@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

HeavenlyPossum

@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social

Anarchist, communist, opossum. But then, I repeat myself.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

HeavenlyPossum , to random
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Thread: Climate Collapse Already Started

The African state Mali experienced a military coup, bringing Amadou Toumani Touré to power. In 2020, Mali experienced another military coup, this time bringing Assimi Goïta to power. In 2021, Goïta staged yet another coup, overthrowing the civilian leaders he had put into place after his last coup.

All of this occurred while half or more of Mali was controlled by a mix of Tuareg rebels fighting for an independent homeland and a North African ISIS offshoot.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_War

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HeavenlyPossum OP ,
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Next door in Niger, there were military coups in 2010 and again in 2023, the latter bringing to power Abdourahamane Tchiani.

Parts of Niger are also controlled by ISIS offshoots.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nigerien_crisis_(2023–2024)&diffonly=true

2/9

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
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In Chad, Idriss Déby Itno had ruled since he overthrew the previous government in 1991. But, in 2021, Déby was killed in battle against rebels in Chad’s north. His son, Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, assumed power and has ruled tenuously since then.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Northern_Chad_offensive

4/9

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
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In Sudan, popular protests in 2019 drove the military to stage a coup against the dictator Omar al-Bashir. The military shared power with a transitional civilian government but overthrew them in 2021. Then, in 2023, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces attempted a coup against the military, starting a civil war that is still ongoing and has absolutely destroyed that country.

https://sudanwarmonitor.com/p/scenes-of-sudans-gutted-capital-khartoum

5/9

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

Burkina Faso experienced a military coup in January 2022 and then again in September of the same year, as junior officers overthrew the previous ruling junta. Burkina Faso is now formally ruled by a captain in his 30s, Ibrahim Traoré, although more than half the country is actually controlled by ISIS affiliates.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihadist_insurgency_in_Burkina_Faso

3/9

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

The governments of the Sahel region were never very strong. They have weak institutions that were oriented towards extractivism to support tiny, militarized elites, a legacy of European colonial rule. The post-colonial rulers of these states have focused on rentier export of resources, like uranium in Niger and oil in Sudan, to pay off subordinate leaders, rather than developing infrastructure or providing services.

These are brittle states in an environmentally marginal region, and climate change probably began pushing them over the edge starting a decade or more ago.

The result is a tumult of genocides, civil wars, coups and counter-coups, insurgencies, rebellions, and jihadism. Hundreds of thousands have been killed. Millions have been displaced, millions are starving. The state system in the Sahel region has broken down, not yet completely but probably beyond repair.

8/9

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

One thing all these states have in common is that they all fall within the Sahel region, a biogeographical zone of Africa. It lies between the savanna to the south and the Sahara to the north. It is hot, arid, and poor; its population depends heavily on seasonal rains to support settler farmers and nomadic herders.

Climate change is hitting the Sahel hard, driving up temperatures to or above the habitable maximum. It has also driven more rain, but less predictable rains, playing havoc with farming and herding. The region has experienced hunger, displacement, and conflict over remaining resources.

https://www.rescue.org/article/central-sahel-how-conflict-and-climate-change-drive-crisis

7/9

HeavenlyPossum OP ,
@HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

It is easy for Westerners who are unfamiliar with Africa to think: “well, that’s just what Africa is like, isn’t it?”

But it’s not. While the peoples of Africa have suffered greatly after decades of colonial subjugation and neocolonial exploitation, the popular image of Africa as a continent of constant wars and instability is a myth. If we take a look, we discover that virtually all of the instability and violence is happening in a very narrow band that runs from west to east across Africa.

The correlation is so stark that it practically begs for some kind of explanation.

