Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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Important week for us. This Sunday will be the municipality elections and we have a very big chance of becoming the biggest party in my city, Antwerp. It is one of the biggest in the country with one of the biggest ports in Europe. It’s a very influential city.
It would be a massive win for us if we manage to get into power. We spent months campaigning, getting out in the streets daily, talking to the people.
Looking forward to the next months as the elections madness of the past year (national and now municipal elections) is done and we can focus on other things instead of asking people to vote.
As I was doing research on the Third Reich’s massacres of mentally ill Jews, it finally occurred to me that what I am effectively doing is putting a puzzle together: the Shoah is linked to the extermination of Native Americans, the massacres of the OvaHerero and Namibians, the slaughter of the Armenians, Fascist Italy’s exploits in Africa, mediaeval anti‐Judaism, Spartan ableism, Anglo‐American eugenics, violence against German communists, violence against Soviet POWs… I should have realised it sooner. The pieces are all meant to fit together.
Generally I don’t write my anecdotes or articles with anybody other than antifascists in mind, but I would be most delighted if they help the Jewish community in particular make sense of the tragedy that befell their relatives. That is when I can be certain that my efforts have been worthwhile.
the Shoah is linked to the extermination of Native Americans, the massacres of the OvaHerero and Namibians, the slaughter of the Armenians, Fascist Italy’s exploits in Africa, mediaeval anti‐Judaism, Spartan ableism, Anglo‐American eugenics, violence against German communists, violence against Soviet POWs…
Get ready to be called an anti-Semite and holocaust denier. Point of the Holocaust/Shoah narrative is that it is a unique event in human history and Jewish people are unique victims of it, comparing it to other events (no matter how similar or despite having a larger death toll) is considered Holocaust denial.
Bashar Al-Assad was called an anti-semite and hater of Jews:
In recent remarks issued by Syrian President Bashar Assad, he propagated hateful and deeply disturbing antisemitic rhetoric, questioning the veracity of the Holocaust and cultivating conspiracy theories. We, as responsible members of the global community, vehemently condemn his remarks.
The Holocaust has been extensively documented, researched, and studied as one of the most tragic and horrifying events in human history. The attempt to trivialize, deny, or distort its horrors is a form of antisemitism. source
What did Assad say?
The video of the speech, translated and published by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), reveals Assad telling a crowd that ‘there is no evidence that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.’
He never denied lots of Jews were killed (he’d probably say it was in the millions himself), he has a problem with the number “6 million”.
Assad questioned the politicization of the Holocaust issue, arguing, "True, there were concentration camps, but what shows you that this is a politicized issue, not a humanitarian one and not a real one, is that we talk about these six million, but why don’t we talk about the 26 million Soviets who were killed in that war? Are the six million more precious? " [emphasis mine]
He claimed during his speech riddled with historically inaccurate lies that, “there was no specific method of torture or killing specific to the Jews. The Nazis used the same methods everywhere.”
Assad goes on to publicly and inaccurately question, “How was it that despite the German collapse and European constraints, Nazism was allowed to rise and build an army? It was done with American support, money, loans and investments .” [emphasis mine] source
“there was no specific method of torture or killing specific to the Jews” is an anti-semitic statement because it doesn’t recognise Jewish suffering as unique.
Even if the whole Zyklon-B showers/gas chambers thing is made up, and even if the Holocaust denialists are right when they say “only” 400k-1.5million Jews were killed due to malnourishment/disease/conditions, we still have hard proof of: 1) Einsatzgruppen genociding Slavs and Jews in Eastern Europe, 2) Jews were stripped of belongings, property, rights and put into concentration camps, 3) Germany did want to clear Eastern Europe of people to make Lebensraum and keep lots of Slavs as slaves for the reich, 4) Germany did attack all of Europe and want to turn it all fascist and extinguish any culture/ethnicity not compatible with it, 5) Germany did wish to expel all Jews and remove them from German society (along with other undesirables), and so on.
Even a hundred dead for racist reasons is too many. Method of killing os irrelevant too. Whether Nazis killed millions of Jews and other people with bullets, malnourishment, bad treatment, gas, kind words, hugs… it doesn’t matter, Nazis killed a bunch of people. But I guess it is jmportant we know they killed differently than other European/colonial powers who also killed millions.
The Nazis should obviously be opposed (and many have opposed them even before they started genociding) so what are possible motivations for making up horror stories about them? I remember being told in the 90s Nazis made soap out of Jews and stuffed coats with their hair.
