V. Illych L. posted:

the first objective for socialists in every country is to strive for socialism in their own country and oppose their own reactionary institutions. this is generally more difficult and more costly politically than saying "our side is better than the other reactionaries". in NATO countries, that means opposing NATO, which is the basis for the present and very much anti-socialistic security apparatus in europe. the last time someone who could credibly be seen as a socialist politican was in any danger of actually taking power in a NATO country, the military openly threatened sedition should he win

StashAugustine posted:

I feel if nothing else a lot of internet commentary gets the wires crossed between "in the broad picture, who bears what responsibility for the war in Ukraine" and "what should western leftists demand from their government in relation to the war"

croup coughfield posted:

theres a current in the anglosphere left that any nation or power that opposes us/nato interests is automatically "on their side" and must be "defended" which is both very stupid and very funny. the fact of the matter is that pretty much no one is on "our" side, which is to say, the side of anti-capitalism. imo the only thing that's good for socialism right now is strengthening domestic socialist organizations to withstand and exploit recession of state power, spreading class consciousness, and maintaining ties and solidarity with similar groups abroad.

HiroProtagonist posted:

Because whatever Russia does cannot compare to the horror the NATO bloc has inflicted on the rest of the world.

This is not pro Russia either, it's just facts.

Russia just does not have the reach or capability necessary to deprive a majority of the world of essentials, as much as liberals would hate to admit it

More to the point, NATO is the dominant bloc and the military arm of capital. Breaking that bloc is good but confusing that with unconditional support for a specific country is confusing critical support for unconditional nationalism

MLSM posted:

Lol

This nonsense was debunked quite well on the same page:

MLSM posted:

Lol

This nonsense was debunked quite well on the same page:

Yeah, russia is capitalist gently caress, but they don’t cause a fraction of the misery that america/nato inflicts upon the world. It’s not even a contest. This should be enough for any sensible person to support Russia’s continued independence and resistance from nato. The bar here is pretty low, but there’s still a choice.

As for the socialist argument, I’d argue Russia’s population is much more susceptible to socialist/Marxist ideas than America’s is for obvious reasons. Again, this isn’t even a contest in this department either.

But yeah common sense still wont stop an abundance of confused dumbasses in the western world holding up hammer and sickle flags alongside ukrainian and nato flags

Cuttlefush posted:

are you serious

Epic High Five posted:

You cant just say you would argue something and then not argue it in the Marxism thread, that's secular heresy

croup coughfield posted:

its been 30 years, i don't think theyre gonna do the meme

AnimeIsTrash posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Group_(NATO_Parliamentary_Assembly)

Westerners can join the NATO socialist working group.

croup coughfield posted:

its been 30 years, i don't think theyre gonna do the meme

croup coughfield posted:

its been 30 years, i don't think theyre gonna do the meme

Epic High Five posted:

I dont know what any of this means but I will say this: you miss every shot you dont take.

Atrocious Joe posted:

they saw this post and are now doing now it out of spite
https://twitter.com/KawsachunNews/status/1595043775990140930?s=20&t=SjwgoKuKSkZvSvtdZ2Gbsw

croup coughfield posted:

he thinks the russians would retvrn to socialism if we give the petroleum oligarchs more gas profits and i think thats stupid and not worth arguing with

croup coughfield posted:

he thinks the russians would retvrn to socialism if we give the petroleum oligarchs more gas profits and i think thats stupid and not worth arguing with

Ferrinus posted:

per both stalin and trotsky, russia inflicting some kind of geopolitical defeat on america would serve the cause of global socialism even though russia is not a socialist country, because weakening the great satan is its own reward.

gradenko_2000 posted:

this is bipartisanship

quote:

I will take the most simple and obvious example. In Brazil there now reigns a semifascist regime that every revolutionary can only view with hatred. Let us assume, however, that on the morrow England enters into a military conflict with Brazil. I ask you on whose side of the conflict will the working class be? I will answer for myself personally—in this case I will be on the side of “fascist” Brazil against “democratic” Great Britain. Why? Because in the conflict between them it will not be a question of democracy or fascism. If England should be victorious, she will put another fascist in Rio de Janeiro and will place double chains on Brazil. If Brazil on the contrary should be victorious, it will give a mighty impulse to national and democratic consciousness of the country and will lead to the overthrow of the Vargas dictatorship. The defeat of England will at the same time deliver a blow to British imperialism and will give an impulse to the revolutionary movement of the British proletariat. Truly, one must have an empty head to reduce world antagonisms and military conflicts to the struggle between fascism and democracy. Under all masks one must know how to distinguish exploiters, slave-owners, and robbers!

sube posted:

With both this view rests on the assumption that X country (eg Russia) is a non-imperialist actor fighting an imperialist invasion and that as such the victory of the non-imperialist country would be preferable. Which seems correct to me. So applicable to Iraq vs. USA, but not to Ukraine / NATO vs. Russia as both sides are imperialist blocs

Truga posted:

it's a proxy war between greater satan and lesser satan, and media has taught us to always root for the underdog. remember remember, putanda forever

genericnick posted:

What, that doesn't matter at all for that Trotsky text?

gradenko_2000 posted:

