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First he purged rightist employees (even his friends) working at Current Affairs to consolidate an editorial line under his leadership, now he reposts in support of Dengist developmentalism.
The libertarian socialist to Leninist pipeline is real.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2018/04/attempting-to-understand-north-korea
8 years ago he was calling DPRK red fascist authoritarians. Maybe he has improved since then, many of us have, but don't pretend he's been reasonable or consistent. That's revisionist history, he still hosts this article on his website despite 'wrestling control from the rightist friends' or whatever bullshit made up about palace intrigue at the petty bourgeois revisionist substack. He's a chauvinist and social fascist. None of these people are principled communists, they are social democrat 'left libertarian' lesser-evil chomskyites. He's tailing Dengism because anybody with eyes can see China is better than the USA, it's becoming irrefutable. He's an opportunist tailing a revisionist lmao.
If we want it to mean anything, we have to stop using "social fascist" so loosely. It means someone who supports social-ish policies in the imperial core while supporting fascism in the periphery. Whatever else you think of the guy, he isn't that:
He's far from Parenti when discussing the merits of AES states, but he's also far from supporting basically any part of U.S. foreign policy.
Incorrect. Social fascism is the recognition that social democracy is the left flank of fascism, they are two sides of the same coin. Unsurprisingly since Germany was ride with revisionist social democrats that oppressed other socialists and communists and materially supported fascists via the state apparatus. Social democrats, similarly, supported imperialist wars, which was not exclusive to core vs periphery, as the imperialism in question itself was spread around and also targeted against mutual European powers.
Nathan J Robinson is a wishy washy socdem that can barely discuss topics consistently. Maybe he has moved a little left since he pushed out his employees for trying to govern Current Affairs collectively, I don't know and haven't followed him for a couple years. But unless he's sharing principled socialist views it is likely appropriate to still call him socialist fascist, particularly given the extent of his historical chauvinism.
So sure, let's use the term for what it actually means and apply it to NJR.
Regarding his more recent writings, like those you posted, what we should look for is pulled punches and a tendency to "both sides", the hallmark of an imperial core social democrat. A target of imperial violence (etc) only reluctantly defended, gotta throw in some condemnations of the target in one way or another.
In the Gaza article, even just the tagline is already the imperial socdem messaging less than one month after Oct 7: ceasefire. In contradiction of the resistance and principled communist messaging at that point, the messaging needed was to reject a condemnation of Hamas, push back against the onslaught of Hasbara, and humanize Palestinians who are dehumanized constantly.
In the article, we can see him criticizing Biden for his kneejerk Zionism and material support, humanizing Palestinians in the sense of their suffering but not much else.
Then in the second section he leads with the inevitable condemnation of Oct 7:
In this paragraph he cites 4 sources. The first is for the music festival, which we know has a far murkier story and likely firing on the crowd by occupier helicopters. A chauvinist article, it also simply attributes everything to "Hamas militants" rather than the coalition of fighters and independent participants, pushing the Hasbara to isolate Hamas and place the focus on it being somehow uniquely evil and separate from the rest of Gaza and Palestine. NJR does not push back on this, simply cites it as a given. The second source is about the killing of old people and children and babies, which we now know are largely uncorroborated claims by IOF and Zionist entity intelligence - they forever blocked all independent investigation and access to journalists, UN folks, and so on. Again, NJR cites this without pushback or comment. The third id the debunked claim of beheading babies and children. You guessed it: cited without comment or pushback by this alleged leftist journalist.
I promise that I did not read his article before making my prediction of what an imperial core socdem would do in this situation. And lo and behold, you get the both sidesing, the reluctant push against empire (making sure to condemn both sides in at least some capacity.
Later on:
He also refers to Palestinians in Gaza as Gazans throughout. This is a common practice, sure, but it is also one explicitly requested to be avoided by Palestinian messaging groups, including those with close ties to Palestine and the resistance. The people who live in Gaza are Palestinian and they are largely refugees seeking the right of return. I mention this because it is illustrative of the disconnect between imperial core socdems and the actual on the ground struggles. They largely learned about Palestine in that preceding month and did not, generally speaking, organize in concert or thoughtfully around them.