6/9

A map of Africa depicting areas under government control, military junta control, separatist control, rebel control, foreign government control, and terrorist control. With a few exceptions, such as the rebel areas of eastern DRC, most of the continent is labeled “government control.” But there is a very stark band of colors across the Sahel region, depicting various coups, rebellions, and civil wars, encompassing Guinea, Mali, Niger, Burkina Fqso, Chad, Sudan, CAR, Ethiopia, and Somalia.
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    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
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    And wasn’t this precisely what we’ve been warned would happen, for decades, as the planet warmed and our weather became more severe and less predictable? Wars, hunger, mass migration, state failure.

    Well, here it is.

    We’re pushing the climate beyond the niche in which the state first emerged and has existed ever since. The first dominoes to fall have been some of the weakest states in one of the most environmentally marginal regions.

    Other states at this same latitude, experiencing the same unsurvivable temperature increases, might have more resources to handle these changes for now. Saudi Arabia and India both have more robust institutions and more financial resources than, say, Burkina Faso. But this is not a problem that you can just throw money at forever—it is a simple question of physics and biology.

    9/9

    A map, produced by ClimateReanalyzer.org, depicting maximum temperatures on 22 June 2024. There is a band of 40-50 degrees Celsius covering the Sahel region of Africa, most of Southwest Asia, the southern coasts of Iran and Pakistan, and then the entirety of the North Indian Plain.
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    • HeavenlyPossum , to random
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    Thread: Structural Reason and Moral Responsibility

    Realism—or, more properly, structural realism or neo-realism—is a school of international relations theory. That is, it is an attempt to understand, explain, and ideally predict the behavior of states as states—as units of a system.

    Realism posits that states behave according to structural constraints, and specifically in terms of power, and thus that we can anticipate their behavior if we study those constraints.

    The basic tenants of Realism are that:

    • states are unitary, rational actors;
    • states are units of a larger system;
    • that system is anarchic--that is, there is no higher authority than the individual state; and
    • states are self-interested.

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    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    Because these states are self-interested, they will seek to defend themselves against aggression. Because defense is expensive, they will seek to mobilize and acquire more resources. And because there is no higher authority to provide security or adjudicate disputes, states must be self-reliant.

    The result, Realists argue, is a constant churn of conflict and ambition driven not by the personalities of individual leaders or the national character of these states, but rather these structural constraints. When two states encounter each other, they must be distrustful of each other, because the risk of trust is defeat in war and possible destruction through conquest.

    2/

    HeavenlyPossum , to random
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    Russia is an imperialist, settler-colonial state.

    There is a reason there are Russians living from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, more than seven thousand kilometers away: successive iterations of the Russian state ruled from Moscow have invaded, conquered, settled, and ruled vast areas of the Eurasian continent. This was always an explicitly imperialist project replete with frequent genocides against indigenous communities.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide

    1/

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    It is in this context that we can understand much of Russia’s recent behavior on the international stage—its invasion and dismemberment of Georgia; its invasion of Syria and transformation of the Asad regime into a client; its mercenary adventures in Africa’s Sahel region; its pursuit of a naval port in Sudan; and, most saliently, its war of conquest in Ukraine.

    Yes, Russia claims pretexts for its imperialist aggression in each of these cases. But just as we’re able to see through those pretexts when other actors claim them—is the IDF really “the most moral army in the world”?—we’re smart enough to see through Moscow’s pretexts as well.

    https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/30269/wagner-group-countries-of-operation/

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    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    When Russia sold Alaska to the US in 1867, it did so as a colonial power, a peer of the US imperialist project. It was not transferring “Russian” territory but rather the lands and indigenous peoples of Alaska, whom Moscow had conquered, as chattel.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Russia

    2/

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    And yet, every step of the way, there are leftists who are willing and eager to credulously accept any Russian state lie and dutifully apologize for any Russian state atrocity because they’ve decided that an antagonistic relationship with the US puts the Russian state on some “good team.”

    A settler colonial state that commits imperialist interventions on a global scale, ruled by a mafia clique of ultra-rich capitalist oligarchs, is not and cannot be your friend. Cheering for the US against Russia or Russia against the US makes as much sense as medieval peasants cheering for rival lords to come slaughter them, or a beef cow at auction cheering for rival butchers to place the winning bid.

