Image is of Elon Musk giving the Nazi salute a week or so ago.
I didn't really want to keep spotlighting American domestic events as I had assumed that shit would calm down pretty quickly, but it appears that the Trump administration, including Musk, are determined to bring down the empire from the inside.
One of the most important lessons of ruling a country - and especially an empire - is to never, ever believe your own propaganda; and yet now we have neo-Nazi failsons disrupting parts of the imperial apparatus and causing general government mayhem because they actually seem to believe in libertarianism; that the state and the capitalists are somehow in opposition, rather than working in lockstep to maximise profit and boost American hegemony around the world.
I'm not so optimistic as to believe that a national collapse is FOUR DAYS AWAY, like those weird anti-China cranks often speculate - the US has at least a decade or two left even under these conditions. But consider the damage being inflicted in these past couple weeks, and extrapolate that over the next four years. Does any living American political figure possess the competency to halt - or even meaningfully slow - the already ongoing decline? And could they achieve power (or even be allowed to do so) after Trump's term is done?
Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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.
The r/China subreddit has been a ghost town lately with mostly positive to neutral comments. One of the top posters has nothing new posted after January 19th lol
When that USAID check stops coming in the mail
Me watching with a grin on my face with my Xibucks.
I'm surprised there aren't more people who have a true love of the propaganda game. I post pro-Chinese/DPRK/Resistance propaganda here and I don't get paid for it (though if Xi is ever offering...)
I guess it shows not only how astroturfed Reddit is (as HoiPolloi said) but in a more general sense, how much the establishing of false narratives relies on a constant application of money and force (physical or digital). It's easy to be like "oh, human nature, blah blah blah, we'll always believe and post untrue things because we're all gullible and imperfect and sinful" but actually, when there's no money to act as an counterincentive, true and good things tend to spread. Yet another thing proving Masses, Elites, and Rebels correct I suppose.
Isn't it proving that wrong?
Remove the licensing (created by pumping money into anti-communist narratives) and you remove a substantial amount of the people going for these narratives. They will still feel a low-lying level of hatred of communism created by decades of pre-existing media reporting, but with the propaganda receiving less funding, you then have an opening to show the counterpropaganda, which can be surprisingly successful if it's reporting the positives of socialism. We saw this when TikTok briefly closed down and people went to Chinese social media and saw that all the "social credit" stuff is nonsense.
It really proves that Reddit is one of the most astroturfed site on the internet.
Oh man! All my fav pods are going to stop now.
Yea will be interesting to see if any 'leftist' pods suddenly shudders up.
Wasn't v*ush freaking out about losing funding (does he still purport himself to be "leftist") ?
A whole lot of Breadtube are on this USAID and NED payroll. Something users here buck at when pointed out because of their parasocial attachments.
It’s been proven before that the biggest breadtubers gets money from CIA cut outs.
If we are naming names: PhilosophyTube, Contrapoints, Vaush are all sus as hell and have all pushed Slava Ukraini Nazi-apologist nonsense. If they are of the anarcho-Bidenist ilk they are almost assuredly bought and paid for.
There's nothing stopping them from creating fake Patreon accounts and funding Breadtubers that way. I suspect this is how they platform smaller channels who organically espouse anarcho-natoism but just need a push in money and views to get the ball rolling. But Contra also met Clinton before, so I wouldn't be surprised if she's getting checks from them.
Remember, remember, the fifth of November Kelly's income that remains after this catastrophe.
Contrapoints I can easily believe (and Vaush has been explicitly that for quite a while now). PhilosophyTube too? Bummer. She did recently do a collaboration with Innuendo Studios—who is ultra fucking liberal and talks all the time about how "we Democrats" allegedly do things with all good intentions—by narrating one of his videos. That was a bit disappointing, but I could squint and assume maybe it was just a voice acting thing like the other fiction she's been acting in in the mainstream media.
Yes she was the one with receipts, she took NED funds and it's documented. There was a bunch of drama about it.
I’d be very surprised if Vaush was actually on the payroll. I don’t think it works that way.
I think it instead works by selecting who to amplify rather than constructing personas directly.
Also specifically in the case of Vaush, it also works by salami slicing the community to shape it. An extremely effective tactic that clearly happened with Vaush. Not that he was ever “good”, he was always a fucking moron, but that community was shaped hard to make it what it is today. He went from “vaguely unionist debate lord Bernie bro” to “alt-right but trans ~~chaser~~friendly”.
Breadtubers have receipts with money transfers from the NED. You can doubt it all you want but it’s documented and factually happening
I'm pretty sure he stopped calling himself a leftist a while back. Maybe a year or so? Stopped because now he openly attacks leftists and leftism. Shocking, right? How dare anyone like, criticize the DeFenSiVe aLLiaNcE of NATO, and all that.
Every Robert Evans project on furlough, lol.
I would love to see the daily active users across the whole sub over the last few weeks. Probably only admins know that info though
Reddit traffic probably hit a slump as well.