Image is of the Preah Vihear Temple on the Cambodian border. Image sourced from the UNESCO World Heritage website.
Over the last few days, Thailand and Cambodia entered into a heightened stage of conflict due to a long-running border dispute. Like many problems on this planet, Europeans are ultimately to blame - specifically France. Certain sections of the border drawn up by France about a century ago were not fully agreed upon by both sides, with the ownership of some Khmer temples being the most visible points of disagreement.
Despite interventions in favor of Cambodia in the 1960s and later 2010s by the ICJ - one of the mainly mostly useless global institutions that liberals periodically disown - the border conflict has simmered at a generally low level. Of the two countries, Thailand is significantly more militarily and economically powerful.
Last Wednesday, a Thai soldier lost his leg by stepping on a landmine, prompting a rapid escalation between Cambodia and Thailand that has since resulted in dozens of deaths and tens of thousands displaced. Cambodia was willing to come to the negotiating table fairly quickly, but Thailand was more hesitant. International pressure on the two countries by Malaysia, China, and the United States eventually forced Thailand to the table, and they have recently agreed to an immediate ceasefire courtesy of ASEAN.
Notably, Trump refused to hold trade talks with either country until they agreed to peace, which suggests that he really wants a Nobel Peace Prize - which he seems a shoe-in for given that he’s met the two most important requirements that several Nobel Peace Prize recipients have needed to meet in the past, which are: 1) start at least one war, and 2) accelerate the genocide of millions of people as billions more people watch on. His policies vis-a-vis ICE creating a domestic terror regime only further increase his chances of winning the prize.
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.
Zohran Mamdani claims he has “grown” from previous “defund the police” tweets while speaking to reporters at a cop funeral
lol nope
have fun everyone
lol now it’s triple that. Absurd
5 times now
The American Left is so broken and beat that we’ve had people on here arguing that he wasn’t pro-cop, and that actually he wants to fund social workers (to do policing) which is somehow good, and are literally in here saying it’s admirable political calculus to actually be talking about reformism and that defunding a fascist army is just extremism/ultra talking points. Hundred years after Rosa died and we still have “Leftists” talking about reformism in a literally fascist imperial state, truly such a sad nation.
The same people that will say some loser with a bad take deserves the wall are out here defending a guy with a massive platform using it to speak soft on the entity and its partners the NYPD.
[edit: if cops only working 40 hours at fascist oppression instead of working 65 hours at fascist oppression is a “bright side”, then the darkness has won]
The 21st century leftists cannot imagine a future without electoralism, just like how 16th century French people could not imagine a future without monarchy. That is, until the inevitable happened. They are too ideologically constrained to see that History is always marching on. And all those who were still stuck to the tradition and not prepared for the radical change so alien to what they were accustomed to, are destined to be swept away by the Tide of History.
Having said that, Mamdani is still a positive change. However, we all know that he cannot do anything without a mass movement behind him, ready to take on any and every challenge that comes from the establishment. It is up to the American left to decide how they want to organize with or around him.
One of the truly blessed things about the Chinese revolution is that electoralism and nonviolence have never taken up root whatsoever. Throughout the entirety of the Century of Humiliation, every single Chinese person or org of note understood that the only way to overthrow the old regime or kick out the imperialist was through violence. None of that voting or nonviolence bullshit that plagued every other liberatory movement in existence. There was no Bloody Sunday or no March of Return with Chinese characteristics because Chinese people weren’t stupid enough to think nonviolence would somehow work. Nor was there any serious attempt to solve problems by voting. Chinese people’s attempt at combating imperialism was forming ad hoc bands of dudes with primitive rifles and melee weapons. They did not succeed, but at least they actually tried something instead of voting or nonviolence. Even the May Fourth movement, characterized as an intellectual movement, was riotous where people burned down residences.
Literally all that matters is winning the election and delivering socialist policies that improve people’s lives.
The Bolivarian Revolution was a democratic reformist one, and it permanently cemented an AES state in South America.
And it was carried on the backs of an organized mass movement. Which is entirely lacking in the us.
Chavez also had factions of the military on his side. Remember that Chavez was a military man who first staged a coup before going the electoral route when the coup failed. You can’t really stage a coup if you can’t guarantee the loyalty of some officers and enlisted. When he was elected, the factions of the military who were not loyal to him staged their own coup, which almost succeeded. But a phone call from Castro at the 11th hour among other things saved the Bolivarian Revolution from reaction. And it goes without saying that after the defeat of the coup, Chavez purged the military of those disloyal to him and the Bolivarian Revolution.
This goes back to my initial point about how Mamdani isn’t going to go far because he doesn’t have his own military.
I don’t think there was a mass movement until after Chávez was elected. Many people just voted for him because they were frustrated with the status quo.
Admittedly I haven’t researched this too much so do correct me if I’m wrong.
A lot of people voted for him (especially within military circles) because they thought he would be like Marcos Pérez Jiménez (whom he and the Venezuelan congress did invite to his inauguration as long as Jiménez admitted his crimes). During Chavez’s first years, he was basically a social democrat, he visited Wall Street and had an alliance with the liberal parties in congress.
