TΛVΛR

Just to be clear: You can reject both, but compared to the invasion of Iraq the justification for the invasion of Ukraine is sound.

If @xkyfal18 justifies the invasion of Ukraine but does not justify the invasion of Iraq that is a consistent position, your trying to isolate the regime change aspect amongst all justifications is a fallacy typical for the metaphysical thinking of a liberal. By adding that constraint you’re ridiculing your own question

Also nearly everybody would support regime-changing hitler, does that mean everybody supported the invasion of Iraq bc they support regime change in one instance? Ofc not. I hope even you can see the idiocy of that argument.

Now back to the premise: Even if you ignore the worst US lies, both invasions are ultimately justified with “national security” (the purpose of a military after all)

Well one (the invasion of Ukraine) is the response to a hostile superpower inciting a nazi-powered coup + civil war on your border with the aim of eventually regime changing you.

And the other one (the invasion of Iraq) is you being the hegemonic superpower devastating a country on the other side of the planet without any threat at all, on a whim (well imperialism actually)

Ofc both amounted to one country imposing their interests over another, but whose were more justified? What threatens “national security” more? A civil war on the border or peace in some far-away country?

Like I said: Oppose both: ok. But it needs pointing out, that people who justify the invasion of Iraq are categorically monstrous

Ofc I realize you didn’t justify the invasion of Iraq. But you also alluded to the US as a protective power while calling out Russia as belligerent, implying Russia would be more warlike than the West, the most murderous power structure humanity was ever doomed with.

The metaphysical need to atomize and isolate things (like the aspect of regime-change in Ukraine/Iraq) isn’t practical in discussions about geopolitics.

It only leads to ridiculously irrelevant comparisons, as evidenced…

You will probably not take it as honest advice atp, but I mean it: Liberalism implicitly teaches us Metaphysics and it sucks hard. It does not give us the tools for a proper analysis, it gives only an approximation of reality that is practical when its error is tolerable, but it is often not. looking into dialectics is imperative.

Its so unfortunate that so many people, like yourself, have not been paying attention to Ukraine in the last decades.

With Russia finally having reacted violently, our war propagandists are having a field day with your brains.

Chances are you already are immune to historic fact and prefer some Neocon giving you their speculation on a foreign leaders psyche instead.

It was in fact the US-centered, imperial power structure which tried its hardest to make peace impossible.

On the off chance that you can still tell information from garbage read some influential imperial strategists from 2019 for an introduction:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html

This was my last, longer comment about her (party).

While it would be absurd for a Socialist to mistake her for a comrade, your scepticism towards her “problematization” (especially by liberals) is very warranted.

It depends on who you compare her to. 30 years ago, she was a Socialist, compared to that modern day Wagenknecht is very bad.

However if you compare her party to the German Bundestag, then 99+/-1% are more “problematic”. As an example: for the longest time her new party stood alone in the parliament in opposing weapons exports that facilitate an active genocide (her old left party recently managed to overcome internal resistance and silently join her in that conclusion, though I wonder if its members know).

I share and understand the frustration comrades have with some of her stances / rhetoric, but if you view imperialism or more specifically hyper-imperialism (as tricontinental calls it) as the main contradiction of our time - which I do - then both become clear: why she is in no way among the most “problematic” and also why she is constantly made out to be by the transatlantic media

So yeah a comrades criticism of her is very valid (as I guess they don’t support any other party in the parliament either), a liberals is - as always - massively hypocritical

Germany is creepy as fuck right now. Its completely sliding into Military Keynesianism

The decoupling from Russian energy, the “derisking” from Chinese markets and the move towards e-mobility which will crush German car companies (not saying I want more fossil cars - its just an analysis) are smashing the rate of profit. (That’s a thorough sweep through most of the economic base in Germany).

It does already lead to cuts on social spending which in turn makes ppl turn away from centrist libs.

Who are they turning to? Well the left is nonexistent in Germany, so they are looking the same way that capital which is on the losing side of things is looking: the far right AfD.

Meanwhile the transatlantic center is desperately trying to look for growth potential and finds the arms industry, which is in line with their Zionism, Islamophobia, Russophobia and Sinophobia anyways.

So we now have discussions in Germany that we have to be ready for war with Russia in no later than in 5 years and are proudly opening up new arms factories.

The more the AfD rises in polls the more the center will lean into war with Russia to mitigate an economic situation that benefits the AfD as well as create a narrative that is supposed to keep the “Russia friendly” AfD out of power.

