Lessons posted:History will justify the internet weirdos who exalt and excuse any murderous dictator the US doesnt like.
discipline posted:people have legitimate grievances all over the world not just in syria. but just because I say I have a solution to those grievances doesn't mean that solution is worth any more than the paper it's printed on.
i...guess? do you agree with crow (?) that amnesty international and human rights watch don't produce factual content?
babyhueypnewton posted:Good job Khamsek, Jools, and Crow. Thug lessons should be glad im not mod anymore or else he would be permabanned.
This thread is awful, but not because of white "socialists" who are obsessed with anime. It's the people who think as americans there's nothing we can do to stop U.S. imperialism. Do you know how much families in afghanistan, syria, ukraine, etc wish they were americans so they could directly challenge the U.S. govt and media without being murdered? Your white faces and bodies are worth far more to u.s imperialists who dont mind slaughtering millions of people of color who dare to reject complete obedience to imperialist exploitation.
The ultimate irony is that Syria was an example of anti-imperialism stopping a war from happening! and probably saved the country from being looted like libya. Of course, socialists and white petit-bourgeois are not the site of anti-imperialism in the 1st world as this thread can show you, so most sadsack computer socialists genuinely dont think there was any anti-war resistance in the american public.
Do the coincidences of internal imperial politics and empire fatigue really constitute anti-imperialism in any meaningful way?
notciaNOTjew posted:babyhueypnewton posted:Good job Khamsek, Jools, and Crow. Thug lessons should be glad im not mod anymore or else he would be permabanned.
This thread is awful, but not because of white "socialists" who are obsessed with anime. It's the people who think as americans there's nothing we can do to stop U.S. imperialism. Do you know how much families in afghanistan, syria, ukraine, etc wish they were americans so they could directly challenge the U.S. govt and media without being murdered? Your white faces and bodies are worth far more to u.s imperialists who dont mind slaughtering millions of people of color who dare to reject complete obedience to imperialist exploitation.
The ultimate irony is that Syria was an example of anti-imperialism stopping a war from happening! and probably saved the country from being looted like libya. Of course, socialists and white petit-bourgeois are not the site of anti-imperialism in the 1st world as this thread can show you, so most sadsack computer socialists genuinely dont think there was any anti-war resistance in the american public.Do the coincidences of internal imperial politics and empire fatigue really constitute anti-imperialism in any meaningful way?
lol "empire fatigue". capital does not get fatigued in the search for profit. it is the american people who are "fatigued" with propaganda and being sent to die.
littlegreenpills posted:so we SHOULD watch the daily show, share anti war stuff on social media and write letters to our congressman. ok i gotcha
tbh i dont see the harm at all in the last two
discipline posted:You shouldn't roll your eyes tho Jools, imperialism is totally connected to domestic policy that's why it's totally the issue everyone can agree on in USG
huh? i meant in the sense of talking about assad or whoever's domestic policy
like what kind of worthless marxist are you if you are not only unable to place rhetoric of liberal humanitarianism as highly-chauvinist, weaponized, and intentionally misleading, but also uncritically endorse such a killer clown organization such as Amnesty International? Maybe actually read the things I link?
"Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, for instance was drawn directly from the US State Department" [Crownote: assistant to Richard Holbrooke in his capacity as UN Ambassador and Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Assistant for International Organization Affairs]
who do you think these people are? would you read about some bumfuck 19th c Earl from Kent's editorial opinion about 'savage Russia's grab for the Orient's bountiful treasures' without any kind of critical awareness or skepticism? or is it different because these people are from the same class as your family and your friends?
the state is by definition an armed, violent, interlocking group. there is nothing particularly savage about certain states over others, except perhaps scope relating to processes of accumulation. One can't investigate the 'moral responsibility' of this or that massacre without tying it to the larger forces, processes, and actors at play.
like we got people complaining about Palestinian collaborationists and its like, where the fuck do collaborationists come from? They arise from enormous internal pressure generated by larger forces, ie. the billions of dollars in aid money drowning independent development, massive geographic repression, routine assassinations, and billions of dollars of state of the art occupation security and active warfare against the Palestinian nation. You can't talk about the butchers of Hamas or Fatah or whatever trope you wish to pull out without talking about the astronomical and nearly unthinkably horrific role of westerners and settlers who impose such choices on the Palestinian people.