When oil prices rose, he began abandoning most of his liberal views and started implementing his social programs (which were really good). Due to this, he gained the respect of the so-called “Colectivos,” who were armed civilians that took care of their low-income neighborhoods because the state didn’t care for them, and the respect of other groups. When the elite, Supreme Court, and parts of the congress and military high command (generals) found out that Chavez wasn’t like Jiménez, but actually a democratic socialist, and that he wouldn’t be a puppet of the system, they began to plot his removal with the help of the U.S. government (though a small group of U.S. diplomats did warn Chavez that the military was planning a coup against him).
After the coup, the Supreme Court pardoned basically everyone who took part in the coup, which led to Chavez eventually using his majority in congress to reform the Supreme Court. Nowadays, there are a bunch of Venezuelan judges who live in Miami that pretend they are the real Supreme Court of Venezuela.
There was a movement within the army called Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200. Like many militaries in South America, Venezuela had left-wing military revolts during the 1950s-1960s (besides the usual reactionary right-wing revolts and dictatorships during the 1940s-1950s). Chávez’s original plan was to install a civilian government in Venezuela to end the economic and social crisis. President Carlos Andrés Pérez had ordered the literal massacre of civilians during the 1989 protests. Chávez regained popularity by the later 1990s because South America had another economic crisis due to the failure of Neoliberalism. There were a lot of protests (the 1999 March in Brazil, the 2001 Argentinazo, the fall of Fujimori in 2000, and the military coup in Ecuador in 2000), which led to the first Pink Tide.
Very grateful for your comments here, always
Thanks
God I had some insufferable DSA person say something like this to me a decade ago. “Well actually latin American countries have brought socialism via electoralism, why can’t we?”
I don’t understand how people become Marxists and skip the whole “analyze material conditions” part of what Marxism is. How the fuck is New York 2025 anything like Venezuela literally ever? Indigenous peoples in Latin America fighting for their sovereignty is a movement that has been ongoing for hundreds of years. It’s a multi generational organizational behemoth that had broad popular support, including among military and police which was a crucial part of how Chavez took power. I don’t understand how someone could focus on the election part of Chavez and not the part where he was
immediatelyarrested and had to be rescued via a mass popular movement where citizens were literally shooting anti-Chavez resistance in the streets, and getting slaughtered themselves. Allende didn’t have that and was easily taken out. Mamdani has two options if he wins, get eliminated, which no DSA members are going to stop from happening, or backtrack on everything meaningful he was saying he would do and put in, at most, some milquetoast reforms that will get rolled back within a few years.It’s honestly offensive to see so many people here claiming the struggles of Palestinians and Bolviarian revolutionaries to justify a supporting Democratic mayoral candidate
Edit: I’m not coming for you specifically companero and I don’t feel like you are saying anything in bad faith
Chávez was elected in 1998 and the coup attempt happened in 2002. By then he had already built immense goodwill with the barrios by delivering positive change. That’s why they fought to save him.
You’re right I shouldn’t have said immediately arrested, but everything else still stands. Chavez organized for over almost two decades before his first election, was in prison for two years for attempting a coup, and then won his first election two years later. To say that people didn’t know about him before he was president is false, he already had a lot of support and gained more after winning but it wasn’t like he was an unknown
The coup didn’t stop in 2002, they attempted a general strike and a legislative coup in 2004. After the 2006 election victory for Chavez, things begun to change, and after that parts of the Venezuelan Elite decided to side with Chavez.
Yes, but that’s mostly because a left-wing military coup in South America wouldn’t last long anyway due to pressure from the U.S. and other countries. Ecuador tried that, and the Junta (which was already a moderate faction within the even more radical CONAIE faction of the military and congress) was pressured hard by the U.S. to give up power and let VP Gustavo Noboa (unrelated to Daniel Noboa, though both have family members named Luis Noboa, which is weird) take power.
Venezuela’s constitution also protects private property, and its economy is still more business-friendly than some other South American countries.
I mean, Venezuela is basically doing their version of Dengism. Especially under Maduro. But they still have good foreign policy, they constantly pay lip service to revolutionaries, and they still seem committed to the cause of socialism in the long term.
The speed at which western leftists can glee over a guy who literally said Israel has a right to exist because they’ll “get” “subsidized” malls where they’ll save maybe 30$ on groceries just shows me how they need to get a fucking grip. If a pretty smile and some milquetoast promises from THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CANDIDATE can make you cheer for a guy, a suitcase of money will you make burn the world.
His goal is create a “democratic party one can be proud of”, idk why some people have let themselves be enthralled into thinking he will be the american mao who is just hiding his true beliefs, which almost all communists explicit said one should not do, but anyways…Just because he is charismatic? Because he went to on that youtube short nyc subway channel?
What you’ve gotta understand is that hes a DSA-right guy. He wants to win people over to socialism by running socialist campaigns on the democratic ballot line and eventually become an independent party at some indeterminate point in the future.
He’s read Marx, thinks hes a communist, kind of is in some important ways, but his praxis is Sewer Socialism.
