> Their outrage at Israel’s breaches of the laws of war in Gaza is justified, as is their anger over Western double standards.
A bit late to this discussion, and this isn't related to the core arguments in your article, but what are the breaches of the laws of war, or the double standards at play here? I'm genuinely curious, because the typical things people bring up (civilian casualties, starvation etc) seem to be a direct consequence of Hamas doing things like using human shields or stealing aid etc, and blaming Israel for that seems unreasonable.
> Richard Medhurst is convinced the Syrian revolution is a NATO/Israeli “occupation”. Craig Murray thinks it’s a tragedy that Assad’s “flawed but pluralist regime” is gone. Vijay Prashad predicts it will all end like Libya.
Wow, such wild takes!
Funny how "the tankies" aren't the people with the actual colonial support, tanks, airplanes, bombings, and ongoing genocide. War is peace.
Tankies continue to be a blight on free people, and that's taking into account the shift in what that descriptor is understood to mean.
""The term tankie has seen several shifts in its connotation over the years. Originally, it was a pejorative label for communists who supported the Soviet Union’s interventions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Yet, its contemporary application is much broader. Today, the term refers not only to pro-Soviet hardliners but also to those who back China’s policies on matters such as the Uyghur genocide and the Hong Kong protests. A recent study by Petterson portrays tankies as: “regard[ing] past and current socialist systems as legitimate attempts at creating communism, and thus have not distanced themselves from Stalin, China etc.”
"As a result, while ‘tankie’ once referred to specific historical events, it now captures a broader spectrum of communist ideologies, particularly those aligned with ‘Actually Existing Socialist’ (AES) countries. Our research delves into a selection of subreddits where members identify as communists, notably Marxist/Leninists, who champion AES (See Fig. 1). Our study, spanning from July 2019 to March 2022, explores online spaces where modern tankies gather and spread their extremist ideology, analysing more than 1.3M posts to understand this under-researched and evolving identity."
Hi Chris. Thanks for your civility and reasonableness. I’m afraid Gaza is a red line for me. I do think it’s the key moral issue of the day & along with Amnesty International (and a large number of other reputable sources) I’m convinced a genocide is taking place there with our government’s active support. Mason must know this too, but he pretends he doesn’t. So I’m not going to continue funding someone who is not being honest or courageous about this defining issue. I do accept, broadly, his thesis that only a coalition of the left and centre can defeat fascism, but it seems to me that the left here & in the US have shown a willingness to co-operate with the centre (Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet) but the centrists have ruthlessly and often cruelly slammed the door in our faces. If he was honest, Mason would report on this. Instead he has sided with the centrists and wastes his time and ours mocking tankies. I do read as broadly as I can but am no longer minded to pay for this stuff. Thanks again for your response.
Whatever. Let's even say that the Gaza genocide isn't a problem. They ("Hamas") brought it on themselves. Besides, we have to side with "the only democracy in the Middle East." It's all pure Realpolitik, dear boy.
Then why are "our allies" Israel now launching a mass bombing campaign and a landgrab in the Golan, just as the progressive "Western" allies have won this stunning victory?
Whatever contortions will be used to justify this, I'm sure they'll be about as silly as famous tankie rationalizations from from Hungary '56 to Ukraine '22. Merkava Tankies?
The Gaza genocide is, to use your words, “not a problem” for the rather straightforward reason that none is going on, except perhaps in the fantasyland of certain ideologues.
As far as the IDF “land grab” supposedly going on, it consists of the temporary takeover of the Syrian portion of Mt. Hermon and the buffer zone that the U.N. troops are supposed to be protecting but recently required IDF intervention to assist them. Should time prove these things to be more than “temporary”, then we might have that discussion. The issue will, in large part, be determined by what type of regime and government eventually emerges in Syria.
But if “occupation” of parts of Syria so concerns you, I assume you are aware that for several years now that Turkey has occupied border areas that are over 20 times the size of what the IDF controls and the Turks are in their usual process of forcibly transferring Sunni Arabs to displace Kurds from the border.
