Not a serious response at all. Ah yes: please tell the families of my closest friends, whose families were raped, tortured, and murdered by the Iranian Islamist government, that Islamist are only the enemy when they are supported by the West. You are just writing off the political contexts of these countries as if they do not exist. You should be fucking ashamed of yourselves. I do wonder whether anyone here would be offering the same ‘critical support’ if it were a theocratic evangelical group (whether opposed to the west or not).
Your take is a reactionary take. Thank you for taking the time to make this response as this is exactly the kind of ultra brainworms that I’m taking about. Thank you for admitting you are not a Marxist or a Communist, as that makes this easier. The idea that something is only reactionary or a political enemy when they serve Western interests is literally the definition of campism, and is confirming my suspicion that, frankly, the vast majority of people making these kinds of responses are self-flagellating yankies on the internet who have never been to a Islamic country, encountered Islamists, know many Muslims outside of liberal, western contexts, and have no idea of the fundamentally reactionary nature of Islamism in the context of reactionary societies. The nature and function of these groups is not restricted to some Western-centric, myopic view (which annoying and ironically is here virtue-signalling as if it were not).
Them being reactionary is not uniquely determined by whether or not they happen to serve Western interests. This is insane and exactly the form simplistic reductionism and western-centrism that I’m talking about. The fact you can say something that is literally a right-wing cliché of leftist stupidity is pretty shocking honestly. The Taliban are a depraved group of ultra-reactionaries whose social structure is based on systematized rape whether you like it or not. We are not on TV here. We are a small group of (supposed) communists on a small internet forum. The idea that in that context we should be ignoring the self-evident truth because reactionaries are going to agree with a part is not only baby-brained and misguided, but leads, as we’re seeing here, to consistent confusion and reactionary positions. You are arguing to give implicit or explicit support to far-right groups who are THE principal, immediate enemies of the left in those contexts. Taking this position again tells me your communist is abstract, idealist, and moralist, and does not have any relation to concrete militant activity, because you would rapidly realize that if you say that shit to an ordinary worker, they are going to think, with justification, that you are insane, and it will de-legitimize the rest of what you are saying.
There also seems to be a basic misunderstanding of what Islamism is, and you are simplistically reducing it to one partial and not really correct aspect to make your point. You are equating Islamism with national liberation struggle, which is the same misunderstanding that many others are making here. Certain Islamist groups are involved what for some is, subjectively, a struggle for national liberation, and what may prove to be objectively so (we don’t know yet). But again, this is other example of the repeated ignoring of the point that Communists have to maintain a realistic conception of what the political possibilities are, including the critique that theocrats are fundamentally reactionary, and that political movements based on theocratic principles are fundamentally limited in terms of their progressive potential. I’m guessing again that if you are not aware of this view them you are not familiar with the Marxist analyses of religion. Marxists groups in Palestine (to the extent they exist: very litte) do cooperate out of necessity with groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and you are correct that for them, in this particular context, it makes sense to cooperate for the time being in the face of Israeli fascism. But that makes no difference whatsoever to whether or not those groups are reactionary more broadly. Like if Boko Haram murder a another village in a day, do we as Marxists not recognize it as indication of reactionary movements in certain contexts. Someone not doing so because they are in the West is not political acumen, it’s ignorance and cowardice.
Islamism is first and foremost a modernist ideology which aims to extend particular modernist yet interpretations Islamic principles to as many aspects of social, political, economic and cultural life as possible. Like Fascism, it shares a focus on a return to a pure, mystical past through violence and bloodshed, radicalization of mass-movements, functions similarly to crush left-wing groups, and erects an absolute friend-enemy distinction between those in the group and those outside of it. The nationalism of certain groups, such as Hamas, is a political realignment towards national contexts as a result of political pragmatism. But Islamists are ultimately internationalists. Hamas see Palestine as a Waqf they must maintain on the route towards a greater Caliphate. But Islamist groups are not concerned with liberating their people. They are violent, far-right, misoygynistic theocrats who exert extreme patriarchal controls over women’s bodies and commit atrocities against religious, sexual, and gender minorities. Every single time an Islamist group has taken power, it has crushed the left. It is a fundamental obstacle to the left in those countries. The future Communist movements of those countries will perhaps have to face Islamists as their principal immediate enemies as the international political situation deteriorates.
