#(or that every Palestinian is in favor of Hamas)

[susiephone]

it's always bizarre to me when americans assume that everyone living in a foreign (often predominantly not-white, non-english speaking) country must be in favor of the government there. like dude we live in a country where it's nearly guaranteed that 50% of the population fucking hates the president at any given time. why would it be any different for other countries?

[esyra]

Haven't heard from family in days. I feel like it's time to accept they're gone. I know in my heart Palestine will, one day, be free, but it wasn't supposed to be like this.

We feared another Nakba, and it happened. 700,000 pushed out of their homes in 1948 to 1 million being forced to leave their homes in 2023.

We thought it couldn't get worse or more deadly than the Israeli invasion in 2014, and it happened. We lost 2,251 people in 50 days then. Now we're past 2,300 in one week.

What I heard most from my grandmother the first days it's that "this time is different". And I feel like a rock is crushing my heart in pieces because i've been hoping that speaking out, teaching people about the historical oppresion of Palestine would help but it's not helping. Nothing is changing.

I feel like I'm screaming into a void. There's some sympathy from people online, until I see content documenting Palestinian oppresion being flagged as 'hate speech' or check the comments of any updates on Gaza and it's: "blame it on hamas", "tell them to give up hamas", "the hamas asked for it". They're not even among civilians!!!!!

My heart feels full seeing the manifestations in favor of Palestine, then I see police forces breaking protests apart and remember that the people that can actually save Gaza don't care.

If there's nothing left to do but to watch the extermination of my people, then I'm going to beg for anyone reading this to please don't forget. Please.

Israel is hiding behind Judaism to commit genocide against Gaza. Netanyahu supported the Hamas militant group to prevent the establishment of the Palestine State, and now he's using them to justify his agenda of ethnic cleansing. He abandoned Israelis and left them to die because he cares more about seeing Gazans dead!

Every single person and institution supporting and financing Israel is complicit. I hope the deaths of every Palestinian haunts you for the rest of your lives and that you never find an ounce of forgiveness, for you do not deserve it.

Just as in the Iraq War, the US government is financing and cheering for the slaughter of millions of innocent Arab lives. The media is complicit by engaging in biased propaganda and other nuclear powers, such as the UK and Germany, are complicit too. You are fascists and war criminals and every drop of Palestinian blood is in your hands. I hope every single day, for the rest of your lives, you look in the mirror and see nothing but the blood you've helped spill.

This serves as yet another proof that not a single Western in a position of power, be it in the media or in government, sees Arabs as humans beings.

For decades, the US has comitted terrorism and crimes against humanity in the Middle East and has NEVER been held accountable. Over one million in Iraq; over 150,000 in Afghanistan; and now they'll turn Gaza into a graveyard. Punishing selected soldiers over the years does not erase the fact that the American military and its government validates their crimes during execution and are never punished for it.

Please never forget: Joe Biden is a genocidal terrorist, Rishi Sunak is a genocidal terrorist, the American Democrat Party and UK's Labour Party are led by genocidal terrorists, the European Union is led by genocidal terrorists, fuckass Walt Disney Company is led by genocidal terrorists; every celebrity that called for Palestinian death or stood by silently while ignoring our suffering is a genocidal terrorist.

May Allah protect the people in Palestine and grant the martyrs the highest level of Jannah. Wallah what keeps me here is knowing that the Akhirah is theirs. May Almighty Allah grant us imaan and Taqwa as high as the people of Gaza. Ameen.

[perkwunos]

But there’s a cruel reality behind the decision to track right: The campaign, once it hitched its wagon to Biden’s policy of unqualified support for genocide in Gaza, really had no other choice. In 2020, the Biden campaign tentatively rode the progressive wave of the George Floyd protests, anger about Trump’s racist border policies, Covid activism, and anti-war protests against Saudi Arabia’s destruction of Yemen to energize the Democratic Party base to defeat Trump. It was, in retrospect, mostly lip service, and certainly no one at the time thought Biden a firebrand progressive. But the broader theme of the campaign was that everyone would have a seat at the table, even if the plate would most likely end up being empty.

Harris made no such pretensions, because any strategy that played to similar themes would have had to address the elephant in the room: the Democratic Party’s ​“ironclad” support for Israel’s elimination of a people in whole or in part. And this simply would not have worked. One can’t really bank on activist energy, youth turnout, and base-mobilizing when those involved — while canvassing together, or running phone banks at each others apartments, or getting drinks afterwards — have to awkwardly address the fact of genocide and their candidate’s support for it. This isn’t to say there was no activist or youth energy in the campaign — clearly there was. But those in charge quickly decided against making this their central theme and vote-gathering strategy, given the uncomfortable questions that would naturally arise from campaigning in these spaces. So Liz Cheney and her negative-2 favorables it was. 

Countless pro-Democratic Party pundits tried to warn Harris. Polls were commissioned. The Uncommitted Movement very politely, and well within the bounds of loyal party politics, begged Harris to change course. But she refused. The risk, to her, was worth sticking to the unshakable commitment to ​“eliminating Hamas” no matter how many dead Palestinian children it required, or the degree to which images and reports of these dead children would fuel cynicism and create an opening for Trump to win. 

