cfgaussian @ cfgaussian @lemmygrad.ml

Posts

101

Comments

455

Joined

3 yr. ago

Sure, but that's not a particularly interesting question in my opinion. I mean there are plenty of good reasons to not like Trump, or Biden, or Putin for that matter. Hating them is easy. The better question is "do you understand why their supporters like them (or at least prefer them to the alternative)?". It's in answering that question that we learn something valuable. Your ability to give a reasonable, non-caricature answer reveals whether or not you have the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes, to understand their situation and their point of view. Even or perhaps especially when you consider the other person your enemy, it is useful to be able to do that.

Is there any difference between this and how all the chuds were denying the result of the 2020 US election? In both cases it was just asserted without evidence that the claimed result was a lie because they felt it couldn't be true. Same for Russiagate and 2016. The same pattern repeats:

"Me and most people i know hate this person, therefore it is impossible that they legitimately won the election."

When asked to produce evidence of actual fraud: crickets. When confronted with how the other side feels: deny, dismiss and demonize. It's an emotional kneejerk reaction.

chuds are easier to convert, but a chud thread would be a miserable idea

I completely agree on both counts.

Some folks apparently really have a vendetta against Brian Berletic, i can't explain the downvotes any other way considering that this short piece says nothing particularly provocative or new other than pointing out that NED(CIA front) funded polling showed Putin at around 86% just before the election and lo and behold that's pretty much what he got.

I don't think the occasional open megathread would hurt but focusing too much effort on trying to reach liberals is a tactical mistake. There is a much broader mass of people out there who are not liberal, most of them are just apolitical or only very superficially political in one direction or the other, and these are the people who we should be trying to reach first, not groups that are already ideologically hardened, whether liberal or conservative. It is more difficult to break through already established barriers than to lay down foundations on empty or mostly empty land. In order to reach these people you need to emphasize shared material interests, and preferably do so outside of the kind of online milieu which tends to disproportionately attract already politicized individuals as is the case for this platform.

hard to keep the status quo in the face of those trying to tear it down

The status quo should be torn down

by just getting back to where the Greeks were thousands of years prior

Oh look, yet another Westoid with a bullshit 19th century understanding of history and enamored with the "regaining lost knowledge" trope. There was no "regression", that is a myth, this idea that the Greeks and Romans were more advanced than medieval people is simply not borne out by the evidence. Society was in many ways more advanced in the medieval era than in antiquity.

Blue no matter who

Fuck off. Voting for Democrats is voting for fascism.

Try a different browser? I'm using Opera and it works for me. I assume it will be posted to YouTube as well eventually since CGTN released a promo for the documentary on their channel, so you could also just wait until it's available there.

The bicycle prices seem off. Why would the price of a bicycle in the DPRK be so high? They have an industrial base and bikes are not particularly complicated to manufacture. I mean if that's what your sources say and you trust those sources then i guess that's the way it is, i don't have any data on this personally, but intuitively i would have expected something closer to 100k rather than 250k KPW. It's still a significant purchase but one you only make once every ten years or so, and maintenance costs are probably very low.

At the same time the western price i am sure is low balled. I don't know many who would actually buy a bicycle that they plan to use regularly as a primary means of transportation for only $100. Granted that doesn't happen at all in car-addicted US, but in Europe at least some people do primarily use bikes and they spend a hell of a lot more than that on their bike, starting at €250 for a basic model, but most probably around €500 for a decent one if you are serious about using your bike daily.

Die Linke has turned completely opportunist and has capitulated to the liberal consensus on a number of issues, but the worst of all is that a significant number of them have just gone along with the anti-Russia hysteria. With only a few exceptions they did not oppose the drive to send tons of weapons and vast sums of money to Ukraine and have not even tried to advocate against the insanity with the sanctions which completely backfired. So whether she siphons votes from them or from the AfD racists, both are good outcomes in which bad parties get less votes.

