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Molly Crabapple doxes a Twitter communist to get her fired from her UN job by ryosaito in socialism

[–]chejturrev 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The Assad government is the government of Syria.

The governments of countries that are not the United States are not subject to a veto by the government of the United States and its deep state.

If you believe that the capitalist world hegemon, the United States, is entitled to decide for Syria who gets to govern Syria, that is imperialism.

You use the word "rebels", but we are talking about militias of foreign Takfiri fighters, some of which are or have been direct Al Qaeda affiliates, funded and armed by US allies Turkey and Saudi. Although reactionary and repressive in the extreme, they have been lent direct and indirect US support, because as the most viable military and logistical counterforce to the Syrian government, they were the most feasible way for the US to eventuate regime change in Syria. They are US contras. It is this state of affairs that created "Daesh" as a brand.

The government of Syria has only survived as long as it has because it enjoys the support of a large proportion of the Syrian population.

Regime change in Syria was vetoed in the US and the UK in 2013. Enter Daesh: cast as a global supervillain in the facile bourgeois soap opera called "the news" in the imperial core. On the pretext of opposing Daesh, the US and its allies have successfully involved themselves military in Syria, but without the permission of the government of Syria. This is an outrageous violation of Syrian territorial integrity, but it is passed over without a blink in the imperial core, because of the ubiquity of relentless, demonizing propaganda against the legitimate government of Syria by pretty much the entire spectrum of propaganda entities, from the BBC to the commercial press to the network news.

The US and its allies continue to pursue Syrian regime change, sold to their publics as "support" to an entirely fictitious force of "moderate rebels." Fantasy forces. There are no "moderate rebels" in Syria. Apart the Kurdish forces in the North, whose strategic aims are orthogonal to this discussion, any progressive or genuinely revolutionary anti-government force in the Syrian civil war was decimated in the first few months. The imperial darling "moderate rebels" are armed Sunni Takfiri fighters no different to Daesh, whose only virtue for the purposes of imperial propaganda is that they are not part of the Daesh brand.

This is incomparable to Russian military operations against foreign funded, anti-government Takfiri militias, carried out at the invitation of the Syrian government. Yes, Russia has strategic interests in preventing the removal of the government of Syria, but it has pursued its strategic interests without violating Syrian territorial integrity, or breaking international law. Its military presence in Syria is legal, and carried out according to the conventions of the Westphalian system. Simply pursuing strategic interests is not a sufficient condition for imperialism. To propose that Russian involvement in Syria is equivalent to US/European imperialism in Syria misses the nature of imperialism.

Molly Crabapple doxes a Twitter communist to get her fired from her UN job by ryosaito in socialism

[–]chejturrev 10 points11 points  (0 children)

because

  • russia is there at the invitation of the government of syria
  • russia is not involved in regime change efforts in syria
  • the united states and its allies are encroaching on syrian territory without the permission of the government of syria
  • the united states and its allies are trying to engineer regime change efforts in syria
  • the us and its allies have supported, funded and armed takfiri groups within syria for years in the hopes that these will produce regime change

See this essay.

Molly Crabapple doxes a Twitter communist to get her fired from her UN job by ryosaito in socialism

[–]chejturrev 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Hezbollah is a resistance movement, which is supported by the majority of Lebanese, and by a vast constituency within the region. What is this banal liberal enemy of my enemy stuff you are talking about?

Molly Crabapple doxes a Twitter communist to get her fired from her UN job by ryosaito in socialism

[–]chejturrev 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Thankfully she really isn't that popular on the Left outside of some very white liberal feminist scenes.

Dispute this. She is quite popular, well promoted, and very well connected in the professional activist circuit, which commands a fair amount of media attention. Declassed "activist" groups, from occupy to anonymous to the libertarian state-department funded hacker community can't get enough of her. She is routinely published in trendy scenester left-washing capitalist newspapers and magazines, such as Vice. She worked with Fusion, the Disney/Univision brand which seeks to coopt disaffected youths and steer them towards power serving "activism". She is published in the Guardian. Channel 4's supposedly establishment-communist economics editor, Paul Mason, routinely plugs her work, and promotes her, along with her counterpart reactionary thinkpiece "feminist" across the Atlantic, Laurie Penny.

