Seriously how are they wrapping their heads around that the racist hegemon wants to wipe both Palestine and Russia off the earth, and is funding their enemies in both cases?? Do they think the US doesn’t know where their interests lie?
US: Allied to Israel and Ukraine. Gives them billions in weaponry. Consistently votes against Palestinian statehood. Funds the murder of countless Palestinians.
Russia: Consistently votes in favor of Palestinian statehood. The USSR even fought a short war against Israel in the 1960s.
I was talking with two friends yesterday. Apparently they always supported Palestinians, but once they saw Hamas soldiers screaming Allah Ackbar and kidnapping civilian women, they are of the opinion that they’re not better than Israelis. “It’s just two Nazi Germanies fighting against eachother.” Was a banger I heard during that discussion. Another banger: “You don’t see Ukranians murder and kidnap civilians, do you? They are respectful of POW.”
I tried my best arguing; to no avail. Whatever I said, I was countered with smth like, “well i support them too, but this kind of force is totally unjustified”. So in short I failed the argument.
Like fuck they are. Even if we use only the Ukrainian sources, they routinely report Russian KIA:POW ratio as being way, sometimes even multiple times, higher than even during the most brutal fightings in the history of humanity.
Meaning they, by their own admission, either kill or do not take prisoners.
Thanks for this; I shall use this knowledge next time I speak to them. Tho honestly I think my energy is better spent elsewhere.
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Whenever anyone does this, I like to use the metaphor of an older woman defending herself from a purse-snatcher. “Is their violence the same?”
It’s very morally satisfying for ppl from colonizer countries to equate the violence of self defense, with that of colonizers… and euroamerikkka (and Isn’treal by proxy) is the greatest purse-snatcher in history.
Counterpoint, there is no such thing as civilian Israelis. They are all criminal settlers occupying stolen land and condoning genocide against the people they have stolen from.
Well, I kinda get your point… Though in all honesty I couldn’t blame children for being born there. I’d argue there are civilians.
I’m supportive of Hamas’ and Palestine’s fight for liberation though, just to clarify.
To quote other commenters in another thread.
What does it mean to be a “civilian” when the violence against Palestine is settler-colonial ethnic cleansing?
I do not advocate for the actual assault of children, but the “civilians” in the settlements are the perpetrators of decades long genocide. People who not only do not care that countless Palestinians, children included, have been murdered, but actually support it. It is not a meaningful distinction in this type of conflict.
They put themselves there because they are ideologically committed to ethnically cleansing the land of Palestinians and taking it for themselves. They are thieves and murderers and actions against them by Palestinian forces is self defence.
I agree, what Palestine and Hamas are currently doing are the only actions left to them by their oppressors. After so many atrocities committed by Israel and so much hatred and violence against them, the Palestinians literally are fighting for survival. Thus, I couldn’t, in good conscience, tell them to ‘dial down their violence’ or whatever it is shitlibs want from them.
And thanks for ur comment. Imma think abt meaningful distinctions.
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Honestly the idea that Hamas fighters or Israelis are intrinsically better as the others people is seems to me like a bizarre discussion. Like tbh I don’t even know what people are trying to say when they say this or what they could possibly think they are proving. The question of support for Palestinians is not one of their individual leaders’ or soldiers’ personal virtue but one of judgement of support for relatively progressive forces in the actual historical context.
Settler-colonialists are intrinsically a reactionary force, but their children have not chosen this. Honestly I feel like I’m going a bit insane as I’ve also seen people celebrating videos where parents are tortured and murdered in front on their children. I’ve also seen quite a bit of anti-antisemitism on the comments sections of the videos. The psychologically healthy reaction to that is to be shaken and to see it as evil. The reasonable response is also to know that Liberation has nothing to do with that and does not necessitate it, is not invalidated by it.
