Image is sourced from this article.
Those who were around in the early days of the news megathread may remember Pedro Castillo, the left-leaning leader of Peru who was deposed in December 2022. He was replaced by Dina Boluarte, the first woman to be President of Peru, who described herself as a progressive but afterwards routinely sided with Peruvian conservatives and American interests. To say she was unpopular is an understatement of titanic proportions - she descended to such lows that she was, at one point, the single most unpopular leader on the planet. As with most deeply unpopular leaders that side with the West, she kept power for a bafflingly long time.
However, on October 10th, after a period of protests against the government, she was impeached and removed by Peru's Congress in a unanimous vote. José Jerí was sworn in as the new President, who was previously the President of the Congress and is a member of a centrist Peruvian party. The government is trying the classic strategy: keep doing the same thing as before, and sacrifice an unpopular figure - here, Boluarte - in the hopes that this appeases the crowd.
Is this strategy working? It doesn't really seem to be - protests are not only continuing, but strengthening, as it is clear that neoliberalism will not reformed and the brutality by police will not stop (there was very recently a high-profile case in which a musician, Mauricio Ruiz, was murdered). Controversies surrounding Jerí, including allegations of SA, are already being reported. If Jerí is deposed, the next person in line to try their hand at ruling will be the former army general Roberto Chiabra, who would be the ninth President in less than a decade.
Last week's thread is here.
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The Zionist Entity'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.
I do think Platner is not who he says he is, cannot be trusted but wtf is going on here. This MSP Account has been showing up on my feed, I thought it was a local newspaper but they are not?
https://x.com/broderick/status/1981104597910638653
I believe that Palintir dug up his reddit, this account is an opp, but also that he is awful for several reasons
The amount of time, money, and effort that has been put into digging up this guy's post history almost makes it tempting to support him just out of sheet spite for whoever in the establishment it is that clearly views him as a threat. I don't and I am not going to support him, but it's really weird how much effort has been put into stopping this guy. My guess is that the DNC was behind this. Maybe they used some sort of AI company to find his accounts, like Palantir, but I also think it's likely someone careerist working for him gave this stuff up in return for a job. These accounts are the sort of thing that would come up during oppo research.
Unpopular opinion: voting for the succeem to spite the chuds is good, actually
As we all know "electoralism doesn't matter" and all that
I don't know who this is even spiting. There's two establishment Democrats in the race who would be his main opponents. The first is Janet Mills, the current governor of Maine who is a backed by Chuck Schumer. The other is Jordan Wood, a DNC approved "progressive" who used to be Katie Porter's chief of staff. Then there is Susan Collins, AIPAC backed incumbent, who hasn't officially declared but will probably run again. Was being a weird/stupid progressive Ustase enjoyer going to be enough of a "benefit" to him that it was going to eat into enough of someone else's votes? It seems like he'd be more of a problem for Dems, but I could see the GOP being worried was going to eat into Collins' votes.
Something is just weird about this whole thing and I don't know what it is, yet.
I want to say it's "spooky season" feeling, but I can't remember if we decided that was too close to a slur or if that was a different community.
Anyway, the contradictions are heightening, and the demand for social democracy continues to increase since it's the only thing that could stabilize the US. It's been a fully colonial/imperial project since it's conception, and the project is complete but the momentum can't stop. The fact the capitalists has to rally and shut down Bernie Sanders is an example of this self destructive tendency.
Normalizing nazism to spite the chuds is ridiculous. The fact that this guy's political career in the "progressive" movement wasn't over the instant he showed the tattoo is proof that Amerikkka is fundamentally a fascist country.
While the „discourse“ is already tiresome, he is definitely very strange and there is some foolery abound.
Platner … Palantir … it's all adding up
You...do realize that "flawed" is "a literal Nazi mercenary" right? Mamdani is flawed. Sanders is flawed. This guy is an Actual Nazi. He's more than "flawed"
Amerikkka is fucking doomed lmao, look at the "socialists".
There are a lot of flaws I can tolerate. Nazi isn't one of them
Yeah, he's just a weird inconsistent guy who went on four tours, the last time as a PMC as late as 2018, to the Middle East to be an Imperialist war criminal and makes no apologies for it.
He's also a weird inconsistent guy who got a SS Totenkopf tattoo on his chest, kept it on him for decades right up until he got caught with it during his campaign to join a bourgeois party, and defended other soldiers getting SS tattoos because of "PTSD" from being Imperialist war criminals.
Oh, and let's also not forget he's a weird inconsistent guy for openly gloating about mass murdering brown people in the millions during the war against ISIS back in 2014 on his now deleted Reddit account.
Wait, that doesn't sound inconsistent at all.
Well, I guess he did LARP as a "Communist" one time on Reddit back in 2018 (while he was working for Blackwater) but went confronted about it recently he completely backtracked and said he doesn't stand by those posts anymore.
