Anarcho-Bolshevik
‘The political desperadoes and ignoramuses, who say they would “Rather be Dead than Red”, should be told that no one will stop them from committing suicide, but they have no right to provoke a third world war.’ — Morris Kominsky, 1970
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Cake day: Aug 27, 2019
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- www.workers.org
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>Workers were also outraged by the company’s recent mandatory return-to-work policy during the ongoing pandemic and Amazon’s layoffs of 27,000 workers, attacks being experienced by workers throughout the high-tech industry.
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>The story on the ad’s exclusion was originally published by the Seattle Gay News, which obtained comments from Seattle Pride and Encore Media — the ad agency that manages advertisements for Seattle Pride. Seattle Pride’s leaders denied that they deliberately blocked the ad, claiming that it was actually just an “unfortunate series of miscommunications” and that “there was simply no space left for a full page ad.”
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>Comments from Encore Media to the Service Employees Union (SEIU, which SBWU is affiliated with) however, reveal the real reason the ad was blocked. “My concern is that Starbucks is one of [Seattle Pride’s] sponsors,” said a representative from Encore. “I do not want to jeopardize our relationship in any way, so I flagged the ad for their approval.” (sgn.org)
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>Starbucks has platinum sponsor status with Seattle Pride, which requires donating at least $150,000. It’s clear that Seattle Pride has been bought off by Starbucks and is throwing working-class LGBTQ+ people under the bus in favor of a multinational coffee behemoth with a reputation for brutal mistreatment of its workers.
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>Torrents of U.S. media reports had told us to expect cities under martial law, military forces of occupation and heavily armed police on every corner. The Indigenous population, especially the Uygur people, are described as an impoverished and isolated population, who are allegedly forced into slave labor and doing backbreaking work in the fields or being locked inside concentration camps.
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>Coming from the New York City area, I expected a police force of at least equal size. The New York City police force is the world’s eighth-largest armed body. On our return, reports of “Stop and Frisk” programs centered on Black and Brown youth dominated the media: “Too many people in New York City are stopped, searched and frisked illegally, federal monitor says.”
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>What we saw in Xinjiang was vibrant cities — Kashgar and Urumqi — full of tens of thousands of tourists, along with the local population of many nationalities. Huge and colorful marketplaces and bazaars, almost all of them run by Uygur families, stretched for many blocks. Busy subway lines crossed the cities. Everywhere we saw food markets brimming with inexpensive produce. Restaurants, cafes and street food stalls were packed with local people. In the evenings, the streets were full — not silent and ominous.
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- vocinfo.substack.com
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>As told by his obituary, Stephen J. Skubik (1916–1996) “started life in a basket left on the doorstep of a Ukrainian church in Philadelphia,” and in his Depression-era teens, “spent a year traveling across the country as a railway hobo.”
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>By 1970, he “[suggested the concept](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1971-pt14/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1971-pt14-5-3.pdf) of building a monument to the victims of Communism” according to Donald Miller, the executive director of the NCNC and the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation, which was a front for the Moonie cult, or [Unification Church](https://vocinfo.substack.com/p/the-unification-church). Skubik and Miller served on the “American Action Committee” of the AACCC, which announced “Operation M” to create a memorial for the “victims of communism.”
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>In 1993, the year that Congress “encouraged” the NCNC to “create an independent entity” for its victims of communism memorial project, a 77-year old Stephen Skubik self-published a poorly written, dubious and conspiratorial book, “The Murder of General Patton,” according to which **the author had a life changing meeting with OUN-B leader Stepan Bandera, the infamous Ukrainian [Axis] collaborator**, just a week after World War II ended in Europe.
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>Stephen Skubik wrote that he subsequently questioned other Ukrainian nationalist leaders, who repeated the rumor about Patton. Skubik “interrogated” General Pavlo Shandruk, who had commanded the remainder of the Ukrainian Waffen-SS division, and Professor Roman Smal-Stocki, who was also wanted by the Soviets as a Nazi collaborator.
(Emphasis added.)
Skubik was also partly responsible for encouraging more aggression towards the people’s republics, euphemistically called a policy of ‘liberation’:
>The Ukrainian Congress Committee sent Stephen J. Skubik, future VOC founder Lev Dobriansky, and three other representatives to the 1952 Republican national convention, where they urged the platform committee to adopt a foreign policy plank “advocating and supporting freedom and independence for all nations enslaved by Soviet Russia.”
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- ojs.library.queensu.ca
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>Estimating the number of homosexual men in the SA or any right‐wing group is extremely difficult because as Theweleit so accurately determines, “In the absence of statements from fascist men directly involved in sexual relationships with other men — it is impossible to determine the nature of those relationships in any detail.” However, there is reason to believe that there was a notable amount of homosexual presence in Volkisch parties, including the NSDAP.
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>In a 1926 survey done by The League of Human Rights, a homosexual rights advocacy group based in Berlin, about 3% of the more than 30,000 male members of the League said they were members of far‐right völkisch parties (including the Nazis). 21% said they belonged to the conservative DNVP (Deutschnationale Volkspartei; originally a conservative monarchist party that in the later Weimar period aligned itself more closely to radical far‐right parties like the NSDAP).
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>Furthermore, there were some homosexuals in SA leadership whose sexual orientation was an open secret in the [NSDAP] for a long time, most notable of which were the SA co‐founder and commander Ernst Röhm, Edmund Heines (Röhm’s deputy), and Gerhard Rossbach (an associate of Röhm who supplied early SA troops with their signature brown shirts).
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>As demonstrated, the SA’s balancing act depended on its homosexual members keeping their proclivities a secret, giving the organization plausible deniability against accusations of harbouring homosexuals.
It is interesting to note that these men were critical of how activists such as Magnus Hirschfield promoted gay acceptance. On the contrary, gay fascists thought that they should earn heterosexuals’ acceptance by proving that they were just as manly — if not more so — than the ideal straight man. In short, whereas some gay men opposed the neopatriarchy, gay fascists sided with it.
As for queer women, I know only of the case of [Violette Morris](https://allthatsinteresting.com/?p=255704), who gained the Fascists’ interest as early as 1936 and later collaborated with the French Gestapo. She had access to black market goods and she transported Axis officials. There are also rumors that she committed her own atrocities, but these remain unconfirmed.
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>The U.S./NATO forces have been matching the Russian efforts with a buildup of their own, doubling NATO’s presence with ships, submarines and patrol aircraft. War games were held in March 2022, within days of the Russian entry into Ukraine. Known as Cold Response, these games are held every two years enabling the NATO forces to rehearse coordinating and commanding personnel and supplies from 27 different countries, with no common language, under Arctic conditions.