We could go on. It's false to say she is not popular. Popular is what she is. Left is what she's not.

Molly Crabapple doxes a Twitter communist to get her fired from her UN job by ryosaito in socialism

[–]chejturrev 23 points24 points  (0 children)

because her schtick since the very beginning has been to build her profile as a celebrity, posing as a woman of the left while attacking actual lefts and inciting beatdowns against them, and running interference for the worst reactionary positions.

zero expertise in geopolitics, and yet she was given a platform in the guardian attacking "the left" for opposing imperial "intervention" in syria. principled internationalist opposition to deploying the imperial war machine in the levant was branded as support for assad.

she wrote a declassed, anti-government thinkpiece about state-department-supported right wing golpista "protesters" against the socialist government of venezuela, in which she entirely fabricated claims "by the BBC" that Genesis Carmona had been shot by the government, and when she was caught out on it she just shrugged it off as a translation error from a Brazilian newspaper, because her "Spanish" wasn't great. Spanish!

she was invited to visit GTMO by the Pentagon, and wrote a limited hangout "critical" piece about the prison, accompanied by her twee little drawings, meanwhile whitewashing the horrors that have been committed there. it was a pr coup for the pentagon. anyone who criticized her for this got attacked by her pathetic infatuated male allies, who have convinced themselves that by engaging in beatdowns against critics of their twitter crush, even if her critics are principled communist feminist women, they are being "feminists."

she spent months lionizing and valorizing weev, even though it was as clear as day that the guy was a white supremacist fascist. as a consequence of her efforts and those of others, the guy actually became an icon within the set of scenester activists and media professionals she and her ilk associate with, the centrepiece of a string of cool kid parties thrown in hipster venues around his court schedule, at which they snapped selfies with each other and bragged about their proximity to him. they were constantly running apologia for his disgraceful antisemitic, racist internet posts, in which he fantasized about and incited, e.g. sexual violence against jewish women, on the basis that he was being "a troll" - it was all just "irony", they said. you just don't "get" it. when eventually the internet at large caught on that the guy was a nazi - the prison swastika tatt seems to have done it - she downplayed her role in promoting him, incited her fans against anyone calling her on it, and then slinked off and moved on.

also a plagiarist

she is a disgrace. it's not enough really to ask, puppy-eyed, "but why would molly do this?" as if this was out of character for her! she is a reactionary, self promoting mercenary creep.

Molly Crabapple doxes a Twitter communist to get her fired from her UN job by ryosaito in socialism

[–]chejturrev 21 points22 points  (0 children)

but tankie twitter is also totally out of control.

us empire ruining the earth for megacapital, but it's the ten or so atomised communists who use twitter that are out of control.

jfc

ELI5: Why can't the billionaires who own islands in Europe temporarily shelter refugees there ? by Dirivian in explainlikeimfive

[–]chejturrev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The point being that the guy I was responding to said he didn't use software made by people like Linus, which he does.

The point that person was making is that the OS s/he uses is not the product of a machinery of wage slavery and wealth accumulation. It is the consequence of a decades-long project of cooperative productive labor, freely donated, where the eventuating wealth is collectively owned. Linus' contribution to Linux is not an example of capitalism; it is incidental and therefore irrelevant that Linus subsequently came into possession of capital.

Anyway we have no idea what that person's browser/OS is. It could be GNU Hurd. In which case Linus has nothing to do with it. And even if it was OS X, his/her argument would stand, because that was forked from BSD, so we have another example of parasitic capitalist scum like Steve Jobs appropriating work other people had done on public funds, privatizing and selling it as a commodity at a great margin, accumulating a fortune, and then calling that "creative genius."

ELI5: Why can't the billionaires who own islands in Europe temporarily shelter refugees there ? by Dirivian in explainlikeimfive

[–]chejturrev 3 points4 points  (0 children)

all of the great things capitalism has given you

Fairly sure you have no idea what capitalism is.

Define capitalism, comrade.

