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.
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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.
AFL-CIO calls for a negotiated ceasefire in Palestine, releasing of prisoners, all aid to the Palestinian people, an affirmation of the U.N mandated Two-State as the best pathway to long-term stability and peace.
Opinions of their dogshittiness aside, this is a progressive direction in favor for the Palestinian people.
I would like to encourage any Union members here to sign or urge others to sign this petition initiated by UE and UFCW Local 3000.
Any complaints about purity will be allowed but also be met with the spray bottle.
This is most likely the best you'll get out of the American labor movement, take what you can get at this current time.
https://secure.everyaction.com/w1qW7B3pek2rTtv9ny5bqw2
Also for the record I still think it's fucking weak.
But when your communist movement abandoned/chased-out-of the trade unions, you gotta roll up your sleeves and get back in there to try and change it for the better.
It's a dogshit statement from the posterchild anticommunist union and the UFCW statement is milquetoast both-sizes stuff that makes JVP look radical.
We should engage with it critically. What does it even mean to take what we can get?
I think we have different problems re: labor among the Western left. Our approaches are dominated by (1) Trots and various ultras that are pointlessly critical and subscribe to rank-and-file strategies out of dogmatism rather than having an actual plan and (2) folks providing entirely uncritical support and kind of just hoping that telegraphing support for unions will translate into building a better labor movement / orientation towards labor.
Realistically, we should be having conversations about how we should be organizing to approach labor in the imperial core, where labor unions are in reactionary industries and where our work will be easily coopted by and redirected into liberalism. We should have clear expectations about what wet actually materially hope to get out of engaging with each union so that we can measure the success of our approaches. Another failing in the Western left is having basically no idea of what we actually want to achieve and instead just going through motions that look like organizing. Then we pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, which is pretty easy to do if you have no goals beyond going through those motions.
I'll suggest some points of unity:
Unions will tend to express worker sentiments to a greater extent than companies do and can be influenced by their workers to adopt directions more favorable to our causes. Therefore, we should organize rank-and-file campaigns with at least two strategic goals: (1) to achieve a clear and plausible concrete goal with fellow workers that helps keep the union beholden to them and (2) to, in the long-term, build up respect for socialists within the union.
Unions should be critically examined for their potential to turn on socialists and collaborate with cops/feds to get us killed.
We should be in the practice of creating new unions as part of socialist organizations. Union organizing skills translate to general organizing skills and the best way to have a socialist union is to create it with socialists. To this end, when we embed in existing unions, we should be measuring our success by whether we can use the skills gained to organize other workplaces. It also helps us be self-critical. I can't tell you how many self-proclaimed socialists are out there telling people to organize their workplace without having any idea how to actually do it. The act of telling people to do it is apparently the praxis. This is counterproductive. We should do the actual work and use the results as our barometer.
We should understand the limits of unions run for and by settlers when left to their own devices. Unions don't have class solidarity by default, it takes political education and effort to instill this.
We should not engage with unions in inherently reactionary industries without having a realistic strategy for how we will undermine the industry itself. These unions tend to be advocates for their own industry, including weapons industry unions fighting to make sure the feds buy 3000 new Baby Skull Buster bombs. Uncritical engagement with these unions is not only harmful in itself, it also undermines your own organization, as members start to normalize casually supporting the means for imperial violence and "any union is a good union". Overall it means gullible and reactionary people in your org.
We should not be pointlessly loud and critical of any union. Simply saying and doing nothing re: the AFL-CIO statement is better than presenting a bad analysis that nobody understands or that communicates "socialists don't like unions", etc.
We should offer public "friendly advice" to union workers that provides a vision for how things could be better. This is a way to facilitate engagement with workers, especially those who are unhappy with what their union is doing. The biggest missed opportunity I see is when we provide uncritical support for mediocre contracts. There's a pile of workers out there who we could've pounced on to organize for the next contract and to teach about socialism who see some boring-ass statement and realize that the local socialist org really just doesn't give a shit.
Way to hit the nail on the head. I get a feeling you'd get along famously with the communist union specialists I know because, outside of some word quibbling everyone loves to do, you've more or less said exactly what they've told me point by point.
Hell yeah I love communist union specialists. I hang out with local ones all the time, ha. We also like to moan about labor and then continue to do projects in it, lol.
Meanwhile endorsing Genocide Joe.
But yeah: it's better than their echoing fucking silence, at least.
They took 2 weeks after the ICJ ruling to issue this limp response. Even SEIU released their statement before the ruling, and their statement is marginally better too because SEIU at least blamed Israel and didn't advocate for some two-state bullshit.
This I can do as I am a member of the AFL-CIO. I will bring this up in our next meeting that is coming up. Our Local doesn't want to "be political" and filled with CHUDs, but for what it's worth as collective action and solidarity it is something and the
in DC recognize the union. So it's worth more than a Dear John letter to get shitcanned by my reps as a single citizen.