As to the massive bombings you mention, the reports say that the targets are the Syrian navy, air force and Syrian munitions, missiles and chemical weapons that no one wants to fall into rebel hands as well. Unlike Hamas and Hezbollah, Syria did not embed these things in its civilian population so there appears to be no civilian casualties involved.
Again, let’s compare it to Turkey who in the past week or so, bombed Kurdish territory leaving about one million Kurds without water. Funny what Erdogan can get away with when everyone decides to focus on and distort what Israel is doing.
It’s a strange type of “genocide”, so much so that Amnesty International had to broaden the definition in its most recent report (at p. 101) to come close to roping in Israel’s alleged conduct. Even then, AI carefully excluded its Israeli office in the compilation of “evidence” that was false, incomplete, purely speculative and based on mistranslated quotes or ripped from their context so that the target of Hamas was conveniently replaced with Palestinians.
Then comes the fact that, once the West allowed Egypt to seal Gazans in an active urban war zone that Hamas took a decade and a half of embezzled funds to create, the Israeli “génocidaire” delayed its counter-attack and has consistently (with vanishingly few exceptions) notified civilians to move and told them where to go. Of course, even then armed Hamas operatives kept them in harms way by moving with them.
Then, the combatant to civilian ratio disproves the “genocide” claim. It is the lowest in history and doesn’t take into account civilian deaths caused by the estimated 15% of misfired Hamas and PIJ missiles and Hamas live fire on their own people.
If you look at the amount of ordinance dropped even in light of total dead, including combatants, it is self-evident that no genocide - as the legal concept is defined - is not occurring. Not even the ICJ was willing to undermine the law for partisan political advantage when it refused to agree with South Africa either that a genocide was happening or was plausible. It required an explanation from Chief Justice Donoghue on the BBC to correct the misinformation from the anti-Israel camp.
Yes, war is hell and civilians die. But just as there would have been no Nakba in 1948 had the Arabs agreed to the U.N. compromise, there would have been no death and destruction in Gaza had October 7 not happened. By scapegoating Israel, you fall into the trap identified by the author: infantilizing the Arabs by denying them agency. That seems to be straight up Orientalism, a supposed cardinal sin for some.
The bottom line is that the al Aqsa Flood has washed away Hamas, Hezbollah and Assad’s control over Syria while considerably weakening Iran’s imperial pretensions over the Middle East. That should be cause for a cautious optimism that the populations now have the opportunity to throw off the shackles that have kept them enslaved to (yes) a genocidal antisemitic ideology aimed at destroying Israel. It is entirely up to Gazans, Lebanese and Syrians to determine whether they seek peace and prosperity with Israel as their neighbor or more of the same.
The opportunity to have the region remake itself is at hand. Why not give the Arabs the minimal courtesy of treating them as responsible adults, and let them chart their own future within their own customs and practices? And perhaps we would do well to avoid superimposing otherwise inapplicable Western frames of reference (Marxism, imperialism and all the rest) on Middle Eastern cultures that operate under their own rules. In other words, a little humility just might help being more clear eyed about these events.
Your dismissive reply speaks volumes. It is as predictable as it is unpersuasive. Ignoring the facts when they are destructive of your hopes or ideological convictions is not a proper rebuttal.
I understand how difficult it may be to have your worldview crumble before your eyes, but you do yourself a disservice by denying what you can see so clearly. Perhaps the time for a little introspection has arrived, but that’s up to you.
In any event, what we say about these events in the Middle East will do nothing to affect the course of events. Whichever of us has the more clear eyed explanatory apparatus will be in a better position to understand what is happening. That is really all that is at stake in our conversation.
1. I suspect Galloway may be pointing at Qatar not a "false flag" conspiracy theory. Isn't this really basically just the falling out of the "Al Jazeera" lot and the "Press TV" lot?
