"Any victory like that would cost millions of lives."
So, literally any victory in history then?
Honestly would probably quickly come down to the reaction of NATO.
I don't have a hard time believing they have contingencies for a counter coup in the US.
Oh my god how funny would it be they gladio'ed Trump.
This guy fucking sucks, I don't care who you are. He literally stans the kurds and talks about non-violent protest in pursuit of ones goals. If this guy isn't textbook O P E R A T I V E, nobody's a fucking op.
Stop recommending his shit, dude fucking blows, and his only purpose is to scare libs into supporting whatever the state dept says
Yeah maybe a little uninformed, I thought so as well? Rojava is Kurdish right
The Kurds are fuckin awesome, there's a subset of leftists that hate the Kurds because the United States worked with them to defeat ISIS in Northern Syria. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ sometimes for some people anything that actually has to face the rigors of the real world just isn't enough for them and things are only good when they're pure and haven't happened yet
It's just dumb because for one, like you mention what else were the Kurds supposed to do? Just let ISIS kill and rape them all? And secondly, US support for Rojava has always been really half-hearted, the US has never really given very much political backing to the Autonomous Administration (the government of Rojava), they just give them military aid and a bare minimum of humanitarian aid, that's it. The US also did nothing when Turkey invaded Afrin, and the US withdrew troops in order to allow Turkey to invade Tel Abyad and Serakiniye. I think if Rojava was really an American puppet they would be getting a lot more political support than what they are currently getting.
what else were the Kurds supposed to do?
Ally with Assad and the SAA in 2017 at a time of peak leverage to prevent an inevitable and obvious Turkish/NATO offensive into Northern Syria, accepting US support in 2014-2015 is justifiable, remaining a US client in 2017, 2018, and 2019 was beyond short-sighted and it cost them leverage with Assad and most of the heavily populated northern border
I don't see any racism towards Kurds here. Can we not do this shitty kind of argument? Not supporting Rojava isn't racist.
The same people who will stan Stalin despite the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and not understand the obvious inconsistency here.
Hardly any inconsistency, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact still led to the invasion of the Soviet Union just like the Rojavan/US alliance led to a Turkish/NATO invasion
Rojava is Kurdish right
No it's officially a multi-ethnic autonomous region, half of the population isn't even Kurdish
He can't be an op, he tells leftists to buy heckin gunarinos that's how you know he's an epic radical
I mean in the last episode of Worst Year Ever he does lay out a really good case for why you shouldn't tell people not to counterprotest and that if fascists are marching, do confront them and overwhelm them with numbers and beat the shit out of them because if left to their own devices they will target people in the vicinity anyway. I think there's slightly more nuance to be had than just "lol he's an op"
He also tells you how to knock down riot cops and stomp them in It Could Happen Here. During the Portland protests he repeatedly said the cops deserve what they get.
I really hope we're not going to draw the line between lib and True Leftist as "they don't openly call for the murder of state officials/cops everyday." If you guys want to join a militia, then do so. But stop expecting everyone with a public livelihood to advocate violence on your behalf.
Riot cops don't uphold American global hegemony, the CIA and military do. Robert Evans literally works for NED (see: US government) funded media outlet Bellingcat.
The US government doesn’t care if some anarchists spar with white supremacists in the US. The US has completely military and police control inside its own borders. The entire grift of people like Robert is that they can look radical by supporting the most radical policies within the US, like rioting or changing economic policies (because they will never happen in this political system) but then turn around and repeat the CIA/State Dept lines on any foreign policy issue, to get other so called radicals in the US to become useful tools of the government in carrying out imperialism. Robert isn’t actually challenging any propaganda or narratives about anyone other than some activist teenagers and cops in the US. On the contrary, he further reinforces narratives about official enemies of the US and about communists historically like the USSR. He is completely hostile to "tankies".
He's a lib. Yes, he has dumb takes about tankies. But working for Bellingcat doesn't make you a CIA agent. Nor does it mean you're hired by the government to disrupt leftist movements. I've worked for Walmart and Amazon, yet I'm not a capitalist. For one thing, his podcast isn't even close to being popular enough. The CIA would just use Joe Rogan or someone like that. An anarchist in ohio isn't "carrying out imperialism" on behalf of the US government for being wrong about tankies. This is hysteria, not insight.
Second, this is unfalsifiable. The claim is that he doesn't suggest violence and when we say he does it's not the right kind of violence. There's literally nothing he could do to not be an op. If he came out tomorrow and told people to murder their governor you'd call it an op because it's going to get leftist arrested. This is why you don't base your analysis of the world on twitter screenshots and shitposts on chapo.chat or r/cth.
Robert isn’t actually challenging any propaganda or narratives about anyone other than some activist teenagers and cops in the US.
