this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
167 points (98.8% liked)
news
23988 readers
632 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-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--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
167
Bulletins and News Discussion from April 21st to April 27th, 2025 - JD Vance vs Pope Francis, No Items, Final Destination
(hexbear.net)
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
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
view the rest of the comments
And the only revolutionary struggle is inter-imperialist overt military conflict? Hell no. If you wanna help the revolution, work your ass off and send money to Cuba or Palestine instead of throwing your body to the meat grinder.
Russia is not acting in an imperialist manner, they are acting in anti-imperialist self defense.
If someone joined the Iraqi military to fight against the US military invasion would you say that's "an inter-imperialist military conflict"? Your analysis is chauvinist and flawed, so you have incorrectly assessed the correct revolutionary defeatist course of action. Russia needs to win this conflict and it's your duty under revolutionary defeatism to oppose your own nation above all else. Lenin, Marx, Stalin all clearly demonstrated in their words and actions that you can critically support a capitalist nation when it is fighting imperialists.
Russia is acting in Ukraine essentially the only way it's been allowed to, in order to maintain its sphere of economic and diplomatic influence around it, it has been essentially forced by the imperialist west to engage in warfare.
The fact that Russia is in a geopolitical position opposed to the west, means that, in a general sense, the fight is anti-western imperialism. It also can be described as Russian capitalist imperialism though, it's not for the goodness of its heart that it's engaging in this struggle against the west, it's for the sake of the profits of its capitalists.
That's not nearly enough reason, as a westerner, to go throw your body into the meat grinder for a country actively oppressing its minorities, its women, and its LGTBQ. There's plenty more ways you can engage in anti-imperialism such as donating money to Cuba or time in mutual aid. I don't see how that's a chauvinist point of view: I can recognise that the west is actively worse than Russia in terms of imperialism (even if only by the fact that it holds more geopolitical and economical power), and that there are way more effective and less morally reprehensible ways of anti-imperialist struggle.
Once you remove the moralist pretensions and blame gaming, what you are saying is that Russia is acting in anti-imperialist self-defense.
You can stop there. This is correct, which is why the correct revolutionary defeatist course is to critically support Russia.
"goodness of their hearts" more moralist idealist nonsense and failure to understand Revolutionary Defeatism. You are not a marxist, this is not marxist analysis. It's moralizing and blame gaming. Intentions do not matter. Actions do.
Imperialism is the primary contradiction. The same exact argument could be made for Rachel Corrie going and dying under Israeli bulldozer treads to protect a "capitalist" and "reactionary" nation of Palestine.
Palestine doesn't deserve support because it's a communist project (it isn't). It deserve support because it's anti-imperialist and de-colonial. Same goes for Russia. Your position is chauvinistic because it holds a double standard, one where you "both sides" and do nothing instead of doing your duty because the "enemy" is one you personally hate (because of decades of anti-Russia brainwashing that makes it an "exception" (this "exception" is the root of your chauvinism, treating Russia different than you would any other nation under American imperialist attack).
"Your analysis should stop where I say it should stop" isn't the greatest way of approaching someone on your side of the struggle. We're all buddies here, no need to be so aggressive.
When the USSR didn't engage in unequal exchange once it was industrialised, it was literally out of moral principles. When Cuba sends doctors abroad to crises, it's literally out of moral principles. It isn't "idealist nonsense", the struggle against imperialism essentially stems from morality, trying to separate the two is absurd.
Again, I ask you to refrain from engaging in offensive statements. Hexbear is cool, I don't want it to be an aggressive poison swamp.
Palestine can't be compared to Russia because Palestine isn't an industrialised nation. The difference between Russia and Palestine is rhat Russia is industrialised and can therefore engage in imperialism, and it does. Palestine, as a colony undergoing genocide, is in a very, very different position.
My whole point is that critical support to Russia is OK, I'm not arguing against that. My point is that there are a million more effective and more moral ways of engaging in anti-imperialism than sacrificing your life for the Russian oligarchs just because they happen to currently engage in warfare against the imperialist west.
No it was because Imperialism is counter-productive to spreading world revolution and socialism. It's a material basis with a material explanation.
Incorrect. Within Marxism, the only axiom that is "good" is class domination by the workers and spreading of socialism. Imperialism is opposed because it is the highest form of capitalism and we cannot have socialist revolutions while there are imperialist superpowers destroying them in their cribs. It's a practical consideration, not a moral one. The DPR was a socialist revolution against the Fascist American-installed Kiev regime. It was crushed and destroyed by imperialist nazis and Russia eventually came in to help once it became an issue for them too (but too late IMO, Russia should have invaded sooner).
If you don't want to be called an idealist moralizer, don't make idealist moralizing arguments. If it's offensive to you, consider why you are making these types of statements and self crit regarding your idealism.
Where does Marx, Lenin, Stalin or anyone else talk about "industrialization" being the litmus test for critical support against imperialism? How is that even relevant? This is just more idealist underdogism instead of materialist analysis of geopolitical forces. Iran is industrialized. Would you not support them if America and Israel invaded and declared war on them? Or would you BoTh SiDeS because one is a "reactionary capitalist theocracy"?
So therefore it's commendable and anti-imperialist to join Russian forces in combatting imperialists. That's what critical support means, you support them in this case. So why are you griping?
Disengage now, I don't wanna continue a conversation with you.
*edited due to prior bad usage of the "disengage" rule on my part
Why did you bother to ask him a question if you weren't going to let him answer it?
Edited it. Thanks for your input.
Actually yeah you can disengage means disengage.
So can my comment be restored since their comment was not following the rules at the time it was posted? Can I edit a comment to say “disengage” to get other people’s comments removed after the fact? Seems like another inconsistent and abusable use of the rule
idk if telling someone to disengage when you call them an insufferable prick in the same comment is really in the spirit of the rule lol
it isnt, the mod either misinterpreted rule or there's been a huge rule change around disengaging in which case i will be using this in bad faith next time i get into an argument
the user who disengaged edited his comment to reflect the spirit of the rule which is by making a comment with "disengage" or a short sentence to that effect, like "Disengage now, I don't wanna continue a conversation with you."
Ok in the future I look forward to users using this to get the last word in, glad you changed the rules!
https://hexbear.net/comment/3746029
Since when does "critically supporting" Russia mean die on the front lines for their territorial ambitions?
These aren't territorial ambitions, it is self-defense against NATO encroachment and Nazism. The fact you keep falling back on the western narrative about Russia being the aggressor who wants to take all the territory shows your chauvinist roots.
Going to fight on the frontlines is one of the strongest forms of support you could lend to a cause. Do you think when socialists say we need to “support” something that it means just sending vibes? We mean material support.
Fucking quote me on that. Why are you putting words in people's mouth and ascribing them intentions you know nothing about?
I said "territorial ambitions", and Russia is completely transparent about having designs on Crimea, and parts of east Ukraine. That it is part of a fight against NATO encroachment doesn't suddenly change the fucking material facts of what the war is. If you go fight for Russia, you're going to risk your life in a trench to take or hold some tiny village or hill. That's a fact. That's a completely coherent position to take without having to "fall back on the western narrative".
I am, as are just about everyone else I have ever talked to on this site, happy to call Russia's fight a fight against NATO and imperialism. It's your insane leap from that fact to "it's your duty as a communist to die for Russia" that everyone is reacting against.
I find the fact that you find dying in a ditch for Russia, a country that at most deserves critical support, for the reasons many others have stated here (capitalist society, persecution of minorities etc.) somehow more important or pressing than joining the fight against fascism by moving to and helping build a nation with actual, existing socialism to be an absurd set of priorities.
Nowhere did I say it was your duty to die for Russia. Now who’s putting words in who's mouth? It’s your duty to oppose your own nation’s imperialism. There are many avenues and methods to do so. One of which is to join an anti-imperialist armed forces engaged in combat with imperialists. Another of which is to join your communist party and push for anti-war movements at home. Another of which is to agitate your trade union to be more radical and stop shipping things to Israel.
All of these are valid methods of material support that fulfill your revolutionary duty. Just as this young man was doing his duty and died in that service. He should be respected, remembered as any martyr against imperialism. I find your lack of respect insulting and chauvinistic. The mockery of this young man’s sacrifice is not it, and reveals an ugly and chauvinistic nature lacking in understanding of his contributions.