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.
Rojava has always been a weird situation to me. As an American I know it’s the fault of the US that the middle east is in the situation it is in. Hell, would even ISIS be a thing without US support? Would feel pretty gross hating any Arabs from my position, but even before I knew much about it I found it funny that Rojava seemed to be the “safe” group for Americans to like. People who would never say a word about Ansarallah or Hezbollah would praise or go support Rojava and there wasn’t massive media push to slander it, it even seemed like the mainstream news was oddly positive about it. That always struck me as suspicious, but still i could see why it was compelling. I hope the individuals on the ground with good intentions can make it out okay whatever the outcome and everything works out great for everyone and the Daesh get deradicalized and Nasser comes back from the dead and they remake the United Arab Republic and the US is too busy civil warring with Texas to do anything about it.
I always felt it was weird how, for the past 50 years or so, every secular, left of center, and socialist force in the middle east was massacred by NATO and it’s proxies. And then you had US generals supporting the PKK and telling it to rebrand into the SDF. Neither of these things never seem to feature in conversations about how Rojava is an anarchist experiment that is to be supported.
its totally not a psyop when america has been murdering every leftist movement for a century but then starts singing ‘mother anarchy loves her sons’ when an anarchist commune happens to sit on an oil field and fight their war against syrians
It’s not that difficult, TBH. The U.S. will opportunistically support even secular, leftist groups if it is convenient for it at the time. The U.S. wanted to take credit for defeating Daesh when it was absolutely incapable of achieving that itself, and was happy to support a revolutionary group which opposed Assad (well, somewhat opposed him; what a shock that U.S. “support” of Rojava also fell off pretty abruptly every time Rojava actually made deals with the Assad government, however tense those deals were). Literally everyone—including and especially the Kurds in Rojava—knew that was the limit of the support they’d get from the U.S. And surprise, surprise: the U.S. was happy to give Turkey the green light to go after Rojava in any context where it didn’t affect the U.S.'s own aims.
Hexbear MLs are honestly far too willing to trash any actual leftist unity/solidarity the instant there’s conflict between actual leftists and governments which the U.S. empire wants to do away with, which they are far too quick to develop a parasocial relationship with like the most devout of Vaush fans. I think it’s amazing how quickly the “critical” in folks’ so-called “critical support” drops away.
That’s an euphemistic way of describing what NATO did to Libya, and what it still wants to do in Syria.
Of course the Turkish proxies in Afrin and US proxies with the SDF/PKK have a ton of reasons not to trust the Assad government. Dismantling them outright is just the means of causing another migration crisis in Turkey, which in turn is likely to end with sectarian riots at some point.
At the end of the day however what we have is a country invaded in parallel by two NATO powers. This is not sustainable either, especially given that it’s cover for NATO to support Israel, invite war with Iran and steal syrian oil. The longer this continues the more resentment is gona be bred over this issue.
No euphemisms intended, I assure you. Honestly sorry if it came across that way. I have no sympathy for imperial maneuvering and the atrocities it continually produces. Genocide and enslavement and every other horror we can mention are never surprises in the outcomes of U.S. actions.
Who gon’ tell him
Lmao.
I still remember when it was pointed out that Afghanistan was not part of the Middle East and not Arab on Hexbear and a bunch of people showed their ignorance.
I don’t think geography is taught in American schools anymore. Though maybe this quotation is still part of the jingoistic curriculum:
Damn, see this is why I don’t have opinions. I don’t know crap about shit.
It’s fine for a person to not know something, it’s impossible to know everything and teach everything, but there’s no excuse for talking before knowing something as basic as why a region wants autonomy
What IS Afghanistan then?
Central and Southern Asian
Oh cool
Removed by 5 eyes
Nah what the hell happened over here.
Removed
but muh oil puppets with leftist flavor
The usual cracker suspects showed up
That’s because Ansarallah and Hizbollah are religious fundamentalist patriarchal organizations. Critical support for their struggle against US influence, sure, but they’re still right wing movements. PKK on the other hand is an old but very dynamic hard leftist organization. Their goal is to crate a liberated, multi-ethnic international communist region, has been for a while now. They’ve been struggling against a genocidal state in Turkey for decades and still thrive.
They’re the underdog that took an opportunity to create the first version of that region in Rojava, not even fighting the central government but filling a power vacuum that otherwise would have been (and in other parts of the country has been) filled by religious extremists. ISIS brought the war to Rojava, which was quite convenient for the US because desperate people don’t ask where their weapons come from as long as they can stop an existential threat.
Rojava still is a beacon of hope for people in northern Syria, eastern Turkey, and the rest of Kurdistan. It has seen amazing cooperation between ethnic groups that clash in other parts of Syria, not to mention communist grass roots organization (as in communal soviets), women’s liberation, and an end to persecution for Kurds.
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nice effort post