Imagine a terrifying world where we are all ruled by monsters of every stripe. And not hot ones like werewolves, but instead decaying zombies and mummies who are both insensitive to, and actively benefit from the immense suffering they cause on a daily basis. The top echelon of society, filled with profit-seeking, bloodsucking vampires. And the worst of it is that they repeat on a daily basis that what they are doing is not only just, but there is no other possible way to do it.
Pretty spooky, right? What if I told you that this world... was our own?
Happy Halloween!
Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is Lebanon! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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/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/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.
Like I'm not crazy in thinking that the zionist government in israel and it's useful idiots around the world are straight up lying and engaging in hyperbole to make the oct. 7th attacks sound juicer to end times evangelicals and genocidal jews to further the country's aims no? Also worth pointing out that the more the zionists lie the more emboldened antisemites around the world are going to become. We're a couple steps away from groypers rightfully pointing out that israel is lying, and therefore it means the holocaust was fake too, because Israel lies, ofc they're wrong, but you get what I mean.
Like I'm not crazy in thinking that the zionist government in israel and it's useful idiots around the world are straight up lying and engaging in hyperbole to make the oct. 7th attacks sound juicer to end times evangelicals and genocidal jews to further the country's aims no?
States tend to go batshit when their monopoly on violence is severely disrupted but because settler-colonial states usually do not require the indigneous people to exist - as opposed to the contradiction between bourgeoisie/proletariat where the former oppresses the latter but also needs them in order to exist and so cannot just kill them all - the reaction from the state is particularly deranged and heavy-handed. All of Israel's actions in Gaza since October 7th have been to try and reconstruct deterrence and their monopoly on violence, as well as to demoralize the Resistance. They can only really strike civilians though due to the tunnel networks, so in reality the airstrikes are the impotent rage - and most importantly, fear - of the settlers; every Israeli who posts those truly reprehensible videos mocking the Gazans should be understood as people who are extremely afraid of their treats (in the broad sense of the term) being forcibly taken from them and are finding ways to cope with that fear. They're certainly killing a lot of innocent people but the strikes are mostly militarily irrelevant and are not rebuilding any deterrence or their monopoly on violence.
Also worth pointing out that the more the zionists lie the more emboldened antisemites around the world are going to become. We're a couple steps away from groypers rightfully pointing out that israel is lying, and therefore it means the holocaust was fake too, because Israel lies, ofc they're wrong, but you get what I mean.
I don't hang around in those circles but I would be shocked if this wasn't already the prevailing narrative, though many antisemites might be held back a little as if you're reactionary enough to be one, chances are you don't hold positive opinions about Arabs either.
I don't hang around in those circles but I would be shocked if this wasn't already the prevailing narrative, though many antisemites might be held back a little as if you're reactionary enough to be one, chances are you don't hold positive opinions about Arabs either
Yeah. I mean when I was a reactionary I was more in the libertarian vein and liked Arab people and was upset over like the USA's wars in the middle east and Israel. Now though I don't see it much. Most reactionaries, like you said, tend to hate Muslims too.
They're definitely making shit up. It's very likely ~1,000 Israelis give or take were killed. Urban combat sucks. But afaik a lot of the detailed atrocity porn in made up.
Idk if the current propaganda spree will influence fash to do even more holocaust revisionism. Holocaust revisionism and/or denial is official policy in much of Eastern Europe and arguably in the EU parliament and the US government given their formal adoption of the Holodomor bs. Israeli's propaganda push might make that worse, or it might already be too bad to matter.
I think to a large degree, with the passage of all but a handful of survivors and many of the children of survivors, that has already happened. For people who even know about it in any detail at all it's moved from history to mythology. Even in the like 70s-10s when knowledge of the Holocaust was relatively wide spread I never got the impression that most people had any real visceral understanding of what the Nazis did. Six million is too big of a number to wrap your head around and most folks didn't have the time, training, or inclination to really understand what Nazi society, and European society more broadly, was doing. And it's just gotten more and more abstract since then.