Watching the US clutch their pearls about Russia annexing Ukraine territory is especially hilarious to me as if they didn't support Somalia invading to try to annex the Ogaden region in Ethiopia

That war would end up destroying Somalia for decades, they still haven't recovered it's sad

US got what they wanted tho two socialist countries fighting against eachother and less unity in Africa that's two birds one stone

really don’t get y barre thought that s*** was a good idea i just dont lmao

Are all of these videos/streams?

Struggling with an issue related to my eyes and things I can just listen to are much easier for me

Because Siad Barre, as Fidel Castro said after meetings with him and Mengistu said, was above all a chauvinist and a nationalist. He chose to take military action to annex the Ogaden region from Ethiopia through military action and declined any diplomatic solutions which included a federation with Somalia and Ethiopia, proposed by Mentistu and Fidel, which was supported by the USSR. The Somali government also wanted closer relations with US-aligned Saudi Arabia and Egypt for a while before the war, who ended up supporting them during the war.

You can read Fidel talk about his meetings with Siad Barre and Mengistu:

I'm definitely no fan of Mengistu, he was an incompetent leader who was excessively authoritarian and brutal, but when it came to relations with other countries, he was pretty decent. Siad Barre was just used as a US pawn to make another divide among socialist and African countries fueled by nationalism. His government's policies have been the cause of many problems in the region, especially when it comes to Somalia of course.

I'll say it's pretty funny to see him try to justify his invasion by using Lenin's doctrine of revolutionary defeatism, reminds me of the mental gymnastics you'll see some online leftists do

I wonder why grillpilled Ethiopians are showing support for Russia on the anniversary of the battle of Adwa instead of having a nuanced take on how this is an inter-imperialist conflict in which there are no good actors

People vandalized a German Communist Party (DKP) office



Heard German communists also got attacked physically

u read russian?

damn why ?

would be crazy if communist and fascist start beating each other up in the streets again.

They’re videos but you can just listen to them cause they mostly just talk so no need to watch

how i be feeling about this s***

especially cuz the manufacturing consent machine then puts its sights on the people of the region focusing on dehumanizing and demeaning them making the imperialist action justifiable.

like every single imperial project of the past few decades had the victims completely dehumanized while ukraine gets the premium treatment for their whiteness

I definitely agree with this in practicality but let's be clear on what the actual reason is for this inflated manufacturing of consent for ukraine vs other comparative occasions elsewhere in the world

the reason is because it is orthogonal to actually possible effecting people's lives, something which due to the luxuries of living in the first world people are not otherwise generally provoked to deal with; thus in turn, not only are people more acclimated to caring, but at the same time it is far easier for malicious parties to take advantage of for this exact reason - news media can sensationalize more about topics people actually care about, and the overall structure of companies, politicians, etc. can hijack dominant sensational topics under the guise of compassion, because the human instinct is something needs to be done about problems "at the doorstep" of their lives vs in some vague bubble and distant culture far away. This is not limited to situations such as this; think about the attention things like the Nice Terrorist Attack years ago go in France vs when the IDF destroys a school of palestinian children with a shell and then calls it an accident.

I don't buy the argument that Ukraine-Russia is a unique situation due to either intrinsic imperialism or race; this simply isn't true and is very easily to dispel the notion of. For the latter, there may be some truth in the fact that some people in western countries feel strongly about the Ukraine-Russia conflict due to their heritage; I mean, huge swathes of former immigrant families in the west do have heritage in this region the same way there are many irish descendents who, despite never visiting Ireland, I'm sure feel some sort of ancestral pride for their family tree (or similarly, Europeans who just feel general current pride for the European Continent or theoretical union beyond just the EU itself). This is not unique - the same can be said about African or Arab immigrants abroad. What is unique, however, is that the country lies on the doorstep of Europe - thus drawing far greater fear for others not of said heritage which is more easily expressed through the modern hyper-distilled apparatus of capitalist social interactions (i.e. social media nonsense). I don't think anyone would make the assumption the media is doing all of this to please the former of ancestral immigrant groups of a population the same way it would be ridiculous to say the upper corporate echelon's adoption post-2020 protests of BLM surface level rhetoric (w/o change of underlying mechanisms) was in any way targeted at actually bolstering black voices insomuch as rebranding themselves in a way friendly to trends to preserve power.