That has nothing to do with the right to self-defense or general support for the Palestinian liberation cause, given that some people seem to making the massive jump to concluding that it means that self-defense necessarily implies or condones or means that we shouldn’t think as fucked the torture and murder of children and sexual violence against women hostages, which is just mind-boggling and twisted. I completely fail to see what the righteousness of Palestinian liberation has to do with this. If the PLO has tortured children, any reasonable non-psychopathic individual would have said that is fucked and unacceptable and reactionary, while also recognizing that that doesn’t affect in the slightest the need to support Palestinian Liberation when and wherever the opportunity presents itself. If that was true of the old PLO, it should be infinitely more true of Hamas.
Nor does it have to do with hang-wringing over the the death of civilians, as the support for armed struggle against any imperialist or fascist power has to recognize that those are inevitable. There were atrocities committed by the Red Army during the conquest of the Third Reich, but that did not affect the undeniable legitimacy of the Soviet cause. We can also recognize that it is an unavoidable feature of the asymmetrical warfare that Hamas will have to use what will be described as ‘terroristic methods’, but which are just a particular type of guerilla terroristic methods (as aiming for terror, psychological shock) as are used by every single power in any war.
“im criticizing Palestinian resistance, because right now they’re actually fighting back and the worng civilians are being killed”
Never saw so many people condemn this kind of atrocities by the regime. Also, saying that “their children have not chosen this” reminds me of the apologies on fascists. I can tell you yes, under mussoloini his ideology was mandatory so the people didnt choose it, but on the other hand they were affected irreversibly. To this day the ideology survived, and not by any mandatory dictate of the government.
On your comment more generally, we dont get to choose how the oppressed people fight back.
TLDR: the israelis are still genocidal, they act on their own will whether they are children or not.
With all due respect, I think there a lot of serious confusion running through your comment, to the extent that I can make out what you ‘argument’ is supposed to be as it seems to be jumping a bit inexplicably between unrelated pointed (although feel free to clarify). I really not sure what your points about Mussolini and ideology being mandatory or not are trying to say. Like are you saying that the children should be killed because they were subject to fascist propaganda? Should every Hindu child be murdered because they subject to fascist Hindutva propaganda? Should every Ukrainian child? Islamism serves a similar function to fascism in Islamic societies. Should every child whose parents are Islamist been killed? Wtf are you talking about? Like how the fuck can anyone thing this kind of reasoning is not only moronically fucking stupid, and insane, but also evil is beyond me and speaks volumes about how far the modern left has fallen in nihilism.
Nowhere have I criticized Palestinian resistance, but you seem to be inferring that, from, I guess, the recognize of the trivially obvious fact of how reactionary Hamas are (just read their history or charter). So what? Nothing at all could ever be criticized if there’s a power imbalance? That’s insane. The Khmer Rouge originally were the underdogs, as were the Shining Path in Peru. If they should obviously not get a pass, it’s not clear to me why Islamists should without a lot of argument. And yes, if a particular form of your resistance is killing children, then your resistance is not progressive or politically sensible to that degree. That in no way means that Palestinian right to self-defence should not be unequivocally supported, but that doesn’t contradict in the slightest condemnation of certain acts that any sane Marxist.
This also says alot about your ignorance of actual historical Marxist and Bolshevik policy on these points. The Bolsheviks never supported any national liberation movement unconditionally. It had to be a relatively progressive force. In certain cases they made mistakes, such as in the degree of their support for, say, the Guomingdang. The 20th century has provided ample evidence that bourgeois national liberation movements are dangerous, though in many circumstances should be provided critical support, in the interests of creating a context where communist movements can develop. We could also take another Islamist group, the FLN in Algeria. On the one hand, they were the only feasible body capable of defeating the French colonizers, but they detracts in no way from how intrinsically reactionary they were socially or politically, as evidenced by the fact that they massacred, tortured, wiped out the Communist revolutionaries. Hamas would do the exact same if they had a full state of their own. Specific national liberation movements should be supported to the extent that they are progressive forces in their historical context.
Suffice it to say that if the question is whether it is ever justified to kill children I’d say the answer is in 99.99999999999% of cases a resounding “obviously fucking not you fucking moronic psychopath”, not only because of moral and ethical considerations which are not changed by the political circumstances, but also because it is politically stupid of the highest degree, unless you are a fascistic Islamist group whose political ideology is intrinsically apocalyptic and whose long-term political interests are in accelerated destabilization of the geopolitical region, which will only benefit Islamists, not leftists and so not, in the long-term, the interests of the masses who live in this region.