    4/

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    The Russian state has no more claim to rule Russian speakers in other countries than Hitler had to annex Austria and the Sudetenland because they were populated by ethnic Germans.

    The Russian state has no more claim to change the government of Ukraine or impose its policy preferences on the Ukrainian state than the US had to change the government of Iraq or impose its policy preferences on Iraq.

    These are quintessentially imperialist positions that have been discredited countless times.

    5/

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    In 2014, Russian exploited a very real conflict in Ukraine to establish two little astroturfed statelets, the “Donetsk People’s Republic” and the “Luhansk People’s Republic.”

    We’re supposed to believe these were genuine expressions of local political aspirations, even though they were occupied by Russian troops and their “governments” were staffed by Russian officials and intelligence officers.

    We’re supposed to believe these regimes represented the people of the Donbas even though they ruled through constant and pervasive violence and were funded through extortionary gangsterism.

    We’re supposed to believe these communities chose to join Russia even though the “votes” were conducted at gunpoint.

    Anyone who genuinely believes that these little puppet regimes represented real public will to be ruled and brutalized by Moscow should learn a bit about Hawaii and Texas became US states.

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/05/ukraine-torture-ill-treatment-armed-groups-east

    6/

    HeavenlyPossum , to random
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    By now, many of you have undoubtedly heard that a Florida court has ruled against Chiquita, ordering the company to pay $38 million to the families of people murdered by right-wing death squads that Chiquita funded in Colombia in the early 2000s.

    This is of course a pittance, but still a positive step.

    I haven’t dug into the details of the case but two things leap out at me:

    • First, the group that Chiquita funded—the AUC—was a US-designated terrorist group at the time. Chiquita was separately fined $25 million a few years ago for that, but it’s wild to imagine how different the reaction would be if the terrorists Chiquita funded were Muslims.

    • Second, my many thanks go to Chiquita for once again illustrating the impossibility of capitalism in the absence of state violence, contrary to the claims of ancaps. If powerful and wealthy firms lack state support, they’ll simply hire state-like violence on the market.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/6/11/us-court-says-banana-giant-chiquita-funded-colombian-paramilitary-group

    HeavenlyPossum , to random
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    During its reign of terror, Nazi Germany implemented an effort to encourage reproduction by “racially pure” Germans called the “Lebensborn” program.

    Part of this program included the kidnapping of children from conquered territories who met the Nazis’ arbitrary phenotypical qualifications for racial superiority—things blue-eyed and blond-haired. Unlike other members of their communities, who were destined for enslavement or mass murder, the Nazis believed these children could be adopted out to German parents and incorporated into German society.

    (Few things emphasize the nonsensical bullshit of Nazi racial theories than this sort of arbitrary selection of “pure” children from “subhuman” communities.)

    The Nazis kidnapped tens of thousands of children, and perhaps hundreds of thousands, from communities they conquered—Czechia, Poland, Russia, etc. They deliberately destroyed records at the end of the war, so many of the children who survived were never identified.

    After the war, during the Nürenberg Trials, this action was correctly identified as an act of genocide.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensborn

    1/4

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
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    There is a certain kind of crass genocide denialist who will insist that this or that genocide can’t possibly be happening because the perpetrator has not killed enough victims yet, or hasn’t been killing them quickly enough, to meet some arbitrary model of genocide they hold in their head.

    But genocide is not merely mass murder. Rather, genocide is the process of destroying a group of people as a distinct community. It certainly does involve mass murder, but it encompasses many other kinds of related crimes—including efforts to stop that community from being able to have children and forcible assimilation of members of that community.

    4/4

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has kidnapped and deported possibly hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children. It has subjected these children to forced Russification and adopted them out to Russian families, on a scale that potentially dwarfs the comparable Nazi program that operated over a much vaster area for many more years.