... Turning every party advocate into a dead-eyed trolley problem expert triaging which genocide was morally preferable may have made cold logical sense, but it was hardly an inspiring message. Making it less compelling was that, by and large, it was not a position emanating from Palestinians themselves, as virtually every major Palestinian organization and the sole Palestinian-American in Congress, Rashida Tlaib, refused to endorse Harris.

[the-library-alcove]

One of the things that's honestly so fascinating--sociologically speaking--is how Hamas and the rest of their Islamist allies have managed to turn their "Pro-Palestine" cultists and useful idiots into full-on Arab Supremacist Fascists.

Quoting Umberto Eco's 14 Common Features Of Fascism, with my comments as addendum:

The cult of tra­di­tion. “One has only to look at the syl­labus of every fas­cist move­ment to find the major tra­di­tion­al­ist thinkers. The Nazi gno­sis was nour­ished by tra­di­tion­al­ist, syn­cretis­tic, occult ele­ments.” In the Hamasnik cult, this is exemplified by the claims of an ancient--prehistoric, even!--continuity and history of Palestine, the "well, this is their culture!" promotion of misogyny and sexism, as with the Taliban and Hamas, and, of course, the "Blood and Soil" rhetoric we see being promoted as part of the idealized "Palestinian connection to the land".

The rejec­tion of mod­ernism. “The Enlight­en­ment, the Age of Rea­son, is seen as the begin­ning of mod­ern deprav­i­ty. In this sense Ur-Fas­cism can be defined as irra­tional­ism.” See all of the "anti-Western" outlooks from the Hamasnik crowd, plus all of the rejections of science and documented history in favor of a simplified propaganda narrative.

The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beau­ti­ful in itself, it must be tak­en before, or with­out, any pre­vi­ous reflec­tion. Think­ing is a form of emas­cu­la­tion.” See all of the pointless protests, where not only is what is being demanded pointless, but in many cases there is no causal link between their actions and what they supposedly wish to accomplish, and often are actively harmful to their cause. The man who climbed up on London architecture the other month "to bring awareness to the Palestinian cause" did nothing to help them, but he certainly took action!

Dis­agree­ment is trea­son. “The crit­i­cal spir­it makes dis­tinc­tions, and to dis­tin­guish is a sign of mod­ernism. In mod­ern cul­ture the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty prais­es dis­agree­ment as a way to improve knowl­edge.” See how any Palestinian peace activist is treated for an easy example of this one.

Fear of dif­fer­ence. “The first appeal of a fas­cist or pre­ma­ture­ly fas­cist move­ment is an appeal against the intrud­ers. Thus Ur-Fas­cism is racist by def­i­n­i­tion.” Note how "Zionist" has been turned into a pejorative, and "Zio", a slur coined by the KKK, is easily on the lips of these "activists".

Appeal to social frus­tra­tion. “One of the most typ­i­cal fea­tures of the his­tor­i­cal fas­cism was the appeal to a frus­trat­ed mid­dle class, a class suf­fer­ing from an eco­nom­ic cri­sis or feel­ings of polit­i­cal humil­i­a­tion, and fright­ened by the pres­sure of low­er social groups.” See the common statements of "We don't want two state, we want all '48!" and a general refusal to accept that there's a status quo where Israel isn't going anywhere and peace is necessary; instead, there's an attitude of frustration that they want this outcome, and they're going to get it!

The obses­sion with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fas­cist psy­chol­o­gy there is the obses­sion with a plot, pos­si­bly an inter­na­tion­al one. The fol­low­ers must feel besieged.” The sheer amount of "Zionists control the government/media/economy/etc" conspiracism makes this almost too easy.

The ene­my is both strong and weak. “By a con­tin­u­ous shift­ing of rhetor­i­cal focus, the ene­mies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” But at the same time as "Zionists control the world", they're also apparently readily intimidated and rebuffed by a bunch of ineffectual and over-privileged college students.

Paci­fism is traf­fick­ing with the ene­my. “For Ur-Fas­cism there is no strug­gle for life but, rather, life is lived for strug­gle.” Again, see the treatment any Palestinian working for a two-state solution for an easy example of this one.

Con­tempt for the weak. “Elit­ism is a typ­i­cal aspect of any reac­tionary ide­ol­o­gy.” This one is interesting, because you do see it... but not in the usual form, because it's become contempt for anyone who isn't willing to show the "strength" of committing full-fledged to their belief system and sacrifice themselves in its service. See, for example, the adoption and twisting of "none of us are free until all of us are free", where activists for other causes that can actually do measurable good are dismissed or condemned for "not standing with Palestine".

Every­body is edu­cat­ed to become a hero. “In Ur-Fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy, hero­ism is the norm. This cult of hero­ism is strict­ly linked with the cult of death.” Everyone is expected to sacrifice themselves for the Uber-Cause, Palestine, and even engage in "activism" when bed-bound.