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>The U.S. announced last week that it will open a consular office in Tromsø later this year to monitor Russian moves in the region.
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>The U.S. has expanded its military presence and training to enhance its Arctic preparedness. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in the world, is operating in Norway’s Arctic waters under NATO command. There are currently 150 jets from 14 NATO nations training in the region, more above the Arctic Circle than at any time since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
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>Over a hundred protesters turned out in what organizers called the first Pride month event in Philadelphia. Tyrell Brown, newly elected Executive Director of Galaei, was among the speakers. The Queer and Trans, Black, Indigenous and people of color radical social-justice organization is the host of the 2023 Philly Pride March on June 4. Trans activist Jazmyn Henderson, with ACT-UP, chaired the rally and led chants.
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>Ecuadorians are angry about the insecurity, the governmental incompetence and Lasso’s total indifference to the needs of the masses. People remember that life was better six years ago — before Lenín Moreno became president, before the COVID-19 pandemic, before prison massacres and surging street violence.
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>La Vía Campesina (the International Peasant’s Movement) on May 20, demanded that Lasso must “Respond immediately to the serious social crisis that Ecuador is facing, with high rates of hunger and child malnutrition, poverty, migrations, unemployment of almost half of the population, lack of investment in health and education, and an out-of-control level of violence and insecurity due to criminal gangs.”
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>The peasants’ group also demanded “Lasso must refrain from deepening neoliberalism, extractivism, the privatization of basic services, the handover of natural goods — oil, mining, the radio-electrical spectrum — to transnational corporations.”
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:::spoiler [Transcript]
Yo future me, I’m really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but Jackie Arklöv was the best black Neo‐Nazi of all time!
:::
(I should have had the idea for this image six months ago.)
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- academic.oup.com
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Do the middle ages have minimal relevance to modern history? Contrary to first impressions, maybe not. Research indicates that anti‐Jewish sentiment from the mediaeval period never fully faded away, and only made the NSDAP’s job of attracting support easier:
>Churches from Cologne to Brandenburg displayed (and many still display) a *Judensau*, the image of a female pig in intimate contact with several Jews shown in demeaning poses. The same type of sculpture can also be found in Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, France, and the Low Countries.
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>Before turning to the regression results, we examine differences in various twentieth-century outcome variables between cities that did and did not experience Black Death pogroms. As Table IV shows, pogroms in the 1920s were substantially more frequent in towns with a history of medieval anti-Semitism.
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>Similarly, vote shares for the Nazi party (NSDAP) in 1928 and for the anti-Semitic DVFP in 1924 (when the Nazi Party was banned) were more than a percentage point higher—which is substantial, given that the average vote shares were (respectively) 3.6% and 8%.
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>Our three proxies for anti-Semitism in the 1930s also show marked differences for towns with Black Death pogroms: the proportion of Jewish population deported is more than 10% higher, letters to the editor of *Der Stürmer* were about 30% more frequent, and the probability that local synagogues were damaged or destroyed during the *Reichskristallnacht* of 1938 is more than 10% higher.
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>Unlike the Stonewall Rebellion commemorated throughout June, however, Pride in the CLE had dozens of corporate sponsors and contingents in the march. The list of notorious exploiters who endorsed the event included Amazon, McDonald’s, Target, Sherwin Williams and First Energy.
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>Many Greater Clevelanders marched with the companies they work for, but the largest contingent was of at least 1,000 unaffiliated individuals. This was the most youthful and multinational section of the march.
Related: [*Celebrating Pride Philly style*](https://www.workers.org/?p=71438) and [*Buffalo Pride 2023*](https://www.workers.org/?p=71435).
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>As an ally in the United Front with the CPC, Taimeng works resolutely toward a united China and promotes policies that mutually benefit people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Su Hui, chairperson of the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League’s Central Committee, said at a press conference in March: “With the word ‘Taiwan’ in our party’s name, one of our missions is to carry on Taiwan compatriots’ noble tradition of loving our nation and homeland, and try our best to realize the motherland’s reunification.”
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>Awareness of and support for the movement to Stop Cop City is now national and international. This planned militarized police training center will be utilized by various U.S. police forces and, like the notorious School of the Americas located in Columbus, Georgia, will attract trainees from repressive governments around the world.
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>Uprisings of workers, youth and students, retirees, farmers, women and LGBTQ2S+ people have the global bankers and bosses worried they are losing control of their profit system.
([Alternative link.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292061831))
To a certain extent, this was the fault of the U.S.’s xenophobia, which alienated many Italians and made them desperate for acceptance.
>Mussolini had been aware since the early 1930s that the only effective way to exploit Italian Americans for political purposes was to mobilize them as a lobby. He, therefore, **encouraged them to become U.S. citizens so that they would be eligible for the suffrage and, as U.S. voters, could pressure American political institutions such as Congress and the Presidency into adopting policies that benefited Italy and Fascist interests.**
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>This strategy reached a climax during the Italo‐Ethiopian War, when the “Little Italies” supported Mussolini’s war efforts and lobbied Congress to prevent the passing of a neutrality legislation that would have granted the U.S. president the power to impose economic sanctions on Italy.
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>Mussolini thought that Italian communities would be more useful if they turned into American electoral lobbies. In his view, Italian Americans could be loyal U.S. citizens providing that they maintained strong spiritual ties to their mother country, which involved promoting Italy’s interests in the United States.
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>In the Spring of 1932, *Il Duce* officially stated to German journalist Emil Ludwig: ‘*We consider it a matter of principle to ask our fellow countrymen *[Italian Americans]* to be loyal to the State in which they live. If they acquire full citizenship in the spiritual sense as well as in the material, they count for something; but if they hold themselves aloof from their adoptive land, they remain helots. **Since we began to advocate the policy of assimilation, many Italian‐born citizens have attained high positions over there.***’
(Emphasis added.)
:::spoiler [Additional excerpt]
Nevertheless, despite the Fascists’ best efforts, young Italian‐Americans were less excited to embrace Fascism:
>In the interwar years, young Italian Americans experienced generational clashes with their parents. The latter lived according to Italian traditions and rejected the American‐style behaviour of their children who regarded Italy as a far and away country that existed only in their parents’ and grandparents’ recollections.
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>The members of the second generation grew up during the years of Mussolini’s regime and experienced a harsh conflict with their parents. Young Italian Americans usually refused to speak Italian in public and were even ashamed of their ancestry.
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>They also thought of Italy as an unknown country. Few were aware of what fascism was. To most of them, it was just an obscure ideology that was very distant from their […] values. Some observers and scholars have held that young Italian Americans did not even accept fascism.
