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

“Leftism” is when my opinions somehow always coincidentally align with the geo-political agenda of the world’s premier exporter of fascism

.. the us?

Well, sure, since half the politicians in the US are openly in cahoots with Russia. But those aren’t the politicians that guys like the dude in the video ever object to.

Do you check under the bed for the Red Menace before you go to bed?

You bring up a good point. Why would people on the left behave like old-school tankies when Russia isn’t even nominally communist anymore?

lol yeah dude not wanting another US military intervention is def behaving like an old school tankie, good luck with that

Always incredible when Americans on ilx mistake the acts of America in its own interests as neutral and apolitical.

You, an old-school tankie: I don’t think war is in the interests of civilians on either side of the border
Me, a shrewd political commentator: uhhhhhh you know the Soviet Union broke up right, COMЯ ADE?!

lol

also libs who think fascism is just the republican party and not like the entire us imperial project are idiotic

“Leftism” is when my opinions somehow always coincidentally align with the geo-political agenda of the world’s premier exporter of fascism

Gunna go out on a limb and say there’s one country in particular that is funding and arming the Azov Battalion and you’ll never guess who it is!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/Gabriel_Boric_Font_%282018%29.jpg/512px-Gabriel_Boric_Font_%282018%29.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Retrato_Oficial_Presidente_Boric_Font.jpg

rowr

I have no idea whether this new government is left or not but it's one less right wing populist wanker in power.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/24/opposition-slovenian-liberal-party-on-course-for-landslide-win-say-exit-polls

One thing that got lost in the (valid) panic over Le Pen is that Melenchon only got 1,5% less votes than her, it could've easily been a Macron vs Melenchon run-off.

My wife was actually dreading a Le Pen vs Melenchon run-off because she thinks that in that scenario Macron voters would go for Le Pen.

Nice chat happening today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpLX8T6phOQ

A significant shift via the @FoxNews national poll:

Around this time in the Obama presidency, voters said by a +10 margin that government was "doing too much"

Today voters say +17 that government "should do more" pic.twitter.com/VLcE89pp8a

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) September 15, 2022

swifties developing class consciousness bc they couldn’t get tickets is my favorite tiktok trend pic.twitter.com/SVhSSmMoyZ

— reversecowgirl69 (@botticellibimbo) November 17, 2022

China Miéville talking right now for a Haymarket event and covering a lot of Q&A about his book on the Manifesto and organizing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKwxKR5-QKU

I was quite surprised to see this statement from this person. I haven't followed her work but I think she used to work with socialist writers and publishers. I have a Dawn Foster book for which she wrote a foreword. Now she's speaking at the National Conservatism event and talking about the need to 'seek God'? Surprised.

We need to seek God in each other. We're in a spiritual (and a material) crisis. But it's not over! Can't help but agree with Tim Stanley at #NatCon.

— Nina Power (@Nina_Compact) May 16, 2023

If I remember correctly, she said if she was in the US she would have voted for Trump, with him being the antiwar candidate

power used to be on the left, yes, but went fascist around 2018-2019. she did a version of the usual routine - posted a bunch of transphobic shit on facebook (then it was the typical radfem ostensibly-from-the-left sort of stuff) then a year later she was paling around with outright fascists and denouncing feminism, then another year later she'd become a regular columnist for the telegraph churning out anti-woke nonsense.

now she's helping run compact, which basically advocates for fascism with a welfare state - it's staffed by a bunch of tradcaths and reactionary ex-leftists, a lot of the usual suspects.

"power used to be on the left, yes, but went fascist around 2018-2019"

Mark Fisher (11 July 1968 – 13 January 2017)

Some people on ilx are closer than I was but I think in NP's case her L to R journey was complicated by a personal breakdown and significant issues with alcohol etc. I think her recovery was aided by a quasi-fascist edgelord so the personal is v mixed up with the usual stereotypes.

Worthwhile panel talk from Haymarket Books: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ8LRtdeDZg

tradcaths

Word of the day, I hadn't heard this before.

i "attended" a DSA meeting yesterday. They were nice.

I forget the thread where we were discussing the cis-white-male dominance in re DSA ... but this chapter was pretty diverse in that regard.

There was a debate over endorsing a candidate for state Senate. All of the people "against" endorsing this person all said how much they "loved" her and how they would vote for her, but somehow "endorsement" was tied up with "heavy campaigning" and not having the capacity to organize a campaign of that scale, which didn't make sense to me as a "regular person"... fortunately, they actually did agree to endorse this candidate, which gave me some hope that this wasn't yet another absurdly dysfunctional organization.

