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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: November 14th, 2023

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  • You’re right, I recant. I doubted if he was willing to do that but OP swayed me.

    Melenchon is not saying “I’ll help Gaza” (my argument was that he could’ve done so in easier ways if he really wanted to)

    …but “I protect my citizens even if they want to help Gaza”. Weaker morally, but doesn’t come across as an evil trick anymore (but as a good trick)


  • One is about enforcing the safety of French people doing what they want. The other is about a more offensive stance. This is much easier to sell

    You’re absolutely right — Fair point. The perspective of “diplomacy” does change things — I hadn’t thought of that.

    Signals less Palestinian Solidarity and more nationalism, then though. But still a net helpful notion I agree. Albeit it weaker than “I’ll bring food to Gaza and aim at Israelis if I have to.”


  • without saying he will pay for [the aid]

    If it’s about political expediency of signalling cost aversion is aid the big cost factor?

    I would assume the expensive part of escorting aid is the cost of the military deployment, no?

    I get your point about the Overton window, but I also see a flipside to it: the risk is sheepdogging revolutionary sentiment into the liberal electoral system.

    The overton window becomes a carve out in the liberal accepted framework (even though it stays inconsequential in terms of action) which could be a way of releasing tension in the rebellious climate of french politics right now



  • escort citizen flottilas

    That’s a very weird choice in a scenario where you have a state at your hand that can escort it’s own aid shipments at much higher scale.

    This smells like he wants to weasel out, pointing at some irrelevant nominal change that Israel did which flipped the conditional “if necessary” false or something like that


  • I coincidentally listened to the episode about DSA at the time. I also watched JT’s video that it referenced. So it has been a couple of weeks, but I did not agree with their takes and am far closer to RTSG’s critique on this (and that of the viewers criticising JT from the left).

    Yugopnik himselve mentioned a point that RTSG didn’t deal with in full. Lenin did say communist participation in bourgeois parliamentary politics serves to expose the latter as a deception. RTGS picked up on this being meant from the vantage point of a vanguard party, but there is a more glaring contradiction here.

    JT did not work towards exposing the deception but mystifying it. Regardless of how often he may distance himself from parliametarism, he praised it’s supposed achievements.

    A huge issue with the “baby leftists”, who JT aims to address, is their emotional investment in the democratic party (as is obvious right now after the midterms). And he strengthens that instead of working towards emancipation and empowerment.

    Yugopnik’s logic is completely backwards: “participation in parliament leads to it being exposed as a deception hence it’s good to praise the effectiveness of that participation to cast legitimate doubt on participation”. That’s just paradoxical.

    That was a damning, unprincipled episode. It was sad to be honest. I don’t really listen to the deprogram, because it’s vibes/substance ratio is too high for me, but at least I assumed the substance was there. Now I’m questioning that, but maybe it was a one-off.