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lots of awful shit happens everywhere all the time for no fucking reason at all.
Sources used: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/162367
I honestly suspect that the majority of Taiwan’s supporters have no clue about its history other than its founding by anticommunists. Either that, or they have a deeply cold and uncaring response to atrocities like these:
Economic and political conditions worsened for the people of Formosa after Chiang’s régime took over from the Japanese at the conclusion of the World War II. On February 27, 1947, a parade of Formosans was marching to present a petition to the Governor for a redress of grievances. Ambassador Stuart tells us what happened:
Without warning a machine gun mounted somewhere on the government building opened fire, swept and dispersed the crowd and killed at least four. (Page 926.)
Public resentment and anger mounted. So, Chiang’s Governor invoked martial law on the next day. And as Ambassador Stuart tells it: “Armed military patrols began to appear in the city, firing at random wherever they went.” (Page 927.)
A few days later a delegation of prominent citizens called on the Governor. Ambassador Stuart explains what happened:
They urged the Governor to lift martial law so that the dangers of clash between the unarmed civil population and the military would be averted. This the Governor agreed to do at midnight, March 1, meanwhile forbidding meetings and parades.
On that day busses and trucks, filled with squads of government troops armed with machine guns and rifles, began to sweep through the streets, firing indiscriminately. Machine guns were set up at important intersections. Shooting grew in volume during the afternoon.
At no time were Formosans observed to have arms and no instances of Formosan use of arms were reported in Taipei. Nevertheless, the military were evidently allowed free use in what appeared to be an attempt to frighten the people into obedience. (Page 927.)
(Emphasis added. Source.)
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>Glacier Northwest/CalPortland driver Mark Hislop, Teamsters Local 174, was among those whose 2017 strike led to the June 1 ruling. Hislop said this about the ruling: “Six years ago, this company forced us out on strike by refusing to bargain in good faith, and they’ve been coming after us in court ever since. As far as I’m concerned, today’s decision changes nothing for us Teamsters, and it will not stop us from fighting as hard as we can for strong contracts.”
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>In Massachusetts alone, a recent survey found that 1.8 million, one-third of the state’s adult residents, struggle with food insecurity, a 13% increase from 2020. The statewide hunger crisis disproportionately affects communities of color, as well as adults who identify as LGBTQIA+. Some 36% of Massachusetts households have reported that their children experience chronic hunger. (tinyurl.com/2xc28bu7)
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>Although the Pentagon budget stands at a record high of $842 billion, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have agreed to accept it, taken from budget cuts. The tens of billions recently spent bailing out failing banks such as SVB and First Republic also went unmentioned during the Congressional debate on “fiscal responsibility.”
I would like to remind everybody that contrary to what antisocialists think, ‘rich country’ does not automatically translate into ‘ordinary people are living pretty good’.
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>Like the banker he’s been all his life, Macron is obeying EU orders to make no concessions. However, the French president was unable to win a vote in parliament, even from other pro-capitalist parties, to pass the new pension plan. To impose these cuts on the working class, Macron was forced to use a maneuver in mid-March to pass the plan by decree.
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>Though this maneuver was technically legal and constitutional (Article 49.3), it was an insult to democratic rule. Workers’ anger exploded. Unionists in France, especially those in the industrial and transport unions who are members of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), held periodic walkouts. They stopped transit, held up refining fuel and withheld electric power. They showed just how vital the working class is in capitalist society.
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>The government’s sole response has been to use the capitalist state to assault the workers’ movement. It has ordered police to beat and arrest demonstrators and judges to keep them in jail awaiting trial and has made it illegal just to protest. Even people just walking near demonstrations have been arrested.
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>So far, Macron has refused concessions. The workers have refused to submit. The class struggle, instead of softening through some sort of negotiations, has intensified.
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>One of the bill’s lowlights is the suspension of the freeze on student loan payments — meaning young people struggling to make ends meet, working one or more low-wage jobs, will have another bill to pay.
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>An estimated 750,000 individuals could lose Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits under the bill, which raises from 50 to 54 the age at which a recipient is required to work at least 80 hours per month to receive food stamps. This would hit very poor, elderly and disabled people the hardest.
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>In addition the bill “effectively ratchets up requirements on states to show that very low-income parents receiving [Temporary Assistance to Needy Families] income assistance are meeting rigid work requirements that are often ill-suited to the needs of families.” (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, May 31)
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>WGA-West is focusing on stopping studios from moving work to New Mexico from Los Angeles. Several productions have been shut down with flying pickets sent to production sites at 3 a.m. Earlier in the week WGA strikers disrupted filming of “Duster” in Albuquerque with a 3:45 a.m. action. The Santa Fe action was coordinated by longtime WGA member George R.R. Martin and WGA-West representatives.
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>On strike since May 1, WGA-West and WGA-East are fighting for decent compensation in the midst of an entertainment industry restructuring. The growth of streaming over network programming, the replacement of long-term series with miniseries, and the use of “mini-rooms,” where writers create episodes for only a short number of weeks but are not involved in the full production of a show, have all cut into WGA members’ income and future work potential. Writers fear being turned into gig workers or being replaced altogether by artificial intelligence.
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>Workers testified inside L’Enfant Plaza at a Postal Board of Governors meeting, describing how bad the 10-year plan is. Postal workers must continue to fight back against these attacks to fight the privatization of the Postal Service.
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>The vast majority of those imprisoned at Petit-Goâve and throughout the Haitian prison system have not yet been tried or convicted of a crime. In fact, of a prison population of 11,580 persons as of May 2021, only 2,071 had been sentenced. Across Haiti, there were an estimated 80 to 100 prisoners who died of malnutrition and lack of medical care nationwide last year.
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>The United States has funded the construction of four prisons in Haiti since 2013. However, given its dominant influence over and funding of the Haitian National Police and its prison system, the U.S. bears responsibility for the deplorable conditions that characterize all of Haitian jails today.
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>The New Communist Party of Yugoslavia released a statement on its website that gives a more honest assessment of the anti-NATO protests than those published by the corporate media.
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>“The New Communist Party of Yugoslavia (NKPJ) and the Alliance of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia (SKOJ) condemn the brutal beating of citizens, who tried to prevent a violent assault on the buildings of these three municipalities by the Kosovo police, who threw tear gas at those present.”