2. It's a bit too early to say whether comparisons to Libya are a specious "tankie take" no? (At the very least there's no natural resolution apparent to the problem of Kurdistan.)
"...[At] the Oxford Union last month, when 75% of students in the room reportedly indicated that they would not have told the authorities if they’d known Hamas was about to launch its murder spree."
I've been around this issue for more than two decades now, but this stat is extremely troubling!
Yes to all this but today is also, or should be, a moment for reflection by those who opposed any action whatsoever against Assad slaughter - a group that extends far beyond just tankies. Thinking of Ed Miliband and all those who put narcissistic UK party politics before consideration of any action for Syrians. Those of us who raised Syrian voices at the time know full well it was not just tankies who ignored those voices. As George Morris from Syria Solidarity put it back in 2016: "some things are more important than the Labour party. Syria, drowning in blood, is one of them." (https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/the-staggers/2016/12/speaking-out-syria-more-important-labours-internal-politics)
“Israel’s breaches of the laws of war in Gaza.” What pathetic cowardice & moral bankruptcy you show in soft-soaping ethnic cleansing and almost certainly worse. Netanyahu has not been served an arrest warrant from the ICC for “Israel’s breaches of the laws of war in Gaza”. The warrant accuses him of murder, and much, much more. If being outraged and disgusted by war crimes, not “breaches”, and war crimes enabled, inter alia, by our gutless PM make me a tankie then I proudly declare my tankiedom. And it is the view of this proud tankie that there are indeed dangerous enemies of the rules based international order and you can find them, currently, in Number 10 and the White House. Yoav Gallant, also wanted for war crimes by the highest court on the planet, is currently installed in a 5 star hotel in New York.
Don’t misunderstand me. Your comment was really helpful in clarifying the kind of person who reads Mason these days and expediting my decision to unsubscribe from his Substack. As for Zionists resorting to personal abuse rather than engaging with arguments- there’s nothing new there.
I never heard of mason before so quit generalizing as you know nothing. As far as Zionism is concerned, of course. I’m a proud Zionist and have always been. It’s nice to know you are tracking the actions of Yoav Gallant. So much to do in the world but there you are.
At least Clare Daly and Mick Wallace got voted out from their MEP seats. It turns out that going to bat for Russia wasn't taken well by the Irish electorate.
If we put Galloway and Johnstone together, then 7 October 2023, Hezbollah's reopening of hostilities with Israel in solidarity with Hamas, and Putin's invasion of Ukraine were all really moves in an imperialist grand strategy to knock over Syria. All ultimately choreographed by the lizard people, no doubt.
I first encountered the term in 1985 in a Eurocommunist publication - Marxism Today, the monthly magazine of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Ken Livingstone (left-wing Labour leader of the Greater London Council) used the term in a response to an interview question by Beatrice Campbell (CPGB member and author) to characterise the orthodox Communist factional opposition within the CPGB to the Eurocommunist majority in which Campbell was a prominently figure.
Dude when JC was under attack you called it a Stalingrad moment if I recall correctly?
Then I saw you on a march for Ukraine, and noticed how short you are in real life
'Decolonising Syria' by dividing it into Turkish, US, Israeli and Russian areas of control lol
Not to bright that Benji Boy is he?
> Their outrage at Israel’s breaches of the laws of war in Gaza is justified, as is their anger over Western double standards.
A bit late to this discussion, and this isn't related to the core arguments in your article, but what are the breaches of the laws of war, or the double standards at play here? I'm genuinely curious, because the typical things people bring up (civilian casualties, starvation etc) seem to be a direct consequence of Hamas doing things like using human shields or stealing aid etc, and blaming Israel for that seems unreasonable.
One of the fairer attempts to address this question, imho.
https://historyimpossible.substack.com/p/the-question-of-genocide
> Richard Medhurst is convinced the Syrian revolution is a NATO/Israeli “occupation”. Craig Murray thinks it’s a tragedy that Assad’s “flawed but pluralist regime” is gone. Vijay Prashad predicts it will all end like Libya.