So nah, I think he's pretty consistent with his social Fascism.
On a more meta note: I think we owe the now banned user Wheezing an apology for accusing him of being unhinged over thinking this forum was full of imperialist boot lickers. We've had like 5 struggle sessions in the last few days over this topic and we're still seeing people defend a fucking sucdem with a Nazi tattoo.
I think there are actually more nazi defenders now than there were at the beginning of the struggle sessions, it's amazing.
https://hexbear.net/comment/6591486
What's the joke? Being a leftist is being right too early?
Agreed. Go ahead and check my history too.
I absolutely agree, who among us has not done 4 separate tours into West Asia to assist the US in committing genocidal and imperialist acts? The last of which being under trump in 2018 with Blackrock.
So many of our comrades are just embarassed to admit that they also joined up with fascist militias when they were young for decades of their life and on multiple occasions.
I'm beginning to think that half the people on this site don't see brown people as humans.
This isn't a mistake of some small magnitude. Dude was a careerist in committing genocide, and people want him in a public leadership and representative part of the left? Also, he's still focusing on the "poor soldiers" rhetoric and making the imperial machine more efficient!
If all struggle is a struggle for power accepting him as a leader is accepting genocide as acceptable in the American context.
I DON'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE TATTOO COMPARED TO THE FACT HIS ENTIRE LIVELIHOOD WAS BUILT ON KILLING BROWN PEOPLE.
He served 4 fucking tours then became a damned merc! How many times do you get to dip back into genocide if you regret it in the end?
I at least see how the hesitance to retreat from Zohran, Bernie, etc is something people contemplate. But this is a fucking brownshirt fresh out of uniform though and calling that out is purity politics because he feels bad?
Why is everyone suddenly okay with retreating on the front of anti-imperialism at every single turn? How many people are acceptable to sacrifice for this "powerful socialism?"
Should we focus on socialism in a national context? Build the national variety?
Except the Hasan stuff was essentially a narrative that was made up out of thin air whereas with this there’s actually something to it.
It’s really hard to understand where people are coming from with this perspective that those of us expressing skepticism about this guy are seeking out “perfection” like Hasan and Zohran have flaws especially the latter but I’m willing to except the possibility that good can come from them.
This is something else entirely it’s not purity politics . So there’s bad faith actors tarring him? I don’t care about the source I don’t feel comfortable getting behind a guy who patrolled abu ghraib and I don’t want the ADL to have an easy W by having a new anti Zionist senator have a Nazi tattoo.
Yes you can dig up dirt on anyone and technology can make that easier but that doesn’t mean we have to get behind this one like cmon now
Nazism isn't just a "flaw", please reconsider fully every ideological building block that led you to think it's OK to excuse fascism. Depressing that this has 10 upbears.
Its pretty wild that, what? 2-3 days on we're still having this fucking discussion. We've banned users here with a military history for way less than open Nazisim, but Planter is running for office and we should just be OK with his history of actively supporting American imperialism via his military/merc service because he's advocating for mildly sucdem reforms now?
yeah most people who end up here with a military history are at least mostly repentant, but some of the Democrats on this site are still sticking with "well....what are our other options, though?? maybe we'll get a better
primary challenger from his left, but until then let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good!!" for an unapologetic career war criminal.
goddamn, i hate getting this heated and wish this site had more benefit of the doubt in general and hate how hostile it gets around most things, but at this point the chauvinism from the Western entryist subset on this site needs to be called out in harsher terms. we need to have a red line around "maybe don't ever critically support or give benefit of the doubt to unapologetic mercs for empire, especially if they have fucking nazi tattoos"
I can kinda understand the desperation that the entryists feel because they're pursuing a strategy that can literally never work so they have to compromise with people who have nothing in common with them to convince themselves the "left" is getting a win. Sadly the only place that kind of chauvinism leads is Nazism if you let it go unchallenged, but I do understand how people get there now.
i get it too. i've got some measure of compassion for just about everybody! but no one is coming to save us except us, nominal socialists need to leave this shit ass party that hates their fucking guts behind them and to stop begging for crumbs from fascists.
If you're harsher you need to be willing to write an extensive polemic or be banned btw.
ur not wrong, my days of being that active/invested in the site are behind me tho
Like who? The only ones I know of were frauddog and some brigaders, and neither one of them was repentant in the slightest. I assume most people try and hide it out of shame, and tbqh, I don't know what someone with that kind of history should even do if they want to recover from it.
You think a ss tattoo on a socdem candidate wouldnt turn into a struggle sessions and gesturing about purity.
Do you guys not realize how right wing you have turned?
It's because most people here I suspect are White Americans who are desperate for a popular public figure to attach themselves to. They want their own Xi Jinping to look up to. Problem is, no one on the American 'left' is willing to get up off their asses and actually put in the work to create a vanguard party because they are too privileged and comfortable in their current material conditions, so they instead rally behind and
for what already exists; a two-party bougeois duopoly where the furthest left the system will allow is racist, genocidal imperialists who will allow the American working class some treats from the super profit gained from the spoils of war and exploitation of the rest of the world. And even then, the American state tries its hardest to not even allow those kinds of politicians to take power.
