Get it? The Sturmabteilung?
Anyway, Ukraine will probably launch its counteroffensive soon. Maybe this week. Maybe next week. Eventually, for sure. Probably. So I'm taking the week off to prepare for it. Your regularly scheduled programming will be back on May 1st.
Image is of dragon's teeth fortifications in Ukraine, from the wikipedia article.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
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.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the warzone.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
Hoping for a 'peaceful world' for multipolarism is straight from kautsky's UltraImperialism
Lenin would critique it into non-existence
This is precisely why we, as the anti-hegemonic left, don't actually want multipolarity as it's commonly defined, at least not as any kind of endstage. For starters, it's essentially impossible to maintain multipolarity due to capitalism's tendency towards monopoly. And we certainly don't just want a world where all national bourgeoisie are given a chance to better exploit their own workers, instead of just the international bourgeoisie doing so.
Instead, I envisage multipolarity to be the stage on which the workers of the world can finally put up an organized fight against capital, with the influence of the United States much reduced and development of infrastructure in the developing world increasing so that countries at least approach self-sufficiency. It's a chance to finish the fight that the people from the 1910s-40s started. If we fail, then another capitalist hegemon will develop and we'll go through yet another cycle, though with climate change it's not clear how many more cycles humanity can withstand as a global civilization.
Yes, you pose the common educated opinion in Hexbear that I see most often, I was just worried about the small percentage that are too complacent. I was one once, and I can see how it can devolve the consciousness of an online space. Lemmygrad is currently having its own battle with this.
I'm not hoping for a peaceful world from multipolarism, I'm hoping for the collapse of the empire. You know which.
And it will be glorious, comrade
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Who said multipolarity would be peaceful?
oh not anyone specific, I was just highlighting my thoughts on the subject. I see a small, but growing, contingent of hexbears giving me the same vibes as kautsky as I read critiques of it. Chinese Hegemony will not truly be very peaceful, just barely less so. Russia is an emerging Imperialist power as well.
Thi article give a good summary close to the critiques I make:
although I would have liked to have found more, my google search engine isn't bringing up Socialist news networks unless I specifically search for them.
America's decline is good, but anti imperialism will eventually have to cover the broad spectrum of the imperialism of all the highly competitive empires. we are nearing a similar time as that of WW1 and its post. NATO is a far more reactionary imperialist force, but BRICS is an economic response of other Capitalists Nations (or countries with similar aims of economic growth through capitalist means, as with china) as a counter force. It is only anti-imperialist in the sense that it combats the current world order.
although critiques are welcome, I want to better my understanding.
Do you believe China is imperialist? China does practice capitalism, but on the leash of the CPC.
Not in the sense of full wealth extraction or colonialism, no. They are still in some way imperialist due to their capitalist practices overseas, as such is inevitable. It also makes trade with explicitly dictatorial nations or fascist ones like Myanmar and Israel. Of course I'm not going to lie and say that they are using fake methods of debt trap diplomacy and whatnot, but their economic influence and foreign capital exploitation is imperialist. I would have almost no qualms whatsoever if it was just the Chinese state doing these programs, with no profit interest. Capitalists are on a leash, but the farther away, the more they tug on it. I also question the state of the worker's rights in these expenditures, as the workers rights in places like SE Asia, South America, and Africa are left something to be desired (mostly due to the efforts of US imperialism). If the workers don't take part in deciding for themselves, and if the companies break strikes and discriminate against labor efforts, it is definitely an imperialist effort.
Internally, the CPC has almost solved its contradictions, and is showing to be on the road to committing to their original socialist cause. Overseas are usually just capitalist entities of the PRC, with some State oversight (but, again, capitalists are going to capitalist no matter what).
China is an entirely unique nation unlike anything that has come before it (in terms of socialism), so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
That sounds like capitalism, but that doesn't in and of itself imply imperialism. Seems to me that China would need to be engaging in unequal exchange with other countries, and enforcing that unequal exchange through coercive (often violent) means to be considered imperialist.
I totally agree, but I think what is really what should be pointed out is the possibility for new revolutions to happen. For instance the United States only joined the imperialist division of the world in the 1890s after causing the cassus belli for war against Spain's colonies where the monopoly capitalists also began to create mergers with the existing imperialists.
Contrary to popular belief, I think that we are actually going to see a more violent world as emerging imperialist powers necessitate violence in order to establish theirselves within the division of the world.
The old world is on its way out and every can breath a sigh of relief, but I think what can be misconstrued as naivety in looking forward towards the new world (even to people themselves) is a real needed effort to look at what the emerging forces are and where class conflict can be fully resolved in the meantime.
the Drones and the Hyper Sonics might help. Beeing a "Superpower" does not give you the military edge it did before , limiting the general viability of war. , But they also help for a ever more fragmenting hellworld so ...
Multipolarity is a step on the path towards the good kind of monopolarity.
Die Sozialistische Weltrepublik! :hammer-sickle:
Misreading of Kautsky IMHO look where the nations which did WWI are now - the declining NATO+ bloc, Japan, Russia (lost its colonies, of course). IMHO Lenin would probably have the same analysis of neocolonialism and monetary imperialism (superimperialism) as those who lived to see it emerge??? If you teleported him (it would be so cool to do this btw let's pause on this)???
The decline is making us more violent, lawfare coups, proxy wars, nuclear brinkmanship, etcetera, because we can see the funding we use for the interventions to secure the funding for the interventions we use to [...] is at risk of collapsing.
The economies so crudely termed "the jungle" by Borrel aren't built off neocolonialism because they are on the receiving end, and their development is destroying their status as colonies.
The us striving for unipolarity has tremendously increased regional conflicts and internal anticommunist purges. I'm no economist but regional blocs that are all invested in each other's currencies seem more likely to deal with things using diplomacy.
The anticommunist reaction isn't going anywhere but it looks like a tremendous opportunity to me and I don't think many people read Kautsky's silly little letters but us.
I'm not lauding Kaustky, far from it. UltraImperialism is a niave and politically backwards book that makes me see directly how much of a "marxist" he really was. Lenin was right to hate him. I was merely pointing out that I've seen similar sentiment to Kautsky's in some places on Hexbear, and how many need to not let down their guard for the new order and hegemony.
Oh how I wish, Habibi
Oh don't worry I didn't think you were lauding Kautsky. Or even saying a lot of people still do. I've seen the comparison of superimperialism to ultraimperialism before and it seems skin-deep to me. People implying everything is going to be all sunshine and roses now that the US will have less than total impunity to curb stomp people and send in the goons are going way too far but I see a lot (AND I MEAN A LOT) more skeptics because this is somewhat unknown territory.
You know what we need? Popular youtube video essayists to explain dependency theory and world systems theory. Too many goddamn books for me. (Working on it tho)
EDIT: Ah I see this is about Chinese and Russian imperialism and not about the undeath of neoliberalism RIP. It's always some random blog with a guy denouncing "Marcyism, campism, Red-brown alliance, multipolar chauvinism" just made up shit I'm done. I'm going to start posting in Covert Action Magazine or something. I need industrial strength posting warfare. This site is gonna feel artillery. Can't believe people still take this kind of Alexander Reid-Ross-ass writing seriously.
I mean, its not just about that, the other nations like the still shambling USA, France, Israel, Japan, Germany, and other such nations are ones to worry about far more. Russia is nation building with this ukraine war, but found themselves in quite a different position than they thought, the future is open.