Image is of German farmers blocking the road near the Brandenburg Gate in early January 2024.
The ruling German coalition - the FDP, the SPD, and the Greens - has been in dire straits since the war in Ukraine began due to their steadfast commitment to destroying their country as much as possible in solidarity with Ukraine destroying themselves too. Scholz is deeply unpopular, with a record low approval of 20%, and his party's approval is even lower.
The German left has been entirely unable to take advantage of this situation, with Die Linke fragmenting due to split opinions on what position they should hold on Ukraine, among other issues. As a result, the major conservative party, the CDU, has gained a lot of voters over the past couple years. Most worrying, however, is the gains that the fascist party, the AfD, has made - from 10% in 2021 all the way to ~20% today. A significant chunk of the vote is likely protest votes due to the lack of an alternative, but a vote for fascists makes you a fascist nonetheless.
Recent controversies with the AfD - including an allegation that they held a secret meeting discussing a plan to mass-deport millions of migrants in an obvious parallel to Nazi meetings planning to remove all Jews from the country - has recently slightly damped approval for the AfD. This meeting generated counter-protests and condemnation from many Germans. It was later revealed that the meeting might not really have happened as alleged, but it doesn't actually matter, because the AfD's stance is being increasingly reflected by the ruling coalition, who recently introduced a bill allowing faster deportations of rejected asylum seekers and significant new powers for authorities in that regard, including potentially the criminalization of sea rescue organizations and imprisonment for aid workers.
The German government is increasingly considering banning the AfD, with their anxiety and motivation to do so rising as the AfD maintains and improves its position as Germany heads towards elections in late 2025. There are intermediate steps that could be done, such as revoking state funding, but if that doesn't work, then the party might well be banned. While I will never argue with fascist parties being banned, this probably won't fix anything, as the underlying economic and social conditions that are fueling these electoral shifts in the first place are not improving. Germany, the largest industrial power in Europe, is mired in a recession, particularly a manufacturing recession, from which there appears to be no escape. It has so far carefully shepherded its natural gas resources to keep the population as mollified as possible, but this has come at the expense of industry. In a trend starting from July 2022, manufacturing PMIs are still well below 50, reaching 45.5 in January 2024, which indicates decline. I suppose if you wanted to look on the bright side, it's better than it was in July 2023, where it was a whopping 38.8, so the rate of decline is becoming a little slower.
And this is just the domestic stuff. Germany has also famously sided with Israel to support them during the ICJ genocide case, has kowtowed to Netanyahu as they bond over being Genocide Experts, and maintains its support of Ukraine, continuing to send military gear and money to be converted to scrap metal by Russian artillery - rather than spending money on doing anything about the cost of living. In the face of a historic economic downturn, it has only more fervently stated its desire to remain militarily opposed to Russia for decades.
The Country of the Week is Germany! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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 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.
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.
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.
My take on this is very unconventional, so hear me out.
First, I am assuming competence on the US part. Based on how competently they fucked Europe up in the last couple years, I am assuming they’re not completely stupid, despite what many anti-imperialists on the internet are saying.
Second, I am assuming that the US is very well aware that they cannot possibly stop China’s technological advancements and eventually surpassing the US itself. This lesson was already well learned when Huawei beat the US in 5G technology years ago.
Third, I am assuming that the US empire will act like a landlord (finance/rentier capitalist), not as an industrial power as people are used to think about the US as a superpower. They will fight China exactly as a landlord/rentier capitalist would do - using legal means and its control of the global consumer market to stop China’s expansion as a net exporter.
It is actually very surprising to me that most commentary I’ve read on mainstream and alternative media continue to make what I call the “wrong assumptions” about how the US would behave, especially the second and third points above.
So, here’s my thesis: the US’s goal is to force a decoupling with China while preventing its transition into an internal (self-sufficient) consumption economy. If China continues to be a net exporter country, the US will always have some form of control over it. Its biggest fear is if China can survive independently without relying on its export industries.
Have you noticed how the US sanction is specifically targeting Huawei, and not the other Chinese mobile vendors? That’s not because they want to stop Huawei from surpassing them - they already know it is an impossible task.