Independence of a state is not the same thing as national liberation, and the fact that people here can easily understand this when the formal independence of a state is from Western Imperialism, but not in other cases or senses, is pretty worrying and says quite a bit about how much actual real thought and reflection people are putting into these questions. You can say it comes first all you like, but firstly that can actually be contended. Secondly, even if true, it in no way implies the literally baby-brained video-game geopolitical calculus of “something is bad if and only if it supports the West’s interests”. If you honestly think that, they honestly there is a real fucking problem.
So maybe don’t get so fucking sassy if you’re basic ability to use the concepts we talking about here is lacking.
The west is the foremost enemy of communism, globally. My stance has nothing to do with whether I think a political entity is good or bad, as you put it. My stance is that AES states know what they’re doing better than some bozo on the internet. Do you think the DPRK thinks Iran is its bestie?
You want to talk about doing militant action on the daily? You want to talk about sass? That’s rich coming from the person saying that the DPRK is “supposed to be an ML country”
I didn’t say that the DPRK were not Communist, though I’d also argue that any serious analysis of the history of the place, to the extent we have access to it( though lack of evidence doesn’t imply any positive conclusions either, something many people here also seem not to understand), also leaves much to be desired, though that obviously is materially very much a result of the incredibly difficult position they have always found themselves in.
Again, you are not actually making an effort to respond to what I’m saying, and you’re responding moralistically. You’re embarrassing yourself. Take the L and move on. If you can’t actually argue these points in terms of there content, but have to always retreat to a meta-position over the argument call someone a bozo, then that says a lot more about the weakness of what you’re saying than what I am saying.
You really need to get over this infantile idea that the only people who can any have any possible legitimate opinion on the place Fuck off with that reactionary nationalism. Since when has ever been the case in the history of communism? I guess Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin’s opinions on places they had never been were always totally incorrect then? You seem to be implying that when convenient. The only criterion is the arguments and evidence you have, and you haven’t provided any real substantial ones, making a bunch of simplications, and invalidly reasoning to conclusions that what you are saying doesn’t imply.
You want to know what communists from these places think? Again: please tell my comrades who have had their families raped, murdered and tortured by Islamists that they are not in fact reactionary or their enemies. You’re rather conveniently ignoring this point.
Even if (which I agree is a fact) the US-hegemonic Imperialist system is the primary enemy of communism in an overall sense, or the most powerful enemy of communist movements, and so there has to be anti-imperialism as a central focus of any leftist movement, and this has to recognize that otherwise deeply reactionary groups are currently the only armed means for opposing Israeli fascism, settler-colonialism, apartheid and imperialism, and that that implies that communists there have to cooperate (all of which is obvious and not what is up for discussion), you making the inference that this implies that there cannot be opposition to anything else more broadly, or that Communists should not clearly express their opposition to, and criticisms of, far-right theocracy because they are opposed to US imperialism, is so infantile and detached from reality that it honestly beggars belief. This isnt fucking hearts of iron. Some people are actually communists in these societies. Doing apologism for reactionary groups simply because they oppose the West is opposed to them is itself doing the anti-communist propaganda of the West for them.
Why would I make an effort to respond to your essay-length strawmen? You assert your credentials as though I know you and can verify them, when that’s more true of the nation you’re criticizing. We’re all internet bozos when we’re on the internet because it’s a trustless environment, and in that setting no one has standing to meaningfully criticize the decisions of AES states. You are not Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Stalin. If you have the standing that you sanctimoniously claim, then write an article.
The only thing accomplished by English-speaking internet bozos whining about Islamism is to muddy the water surrounding Western aggression against Islamic states, and to disconcert support for AES states whose interests are currently aligned enough with them that they choose varying degrees of cooperation.
I’m not dropping any credentials. I’m making reference to evidence. You can believe it or not, that’s your prerogative and obviously it’s convenient for you to not believe it because you actually can’t talk about the relevant content, but just have to resort to ad-hominens, not justifying anything you are saying, not providing arguments or evidence, as if Marxism implied that these don’t matter, which again tells me you are posing ultra whose positions are vulgar materialism’s at best.