“We need to fully fund the police and keep response times fast” = “create alternative crisis response to reduce police workload”
“Israel has a right to exist as a democratic state” = “Israel doesnt have a right to exist”
“We should make the democrats better” = “we should win races as socialists within the democratic party to create a split”
The DSA right actively opposes discipline and could therefore never do anything entryist with the Democratic Party. They will capitulate to “their electeds” every time and therefore have no program or means by which to enforce it. Their subscription to electoralism is not reluctant or strategic, it is just lingering liberalism.
In New York, would that mean trying to win the support of the CHUDs? Or the Ninja Turtles?
People think there’s only two options: Shredder or Master splinter, but I’m here to tell you there’s an alternative: A socialist alternative. I’m here to advocate for every-day working people: for the goons getting clobbered by nunchuks for $14 bucks an hour and without healthcare! The turtles and shredder fight, nobody wins. We are calling on all goons to lay down their arms and refuse to fight a Mutants’ war.
He did not say “Israel has a right to exist” he said it “only has a right to exist as a state with equal rights” which is the same fuckin thing as saying it shouldn’t exist, considering equal rights and one state are anathema to zionism
HE’S DOGWHISTLING
This is myopic. If Israel kills enough Palestinians that giving them equal rights still means Jewish Israelis can decide every election, they’ll go ahead and do it. That’s what the US did with the indigenous people of Turtle Island. Failing to recognize that as a real possibility is ahistorical. If we start conceding that “equal rights” is the point now, if it comes to it, Zionists still could get everything they want i.e. the land.
Of course its “myopic” HE’S RUNNING FOR MAYOR OF NEW YORK FUCKIN CITY, the point of that statement is to force zionists IN AMERICA to publicly agrue against the concept of equal rights, which IN AMERICA doesn’t bode well for the short or long term viability of zionism IN AMERICA
And since America is Israel’s paymaster, zionists eating shit IN AMERICA equals zionists eating shit everywhere
He’s running for election not hosting a university symposium on genocide studies
He never said it.
And if he did, he didn’t mean it.
And if he did, it wasn’t that bad.
And if it was, it doesn’t matter. Why are you still asking questions?
Gosh Zohran is such a zionist, that’s why the media and AIPAC are backing him
Also HE DID SAY IT
And he should say it again
And he should keep saying it
And he should ignore larping doomers who don’t understand basic rhetoric
you westerners are a lost cause.
They really bring fire and brimstone upon rando normie leftists for not having done 20 October revolutions by lunch but coddle and infantilize those with the ability to reach millions and means (monetary or otherwise) to do change. Its so backwards, “accountability” and criticism declines the more able a leftist is to actually do leftist things.
they’re having a parasocial relation with a democrat. now the question, is Mamdani brat?
Removed by mod
I come with fire and brimstone for so-called leftists who seem to have it out for the most pro-Palestinian candidate in American history
Like seriously “accountability”??? You doomers couldn’t even get his policies on defunding the police correct, and you wanna be taken seriously while slinging that type of wrecker bullshit?
Yawn. Calling everyone doomer, wrecker and “so called leftist” has lost its punch, especially when it is in the defence of a milquetoast socdem. He is not pro-palestine enough and its the work of the american left movement to direct the working class towards more radical policies, not cater and tail towards the most reactionary elements on the “left side” in the name “electability”.
The strategy to turn the dems into a working class party strategy, paraded as the panacea, is dead in the water, hell the corpse has been poising the pond at this point.
I know you apparently have invested a lot of personal time, money and social connections into that man’s career. Which not only makes you mentally biased against any criticism, but in the end it also does not absolve mamdani from it, despite the effort you put in.
I get the feeling, I went to university. There were many times, I put a lot effort and time into something and it got graded badly or was considered unexceptional. I was frustrated and angry because all the effort went nowhere, however this did not mean my work was unfairly judged.
Ok cool, you’ve given up, then shut the fuck up about him, the totally “left-wing” media hounding him will hold him “accountable” on your behalf, so don’t worry about it, you want to be vindicated right? According to all your dipshit doomer calculations the “Not pro-Palestine enough” candidate will lose, or be assassinated, or betray his polices somehow, or be arrested…I’ve lost track for all the excuses for apathy
It’s hilarious, you doomers are utterly terrified of having your anti-electoral ideology invalidated, I get it “frustrated and angry” it’s a comfort blanket to soothe the tummy aches since Bernie ate shit in 2020, GET THE FUCK OVER IT ALREADY
The man stood in the belly of the beast and told them he wasn’t gonna change his polices and you think he needs absolvement from your Too-cool-for-school ass? lmao what a reddit-pilled joke
Imagine being this stubborn and fighting this many starwmen.
And you doomers don’t have any arguments
Everyone who doesn’t do DSA electoral reformist entryism is a DOOMER. The ONLY WAY FORWARD IS MINE
Your own argument was that when he was saying “Israel has a right to exist” he meant “death to israel”
“Israel has a right to exist…ONLY AS A STATE WITH EQUAL RIGHTS” THAT is his position and it’s an obvious repudiation of zionism and wielded by Zohran as a rhetorical trap for American zionists and their supporters
This is called liberal zionism.