One I could think of is that the US had “internment camps” for Japanese people. Every Japanese person in the US was sent to a concentration camp. What makes US camps different than German ones? No systemic extermination of course!
Another extermination camp I can think of is Jasenovac, where people were killed by axes, saws, hammers, knives… handheld weapons. So the argument that Nazis used Zyklon-B so that their soldiers wouldn’t have to actually kill people with their bare hands and not fuck themselves up mentally makes sense, with Jewish inmates responsible for dragging away the bodies.
If I were you, I wouldn’t touch the issue with a ten-foot pole. You either have to accept the main ADL narrative where the Jews have suffered uniquely and therefore deserve special privileges on the world stage, or you don’t agree with it and say Jews have been (and in some places continue to be) oppressed based on their religion and heritage, much like many people have been throughout history and be called an anti-semite for trivialising the plight of the Jews.
This is a topic where reason can’t win, even discussing the topic gets you labeled an anti-semite. Questioning a single aspect of the narrative is akin to denying the whole thing.
Alright, I can’t agree with what you are saying.
It’s one thing to say how the Holocaust is linked to a variety of other atrocities committed by fascists and imperialists, but it honestly sounds like you’re trying to say that downplaying the Holocaust isn’t that bad.
As Communists, we are interested in the truth. This means we have to accept well-documented facts such as the Earth being round, humans originating with evolution, and, in this case, the numbers of Jews killed during the Holocaust and the methods used. And what makes denying this unique is that it’s most often done with malicious intent, far more so than saying that the Earth is flat or that the Biblical creation story or similar stories are true.
Although Assad gets our critical support for fighting against imperialism, this does not mean we have to condone everything he’s done, including the speech you mentioned.
Our hatred for Zionism and for imperialism does not mean we have to give a single bone to those who downplay or outright deny the Holocaust and other well-documented genocides.
it honestly sounds like you’re trying to say that downplaying the Holocaust isn’t that bad.
Why does it sound like that to you?
Genocide wasn’t invented by Hitler. It was “industrial” in a sense that technology from the industrial age was used and that it happened on a large geographic area, so it was different in those ways.
Nazis killed millions of Jews and Slavs (and some others). Turks genocided millions of Armenians by forcing them into the desert. Britain starved millions of Indians. England killed millions of Irish. Europeans killed millions of indigenous people in the Americas and millions more in Africa (Belgium is responsible for some 10 million deaths in Congo alone).
Why single one of those out as the worst?
Westerners only single out the Jewish genocide because 😱 they were white! None of the other genocided peoples are white, so it’s OK.
I finished reading AntiDrug Capitalism(is from an author that could be considered trotskyist). If I could summarize the book in important points will be like this:
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Cartel members and criminals served the imperialists to expand in markets that were locked away before.
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Just in Mexico, cartel members served to purge places out of any resistance such as activists, indigenous people and others. This allowed the state and the imperialists to extract resources while reducing the likelihood of people organizing against it.
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They also served to curve immigration by kidnapping immigrants and extorting them.
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Every latin american country that received money from the USA to “fight the drug war” had spikes of violence.
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Cartel members could be classified as counter insurgency. In other words, they are the capitalists dogs with the only purpose of destroying popular resistance and misleading working class people. They extort middle class people and petty bourgeoisie(small fruit stores, taco stores, convenience store) while benefitting the big capital(Walmart).
If I could conclude, the USA is directly responsible for creating the ideal conditions to exploit latin america out of its resources and out of its people through cheap labor.
They did the same (but to a less extreme extent) in southeast Asia (the “golden triangle”) and of course in Afghanistan. TBH wherever there is organized crime (esp. drugs and human trafficking), terrorism, religious extremism and cults, fascism, or tribalism/separatism, look deeper and you’ll find the CIA
I finished reading AntiDrug Capitalism(is from an author that could be considered trotskyist).
Man, trots can be something…
They can put succinct analysis like this, or end up being kooky as hell a la Larouche or Living Marxism, anti-Stalin line notwithstanding
Or they can literally do both things(succinct analysis and kooky)! Let me show you some proof right from the author of the book:
Jayzuz…You know what saddens me the most? That this person is someone with abundant knowledge on how the USA has destroyed latin america and, with all of that knowledge, she ended up aligning with the pro imperialist propaganda against the non-aligned non-western countries. It is very sad.
