Image is of the Te Pati Maori (Maori Party) cofounders, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. They have 6 of the 123 seats in the New Zealand parliament.
Officially confirming that the Republican primaries were a gigantic waste of time for everybody involved, Trump has massively beat everybody else in Iowa, and will very obviously be the Republican candidate for 2024. Given the abysmal state of the US economy (for everybody who isn't in the top 1-10%, which is mainly what national statistics reflect when they aren't telling blatant falsehoods), it's more plausible than ever that Trump may indeed once again become President - though I personally refuse to predict one way or another due to how volatile politics and geopolitics currently are. Project 2025 is coming, folks - either as the official Republican governance program, or as what the Democrats will do in 2026 after the midterms, stating that they have no other choice and have to reach across the aisle as they are the Adults In The Room™.
In other news...
Late last year, New Zealand voted in a new and very right-wing government, composed of the center-right National Party, the libertarian ACT Party (ACT stands for the "Association of Consumers and Taxpayers", good lord), and the fascist New Zealand First party. By what I can tell, this was the well-trodden path of "Vaguely center-left party does neoliberal austerity and causes a recession and workers fucking hated it and voted in a different party out of desperation," though the flooding and cyclones did add challenges to Chris Hipkins' short reign after Jacinda Ardern resigned.
It's worth noting that Hipkins was at least fairly China-friendly, meeting up with Xi Jinping on a five-day visit in the summer. They still do the whole "We have concerns about human rights" thing, but of all the countries of the imperial core, New Zealand is - or, perhaps, was - one of the most amicable. In 2021, China was New Zealand's single largest trading partner, with a third of exports going to China (more than Australia, the US, Japan, and South Korea combined), and they receive 22% of their imports from China too, more than any other single country.
Christopher Luxon, the new Prime Minister and sentient thumb, has said that he is exploring a closer relationship with AUKUS:
Luxon said New Zealand was interested in becoming involved in AUKUS Pillar 2: a commitment between the three partners to develop and share advanced military capabilities, including artificial intelligence, electronic warfare and hypersonics.
“We’ll work our way through that over the course of next year as we understand it more and think about what the opportunities may be for us,” Luxon said. “AUKUS is a very important element in ensuring we’ve got stability and peace in the region.”
This is not to say that Hipkins wanted nothing to do with AUKUS or Western organizations aimed generally against China - in fact, pre election, "he was open to conversations about joining Pillar II of AUKUS". But the current government is pushing down on the accelerator pedal.
The left-wing Maori party, Te Pati Maori, has stated that they want New Zealand to remain non-aligned, as joining AUKUS would erode the sovereignty of the country:
As Maori we cannot allow our sovereignty to be determined by others, whether they are in Canberra or Washington. Aotearoa should not act as Pacific spy base in the wars of imperial powers. Joining AUKUS will severely undermine our country’s sovereignty, constitution, and ability to remain nuclear free. There is too much at stake for our government to make a commitment of this magnitude without a democratic process.
In general, the party leaders of Te Pati Maori want New Zealand to be the "Switzerland of the Pacific", which is perhaps not the greatest analogy given all the problems Switzerland had and has, but we understand the intended meaning of desiring neutrality.
The Country of the Week is New Zealand! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
@GinAndJuche@hexbear.net I remembered the most recent article & you have been subscribed to Poland facts
@PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml idk you probably know more about this than FP or FT
In Poland, due to socialism and communism being totally demonised in public spaces there is only one kind of radicalisation possible, fascist one. But i find this gender gap highly sus, especially worldwide.
I'm convinced this is driven by propaganda rather than material conditions. MRA and manosphere shit is the primary driving force and the left has utterly failed to put up an alternative, instead bickering over how any form of idea of "masculinity" is something we shouldn't promote due to inherent toxicity. I agree with the fact it is inherently toxic but if there is no alternative idea to lay down then failure to oppose it is just handing over young men to the far right in mass quantities.
We should be laying out a healthy leftist idea of masculinity, with role models, at the same scale and effort that the right has. Failure to counter this is a strategic disaster.
I understand as much as anyone that machismo shit is bad but holy shit we need left-machismo
to come back and we need it soon.
