I mean... His articles often seem to generate quite a bit of controversy here, so...if the shoe fits? He has lately been writing a lot about an as yet unresolved debate that is happening among the (mainly US) left and from what i can see this ideological struggle will likely go on for a long time without a resolution. But the discussions that this generates are very interesting and i find i learn a lot from the informed critiques that get written in response to his articles. For me as someone not directly involved in what is happening in the US it has been very interesting to follow. A few of the responses sometimes fall flat but that's ok too, this is the leftist infighting community after all, what better place than here is there to express one's disagreements and frustrations with other leftists?
cfgaussian
Of course they're being dishonest here, they in fact don't believe that killing Che was the only good thing that Barbie did, because their implicit statement is that Nazis are good when they kill communists, which the Butcher did plenty in Europe too. They usually don't dare to say it openly, but they are no less giddy and glad about all those other murders than they are Che's.
Liberals' stance toward Nazism is that they view it as distasteful to openly associate with but useful as it does their dirty work of murdering communists. They will ally with Nazis, recruit Nazis, enable, help and defend Nazis when they are fighting their common enemies which is communists and anti-imperialists of all stripes. And they are always just itching for any opportunity to be allowed to celebrate Nazis committing mass murder and atrocities so long as it is against a sufficiently demonized group, they cannot wait for it to be socially acceptable again, and to a certain extent that is already the case nowadays when it comes to Nazis killing Russians.
And soon, when the imperialists kick off the open conflict with China in earnest - something which they are all writing about as essentially inevitable at this point - it will become even more acceptable to celebrate the most heinous and inhumane shit imaginable being done to Chinese people. They will be calling for genocide and will feel absolutely morally righteous doing so. And the more that they lose and get humiliated by China - which they will - the more enraged and bloodthirsty they will become.
Is it really acceptable learning material though if it contains 10% truth with 90% pernicious lies? By appearing reasonable and objective about one thing they bolster the credibility of the falsehoods and misrepresentations they tell about everything else.
The problem with Hoxhaists is the same as the problem with Maoists - both Mao and Hoxha were by and large correct in what they wrote and did, and in the political positions they adopted during their lifetimes, but their modern day "followers" do not understand that correct conclusions drawn under one set of material and political circumstances do not necessarily apply to an entirely different set of conditions. By being overly dogmatic (doing precisely what Mao warned not to do with "book worship") and failing to apply a proper dialectical materialist analysis to the conditions of today they unfortunately tarnish the image of their namesake by association.
There is no conceivable scenario under which a "two state solution" is viable. That has been dangled in front of Palestinians for decades, in fact promising this has been a Zionist strategy since the very beginning of the occupation. And by now they've played that card so often they don't even bother anymore, the last time anyone who mattered pretended to take that idea seriously was sometime in the early 90s when they used the Oslo Accords to trick the Palestinians with yet more false promises. And even that pretense turned out to be too much for many of the Zionists and they assassinated their own prime minister in 1995 because the mere suggestion of a compromise was unacceptable to them.
Anyone trying to sell you a "two state solution" is either extremely naive and ignorant of history and of the realities of the Zionist occupation and its ideology, or is deliberately trying to fool Palestinians and their supporters, to weaken and demoralize them by driving a wedge between those who are so desperate, corrupt or easily fooled that they would compromise for the sake of "peace" and those who insist on continuing the struggle for complete liberation.
Now i don't mind China going through the motions of looking like they're trying to negotiate in earnest, that is a geopolitical game they have to play, just like they had to pretend to put forward a "peace plan" for Ukraine. It's good for their global image as the peace broker, which contrasts starkly with the US warmonger who stirs up conflict everywhere. But they know nothing is going to come of it.
Except that he doesn't, he constantly states that he supports decolonization.
Lol, no, where did you get that idea from?
I am not anti Ukraine, i am anti-NATO and anti Nazi. I'm pro-Russia because i am pro-Ukraine. I want to see the people of Ukraine liberated, peaceful and prospering and this can only happen if NATO is expelled out of Ukraine along with NATO's proxy fascist junta puppet regime in Kiev.
Right now only Russia's military intervention can achieve that.
Anti-fascist, anti-imperialist struggle is a manifestation of class war. The defeat of imperialism and fascism even by a bourgeois state still advances the cause for the global liberation of the working class. A blow to US hegemony anywhere is a victory for workers everywhere.
In their original conception many of these superhero stories have a pretty decent message, the problem is that as time goes on they drift further and further away as the IP is expanded and reinterpreted by people who did not "get them" and do not agree with the original intent. Then of course you have the ideological dilution that always happens when something becomes successful with big money interests behind it and gets commercialized for mass appeal such that the message becomes less and less radical until the lowest common denominator is reached. And in this process of Hollywoodization of course most movies that involve big budget action scenes more often than not become involved with the US military which also makes sure to insert it's fascist, imperialist, US war machine glorifying ideological taint into the project.
And so the question is at what point does the original intent start to become irrelevant in the face of what the IP has morphed into, in the face of what it represents in its most recent and popular incarnations? Defending Marvel movies for instance with the argument that the original conception of the superheroes portrayed in them was positive for me personally is kind of like saying that the Swastika was originally a symbol of peace - that may be so but clearly it has since become irreleversibly tainted.
I'm personally a fan of Black Agenda Report, i think they do a lot of good work, i always enjoyed reading them and listening to their programs and i find it quite sad to see this conflict that has developed between them and certain parts of the communist movement in the US. But i was also quite shocked at how many NATO talking points about the Ukraine conflict that they have repeated. I don't believe that they do this for any malicious reason but simply because the imperialist propaganda is so overwhelming and omnipresent, and the pressure to accept at least part of it in order to not be completely ostracized and demonized in progressive and other liberal adjacent circles is so high.
It's of course your prerogative to disagree with Rainer, there are valid critiques to be made of the strategy that he endorses, but i do think it is about as unfair and disingenuous to accuse him of "carrying water for fascists" as it would be for the other side of this debate to accuse you of guilt by association with imperialists because you support BAR who have connections with so-called progressive and pro-Democrat organizations.
Ultimately coalition building is always going to be messy. Someone is always going to be disappointed and some of the temporary alliances of convenience that one enters into are going to make some people feel "impure", as if merely by associating with certain people with whom one has ideological disagreements one's soul becomes "tainted" or "dirty". This is understandable as we all have certain ideological positions that we are very heavily emotionally invested in, and when we encounter people who take the opposite position our negative emotional reaction is very strong, particularly when the issue in question is one that affects us personally.
For instance if your number one enemy are internal reactionaries and the threat they pose to you and your community then it makes sense for your own self-interest to compromise on imperialism and ally with liberal adjacent forces. I can't blame anyone for making such a choice for the sake of their own safety and survival, even if i do fear it may be short sighted. It takes a certain amount of privilege to be able to assign a lower priority to the threats that reactionaries pose to marginalized communities. But by the same token don't be surprised when people for whom the primary threat are not domestic US reactionaries but the actions of the US empire abroad (which is the case for most of the global south) choose the compromise that they feel keeps them safer.
On the whole i will say though that i think both sides of this particular debate make some valid arguments but i also see problematic aspects in each camp. I am hopeful that this can be resolved because i think there are more commonalities than differences, and in my opinion the disagreements are kind of being exaggerated...it's not so much that there is a major qualitative ideological difference but merely a difference of where the focus lies, what each side sees as their number one strategic priority.
I do wish you would continue to read what Rainer has to say and continue to seriously critique it, i think that these discussions are valuable, they are the kind ideological struggle that needs to be carried out internally among the left until we arrive at a synthesis to resolve this contradiction we are seeing.