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

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

tbh I was taking a shot in the dark there, I'm not in the least surprised to find out they're not very left.

Yeah, as I said, the main story here really is the fringe right parties surpassing the left for the first time. A party that openly advocates for the forced sterilization of paedophiles now the third largest political power in the country, not great.

Ajamu Baraka on BPM right now, talking Ukraine and domestic matters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLn45wQ2Beo

“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