China has capital controls. The usual market logic doesn't necessarily apply. If they decide a strong Yuan is not in their best interest they may deliberately weaken it.

There are plenty of stable investments in China though. The one i would stay away from is real estate probably.

It really doesn’t have anything to do with an ideology that died in that country decades ago.

Communism isn't as dead in Russia as you think. There are far more communist sympathies in Russia than there are in any other western or post-Soviet country. The communist party is the biggest opposition to the ruling party.

China actually does domestic shit that’s respectable which is what’s given them the ability to contend with western influence and financial power

China and Russia are more alike than you might think. China is not a perfect socialist country, it has a very active market economy, and a lot of capitalistic elements to their economy, albeit always with the state having the final word and making sure capital doesn't get out of line. Russia is not a perfect capitalist country. They have a fairly large state owned sector, especially in military and resource extraction industries, and the state at times exercises strong control over the economy to discipline rogue capitalists. China has a socialist ruling party and Russia a capitalist one, but in practice their economies are closer to each other than they are to the neoliberal West.

they’re forced into preemptive action (which is not wrong), but it’s not out of some anti-imperialist ideology, it’s for their own sovereignty. Just because those actions are taken doesn’t make them anti-imperialist.

I think here there are just differing philosophical views on the importance of intent vs practical results. What good is good intent if the results are objectively bad? And if the results are objectively good, does it really matter what the intent is?

I mean the blind and uncritical faith in both Russia and China simply because they are aligned against a foe completely discounts their significant differences in the modern day, and frankly it’s insulting to China’s progress to even lump them together

I don't think we should have uncritical faith in either of them. In Russia's case it should definitely be critical support.

And yes the two countries are very different. Russia is certainly not the USSR. But Russia is for all intents and purposes allied with China, and the two countries have complementary strengths. Russia is a raw material superpower with a very advanced military industry. In many ways Russian military technology is still ahead of both the US and China, even if it's not as big by sheer size. It's also about as close to self-sufficient as a country can get. China on the other hand is a manufacturing and technology superpower. Each has what the other needs. This partnership is not going away any time soon. Their relationship is only deepening.

Most western rhetoric on Russia is in an attempt to divert public funds towards private arms companies

True. But a defeat in the Ukraine proxy war would still be extremely destabilizing for them. Due to the sheer amount of money and political capital that they have invested into this conflict, it would be viewed as a humiliating defeat of NATO and the EU, and both organizations risk falling apart as a result.

Russia’s population is in literal decline and has been for decades because their domestic policy has generated nothing for their people besides extraction

Pretty much all European countries are struggling with their demographics and for the most part the growth they do have is thanks to immigration. China's situation is not much better in this regard either. But i don't think this is as big of a deal as it is made out to be. Russia isn't going to run out of people and neither is Europe and neither is China.

Also, you should not underestimate the level of recovery that Russia has achieved compared to where they were 25 years ago. Russia today is not the Russia of the 1990s. There are a lot of problems but from what i can tell the mood seems to be generally optimistic. They have solid growth, they are regrowing their domestic industries as a result of the sanctions, living standards have greatly improved, and their international standing outside of the collective West is very good.

Whether this is sustainable in the long term remains to be seen. They may need to take a page out of China's playbook and copy some of China's policies and development strategies. But if that is the case then they are well positioned to do it, with a communist party as the second biggest independent political force in the country, and with China right next door to look to and gain inspiration from.

the irony is you are arguing for self-censorship by throwing away a massive platform because you disagree with 1/10 of his takes

And if that means calibrating a take that may violate the policies of a massive platform, then so be it

And when the TOS of that platform change to further restrict anti-imperialist views? You just go along for fear of losing that platform. And you justify it by saying that you are only giving up one tenth of your principles. And then you give up another tenth. And another. And every time it's ok because it's only a small part.

