Chomsky whines about the USSR and calls its collapse "a win for the left". Absolutely unbelievable. Of course he has nothing to say about 1993 protests or the fact that the majority of Russians who experienced life in the USSR want it back.
Zizek calls China a "bad model for the left". Of course no actual socialist experiment is ever good enough for the ivory tower intellectual. Even worse, he keeps saying he hopes that China will liberalize its government. So fuck the DotP, lets just give away power to the capitalists, because that is literally what will happen in a liberal democracy, and he knows it.
You read Blackshirts and Reds? It has a good chapter on left anti-communism :party-parenti:
:this:
someday soon I'm gonna find the blog again, but there's a (I assume BC-based) native that blogs about tactics and some excellently thorough criticism of radlib texts
really wish I'd bookmarked their shit because now I can't find it
Post it to the site in a new thread if you do find it, I'd like to read it, as others would too I'd imagine
ngl was hoping someone smarter than me here would just link it as a reply
they absolutely dismantled that pacifist screed written by one of the XR ghouls
maybe that rambling/vaguely-incoherent/solidly-conspiracist anti-greenwashing blog links to it
I was thinking of Zig Zag, whose decol manual hit the front page a few days ago. Turns out he just reblogged the specific crit I was thinking of.
its because most Western Left Leaders are utopians who think their country's revolution will have True Socialism unlike the past attemps :marx:
Richard Wolff is great imo, probably one of the more succinct ones and u can tell he gets less mainstream media attention for it
this recent interview w him is worth watching
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5rszSpuv6M
he gets less mainstream media attention for it
This is at least half the thread right here. All the incentives and career tracks in mainstream media flow around capitalism as an unchangeable net positive. Of course this leads to only token coverage of leftists, and that token coverage is further restricted to leftists with significant flaws.
Wolff really needs to do a series on Netflix or something imo, thats how u get some serious mainstream coverage, and u know it would be really well received too with how well hes able to explain things.
he doesnt really speak much about any org or party from what i noticed i dont quite understand why. i think he should get involved with dsa he would get a big audience there that can benefit from his expertise
Because if they say anything else, they wouldn’t be “thought leaders”. It’s not like Chomsky is free from Chomsky own logic of “you wouldn’t be here, if you thought otherwise”.
It's a bit like the libs who support black liberation in the abstract, in the ideal, but "have criticisms" about every actual movement.
Because capitalism doesn't reward leftism so only the toothless rise to the top. Just enough that people feel that they have freedom of expression, but not enough that it actually threatens the status quo.
you tying this to a political project or no? cuz the chinese diaspora been running the south china coasts for 400 years, nothing anti-capitalist about them folks
Moreover Chomsky endorsed the bombing of Serbia during the yugoslav wars
but those aren't the true american thought leaders, its all Saint Parenti who has never ever had a bad take; then nima shirazi and adam johnson--dont you listen to the pod???
didn't parenti write some obnoxious pro-slobo screed?
narrator: he did
there are truly no good folks involved in balkanization. slobo wasn't as bad as the west propagandized him to be (he's far from the worst yugo leader involved, in fact), but someone who let the reactionary ultranationalist hawks run wild the way he did deserves absolutely no praise from the left
at best he's a grifter who doomed one of the most successful socialist projects in the world to enrich himself. at worst he's a collaborator who deserves the wall
even serbian anti-nato documentaries on balkanization don't try to stan slobo
lol I should've known
keeping it serious, if someone considers you a 'thought leader' it's time for people to stop paying attention
ngl Graeber dying this year was rough but at least we won't see him endorsing Ivanka Trump as the democratic nominee in 2032
IMO the leftists on turtle island people should be paying attention to are all indigenous bloggers mostly writing about tactics and radlib criticisms on blogs that get probably 1000 hits a week
I was thinking of Zig Zag when I made that comment, though the specific criticism I was thinking of wasn't written by them.