There is no such thing as a liberal zionist who wants equal rights, they wouldn’t be a Zionist then, liberal Zionists believe in the two-state solution or Bantustans, typical Zionists believe in genocide, either way no equal rights
Which do you believe plays well with the average ignorant American; “Equal rights for all in Israel” or “NUKE TEL AVIV!” which do you think zionist media would prefer to propagandize against?
Yes we do, with @xiaohongshu@hexbear.net giving a particularly detailed one.
Just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I feel like I’m arguing with bluesky liberals. Like it’s literally almost word-for-word the exact same rhetoric.
I didn’t get arguments from Xiaohongshu, I got doomer prediction after doomer prediction, which hilariously contradicted each other
he actually does say the other thing in the colbert clip but i’ve already commented on it and frankly neither side should give a shit what a mayor thinks about international relations, the fact that it’s even a question is just racism.
Thank you
I don’t recall him ever saying Israel has a right to exist. I do recall him articulating the one-state position, though.
Now you have seen it.
I can’t get the video to play but I am assuming this is where Mamdani say “Israel has a right to exist… as a state with equal rights”.
That is unambiguously if perhaps using softer language, an endorsement of the one state solution. Some here might disagree but I have no problem with using very specific language when talking with normies who have little to no knowledge of the situation in Palestine. I do it all the time IRL with my boomer parents. I’ve brought them around to the one state solution over time, but to do that I had to walk them through it slowly and avoid terms or language where it would scare them away because they are profoundly ignorant. Yes, you educate and raise up the masses but that doesn’t mean you just toss them in the deep end. To a general audience watching a mayoral debate, saying “death to Israel”, though correct, only closes doors. Framing it first as an issue of equal rights will actually cause people to let their guard down and listen to you. I believe Mamdani’s approach is correct here.
What do you say if after the genocide in Gaza, Israel plays back a similar strategy in the West Bank, leaving only 2-3 million Palestinians alive in Occupied Palestine? At that point, Israel can give the remaining Palestinians “equal rights” with no land back, doing exactly what people like Mamdani are already softly capitulating to, yet Palestinians will have become a small enough minority that settlers would continue to have power over them.
IMO explicitly spelling out that decolonization is necessary is the minimum for a view on the conflict to be worth endorsing. That doesn’t mean that Mamdani is a bad mayoral candidate, but his stance on Palestine is weak, it shouldn’t be praised as if it was the best possible stance.
Nah he says it has a right to exist and a responsibility to uphold international law (lol)
“me when I’m being cringe and annoying”
no this is the one where he says “like all nations”.
of course no nation-state has any rights at all, but he doesn’t get into that on colbert and it would be naive to be so charitable. but he’s running for mayor he should be refusing foreign policy questions and people shouldn’t be asking one way or the other.
I’m still waiting for him to win to judge based on what he does
Call it cope but he never said anything against ideologically purging the police of straight up fascists (yes I know, that’s all of them, that’s the point) and hiring a bunch of unemployed or underemployed leftists to actually go after real criminals instead of harassing and killing poor people
My biggest criticism of him is that he’s letting himself be put on the backfoot and having to play defense instead of going on the assault and taking advantage of the current news cycle to go after Cuomo for his many ties to
and maybe even win over a few disillusioned chuds
Ok if he actually does a complete purge, I’ll concede this was a ploy. Usually it goes the opposite way, you have to moderate your ideas once within the system because of institutional opposition
He wants to drastically reduce the amount of overtime for cops. Notice that he always redirects back to keeping headcount the same. He isn’t going to hire any new officers, he will push back on the overuse of overtime. Unfortunately, the police union is still very strong so it will be hard to do anything.
I am generally thinking the same. I think this should be his new slogan:
“re-fund the police”
basically run on taking the existing police budget to fund its opposite.
It’s essentially his new stance on Israel: it has a right to exist so long as it exists as the exact opposite of what it is now
It was obvious.
I’l just get more AOC from here.
Western leftists when the Democratic mayoral candidate walks back all his radical positions: OMG America is having a revolution
The same leftists when BRICS doesn’t nuke Israel or shut down the entire global economy and destroy themselves to stop a genocide entirely manufactured by the enemies of BRICS: OMG BRICS are the real Zionists
truth nuke
fell for it again award: chapo.chat edition
who thinks it’s a revolution? i’m very clear that it is not, we can point and laugh at people who think it’s the revolution together.
Those here who are vehement defenders of it against all legitimate criticism are acting as if it is a revolution, and often while being hypercritical of others in a way that seems in bad faith. Not everyone who is hopeful for mamdani is being myopic about this
HE’S FUCKIN DOGWHISTLING
His policy is to keep the police budget static and transfer the yearly budget increase to social services, thru inflation the overall police budget will shrink year on year, that IS DEFUNDING THE POLICE
Jesus christ people it’s one of the smartest policy positions from a western left politician in years, but mfs are more concerned he isn’t calling for the burning of police stations, like come on
Research his policies and you will see what he’s trying to do
no if he doesn’t personally execute every cop with his bare hands then he’s a fascist
Tough, but fair approach.
This is great man theory. A real socialist will set up struggle sessions in Central Park.
I’m not even a squishy electoralist. I consider myself a ML.
But I don’t see why we shouldn’t just throw everything possible at the wall and see what sticks.
Porky is clearly afraid. We must be doing something right.