What they really want to achieve is to force China (Huawei) to develop its own native technology that is sufficiently divergent from the international standards (at least on legal/technical grounds), and that’s exactly what the US is getting: while Huawei is being decimated by other Chinese mobile vendors like Oppo, Xiaomi, Realme etc. in external markets like Southeast Asia (mostly due to the lack of support for certain Android services, and the chip sanctions), its retreat back to China’s domestic mobile phone market is also crushing the other competitors. Huawei’s market share in Asia went from ~11-12% in 2019 to <4% in 2023. So, you end up with Huawei dominating China’s market and the other vendors “retreating” out to the overseas market.
Meanwhile, the sanctions imposed on SMIC and Huawei are certainly going to create a divergent path for the native Chinese technology. We are already seeing that Huawei’s future HarmonyOS (HongmengOS) will drop support for Android services, ultimately creating an ecosystem of its own.
And that’s what the US is betting on. When China has its own ecosystem matured, the US can now force China’s overseas customers to make a choice: Chinese services or Google services, the latter of which is of course controlled by the US. As there are simply way too many businesses across the world that rely on some form of Google services to function, the transition to a completely different Chinese ecosystem will be a very expensive and painful process, so the path of least resistance for them is to actually drop Chinese technology, regardless of how much more advanced the latter could be. It’s simply the cost of services imposed upon them. Anyone who wants to do business with the US or use US-related technologies will have to meet a certain standards in their hardware and software, and it would be very easy for the US to say that Chinese tech are not meeting the criteria.
The key here is to not impose sanctions on the other Chinese vendors for now, because that will only speed up China’s transition away from relying on export market. Here, they deliberately want China to try to have it both ways.
This is how the US can destroy China’s mobile phone export market. It is not going to compete directly like other industrial capitalists. Microsoft didn’t dominate the market because Windows was the best OS amongst all the competitors, it dominated the market because they used legal means to stop other competitors from being able to penetrate the market. And like a good rentier capitalist, that’s exactly what the US will do to make it very expensive for other users to fully switch to Chinese technology.
Longer term, if Chinese businesses lose their export revenues, it will make their own capital investments in technology more difficult (less incentives to innovate because your domestic market is too small to make a profit from). This will come back to bite China’s own tech industries eventually.
This is why I am convinced that China’s transition away from export industry and into developing its own consumer base is not only inevitable, but it must be prioritized. Simply bypassing sanctions is not enough, and simply developing your own native technology is not enough, you need to have a strong consumer base to sustain that growth.
It's not so much that the US is incompetent (although there's definitely plenty of incompetence to go around and the current US political class is nowhere near the political competence of the political class immediately after WWII) but that the US is an irrational actor if we understand a rational actor in the context of geopolitics to be an actor that focuses on self-interest and has long-term agendas that it wishes to pursue.
Being a rational actor itself isn't good or bad. China is a rational actor, probably one of the most rational actor in existence today, and its foreign policy is very much a product of it being a rational actor. This is why it simultaneously has the BRI and pays lip service to anti-imperialism while at the same time has normalized relations with the Zionist entity, partly to use Israel as the middleman in order to procure US military tech. Everything that China does is calculated for the sake of its own national self-interest and for the sake of its long-term plan. In contrast, Ansarallah isn't a rational actor at all. The rational thing to do would be to issue a bunch of anti-Zionist/pro-Palestinian statements while ensuring the Saudis and Emirates through backroom channels that they would do nothing substantial to help the Palestinians. Instead, they pretty much torn up the detente they had with the Saudis by launching cruise missiles at cargo ships. That's because their guiding ideology for international relations isn't realpolitiks but political Islam, which is a completely different paradigm. Therefore, we don't have to read tea leaves when the Yemeni military states that the attacks will continue until the blockage in Gaza is lifted, but take them at their word. This is a good thing.
So if the US doesn't fully embrace realpolitiks in the same way China does, then what is its guiding ideology? I would say that part of its guiding ideology is white supremacy. US society is completely build on white supremacy, so for a bunch of geopolitical wonks to say, "well, we made it all the way without addressing our white supremacy, but for the sake of crafting reasonable policies against China, let's temporarily turn off the white supremacy switch in our heads so we can impartially analyze China." It doesn't work like that. Another key ideological component is triumphalism over winning the first Cold War. When you combine the two, it becomes, "We beat the Soviets. These bug-brained Chicoms are even more pathetic than the Soviets ever were. We totally got this." And among the stereotype of Chinese people is that they are incapable of creative ingenuity which leads to your second assumption.