Never said I was any of those people. Why would I? You are claiming that a position I am expressing is reactionary, and then using that to disregard every other opinion expressed, which would make these other individuals I’d guess you would claim to agree with also reactionaries, and would Like Lenin and Marx would be Islamophobic ten-fold more than me, as would a huge number of communists in the Islamic world, if your conditions for it were correct. WTF does me not being them have to do with anything? What matters are the actual reasons you can give for the political position you are putting forward, and your’s amounts to betrayal of communists outside of the west and cowardice for the sake of virtue-signalling.
If I give reasons, and you can’t respond to them, except through the classic abusive partner tactic of pre-emptively accusing the other person in the discussion of what you have embarrassingly shown yourself to be guilty of at length (straw men) because you don’t actually know what you’re talking about, then again that says far more negative about your position than mine. If you are going to complain about a Marxist on a communist forum giving long-length explanations and arguments for views, then grow the fuck up you ultra. The idea that suddenly people can’t make reference to their own experience has never been the case here, so well done for just inventing that ad hoc to avoid the fact that you are happy to be silent about atrocities against comrades in other countries because you feel you lose virtue points. That’s called cowardice.
I live in the West now, but I am not from the West. I moved here. So watch your fucking mouth. If you think I am having these conversations only in English then you again don’t know what you’re talking about. And yeh I do write articles. In English and not in English. Since when what that exclusive with discussing with other comrades on a forum? Again you’re just inventing ad hoc shit but you have nothing to contribute.
I’m sick and tired of this take that all you crypto Christian, self-hating masochistic cracker yanks have, where you are so insecure about being American that you have to be as ultra as possible to virtue-signal as hard as possible about how opposed you are to yankie imperialism, where you claim that any negative comment about any group outside the West is therefore somehow metaphysically supporting western imperialism, which is such a bizarre argument it’s ridiculous that time even has to be spent dealing with it. I am muddying nothing. I’m being clear. You are muddying and not expressing what you think because of either cowardice, embarrassment or ignorance.
Like it’s embarrassing that either you can’t understand that the following two propositions can be believe at the same time, or that people are too stupid to be able to do so: namely (1) that Islamists are reactionary and are key obstacles to communist (left-wing more broadly) political organization in those countries, and (2) that Islamic countries are victims of Western Imperialism. Like if you really think all that, you are literally in the grip of infantile disorder. Both these things are true you dullard. What do you think it looks like when you write that? It looks either like you don’t think they are reactionary, in which case you’re reactionary, or like you are admitting implicitly that they are but that you think workers are too stupid to be able to understand that, and so you are expressing a classist position. Again reactionary. It’s precisely one of your tasks as a militant to bring people to that correct position. Again, if you don’t understand how necessary that is, then you are reminding me that you are not involved in any militant or party activity, but in those contexts you have to formulate serious responses to that, and you will look like a dolt to your working class if all you can say is 'we don’t want to make clear our opposition to all forms of far-right politics. Like you do understand that other people literally live in countries where the influence of Islamism is actually a thing? If you want to organize Muslims workers, you have to combat it, because otherwise you are at a disadvantage.
Also, you do understand that there are Islamists in power who are supported by the West? So what, in those cases you only recognize how reactionary they are to the extent they receive Western support? Again: stop projecting your infantile, ignorant yankie view on the rest of the world. You have literally achieved the least of any communist tradition, practically or theoretically. An AES can do real politik all they like. The idea every communist in the world is obliged to follow them to the letter is not only intellectually lazy but also incoherent, as they contradict one-another frequently. They can also be wrong. They can engage in revisionism. You just ad hoc assuming that they necessarily have a correct take has never been the correct ideological practice of any successful communist party. I’m guessing again you haven’t looked at the debates within communist parties over similar questions from the last hundred years if that is your view. China has had plenty of positive things to say about Israel. No-one here is about to repeat those, because the actual concrete content of the situation in Palestine obviously calls for unambiguous support for Palestinian liberation from Israeli fascism.