However, it should be noted that there is a strong disconnect here because the media's sensationalism and political pressures based on exploiting this; there are of course Imperial powers at play with any over social campaign, simply due to the nature of Imperialist groups which reside embedded in the western conscious. However, how different is the performative action we see from not just people, but also corporations and media from the same performative action we saw during (as one example) the BLM movement and summer protests of 2020? Or even, say, the "#resist" initial reaction to Trump? Even that resulted in virtually the same manifestation of actions - meaningless protests, ubiquity of hashtags and "selling trinkets for charity", donations to arbitrary charities, corporations adopting rheotric, and people individualizing global events for their own personal celebrityhood or self-promotion on social media; even if unconsciously.

The core aspect of what drives populations toward that and toward this is the same - performative acts that everyone (from the bottom to the top and then recursively back down) feel can work towards preserving the "norm" of first world life from any form of distinctive change which might push us out of the current trajectory of the capitalist world. While I do think there is a***ysis to be had about how this ties into the hands of Imperial parties which exist ultimately, I think this is somewhat negligble of an a***ysis because you may as well say "this ties into the hands of captialist parties"; which, yes, of course - merely existing in the west is "tying in to the hands of capitalism" because that is foundation under which both the culture and structure of society is built on. I do think though that it's important to note what drives reactions primarily is the fear of disruption of first world order; any other so-called underlying factor will always come back to this.

It is the same thing that you could go as far back to the manufactured consent for the Iraq war to cite - the fear was of the ability for Iraq to disrupt such a life, so thus it was easy to manufacture said consent under any manner; the anti-islamic or anti-arab rhetoric will always serve as a minor factor in this because the primarily means of consent will always instead be derivative of fear of lifestyle norms being faded away - I do think it is important to note as well that while there could be an argument for "these lifestyle norms are built on race", that - even if true to any extent in theory - will always fall short of a wider reaching a***ysis because even if true as a trait, it incorrectly attributes the original motive thus invalidating the inclusion of ultimately similar events into the same category. I've seen this happen a lot online or similarly for example - people thinking that the entirety of american colonial slavery happened because the US was specifically looking to create a racial world structure rather than the fact that they wanted to create an economy and thus exploited slave labor for profit; the motive of slavery was profit built on oppression, not oppression built on profit. Similarly, I think this really needs to be mentioned (not in exact terms, but similarly) as the cornerstone of a***ysis for modern events. Other aspects will always be secondary to primary attributes, but lend themselves in a vacuum to an a***ysis which may otherwise seem true.

Thank you so much

My bad for this but could you link everything you mentioned, I tried looking all of them up but got a bunch of different results and want to make sure I'm in the right place

really interesting points you bring up and three things come to mind when i read em.

the comparison to blm is very interesting. i definitely agree that the unilateral response does match nearly exactly and requires strict attention to as it was not only clearly not a one time response but also the fact that both responses have happened in rapid succession might signify an important element of the status quo.

it also is a very explicit example in my mind of the distinction in the methods of status quo preservation of liberalism vs conservatism. the liberal status quo enforcement entrenched in this postmodern void that can wean off any criticism by utilizing a specific liberalized morality. while not historically unique by any means, it's something that has grown increasingly frustrating for myself at least trying to combat this self-assured liberal status quo preservation. like something i think you mentioned a couple pages back but the current methods of "disinfo" and "fact-checking" and "astroturfing bots" etc. creates a simple mechanism for liberals to refer to the status quo and maintain their ideological position when faced with contradictions.

and lastly you're also correct in that it isn't necessarily whiteness itself but the maintenance of whiteness in essence. definitely an important distinction although there is a part of me that feels like something definitely needs to be said as relating to what constituting "the door" is. maybe something relating to the US' internal push for liberal civil rights being a result of this - as the social conflict relating to systematic oppression of minorities would constitute a conflict "at the door" - but i prob need to think about it for a bit.

when contrasting liberalism and conservatism, i think it's important to mention that most of conservatism is just a strand of liberalism ultimately. "real" conservativism is not just hard or sometimes impossible to quantify without purity spiraling, but at the same time "conservatism" as a core concept is essentially impossible under liberal capitalism, and yet in the modern era is not only adjacent to it, but essentially defined by it. Not to say there aren't conservatives who are anti-capitalist, of course there are - especially historically - but in the modern era, in the west, this really does not exist as a influential part of the public conscious by any means.

