socialists who support Khan, Jacobin chooses to print what serves their line :chomsky-yes-honey:
I mean the current PM is also democratically elected. If you're aware of parliamentary system, Imran khan was running a "minority govt", his party didn't get full majority so a couple of small parties supported him to form govt. Now those parties shifted their support to Shahbaz Sharif
The result is that populists who accept neoliberalism as their economic principle equate anti-imperialism with authoritarian nationalism, disregard for civil liberties, controlling women’s bodies, and repressing minorities. In other words, we are left with a neoliberalism without civil liberties, and anti-imperialism without a vision of emancipation.
Who does this even describe? Neoliberal populists who are also "anti-imperialists"???? These people don't exist anywhere in numbers large enough to hold power
Jacobin article arguing about phantom "anti-imperialists" while also implying its good the US overthrew the Pakistani government
Ok the US approved government isn't going to be better and the disruption caused by power struggles will only hit the working class, if the author wants real anti-imperialists to take power maybe he should recognize the basic fact that independent dictators are easier to overthrow than the client dictators of a superpower
Reminds me of when Egyptian liberals were celebrating the overthrow of Morsi while studiously ignoring who the fuck was actually doing the overthrowing
Westerners talking over asians to prove how "based" they are on asian issues
The article is literally written by a Pakistani socialist.
Ammar is good. Does really good praxis with his hkm movement. He's right on the money here