Wow, such wild takes!
Funny how "the tankies" aren't the people with the actual colonial support, tanks, airplanes, bombings, and ongoing genocide. War is peace.
Tankies continue to be a blight on free people, and that's taking into account the shift in what that descriptor is understood to mean.
""The term tankie has seen several shifts in its connotation over the years. Originally, it was a pejorative label for communists who supported the Soviet Union’s interventions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Yet, its contemporary application is much broader. Today, the term refers not only to pro-Soviet hardliners but also to those who back China’s policies on matters such as the Uyghur genocide and the Hong Kong protests. A recent study by Petterson portrays tankies as: “regard[ing] past and current socialist systems as legitimate attempts at creating communism, and thus have not distanced themselves from Stalin, China etc.”
"As a result, while ‘tankie’ once referred to specific historical events, it now captures a broader spectrum of communist ideologies, particularly those aligned with ‘Actually Existing Socialist’ (AES) countries. Our research delves into a selection of subreddits where members identify as communists, notably Marxist/Leninists, who champion AES (See Fig. 1). Our study, spanning from July 2019 to March 2022, explores online spaces where modern tankies gather and spread their extremist ideology, analysing more than 1.3M posts to understand this under-researched and evolving identity."
https://gnet-research.org/2023/10/02/tankies-a-data-driven-understanding-of-left-wing-extremists-on-social-media/
I’m currently preparing a long essay thoroughly (as much as I can) debunking the myth that Assadists are ‘good on Palestine’
Hi Chris. Thanks for your civility and reasonableness. I’m afraid Gaza is a red line for me. I do think it’s the key moral issue of the day & along with Amnesty International (and a large number of other reputable sources) I’m convinced a genocide is taking place there with our government’s active support. Mason must know this too, but he pretends he doesn’t. So I’m not going to continue funding someone who is not being honest or courageous about this defining issue. I do accept, broadly, his thesis that only a coalition of the left and centre can defeat fascism, but it seems to me that the left here & in the US have shown a willingness to co-operate with the centre (Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet) but the centrists have ruthlessly and often cruelly slammed the door in our faces. If he was honest, Mason would report on this. Instead he has sided with the centrists and wastes his time and ours mocking tankies. I do read as broadly as I can but am no longer minded to pay for this stuff. Thanks again for your response.
Whatever. Let's even say that the Gaza genocide isn't a problem. They ("Hamas") brought it on themselves. Besides, we have to side with "the only democracy in the Middle East." It's all pure Realpolitik, dear boy.
Then why are "our allies" Israel now launching a mass bombing campaign and a landgrab in the Golan, just as the progressive "Western" allies have won this stunning victory?
Whatever contortions will be used to justify this, I'm sure they'll be about as silly as famous tankie rationalizations from from Hungary '56 to Ukraine '22. Merkava Tankies?
The Gaza genocide is, to use your words, “not a problem” for the rather straightforward reason that none is going on, except perhaps in the fantasyland of certain ideologues.
As far as the IDF “land grab” supposedly going on, it consists of the temporary takeover of the Syrian portion of Mt. Hermon and the buffer zone that the U.N. troops are supposed to be protecting but recently required IDF intervention to assist them. Should time prove these things to be more than “temporary”, then we might have that discussion. The issue will, in large part, be determined by what type of regime and government eventually emerges in Syria.
But if “occupation” of parts of Syria so concerns you, I assume you are aware that for several years now that Turkey has occupied border areas that are over 20 times the size of what the IDF controls and the Turks are in their usual process of forcibly transferring Sunni Arabs to displace Kurds from the border.
As to the massive bombings you mention, the reports say that the targets are the Syrian navy, air force and Syrian munitions, missiles and chemical weapons that no one wants to fall into rebel hands as well. Unlike Hamas and Hezbollah, Syria did not embed these things in its civilian population so there appears to be no civilian casualties involved.
