• PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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    8 hours ago

    For those who like me can’t read the original meme text:

    “Leftists” whose political opinions on China, DPR Korea, Cuba, Israel, and Ukraine mirror the U.S. State Department’s position

    And then the face the person is seeing in the mirror is a clown.

    I wouldn’t have even tried to engage on the China / N Korea / Ukraine side of the analogy. The other one is a lot more absurd. I don’t think there is any non-trivial number of “leftists” on Lemmy who think that Israel “has a right to defend herself” and deserves tons of weapons, or that Cuba is a terrorist state.

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
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      4 hours ago

      Israel “has a right to defend herself”

      It does but what it does far exceeds legitimate defence. And what it does also isn’t building Zionism because antagonising people goes directly against the goal of creating a place for Jews to live in peace and prosperity.

      I gave up on it when the fucker killed Rabin and it’s been a constant slide into full-on fascism since then, as in, fascist modes of thinking captured more and more of Israeli politics to the point where even the left is largely cooked. They may disavow what Amir did but they still share his outlook towards “security”. They may not be actively genocidal but still support “antagonise until Palestinians give up”. The situation is fucked in pretty much every way that a situation can possibly be fucked.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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        4 hours ago

        Fully agreed. If it wasn’t clear from my quotation marks, I think Israel is now actively exterminating a civilian population, after pursuing a policy of slow extermination spanning back for decades, with the goal of eventually eradicating the state and people of Palestine completely. And that policy of slow extermination led to the atrocities of October 7th as an absolutely predictable consequence. I put quotes around “defend herself” because that’s how the State Department talks about it, but nothing Israel is doing right now makes any sense in that context or any other aside from exterminating Palestinians as fast as they can get away with. Netanyahu refusing to say if he agrees to the current latest cease-fire in exchange for getting all the hostages back before they’re all dead, is just yet another prime example from today.

        He doesn’t want the hostages back. He wants to kill Palestinians, and if them having hostages makes that easier, then he’s in favor of them keeping the hostages. I don’t know why anyone who writes about geopolitics buys into the ludicrous framework of it being any other way, let alone this fantasy of “defend herself.” I get why the State Department says that. They’re lying on purpose to accomplish their goals. What the newspapers are doing when they say it, I couldn’t tell you.

    • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
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      6 hours ago

      Could you elaborate on Cuban or Cuban-sponsored terrorism? I mostly agree with the US positions on these except for Cuba and maybe Israel. I also don’t know Cuba that well. I know that some Cuban protests are suppressed, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what terrorism means.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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        6 hours ago

        The US has been saying since the 80s that Cuba is a sponsor of state terrorism. I think it’s mostly made up because they’re communist and we don’t like them. I think maybe Castro did a little bit of what when we do it is called “covert ops,” but I’m not aware of Cuba being any kind of major sponsor of terrorism, in the same way that Saudi Arabia or Israel is, for example.

        The State Department has some very minor legitimate beef with modern-day Cuba because they suppressed some protests, yes, and put a few hundred people in prison more or less for being the opposition. Every so often they do minor dictator stuff like that which we officially tut-tut at them for. On the whole, though, our beef with Cuba is just because nobody’s forgotten the days when Che Guevara was public enemy number one, and Cuba got away with being on his side, and for no other reason that’s more logical than that one.

        • PugJesus@lemmy.worldM
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          5 hours ago

          The US has been saying since the 80s that Cuba is a sponsor of state terrorism.

          Angola stuff, I think. Not that our hands were clean in that conflict.