There is obviously an inherent problem with remaining on bourgeois controlled platforms in general. Leftists and anti-imperialists need to stop falling into this trap that says it's preferable to self-censor and remain on the mainstream platforms than move to alternative ones and try to grow those instead.

The more you grow your audience on the mainstream platforms the more you will feel compelled to do whatever it takes to stay there. It's a gambler's fallacy. You have become too invested and your material interest too tied into this brand and this space you have built to abandon it and start again. So now the bourgeois owners of the platform can force you to bend to more and more of their whims.

But even if you do stay on big corporate platforms, you can still do much better than Twitch. YouTube for instance, as i said, has less strict TOS. Only he probably wouldn't be making the same astronomical sums of money there that he is on Twitch. I will never understand why his fans are so parasocially attached to him that they can't see how problematic this is.

The point is NOT to create a dedicated CULT, the point is to reach out to normies and changes their goddamn mind about socialism

The point is to grow the audience on a less censorious platform. The point is to educate people correctly, not to perpetuate imperialist narratives. There is no use having a million people listening to you if you can't advocate for a genuine socialist and anti-imperialist position, if you can only say what your bourgeois masters will allow you to say.

please develop a sense of strategy, we want an army not a fuckin bookclub

The notion that a Twitch chat is an army is absurd to the point of delusion. At least a bookclub would be achievable. Most people just go to his streams for entertainment.

You seem to think that he is converting all these liberals to socialists and communists, but all he is doing is turning them into edgy socdems. Maybe some go further but it is not thanks to him.

And i wouldn't even mind it that much if at least people were honest about it rather than pretending he is more radical than he really is. If he just stuck to pro-Palestine advocacy i would not be saying anything. When it becomes problematic is when you start to abuse the credibility that you have built on Palestine just to repeat imperialist propaganda about another country that is actively fighting against fascism and imperialism.

unlike Palestine, the War in Ukraine DOES NOT have popular grassroots support

It does in Russia. It doesn't in the West because of the decades of anti-Russia propaganda and the barrage of lies and retconning of history that the imperialist media saturated the Western public with after February 2022.

But the task of public leftist figures in the West isn't to be slave to already existing majority public opinion. If we had acted like that when the Palestinian cause was not yet popular where would we be now? This is Tailism. Tailism is opportunism.

Russia has nukes, are you joking, Palestine doesn't.

Russia has nukes but the people of the Donbass don't. The ethnic Russians whose language and identity the Banderite regime is trying erase don't. All they have is Russia. If Palestinians had a big country nextdoor willing to intervene on their behalf by invading the Zionist entity, would you denounce that intervention? Countries have a humanitarian duty to stop genocides, by armed force if necessary. Russia is fulfilling its humanitarian duty to protect the people of the Donbass and other majority Russian regions in Ukraine from ethnic cleansing.

And unlike Palestine, half the fault lies on Putin for getting fooled multiple times and allowing an army of neo-nazis to mobilize along his border for eight years.

Would've, could've, should've.

Many would argue that the idea of Russia intervening in 2014 is naive and ignores the material realities of Russia's economic and military situation at the time. They would say that Russia was not yet ready to take on NATO militarily, that they needed time to reorganize and modernize the army, and that their economy would not have withstood the economic assault the West would unleash in response without the eight years of sanction-proofing the Russian economy.

And besides, they did intervene. They protected Crimea from the Maidan thugs that were raging in other parts of Ukraine at the time, allowing Crimeans to peacefully vote to reintegrate with Russia.

In any case, there is no point in speculating about what could have been, focus on the present. Russia was objectively right to intervene. Whether they were late in doing so is irrelevant when assessing if they deserve our support today. That doesn't mean you need to go out there and shout "i support Russia", but if you claim to be an anti-imperialist and have a platform of a certain size, you have a responsibility to educate people on the crimes of the Banderites, the crimes of the Kiev regime, and the real views of the people of the Donbass who overwhelmingly support Russia's intervention.

if he praised the Russian intervention and got banned you'd make fun of him and still call him a liberal

Look, nobody is asking Hasan to profess his love to Putin. But you don't get to call yourself anti-imperialist if you take the side of the openly fascist imperialist proxy in a war.