The way to really think about this liberal vs conservative divergence in the modern era is that conservatives try to preserve the status quo through almost too literal interpretation of such; systems are never questioned intrinsically, but rather the topics which bubble up to the surface are dealt with in the vacuum of their existence. On the other hand, (modern) liberalism is somewhat of an inverse - while systems may be questioned in the forefront, what is actually changed at any given point is not the system but rather - similarly - the topics which bubble to the surface as a result of said systems. In both cases, the underlying mechanisms of society are ultimately unchanging.

When I say "at the door", I really just mean anything which is seemingly going to effect actual life. When Saudis cause a genocide in Yemen, most people in the west don't care. It will never ever effect them, not just because of the preferential treatment of Saudi over Yemen, but because of the detachment of the conflict from their lives. When it comes to Ukraine, suddenly the fear is rationalized in their minds as "wait a minute, this is actually close to europe, are we going to be next?" (not that this is inherently true or debatable, but again, this is paired next to the sensationalism of the media and the opportunism of politicans and corporations to take advantage of the fact it could be) - similarly, there are strong economic ties of the west to ukraine. Suddenly corporations have lost their source of cheap outsourced labor or foreign branches - something not at risk in Yemen or Palestine or Libya. And of course even being in the US - not geographically at the same theoretical risk as Europe - the fear still falls in terms of the close knit nature of US/EU relations and the fear of a actual "war" disrupting life in a way far more detrimental than the perception of Iraq or Afghanistan (i.e. the dumb thoughts of "it's just third world countries far away and we're beating terrorists who cares") - and even if the "war" is not disrputing life itself, it's disrupting global economics, which of course western status quo is completely based on

Are you a western chauvinist? Noooooo, it's Pol Pot and Gonzalo who were wrong 🙄 😒 🤦🏾‍♂️

yea i dont mean any of this in opposition to what you wrote but it just got me thinking on certain specifics that you touched on that i hadn't thought about before.

and yea i meant to touch on the contrast between "liberalism" and "conservatism" in the same vein you mentioned. as two arms of the same body just w distinct methods of status quo maintenance. the orthodox leftist explanation as the left coopting and dispersing revolutionary impulses and the right working to continually push the bourgeois agenda is great, but i like your conceptualization of it better.

something similar ive been thinking about is how insidious and frankly ingenious the natural design of liberalism is. it almost reminds me of the natural functions of deep rooted plants that can systematically stretch its tendrils into finding the perfect extractive conditions through the smallest of cracks. the left being able to tap into every single possible social discontent to mediate while the right allows the roots to retract if they bite off more than they can chew.

for "at the door" i more so meant to ask your take on how or if it applies to social issues ie blm protests. naturally living in a fascist police state also affects the bourgeois given that they also have to inhabit the same society. might be a reach but i feel like the reason why the US has progressed on social rights issues is because the very blatant and violent contradictions do play out in extremely close proximity to people in the west.

anyway thx for writing everything out btw really helps me straighten out certain working theories i have that i haven't really spent the time to think out fully.

@krishna_bound

I do think though that it's important to note what drives reactions primarily is the fear of disruption of first world order; any other so-called underlying factor will always come back to this.

I think there's definitely a lot of truth to this and I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but you have to ask yourself, where does their assumption that this "first world order" is being threatened in Ukraine, or that there was any such thing as a first world order in a country as corrupt and already full of armed conflict as Ukraine in the first place come from? And that this order wasn't being threatened elsewhere?

As we all know, that which people understand to be components of this "first world order" that they see as being under attack; rule of law, democracy, civilian control of armed forces etc., all gets violated when it's done to undermine to pursue Western interests anywhere else, just as it has been in Ukraine by Western-backed forces.

So while it's true that it's this great fear of some perceived first world order being threatened that allows for such a level of manufactured consent. There are moderating variables that make people recognize this as a threat and in a way that they don't recognize anywhere else.

