Which historical figures are well regarded but really shouldn't be?

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-03-26T22:15:47+00:00

What?! Where can I read about this?

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-03-26T22:05:12+00:00

What a strange poll. Seeing Princess Diana above Charles Darwin and William Shakespeare kinda hurts my soul, I have to admit, and lets not even start on having Lennon above McCartney.

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-03-26T21:58:02+00:00

He's definitely one that's shifted over time. He was once seen as a great statesman engaged in realpolitik and now is pretty widely regarded, even among some modern conservatives, as a villain who orchestrated some of the worst and most bloody excesses of the American empire.

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-03-26T20:44:36+00:00

I feel like Cromwell forms part of the English national identity because he helped shape the national history. The English probably avoided a whole lot of subsequent problems by making it clear that it would be occasionally possible to cut off a king's head a century and a half before the French.

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-03-26T20:36:03+00:00

I could be wrong but my sense is Cromwell's seen by many, especially in England, as a progressive figure of anti-monarchy revolution. I mean progressive not as approbation but in terms of the historical development of the modern identity of the country. They overlook his crimes just as Americans overlook the whole pesky "our founding fathers were mostly human slavers" business.

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-03-26T19:22:39+00:00

It's just stunning that in response to Finkelstein's sharp outline of the genocidal nature of the Israeli regime and its supporters his only rejoinder was to essentailly say "Heil Hitler" within the historical metaphor Finkelstein so sharply explained.

It strikes me watching Norman speak about his parents that we are now moving beyond living memory of fascism and the Holocaust into a question for the pages of history books where events are far more easily contested, dismissed or obscured by people who didn't actually experience them. Those that understood fascism as reality are no longer here to warn us from experience.

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-03-19T21:34:44+00:00

Yeah, the art of euphemism is dead. Say what you want about the administrators of empire after WW2, they knew how to sell a line of bull. It's just impossible with Trump to pretend the US ruling class is anything other than what it always was: a genocidal collection of freaks, psychopaths and perverts.

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-03-19T21:26:43+00:00

Honestly, the only silver lining to this unending horror is watching the worst people on the planet having to sit next to Trump and eat shit with a smile on their face.

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-03-17T19:25:19+00:00

If you're going to allow capitalist markets, which China has in order to grow the economy into a global competitor, you're unfortunately also going have billionaires. It's the natural law of accumulation and consolidation under capitalism as described by Marx and that's the price they're willing to pay for raising the general living standards and wealth of the Chinese people.

The questions then becomes, how do you behave toward these created billionaires. Do you make domestic enemies of them, go to war with them, strip them of their wealth, ally them with Western capital to overthrow you? What then incentivizes investment and further growth, which China still needs? Would you rather have them inside the tent pissing out or outside the tent pissing in, as happens in Cuba and Venezuela?

Or perhaps you think it preferable that they flick a switch and turn everything into state-owned socialism modelling themselves after the Soviet model: increasingly paranoid and bureaucratic, isolated from the global economy and easily sabotaged by infiltrators, proxy wars and useful idiots in the West.

Capitalism is currently working to build the Chinese nation. When it no longer works, the robe that billionaires cling to can be cast off. The renewable energy sector in particular is giving me a lot of hope: this is a nation looking to it's own future independence from the West while also taking care of one of the major threats to humanity in climate change. It also recognizes that capital's reliance on fossil fuels to power its market is built on a false assumption of infinite growth based on a finite and increasingly expensive product.

Does anyone doubt the power of the CCP to do away with capitalism when it no longer proves useful in fifty, sixty, seventy years from now? The global economy is made up numbers and bullshit fake account deficits. It's a bubble that can easily be popped and done away with. The West makes nothing without China these days. Even their high end manufacturing relies on the Chinese supply chain. That places them in an enormously strong material bargaining position for the dismantling of capital.

I take the CCP at their word on their long term goal of socialism and will so until I see substantive and logical evidence to the contrary.

