cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/36603369
Italy is sending a ship to accompany the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla, who said its activists remain shaken but determined following an Israeli attack on Wednesday morning.
Organisers of expedition, which is attempting to carry aid to the Gaza Strip, shared footage this morning appears to show an explosion that detonated on one of the flotilla’s vessels.
Late on Tuesday activists heard explosions and saw drones that targeted some of their boats, currently situated off Greece. “Multiple drones, unidentified objects dropped, communications jammed and explosions heard from a number of boats,” the Global Sumud Flotilla said.
“I have authorised the immediate intervention of the Navy’s frigate Fasan, which was sailing north of Crete and is heading towards the area,” Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said in a statement.
Italy is doing this in response to work on the ground by activists. Have you been organizing for Palestine in China? I’m not Chinese but I am from one of the countries directly responsible for the genocide and me and my comrades risk getting beaten, killed, doxxed, and/or arrested for Palestine.
As much as I would love for some government to step in and stop the genocide it feels like pretty naive to think that will happen without a mass movement of people on the ground demanding it from their own country.
I would like to think a socialist superpower wouldn’t need mass protests in the streets to do the bare minimum against fascism and apartheid. China hasn’t even broken economic ties with Israel.
I would say it is dishonest to say they have done the bare minimum, I feel the true complaint anyone has is that China hasn’t done what they themselves think they would do if they ran China. Everyone thinks they would escalate war with the US, NATO and Israel if they ran China and so since China isn’t escalating war they aren’t communist enough for people who very likely have never escalated any struggle with any oppressor force in their life at all.
A socialist state is no less beholden to the will of the masses than any other. The complaint here is that they maintain the same level of cooperation with Israel as they do with literally everyone else. It isn’t preferential treatment, and they supply weapons and defensive tools to Israel’s enemies while primarily selling Israel consumer products. Chinese people don’t care enough to fight to stop that, and so the government continues with the policy they have had with pretty much everyone for several decades. Is this disappointing? Sure. Is there any reason to expect anything differently, given the circumstances? Not really.
I see many non-Chinese people hoping China is going to save them and the world, and I would tell them they need to organize in their own place and time for the world they want to see. Glazing China online and not organizing is not much different than criticizing China online and not organizing.
To see a Chinese person criticizing their own country for not doing enough means there is organizing work to be done there as there is everywhere else, and if you only criticize from the sidelines then you aren’t really a principled communist, just a person who likes the idea of communism but wouldn’t work towards it. If you aren’t willing to take risk and struggle, it can hardly be expected of anyone else. I’m glad to hear updates from people’s experience around the world, but I don’t feel like it is too much to ask marxists on the marxist website who seem to care so much about theoretical economics and armchair grand strategy speculation to maybe follow the basic marxist principles of putting in the work of organizing for the things they want other people to get done for them.
China is in the beginning of socialist transition, and the process of building towards communism takes generations of struggle which we can expect would take centuries. A successful revolution doesn’t end the process of struggle within a society, it only guarantees more struggle will be required. Chinese people need to advocate for Palestine if they have a problem with their government’s position. Non-Chinese people need to advocate for Palestine if they have a problem with their own government’s positions. Sorry, posting online doesn’t count.
I would love a China that is emboldened enough to take risks because it knows it cannot be stopped in the way that the US does, but I’m under no illusion that China as it is would think that is something they can and should do. There are a lot of timelines that won’t be met by the time China feels emboldened enough to just do whatever they want. more people will die, more ecosystems will be irreversibly destroyed; even your idealized China isn’t going to be able to stop the ongoing or future atrocities happening even nearer to their country, yet alone any great distance away. When I see the dozens of countries directly enabling the genocide, I don’t think “China needs to do something about this,” I put the responsibility of the people of those nations, which most people criticizing China on this issue are a part of. Yes, it would be great if China can clean up the messes we make for us. It is easy to complain about how China isn’t doing enough to stop the genocide being done for us in our name with our tax money and stolen labor value.
If we assume China is run by an actually committed Communist Party, building socialism in one country is a policy that has been in place since Stalin, and many would argue that the USSR’s over extension in a lot of important liberation movements contributed greatly to its own downfall. That era of global scramble between communist backed groups versus western backed groups was a specific time and place, but if China doing whatever they can to protect their domestic priorities while protecting their overall strategy to fill any vacuum left by the US as soon as they can to continue to push the US towards collapse is their priority, it makes sense to do what they are doing at the pace they are doing it. China is wary of making bold moves, probably because it has the most heat on it from the west and it is dealing with nuclear nations run by religious fanatics who think the apocalypse is a one way ticket to eternal paradise. Maybe China wants to let the US make it’s horrific, violent, criminal acts so it can dig its own grave enough that they can join a chorus on the issue instead of taking the lead. Being a serious and committed communist party with a long term goal of building towards communism means prioritizing the odds of success, and eliminating risk. We all want to imagine ourselves as the cool revolutionary making harrowing decisions, killing the enemy or whatever great man fantasy larp but I think the hard part of the revolution is surviving after for the centuries required to build towards communism, and it seems very unsurprising that China is micromanaging the risk they take on in such a way in order to ensure their centuries long crawl towards communism continues.
