There has been a failure of the American "left" to occupy this space first. the democratic party (including Bernie and "The Squad" ) is unanimous in their support of NATO's imperialist proxy war, fails to understand (or deliberately ignores) any history before february 2022, and AOC even dismissed anti-war people at her own town hall meeting as "Larouchites".
Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad are both correct about this conflict, but there isn't any activism to rally around their perspective. So the contrarian right who think Putin is based trad homophobe christian leader and supports Russia to own the libs (rather than being sincerely against NATO) have taken to shitting up the discourse and occupying the space that should be occupied by the anti-war left. The crisis of unipolar US-led globalization have broken the brains of the American "left."
There isn't an American left in mainstream politics. If you mean the american left parties, then they have all been uniformly anti war, but thet are tiny and no one listens to them; even the shit CPUSA national org has had a strong anti nato anti ukraine war line. The only time you see Americans in general organize in significant numbers for an anti war position is when it actively involves American citizens fighting and dying. Talking about the "American left" as a coherent entity is like talking about fucking unicorns.
There was so much hope in the old sub as people like AOC and Sanders were trying to win. They hadn't seen it before. Every "left" politician in the US bends the knee to the point of giving up on even the milquetoast slightly-left things they said when they were new.
I should have known better lol. I knew all about George Bush stealing the election, COINTELPRO and all that shit. But man, when Bernie starting pulling real numbers and getting results right out of the gate (which would have carried any other candidate to victory off pure media attention alone) I could feel the hopium. Normal people I knew in real life were talking about nonprofit healthcare and shit because every candidate was forced to ape Bernie's position on it.
I think if sanders had won we might have seen something. Like I don't think the world would have shifted overnight, but that kind if success for a left wing movement might have given some coherence to the real energy that was there and the desperate desire for change that everyone still feels. Unfortunately getting owned by the dems really just scattered anything that might have been. I don't think an electoral strategy is possible anymore, it is too discredited by sanders loss; assuming electoralism was ever really viable to begin with, a sentiment I am partial to thinking it wasn't really.
:this: yeah, that's the problem when the US "lefts" most prominent public figures are social fascists with no understanding of internationalism let alone understanding imperialism
Using the fucking term "Larouchites" makes me realize how AOC has to know by now how compromised she is and beholden to the power structures the democratic party has created to fucking smother anything tangentially left.
Exactly. The American left/radical liberals did some vote triangulation politics nonsense to support the war because they don't want to lose the support of liberals and the democratic party, who they got into bed with. They put out one very mild anti war statement (that letter from the squad) to test the waters, saw the push back from liberals and immediately withdrew their statement.
Teaming up with democrats will cause the death of social progressive and more left wing views. Once democrats can't hold minorities hostage by holding their human rights over their heads, they will lose their votes too, little by little. This gives the "third way" (we all know what that is) a perfect opportunity to strike.
This is what I can piece together as a non American.
no, because as I said, the right's """anti-war""" position is more out of a contrarian admiration of Putin and there is no sincere anti-imperialism among the right.
wall of text if you care about this
They support Putin against "d3generate globohomo judeobolshevism" and other such nonsense spectres they've conjured up in their own heads. If you go to the right spaces on the internet (corners of 4chan for instance) you can see this in action, but you can also see it on Tucker Carlson. The American, Canadian, British and European right have taken to thinking of their own governments and international institutions as Communist conspiracies (despite enormous evidence to the contrary). They do not oppose the actual existing privileges of unipolar western hegemony, they just hate it when they see a NATO official wave a rainbow flag and they support Putin who they see as a based anticommunist Christian crusader fighting Satanism or something. They have an incoherent narrative. Meanwhile, "respectable liberals" who support these imperialist institutions have to convince their voters that imperialism is actually progressive, hence the bad-faith attempt to pretend their proxy war against Russia is about protecting progressive European values. Hence the pinkwashing of imperialism, the attempt to falsely gain support for imperialism by pretending these imperialist institutions are progressive, or attempting to support feminism/LGBT. This strategy dates to the 19th century, when British imperialism in Afghanistan and French imperialism in Africa were framed as attempts to liberate women from backwards cultures, and so on. There is a yin-yanging between the bourgeois liberals and conservatives in the imperial core, for lack of a better term. the conservative bourgeoisie will falsely appear progressive for being "anti-war" for contrarian and absurd reasons. The liberals bourgeoisie will support imperialism while appearing to support bringing "human rights" to the "backwards east" with "lethal aid."
The real cause of this war is complicated. Russia was a source of cheap energy for Europe. Nordstream Pipeline brought natural gas to Germany in a cheap, predictable way without fluctuating price points. The Germans then sold it to other Europeans. However America wanted to sell Europe liquid natural gas. Problem is, it's expensive, has to be shipped by boat, and fluctuates in price. Europe didn't actually want that shit. So they sought out Russian energy because it was cheaper. Meanwhile Ukraine was about to tighten its relationship with Russia in 2014. President Yanukovych was faced with a choice between a $17 billion high interest IMF loan that came with strings attached (anti-labor measures, austerity, deregulation, imperialist looting of natural resources, the usual), or a Russian aid package that was $15 billion, lower interest, and came with cheap energy deals. He chose the Russian aid package. So America couped him, brought Poroshenko (president) and Yatsenyuk (prime minister) to power. Poroshenko helped integrate nazi gangs into the Ukrainian military, who were receiving training and weapons from America through the CIA front National Endowment for Democracy. Meanwhile Yatsenyuk canceled the Russian aid deal and took the IMF loan, plunging ukraine into poverty, putting Ukrainian farm land into the hands of foreign (US-allied) companies, etc. The communist party of Ukraine was banned in 2015 for being "Russian influenced." The Russian language was no longer to be taught in public schools despite a significant population in the Southeastern half the country speaking it as a first language, and so on. Crimea held a referendum to become part of Russia. It passed. Russia annexed Crimea. Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine started their own separatist movements and the government began a civil war against Donetsk and Luhansk that saw the Odessa massacre in a trade union hall , as well as the shelling of Donetsk with artillery. So only after 8 years of civil war did Russia finally invade Ukraine when the threat of Ukraine joining NATO (NATO membership usually involves US stationing bases/weapons in Ukraine, close to Moscow) reached a fever pitch. The main cause of the war is US financial interference in Ukraine, and NATO expansion. Both NATO and Russia are attempting to have influence in Ukraine, but the escalation arguably began with the coup in 2014. I don't know much about the orange revolution in 2004, but some have pointed to that as also a US-backed color revolution. And to an extent, the privatization of the Russian economy by Yeltsin was also US-backed, since the USA poured billions into Yeltsin's election campaign, and supported his shelling of the Russian parliament. So the aggression on NATO's part goes back decades.
Yes every part of how they got to their position is backwards and stupid but as Putin isn't actually doing the war to repress foreign gay rights I'm not going to take that seriously
if they accidentally harm American imperial interests out of misguided bigotry I am still going to take the damage to imperial interests as a win
if they accidentally harm American imperial interests out of misguided bigotry
not what is happening. For them to harm American imperial interests, they would have to actually be opposed to them in a non-symbolic way. But their opposition is purely symbolic.
ah, but that's the sleight of hand. They'd rather be in a proxy war with China over Taiwan instead! Also another reason their opposition is purely symbolic is that it's a partisan opposition rather than a political opposition. If Ron DeSantis or Dan Crenshaw got elected tomorrow and continued escalating, I don't think they wouldn't care anymore.
Yeah but China isn't going to invade Taiwan and Taiwan is more resistant to US demands than Ukraine. For example Taiwan refused to toe the US policy line over Tibet
Taiwan isn't an independent country. It's part of China. This is acknowledged by the UN. So the entire logic of the country invading itself is an invention of US foreign policy.
Taiwan and Taiwan is more resistant to US demands than Ukraine. For example Taiwan refused to toe the US policy line over Tibet
True, but that doesn't change the fact that the """anti-war""" right wing in the US are more mad about the emphasis of US foreign policy than they are about US imperialism in general. It doesn't change the fact that their opposition is mostly to spending on the wrong war rather than spending on war at all. The """anti-war""" right is absolutely fine with NATO expansion and defense budget ballooning, they just hate when liberals spend money instead of them. This is the subject of the conversation. There is no real reason to build a coalition with these people or even critically support them when they do the """right thing""" for the wrong reasons.
Taiwan isn’t an independent country. It’s part of China. This is acknowledged by the UN. So the entire logic of the country invading itself is an invention of US foreign policy.
Not that relevant a distinction pretty clearly whatever they are they have their own separate miltary and don't do what the Chinese government says.
True, but that doesn’t change the fact that the “”“anti-war”“” right wing in the US are more mad about the emphasis of US foreign policy than they are about US imperialism in general
yes but in order to be against something in general you must be against it in the specific. They are anti this war and until the next war that means they are anti war
They are anti this war and until the next war that means they are anti war
ask them if they want to decrease the defense budget or end NATO and see where that goes. They don't care about the root cause of it. They want to snip a branch (for the entirely wrong reasons) but they'll scream bloody murder if you try to pull the plant out by its roots.
also their reasons don’t matter they don’t amount to anything more than contrarianism
this is where i disagree fundamentally. Two people can identify the same problem, but will believe the problem is a problem for very different reasons, and offer very different solutions as a result. Because of that context, their reactionary solutions to the problem they have identified are horrible, and will make things worse, and they should not be permitted to steer the conversation or be supported as they fight to gain control of the situation.
What do you mean? The US is constantly escalating tensions with China because it views China as its main geopolitical and ideological competitor. the US military is planning for war with China as early as 2025
it's a shame, because while I hope you're right, I can see with my own eyes that America is slowly surrounding China with military bases and aircraft carriers, they are already supplying Taiwan (internationally recognized as Chinese territory) with weapons and training. Japan is re-militarizing for the first time since WW2, and a former CIA director and several war hawks have co-authored a series of articles in foreign policy magazine on how to escalate and prepare for war with China. So it seems to me this "saber rattling" is getting very very serious
Yeah it is serious but it's more along the lines of US aggression to the soviet union than Iraq. China scares them enough that they won't straight up have US soldiers try and kill Chinese people directly
I'm not young. I grew up with this shit. It is precisely growing up with this shit that makes me truly believe America is an increasingly unhinged rogue state planning for war with China. It is precisely growing up with this shit that makes me not trust when the American right, who cheerleaded the destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen, suddenly pretend to be """"anti-war"""". i don't buy it
This would 1) push Russia and China even further together in a Eurasian military alliance bloc and 2) Make the US look unstable and unhinged to the rest of the world.
Overall, a better outcome for anti-imperialism than the US competently isolating and destroying Russia.
The US military empire is becoming increasingly riddled with contradictions and incompetent, and swapping back and forth between parties hinders their plans when they undo things out of contrarianism
This would 1) push Russia and China even further together in a Eurasian military alliance bloc and 2) Make the US look unstable and unhinged to the rest of the world.
1 and 2 are both already happening regardless of what the american """"anti-war"""" right achieves
Permitted? They need to pass an ideological barrier to advance material causes? Who is doing the permitting? Seems like most people here have an attachment to some notion of allowing or disallowing change based on their own ideological basis. We don't get to make that choice, as materialists we ought to critically support causes which move the needle away from imperialism regardless of intent or ideology, there is no coalition, only critical support for a cause which we both happen to support. This is how politics work, should Deng not have opened relations with the U.S in order to preserve an intangible ideological integrity? No of course not, you have to advance your interests even if it means working with those that do not share your goals.
Ron Paul whatever you may think of him is not a fascist. Fascism proposes that war and the profits from it are the primary engine of technological progress and modernisation. A fascist would not be anti-war. The fascists like the proud boys went and fought in Ukraine
Eh, libertarians in the US are just a different kind of fascist as far as im concerned. They're pro-apartheid because of the fig leaf of "property rights" but really theyre just rascists, "anti-war" but only because theyre isolationist who don't understand where the treats come from. The reason they don't support empire is because they think treats materialize from atlas shrugged style industrialists and not from imperial exploitation of the global south. Ron Paul has always been full of shit and a racist clown.
The US empire isn't fascist either it is liberal. Liberalism includes the violent economic exploitation of the global south for imperial benefit a notable example of such a liberal state would be the British empire.
fascism is a specific ideological framework which is incompatible with libertarianism. Both of them are bad but not equally so and it's incorrect to lump them in together
I don't get pedantic when it comes to fash. Its fash all the way down. Liberals are just fash who don't know it yet, but will be in a crisis of capital. Social democracy is the left wing of fascism etc.
that's not not being pedantic it's just being wrong. Fascists love to be lumped in as just another part of the liberal machine
liberals don't magically turn into fascists when capital hits a crisis. When there is a threat of Communism capital will seek safety from violent fascists these will not be the exact same people
calling liberals fascist is barely more politically literate than calling the security guard at the mall fascist for pissing you off
If you accused Ron Paul of being Jack the Ripper i would defend him because what you're accusing him of is blatently false.
There are many legitimate reasons to criticise the man and libertarians but that doesn't make them a fascist.
calling everyone you don't like a fascist undermines your ability to call out fascists like Nick Fuentes and makes them seem like just another part of the right wing. Similar to how republicans calling everything socialist has removed a lot of stigma over the word socialist
The conservative movement that championed Barry Goldwater (who shares Ron Pauls "principled" stance against civil rights) and Ronald Reagan was a crypto-fascist white supremacist movement. After Reagan it became the mainstay of conservative politics in this country. I have a hard time not seeing Nick Fuentes as just another part of the right wing in the US since the right wing in the US has been crypto-fascist my whole life. I think libertarians are completely full of shit about what they believe and that they don't deserve defense just because they pretend to be against US empire sometimes. Is crypto-fash better than fash? I guess, but does it matter? Personally, I don't think so.
You disagree with calling Ron Paul a fascist. Okay. I get that there are differences between the different types of liberals, especially if you want to be specific correct. He's racist, homophobic, antiabortion, he's fought to uphold white supremacist patriarchy his entire life. He is still against the civil rights act. He's against US empire because of archaic isolationist beliefs (ask him about the gold standard lol) and because he thinks taxation is theft and feels agreived that so much money goes to that. So, what does that make him to you? And why is it important to defend libertarians here?
No Reagan was a neoliberal white supremacist. Being racist, white supremacist, anti-abortion, sexist etc are not on their own fascist although they are very much in line with fascism.
fascism is a very specific idea of how society should be run that is admittedly hard to define but does involve a belief in a societal militarism revolving around a conflict of races whereby only some races have a right to exist that also involves the systematic rooting out and killing of those seen as lesser or subversive. That is not Ron Paul but it is Nick Fuentes and the fact you can't see that is terrifying
Reagan began a system of mass impoverishment for black Americans. A fascist would have rounded up and killed them do you see the difference and why I say it is dangerous to conflate them
I think theres a lot less difference between Reagan, Paul, and Fuentes than you do. I'm not saying theres no differnces, I'm just not sure that those differences matter the way you do. I guess because Reagan would have happily rounded up black people and killed them if he could have, and Ron Paul would have been happy to join.
No Reagan wouldn't have rounded up black people to be killed he wanted them as an economic underclass to be exploited and wanted to take away power from black communities that could have been used to challenge capital. He wanted to do these things because he was racist yes but he wasn't an exterminationist. Violent white supremacy does not on it's own qualify as fascist things can be terrible while not being fascist
take the AIDS crisis. A homophobic neoliberal such as Reagan would ignore it as they don't care enough about gay people to affect their belief in the government not being responsible for people's welfare. A fascist would blame the gays, Jews etc and have them all killed
Okay. It sounds like splitting hairs between different kinds of fascists to me, but i respect that these definitions matter to you comrade. Thanks for the discussion :fidel-salute:
There has been a failure of the American "left" to occupy this space first. the democratic party (including Bernie and "The Squad" ) is unanimous in their support of NATO's imperialist proxy war, fails to understand (or deliberately ignores) any history before february 2022, and AOC even dismissed anti-war people at her own town hall meeting as "Larouchites".
Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad are both correct about this conflict, but there isn't any activism to rally around their perspective. So the contrarian right who think Putin is based trad homophobe christian leader and supports Russia to own the libs (rather than being sincerely against NATO) have taken to shitting up the discourse and occupying the space that should be occupied by the anti-war left. The crisis of unipolar US-led globalization have broken the brains of the American "left."
There isn't an American left in mainstream politics. If you mean the american left parties, then they have all been uniformly anti war, but thet are tiny and no one listens to them; even the shit CPUSA national org has had a strong anti nato anti ukraine war line. The only time you see Americans in general organize in significant numbers for an anti war position is when it actively involves American citizens fighting and dying. Talking about the "American left" as a coherent entity is like talking about fucking unicorns.
There was so much hope in the old sub as people like AOC and Sanders were trying to win. They hadn't seen it before. Every "left" politician in the US bends the knee to the point of giving up on even the milquetoast slightly-left things they said when they were new.
I should have known better lol. I knew all about George Bush stealing the election, COINTELPRO and all that shit. But man, when Bernie starting pulling real numbers and getting results right out of the gate (which would have carried any other candidate to victory off pure media attention alone) I could feel the hopium. Normal people I knew in real life were talking about nonprofit healthcare and shit because every candidate was forced to ape Bernie's position on it.
I think if sanders had won we might have seen something. Like I don't think the world would have shifted overnight, but that kind if success for a left wing movement might have given some coherence to the real energy that was there and the desperate desire for change that everyone still feels. Unfortunately getting owned by the dems really just scattered anything that might have been. I don't think an electoral strategy is possible anymore, it is too discredited by sanders loss; assuming electoralism was ever really viable to begin with, a sentiment I am partial to thinking it wasn't really.
i used scare quotes for a reason and agree with your point
Fair enough, and my apologies for calling you out. I guess I am just tired of endless pessimism and your post was unlucky enough to trigger me.
:this: yeah, that's the problem when the US "lefts" most prominent public figures are social fascists with no understanding of internationalism let alone understanding imperialism
So when a candate deliberately leaves out a foreign policy tab in thier issues page that's a big red flag.
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Not the good kind of red flag either :USSR:
Using the fucking term "Larouchites" makes me realize how AOC has to know by now how compromised she is and beholden to the power structures the democratic party has created to fucking smother anything tangentially left.
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Exactly. The American left/radical liberals did some vote triangulation politics nonsense to support the war because they don't want to lose the support of liberals and the democratic party, who they got into bed with. They put out one very mild anti war statement (that letter from the squad) to test the waters, saw the push back from liberals and immediately withdrew their statement.
Teaming up with democrats will cause the death of social progressive and more left wing views. Once democrats can't hold minorities hostage by holding their human rights over their heads, they will lose their votes too, little by little. This gives the "third way" (we all know what that is) a perfect opportunity to strike.
This is what I can piece together as a non American.
there is no american left
i used scare quotes
Ok but isn't it a good thing that someone is occupying the space.
no, because as I said, the right's """anti-war""" position is more out of a contrarian admiration of Putin and there is no sincere anti-imperialism among the right.
wall of text if you care about this
They support Putin against "d3generate globohomo judeobolshevism" and other such nonsense spectres they've conjured up in their own heads. If you go to the right spaces on the internet (corners of 4chan for instance) you can see this in action, but you can also see it on Tucker Carlson. The American, Canadian, British and European right have taken to thinking of their own governments and international institutions as Communist conspiracies (despite enormous evidence to the contrary). They do not oppose the actual existing privileges of unipolar western hegemony, they just hate it when they see a NATO official wave a rainbow flag and they support Putin who they see as a based anticommunist Christian crusader fighting Satanism or something. They have an incoherent narrative. Meanwhile, "respectable liberals" who support these imperialist institutions have to convince their voters that imperialism is actually progressive, hence the bad-faith attempt to pretend their proxy war against Russia is about protecting progressive European values. Hence the pinkwashing of imperialism, the attempt to falsely gain support for imperialism by pretending these imperialist institutions are progressive, or attempting to support feminism/LGBT. This strategy dates to the 19th century, when British imperialism in Afghanistan and French imperialism in Africa were framed as attempts to liberate women from backwards cultures, and so on. There is a yin-yanging between the bourgeois liberals and conservatives in the imperial core, for lack of a better term. the conservative bourgeoisie will falsely appear progressive for being "anti-war" for contrarian and absurd reasons. The liberals bourgeoisie will support imperialism while appearing to support bringing "human rights" to the "backwards east" with "lethal aid."
The real cause of this war is complicated. Russia was a source of cheap energy for Europe. Nordstream Pipeline brought natural gas to Germany in a cheap, predictable way without fluctuating price points. The Germans then sold it to other Europeans. However America wanted to sell Europe liquid natural gas. Problem is, it's expensive, has to be shipped by boat, and fluctuates in price. Europe didn't actually want that shit. So they sought out Russian energy because it was cheaper. Meanwhile Ukraine was about to tighten its relationship with Russia in 2014. President Yanukovych was faced with a choice between a $17 billion high interest IMF loan that came with strings attached (anti-labor measures, austerity, deregulation, imperialist looting of natural resources, the usual), or a Russian aid package that was $15 billion, lower interest, and came with cheap energy deals. He chose the Russian aid package. So America couped him, brought Poroshenko (president) and Yatsenyuk (prime minister) to power. Poroshenko helped integrate nazi gangs into the Ukrainian military, who were receiving training and weapons from America through the CIA front National Endowment for Democracy. Meanwhile Yatsenyuk canceled the Russian aid deal and took the IMF loan, plunging ukraine into poverty, putting Ukrainian farm land into the hands of foreign (US-allied) companies, etc. The communist party of Ukraine was banned in 2015 for being "Russian influenced." The Russian language was no longer to be taught in public schools despite a significant population in the Southeastern half the country speaking it as a first language, and so on. Crimea held a referendum to become part of Russia. It passed. Russia annexed Crimea. Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine started their own separatist movements and the government began a civil war against Donetsk and Luhansk that saw the Odessa massacre in a trade union hall , as well as the shelling of Donetsk with artillery. So only after 8 years of civil war did Russia finally invade Ukraine when the threat of Ukraine joining NATO (NATO membership usually involves US stationing bases/weapons in Ukraine, close to Moscow) reached a fever pitch. The main cause of the war is US financial interference in Ukraine, and NATO expansion. Both NATO and Russia are attempting to have influence in Ukraine, but the escalation arguably began with the coup in 2014. I don't know much about the orange revolution in 2004, but some have pointed to that as also a US-backed color revolution. And to an extent, the privatization of the Russian economy by Yeltsin was also US-backed, since the USA poured billions into Yeltsin's election campaign, and supported his shelling of the Russian parliament. So the aggression on NATO's part goes back decades.
Yes every part of how they got to their position is backwards and stupid but as Putin isn't actually doing the war to repress foreign gay rights I'm not going to take that seriously
if they accidentally harm American imperial interests out of misguided bigotry I am still going to take the damage to imperial interests as a win
not what is happening. For them to harm American imperial interests, they would have to actually be opposed to them in a non-symbolic way. But their opposition is purely symbolic.
they are opposed to the war in Ukraine. Blocking money to the Ukraine war isn't symbolic it's real
ah, but that's the sleight of hand. They'd rather be in a proxy war with China over Taiwan instead! Also another reason their opposition is purely symbolic is that it's a partisan opposition rather than a political opposition. If Ron DeSantis or Dan Crenshaw got elected tomorrow and continued escalating, I don't think they wouldn't care anymore.
Yeah but China isn't going to invade Taiwan and Taiwan is more resistant to US demands than Ukraine. For example Taiwan refused to toe the US policy line over Tibet
Taiwan isn't an independent country. It's part of China. This is acknowledged by the UN. So the entire logic of the country invading itself is an invention of US foreign policy.
True, but that doesn't change the fact that the """anti-war""" right wing in the US are more mad about the emphasis of US foreign policy than they are about US imperialism in general. It doesn't change the fact that their opposition is mostly to spending on the wrong war rather than spending on war at all. The """anti-war""" right is absolutely fine with NATO expansion and defense budget ballooning, they just hate when liberals spend money instead of them. This is the subject of the conversation. There is no real reason to build a coalition with these people or even critically support them when they do the """right thing""" for the wrong reasons.
