Olle Bengtsson

Carlos Martinez är en av redaktörerna för “plattformen” Friends of Socialist China, som i förra veckan arrangerade detta webinarium med deltagande av en lång rad personer av vilka flera – och några flera gånger – förekommit i mina inlägg, och med sig själv som ordförande:

Vad är det viktigaste med detta? Det är att det bidrar till att stoppa barbartrogloatlantardernas krigsförberedelser mot Kina (atomvärldskrig) – och därmed till bevarandet av västerlandet, och till dess inslående på en ny väg.

“This event will explore how these achievements are a product of China’s social, political and economic system: socialism. In spite of several years of intense propaganda and misinformation about China in the media, large numbers of young people in the West are going through ‘a very Chinese time in their lives’, not least because they are seeing China’s extraordinary achievements in poverty reduction, technological innovation, ecological protection, infrastructure development and more. This webinar, organised by Friends of Socialist China, will explore how these achievements are a product of China’s social, political and economic system: socialism. The speakers will argue that China’s progress would simply not have been possible within a framework of capitalist rule, and that the country’s experience provides a powerful example of the superiority of socialism in terms of delivering for the people and for the planet.

Confirmed speakers:

George Galloway (Former MP, leader of Workers Party of Britain / ‪@GeorgeGallowayOfficial‬)

Li Jingjing (Journalist and political commentator, CGTN / ‪@Jingjing_Li‬)

Chen Weihua (Former China Daily EU bureau chief)

Ben Norton (Editor, Geopolitical Economy Report / ‪@GeopoliticalEconomyReport‬)

Danny Haiphong (Geopolitical analyst and journalist / ‪@DannyHaiphongYT‬)

Tings Chak (Asia co-coordinator, Tricontinental Institute / ‪@Tricontinental‬)

Keith Bennett (Co-editor, Friends of Socialist China)

Ileana Chan (Host of the Global Majority for Peace podcast / ‪@EmpireWatch‬)

Qiao Collective (Diaspora Chinese media collective)

Chair: Carlos Martinez (Co-editor, Friends of Socialist China / ‪@InventTheFuture‬)”

By Caitlin Johnstone

Ultimately what separates the anti-imperialist left from mainstream liberal “humanitarians” is whether you’re in it for humanity or for yourself.

For the liberal, wanting peace and justice is more of an abstraction than a desire to fight the concrete power structures responsible for the lack of peace and justice in our world.

If you’re a liberal you oppose the idea of children being killed and starved in the abstract, because thinking of yourself as a moral person allows you to feel nice feelings about yourself, but you have no interest in taking a well-defined stand against the empire which routinely kills and starves children via genocides, wars of aggression, and siege warfare.

You don’t want families living in poverty because it would make you feel like a bad person if you did, but you also don’t take a concrete stand against the capitalist system whose very existence depends on the perpetual creation of poverty and scarcity.

You kinda-sorta want everyone to have happy and plentiful lives free from fear and tyranny, but you don’t want to consider the possibility that your own country is responsible for abusing, terrorizing and exploiting the global south. Because that would make you feel uncomfortable feelings.

It’s not about wanting to actually help humanity and fix the world’s problems, it’s about you and your feelings.

Those who oppose the capitalist empire are actually interested in bringing health and harmony to our species. They do not shy away from uncomfortable truths about their own government’s abuses, the dystopian nature of western civilization, or the way their own creature comforts are built on the backs of workers in impoverished countries. Because for them it’s not about feeling nice feelings, it’s about creating a better world.

The western anti-imperialist has no problem recognizing that their own society is the main villain on the world stage, because they’re actually looking at the sources of the abuses and injustices in our world. The liberal “humanitarian” prefers to see evil only in foreign regimes, because being the bad guy doesn’t feel nice.

The western anti-imperialist recognizes that both mainstream political parties in their country promote the warmongering, militarism, capitalist exploitation and imperialist extraction which sustain the western empire, and they oppose the abuses of both parties whoever happens to be in office. The liberal “humanitarian” only recognizes wrongdoing in one mainstream political faction while proudly supporting and voting for the other, because this allows them to feel like they’re helping.

The western anti-imperialist accepts that standing on the morally correct side means eating loss after loss and receiving disappointment after disappointment, because the push for revolutionary change is swimming directly against the current imposed on every institution in our society. The liberal “humanitarian” feels nice feelings about their position because their side wins elections half the time, while smugly sneering at those to their left who never get their people into office.

The western anti-imperialist will stare unflinching into the carnage from Palestine, Lebanon and Iran, feeling all the anguish and rage from witnessing those atrocities supported by their own nation. The liberal “humanitarian” tries to avoid looking at those things, because their entire worldview is built upon psychologically compartmentalizing away from reality in order to prioritize their own feelings.

Basically it’s the difference between actually being a good person and just wanting to feel like you’re a good person. The former is hard, while the latter is easy.

Which one do you want to be?

Texter av Catelina Johnstone

Riktigheten av mina korta kommentarer om Orbán och Ungern för snart fem år sedan ser kanske nu ut att i mycket ha bekräftats, även om det verkar litet oklart exakt vilken väg den nya regeringen kommer slå in på.

I andra delen av min serie inlägg under rubriken Invandringspolitik och världspolitik skrev jag:

“När det gäller Europa är Ungern för många av de populistnationalistiska högerfrontsanhängarna den främsta förebilden. Liksom andra fall i Centraleuropa skiljer det sig från Västeuropa därigenom att en ledande politiker ur den “vanliga” högern, Orbán, själv tagit steget att anamma en invandringspolitik motsvarande de västeuropeiska populistnationalisternas. De historiska skillnaderna gör dock att detta fall långtifrån är helt jämförbart med det block som nu är på väg att formas i Sverige. Orbán har, så här långt, kunnat nå avsevärd framgång, och det återstår att se hur länge den kan fortsätta, hur långt han kan nå, hur beständiga resultaten blir. Men grunden även för hans politik framstår redan från början som otillräcklig och riskabel, såtillvida som den förutsätter en ganska stark fortsatt anslutning till NATO, Israel, och, noga taget, det vanliga övernationella atlantdominerade kapitalistiska systemet, oaktat hans goda relationer med Ryssland och de selektiva restriktioner han upprätthåller mot George Soros.

Givetvis kan Ungern justera kursen. Men hittills tycks regeringen exempelvis behöva stödja detta systems fortsatta politik i Mellanöstern, vars våldsamma uttryck ju orsakat en stor del av migrationen. EU:s utrikesministrar kunde inte enas om ett gemensamt uttalande om Gaza-Israel i maj, eftersom Ungern på grund av stödet för Israel inte ställde sig bakom kravet på eldupphör. Långsiktigt förefaller Ungerns paradigm ingalunda fullt tillfredsställande och inte heller generaliserbart. Det representerar inte i tillräcklig utsträckning den självständiga europeiska linje som är vad som verkligen behövs. Att populistnationalisterna i övriga Europa kan sätta sådan tro till Ungern beror på att de anser, eller väl snarare hoppas, att invandringsproblematiken kan lösas inom dess ram, att Soros är en abnormitet, ett undantag som går att komma till rätta med utan att överskrida det, och, djupast sett, att det ekonomiska system paradigmet är en del av verkligen är det riktiga och normala, som de inte har några problem med. De tror inte bara på de för den modifierade och utvecklade populistnationalismen väsentliga konservativa värdena, utan också på högern i allmänhet.”

Alla tre delarna av Invandringspolitik och världspolitik finns också samlade i ett inlägg, och ger tillsammans den nödvändiga bakgrunden till och sammanhanget för denna bedömning.

Mckay och Kit Klarenberg förklarar det hela närmare i senaste avsnittet av deras program Decline and Fall, och Mckay har följt upp med två avsnitt på sin egen kanal (1, 2) som går på djupet om de problem den nationalborgerliga kapitalismen oundvikligen ställs inför under de förhållanden dagens euroatlantiska generalimperialism eller globalism, vår tids utvecklingsstadium av kapitalismen, erbjuder. En tredje del utlovas, som jag också kommer posta här.

Problematiken uppkommer givetvis i vad Wallerstein i sin världssystemteori kallar de semiperifera länderna och genom deras av Samir Amin analyserade beroende, i övriga delar av världen. Men den föreligger även i det europeiska sammanhanget, och Mckay beskriver i detalj hur så sker i fallet Ungern. Vi har att göra med en problematik som också all populist- och radikalnationalistisk politik i Europa ställs inför, i synnerhet i de mindre länderna, och som de helt enkelt inte kan lösa inom sina nuvarande ideologiska ramar.

