Erik Houdini on the Tiktok BanIt’s strange how things shift. I remember as a kid marveling at the idea that 'authoritarian' countries abroad censored the internet. It felt like something out of a dystopian novel, real Brave New World shit. Back then, during the Stop SOPA/PIPA era, the internet was wild, open, and keeping it that way was fiercely defended. Countless websites blacked out in protest of SOPA/PIPA. Hundreds of youtubers raised awareness. Wikipedia even shutdown. People were ready to burn it all down to keep the internet free. But now? Things have shifted. Post-Trump, liberalism has morphed into this smug, elitist war machine. It’s all about "we’re the smart ones, the adults are in control" while propping up the same American imperialist foreign policy that’s been selling the "democracy" hustle for decades. And God help you if you criticize the media elites or the national security crowd—because somehow that makes you pro-Trump. They’ve turned dissent into a team sport. But let me make this clear: we’re communists. We don’t play that red vs. blue horseshit. We fight for the people, not the corporations or their government puppets. They’ve built their castles on the bones of the powerless, fueled wars for profit, and worn the mask of "freedom" as they ransacked countries. They’d love to sink their claws into China, paint it as another grand liberation, just like they did in Iraq or Afghanistan. But real shit?—they don’t control the narrative now. Their game is slipping. It’s not 2003 anymore.
https://erikhoudini.com/#on-the-tiktok-banFrance’s Parti Socialiste Agrees to Bad Deal With MacronistsTo its allies, the center-left force’s stance on Bayrou is the sign of a dangerous breach in the NFP. “The Parti Socialiste has isolated itself from the left-wing alliance,” LFI caucus leader Mathilde Panot told journalists shortly after the no-confidence motion was defeated. “I’m all for a social conference on the retirement system, but is that worth a non-censure over the [general policy address]? I don’t think so,” wrote Lucie Castets, the NFP’s nominee for prime minister after the alliance emerged as the largest bloc in last summer’s snap elections, in a January 14 text to Faure, alluding to Bayrou’s concession to the Parti Socialiste. Revealed by Libération, Castets finished off her message to the Parti Socialiste leader with a warning: “If you sell out the NFP, the left-wing electorate will be furious with you.” Where the Parti Socialiste would land on Bayrou has been at the center of attention in recent weeks. Following the fall of Barnier’s government on December 4, the party’s leadership entered into negotiations with Macron and figures from the president’s bloc, talks that picked up speed following the appointment of Bayrou on December 16. The new premier, for his part, quickly echoed Macron’s sentiment aired in early December that the next minority government could no longer survive solely on the good graces of the far right, essentially meaning that it would have to cultivate ties with the center left. The PS’s split from its partners is also an escalation of the power struggle within the NFP alliance, a battle that largely pits it against France Insoumise. Though long perceived as an advocate of left-wing unity, Faure has increasingly yielded to the right-wing faction of his party systematically opposed to any pact with Jean-Luc Mélenchon and LFI. The Mélenchonists, on the contrary, have advocated for a full-opposition strategy vis-à-vis the Macronist center, one bent on provoking Macron’s resignation and forcing new presidential elections.
https://jacobin.com/2025/01/france-parti-socialiste-macron-bayrou Karl Marx Critique of the Gotha Programme Ch. II "Starting from these basic principles, the German workers' party strives by all legal means for the free state—and—socialist society: that abolition of the wage system together with the iron law of wages – and—exploitation in every form; the elimination of all social and political inequality." I shall return to the "free" state later. So, in future, the German Workers' party has got to believe in Lassalle's "iron law of wages"! That this may not be lost, the nonsense is perpetrated of speaking of the "abolition of the wage system" (it should read: system of wage labor), "together with the iron law of wages". If I abolish wage labor, then naturally I abolish its laws also, whether they are of "iron" or sponge. But Lassalle's attack on wage labor turns almost solely on this so-called law. In order, therefore, to prove that Lassalle's sect has conquered, the "wage system" must be abolished "together with the iron law of wages" and not without it. It is well known that nothing of the "iron law of wages" is Lassalle's except the word "iron" borrowed from Goethe's "great, eternal iron laws". [1] The word "iron" is a label by which the true believers recognize one another. But if I take the law with Lassalle's stamp on it, and consequently in his sense, then I must also take it with his substantiation for it. And what is that? As Lange already showed, shortly after Lassalle's death, it is the Malthusian theory of population (preached by Lange himself). But if this theory is correct, then again I cannot abolish the law even if I abolish wage labor a hundred times over, because the law then governs not only the system of wage labor but every social system. Basing themselves directly on this, the economists have been proving for 50 years and more that socialism cannot abolish poverty, which has its basis in nature, but can only make it general, distribute it simultaneously over the whole surface of society!
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch02.htm