This is a very well reasoned response, and for the most part i would have to agree, particularly with the bit about having an organized and disciplined approach to information (that was excellently put and i will certainly remember that phrase). Disclaimers can and should be added, if only for newer comrades who may not be aware of the biases of a source.

That being said i wonder if we can't just use a bot that would call up a boilerplate disclaimer for sources that are used on a somewhat regular basis which are of dubious political orientation.

Fair enough. You're not wrong and your reaction is valid, but i guess i just don't like seeing strife in communist spaces. I think we can afford to have a little more patience for our comrades than we typically do with others online, make a conscious effort to be charitable and if they are wrong about something first explain rather than rush to condemn and dismiss them.

We could all stand to be a little less judgemental, and we should remind ourselves that most of us were not always communists. We grow and we learn. Not too long ago most of us probably had plenty of bad takes. It's to be expected that some of us still have some liberal impulses that need to be unlearned.

If you're worried about empowering the far right, the worst thing you could do is refuse to look at reality because occasionally some far right nutter talks about it

Indeed, because once we start doing that then we allow the right to monopolize anti-establishment and anti-imperialist rhetoric. You don't diminish the right by doing that, you diminish the left and drive people toward the right. People, by and large, realize that something is not right and they look to whoever will validate that feeling and give them an explanation. If the left fails to do that then the right will. The surest way to alienate people who are just beginning to have some nascent class consciousness is to give in to the liberal moralizing impulse (of which the ultra-left purity fetish is a manifestation).

If a right wing source presents a correct geopolitical analysis then we need to acknowledge that, otherwise we just discredit ourselves. And then, if and when they go on to state nonsense about other topics we will have the credibility to say "no, actually on this topic they are wrong" and explain why and convince people that we communists have the more correct analysis on the greatest number of issues, because we do not make the idealist errors that the right does.

I think this response is a bit harsh. I can understand where they are coming from, and once upon a time i myself may have had a similar kneejerk reaction. I think that as i matured (politically, though age also helps to put things into perspective) i came to understand that such an emotional reaction was not productive. Criticize what needs to be criticized and learn as much as you can from any source that you can. As Lenin said the most important thing a young revolutionary can do is учиться, учиться и учиться.

I think what the OP of this comment chain needs to ask themselves is this: there are already enough imperialist shills trying to discredit and smear anti-imperialist voices, regardless whether these voices come from the left or the right (and frequently conflating the two anyway); do i really want to help them do that and what does my revolutionary cause gain by doing so?

The problem with saying "X is right wing therefore anything they have to say is automatically suspect and we should not listen to them" is not just that it's superficial moralism, it's that by doing so you also discredit any correct analysis they may have. Then later when communists make the same correct arguments and point out the same factually true things, our own analysis will have already been discredited by association with the objectionable source. According to the "guilt by association" precedent that we ourselves would have already set.

This is obviously a self-defeating strategy for communists which allows the liberal imperialists to successfully smear the anti-imperialist position as a whole as a right wing one. The correct approach is to critically analyze the content of an argument and judge it based on its merits rather than who it came from.

It's a little frustrating that you seem to ignore everything i wrote about engaging with the content of a piece and just keep doing this "attack the messenger" thing. There's this strange way of thinking that i see most often in liberals where you can never engage with or come into contact with anything that is associated with people who have reactionary views on certain issues, almost like they think that by doing so you somehow become morally tainted by association. As a dialectical materialist i think that this kind of puritanical impulse is not helpful.

To answer your question, no, there is not much out there with this level of quality of analysis on these topics. There just isn't a huge amount of content like this coming from progressive channels, i wish there was.

By the way, this channel isn't even the worst offender as far as reactionary sources of good geopolitical analysis that have been shared here. When we do so we assume a certain level of political maturity from our comrades, such that they can engage with the analysis presented and separate that from whatever other reactionary views that source may have. Are you also going to say we should never post anything from Russian or Middle Eastern sources because they almost certainly hold reactionary views on some issue or other?

If someone is uncomfortable with giving a particular channel views they can use one of the alternative links provided, where the video is embedded on a third party website. I'd recommend doing that anyway for privacy reasons.

