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Bulletins and News Discussion from April 28th to May 4th, 2025 - Competent Fascism? - COTW: El Salvador
(hexbear.net)
Image is from the Britannica article on CECOT, known as the Terrorism Confinement Center in English.
This megathread's topic is inspired by our lovely news regular, @Frogmanfromlake@hexbear.net, who talks often about the conditions inside El Salvador and gives nuanced and informative takes.
As the Trump administration continues to make foreign policy blunders that would make even the staunchest anti-imperialist accelerationist blush - and we are barely three months in! - it's interesting to compare and contrast his policies of incompetent imperialist and domestic management to the dictators in other countries.
Bukele is somewhat unique among fascists, in that he seems to not hide - and seems to even admit to - his evil, self-describing as the world's "coolest dictator". El Salvador has no particular shortage of prominent fascists in their history, but one major example is Maximiliano Martínez, who led the country over much of the 1930s and the early 1940s. He was responsible the deaths of many thousands of communists and indigneous people, and yet joined World War 2 on the side of the Allies and against the Nazis.
The comparisons between Martínez and Bukele - and, indeed, between Bukele and Trump - in terms of their impact on minority groups are slowly growing as world attention is being drawn to the country. The recent meeting between Bukele and Trump has shifted a spotlight onto El Salvador's crime policy; the internal conditions of El Salvador's prisons are genuinely monstrous. One gets a similar feeling as when reading descriptions of the conditions of Holocaust victims in German concentration camps. Trump has made statements to the effect that he want a similar crime crackdown inside the United States, and I certainly believe that he wants this (ICE is already just kidnapping people off the streets into vans), but his administration has been so chaotic and mismanaged that it's difficult to determine whether this will be an interest he rapidly drops in favor of some other hair-brained scheme.
Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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 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.
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.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
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I came across a popular Tik Tok clip of Dan Bilzerian "Prince of Grifters" dismantling Zionist talking points during an interview on the Patrick Bet-David podcast; and I got to say the western left is utterly devoid of skilled orators
The rock solid confidence Bilzerian displayed while he shut down the typical "do you condemn Hamas" line of questioning left the interviewer stuttering and visibly taken aback
It's a social effect I haven't seen anywhere else, not Hasan, not Sam Seder, Finkelstein occasionally approaches this skill but even then he falls slightly short.
It's deeply frustrating that a dipshit influencer can instantly create a memorable clip like that while a legion of left-wing podcasters and commenters can barely match its punch even after 18 months of trying
The problem is that leftists get shut down (by libs and radlibs, but often even by other leftists) if they say things that are mean or rude, even if they're also true. As a result, there aren't any in-your-face, never-back-down leftists in the spotlight.
Good example is Roger Hallam.
The problem with Bilzerian is that he's straight up antisemitic. In that he is very prejudice towards Jewish people. So he doesn't care about being bigoted towards Jews, which is why he speaks like that.
Exactly and that adds to my frustration, but we can't afford to let racists and bigots monopolize the concept of confidence in political spaces
We need more leftists who can harness Badempanada energy, but without the basement gremlin aesthetic
Yeah unfortunately every leftist influencer is hyper aware of coming off anti semitic. But its self defeating, they will call you antisemitic anyway. And it opens the door for actual antisemites like bilzerian or klandace Owens to gain traction.
Doesn’t help that a lot of left-adjacent people are very bad faith comprehenders/too diplomatic.
Exactly this. You not only have to have confidence, but also be witty and have a bit of bravado ideally. You also have to treat fascists as fucking fascists, don't be charitable whatsoever, initiate the name calling and openly mock them whilst being cool headed and above the situation itself. Many leftist instead engage in debates where they let the fascist speak, express his views etc. You need to call a spade a spade immediately, not fuck around for the sake of liberal civility.
sigh I think I score 0.5 out of 3 on this scale :(
I mean, I think I fulfill the criteria online. In real life with social anxiety however...
So what Hasan does
except not be kinda dumb and lose most arguments by ceding tons of ground right out the gate
Yes, the twitch streamer must be a brilliant academic and charismatic. I keep hearing this ceding tons of ground and I have no idea what that means.
It means he opens a “debate” with accepting the premises of the Liberal or chud. He only quibbles on small pedantic points.
For example, whenever he talks about Russia-Ukraine he uses western liberal framing of Putin being an evil guy who did a full scale invasion blah blah. He doesn’t even try to explain the context at all. He does this with all geopolitical events. He just takes the western framing and narrative and quibbles on small details instead of attack the entire false narrative and asserting his own
I disagree. He gives the western frame not as a point of agreement but the point of context and then walks through how western imperialism has gotten the mass public to agree to this frame and then takes apart the whole thing piece by piece. I guess he could just go in full scale and say they're wrong but running a 10 hour twitch stream the conversation would be over pretty quickly and not much learning would be done by the viewer. It would just be you agree or you don't.
Hasan says he supports Ukraine and that Putin is a fascist dictator. He's full radlib. He doesn't reject the western framing.
Hasan immediately gives so much ground. All you have to do to win an argument against him is make an extreme claim confidently over and over. It will derail him and he just focuses on that nitpicked point and cedes everything else.
I don’t really think you can “own”your way into a revolution.
When making a cake, every ingredient is important
Right-wingers are usually more confident in a way that is often just arrogance and have no problem saying things that leftists would find too problematic. This makes them come across as “based” to the average person watching those TikTok’s.
I have that skill. I just don't have the platform.
didn't yanis instantly on like oct 8th said he doesn't condemn hamas
and he is fairly charismatic, despite being wrong on lots of stuff.
Link??
I've heard Hasan make the exact argument and just as clearly. Dan also thinks Israel killed JFK and did 9/11.
well Hasan should listen to his own advice and stop letting chatters dictate the conversation. He does an awful job controlling the narrative on his stream
Nah Hasan wastes too much time over-intellectualizing basic points and getting distracted by deadend tangents or overly-charitable interpretations of nonsense from bad faith actors
The last time I saw him get down to brass tax was when he shut down that random liberal Zionist Brit on Piers Morgan's show, over a year ago
Most of the time he projects the unfortunate tone of someone who is whiny, hesitant, and uncertain, which is only partially nullified by his general dude bro aesthetic
He's just too damn nice
He runs an all day talk show. He has to ramble at times to keep it going. And often times he does this because people listen to him for a long time are in his chat and willing to engage so it makes sense.
That Pier Morgan interview was one of the times I'm talking about. When he goes on other shows he has no problem openly shouting down fascists and calling them for what they are. He does this with chat all the time too.
We don't have many popular Marxists who are teaching media literacy effectively to the masses.