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/25/fresh-details-russias-forcible-transfer-ukrainian-children

    3/4

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
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    In December, Israeli forces destroyed Gaza’s largest fertility clinic, destroying thousands of frozen embryos and denying hundreds of Palestinians experiencing fertility.

    These people—those who haven’t already been murdered—have been denied the possibility of ever becoming parents because of this destruction of yet another medical facility in Gaza.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/5000-lives-one-shell-gazas-ivf-embryos-destroyed-by-israeli-strike-2024-04-17/

    2/4

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @DrorBedrack

    We don’t abandon the word or the concept because fascists are trying to co-opt it.

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @DrorBedrack @PeterLG

    I mean, I’m citing the 1948 Genocide Convention, which (correctly, I believe) identifies genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” which include any or all of “killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group.”

    It’s not like I just made it up on a whim. Fascists might try to appropriate the concept for their own terrible purposes but fuck them.

    HeavenlyPossum , to random
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    If you look straight down at a political map of the world, you of course see states crammed together like puzzle pieces, filling every inch of the world. It’s easy to conclude from this mundane and omnipresent depiction that the world really does consist of a patchwork of competing national teams.

    But if you tilt that map ever so slightly, you’ll see that those states are really just a very thin layer hovering above a borderless world of all different kinds of people, most of them toiling endlessly to support the goals and interests of those states—that superstructure—floating just above, but separate from, the people.

    It’s a fun trick you should try it sometime.

    HeavenlyPossum , to random
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    This is an absolutely bombshell report from Reuters:

    “At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.

    It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.”

    https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

    HeavenlyPossum , to random
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    Believing “Russia was provoked into invading Ukraine by the US” is a bit like believing “Chiquita was provoked into hiring death squads to murder Colombian labor organizers by rival fruit companies.”

    It makes a certain sort of sense, from a structural perspective, but it also assumes that any of these actors—capitalists or the states that work for those capitalists, these systems of competitive power politics/profit-seeking—should even exist in the first place. Chiquita was only in a position to be provoked by capitalist competitors because its owners chose to be capitalists. Russia was only in a position to be provoked by the US because its owners chose to be rulers of a great power.

    We don’t have to naturalize the effects of terrible systems.

    HeavenlyPossum , to random
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    Tankies are testing out “the rise of the far right is good because they’re nationalists who will realign Europe with Russia instead of the US” in response to the EU election results.

    leah , to random
    @leah@cyberpunk.lol avatar

    its always morally correct to steal from the rich :anarchism: :blackSparkles:

    HeavenlyPossum ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @leah

    It’s not stealing, it’s taking back something they stole

    HeavenlyPossum , to random
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    The presence of actual fascists in the Ukrainian military, like Azov, no more invalidates the legitimacy of Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression than the presence of Hamas invalidates the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance to Israeli aggression.

    HeavenlyPossum , to random
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    To be in favor of Palestinian resistance but critical of Ukrainian resistance is a very silly position to take.

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
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    Then there’s the fascist pro-Russian position articulated quite explicitly by Putin—revaunchism, territorial aggrandizement, homogenization of national groups and subordination to the imperial core or “Gleichanschaltung” as the Nazis put it, that sort of thing. It’s vile and awful but it, too, is an internally consistent package of ideas, operating according to the logic of Putin’s ethno-nationalist reaction.

    But hooo boy I do not get the “I don’t support Russia I just want Ukraine to lose super badly” crowd. It’s just such a grab-bag of ideas and vague allusions. Lots of “wink wink” style suggestions but very little actual substance, no coherence. Just pure conspiracism.

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    I get the arguments in favor of Ukrainian self-defense.

    There’s the one I agree with: all people have a right to self-defense against aggression.

    There’s the “go team good guys!” of the fervent liberal internationalist, who hopes for a military victory by the Ukrainian state.

