This backpedal comes right after meeting with AOC and Bernie Sanders. The two have rubbed their shitlib off on him. Previously he seemed to not be totally for or against (could have generously been seen as “hiding his power level”) but now clearly against the phrase.
I still hope Zohran wins though. Him losing would be a big win for the pieces of shit in the media and in power looking to prove that even suggesting Israel might be doing something wrong is forbidden.
The Gand wizard explained to me why “Black lives matter” is bad, I will now discourage its use
Fuck this bullshit, stop centering everything on Zionists. Palestinians are being genocided and we’re getting tone policed? The oppressor does not get to choose what we say.
Tone policing is just a way of controlling and extinguishing the narrative. When someone controls your language they control the message but wrapped up as being some kind of concerned support.
“I won’t tell my supporters to rise up against things anymore because a Nazi said it reminded her of the warzaw ghetto uprising.”
he never used the phrase himself to being with, he just got in trouble with the zionist media for not discouraging its use.
edit: until now. L move. he should be responding to that attack with the story of the warsaw ghetto intifiada and how the museum changed that word to, i forget, one of the words in the acronym for hamas.
Hamas stands for “Harakat al-Muqāwama al-Islāmiyya,” and that middle word, “Muqāwama,” basically means “resistance” or “struggle,” which is what the US Holocaust Memorial Museum changed their Arabic text for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to. I think he cited them using the term “intifada” in the past and that provoked even more accusations of him being an antisemite, but idk if that’s why the museum changed it, though they did change it pretty recently.
thanks, yeah the story i heard was that zionists were mad about the word intifada and complained/pressured for that change.
So… you had faith in the electoral system of the imperial core again, didn’t you?
What are your honest thoughts about the PSL announcing mayoral candidates?
PSL aren’t democrats.
The communist electoral strategy isn’t to “take power via bourgeios democracy”, but to use the election platform to spread communist ideals and gauge our numbers. Most importantly, via our own working-class parties, not bourgeios parties like the democrats.
Yeah, I agree. I also have read Lenin. The person I’m asking the question of appears to be broadly dismissing electoralism in the imperial core. That’s a lot different then only supporting electoralism as a means of educating the “backward masses” and counting your numbers, as a part of larger strategy that includes building dual power like the workers councils (Soviets) in Russia. Electoralism allowed the communists to gage their support.
What I tend to see in threads like these are condemnations of electoralism with little clarity on what the actual condemnation is. There is a very mixed message being sent if only because the DSA is involved.
beyond any consideration of the moral implications of being wishy washy under pressure about genocide by the feelings of horrifying racists: it’s just stupid politics. admitting this is inviting a simple next step of attacks, about why he didn’t say this sooner, and then why he’s done so much advocacy for Palestine before, etc. he has a lifetime of advocacy that he’s inviting them to continue slandering him about by not explaining to Al goddamn Sharpton why he’s actually an incorrigible islamophobic anti-“Arab” racist who isn’t even willing to learn how to pronounce the word he’s pretending to care about so much let alone learn that it means uprising. it’s also pretty clear that zohran is sort of just lying here? so that the press can here what they want to? but he’s a brown muslim guy named Zohran “from Uganda” so absolutely no one who’s a hysterical zionist nazi will be moved or swayed by this pitiful attempt at backpedaling, and neither will the feckless machine democrats who want to turn any instincts he has into mush like AOC. i don’t think he’s betrayed Palestinians, but whoever he’s listened to in taking this tact is genuinely fucking bad at their job and needs to leave.
Folding under 0 pressure
There was some pressure, the issue is that this won’t actually reduce the pressure even slightly.
The pressure is lighter now that there’s a divided opposition and he has a D next to his name on the ballot. I think it makes it even less acceptable, it paints the picture that the primary campaign was opportunistic.
I agree at least that it’s even less acceptable now and paints the picture that he’s an opportunist, but I think it’s still not true that there’s zero pressure. I think that, if anything, the bourgeois interests who underestimated his campaign before will now dump much more funding into whoever they think the opposition is to try to be sure to crush him if doing so is at all possible still.
0 pressure, besides the fact this is literally all the papers run and talk about instead of the extremely popular actual policies.
is it mistake to concede in the expectation he’ll stop being smeared from this angle? obviously, this story is literally just an embellishment of the earlier statement because the initial “discourage” statement still hasn’t stopped the media from centering this zionist narrative. bro needs a
media coach ffs
Still waiting for him to do literally anything if consequence, but the optics-carers go off i guess
people act like he’s running to be mayor of Palestine or like he’s walked back “i’m going to arrest Netanyahu” or like any of his actual public policy i.e. rent controlFeeling it with a presidential candidate in Ireland and her throwing fellow leftists like Mick Wallace under the bus. The only thing that can motivate me to vote is to send a clear message to ruling powers that isn’t some skewed poll or ignored demonstration.
what did she say about Mick Wallace?
