#counterfire — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #counterfire, aggregated by home.social.
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I kinda think I hate #Counterfire, with it's finger-wagging what-the-left-needs-to-do, yet an organisation that really has little influence politically.
They feel a bit like self-appointed arbiters to me.
idk they bore me.
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As much as I like #Counterfire having varied content like reviews for books, films and TV, I see this sort of thing quite a lot:
"recently-aired four-episode series on Disney+"
Or Netflix or whatever.
The writers for this revolutionary socialist organisation sure love their corporate streaming services!
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Some words someone wrote about the new left wing party.
It doesn't really mention entryism but it does mention "MPs are expected to attend parliament and vote against any curtailing of our rights and freedoms," which would defend from entryists, I think.
https://www.counterfire.org/article/is-the-party-about-to-begin/
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#Counterfire | Palestine solidarity was not confined to a couple of moments, but was a pervasive normality at the festival, in stark contrast to our media, reports Katherine Hajiyianni
https://www.counterfire.org/article/palestine-solidarity-at-glastonbury/
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#Counterfire | Police lead assault on women’s rights
https://www.counterfire.org/article/police-lead-assault-on-womens-rights/
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Yeah, I got that impression when watching the White Man Walking documentary.
It's easy to dismiss the 'What about white people?' counter argument as uninformed, blinkered and racist, but I think it's important to recognise many white people feel under-represented. The problem is, fascism speaks to those people while #socialism doesn't.
Reform work, like how all fascism works, to point the blame at brown people and immigrants to dupe the uniformed white, and to destroy #solidarity.
"Racist dog whistles are key to Reform UK’s politics, but it’s not why they win votes in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse or in Llanelli. Councillor Beer is right, the main reason people vote Reform UK – as poll after poll demonstrates – is not primarily to ‘stop the boats’ but because they see it as giving them a voice when the established parties don’t listen."
#Counterfire | Only an independent left can beat Reform
https://www.counterfire.org/article/only-an-independent-left-can-beat-reform/
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#Counterfire | Protests work: Israel has never been so isolated
https://www.counterfire.org/article/protests-work-israel-has-never-been-so-isolated/
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This article is about how the British were protecting their empire during WW2, not fighting fascism.
#Counterfire | Was World War II really the ‘good’ war?
https://www.counterfire.org/article/was-world-war-ii-really-the-good-war/
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#Counterfire | ‘Good Jews’, ‘bad Jews’ and imperialist lies
"This raises the question: If the majority of Jews were again to champion the cause of oppressed peoples, would the imperialists revert to their old anti-Semitic ways? For anti-Zionist Jews, this is an irrelevant question. Under no circumstances will they abandon their opposition to oppression."
https://www.counterfire.org/article/good-jews-bad-jews-and-imperialist-lies/
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This is worth a read, I think.
#Counterfire | Rights and Rulings
"The danger is that if we allow proclamations that this is the end of trans rights to go unchallenged, not only will trans people be made more anxious and isolated, but the perception will start to become the reality. The respect and dignity which trans people have won over the last decades could indeed be lost, not because of what the law says about single-sex spaces, but if the consensus becomes that this ruling means that trans people don’t deserve equality."
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This is worth a read regarding the beginning of WW1
#Counterfire | Is this a chilling replay of the Sarajevo moment?
https://www.counterfire.org/article/is-this-a-chilling-replay-of-the-sarajevo-moment/
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#Counterfire | Something rotten in the state of Starmer’s Britain – weekly briefing
"Has there been a worse Labour prime minister than Starmer? Tony Blair was a neoliberal through and through and took us into an illegal war in Iraq. But at least there was some attempt to improve elements of domestic policy."
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#Counterfire | Grenfell: Still no justice
"That no one has been prosecuted for the Grenfell fire and there are still many buildings with the same cladding is a reminder that Labour is carrying on where the Tories left off"
https://www.counterfire.org/article/grenfell-still-no-justice/
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An International Women’s Day special, plus Trump’s new world disorder, Starmer’s arms race, clampdown in Turkey, and more in this month’s #Counterfire freesheet.
If you would like to receive physical copies for #free please email [email protected]
https://www.counterfire.org/article/stop-starmers-militarism-counterfire-freesheet-march-2025/
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#Counterfire | If this is what happens in the Oval Office, think what will happen on the battlefield – weekly briefing
"Trump, Vance, Rubio and the rest see the total isolation of Russia as pushing it closer to China, which is the biggest threat to the US. It therefore is dealing directly with Russia in order to prevent that and to start doing business with it once again. Part of that as Trump sees it is ending the war in Ukraine through peace talks with Russia."
