Trump's victory, and the further mass oppression of minorities, is closer than ever before. May god have mercy on our souls.
previous preamble
The totalitarian capitalist dystopia which was created by the United States in the aftermath of the Korean War has increasingly experienced problems as the multipolar world is being gradually birthed.
Due to the widespread exploitation of the population, long work weeks, and high housing prices, the population growth of South Korea has plummeted, with the lowest fertility rate on the planet, and the highest suicide rate in the OECD. While a capitalist "success story" before the 2008 recession in terms of profit accumulation for the richest at the expense of most others, conditions have grown more dire in the Long Depression since the crash. GDP growth per year has averaged out at 2-3%. For more concrete figures, labour productivity has stagnated, particularly in the service sector. The rate of profit hit a peak when the dictatorship ended in the late 1980s, but has since massively tumbled. These dynamics are not unique to South Korea; they are happening throughout the West.
While South Korea is stagnating, perhaps even falling, its northern neighbour is rising. With Russia already persona non grata to much of the developed world and yet still maintaining fairly good economic growth and continuously albeit gradually moving towards victory in Ukraine, Putin sees no reason to be intimidated by the West's shunning of the DPRK, and Russia is establishing ties as well as military and economic deals. This seems to portend an end to the post-Soviet period of forced isolation due to UN actions forbidding the people of the DPRK to leave the country (which many westerners believe is a policy originating from the Korean leadership due to their propagandized education).
Many in the West are still, regrettably, unable to properly analyze the geopolitical situation of Korea due to their government programming, leading to bizarre takes about imminent collapse, or desperation on the part of Russia or the DPRK, unable to recognize that the DPRK has a powerful military sector all its own, and decades of autarky has created a durable society where limited resources must be used efficiently and effectively. The position of the Korean Peninsula seems likely to be a critical part of the US-China conflict, whether this is an outright war or instead a series of proxy wars. Indeed, Korea's position may soon become very important in global trade routes if the US tries to cut off the Strait of Malacca to Chinese-bound cargo ships, with vital resources like oil and food potentially transported both over land and via the Arctic Route over Russia and through the DPRK to China. Russia's leadership clearly sees the importance of Korea in the future, hence their actions now; and, of course, South Korea siding with Ukraine has also forced Putin's hand to oppose them more openly.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The "Country" of the Week is South Korea! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section. Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war. Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language. https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one. https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts. https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel. https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator. https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps. https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language. https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language. https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses. https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Unironically, Biden’s numbers could be boosted if Trump doesn’t play his card right and the Democrats capitalize on the threat of a new wave of Republican terror during Trump’s second term.
If Trump is as politically astute as he thinks he is, he will back off from the more aggressive fascist rhetoric and even switch to a more reconciliatory tone. He’s practically won at this point, and it would’t hurt his numbers to campaign on a softer tone.
On the other hand, if Trump does not hide his streak for vengeance, then it might re-mobilize voters to vote for the Democrats to prevent Trump’s second term again. Biden might squeeze out a win from this if Trump makes the wrong move.
So, one wildcard assassination incident has changed completely the electoral calculus.
Biden is no longer facing the heat of having to step down from being the Democratic nominee (all the criticisms about his poor debate performance are now thrown out of the window), the attention has successfully been diverted away from the genocide in Gaza, and instead he can now fully capitalize on the perceived terror of Trump’s revenge if he gets into office once again.
People who said they would not vote for Genocide Joe, are now having second thoughts about whether handing the presidency to Trump is truly worth it. In fact, we are already seeing an underlying current of this thought on Hexbear based on the comments I’ve read.
People who said they would not vote for Genocide Joe, are now having second thoughts about whether handing the presidency to Trump is truly worth it. In fact, we are already seeing an underlying current of this thought on Hexbear based on the comments I’ve read.
please point out the genocide apologists so I can report their comments
I don’t think there are genocide apologists but there is now this sentiment about how Punished Trump’s arc is going to make his second term so much worse, that he’s going to round up leftists and queer people and execute them, which intrinsically implies that as bad as Genocide Joe’s second term is, it’s going to be much much worse under Punished Trump.
If that’s the conclusion one comes to, then it makes sense for them to vote for Biden in spite of the genocide. It’s a logical and rational decision.
the sense i get is that people are more worried that now things are going to get worse whoever wins, that even before the election genocide joe may use this as an excuse to round up leftists, &c. that now we're locked into crackdowns and our years of lead, even if there's a democratic president next term, not that a biden victory will really mitigate any of the coming political violence that biden and his ilk will unequivocally make weaselly excuses for and tacitly condone. there's still the red state governors that are implementing their agenda with no resistance from the currently existing biden administration. whatever calls for vengeance trump decides to make will lead to stochastic terrorism regardless of who wins the election, biden won't do anything to stop that.
People who said they would not vote for Genocide Joe, are now having second thoughts about whether handing the presidency to Trump is truly worth it. In fact, we are already seeing an underlying current of this thought on Hexbear based on the comments I’ve read.
Biden was 99pct Hitler and a monster and indistinguishable from Trump (worse even) and now he's a senile, arrogant fool who will bring us Trump, the real horror. It doesn't matter what the state of play is, posters will take positions of maximal ressentiment against "liberals"; all politics is pathology, here as well.
Biden is playing 7D chess, appearing to be weak and defeated to bait Trump into celebrating early and calling for revenge, thus provoking fear from liberal and undecided voters
People who said they would not vote for Genocide Joe, are now having second thoughts about whether handing the presidency to Trump is truly worth it. In fact, we are already seeing an underlying current of this thought on Hexbear based on the comments I’ve read.
Yikes. I fucking hope not. Biden (and Democrats) losing is a good thing. As is the utter rejection of any person and party who has committed genocide (especially in a way the working class has actually generally seen and recognized). As would be working-class people realizing the need and benefit to non-electoral engagement, and the radicalization of a lot of us like in 2017.
I'd rather a leftist candidate win in terms of electoralism, of course. But Biden winning is pretty much the worst outcome at this point. Slightly better than that is Trump winning. Slightly better yet is Trump winning but the Democrats losing REALLY HARD and the Green Party and/or PSL and/or some third-party/independent candidate like Cornel West getting enough of a share of the votes to give a high chance of the decline of one or both of the uni-party factions in future elections. Slightly better yet is something happening to Trump and the previous outcome happening with some other Republican. Etc.
Somewhere up the list of better (but incredibly unlikely) outcomes is some social democrat somehow being nominated by the Democrats and winning. But IMO that's the only form of bad outcome that could actually constitute anything like the "harm reduction" that liberals whine about constantly (though that's still a very bad misappropriation of that term). And it's still a bad outcome, because it is still a somewhat weaker form of condoning genocide, and still just puts off the degradation of the uni-party and the state and capitalism.