Mentioned somewhere else in the thread I keep forgetting to bookmark them
Yeah, every fucking one of those murderous splitters deserves the wall, and the western bombers double deserve the wall. Fucking up Yugoslavia, even with its issues, is something only god can forgive them for.
to be fair, I can think of at least a dozen folks off the top of my head that deserved to face justice before slobo
:10000-com:
Holbrooke, Clinton, Tudman, Tus, Mladen, etc. etc. etc.
Instead of posting an article explain what you disagree with?
He does not "stan Slobo" but points out how no criticism is ever made of fascist Franjo Tudgman or the Bosnian leader Izetbegovic
Simiarly nothing was ever said in mainstream press of atrocities committed against Serbs this is despite Serbs being ethnically cleansed under the watchful eye of Nato troops
huh? the article I linked is the Parenti essay I'm talking about
gonna just point you to the rest of my comments about this in here to answer your second part
to be fair, I can think of at least a dozen folks off the top of my head that deserved to face justice before slobo
...
Holbrooke, Clinton, Tudman, Tus, Mladen, etc. etc. etc.
...
at least w/ parenti you know it’s just a misguided vehicle for very deserved nato/propaganda criticism
...
and slobo absolutely doesn’t deserve his propagandized rep. there’s a particularly famous speech he made on serbian independence day just as shit was escalating (91 or 92 if I remember right) where he called for yugo unity and absolutely put the serbian crowd to sleep by not calling for croat and albanian blood.Yes, the Serbs were subject to a ton of atrocities during balkanization. That doesn't absolve their genocidal ultranationalists (and again, I'm not saying Slobo was one of them, just that he enabled them).
So you posted a parenti article as if Parenti had a bad take on the Yugoslav wars or a bad take on Milosevic..
What do you object to in that article?
it is wholly uncritical of the serbian right's role in balkanization/the balkan wars, and the way milosevic enabled those parts of his government/military
The entire point is that you can point out nato, tudman, izetbegovic, etc.'s atrocities and nazi ties while staying critical of the ultranationalist serbs that rode milosevic into power. Even fucking Serbian documentarians producing social history of the balkan wars do.
this is clear in my other comments in this thread. I suggest reading them
Nah you completely missed his point and the fact you can't point to a specific paragraph or point in the article is telling.
Everyone knows about the Serbs atrocities - he mentions them loads of times.
The Yugoslav leaders were essentially all involved atrocities of similar levels against each other - but only Milosovic was painted as Hitler whilst ethnic cleansing happened under the eye of Nato troops.
That's his entire point essentially.
the fact you can’t point to a specific paragraph or point in the article is telling
The complete failure of Western forensic teams to locate the 250,000 or 100,000 or 50,000 or 10,000 bodies (the numbers kept changing) of Albanians supposedly murdered by the Serbs in Kosovo also goes unnoticed.
If this isn't downplaying the serbian side idk what is.
I've met Serbians today who use genocidal rhetoric ('infestation', 'sub-human', etc.) to talk about Albanians. To pretend like that sentiment doesn't exist because it's propagandaized as the only genocidal impulse there during the time is asinine.
he mentions them loads of times
find one fucking quote, cause I can't
better to just watch this, which is infinitely more nuanced than Parenti's shitty essay
If this isn’t downplaying the serbian side idk what is.
Prior to the Yugoslav war the US told everyone that 200,000 people had been killed. Heres a little job for you bud...20 years have passed since the US claimed Serbs killed 200,000 people. Show me where thats true
There was no such thing. It was a lie to go to war and murder 140,000 people and turn Serbia into the cancer capital of Europe.
find one fucking quote, cause I can’t
Then read his book To Kill A Nation where he explicitly says the war was more like a limited insurgency with all sides committing atrocities
better to just watch this, which is infinitely more nuanced than Parenti’s shitty essay
Already seen it. Im surprised you dont think its "downplaying the serbian side" by...telling the truth
I choose to be a pedantic asshole and say you said bad takes and that's a take singular
there are truly no good folks involved in balkanization. slobo wasn’t as bad as the west propagandized him to be (he’s far from the worst yugo leader involved, in fact), but someone who let the reactionary ultranationalist hawks run wild the way he did deserves absolutely no praise from the left
you don't need to stan slobo to be anti-fucking-nato
no doubt
greenwald also stanned slobo too if i remember right, at least w/ parenti you know it's just a misguided vehicle for very deserved nato/propaganda criticism instead of greenwald's hack-contrarianism
and slobo absolutely doesn't deserve his propagandized rep. there's a particularly famous speech he made on serbian independence day just as shit was escalating (91 or 92 if I remember right) where he called for yugo unity and absolutely put the serbian crowd to sleep by not calling for croat and albanian blood.
that said, he wasn't great.