Edit: It has also become apparent to me over the last few months, likely because Trump 2.0 broke a lot of Americans here, that any non-American that tries pointing this fact out gets met with a lot of pushback from these folks. A common argument I've seen (not just here but literally everywhere) is that because Americans have it "worse" that the rest of the Global North, it's fine to vote for socdems/ social fascists because they deserve a bit of reprieve.
I frankly have never agreed with this line of thinking because 1. It completely disregards how America treats the Global South, which is far, far worse than how any American is treated and is against the spirit of internationalism which all socialists should strive for, and 2. Because I live in a Social Democracy and I can clearly observe how my country is still imperialist, still engages in the pillaging of the Global South and supports the Palestinian genocide, and still exploits and divides our working class through xenophobic, racist, sexist, and transphobic bigotry (just done more subtly than it is in MAGA land) which is intentionally designed to prevent any socialist movements from ever getting popular.
If anything, having socdem reforms makes it easier for the capitalists to keep us docile and compliant while our wages are stagnant, we are more overworked than ever, and inequality and household debt has never been higher in the last 50 years. Nothing has changed, except our workers get some more treats to shut up while Billionaires still dine on our misery. The socdems in my country also let Nazis march in the streets and let cops have Nazi tattoos without repercussions too! This is not the future you want to fight for, Americans. It's not the future any socialist/ communist should be fighting for.
Don't you see? We need better conditions to be able to properly organize!
Like the great conditions that were in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba...
Wait a damn minute....
The ironic part is that they won’t even get treats. Look at the electoral left in europe. They are utter garbage and america has worse conditions for leftist politics.
Hexbear needs a cultural revolution, I'm seeing too much imperialist apologia
People shit on ZPoster for being unhinged, but how can someone not be unhinged when surrounded by these chumps?
Gotta have proper decorum when you call fascistic behavior fascistic. (No tone tag, that's the rules)
Yeah what the actual fuck is happening here.
also, this isn't some ex infantry grunt becoming politically aware and volunteering at a dsa brake light clinic. his desired career path is marine corp to private merc to us senate, climbing from one oppressive arm of empire to another. the actual fuck are we doing here? whether he's an op or not, has everyone's basic grifter radar been shortcircuited?
Totally why we should put aside our purity politics and support a dude with a SS tattoo. Genius logic.
I don't think you deserve an apology, I'm not working or compromising with anyone who has fascist or fascist-adjacent politics or ideologues whatsoever. Not because of "purity-testing" that is loosely-defined by your absolute, depressing, lack of principles but because I'm not "compromising" with those who would see my partner, my closest friends and family as sub-humans or less than human. In every fucking historical context a red-brown alliance has ALWAYS ended in failure. ALWAYS.
Nazis and their collaborators deserve a slow, grueling death that would make the wall look forgiving in comparison. :)
I think they genuinely don't give a shit ngl, they're just hoping the "left" is consisting of enough people that can ignore these things they can get away with an increasingly more insular in group of people that are "needed for power" as fighting for other groups is just "purity" politics.
Wait... A group that focuses on power for an insular in group that closes as conditions worsen while either actively or passively enabling increased suppression of other groups... There's a word for that... On the tip of my tongue... Begins with an F... Anyone got a vowel?
Sorry, if we can't draw a red line at Nazis and their symbology, then where do we draw the line? When people are talking about how the Azov are all Nazis, almost 50% of it is their unending attachment to Nazi symbols, which include the totenkopf.
Unlike some people here, I think it's plausible that he didn't know it was a nazi symbol when he got it. I think most people who are part of the online left are far more well read in right wing symbolism and dog whistles than the average person, and even then some people here were unaware of it.
That being said, his reddit account indicates that he's known about its nazi origin for almost a decade now. Not really any excuse for it at that point, especially when many tattoo artists would cover up gang or hate symbols for free, as well as many removal clinics doing removal treatments for free.
Yeah hes thought this reddit account nonsense was going away, it really came back to bite him in the ass.
Perhaps not enough biting him in the ass, considering latest polling that came out indicated he is running away with it. If Mainer comrades wont run a candidate to challenge his "left lane" here, we just have to hope he was somewhat genuine in his change of heart and isnt a total Fetterman Act II
we can also just not invest our hopes & dreams & organizing muscle in the (obviously increasingly, considering Platner) cryptofash democrats or consider whether to give critical support to an unrepentant career war criminal at all
This is bait.
I'm willing to go with him being exactly who he says he is: an unapologetic, imperialist, baby-killing stormtrooper with an SS totenkopf tattoo (no, I don't care about the "accidental" acquisition of that tattoo).