Machis­mo and weapon­ry. “Machis­mo implies both dis­dain for women and intol­er­ance and con­dem­na­tion of non­stan­dard sex­u­al habits, from chasti­ty to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.” This one is fascinating, because you do have "Queers For Palestine" and other such Turkeys-For-Thanksgiving groups, but at the same time, watch how they treat other queers who don't get in line with their ideology. Also, note how these people actively celebrate and support rapists from Hamas.

Selec­tive pop­ulism. “There is in our future a TV or Inter­net pop­ulism, in which the emo­tion­al response of a select­ed group of cit­i­zens can be pre­sent­ed and accept­ed as the Voice of the Peo­ple.” And the select group of citizens are "a small fraction of coddled students at elite universities" and "a group of fanatical militants".

Ur-Fas­cism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fas­cist school­books made use of an impov­er­ished vocab­u­lary, and an ele­men­tary syn­tax, in order to lim­it the instru­ments for com­plex and crit­i­cal rea­son­ing.”

I'm just going to make a separate list here:

War becomes Genocide.

Humanitarian Aid becomes Manufactured Famine.

Borders become Concentration camp walls.

Suicide bombers become heroes.

Rape becomes Resistance.

Civilian Evacuation becomes Ethnic Cleansing

Unwilling Human Shields become Brave Martyrs

Indoctrinated Child Soldiers become Adorable Spirit Of Resistance or Murder

People returning to their native homeland become Colonizers

Hostages become Prisoners of War

Anti-Rocket Defense becomes a Tool of Genocide

Surrender becomes Ceasefire

Keeping terrorists away from civilians becomes Apartheid

Civilians become Acceptable Targets

And more. (I edited an earlier version of this post that had a graphic I added because I was tired and it contained a lot of what I was going for, but it was pointed out that it had some... issues. So it's gone and this list is added)

So with all of that said, I just find it fascinating (in the same way that, say, a weapon or a dangerous chemical or the like is fascinating) how a bunch of ostensible progressives and Leftists have been conditioned and propagandized into becoming Arab Supremacist Fascists, when the majority of them are not Arab. Many are, in fact, from groups and classes that would be marginalized or actively persecuted if the very Islamists they support gained power over them. At least White Supremacists make sense in a way--they're acting in their own perceived self-interest and self-promotion. But these people? The only thing that's in it for them is the sense of moral superiority and the ability to be as bigoted as they want to against Jews.

And the only thing that I can say to that is that really gives a sense of the seductiveness of bigotry.

[shroominalong]

Not to get on my soap box or anything, but I'm getting a weird amount of hate rn and being accused of like, engaging in a full on harassment campaign, because of one reply I made to a post, pointing out that we cannot boil down Greta's situation to just a "normal detainment" when Israeli propaganda sites are proudly declaring her and other activists are going to be forced to sit through a 43-minute-long propaganda-infused literal snuff film showing footage of October 7th from body cams of the Hamas attackers.

So, I've had some time to think about it, and if I'm gonna get hate about it, I'm going to be clear on all topics so you can hate on me and post weird comments on my pinned post bc my asks are closed accurately.

1.) The claim this was just a publicity stunt. Yes. It was a publicity stunt. I am not disagreeing with that, but to boil it down to "just a publicity stunt" in a derogatory manner severely downplays the point behind said publicity stunt, which I will get into in a moment.

Did Greta know this was a situation where she was going to be detained? Yes. She did. Is she purposefully using inflammatory language? Yes. She is. But that's the point. Which I will expand on in a moment.

2.) The reminder that Freedom Flotilla is not a sanctioned aid organization permitted to have access to the Gaza Strip. Some people went as far to say "If Doctors Without Borders weren't even allowed in, what made them think they would be permitted?" I daresay that was the point. If you pay attention, almost every humanitarian aid organization operating within Gaza at the moment is Palestinian run. I could be wrong on this point, but I am 90% sure there are no major international organizations "permitted" to operate within Gaza at this time. That is going to be brought up in a moment.

3.) The point everyone made that Israel has promised to deliver the aid from the Freedom Flotilla, and the implication that we should take that at face value. Israel, who has a rich history of not only blocking aid, but actively using relief supplies as a means of marking out drone strikes and massacre sites. They have repeatedly either failed to let aid they promised would be let through to actually make it into the strip, even stolen it, and have also used relief supplies as literal bait.

Listen. I've thought about it. A fucking lot. Yes, what Greta did was a publicity stunt, and she made the entire voyage extremely loud and public, spread it all over social media. You can say that was a publicity stunt. But that was very much intentional.

The vast majority of humanitarian groups operating within Gaza right now are run by Palestinians. No foreign nationals are really permitted in the strip. Why is that? Maybe it's because of Israel's habit of targeting medics and aid workers and journalists and hospitals. Perhaps. Maybe it's because if a couple of foreign nationals die, other countries can wave it off with a "strongly worded email" and let it die, because that's just one citizen being an idiot, and they can spin it that way in the media.

"She absolutely knew she was going to be detained, sailing into a war zone like that without the proper permits." Maybe that was the point. Maybe this was less about Israel, and more about pointing a gun at all of their governments and saying do something, you sniveling cowards. Maybe it was to force them to finally get the gears working.