Literally no podcast does. They're podcasts. Not your personal army or vanguard party. Chapo is libs (and an op because Will's grandad was a communist informer). TrueAnon is an op (Brace worked for the government and carried out US policy goals). Everyone is an op. No podcast is going to lead the revolution for you. You're just mad because he works for Bellingcat and you saw some bad twitter takes. Being wrong doesn't make you an op.
But working for Bellingcat doesn’t make you a CIA agent
A truly socialist take of "being paid by the government doesn't mean you work for the government"
I’ve worked for Walmart and Amazon, yet I’m not a capitalist.
But do you currently work in public relations or marketing at Walmart?
Literally no podcast does. They’re podcasts. Not your personal army or vanguard party.
Absolutely true. I haven't listened to Robert Evans' podcast or whatever, but podcasts like Citations Needed are good in that they are explicitly about changing your beliefs about the US to "deprogram" people of dominant narratives, which is useful even for people already on the left.
One thing is certain, if your work is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, you are not doing any good work.
Working for the government doesn't mean you agree with the government. And working for a private company that receives grants is not working for the government. Tons of companies receive grants and funding. Stop being obtuse.
Absolutely true. I haven’t listened to Robert Evans’ podcast or whatever
"I've never heard anything the guy said other than the tweets people get mad over." is peak internetbrain.
One thing is certain, if your work is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, you are not doing any good work.
He writes articles sometimes, for a company that he only started working for in the past few years , that gets funding. You're trying to equate this with his entire body of work (podcasts, tweets, books, etc) being funded by NED and carrying out its goals. This is beyond intellectually sloppy. His earlier articles were in 2018, before he was brought on as an actual employee, and they were on the Christchurch shooting and right wing shit. Before that he was already working on BTB and he had done his investigative stuff in Syria and the Ukraine.
So he's an op when he's against violence, but also an op when he's for it?
"There's slightly more nuance here" seems right.
I mean the ruling class is not only interested in keeping the peace. Sometimes street violence serves their interests, and I think his purpose is less about preventing the left from punching chuds and more about steering the left away from threatening ideology, and thus in turn threatening praxis.
And I'm sorry but I'm not interested in a nuanced take about someone who works for an NED-funded rag and tells the "radical left" to hate all of the US's adversaries and do ineffective decentralized/horizontal organization.
The US government doesn't care if some anarchists spar with white supremacists in the US. The US has completely military and police control inside its own borders. The entire grift of people like Robert is that they can look radical by supporting the most radical policies within the US, like rioting or changing economic policies, because they will never happen in this political system, but then turn around and repeat the CIA/State Dept lines on any foreign policy issue, to get other so called radicals in the US to become useful tools of the government in carrying out imperialism. Robert isn't actually challenging any propaganda or narratives about anyone other than some activist teenagers and cops in the US.
The US government is white supremacist. It's chocked with racial supremacists. Racial supremacy and capitalism go together. Fighting white supremacy is fighting cops, fighting cops is fighting the state. The state is white supremacist. You can't pretend that fighting cops doesn't matter only the military. The cops are domestic military at this point. What kind of state is okay with anarchists fighting cops? Anarchy isn't a challenge to capital? I'm not an anarchist and I know we like to have our sectarian shitfights. But this is just silly. I hate to be rude, but you copy/pasted this comment at me so I assume you think it's particularly good.
but then turn around and repeat the CIA/State Dept lines on any foreign policy issue, to get other so called radicals in the US to become useful tools of the government in carrying out imperialism.
"Guy having bad takes on twitter turns leftists into useful tools of imperialism" Pure ideology. Please don't tell me you go around saying how much of a ML you are and how everyone who isn't is a lib op while saying shit like the above.
sure he buys into what ever the State Department says, but lets ignore that
Alright, I'm going in...
So, what opinion should we have about the Kurds?
They are impure so they deserve to die, as adjudicated by internet socialists
Kurds have the support of the Syrian government now that the US abandoned them I thought?
The Kurds allowed Syrian and Russian troops to enter certain areas in order to stop a Turkish invasion, but other than that the relationship between the Kurds and the Syrian government is very tense because the Syrian government wants to regain full control of the Kurdish controlled areas, and the Kurds want to retain their autonomy and keep their revolution going. There have been attempts at negotiations but they never went anywhere because neither side is willing to concede very much.
Every time Assad makes moves on FSA ISIS prisoners tend to "escape" from YPG prisons
A bunch of armchair leftists on this site are going to lead a revolution against the US military lol.
Good fucking luck.
“A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”
:mao-aggro-shining:
there's a lot that exists between voting and fighting the military, it does not like seem that he's saying all you can do is vote
He works for NED funded Bellingcat. He has bad takes on literally everything and is an anti-communist.