    There’s the crass and mercenary “bleed our adversary dry via proxies” of the Western realist, who hopes at least for the absence of a Russian victory.

    I don’t agree with all these arguments, but at least they make sense. They are comprehensive and internally consistent.

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @foolishowl

    That’s true! And that would, by itself, probably serve as a comprehensive, internally consistent argument.

    But I almost never see it articulated this way—“we must sacrifice the Ukrainians to achieve this greater good of defeating the greater evil”—and only as part of that grab-bag of vague allusions.

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @passenger @foolishowl

    I wish I could say that this is somehow a modern phenomenon, but the metaphor of the state as a sort of super-organism goes all the way back to medieval Europe. The rot is deep and hard to shake off.

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @foolishowl @messaroundmarx @passenger

    Absolutely agree. I only argued that the idea of the state as a sort of sports team/super-organism predates the modern era by a long time.

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @messaroundmarx @passenger @foolishowl

    The metaphor of the state as a literal body politic was popular in medieval Europe—the monarch as its head, the peasants as its hands and feet, etc. ie, the idea of the state as a unitary actor in its entirety.

    HeavenlyPossum OP ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @foolishowl @passenger @messaroundmarx

    Medieval peasants were absolutely aware of the state.

    Empires were mostly a classical rather than medieval phenomenon. While there were still some in the medieval period—like Byzantium—and some titular empires—like the Holy Roman Empire—most polities in the medieval period were much more local and patchwork.

    HeavenlyPossum , to random
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    Ideologies that have failed and are collapsing tend to produce radical and extreme reactions as they die.

    Industrial capitalism produced the Nazis. Authoritarian communism produced the Khmer Rouge. Political Islam produced ISIS.

    Super excited to see what further horrors neoliberal capitalism has in store for us as it, too, fails.

    HeavenlyPossum , to random
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    For some reason, “left unity” in practice always means anarchists aligning with and subordinating themselves to authoritarians, and never authoritarians adopting the practice of anarchism.

    MikeDunnAuthor , to random
    @MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social avatar

    Russian warships are heading to the Caribbean for exercises. And according to NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe General Christopher Cavoli, Russian submarine activity in the Atlantic are "at a higher level than we’ve seen in years.”

    Why?

    Because the U.S. and NATO keep escalating their involvement in the Ukrainian war, incl plans to station hundreds of thousands of troops, inclu US soldiers, along Russia’s entire western border, from Finland to the Balkans. Not surprisingly, Russia is treating this as an existential threat.

    But a direct military confrontation between NATO & Russia dramatically increases the risk of accidental, or deliberate, use of nukes, which is an existential threat to the entire planet. And even without the firing of nukes, a ground war on this scale would lead to mass slaughter unseen since WWII.

    What about Ukraine, you ask. Well, they've already lost >200,000 lives in this war, which they've been losing badly, hence the rationale for the increased NATO involvement. However, escalation of the conflict will only increase the pace, and the scale, of the slaughter of Ukrainians. And in a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, Ukraine would likely be decimated. So, no, an increase in NATO involvement doesn't help save Ukrainian lives, and might not even lead to its independence.

    A negotiated settlement is the only way out of this morass. Yet that isn't even on the table. And news coverage is so scant, and so biased, that most people don't even realize how serious the threat currently is. Even the peace movement is barely making a squeak.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/nato-land-corridors-could-rush-us-troops-to-front-line-in-event-of-european-war/ar-BB1nA9P9

    HeavenlyPossum ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @MikeDunnAuthor @tlg

    What sort of negotiated settlement should the Palestinians seek with Israel?

    HeavenlyPossum ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @MikeDunnAuthor @tlg

    What do you think communities like the Palestinians and Ukrainians should give up to secure these negotiated settlements? Certainly not “everything the enemy wants,” but some of it?