People making some kind of mysterious jump in their ‘reasoning’ from the correct point that ‘Palestinians in Gaza have the right to defend themselves, and the only way they have to currently do so is through political and military structures which are dominated by Hamas’, to ‘we cannot recognize as evil and depraved the torture, rape, and the murder of children’. Or the insane assumption that they are actually politically productive.
There’s a similarly piss-poor, vague, ambiguous suggestion you seem to be making when you compare a point to fascism apologism (first off, if you are actually accusing me of that, go fuck yourself with a cactus), which is bizarre. The fact that a fascism engages in poor reasoning by using that kind of statement proves absolutely nothing, and thinking otherwise is obviously confused. I don’t give a fuck what it reminds you over. Refute the point or don’t, but don’t pretend you are by vague associations. I can make the exact same kind of argument to someone who says ‘vegetarism is good’ but responding ‘reminds me of something Hitler apologists would say, as Hitler was a vegetarian’. You seem to be making no less insane a ‘point’ there. If you really that stuck at a level of reasoning by vibes, associations, connotations, or that you cannot recognize the obvious point that different people can use the same set of words in different contexts with radically different purposes, meanings, and that in one case it could be done logically and in another illogically, then you really need to read some fucking theory. If we were talking about a hypothetical Eastern European society which the US was bombing, and the main opposition force was an explicitly fascist party, then I wonder how many people on this site would support it, though it seems to be as self-evident a political proposition as there could be for a Marxist that fascists should not be supported under any circumstances. In that case, we could still make arguments
The current strategy of Hamas, which restrains that of all others in Gaza because it is dominant, is not the optimal one imo, though I’m not there, though that doesn’t seem to matter when we make the obvious realization that it will lessen, not strengthen the likelihood of the construction of actual secular socialist movements. That being said, Hamas is the fault of Israel, and Israel bears ultimate responsibility for what is happening. Palestinians are in a completely fucked situation where armed resistance can only happen through or in conjunction with Hamas. The united from with Hamas and Islamic Jihad from the more progressive Palestinian groups is the only thing they can do. I agree. But that does not mean in any way that the regressive aspects and tactics they use, which are not going to aid the communist movement of history in the long-term, should not be recognized.
You last comment seems to be going from a triviality to a depraved insanity. Children do have a (developing) will. Yes. Fucking obviously. But going from that to ‘they are genocidal’ is such a vague jump in argument. They are born into the structures of Israeli apartheid, and the apartheid program of much of Israeli society. But frankly, Westerners on here do not benefit less in many cases than many poorer Israelis from structures of exploitation. Does anyone here think it would actually be either morally or politically non-fucked to arbitrarily torture and murder their children? Is a working class baby born in Detroit genocidal? Some people have literally lost their mind, and are nihilistic ultras larping as Marxists.
can we talk about this?
The Algerian Communist Part and the FLN cooperated during the Algerian War against French occupation in the National Liberation Army. This was purely tactical from both their perspectives, as Communism is inherently anti-Islamist, and Islamism is inherently anti-communist.
Once the French withdrew and Algeria had formal independence, the FLN was in power and banned the Communist Party in 1962. They were forced underground and would be continuously repressed and would never regain their former support or influence. This was continued once Boumédiène took power. They have never since regained substantial popularity and this was seriously obstructed not only by government repression but also by the rise of Islamism more generally in the Middle East and North Africa, which have presented themselves as radical alternatives based on purifying return to a mystical past and the obliteration of the distinction between religious and political institutions, diverting radical energy from communist movements, which might remind you in several respects of another political movement of European origin.
The history of Algeria and the PCA didn’t start on 1st November, The most of the PCA members were of settler pieds noirs, and it was a part of the PCF. second thing is that the FLN is not Islamist never claimed to be, it’s just that Algerians (especially the ones that were oppressed by French colonialism) were Muslims, the revolution was liberating Muslims from oppression.
the FLN banned every single other party after Independence, one party system.
