Looked into the country, these Nepalese ‘Communists’ Are More akind to Neo-Libs rather than Actual Dictator of the Proletariat. Damn, That sucks. Is there any More info ?
Looked into the country, these Nepalese ‘Communists’ Are More akind to Neo-Libs rather than Actual Dictator of the Proletariat. Damn, That sucks. Is there any More info ?
In any case, this comment gives a good summary of the recent history and politics in Nepal: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/6962091
Hard to say whether any of that will still be relevant going forward, everything may change now, but at the same time there is the possibility that if these were genuinely spontaneous events without much organization behind them, that the status quo will find a way to reassert itself just with different faces and slightly different branding.
Since we did not see a longer period of organized struggle nor any kind of publicly visible vanguard organization driving the protests that could focus the masses in a purposeful direction and have a plan for how to take over and establish a new government, that basically only leaves two possibilities here:
One is that this was planned and orchestrated in advance, almost certainly with heavy involvement by outside forces (English language signs at protests in non-English speaking countries are usually a big red flag) and that behind the scenes deals have already been made about the transition and the new regime, most likely with the collaboration of segments of the army and/or security forces.
The other is that these were spontaneous riots giving vent to longer pent up social frustrations (which for sure exist and have legitimate grievances) that got out of hand and found the government to be much more fragile than many would have expected. These now risk being co-opted by more nefarious actors.
Either way, the fact that the spark that set this off was the government’s ban of western social media due to their non-compliance with the local laws is a huge warning sign to all global south countries. If your young generations can become so addicted and so dependent on foreign social media that the mere threat of having these “treats” turned off can lead to them rioting to the point of overthrowing a government, you have critically failed in protecting your country’s sovereignty.
Once again this underscores the need for all sovereign states to develop domestic alternatives to western controlled social media, tech services, etc., or at the very least borrow them from countries such as China which do not have a history of leveraging their control over these domains for interference in the affairs of other countries.
The dynamics of unorganized mass protests is that the movement will bend, in its internal contradictions, to the direction of the most well organized, motivationally driven and materially supported element.
Take the classic Tiananmen color revolution. It was originally an outcry against the runaway inflation of the 1988-9 period caused by the package reformers winning out against the gradualists. This led to an introduction of shock therapy by primarily Deng Xiaoping’s (I would indeed argue that his role played a major part) and Zhao Ziyang’s urgings, which led to historically high prices unseen in the history of the People’s Republic. Price stability was then re-introduced in late 1988 to prevent economic catastrophe but this led to backlash both from parts of the population that were outraged at this poorly conceived obsession with a “big bang” reform having taking place at all in the first place and the incipient liberal comprador-aspirants who thought the price stability initiative meant the end of the liberalizing reforms and their profit-seeking opportunities.
Both elements were present in the initial protests. The former (the Western journalistic and academic trick at the time was to dub every socialist and leftist element in socialist state politics as “conservative” to deliberately obfuscate their identity) were the socialist contingents, including Maoists and Ultraleft elements, who wanted a return to the Mao era rather than some capitalist restoration. Obviously, the color revolution elements, backed up by the West’s unfettered media penetration in China (which is how they captured those pictures they wave around nowadays), won out. They constructed that tacky Statue of Liberty clone “to Democracy” in Tiananmen Square, which appropriated and hijacked the imagery and messaging of the protests once the Western media started proliferating pictures of it, and the entire movement became a full blown color revolution aiming at capitalist restoration, even though large contingents of the participants wanted nothing of the sort.
This is how it works. Victor Bevins (a soc-dem), wrote a book called “If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution” that essentially dissects the systematic co-option of every single unorganized mass protest movement in the 2010s. The most infamous being the Hong Kong color revolution attempt, where public frustration over the affordability housing and the dynamics of the frozen economic and political system of Hong Kong due to China’s concession to Britain with the 50 year “1C2S” policy preventing any substantive mainland intervention or introduction of socialist governance to Hong Kong, which boiled over through an extradition case of a murderer. This was then easily was hijacked by the Trump I admin and the Western NGOs operating in Hong Kong, and co-opted as a “democracy” and “independence” protest.
As for Nepal, I incidentally made a comment three months ago back in May:
It’s not to say that things will necessarily progress in that direction, but that the external interests have been clearly demonstrated and many of the requisite pieces have likely been set in place.
This is a good breakdown. And a reminder that these large scale demonstrations and movements have multiple conflicting factions, liberatory AND reactionary. And unfortunately it’s the factions that are backed by Western capital that historically have ended up rising to the most visible platform.
Vietnamese netizens on Facebook also discuss this. There’s a screenshot of the decree which listed
TikTokWeChat, Zalo (Zalo is Vietnamese made), and Mastodon amongst 26 sites. I can’t read the text though, but it does look like it’s written in Nepal script.Edit: Found it
I do not speak Nepali, but that is indeed the Nepali script.