No comment from me
I just want to point out the contrast between how BE talked about the event and how the Cuban Communist Party talked about the event so I will leave their article here https://www.granma.cu/mundo/2026-01-07/haz-lo-que-digo-no-lo-que-hago-07-01-2026-22-01-22
Socialism is when you act smug on the internet, communism is when your smuglord post hits the frontpage of reddit.
Honestly, fuck this Western attitude of throwing their own movements under the bus for not being perfect out of the gate. Whenever reaction doesn’t happen spontaneously, it’s hopeless because “Westerners” are inherently passive, when it actually happens it’s hopeless because they’re not doing it right. If you’re that hopeless just leave politics already, this is not the place for people who don’t believe in change.
Also, Bad Contrapanada, people can be angry about multiple things at the same time. And there’s this neat thing called “propagandizing” that relies on it.
Either way, a woman was shot at point blank range multiple times for trying to drive away from a brownshirt. It was filmed and the footage is easily available. Trying to frame the reaction to this as somehow bad is some bizarre lack of empathy.
BE never even called himself a socialist/Marxist, idk why he became a figurehead of leftism at all.
Was gonna edit but I think there’s a broader point to be made about the lack of discipline of non-partisan online Western left as a whole. Lots of these left content creators seem allergic to submitting their publications to a greater editorial line, and still seem to think of their online presence as it pertains to them as individuals rather than to society as a communication apparatus.
You’re allowed to have your frustrations and vent them out among friends without thought, but if you’re doing it on the internet at least have the decency to use an alt account. Otherwise this is some “personal brand” type shit.
First paragraph is correct.
Second paragraph concedes at some level that material conditions informs the idea but then backtracks to criticism of a lack of a type of metaphysical conception of change. This latter is just the other side of the coin of those who are firmly in the camp of brainwashing as an explanation for lack of persuasion of westerners towards more significant anti-imperialism (it is not).
- https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
- https://redsails.org/false-witnesses/
- https://redsails.org/dont-work-that-way/
(Everyone should also read that last link on how advertisements work)
Taking the tiniest grain of an accurate observation and sprinting with it in the most uselessly misanthropic and self-satisfied direction possible, the BE special
Dude’s gonna end up as some kind of weird antinatal nuclear extinction advocate
Posadist Empanada era incoming
Pointing out the hypocrisy of libs talking more about annexing Greenland as a bad thing instead of the Venezuela situation would have made more sense. Also, sneering at people for being outraged at fascist excesses in the US is… a choice.
Same shit with all the progressive liberals hating Trump’s invasion of Venezeula only because Trump did it without going through the proper channels. Had a democrat done the same thing but with senate approval then imperialism would’ve been okay in their eyes.
Some people are really showing their ass lately, indicating that they’re more upset at the western left having any progress at all, than they are at the imperialists, i.e. their identity is more about being a west-hater than it is being anti-imperialist. I don’t care if someone is generally pissed at the western left for not being effective enough, but shitting on it during a crisis instead of encouraging further development is, well… maybe it’s too weighty to say it this way, but it strikes me as counter-revolutionary, wrecker shit. Like what the fuck do these people want. The US makeup is not going to change the whole of its behavior overnight and it wouldn’t even if a communist, de-colonial vanguard party took over today.
Goes perfectly along with his recent rants about how the USA invading Greenland would be good because it would be Americans killing Europeans. Despite the fact the almost 90% of the population of Greenland is Inuit.
I also seen a take that the Inuit are colonisers who genocided previous population so you see, USA invading Greenland is actually doubly anticolonialist! And the real indigenous population were vikings.
Hey look Innuits aren’t real colonised people bcz they exist in an area that is north of Britain.
— Badempenada’s book called “why revisionism is cool actually”
Is he even aware of the indigenous population? A lot seem to think it’s populated by white Danes
He also said the same about Chile and Argentina.
That Chile and Argentina never had genocide against the Indigenous.
Wild take since Mapuche resistance is like still very much active to this day.
Absolutely.
I’m not sure I’d go that far. In his video about Argentina and Racism, he pretty clearly states that the subsequent rulers of Argentina since its independence were European liberals based on Buenos Aires, who consistently commited ethnic cleansing against the indigenous people. He goes on to link their ideological liberalism to the ideology of US manifest destiny.
I think claiming he’s a LatAm genocide denialist is a little too far of a claim.
I’ve seen him on Twitter saying that it wasn’t a genocide, but he keeps either deleting his tweets or his Twitter accounts keep getting banned so it’s hard to tell.
People think its discount Iceland because it has a similar name and the most known thing about greenland is the viking switcheroo with Iceland to trick norse settlers into choosing iceland (not true btw) -> meaning its major association is with europeans only.