I think the only way to tap into machismo while inheriting as little of its problematic baggage as possible is through martial prowess, which includes the willingness to fight and die on behalf of a noble cause. This means understanding that young people seek heroes and heroism that's completely absent in their lives, and through the framework of cisheteronormative masculinity, an average cishet young man will see a male hero as a warrior on a noble mission.
Castro and Che were super charismatic and a man's man, but they were also brave heroes who took up arms in order to overthrow Batista. You could extend this to someone like Tito who took up arms against fascists as a Partisan, fulfilling his duty to humanity by personally sending at least 10 fascists to hell. The Panthers looked cool as fuck, but they also killed pigs and were hunted down by the feds for being cop killers.
The modern equivalent of Che is basically Abu Obaida. I've seen so many photos of Arab boys dressing up as him on Twitter. Everyone fighting the Zionist occupation from Hamas to Hezbollah to Ansarallah is a hero, a fighter, and a warrior. And I have no doubt in my mind that people who were on the fence are converting to Islam because of their heroism. Hell, I've even seen people on Twitter claim to have converted from Sunni to Shia because of them. This is what we need.
But as that Iranian DJ(?) said, the West doesn't have heroes. Who's the Western equivalent of Obaida or anyone in Al-Qassam? For the US, the closest people who rise to the level of heroes are Indigenous water protectors, who are typically Indigenous women. But the men? The West doesn't have heroic men to set a good example for other men, which means young men are more easily swayed by some reactionary fascist bullshit. Fascism preys on their desire for heroism in their lives. It's a common fascist talking point to say that modern men have their potential for heroism and greatness suppressed by the [slurs], who force them to live a life of mediocrity.
The last male hero for the US at least was probably Tupac. He was related to Panthers, joining the Young Communist League as a teenager. Besides his career as a rapper, he also was starting to get into acting before he got murdered, and he was a charismatic dude in general. Tupac also shot at a bunch of pigs harassing a dude and somehow was able to escape jail time. He was a larger-than-life figure. A book I was starting to read before Al-Aqsa Flood happened argued that Tupac was assassinated by the feds precisely because he was a leftist heroic figure who had enough charisma and street cred to unite multiple demographics who otherwise would have nothing to do with each other. Like, fucking George Lucas wanted Tupac to be cast as Mace Windu and only casted Samuel L Jackson after Tupac was murdered.
I don’t think that’s accurate, not that I’m opposed to killing cops. The feds were after them for being effective organizers. They got raided for giving kids food. They got assassinated for uniting with even gangs and confederate flag wavers. The weathermen probably killed cops though.
Tupac was awesome, maybe we need to bring back John Brown or whatever. I feel like X or Lil Peep could almost fit, but they’re more like queer-ish figures, not hyper masc.
At least from one testimony of a surviving Black Panther, the repression really began once the Black Panther started racking up kills. I think a lot of the cop killings was technically done by the BLA instead of the BPP, but the BPP/BLA line has always been blurry and every single member of the BLA was a member of the BPP.
A lot has been irreparably lost when Tupac got murdered. I think Tupac was on his way of brokering a deal between rival gangs in LA as well. It seems like once a charismatic Black man is set to bring peace among Black gangs, his days are numbered. It happened to Hampton, and it happened to Tupac. Hell, it even happened to Nipsey, who while not a socialist by any means, could be seen as how a progressive (petty) bourgeois figure would look like within the Black community. I think Nipsey's dad was involved in revolutionary politics in Eritrea as well. But once Nipsey began taking steps to broker a deal between LA gangs, he had to go as well, and suddenly some random dude shot him even though Nipsey was by all counts beloved in the hood going by the size of his public funeral.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the BLA was doing such, but that also makes it sound like Cointelpro was provoked.
I’ve heard it alleged that Kurt Cobain was led to die by feds in some way, among others. Not the same, but Young Dolph is also said to have been killed for threatening white property interests.
There's Greta and very little else. There's a reason the MRA crowd has slammed her and it goes beyond just opposition to climate stuff. Obviously this isn't a male example though, you're right that there are no practical male examples. Not any that are left anyway.
It's entirely by design. The feds saw the impact a Muhammad Ali or a Diego Maradona had and have taken all steps to make sure that won't happen again. This means someone like Nipsey, a rapper who is in many ways just a lesser Tupac, had to die under extremely sus circumstances as well. Unlike Tupac, Nipsey styled himself as a capitalist entrepreneur and lacked the real star power that Tupac had and successfully wielded, but like Tupac, he was a charismatic Black man and he, at the end of his life, tried to broker a deal between LA gangs to stop killing each other. Nipsey, like Tupac, also had family with connections to revolutionary politics. In Nipsey's case, it was his father who was involved in Eritrean grassroots politics. I think Nipsey even started flirting with Pan-Africanism right before his death.