The advantage of videos like this is that they use the western media's own reporting and publicly available information to show how, when you actually dissect what they are saying, they frequently slip up and admit the truth even while they try to spin it to fit their narrative. That is helpful when trying to deprogram people who would otherwise not trust any non-western source, or who would refuse to listen to any overtly communist channels.

If you think that sharing videos like this should come with a content warning to caution against listening to these sources on other topics, then that is totally valid and we can absolutely do that.

As for who he used to write for, of course that's fair to point out, but to be consistent you should also take issue with any author who used to write for Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, CNN or any other mainstream media. Genocide apologist, warmongering, imperialist bourgeois establishment mouthpieces are no less reactionary than far right conspiracy theory websites. In fact the latter sometimes stumble onto real conspiracies and have occasional flashes of insight into how the covert and overt machinery of the bourgeois state works in ways that liberals never do. Obviously that's wrapped in utterly deranged, delusional reactionary drivel, but still.

With all due respect these are two completely perpendicular axes. His analysis of the Ukraine conflict and the US's new Cold War against China are one thing and his takes on vaccines and global warming are another thing entirely. Obviously we won't post any videos of his on the latter two subjects because as you say it's likely to be BS. There are many anti-imperialists with bad takes on vaccines and global warming, does that mean that everything else they say is also wrong? Conversely, there are countless liberals who are right on vaccines and GW but completely and utterly delusional when it comes to geopolitics.

People can be wrong about one thing and right about another. If a piece of analysis is correct then it is correct regardless who it comes from. Obviously we should be careful to not spread reactionary propaganda, and when it comes to right wing sources that means we need to vet a piece extra carefully before we share it (and possibly add content warnings), but also it's frankly lazy and not very educational to automatically dismiss something without engaging with it simply because it comes from a source we don't agree with on other topics. If something is BS then i'd like to believe that we are smart enough to realize it, or if not to at least have our comrades point it out for us by dissecting the piece and showing how and where it is wrong.

In fact doing this can often be more educational than just engaging with content that we already know we will 100% agree with. It is a good exercise to engage in critical analysis of a piece, understand what the biases of the author are, and identify where their analysis falls short as a result. Obviously this isn't worth doing with just any old reactionary garbage, something has to have at least a minimum level of coherence and connection to reality, else we're just wasting our time, but i don't think this falls in that category. If you think this video gets it totally wrong then let's discuss where and why, i think that would be an excellent opportunity for us all to deepen our understanding of this subject.

My guess is money extortion scheme gone wrong.

Either way it's an act of terrorism.

Here's a source: https://sputnikglobe.com/20240917/what-is-known-about-mass-pager-explosion-in-lebanon-1120178496.html

According to Twitter he has ties to Azov and was actively engaged in attempting to recruit and smuggle mercenaries from Central Asia to fight in Ukraine, and proposed doing the same for Taiwan. Unhinged psycho. Too bad these wannabe assassins are such rabid turbolibs...

A little reminder of who this fascist CIA asset was: he regularly participated in neo-nazi marches, advocated to strip non-ethnic Russians of their Russian citizenship, and called muslim Chechens "cockroaches".

Yeah this is straight up reactionary shit. They say it's not meant to persecute people with different sexual orientations, rather just target "the movement", but wtf does that even mean? How do they even legally define what "the LGBT movement" is? Do they think that people are card-carrying members of some official LGBT organization? This is so vague that it allows basically any interpretation that they decide is politically expedient at any given time.

Depending on public opinion this could range from being virtually a nothing burger that will only be used to go after western sponsored political opposition groups (which would be foreign interference anyway, Russia already has laws for that), all the way to making life a nightmare for queer people and trying to completely erase them from public visibility. Basically what will happen is up to what the mood in the general Russian public is at any given time and how much pushback there is when the government oversteps, but unfortunately at the moment a lot of Russians have very reactionary views on this subject.

The sad part is that i'm not sure that the outcome would be any different even if the ruling party was a communist one, at least if it chose to tail the masses on this issue. It's a difficult problem to solve because a vanguard party should not be tailing the masses but it also should not impose completely unpopular policies that the masses are not yet ready for. The correct thing to do is to prepare the people for more progressive policy with a thorough campaign of education and normalization.