Again, let’s compare it to Turkey who in the past week or so, bombed Kurdish territory leaving about one million Kurds without water. Funny what Erdogan can get away with when everyone decides to focus on and distort what Israel is doing.
It’s a strange type of “genocide”, so much so that Amnesty International had to broaden the definition in its most recent report (at p. 101) to come close to roping in Israel’s alleged conduct. Even then, AI carefully excluded its Israeli office in the compilation of “evidence” that was false, incomplete, purely speculative and based on mistranslated quotes or ripped from their context so that the target of Hamas was conveniently replaced with Palestinians.
Then comes the fact that, once the West allowed Egypt to seal Gazans in an active urban war zone that Hamas took a decade and a half of embezzled funds to create, the Israeli “génocidaire” delayed its counter-attack and has consistently (with vanishingly few exceptions) notified civilians to move and told them where to go. Of course, even then armed Hamas operatives kept them in harms way by moving with them.
Then, the combatant to civilian ratio disproves the “genocide” claim. It is the lowest in history and doesn’t take into account civilian deaths caused by the estimated 15% of misfired Hamas and PIJ missiles and Hamas live fire on their own people.
If you look at the amount of ordinance dropped even in light of total dead, including combatants, it is self-evident that no genocide - as the legal concept is defined - is not occurring. Not even the ICJ was willing to undermine the law for partisan political advantage when it refused to agree with South Africa either that a genocide was happening or was plausible. It required an explanation from Chief Justice Donoghue on the BBC to correct the misinformation from the anti-Israel camp.
Yes, war is hell and civilians die. But just as there would have been no Nakba in 1948 had the Arabs agreed to the U.N. compromise, there would have been no death and destruction in Gaza had October 7 not happened. By scapegoating Israel, you fall into the trap identified by the author: infantilizing the Arabs by denying them agency. That seems to be straight up Orientalism, a supposed cardinal sin for some.
The bottom line is that the al Aqsa Flood has washed away Hamas, Hezbollah and Assad’s control over Syria while considerably weakening Iran’s imperial pretensions over the Middle East. That should be cause for a cautious optimism that the populations now have the opportunity to throw off the shackles that have kept them enslaved to (yes) a genocidal antisemitic ideology aimed at destroying Israel. It is entirely up to Gazans, Lebanese and Syrians to determine whether they seek peace and prosperity with Israel as their neighbor or more of the same.
The opportunity to have the region remake itself is at hand. Why not give the Arabs the minimal courtesy of treating them as responsible adults, and let them chart their own future within their own customs and practices? And perhaps we would do well to avoid superimposing otherwise inapplicable Western frames of reference (Marxism, imperialism and all the rest) on Middle Eastern cultures that operate under their own rules. In other words, a little humility just might help being more clear eyed about these events.
Read all that before somewhere. Several times. Well done for mastering cut and paste.
Your dismissive reply speaks volumes. It is as predictable as it is unpersuasive. Ignoring the facts when they are destructive of your hopes or ideological convictions is not a proper rebuttal.
I understand how difficult it may be to have your worldview crumble before your eyes, but you do yourself a disservice by denying what you can see so clearly. Perhaps the time for a little introspection has arrived, but that’s up to you.
In any event, what we say about these events in the Middle East will do nothing to affect the course of events. Whichever of us has the more clear eyed explanatory apparatus will be in a better position to understand what is happening. That is really all that is at stake in our conversation.
Well morons will be morons. I expect nothing from this crowd of Jew hating dipshits. I can now laugh at them even more.
1. I suspect Galloway may be pointing at Qatar not a "false flag" conspiracy theory. Isn't this really basically just the falling out of the "Al Jazeera" lot and the "Press TV" lot?
2. It's a bit too early to say whether comparisons to Libya are a specious "tankie take" no? (At the very least there's no natural resolution apparent to the problem of Kurdistan.)