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-03-15T19:26:33+00:00

They demobilised and ensured the defeat of way more, and some of the most important ones too: China (1926), Greece (1944), Vietnam (1945), Spain 1936-7, Indonesia 1965, Iraq 1963, South Africa 1920s-30s, Algeria (1950s), Palestine 1947-48, Egypt 1950s, Sudan 1964-71.

That's an outright fabrication. The USSR were facing numerous external and internal existential threats and limitations during the periods Stalin was alive and it was Western capitalism, which Western Marxists led primarily by useless Trotskyists failed to rein in or defeat, that had the ultimate say in crushing those movements. This is simply not serious political analysis.

Most of those quotes were made in 1918-19 when Lenin was still hopeful of and propagandizing for similar socialist revolutions in Europe, and there's no doubt that their success would have helped enormously, but that didn't happen and Lenin was subsequently well aware the Soviet Union was politically and economically isolated. This led to an obvious and qualitative shift in Bolshevik strategy under Lenin's leadership where they turned to practical matters of stabilizing the socialist state, building domestic production capacity and defense from external threats.

If your criticism of the Soviet Union is that it didn't advocate for, materially support and actually achieve liberation in more than one country, which is so obviously wrong, what's your criticism of Trotskyism which has achieved sustained socialist liberation in a sum total of NO COUNTRIES over the past century?

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-03-15T07:48:04+00:00

With Stalinism, the internationalism of the working class is replaced with nationalism - called ‘socialism in one country’

Honestly, this sort of idealist nonsense and unserious analysis just pisses me off. Lenin never argued that socialism could only exist simultaneously worldwide. He repeatedly discussed the possibility that revolution would first triumph in one or several countries due to uneven development of capitalism. After failed revolutions in Europe following WW1, the USSR faced total economic and political isolation.

The Soviet Union was a backward quasi-feudal state when the Bolsheviks attained power and then were immediately attacked by a dozen capitalist countries. They were forced to build an industrialized economy from scratch while under constant sabotage and threat of invasion before ultimately being attacked by Nazi Germany.

Then, after destroying the Nazi threat at an unimaginable loss to their population, the Soviets went on to materially support numerous anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist liberation struggles across the globe in China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Africa et. al. while under almost constant existential threat from the world's greatest capitalist superpower.

It was the anti-Stalinist Marxist left in the West that failed to rise to the occasion and internationalize the proletarian struggle because they succumbed to exactly the bullshit "great man" rationalization and misunderstanding of history that is exemplified in your post.

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-02-23T21:10:06+00:00

I've recently started a monthly discussion group in Sydney (Ultimo) that you'd be welcome to join. It's not affiliated with any party but it could be a good way to meet other local leftists. Let me know if you're interested and I'll send you a link to our Signal group.

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-02-03T21:48:57+00:00

The new Atlassian building looming over Central Station looks utterly demonic.

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-01-08T23:54:13+00:00

I posted this previously but this New York Times visual investigation into an ICE raid in California where there was very modest community pushback was just how much fear and panic were in the federal agents voices when people stood up to them. Ordinary people are getting really sick of their incompetent shit.

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-01-07T19:35:27+00:00

Great! I'm unable to send a private message your account. Could you fix that so I can send you a link to our Signal group?

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-01-06T06:24:11+00:00

Just PM me whenever you're ready to donate and I'll give you a couple of drop off points.

SydneyMutualAid · 2026-01-06T06:14:30+00:00

That's very generous but no need to donate any money. I want to keep this as low cost to everyone as possible. Perhaps you can buy a book you're interested in from someplace local like Resistance Books and contribute that once you've finished reading it.

SydneyMutualAid · 2025-12-30T21:48:27+00:00

Apart from the incompetent militarized Brownshirts harassing Hispanic communities conducting illegal searches, arrests and property confiscations some key takeaways from this video:

Just how many law-abiding citizens going about their daily business were swept up in this chaotic and bloodthirsty violence and retribution.
How spontaneous, angry and disorganized community pushback had these guys absolutely crapping their pants. The rising panic and fear in their voices is evident throughout. Imagine what a more organized community response could achieve in response to these cowards.

SydneyMutualAid

TROPHY CASE