To be fair, the two people at the Grayzone who criticized Jacobin for not properly vetting some of the speakers at one of their co-sponsored events are not necessarily 100% anti-Jacobin. They actually have friends who work for Jacobin like Denis Rogatyuk who is an international editor at Jacobin. They even publish the work of some Jacobin journalists.
Jacobin has generally been good for Latin American coverage imo, albeit with some exceptions like some of their earlier Bolivian coverage. Both Jacobin and the Grayzone were the only 2 left-wing outlets that I recall that had critical coverage of Yaku Perez leading up to the 2021 elections in Ecuador.
Zenz then in a later post used a callous "both sides" argument against Palestinians that are being genocided. Whenever you hear anyone saying "both sides" when there's a clear oppressor, that person is 100% on the side of the oppressor and is too cowardly to outright admit it. Palestinians absolutely have the legal right to self-defense according to international law. Israel, the occupying power, does not. As we know, Zenz is a fascist and pro-Zionist (as long as he deems it not too "raw").
Yeah, and making rice noodles is obviously outside the commanding heights of the economy, which is what is under public ownership for their long-term NEP development model, so this isn't exactly a big revelation or anything to anyone who has been paying attention. State-owned enterprises still exist and compete with private enterprises, collective enterprises, and mixed enterprises outside the commanding heights in China, but a lot more private enterprise is allowed to exist in these non-strategic industries because it saves on monitoring and operational costs for the state and facilitates attracting more foreign capital and technology that China needs to develop. The NEP model certainly isn't immune to criticism, but if a developing country is going to use it as part of their development strategy, then it would be ridiculous for state officials to suggest that they want private enterprises to develop poorly and offer absolutely no support. They would just be sabotaging their own economy at that point. The headline would be more concerning if the state was instead privatizing actual public enterprises, which isn't the case. It just restates what we already know.
Well, it didn't exactly help that the Moreno regime has been persecuting the Correaist left over the past several years (many face trumped-up charges like Correa and Jorge Glas Espinel with proceedings that were about as dirty as Lula faced) and the mainstream media in Ecuador intensified its right-wing propaganda against the leftist Arauz by insisting that Ecuador would become the "next Venezuela" if Arauz won. I've also encountered some voters who still believed that Moreno was a leftist (he was elected as a Correaist leftist and then quickly did a complete 180 and became a right-wing neoliberal in office) and blamed the economic collapse in Ecuador on socialism despite Moreno crippling the economy by going mask-off neoliberal with extreme austerity and selling out the country to the IMF. There's zero chance that Ecuador will rejoin ALBA under Lasso. Expect the political persecution against the left to continue in Ecuador. The left has always had an amazing propensity for disunity and we should never underestimate how the bourgeoisie will find ways to exploit anything they can to infiltrate, co-opt progressive rhetoric, gaslight, divide, and conquer the working class.
Eva Golinger revealed years ago that Carlos/Yaku Perez's Pachakutik (a political arm of CONAIE) received training and financial support from the American government's National Democratic Institute (NDI), which is funded by the National Endowment of Democracy (NED) and the US state department. It appears that the US got one hell of a return on their investment with corrupting enough of the party leadership to appoint and support Perez who led the vote-null campaign to inevitably help the far-right banker Lasso win the runoff (he even endorsed Lasso back in 2017). Criticism of Perez from within his own party by figures from its more left-wing faction like Leonidas Iza, who pointed out major red flags concerning Perez like how he had right-wing Lasso-affiliated elements in his inner circle directing policy, was ignored. Indigenous leader Sacha Rosero Lema described an undemocratic nomination process of Perez by the Pachakutik leadership. Yaku Perez opposed Andrés Arauz’s plan to give $1,000 to 1 million mothers who are the heads of their households because Perez claimed that these women would “probably spend it all on beer that same day”. Perez celebrated the far-right coup against Evo Morales, called for the "fall" of Maduro, advocated for a closer relationship with the US, and even called for a military takeover of the country.
This is a great Jacobin article that addresses some of the misconceptions about leftist politics in Ecuador and the Correa era.
To be fair, the two people at the Grayzone who criticized Jacobin for not properly vetting some of the speakers at one of their co-sponsored events are not necessarily 100% anti-Jacobin. They actually have friends who work for Jacobin like Denis Rogatyuk who is an international editor at Jacobin. They even publish the work of some Jacobin journalists.
Jacobin has generally been good for Latin American coverage imo, albeit with some exceptions like some of their earlier Bolivian coverage. Both Jacobin and the Grayzone were the only 2 left-wing outlets that I recall that had critical coverage of Yaku Perez leading up to the 2021 elections in Ecuador.