Trump’s victory, and the further mass oppression of minorities, is closer than ever before. May god have mercy on our souls.
previous preamble
The totalitarian capitalist dystopia which was created by the United States in the aftermath of the Korean War has increasingly experienced problems as the multipolar world is being gradually birthed.
Due to the widespread exploitation of the population, long work weeks, and high housing prices, the population growth of South Korea has plummeted, with the lowest fertility rate on the planet, and the highest suicide rate in the OECD. While a capitalist “success story” before the 2008 recession in terms of profit accumulation for the richest at the expense of most others, conditions have grown more dire in the Long Depression since the crash. GDP growth per year has averaged out at 2-3%. For more concrete figures, labour productivity has stagnated, particularly in the service sector. The rate of profit hit a peak when the dictatorship ended in the late 1980s, but has since massively tumbled. These dynamics are not unique to South Korea; they are happening throughout the West.
While South Korea is stagnating, perhaps even falling, its northern neighbour is rising. With Russia already persona non grata to much of the developed world and yet still maintaining fairly good economic growth and continuously albeit gradually moving towards victory in Ukraine, Putin sees no reason to be intimidated by the West’s shunning of the DPRK, and Russia is establishing ties as well as military and economic deals. This seems to portend an end to the post-Soviet period of forced isolation due to UN actions forbidding the people of the DPRK to leave the country (which many westerners believe is a policy originating from the Korean leadership due to their propagandized education).
Many in the West are still, regrettably, unable to properly analyze the geopolitical situation of Korea due to their government programming, leading to bizarre takes about imminent collapse, or desperation on the part of Russia or the DPRK, unable to recognize that the DPRK has a powerful military sector all its own, and decades of autarky has created a durable society where limited resources must be used efficiently and effectively. The position of the Korean Peninsula seems likely to be a critical part of the US-China conflict, whether this is an outright war or instead a series of proxy wars. Indeed, Korea’s position may soon become very important in global trade routes if the US tries to cut off the Strait of Malacca to Chinese-bound cargo ships, with vital resources like oil and food potentially transported both over land and via the Arctic Route over Russia and through the DPRK to China. Russia’s leadership clearly sees the importance of Korea in the future, hence their actions now; and, of course, South Korea siding with Ukraine has also forced Putin’s hand to oppose them more openly.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The “Country” of the Week is South Korea! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Cold hard facts tankies aren’t ready to accept.
It was morally wrong for the Native Americans to defend their territory and kill settlers.
It was morally wrong for the North to fight the Southern states and they should have been allowed to secede and continue their barbaric Dixie pseudo-aristocracy.
It was morally wrong for the Red Army to defend the Soviet Union from the Nazis and liberate Europe from fascism.
It is morally wrong for the Palestinians to fight for their national liberation.
The worthless fucks over at Jacobin probably unironically believe this. The chauvinist American “left” loves nothing more than to preach from their glorious position as enlightened westerners.
They are collaborators of empire who merely demand that the spoils of imperialism be shared more equally. They are the enemy of working people worldwide.
Fascist sympathizers.
The American “left” is done. Little Goebbelses who will all fall in line behind the person they called literally Hitler. This country must be destroyed from without.
Not to mention waxing poetic about the most murderous structure to currently exist as a “great experiment”. They legitimize and enable this structure, they condemn its enemies, they now march in lock-step with it, trampling over the billions under its thumb who they deride as too stupid to know how to really do leftism.
They have fought valiantly to earn themselves a seat in the defendants’ box at the American Nuremberg.
The American “left” is done.
I’m sorry, the what now? I know those words, but I have no idea what you’re saying.
I struggle to see how this undermines what I said. Jacobin is right that “political violence is always wrong” because I haven’t gone on a functionally useless adventurist spree?
YOU’RE TELLING US TO VOTE FOR A PERSON WHO HAS POLITICALLY MURDERED, STARVED, AND BURNED OVER TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE IN PALESTINE ALONE!
Donald Trump - the person that these writers considered a colossal threat to democracy, justice, and freedom, as well as to all minorities, since 2016 - is officially worth more to these spineless motherfucking weasel socdems than every person in Gaza. And Trump wasn’t even killed.
It is also the product of literally zero theory. Political violence is the engine that has driven oh, I don’t know, all of history. Political violence is exercised every single second of every minute of every hour of every day by the state, a structure that literally could not exist without it. It is a tool that has no intrinsic moral value attached to it. It is also the key to victory.
Jacobin is truly emblematic of the American “left”: chauvinist, genocide-enabling, fascist-sympathizing, utterly worthless chucklefucks who are the enemy of the victims of empire.
It is morally wrong to kill people, period
Jacobin comes out against fighting Nazi Germany in WWII
it’s a very strange coincidence that the values we uphold just so happen to be values that are very compatible with the capitalist ideology that rules us, despite our political project being ostensibly opposed to capitalism. hm. should we inspect this and see if there’s anything to constructively criticize in order to create something more liberatory? nah, it’ll probably be fine, we can also use these values to create a better world for the working class. anyway, it was wrong to stop Hitler
Is the high-jacking and making meaningless of important terms - first with antisemitism and now with political violence - a new thing for the ruling class? Or is it just more obvious now than before?
Like, the way that “political violence” is being discussed right now could convince someone that “political violence” is just violence against political figures, as if to erase the killing of millions (and the maiming of tens of millions) by political violence around the world in the last 20 years, the majority of whom are victims of political violence by Global North powers
The American “left” fall in lockstep with the empire on AES and praise their genocidal country as a “flawed” democratic beacon of freedom. You can see this happening in real time as they trip over themselves in a race to become the emblem for “real patriotism”, to proclaim their love for America, to feverishly insist “this is not who we are”.
They don’t understand what “political violence” is, nor do they care to understand what it is from their lofty position as enlightened western “leftists” in the imperial core.
Yeah. Just remember that “political” is only ever allowed to actually mean “partisan”, at least in the U.S. context. Then it makes a lot more sense. It’s a definition of “political” which is absolutely useless to anyone but our rulers, of course. But that’s why it’s pushed so hard.
It’s like recuperation, where they take politically radical ideas and defuse/twist/neutralize them so they can be safely metabolized into bourgeois society and lose all radical character. Yet, “antisemitism” and “political violence” aren’t even radical concepts.
I have no idea what it’s called when they’re seemingly recuperating already long established political ideas. Gaslighting? idk
Isn’t their magazine named after one of the factions from one of the most violent uprisings in European history which led to modern day liberal democracy lol