More what she avodied saying when she was asked about his claims about Azov.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/F0UkQ7eQSGI
She said he was great TD (you know from 2012 to 2019), rightfully mentioned some of the good work he did on the Gardai as a TD. But there is an implication there that he fell from grace as an MEP from 2019 to 2024. A time where he and Clare gained interational notarity railing against NATO, defending AES and speaking up for Palestine. She herself is a more a career politician who only left Labour years ago because they ran Michael D instead of her. Mick and Clare while being trots where a blaze of glory for the Irish left.
Correction: Mick Wallace was more aligned with the CPI then any of the trot groups towards the end. Clare Daily was in a trot party - Socialist Party (CWI affiliated back then) but kicked out for working with wallace.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
i’m disappointed he isn’t standing up to zionists but he has a lot of room to backpedal
rolling over to Zionist feelings on something irrelevant truly doesn’t bode well for when the rubber meets the road, when it’s actually controversial positions in favor of Palestinian liberation
torn between that worry and “maybe he’s letting them have that one because it’s so minor”
like he’s walked back “i’m going to arrest Netanyahu” or like any of his actual public policy i.e. rent control
When did he walk these back
He hasn’t, but people here act like he did with his response to what is literally a slogan
You say this like him condemning “Black lives matter” because “All lives matter” wouldn’t be a terrible indictment, and this situation is a lot less different from that than some might wish it was.
Except it is a very different situation precisely because he doesn’t condemn the phrase
He chose the word discourage very carefully in an attempt to be diplomatic to the establishment without actually condemning those of us who say it
Sorry, let me rephrase to the very different situation:
It is like him discouraging the use of “Black lives matter” because a white rights activist told him that it makes them think of the knockout game and South Africa’s “white genocide” and is a denial of the fact that “All lives matter”. My point is that he’s ceding ground to the Zionists as though they are making a point worth respecting in policing reasonable language.
- every mother fucking time lmao
There is functionally no such thing as “hiding your power level” in the sense of secretly being more left. If you’re “hiding your power level” it’s because you’re a rightist, and the phrase is exclusively used by baby leftists as cope.
If you’re not creating the conditions for people more radical than yourself (e.g. by playing word police on radical slogans) then you’re not a communist who’s in deep cover waiting for the time to strike, you’re just another liberal delaying the time to strike.
as a politician sure but this does actually apply for hasan piker (calling DPRK best korea in a video with boy boy ,saying Mao liberated Tibet)
I really meant in terms of politicians and such. That said, I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time listening to Hasan and I think he is basically as he represents himself with the one exception of de-emphasizing his belief in the necessity of violence because of TOS. Well, perhaps he realizes in some arguments that he is wrong slightly more often than he is willing to admit because he’s also extremely stubborn, but it’s hard to tell where that would leave him overall.
Mao liberating Tibet is something even the vast majority of revisionists agree with and “best Korea” has several points to consider: first, it’s a meme; second, when there’s only one other Korea and that Korea is the RoK, it’s a really low bar to be “best Korea;” three, any decent Marxist who is interested in geopolitics should be able to tell you that the DPRK is not Marxist or even really socialist, so overstated support for it isn’t selecting as strongly for being a Marxist as Hexbear would have you believe, even if the DPRK is unquestionably a historically progressive force and it would benefit the world for it to triumph over the foreign occupation dominating half of Korea.
any decent Marxist who is interested in geopolitics should be able to tell you that the DPRK is not Marxist or even really socialist
Yeah this is some very niche take. Is any country at all Marxist or socialist then?
I think you can define socialist in a pretty generous way (like “professes to seek the eventual end of class society”) and that would include, to the best of my knowledge, every ““AES”” state except for the DPRK. The DPRK does not even meet that incredibly low bar; see the article I linked, where they are quoted as being against even the eventual destruction of the national bourgeoisie.
It is a fantasy that the DPRK is more socialist than Cuba, a fantasy that I struggle to imagine the basis of except that it has the most Soviet aesthetic and is the most openly hostile to America and friends. I strongly encourage you to read the article, ignoring Bland’s Hoxha-philia because I don’t think that aspect is very productive, but it’s also not very relevant to the main content of the essay.
the essay identifies some cringe statements but fails to situate any of the rhetoric and policies within the DPRK’s overall economy and context. acclaiming khrushchev is just a given when the USSR was rebuilding their country, special economic zones and other compromises in the 90s are because of the USSR’s disintegration.
but it’s very hard to judge these and tge involvement/existence of national bourgeoisie without real economic data about the proportion these aspects constitute in the overall picture
While I don’t like the Khruschevite stuff, it really isn’t the point of my bringing up the article and neither is the SEZ stuff, which I’m obviously aware Hexbear is supportive of. My personal concern is with their thorough denouncement of Marxism point by point and even in name itself, as well as, it must be stressed, their explicit support for an indefinitely perpetuated capitalist class. It’s not like these things were needed for them to stay on China’s good side or could remotely help them get off the west’s bad side, and these things have remained for decades.
