This year really is just gonna be us swinging from election to election, I suppose. I feel Lenin’s beaming red eyes on me.
Up next on our electoral tour is Portugal. The current government - a coalition of the center-left Socialists and the center-right Social Democrats - has been mired in corruption scandals, resulting in a general election being called a mere two years after the last one. The fascist and vaguely populist Chega party has gained significant support over the last two years due to the economic hardships. Yesterday, the Social Democrats secured a narrow win of 79 seats compared to the Socialists’ 77. Chega, in third place at 48, would appear to be the best candidate for a coalition, though the leader of the Social Democrats has said that they would refuse a coalition with them due to their xenophobic views. Regardless, the fascist surge is worrying, if expected.
Portugal’s economy is going pretty badly even as European countries go, with little growth in productivity or investment over the last decade. The origins of this crisis date back to Portugal making the euro their national currency in the early 2000s, thus surrendering their ability to control their own currency, becoming reliant on investment from Germany and France, and suffering greatly in the 2012 European debt crisis. Unemployment and low wages spurred emigration; in 2013, the youth employment rate was about 40%; this has only come down to 25% recently and is increasing again. The government is heavily reliant on debt for public spending, with a debt-to-GDP ratio skyrocketing to over 100% in the two decades since the turn of the millennium. The capitalist sector is simply not profitable enough and hasn’t been for 40 years, which is only a problem if you are a capitalist economy. For more on the Portuguese economy, check out Michael Roberts’ recent analysis, from which I obtained a lot of this information.
Inside Portugal is the same story playing out across much of Europe. A failing center or center-left political party, unable to cope with the economic troubles of the last few years due to absolute obedience to neoliberal policies. A fascist party rising, but with no alternative economic plan, hoping that perhaps oppressing minorities and going after “wokeism” will make their God, The Economy, rain blessings down on them again.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Portugal! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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Last week’s thread is here.
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.
I do think there’s something else. European elites are just loyal to the american world order. They’ll say so both in open and in private. Of course they are, they’d be fools not to be loyal to it as it was good for them. And as much as we talk about, say, German industrial decline, nothing has stopped German elites from investing in American LNG exporters and European LNG importers which are fleecing the masses of Europe. Likewise for the rest of the European populations, though they are now being squeezed dry by US policy they still believe, by inertia, that the ‘rules based international order’ is a good thing because they live in the imperial core and their labour is just better rewarded than that of the average person in the Global South.
With the Elites in tow you have the entirety of media. With inertial belief still strong in the middle and lower classes of Europe, that media has fertile ground to work on. The problem isn’t today, it’s years from now. If Europe continues to stagnate then the european elites become akin to compradors in impoverished countries. That is the fertile ground where the populist form of politics (in strict sense, an alliance between a member of the elites such as, say, a junior officer or a lower landlord, with the masses) leaves the fringes more and more. And in Europe, populism hasn’t just been a big tent with some forms of conservativism and some forms of economic socialism like in LatAm. In Europe it will be straight up fascism.
It is true that the European elite is loyal to the US, but more importantly they are completely dependent on the US. At the same time the Europeans are enthusiastic participants when it comes to Ukraine, moreso than the US.
The US has always held the position that the aim of military aid is to strengthen Ukraine’s position at the eventual negotiation table. But the Europeans for a long time believed the goal to be a total retreat by the Russians.
Because of those fantasies, the Europeans have jumped in head first. Now the mood has soured and the Europeans are starting to realised that they have wagered the stability of their entire system on the outcome of this war. Hence those comments Macron has been making.
I hope that all this talk of sending troops to Ukraine is part of a process of Europe accepting the reality that they played themselves. Hopefully the Americans can reign their dogs in before they do anything stupid.
I think Macron is making the comments he’s making because France at one point was considered the ‘defeatist, mediator’ of Europe. When the whole of Europe, the Germans most of all, were more loyal than the King, Macron ‘tarnished’ himself as weak. Since Macron’s form of politics is just being a hollowed out neoliberal that panders to everyone at once, pretending to be more militarist than his own soldiers is likely something that Elysée aides have convinced themselves plays well to the public.
Sure, people like to bring up rational geopolitical reasons why Macron is making these foreign policy statements. Like losing influence in the Francophonie, or the french mercs who got merc’d, or, as you say, the souring in Europe and a need to keep the aid going. But Macron is primarily concerned with his political survival and nothing, not even one million ukrainian lives matter more than that.
I agree with your statements. I’d only add that Europe gets soured on America’s fuck ups for years, but they never let it go. Europe thinks that Obama and France destroying Syria and Libya put their union on the way to fascism and disintegration. Europe thought bigly about Trump badmouthing NATO or Bush threatening them into complying with the Iraq War. None of this mattered and I think the self-sanctions against German industry still won’t because these are financialized economies and the elites can just shuffle their portfolios around.
Michael Hudson has this funny story that one time, by chance he ended up seated next to the CEO of a huge German corporation (Volkswagen or something, I forgot) in a dinner organized by the State Department. The German CEO, mistaking him for someone important from the State Department, basically spent the entire evening hinting to Hudson that “you know, our loyalty will always lie with you”.