KiaKaha

How much time do you have?

An aborted proletarian revolution as a key national myth will do the trick.

Our position hasn’t shifted that much from the pod’s position.

The pod has a semi-ironic veneration of China, per the Wolf Warrior episode. It hates the entire US establishment. It wants Iran to get a nuke. Much of its stance is based on opposing what the most awful people in Amerikkka support.

That’s not to say we follow the pod’s marching orders. Rather, we get to the same place for much the same reasons.

The Ukrainian issue is probably the best example of this. No one here’s super pro Putin or his brand of Russian nationalism. When the war started, we were deep into ‘lol there’s not gonna be a war’. We had to eat humble pie, hard.

You know what changed?

Ukrainian flag emojis.

The worst people in the world, with the absolute worst takes, went hard on the Ukraine side.

Was the war a bad idea? Quite possibly. It’ll likely settle into a frozen conflict again, much like it was before, with similar territory, at the cost of a lot of lives.

But seeing people go around, pretending there wasn’t Ukrainian shelling of the Donbas? Pretending Putin hadn’t been pushing for Minsk II to be implemented as agreed? Saying that Putin wants to wage a genocide against Ukraine? Seeing everyone bend over backwards to apologise for literal neo-Nazis?

Fuck that.

What.

Graeber has you covered.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on here. These “heroes” are purely reactionary, in the literal sense. They have no projects of their own, at least not in their role as heroes: as Clark Kent, Superman may be constantly trying, and failing, to get into Lois Lane’s pants, but as Superman, he is purely reactive. In fact, superheroes seem almost utterly lacking in imagination: like Bruce Wayne, who with all the money in the world can’t seem to think of anything to do with it other than to indulge in the occasional act of charity; it never seems to occur to Superman that he could easily carve free magic cities out of mountains.

Almost never do superheroes make, create, or build anything. The villains, in contrast, are endlessly creative. They are full of plans and projects and ideas. Clearly, we are supposed to first, without consciously realizing it, identify with the villains. After all, they’re having all the fun. Then of course we feel guilty for it, re-identify with the hero, and have even more fun watching the superego clubbing the errant Id back into submission.

I (Don’t) Miss The Old Hexbear

I’m digging the encryption clues.

Parenti has a short primer.

Maidan put pro-west, anti-Russian fash sympathisers in charge. The population of Crimea, being ethnically and historically Russian, said ‘fuck this’ and left, then joined Russia.

There was various degrees of US support to Maidan and Russian support to Crimean independence.

Geopolitically, the annexation of Crimea was a response to the west’s pulling of Ukraine into its orbit. The Russian preference would have been to keep a Ukrainian govt sympathetic to Russia. But when that proved impossible, taking only the pro-Russian portion of Ukraine was the next best choice.

My understanding is that, historically, Crimea was Russian, and was transferred to Ukraine as a gift during the USSR era.

Fingers crossed he backs PSL.

The New Communist Party of Aotearoa has a website up over here and their analysis is usually solid.

I’ve just done a quick search, and this book looks decent for an overview.

And of course, there’s Lenin’s analysis of us:

A country of inveterate, backwoods, thick-headed, egotistical philistines, who have brought their “civilisation” with them from England and keep it to themselves like a dog in a manger.

I have two skills -it’s non-monogamy and speaking publicly, okay? Do some fucking research!

This is a pretty slick line