Jag kan inte se att något sådant parti har eller någonsin har haft en politik för den nödvändiga typen av hantering av västs megaföretag och finansiella institutioner, att dessa partier kan vinna en tillräcklig maktbas för att genomföra en sådan, eller att de ens har en tillnärmelsevis adekvat teoretisk förståelse av problematiken.

Så länge de inte starkt vidareutvecklar den socialkonservatism de i bästa fall åtminstone tenderar att omfatta, förblir det enda de åstadkommer en ineffektiv och ytterst helt harmlös, mer eller mindre vild gestik inom ett system som uppställer principiellt oöverstigliga gränser och hinder för dem. De blir meningslösa. De reduceras till medel för det oförstådda systemets avledning, oskadliggörande och absorption av den legitima popoppositionen. Ja, de kan i detta stadium av sin korruption eller inskränkthet låta sig användas för systemets än mer sinistra åtgärder mot denna.

By Caitlin Johnstone

The most common pro-war talking point about Iran is that they massacred tens of thousands of protesters in January of this year -  but what’s funny is that they never cite the same number. Because it’s a completely fictional story, they can just make up any number they want.

In online discourse with empire apologists these past few months I’ve been told that the number of dead protesters is thirty thousand, forty thousand, fifty thousand, sixty thousand, seventy thousand, eighty thousand, ninety thousand, and a hundred thousand. 

They really do seem to just throw out whatever number feels believable in a given moment. I recently saw an exasperated Glenn Greenwald ask an interlocutor on Twitter, “How do you decide when to claim that Iran killed 30,000 protesters, or 45,000, or 70,000? Does it depend on the day of the week or lyrical flow or something else?”

Iranian regime change muppet Reza Pahlavi claimed in January that 50,000 protesters had been massacred by the Iranian government that month.

Notorious Korean propagandist Yeonmi Park put the number at 40,000.

In February, President Trump said it was 32,000. By April he had inflated that number to 45,000, and then later climbed it up to 60,000.

Last month I saw The Australian’s Cameron Stewart swelling the number to 80,000.

In February there was a viral tweet by a propaganda account called The Persian Jewess asserting that “90,000 protesters have been killed to date,” while right wing influencer Nicholas Lissack said it was actually 100,000.

The other day someone commented on a post of mine telling me “Iran killed over 40k protesters standing up for freedom,” and when I dismissed that claim another empire apologist came in and adjusted the number to 30,000.

The reason they can’t settle on a number is because it’s all made up. 

Nobody denies that thousands of people were killed in the January unrest; the Iranian government itself has stated that 3,117 people were killed in the violent clashes, including large numbers of security forces. Given that the US Treasury Secretary has repeatedly admitted that the US deliberately fomented the unrest in Iran, and given that Trump has admitted to sending weapons into the country with the goal of arming the protesters, and given that Trump’s previous secretary of state has suggested that Mossad was intimately involved in the so-called “peaceful protests”, it was inevitable that people were going to be killed.

But the war propagandists couldn’t be content with a few thousand deaths. They needed something more spectacular. Something sensational. So they started circulating thinly-sourced reports by shady individuals claiming the body count was much higher than acknowledged, and then further inflating the numbers in those reports.

And when they did this it made it clear that they’ve been lying about the whole thing, because anyone can see the numbers going all over the place depending on who happens to be speaking and what kind of mood they happen to be in. They made a classic blunder in fiction writing, as explained in a viral post that was doing the rounds on Tumblr a few months ago:

“speculative fiction writers i am going to give you a really urgent piece of advice: don’t say numbers. don’t give your readers any numbers. how heavy is the sword? lots. how old is that city? plenty. how big is the fort? massive. how fast is the spaceship? not very, it’s secondhand.

“the minute you say a number your readers can check your math and you cannot do math better than your most autistic critic. i guarantee. don’t let your readers do any math. when did something happen? awhile ago. how many bullets can that gun fire? trick question, it shoots lasers, and it shoots em hard.

“you are lying to people for fun. if you let them do math at you the lie collapses and it’s no fun anymore.”

If you’re going to write fiction, it’s important not to disrupt the illusion and snap the reader out of the imaginary world you are creating for them. The narrative about tens of thousands of dead Iranian protesters is fiction, and everyone’s waking up to the lies.

Texter av Catelina Johnstone