SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him] @ SeventyTwoTrillion @hexbear.net

"Crises teasingly hold out the possibility of dramatic reversals only to be

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Hey everyone, was gonna post this like five hours ago but the site was down lol.

To continue on the idea of a reading club: If anybody has any recommendations for broad books on geopolitics then I'd be down to hear them. I've been told that Super Imperialism is a tricky read right off the bat, so we could instead:

a) start with something that starts from a more basic level like Lenin's Imperialism, albeit perhaps less applicable to the specificities of the current moment b) start with a book that's actually more recent than Super Imperialism, like Desai's Geopolitical Economy, which I have read and I can say requires only the prior knowledge that somebody who frequents this site would likely have c) start with something else entirely, if there's any suggestions. d) just stick with Super Imperialism, like @xiaohongshu@hexbear.net is urging us to do all the time.

I recognize that book clubs are one of those things where you have like a hundred people join in and then by the time you're halfway through the book, there's like five people left. I'm the kind of loser who takes summarized notes on the books he reads, so my plan would be to release my chapter summaries as we go so that even if you cannot be assed to actually read a book, you can still benefit from the gist of it. Starting with b) would be advantageous because I'd only have to clean up my current notes.

I will actually start posting again soon lmao, just getting my sources back together again and catching up with what's been going on

Next thread here.

Hey everybody, I'm back from sitting atop a mountain and meditating on the meaning of life, reality, and the goddamn news for a few weeks. I'll be getting back into the swing of posting here over the next few days.

I don't have anything to announce, but I do want to gauge interest on a "bookclub" here in the news megathread, the idea being to go through a book like Super Imperialism and other geopolitically relevant books as a community. It would give us something to do other than doomscroll, and get us all on the same theoretical grounding (from which we can then argue with each other at a more enlightened level).

Next news thread here:

https://hexbear.net/post/4151797

Next thread here.

I think 72 trillion has been purposely avoiding hexbear because one or more admins have gone fucking insane and are banning tons of long time users for made up issues.

To whoever posted this, I haven't been purposefully avoiding Hexbear lately because of the admins, I've been purposefully avoiding Hexbear lately because the comments have generally been unnecessarily pessimistic and unproductive. I'm not gonna spend much times in places where the vibe is merely documenting the thousand myriad ways in which the world is screwed and it's all hopeless; I prefer spending time analyzing those thousand myriad ways and how they could be overcome and what the likely course of action will be based on historical comparisons. Informed despair is still just despair.

With the fall of Syria, Nasrallah's assassination, and the death of Raisi, I've figured out how the Resistance media operates.

1. If imperialist media is reporting something and there is no reporting on it at all by Resistance media, it is probably false.
2. If imperialist media is reporting something and Resistance media is explicitly denying it, it is very possibly true.
3. If imperialist media is reporting something and Resistance media is explicitly denying it and there's rumors from channels in the know that it's true, then it's almost certainly true and they are figuring out the best moment to report it.

To sum it up: If it's all clear, there's nothing to fear; if they deny, get ready to cry.

you can't even have damascus anymore. because of woke

Well, if you can't set up your government-in-exile in Florida then Moscow isn't too bad. Give climate change a couple decades and they might have similar temperatures and climates

Starting up the next news mega early given the bombshell that's happened.

Hezbollah literally just defeated the Israeli army, what on god green's earth are you talking about

if Netanyahu was currently getting a tan in Beirut I could understand this position, but they couldn't even take Khiam. The Resistance is not only not defeated, it's actually still stronger than Israel and has more achievements under its belt. It's taken over a year for Israel to achieve two meaningful goals (collapse of Syria, detach Gaza and Lebanon fronts) while the Resistance has been knocking out Israeli air defense and military sites and tanks and vehicles and causing untold economic and social damage to Israel since October 7th, and now suddenly it all means nothing? All those tanks magically repaired, all that tourism money replenished, all the Zionist soldiers risen from the grave, all those air defense missiles un-fired?

We aren't at the end of the war. We're not even at the beginning of the end. We're at the end of the beginning, and we have years to go yet. Strap in.

I don't think so? I think the situation is still relatively okay and I'm optimistic about the future of the Resistance. The massive damage done to Israel isn't suddenly reversed because a bad thing, even a very bad thing, happens. That's simply not how material conditions develop. It's a race to the bottom; as Israel internally decays, it must take increasingly brazen and risky actions to survive. The South Africa model is being followed to its inevitable conclusion. Destabilize surrounding countries in the hopes that everybody else will fall before you do. It won't work, but ideologically, there's no other way for Israel to go.

What happens next will be defined by Iran and Russia's response. The ball is in their court. If there has been no strategic developments or recalculations within the next few months or so then we can infer a lot of things from that.

You can have hope, or you can say that actually, the Resistance never had a chance anyway and swear that you'll never predict any good event ever happening ever again: the internal emotional state of internet commenters doesn't matter to anybody actually fighting against Israel. You're obviously allowed to have strong emotions about it, it would be kinda weird if you didn't, but your opinion of events cannot influence them. My goal here remains the same; to observe and understand how anti-imperialists act, and respond to actions, by a decaying neoliberal hegemon. I'll be here as long as there are anti-imperialists in this world, which means I'll be here indefinitely, because there will always be those who oppose the ruling order. Regardless of what happens in the Middle East, as communists, we (including myself) should aim to do at least a little better than defeatism. It's why I admire @xiaohongshu@hexbear.net; they might be rather pessimistic on the whole, but they don't just show up and bleat about how it's all hopeless and there's no way for China or Iran or Russia to win, they are reading and studying to understand the geopolitical situation and what avenues exist for imperialism to be defeated if China is willing to do X, Y, or Z. To take a section from this essay I recently summarized and posted:

The Demiurge Does Not Exist; or, the Problem With Pessimism:

This is a frequent problem in political media, or media in general: simply depicting a problem is not enough. Portraying or pointing to the inequalities and abuses of capitalism has to come with the practical solutions to these problems, otherwise it is an exercise in despair – an informed despair, yet despair nonetheless.