Not a serious response at all. Ah yes: please tell the families of my closest friends, whose families were raped, tortured, and murdered by the Iranian Islamist government, that Islamist are only the enemy when they are supported by the West. You are just writing off the political contexts of these countries as if they do not exist. You should be fucking ashamed of yourselves. I do wonder whether anyone here would be offering the same ‘critical support’ if it were a theocratic evangelical group (whether opposed to the west or not).
Your take is a reactionary take. Thank you for taking the time to make this response as this is exactly the kind of ultra brainworms that I’m taking about. Thank you for admitting you are not a Marxist or a Communist, as that makes this easier. The idea that something is only reactionary or a political enemy when they serve Western interests is literally the definition of campism, and is confirming my suspicion that, frankly, the vast majority of people making these kinds of responses are self-flagellating yankies on the internet who have never been to a Islamic country, encountered Islamists, know many Muslims outside of liberal, western contexts, and have no idea of the fundamentally reactionary nature of Islamism in the context of reactionary societies. The nature and function of these groups is not restricted to some Western-centric, myopic view (which annoying and ironically is here virtue-signalling as if it were not).
Them being reactionary is not uniquely determined by whether or not they happen to serve Western interests. This is insane and exactly the form simplistic reductionism and western-centrism that I’m talking about. The fact you can say something that is literally a right-wing cliché of leftist stupidity is pretty shocking honestly. The Taliban are a depraved group of ultra-reactionaries whose social structure is based on systematized rape whether you like it or not. We are not on TV here. We are a small group of (supposed) communists on a small internet forum. The idea that in that context we should be ignoring the self-evident truth because reactionaries are going to agree with a part is not only baby-brained and misguided, but leads, as we’re seeing here, to consistent confusion and reactionary positions. You are arguing to give implicit or explicit support to far-right groups who are THE principal, immediate enemies of the left in those contexts. Taking this position again tells me your communist is abstract, idealist, and moralist, and does not have any relation to concrete militant activity, because you would rapidly realize that if you say that shit to an ordinary worker, they are going to think, with justification, that you are insane, and it will de-legitimize the rest of what you are saying.
There also seems to be a basic misunderstanding of what Islamism is, and you are simplistically reducing it to one partial and not really correct aspect to make your point. You are equating Islamism with national liberation struggle, which is the same misunderstanding that many others are making here. Certain Islamist groups are involved what for some is, subjectively, a struggle for national liberation, and what may prove to be objectively so (we don’t know yet). But again, this is other example of the repeated ignoring of the point that Communists have to maintain a realistic conception of what the political possibilities are, including the critique that theocrats are fundamentally reactionary, and that political movements based on theocratic principles are fundamentally limited in terms of their progressive potential. I’m guessing again that if you are not aware of this view them you are not familiar with the Marxist analyses of religion. Marxists groups in Palestine (to the extent they exist: very litte) do cooperate out of necessity with groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and you are correct that for them, in this particular context, it makes sense to cooperate for the time being in the face of Israeli fascism. But that makes no difference whatsoever to whether or not those groups are reactionary more broadly. Like if Boko Haram murder a another village in a day, do we as Marxists not recognize it as indication of reactionary movements in certain contexts. Someone not doing so because they are in the West is not political acumen, it’s ignorance and cowardice.
Islamism is first and foremost a modernist ideology which aims to extend particular modernist yet interpretations Islamic principles to as many aspects of social, political, economic and cultural life as possible. Like Fascism, it shares a focus on a return to a pure, mystical past through violence and bloodshed, radicalization of mass-movements, functions similarly to crush left-wing groups, and erects an absolute friend-enemy distinction between those in the group and those outside of it. The nationalism of certain groups, such as Hamas, is a political realignment towards national contexts as a result of political pragmatism. But Islamists are ultimately internationalists. Hamas see Palestine as a Waqf they must maintain on the route towards a greater Caliphate. But Islamist groups are not concerned with liberating their people. They are violent, far-right, misoygynistic theocrats who exert extreme patriarchal controls over women’s bodies and commit atrocities against religious, sexual, and gender minorities. Every single time an Islamist group has taken power, it has crushed the left. It is a fundamental obstacle to the left in those countries. The future Communist movements of those countries will perhaps have to face Islamists as their principal immediate enemies as the international political situation deteriorates.