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>The announcement further declares: “Washington, London and Brussels are constantly pressuring Belgrade to officially recognize the independence of the false ‘State of Kosovo,’ which the communist and workers’ parties of the world vehemently oppose, and demand that this retrograde Act, directed against peace, stability and prosperity, carried out for the sake of the expansionist goals of big capital should immediately end.” (nkpj.org.rs, May 30)
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>Declaring her hatred for an Amazon-influenced Seattle leadership, which has caused the eviction and dislocation of many working-class people, Morgan said, “I want Seattle to be a socialist city.” She pointed out: “We have never had a mental health system in Seattle. We demand a large public mental health facility with counselors and therapists.”
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>Morgan wants to extend and expand a tax on big companies like Amazon to provide vital services, including free public transit and affordable social housing. As one who has marched with Black Lives Matter against police murders, Morgan demands, “Defund and abolish the police!” and “Stop the brutal police sweeps of homeless camps, because without housing people die.” Her campaign calls for “full comprehensive rent control with no loopholes.”
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>Morgan was active in the Capitol Hill Organizing Project (CHOP). which resulted in the cops vacating the local police precinct. She is a board member of Capitol Hill Pride and a member of Social Outreach Seattle. As a person who is partially of Ukrainian descent, Morgan has marched to protest the U.S.-led proxy war against Russia, saying the U.S. is using Ukraine as a political pawn, and accuses the Ukrainian leadership of specifically attacking intersex lesbians.
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>Erdoğan has a long history of repressing the Kurdish people and imprisoning their leaders, as have past leaders of the country. And he has prevented or tightly controlled and arrested political protesters, including on International Women’s Day[.] Publicly, he denounced LGBTQ rights during his election campaign.
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>Erdoğan managed to scrape by against an opponent who was, if anything, more pro-imperialist than him. Leftist and Kurdish parties were not represented in the runoff at all and were repressed during the election. Neither candidate offered any meaningful change for the Kurdish population, a nationally oppressed minority, and there are reports that it was more difficult to vote in Kurdish areas.
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>It is clear that the struggle in Türkiye isn’t over.
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>As Moorehead wrote in 2021: “Nothing has changed before or after the Chauvin conviction and sentencing, in terms of Black and Brown people being racially targeted by the police. Nothing has changed for the families of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Shantel Davis, Elijah McClain, Walter Wallace Jr. and countless others calling for any kind of justice, whether these deaths were videotaped or not.
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>“As an act of solidarity, it is important to defend the right of the victims’ families and oppressed communities under constant police occupation to demand that accountability be arrests, convictions and jail time for killer cops. However, it is just as important for revolutionaries and socialists to call for the abolition of not only the police and other repressive arms like ICE but for the abolition of capitalism, a system that puts the profits of the superrich before the needs of the people. One cannot exist without the other.”
Italy, France, Great Britain and Germany signed a Four‐Power Pact, proposed by Mussolini, which would have allowed a gradual revision of the 1919 Peace Treaties. Worried about the effects this could have on their territorial claims, the countries of the Small Entente and Poland mobilised against this Pact. Although it was eventually not ratified, the negotiations around this Four‐Power Pact permanently damaged the Franco‐Polish relations.
Henri de Jouvenal, the French ambassador present at these negotiations, had accepted the idea of transferring the “Polish corridor” to Germany. Taking this as a signal that Poland could no longer rely on France’s protection, the Polish government sought to establish ties with Germany instead. This diplomatic turning point was concretised in the bilateral pact of non‐aggression, signed by representatives of Poland and the Third Reich on 26 January 1934.
Imagine for a moment that you are looking me in the eye, then answer me this:
Do you remember witnessing anybody in your country discussing this history?
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- rivista-incontri.nl
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([Alternative link.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335876683_The_Dante_Alighieri_Society_in_Warsaw_From_aristocratic_sociability_to_Fascism's_intellectual_showcasing_1924-1934))
>**The involvement of commercial partners became more evident, reminiscent of the public–private partnerships that the Mussolini régime was eager to encourage. The financial report of 1933 shows that sponsoring came from a number of Italian and Polish companies**: the Milanese engineering company Società Anonima Puricelli Strade e Cave, insurance companies (Riunione Adriatica di Sicurtà, and Assicurazioni Generali), the shipping company Italia-Cosulich Lloyd Triestino, the Warsaw-based Handlowy Bank, the car manufacturer Polski Fiat S.A., and the Warsaw firm Dom Handlowy Meyer.
(Emphasis added.)
Didn’t Hitler make it into the government democratically?
Not really. In fact, the NSDAP’s previously substantial support in the polls shrunk in 1932. The upper classes appointed him in January 1933 anyway; ‘liberal democracy’ had always been an illusion.
On the other hand, the Saar Basin was a microstate that voted overwhelmingly to join the Third Reich.
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Quoting Haile Larebo in [*Italian Colonialism*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=0E75DB6F534118D0783B6EF202E93F4B), page 86:
>In the case of [Fascist] colonialism, the “prestige of the White race” would be maintained by educating the workers in an imperialist mentality and employing a vigorous policy of racial segregation. **The points of reference were the examples of native reserves in South Africa and Kenya.**
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>In part to compensate for the lesser use of native labor, settlement was conceived of in the most grandiose terms, with figures arriving at 6,250,000 settlers who would be settled on 50,000, one‐hectare plots. Although the unrealistic nature of these claims was apparent within a few years of the invasion, Party officials and journalists continued to perpetuate the illusion.
(Emphasis added.)
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>G2 was headed by the irascible and vehemently anti‐communist Major General Charles A. Willoughby (1892–1972). Willoughby, who was the son of a German father and American mother and whose birth name was Adolf Tscheppe‐Weidenbach, had moved to America at the age of eighteen and become a naturalized U.S. citizen.
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>As Takemae Eiji notes, “fellow Occupationaires mocked the General’s stiff Prussian bearing, referring to him alternately as ‘Sir Charles’ and ‘Baron von Willoughby’… Regarded as a martinet by his subordinates — **he took a perverse pride in the epithet ‘Little Hitler’, and even MacArthur dubbed him ‘my loveable fascist’** — the volatile Willoughby nonetheless enjoyed the Supreme Commander’s full confidence”.
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>Eventually, it was the CIA that gained the upper hand in the struggle for intelligence control. Immediately after MacArthur’s dismissal in April 1951, Willoughby too returned to the United States in a state of “nervous slump”, handing over to the CIA his files, many of his contacts in Japan, and his messages of concern about the need to **continue protecting and nurturing the former senior Imperial Army officers whom he considered “essential for rearmament”.**
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>Arisue’s new position of trust with the American forces enabled him to provide financial support to Kawabe Torashirō, who also soon became a key informant to the occupation forces; and **Arisue then proceeded to recruit a number of other leading former military figures, including Hattori Takushirō, who had held key positions in the Imperial army general staff, and later Tsuji Masanobu, a wartime colonel and military strategist who was regarded as one of the architects of the invasion of Malaya and Singapore, and had gone into hiding during the early occupation era after being listed as a Class A war criminal.**
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>As Willoughby later wrote, **these people had been “the brains” of the former Imperial Japanese general staff**: “monographs were just a cover, to keep them from starving”. Equally importantly, the research activities of Arisue, Kawabe, Hattori, Tsuji and others enabled them to become crucial conduits of information for the U.S. occupiers — a rôle to which they took with enthusiasm.
