Man, what a bad year for us. Look at all these setbacks the global communist movement faced and didn't overcome:
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The Chinese spy balloon incident. We hoped the presidency and the Pentagon would make utter fools of themselves by shooting down children's kites and talking about alien invaders. Didn't happen: Biden's measured and appropriate response won him the admiration of the entire world, and put to rest any lingering doubts about his fitness for office.
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US sanctions absolutely destroying China's semiconductor industry. We thought that one of the world's richest countries, with the biggest real economy and most advanced industrial base on earth, would find a way to make needed chips on their own. Nope: cheap commie manufacturing got exposed once again as unable to adapt to the computer age, and the Chinese had to come begging to Washington to get the sanctions lifted. Just like Reagan predicted.
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The US economy and the USD were both stronger than ever, with de-dollarization basically a nonstarter. (This after the US did NOT experience a recession in 2022, and after American economists absolutely did NOT redefine the very meaning of the word in order to hide how badly the economy was doing). We hoped Russia and China announce a raft of trade agreements, including trade in yuan; none of that came to fruition, and we might as well accept that Bretton Woods is going to be with us forever.
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Russian retreat from Bakhmut, a city which had not strategic value to begin with. Russia said it was the key to the Donbas, and as good Z bots we have to keep parroting that line, but we all know the city was only attacked to stroke Putin's ego. Avdiivka is NOT, I repeat NOT, in danger from Russian forces.
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But the biggest humiliation we faced: the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which people are STILL talking about, which ISN'T being quietly swept under the rug, and which all freedom-loving people (not Tankies) will CONTINUE to talk about until the end of time. We thought the Ukrainian army would stall at the skirmish line, unable to advance because of extensive mining and massive Russian firepower; instead, we had to gnash our teeth in rage as those rag-tag Ukrainian heroes, armed with advanced American and EU weaponry, broke through Russian lines and liberated Crimea. Guess those Patriot missiles really are invincible.
So there it is, a really crappy year for anti-imperialism. Let's hope 2024 can be better.
1991
If you can spin that year as a win I will eat my pants.
We lost materially, but we won the "I told you so" game. Which is what we are best at winning.
i was in the market for an armchair actually
It wasn't as bad as... that is to say, it could have been worse if...
Yeah, there's really no way 1991 was a win. For anybody.
The peoples of the USSR had so many new things that year.
К А К - П И Ц Ц А - Х А Т
A fate worse then death.
ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА! ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА! ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА! ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА! ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА! ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА! ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА! ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА! ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА! ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА! ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА! ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА! ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА! ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА! ЗА ГОРБАЧЁВА!
It set the stage for 9/11
You consider that a win???
Killed a few thousand innocent civilians and in response we got 1 million Iraqis and Afghanis dead, the passage of the Patriots Act, ramping up of domestic and overseas fascism, etc.
Symbollically it marked the first strike against the american empire, I think its the turning point that will be seen in history as the start of the end for the USA.
Obviouslly what came after was awfull.
Eh, the first blow came long before that. This was just the most visible one, and not worth the cost.
I suspect the cost would have been paid no matter if it happened or not, it was the rebellion of those oppressed in the middle east.
Not really. It was a violent and desperate assault by deranged fundamentalists that the US had armed, trained, and abandoned; therefore making their own bed to lie in.
It doesn’t really seem like it was meant as a rebellion if the Taliban pissed their pants immediately and offered to surrender Osama, and to aid international forces in capturing him, if the US didn’t invade.
Even in his infamous letter, Osama spends the majority of it wailing and and ranting about hating those that don’t follow Allah, and the “moral degeneracy” of the west.
The conditions of all of these things where put into place by the US; I dont deny that those who attacked had extermist views, and non-alligned views with our own, outside of the scope of anti-impearlism; however I view it a symbollic moment the US realized the bombs go both ways.
Im also less likely to give credit to the idea that Osama's rants, and the wider radical islamic doctrine are again products of being colonized violently, given that im not going to blame the oppressed for holding these views when we keep bombing any schools they build.
I do agree with that first part. 9/11 was pretty much a wake up call of the consequences of American imperialism. While the perpetrators were evil, vile, and backwards religious extremists, the shock felt by the US after 9/11 did tangentially support the anti-imperialist movement.
Also I do agree for the second part partially, but at the same time Osama was hardly the one building schools, and very gleefully participated in blowing them up alongside the US. So he doesn’t really get the benefit of eating his imperialism cake, while whining about how evil it is when he runs out his usefulness to the machine. Not to mention that he was the same “moral degenerate” that he rallied against, as most Afganis saw him, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban as backwards, imperial hicks that was actively taking Afghanistan back in time. (I wonder why Afghanis didn’t like a random deranged Saudi man).
Yeah dont get me wrong im not holding up Osama here, I know he wasnt a figure to idolize or hold up up in a current day settin and im not a twitter Osama video rider. I do think that the creation of Osama by the US state apparatus is what turns a lot of people on to just why things are the way they are in the middle east though, and I think thats why 9/11 is significant as a honest academic material analysis of the situation always leads to the US.
I'd say that Wahhabism and radical, fundamentalist Islamic doctrine and jihadi movements are not entirely the product of colonialism (though a fair bit is in reaction to colonialism)- but their proliferation and general success (for certain measures of success) absolutely is, both in the sense that the west has a long history of backing Islamic extremists to undermine secular Arab, north/west African, central Asian, and Muslim south and southeast Asian countries, and that the conditions of "post-imperialism" naturally also don't lend themselves to moderate religious views (particularly when a certain grouping of countries tends to kill off secular nationalists and socialists).
The revisionist Gorbachev finally lost power.