I hate both what is happening in Venezuela, and what ICE is doing. It’s all exhausting. My problem is that Liberals will worry about people with no criminal record (you can get one by shoplifting once) getting deported, but not necessarily people with a criminal record. I was hoping seeing people being brutalized simply for being criminals would get Liberals to sympathize with criminals, but instead, there is only the language of “ICE is criminal, Trump is criminal, the inevitable trajectory of Capitalism that I see affecting the law is criminal”. I smell plenty of fear from Liberals despite their claims to show none.
white leftists stop performative self-flagellating challenge
This and a comment he made regarding how US leftists can’t be persuaded by empathy and solidarity (real anti-imperialist framing in his words) really make me pinch the bridge of my nose. In the latter post he declared that it might be more effective to make Americans think they are being harmed by the US relationship with Israel as an appeal to their inate selfishness.
It just has me scratching my head becuase… is that not the entire idea of material interest? Is it not in the material interest of many anti-imperialist countries to fight Israeli imperialism? Would South Lebanon not be better off if the zionist entity collapsed and it instead bordered a Palestinian state? Would Iran not have more regional influence if there was one less US vassel to contend with? Would the Global South, who are constantly agressed against by Western international lawfare benifet from shifting the paradigm against Western aligned states?
I’m not going to say that the US Palestinian liberation movement is some kind of revolutionary force, or that there isn’t a lot more that could be done, or if they are not infested with liberals. However it’s the peak of idealism to criticize them for agitating to other Americans by appealing to how the zionist entity hurts them. It’s basic Marxist analysis that a people’s material conditions influence their actions.
It’s fucking infuriating that I have to justify my humanity as a Muslim to US Yakkubian liberals, but if I need to explain to them why the US destroying my communities homelands will come back to hurt them, then I still do it. If those Whites start getting upset becuase of them got killed by the fascist militia, I’m still glad that they are starting to oppose the fascist militia. Not because of some idealist notion but because that gets the heat off my back potentially.
I’ve said it before here, I’m not a communist because I’m altruistic, I’m a communist becuase the Liberation of humanity would benifet me.
As much of a jackass as he is, he makes a half point. The average American does not care about anything but themselves and maybe their friends and family, and especially not people who don’t look like them. Look at how they reacted to Ukraine vs Gaza.
Half a point? This is completely the point! Overwhelmingly the reaction to these two events shows how backward and (frustratingly) indifferent the people of the US have become. As a socialist I don’t need to couch my utter disappointment with “well some of them are genuine” to make American comrades feel better. The hard truth is that there is work to be done, and nobody has more of a job to do than the western left in order to fix it.
BE is pretty much !shitreactionariessay@lemmygrad.ml material
70% bad 30% empananda.
I don’t think there is more noise about the woman ICE murdered than there is about Venezuela.
Even if there was why would you expect liberals to care about brown people in south america more than a white woman? Why would you expect people to be less mad about something that could just have easily happened to them as something that happened thousands of km away?
None of that would be shocking… if it was the case.
Is Badempanada not aware of how large the anti-war protests in the US are?
Not to be mean but much of the world doesn’t really see American or really western “protests” as protests they’re more like angry parades
more like angry parades
thanks this made me laugh
So the people in 2020 who were brutalized by cops for protesting police brutality, were those parade participants?
Yes? Repression alone doesn’t turn something into a real challenge to power. Liberal states routinely brutalize protests they know will remain contained. In 2020 millions marched, chanted, got beaten, posted photos, then went home and the system carried on largely unchanged: police power intact, imperial violence ongoing, no serious threat to state authority. That’s why much of the world sees Western “protests” as angry parades: emotionally intense, sometimes violently policed, but structurally safe. They function less as challenges to power and more as pressure-release valves for discontent that the system knows how to absorb and move past.
The point I’m making is that in using this cavalier language of “parade”, you are also trivializing protest efforts where people have suffered injury or imprisonment; and you justify this to me because they weren’t successful at challenging power, as if this means the risk and injury involved don’t matter. I’m plenty familiar with the arguments about the limited effectiveness of western protests and I think there is validity to that point of view. You can make that point without also throwing under the bus people who have put their lives on the line under unsafe circumstances and you can do it without arrogantly presenting your position as if it speaks for the precise viewpoint of billions of people across the world.
You’re arguing against a position I’m not taking. I’m not dismissing people’s suffering, courage, or risk; I’m rejecting the idea that suffering itself constitutes a challenge to power, or even a protest in any meaningful sense. Repression is not the same thing as leverage. Western protests don’t “fail” in some tragic way, they’re never structured to succeed in the first place: no durable mass organization, no discipline, no concrete enforceable demands, no escalation strategy, and crucially no mechanism that makes the state fear consequences if it ignores them. Being beaten by cops inside a ritualized protest cycle the state fully understands and contains doesn’t change that. And yes, from the perspective of the periphery, it’s hard to summon much sympathy when citizens of the core (whose governments operate the largest immiseration apparatus in human history, grinding the periphery nonstop, 24/7 365, with the ultimate orphan-crushing machine) can’t even mount protests that make the slightest material difference. That’s not arrogance or moral contempt; it’s a material critique of a protest culture designed as a pressure-release valve for the empire, not a threat to it, elevated in the West to near-biblical canon where peaceful, state-sanctioned parades are treated as the only legitimate form of politics outside of the ballot box.
