What does this even mean? Literally every left-wing org and party has been organizing a lot around this over the past year holding tons off anti-war actions, events, and rallies? Whats the point of downplaying actual left wing organizations this way?
https://peaceinukraine.org
https://dsaic.org/ukraine
https://defusenuclearwar.org
https://unacpeace.org
https://answercoalition.org
https://popularresistance.org
https://blackallianceforpeace.com
https://progressivehub.net/no-war-in-ukraine
https://codepink.org/ukraine
We have no real outside funding, no actual community leaders and every time we attempt to create any large organization the cops are all over us. It's not that the left has 'regressed'. The left has been smashed.
This continues as a hangover from the complete and utter failure of BLM (which was likely an op from the beginning in 2020 after being compromised in 2014) and the Sanders movement (which was always politically incoherent), where all the actually principled leaders got arrested (because that is what you are supposed to do) and all the grifters moved on to the next thing.
I completely disagree. We should absolutely laugh at the chuds because they will have millions of dollars of support, high profile people, mainstream media backing, AND STILL FAIL because they don't actually understand the mechanisms for the creation of an effective popular movement.
Also because most of them are the aforementioned grifters.
I cant believe i have to argue with people here that you do not gotta hand it to fascists and reactionaries for hosting an event full of grifters. What is pointing people towards Peoples Party and Libertarians and all these far-right orgs and LaRouchites gonna do other than liquidate any coherent anti-war movement into a sea of dumb podcasters and youtubers lol
I get what you said, allow me to be more direct.
Spare me your sanctimony.
I not only have the right, I have a duty to laugh at them because they are arguably in the best position possible to succeed, but will not because their very ideology of libertarianism neuters any potential for them to challenge the security state. They, by the very methods and funding that makes them able to publically flail to stop the war, do not see the mass withdrawal of labor as a viable method of public expression, even though it is the only viable method of expression available to us. They will fail, not due to institutional violence, but neutered by their own nature. It is absolutely tragic and hilarious.
Our failure was a tragedy. Theirs will be a comedy.
Of course it does not change the matter. But what would you have me do? An adventurism? Call for a general strike on Facebook? Create a dank anti-war TikTok meme? It is difficult enough to organize mildly radical union work, let alone an unrelated work stoppage.
The Persians are coming, and I am content enough to roll my pot up and down the street.
Not at all a good comparison with Iraq. Yeah the anti-war movement is weak today, but not cause the left isn't organizing around it. Are you under the impression the left was more powerful in the 2000s? Any leftist anti-war org linking arms with fascists, reactionaries, sexual abusers, homophobes, racists, etc. will only weaken the movement. Several of the people at this event aren't even anti-war. Scott Ritter posted the other day he isn't anti-war and he wants Russia to annihilate Ukraine. This event is a joke full of clowns who dont do any real organizing or movement building. Growing their podcast and youtube audience is not a "movement" nor organizing.
How is the left too weak to stand up against the state when every leftist org in the country has been doing that the entire year though? I wouldn't even call this an "anti-war" event when they have people on that are pro-war just anti US intervention this specific one. That aint no anti-war movement being built just podcast dollars flowing in. Tulsi is literally a US army officer lol
They're also not challenging the premises our intervention in Ukraine are based from. It's akin to people's insistence we compare Ukraine to Palestine and ask why people aren't trying to stop the horrors of Zionism - it implicitly compares Russia's defense of DPR and LPR to the destruction of Palestine. It's insane. Also OP didn't notice Codepink is literally on this roster. Fucking goobers you both are.
Great collection of orgs that decry "russian aggression in ukraine" and offer little context (like McCain and others gassing them up for the maidan and the subsequent civil war where most of the military defected to DPR/LPR), by the way codepink is actually at the event you just posted a roster for. If you don't challenge the premises we base our support for the war off of, it's worthless. Still sucks but I can't just laugh at this. I'm extremely dismayed by this roster, if this is what Blumenthal thinks is cool and good I'm not surprised but we all saw it coming from his insistence on being a messy drama loving bitch on other occasions and deliberately inciting the Twitch liberals.
https://bird.trom.tf/pic/orig/media%2FFoQO2q-WAAMJwmx.jpg They are, but it's not in the photo you posted. I thought you posted a slightly different selection of the roster.
they are not involved, ann wright is not a representative of the org, shes just there in her own capacity and very much against the wishes of codepink the organization which is still trying to get her to drop out
good to know ty, I'm not super familiar with the org I just noticed a couple of logos for them, it's not related to my larger point. i get why anyone would tell ppl to drop out from this glowie shitshow
laughing at dumb fascist clowns and reactionaries and their enablers is good actually
Remember when Ben Norton said the only things the left can organized with the libertarians are the issue of war and foreign policy because they are at least consistent on those?
yeah
Well she threw in with MeToo organization run by the same people as Biden's campaign IIRC so I hope she got something out of this.
holy shit I forgot it was Anita Dunn, god it's blatant, how could I forget
Hot take 1: I rather have cringey libertarians be against the war for the wrong reasons than cruise missile socialists and anarcho-natoists fantasizing about cleansing the world of Russian orcs.