We never could have seen this coming
His public stance has long been to keep the current police budget, while increasing funding for social workers. He is carefully triangulating to avoid scaremongering from his opponents which could cost him the race.
Let the man cook.
Yeah love to defend selling out as “triangulating”
Am I in 1990?
Would you rather him lose the election to Cuomo or Adams? Because there’s literally zero chance of them doing socialism, and they will increase the police budget, guaranteed.
I’d rather he just stay principled and say that police will need to be purged and rebuilt, and actually do that
Also New York has a police force that’s bigger than many nation’s armies and goes and trains in Israel. Yes they need defunded, it’s an absurd position to say they don’t need to be. New York City needs to defund the police moreso than anywhere else on Earth. The New York PD is a massively powerful cartel that runs huge chunks of the city through corruption and graft and its various patronage systems. If Zohran isn’t serious about confronting and dismantling their cartel, then he’s going to get destroyed and dog walked
Let’s be frank. He will not embark on this political project for the very simple reason that he has no military behind him, not even some socialist paramilitary. Some genuine socialist being elected to mayor of the center of capital (pop quiz: what city is Wall Street located in) is always a pipe dream. The far more likely possibility is that he’s either an opportunist/sell-out/controlled op or he’ll do whatever the NYPD tells him to do after being threatened with his life. There’s basically zero political cost if the NYPD decides to simply kill him and dump his body in a shallow ditch.
So let’s be honest about this whole charade, it’s a joke
The 2020 George Floyd uprising showed everyone who was paying attention that most major cities are de facto controlled by the police. I remember there was one police force (NYPD?) who straight up kidnapped the mayor’s kid because the mayor wasn’t saying the police needed to crack skulls. There was another city (Chicago or LA?) where one councilmember wanted to investigate their police force, so the sheriff simply sicced his goons on them. The police used some court-ordered excuse to dump the councilmember’s shit all over the sidewalk and they kept on doing that over and over until the councilmember took the hint and resigned.
A socialist could become Mayor of one of the most powerful cities on earth and your complaining that he doesn’t talk like a reddit ultra, so its a “joke”
Let’s keep this simple, if Zohran is elected do you believe he’ll crack down on pro Palestinian protesters to the same extent as Adams or Cuomo?
If we’re being honest, that depends on how the Federal government wants to fuck with the city’s budget, which I remind you, like many major American cities today, isn’t in a very good shape.
Too many American leftists have bought into the right wing Democratic propaganda that “the government is too weak to do anything” and are suddenly shocked by the Trump administration doing anything it wants with very little repercussion against the government itself.
To be clear, the US Federal government can literally confiscate the assets of every single billionaire in America tomorrow and there is nothing they can do about it, with all the wealth they have amassed. This is how powerful the federal government is and you think it’s afraid of the Wall Street city?
The only thing that could change the equation and make the federal government think twice is an organized mass movement that is prepared to fight it to the end - one that is prepared to exert mutual destruction where the damage will be too costly for the other side. Is the American left prepared to go through this?
You can’t be serious, he’s literally cutting the budget by keeping it static and letting inflation do the work
Meanwhile the yearly budget increase that would’ve gone to the cops will go instead to social services
I’m sorry but that is a brilliant strategy, FUCK PRINCIPLES sneak that socialism right thru the backdoor and make the capitalists pay for it, psy-op their asses and give them a taste of their own technocratic medicine
He’s cutting the budget without “cutting” the budget and if the media tries to hit him with law and order rhetoric they’ll sound delusional to the average Joe
Do you want to win or do you want to be an ultra?
Is it “winning” when your “guy” is going to sell you out, bit by bit transforming into Nancy Pelosi? Is it winning when he drags a good chunk of leftists along with him back to DNC entryism and DSA idealism?
Yeah that’s a sad story and all, but I’ll be a little busy reflecting on the fact he won on the back of pro-Palestine sentiment and socialist policies, but by all means keep playing with that crystal ball
this is identical to wanting him to lose.
Wanting to reduce the size of the New York Army means you just want to lose - radlibs in 2025
Just go be a democrat if you are this unprincipled and easily cowed
stop being disingenuous
Yes that is what needs to be done in any serious NYC political project. Everything else is just window dressing. The cop cartel runs the show. Fight it or play nice is the only question.
We can and should criticise any leftist presenting candidate. That doesn’t mean that we want them to lose.
Has a democratic socialist anywhere in the world ever run on defunding the police?
It’s not a tenable electoral position at all. It’s a strong slogan for activism because you know that the compromise is going to be somewhere in-between. Much like “fuck cars” or “antiwork” are fun extreme slogans for pulling people to left with entertaining extremism but everyone understands they’re not tenable positions, the compromise would always be something in-between. Without a revolution of course.
What he should be careful of is using language like “grown”. It implies the former movement was childish when it was not. It undoes some of the work it did. He should simply say that’s not what he’s running on and not what he would seek to carry out, something like “those movements had a useful purpose in using strong language at that time but they’re not what the current moment calls for nor what I would implement”. It’s possible to say that’s not what he wants without unintentionally putting down what was absolutely a good movement.