Independence of a state is not the same thing as national liberation, and the fact that people here can easily understand this when the formal independence of a state is from Western Imperialism, but not in other cases or senses, is pretty worrying and says quite a bit about how much actual real thought and reflection people are putting into these questions. You can say it comes first all you like, but firstly that can actually be contended. Secondly, even if true, it in no way implies the literally baby-brained video-game geopolitical calculus of “something is bad if and only if it supports the West’s interests”. If you honestly think that, they honestly there is a real fucking problem.
So maybe don’t get so fucking sassy if you’re basic ability to use the concepts we talking about here is lacking.
The west is the foremost enemy of communism, globally. My stance has nothing to do with whether I think a political entity is good or bad, as you put it. My stance is that AES states know what they’re doing better than some bozo on the internet. Do you think the DPRK thinks Iran is its bestie?
You want to talk about doing militant action on the daily? You want to talk about sass? That’s rich coming from the person saying that the DPRK is “supposed to be an ML country”
I didn’t say that the DPRK were not Communist, though I’d also argue that any serious analysis of the history of the place, to the extent we have access to it( though lack of evidence doesn’t imply any positive conclusions either, something many people here also seem not to understand), also leaves much to be desired, though that obviously is materially very much a result of the incredibly difficult position they have always found themselves in.
Again, you are not actually making an effort to respond to what I’m saying, and you’re responding moralistically. You’re embarrassing yourself. Take the L and move on. If you can’t actually argue these points in terms of there content, but have to always retreat to a meta-position over the argument call someone a bozo, then that says a lot more about the weakness of what you’re saying than what I am saying.
You really need to get over this infantile idea that the only people who can any have any possible legitimate opinion on the place Fuck off with that reactionary nationalism. Since when has ever been the case in the history of communism? I guess Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin’s opinions on places they had never been were always totally incorrect then? You seem to be implying that when convenient. The only criterion is the arguments and evidence you have, and you haven’t provided any real substantial ones, making a bunch of simplications, and invalidly reasoning to conclusions that what you are saying doesn’t imply.
You want to know what communists from these places think? Again: please tell my comrades who have had their families raped, murdered and tortured by Islamists that they are not in fact reactionary or their enemies. You’re rather conveniently ignoring this point.
Even if (which I agree is a fact) the US-hegemonic Imperialist system is the primary enemy of communism in an overall sense, or the most powerful enemy of communist movements, and so there has to be anti-imperialism as a central focus of any leftist movement, and this has to recognize that otherwise deeply reactionary groups are currently the only armed means for opposing Israeli fascism, settler-colonialism, apartheid and imperialism, and that that implies that communists there have to cooperate (all of which is obvious and not what is up for discussion), you making the inference that this implies that there cannot be opposition to anything else more broadly, or that Communists should not clearly express their opposition to, and criticisms of, far-right theocracy because they are opposed to US imperialism, is so infantile and detached from reality that it honestly beggars belief. This isnt fucking hearts of iron. Some people are actually communists in these societies. Doing apologism for reactionary groups simply because they oppose the West is opposed to them is itself doing the anti-communist propaganda of the West for them.
Why would I make an effort to respond to your essay-length strawmen? You assert your credentials as though I know you and can verify them, when that’s more true of the nation you’re criticizing. We’re all internet bozos when we’re on the internet because it’s a trustless environment, and in that setting no one has standing to meaningfully criticize the decisions of AES states. You are not Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Stalin. If you have the standing that you sanctimoniously claim, then write an article.
The only thing accomplished by English-speaking internet bozos whining about Islamism is to muddy the water surrounding Western aggression against Islamic states, and to disconcert support for AES states whose interests are currently aligned enough with them that they choose varying degrees of cooperation.
I’m not dropping any credentials. I’m making reference to evidence. You can believe it or not, that’s your prerogative and obviously it’s convenient for you to not believe it because you actually can’t talk about the relevant content, but just have to resort to ad-hominens, not justifying anything you are saying, not providing arguments or evidence, as if Marxism implied that these don’t matter, which again tells me you are posing ultra whose positions are vulgar materialism’s at best.