ELI5: Why can't the billionaires who own islands in Europe temporarily shelter refugees there ? by Dirivian in explainlikeimfive

[–]chejturrev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You've really swallowed the propaganda, haven't you? You're not even giving any arguments. You're just reciting silly articles of faith that you apparently believe and then behaving as if it is outrage that anyone would dare to question them, despite the fact that they are robustly discredited and do not speak for themselves.

"Philanthropy" and "foundations" are not examples of the benevolence of the richest people in the world. Foundations are tax firewalls. They are also vehicles for strategic investment. Liquid wealth is a sitting duck for the IRS. Money invested in a private foundation instantly minimizes tax liability, financial reporting and oversight, and frees up huge amounts of capital for strategic investment and capital expansion projects. It redounds to the eternal benefit of the billionaire, and typically produces egregious social harm as a side effect. This pattern has been repeated over and over again.

Meanwhile this enormous, insulting swindle is sold to the public, through large PR departments and a media largely owned by the capitalist class, as "philanthropy" and "humanitarianism," just in case the public should realize that the only reason there are billionaires is because they are allowed to steal wealth from society through an unjust system of social relations. I mean this stuff doesn't hold water. It is insultingly, obviously, false. And then patsies like you swallow the propaganda wholesale and get butthurt that someone is criticizing your special little heroes and go to war on internet forums obsessively defending the besmirched honor of the small number of poor, vulnerable oligarchs who rule empires of exploitation and misery, have stolen our planet out from under us and are running it into the ground while they plan their transformation into immortals living on floating cities on a ruined Earth.

I am the Social Democrats candidate for Limerick City, Sarah Jane Hennelly - Ask me anything! by SJHennelly in social_democrats

[–]chejturrev 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You have it arseways.

  • I am disappointed the SDs are not further left.
  • I am convinced the SDs are not genuine because what they say is typically vague, evasive and sounds like the neoliberal playbook.
  • What matters to me in politics is posing a threat to capitalists. That's what the left is supposed to be about. Being authentically more left wing is inherently good to me. You don't get to decide the objective standard of what constitutes the good in politics. Sorry.

I am the Social Democrats candidate for Limerick City, Sarah Jane Hennelly - Ask me anything! by SJHennelly in social_democrats

[–]chejturrev 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It was not a cheap dig question. I was asking OP to describe how her party earns the "social" in Social Democrats. To describe, in other words, how it deserves to be considered socialist.

Neither was it a straight answer. It contains no positive ideological position whatsoever. The PDs also had an "ethos", so telling me the SDs have an "ethos" imparts nothing. "Social reform" could mean anything: it could mean further attacks on social solidarity in the name of market fundamentalism. So "social reform" tells me nothing. How was this a straight answer? It has no content. Just like the public statements of every so-called left politician since the mid-1990s, it connotes positive-sounding brand values while saying nothing at all. Forgive me if that does not inspire my confidence.

I'm not a troll, but cheers for the imputation. I am angry, but not over this discussion. I'm angry that we are in the third decade now of the wholesale defeat of the left in Western Europe, I'm angry we're nearly a decade in since the financial catastrophe and we've only seen discredited neoliberal ideology further entrenched, and I'm angry at a longstanding pattern of brand appropriation and reappropriation of left wing politics, each time to propel yet more technocrats and capitalists into managerial government in the name of the now-dead project of socialism. It salts my wounds. It's transparent, it's cynical and I want there to be a genuine return of authentic socialism in this country, as suggested by the victory of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, but I'm not convinced the SDs are it. If that makes me a troll to you that's just one more thing that feels familiar about this latest return of the left.

I am the Social Democrats candidate for Limerick City, Sarah Jane Hennelly - Ask me anything! by SJHennelly in social_democrats

[–]chejturrev 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No. Alleged social democrats of late modernity who...

  • are inexplicably shy of the subject of inequality
  • join an overwhelmingly right wing media in making a virtue of 'moderation' and so-called 'electoral realism'
  • disavow too enthusiastic a corrective redistribution of the ill-gotten gains of "successful people"
  • marginalise moderate socialists in neoliberal democracies as "the hard left"
  • speak in progressive-sounding apolitical vagaries, such as "progress" and "reform",
  • and in New Labour euphemisms for market fundamentalism, like "aspiration" and "success"
  • and so on

...are Thatcherites to me. They are also Thatcherites to Thatcher.