It has been made very clear from the start that everyone should be putting pressure on the individual governments involved to act. This was not solely about Israel. It was about the collective failure of the international governing body. That's why a member of the EU Parliament was there in the first place. Or did we forget one of the detainees was an actual sitting politician in all of this, not just some random activist private citizen?

We can go in circles saying it was a legal detainment. Sure, it was, but laws often function in the favor of the governing bodies, and we have to consider how Israel is exploiting those laws to their benefit right now.

The claim she was doing it for clout, of all the things, is absolutely fucking insane. This is not on the same level as a random YouTuber rage baiting, my gods, what the hell is wrong with you all. Greta and the other activists knowingly and intentionally sailed into an active warzone controlled by a government with decades of war crimes going entirely unimpeded under its belt, and you all want to cry she was doing it for clout. Insane behavior. What is wrong with all of you.

Overall, I was very polite in the post, and when I saw it was not going to be a productive conversation, I disengaged. But, I just blocked my second person on my pinned post spewing vile comments at me to circumvent my closed ask box, equating to one single post like I was leading some kind of mass harassment campaign.

I am very sorry to the Jews around the world being targeted and attacked in the name of "Free Palestine". At no point did I indicate that was correct behavior, or that I agreed with it, nor did I ever indicate that was an acceptable sacrifice in my eyes. I understand the extremely valid concerns that this incident will instigate further attacks. But, the solution to dispelling the building antisemitism right now is not to downplay the actions of the Israel government, shame the aid workers trying to force their governments to act, and boil down an instance of activism as nothing but "a publicity stunt she knew would go wrong."

Yes, Greta likely did know the consequences of her actions. But to play it all as selfishness and a desire for attention is really not okay.

I am no longer interested in being polite.

If you want to come at me, come at me. Here's allllll my thoughts on the matter. If you got a problem with it, fuck it, I'm opening my ask box, but I'm not turning on anon for any of you. If you want to say something, say it with your chest.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Chad Merlin

Küntzel makes a distinction between anti-Judaism, which he deems an ancient phenomenon based on religious polemics, and antisemitism, which is a modern concept coined in 1879 by Friedrich Marr. “In other words, anti-Judaism deems all Jews to be evil, but antisemitism views all evil to be Jewish,” he stressed.

“The Quran itself is not antisemitic. It has some anti-Jewish statements, and some verses speak in their favor, but those sayings against the Jews have more of a religious, polemic aura to them than those modern tropes,” he continued.

“The known status of Dhimmitude, in which Jews and other minorities under Islamic rule are supposed to be ‘sheltered’ but also degraded and harshly discriminated against, can also not be viewed as antisemitic in and of itself.

Nowadays, Islamist and European antisemitism are well mixed. For instance, Hamas leader Fathi Hamad was quoted saying, “We must attack every Jew on planet earth,” calling to slaughter and kill them and tear them into pieces ‘with Allah’s help.’ This is not Dhimmitude, and not at all what the Quran says. This was learned directly from Nazi antisemitism, which called to kill every Jew on planet earth – not to shelter and degrade them as Dhimmis.”

According to Küntzel, Nazi Germany and its ideology had a strong influence over the Arab and Islamic world. “That Jews don’t deserve the dhimmi status but that they must be killed to save the world is a new concept in Islam, a’redemptive antisemitism’ as Saul Friedländer coined it. The Nazis believed that Jews are responsible for every evil in the world thus must be killed to rid the world of all evil. Nowadays many Islamists say the same, that Jews must be killed in order to save Islam from destruction,” he added.

“This is a kind of paranoid thinking, brought into Islamic thought by Sayyid Qutb,” Küntzel continued, referring to the man regarded as the founding father of Salafi Jihadism and a direct disciple of the Muslim Brotherhood founder, Hassan Al-Banna.

“Qutb popularized this kind of thinking within the Muslim Brotherhood around 1951, but it can also be found before him in a 1937 pamphlet titled Judaism and Islam, which pictures Jews as fighting to destroy Islam, calling to fight and kill them before they have a chance to destroy Islam. So again, this is a parallel between European and Islamic antisemitism.”

According to Küntzel, the aforementioned pamphlet was published anonymously in August 1937 as an attempt to drown the Peel Commission’s first suggestion of a two-state solution.

“This was the first compromise plan for the Middle East, supported by some Arab leaders such as Emir Abdullah and favored by the Zionist leadership. However, the Palestinian mufti Hajj Amin Al-Husseini fought against it with all his might, and he was supported by the Nazis, who also sought to prevent a small Jewish state or ‘Jewish Vatican’ as they called it.”

Küntzel argued that the Nazis’ influence led to the eradication of the balance between moderate and radical forces in Islamic circles. “The 1937 pamphlet was probably the first time in which the myth of ’Jewish power’ typical of European antisemitism was mixed with an Islamic myth of Jews plotting to kill Mohammed – and all in an attempt to prevent a Jewish state.”

[cookingwithroxy]

When I said that the gofundme's for Gaza are bots, I don't say that out of nowhere. Because of one very notable thing.

The blogs with those gofundme's have usually only about two posts, and tend to send asks to anyone who responds or reacts to certain pro-gaza posts, even those who are not in favor of Hamas's behavior.