Meanwhile more and more authoritarian laws are enacted to protect the centrist parties from losing power while at the same time Ukranian-“solidarity” lets fascist elements seep in the centrist parties, predominantly the green party and its foundations (Heinrich Böll, LibMod, …)

I am not certain of all the mechanisms but I don’t see any meaningful material development that would halt this. Renewables don’t provide profit rates that can satisfy capitalists.

I guess revolutionary potential in Germany grows higher than it has ever been, but with the huge head start in organization and capital of the right its going to be an uphill battle. Additionally a lot of whats left on the radical young left is massively confused (like pro-Israel, and pro-US), which is not to say psy-OPed.

Regarding organization I see some good development on the left around Palestine, but its often ppl with a migrant background who are massively in danger of state repression.

IDK I hope the more I am active the more opportunities will unfold, but I aside from organising I am considering leaving the country within the next years, although I would hope that we’ll somehow be able to prevent recreating the 30s of last century as well as the 40s where Russia has to solve our fascism problem again!

Looks like Luxemburg’s Socialism or Barbarism again and I am not here for the Barbarism

Living there, was born there, agree with you!

We were exploiting the Euro-zone and now burn it all on the altar of transatlanticism. And all of that with a moronic smugness.

I hate it here. Nowadays German liberal elite has developed a disgusting kind of exceptionalism with a vibe akin to “we are the most humble people in the whole world.”

Ironically having been the perpetrators of WWII and the Holocaust nowadays reinforces the idea that “we are righteous”. We have transformed German guilt into a twisted sense of pride, where our “culture of remembrance” is a sign of our superiority.

(Ofc this culture of remembranc is inherently white supremacist, it’s a different issue)

As if a genocidal holocaust phase is a part of any countries development, other countries just haven’t had theirs yet. So naturally we know better than these “pre-genocide” societies, right?

These days we explain Jewish people what constitutes antisemitism, we explain to the world what constitutes a genocide …

Ofc there is more, we forge ourselves against the US and Israel (incidentally both post-genocide societies) bc it allows us to never question ourselves. Our lesson from WWII, our “humility”, is to accept these 2 entities as our sole judges, as long as they will deem us good we are good, no questions asked

Emacs keybinds are fine, used them for some years. But once I tried modal bindings I never wanted to go back, “key-chords” just add strain.

Fortunately emacs has many options for modal keybindings, I prefer meow over vim personally

Thanks comrade! I have some disagreement about your strong admonition. We are talking about the only party plausibly in the next Bundestag that’s demanding a stop of weapons exports to ultraright genociders - thats gotta be worth something.

Be sure that I agree with you that some of her statements border a reactionary de-legitimization of gender struggles and I oppose that.

But some of what queer.de writes here I can’t follow. For example: They claim Wagenknecht is shifting blame for rising inequality onto queer people and the single source they give is this quote of hers:

Open-mindedness, anti-racism and the protection of minorities are the feel-good labels used to conceal rude redistribution from the bottom to the top and give their beneficiaries a clear conscience. And they are not contradictory: marriage for all and social advancement for the few, quotas for women on supervisory boards and low wages in areas where women work in particular, state-paid anti-discrimination officers and a state-induced increase in child poverty in immigrant families.

In my opinion their interpretation is completely unfounded, to me that quote sounds like an accurate critique of pink-washing reading into it that queer people are to blame for inequality seems a bit disingenuous. It seems like the authors have a gripe with Wagenknecht. That’s understandable, she never explicitly speaks out for queer people (to my knowledge) and only every decries the discourse as a “distraction”, I understand being pissed at that.

But a continued existence of this party only ends one way

What way is that? I can’t see that even “their continued existence” would end in some kind of purges?! I don’t look at it without concern but I believe the continued existence of her party is a good thing!

A part of it is because I have finally lost faith in the only party I ever supported “die Linke”. With their uselessness in opposing reactionary wars, from an anti-imperialist perspective, they have outlived themselves. Not only that they refuse to take part in leftist peace protest about Ukraine, when Israel began the hot-phase of their genocide the position of “die Linke” was terrible, I get that you have to condemn Hamas as a German party, but going on and on about them wanting to instate a Islamist dictatorship was proactively clouding the real cause for war and was playing Israels fiddle of necessitating the extermination of Hamas by all means. Eventually they were just about able to adopt a cease-fire position, against huge inner-party opposition, but AFAIK until this day they never demanded the end of weapons export to Israel. While at the same time they are demanding the gov to pressure Qatar to end their support of Palestinian resistance. Jan Korte, one of their members of parliament, is even demanding the gov to pressure egypt to open their borders to, de-facto, finally facilitate Israels plan of ethnic cleansing: https://www.fr.de/politik/linke-kritisiert-regierung-wegen-untaetigkeit-92741296.html

And on a personal level: I am involved in ceasefire protests. We contacted “die Linke” from the very beginning, they nervously refused everytime - even when we were still strategically moderate. Fuck that, if I have to have a liberal, at least I want one with a backbone and an anti-genocide stance.