Nipsey was a lesser Tupac, but this goes to show that the feds are very proactive. He might be a lesser Tupac at the time of his sus death, but the feds don't want to take any chances.
What about that American footballer dude that took the knee? Sorry I don't know his name.
EDIT: Kaepernick that's the one.
For Kaepernick, he is just not good enough at his sport to truly make an impact like Ali or Maradona. I think there might have been career sabotage as well to make sure he would never be good enough at his sport for people to look up to. It doesn't take away from his courage in doing what he did in a reactionary sport with a reactionary audience like American football. Meanwhile, someone who could actually be considered a GOAT in American football like Tom Brady is some reactionary Trump supporter. In general, a lot of American star athletes tend to not have any ideology outside of some grinding hustle bullshit. You see this in people like Kobe. I don't think there's any NBA star with good politics except maybe for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was politically adjacent to Ali and has apparently penned articles in Jacobin before. There's also Magic for his HIV advocacy. Meanwhile, Lebron broke the NBA strike in 2020.
Masculinity is absolutely not inherently toxic. There are many male role models who are great examples of masculinity throughout history in many fields, and I think people would be hard pressed to call them "toxic".
What is toxic is the gender expectations and standards men are forced into from birth, along with all the contradictory messaging that obfuscates what people want from you.
Yeah maybe but we need to figure this out and get a suite of role models and "male thinkers" that represent left views or we're just letting Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson own the minds of young men.
Undoing these brainworms will take considerably more than properly countering them to begin with. We need a modern Muhammad Ali. We need leftist males that appeal to the interests of these young boys and no matter which way you look at it they fall into a few major categories like fighting(why they latched onto Tate in the first place), "how do I get girls?" and "how do I be smarter and brainier than everyone else" (the shit that leads to finding someone like peterson). Not exhaustive but these are some of the major ones. We have almost nothing actively competing for headspace on these topics because we find them either distasteful or problematic in one way or another.
I don't really care about why we're not doing it, we need to be doing it because it's clear that nobody has an alternative. Whether or not these topics are flawed or problematic in some way.
god I hate how almost every martial arts instructor in the USA is a Libertarian.
I met one that was a fascist instead of a libertarian.
He taught Krav Maga. He was so good at it he was flown around the U.S and Israel to teach interested civilians, military, and police. The few times I've listened in on him giving public demonstrations to advertise his classes to the public - and I'm specifically talking about firearms handling on this - I've been generally blown away with how... I think I'd best describe it as aggressively bullheaded and arrogant it appeared to be.
The one thing that still sticks in my mind to this day, and this is apparently being or had been taught to civilian hogs, war pigs, and the pigs in blue, is the standardized reaction to fire. That is to say in a hypothetical scenario where someone with a gun opens fire on you - and you get lucky and they miss - the krav maga dude literally trains you to stand your ground and face the general direction of incoming, draw your firearm, aim in the general direction of the incoming fire, begin returning fire blindly in the general direction of incoming fire, and then advance on the enemy. The explanation given is that whatever enemy is shooting on you is anticipating on you fleeing towards cover and seizing the initiative in the attack (spoiler: the enemy is actually anticipating killing your ass lmao.), therefore by boldly returning fire and advancing on their position you shift the initiative in your favor and increase your chances of survival.
Folks if you have any knowledge infantry tactics, or at least knows how a gun fucking works, you would get it in your head that walking towards the incoming bullets of someone who's got the drop on you and hoping your blind firing will kill them, or at least scare them off, is an extremely bad idea that would get you killed.
I think back to the shit I heard from him and wonder if those dumb IDF bastards actually use that in their training.
A man who needs to prove how manly they are is inherently reactionary. Machismo is a outlet for men who feel they have no control. They pursue a physical ideal because they feel powerless to change their material economic conditions. It is an anti-class awareness trap.
Maybe but I think the positives of not allowing the entirety of young males to be poisoned like this outweigh the negatives if we have no alternative. Demanding perfection here is allowing the far right to take the entirety of the male youth from us.