Yeah, I thought the comparison of them to Bob Avakian and the RCP was pretty damning: going around swearing and acting tough while absolutely failing to build any connection with the working class. Though Bob Avakian’s people at least show up to events and do stuff in the real world. The accusations of ultraleftism were interesting as well. I’ve noticed among Haz & Co. a weird glorification of the Khmer Rouge, an attitude towards Russia which almost amounts to the Three Worlds theory, and a stated belief that a new American civil war is a necessary step toward socialism – all of which fit pretty well with the ultraleftist mindset. Perhaps this strain of “patriotic socialism” was always just “Maoists who happen to support modern China?”

“LARPers of all discord servers, unite! You have nothing to lose but your brain cells!”

Weren’t there attempts to create rainfall artificially in the 1950s? Which were stopped because none of the methods they tried really, you know, worked?

Nothing about Ukraine surprises me anymore. They are the reigning champions of cringe.

Get that shit in the bedroom and stop blocking my view of V.I. Lenin.

Ironically, this reads like something my aging hippie uncle would say after taking a long pull from a joint.

• Jordan Peterson: guy who thinks having read Hero With a Thousand Faces somehow makes him competent to talk about geopolitics

• Joe Rogan: failed comedian whose funniest moment was believing Yeonmi Park’s nonsense about Korean citizens being forced to push multi-ton train cars

• Lex Friedman: never heard of him, is he some DC comics character?

• Sam Harris: what is this, 2010?

So yeah, not sure how China is going to survive.

When you say that to liberals, they’ll immediately point to Iranian laws mandating headcoverings for women – as if having to abide by an admittedly repressive dress code were not infinitely preferable to living in a poverty-stricken, war-ravaged failed state with open-air slave markets. “But those aren’t the only two options!” When the United States is involved, you bet they are.

Out of all possible ways to present historical data, this chart has got to be the most confusing ever devised. And I’m including Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit among those ways.

Only because YOU didn’t support the US-backed rebels hard enough, TANKIE.

Also, in what world was Russia “rebuilt” under the “90s/early 2000s neoliberal boom?” Russia was being cut up and sold piecemeal during that time. Putin himself has said that the 90s were more disastrous for Russia than the fascist invasion during World War II.

Nor was the 2003 antiwar movement made up of “campists.” I was pretty young then, but I remember a lot of them actually being libertarians of some kind. Nobody (in the US) was marching with pictures of Sadaam Hussein, and nobody was flying the flag of Russia or China. The ethos was actually closer to pacifism and “let’s all get along” – utterly inchoate ideologically, which is one reason the anti-war movement achieved nothing despite its size. The person who made this graphic is projecting some conversation they had recently about Syria onto US domestic politics 20 years ago.

Apparently.

Is… is that soyface Prigozhin?

They aren’t, they’re attracted to a cartoon caricature of women. Real women are only acceptable to the degree they resemble the cartoon caricature.

On-demand porn and its consequences, I guess.

There is a lot of doomerism in this comment section – understandably so, because this is a tragedy for the Syrian people and a setback for global anti-imperialism. But we need to be careful of falling into the trap of thinking the United States is omnipotent, or some kind of Manichean, unstoppable power of absolute metaphysical evil.

My read is this. Nearly every regime change operation mounted by the United States over the past five-eight years has been an embarrassing failure; this from the country that was once able to topple governments in the global south (and in the north as well) almost at will. Currently the US is led by one of the most incompetent administrations in recent history. If you doubt this, consider the way Biden’s foreign policy undermined the dollar (foundation of US global supremacy), and undid the result Kissinger and Brezinski spent decades trying to bring about, namely driving a wedge between Russia and China. These developments were, it is true, a long time in the making, but Biden greatly accelerated them. I ask then: is it credible that the United States, at this point in time, was able on its own to mount a regime-change operation as impressively effective as the one we just saw in Syria? It seems to me that the speed with which the Syrian government fell rather points to serious internal problems; understandable in a nation which has been at war for over a decade, but problems none the less. In other words, this was likely not a stable government – there was interior rot we didn’t know about; and the US state department may be just as surprised as we that their operation worked.

The best-case scenario for Syria at this point is, of course, an Evo Morales situation where the Assad government comes back from exile. I do not think that is likely. This a tragedy for Syrians, beyond many people’s ability to comprehend. But it does not necessarily change the overall trajectory of world history.

There’s also some really striking footage of it flying through the air. Terrifying, like some Old Testament angel of death.

Communist Flag, Male Version (Straight):

• Too many meetings with comrades

• Yells at you for saying imperialism is “problematic” (it’s actually the primary contradiction, calling it just “problematic” makes you sound like a lib)

• Knowledge seeker (no investigation, no right to speak)

• Dialectics maniac

• Stalin addict

• Massive wife guy

“Dude, I’m so bored!”

“Yeah, me too, being a government official sucks. You know what, let’s go do something crazy.”

“Like skip and go build another megacity?”

“Nah, we did that yesterday. I’m thinking maybe a couple hundred more miles of high-speed rail – hey! I got it! Let’s go eliminate poverty! You on board?”

“We’re such slackers, lol”

Most up-to-date US weapons system

I feel like I’ve heard every one of these on reddit, and (unfortunately) in real life. Well done.