alanjjohnstone
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George Monbiot applies his mind to conspiracy theory
I believe this synthesis of left-alternative and rightwing cultures has been accelerated by despondency, confusion and betrayal. After left-ish political parties fell into line with corporate power, the right seized the language they had abandoned. Steve Bannon and Dominic Cummings brilliantly repurposed the leftwing themes of resisting elite power and regaining control of our lives. Now there has been an almost perfect language swap. Parties that once belonged on the left talk about security and stability while those on the right talk of liberation and revolt.
Very good point, MS, about how China is very happy to permit those Taiwanese fascists of Foxconn to do business on the mainland and make profits out of the work of PRC citizens.
Praise for Foxconn’s expansion in the mainland and its relationship with the government
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202104/1222048.shtml
No need to check, Global Times is a China government news outlet, not part of the anti-China media
I re-edited my earlier post to offer a more nuanced appraisal of the relationship between Jack Ma, Alibaba and the Beijing government which is going through a strain.
https://thediplomat.com/2021/09/the-real-cause-of-chinas-alibaba-crackdown/
But once again TS has to retract a false allegation and to simply assert it is anti-mainland is another distraction. Over recent years it has been sympathetic.
The SCMP is Hong Kong-based and its parent company is the Alibaba group which is owned by Jack Ma, who is (or was) a member of the CCP. Alibaba had a very friendly relationship with the Chinese authorities although that may not exist as strongly nowadays being considered too large an entity are as many tech companies are around the world. Xi is reining in its economic influence.
Alibaba bought SCMP in 2016 from the Great Wall Pan Asia Holdings, which was co-founded by the Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China. Its predecessor was China Great Wall Asset Management Corporation founded in 1999 under the approval of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China.
https://www.gwpaholdings.com/en/about-us/company-profile/
So when TS describes it as controlled by Taiwan fascists, it is yet another distortion of the actual facts and another example where he wishes to cherry-pick the validity of sources to suit only his narrative.
BBC bias stokes anti-China narrative.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-58635393
Surely a mention of Australia’s expansionism is justified – its complicity with Indonesia to steal East Timor’s oil.
Wez, I agree with you that honest debate is not possible with someone who will never accept your sources but insists that his own are unimpeachable.
TS is certainly a case study of a person with entrenched views and it would be interesting on how they arose. He has been very reluctant to cite his own party memberships if he has had any, that is. He is unable to provide examples of any political party platform that he can endorse other than the CCP. His only attempt citing the Japanese Communist Party simply revealed his naivity and ignorance which he quickly had to retract. We know nothing of his political evolution. We know nothing of his political activities other than what we witness on this forum.
Whether he espousing right or left-wing beliefs seem irrelevant. He could so easily be pro-Trump or pro-Modi or a follower of a host of other populists intent upon substituting charisma for reason.
He will no doubt dismiss this wiki link as planted to discredit ‘Grandpa’ Xi but it reveals the similarity between Stalin and Mao and Xi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping%27s_cult_of_personalityTS forgets one of Marx’s insightful observations, “one cannot judge people by what he thinks about himself,”
Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its professed intentions, but, on the contrary, actual changes must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.
“Libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.”
“Men generally believe what they want to.”Justin Trudeau scrapes through with a minority government.
NDP about the same number of elected MPs as before.
To the left of the NDP, with no chance, the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada was standing several candidates.
https://cpcml.ca/The Communist Party of Canada
https://communist-party.ca/Senior superintendent Steve Li, from the city’s new national security police unit, announced the arrest of two men and one woman, Wong Yat-chin, Wong Chi-sum Chu Wai-ying from the pro-democracy group, Student Politicism.
The group used slogans declared illegal under the new national security law and told people to “prepare for the next revolution,” Li said.
Police seized large quantities of sweets, biscuits, and books. Earlier this month the city’s top security official Chris Tang accused jailed activists of collecting items like chocolates to “build power” and “solicit followers”.
Li suggested democracy activists were using the items to win followers in prison.
The M&Ms was no doubt supplied by the CIA, the Candy Infiltrating Agency
Scotland is different
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-58506013
My reading is that mass protests at COP26 will require those participating to have proof of vaccination,
Any event, of any nature, which has more than 10,000 people in attendance
Japan’s defence minister, Nobuo Kishi, has urged European countries to speak out against China’s aggression, warning that the international community must bolster deterrence efforts against Beijing’s military and territorial expansion amid a growing risk of a hot conflict. China was “attempting to use its power to unilaterally change the status quo in the East and South China Seas”
MS, I know you require very little education from me.