Every massacre in Syria is a massacre by the American empire. Every billion dollars spent by American corporations in propping up anticommunist, fascist partners in Germany is a notch in its complicity in the wholesale slaughter and genocide of eastern Europe and the USSR. This is not merely rhetoric, it's a concrete fact. To equivocate the vast scale of American action in the era of global imperialism to its targets is utter dishonesty and is in the realm of imperial fantasy. ****Imperialism is the Highest Stage of Capitalism, which is now in its global era****
babyhueypnewton posted:notciaNOTjew posted:babyhueypnewton posted:Good job Khamsek, Jools, and Crow. Thug lessons should be glad im not mod anymore or else he would be permabanned.
This thread is awful, but not because of white "socialists" who are obsessed with anime. It's the people who think as americans there's nothing we can do to stop U.S. imperialism. Do you know how much families in afghanistan, syria, ukraine, etc wish they were americans so they could directly challenge the U.S. govt and media without being murdered? Your white faces and bodies are worth far more to u.s imperialists who dont mind slaughtering millions of people of color who dare to reject complete obedience to imperialist exploitation.
The ultimate irony is that Syria was an example of anti-imperialism stopping a war from happening! and probably saved the country from being looted like libya. Of course, socialists and white petit-bourgeois are not the site of anti-imperialism in the 1st world as this thread can show you, so most sadsack computer socialists genuinely dont think there was any anti-war resistance in the american public.Do the coincidences of internal imperial politics and empire fatigue really constitute anti-imperialism in any meaningful way?
lol "empire fatigue". capital does not get fatigued in the search for profit. it is the american people who are "fatigued" with propaganda and being sent to die.
The American people were the good guys after all.
jools posted:also c_man for me its definitely "lesser of two evils" - im a communist, and a marxist, for a reason - but i see arguments over domestic records or whatever as pretty separate to this kind of thing, and roll my eyes at the way they interpenetrate arguments about foreign intervention....
Is it though? I don't think you actually read those reports of human rights abuses I posted, let me repeat one of them.
Salameh Kaileh, a Palestinian journalist with Jordanian nationality, was tortured by Air Force Intelligence officers after being arrested at his home in Damascus on 24 April, apparently because of a Facebook conversation and his possession of a left-wing publication. He was whipped on the soles of his feet and insulted. On 3 May he was moved to a military hospital, where he and others were beaten, insulted and denied access to toilets and medication. He was deported to Jordan on 14 May.
So we're talking about a government that imprisoned and tortured a Palestinian journalist for possessing left-wing materials. Of course this is not an isolated incident and the total and complete hostility to the left of the Syrian Baath Party is well-known, they outlawed the communists as soon as they came to power etc., they are an indisputably right-wing reactionary regime. Does this enter into consideration at all for you? I could see your point to an extent if this was just a human rights/moral issue, maybe we would have to bite the bullet and support a left-wing regime that committed atrocities for strategic reasons, but if you're saying leftists have to support Assad do you really think we can just completely disregard his politics?
And of course this isn't just a domestic policy thing, Syria happily sent in hundreds of thousands of troops for America's imperialist Gulf War in exchange for SiCk aid money, up until 2011 Assad was totally cooperating with IMF neoliberalism (Maybe you want to dismiss this as irrelevant domestic policy? List some other countries where you think IMF involvement is just a domestic issue and not a larger imperialist one). This whole reconstruction of Syria as an anti-imperialist power is a farce, people who fight America's wars don't become national liberationists just because America backstabs them and funds their enemies.
Lessons posted:So we're talking about a government that imprisoned and tortured a Palestinian journalist for possessing left-wing materials. Of course this is not an isolated incident and the total and complete hostility to the left of the Syrian Baath Party is well-known, they outlawed the communists as soon as they came to power etc., they are an indisputably right-wing reactionary regime. Does this enter into consideration at all for you?
The Syrian Communist Party knows all that and supports the government anyway, so presumably Syrian communists are themselves right-wing reactionaries, or the opposition alternative is so bad it necessitates making alliances like this.
http://english.dohainstitute.org/content/625971b6-e266-404d-bb20-2e997b6c79bb
13 countries polled, (including the Palestinian territories), huge majorities in 12 of them supporting Assad stepping down, the exception being Lebanon where public opinion is split (next closest is Iraq where opinion is 'only' 51%-26% in favor of Assad leaving). But maybe you think they don't support Assad but they want him to win? No that's not true either
Again it's an overwhelming majority opposed to Assad's government and only a tiny, tiny 3% minority calling for the khamsek/crow position of an Assad regime victory. Maybe if we're being generous we can say they support peaceful politics too and then it's just a combined 13% minority, vs. 66% who want the regime to go.