Now, if these were actual people, that wouldn't happen. You most absolutely would not post a cut-and-paste ask to someone who's actively hostile to Gaza to send financial support. But for a bot that's just set to read a post's active history and send asks to everyone who interacted with it, that makes perfect sense.

Even if the person behind the post is actually Palestinian (which you have no reason to assume they are) they are acting in ways that are blatantly disingenuous. Seriously. Do not spread their asks, do NOT send them money. You can see on Gofundme's website that they don't send money to Gaza. There is no way that money is going directly to help anyone. And don't get me started with the 'vetting' service, which is also so massively suspicious.

I mean, do ANY of you know those people 'vetting' these things? Do you know them well enough to trust them with your kids?

Or do you trust them because every ask begging you for money sends you back to that one or two people who tells you that they're totally okay, as well as a dozen other two-post-blogs that also send random asks out begging for money?

[luckybyler]

This was a reply to someone else, but I'm making this its own post because so many people are being so evil right now re: Noah Schnapp.

You can find other, longer explanations with history and all, but all the places I've seen more or less agree with this:

So you're all calling people to cancel Noah because he's in favor of a Jewish nation in what is today Israel. Which is a perfectly reasonable, decent and educated opinion to have, especially when you, to use a trendy term, "educate yourself" and find out why the state of Israel was created.

11000 dead Palestinians, half of them children

According to Hamas. Don't forget that, ever. They're the current, official government of Gaza, thus they're the ones who give numbers. This means that the real number could be 10, 1 million, anything in between. What I've read is that they probably give more of less accurate total numbers. What they fail to do, however, is distinguish between Hamas militants and civilians, and beteween civilians killed by IDF strikes, civilians killed by failed Hamas or Palestininan Islamic Jihad's rockets (which happens a lot), and Palestinians murdered by Hamas/PIJ (which also happens, a whole damn lot). They also don't specify how many civilians they have prevented or tried to prevent from evacuating or receiving aid.

11k dead people is a horrible number. Even 1 dead person is a horrible number. However, urban warfare in such a densely populated area is its own kind of hell, especially when the other side is fond of using civilians as human shields in every way possible. The fact that the number is 11k and not 50k, 100k, and so on, indicates that the IDF have indeed done a lot to minimize deaths. You don't genocide people by doing roof knocks, opening evacuation lines, dropping guided bombs, putting up an Iron Dome to deal with rockets while avoiding escalation, etc. simply because actual genocide, while a lot worse, is also cheaper, easier and faster than what they're doing. This is important because caling every act of war genocide dilutes the word, and there are actual genocides happening around the world. Also, there is a difference between striking military targets and causing civilian deaths as a side effect (what the IDF is doing) and planning and carrying out a massacre deliberately targeting civilians and inflicting as much pain and humilliation as possible on them. And there is a difference between doing so by breaking a ceasefire (which is what Hamas did), and defending your country because if you don't do that a terrorist group will anhilate you (which is what the IDF is doing).

Back to Noah. So far, these are the things that people have tried to cancel him for:

Traveling to Israel (a completely normal thing)

Having Israeli friends (another completely normal thing)

Condemning Hamas' horrible attack on October 7th (the decent thing to do)

Posting a statement saying he feels unsafe as a Jewish person in the US (which, given the rise of antisemitic acts in the world, including the US, including where he lives and where he studies, is a valid feeling to have)

Signing a letter, along with Shawn Levy, Brett Gelman, Ross Duffer and I think Cara Buono, asking Biden to press for the liberation of every hostage by Hamas. This especially shows the utter ignorance of the cancellers because, as it turns out, caring about every hostage implies a slowdown of IDF's actions (and, at the time, a delay of a ground invasion).

Supporting the existence and preservation of the state of Israel (once again, a completely normal thing). The fact that people are turning against him for these things says to me that the real reason you are all hating Noah is beacuse:

He's Jewish. Like, really really Jewish.

And the fact that this all comes from a place of antisemitism isn't hidden at all: I've seen y'all on here, on Twitter, Reddit, every other social media calling him slurs (such as "cunt"), censoring his name, pretending he's not part of the cast, asking the Duffers/Netflix to fire him, wishing him failure, doxxing him, calling on his classmates to physically assault him, etc. He doesn't need to educate himself: you guys are already teaching him a great lesson on why a Jewish state is necessary. If that's the treament he gets from his own "fans", what can he expect from the world at large?

[sayruq]

Biden's visit has concluded. Israel has spent his entire visit trying to muddy the waters of what happened to Al Ahli Hospital and despite their cartoonish efforts, it hasn't worked

The Global South and especially West Asia know who is responsible for the bombing and no amount of AI voice recordings of 'Hamas operatives' can change that.

Israel war crimes continues to backfire on them even in America

Biden backing Israel has had an impact on America's image. Here's a Wall Street Journal article warning that America's continued support is turning countries towards Russia and China which is code for turning countries against America

An EU official said that the EU will pay a heavy price in the Global South for its continued, unabashed support for Israel

There's also speculation that the Biden administration knew about the bombing before it happened.

Countries that were/are allied with Israel continue to distance themselves from Israel like Russia. The reason I keep highlighting Russia is because the West has been running out of ammunition due to the Russia-Ukraine war and that includes Israel which is rumoured to have sent 80-90% of its ammunition to Ukraine. If this conflict lasts a long time, Israel will need to buy weapons and ammunition and Russia would be one of the countries they would turn to (same with China)

So, where are we in terms of the conflict? After days of waffling over a ground operation in Gaza, Israel postponed it until some time after Biden's visit and now we're back here again

Now I'm no military expert but constantly going back and forth on whether or not you'll invade Gaza is bound to do damage to your troops' morale. No wonder they're dealing with mass desertions while their citizens demonstrate on the streets. The Israeli leadership has no plan besides bombing Gaza.

I've seen people on twitter say that the hospital bombing was done deliberately to normalise IDF soldiers to mass civilian deaths in places like hospitals, schools, places of worship, etc. I don't know if I believe that - I think they wanted to push Iran and Hezbollah's buttons before hiding behind Biden. I don't think these people are thinking strategically.

As far as the possibility of regional war is concerned, all indicators show that the West preparing for the war to escalate

Seems to me the Israel has seen what Ukraine has received in just a year and a half of war. They're done receiving a paltry 3.8 billion every year and now prepared to drag out the conflict and I can't say I blame with Biden proposing a 100 billion package for both Ukraine and Israel. This will stretch America too thin as far as funding in concerned. Cracks are already showing

There are parts of the US government that is unhappy that the Ukraine war is losing attention. During the Ukraine war, you had parts of the government that wanted focus to shift from Russia to China. Because of that, the US government has spent the past year alternating between hostility to Russia and threatening to go to war with China over Taiwan. When Niger expelled France from within its borders, America was preparing to join that conflict until Mali and Burkina Faso declared they would fight with Niger. Now they're entering a third front in West Asia. In short, the mighty empire is expending a lot of resources right now and it is not the threat it was when it invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s.

At any rate, the ground invasion of Gaza won't go the way Israel and America hopes it will

The coalition of Palestinian resistance fighters are still patiently waiting for the IDF to come meet them. Their allies aren't backing down either

The reason I keep making these posts is to remind people that, while the genocide of the people of Gaza is horrifying, the war for the liberation of Palestine has not yet been lost.

Do not lose hope. From the river to sea, Palestine WILL be free

[eretzyisrael]

The Hamas-run

has released what it claims is a comprehensive list of all Palestinians killed during the current war.

And guess what.

Even according to Hamas's own data, combat-age males are vastly overrepresented among the casualties, demonstrating that Israel has done a remarkable job of targeting Hamas and Islamic Jihad combatants and sparing uninvolved Palestinian civilians throughout the war.

According to an analysis by @levanonisrael, of the 50,021 individuals Hamas claims have been killed during the war, some 16,229—or almost exactly a third—were likely combatants.

Taking into account the possibility of female combatants or terror operatives, inaccuracies in age reporting (of which the ministry has been proven guilty in the past), and likely exaggerations (of which the ministry has also been proven guilty), the number may well be closer to 20,000.

In any event, the civilian casualty ratio in Gaza appears to be somewhere between 2:1 and 1:1 – a far cry from the 9:1 ratio reported by the UN for conflicts around the world over the past 40 years.

Again: this isn't Israeli data. It's not American data. It's Hamas data. And it demonstrates that, far from bombing Gaza indiscriminately, Israel is engaged in a highly targeted effort to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups in Gaza while doing whatever it can to spare civilian lives.

Every Palestinian civilian casualty is a tragedy, attributable to Hamas's heinous practice of intentionally endangering civilians by embedding itself among them, fighting from behind them, and using them as human shields. 

But Israel's record throughout this war compares favorably to the records of other Western militaries that have engaged in urban warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere around the world. Indeed, senior military officials from other countries have said repeatedly that Israel employs measures that their own militaries never have or would to protect Palestinian civilians, often putting operational objectives or the lives of Israeli soldiers at risk in the process.

This data handily disproves the most outlandish claims about Israel's conduct during the war and should be used to refute those despicable allegations.

Israel's war is just, it has been pursued justly – and Hamas's own data just proved it.

Avi Mayer אבי מאיר

[centrally-unplanned]

This article about Hamas's strategic planning in the lead up to the October assault was at least a partial mind-changer for me. So far I had been viewing Hamas as executing a "bait" attack on Israel for international & domestic political reasons. Kill enough Israelis, and in particular take some hostages, to force Israel to invade Gaza; which you want because that will re-inflame radicalism, tank Israel's growing coziness with Arab states like the Gulf Monarchies, and keep the Palestine Question front-and-center on people's agendas.

What it was not about was achieving any sense of a military victory; Hamas did not think they would be able to defeat the IDF on the field, or even truly hold them back. They thought they would do better than they have in defending Gaza, to be honest, but the goal wasn't to "win" in that way or anything. The actions of Israel, in their inflamed bloodlust, would be the fulcrum of progress for Hamas. It was the most logical interpretation of their strategy, because tbh its working, Israel's strategy void has bungled this war at every level. Of course if it is "worth it" is a completely separate question - Hamas is playing a game from deep, deep in the red, if you aren't going to fold and pack it up from that position these are the hail mary plays you make.

