Play the first one its amazing, and if you are wondering what it was that was missing watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgJazjz9ZsA

A bomb!

That comes after very in-depth reading. What got me that far to even trust their judgement that this kind of research would be worth my time was the fact that they were consistently right about takes on the USSR that seemed ludicrous. Just that they seemed to really know their stuff about USSR history especially the Stalin era. So I started reading

Michael Parenti - Blackshirts and Reds

a rather short book about anticommunism in the west. I already had very left views but what stuck with me was that I required a revolution to be “perfect”, the outcome sure and everyone had to be happy, an unrealistic standard considering the kind of fundamental change I envisioned. Or in Parenti’s words:

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.

Once I had conceded my previous “anti-tankie” views and thought of the USSR not as a failed revolution that started of well-intentioned but was led astray by power hungry dictators, but as a successful revolution that had to endure a constant onslaught, physical as well as political, I was “through the looking glass” so to speak.

Then the genocide in Gaza happened and I kind of looked at the countries we were allied with, who were consistently some of the worst offenders of human rights. The whole supporting violent dictatorships in former colonies wasn’t news to me, but when put into perspective I had a “Damn we really are the baddies aren’t we” moment.

I realise that this doesn’t answer your question on Ukraine and the Uighurs but that’s because I don’t have the time right now to get into a debate on that, and the original question was on what changed my mind about it which was less the actual research I then put into, but the heavy-lifting on even questioning the western narrative was done before that.

To answer your question in a nutshell however: The reason the situation in Ukraine deteriorated this far, to the point that the ethnic russians in Ukraine had to even put up “self-defense” forces was meddling of western capitalist forces. The article that I keep referencing on that is ( CW for pictures of dead bodies and gruesome descriptions of fascist violence):

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/07/29/what-the-u-s-government-and-the-new-york-times-have-quietly-agreed-not-to-tell-you-about-ukraine/

The open fascism in the paramilitary groups that later got put under the umbrella of the Ukrainian army was an open question mark for me, this article gives a very detailed answer to that. The details in that report post 2014 are corroborated in the UN reports as well:

https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents-listing?field_geolocation_target_id[1136]=1136&field_content_category_target_id[180]=180&field_content_category_target_id[182]=182&field_entity_target_id[1349]=1349&field_entity_target_id[1350]=1350&sort_bef_combine=field_published_date_value_DESC

As for the so-called “genocide” of Uighurs in China, the “evidence” is very very circumstantial especially considering the scale alleged. Millions of people are alleged to be held in internment at some point, a scale that should be visible from space. I mean manhattan has a population of 1.7 million, where are all these people interned?? As an example of one of the oddities about the whole allegations. The only countries that seem to care are outspoken anti-communist countries, with the whole muslim world not considering the crackdown on religious extremism in Xinjiang a genocide. All the articles I kept getting linked were “oh how terrible the situation there is, what an evil evil government” with no one seemingly caring about the actual people. It’s all just treated as an abstract talking point. And the only references boiling down to two reports by Adrian Zenz

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02634937.2018.1507997

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02634937.2021.1946483

a person with some questionable viewpoints

https://books.google.de/books?id=lRtSQB3HHJcC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

All the stuff around it seems to be pushed by Washington based anti-communist thinktanks trying to establish an “east turkestan”. The whole movement is heavily US-financed. See here for more info:

https://hexbear.net/post/2361

That’s what changed my mind about it all anyway, but like I said I probably will not be able to go into more depth about this, as I have spent too much time on this already.

The ussr and china were evil and nato were the good guys fighting for freedom.

Boy was I wrong on that one. What changed my mind were the tankies on hexbear who consistently were the most knowledgable on a topic and kept being correct with (what I thought at the time) the most obviously incorrect takes.

Could be that there is a law against storing data outside of the EU that might pertain to your school situation, so you might have a right violated. Though fighting that is quite a bit of work. You’d want to escalate things with your school first, but in order to do so be knowledgeable on the issue which requires a big time investment and in the end if your school doesn’t care they are probably gonna bet on you not seeking legal recourse. Which is such a ginormous amount of work they could be right depending on the resources you have.

That’s not to say its a battle not worth having, but its quite the battle if the school doesn’t care, because they can just stonewall and its up to you to overcome it.

As an alternative I unfortunately don’t know of any except a self hosted moodle solution which is a hefty amount of work for the school and might be reason enough for them to deflect or stonewall on the issue. So I wouldn’t go into that with them, let them do their own research on alternatives maybe they can come up with something since they have different resources and connections than you do.

This the guy behind the dahiya-doctrine right? Thats a hell of a spin on a news headline

It’s not like they were doing nothing, they were supporting it. They still were benefiting from the nazi turbo-capitalism that was eating people alive up until that beast started to turn on them. Like the US is doing now with Israel and their genocide of Palestinians.

It’s not like the anti-semitic violence came as a suprise when we attacked Poland. It was clearly already there, so why was there nothing done to reign it in? No sanctions or anything they were very happily, keenly even doing business with Germany which was already stealing and oppressing and heavily militarizing for years prior.

And that’s when the genocide started is it?

Edit: oh I see where the mistake might have happened, by antifascist war I didn’t mean world war II but the armed struggle against fascism in general.

Why do you think the german public looked away? Why do you think the UK and the US took so long to join the antifascist war?

Let’s see if the US public can be bought off to overlook genocide that cheaply.

Lets see if we can pick some of the hostages out of the rubble

Absolute ghouls, there is shooting the hostage and then there’s collapsing every building in a mile radius of where they’re held in order to maybe get the hostage-takers. Well it shows it never was about getting the hostage-takers or the hostages doesn’t it?

ah fuck

Nope, its the same Palestinian = hamas bs that allows them to label everyone enemies and only differentiate between “combatants” and “noncombatants”

Nope they haven’t. They are justified in their attacks. Just stop the genocide. That’s it. Also the US and Allies have been doing that anyway for the past decade or so what’s the difference.

No no its

Your country is actively supporting {insert country with deranged policies supported by your government} from committing {insert warcrime}. Please send me your address so I can torch your house.

Which, as a German, I find fair.

We will never negotiate with terrorists who demand an end to genocide!

American Service-Members’ Protection Act

Why not? It makes sense to me, it carried me through some very difficult times and is a good way to think about how I interact with the world and my moral framework.

I mean what you call a masterstroke some might call a hypocritical attempt to destabilize China simply because it resists capitalist exploitation

If we are talking about why most of the Nazis weren’t put on trial the reason “they were in administration” is only half the truth as a lot of Nazis weren’t put on trial because the US had a use for them or because they just didn’t care enough. I mean look at how the Soviets approached denazification and how the US did. East Germany was a lot more thorough than west germany.

As an example SS members were allowed entry to Canada who had a very strict “no communists” immigration policy and their SS tattoos actually proved to be an advantage to prove that.