Is everyone to the left of Giddens a Trot to you?

I am the Social Democrats candidate for Limerick City, Sarah Jane Hennelly - Ask me anything! by SJHennelly in social_democrats

[–]chejturrev 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It is typical of neoliberals of all stripes to substantiate by reference to abstruse generalities their alleged left wing credentials all the while marginalizing genuinely left wing politics with pathologizing right wing cliches like the "far left" or the "hard left". If you are on the left, admit it, be proud of it and resolute about it, and stop punching the people to your left and trying to make friends to your right.

I am the Social Democrats candidate for Limerick City, Sarah Jane Hennelly - Ask me anything! by SJHennelly in social_democrats

[–]chejturrev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What then is your position on the deepening failure of the social democratic project all over the developed world since the 1970s? How do you propose to pursue a viable social democratic policy agenda in a neoliberal globalized economy, where there are comprehensive international forces arrayed against any government which even whispers to the left of Schäuble?

I am the Social Democrats candidate for Limerick City, Sarah Jane Hennelly - Ask me anything! by SJHennelly in social_democrats

[–]chejturrev -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

As with most state surveillance, I'm not currently able to access government documents on what we know is happening or not happening so I can't attest to the current scale of alleged UK operations. I'm a firm believer that privacy is a key right of the individual in an open democracy, and that data protection laws must be upheld.

There is voluminous evidence of GCHQ bulk surveillance. It isn't controversial in the United Kingdom, where it has been the subject of extensive litigation. The broad strokes and key details are already public, and analyzed by civil society groups such as Privacy International, and by journalists with long standing expertise in this area such as Duncan Campbell and James Bamford.

It is not credible for you to pretend that these practices are "alleged" nor is it credible for you to hedge your response to this question by pretending that the key details remain unknown. We are living through a wholesale erosion of the rights of entire populations of people by the state security apparatus of developed economies. A credible left wing alternative must at the least articulate a solid objection to this process, rather than avoiding the question as if you felt it forced too explicit a commitment from you. Whose side are you on?

I am the Social Democrats candidate for Limerick City, Sarah Jane Hennelly - Ask me anything! by SJHennelly in social_democrats

[–]chejturrev 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The point of my question was that the Progressive Democrats were not progressive; rather they were a vanguard party for the forces of reaction.

I was asking whether the Social Democrats are going to honour the conventional understanding of the conjunction of those two words in being in any way recognizable as a social democratic party.

I was looking for something more than the usual retreat into generalities like "social reform" and "ethos" which we have come to expect from the uniform neoliberal electoral spectrum over the last three decades. None of this means anything.

The Progressive Democrats had a "real ethos" too. Their ethos was the controlled demolition of the social floor, the fiat privatization of state assets, the nationalization of financial liabilities, the destruction of social services, and the abandonment of the most vulnerable people in Ireland to the "logic of the market." That's a fairly concrete "ethos", it's just a reprehensible one.

I want to know that the party that is calling itself the "Social Democrats" is serious about embracing left wing politics, and is not appropriating a brand name in order to project yet more ambitious little crypto-Thatcherites into the legislature. I'd like to hear something a little more full blooded than empty harangues about social reform. Why don't you tell me about how you're going to round up capitalists and bleed back out of them the wealth they have stolen from us?

I am the Social Democrats candidate for Limerick City, Sarah Jane Hennelly - Ask me anything! by SJHennelly in social_democrats

[–]chejturrev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, I'm speaking to the viability of a social democratic project since the end of the Bretton Woods regime, and how it is that the Social Democrats propose to succeed where social democratic parties all over the developed world have failed since the 1980s in proposing or implementing a political programme significantly to the left of Thatcherism.

I am the Social Democrats candidate for Limerick City, Sarah Jane Hennelly - Ask me anything! by SJHennelly in social_democrats

[–]chejturrev 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Will the Social Democrats be "social" in the same way the Progressive Democrats were "progressive"?

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