NJR does dedicate a section to opposing Hasbara narratives, though this is of course incomplete given the citation-laden condemnation of October 7 above.
Naturally, there is a salient question unanswered in this article, but the most central one for knowing the fundamental orientation of the author: is Nathan J Robinson a Zionist? A socdem can easily be critical of US money for Israel, place extra focus on Netanyahu as uniquely evil and responsible, condemn October 7, while also harboring a basic Zionism: a believer in and justifier of Israel's existence, a settler colonialism project premised on the construction of an ethnostate and genocide. The idea that the basic premise of Israel is invalid is not raised nor contended with, but this is presented as a primer for what folks need to know about Gaza? I honestly don't feel like trawling for info on this at the moment, but the absence of this discussion is salient.
So... I think we can comfortably still call NJR a social fascist unless he has made substantial progress in like 2 years.
To me, this is pretty similar to "he's far from Parenti when discussing the merits of AES states, but he's also far from supporting basically any part of U.S. foreign policy." He's too willing to accept the State Department line on anti-imperialist groups, but he's also clearly opposing what the U.S. is doing.
No.
I mean by that standard every liberal calling for a ceasefire fits the bill. The question is how people here should think of him. Is he anything more than a half-aware self-interested petite bourgeois socdem? Even they can sometimes so good things, within hard limits.
There is also an important consideration. Those who call for moderation often give the appearance of opposing a manifestation of capitalist oppression, but then through qualifying and left-punching also do work on behalf of that capitalist oppression. Such as the examples where he uncritically repeats debunked Hasbara to both sides the topic. Sometimes it's tempting to think, "well on the balance this is helping", and I think that way sometimes as well, but I increasingly think we can move more quickly past the notion of "liberal whispering", that we can push much harder and faster than we give ourselves credit for, and so the moderating influence becomes more of a detriment.
I didn't read anything there that tells me he isn't a Zionist. Liberal Zionism is a reluctant acceptance of Israel's "right to exist", a bias for a "two-state solution", that kind of thing. The implicit acceptance that the Zionist entity is and should be here to stay.
I think NJR suggests the Hasan Piker line of thinking which is to just suggest Israel should become a multiethnic democracy through unstated means. I guess we could split that hair and call it antizionist because it denies the ethnostate, but to me it always reads as more liberal whispering propaganda, a softened stance intended to make them think (just a little) rather than stating a concrete political position.
A lot of liberals will nod along to calls for ceasefire and then support a bunch of money and guns to Israel. He's not doing that.
I agree we don't need to give an inch to the "but of course October 7 was bad" crowd. I don't think Robinson fully agrees with that -- he has a more pacifistic approach to violence -- but a lot of that last article leans very heavily in that direction.
I mean, that's one of the more realistic ends to Israel as it's currently constituted. It's what happened to apartheid South Africa. And just like South Africa, there are millions of settlers who are not going to voluntarily leave. If not some form of multiethnic government, what is the plan for those people?
A lot of liberals will be against US money to Israel but also still believe that Israel itself deserves to exist and still should continue existing. I think this is the most basic Zionism - a fundamental acceptance, and even support for, the basic premise of the project on this level. So the "no longer an ethnostate" part can do a lot of work against that liberal Zionists tendency but still be incomplete in that it is wishes for a particular idealist outcome without focusing clearly on the end to Zionist oppression and for liberation of Palestine and Palestinians from occupation. This could look like several different things and does not need to be some westernized ideal of a liberal democracy to be justice and liberation. That is putting up roadblocks to liberation, saying it has to look one particular way, and sets them up to tut-tut if it doesn't go that direction.
Sorry I don't think I understand what you mean.
Regarding the end of Zionism and the beginning of a free Palestine it could look like many different scenarios depending on how it is achieved. I think a much larger exodus than in South Africa is to be expected, as the social connections are much weaker (the project is much younger, people have less history) and the ethnic supremacist embedding is intense. The lack of that embedding will be catastrophic to the Zionist psyche. The idea that there is no point in staying under equitable conditions may be very popular. Even the threat of them might be enough. We already saw an impetus to do a version of this simply because the illusion or complete domination was so undermines by October 7.