this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
161 points (98.8% liked)

news

23981 readers
761 users here now

Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.

Rules:

-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --

-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --

-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --

-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today/ . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --

-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--

-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--

-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --

-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Image is sourced from this Guardian article.


The Pope's fucking dead.

He gave JD Vance three chocolate easter eggs, exchanged pleasantries for 17 minutes, and then keeled over and died.

What a way to go.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.


you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] dead@hexbear.net 59 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

I think Pope Francis's actions were more intended to influence "The Left" to becoming Catholics, rather than to make Catholics go to "The Left". He's a Catholic first and foremost, his sympathies to socialists are secondary. There were many sensationalized articles over the past years which claimed that the Pope said Jesus would have been communist or that Christians should act like communists, but my interpretation of what he said is that he meant "good communists are christians". He wanted Communists to have sympathies for Christians.

The goal of the Pope is to grow Catholicism. He said that LGBT are welcome in Catholicism, not because he's progressive, but because it grows Catholicism to be accepting of more people.

Even the things he said about Gaza were rather milquetoast. The following is Pope Francis Easter statement on Gaza.

"I express my closeness to the sufferings of Christians in Palestine and Israel, and to all the Israeli people and the Palestinian people. The growing climate of anti-Semitism throughout the world is worrisome. Yet at the same time, I think of the people of Gaza, and its Christian community in particular, where the terrible conflict continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation. I appeal to the warring parties: call a ceasefire, release the hostages and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace!"

Firstly he says that he has closeness to both Israeli and Palestinian people, placing emphasis equally, doing both sides. Then he says that he's worried about anti-semitism, but doesn't mention islamophobia, potentially a dog whistle. Then he describes the genocide in Gaza with passive language. He calls it a "conflict" rather than a genocide. He says that "conflict" causes the death and destruction and not Zionism. He doesn't say who is causing the death and destruction, which is Israel. He calls for a ceasefire but in the next breath says "release the hostages" as if Hamas hasn't already promised to release the hostages on the condition of a permanent ceasefire.

If any person said the same quote as the Pope on Easter, they would be called a Liberal Zionist, which the Pope may have been.

I can understand wanting to bend the truth. If you tell Catholics a white-lie to say that the Pope was more radical than he actually was to influence Catholics into being against Zionism, I can see utility in this. I don't see Pope Francis as an actual radical figure, but more of an opportunist who uses left populism for the intention of growing Catholicism.

[–] TechnoAnomie@hexbear.net 3 points 2 days ago

Fair enough. Thanks for that, good post. I'm seeing that I was thinking about the influence on captivating some people into rethinking what they think about the reactionary path, from whether they should reject it, to whether they should reject it in a different way, and what progress and dreams were seen as acceptable to lose in what turned out not to be temporary, let alone necessary.

And I'm used to and don't know how to talk about spirituality, which obviously isn't as important as material analysis, and sometimes overcorrect both the world's and personal feelings of despair.