Is the West Experiencing a Left-Wing Drift? (the international left politics activism, news, and strategy thread)

Always read the footnotes. Fed economist: "I leave aside the deeper concern that the primary role of mainstream economics in our society is to provide an
apologetics for a criminally oppressive, unsustainable, and unjust social order." https://t.co/9kphNPQ8La

— Danny Yadron (@dannyyadron) September 24, 2021

now to not leave it aside i guess

a remarkable referendum today: Berlin voters by a comfortable margin voted that the city should expropriate housing from large landlords (that have at least 3,000 units) & socialize those units.

Roughly 200,000 units fit that description.

— Taniel (@Taniel) September 26, 2021

The landlords are making memes y'all pic.twitter.com/7Y4b5XnCeY

— Themperor Kennedy🐸🏳️‍🌈 (@kennedytcooper) September 24, 2021

Lol pretty sure those are memes from the Radical Centrist Instagram page, which is run by Brad Troemel.

Read that as Brad Toenail

He's an artist and social commentator, makes a fair amount of money off of his Patreon from my understanding.

He got shadow-banned on IG for a meme he made that mimicked an actual Biden ad that said, "Not his head, but his heart". A lot of people shared it thinking it was an actual Biden ad rather than a leftist shitpost.

Rutgers is offering a 6-week labor history class with three leading labor historians for $90. Seems like a really cool/fun course!

Register here: https://t.co/sYgEdGPFTf pic.twitter.com/NnHWr4orbI

— Chris Brooks (@chactivist) October 3, 2021

That's a good price and sounds like it could be fun!

Covering the strike wave https://theinsurgents.substack.com/p/ep-82-are-we-in-a-strikewave-ft-jonah

ty

item: saw a kid wearing a sleeveless shirt with a hammer and sickle on it at the gym yesterday

What's up with the Qiao Collective ties to the DSA, leading to the decision by the DSA International Committee not to condemn the forced dissolution of an independent Hong Kong Trade Union? I was thinking about reaching out to my local DSA but after that I'll pass. Got in touch with Food Not Bombs here instead.

...ok

Is there a better thread to discuss this in? I'd genuinely be interested in seeing the thoughts of other leftists here on the matter, it's something I've seen tearing up Twitter and other leftward forums but maybe I missed any discussion of that here, sorry.

Better than the last time you responded to me I guess.

really looking forward to wearily scrolling past all your posts

― ingredience (map), Tuesday, December 10, 2019 12:07 AM (one year ago)

thanks for reminding me i should go back to doing just that

Qiao Collective are known apologists for the CCCP. The best left site coming from that part of the world, run by some people that I have met and can vouch for, is here: https://lausan.hk/

The left mainstreaming of apologism for Xi Jinping and the CCCP right now is appalling. Just because the US and China are sabre-rattling doesn't make China some sort of paragon of decency and virtue. Caping for a state is always a bad look.

agreed but I'm not sure this mistake should really invalidate the DSA completely (I mean, it won't for me), fixing potholes and brakelights is good regardless

afaic the DSA is like all socialist cult associations: occasionally OTM and doing actionable work, mostly full of shit.

the DSA is like all socialist cult associations

Huh?

RevCom? Cult. ISO? Cult. Blackhammer? Cult. DSA? A larger cult, but a cult nonetheless.

Socialism is certainly closer to my own personal ideology, but I'm not interested in socialist organizations at all, because I've been burned by them in the past. I've watched them burn others in the past. The good work that some of the do seems anomalous rather than par for the course, in my experience.

i'm also trending more anarchist lately in my political orientation, the little of it i have anyway

i don't know where to put this but i enjoyed this book review. the baffler has been on a roll lately?

Peace Inc. has flourished since the end of the Cold War. This dating is not accidental. The industry’s rise is bound up with the dreams of the end of history that were so frequently hallucinated in foreign policy circles in the 1990s. The anti-politics of peacebuilding is part and parcel of a liberalism that tries to neutralize actual struggles. Rather than seeing violence as part of some overarching goal—an end to colonial rule, say, or a revolution—contemporary peacebuilding sees violence itself as the problem. Countries might remain woefully unequal and bereft of socio-economic justice, but the peacebuilders have done their job as long as peace is obtained. As Autesserre summarizes, for Peace Inc., war and poverty are “technical problems . . . which can be solved using technocratic solutions based on best practices and a large body of universal, time-tested ideas.”

https://thebaffler.com/latest/give-peace-a-chance-craze

Thanks for that. My grandmother was a big peace activist and would sometimes be lightly involved in this sort of world. Luckily her more radical friends and her own curiosity often won out so she could form more nuanced views.

As in, I'm looking forward to reading it!

it's a juicy review with a lot of striking anecdotes that starts to paint a picture of what's really going on with this stuff. it does not like the books very much.

i'm also trending more anarchist lately in my political orientation, the little of it i have anyway
This has been my direction as well, antiwar above everything else

ha jacob did you read the rest of that post

I did and I'm still thinking about it. I'd like to read the book.

Leninism is the future

#Boric #Presidente #Chile 🙏🙏🙏 pic.twitter.com/zm5M5UY7DZ

— Pedro Pascal he/him (@PedroPascal1) November 23, 2021

boric,,,hello

Honduras elects democratic socialist as first female president, unseating conservative ruling party

Hillary Clinton in shambles

If you need a good excuse to cry, here you go https://t.co/6CzBd2zizS

— Carter Moon (@CarterDMoon) December 9, 2021

Nice

It's been called by Chilean media:

Gabriel Boric will be Chile's next president. pic.twitter.com/3NYB00iSOc

— Taniel (@Taniel) December 19, 2021

I've always liked Pablo Pascal as an actor and he publicly supported Boric and is Allende's great nephew.

based

Mind-blowing scenes in Santiago, where hundreds of thousands have flocked onto the streets to celebrate Gabriel Boric's victory pic.twitter.com/uirvG1mVBg

— John Bartlett (@jwbartlett92) December 20, 2021

🇨🇱 Y bien si votaron los chilenos. Gabriel Boric, nuevo presidente de Chile. #compol pic.twitter.com/EzH3Lkvr39

— Sergio Paz (@sergiopazc) December 19, 2021

The exact moment the German health minister became legendary on philosophy Twitter pic.twitter.com/R4HgWIohMs

— Anthony Ballas (@tonyjballas) January 27, 2022

holy shit

sorry, that just connected a lot of dots for me

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/31/portugal-general-election-pm-antonio-costa-wins-surprise-outright-majority

it really grates on me to see Starmer congratulating the Portuguese centre-left social democrats of the type who are not welcome anywhere near his fucking Labour party.

Not worth getting angry about calz, the PS are p much melts and Costa a blatant careerist.

Entirely one for the right-wing drift, I'm afraid: Chega (actual fascists) and Iniciativa Liberal (free market fundamentalists) surpassed the BE (Leftist Block) and the communists for the first time, votes that would've gone to the left instead ended up at the PS because of polls suggesting that the centre left and centre right were neck to neck, which turned out to be total bullshit. PS now has no pressure whatsoever to swerve left and the amount of virulent racist scum MPs has moved from one to eleven.

Really wish that anglos (not Tom in this thread, to be clear) would stop shooting off rockets every time a party with "socialist" or "social democrat" in its name triumphs in Europe.

ah right, I thought they were amongst the better class of Euro-melts but now I think I recall you posting before that they aren't any good.

yeah I mean better than Starmer labour of course but that's not the highest ceiling