Here is November 7th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is November 8th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
I strategically retreated from doing an update on Wednesday (and I always perform tactical update withdrawals on Thursdays and Sundays) so this next one covers a bit from those two days.
Here is November 11th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists, for the “buh Zeleski is a jew?!?!” people.
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ ASB Military News, banned from Twitter.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster - crowd-funded U.S journalist, mostly pro-Russian, works on the ground near warzones to report news and talk to locals.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it's a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
With the entire western media sphere being overwhelming pro-Ukraine already, you shouldn't really need more, but:
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.
Last week's discussion post.
There was someone who posted about a communist who died fighting for Russia, and people were saying that he was an exemplar par excellence of a communist as opposed to a coffee shop communist, in the other chat. I just want to say that I disagree. He is dead now, and did not accomplish anything with that death, another soul to the meat grinder of war between capitalists. Just because Russia is 'argueably' in the right here doesn't make it any smarter to countinue to fight and die over the same 50 miles of muddy land, now that the people have been moved out.
I know this isn't a popular thing to say here, but despite the fact that it is a good thing that Nazis are kinda getting owned (even though in reality they are being funded by the west more that ever now, so it's more of a win/lose) the global economic objectives of multipolarity could have been accomplished without this war, and the war is a sign of the heightening contradictions within Russia itself. He was clearly a committed comrade, but a comrade dead in WWI is one more comrade that is not there for the October Revolution, and we are not even close to that. As Brace says, we are peasants in Alsace who can barely read. We have no cause to fight our lords wars.
I feel like measuring the "worth" of a communist by how they died rather than how they lived is kinda defeatist and succumbs to a desire to become a holy martyr for the cause. Not every communist will die in The Revolution, taking a bullet to the head as they mount the barricades, and you're not any less of one if you were otherwise a good person living by a socialist mantra who died because they accidentally ate some undercooked food or fell off a ladder.
Dying while killing outright, swastika-tattooed fascists, even if the country you're fighting on behalf of is a capitalist oligarchy with reactionary views, is certainly not the worst way for a communist to go, though it's far from ideal.
:gold-communist:
He fought in the Donbass for eight years. In even a fraction of that time, he would have helped more people than probably anyone on this website ever will, and you should be ashamed of yourself for posting that his life was wasted.
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What is it with people and projecting their perceived revolutionary failures on the website as a whole? I agree, he lived well. He fought well. He died well. But saying that he was more of a comrade than those organizing labor, or even attempting to keep socialist ideas alive in a country that is inherently hostile towards them is sectarian in nature, and a ridiculous notion. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so hostile, he didn't die for a 'muddy stretch of land' but the way the paragraph read in the last thread irked me because it dismisses real work, necessary work of organization, as 'coffee shop' socialism. Fuck martyrdom.
If you're organizing or whatever, you aren't doing coffee shop socialism, and I'm not sure why you would feel targeted by that. The author of the piece isn't in combat either, he does humanitarian aid. The fact remains that fighting Nazis for the better part of a decade is an impressive achievement and the kind of thing we should strive to emulate, not dismiss as a pointless death.
The way I see it is that every single person on this site is contributing to the modern equivalent of a leftist newspaper and I do not consider a single one of them to be doing nothing at all. Social media is a new format of newspaper, broken free from complete editorial control with content decided by combination of audience and algorithm.
Is there more some people could do? Probably, but I dislike people attacking the entire site in broad sweeps, if it became accepted to do here the resulting negativity could spiral into mass logoffs. The site's health relies on positivity about the site and userbase among the userbase. It's uncomradely.
TBH, I feel like Hexbear does less than basically every other leftist site to encourage reading theory, recruiting new people, and taking action. Like, we have a lot of great people here, but most of the site is just an endless dunk tank. Lemmygrad and leftypol aren't much better, but at least they read and have ideologies beyond mocking liberals.
Frankly, a socialist organization (inasmuch as a website can be an organization) doing nothing but chatting with each other is probably worse than useless, wasting the time of everyone involved. Maybe I just don't belong here, I dunno.
Maybe you just found your purpose here? Point people to relevant theory.
For me that's because I already have places where I seriously read theory irl. This is my place to shit post because that is what these kinds of online spaces are (in my experience) best for. Online radicalization is just as isolating and alienating, it provides no community and little solidarity. There is alot of power in "I may not have read Marx's Capital but I have the marks of capital all over my body." and having a community that responds to that is more important than if they know the LTV.
I sympathize though, if you don't have an outlet for that hexbear is pretty stupid.
Trying to encourage more of that on lemmygrad. We're in a bit of a doomer phase right now, but we are getting better. We have lots of Party active comrades there too. Don't dunk too hard comrade.
TBH I don't use Lemmygrad very much, it's a pretty small community. Leftypol too, but you don't notice as much since everyone's anonymous.
I think Hexbear is actually the largest of the independent leftist social media sites by a decent margin, although I might be missing some.
I think shame can be a powerful motivator but it should used sparingly and always be paired with ways to engage.
Because alot of what organizing is is just sitting around talking, endlessly discussing and refining dumb shit ideas and keeping people away from Twitter. Much of it literally is just trying to provide a community that affirms and explains their feelings of depression and alienation without turning towards liberalism. I do not need people getting weird ideas from online spaces that they need to fuck off to fight in Russia or Nicaragua to be useful.
This is stuff I have to deal with with irl leftists, so it hits a chord.
It is an impressive achievement and it would be even better if he was still alive.
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:doubt: We're not even close to the water wars, or the arable land wars, or the Global War on Migrants. *slaps roof of 21st century* You can fit so many manmade horrors beyond my comprehension in this thing!
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I'm looking forward to dying in 2049 in a minor skirmish over the last bottles of hot sauce in Northern Europe. A 12 year old street rat will shank me with a broken iPhone and I'll bleed out on the cobble.
:yea:
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Don't project your own problems onto me. I am certainly not sitting on my hands waiting for pure revolution, but neither am I willing to die for a muddy stretch of land. I think you have some serious unaddressed issues if your life has no meaning outside of death. Sorry for being harsh.
:both-sides: I upbeared you and everyone who responded to you, there isn't one right answer here
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I'm sorry I implied bad faith in what you were saying, but saying that I wave 'hot takes from Twitter' is asinine garbage. I will take back the 'muddy stretch of land' bit though, I agree that was a step too far.
What I am saying is that his death was meaningless and not something to be celebrated, even if he did die well. We should have celebrated and acknowledged his life and work while he was still alive, not after he was killed. Russia is a capitalist nation run by oligarchs, no amount of third world flag waving will change that. They provide a counterpoint to American hegemony, which is good, but not so good that it is worth insulting the work of other comrades in other areas who are also organizing and doing work.
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Bro Putin is based and socialist the oligarchs and IMF are just holding him back bro
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You are missing a key point. He didn't die fighting for Russia. He might have fought on the same side as Russia but he fought for a free Donbas. The LPR and DPR were supposed to be communist states even if now they are just part of Russia. He didn't die for Oligarchs or for capitalists. He died defending people who said no to Nazism. They openly called themselves Neo-Soviet and were called "Stalinist" by people who think its an insult. He died in one of the only Communist revolutions of our day.
That is fair enough. But as that one documentary said, "The kind Vladimir Lenin would have killed everyone here."
:side-eye-2: :side-eye-1: