This sort of shit is why people call him an op.
He’ll do decent coverage sometimes, but when push comes to shove he’ll run interference for the state department and fascists.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/429/010/a5f.jpeg
The Jordan Peterson one? I listened to that this morning and didn't notice anything anticommunist about it. Or do you mean the Holocaust one?
This is where the kind of vague "antiauthoritarianism" that's predominant in the US left gets you.
I'm not trying to be sectarian, you can see I don't have a history of that. But Robert's brand of anarchism is the kind where you get all the cool leftists ideas but you also get to maintain some liberal views about the Soviet Union and China and shit in the ME. That's just a flavor of leftism we have to work with, as it's not uncommon. So yeah, he gets to be a cool leftists on guns and dealing with nazis and shit. But then he also gets to argue against the "tankies". He liked this post the other day:
https://twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1317707370319917056
I don't think he's an op. I just think he has a little bit of a military boner, and it's a bit too close to a imperial boner. Plus he has a lefter than thou attitude about nebulous tankies online saying stuff about stuff.
He also outright says he worked with feds, and stans for Euromaidan in his podcast.
Not to mention the Bellingcat thing.
I know, I've been following him for quite a while. He's worked with feds, training them on white nationalism and neo-nazis. He's openly admitted this way back when BTB was fairly new. I'm aware of his transgressions. I don't think that makes him a fed or a CIA agent though. It's possible to be leftist and have shitty takes. We do it all the time. It's possible to believe in something and fail to live up to it. We can't just call every shitty take an op. The idea that leftists can only be wrong when it's a CIA job is quite egotistical.
He's an anarcho-succdem, it's a long held policy position within the American left and historically had been deeply affiliated with the trot movement when the USSR was still a thing. Since then it's evolved into it's own beast.
It's about pointing to some undefined group of tankies. What tankies? Which posts on twitter did this person see? Robert has done this before where he's called out some group for saying dumb stuff and when people press him on it he just goes "oh it's just something I heard." Some nerd with a CCCP flag on twitter calling everything a CIA op is not some major constituency. It's a problem I notice particularly with anarchists that they think tankies are everywhere and are this huge group of influencers. There's a whole flavor of leftism that's just railing against the tankie menace. I'm saying that Robert is one of those guys.
Idk, you see that kind of leftist that thinks everything bad about the USSR is cia propaganda, and that every single revolution against a socialist is 100% cia op, and not built on organic and legitimate grievances here quite often
Only because literally almost everything bad about the USSR is CIA propaganda or old Nazi propaganda and every single revolution against a socialist is 100% a CIA op. You are truly underestimating the sheer amount of power and influence the CIA wields and how often it has wielded it to crush Communism.
But that's the thing, a lot of the bad is actually there. Not the hundred gazillion killed people, but corruption, authoritarianism and all that stuff. CIA just cashed on that and upped the volume to 11.
A lot of those movements that overthrew socialist governments didn't do it because of CIA, but it probably helped. IMO most of eastern Europe the resentment was already there, and for a reason.
Nah it was more like at a 2 and the CIA turned it up to 11. Pretty weird that over 90% of people from the Soviet States said in a poll that they wanted to stay in the Union in 1991.
People keep referencing these polls. I know there is a certain sentiment in that direction in older people , born before the 60s. Also a lot of people that are disillusioned by capitalism, but it's a lesser evil type of thing, rather than actually liking one more than the other. And pretty often it's a very reactionary desire, along the lines of "cause then men weren't so soft, women knew their place and we didn't have none of em gays"
Yeah I’d enjoy a primer on the Thai protest situation. A short one, as it means fuck all to me from across the globe...
Here are a couple of primers I’ve seen floating around:
https://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2020/08/why-is-us-funding-protesters-to-attack.html
https://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-complete-guide-us-government-role.html
The TL;DR is the current Thai govt is getting closer to China, so the various colour rev infrastructure is getting lined up against them.
Personally? I’m not going to get emotionally invested in the Thai king. I’m not gonna do that to myself.
Anti imperialism doesn’t mean simping for the people under attack but clearly demonstrating the actual geopolitics at play and making a scientific choice based on what weakens the global capitalist system.
Dude talked shit about Maduro, so he is trash in my book.
He once interrupted his guests to go on a tangent about how shitty teachers unions are, and that's as much as I know about his anti-left activities. I generally like his podcast tho.
he loved the unions in his behind the cops series. i had no clue he was anti union other than cop union
I still have no "take" on Bolivia.
well shit, your station chief should have briefed you
You can be against American police violence without being an internationalist leftist lol.
Also the dude is a journalist, he's not a movement leader.
Idk, I think it's dumb to assume that everyone needs to be a principaled leftist at an issues oriented protest. This isn't an explicitly leftist uprising, it's left/liberal.
I'd say that Robert is a net positive in that he's the first step in radicalizing libs by teaching them history. If you look at the comments for the BtB subreddit or fb page there's lots of people coming to the realization that the FBI is bad actually, etc. Hopefully some of them move on and actually read theory
Didn’t he come out and call it a coup eventually though? Correct me if I’m wrong, i am not on Twitter....
I don’t think we should be critical of skepticism when people are watching world events from the other side of the globe and having to sift through mountains of imperial propaganda constantly.
I mean you can be willing to say there's a complexity there that you don't understand and therefor it's not worth commenting on in general. Fine, whatever. How tf though is it not clear that what happened to Morales was a textbook coup. Removed from any moral judgement on anyone involved that was very clearly a coup.
Plus he feels comfortable enough to post and retweet protests movements all around the world constantly (thailand, belarus, hong kong, etc.).
I mean, you’re right. So many western leftists confuse tactics for goals. They see people rebel and reflexively support it.
