the_dunk_tank

Would have been nice if he cited some sources for the alleged mass murders and disappearances.

Aa for the election I think it is true that it has not been transparent enough to pass the sniff test. But I don't really care about that. When the west cries about electoral integrity it rings very hollow. Because of the sanctions and the material support for Venezuela's far right from America, the election is already not free and fair. Freedom and democracy lovers should ask their government to remove their boot from Venezuela's neck.

Because he's Australian living in a more reactionary state in Latin America, it's not surprising he disparages most AES, even if Venezuela isn't even run by a ML party. In fact Maduro's real policies is more akin to Bad Empanada than he thinks. Brainworms are brainworms, I guess.

His Twitter trolling is funny and he's right about a lot of things but he's also kind of a melt between his views on China/AES and talking about how the left should organise into armed revolutionary cadres while doing 2 hour livestreams about Keffals drama and shit

I always kinda got the impression he’s a contrarian that thrives on drama. Sort of like a breadtube version of keemstar.

"All streamers should be shot." - Bademp

pretty standard incoherent internet maoist, can be pretty cool and then suddenly veers off into purely contrarian anti-aes nonsense that only serves imperialism

he's always been anti-Venezuela

sounds like some cracker shit idrc

Yeah, this bothers me

Honestly it doesn't quite matter to me if the election victory is 'legitimate'. My opposition to US-backed coups (both dems like Chris Murphy and repubs like John Bolton admit in public that they tried & failed to coup Venezuela) is not contingent on its target being socialist, progressive or democratic

BadEmpanada can defend himself from critique by claiming he's just being factual, but even the fucking Majority Report had more principle in stating they didn't know for certain because they weren't experts on Venezuela, and more importantly putting front and center their opposition to US regime change

When you have Kamala Harris supporters arguing a more principled anti-imperialist position than you, you know you've fucked up

Honestly, please dunk on me, because I saw this video and now I don't know what to think about the Venezuelan election issue. Two days ago I remarked that my only acquaintance in Venezuela had come out in support for the election fraud narrative — and my kneejerk assumption was that this person, being a jus soli US overseas citizen who speaks English as a second language to an advanced level, was probably just peddling pro-imperialist nonsense. And I felt kind of bad about saying this, because even though it was probably true, it also felt like I was saying of someone behind his back that I know better than him about issues that directly affect him. Even in the times when this is plainly true, it is never comfortable to assert this.

But now, Hell, man, I don't know shit about Venezuela, really, right? So could I have been wrong to assume that the only Venezuelan I know was blinded by his own biases? And I don't like treating YouTubers as trustworthy sources, because God knows they aren't, and God knows that people like Bad Empanada have their own biases too — but this video did shake my confidence in the apparent consensus about the Venezuelan election. Because when I just saw ten headlines about election fraud and assumed "Alright, that sounds like it's probably true", then what's to say that the whole image of consensus about the Venezuelan election issue doesn't come from other people doing the exact same thing? But maybe that thought is just parasocial brainworms from this guy calling me a child who needs a hobby, though, that that type of shaming would strike a chord with me who often worries about not being active enough in real-world organizing.

So what really is the "solid dick" about Venezuela right now? Where do the communists of Venezuela really stand on the election issue? Where would you recommend I look to get a better idea of the situation, such that I can feel like I've done my due investigation into the issue? Probably all the articles and videos already shared in the past few days, for starters.

badempanada is annoying but some of the stuff he brought up is legitimately suspicious. This election was very likely rigged

Having said that, I don't really care if maduro rigged the election. Election rigging can be perfectly fine in some cases and this might be one of those

There very well may have been fraud, and I won't pretend that Maduro hasn't maneuvered in dishonest or outright illegal ways to avoid the Chavistas losing power. And I do think it is fair to say he hasn't managed well and has lost the socialists there a lot of good will which just makes foreign interventionism easier.

However BE's framing of this is unsympathetic. Like he will for sure agree that Maduro being in power is better than the alternatives, he has said as much in the past week, but because of how approaches controversy he can't help himself but frame it this way. It is really annoying and I say this as someone who defends him 9 times out of 10.