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In expected socdem fashion the Socdem Party and the Greens are saying they don’t want to 1) govern with us 2) see us govern at all and they’d rather get behind the ruling neolib parties that have been ruling for the last two decades. They’d rather go for another 6 years of racist austerity than for a leftist coalition.
Not that the Greens are the ones to talk. They are struggling to beat the election cutoff and might turn irrelevant in the city. The Socdems are doing a bit better but marginally so. Turns out neoliberal policies don’t go well with your left wing voters. Meanwhile 1 in 4 people voted for us in the national elections back in June. 1 in 4. We could very well have a coalition solely consisting of left wing parties to do whatever we want.
But nope. Call us extremists instead and focus on the neolibs.
We shouldnt give up hope yet - we got more then a few clandestine members in vooruit and groen that will try to help put pressure on their leadership after sunday. Ig its gonna depend on how high our score is although its no doubt gonna be hard w conner running things atm considering his love fest w de wever. It would be awesome to have a ml mayor of antwerp but i dont think its gonna be in the cards this time, we should be able to enter local gov in some other places though
The media campaign against our party for the upcoming elections this Sunday is running on full force.
They are afraid and it is great to see.
I was stupid and didn’t see the comment below lol
I hope you all have a nice week :D
Still with the nice weeks but never a normal week still?
Well you too
HUSKY
☝️🤓 Actually it’s an Alaskan Malamute not a a Siberian Husky
I stand corrected… I do not want to offend such a cute dog by getting it wrong to their face
you too OppoWait I wired you the Xi-Bucks and you did not do the bever post? I feel betrayed
Christopher Walker voice: you, too, Oppo, should have a nice, week
So cute!
You too Oppo 🫡
Is that Kyrgyzstan?
I googled “Aksai Chin” its a territory Britain took from China during a revolt, China recaptured it in 1962 but India still claims it
That looks fantastic 😁👌🏼
Have a nice week, Oppo! 😁
Both fascinating and terrifying 🥺
China policy about limited time visas for europeans is actually working, my comically reactionary dad told me he wants to visit China after watching several videos from a german youtuber that went to China lmao.
To all our US comrades on this site who are facing Milton: stay safe please and good luck. It seems to be an incredibly rough one.
In another weird turn of events our party is now accused of supporting the Taliban for some reason
Ik lmao, tbh if thats the worst they can find we are pretty safe and it shows how incompetent the bourgeois parties are
I mean I know it’s not true but I’m curious as to why they say it lol. Like, we do take sides when it comes to Xinjiang or perhaps Russia but I’ve never heard or seen anything about the Taliban???
Probably noting deeper than “you root against America and NATO, the Taliban is America’s enemy. Q.E.D. you support the Taliban.
I have to deal with a lot of aggression at work. Like, on a daily basis there is shouting, threats and sometimes fights or police involvement.
Today I had a guy who exploded in an instance just because a female coworkers asked me something while I was busy with his questions. Told her he wouldn’t tolerate a women lecturing him (she wasn’t) and called her the Devil for some fucking reason. Told him he could kindly fuck off. Normally I can see the thought process leading up to a rage fit but this was just 0-100 in less than a second.
It’s sad but you get used to it. A day without aggression gets labeled as a good day these days, which is absurd of course.
And my job is to help people even. I’m not even influencing them in any bad way whatsoever. But still there is aggression.
I just hope to one day experience a world in which all of this is not necessary anymore.
Call me crazy but I find it very difficult to care about presidential election when we’re on the cusp of two potentially global wars that both candidates are all but promising to see through.
the most meaningless electios, both are hitler
Hitler was only imitating the war crimes by Europeans against other races, so this analogy is accurate in reality.
I just looked at instagram reels Comment section for the first time 💀
lol there is not a single real person commenting there
Man, this week has been an absolute NIGHTMARE. Thank god it’s over. Hope everyone is doing well!
Agreed comrade, I am ready to enjoy a long weekend
Here is a Dutch vid by marxist YouTuber Left Laser about both a pro Israel as a pro Palestine demonstration happening the same day in Amsterdam. The contrast between how demonstrators are treated is huge.
It’s in Dutch so most of you won’t understand but it’s still interesting to see ground level footage of events unfolding.
I kinda regret not going. Hopefully there’s another demonstration soon
Weren’t there daily protests in Amsterdam or was that somewhere else
Not in Amsterdam
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