The fact that so far she is only on the ballot in Thüringen doesn't mean her party can't grow as a political force and become relevant in other Bundesländer too.

As for the Greens, they are not just arch-neoliberals they are also the biggest warmongers in Germany right now, it's weird that you chose to omit that part.

Maybe, if you are in a strongly AfD district.

I don't understand this. Are you saying that she is only preferable to the AfD but not to the mainstream liberal parties (CDU, SPD, Grüne, FDP) despite these being staunch supporters of Palestinian genocide and of Ukrainian Nazis? Do you think there are no transphobes in those parties? I feel like the Wagenknecht situation in Germany in some ways mirrors the discussion that has been going on around George Galloway in the UK. In both cases it is clear they hold reactionary views on gender and perhaps other social issues too - and that is a legitimate grounds for criticism - but at the end of the day i don't see any other viable alternatives if you want a candidate with an anti-imperialist outlook and who has a realistic chance of winning an election of any significance. Now sure, the usefulness of electoralism as a vehicle for advancing a revolutionary agenda is questionable, but at least with the right candidates making a big enough fuss it is possible to push the anti-war agenda to the forefront of the discourse, in tandem of course with mobilization for protests to exert pressure on the political elite.

Mind you i don't think either Wagenknecht or Galloway are socialists. For me Wagenknecht's policies sound more like those of an oldschool social democrat (not of the contemporary neoliberal SPD/labor type but what socdem/labor parties used to be). And she is not as good on Palestine as Galloway is, though that may be because it is that much harder in Germany to openly support Palestinian liberation. All of that as well as the issues you mentioned are included in the critical part of critical support.

Completely agree. Galloway is not perfect and there are some things he says on occasion that socialists could legitimately criticize him for, but on Palestine at least i fail to see how anyone can say he has been anything but a consistent and staunch supporter of Palestinian liberation for basically his entire career.

normally I would dismiss this as yet another rambling of an irrelevant old quack

And that is exactly what you should do in this case too. Unless you see someone actually associated with the government start putting out this sort of rhetoric i don't think you need to worry. Dugin should not to be taken any more seriously than the Strelkov type "turbo-patriots" who have been saying shit like this for years. But it makes for attention grabbing sensationalistic headlines which is why the media like to report on these things.

What Germany thinks and wants is irrelevant. They will do as they are told by Washington. They didn't even dare speak up about the US blowing up their main energy supply pipeline. They are a completely subjugated vassal state.

I would advise remaining skeptical about this. Personally i am not convinced that this will actually take place, and even if it does there's a good chance that Russia will ignore it. I am also not discounting the possibility that this is some kind of information warfare ploy. So let's wait and see what happens before jumping to conclusions.

From what i've heard they're one of the more radical anti-imperialist and decolonial groups in the US. As for them being in the crosshairs of the state apparatus, that's how you can tell who is actually a threat to the system and who isn't. If they weren't dangerous, the FBI wouldn't be targeting them. Which makes it all the more important for other leftist groups to stand with them and help them fight the state's attempts at repression.

Yeah but the FP tweet is real and that's the funny part.

Indeed.

Yeah, no, this is absolutely meaningless. None of this has any relevance as long as the current conflict is still going, and nobody knows what the situation in Ukraine will be when it does end. And everything they promise in this statement to do in the future for Ukraine they have already been doing and Ukraine is still losing. None of those measures worked to stop Russia doing what they judged needed to be done.

But you know what would work to deter Russia? Actually sitting down to talk to them and taking their stated vital interests seriously. And without trying to pull one over on them and scam them for the third time. And unfortunately, since that is still too radical a step for Europe at the moment, the present course will continue unabated, to the detriment of Ukraine and of Europe, not so much to Russia.

This. She was the one "progressive" who due to her stance on Palestine i still had hope for that she might not be completely compromised, unlike all the others. Turns out i was wrong. There is not a single politician in the entire Democrat party who isn't a shill for imperialism.

Mintpress is anti-imperialist media, which is why libs hate them.