This article, a long (and sometimes overly windy) interview with two career members of the Palestinian governing orgs (primarily Fatah), shines a very different light on that. They outline that over the past ~decade, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar coalesced power around his own faction of highly fundamentalist adherents that convinced itself that divine favor was shining on them and they would be able to actually defeat Israel in the field. The most compelling evidence for this is a conference they held planning the post-conquest occupation of Israel:

So detailed were the plans that participants in the conference began to draw up list of all the properties in Israel and appointed representatives to deal with the assets that would be seized by Hamas. "We have a registry of the numbers of Israeli apartments and institutions, educational institutions and schools, gas stations, power stations and sewage systems, and we have no choice but to get ready to manage them," Obeid told the conference.

They even called people up to ask if they would take the job of governor of this-of-that province! This was not a bored-Friday white paper by any means. They discussed defensive plans and counter-offensives like that was on the table. Sinwar outlined conquest as the goal.

If we accept this premise, it naturally lends itself to the question "okay how did they get the rest of Hamas to go along with this?" Because Hamas is not all These Kinds of People, its a governing state that does politics on the international stage after all. One of the reasons I leaned towards my interpretation was that, for the past ~decade, Hamas has actually been doing a glam-up rebranding of the org to make it more moderate & respectable in international eyes. The 2017 Charter Revision is the biggest example, which included say disavowing the idea that this was a religious war (distinguishing between zionism & judaism), and loosely admitting to the idea that they could recognize Israel as a country if terms were met. Actions like these show actors who are pretty level-headed. Were they inauthentic? Did they change their mind?

Maybe a bit, but its more than they aren't the same people. Right alongside the build-up to the October attack was a purging & sidelining of whole swaths of Hamas leadership. Many were not even informed of the attack - though they knew something was coming. Apparently it leaked on October 2nd, and a bunch of leaders just immediately fled the Strip for safety. This one is the most amusing:

Haniyeh's eldest son took a similar course of action. Around midday on October 2, Abed Haniyeh chaired a meeting of the Palestinian sports committee, which is headed by the minister of sports, Jibril Rajoub. Suddenly he received a phone call, left the room for a few minutes and then returned, pale and confused. He immediately informed the committee – whose members were in a Zoom conference with counterparts in the West Bank – that he had to leave for the Rafah crossing straightaway, as he had just learned that his wife had to undergo fertility treatment in the United Arab Emirates. (He was lying.) He granted full power of attorney to his deputy and left the Gaza Strip hurriedly.

That is one way to duck out of a pointless meeting, take notes people!

So instead of my hail mary politics play, what you have is a story of an institutional coup by a radical faction - which for extremist resistance groups is an ever-present threat. None of this means the "bait" strategy part is wrong of course, that was definitely still the point - but this argument here claims that goal of the bait was to bring the IDF into Gaza where it could be defeated in the field with their extensive fortifications, and then presumably inspire others like Hezbollah to jump on the moment of weakness and besiege Israel proper.

So....is this true? There are two gigantic caveats on this article: the first is that the people being interviewed do not primarily work for Hamas - they are members of Fatah, the leading faction of the PLO. They hate Hamas, they are not Hamas leaders themselves, they have every incentive to paint Hamas as irredeemable. You really can't take this story simply at their word. But they aren't outsiders - they hate Hamas but they work with them constantly, that is how it works, people rotate around in the Palestine orgs. They have met personally and worked with dozens of Hamas leaders; one of them was even called to be offered one of those post-war occupation governorships! (He said no lol) So its a big red flag but not a damning one. And things like the fleeing leaders, the conference on the occupation, those all 100% happened. They released press on it, they weren't hiding it.

The second caveat is that its just really not uncommon for large organizations, particularly extremist ones, to engage in mainly performative actions at scale. The South Korean government still maintains a department that plans for the administration of North Korea for example! Not totally useless ofc, but it writes exactly the reports you think it does that get put in a bin and never touched. Sometimes its appeasing internal factions, sometimes its PR, sometimes its just institutional inertia. Its absolutely believable that Hamas would make a big plan for how they would conquer Israel because otherwise...what do you tell the commanders, exactly? Why are they fighting again? A significant percentage of the lower-level fighters need that belief, so you give it to them. While certainly there is a fundamentalist faction in Hamas, are they ones winning? Or are they just another faction being played against?

I don't see enough evidence to say, but there is enough to make me pause. I'm not sold on it in the end, that is my final conclusion. I think more brains than Sinwar were involved in this and they had more realistic aspirations. And yet the level of commitment and disorganization does suggest that at least some of what was pushing events forward was a group immune to doubts being at the wheel. Certainly interested in researching more.

[foxgirlmoth]

Okay, lets go through this apparent list of positives that Biden is in favor of.