As I have laid out elsewhere, Germany, and the EU as a whole, has taken a path of doubling down on war with Russia and from what I have seen these last years “die Linke” won’t do shit about it, to me they are now just over the verge of being appropriated by imperialist forces. BSW, and Wagenknecht/Lafontaine in particular, are the only ones with a credible/longstanding anti-war stance and as an anti-Imperialist on that front they have more to show than any other party.

Sorry if I got a bit emotional, I used to feel connected to “die Linke” and I am disappointed.

I mean, If I can hope for the KMT to win against the DPP in Taiwan for strategic reasons, in this case I could bury the hatch with the SPD just deep enough to accept a strategic benefit would there be one.

But there isn’t: The defining difference seems to be that BSW will obstruct US-led Western Imperialism through rapprochement with RU and CN and will not give weapons to IL while the SPD will do the opposite of all that

It seems a little ultra to say they are between Strasserism and Nazbol.

IMO they are classic “Christdemokraten” minus the religious invocation, their policy is exactly that of Helmut Kohl in nearly every regard.

What is different is the media and societal context they are embedded in. Large parts of society are reactionary about immigration and the media love themselves a “red/brown” alliance, creating a feedback loop. And that they broke from the left created mechanisms of its own that play a role.

Its still concerning, but remember sending military to Mali and creating Frontex is well within the realm of socdem anti-immigration action.

I am concerned about what they say and some of the support they draw but so far their rhetoric has been qualitatively significantly different to the likes of the AfD (I think?) in that its not ethno-popular/“völkisch”

IMO what they say is well within what socdems say/do. But its not my rabbit hole, if you can educate me otherwise I definitely would want to know (German texts are fine too)

I hope with you, and I am trying to do my part here (so that hopefully you guys don’t have to do all the work again…).

Off topic but while I have the chance: thank you comrade for your tremendous work here. But also in FP and Clojure. It was a fun realization that you are the same person;)

Good question, I remember being a bit insecure writing that sentence. Please don’t put too much trust in that comment of mine as I still have had little praxis to challenge my analysis. Anyways, my thoughts there were a bit convoluted, not sure if it came across correctly.

What I was thinking about when I wrote it was “you can’t have a traditional socialist party that successful”, where I meant only electoral success and only in the short-term. Yeah I’d make out mostly political climate as the cause for that.

I didn’t want to say that the pursuit of a Socialist party is not worthwhile, I think it is. Although I wonder if an obvious socialist party will be able to get off the ground or whether a “Black Panthers” approach (in terms of being not-too-obviously socialist) would be more promising.

Such estimates are always speculative without praxis to probe ones conceptions though.

There are two parties in Germany that bear the label ML (DKP and MLPD), both have next to zero visibility and are under the observation of the intelligence services. They are considered to be enemies of the German constitution (not surprisingly since that grants the right to private property). I believe they are only not banned bc their influence it negligible and a legal pursuit would bind resources and give them previously unknown visibility.

I would see both as some evidence for my claims but I have to say I am not speaking from personal experience I’ve had no interaction with either party (I wonder if I would admit to that online).

But yeah I personally know way more foreigners here who are Socialist than Germans. In France and Italy Socialism is way more present as a concept. We have no clue what the word means. For most of us it means nothing. And for the rest its what the the dusty, old men from the “Unrechtsstaat” GDR talked about when they wanted to steal from and control the people. its a failure of the past, not a success of the future. and speaking of it is dangerous, the economy is bad as it is.

We’ve had the “Radikalenerlasse”, the congress for cultural freedom, the CIA building up our media and intelligence services all purging Socialist knowledge from public consciousness while at the same time our “big brother” helped us to become the so-called richest nation in Europe. The material conditions have been comparably fine for us under liberalism, people fear falling back into the GDR trap.

Germany, having been in the center of US Crosshairs of cold-war efforts has left a nasty scar on us, it will take some time and probably a worsening of the economic conditions but most of all a big educational effort from us comrades to get back.

