Image is of the Preah Vihear Temple on the Cambodian border. Image sourced from the UNESCO World Heritage website.
Over the last few days, Thailand and Cambodia entered into a heightened stage of conflict due to a long-running border dispute. Like many problems on this planet, Europeans are ultimately to blame - specifically France. Certain sections of the border drawn up by France about a century ago were not fully agreed upon by both sides, with the ownership of some Khmer temples being the most visible points of disagreement.
Despite interventions in favor of Cambodia in the 1960s and later 2010s by the ICJ - one of the mainly mostly useless global institutions that liberals periodically disown - the border conflict has simmered at a generally low level. Of the two countries, Thailand is significantly more militarily and economically powerful.
Last Wednesday, a Thai soldier lost his leg by stepping on a landmine, prompting a rapid escalation between Cambodia and Thailand that has since resulted in dozens of deaths and tens of thousands displaced. Cambodia was willing to come to the negotiating table fairly quickly, but Thailand was more hesitant. International pressure on the two countries by Malaysia, China, and the United States eventually forced Thailand to the table, and they have recently agreed to an immediate ceasefire courtesy of ASEAN.
Notably, Trump refused to hold trade talks with either country until they agreed to peace, which suggests that he really wants a Nobel Peace Prize - which he seems a shoe-in for given that he's met the two most important requirements that several Nobel Peace Prize recipients have needed to meet in the past, which are: 1) start at least one war, and 2) accelerate the genocide of millions of people as billions more people watch on. His policies vis-a-vis ICE creating a domestic terror regime only further increase his chances of winning the prize.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
These kinds of struggle sessions always go too far. It's almost always leftists who share mostly the same ideals, but as soon as a difference pops out, people start calling names, throwing accusasions, generalizing one bad take to the whole character of the other person etc. We can surely be more understanding, unity is what gives as the most strength, not being as purist as we can possibly be.
Nobody on the left has formally reckoned with how the internet has changed interactions and discussions. You can give someone an excuse for righteous indignation and they become an absolute terror because their foolishness is somehow fighting the good fight. You also get their weird thing where people treat issues like metaphysical entities that feed on attention. If you just talk about one issue enough, it gets stronger. If you don't feed another issue, it starves and dies. I think that is mostly due to social media and the structure of forums imprinting on people's minds and they think that's how things in the world work. And it's not a matter of who owns the website. These issues don't go away just because it's a leftist website.
A big problem with the internet is that people can't read the tone and emotion of the person on the other side of the screen, and as such, will always filter it through the medium of how they are currently feeling. So someone who has had a bit of a bad day or is feeling antagonistic will probably react much more negatively to someone else. This, combined with the fact there are no real consequences for being rude or mean, can make internet discussions turn nasty far quicker than face to face conversation.
To be fair, while this is mostly people arguing on a niche internet leftist forum that holds zero weight on what is actually happening in the world, the question of reform or revolution is a perpetually unresolved issue for the left that dates back at least a century. And I believe they argued even more fiercely back then when the world was at a critical juncture - choosing the wrong path could cost your entire movement and years of effort that went into it.
Arguing over whether to go the reform path or the revolution path is already baked into the consciousness of every left wing movement, hence the split of the Third International from the Second.
First as tragedy, then as farce.
The farcical part is that a century later, Western internet leftists argue over the question of reform vs revolution when they don’t even have an organized movement like they did a century ago, and most unwilling to arm themselves. Is this even a serious movement? There wasn’t any debate to be had, until they actually get serious about organizing and rallying people behind their cause, and have formulated strategy to take power like what Lenin and Mao did.
None of what I’m going to say is excuse-making; I think the left in the US isn’t where it should be. But that said, there are some significant conditions that should be accounted for.
I am in my early 40s, so my political consciousness began in the mid/late 90s. I can say from that point until the GFC and Occupy Wall Street, class consciousness was at absolute zero and the left was totally dead. The orgs that existed were tiny. The ingrained anti-communism of Americans runs very deep.
I actually think Occupy was more impactful than Bernie, but only because it actually started a tiny spark of class consciousness with discussion of the “1%” and the “99%”. Just the idea that there was a small group of rich people and then the large majority who aren’t rich, and don’t have the same interests, was a totally new concept to Americans.
We are also hampered by this dead left from the 90s and 00s is that we have no orgs and people with deep history and knowledge. Even a place like the UK has a lot of boomer Trots with some questionable social policy ideas. We here are all people who just started to put it all together either post-Bernie or post-pandemic.
That said, I am very bullish on where PSL is going. I think they do org building the right way and are having success. Again, not where we should be but I do think things are starting to connect.
we're never going to reform the
. maybe we can get the boot off of some people's necks a bit. the national circus is ridiculous but it makes sense for nyc comrades to spend some effort here. everyone else is just spectating and doing whatever they were doing before.
Spoken like a true doomer! /s
I saw the /s but seriously doomerism would imply there is no solution (like climate change, which is a legitimate issue for much of the world).
