Left Anti-Communism: a Trojan Horse That Weakens the Working Class

“The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.”

Left Anti-Communism: a Trojan Horse That Weakens the Working Class – MLToday

Menendez’s New Jersey: Global power hidden in plain sight

Menendez’s New Jersey: Global power hidden in plain sight (archived)

During the Monday press conference, Menendez implied that he was also one of the many fleeing Communism. He called himself the “son of Cuban refugees,” and said that the cash found by the FBI was “from my personal savings account, which I have kept for emergencies, and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba.” But Menendez was born in New Jersey years before Castro’s revolution, to a family of working-class immigrants who had left Cuba under the previous, capitalist dictatorship. Menendez’s Senate office did not respond to a question about what confiscation his family faced.

50 years after Chile’s coup, Salvador Allende’s grandson speaks about Britain’s role in the rise of Pinochet

Margaret Thatcher with Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet
(Reuters)

In Santiago, Declassified spoke with Pablo Sepúlveda Allende about Margaret Thatcher’s friendship with Chile’s dictator and how Labour helped him evade justice for crimes against humanity.

50 years after Chile’s coup, Salvador Allende’s grandson speaks about Britain’s role in the rise of Pinochet

Related:

The end of Allende

Chile, September 11, 1973: The Horrors of ‘the First 9/11’ Are Routinely Overlooked

Salvador Allende’s Final Speech on Sept. 11, 1973

Each September large memorials are held for the 9/11 attacks on the US. Yet few recall the far more destructive 9/11 that occurred 28 years before.

Chile, September 11, 1973: The Horrors of ‘the First 9/11’ Are Routinely Overlooked

Related:

Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, September 11, 1973

AOC-Led Delegation Can Push for New Approach to Latin America

You might not know it by the relatively scant news coverage, but the U.S. congressional delegation, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that visited Brazil, Chile, and Colombia in August marked a big step forward in the development of a new U.S. approach to Latin America and highlighted the important role that the U.S. progressive left has to play in it.

AOC-Led Delegation Can Push for New Approach to Latin America

Related:

AOC urges US to apologize for meddling in Latin America: ‘We’re here to reset relationships’

Asked if the left needs to build a counterweight network, Ocasio-Cortez, whose trip to Latin America was branded “AOC’s socialist sympathy tour” by Rupert Murdoch’s conservative Wall Street Journal newspaper, replied: “I absolutely believe that the battle for democracy must be transnational and it must be global, and it especially must be hemispheric.

Is Argentina’s presidential frontrunner Javier Milei US’ “boy?” Rejects China+Mercosur, embraces $$

Argentina’s Milei Says He’d Reject ‘Assassin’ China, Leave Mercosur

Milei described his foreign policy proposals as a global “fight against socialists and statists,” and revealed that he would appoint Diana Mondino, a trusted economic adviser, to be his top diplomat. She’s a former Standard & Poor’s director for Argentina and is running for Congress.

Video via Emil Cosman

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10 worst mass killers, regimes and dictators

Naturally this list is subjective to an extent, and probably contains some mistakes and things that I missed. However, I think the top 3 are somewhat obvious and its no great surprise why I chose the regimes and dictators that I did. My criteria was their death toll, their reactionary power and influence, and also their plans and the resulting death toll, even if some of those plans were not fulfilled.

10 worst mass killers, regimes and dictators

Video: 10 worst mass killers, regimes and dictators

When Liberals Fell in Love With Benito Mussolini

When we speak of concepts like “totalitarianism” and “corporatism,” it is often assumed that fascism stands very far from the liberal market society that went before it, and which we are still experiencing today. But if we pay closer attention to Italian fascism’s economic policies, especially during the 1920s, we can see how some combinations typical of both the last century and our own were experienced already in the first years of Benito Mussolini’s rule. A case in point is the association between austerity and technocracy. By “technocracy,” I refer to the phenomenon whereby certain policies that are common today (such as cuts in social spending, regressive taxation, monetary deflation, privatizations, and wage repressions) are decided by economic experts who advise governments or even directly take over the reins themselves, as in several recent cases in Italy.

When Liberals Fell in Love With Benito Mussolini