>
>**They rapidly reestablished their authority over now unemployed former military subordinates, creating a web of private intelligence organizations which provided information to the Americans in return for a variety of monetary and other rewards.** This web, as we shall see, extended across borders into many parts of the former Japanese empire.
(Emphasis added.)
:::spoiler [Notes]
Particularly cautious readers will wonder if others were overreacting when they called Willoughby a fascist. On the contrary, these reactions were justified:
>**Charles Willoughby, an outspoken admirer of Benito Mussolini**, may also have been attracted to Arisue by the fact that the former intelligence chief had once served as Japanese Military Attaché in Rome, where he had developed a similar enthusiasm for Italian Fascism and reportedly attempted to develop a joint Japanese–Italian strategy towards the Muslim world.
>
>**Rather than being investigated for war crimes, therefore, Arisue was “interrogated, then called in for consultation very early in the occupation”, and “a working relationship apparently developed”.**
Reconstructing Axis history is at least twice as difficult as reconstructing Allied history. Axis officials, possibly anticipating that I love a good challenge, destroyed substantial amounts of potentially incriminating documents in 1945. Nevertheless, they shouldn’t get all the credit for making my figurative job more difficult:
>Arisue was soon installed by Willoughby in a section of G2’s headquarters in the NYK Building in central Tōkyō, where his ostensible task was to collect and analyze archives and write monographs about Japan’s wartime activities.
>
>One advantage of this appointment was the opportunities it provided, not only to unearth and preserve the archive of Japan’s military actions in Asia, **but also to make parts of it disappear from the record (so continuing a process which had begun with the destruction of many documents during the last days of the war). A U.S. official note from May 1946 advises that some Japanese War Ministry documents “of a special nature” are absent from the catalogue of files that had been drawn up, “having been left in the charge of Arisue.”**
(All emphasis added.)
:::
Communist memes trying not to meme about genocide
Apparently these dullards have never visited r/historymemes, because those anticommunists joke about famine in the people’s republics all the time. I’ve personally never seen any anticommunist object to the jokes on the grounds that they’re inappropriate (though I have seen a handful of them object to the jokes because of just how repetitive and tiresome they are).
To put things into perspective:
Joking about millions starving = comedy gold every time
Joking about an anticommunist conspiracy theory = WORSE THAN HOLOCAUST DENIAL
I’ve talked about it before, but now would be a good time to mention my most vivid memory of the show. I remember having the misfortune of catching an episode (one titled Goobacks, from 2004) and there was one particular moment that always struck me as incongruous.
This is a xenophobic redneck asking another xenophobic redneck how they could prevent immigrants—‘people from the future’—from obtaining employment:
‘All right! So, any ideas how we can stop the future from happening?’
‘How about we cause more global warming, so that in the future, the polar ice caps melt, and it ushers in a new ice age?’
‘How the hell is global warming gonna cause an ice age?!’
‘Well you know, the… global warming could bring on like a climate shift or somethin’?’
‘Chet, you are a fuckin’ [insert slur here], you know that?! Even if global warming were real—which all proven scientific data shows it isn’t—you think an ice age can just happen all of a sudden-like? It would take millions of years for a climate shift to happen!’
‘Well I was just tryin’ to be helpful.’
‘Well help yourself to a fuckin’ science book, ’cause you’re talkin’ like a fuckin’ [insert slur here]!’
It was possibly the most blatant case that I’ve seen of a writer ranting at his audience. Not only could the dialogue have easily been deleted without distorting the plot, it was so out‐of‐character for this guy that even I noticed (I was generally less observant back then). And, hopefully, it goes without saying that there is no need for anybody to get this irritated over one silly question.
Honestly… usually I just tune out these climate stories because they are nothing but the same shitty news over and over and over and over and over again, and (almost) nobody doing anything about the situation.
Yes, I get it: the earth keeps getting shittier. What do you want me to do about it, hang a bunch of fossil fuel executives and bulldoze their factories?
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- archive.is
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>Seen as antithetical to traditional masculine ideals, gay men in Fascist Italy were targeted for discrimination and oppression—even though technically there had been no laws outlawing consensual same-sex relations.
>
>Mussolini believed homosexuality to be an imported vice and didn’t want to officially recognise activity that he considered to be fundamentally incompatible with a strong fascist country.
>
>“Fascism was especially keen on spreading the myth of a stereotypical Italian virility,” explains researcher Tommaso Giartosio, co-author of the 2006 book *The City and the Island* which explored the internal exile of gay men to the island of San Domino in Fascist Italy.
>
>“The repression of homosexuality did take place, but it was carried out by the police very discreetly, through a procedure that deliberately avoided trials or any other kind of publicity.”
>
>“When several hundred gay men were arrested in about half of Italy’s provinces, the newspapers didn’t report it at all.”
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- academic.oup.com
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- 8d
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cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/530122
> :::spoiler [Excerpt]
> >On 27 May 1937, R. was interned at Sachsenhausen concentration camp under protective custody. On 5 February 1938, R. and Gertrud were divorced. R. was released from Sachsenhausen six weeks later, on 22 March 1938, and by October that year Gertrud had remarried.
> >
> >R. believed that Gertrud was the one to denounce her to the Gestapo, a deep betrayal that had landed her in Sachsenhausen. According to R., Gertrud told the Gestapo that she knew nothing of R.’s gender non-conformity, claiming a narrative of ‘deceit’ that would have been familiar to the authorities.
> >
> >Up until this point in history, gender-crossing behaviours were often linked to espionage and theft. Claiming deceit would protect Gertrud from accusations of adultery and would legitimize her divorce and remarriage.
> >
> >Gertrud’s actions are less shocking when contextualized within the climate of fear in [the Third Reich], in which wider society functioned as an unofficial branch of the Gestapo, with neighbours and even loved ones denouncing those who did not belong in the *Volksgemeinschaft*.
> >
> >Gender nonconformity constituted a heightened ‘risk’ category in terms of drawing negative attention to visible queerness, and the practice of alerting gender non-conforming people to the police in [the Third Reich] was common, even within queer circles.