But the phrase anti-imperialism is tossed around a lot by those who have little knowledge of Marxism and believe it was one of Lenin’s major contributions to Marxist theory, although Bukharin and Luxemburg among others also offered their own versions of it around the early 20th Century.
Like the phrase “dictatorship to the proletariat,” anti-imperialism only assumed importance to Lenin to safeguard his premature seizure of power
MS, I think someone has to possess a basic understanding of the material conception of history to comprehend why today socialists should oppose anti-imperialism.
It is vital to understand the evolution of imperialism in political thought. The theory made the struggle in the world not one between an international working class and a global capitalist class, but between imperialist and anti—imperialist states.
Anti-imperialism is the slogan of local elites. Anti-imperialism is a doctrine long used by capitalists in relatively weak countries to try and pursue their own ends. We reject nationalism as anti-working class because it has always tied the proletariat to its class enemy and divided it amongst itself: the workers have no country.
Anti-imperialist struggles are class struggles under an ideological smokescreen, but not of the working class. Anti-imperialist nationalism is the ideology of an actual or aspirant capitalist class that seeks the way to its own independent state blocked by imperialism and therefore must mobilise the masses to help break down this obstacle. The logic of such movements is to subordinate the interests of workers to those of the bourgeois leadership and that such movements can tie their movement to presently supportive states that may well be prepared to use it as a bargaining chip in the pursuit of their own geopolitical interests. Different regimes that may now present themselves as anti-imperialists have a history of collaborating with imperialism. It is of the essence of bourgeois nationalists that, when imperialism prevents them from building their own independent capitalist state, they may lead struggles against it, but they are striving to carve out a place for themselves within the existing system, not to overthrow it. This means that, sooner or later, they will come to terms with imperialism. Successful anti-imperialism becomes imperialism.
Marx and Engels did support certain nationalist movements and some wars – TO BRING CAPITALISM TO FEUDAL STATES, to usher the capitalist class into political power so they could create the pre-requisites of socialism; an actual working class within an industrialised society. Prussia against the Slavs. Britain and France against Tsarist Russia. Even Prussia was against France so as to strengthen the unification of Germany. But can anyone seriously think that such a policy is required in to-days world where capitalism is now the predominant system and it’s the working class that is the decisive class, not the capitalists? What may have been right in the 19thCentury for Marx and Engels, may not now be the right choice in the 20th Century under changed circumstances. What was perhaps provident for backward Russia in the eyes of Lenin or Stalin need not be applicable or advisable for the rest of us?
Every up-and-coming capitalist power finds the world already carved up by the established powers. If it is to expand its influence it must clash with these powers, as Germany, Japan, Italy and Russia have found and as China is now finding. All of them, in their time, have beaten the “anti-imperialist” drum, that is, have opposed the domination of the world by Britain and France and later America. Mussolini talked of Italy as a “proletarian nation” in a class war against the “bourgeois nations”. Nazi Germany stirred up Arab and Latin American nationalism. Japan advanced the slogan of “Asia for the Asians”. Russia, too, and now China, like Germany before, vociferously denounce Anglo-French-American imperialism. It is of the essence of bourgeois nationalists that, when imperialism prevents them from building their own independent capitalist state, they may lead struggles against it, but they are striving to carve out a place for themselves within the existing system, not to overthrow it. This means that, sooner or later, they will come to terms with imperialism.
We should also remember that Occupy’s procedural conduct of its meetings was determined by NYC’s ban on the use of PA systems and so Occupy’s strange hand signals and its Chinese whispers method of conveying what speakers are saying to those unable to hear.
There is no need to duplicate something that is not necessary.
But overall didn’t Occupy reflect what happened in the past, assemblies whether in the American Revolution or French Revolution or the Russian Revolution, various means of debate arose, townhall meetings, popular assemblies, soviets. But without some sort of accountability these degenerated and power passed into the hands of a minority.
Bijou, And there has been also the denial of the accepted scholarship and authority of those who have investigated and reached informed conclusions and instead, the reliance upon the findings of those unqualified in the field, which is symptomatic of proponents of fringe theories.
“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” someone once said
