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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • If you look around the world at the Orbans, the Bolsanaros, the Le Penns, the AfD, etc., you will find that polarization and the rising far right is global. First past the post is not a good thing, but the causes are far deeper.

    A past global trend was how the center left parties (Democrats in the US, 2nd International Socialist parties in most of the rest of the world) discredited themselves, abandoning their core constituencies and pushing neoliberal economic policies (in the US, free trade, dismantling welfare, the banking deregulation behind 2008). I think that’s the proximate cause in the rise of the global far right.

    The cause of that trend is the inability of regulated capitalism to both provide for everyone AND provide the necessary ever increasing rate of profit.

    While there have been stirrings of possible left reformist parties (Sanders, Corbyn, Lula, etc) even those that make it into state power are ineffective at creating a new, stable, political economy.

    Meanwhile climate change is haunting the globe and the clock is ticking.




  • Since 2000, the ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israeli deaths is 21:1 (NYT). Rockets? The name evokes weapons from Lockheed or Boeing, but Hamas and Islamic Jihad make them in garages and basement tunnels while Israel has the most hitech interceptors available. It’s still comparatively slingshots to F-16s.

    Hamas was created in 1987, and has benefited from disproportionate treatment from the Israelis, who used Hamas to divide the Palestinian resistance. When Israel blows ckekd the negotiation tactics of the secular Palestinian resistance, what else were Palestinians to do? Palestinians in Gaza tried mass civil disobedience I’m 2018 with the Walk of Return, but Israel used live rounds and nearly 300 were killed and thousands wounded. How else were the Palestinians to seek freedom?








  • While voting is a necessary but insufficient way to combat fascism, 96% of voting Ukrainians choosing to not support fascism is a good indicator that fascism is NOT on the agenda in Ukraine. A fascist coup by that 2% supporting fascism would be opposed by the vast majority of Ukraine.

    You completely ignore that fact with your hardon for attacking the identity of persons chosen by the Ukrainians.

    Edit to explain: I made no argument on what Zelinsky as a Jew or the Muslim cabinet member would be politically, which would be identity politics. This statement of fact (Zelinsky is Jewish) was relevant to the political preferences of the Ukrainian people. Fascists don’t choose Jews and Muslims to represent them.

    Zelinsky is a pretty terrible neoliberal, and I’m not actually a fan. But I am a fan a national self determination. So was Lenin.






  • Except that is not what the poster you’re replying to said. The poster said, ‘negotiate with Palestinians to hand over Hamas responsible for 10/7’. That’s not ‘negotiating with Hamas’.

    There was an ongoing peace process between Israel and the secular PLO with the Oslo Accords and then Israel stopped the process. Israel accelerated land grabs and illegal settlements, and actually PROMOTED Hamas. The PLO organizations had either pledged to not harm civilians or given up armed struggle altogether. But Israel said NO to land for peace and so why should Palestinians choose peaceful negotiations?