what the fuck is happening in Russia?

So bizarre seeing the transphobia in the middle of anti-colonial talking points.

"how do you do fellow members of the global south and victims of western colonialism?" pic.twitter.com/o7YbykoXVj

— Luka Ivan Jukic (@lijukic) September 30, 2022

So bizarre seeing the transphobia in the middle of anti-colonial talking points.

Is it that bizarre? LGBTQ is an expression of western imperialism. Galloway was making similar points in Batley recently, seems relatively standard by now

It's not bizarre in the slightest, he's just casting his nets wider with a few extra keywords and phrases.

He knows there's plenty of people in the West who agree with him, including many in government.

The same strategy as Fox News bigoted blowhard Tucker Carlson appropriating the language of economic justice to sell Republican policies. Folks don’t have visceral tribal allegiances to neoliberalism like they do to race, nationalism, or gender roles. Now that neoliberalism is widely failing, it’s getting to be a hard sell so they have to resort to the bait-and-switch.

neoliberalism is always a hard sell and has to be forced on people and I think the punitive/authoritarian/austerian side (the culture war stuff) is always at least implicit- and people get to pretend they're fighting power when they make that stuff explicit (trump brexit etc etc) instead of rejecting the logic altogether which would be too hard and might have actual consequences

the thing that leapt out at me from putin was the what I thought of as duginist and eurasianist touches- I don't know enough to know if this is the actual core of putinism or if it's more like a dogwhistle to a certain faction but it's striking anyway

unfortunately it will resonate to some extent- anyone who knows anything about syria knows how bullshit the anticolonial stuff is from russia - sadly that doesn't include a large proportion of the western lefts (and dissident rights) he's reaching out to here

Right maybe Syria isn’t so clear to some because it was recent whereas the West has centuries of colonialism to attack. Except that Siberia was basically a colony of Russia initially, wasn’t it? And attacking the West for slavery — yes atrocious, but. What exactly was the difference between slaves and serfs? Was it just skin color or

Anyway I came to say neoliberalism was not a hard sell in the USA in the late 20th century and it doesn’t seem like the corporate co-option of progressive politics in that era was a uniquely American issue — Labour, SPD in Germany and I’m sure others were glad to benefit from the largesse of the 1%.

"Is it that bizarre? LGBTQ is an expression of western imperialism."

Is it?

Well to those bozos it is

"Is it that bizarre? LGBTQ is an expression of western imperialism."

Is it?

It is beginning to look that way, if I'm understanding him correctly

to who, exactly?

The right wing in Europe is casting LGBTQ as a corruption, a malign (outside) influence to be resisted.

sure, I was just calling anvil's phrasing into question as it appeared to give legitimacy to the argument, which I don't think it deserves

There is no legitimacy to that argument whatsoever. Unlike anti-colonial discourse.

Of course not. It's pure reactionary politics.

Well anvil is stating it's not bizarre or strange to see transphobia being called upon but usually reactionaries don't care for both anti-colonialism or trans rights.

This isn't about Putin but the two issues being spread out like this in the same speech.

reactionaries do care for stories of national victimhood

Opportunists going to opportune.

fascism's whole shtick iirc is getting a guy up there to be like "too many solid things have melted into air lately (because of the jews)-- but don't worry we've invented a murder ritual to bring them all back" and then just continuing to accelerate ultraviolent gangster capitalism while yelling on tv about god and dad; so it's not too weird to find it also willing to say there has been too much colonialism lately (because of the gays).

when the supply chain started breaking down i gave up.

I know I’m about a week behind but just wanted to comment that this post and the next one were lovely pieces of writing.

dlh - thanks. I get it now.

I see it as an attempt to fuse ‘western neoliberal imperial hegemony’ with ‘western cultural degenerate globalism’, and these are manifestations of the same thing, and they are done by the same people using different tools. The West is invading, with their NATO, and their LGBT, and their UEFA, and their so-called color revolutions (which, like Maidan, are in fact CIA coups), meddling where they’re not wanted, who needs them?.

It doesn’t seem bizarre because its not even original, its been pushed for years, in the west too, Galloway, Greyzone types. In the west we might get diluted versions for certain audiences tweaked a little, away from explicit ‘LGBT is bad’ to a more flexible ‘LGBT is cynically weaponised by elites’.

Not a million miles away from trying to fuse 'Corporations are bad' people with 'Corporations are bad because they are woke' people. Or using 'the west' for one audience, and 'globalists' for another

I've been watching this guy's videos talking to Russians, mostly in Moscow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1420channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1420channel

not me trying to link to the channel '1420'

Very good thread on nuke talk of the last few days.

Haven't yet heard a compelling case as to why, for the west, Putin's use of tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine turns Ukraine from its status now - a cause worth a proxy war - with limited some risk into a major war with significantly elevated risk of the worst outcome. 1/

— Patrick Porter (@PatPorter76) October 3, 2022

A much bigger Russian collapse will unfold in the coming days.

— Francis Fukuyama (@FukuyamaFrancis) October 3, 2022

always so prescient is this lad, give him a tenner and the lottery numbers for Wednesday are all yours.

If he's looking at open source data then he needs to say more. If he's dropping hints based on a classified briefing or a leak than he needs to say less.

History is over... NOW

wait

NOW

Wanda Jackson’s Fukuyama Mama

It does seem a fairly safe bet, just based on momentum, that Russia will continue to see setbacks on the battlefield in the coming days, though Fukuyama's tweet seems to imply something bigger than that. Not sure what information he has, other than Putin's evident desperation.

I think people are underestimating the extent to which Fukuyama operates on pure vibes.

Not sure what information he has

Does he have information or a desire for people to pay attention to him?

The latter. I think his comparative advantage is supposed to be an ability to recognize emerging patterns more quickly in data that everyone has access to.

in the chicago academic scene a lot of people are into post-history

I don't really have any view on whether his "End of History" thing was wrong or just early. But I do know it was a hugely successful and durable meme that he dined out on for years and parlayed into various comfortable sinecures. So not necessarily evidence of incompetence.

One of his predictions from February:

* The collapse of their (Russia's) position could be sudden and catastrophic, rather than happening slowly through a war of attrition.

More predictions.

happy october everyone pic.twitter.com/Dhq7DOO0MZ

— isi litke (@isilitke) October 3, 2022

Mr. Fun At (Halloween) Parties.

Joyce Carol Oates did it better

Yup.

at worst a war crimes

Any thoughts on why the US has released to NYT info that it believes Ukraine was behind the Dugina assassination?

I didn't think Ukraine was behind the assassination (and this particular release doesn't necessarily mean it was either). No idea why this was release (and released now), or even if it was intentional release

anyone with a hot take?

Letting Putin know that we're not in the business of assassinations on Russian soil? Gotta be on his mind.

yeah, we're too busy sabotaging pipelines to assassinate his cronies' children

I'm trying to get my head around the large numbers of torture sites in Ukraine that we're still probably only scratching the surface of. Particularly the seemingly unco-ordinated and purposeless nature of them. Is this ingrained in some way, an extension of Dedovshchina?

Its difficult to imagine going from zero to hundred so quickly, from regular life in Russia to this, unless it was already part of life to some degree. And if it wasn't...a lot of the torturers will be going back to everyday life in Russia eventually

They might be not be "going back to Russia" though. There's anecdotal evidence that some of the worst behaviour has been by separatists from Russian controlled areas of Ukraine.