The rise of Islamism was funded by the US and Saudi Wahhabism, the FLN went to war with 2 Islamist parties during the civil war, once again proving the FLN to not be Islamist.
I honestly thought you were going bring up Messali El-Hadj’s party or the FFS, did you get your information from french sources? because that’s what it seems like, they always bring up the “omagaad they were basically like ISIS they ate babies”.
You’re correct on the first point. That’s a typo on my part. Thanks for pointing it out. They were of course nationalist. But their nationalism was still ultimately inconsistent with communist politics. My brain was fuzzy lol as I’d spent all day explaining to ultras what Islamism is.
In really not sure what you think is being established by your second comment. Are you saying they were not anti-communist because they also banned other political parties? Because that is self-evidently false. Fascists also banned all other parties along with communist parties to establish a one party state. Are they now therefore not anti-communist because they also banned other political parties? The fact that it may (or not) be valid for communists to only allow one party under socialism does not seem to imply that all one-party states are equal. Additionally they were explicit in their anti-communism. Their rule extinguished the potential for communist politics, along with the rise of Islamist. The installation fo ineffective and corrupt nationalist governments has not generally led to communist political ascendency, but rather to Islamist ascendency, as the latter benefited more from the perceived illegitimacy of these governments.
I’m not really sure what your point is by noting that there were a lot of pied-noirs. Should Jor Slovo have been axed after he was part of the armed struggle against apartheid because he was white even though a communist? Judging the political progressiveness of someone like that is fundamentally identitarian and has far more in common with contemporary postmodern and post structural or general liberal, Soc dem and ultra leftist identity politics. It is fundamentally non-Marxist. What matters is how that individual positions themself politically and whether, in this case, they are a class or colonial race traitor. Otherwise kind of position which simply says ‘they white therefore they bad’ is strangely and perversely moralistic to me, and just reproduced the race essentialism, rather than taking a historical materialism view on racial identity, which doesn’t allow that kind of blanket conclusion. You are correct that the PCF has had persistent issues with racism and chauvinism still its inception. So did Engels, frankly. I don’t see how this invalidates communism as preferable to nationalism or indicated that the PCL was in no way communist in its ideology or politics.
My sources are French, Algerian and from Algerian Communist and non-communist friends and acquaintances. You of course correct that the general French liberal and conservative reaction to the nationalist is to see them as satanic. That being said, the FNL did completely did commit atrocities against progressive opponents and civilians. The fact that western liberals or conservatives oppose a group due to their own interests in no ways means that said group’s long term interests are coherent in any long term sense with those of communists.
This kind of argument is very weird to me. It would carry over to the case of the Iranian revolution and the Islamist’s. Should the fact that they were, in a broad sense, attempting to ‘liberate’ Iranians from Western imperialism, therefore they should be viewed positively or as progressive? They are an even more prefect example of a diversion of radical energy from a growing communist movement to radical reactionary mass movements that then brutally crushed all Iranian communist groups through torture, rape and assassination.
Yeah, of course, Arab nationalism is inconsistent with communist politics, but the FLN was as nationalistic as much as it was communist, it has gone to wars with other Arab countries, voted against them, and stood with them depending on the condition.
well are they fascist Islamists because they banned all parties including communist parties? you look at the policies of the FLN and its relations to define that, not if they banned a party or not. Stalin killed a number of opportunists and Trotskyists after the revolution, does that make him a fascist? you’re not making sense.
No, that is not an evidence of being anti communist, the Islamist reactionaries were funded by Al Qaeda and the US and Wahhabists, the rise of Islamist terrorists and Nationalistic terrorists in the balkans post Yugoslavia doesn’t mean that Yugoslavia repressed communism.
Algeria is not Apartheid south Africa, the Settlers in Algeria were more recent and the colonizer crimes were more violent, a party that majorly attracts pieds noirs and isn’t popular with natives means that the party looks for the interests of the Pieds noirs, which the PCA was, it didn’t look for the native interest, the PCA is like the socialists parties of setters in the Zionist entity. the people who fought on the side of Algeria during the revolution native or not were granted citizenship, Harkis were kicked out of the country.
http://babelouedstory.com/thema_les/histoire/12070/12070.html
And the Fr*nch colonizers committed a thousand other for 132 years, The FLN didn’t drop nukes, Napalm or bomb in barrages, so I don’t care and I have no sympathy.
