MelianPretext
The real underlying answer is that socialist governments bought into the Western propaganda narrative of “legitimacy.” This is where, if socialist governance fails to deliver economic growth, it loses its “legitimacy” and should then be overthrown in favor of capitalist restoration.
Socialism, therefore, is not seen of intrinsic value in of itself, nor are the socioeconomic achievements and benefits of a socialist society recognized. The “purpose” of socialism is solely for delivering and maintaining perpetual economic prosperity agnostic of externally suppressive economic pressures. This is due to the cyclical nature of 1) socialist governance buying into the need for “legitimacy,” 2) pursuing “legitimacy,” 3) creating public cognizance in their population on the idea of “legitimacy” - and 4) then setting their own population’s expectations on the necessity for their governments to maintain this “legitimacy or else …” approach - which then further 5) reinforces the narrative of “legitimacy” for socialist governments.
Meanwhile, all of this happens as Western propaganda further eggs on the narrative through channels like Radio Free Europe which expands the class of capitalist restoration comprador aspirants in those socialist states.
The 80s were a time of international economic headwinds through the export of the fallout of Reaganomics to the global economy. This caused economic crises most famously in places like Japan, but even though the rest of the world was going into the shitter through the American weaponization of their financial hegemony under Reagan to rescue their own domestic economy, socialist governments weren’t “permitted” to stumble themselves, even though everyone else was, through the buying in of the “legitimacy” narrative.
Governments in the Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavia then, through desperation in maintaining “legitimacy,” approached the IMF with its poison pill loans and structural adjustment program austerity mandates. Because the conditions of these loans were purposely designed to sabotage socialist societal stability, this then further exacerbated the economic stagnation such that eventually the socialist governments fell victim to the appeal of pursuing the ultimate Western poison pill - shock therapy - which led to the collapse of these socialist states.
The result was that, rather than being overthrown by the collective people as Western propaganda had fantasized, these governments voluntarily, and unilaterally, committed suicide due to the idea that they, and the entirety of socialism, had “lost legitimacy” and the only remedy to this being full-on capitalist restoration.
The diminishment of Yuri Gagarin’s historic achievement as “no big deal” by the usual suspects will always be hilarious because it’s one cope against the achievement of a man who is destined to be vindicated in the course of the future.
In the far future, whether that’s when the human colonies of Mars declare independence from Earth and or eons later when humanity, if ever, reaches systems like Alpha Centauri, when they teach human history, frankly, they won’t give a shit about Armstrong who stepped on the Earth’s moon (oh excuse me, I forgot the proper spin: the “first to step on another ‘celestial object’”).
The one human from Earth that will matter, perhaps the only one that will matter at all, to those humans who will be so far distanced from humanity’s homeworld will be that person who first entered space, setting off the teleological historical narrative to the context of the journey to their extraterrestrial homes.
That one individual is Yuri Gagarin and it’s both profound to realize and empowering to think that while the entire weight of the contemporary West’s academic, political and intellectual classes might be arrayed to downplay the achievement of the first human to reach outer space as accomplished by the collective hands of the USSR, this is one struggle despite all their teeth gnashing that they will never win, will never be able to take away from socialist achievement and that, as sure as anyone can be, he will be commemorated long after perhaps any other human from this planet.
Pretty momentous occasion as far as UNSC affairs go. This is the infamous March resolution that has been renewing the sanctions supervisory regime that was first implemented in 2014 and renewed every spring since. This year’s would have been the 10 year anniversary of it and having it squashed by Russia and abstained by China is a positive step towards drawing back from a long cooperation with the West on this matter and a necessary preliminary move to re-legitimize any re-establishment of economic relations with the DPRK.
Her biggest accomplishment is paying homage to Mao with a kowtow when she fell down the stairs of the Great Hall of the People. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Evr9IJCUUAEbGzR.jpg
Personally, I view those groups as fellow travellers and not as comrades. For me, the only distinction between those two terms being that we can both talk about the destination down the road we’re heading to, but I will tune you out if you start talking about how we should be riding donkeys rather than driving the EV.
Until world communism has been achieved, there’s no simple “choice” between nationalism or internationalism, even then there will be new problems in the new world order.
Fair enough.
I’ll also add that “nationalism” is one of those spooky words the West likes to trot out to beat the Global South with simply on the premise that because Western nationalism was an absolute clusterfuck (and here they’ll usually point to the “nationalism as reason for WWI and WWII so it must be bad” gimmick which is agnostic of the Marxist discourse on the role of capital and imperialism in those wars), it must mean that Global South nationalism must transitively be bad as well.
Similar to how Western sexpats post pictures on Reddit of Buddhist swastikas trinkets in Asian flea markets and the comments use it as a sign that Asians don’t care about the Holocaust. Yes, places like Modi’s India show that Global South currents of nationalism can be warped into profound fascism and cultural chauvinism, but this should not be seen as the prima facie character of Global South nationalism, particularly for AES states.
In essence, nationalism in the Global South operates on a different register from how it is seen in the West and this distinction should not fail to be appreciated. The reason why the West itself downplays nationalism is because the entire bloc is now more or less subordinated to American hegemony not unlike how their propaganda once portrayed Comintern/Cominform Internationalism. Countries with flare-ups of nationalistic (or “patriotic”) state character like right-wing Hungary interfere with the ease of coordination to Washington directives and thus are a distinctly problem child for US state interests, which is why nationalist currents are generally suppressed today in the West.
The truth is that there’s some straight up freaks that pose as MLs and the unfortunate thing about the marginalization of the left in the non-AES world and the need for leftist “unity” is that we have to suffer their presence in our discourse. It’s been the state of things back when the USSR still endured and it’s still the case today as seen with “ML” takes on China.
I remember reading Keeran and Kenny’s work on the dissolution of the USSR, how the capitalist restoration led the greatest humanitarian disaster since the Second World War, still ongoing today through legacy conflicts like Ukraine. K&K observed how some sociopathic Western “MLs” actually celebrated its collapse at the time because “now that the USSR was gone, real socialism could finally begin.”
Deeply disappointing, as an outsider to the Murdoch island’s internal discourse narratives, to see Australian members (both here and elsewhere) drink the kool-aid on the propaganda against this referendum and bending over backwards to do online global opinion damage control for their settler colonial state’s latest collective act of ethnic repression.
The conditions of this referendum are completely performative, yes, but it institutionalizes a recognition of the indigenous peoples these settlers have genocided. This would have been a first step. A very small step, but a step still. Voting down the referendum because there should have been better conditions is a hilariously optimistic expectation for the land of White Australia. It’s been two centuries since the establishment of this genocidal settler state, this referendum is the best first step that’s going to be ever condoned from such a population, and apparently even this was a first step too far for these islanders.
The propaganda excuse that the indigenous peoples opposed this themselves, from a cursory search myself, even seems wrong give how the overwhelmingly indigenous districts apparently voted for it.
The only valid reason for opposing this performative first step is that it deprives the Australian state from weaponizing this as self-image propaganda like New Zealand does with its “cutsey” Haka performances to pretend like its some decolonized country for the world. Instead, this referendum further confirms this island is still in the collective grip of the failsons of White Australia.