news
Welcome to c/news! We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:
-
To learn about and discuss meaningful news, analysis and perspectives from around the world, with a focus on news outside the Anglosphere and beyond what is normally seen in corporate media (e.g. anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, Marxist, Indigenous, LGBTQ, people of colour).
-
To encourage community members to contribute commentary and for others to thoughtfully engage with this material.
-
To support healthy and good faith discussion as comrades, sharpening our analytical skills and helping one another better understand geopolitics.
We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.
Newcomm and Newsmega Rules:
The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.
-
Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.
-
Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.
-
Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.
-
Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.
-
Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.
-
Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.
-
American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.
-
Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.
-
AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.
view the rest of the comments
Using that example, is "the war happened because Bush was there." Popular demand did not matter.
The question then is what happens when popular demand changes and voting habits change as a result? What happens if a fairly earnest anti-imperialist is elected? Trump ran on being against wars (twice, hilariously). He correctly called Hillary a warmonger; he just sort of left out the "and I will be too." Without a political record to hold against him it was harder, before his first term, to say "he's definitely lying!"
My point in bringing up Trump (or Sanders putting aside his actual policies and stances and focusing on his "imagined rhetoric" ie how people regard him which is anti-imperialist) is there is clearly a not always subtle, though rarely directly addressed, undercurrent of anti-war from the American populace. Whatever their reasoning people kind of tend to not like wars if they can't see a justification for them (that's kind of key though obviously).
The logical next step is if people are truly against unjustifiable (to them) wars, and they elect a real anti-imperialist, and let's say the CIA doesn't day one just sort of make their head do a weird thing. Then the US has an anti-imperialist president. Or majority in congress. That president/congress, being actually earnestly anti-war, actually abide by the will of the people to avoid conflicts.
One could argue that hypothetical person will never be elected or they'll get CIA/FBI popped day one, etc. The fact is though... that could happen. That person could be elected. That's what Israel and the military industrial complex and all those who suckle on its innumerable teats fear most. They don't care about opinion right now. They're gonna do what they want popular opinion be damned. They care about in 5, 10, 25, 50 years down the line. All it theoretically takes is one election to quite literally vaporize Israel.