The problem with the American left is that nearly a decade after Bernie Sanders first became a well-liked public socialist figure, they still seemingly have not learned anything. There are arguably some small progress here and there, but I am surprised they still haven’t managed to organize a mass movement properly.
It is fragmented as ever. What exactly is their strategy to take power? Do they even want to take power? I don’t know the answers and I doubt they know it either. Compare that to the early 20th century socialist movements and you see a stark difference there.
Well DSA is the largest US "left" organization and their mass movement is the topic of this thread. Mamdani is the culmination of all of DSA's work put to the test, and I do hope he wins just so we can see what happens. I'm very certain of what will happen as many others here are, but hey, it's something I'd love to be wrong about.
The reality is that the post new deal US is peak labor aristocracy and it has permanently damaged the psyche of nearly every American, especially after the red scare and the destruction of anti-war movements during the Vietnam war via counter culture bullshit. Americans all have individualized ideologies based on various mixes of fictional books/ movies/games, religious fundamentalism, American exceptionalism, western chauvinist white washed history, and good old fashioned selfishness. There is no national identity, nothing to unify around. Even if you get access to new (for Americans) methods of analysis like Marxism, you have to plug it into your boutique, firmly established idealist framework and essentially rob the truth of it's very essence. Everything is a facade on a facade. Like all empires, the destruction of America will be a self inflicted prerequisite before anything different will happen. This is why I only organize with New Afrikans, Indigenous, and decolonial orgs in the US, focusing on building relationships locally with the most marginalized and oppressed. When crisis hits, we already have established logistical hubs, healthcare systems, food production and most importantly, positive reputations with average people who know we can rely on each other.
tl;dr: there is no strategy to take power, the best of us are organizing for survival now and in anticipation of what is yet to come.
IMHO, the federal government has to fall before there's even a chance of socialism in the landmass currently called the US. Thinking the US can be socialist is like thinking the Qing dynasty can be socialist. There's so many dominos that had to fall before the CPC could even exist as a party with poor ideas about which strata of Chinese society had revolutionary potential (which was later corrected by Mao) and the chief domino is the Qing dynasty had to be overthrown first.
I think most people have this idea that US exceptionalism has to be combated before the US can be reformed/overthrown when it's the other way around: US exceptionalism can only be combated once the US is no more. The American dream will only cease to exist when America ceases to exist. It's idealist to think otherwise and we have a historical example with China. The movement against Confucianism and other traditional Chinese thought that served the feudal order only began after that feudal order ceased to exist. The 2000+ year old feudal imperial dynasty had to fall before intellectuals went, "damn, maybe Confucianism is not what it's cracked up to be" and the masses went, "damn, maybe these nerds saying Confucius ain't shit have a point."
I don't think anyone on the American left has a truly good idea of how to drive revolutionary change and create a mass organization in the US.
The closest I have seen anyone come to creating an organized mass movement are the Obama, Sanders, and Trump campaigns, all in a similar manner: popular/charismatic "political outsider" energizes a base of people through a presidential campaign that can then be channeled into an organization. Obama had it with Organizing for America, which was the organizing apparatus he set up that was entirely outside of the DNC (until he ended up rolling it into the DNC) but he is not a socialist and was primarily self-interested. Bernie kind of has that with the DSA but he wasn't really affiliated with the DSA at all (although the probably could have taken it over if he actually cared to), but he is also dedicated to the Democratic party despite not being officially a Democrat. Trump is basically an inversion of that, where years of wealthy conservative money creating the institutions necessary spawned a figure that could generate something along the lines of a mass movement to attach to those institutions.
You could probably put Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter in there, as well, but those seemed doomed to fail in retrospect because they did not have a visible, centralized leadership.
I think this is important to consider. The US establishment has, for decades now, successfully captured any sort of mass movement and turned it into yet more support for the status quo. They have all the tools and tricks at their disposal to make sure any movement either just supports the system, or fizzles out (like OWS or BLM). It isn't easy to get around this, and I honestly don't have a solution myself, our American comrades do have it very rough when it comes to any sort of revolutionary optimism, so I don't blame them when a lukewarm demsoc gets their critical support because it is literally the closest thing to a left wing politician in their country.
Yeah, it kind of seems to me that the US has the monopoly on information warfare, repression, propaganda, surveillance, etc. and I would be curious if there are/were any other governments that could even come close to the level of control that the US has. There is also such extreme individualism baked into our culture, there is no national identity to tie people together...Segregation is fundamental to the history of the country.. I could go on, but you know all of the factors already.
I have faith that history will march on, it's inevitable that the empire will crumble. That said, it does seem to me to be a set of very unique circumstances to try to overcome. I don't believe in Mamdani at all, though, electoralism is not the way. I'll he pleasantly surprised if he sticks to his promises, but for whatever reason I'm considered a doomer if I'm anything besides ecstatic about him