WWI did result in the USSR, so it's impossible to say if it's good or bad

sube posted:

it does considering the argument is that Brazil is facing an imperialist invasion, and that due to that resistance is worthy of support no matter their politics; which is part of a critique of liberal anti-fascism being blind to "democratic" imperialism. Meanwhile for him the victory of either side in an inter-imperialist conflict is meanwhile a loss for the proletariat, citing ww1 ("The victory of any one of the imperialist camps would spell slavery, wretchedness, misery, the decline of human culture.").

gradenko_2000 posted:

V. Illych L. posted:

zizek having a provocative form and introduction is basically just zizek writing a piece. this has been his style for as long as he's been a public figure. one really does have to read the actual piece to figure out if he's also being stupid.

quote:

Consider Russia today. In an unverified video that began circulating this month, a former mercenary from the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group is accused of switching sides to “fight against the Russians,” whereupon an unidentified assailant smashes a sledgehammer into the side of the mercenary’s head. When asked to comment on the video – posted under the header “The hammer of revenge” – Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group’s founder and a close ally of Vladimir Putin, replied that, “A dog receives a dog’s death.” As many have observed, Russia’s behavior is now identical to that of the Islamic State.

Or, consider Russia’s increasingly close ally, Iran, where young girls who have been arrested for protesting the regime are reportedly being married off to prison guards and then raped, on the grounds that a minor cannot legally be executed if she is a virgin.

Or, consider Israel, which proudly presents itself as a liberal democracy, even though it has gradually come to resemble some of the other fundamentalist-religious countries in its neighborhood. The latest evidence of the trend is the news that Itamar Ben-Gvir will be a part of Binyamin Netanyahu’s new government. Before entering politics, Ben-Gvir was known to display a portrait in his living room of the Israeli-American terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounded 125 others in Hebron in 1994.

Netanyahu, who was Israel’s longest-serving prime minister before being ousted in June 2021, is fully implicated in this ethical decay. In 2019, the Times of Israel reports, he called “for a fight against rising Muslim and left-wing anti-Semitism in Europe, hours after the [Israeli] government published a report that said the far-right posed the greatest threat to Jews on the continent.” Why does Netanyahu ignore far-right anti-Semitism? Because he relies on it. The Western new right may be anti-Semitic at home, but it also staunchly supports Israel, which it sees as one of the last remaining barriers against a Muslim invasion.

Unfortunately, all this is just one side of the story. Ethical decay is also increasingly apparent in the “woke” left, which has become increasingly authoritarian and intolerant as it advocates permissiveness for all forms of sexual and ethnic identity – except one. The sociologist Duane Rousselle has characterized the new “cancel culture” as “racism in the time of the many without the One.” Whereas traditional racism vilifies the intruder who poses a threat to the unity of the One (the dominant in-group), the woke left want to do the same to anyone who has not fully abandoned all the One’s old categories of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. All sexual orientations and gender identities are now acceptable unless you are a white man whose gender identity corresponds with your biological sex at birth. Members of this cisgender cohort are enjoined to feel guilty just for what they are – for being “comfortable in their skin” – while all others (even cisgender women) are encouraged to be whatever they feel they are.

SAVE NOW
This “new woke order” is increasingly discernible in absurd real-world episodes. Just this month, the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania planned to sponsor a student-organized event for all those who are “tired of white cis men.” The plan was for attendees to “come paint & write about” their frustrations with “comfortable in skin” white men. Following an outcry and charges of racism, the event has since been postponed.

There is a paradox in how woke non-binary fluidity coincides with intolerance and exclusion. In Paris, the prestigious École Normale Supérieure is now debating a proposal to establish dormitory corridors reserved exclusively for individuals who have chosen mixity/diversity (mixité choisie) as their sexual identity, in order to exclude cisgender men. The proposed rules are strict: anyone not fitting the criteria would be prohibited from even setting foot in these corridors. And, of course, such rules would open a path to even tighter restrictions. For example, if enough individuals define their identity in even narrower terms, they presumably will be able to demand their own corridor.

Three features of this proposal are worth emphasizing: it excludes only cisgender men, not cisgender women; it is not based on any objective criteria of classification, but only on subjective self-designation; and it calls for further classificatory subdivisions. This last point is crucial, because it demonstrates how all the emphasis on plasticity, choice, and diversity ultimately leads to what can only be called a new apartheid – a network of fixed, essentialized identities.

Wokeism thus offers a quintessential study in how permissiveness becomes prohibition: under a woke regime, we never know if and when some of us will be canceled for something we have said or done (the criteria are murky), or for simply being born into the forbidden category.

Far from opposing the new forms of barbarism, as it often claims to be doing, the woke left fully participates in it, promoting and practicing an oppressive discourse without irony. Though it advocates pluralism and promotes difference, its subjective position of enunciation – the place from which it speaks – is ruthlessly authoritarian, brooking no debate in efforts to impose arbitrary exclusions that previously would have been considered beyond the pale in a tolerant, liberal society.


That said, we should bear in mind that this mess is largely confined to the narrow world of academia (and various intellectual professions like journalism), whereas the rest of society is moving more in the opposite direction. In the US, for example, 12 Republican senators voted this month with the Democratic majority to codify the right of same-sex couples to marry.

Cancel culture, with its implicit paranoia, is a desperate and obviously self-defeating attempt to compensate for the very real violence and intolerance that sexual minorities have long suffered. But it is a retreat into a cultural fortress, a pseudo-“safe space” whose discursive fanaticism merely strengthens the majority’s resistance to it.