And what are those variables? Well they'll say it themselves: "this is Europe", "these people are civilized", "they look like us", "it's not a third world country" etc. Add to that that this time it's not one of their own countries who are violating this order abroad, but a Eurasian one violating it in an aspiring EU and NATO country by "turning to their Asian past" and sending in their Asiatic hordes as they'd say, and you have the perfect formula for a hypocritical liberal circlejerk about how we have to "protect liberal democracy" in Ukraine by banning RT in our own countries.

As Zizek wrote in his article the other day:

"Are we ready to prove that in defending Europe, we are fighting for freedom everywhere?"

If anything, the dramatically disproportionate reaction to this conflict gives us an answer that most of us knew already, a definitive no.

So does that then just mean that it's just about there being attack on their liberal democratic way of life + proximity? Well, if that was the case then the undemocratic and illiberal actions of US-backed reactionary forces in Ukraine would also be condemned, but they're not, no matter how undeniable they are. So it can't be that.

Is it the fear that eventually Russia will do to the West what they are now doing to Ukraine? Nobody in their right mind thinks that Russia would launch an attack on NATO members.

The way I see it, on a political level, this disproportionate reaction can be explained by the fact that it's the first time a designated adversary gets out of line militarily to such an extent, and to add insult to injury, its target is a member of their European "family" (as Rutte put it) who aspired to become part of the West through NATO and the EU.

I think the disproportionate humanitarian outcry by everyday white people is because of the fact that since it's Russia doing it, the invasion is already unjustifiable by definition, unlike when we do it, so the human cost of it is not a collateral damage justified as a necessary evil, but senseless violence, which makes it even more tragic. In addition, deeply rooted unconscious biases as a result of white supremacy makes people recognize the humanity of white Ukrainians more than when it happens in non-white countries, leading to a level of empathy for refugees that we've never seen before from "uncivilized" countries like Syria or Iraq.

I agree with you, I just think that there's two main (well, maybe 3) reasons why people assume there's an possibility to disrupt the first world order. I think everything you say is correct, but I would note that unlike a lot of regional tensions (i.e. Armenia-Azerbaijan), the involvement is between a western satellite and a direct global power; so the battle isn't happening in a vacuum. Also there's the obvious elephant in the room of Russia being a nuclear state. Similarly, this is a country which is bending head over heels trying to align itself as close of proximity as possible to the west - sending applications to EU/NATO, calling for a No Fly Zone instituted by the US, etc. So I do think just contextually (without having to intellectualize it too much), there is a distinction automatically in terms of comparison - the proximity does feel real for those following media or social media even if it isn't truly beyond that.
This is also basically the rare occasion where a western-aligned country is the one being invaded rather the west doing the invasion themselves - so it's harder to spin it as "we're doing x for your own good", the inverse having to be the current media sensationalism we've seen now.
I agree more practically with you and I don't think that many people genuinely believe Russia will use nukes or that the US/EU will go to war with Russia or Russia will invade Poland - however, there is a nuance here that many people are just either A) not educated in global politics at all in the west due to the luxury the west can afford them for blissfully ignorant comfort and B) there are active entities looking to misinform or twist geopolitical events for their own gain (the Media) or the gain of others (the Pentagon). This is significantly easier at scale I believe now then during a US invasion of Libya or during a isolated regional war such as Nagorno-Karabakh.

Yeah I agree but this point is interesting tho

I agree with you, I just think that there's two main (well, maybe 3) reasons why people assume there's an possibility to disrupt the first world order. I think everything you say is correct, but I would note that unlike a lot of regional tensions (i.e. Armenia-Azerbaijan), the involvement is between a western satellite and a direct global power; so the battle isn't happening in a vacuum.

It's obviously true that Ukraine is a Western satellite and that this is part of why it's made out to be a bigger deal than other wars, but as we all know they would never admit that, or even say too much about how their EU and NATO aspirations play a role, they have to cloak everything in universalist rhetoric.

I think it's one of those things which even if it isn't directly admitted it's latent and obvious in people's minds. Like I said without even having to intellectualize it, people feel the proximity of influence to Ukraine (esp. Kyiv) because the west has huge company branches there, student exchange programs, visa programs, etc. And obviously Ukraine's government themselves just openly saying "PLEASE LET US INTO EU/NATO" etc. plays into that, because while it's true the current reigning powers may not admit it themselves, they almost don't have to but everyone around them almost says the obvious indirectly. I agree though the actual people in power do mask it with that universalist rhetoric