Image: the last sight of many a commie.
Please pronounce his name wrong to make the title pun work better.
Anyway - Javier Milei, a caricature of a libertarian invented deep in the Hexbear Bit Factory, has won the Argentinian general election; and with a 12 point lead over Massa, it wasn't even particularly close. There are several analogies for this situation - Trump beating Hillary, Bolsonaro winning in 2018, or the alternate universe where Le Pen beat Macron. Massa is not a great guy. The last couple years have been difficult for Argentina, facing massive inflation and the same general economic downturns that are happening everywhere.
Milei is an... interesting person. To name just a couple things going on in his deeply bizarre life, he has a very special relationship with his sister, and an even more special relationship with his mastiff, Conan. When Conan died in 2017, he was so utterly distraught that he had him cloned into four new dogs, named Murray, Milton, Robert, and Lucas, for his economist idols. And he uses mediums to speak to his dead dog. This is probably the closest we're ever going to get to having a dog be president of a country.
Milei wants to essentially collapse the economy even harder. Playing off the general public sentiment of "dollar = good, peso = bad", he has vowed to make the national currency of Argentina the US dollar, thus eagerly giving a massive amount of control over the Argentinian economy directly to America. He wants to take a chainsaw to the status quo, cut off trade with communist countries like China, and demolish the Central Bank. Will Argentinian capitalists and the Senate let him do this? Probably not. What happens with their membership in BRICS+? Who knows. Where does Peronism go from here? Who can say.
But he still won, and will now be president. I suppose that every dog has its day.
Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is Argentina! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
What was reactionary about it? The tone?
Should there be an expectation on Hexbear to preface with "Not all white gay males" before venting in /c/anticishetaktion?
Sorry but I've heard that criticism before and reads to me as fragility than a material analysis of reaction, might as well have the expectation to preface with "not all cishets" on /c/anticishetaktion or "all lives matter" on a BLM forum.
Explicitly holding entire minority groups accountable for the political actions of some members of their minority is reactionary behavior.
Sounds like you need an intersectional education on the spectrum of privileges if that's your reaction and takeaway
The friends that brought this to my attention are gay white men and had no issue with what was being said, either with the post, the user, or the outpouring of conversations about their struggles as POC and transgender people in white and middle class gay/lesbian spaces.
Very funny that this keeps happening to the 5-10 POC posters on Hexbear whenever one of us doesn't police ourselves
50 comments between the handful of POC posters venting with allies, a handful of negative comments from you 2 and the entire post gets nuked and again the two of you manage to find my comment and reply to it after being one of the like 3-4? posters that took issue with the conversations we were having and get it taken down for all of us.
For a site that has Leslie Feinberg as its posterchild its pretty embarrassing to tone police or to expect people to self-police on a statement as simple and uncontroversial as "the most privileged members of a community have been the most reactionary"
As if saying or even complaining that white middle class gay and lesbians backstabbing transgender and POC members of the LGBTQ coalition is controversial or reactionary?
Who are you to decide that the conversation that everyone else was having should be shut down?
Maybe replace the pride roller with a ballot box and Feinberg with Buttigieg as the mascot because I think only one of those two people would take issue with what was said, and only one would feel satisfied about reprimanding BIPOC peoples' space and right to vent on a "safe space" ostensibly designed for them.
The OP of that post straight up said I was lying about the police intimidating me in my home for being gay.
Admins stepped in without me reporting anything, and you want to make that my fault because I pointed out that felt shitty.
Denying my lived experience oppression is leftist? I’m not even bothering with this reactionary nonsense anymore.
So that comment(s) should be removed and presumably has already been removed
Before the article and everyone else's discussions were nuked?
If I'm looking at the comment the OP said "I don't want to hear it" presumably because he felt you were decentering his grievances and the collective experiences of POC and was that the place, or your place, to bring it up? When a POC queer person is in the middle of airing his own grievances and venting about their experiences?
You don't have to take that space to say that you are also oppressed, or make it about yourself, and you definitely did not have the right to destroy that space entirely if presumably you and the other poster that replied to me were the ones to report it.
If you didn't report it then why not reinstate it? The comment in question you're talking about has already been deleted.
I'd like to reiterate that the discussion wasn't about you or the OP, I have no issues with you or your character. I didn't even expect you or the other user to reply to me - my issue is restoring that discussion and that space to for our other POC users to vent and to put my stake in the site's continued ability to be a safe space for racialized people and yourself.
I remember in the first months of Hexbear the early exodus of BIPOC users when Black users were dogpiled for criticizing Asian immigrants for their place in oppression, Asian landlords and business owners that discriminated against BIPOC people. I made essentially the same argument that you made that "Non-BIPOC POC people also experience discrimination, you shouldn't attack them" and those users over time never returned.
There's a time and place, and over the years it's made it so overtly obvious and painful to me that POC can so obviously and often also be racist and discriminatory to BIPOC that I regret ever mentioning it at all. It wasn't my place and wasn't the time.
Just the same way that white Lesbians and Gays occupy a higher position in the social hierarchy than white transgender and POC+BIPOC LGBTQ+ people.
Airing grievances doesn't invalidate your experience, nor do those grievances mean you are a bad person or that you haven't experienced discrimination.
Sounds like you're making this about yourself and not about the content of the article and you need to step back
Gay white cismen are the weakest link in the LGBT community just like white women are the weakest link among women and Cuban/Vietnamese/Iranian diaspora are the weakest link among POC. This shouldn't be controversial at all. Me calling out a Karen (per the original AAE definition of the word of a racist suburban soccer mom who calls the pigs because a Black dude is wearing a hoodie) for being a racist piece of shit doesn't make me a reactionary because she as a woman belongs to a marginalized community.
As you seriously going "not all gay white cismen?"
Super jarring to just finish a big LGBTQ+ project that talked about exactly this phenomenon and then to see it happen in real time after being called to try to get one Lemmygrad user's post reinstated just because we noticed signs that a lot of Hexbear's POC posters were using it as a good space, and that removing it would send the wrong message.
Seriously I would expect Hexbear to be the last place to see this happen so blatantly (and for it to happen repeatedly) with everything about Leslie Feinberg and TransComrade69 that's supposed to define the community's culture.
That’s not what reactionary is, and by that definition class war is reactionary
If the class war is against sexual minorities on the basis of their sexuality, I’m unsure how that could be a class war.
Attacking reactionary elements of movements is fine and good. Lgbt capitalists shouldn’t be spared because they are lgbt.
What the fuck are you even talking about?
POC LGBTQ people critique the privileged stances of the most privileged, rightwing/liberal part of their movement: Wow what are you RON DESANTIS DOING GENOCIDE?!?! NOT ALL CIS WHITE MEN!!!
Seriously you are falling down the hole of stupidpol reaction right now. Stop yourself before it's too late and you start to resent black and trans people for "attacking" you
I agree, it’s fine critique right wing and liberal positions.
Unlimited genocide on the kkkrackers.
I got upset because someone told me I lied about being oppressed by armed thugs of the state. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
I wasn't even in that thread btw and have no idea what grievances you're on about. I'm talking about the original comment of this thread's concerns, which are that the article was deleted for being "reactionary". It was not reactionary, regardless of OPs others comments (which I didn't even see). Those comments should have been removed and the article left up if the comments were in fact reactionary. The issue is the censoring of black/trans LGBTQ+ voices for the fragile sensibilities of white cis men arguing in a stupidpol fashion that it's unfair to critique them
Is that what the takeaway is? Not all (gay) cis white men?