I get that it is frustrating to see some leftists utterly dismiss some of the reality in Venezuela or any other country. There is a certain blindspot plenty of us have. You see it when Ortega is mentioned, you see it when Iran comes up. But antagonism is not going to fix that, and certainly not WHILE coup attempts are happening. He could save that shit for after like he did when he talked about Maduro previously. But then again, holding onto power, however better than the alternative electoral options they may be, is harming socialism in the country if this continues. Maduro should stay in power right now, but by god PSUV needs to have a new face, Maduro needs an established successor and one who won't come off as obviously hand picked. I think that is what BE is mostly pissed about, that people are taking tactical necessity and treating it as everything is going well or this is ideal.

But again, bitching about people bitching about other people is not really helping either so this type of talk is useless

without a class conscious organized mass movement any individual person on the internet people look to as a left authority will go insane, the human brain is just not suited for this

He’s the last person to call other people brainless internet children

That title, my guy is rapidly becoming Breadtube Maddox

There is an insurmountable level of disinfo, information deluge, and obfuscation that can be delivered to onlookers.

If only the solutions to these questions were more intuitive... It would be cool to have PGP Vote with local election officials and officials from parties signing constituents' keys to form the web of trust. It's just not gonna happen tho

I would unironically rather watch some tiktok maoist with 100followers record themselves doing pushups in the woods. Idc if he's correct most of the time, his entire online persona is consistently fucking cringe.

This doesn't surprise me.

He missed with the Xinjiang 'genocide' as well.

Missing is human, but he's such a dick about it and to my knowledge he never acknowledged how fucking stupid he was about Xinjiang - and I doubt he will about this as well.

I feel like a lot of us here struggle to reconcile that

A) the US has a long history of using "freedom and democracy" as a purely cynical, hypocritical and often straight up false (they called Allende a tyrant lmao) excuse for imperialism

and B) sometimes anti-imperialist leaders really are undemocratic, partially as a defense mechanism against imperialist aggression and partially because they aren't very good leaders and their incompetence leads to popular discontent (which is further exploited by imperialists to the point that it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins)

I guess what I'm saying is you can be glad Maduro didn't get couped and replaced with Venezuelan Javier Milei, you can be 100% against sanctions and cynical US attempts to "democratize" Venezuela, but you don't need to pretend like there was nothing suspicious about this election. Just look at the vote counts released by the CNE on July 29 I mean come on lol, bro is regimemaxxing with these percentages

Generally his video essays about Imperialism/ Settler-Colonialism are extremely on point and a great way to educate libs, but yeah his takes on AES can be hit and miss.

In regards to Venezuela, while their nominally socialist government definitely has its problems (even if you ignore the likely electoral fraud, Maduro has suppressed much of the Venezuelan left including the Communist Party, and his policies are largely social democratic in nature), as a Marxist who lives in the Global North, my first position towards Venezuela or any country in the Global South is to lift all sanctions and/ or stop Western intervention for imperialist interests. This is why we have critical support for imperialized countries.

He's just another twitter/youtube debatebro streamer who happens to have a vaguely maoist bent. His heart has always been in starting shit for attention, never for socialist causes or education.

You're surprised that the guy who implied he thought Muslims would and should bomb the New York metro over the Palestinian genocide is a stupid reactionary asshole?

Dude always comes off like a creepy asshole, not sure why people like him, maybe like a "he's our asshole" kind of thing

He's 70% correct, 30% wrong.

Despite his best efforts to shit upon anyone who even lightly attempts to interact with him (his best and worst trait), his "takes" are very often correct. People might not like specific phrasing and sort of "hedging" around his opinions of certain nations and/or leaders, but if you focus on his core statements, he agrees with most people who frequent lemmygrad/hexbear.

He's not even saying Madura staying is good or bad, btw. He's just saying that as far as he can tell, and from videos and such he's seen from people in Venezuela, the election was rigged. His point (this is me translating from Asshole to English) is: "who cares? It makes sense that given Madura's mistakes, which cannot be blamed solely on the US, people who aren't all that engaged in the political process want a different guy. Any guy. Even voting for right wingers." Which makes sense if you apply that logic to other nations where voters will vote to punish leaders during times of hardship even if the resulting change of government worsens things.

That said, I don't know dick about Venezuela and will be withholding much opinion besides "always be extremely skeptical of US media and state department- but do not totally discount them. They only lie most of the time. Sometimes if truth is more effective they'll tell the truth." Hopefully time will reveal, with proof, the full situation.