A week ago, the Bolivian left-wing party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), currently led by Luis Arce, decisively lost the round of elections against the right-wing. This comes after a prolonged period of "infighting" between Arce, and Morales, who previously led the MAS prior to the 2019 coup which briefly installed Jeanine Anez.
I put infighting in quotes because despite the nominal similarities between Arce and Morales, it is clear that this is not merely a counterproductive battle between two men - instead, the Bolivian left has arrived at a time of unavoidable conflict between two competing strategies. The electoral strategy is represented by Arce, who has aligned himself with a more middle-class-oriented campaign that is more economically liberal, whereas Morales represents a more working-class-oriented campaign that seeks to go further than tepid reform.
Such a conflict between electoralism and revolutionary action is inevitable in any and every developing country that 1) possesses a functioning left-wing party or organization, and 2) is under internal and/or external pressure by capitalists. This crisis must be resolved eventually - and this electoral failure is how such a crisis is manifesting right now. So while the Bolivian left has indeed lost the election, it is not yet defeated. The revolutionary campaign can, if it is willing, still ultimately stand triumphant. But what must be done is a real movement towards socialism, which goes beyond technocrats reforming from above, and instead transforms the state into a full political project of the working class, in which their movements, organizations, and protests are genuinely empowered. Such a project will involve repression by the forces of reaction, not least by the United States, but it is the only road left to take.
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Israel's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
Wikipedia just echoes the prevailing majority narrative among western populations. It doesn't set it, it reflects it.
The narrative was set by everyone's social media and personal chats with one another about the conflict. Wikipedia is just reflecting that.
What we're really seeing is a transition point where tv news and old media is now less powerful than social media at setting the narrative. Maybe wiki helps in reinforcing it, but it wasn't directly set by it.
EDIT: Another factor in this is the very clear involvement of other governments like South Africa as well as the UN in opposition to and calling out Israel. These provided the more powerful arguments than news media that were then spread via the social media. The biggest spread, in my opinion, has been tiktok videos. Tiktok set the narrative on Gaza.
Something stated in the letter itself is that AI chatbots are trained on Wikipedia, giving it an outsized influence given the (sadly) increasing number of people relying on LLMs for information
I mean, they're also training the bots on social media though. Even hexbear and lemmygrad are being used to train Meta's ai, I can't imagine we're not on the list for others too.
I mean they could train on our messages as things not to say.
Wikipedia both reflects and sets prevailing opinion, it just depends on how one subsets the users.
Someone casually reading through it with little political education can be impacted by whether the genocide of Gaza is described as such or not.
The editors are in a war and are themselves clearly often fed-adjascent, people in think tanks and so on or "power users" that reflect think tanks and are promoted due to their proximity to that apparatus. They are distinct from the casual users and this is where astroturfing is funded.
The ruling class' propaganda apparatus is myriad and interconnected. Its primary function is to create public sentiment that allows ruling class agendas to proceed uncontested. To the extent that it reflects public opinion, it is primarily reinforcing its own historical propaganda or a shift in strategies by which to control potential opposition. It is in the driver's seat. Wikipedia reflects this more than public sentiment.
What I mean here is that the only part of the apparatus that truly matters is the part that sets the narrative.
Every other part builds off of the assumption that they have narrative control. Wikipedia is reflecting the narrative that gets set elsewhere. And as you rightly put it - reinforcing that narrative in the future.
It's a longterm archive of narratives. A history book. But it doesn't write the history, the media was the one writing the history up until now where social media is becoming a challenge to the ongoing narratives and prompting mass censorship and control of the internet to be rapidly implemented.
To communists, the part that matters most would be the part where the narrative is set. That's where we can have the highest impact if we break that control.
Of course comrade, that all makes sense. The classic communist method was to print one's own newspapers and spread information through a grassroots in-person network (prior to controlling a state). Owning a printing press required capital up-front but the distribution method and production could proceed through organized mass effort.
I think we shoild continue that method, just not like Trots where they write insufferable nonsense and stand on poorly-trafficked corners and still end up getting into fights. This is because our core source of strength is still on the ground direct conversations and party building.
While a presence on social media is valuable and can help set agendas, it is something very easy for capitalists to control and oppress. Much easier than having comversations and distributing materials in-person. You are correct that TikTok was important for breaking through the Hasbara wall since Oct 7. But now TikTok is being reigned in to specifically prevent this from happening again. It is not sustainable to use capital-controlled social media networks as a primary venue for propaganda, and of course almost useless for organizing outside of advertising an event or org. Better to spend that time producing content for a local org, distributing it, and building that org - as that will be a skill with staying power.
To be clear, simply ceding the space isn't a good tactic, but one should critically approach it just like bourgeois electoralism: it is a bourgeois-constrained and -controlled space spreading a false sense of a commons or democracy. And budget one's time accordingly.
What I'm saying is that we should be more involved in legally and politically fighting the attempts to rein in social media. Things like the EU's "Chat Control" legislation can successfully be fought because it's too unpopular and there's huge security issues. They want to scan every single message before encryption is applied, which is obviously insecure (back door can be used by others if it exists) etc etc.
Their attempts at control can fail. We do not have to assume their inevitable success in these endeavours.
That's true but the better use of time even for that is still organizing. Social media is useful for advertising a campaign but any actions called for by it are anemic by default and easy to ignore. I also think a material analysis of the creation and removal of EU rules is called for, as the EU also often does very unpopular things. Do they create protections due to public demand or because their domestic production forces align with it more or because Euros organize successful campaigns with material consequences if legislators don't follow through? That sort of thing.