It’s starting to grate a little bit whenever he says some DemSoc shit and everyone farther left is going “SEE?? what did you expect??” And it’s like yeah, this is pretty much exactly what I expected as someone farther to Zohran’s left, but like you’re saying he could do a bit more fine tuning on the language.
Of course it would be foolish to consider him revolutionary (as a mayoral candidate, his personal feelings and thinking are almost certainly to the left of his platform, but we’ll see). It’s a good thing that nobody actually thought that though.
Ah yes, he’s hiding his power level
I don’t understand why anyone is arguing about this. Nobody argues that Mick Lynch or Corbyn weren’t hiding their power levels. Lynch specifically said it’s ridiculous that the media were calling him a communist when he absolutely 110% is lmao
I don’t see what is different here. Zohran is definitely personally left of what his electoral policies and media presentation are going to be.
Do you know him yourself?
Do I know Zohran? Or Lynch and Corbyn?
It’s simple, Zohran is the candidate they always claimed to want and he’s winning, but that invalidates the anti-electoral ideology so many here use as a comfort blanket and it makes them ROYALLY PISSED
I mean, I don’t think electoralism will achieve socialism so i’m with them on that one.
I do think demonstrating electoralism will not achieve socialism is a necessary prerequisite to revolution though.
If demonstrating the “failure” of electoralism is a prerequite for revolution, then that means electoralism is in fact a crucial tactic that will help achieve socialism
This isn’t semantics, the failure of analysis from the doomer faction is assuming the “demonstration of failure” arises from losing elections, it doesn’t, the demonstration effect is only possible after you win
Reformists IN POWER being undermined is not the same thing as reformists losing elections
Opposition in power polarizes and energizes the base, losing demoralizes and leads to demobilization
To demonstrate to the masses the anti-worker solidarity of the ruling class, socialists and their allies have to be in some position of power to manifest that anti-worker opposition in the first place
WE HAVE TO WIN ELECTIONS
I want to have hope sooo bad… and I understand you’ve helped with his campaign and say he’s the real deal. But I thought the “reform or revolution” question was already answered. Are we wrong about that?
Like, I don’t see how this ends well unless it’s all part of a much larger plan to get a revolution going. Is there a larger plan? You don’t have to say what it is, if it’s like op sec or whatever.
I could see it if it’s like, a plan to radicalize more people:
Mayor tries to do objectively good shit and gets ratfucked --> people get angrier and say fuck the system (but they could just end up getting more fascist)
Mayor gets some good things done --> hey socialism is cool, maybe we should join! (join what exactly tho? no vanguard party?)
???
Fuck hope, we’re past hope, wrestle despair into rage and fear into defiance, wouldn’t matter if Zohran was a CIA clone, if he wins under a mantle of socialism and pro-palestine sentiment WE STILL WIN
Most online leftists never understood the debate to begin with, the question was not about “reform or revolution” it was about whether reform will kill revolution or will reform trigger revolution and historically the question has been answered in favor of the latter
Lenin overthrew the reformists not the Czar, reforms genuine reforms gives us the space and time we need to pull it off
Zohran winning under Trump is the best possible combination for us, the heat of the fascist furnace with a forward socialist base in New York, we’ll explode in numbers
I don’t think he’s going to expose it if he is. As an official he is and will be a DemSoc and should be treated accordingly.
Read the details of his policy proposals and you’ll see he is
None of you anti Zohran wreckers even realized his police policy would in fact cut their budget despite his “pro cop” rhetoric and we’re supposed to take you all seriously when it comes to evaluating his power levels?
Just because hiding your power level hasn’t happened much historically doesn’t make it impossible.
You know what has happened historically repeatedly, over and over? Credulous leftists being fooled by Soc dem social fascism because they delude themselves into believing there’s “5D chess” or “hiding power levels” going on
The western left has learned zero lessons from AOCIA
I don’t remember AOC or Bernie ever threatening to arrest Bibi
Did anyone that calls themselves a communist actually ever believe AOC was further left than socdem liberal? I don’t feel like anyone ever did.
A major, common error in thinking is the presumption that socialist politics is crossing your fingers that one figure ends up not being a piece of shit or incompetent. This is actually a bourgeois way of engaging with politics, where a common person’s role is basically to be a fan or support a candidate, and the candidate has inordinate sway over what that actually ends up entailing, both strategically and in terms of what their political statements and programs are.
This is a fundamental hurdle that any growing socialist must overcome in order to become competent. If your org depends on just one person, it is not a successful or sustainable project, let alone a socialist one. The org must focus on populating itself with competent people and to collectively decide on strategy and actions and for those implementing them to be subordinate to the competent body at large.
This lesson seemingly needs to be painfully learned over and over again. This is a big part of why vanguardism and demcent were emphasized by Bolsheviks. They recognized that the chaos of undisciplined organization made them weak to bourgeois tendencies, including listening too much to just one guy, and they were constantly losing their "just one guy"s to execution and imprisonment and exile. In modern imperial core bourgeois electoralism, the (much less serious) electoral socialists lose their "just one guy"s predominately to self-interested climber (petty bourgeois) tendencies and naivete like suddenly learning that you will be killed without 24/7 security so you better get friendly with the bourgeois state.