> >
> >[…]
> >
> >While interned in Sachsenhausen, R. continued to experience betrayal. Her mother, Alice, wrote letters to the Youth Welfare Office, who took R.’s children away from her. While her mother ‘did not care’ for the children emotionally, she gained custody of them when the state deemed both R. and her wife incapable of looking after them.
> >
> >Alice also cleared out all items from R.’s flat, removing her economic security and, according to R., pushing R. to ‘lose interest in life’. R. would later reflect on ‘what moves the woman to want to get rid of me’, because Alice ‘continued to work against’ R. after 1936.
> >
> >Despite her forced de-transition, R.’s mother continued to spurn her — the sharp break between the Weimar and [Fascist] eras blurred by the continuity in familial rejection. There is no downplaying the crushing reality of the post-1933 world. But for R. the significant watershed was 1936. The greatest losses were her gender and her closest relationships.
> >
> >Released from Sachsenhausen in March 1938, R. was now childless and partnerless. Yet she did not attempt to avoid repeat offences or reinternment after her stay at Sachsenhausen. As will become clear, R. suffered over the course of the ensuing years, but her life cannot be captured with the simple juxtaposition of a queer haven destroyed by the unyielding brutality of [anticommunist] violence.
> >
> >[…]
> >
> >For R., much of her personhood and self-worth was linked to her being allowed to live as a woman. Through her de-transition, she had suffered a profound deprivation of humanity. It also signalled a change in her personality and personal relationships. While the [Fascist] state heterogeneously persecuted R. from this point onwards, her de‐transition evoked greater personal and interpersonal damage than direct forms of punishment and incarceration.
> >
> >R.’s emotional state in 1941 was bleak: not only could she no longer live as the gender that gave her the most self‐worth, but she was also alone, plagued by voices that buttressed her sense of worthlessness, abusing alcohol to stem the feelings she could not bear, without the resilience necessary to prevent herself acting on self-destructive behaviours.
> >
> >In the eyes of the court, repeated imprisonment and internment had not altered R.’s behaviour, indicating the need for alternative measures to be taken. The judge overseeing R.’s prosecution in 1941 therefore saw no use in further carceral punishment, and instead sent for her to be psychologically assessed so that she might be sent to a psychiatric institute. The presiding judge for her previous offence had also had R.’s ‘state of mind’ assessed.
> >
> >In 1938, Dr. Frommer had produced a highly detailed report, which concluded that R. was a transvestite and a masochist. Dr. Fommer noted that R. had an ‘abnormality of the sex drive’, but she was ‘certainly not a dangerous moral offender in the sense of the relevant provisions of the penal code’. This was Dr. Frommer’s way of absolving R. of accusations against §175 while still acknowledging her unorthodox sexual tastes.
> >
> >[…]
> >
> >R. was not a prized *Volksgenosse* (member of the people’s community) of the SS ilk, nor homosexual, but she was ‘Aryan’ and unstable. Indeed, these characteristics played a central rôle in her treatment.
> >
> >Jennifer Evans’s work has shown that transvestism was of ‘the worst kind’ when perceived as an act of homosexual prostitution. But the contrast of this with R.’s case confirms Jane Caplan’s hunch that there was no decisive and uniform response to transness from the [anticommunist] state.
> >
> >This mirrors Samuel Huneke’s formulation of the ‘heterogeneous persecution’ lesbians were subject to in the Third Reich, wherein how lesbians were treated differed greatly depending on the categories additional to ‘lesbian’ that were assigned to them.
> >
> >R. occupied a liminal place in the [Fascist] carceral system. She was not clearly criminal (homosexual), but was a public nuisance to the *Volksgemeinschaft*; she had an ‘abnormal sex drive’ and was a *Transvestit*, but she was worthy of medical care and treatment, and given a chance to re-establish her place in [Fascist] society.
> >
> >[…]
> >
> >On the morning of 12 March 1943, R. was found hanging in one of the toilet cubicles in the Wittenau. The subsequent report stated that R. had committed suicide the night before and was found that morning by the caretaker.
> >
> >[…]
> >
> >R.’s gendered sense of self had tentatively found validation in the form of womanhood and femininity before 1936. But since that world had been flattened with the [Fascist] takeover, she could no longer inhabit it. Perhaps R. could no longer find a sense of place in the world or self within the gender binary, so she untethered herself from it.
> >
> >This can be interpreted as her letting go: a signal of her intentions in March 1943. If she could never see a future in which she could live again as a woman, she would be neither man nor woman — she would become nothing.
> :::
> \
> While normally I’m impersonal when I comment on these anecdotes, I want to take this moment to express my deepest sorrow and sympathy for this poor woman. Gerd R., I am so, deeply sorry. You didn’t deserve the life that you got. Rest in peace, wherever you are.
I tried to find a source for that Allende ‘quote’ and I found nothing of relevance on Google Books. Then I did a general search (through Sagasu) and it’s very telling how almost every single result there is a Reddit thread.
Speaking of which, here are some responses to the image.
Capitalist “antifascism” feels like watching a trainwreck in slow motion. (Keyword being ‘slow’.)
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- sci-hub.ru
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- 9d
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(The figurative kind, but also [the literal](https://books.google.com/books?id=MS25xxY2LKQC&pg=PA67), whose story is for another time.)
>**female gender nonconformity, transvestitism, or apparent lesbianism could lead to serious trouble with the Gestapo**, though not in simple, direct ways, and not necessarily in isolation from other aspects of a person’s life—thus not in a manner that some of the opponents of including women in the memorial would term “persecution.” **Perceived gender nonconformity might, for example, bolster an accusation of sabotage.**
>
>**Even absent an explicit campaign against lesbianism, some lesbians and female-to-male transvestites were harassed, terrorized, and subjected to violence by state and [NSDAP] officials and hostile neighbors at least in part on account of their gender or sexuality.** This maltreatment can be accurately termed “persecution,” though it was nothing like what men caught up in the effort to eradicate male homosexuality suffered.
>
>[…]
>
>Thus far, historians of lesbians in Nazi Germany have found a checkered record. Some women ran into serious trouble with the state on account of their sexuality. Others did not. Austria had an anti-homosexuality law that did apply to women, and women were convicted under it. Although Germany’s sodomy law did not apply to women, there were legal grounds for prosecuting women for same-sex sexuality.
>
>With the exception of the sodomy law, sex laws in Germany, including the age of consent law, were gender-neutral and therefore could be used against lesbians. They were applied in cases where the fact of the matter was simple lesbianism, not the crime with which the women in question were charged.
(Emphasis added.)
