Links and Stuff
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Yesterday's discussion post.
Dealing with socially conservative communists - such as those in Russia, who remember that they were better off under communism but don't really understand exactly why and therefore fall for weird traps like "the gays dunnit!", or China, though that's improving over time I feel - is always a bit frustrating for that reason. Zizek isn't that bad (I think - I don't know what his exact takes are on most social issues but the use of "political correctness" there is setting off alarm bells) but still, same overall group of people.
Zizek isn't really conservative. He's anti-racist and pretty sexually liberal (to a weird degree), which gives him the ideological freedom to point out any and all capitalist offenses against minorities and colonized peoples with materialist clarity regarding the realpolitik behind those decisions. I will concede that he has old manisms regarding queerness, intersectionality, and nonbinary identities, but he is definitely in the pro-gay-rights camp and throws shade at Western govts over it frequently.
But for some reason his works accept mainstream narratives of AES atrocities and so he tends to view historical movements as abject failures right out the gate. He and Badiou both play off each other to try to redefine socialism to move beyond the USSR and China, but in their desire to learn from the past they reject a lot of lessons AESs already learned for themselves.