Best/Least Bad Middle East Bloc

[All Along The Watchtower]

Have fun.

[dead0man]

no thank you

[PSOL]

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend, but I am not going to butt in and stop the epic beatdown of the people I also hate while in the meanwhile damaging themselves enough to be brought down a pet at a more strategic date.

My enemy is the Axis of Resistance and yet watching Monarchies weaken and the global Islamist movement get cut down is glorious.

[S019]

I guess I have to go with the Gulf States, Israel being added in there is a big plus, of course

[FT-02 Senator A.F.E. 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

All of them suck however by process of elimination the Qatar/Turkey/Muslim Brotherhood bloc is the least bad.

[CEO Mindset]

Iran. It's based and redpilled.

[beaver2.0]

None of these blocs is good because they all have oppressive authoritarians and sh**tty petromonarchies reliant on slavery cheap foreign labor.

I wish I could pick and choose.  I would create an Israel and secular Iran-dominated Middle East.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

All three include (hell, let's be real: are dominated by) mind-bendingly depraved and malign actors, and the only explanation I can think of for the forum as a whole apparently feeling that there's an obvious answer to this is knee-jerk RESPECT MUH ALLIANCES-brain.

[MATTROSE94]

Iran. It's based and redpilled.

[Samof94]

2 is most interested in the status Quo. 1 and 3 have the opposite problems in the religious spectrum. 2 is still pretty horrible with Israel being the only country tolerable on the list.

[All Along The Watchtower]

All three include (hell, let's be real: are dominated by) mind-bendingly depraved and malign actors, and the only explanation I can think of for the forum as a whole apparently feeling that there's an obvious answer to this is knee-jerk RESPECT MUH ALLIANCES-brain.

The US picking favorites among them has caused so much grief for so many, even if it’s made a lot of defense contractors, arms dealers, and various middlemen rich and provided excellent job opportunities for lobbyists, think tank apologists, and military and intelligence veterans-turned-mercenaries.

There is no NATO-style treaty alliance between the US and any country in the Middle East (other than…Turkey lmao *dark laugh*). Not with Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE…

[Velasco]

There is neither a ",best " nor a "least bad" bloc in the Middle East, since all the political regimes in the region are evil in varying degrees. Let's be honest about that and realize humanitarianism and altruism are not the reasons behind the US support to apartheid states (Israel), military dictatorships (Egypt) or feudal monarchies (Saudi Arabia)

Turkey's NATO membership is due to its privileged geostrategical position

But there is a little ray of hope in the midst of the Middle Eastern dystopia: the democratic experiment of Rojava

[PSOL]

Why some people look to the chauvinist nation-building of a has-been American proxy force with positive note is the dumbest con the US state department and elements of the Kurdish diaspora pulled off.

Have any one of you read Bookchin’s #bothsides elitist drivel? Because I have more than most of you and it is discrediting.



He also chastised Michael Parenti about caring about “the poor kids who got fed” by the Soviet Union. That’s why his main following are ethnic supremacist secessionists and dumb male middle class college kids projecting the noble savage myth and imagining banging the actors the PKK cast as brave guerrillas.

The PKK itself and its franchise in Syria, now very much Ocalan’s cult after his purge of the worker’s factions in the organization, is not a great organization and is bat••••. I will defend the Kurdish struggle and, like many groups and personalities in Palestine or any national liberation movement, recognize that they are apart of that struggle which they take too much oxygen. The oppression of Arabs in Syria and sidelining of other minorities is somehow handwaived.

[Klobmentum Mutilated Herself]

Why some people look to the chauvinist nation-building of a has-been American proxy force with positive note is the dumbest con the US state department and elements of the Kurdish diaspora pulled off.

Have any one of you read Bookchin’s #bothsides elitist drivel? Because I have more than most of you and it is discrediting.

He also chastised Michael Parenti about caring about “the poor kids who got fed” by the Soviet Union. That’s why his main following are ethnic supremacist secessionists and dumb male middle class college kids projecting the noble savage myth and imagining banging the actors the PKK cast as brave guerrillas.

The PKK itself and its franchise in Syria, now very much Ocalan’s cult after his purge of the worker’s factions in the organization, is not a great organization and is bat••••. I will defend the Kurdish struggle and, like many groups and personalities in Palestine or any national liberation movement, recognize that they are apart of that struggle which they take too much oxygen. The oppression of Arabs in Syria and sidelining of other minorities is somehow handwaived.