If you were in Mamdani’s shoes what would you do differently?
Personally, I would hide my power level to get elected and then start improving people’s lives and building a socialist movement.
why is getting elected a prerequisite to building a socialist movement
I agree. It’s better messaging to focus on reforming rather than defunding. It is a bit disappointing that he hasn’t said much about reform, though maybe that would scare the piggies too much (we are talking about NYPD, after all).
Side note: he could technically keep his promise to maintain the police budget while also letting it succumb to inflation.
Electorally yes.
During the uprisings? “Defund the police” was the correct message for the uprising to take. An extreme starting point from which the electoral candidates were supposed to compromise. “I don’t want to defund the police but they can clearly use some reform”.
The uprising and the message exist to provide the pressure that the electoral candidates then use to make the argument for concession in the way of reform, and they get to sound like reasonable people compared to the unreasonable extremists performing the uprisings.
That didn’t work at the time because america is irredeemable but the logic of it is sound. The existence of extreme shit occurring creates the political energy for the electoral candidates to call for concessionary changes.
what sort of revisionism is this? the extreme starting point was Abolish, Defund was the beginning of the way libs coopted that street energy into get out the vote shit.
I would say that the original slogan was not even “abolish the police,” but “fuck the police.” The very original chant, the ones people who burned down that precinct were chanting and tagging, were “fuck the police” and “fuck 12.” “Abolish the police” is itself a more polite and sanitized version of “fuck the police.” Nobody was spraying “abolish the police” but there were plenty of F12 and FtP tags.
hmm good point. I personally didn’t see abolition as more polite or sanitized though, it tied the anger of the streets back to the historical and material roots. but I can see where someone would see it the way you put it.
when I showed up to my solidarity black bloc at the end of May I certainly wasn’t chanting ‘abolish’, but it felt right by the end of the weekend in a way that ‘defund’ felt like some gross lib shit
abolitionists have never been welcome polite society, except insofar as “attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them” etc.
Defund, abolish. Whichever. I wasn’t really drawing much of a difference tbh. I just used the language the comment before me already used. I don’t recall discussion here ever really having much problem with defund at the time either. I can see your point though.
in June 2020 defund was very much a deliberate choice by sympathetic liberals to not ‘alienate’ people with ‘extreme’ rhetoric like abolish. then they got shackled to it lmao and they’ve been ashamed ever since
in light of your previous comment that distinction felt especially relevant. appreciate you acknowledging it
Come on now
Notice also how he wants to “keep headcount,” this does not rule out pushing back on the amount of overtime officers do.
At least he will stop the surveillance of palestine demonstrations, and if he doesn’t then we know his mayorship is a dud.
Why should we strive to “maintain headcount” on the most bloated oversized and overfunded police department in human history?
The nypd also has foreign bases in 16 different countries. Its a tool of imperialism inside and outside the us.
but calling to defund this is just admitting defeat!!!
Defund was already the sanitized version of ACAB and now that is even too radical.
I agree, this is just their political calculation. Not sure if its the right call or not. I’m trying to look on the bright side that he can still reduce overall policing hours while maintaining head count. Doing anything to policing puts him against the police union though so also, things may just continue to be bad.
Poppin in just to say hello
“180 replies I wonder what happ- oh good fucking lord”
IT IS NOW 230 !!!
Did a country get nuked?
Only hexbearistan
I DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’RE YELLING ABOUT
this thread is making up nearly 1/4 of comments in the news mega rn lmao
What have I done…
Look how they massacred my boy.
Next AOCIA?
Zohran Langleyni
This comment is dedicated to the brave posters of hexbear
I feel like he’s going to be a significantly better Bernie type figure, I hope I’ll be proven wrong and he actually stays true to real socialist ideas
I care more about what he actualy does than campaign promises or speeches, way too many people are more invested into making the correct call than just seeing the consequences. Specialy the shitty self-defeating arguments against the western left, the same old cliche some people love to use as if it justifies or explains anything.
Miss me with this hypocritical garbage when literaly not a single BRICS country actualy stands up to Israel or worse China and others actively collaborate with them, where exactly is this grandiose global south left that stands up against Israel? In principle they exist and perform very nice gestures, yet have achieved zero actual efficacy or power to do anything. Sounds familiar?
This site is built on top of fucking Xi emotes, the same guy who also literaly shakes hands with Biden and Kissinger but Zohran should be hanged for a speech because he is no longer saying kill all the zionists in one speech because its “the western left” that sucks or is “desperate”. Principled anti-zionists should be burning BRICS flags along with US and EU flags but nah.
I do wish he wouldn’t fumble his PR too but IMO what matters is what people do not what they say, this should be the first lesson anyone should have learned from these almost 2 year genocide. The legitimately worrisome things he already did like hiring that one Dem advisor into his campaign a couple weeks ago, that is the sort of bad action that matters right now not silly speeches.
It’s different though. BRICS is not actively involved in the genocide, but the US does.
While it would have been very good for them to intervene and I believe China should have done so, there is no obligation for them to risk sacrificing their own economy, placing billions of their own population’s wellbeing in jeopardy for the sake of 2 million Gazan Palestinians. China’s economy is not doing so well right now, you know, as they’re still very much stuck to the neoliberal model and cannot decouple from the US.