Western protests don’t “fail” in some tragic way, they’re never structured to succeed in the first place: no durable mass organization, no discipline, no concrete enforceable demands, no escalation strategy, and crucially no mechanism that makes the state fear consequences if it ignores them.
💯 ^This. So much this. Very well said.
For those still lurking:
- How Gene Sharp’s Neoliberal Nonviolence Shaped the Left https://redsails.org/marcie-smith-gene-sharp/
To try to clarify some things:
- It’s not your take itself that I’m calling arrogant. What I was calling arrogant was the phrasing that this is a viewpoint held by “much of the world”.
- It does bother me to insist on framing it as a parade, even when talking about something that involves tear gas used against people. I associate parade with meaning celebration and good times. I understand not all protests are like this and perhaps for some of them, parade would be a more appropriate framing of them.
- I hope it doesn’t come across like I am demanding sympathy. To me, it is more about recognizing appropriately the entirety of liberation struggle and avoiding falling prey to reducing it only to static characteristics, for lack of a better way to put it.
I will also admit I’m not in a great mood about any of this right now and that is affecting how I read things.
I hope it doesn’t come across like I am demanding sympathy. To me, it is more about recognizing appropriately the entirety of liberation struggle and avoiding falling prey to reducing it only to static characteristics, for lack of a better way to put it.
I think the most salient part of the point they’re making is that those protests/parades don’t have any positive material effect, that they are a pressure valve that protects the imperial core from more significant consequences. They’re acutely aware of the entirety of the global liberation struggle, and Western protest culture does not contribute positively to it.
To address the derisive tone of calling them ‘parades’… When people from the Global South give feedback or advice on this kind of thing, Western Leftists ignore them or patronize them. They dig their heels in and double down on the righteousness of their ineffective methods while a significant portion of them continue to uncritically agree with Capitalist media’s portrayal of any actual Socialist governments - In Pacific Asia, in the Sahel, in Latin America - as brutal dictatorships and problematic. Doing things like calling Western Protests ‘Angry Parades’ is a very effective filter when talking to Westerners to see if it’s actually worth discussing politics with them or if they’re more likely to yell at you for undermining the ‘Leftist Unity’ that was needed to get Kamala into the White House and save the world.
On the “much of the world” phrasing: I’m not claiming a universal global consensus. I’m speaking from experience as someone from the periphery who has had the privilege to be able to travel across the periphery, where this is a recurring sentiment I’ve encountered again and again. “Much of the world” may be an exaggeration, but the underlying perspective is far from rare, especially among people whose political reference points are mass struggle, repression, and real confrontations with state power rather than liberal civil society rituals.
On calling them “parades”: I’m not implying joy or celebration. I use the term because these events are seemingly typically state-sanctioned or permitted, confined to approved routes, heavily policed yet managed, and highly choreographed from start to finish. The presence of tear gas or batons doesn’t negate that. Violence can occur entirely within a controlled script, and when the outcome is predictable dispersal rather than escalation or leverage, “parade” is an accurate structural description, not a moral slight.
And to be clear, this isn’t about denying complexity or flattening liberation struggle, it’s about refusing to romanticize impotence. Western protest culture elevates these managed spectacles into moral absolutes while systematically marginalizing forms of struggle that actually threaten power. That’s not neutral; it actively disarms movements by teaching people that symbolic display and sanctioned outrage are the peak of political action. Naming that isn’t disrespectful to those who suffer within these protests, it’s a necessary critique of a model that reproduces defeat while insisting it represents resistance.
If you’re not in a great mood, I get that. But the disagreement here isn’t about empathy; it’s about analysis. And analytically, a system that can absorb mass outrage, brutalize it, and still face no material threat is not being seriously challenged, regardless of how real the pain involved is. And as sad as it sounds a protest that doesn’t challenge power in any meaningful way is best described as a parade.
It’s alright not to be in a great mood, I’m not in a great mood either.
The key work here is Western Marxism, the Fetish for Defeat, and Christian Culture by Jones Manoel. The viewpoints in the book still hold up after six years, and age very well after one very concessionist 46th administration.
It does bother me to insist on framing it as a parade, even when talking about something that involves tear gas used against people. I associate parade with meaning celebration and good times. I understand not all protests are like this and perhaps for some of them, parade would be a more appropriate framing of them.
i “protested” my state’s governor over whatever bullshit they were up to 15 years ago and it was literally just a parade around the capitol building.
i have since seen “protests” that are even less efficacious than that. at least parades usually fuck up traffic for a couple hours.
hard to say since he’s a ragebaiter. it’s maybe fair to ignore our anti-war protests since the government doesn’t pay attention to them either.
the only attention most protests require from the state is local police giving approval to when/where it happens
“protests”angry parades*
