I don’t know if I am allowed to link to it since technically you have to ‘buy it’, but the book “China: From Permanent Revolution to Counter-Revolution” by John Peter Roberts was one recommended to me by a Chinese friend whose family left due to their staunch support for Maoism. Lovell’s work as well (I think its just called “Maoism”).

Also the fact that China, out of pragmatism, joined institutions like the IMF and World Bank. They also supported Nepal’s royalists in the Civil War http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4469508.stm which I find to be far too pragmatic for my tastes. I am not saying China needs to be overthrown, that its a totalist hellhole, or that its people suffer unduly - I am saying that the actions they have taken have weakened its socialist institutions in favor of ones that see it now locked into ‘pragmatic’ courses where the west can make psychotic threats of starving the entirety of the nation and clipping systems it has become reliant upon.

I know having an ardently anti-Market socialist stance is unlikely to be popular here, but part of what enabled the socialist movement during the Cold War to combat capitalism as it did were institutions like CMEA providing an alternative framework to things like the IMF.

Looking up his name the first thing I see is that he’s under investigation for fraud.

My opinions are, I’d assume, different from a majority of people here from what I’ve seen. I’m not a fan of China’s socio-economic direction, as you pointed out the reforms enacted have not had the best results for the people of China and the socialist structures of the nation.

I don’t think its fully hopeless though - there are still a fair number of hardline Maoists, and the influence of communism on the nation’s culture definitely can’t be denid. You see a lot of instances where there is definitely potential to return to a more hardline path that is willing to confront capital directly rather than try to work inside of the system.

I did a ton of research around a year ago on it, I’d have to fish around for links and the like.

If you are looking for my opinion, I think it could’ve been better, the Prison Faction were a bit too pragmatic for my taste and their admiration for Stalin didn’t prove to translate into a commitment to socialism (with Romania cozying up to the West after Stalin’s death and hardliners being side-lined in favor of Ceaucescu).

I think Pauker would’ve made a very competent leader to guide Romania on a socialist path, and that Apostol would’ve likely done far better than Ceaucescu. Though all things considered Romania wasn’t terrible, and even with the miscalculations made by Ceaucescu, I believe a majority of Romanians regard the country as worse without communism.

I’m not super familiar with Avatar - can someone please tell me who this comparison’s logic would make Lenin and Mao so I can laugh even harder?

To elaborate on this a bit more; post war Romanian politics were, after the proclamation of a socialist state, dominated by two factions. One faction was the ‘Pauker’ or ‘Moscow’ faction that was predominantly more ‘moderate’ leaning with some ‘reformist’ influence (within the context of Marxism-Leninism, though there was supposedly ‘Titoist’ influence as well) and the other faction was the ‘Prison Faction’ which tended to be more statist and slightly more strict in their social policy. Gheorghe was a member of the latter.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by ‘good’ or ‘bad’, and what you are using as a metric for determining as such.

The ned was used as a weapon in quite a few instances, though the specific ones that are probably more relevant here would be their work in Bulgaria, Albania, and Mongolia.

In Bulgaria after the coup by reformists that ousted Zhivkov the new - now social democratic - BSP was still too spicy for the United States, and further had won the ‘first’ elections held in the country after the end of communism with enough support to continue to make policy. The United States began to threaten the government about a potential exclusion from certain economic institutions as well as helping the opposition to organize by flooding them with money and advisors - ultimately leading to a series of resignations and another election that the opposition finally won.

In Albania, the leadership of the party - after witnessing the brutality of the reformist coup in Romania - decided to begin a program of rapid reform. Eventually they adopted a more western state-system and held elections that the communist party handily won - outpacing the various opposition groups and attaining a majority (I believe a super-majority even). The United States was extremely pissed about this and funded the opposition, doing the same things they had done in Bulgaria with bribing people to organize protests, putting economic pressure on the government, and ultimately leading to the collapse of the Socialist Republic of Albania and reorganization of PPSh into the PS.

Source: https://williamblum.org/chapters/killing-hope/bulgaria-albania

In Mongolia the intervention was a bit later. The US I guess noticed that the MPP was still wildly popular and once more used the ned to forcibly unite the opposition, flooded them with money, and offered them campaigning advice and services that ultimately resulted in the opposition coming to power.

Source: https://jacobinmag.com/2017/11/mongolia-elections-mccain-international-republican-institute/

Forgive the sources, I’m sure I could find more if I sifted through bookmarks but they should at least articulate what was going on.

The main things are institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization - as well as other organizations that were made explicitly to create a global capitalist institution.

Though there are a web of interconnected things, and many of them play off of what happened in the day of ‘yesterday’ as well.

There are a lot of places where nether of these are very super active, so I’d echo the ‘near you’ part and recommend making sure that if you join one - it is one that has the structures necessary to facilitate change and that is fairly active.

A nice list! Though, it doesn’t include some of the ones done through the ned.

Campist would probably be a better term - since ‘tankie’ implies there is at least an ideological commitment there.

Campism would group in the folks whose positions are entirely centered around much more nebulous and ideological fluid positions or around a ‘syncretic’ ‘blend’ that usually just ends up being traditionalism that orients itself as ‘anti-western’ only in-so-far as to oppose social progress. Like people who ‘critically support’ anti-communist movements as long as they are anti-western or globalist capitalist movements as long as they are sufficiently socially conservative.

Hopefully the EFF is still helping with solidarity actions as well. South Africans in general have a lot of power to be able to effect change in Swaziland, they shouldn’t let it go to waste while their brothers and sisters are struggling against oppression.

I’m not sure what the map is trying to say, it makes sense. Vaush is a large youtuber and most of the nations in Blue are English speaking or have large English as a second language populations. The US also does not teach very indepth about African politics (they’d have to mention Liberia, among many many other inconvenient things for the education system) and absolutely wouldn’t teach enough about politics to even mention Sankara outside of specialized classes in universities explicitly about Africa.

It makes sense Sankara would be a popular figure in Africa and nations that face colonialism or were formerly benefactors of a socialist education system that would make mention of him, though I should say searches does not necessarily mean positive. I doubt, for example, France has a very positive opinion of him.

Also, why are Mexico, Argentina, Germany, Ukraine, and Brasil a different shade of red from every other nation?

The paywall he supposedly has planned will be - quite literally - subversive, just not in the intended way.

And not just in Egypt either. Any allies that they could’ve had even if they had maintained Nasserism or a more radical ideology were robbed away by subsequent interventions in West Asia by various means. If op is into the history of the area during the Cold War and the fate of the radical regimes that were once in place its definitely worth looking into as it plays off of and into a lot of different topics.

Sadat’s policies certainly didn’t help stave off imperialism, so he deserves some of the ‘credit’ as well. Egypt under him saw its alignment move from the USSR to the United States (which meant losing all of those advisors and all of that aid), a purge of Nasserists alongside a shift in its prevailing ideological tendencies, and set it on the path to later reforms and western intervention (coups, interference, etc).