Starmer "has to navigate looking like he supports Ukraine to the bitter end while not upsetting Trump."
"The truth is that Britain has little to offer Ukraine militarily or economically, and the Nato proxy war simply can’t be prosecuted without the US, particularly its air cover."
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A brief-ish history of the #Labour Party's pro-war. pro-colonial history.
#Counterfire | Servants of nation and empire. A brief history of Labour’s foreign policy
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This is worth a read, I think, about #IdentityPolitics
#Counterfire | The answer to purity politics is organisation
"This approach, and its activist culture of purity and denunciation, should not be mistaken for ‘ultra-leftism’. It is seldom ‘extreme’ either in terms of its political demands or its tactics. On the contrary, demands for the policing of language and exclusivity in moral values are generally tied to quite conservative political programmes."
"We should be pessimistic about the capacity to remove contradictory consciousness from the minds of individuals. It is an impossible task, completely ignoring both the nature of the phenomena, and the time and space problems involved in the supposed remedy. It is also arrogant and elitist. Identity-politics advocates have made no demonstration that they are fit to educate anyone."
https://www.counterfire.org/article/the-answer-to-purity-politics-is-organisation/
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#Counterfire | Trump’s interventions this week have changed the calculus over Ukraine and prove what the anti-war movement said from the start, argues Chris Nineham
"The fact that Trump’s interventions this week have changed the calculus over Ukraine proves what the anti-war movement has said from the start. The US was always in the driving seat in Ukraine’s war with Russia. Officials and commentators are now regularly referring to it as a proxy war, something they long denied."
https://www.counterfire.org/article/tin-soldier-starmer-leads-europes-security-panic/
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#Counterfire | The new sheriff in town looks east
"Stung, the EU leaders hastily arranged a photo-op where they could try to reassure their publics that they still have a role to play in the world. Starmer emerged talking about British troops policing some future putative peace deal, as if anything he said or did mattered a great deal on the international stage."
https://www.counterfire.org/article/the-new-sheriff-in-town-looks-east/
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#Counterfire | Understanding Trump’s new world order
"Lack of adherence to these very simple precepts has caused enormous problems in some sections of the left during the Ukraine conflict. Some have taken opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to such lengths as to side with their own ruling classes, refusing to see the role of the Western powers in using Ukraine as a proxy to fight Russia. That position has now humiliatingly been exposed as Trump sells Zelensky to Russia in order to advance his own interests, economically strip Ukraine, and blackmail the European ruling class into taking on the full cost of military expenditure on the continent."
https://www.counterfire.org/article/understanding-trumps-new-world-order/
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#Counterfire | New imperial orders to Europe
"For Trump, Ukraine is a sideshow, so he wants to drop it and pivot east."
"Germany had to join sanctions against Russia and China, stop using cheap Russian energy, close down its export market in China and grin and bear it when its allies blew up the Nord Stream pipe line under the Baltic. This has devastated the German economy, with a knock on effect across Europe."
"Vance then met the far-right AfD, which is expected to do well in the forthcoming German elections ... What Vance was doing ... was issuing a warning to the German elite that they had better kneel to Washington’s demands.’"
https://www.counterfire.org/article/new-imperial-orders-to-europe/
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#Counterfire | Trump’s new world order leaves #Starmer standing in the cold
"This is another Suez moment for Europe."
"After the disasters of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Britain’s support for genocidal war in Gaza what credibility has British foreign policy left? Starmer’s posturing about sending British peacekeeping troops only adds to that"
"Trump is turning away from Europe and prepared to do business with Putin because he wants to pivot more strongly to confrontation with China, which he sees (correctly) as his main rival. It is a classic great power carve up where he wants to get the weaker power, Russia, offside to make it easier to confront China."
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#Counterfire | The resistible rise of Donald Trump – weekly briefing
"Why in general is the right growing faster than most left alternatives? Partly because they reinforce widespread capitalist beliefs: nationalism, racism and support for the family. However it is also the case that the centre left parties, like Labour, don’t stand up to these ideas and therefore help to reinforce them by introducing their own policies which mirror the far right."
https://www.counterfire.org/article/the-resistible-rise-of-donald-trump-weekly-briefing/
