Image is of German farmers blocking the road near the Brandenburg Gate in early January 2024.
The ruling German coalition - the FDP, the SPD, and the Greens - has been in dire straits since the war in Ukraine began due to their steadfast commitment to destroying their country as much as possible in solidarity with Ukraine destroying themselves too. Scholz is deeply unpopular, with a record low approval of 20%, and his party's approval is even lower.
The German left has been entirely unable to take advantage of this situation, with Die Linke fragmenting due to split opinions on what position they should hold on Ukraine, among other issues. As a result, the major conservative party, the CDU, has gained a lot of voters over the past couple years. Most worrying, however, is the gains that the fascist party, the AfD, has made - from 10% in 2021 all the way to ~20% today. A significant chunk of the vote is likely protest votes due to the lack of an alternative, but a vote for fascists makes you a fascist nonetheless.
Recent controversies with the AfD - including an allegation that they held a secret meeting discussing a plan to mass-deport millions of migrants in an obvious parallel to Nazi meetings planning to remove all Jews from the country - has recently slightly damped approval for the AfD. This meeting generated counter-protests and condemnation from many Germans. It was later revealed that the meeting might not really have happened as alleged, but it doesn't actually matter, because the AfD's stance is being increasingly reflected by the ruling coalition, who recently introduced a bill allowing faster deportations of rejected asylum seekers and significant new powers for authorities in that regard, including potentially the criminalization of sea rescue organizations and imprisonment for aid workers.
The German government is increasingly considering banning the AfD, with their anxiety and motivation to do so rising as the AfD maintains and improves its position as Germany heads towards elections in late 2025. There are intermediate steps that could be done, such as revoking state funding, but if that doesn't work, then the party might well be banned. While I will never argue with fascist parties being banned, this probably won't fix anything, as the underlying economic and social conditions that are fueling these electoral shifts in the first place are not improving. Germany, the largest industrial power in Europe, is mired in a recession, particularly a manufacturing recession, from which there appears to be no escape. It has so far carefully shepherded its natural gas resources to keep the population as mollified as possible, but this has come at the expense of industry. In a trend starting from July 2022, manufacturing PMIs are still well below 50, reaching 45.5 in January 2024, which indicates decline. I suppose if you wanted to look on the bright side, it's better than it was in July 2023, where it was a whopping 38.8, so the rate of decline is becoming a little slower.
And this is just the domestic stuff. Germany has also famously sided with Israel to support them during the ICJ genocide case, has kowtowed to Netanyahu as they bond over being Genocide Experts, and maintains its support of Ukraine, continuing to send military gear and money to be converted to scrap metal by Russian artillery - rather than spending money on doing anything about the cost of living. In the face of a historic economic downturn, it has only more fervently stated its desire to remain militarily opposed to Russia for decades.
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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.
This is as honest a statement as it can be. In the late 80s many of the liberal-leaning Soviet people were already thinking this, that so long as they adhere to whatever “standards” set by the West, they’d be welcomed as part of the capitalist world. You can go back and read personal accounts from the late 1980s and early 1990s, they really believed that “democracy” was what was missing in the Soviet Union.
My personal take on this is that this naivety of the Soviet people was partially dictated by the historical trajectory of Russia, which directly went from monarchy into socialism, and managed to defeat the counter-revolution. They had never experienced what it was like to be exploited at a moment of national weakness and ended up being colonized by foreign powers in recent memories, and so there weren’t really any real guarded feelings about opening up to the West.
Contrast this to China, where the fall of the Qing Dynasty was immediately followed by a much more brutal and chaotic Warlords era, when Chinese people were killing one another for years. This moment of national weakness allowed the Japanese to invade and caused even greater tragedy. This is why when China opened up in the 1970s, they never fully trusted the Western powers. The key word here is fully, because China did open up a lot, and what saved them in the end was that the state banks were not privatized (the only term they did not agree with Milton Friedman), unlike Russia’s. It was this slightly more guarded moment that saved China from being fully exploited by the Western capitalists.
Strong agree. My baseless armchair analysis is that people in the USSR did not and maybe could not understand the savage brutality and zero-sum ideology of capitalism, and thought that "democracy" was a real thing. I mean look at the gdr? Everyone was ecstatic about reunification, but then the Reich conquered the GDR, stole everything, destroyed all their achievments, burned down anything they couldn't steal, and they continue to punish the east to this day. It was financial total war, unrelenting and pitiless looting and reprisal for the crime of actually ending the Reich in the east.
i travelled eastern europe, not an armchair analysis, this is genuinely what happened. People had no idea how fucked things would be.
It does feel like this might genuinely be a case where chauvinism played a role in attitudes, because surely the USSR must have seen what was inflicted on Africa and other places despite their inclusion in capitalism, and I have to assume the feeling was that it would be different for the states of the USSR, or at least Russia specifically.
All I know is that the Soviet propaganda about America had the opposite effect than it was intended. You often hear Russians said that “we never realized what the Soviet propaganda (not a bad word in Russia btw) warning us about American capitalism was true.”
The young people at the time thought it was all bullshit and the Soviet state was too afraid to let them see the “flourishing democracy” in the West.
Even today, if you look at Russian and Chinese propaganda, they’re often… bad when you compared to the sophistication of American propaganda. The latter has some real “look, we’ve done bad things, but we’re on the way to correcting our mistakes and make real positive contributions to the world” that’s far more believable for its domestic audience than plain old Soviet/Russian and Chinese propaganda that simply said “capitalism bad”.
People in Russia and China often don’t give much of a damn about state propaganda, but American audience are glued to and believe every single word their free media say.
China should have a camera crew interview random Americans about the "Homeless people question", then follow it up with a show comparing "Cops" to actually footage of american protests and uprisings.
Muricans always talk about how thrilled Khruschev was about American supermarkets like it's evidence we were better, and my thought is always that they didn't show him the supermarkets in the rural black south, or in city centers, or anywhere poor and minority people lived.
70-80% of the soviet citizens voted to remain the USSR. It wasn’t the soviet masses that were fooled by western propaganda, it was the soviet leadership and bourgeoisie that had wormed their way into power.
They didn't realize capitalist are like the Highlander with that shit. There can be only one
Parenti has a good bit in Blackshirts and Reds which is a bunch of quotes from Soviet officials, intellectuals etc. gushing over western democracy, freedom and markets. Then he follows that up with brutal descriptions of the consequences of shock therapy, forced privatization and so on and lots of people going "what is this shit? Why does nothing work, and only like 5 guys are rich??" and "wow, I had no idea these leopards would eat my face"
Looks like all those “subversive free thinkers” were just useful idiots with an infantile conception of the world
Absolutely, but he does point out that the qualities of Soviet society - despite also being flawed in a number of ways - sort of immunized people against understanding capitalism. They were simply unable to imagine a society driven to such an extent by greed, with no minimum of public services, safety net and solidarity. They simply took for granted the qualities of their society, while wanting a layer of economic freedom and consumerism put on top of it - unable to understand that the former would be sacrificed to make room for the latter. He also mentions that Soviet propaganda did play a role, because people became desensitized to critiques of the West and started to assume it was just propaganda, rather than actually correct descriptions of these systems.
I don't think any of this exonerates the people most responsible for the tragedy that was the fall of the Soviet Union, but it does help to understand how such flawed views of capitalism were even possible. And it serves as a warning for future socialist projects to keep the revolution dynamic and alive, to keep people engaging with the questions of what society should look like.