The way I see it, the next years will both make that a necessity as it was never before but also provide previously unseen opportunities for it.

Thats kinda how I see it. Sorry for digressing comrade

Thank you for your assessment, yogthos. For what its worth, I think you are spot on.

In Germany huge discussions have erupted on how to cut back on social spending at every corner. How to exert more pressure on the unemployed and force workers to accept less.

As Luxemburg said we’ll see the capitalist class rolling back concessions, with all the consequences you laid out. And not only is Germany decoupling from Russia, but also “de-risking” from China

And the left is vastly unprepared/nonexistent, while the right is getting more and more organized.

One more concern to add: while economic opportunities are closed left and right currently I see only one being actively opened which is weapons production.

Should Germany become dependent on wartime-like production than wartime will be certain be it near or far and with US imperialists being as desperate as they are I see little resistance from them. And liberals who have gotten used to justifying wars might be tempted twice bc weapons production might keep the worst economic consequences and hence the AfD at bay

If the Left cannot find answers, there are more ways than one that lead to barbarism

A more recent poll (from 2 days ago) finds that 21% stated they would either definitely (4%) or probably (17%) vote for BSW.

It is definitely one of the most interesting developments in German politics and I think it will have a net benefit, if only bc of its authentic opposition to warhorny transatlanticism that otherwise owns German politics and media.

However I can’t read this party yet honestly, the sentiment towards it in Germany is a remarkable ball of contradictions. My two cents as a German, when I read the (understandable) hopes that it could be a socialist party.

Although the central founder (SW) was a socialist in her youth, I can definitely not call it a socialist party, they themselves don’t. And in the recent press conference regarding their founding they also explained why, while many members come from a leftist tradition, they don’t call themselves “leftist” (its important to not that left/right have different connotations in every country), their explanation was along the lines that these words have lost their meaning to the German people.

They gathered some of the best politicians you can get from the German left, their recent recruitment of Fabio De Masi is something hopeful, whose stance against finance capital is one of the staunchest (he is a union/reform-socialist, I guess that’s the best you can get in Germany…)

However in their public communication there is nothing Marxist. They carry bourgeoise ideals on their banner. Since the established parties currently increasingly turn towards authoritarian measures and crackdowns against leftist groups there might be a strategic benefit in it for leftist groups though.

Their perception is dominated by other factors since the media exclusively focusses on them:

In Germany the “culture war” is a bit different than in the US, however here their position is not super appealing. They call out a lack of legislation focussing on material conditions of workers, but they draw from the culture war that this necessitates opposition to socially progressive topics and adopt somewhat of a reactionary position in some of these regards. IIRC SW called herself socially conservative.

This is one of the reasons why the parts receives more hostility from the liberals that consider themselves of the left, the other is their stance on refugee policy. While some of their members have in the past advocated for open borders it is their official position that “the numbers need to be lower”, their argument is not the ethnic-popular one that the media tries to put in their mouth but that integration-efforts are past its limits to which there is probably some truth to.

Their championing of bourgeoise values and the parts of their position to gender politics that are reactionary as well as their refugee policy seems to be much of the reason for their popularity. Partly bc the media focusses on these things exclusively (and on unfounded speculations they might be “in the Kremlins pocket”). But also no other German party wants peace in Ukraine and the Palestine and that appeals to people as well. They have some credibility bc they address truisms that are swept under the rug, like that the Nordstream bombing was facilitated by the US. The husband of the central founder was literally the only politician who would talk openly and frequently about the influence of US intelligence agencies.

All this will lead to a lot of member-applications from problematic corners os German society. They have announced that they will be careful with their admissions, and I see potential for growth in a “good” direction (probably not socialist tho).

While I see that they do and say some things bc it is necessary in our political landscape and having a traditional socialist party is impossible in Germany, I can’t bring myself to see them as Socialists with a practical strategy, but they are also not Nazbols. Currently (I didn’t dive into it) I believe they represent a true demsoc approach and flirt with that part of the national bourgeoisie that stands to lose a lot from transatlanticism, like companies who deal with Russia and China.

I believe strategic support is the right way currently, but I doubt they can be swayed towards a Socialist evolution. How they develop will be greatly influenced by how they will deal with the incentives they operate in, like capital interests and the media stirred excitement of reactionary elements for them.

Didn’t wanna cloud anyone’s enthusiasm, they are good news, especially with the AfD turning more and more radical on the right AND having more and more success in the polls.

True for all the lisps without explicit false (in the others its more or less a technicality)

Gotta love though that when lisp is concise it does so without overloading syntax