Nobody is more zealously anti-smoking than an ex-smoker; nobody is more anti-Marxism than ex-Marxist. Anarchists and anarco-adjacents are already often more critical of AES states, on average, than they are of first world capitalist states (not to say they're not critical of both), so when the anarchist (or libertarian municipalist or whatever) in question is an ex-Marxist like Bookchin, a double whammy of criticism for the USSR is to be expected.

I always thought the criticism of the Reason interview was naive. It's Reason magazine. If Bookchin wanted to go there to own the lib(ertarian)s, they wouldn't have interviewed him. Even so, I don't disagree much with Bookchin's libertarian sympathies, but I'm also pro-markets. Markets aren't capitalism.

I know leftists also hate Bookchin for being a Zionist. I don't remember the specific extent of his Israel support, but I don't remember being offended by whatever it was. It's been a couple years since /leftypol/'s Bookchin struggle session though.

Besides, that's all not too relevant to Rojava itself. Apo has been in prison for how long? The Rojava constitution of Rojava, for better or worse, is pretty far removed from the orthodox of anything Bookchin or Apo ever wrote.

They shouldn't have aligned with the US. They should have seen from a mile away that we would stab them in the back, like we've always done to the Kurds. But ever since we withdrew — and again, I have not been paying anywhere near the attention to Rojava that I did a number a years ago — they've been playing ball with Syria, like they always should've been to begin with.

Rojava is still the most interesting and ambitious socialistic experiment in recent years. The Pink Tide 2: Electric Boogaloo is, well, another Pink Tide — it's nothing new and I don't expect it to be any more far-reaching than the first one, though it seems to have more coup insurance behind it. What else is there? Donbass? The leftward direction if China? I'll take my chances with Rojava.

[PSOL]

Markets are capitalism, always have been, and markets are not merely places of goods and service exchange but of replicating and sustaining the capitalist system. Most anarchists want the market gone and don’t belittle feeding children, and the mess of Communalism is not anarchism but a poor collection of takes from some crusty petit-boomer who disregarded both the Black Panthers majority decentralized ideology and the positive shift left by the SDS. There’s a difference between good-faith, substantial criticism made by leftcoms, trots, anarchists, and “anti-revisionists” but this ain’t it man.

Unlike the EZLN, which has its own culture and of which I am far less critical on due to it being generally consistent in its anti-imperialism and unity among indigenous people organized under it, there is no good point to Rojava. It, like Hamas, is an oxygen-suffocating presence that cannot be dealt with at this time and is something to acknowledge and that is it. There should be no commemoration of this disaster. Rojava is led by Apoist cultists following the beliefs of two madmen that have engaged in supporting ethnic supremacy. It’s “accomplishments” are the propaganda techniques inherited by the US fooling people into supporting its mess of an imperialist project. Just because it is new and the numerous discrediting examples aren’t entirely translated from Arabic and Kurdish does not mean much, nor the lack of a “model”. It’s about advancing from the gains we made and doing more.

BO was entirely right to do what she did.

[All Along The Watchtower]

PSOL really going out of his way to demonstrate bottom-tier posting.

[Velasco]

Why some people look to the chauvinist nation-building of a has-been American proxy force with positive note is the dumbest con the US state department and elements of the Kurdish diaspora pulled off.

Have any one of you read Bookchin’s #bothsides elitist drivel? Because I have more than most of you and it is discrediting.

I know Abdullah Ocalan was influenced by Bookchin, but I haven't read that guy tbh. Said this, I don't see the slightest trace of "chauvinist nation-building" in Rojava. I'd say it's just the opposite, rather than building a racist ethno-state, the Kurds in NE Syria are integrating minorities into their "democratic confederalist " project.

On the other hand, it's too easy from a true leftist perspective to criticize the  YPG and the YPJ. You seem to ignore the Kurds in NE Syria were surrounded by enemies and fighting for their survival. Calling them the "American proxy force" sounds like an insult, considering the relationship between the Kurdish militias and the US was one of mutual interest. The Kurds were on the verge of being annihilated in Kobane, but they managed to resist and defeat the ISIS on the battleground. When the Trump administration betrayed them, the Kurds faced annihilation at the hands of the Turkish army and had no other choice but turning to the bloodthirsty Assad. The pact with the Devil is apparently inevitable when you are in the eye of the Middle East