[Under Italian Fascism:](https://web.archive.org/web/20080804114345/http://www.zadigweb.it/amis/schede.asp?id=8&idsch=189)
>The case of lesbians is different [from men], as in Germany: they run into moral and social sanctions more than anything else, they are marginalized, perhaps even arrested, prosecuted with specious motivations such as supposed mental illnesses. Particularly avid in denouncing lesbianism were the priests and psychiatrists: given that female homosexuality was unpunishable by law, the stigmatization of lesbians occurred by declaring them mentally ill (hysterical).
See also: [*Lesbianism and Fascist Rule: Exploring the Discrepancies between the Persecution of Gay Men and Women in Nazi Germany*](https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/westernumirror/article/download/15129/11844).
Originally I was simply going to ignore this topic as it was too depressing (and I was too tired). After I went to sleep I had a dream(!) partly about it, and my response to the thread was — if I may say so myself — surprisingly good.
true anti-imperialism must oppose every imperialism, not just that of the United States.
To paraphrase what I wrote in my dream:
The Western left needs to get over the fact that this isn’t the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The United States attacked Iraq with the goals of destabilizing its currency, eliminating its products from the market, and preventing a challenge to U.S. hegemony. The Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine was the inevitable consequence of the U.S.’s neoimperialist expansion in the East; economically Ukraine is of little importance to Russia. It is of strategic importance to the U.S.
These two are not the same thing.
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- www.workers.org
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- 9d
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>The “Unions Strike Back” march, rally and dance party was called by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. It clogged the intersection of South Figueroa and West 12th streets for hours. A Teamsters flatbed truck served as the soundstage, positioned to target the California Democratic Convention, meeting across the street at the LA Convention Center. The CDC is a recipient of millions of dollars in donations from big studio bosses and their banking financiers.
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- www.workers.org
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- 9d
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>The overwhelming majority of Austrians do not want to go to war on the side of NATO. Only neutrality can provide security. We demand the observance and enforcement of neutrality, as well as an end to the economic war against Russia, which is costing us the most because of inflation. We call for resistance against the irrational acts of our elites!
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- www.workers.org
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- 9d
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>Without a clear exposé of the forces behind M4L, the Post’s analysis reads like a how-to instruction manual for people who may want to follow the group’s methodology. It even includes examples of handwritten complaint cards filed against specific books.
>
>The article goes so far as to suggest that Jennifer Pippin, a M4L member, may have a valid point in objecting to some LGBTQ+ books because of their sexual content, thus making excuses for her homophobia. If sexual content could be considered a valid reason for removing a book, then shelves of library romance and much of the literary fiction sections would be bare, and the Bible would have to go.
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- www.workers.org
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- 9d
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>Hundreds of graduates raised their fists and took turns in the line, many writing pro-union messages on their caps, including the crowd favorite: “F*!# Zaslav!” A few brave gowned graduates refused to cross the line, skipping the corporate pomp, but getting A+ for solidarity.
>
>[…]
>
>To support and join the writers’ strike lines, go to wgastrike.org.
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- www.workers.org
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- 9d
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>It is an honor to join you in celebrating the breaking of the unjust siege imposed on Syria. This siege was part of a global war, led by U.S. [neo]imperialism, and waged for more than 12 years. Many thousands of people were killed, and millions were displaced.
>
>We celebrate with you the end of the illegal freeze of Syria’s membership in the League of Arab States and the invitation to President Bashar Assad to the Arab Summit in Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia.
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- i.imgur.com
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- 9d
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- journals.uvic.ca
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>Not only was this newly established government in France fundamentally right wing, but they introduced antisemitic laws, built and controlled internment camps for “undesirables,” and instigated a roundup of more than one‐quarter of France’s native and refugee Jewish population, including women and children, **against previous Gestapo orders to round up only fit men.**
>
>**This government of France chose to implement certain Nazi‐like policies in ways that were independent from [Berlin’s] administrative orders, yet served a common goal.**
>
>[…]
>
>The independent enactment of racist policies is one of the central examples that demonstrate the collaborative nature of the Vichy Government.
>
>In the fall of 1940, a series of anti‐Semitic laws were created without any instruction from the occupying [Fascist] government and introduced within three to six months of the Vichy Government coming into power.
>
>Legislative changes were introduced three months after inauguration and began with the “abolition on August 27, 1940 of the ‘Marchandeau Decree”’, which repealed prior laws against anti‐Semitism in the media.
>
>[…]
>
>In addition, the new Vichy government had created a “Committee on the Jewish Questions” (Commissariat général aux questions juives) in 1940 that was led by Xavier Vallat.
>
>With the exception of ordering the registration of Jewish persons, “**none of these actions were forced upon by the [Third Reich]; on the contrary […] the [Third Reich] noted the rapidity and scope of French legislation with bemusement, opportunistic glee**, and even occasional annoyance”. The Vichy Government was in fact “eager to legislate, [and] prideful of tracking its own course on questions of race”.
(Emphasis added.)
See also: [The Third Reich interfered minimally in France’s private sector.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/104943)
Fucking hell, I was just listening to Amerika an hour ago and it inspired me to reflect on how the Fascists once tried to Germanize the world, failing where the U.S. succeeded.
I was a little reluctant to mention the inspiration because I was worried that that would have made others here berate me (I feel like I read somewhere that there were ties between Rammstein and neofascism, but I could be misremembering). Now that I know that Till Lindemann is basically a heavy metal Michael Jackson I’ll be careful to mention the inspiration critically.
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- www.degruyter.com
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- 11d
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([Alternative link.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365237481))
>By the end of 1940 and following the defeat of France, the former Bas‐Rhin and Haut‐Rhin departments were annexed to the [Third Reich’s] territory and Strasbourg progressively became the new administrative and political centre of the Gau Oberrhein, which united Baden and annexed Alsace.
>
>**This borderland territory of the Rhine area was perceived as a fundamental space in the Nazi policy, which intended to reshape racial European frontiers. Alsace was meant to become a Western march built for the defence of Germanness.** Thus, the Alsatian lands were subjected to Germanization policies that affected [Roma and Sinti] within this territory.
(Emphasis added.)
Note the class backgrounds of the victims:
>mainly musicians, basket‐makers, fairground artists and trailer dwellers linked to the travelling worlds of this transfrontier area between France, Germany, and Switzerland: Sinti, Manouches, Roma and Yenish experienced familial dislocations and endured persecution policies throughout the war.
In the same way that antisemitism benefited petty bourgeois gentiles, the oppression of Roma and Sinti must have benefited petty bourgeois whites: here you have a minority soaking up the worst of capitalism’s economic pressures, simultaneously reducing economic competition (for the white petty bourgeoisie) and freeing up space for future settlers. But Fascist capitalists’ motivations for oppressing ethnic minorities is a topic that I’d prefer to save for another day.