There's also results in there saying saying 62% of Arabs believe Syria's revolt is a popular revolution vs. 27% who think it's a conspiracy, but more interesting is this table about what those 27% actually think should happen in Syria even though, in their view, it's the work of outside imperialist conspirators.
Even among those who completely agree that this is just the work of a foreign conspiracy, only 11% want an Assad victory, and a large 49% plurality still want Assad to go. He's just that bad!
You guys keep accusing me of being a US supporter or whatever but these are actually the majority views in the Arab world, the ones you're putting out are extreme minorities. If you think not supporting Assad victory is pro-imperial, well, 97% of Arabs are imperial stooges. If you don't want to go that far and think support for the end of the regime is imperial stoogery, well, that's 66% of Arabs. The positions you're taking and the vehemence that you take in condemning anyone who strays from them is completely at odds with what the people concerned actually believe, which is not surprising, because ultimately this isn't about Syria or Arabs or imperialism for you, it's about getting to play at geopolitics and the practical consequences be damned.
Also I expect you're going to say this poll is fake propaganda just like the human rights reports, you don't trust the organization that did it, etc. Well this isn't the only poll, there's also ones from Pew, the Brookings Arab Public Opinion Poll, The Arab American Institute, YouGov/The Doha Debates, and even a poll of Syrians from back in 2011 before the war started. Basically if this is fabricated we're talking about vast collusion between half a dozen polling agencies to fabricate information about Arab public opinion, the whole idea beggars belief and is basically a conspiracy theory.
swirlsofhistory posted:Lessons posted:So we're talking about a government that imprisoned and tortured a Palestinian journalist for possessing left-wing materials. Of course this is not an isolated incident and the total and complete hostility to the left of the Syrian Baath Party is well-known, they outlawed the communists as soon as they came to power etc., they are an indisputably right-wing reactionary regime. Does this enter into consideration at all for you?
The Syrian Communist Party knows all that and supports the government anyway, so presumably Syrian communists are themselves right-wing reactionaries, or the opposition alternative is so bad it necessitates making alliances like this.
The Syrian Communist Party that's legal is a joke, do you also take the China Democratic League seriously in the PRC? The Chondoist Chongu Party in the DPRK?
The PFLP which is an actual credible leftist organization basically disowned the PFLP-GC splinter over their support for Assad, saying "[PFLF-GC leader} Ahmed Jibril does not even belong to the Palestinian Left. He is closer to the extremist right-wing groups than to revolutionary leftist ones", i.e., basically the exact thing you just accused me of saying. Are you really so easily tricked?
Crow posted:Donald: Sad and fucked up thought i just had. One day the lion Assad will die : (
that day, a child will be born somewhere in the world, who has the strength to carry on.
discipline posted:
i somewhat agree but even when anti-capitalism gets added to the anti-imperialism of a disillusioned young american it seems that Alex Joneseological thought is better placed to reap the benefits than the socialist movement.
getfiscal posted:hmm.... donald, you call yourself a canadian communist, yet the communist party only got 0.1% of the votes in the last election. your views are marginal and extreme. here's a video from jon stewart explaining why we need a new centre free from the loons on both sides.
The point here isn't that you need to oppose Assad because Arabs do, of course you're free to support and advocate for whoever and whatever you want. But when you start saying anyone who doesn't believe the Syrian rebels are a CIA plot is an American stooges and racists to boot, well, that applies to 66% of Arabs which seems a little presumptuous to me.
But way more than any of that, the problem here isn't that people disagree with the majority of Arab public opinion it's that they're completely ignoring it and not even considering it as a factor. The position that people keep advancing in one form or another is, "Who cares what kind of government Assad runs, all we should care about is American involvement", but this view is so completely out of touch with the reality of the Middle East it's staggering. People don't want to live under shitty dictatorial rulers like Assad and Gaddafi, in fact they're despised, which is why you can have stuff like the leader of Hezbollah saying things like "Hezbollah expresses support to the revolutionists in Libya and we pray that they will triumph over this arrogant tyrant" while NATO bombs are falling on Tripoli. The reconstruction of these guys as anti-imperialist heroes is a joke, it's a carefully-constructed package for Western radicals looking for a cause to cheer for, rough edges and inconvenient facts purged.
And even that aside, the constant pronouncements that we should only care about America and disregard the record of Assad is totally at odds with the public in the Arab world. That doesn't mean it's somehow off-limits for debate but maybe the opinion of the people actually affected by American imperialism should have their views considered rather than being completely ignored? Just a little?