Hot take 2: I still think a united front with libertarians over being anti-war shouldn't be off the table. Ultimately, the concept of the united front is forming a tactical alliance with people who are ideologically opposed to you. If Mao could make it work with the KMT who betrayed and killed good communists, I'm not sure why a forming a united front with libertarians over this particular issue is insurmountable. Like, libertarians were very much part of the anti-war movement during the 2000s. It's literally the one (1) political issue they're not absolutely terrible about.
Hot take 3: I don't see how this libertarian rally is that different from the "good" rallies arranged by actual anti-imperialist orgs. What's the functional difference between this rally and a rally hosted by say, PSL? There's going to be a bunch of people with signs, numbering less than 2000 people total, a bunch of people are going to read their speech off their phones, and the rally will end with no real material impact on the war in Ukraine. It's not like the good orgs are doing a little adventurism to slow down the war or have support from more mainstream orgs and worker unions. Compare that with Palestine Action, an anti-Zionist org in the UK that broke into multiple factories in order to smash parts that go into drones used by the Zionist entity to bomb Palestinians. To me, the only difference is that the PSL rally would have less cringey speakers and have a less grifty atmosphere. That's literally it. I'm not even sure if the rally would be significantly larger than the grifter rally.
Overall, most of the speakers are fucking terrible on top of being shameless grifters, but this post rubbed me the wrong way because actually existing anti-imperialism in the US isn't that much better. Outside of having much better politics, it's about as socially marginalized and politically insignificant as a bunch of libertarian clowns.
There used to be a coherent libertarian anti-war movement back in 2003 before the invasion of Iraq. Their narrative was, the military should only be used to defend the US mainland and anything else is government overreach and a waste of taxpayer money.
If that was their narrative today, I would agree with you. It may not be as good of a reason to be anti-war, but good enough.
But the problem is, it's 20 years later (jeezus...) and American libertarianism itself has changed. Much more co-opted by conservatives. And they no longer have a coherent anti-war message. Maybe I missed it, but I have not heard one self-described libertarian actually make a case against war that isn't steeped in incoherent Trump-ism or pointlessly bashing Biden and Democrats (you know like, for actual reasons).
I think your point about the 2000s is valid but I really don't think we're dealing with the same types of libertarians nowadays.
But the problem is, it’s 20 years later (jeezus…) and American libertarianism itself has changed. Much more co-opted by conservatives. And they no longer have a coherent anti-war message. Maybe I missed it, but I have not heard one self-described libertarian actually make a case against war that isn’t steeped in incoherent Trump-ism or pointlessly bashing Biden and Democrats (you know like, for actual reasons).
This makes sense. Perhaps I have a soft spot for an older version of them that's completely undeserving for their modern iteration.
I do too! I am not opposed at all to marching in a singular cause with people from say a libertarian background. I actually think it would be a good thing. But I have yet to see anyone outside of the left offer even a minimally acceptable critique of US involvement in Ukraine or anti-China rhetoric.
I mean, one of their headliners is Tulsi. We know she's not anti-war. She's literally a "proud veteran" and is all for wars against the "right" people in her mind (usually Muslims). If god forbid India and Pakistan got into a war she'd be the first person out there demanding the US nuke Karachi.
Tulsi lost the confidence of the DC blob when she went to personally meet with Assad to find out if there was a way to end the war in Syria.
Turns out, they like that war very much and Tulsi was called a butcher apologist for going to the trouble.
it's easy to imagine uniting with libertarians because they are, mentally and politically, sort of childlike, and we want to believe that they'll "grow out of it." problem is there's reasons they arrived where they're at, and sometimes those reasons mean the reactionary aspects of the ideology have a stronger hold on them than any desire for a better world.
United fronts with right wingers are always a dead end, no exceptions. When we assume that fascism (and Amerikan libertarianism is just fascism for stoners) is capitalism in decay and that a decaying system forces us to choose between socialism or barbarism, you cannot side with the barbarians. You are strenghtening the fascist position while accelerating the fall of liberalism. That serves fascism, not communism. It really is as simple as that. For revolutionary leftists, antifascism always comes first, even before antiimperialism. That is the only viable approach. You build up your own forces, you side with liberals were necessary because they are historically doomed to failure anyway and aren't the real long term threat.
Your aim isn't that the liberals are as weak as possible, your aim must be that fascism is in no position to win when the liberal project collapses under its own contradictions. The collapse of Amerikan liberalism is inevitable, a victory of the Amerikan left is very definitely not.