"...[At] the Oxford Union last month, when 75% of students in the room reportedly indicated that they would not have told the authorities if they’d known Hamas was about to launch its murder spree."
I've been around this issue for more than two decades now, but this stat is extremely troubling!
Yes to all this but today is also, or should be, a moment for reflection by those who opposed any action whatsoever against Assad slaughter - a group that extends far beyond just tankies. Thinking of Ed Miliband and all those who put narcissistic UK party politics before consideration of any action for Syrians. Those of us who raised Syrian voices at the time know full well it was not just tankies who ignored those voices. As George Morris from Syria Solidarity put it back in 2016: "some things are more important than the Labour party. Syria, drowning in blood, is one of them." (https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/the-staggers/2016/12/speaking-out-syria-more-important-labours-internal-politics)
“Israel’s breaches of the laws of war in Gaza.” What pathetic cowardice & moral bankruptcy you show in soft-soaping ethnic cleansing and almost certainly worse. Netanyahu has not been served an arrest warrant from the ICC for “Israel’s breaches of the laws of war in Gaza”. The warrant accuses him of murder, and much, much more. If being outraged and disgusted by war crimes, not “breaches”, and war crimes enabled, inter alia, by our gutless PM make me a tankie then I proudly declare my tankiedom. And it is the view of this proud tankie that there are indeed dangerous enemies of the rules based international order and you can find them, currently, in Number 10 and the White House. Yoav Gallant, also wanted for war crimes by the highest court on the planet, is currently installed in a 5 star hotel in New York.
Stand proud Jew hating tankie moron. October 7 wasn’t such a good idea but sinwar can burn in hell.
Impressively cogent response.
Why would you deserve more than I gave?
Don’t misunderstand me. Your comment was really helpful in clarifying the kind of person who reads Mason these days and expediting my decision to unsubscribe from his Substack. As for Zionists resorting to personal abuse rather than engaging with arguments- there’s nothing new there.
I never heard of mason before so quit generalizing as you know nothing. As far as Zionism is concerned, of course. I’m a proud Zionist and have always been. It’s nice to know you are tracking the actions of Yoav Gallant. So much to do in the world but there you are.
Let’s see…. a book that you invented, contains a God that you invented.
And this God gave you land that you didn’t pay for.
Seems like I did know something after all.
Here's another Tankie take - regrettably, from a fellow Australian.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/12/08/assad-is-out-woke-al-qaeda-is-in/
Ireland has some of these useful idiots too.
At least Clare Daly and Mick Wallace got voted out from their MEP seats. It turns out that going to bat for Russia wasn't taken well by the Irish electorate.
https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2024/01/29/latvian-mep-linked-to-wallace-and-daly-accused-of-working-with-russian-intelligence/
https://www.politico.eu/article/revealed-russias-best-friends-eu-parliament/
https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-41415997.html
She’s a Jew hating insane pos.
If we put Galloway and Johnstone together, then 7 October 2023, Hezbollah's reopening of hostilities with Israel in solidarity with Hamas, and Putin's invasion of Ukraine were all really moves in an imperialist grand strategy to knock over Syria. All ultimately choreographed by the lizard people, no doubt.
Very good article. But 'tankies'? Only old Trotskyists like myself know what this means. Or am I wrong?
I first encountered the term in 1985 in a Eurocommunist publication - Marxism Today, the monthly magazine of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Ken Livingstone (left-wing Labour leader of the Greater London Council) used the term in a response to an interview question by Beatrice Campbell (CPGB member and author) to characterise the orthodox Communist factional opposition within the CPGB to the Eurocommunist majority in which Campbell was a prominently figure.
Yes, Tankies were the supporters of tanks as a weapon for socialism. A joke like that wouldn't have occured in 1956 but may have arisen after 1968.
I always enjoy everything that Paul Mason writes but this week is particularly insightful and thought provoking. Very well done.