I would argue that their ideological commitment towards white supremacy and self-aggrandizing triumphalism means that they are very much not well aware of this fact and that plenty of the US political class still believe that the US can continue to surpass China. I'm not making the argument that the entire political class or even the majority of the political class believe in this delusion. But if something like 17% of your political class continues to believe that China can't innovate and just steals IP, well that's a dice roll and if you roll a 1, your senior heads will enact policies that operates under the wrong assumption that China can't technologically surpass the US.
So how did the US pull off the vassalization of Europe? They were able to pull if off because it was the rational agenda to pursue, and since everyone involved is European from the British to the Germans to the Ukrainians to the Russians, none of the white supremacy ideological blinders is applicable, which means the US was able to accurately assess all the players involved. But for China, the US will attempt to pursue a rational agenda, perhaps pursuing the gameplan that you've outlined, but there will be plenty within the political class that want to take advantage of the inherent bug-brainess of the Chicoms and pursue a completely different plan and in the process, fuck up the hard work of the rationalists.
This feels like it would merely create two separate blocs with middle-men connecting them up. Because even if the US says "If you use the Chinese alternative then you are a poopypants terrorist and we won't trade with you," then I don't immediately see why China would do the same thing in return, allowing businesses in, say, Ethiopia to use China's tech ecosystem, then it's transferred to, say, India which would only use Google, then onto the US. So it would just drive up costs for America overall.
So like, for this point:
Does this necessarily imply that there would be no way of transferring between the two, akin to between two file formats or like, a USB adapter? Even the creation of a specific service whose only purpose is to allow that conversion to occur?
I'd like the input of somebody more technologically savvy, really, because this sounds like it could get quite complicated and I don't immediately understand what the purpose of cutting off support for a different tech ecosystem would be unless it was for purely protectionist purposes (and even then). I could get America doing it, but not China. Obviously the time of the USSR was largely before the internet really took off, but are there any digital parallels from then?
Of course there will always be people who attempt to bypass sanctions, but big businesses will almost certainly stay in the lane to avoid getting into legal trouble, because doing so may cause you to lose market share to competitors, while gaining negligible advantage by switching to a new platform/ecosystem, unless there really are some real benefits in terms of efficiency and performance to the business, it is not worth it.
Replacing all the existing hardware and making sure all your softwares have similar compatibility, while at the same time ensuring all your staff have been appropriately trained to use the new softwares competently, are all overhead costs that the US can make to be very expensive and hence not worthwhile. Almost every big business uses some form of Google services these days, making it very hard for them to switch. Small businesses that want to do business deals with the large corporations also have to take into account this as well.
The US government agencies have already enforced this rule of forbidding the use and purchase of goods and services from Chinese vendors, and the bureaucracy makes it very expensive unless you can justify why it cannot be sourced from US-approved vendors. There is no reason to think that Apple/Google cannot do the same to their customers. Who wants to miss out instagram and use a Chinese platform with few English speaking users on it?
As to the cost of making it expensive for America, it’s the opposite. America is the net importer country, it demands goods and services simply by printing money out of thin air. It can never run out of money. China on the other hand, is a net exporter country, it needs export revenues to keep their manufacturing industries employed. This is why we talk so much about de-dollarization, because it fundamentally dictates how China can successfully decouple from the grip of US hegemony.
It is not that the two are technologically incompatible, but the US will always be able to find excuses to say that the standards are not compliant to the ones they use.
Currently, Chinese devices still have a lot of Western hardware and chips in them, so it’s harder to say “this Chinese device is incompatible with our system”, but even then, government agencies have already been doing so on the basis of “Chinese spyware”. This is just the next step to force private businesses into make a decision on whether they want to ditch Google or Amazon services just to use Baidu services.
this is a fascinating perspective, thank you
Most of it is cost associated with the service and with finding techs. If China wants to overcome this restriction they could easily drive down the cost to make it worthwhile.
Also I feel like you're talking about Huawei in the context of mobile phones, when they're so much more than that.