Never said I was any of those people. Why would I? You are claiming that a position I am expressing is reactionary, and then using that to disregard every other opinion expressed, which would make these other individuals I’d guess you would claim to agree with also reactionaries, and would Like Lenin and Marx would be Islamophobic ten-fold more than me, as would a huge number of communists in the Islamic world, if your conditions for it were correct. WTF does me not being them have to do with anything? What matters are the actual reasons you can give for the political position you are putting forward, and your’s amounts to betrayal of communists outside of the west and cowardice for the sake of virtue-signalling.
If I give reasons, and you can’t respond to them, except through the classic abusive partner tactic of pre-emptively accusing the other person in the discussion of what you have embarrassingly shown yourself to be guilty of at length (straw men) because you don’t actually know what you’re talking about, then again that says far more negative about your position than mine. If you are going to complain about a Marxist on a communist forum giving long-length explanations and arguments for views, then grow the fuck up you ultra. The idea that suddenly people can’t make reference to their own experience has never been the case here, so well done for just inventing that ad hoc to avoid the fact that you are happy to be silent about atrocities against comrades in other countries because you feel you lose virtue points. That’s called cowardice.
I live in the West now, but I am not from the West. I moved here. So watch your fucking mouth. If you think I am having these conversations only in English then you again don’t know what you’re talking about. And yeh I do write articles. In English and not in English. Since when what that exclusive with discussing with other comrades on a forum? Again you’re just inventing ad hoc shit but you have nothing to contribute.
I’m sick and tired of this take that all you crypto Christian, self-hating masochistic cracker yanks have, where you are so insecure about being American that you have to be as ultra as possible to virtue-signal as hard as possible about how opposed you are to yankie imperialism, where you claim that any negative comment about any group outside the West is therefore somehow metaphysically supporting western imperialism, which is such a bizarre argument it’s ridiculous that time even has to be spent dealing with it. I am muddying nothing. I’m being clear. You are muddying and not expressing what you think because of either cowardice, embarrassment or ignorance.
Like it’s embarrassing that either you can’t understand that the following two propositions can be believe at the same time, or that people are too stupid to be able to do so: namely (1) that Islamists are reactionary and are key obstacles to communist (left-wing more broadly) political organization in those countries, and (2) that Islamic countries are victims of Western Imperialism. Like if you really think all that, you are literally in the grip of infantile disorder. Both these things are true you dullard. What do you think it looks like when you write that? It looks either like you don’t think they are reactionary, in which case you’re reactionary, or like you are admitting implicitly that they are but that you think workers are too stupid to be able to understand that, and so you are expressing a classist position. Again reactionary. It’s precisely one of your tasks as a militant to bring people to that correct position. Again, if you don’t understand how necessary that is, then you are reminding me that you are not involved in any militant or party activity, but in those contexts you have to formulate serious responses to that, and you will look like a dolt to your working class if all you can say is 'we don’t want to make clear our opposition to all forms of far-right politics. Like you do understand that other people literally live in countries where the influence of Islamism is actually a thing? If you want to organize Muslims workers, you have to combat it, because otherwise you are at a disadvantage.
Also, you do understand that there are Islamists in power who are supported by the West? So what, in those cases you only recognize how reactionary they are to the extent they receive Western support? Again: stop projecting your infantile, ignorant yankie view on the rest of the world. You have literally achieved the least of any communist tradition, practically or theoretically. An AES can do real politik all they like. The idea every communist in the world is obliged to follow them to the letter is not only intellectually lazy but also incoherent, as they contradict one-another frequently. They can also be wrong. They can engage in revisionism. You just ad hoc assuming that they necessarily have a correct take has never been the correct ideological practice of any successful communist party. I’m guessing again you haven’t looked at the debates within communist parties over similar questions from the last hundred years if that is your view. China has had plenty of positive things to say about Israel. No-one here is about to repeat those, because the actual concrete content of the situation in Palestine obviously calls for unambiguous support for Palestinian liberation from Israeli fascism.