Yeah, “endorsement” with DSA chapters is a terrible choice of terms because it’s not just endorsing a candidate(“yeah we say you should vote for this candidate”), it’s folding into the campaign to actively work to get them elected.

An interview from the Liminauts with Matt Christman on more spiritual and metaphysical topics but how that eventually gets turned into something to work on IRL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aczSCRUdHHE

Guatemala: Bernardo Arevalo, son of one of Guatemala's last left-wing presidents, has won the presidential election.

Arevalo shockingly made the run-off and was elected in a landslide, with many expecting him to become the country's most progressive president in decades pic.twitter.com/ecC2Hy3V96

— Populism Updates (@PopulismUpdates) August 21, 2023

taking this at face value and know nothing about Arevalo, seems good.

I want to believe... ya know?

there was an attempt to block him from the run-off after he came second in the first round, this Economist article from last week says there's still a risk of the elite trying to prevent him from being sworn in, or from governing effectively if he is (maybe the margin of victory make the former less likely?)

After Mr Arévalos’s surprise showing in the first round, nine mainstream parties alleged fraud, even though observers had seen no irregularities. The constitutional court ordered the electoral tribunal to review the vote count, delaying certification of the results. When this failed to lead to any change in the outcome, officials tried to suspend Semilla for allegedly forging signatures. (The constitutional court blocked the suspension, but the challenge is ongoing, as no party can be barred during an electoral period.)

Even if Mr Arévalo wins and is sworn in, he may find life very difficult. Semilla could yet be suspended as a party, leaving its 23 lawmakers rudderless. Institutions could refuse to co-operate with Mr Arévalo and stifle his agenda; people will get disillusioned with the lack of results from a candidate who promised change. What lies ahead is an uphill battle, says Ms Chang. But the potential reward justifies it. His win would ensure there are “a few years more of life for democracy”, she says.

https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2023/08/17/guatemalas-elite-may-try-to-scupper-the-presidential-election

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/poland-parliamentary-election-autocracy-tusk/675656/

If there's one thing Donald Tusk isn't it's left wing.

I don't know what happened to Radical Philsophy but I love this interview with Marcus Rediker, a historian of maritime radical politics who wants to recentre the high seas as a location of struggle, dissent and political organisation - a "mobile workforce" comprising not "the multitude" exactly but what he calls "motley crews" - heterogeneous, diverse cells capable of self-organisation and radical action

https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/interview/a-motley-crew-for-our-times

Anyway the closing part of the interview made me think of this thread - he sees a great resurgence of radical left activity but feels that we aren't doing enough to bring all the threads together (perhaps ironically in this age of instant communication)

Rediker is really nice on twitter. Will read this sometime.

sports banger posted a kind of “manifesto” recently that was of course totally right on though perhaps a little unmemorable, apart from this, which has stuck with me:

REAPPROPRIATE BAD VIBES

tired: cursing
wired: casting actual curses

I’m reading The Many-Headed Hydra rn, by Rediker and Peter Linebaugh and let me tell you folks, it slaps

Benjamin Studebaker and Derick Varn having quite the cheery and expansive convo about a lot of shit going on and why/how ever leftist types ostensibly working on it are missing a lot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnGVu3Kmnjw

This is quite good, gets into shit like why the UAW and Teamsters and positioning themselves differently w/r/t electeds like the Biden/Harris Admins

Orban flees Budapest

(?? there seems to be a lack of info)

yes. your source, sleeve?

worst april fools prank

OTOH, the protests continue: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/hungarians-keep-up-protests-against-orbans-move-ban-pride-2025-04-01/

xp thank u

‪Ned Resnikoff‬ ✧@resnik✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
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7m
American democracy hasn’t gotten a ton of lucky breaks recently but we should all be grateful that the world’s least likable man has decided to put himself on the ballot in every single election

Looks like the only economies with negative growth, out of those announced today, are the USA and Hungary. Fascism doesn't work, folks.

― Blake the Messenger (Tom D.), Wednesday, April 30, 2025 9:06 AM (two minutes ago)

https://www.politico.eu/article/political-newcomer-new-lithuanian-pm-inga-ruginiene/

good news + somewhat infuriating politico stupidity where running unions doesn't count as political experience