The Algerian argument of should’ve the FLN won the revolution or not are as meaningful and important as the “how could’ve Hitler won WWII” arguments, it’s milquetoast and outright useless to complain that the FLN didn’t press the communism button in 1963 or that they bombed a milk bar, what matters is that the FLN as much as I dislike them, have and continues to be fighters of Imperialism and supporters of leftist and liberation movements in the global south.
I agree that we shouldn’t celebrate any individual acts of needless cruelty (although I haven’t personally seen anyone doing so), but collectively equivocating Hamas fighters and Israelis is bizarre; there are disgusting people in every sufficiently large group, but it’s a tiny percentage in Hamas compared to the overwhelming majority of Israeli settlers
If you haven’t seem atrocities, you are not on the correct telegrams.
It’s not a question of equating or equivocating. That Israeli is a fascist apartheid settler colonial state goes without question. That there is an asymmetric balance of power which makes inevitable methods which will be immediately labelled as ‘terroristic’, and are of course terroristic in the literal sense of the term, though of course no less so than what Israel practices, should also go without saying. Hamas is also, literally, and in many ways, a product of Israel. But the very reason why they financed them and ensured their ascendancy in Gaza was to split the Palestinian opposition, crush the secular left of the Palestinian liberation movement, and ensure they had an enemy who would be perfect in terms of optics, rhetoric and propaganda because they can very believable present them as a menace (by-the-bye, Hamas is an acronymn but sounds very similar to the word ‘hamas’ in Hebrew, which means ‘violence’).
Aside from moral and ethical questions (which are not irrelevant), there is also the obvious point that not all tactics or strategies used by particular national liberation movements are equal. It’s a mystery to me how people are able to wrap their heads around this very simple and obvious point in the case of, say, the Khmer Rouge or the Sendero Luminoso but not in the context of the Islamic world, and seems to me to have something to do with a lot of guilt that Westerners (on this site, seemingly clearly the majority) justifiably have in relation to the Islamic world. Tbh it’s embarrassing in the first place that the comparison even has to be made to get the point about its incoherence across. All this applies even if the situation is so fucked that there are no other avenues left open to progressive forces than to collaborate with your local far-right reactionaries who are going to commit war-crimes. That is the current situation. I’m certainly not saying that I would not have done the same were I a Marxist Palestinian militant. But that’s because they have no other choice, and we have to respect their opinion that the most immediate issue and the one on which their legitimacy depends is that of Israeli fascism, apartheid and settler colonialism. Ideally there would be a movement more akin to the First Intifada, but Hamas do not want that, because Islamists are fully aware that their interests are not served by actual working-class mass movements.
If you mean that most people in Hamas are not disgusting, well, that was neither my point nor is is possible quite frankly for you or I to confidently make that statement one way or the other. Like is the head of Hamas more or less reactionary that a working-class Israeli in Jerusalem? That’s not that clear. Though it does make me think that there’s a continued, fundamental misunderstanding of what Islamism actually is that’s going on here. Islamism is a far-right, extremely reactionary version of politics which is very similar in many ways to fascism, noticeably in that it is a mass movement and in its emphasis on a return to a mythical past through violence, warfare and blood, it’s death-cult characteristics, its extreme emphasis on hierarchy, is relation to women as essentially one of rape and seeing them as cattle for the bearing of children, its hypermasculinity, and the fact that Islamism is also a result of a (global) crisis in capitalist-imperialist production, but one affecting locally the Islamic global south, or poor proletariat or lumpenproletariat Muslim populations in the imperial core. Like fascism, it functions politically as a a mechanism to divert radical energy from socialist and Communist forces and then to crush them mercilessly.
I meant that I haven’t seen celebration of atrocities. As for Hamas, I have to admit that I know very little about their policies aside from anti-Zionism, so I can’t meaningfully engage with your points at the moment; if you have any sources on Hamas from this perspective, I’ll try to educate myself