If you look around the world at the Orbans, the Bolsanaros, the Le Penns, the AfD, etc., you will find that polarization and the rising far right is global. First past the post is not a good thing, but the causes are far deeper.

A past global trend was how the center left parties (Democrats in the US, 2nd International Socialist parties in most of the rest of the world) discredited themselves, abandoning their core constituencies and pushing neoliberal economic policies (in the US, free trade, dismantling welfare, the banking deregulation behind 2008). I think that’s the proximate cause in the rise of the global far right.

The cause of that trend is the inability of regulated capitalism to both provide for everyone AND provide the necessary ever increasing rate of profit.

While there have been stirrings of possible left reformist parties (Sanders, Corbyn, Lula, etc) even those that make it into state power are ineffective at creating a new, stable, political economy.

Meanwhile climate change is haunting the globe and the clock is ticking.

My impression of the Russian communist party is that they’ve become more a nationalist party than anything promoting class struggle.

They did actually hijack 1 ship and have kept it and it’s crew hostage, the Galaxy Leader. While there have been misses and successful interceptions, several ships have been damaged.

When you insure ships, you take notice of these kinds of things.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_involvement_in_the_Israel–Hamas_war

George Lucas certainly did. The Vietnam War was part of the inspiration for Star Wars.

Yet one more way we are more complicated than middle school biology

Since 2000, the ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israeli deaths is 21:1 (NYT). Rockets? The name evokes weapons from Lockheed or Boeing, but Hamas and Islamic Jihad make them in garages and basement tunnels while Israel has the most hitech interceptors available. It’s still comparatively slingshots to F-16s.

Hamas was created in 1987, and has benefited from disproportionate treatment from the Israelis, who used Hamas to divide the Palestinian resistance. When Israel blows ckekd the negotiation tactics of the secular Palestinian resistance, what else were Palestinians to do? Palestinians in Gaza tried mass civil disobedience I’m 2018 with the Walk of Return, but Israel used live rounds and nearly 300 were killed and thousands wounded. How else were the Palestinians to seek freedom?

Always has been. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Gujarat_riots

Fascists gonna fasc

Officially “celibate”

There have been many spans of time when Democrats had enough control of government to push through what they profress. They don’t use those opportunities.

Not arguing that the two parties are the same. They are better than the Republicans by far, but the Democrats are still not our friends. They either need to be destroyed or changed.

Since Eugene McCarthy, to the Rainbow Coalition, and then the campaigns of Kuccinch and then Bernie working inside has not worked. Of course, neither has working outside.

I doubt you’ve even seen them. Even the protests organized by Palestinians welcome Jewish Voices for Peace who have signs that say, “Never Again Means for Everyone”. And Jewish Voices for Peace organize a lot of protest themselves. Antifa peeps show up to make sure Nazis don’t infiltrate.

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While voting is a necessary but insufficient way to combat fascism, 96% of voting Ukrainians choosing to not support fascism is a good indicator that fascism is NOT on the agenda in Ukraine. A fascist coup by that 2% supporting fascism would be opposed by the vast majority of Ukraine.

You completely ignore that fact with your hardon for attacking the identity of persons chosen by the Ukrainians.

Edit to explain: I made no argument on what Zelinsky as a Jew or the Muslim cabinet member would be politically, which would be identity politics. This statement of fact (Zelinsky is Jewish) was relevant to the political preferences of the Ukrainian people. Fascists don’t choose Jews and Muslims to represent them.

Zelinsky is a pretty terrible neoliberal, and I’m not actually a fan. But I am a fan a national self determination. So was Lenin.

Yeah, it’s a problem. A threatened country integrated a fascist militia into its army. Yes, and that’s bad.

But the country as a whole does not like Nazis at all, and doesn’t vote for them.

“In the 2019 Ukrainian elections, the far-right nationalist electoral alliance, including Svoboda, National Corps, Right Sector, Azov Battalion, OUN, and Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, under-performed expectations. In the presidential election, its candidate Ruslan Koshulynskyi received 1.6% of the vote, and in the parliamentary election, it was reduced to a single seat and saw its national vote fall to 2.15%, half of its result from 2014 and one-quarter of its result from 2012.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics_in_Ukraine

The country has a Jewish president and a Muslim cabinet minister. Sound like a Nazi country to you?

Are you saying “housing first” works or not?

Because just labeling something “housing first” without actually providing housing of course doesn’t work and that may be what you’re say. But a proper “housing first” DOES WORK to significantly improve people’s lives and reduce their engagement with emergency services (ie, cops and hospitals), which is quality of life for the rest of us.

Here’s a study from the Lancet (n=1103): https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(22)00117-1/fulltext

Targeting a journalist, not opposition Hezbollah.

It’s terrible I can only upvote you once.

I would have said, “settler colonial state”. What that state is doing to the Palestinians will, in the lense of history, be seen as equivalent to what the United States did to the indigenous peoples.

“Infestation” is too close to fascist antisemitic tropes and while criticism of Israel is NOT automatically antisemitic, it can be.

Except that is not what the poster you’re replying to said. The poster said, ‘negotiate with Palestinians to hand over Hamas responsible for 10/7’. That’s not ‘negotiating with Hamas’.

There was an ongoing peace process between Israel and the secular PLO with the Oslo Accords and then Israel stopped the process. Israel accelerated land grabs and illegal settlements, and actually PROMOTED Hamas. The PLO organizations had either pledged to not harm civilians or given up armed struggle altogether. But Israel said NO to land for peace and so why should Palestinians choose peaceful negotiations?

Maybe calling the entire population of a country Nazis is going a bit too far.

Ukraine has entered the chat.