Ervand Abrahamian's works are the best scholarship on Iran, he contextualizes the revolution and Khomeini in its historical and ideological context as a synthesis of Islam, Marxism, and political structures of Gaullist France. He deconstructs the idea of Iran as a totalitarian theocracy and shows it's much closer to like, Sukarno's Indonesia than any other country. I'd recommend A Modern History of Iran and also Essays on the Islamic Republic .

I think media and basic history education focuses expressly on Nazi Germany as an example of fascism rather than Italy at the same period, because they have essentially the same symbols (in terms of the US stealing the Roman's aesthetic and national myth) and methods for controlling the ballot.

Who was nursing you, poor Vlod? That land has been had. Nothing you can do about it. It's gone. It's had. You lose. Drainage! Drainage, Zelensky, you boy. Drained dry. If you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. My straw reaches acrooooss the room, and starts to drink your milkshake. I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!

They did the same thing in supporting the Kuomintang from the Japanese conquest of China right up until the Maoists pushed them out of the mainland. Do you think that perhaps inferior methods of military and industrial organization could have played a part in this, or should Mao have called Stalin red fash and given up?

Let's spend the EV money on a time machine and drop a comically large anvil on Henry Ford

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/

You were saying?

Do you have any specific book recommendations on this?

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 agree with the first sentence and disagree with the latter. The world capitalist system was in decline by the end of the 1980s, the USSR was successful in exporting revolution even as they were actively impeded by China, and the socialist bloc walled off a vast portion of the world to capitalist exploitation. The Soviet Union's fall gave the West a shot in the arm that is only wearing off today. These things are awful for humanity in the long run, but the CPC's continued governance is likely the best of a terrible situation atm.

As i said earlier in this thread, the fact that these things happened is justification enough to question China's commitment to socialism. In spite of his abandonment of Stalin, Khrushchev didn't ditch Cuba and back a Batista color revolution or something. Just because they aren't doing these specific monstrous things now doesn't mean it's ridiculous to question the CPC. What sense does it make to separate the reforms from the policies that literally helped the United States continue its imperialist hegemony?

These are crimes on a massive scale that helped contribute to the collapse of the socialist bloc and to the period of vicious reaction we currently live in. They aren't just 'mistakes', and if you understand them as seriously as they should be it makes sense to question the legitimacy of the socialist project

Under Deng China invaded Vietnam, supported the Khmer Rouge, helped the US against the USSR with Operation Cyclone, supported the South Africa-backed UNITA and FNLA, and didn't re-normalize relations with the USSR until pizza man visited. To characterize the critique of China as irrational ultra-leftism is to argue in bad faith.

https://www.massline.org/Dictionary/DI.htm#direct_democracy

The "one ad/one pamphlet" concept is a horrible idea. Reactionary political platforms rely on regressive ideas that have remained in the popular political consciousness for centuries - meanwhile, the positive development of society requires an understanding of complex things that won't be adequately expressed in such a brief format. Think economic planning, human ecology, etc.

This is a recipe for a cruel, inhumane, and backwards society. In short, bourgeois democracy.

This reads so much like a Mussolini quote that I am stunned it's actually real (at least as real as any e-quote is).