Evans co-hosted a mini podcast series called "Behind the Police", where he examined the history of policing in America. The purpose was to show that the police have always been unnecessary, racist, and unaccountable. The podcast got a lot of traction, and may have even helped some people realized how uniquely bad the modern institution of policing is. What about "Behind the Police" is a bad take?
So, no, you don't actually think that Evans has bad takes on literally everything. He probably has some bad takes on current international issue. I don't really know enough about his work to have examples of these. The thing is, though, that very few of the commenters here have any example of a bad Evans take where they explain why the take is bad and how it is caused by the US gov funding Evans indirectly gets. No, "Robert Evans supports Hillary Clinton's slave trade in Libya" , or "Robert Evans supports the Kurds", are not examples. Why is Evans a NED anti-communist? Because he said some bad things about the USSR? What does that make Noam Chomsky?
Painting someone as "a fed", "a radlib", or "a trot" without having any reason why what they say corresponds with that ideology, and any reason why that ideology is bad, is pointless and harmful.
Also, he's literally some random journalist/writer. Even if Evans is a full blown CIA agent, none of his critics here really say what we should do with this information. Should we never read anything he writes because it will pollute our minds with CIA mind control? In that case, what about the New York Times?
Painting someone as “a fed”, “a radlib”, or “a trot” without having any reason why what they say corresponds with that ideology
He is LITERALLY funded by the NED which is LITERALLY US government and capitalist funded. The correspondence is he literally does not support any existing socialists (not even Morales in Bolivia) , and bashes them and other enemies of the US frequently.
From my comment elsewhere in this thread: Riot cops don’t uphold American global hegemony, the CIA and military do. The US government doesn’t care if some anarchists spar with white supremacists in the US. The US has completely military and police control inside its own borders. The entire grift of people like Robert is that they can look radical by supporting the most radical policies within the US, like rioting or changing economic policies (because they will never happen in this political system) but then turn around and repeat the CIA/State Dept lines on any foreign policy issue, to get other so called radicals in the US to become useful tools of the government in carrying out imperialism. Robert isn’t actually challenging any propaganda or narratives about anyone other than some activist teenagers and cops in the US. On the contrary, he further reinforces narratives about official enemies of the US and about communists historically like the USSR. He is completely hostile to “tankies”.
Thank you! This actually explains what you mean. You do have a good point that his version of anarchism struggles to meaningfully oppose US imperialism. And, far all, US imperialism is the most worst thing around. The thing is, I don't see how your overall position here is feasible.
Suppose Robert Evans had good politics. He would criticize every action of American empire, and explain how nearly all domestic politicians and policies work to enhance it. Bellingcat would publish articles about how all nations need support in their fight against Western aggression (Oh, you don't mean I should support ISIS? How do I know when a foreign group America is fighting is bad then? If you think that any criticism of the USSR is "reinforcing narratives about America's enemies", even though the USSR doesn't exist any more, you've definitely left the "critical support" realm...). Evans would be a vocal critic of Bernie Sanders. Bernie wanted to reduce military spending, end some of America's foreign occupations, and limit the intelligence communities. However, during Bernie's time in congress he voted for certain military action, such as (I think) the was in Afghanistan and bombing of Libya. As president he wouldn't have given up every foreign military base, ended all alliances with liberal Asian countries, and gotten rid of all the nukes. Since, in your view, the evil of America empire vastly trumps any good or bad things for workers within the United States, these failures make Bernie a problem. If Evans is against Bernie for these reasons, then presumably he's against all sorts of American electoralism.
Woke Evans should also be against American labor organizing, The last time labor had any power was after World War II, also the war which saw America become dominant global superpower. Maybe there are good, anti-imperialist unions? Which ones? The IWW and its minuscule membership. "Nah, they're all bad", says woke Evans. "Labor unions are a grift because they make workers imagine that that working conditions can be changed without overthrowing the government." Sure, Evans can tell me to join a local revolutionary group. We will organize for the glorious day when the proletariat overthrow the empire! Unfortunately, any time one of these groups gets going the FBI breaks it up. Most never get going, though, since they have a long laundry list of qualities which bar membership: being a veteran, having worked at a company who contracts for the military, thinking the wrong thing about North Korea, etc.
I guess the only good thing to do, if you care about socialism, is to leave any Western country, and join a nation fighting the good fight against the imperialists. Just roll up to a country of your choice in the Global South, and tell them you're done with Liberalism. Too bad if you're gay or trans, better bury that part of you in the name of the cause.
Some might say that it is possible to be both against American empire, and critical of bad regimes abroad (again, like ISIS). It is also possible to be for social democratic reform in America and want to end American aggression. You can organize for change or revolution in your own country, while critiquing the problems of failed revolutions in the past. But maybe the new Robert Evans is right. America is the evil empire, and its sins permits no nuance. Death to all Americans!
Ignoring his point, which is w/e, his podcast was absolutely worthless I think in terms of analysis. It was all just narrative.