It’s just the political reality of the world since the fall of the USSR. Everyone is out for their own now. BRICS is a charade and people keep pretending like it’s the new USSR.
Great way to alienate your potential allies when China is the only country that can stand up to the US today.
There isn’t any sort of relevant legal obligation that is seriously enforced, but it is silly to claim that the PRC doesn’t owe the rest of the Global South action against NATO, considering the PRC’s actions to support NATO’s colonial hold over the rest of the world, as well as the fact that decolonisation should happen (in the ‘moral’ sense of ‘should’).
If we’re being honest, no country other than China has been the greatest supporter of the dollar hegemony, and China has certainly reaped the most benefit from the neoliberal status quo. The two countries running huge trade imbalances sharing the most benefits from the arrangement, at the expense of the rest of the world. Even the American working class suffered because of the de-industrialization, as only their bourgeois ruling elites gained the most from the neoliberal free trade order.
The concentration of industrial capacity into China allowed the US empire to expand its imperialist claws into the rest of the Global South countries, who have been robbed of their productive forces as global industrial base was concentrated into a single country, and thus rendered their economies susceptible to foreign capital influx and the subsequent takeover and privatization of their public assets by US finance capital.
If you ask me, I do agree that China has a duty to redistribute its own productive capacity to the rest of the Global South. However, this is not the world we live in. I simply do not see China caring that much about the world when a rapproachment with the US is still the preferred solution (which is what they’re doing right now). You would have thought that China has learned the lessons in Ukraine just a few years earlier, but time has proven that’s not the case here.
China and BRICS are not the USSR. It has no ideological component behind it. It’s mostly business transactions.
Are you Palestinian? Yemeni? Iranian? Are you family members being killed by Zionism? You speak with a lot of conviction about something you don’t seem to know much about. I don’t think people on the internet with no stakes in what’s going on should purport to be the representatives of other people’s movements. Stay on the sidelines where you belong, cheering on democratic US mayoral candidates
Just another BynarsAreOk post to make it be about China somehow.
I really can’t get over “China bad but let mamdani cook”
So the actual communists supporting Palestine, Iran, Yemen, Cuba, Venezuela, and more are evil zionists but the verdict is still out on DSA member democrat? How do demsocs and ultras end up agreeing with the US state department about which countries are bad AND how to effectively change things within the imperial core.
“China bad, US bourgeois electoralism good” - Marxists apparently
Western leftists are basically touch-starved but instead of it being touch it is any whiff of domestic socialist politics. They’re desperate for anything vaguely in their lane and get parasocial real fast.
I try not to say anything at the risk of coming across too sectarian, but I’m glad someone else noticed this. Dude sounds like he’d be more at home on Db0 or one of other lib-leftist instances.
BynarsAreOk is a contrarian first and foremost. They would probably start whining about anarkiddies being Western chauvinists falling for CIA color revolutions if they were actually on Db0. The extent in which half of their comment history is about China is contrarianism because Hexbear is aggressively pro-China. If Hexbear was as aggressively pro-Russia as it were pro-China, BynarsAreOk’s comment history would be filled with whining about how Putin spits on the grave of Lenin or how the RF completely rides on the coattails of the SU instead of whining about Xi and the CPC. Notice that BynarsAreOk does whine about Putin spitting on the grave of Lenin and the RF completely riding on the coattails of the SU, but it’s not to the extent of their China whining since Hexbear isn’t really aggressively pro-Russia or really pro-Russia at all.
Does explain a lot. I hope they’re quite young, to be an adult and to behave like that is more sad than anything else. I don’t know why someone would participate in a community if their only goal is to go “Umm acktually” at everything everyone else says.
I can understand why BRICS nations other than China don’t want to completely sanction and stop recognizing Israel given they could be sanctioned by the U.S. for the same. But China cannot be sanctioned, they have more more leverage.
If he’s backing down entirely then boo, but I actually like where this line of reasoning is going. Reducing police budgets would be ideal, but reorienting the police from cracking down on fare evasion to, say, solving murders would represent a positive change for most people, especially if it comes with increased resources for social workers to handle stuff that would normally just get turfed to the police. “Defund the police” is a divisive concept that most people don’t seem to understand, but the idea that cops are lazy assholes who are happy to write you tickets but can’t be bothered to solve crimes is an opinion that a lot of people already have. If he’s leaning in that direction then I don’t really see that being a problem, but I’ll reserve judgment until we see what he actually does as mayor.
idk how much of it is a backdown anyway. he campaigned on trying to have the police focus on what the mythology says they’re for instead of doing stuff that directly harms people and communities.
which, lol, lmao, but he’s running for mayor not supreme soviet.
He was never a full defund guy to begin with, afaik. By “back down” I mean full retreat to the status quo. What he’s saying today is consistent with what he was saying before, i.e. get social workers to do social work and free up police officers to do police work.
And yeah, the idea that police officers are going to improve public safety is bullshit, but increasing resources for social work, as well as stopping cops from showing up and murdering people who need mental health support, would be helpful, and within the mandate of the mayor.
Giggling at the idea of people calling Zohran Mamdani a blorbo
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