Image is of Elon Musk giving the Nazi salute a week or so ago.
I didn't really want to keep spotlighting American domestic events as I had assumed that shit would calm down pretty quickly, but it appears that the Trump administration, including Musk, are determined to bring down the empire from the inside.
One of the most important lessons of ruling a country - and especially an empire - is to never, ever believe your own propaganda; and yet now we have neo-Nazi failsons disrupting parts of the imperial apparatus and causing general government mayhem because they actually seem to believe in libertarianism; that the state and the capitalists are somehow in opposition, rather than working in lockstep to maximise profit and boost American hegemony around the world.
I'm not so optimistic as to believe that a national collapse is FOUR DAYS AWAY, like those weird anti-China cranks often speculate - the US has at least a decade or two left even under these conditions. But consider the damage being inflicted in these past couple weeks, and extrapolate that over the next four years. Does any living American political figure possess the competency to halt - or even meaningfully slow - the already ongoing decline? And could they achieve power (or even be allowed to do so) after Trump's term is done?
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Byg8VZdKK88 "Trump can't be a fascist because he's simply working within our system of government" is quite a take from Jon Stewart and his writers.
Either the system itself is fascist, or Trump is bending the system towards fascism, get with it John.
Also Trump is ruling my executive order, I hate to sound like a liberal, but all of these orders could be reversed. If he had a mandate he could have sent all of these orders to congress and made them stick for years.
I expected mainstream media to try to downplay Trump, but wasn't expecting Jon Stewart to do it also. Oh well, libs will be libs.
I wonder if the uptick in actual human opinions in that comment section represents a shift in online spaces now that the usual propaganda arms are being gutted. Good on people for ripping into him for this bullshit.
The libs are in full defeat and cope mode. And the more Trump comes up with "wins" to the media and his supporters, the worse the libs are going to get. I don't think the libs understand just how badly they've lost/failed yet. Two thirds of US citizens support the deportation of illegal immigrants now, nearly three quarters of Americans support a ban on puberty blockers for transgender minors. It's a really bad situation and I don't think that the libs grasp this reality. The Democrat-NGO-media complex has been an abject failure in the advocacy of people's human rights.
They really lost the culture war, well maybe should have stuck to real material conditions
When the cost of living goes up, and people can't find housing, immigrants are an easy scapegoat. This current fascist swing is largely a result of Dems letting billionaires rob us blind and refusing to do a damn thing about it. Trump and Elon are guaranteeing more economic strife so we will have four more years of this bullshit at the very least. In the end the "centrist" position will be "of course I agree with immigrant slavery, but the slave camps should be run humanely!"
the immigrants I work with are generally in favor of the deportations as well, specifically the deportation of illegal immigrants. Because, according to them, it makes it harder for prospective legal immigrants to participate in the legal immigration system. That said, they are essentially gusanos.
I think pinkwashing has outlived its usefulness, partly due to how pinkwashing is so closely tied to the Zionist entity which has no international credibility at this point. Whatever progress people think has been made for queer rights will be unceremoniously rolled back, including gay marriage. We have reached the point where people can point to a color revolution by counting the number of visibly queer people and rainbow flags found within a protest and queerphobia gets rolled into an incredibly vulgar form of anti-imperialism.
Also this. People are turning more reactionary, the elite never was "woke" in the first place nor were 98% of the hollywood/media darlings. Any sense of anti-establishment faux-progressive language hold, should have died when the CIA used it in their PR career video.
The Democrat-NGO-media complex has never had the advocacy of human rights as one of its goals. They’re probably overcome with joy at the prospect of the next four years of fundraising.
Trump can only be a fascist to Jon Stewart if he’s Chinese.
The cracks were there from the beginning, but I was still disappointed he gave credibility to blaming China for covid.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: