Very cute video. Lovely people, great architecture. It makes me very sad how much the imperialist economic warfare is harming this wonderful country. I found her comment about how EU passport holders are not exactly welcome in Iran at the moment darkly humorous. I would be in the exact same situation as her friend who sadly could not join her on this trip. I hate my government so much…

Port cities aren’t usually very conservative. Given their international connections and regular presence of people from various parts of the world, they tend to be more cosmopolitan.

There are three or four above 100k people apparently: Iranshahr, Chabahar, and yes, Zahedan the provincial capital is fairly sizeable. I don’t know how conservative they are, or even by what metric you would measure that.

To be fair, the video doesn’t say “most conservative part of Iran”, it says “Iran’s most conservative city”. I am not super familiar with Iran’s geography, but i have a basic understanding and i would assume that there are not many big cities in Sistan-Balochistan, given that it’s sparsely populated and somewhat of a desert.

Melt it down and use the material for a statue that celebrates the working class:

What that country needs right now first and foremost is stability, recovery and development. It needs to rebuild its infrastructure, its economy, its productive base and its human capital after decades of war, devastation and occupation.

Orientalism, chauvinism, racism, liberal imperialism.

I actually appreciate it when we have libs showing up. Yes, this is an ML space, but it doesn’t have to be a bubble insulated from the outside world. If libs want to come here and learn or engage in good faith discussions, then we should welcome that. People won’t change their views overnight, but we can plant a seed and perhaps over time they will come to understand.

Ultra is short for Ultra Left, which very broadly speaking can be considered a form of what Lenin called “Left-Wing” Communism.

There are a lot of different kinds of ultras, and depending on who you ask you will get a different answer as to who the label applies to (Anarchists, Trotskyists, Maoists, etc.), but what generally unites them all is their idealism, their dogmatism, and their focus on ideological purity. They reject materialist analysis that doesn’t conform with their ideology and demand the skipping of stages in the development of socialism. Ultra-leftism is often associated with adventurism and hyper-militancy.

Ultra-leftism in many ways is simply the opposite side of the same coin to which right-opportunism belongs. They are undialectical deviations from Marxism. Because of their shared lack of solid dialectical grounding, sometimes former ultra-leftists, feeling scorned or frustrated, can flip straight into becoming right deviationists (capitalist roaders), or worse. Their danger stems from the fact that both can steer revolutionary forces and socialist governments off-course and into dead ends, though they do so in different ways.

“It should not be forgotten that Rights and “ultra-Lefts” are actually twins, that consequently both take an opportunist stand, the difference between them being that whereas the Rights do not always conceal their opportunism, the Lefts invariably camouflage their opportunism with “revolutionary” phrases.”

The Fight Against Right and “Ultra-Left” Deviations, - J. V. Stalin

Great read! It’s especially valid to point out how Trotskyists constantly criticize (most of the time incoherently) without proposing realistic alternatives. Also their obsessive-compulsive insertion of the term “Stalinist” or “Stalinism” in everything they write.

This broadly describes my experiences with Trotskyists as well. Trotskyism is less an ideological deviation and more an anti-communist psyop weapon whose function is to splinter socialist movements and alienate potential communists and communist supporters from actually existing socialism.

I see. I thought you were being serious.

Thank you for adding that context!

and gave him a few copies of the first chapter of BaR

This is a brilliant idea for disseminating propaganda! We can’t easily go around handing out whole books and most people likely wouldn’t read them if we did. But printing out a single chapter (or even part of one) and handing it out like a leaflet is much more feasible and much more likely to get someone to actually engage with the material. And hopefully if it catches their interest they will seek out the rest of the book on their own. Did you come up with the idea yourself or is it something that a group that you are involved in does on a regular basis?

That’s the nature of empire. It requires the dehumanization of its victims.

Not a single one of the death camps was liberated by the Western allies. Every single one was liberated by Soviet soldiers. Soviet soldiers were the ones who fought for and liberated Poland. They captured Berlin. It is beyond the shadow of a doubt that the USSR and not the USA ended the Holocaust.

I think people like that he’s undoing anti-China propaganda

Is he? He keeps insisting that China did a “cultural genocide” on the Uyghurs, and he constantly talks about how China is too repressive of free speech.

because i’m apparently ableist, which i know i’m not but what i believe doesn’t matter.

You weren’t being called ableist. The language you were using is ableist. There is a difference. Not all criticism is a personal attack on you.

I won’t be coming back so you’ll say good riddance i guess, bye

This is a childish overreaction. I’m sure the ban wasn’t meant to be permanent, just to give you some time to cool down. All you need to do is stop being so defensive, accept the comradely criticism and move on, and so will everyone else. You don’t need to win every argument or immediately throw a tantrum and leave over being called out when you are wrong about something.

Even if you still think you are right, this is a ML space. It behooves you to accept the democratic centralist consensus on this issue. Leave your ego at the door.

As always: look at where someone’s material interests lie. It’s the same with Hasan Piker. I still don’t understand why so many leftists continue to defend him when it is clear that his material interests now align with the substantially wealthy group of self-employed petite bourgeois that he surrounds himself with. That explains why he is so focused on Democratic party activism.

The problem is precisely that he spends too much time talking to an American audience. There is a broader international audience out there than just America. Maybe talk about how people in Europe can organize. You have two out of three people on the podcast who are not from the US. Yet i hear little to nothing about the politics of their countries. The US centrism of the podcast is off the charts.