While I agree with most of what you say. I will NEVER share anything here that I do/organize, maybe if I need donations, but even then it wont be directly stated to be “mine”. Just like I wont post my home address or social security number on here. For the sake of OPSEC (yes that is important, even in a “silly” shitposting forum) please do be careful.
Also I think its important for comrades to share their thoughts, so they can be refined and/or corrected.
I’m not saying anyone needs to report back on their work, I’m saying that often times many of the most vocal critics of China “from the left” don’t even organize and can hardly call themselves leftists if it’s just a theoretical concept and not a practice they are engaged in
Neither has any AES state(apart from Cuba but that was decades ago not in response to the latest phase of genocide), or Italy for that matter
DPRK has been consistently correct on the Israel question, and has materially supported Palestinian violent resistance in the past. China needs to purge their foreign policy leadership and learn from their “little brothers”
That’s a fair point, do you have some sources for further reading on them providing material assistance for Palestinian resistance?
It is really difficult to say what the ideologically deeply backwards DPRK would do if they weren’t in internationally-imposed isolation. It’s way more likely for a state to correctly say “fuck Israel” if Israel bribing them is off the table to begin with.
They are a historically progressive force, but I don’t think any country imitating them would be a particularly good thing compared to imitating Cuba, insofar as imitation can or should be done at all.
Shut the fuck up lmao, they have been consistently correct and principled in their positions. They aren’t “deeply ideologically backwards” they are the most advanced on Earth. Nobody else is more correct than they are on foreign policy
I don’t disagree, but it’s also easier for them than countries that have physical ties with the west who would have to take concrete action, whereas the DPRK can denounce them all they want immediate economic impact on their citizenry
There are plenty of other nations that are sanctioned to hell, but have very bad foreign policy. Additionally, DPRK has been consistently correct throughout its entire history. If China thought like the DPRK they would have avoided all of their major foreign policy errors: They would not have sided against the USSR in the sino-soviet split, they would not have invaded Vietnam, they would not have cozied up to the USA, they would have intervened in this genocide, they would not have funded the Taliban against the USSR, the list goes on…
Again I don’t disagree with any of that, I’m saying that the negative economic impact on say e.g. Vietnam would be greater if they came out with a principled stance against the Zionist entity and it’s genocide, than what the DPRK has
They say aggressive things to imperialist states and nice things to socialist ones and colonial subjects. That set of conclusions is positive, but it also is difficult to call something like “principled” because who the fuck can they sell out to? The imperial apparatus has screwed them over personally maybe more than anyone else in the world that isn’t besieged in a hot war or Laos, and selling out to empire basically isn’t available to them short of dissolving their government or taking measures that would be literally begging to be invaded.
They are absolutely not the most ideologically advanced country on Earth because they were forced into broadly correct geopolitical positions. Ideologically, they are sub-revisionist and anti-democratic and shitlibs saying the latter does not make it false, they just don’t understand the specific nature of it. I’m begging you, tell me how the Supreme People’s Assembly is democratic, I would love to know. You can start by pointing to a non-unanimous vote anywhere in their history.
Cuba has an incomparably stronger claim to being the most ideologically advanced and it’s wild to me that you’d deny that.
Cuban leaders have very clearly stated, for decades, that they are closely ideologically aligned with the DPRK. After visits there, Cuban revolutionaries decided to use it as an ideal and model. You are just a chauvinist.
Castro in 2014 said that “Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life.” I don’t put a lot of stock in people complimenting their allies, I’m more concerned about what they say about issues. Cuba is furthermore demonstrably much more democratic than the DPRK, and clearly are not imitating them there or else doing a fortunately bad job of imitating them.
I’m begging you, tell me how the Supreme People’s Assembly is democratic, I would love to know.
What in the…NK has had the correct take since forever lol
On foreign policy? I mostly agree, though to my knowledge when the PRC had more actively harmful (rather than passively harmful) geopolitical positions, e.g. relating to Cambodia and Vietnam, the DPRK supported the former and was neutral-to-tepid on conflict with the latter when the PRC was nakedly in the wrong. It’s nothing like what we hear from them normally about “rabid dog” this and “despicable toady” that, despite the Khmer Rouge being one of the best examples of rabid dogs in the history of the modern world (after Israel and a few others).
Equating the economic and military situation of China to all the AES states is a bit dishonest. Most AES states are under economic siege, are developing industrial bases, and are in a much more precarious situation. China is entirely different at that point. They’re the strongest economy in the world lol.
Equating China with every world power who are doing as much if not less in support of Palestine is just as dishonest, if not more so imo