And if maintaining a principled anti-imperialist position results in you being banned, then maybe you should not be on that platform. That is exactly the reason why many of us are no longer on Reddit. And if you have an established audience, a part of it will follow you to whichever new platform you choose to migrate to. You will lose a part of it but those who stay will be all the more dedicated, and you can rebuild your audience on the basis of that dedicated core. This is infinitely preferable to self-censorship. Because if you constantly self-censor in order to remain acceptable to the liberal mainstream, you will simply end up just another reformist.

At the end of the day all the lame excuses about platforms are just that. There are plenty of content creators on YouTube who take either a neutral or even a pro-Russian stance on the conflict and still have a platform, even some leftists. They can do it. Why can't Hasan? Because he fundamentally thinks that Russia is the one in the wrong here. He is choosing to side with fascism and imperialism, even as he offers lip service to criticizing NATO's role in the conflict, because the alternative offends his liberal sensibilities and those of his liberal audience.

And of course his material interest is tied to maintaining his very lucrative business model at Twitch...

If you betray one anti-imperialist struggle for the sake of another you are by definition an opportunist.

Also, i just don't believe that he is engaging in this elaborate strategic deception act that you say he is. If it was just about fear of censorship he could just shut up about it and not say anything. Or he could stream on YouTube, which so far is less censorious than Twitch. Instead he goes out of his way to virtue signal about how bad he thinks Putin and Russia are and how Ukraine are just these innocent smol-beans defending themselves. You are not a pipeline when you are actively lying to your audience, hiding the truth about the Donbass genocide, and demonizing those who are fighting against fascism and imperialism.

What is the difference between him saying that NATO is not good but Russia is still bad for invading and the liberals who will say that the genocide in Gaza is bad but you should still condemn October 7? How hard would it be for him to invite someone on his show who lives in the Donbass and could actually educate him and his audience about life under Ukrainian fascism and Ukrainian bombs?

And speaking of Palestine, yes, he is one of the bigger pro-Palestinian voices in the online commentariat. Great. But it is now acceptable within liberal circles to be pro-Palestine. Pro-Palestine sentiment is increasingly mainstream. We have won that narrative battle decisively among the young generations that are likely to be his viewer demographic. But you know what is still incredibly unpopular? Telling the truth about Ukraine. That is all the more reason to use your platform to do it, when no one else with your reach will.

Instead he chooses what is easy, and convenient for his bank account: respectability politics and trying to ingratiate himself with the liberal mainstream, which is a demonstrably failed strategy. It has been tried over and over again and never worked. Yet he still carries water for Democrats and their electoral politics, still simping for the so-called "progressives" who will vote every time in lockstep with the bipartisan warmongers to give weapons and money to Ukrainian Nazis.

It's time you stopped making excuses and inventing elaborate theories about him hiding his power level and just admit that he is a liberal.

If the US is hoping to be able to replace China with Europe as a buyer for their LNG, i think they may be deluding themselves. China has a huge and growing demand for energy because it is a manufacturing giant. Europe is becoming increasingly deindustrialized and betting everything on the neoliberal transition to a fully hollowed out, financialized services economy. What happens when the demand for US energy craters because nothing is being produced here anymore? Will the US still be able to sell its LNG to us if there is so little industry to consume it?

Decolonize your mind!

For those unfamiliar with early Marxist theory, please note that whenever Lenin talks of "social democracy" in his pre-October Revolution works, and especially prior to the split in the Second International, he is referring to what we today would call communism or revolutionary socialism. At the time revolutionary Marxists called themselves "social democrats". The term "social democracy" did not yet have the reformist meaning that we associate with it today.

And last year Nepal signed onto the BRI and made a deal with China on a cross border railway infrastructure project.

Unfortunately, they might still cheer even then...