    HeavenlyPossum ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @tlg @UnassumingKiwi @MikeDunnAuthor

    We could also, you know, look for ways to pressure the aggressor to stop aggressing

    HeavenlyPossum ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @tlg @MikeDunnAuthor @UnassumingKiwi

    What I find fascinating by all of this is your willingness to take seriously, in granular detail, the realist security concerns of Vladimir Putin and your advocacy for satisfying those concerns.

    Setting aside all the times Putin has explicitly articulated his interests in Ukraine as revanchist ethno-nationalism, I don’t understand this impulse by so many leftists to see this particular member of the upper, upper crust of the global capitalist elite and think “someone did him a fright so we have to calm him down.” His concerns are not our concerns; his fears about maintaining his life of privileged control of the Russian working class are not legitimate fears we need to concern ourselves with.

    Should the global working class similarly present security guarantees to capitalists that we won’t actually overthrow them, and indeed will let them continue ruling and exploiting workers, so they don’t hurt us too much?

    HeavenlyPossum ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @UnassumingKiwi @MikeDunnAuthor @tlg

    I struggle to square “It started with NATO's spread to virtually every inch of Russia's western borders soon after the end of the Cold War” with “I don’t give a shit about Putin, or his concerns, per se.” Putin is not an animal responding predictably through instinct or a force of nature behaving according to physical laws; he’s a member of the uppermost crust of global capitalist elites. He has agency and choice.

    Attributing his aggression in Ukraine to NATO expansion requires one to first care at all about his security concerns—which are concerns about his person, his rule, and his class, not about Russia as a community—as if Russian imperialist concerns in its near-abroad are facts about the world rather than simply Putin’s preferences and desires.

    If Elon Musk intensifies his exploitation of his workers in response to competition from Chevy, we would not extend Musk the same courtesy as you’re extending Putin, or identify the problem as Chevy, but rather capitalism as a system that’s not going to be bargained out of exploiting workers.

    HeavenlyPossum ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @MikeDunnAuthor @tlg

    > “What I find disturbing, and unfathomable, is how so many people who self-identify as anarchist, communist, &/or anti-authoritarian, are cheer-leading for world war”

    Who did this?

    > “in collaboration with, or in support of, and in complete agreement with, capitalist-imperialist propaganda.”

    Where did anyone do this?

    > “Are you, and they, also willing to join up and participate in the fight? Because if so, you would not be fighting for any sort of anti-authoritarian, anarchist or communist society.”

    There are literal anarchist units fighting on the front line against Russian imperialist aggression.

    > “Even if that's what you wanted, your participation would be in collaboration with capitalists and imperialists”

    The morality of self-defense is not defined by who might receive ancillary benefits. Striking workers should similarly not refrain from undermining their employer because a rival capitalist might stand to benefit.

    I am similarly capable of supporting Palestinian resistance to Israeli aggression without endorsing Hamas, because people are people and not components of homogenous ethno-nationalist teams.

    > “Would I like to see Putin gone? Of course. Along with the entire class of people who own the world. But not through a war run by the U.S. & European govts, for the benefit of their oligarchs, using poor and working-class people as the fodder.”

    I’m not aware of anyone who imagines that self-defense by Ukrainians against Russian imperialist aggression will somehow overthrow Putin.

    > “Because that's what this conflict is really all about. A war for the spoils of Russia, using Ukraine as its initial shock troops, and the rest of the European, and possibly U.S., working class as additional fodder, as the Ukrainian working shrinks through attrition.”

    Seems like something the Ukrainian working class should decide for itself.

    rat , to palestine group
    @rat@ni.hil.ist avatar

    @palestine @israel

    התנגדות resistance

    HeavenlyPossum ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @SallyStrange @faab64 @rat

    Pretty wild how anarchists are responsible for all these bad things they didn’t do

    HeavenlyPossum ,
    @HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social avatar

    @faab64 @rat @SallyStrange

    Pretty sure the only people who made all those bad things worse were the actual fascists involved and not people fighting against those fascists

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