United fronts with right wingers are always a dead end, no exceptions. When we assume that fascism (and Amerikan libertarianism is just fascism for stoners) is capitalism in decay and that a decaying system forces us to choose between socialism or barbarism, you cannot side with the barbarians. You are strenghtening the fascist position while accelerating the fall of liberalism. That serves fascism, not communism. It really is as simple as that. For revolutionary leftists, antifascism always comes first, even before antiimperialism. That is the only viable approach. You build up your own forces, you side with liberals were necessary because they are historically doomed to failure anyway and aren’t the real long term threat.
I don't think this is a hard rule, especially when we have the historical example of the CPC forming a successful united front with the KMT. Chiang Kai Shek was deeply reactionary and the KMT under him was a reactionary party. But a united front was formed because between Chiang Kai Shek and Japanese fascists, he was the lesser evil even when the lesser evil had Chinese communist blood in his hands.
As far as whether it's wise to form a united front with libertarians, I personally don't think so, at least not as a general strategy. But there's a difference between saying a particular tactic shouldn't be taken off the table and saying a particular tactic should be adopted as a general strategy. It's less "we should form a united front with libertarians" and more "we should form a united front with these particular people and orgs who self-identify as libertarians."
Would I advocate forming a united front with the people who are going to participate in this Libertarian Party-sponsered rally? Absolutely not. For one, most of them are opportunist grifters like Dore and Hinkle. Gabbard is basically a psyop officer and you have a couple of ex-US politicians (Paul, Kucinich). And to tie this particular rally into my third point, it's just a rally. It's not like libertarians are not seen as clowns by the average American or have the stones to actually do a little adventurism. Most libertarians who actually do adventurism are civilian militia types that are more fascist than libertarian.
Kid: "Mom, I want a national anti-war movement."
Mom: "You have an anti-war movement back home"
The Anti-War Movement Back Home:
No Vermine Supreme? Then it's not really a libertarian rally. :vermin:
If you don't have Penn Jilette, Vermin Supreme, and Johb Macafee you can't be taken seriously as a libertarian convention.
Dennis Kucinich is still alive? And hanging out with this crew now? lol, I remember him from when I was a late teen, voting for him against the mighty Obama in the primary after seeing completely through Obomas shit.
lmao, because of course he is. And Nader is a total Biden/dem shill now too. Thank god I gave up on electoralism when I became an adult.
I really don't know what to make of Tara Reade being on this roster.
She got involved with a MeToo organization literally run by the same people as Biden's campaign staff IIRC, insanely bleak. Congrats on actually noticing her, a lot of people forgot who she was completely and didn't comment on her at all where I've seen this posted.
Feminist take:
Welcome to the Patriarchy, folks. Do you really think this is the first time we as a nation have had to choose between two men who have possibly sexually assaulted or sexually coerced or inappropriately touched a woman? Even Sanders has his oddball writings about women fantasizing about rape to contend with. You want to reduce the chances of this problem to near zero - elect a woman. But short of that mind-blowing concept - Biden must win. I'll state unequivocally that although Biden was nowhere close to my top pick - I will vote for him. My gynecologist sexually assaulted me when I was a teen and you know what- as a sexual assault survivor - I'll still vote for Biden. Because these are our real world choices: a man who is competent at his job and cares if people live or die or a murderous, dictator wannabe who will continue to abuse this entire country until it collapses. 4 more years under the thumb of a psychopathic malignant narcissist and his fascist, monstrous enablers is more dangerous than this fucking virus. You know how bad it is under this blood-sucking, unjust, inequitable, patriarchal system? This bad: If the gynecologist who assaulted me was running for President against Trump and he was competent and effective and would appoint non-fascist enabling, decent people to SCOTUS - I'd fucking vote for him.
Compassion for rape victims is one thing. Taking allegations seriously is one thing. We have a democracy under threat from a fascist president. Tara Reade is an adult and she needs to be treated like one AND she needs to act like one. Prove your claim Tara. The burden is on her.
Democracy is when you pick between two rapists.
Also i love how none of this "lesser evil" shit is applied to China and Russia.
#Believeallwomen
(unless they're accusing Democrats, then women are unreliable and will lie just to get men in trouble)
I love the complaints about Bernies "women fantasize about rape" essay because as far as I'm aware that was then current Feminist thought and demonstrates that he was reading and seriously thinking about up to date feminist theory.
.> : a man who is competent at his job and cares if people live or die or a murderous, dictator wannabe who will continue to abuse this entire country until it collapses.
It's a good thing the pandemic is over. Has anyone seen the bulletin of atmoci scientist's minutes to midnight clock? I'm sure it's doing good too.
Rage Against the War Machine
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