Not that relevant a distinction pretty clearly whatever they are they have their own separate miltary and don't do what the Chinese government says.
yes but in order to be against something in general you must be against it in the specific. They are anti this war and until the next war that means they are anti war
ask them if they want to decrease the defense budget or end NATO and see where that goes. They don't care about the root cause of it. They want to snip a branch (for the entirely wrong reasons) but they'll scream bloody murder if you try to pull the plant out by its roots.
that is true. But it is also true that the branch of it needs to go
also their reasons don't matter they don't amount to anything more than contrarianism
this is where i disagree fundamentally. Two people can identify the same problem, but will believe the problem is a problem for very different reasons, and offer very different solutions as a result. Because of that context, their reactionary solutions to the problem they have identified are horrible, and will make things worse, and they should not be permitted to steer the conversation or be supported as they fight to gain control of the situation.
the solutions they have suggested are to cut off funding. Do you have a better idea if so I would legitimately love to hear it
they want to shift funding to fighting China, not cut it off. this conversation is going in circles.
There isn't a war with China nor is there likely to be in the immediate future
What do you mean? The US is constantly escalating tensions with China because it views China as its main geopolitical and ideological competitor. the US military is planning for war with China as early as 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy5FALVrULM
that just looks like the usual saber rattling.
i hope you're right
so do I war with China would kill us all
it's a shame, because while I hope you're right, I can see with my own eyes that America is slowly surrounding China with military bases and aircraft carriers, they are already supplying Taiwan (internationally recognized as Chinese territory) with weapons and training. Japan is re-militarizing for the first time since WW2, and a former CIA director and several war hawks have co-authored a series of articles in foreign policy magazine on how to escalate and prepare for war with China. So it seems to me this "saber rattling" is getting very very serious
Yeah it is serious but it's more along the lines of US aggression to the soviet union than Iraq. China scares them enough that they won't straight up have US soldiers try and kill Chinese people directly
we'll see
You can always tell the boomers and GenX because they grew up with this shit and can recognize it from a block away.
I'm not young. I grew up with this shit. It is precisely growing up with this shit that makes me truly believe America is an increasingly unhinged rogue state planning for war with China. It is precisely growing up with this shit that makes me not trust when the American right, who cheerleaded the destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen, suddenly pretend to be """"anti-war"""". i don't buy it
This would 1) push Russia and China even further together in a Eurasian military alliance bloc and 2) Make the US look unstable and unhinged to the rest of the world.
Overall, a better outcome for anti-imperialism than the US competently isolating and destroying Russia.
The US military empire is becoming increasingly riddled with contradictions and incompetent, and swapping back and forth between parties hinders their plans when they undo things out of contrarianism
1 and 2 are both already happening regardless of what the american """"anti-war"""" right achieves
Permitted? They need to pass an ideological barrier to advance material causes? Who is doing the permitting? Seems like most people here have an attachment to some notion of allowing or disallowing change based on their own ideological basis. We don't get to make that choice, as materialists we ought to critically support causes which move the needle away from imperialism regardless of intent or ideology, there is no coalition, only critical support for a cause which we both happen to support. This is how politics work, should Deng not have opened relations with the U.S in order to preserve an intangible ideological integrity? No of course not, you have to advance your interests even if it means working with those that do not share your goals.
the """"anti-war"""" reactionaries aren't doing that though.
we are by not advancing a true anti-war movement to combat their fake movement that sucks all the oxygen out of the room
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you know nothing about me.
Not when its facists
Ron Paul whatever you may think of him is not a fascist. Fascism proposes that war and the profits from it are the primary engine of technological progress and modernisation. A fascist would not be anti-war. The fascists like the proud boys went and fought in Ukraine
Eh, libertarians in the US are just a different kind of fascist as far as im concerned. They're pro-apartheid because of the fig leaf of "property rights" but really theyre just rascists, "anti-war" but only because theyre isolationist who don't understand where the treats come from. The reason they don't support empire is because they think treats materialize from atlas shrugged style industrialists and not from imperial exploitation of the global south. Ron Paul has always been full of shit and a racist clown.