If you want “grounding in the DPRK’s context,” I can point to stuff that Bland interestingly chooses not to discuss like the Supreme People’s Assembly being a 687-person rubber stamp for virtually its entire history. There must be a line somewhere where one must admit that a “socialist” state has gone from “making compromises” to “being compromised”.
I apologize that I don’t have spreadsheets on the DPRK’s economic functioning and probably wouldn’t be qualified to interpret them even if I did, but I think even just the exercise of trying to have a standard of evaluation rather than producing post-facto excuses could be helpful.
I’ve never encountered people being able to respond to these things with something higher than handwaving, and the mods can probably tell you at this point that I complain about it constantly.
i’m not trying to handwave but analysis requires hard material data, not just flowery language from statesmen. like the “non-violent” resolution of class divides is the most
paragraphs ever. it’s like basing an analysis of the USSR on their constitution
AES includes China which collaborated with the West to build its economy and reversed the workers protections gained in Mao’s era for neoliberal reform and a IMF export economy.
It also includes Vietnam, and both countries still have relations with Israel. China recently just raised the retirement age and wealth inequality has only grown. Cuba faces similar sanctions challenges the the DPRK and also allows for private industry for capitalists.
I think it’s unhelpful to analyze Marxism in terms of publicly available political speech and not the actions and organization of the state itself. The issue is then that the DPRK isnt an open book when it comes to internal affairs outside of what’s published in state media sources. Of course, thats also just due to the fact that imperialists would like to know exactly how the WPK operates just as we do.
The DPRK enshrines basic standards of living into its contitution: free education, schooling and healthcare (all not guaranteed under AES like China or Vietnam). The DPRK also practices collectivized agriculture. It establishes SEZs while also maintaining a socialist mode of production outside of it. Its foreign policy has consistently been left: supporting Russian SMO, never recognizing the Zionist occupation, breaking off relations with the ROK. Just this year, a resort for domestic tourists was built and the government is focusing on building housing in Pyongyang. The DPRK’s military support for Russian SMO has also broken the liberal sanctions barrier with its historic ally.
If a national bourgeois did exist in NK, then why would they ever choose to play pretend socialism when they could easily join their international class at any point (multiple points, such as the famine in the 90s, nuclear deals with Clinton, etc)? While I don’t argue that this class definitely does not exist and that there isnt an urban rural split/ Pyongyang class elite, rejecting the AES term for NK on the basis of criticizing Juche’s idealist framing isnt a complete analysis.
I’d like to read more analysis of the DPRK based on the affairs of the country that we do know rather than the published writings of its leaders.
It is a fantasy that the DPRK is more socialist than Cuba, a fantasy that I struggle to imagine the basis of except that it has the most Soviet aesthetic and is the most openly hostile to America and friends.
First, I never said that one country is more socialist than other. Second, I have read the article you’ve linked and I don’t agree with the authors stances on revisionism. To me it just seems like purity testing.
First, I never said that one country is more socialist than other.
To ask “if x country isn’t socialist, is any country socialist?” suggests that x country is an especially solid example. This isn’t literally absolutely necessary to ask the question, but it becomes a strange thing to ask with no further explanation for why such a question is even relevant if this implication isn’t being carried. More importantly:
Second, I have read the article you’ve linked and I don’t agree with the authors stances on revisionism. To me it just seems like purity testing.
I don’t understand how you can take it as “purity testing” to criticize the DPRK for openly opposing anti-capitalism and the notion of classless society on even the most basic theoretical level. What do you even mean when you say “socialism” if this is socialism? If the DPRK is socialist for any reason other than using the word “socialist” to describe itself, then fucking Bismark was at least as much of a socialist (and he wasn’t one), and if you were to call them Marxist, they themselves would disagree with you because it’s a core rhetorical element of their state ideology that they aren’t.
Furthermore, if Marxism has any specific value, revisionism is the undermining of that value, though I guess I could say that I disagree with Bland’s stance on revisionism because I think he quite firmly establishes ample evidence that the DPRK is not even revisionist but instead just not Marxist or socialist at all, which is not the stance Bland takes in the article. You have seen for yourself how KIS and KJI took pains to refute almost every idea of Marx that was available to them, typically with extremely frivolous reasoning in support of completely ridiculous alternatives. What is left?
Tangentially, I do think Bland’s a little harder on the co-operatives than I probably would be, but I’ve also struggled to find good information on them and I don’t think it would really change my perspective much overall.
