This touches on something I’ve been thinking about with regards to the ongoing schism happening in the American right between the pro and anti-Israel factions.

I think that as support for the Zionist project among the American public collapses, people like Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes are positioning themselves to be central figures of the right when the Trump train inevitably implodes and the American empire decides that blind support for Israel is no longer of the upmost importance. Obviously I’m just speculating about the future but I can easily imagine that as immiseration within America continues, biosphere collapse hastens, and the cost of running empire abroad becomes too high, these kinds of truly anti-Semitic voices are going to be much more mainstream. Fascism is colonization turned inward etc. etc.

Thanks! Seems like a good motivator for me to learn Chinese . Are more Marxist voices less prominent in these debates?

the Capitalist occam’s razor

Since it looks like the Israelis miscalculated due to their own ideological blinders, do you think the strategy now then is to just flatten Iran with the USAF and minimize the amount of damage done to the rest of world’s economy?

Hmm, I see. This seems like a very high price to pay but I suppose Israel’s leadership is completely drunk off fascist ideology so rationality is out the window anyways.

Maybe it will all be revealed months or years from now, but the timing in the responses of the US and Isr*el feel very strange to me. As people on this site have pointed out, the US has been positioning forces in the Gulf for months now, with all the bombers being transferred in, and then all the staff being pulled out of embassies leading up to the Israeli attack, etc. Clearly the US knew shit was about to go down.

But then, why is the US waiting at least a whole week to step in (assuming they do), or why didn’t Israel wait a little longer to strike if the US isn’t quite ready yet? Is the US purposely letting Israel get a bloody nose as a casus belli to intervene and turn Iran into another Yemen, like they’ve always wanted? But then again, why even bother having a casus belli when no one besides the neocons/zionists in charge want to do this at all anyways? Was it all a severe miscalculation? Iran is heavily infiltrated by Mossad, so there’s no way they don’t know Iran’s military capabilities, or the fact that there were people who could replace the officials they assassinated. I guess I’m just confused. Israel is literally built off this myth about being an unsinkable safe haven–getting battered by Iran seems very damaging for stability in the short and long term. I suppose we can only wait, fog of war and all that. It feels like the whole world is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Look, I’m not a fan of modern Russia, but this feels like an extremely ahistorical pop-history take. I’m not even sure how Russia would exist as a state if all their leaders were the “bumbling ideologues” you describe them as. The Russian government has been pretty clear what their goals and motives are since Putin took power.

Thanks for the response! You bring up a lot of good points.

With regards to the beginning of the Cold War, I think Stalin’s conservative approach does make sense from the perspective you laid out; the Soviets had just lost >25 million people and much of their industry.

With respect to post-Soviet Russia, yeah I think they’re truly stuck between a rock and a hard place. They don’t want to capitulate to the west but still understandably want broader peace. To be honest, if I was in Putin’s shoes I don’t really know what I’d do. Be socialist again? Lol.

Russia is such an interesting country to me because of this weird space they occupy where they’re like a sort of Schrödinger’s European. Simultaneously Western and not. I do wish the Russian left could become a more meaningful force in politics there.