The US empire isn't fascist either it is liberal. Liberalism includes the violent economic exploitation of the global south for imperial benefit a notable example of such a liberal state would be the British empire.
fascism is a specific ideological framework which is incompatible with libertarianism. Both of them are bad but not equally so and it's incorrect to lump them in together
I don't get pedantic when it comes to fash. Its fash all the way down. Liberals are just fash who don't know it yet, but will be in a crisis of capital. Social democracy is the left wing of fascism etc.
that's not not being pedantic it's just being wrong. Fascists love to be lumped in as just another part of the liberal machine
liberals don't magically turn into fascists when capital hits a crisis. When there is a threat of Communism capital will seek safety from violent fascists these will not be the exact same people
calling liberals fascist is barely more politically literate than calling the security guard at the mall fascist for pissing you off
Okay cool. But why do you care about defending libertarians, especially Ron Paul of all people?
If you accused Ron Paul of being Jack the Ripper i would defend him because what you're accusing him of is blatently false.
There are many legitimate reasons to criticise the man and libertarians but that doesn't make them a fascist.
calling everyone you don't like a fascist undermines your ability to call out fascists like Nick Fuentes and makes them seem like just another part of the right wing. Similar to how republicans calling everything socialist has removed a lot of stigma over the word socialist
The conservative movement that championed Barry Goldwater (who shares Ron Pauls "principled" stance against civil rights) and Ronald Reagan was a crypto-fascist white supremacist movement. After Reagan it became the mainstay of conservative politics in this country. I have a hard time not seeing Nick Fuentes as just another part of the right wing in the US since the right wing in the US has been crypto-fascist my whole life. I think libertarians are completely full of shit about what they believe and that they don't deserve defense just because they pretend to be against US empire sometimes. Is crypto-fash better than fash? I guess, but does it matter? Personally, I don't think so.
You disagree with calling Ron Paul a fascist. Okay. I get that there are differences between the different types of liberals, especially if you want to be specific correct. He's racist, homophobic, antiabortion, he's fought to uphold white supremacist patriarchy his entire life. He is still against the civil rights act. He's against US empire because of archaic isolationist beliefs (ask him about the gold standard lol) and because he thinks taxation is theft and feels agreived that so much money goes to that. So, what does that make him to you? And why is it important to defend libertarians here?
No Reagan was a neoliberal white supremacist. Being racist, white supremacist, anti-abortion, sexist etc are not on their own fascist although they are very much in line with fascism.
fascism is a very specific idea of how society should be run that is admittedly hard to define but does involve a belief in a societal militarism revolving around a conflict of races whereby only some races have a right to exist that also involves the systematic rooting out and killing of those seen as lesser or subversive. That is not Ron Paul but it is Nick Fuentes and the fact you can't see that is terrifying
Reagan began a system of mass impoverishment for black Americans. A fascist would have rounded up and killed them do you see the difference and why I say it is dangerous to conflate them
I think theres a lot less difference between Reagan, Paul, and Fuentes than you do. I'm not saying theres no differnces, I'm just not sure that those differences matter the way you do. I guess because Reagan would have happily rounded up black people and killed them if he could have, and Ron Paul would have been happy to join.
No Reagan wouldn't have rounded up black people to be killed he wanted them as an economic underclass to be exploited and wanted to take away power from black communities that could have been used to challenge capital. He wanted to do these things because he was racist yes but he wasn't an exterminationist. Violent white supremacy does not on it's own qualify as fascist things can be terrible while not being fascist
take the AIDS crisis. A homophobic neoliberal such as Reagan would ignore it as they don't care enough about gay people to affect their belief in the government not being responsible for people's welfare. A fascist would blame the gays, Jews etc and have them all killed
Okay. It sounds like splitting hairs between different kinds of fascists to me, but i respect that these definitions matter to you comrade. Thanks for the discussion :fidel-salute:
I encourage you to read more leftist theory about what fascism is and how it works.
I respect your rightful anger at Ron Paul and Reagan who are unmistakably ghouls
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That's an awful lot of effort to put into sabotaging a movement that does not exist
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