To ask “if x country isn’t socialist, is any country socialist?” suggests that x country is an especially solid example. This isn’t literally absolutely necessary to ask the question, but it becomes a strange thing to ask with no further explanation for why such a question is even relevant if this implication isn’t being carried.
im sorry that i wasnt clear with that question. i wasnt trying to paint DPRK as a uniquely solid example or anything, but i was referring to the fact that DPRK, among Cuba, China etc., are considered socialist states by the vast majority of MLs.
on revisionism, i will not comment further on it because i don’t want to get into the conversation on what is and what isn’t socialism (it often ends with nothing really being socialism, since all socialist states had to give some concessions to capitalism etc.)
"There is functionally no such thing as “hiding your power level”. Yeah this isn’t a Dragonball episode
I think leftists running for office could hide their power level, but don’t and instead back down in favor of acquiring powerful friends in the legislature. The prospect is just too tempting, AOC and Bernie and the democratic party machine being on your side and all you have to do is play ball.
I won’t pretend that I completely understand it, but there seems to be a real systematic element preventing it from happening. If you pivot right, you may lose popular will but you will get corporate backing because it makes sense that you’d be bought off. If you pivot left, you lose corporate backing, but why should the people trust someone who has either been a reactionary up until just now or lying to them this whole time?
And it makes sense in the respect that “hiding your power level” is fundamentally anti-democratic because you are subverting democratic choice by misleading the public about what it would mean to choose you. Turns out that tends to sit better with rightists for some reason . . .
fundamentally anti-democratic because you are subverting democratic choice by misleading the public about what it would mean to choose you. Turns out that tends to sit better with rightists for some reason . . .
That’s a great point, leftist or at least center-left policies tend to be more popular than right wing ones so hiding power level is more beneficial to the right. And you’re not going to hide your secret leftist views from the corporate interests so being shifty on the left only makes it look like your hiding something from the public.
This “I didn’t know what my words could mean to some people” is so ridiculous OF COURSE YOU FUCKING KNEW YOU SAID IT BECAUSE YOU WERE STANDING FOR SOMETHING, there’s no way people don’t see through this bullshit
YOU SAID IT
i thought he didn’t, it’s an antizionist slogan with a scary arabic word the media worked overtime to associate with him because of the less flashy, libbed up antizionism he’s espoused–“israel has a right to exist as a state with equal rights” doesn’t make the bush era racism dogs bark
yeah he was on some “i don’t say that but i won’t tell other people not to say it” and now he’s slid all the way to “i would discourage”
they’re not going to stop until he says “israel has a right to genocide and my first mayoral trip will be to kiss netanyahu’s ring” but they’re still trying to find the correctly-worded concession that will make the media stop framing him with racist dogwhistles. forget supporters getting the
it’s the campaign managers
they handed him the folder with pictures of him sleeping taken through a rifle scope
p sure it was his mom and Rowling making a new HP film
Weirdly he actually told his mother when he was a teen to not direct the fifth Harry Potter film. Like not a joke.
Why do we need to make up a reality where this is somehow not what he sincerely believes?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Yes, they have. And you know, when we won the primary election, I said on that stage that I know millions of New Yorkers care deeply about what happens in Israel and Palestine. I’m one of those New Yorkers. And I commit to reaching even further, to understand disagreement, to wrestle with the complexities of those differing viewpoints, because what this city deserves is a mayor that looks not only to represent the close to 600,000 New Yorkers that voted for me, but rather the 8.5 million people that call this city home.
In the meetings I’ve had since that moment, I’ve met with Jewish elected officials, with rabbis, with community leaders. And there was one rabbi who spoke to me about how that phrase, for her, brought back memories of bus bombings in Haifa, of restaurant attacks in Jerusalem. I knew from what she was sharing with me that she had a fear, as she said, that that could come home to New York City.
So, in having that conversation with her, I understood that the gap between the intent I’ve heard some New Yorkers share with the use of that language—of calling for the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land—was disconnected from the impact it was having in that same conversation I was having with that rabbi.
And so I have said, after having that conversation, that this is language I would discourage.
In the meetings I’ve had since that moment, I’ve met with Jewish elected officials, with rabbis, with community leaders. And there was one rabbi who spoke to me about how that phrase, for her, brought back memories of bus bombings in Haifa, of restaurant attacks in Jerusalem. I knew from what she was sharing with me that she had a fear, as she said, that that could come home to New York City.
Hmmmmm
And so I have said, after having that conversation, that this is language I would discourage.
Lmfao tone policing on behalf of rabbis who think Hamas is going to blow up a New York synagogue. Nothing but virtue signaling to Zionists.
fucking knew it lmaooooo
Why are all the comments on that article so awful lmao
Pretty much every unpaywalled, free-for-all, english language comment section is going to be rabidly reactionary.
Here’s how we can push him left