The rest of this paper is an examination of the evolution of a white supremacist policy in a territory under Axis control. It is pretty dry, so it might not be your cup of tea, but it’s good that somebody analysed this.
:::spoiler [Alternative excerpt]
>The study of the implementation of the genocidal policies in annexed Alsace underlines the methods used by [Axis] repressive forces to project onto this borderland space their own conception of [Roma], product of their racial imaginary and former police methods.
>
>Registration of presumed [Sinti and Roma], gathering of individual and familial data, transmission of records from Strasbourg to Berlin, inquiries into genealogical materials, and selections for deportation: these police and bureaucratic operations show how brutally [Axis] racial ideology found its own spatial expression in a recently annexed Western European borderland territory.
:::
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Quoting Alessandro Bufalini’s [*Italian Colonialism in Somalia: issues of reparation for the crimes committed*](http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2177-7055.2017v38n76p11):
>As an example one could mention the De Vecchi’s governorship (1923–1928), when **thousands of indigenous people were subjected to forced labor. In the same period, the [Fascist] governor undertook a campaign of aggressive military expansion marked by a violent repression against the civilian population.**
>
>Moreover, and notwithstanding the attempt to ignore or try to explain away evidence of the atrocities occurred, it is a fact that at the end of 1935 Italy extensively used poison gas in Africa. **Thirty‐six tons of mustard gas were apparently sent in Somalia in September 1935. In addition, in the very same year, a concentration camp was built at Danane, not far [south] from Mogadishu.**
>
>Indeed, the acts of violence against civilians date back to before the advent of Fascism. In the early twentieth century, the [Regio Esercito] wiped out entire populations stationed on Somali territory, for instance the Bimàls and Majerteens. In 1905, slavery was formally outlawed, but in practice widely tolerated for many years.
>
>In fact, the Benadir officials’ practice to purchase female slaves or coerce local women to be their mistresses has not been particularly obstructed when the Italian government asserted its direct administration of Somalia.
>
>[…]
>
>Although not much material is available, it seems beyond doubt that **forced labour was a widespread practice both in liberal and fascist Italian colonialism.** Mostly, this labour, based on the exploitation of indigenous people, was not needed for the military occupation, but was destined for the development of the agricultural sector and aimed at favouring the installation of Italian agrarian companies.
As discussed in Abdisalam M. Issa-Salwe’s *The Collapse of the Somali State*, Cesare Maria De Vecchi and his crew commenced a reconquest of Somalia which lasted from 1925 to 1928. To give [just one example of his exploits](https://sci-hub.ru/10.1017/S0960777304001602):
>While in Africa, De Vecchi ordered the extremely bloody action by Fascist squads against Somali dissidents on 28 October 1926 that caused about one hundred deaths.
[Concerning the Danane concentration camp](https://sci-hub.ru/10.1017/S0018246X96007042):
>of the 6,500 Ethiopians and Somalis who passed through the camp between 1936 and 1941, **3,175 died either through poor or insufficient food, malaria, enterocolitis, lack of hygiene, the unhealthy climate and salinated wells.**
([Details here, including on how some survived.](https://campifascisti.it/scheda_campo.php?id_campo=49))
Ian Campbell’s *The Addis Ababa Massacre* has a great deal of information on this camp, but for brevity’s sake I shall quote only one paragraph:
>**For most of the prisoners at Danane there was never any imputation that they had done anything wrong. They were not convicts, for they had never been convicted of any offence.** Thus Danane was not officially a death camp, but, **since the captives there were sentenced to life imprisonment, it was clearly intended that they would all die at Danane, sooner or later.**
>
>Several officials of the Italian administration, which was well known to have been riddled with corruption, had lucrative banana concessions and sugar‐cane plantations at a project known as Genale, **and ran them using forced labour from Danane.**
(Emphasis added in all cases.)
Further reading: [*The "Historic Sins" of Colonialism in Somalia*](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333775677) (a perspective from a Somali).
I’ve never heard of this guy before so I can’t provide an informed opinion, but my impression from what you wrote here is that he’s a generic antisocialist, albeit an ‘edgier’ one whose grasp of history is maybe slightly better than the rest.
That cover nicely encapsulates what antisocialists really think of phenomena like populicide. Ideally, a statistic like, for example, one hundred million deaths should be a very serious matter and shocking to behold, but antisocialists make it seem so mundane.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that my right eye cried for a couple of seconds when I learned what the Axis did to Java. Never would I use that for a punchline or a cheesy cartoon. Antisocialists, on the other hand…
‘At present the proletariat has urgent need for self‐defense against fascism, and this self‐protection against fascist terror must not be neglected for a single moment. At stake is the proletarians’ personal safety and very existence; at stake is the survival of their organizations. Proletarian self‐defense is the need of the hour.
We must not combat fascism in the way of the reformists in Italy, who beseeched them to “leave me alone, and then I’ll leave you alone.” On the contrary! Meet violence with violence. But not violence in the form of individual terror—that will surely fail. But rather violence as the power of the revolutionary organized proletarian class struggle.’
— Clara Zetkin, 1923
This would fit better in /c/latestagecapitalism, surely.
There are two explanations for the crisis in Haiti. On the one hand, you have:
In 2004, the U.S. government under George W. Bush carried out the second coup (George H. W. Bush was responsible for the first in 1991), leading to the killing of close to ten thousand people by right-wing forces—the old Haitian military forces that President Aristide had disbanded, coupled with various mercenaries and killers from Haiti, including the death squad Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, similar to the Tonton Macoutes, the henchmen of Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier. They actually were not able to carry out the coup d’état, so the special forces of the United States, France, and Canada came in and overthrew and kidnapped President Aristide. But the Haitian people never accepted this coup d’état and resistance has continued to this day.
Haiti has been under occupation by the United States, France, and Canada, but using the United Nations as a cover to make it acceptable and palatable to the rest of the world. UN forces have really been carrying out U.S. foreign policy; they have massacred people in poor neighborhoods and various communities throughout Haiti, because they have kept up the demonstrations against the rotten system of exploitation, demanding their democratic rights and that the people they elected be returned to office. So they are being massacred.
And on the other hand, you have:
black people bad
Now the question is, which explanation sounds more accurate and more credible? Hmm… decisions, decisions.
Thank you for sharing this! It helps with my research on the Axis.
Unfortunately, I suspect that a great deal of Westerners are likely to dis
I bet that both of them were just thinking, ‘Thank God that I live in a neoliberal democracy based on two‐party rule and supply side economics right now and not somewhere with a centrally planned economy.’