I wasn’t sure where to post this, world news it isn’t, so here seems to be a good catch-all comm.
It’s a collection of speculations and theories surrounding the war in Palestine and its possible origins.
Not sure what to think of this. I was talking to a friend of mine last night, who isn’t communist but who does tend to have a pretty good sense about these things, and he mentioned that something about the attacks seemed off to him. It’s certainly a convenient way for the ruling Democratic party in American to divert attention from what’s shaping up to be a major political disaster for them – the inevitable Russian victory in Ukraine.
The drivel about how settlers have been living there for 70 years so they deserve to remain there very nearly ruined the entire article for me.
I generally like Simplicius but this article sucks. It shows the limits of capital-L Liberal conspiracybrain, suggesting that everything the world over is connected and there are no real surprise events.
The part about Pearl Harbour at the beginning is actually quite illustrative of one of the big flaws of conspiratorial thinking like this, which is the “Everything Is A Hidden Message And You’re A Smartypants If You Figure It Out” thing. For example, he says:
There are many circulating accounts of all the things that seem “off” about Hamas’ attack, so I won’t recount every single point here as most of you have likely read them in multiple places; things like the very implausible breach of Israel’s high tech gates and defenses, to the unprecedented failures of Mossad and Shin Bet, to Netanyahu’s eerily scripted invocation of ‘Pearl Harbor’, which is very telling considering that Pearl Harbor was also a falseflag attack with the purpose of bringing the U.S. into WW2.
(did I miss something about Pearl Harbour being a false flag? is that a thing? I admit my WW2 historical knowledge isn’t that great as I like other time periods better. regardless:)
The implication here is “Netanyahu used the words ‘Pearl Harbour’, which isn’t a coincidence! He was actually referring to how Pearl Harbor was a false flag, and therefore so is this attack! Aha! I am a 200 IQ very smart person for figuring out this hidden sign!” which is just bonkers; why would Netanyahu covertly spill his plan out to the world? What benefit would that give him? It’s much more likely that he just reached for the biggest, most shocking event he and his scriptwriters could think of.
To Simplicius’ credit, he does talk about how you could conceivably imagine either the US/Israel or Russia/Iran/China coming up with this masterplan, with it either benefiting US world hegemony or destroying it, depending on what facts you look at and consider compelling. I don’t think either narrative is convincing. If the West had planned it in advance, then they would have known that it would have ruined the Saudi normalization deal. Simplicius says that that could be the point because normalization < neverending chaos in the region, but frankly I think there’s much more in it for the West to have everybody on their side as much as possible. If Iran had planned it in advance, my understanding is that Iran’s government is fairly compromised - I don’t know to what degree, but stuff seems to spill out one way or another (and, to be fair, Israel’s government may also be fairly compromised if rumours are true). Such plans to do this uprising would have been leaked in advance.
I would have to agree, this a weak article especially compared to this same author’s writings about the Ukraine conflict, this one is meandering and confused and veers off into all sorts of irrelevant distractions and speculative hypotheticals. It goes to show that just because someone has demonstrated expertise in one subject does not mean they will have equally qualitative comments on another. I find this is where Marxists simply are a cut above, where non-Marxists often have to resort to convoluted conspiracy theories to explain reality, dialectical materialism allows us to look with clarity at the material conditions and social dynamics which drive conflict and struggles.
going based on memory alone but I believe the FDR administration had prior warning of the attack on Pearl Harbor and specifically saw it as a flashpoint to change public opinion on US entry into the war
I think you can make the argument that the US might have known Pearl Harbour could be a target, and would have been a good excuse to get involved in the war. But the attack itself, coupled with a general offensive across pretty much all of east asia, was not something anyone thought could be possible. Not at the level they did, anyway. The attack itself did very little actual long term damage (sorry to all the people who died) to the yanks fighting capabilities though.
While I wouldn’t call Pearl Harbour a false flag per se, it certainly served the purpose of one and likely could have been prevented. Same as 9/11 three generations later.
The US capitalist class did have plans to enter the war as well (specifically the Council on Foreign Relations), but needed some sort of trigger to get the citizens on board. Pearl Harbour definitely served that purpose. Although I haven’t looked in to that time period in detail so I can’t really say more than that at the moment.