Yeah, but if Chomsky has a bad take he should be fucking ostracized and when Parenti stans people who committed genocide he's just muh broken clock.
Why are you using quotes that clearly don't mean what you think they mean to misrepresent people
In what possible context could any of those quotes make you go: "hm, Chomsky's making a really good point here"?
IDK, to me it seems young western online leftists also hold a lot of bad takes, mostly stemming from the fact that they have only lived under capitalism, and romanticize both China and the USSR.
Of course he has nothing to say about 1993 protests or the fact that the majority of Russians who experienced life in the USSR want it back.
You can have a system that is objectively horrible, yet still have another one that is even worse. I agree with Chomsky on this take. What happened after the fall of the USSR was the leadership just going mask off. By that point it was horribly corrupt bureaucratized juggernaut, with a security state apparatus much worse than anything you see even today in the West (mainly cause since then technologies have changed, and its all a lot more hidden).
Likewise there are many problems with China. It is indeed not a paragon of human rights, and you do not need Zenzis 100 billion uighur for that to be true. It has a lot of problems in a lot of areas, that make it not a very good model.
What we need is something with the ambition and scope of the USSR or China, but with freedom of expression and rights for say lgbtq people and minorities, as in the better/best liberalized countries in the West, coupled with the economic planning of Amazon or Wallmart, but more humane, and also with actual worker ownership of the means of production, and some smart way of preventing authoritarian power grabs and bureaucracy creep. We have progressed past the need of the juggernaut state structures of the mid-late 20th century....
China is capitalist. I know that's a bitter pill for you all to swallow, but any country who has a rich upper class (and yes, they have billionaires like the US does) and a poor exploited class, is capitalist.
I think a better question is how come western leftists spend all their time and effort dividing each other up with petty bullshit defending China and other quote on quote "socialist" countries. We should be rallying the working class, instead a vast majority spend all their time talking about how awesome China is when this conversation does absolutely zero to help the average worker and they don't want to hear that bullshit anyway.
"hard pill to swallow", "defending china"
why do you assholes always think we're emotional about china or some bullshit psychology like that
it's not spending time "defending china", it's actually studying the fucking experiment to see if there's anything worth salvaging for our own synthesis, especially for those of us in the 3rd world
in fact i've never wished for china to be socialist (and it's actually anti-marxist as fuck to talk about material reality in photographic terms), i was spewing shit china takes like yours left and right until what, earlier this year, when i realized i was completely wrong and had to give in
China's capitalists are actively suppressed and controlled by the state. Reality is far more nuanced than you can imagine. Here's a good article to begin - https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2018/06/07/china-workshop-challenging-the-misconceptions/
Building socialism in one country is difficult, in a world where capitalist countries rapidly develop and build more and more technologies and methods to outcompete you militarily and economically. In my opinion, the CPC, while it has internal struggles between rightists and leftists, is still firmly on the path to communism.
I think a better question is how come western leftists spend all their time and effort dividing each other up with petty bullshit defending China and other quote on quote “socialist” countries. We should be rallying the working class, instead a vast majority spend all their time talking about how awesome China is when this conversation does absolutely zero to help the average worker and they don’t want to hear that bullshit anyway.
You can do both. This seems to me more like you're uncomfortable talking about China.
lol “people spend too much time doing struggle sessions about China”
starts struggle session on china
also there are actual criticisms of china but this is just dumb, socialism is a transition, its not a classless society.
any country who has a rich upper class (and yes, they have billionaires like the US does) and a poor exploited class, is capitalist
this dumb argument over vernacular is just stupid. grow up