This is critique as exposure, shining a light on the problems as opposed to demonstrating the fallibility of these problems. Something missing from documentaries and books [like war exposes] is the premise that despite the overwhelming power of the U.S Empire, it is inevitable that it will fall. The brilliance of a work like Marx’s Capital is that it demonstrates the sheer power of capitalism, its ability to extract immense quantities of wealth and social control, while simultaneously showing the power of labour, the protagonist who will break its chains and bring in the next necessary stage in human development.

...

The power of capitalism, the appearance of an all-powerful Demiurge, is undone when we are able to recognise the world as changing over time; this is the Hegelian and Marxist notion of “History”, a dynamic process based on interconnected and material struggles, rather than “history”, a collection of isolated events with no underlying logic.

Without an understanding of how quantitative changes turn into qualitative changes, it is easy to see small wins as isolated, without their transformative potential in aggregate. A lack of process thinking creates “Messianism”, the belief that the world should be changed in one fell swoop; this binary logic is endemic to Western thought and a major factor in the pessimism seen among the Left. A combination of intense pessimism towards the construction of socialism in the short-term, and an intense utopian optimism that the revolution should arrive “all-at-once”, is a fundamental issue that prevents a grounded understanding.

Sorry to reveal my inner LOTR nerd, but quite possibly my single favourite quote in all of media is Aragorn's words after losing Gandalf in Moria:

“‘We must do without hope,’ he said. ‘At least we may yet be avenged. Let us gird ourselves and weep no more! Come! We have a long road, and much to do.'”

I'm now imagining Assad with a long white beard and wizard hat, which isn't a happy thought. Nasrallah fits that look better.

The Saudis are probably feeling real stupid about letting Syria back into the Arab League in 2023. MBS should have just held out a little longer and Syria would have indeed collapsed.

Insert here that meme with the two guys digging for diamonds.

If Assad isn't an idiot, he'll surrender within the next 12 hours and go live in semi-comfortable exile in some gulf monarchy before getting assassinated in a couple years. So hopefully the army will just walk.

This is essentially my position, yeah. Hopefully it also delivers a firm message to Pezeshkian to redouble support and to not hesitate as much any more, nor sign any backroom deals. Of all the organizations for the Resistance to lose, Syria is probably the least impactful. It did very little over the last year directly against Israel and its most useful factor is who it borders; smuggling is universal and unstoppable, the strongest governments in history never managed to stamp it out.

Whenever there's a complex/bad situation developing, there's always a feeling of doom and catastrophism here, and it produces a feedback loop where it makes people with more balanced/positive opinions shy away, thereby further increasing the concentration of catastrophism. I've tried resisting it, I've tried fighting it, and now I'm just ignoring it until the situation is clarified.

Don't worry about what's going on in Syria - the Resistance is still in its ascendancy over Israel. Israel has done even worse against Hezbollah than expected by even the pessimists, Israel does not have the military or economic capability to create Greater Israel (it would first have to, y'know, re-expand into its own borders and re-settle the northern settlers), its land army is large but incompetent, its air forces are becoming increasingly unimportant as they are unable to create military victories.

Raw comparisons of casualty numbers are misleading to the point of doing hasbara; look at literally any successful anti-colonial war, the natives always took massive losses compared to the settler forces and yet still won. North Vietnam had 3-4x the military losses (let alone civilian) of the imperialist side, and yet they won. 4-5x times as many Algerian soldiers died as French soldiers, and guess who had control of the country at the end? Guess who took heavier losses in WW2 between Nazi Germany and the USSR. Guess who won. It's simply not a statistic you can take out of context to judge the progress of any war, but especially anti-imperialist and/or guerrilla wars. The full picture demonstrates that both Israel and Hezbollah are battered and bruised, but Hezbollah is the clear victor when judged from any historical standpoint; it's actually pretty incredible the degree to which they won, considering that wars of this type often involve heavy land losses before the settler forces are attrited and repelled, and often last years, while (if the ceasefire holds, which it may or may not) this one was really over in a couple months.

We need that Inverse Jim Cramer Index but for Hexbear. Any time the predominant narrative is X, guess the opposite of X

The Cradle: How Lebanon's resistance defied Israeli dominance, again

I honestly don't really give a shit about Assad and I don't think anybody here is getting ready to mourn him if he gets got, the actual issue is the potential isolation of Lebanon from Iran.

I'm less anxious than others here though; drone warfare is the future and they're much easier to produce and transport than missiles, so even in a dysfunctional and nominally isolated country, Hezbollah could continue to function and oppose Israel competently. I mean, fucking Hamas somehow manages to produce weaponry capable of destroying/substantially damaging the best tanks Israel can produce, and they're in a concentration camp that's regularly bombed. I'm sure Hezbollah can manage a similar feat in a much bigger country and with much longer borders.