Trans Rights: There have been multiple laws within states to fully close off especially trans kids rights to medical treatments and more. This is extremely current. Biden puts in minimal effort to look like he's doing anything at all for trans and queer rights, and there haven't really been any efforts aside from doing one or two proposals that immediately get shot down, and he's more than okay with that, hence why there's no longer really any push for this shit still. If you're trans, you can't piss in Utah without the risk of getting a fine right now. Even though these are state laws, the fact that there's been nearly zero effort federally to address this besides the title IX rule, speaks a lot about priorities in this area.

Abortion Access: Are we just forgetting the whole Roe V Wade getting overturned thing that happened in 2022? Are you really trying to say that this is good for abortion access? Abortion access has gotten actively worse.

Environmental Reform: Biden has endorsed extreme oil drilling projects and in general oil companies still love him! Not to mention the train crashes which we'll get to later.

Healthcare Reform: Covid-19 is still around and is sadly predicted to stay around for a long while. Healthcare is still private and a competitive field in the US and that causes major issues as well. If you look this up, you see articles titled along the lines of "Biden has lowered the cost of insurance" and meanwhile it just dropped in 2020 once during the pandemic but has been growing in cost.

Prescription Reform: Reading into this, not much has changed, which isn't surprising under genocide Joe. Drugs in the US are still higher than anywhere else in the world, and with healthcare issues still abundant, this is still a big issue.

Student Loan Forgiveness: Student debt is still extremely high in the US, and while Biden has rolled out some plans for forgiveness, it's a fraction of the debt, and he primarily uses the whole thing to win over swing states. This is a dangling carrot that provides very little overall.

Infrastructure Funding: Train crashes from 2020-present, worldwide, but notice the amount of US crashes! Neat! Quite literally just look up train crashes in the US during his presidency, there's too many to link here. It is also important to remember that Biden signed a bill to prevent rail strikes, preventing a lot of pressure to the government and the economy, which would have been a GOOD THING. Seriously, this guy has fucked up our environment and our rights in multiple ways.

Advocating Racial Equity: Structural racism within the US is still a huge problem, Biden hasn't addressed much. Also people are still in cages on the Mexico/US border (Which has been maintained by every president in office since it was established), with a very recent crackdown on the border.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Just. Look at the racial equity and trans rights sections above. Biden does the bare minimum, loves focusing on swing states, and all around uses the ol' carrot on a stick.

Vaccines and Public Health: Once again look above at sections on healthcare, abortion access, and prescription reform. Its bad. Remember how Covid-19 vaccines aren't being continued for free?

Criminal Justice Reform: This is just structural slavery still. Disproportionate amounts of black people are incarcerated, police are still heavily funded under Biden. He does not care about reforming the justice system, he even supports cops breaking up campus protests! Cool!

Military Support for Israel: Yup! Both sides suck! Biden has a very long history of sure hating Arabic countries though! He's done nothing but ship weapons and participate in the genocide of Palestinian people. Would Trump also do this? Yes. Does this mean this is an issue you should just drop and call a non-issue? No, what the hell are you talking about.

Israel/Hamas Ceasefire: Netanyahu has no plans to accept any actual ceasefire, yet Biden still provides weapons and support. Wow! That sure is weird? I wonder if Biden really cares about a ceasefire or how he just looks publicly.

Biden is not a good president, much less a good human being. You provided such a flimsy chart with zero resources or support behind you, and it just feels like people are just making shit up at this point. Get your heads out of the liberal cesspool you grew up in.

[mossadspypigeon]

the anons who accuse you of being racist are so unserious. it’s laughable how embarrassing these people are. when we, jewish and israeli people criticize palestinians we’re AWARE not all of them are bad people. the majority of zionists from both israel and the diaspora are in favor of peace and two state solution much more than endless violence. but yes, it’s crucial to point out antisemitism in palestinian education and even their culture to a certain extent. they teach kids the most antisemitic shit i have ever seen, and the fact antizionists can’t even see how palestinians are victims to their own system is ridiculous. they’re used as pawns since the day they’re born. the more those children are taught antisemitic propaganda, the more prone they are falling into the hands of terrorism. and hamas specifically are making sure this cycle never breaks. 

so please, how is this considered racist exactly? this is nothing but pointing out facts. it’s not about their race, ethnicity, or whatever. it could’ve been anyone. could’ve been white people instead. this is about an ideology. 

i just find it incredibly ironic how you’re apparently racist and bigoted for saying this, while the same anons who stalk your blog are most likely the ones generalizing when they “criticize” israel, dehumanizing every israeli in existence at any given moment. da evil joos are racist monsters but not me!!

be so for real🙄

exactly.

all of this is fine and okay to them. no calling it out, no talking about it. they can’t even acknowledge arab colonization or oppression of minority groups. it’s all just revisionist history, looking the other way, and excuses. plus the fun darvo tactics.

meanwhile how is it okay to teach children to hate like that? why is it fine to hate jews?

if they are so okay with jew hatred, well lmao they must not be very uncomfortable with it.

[jewishvitya]

@turgidturnip I hope you don't mind me replying to this on a different post.

This is about "from the river to the sea" and the claim that it's an antisemitic rallying cry, calling to ethnically cleanse Palestine from Jews.

There's a misconception that this slogan comes from the Hamas charter, but it predates Hamas by, I think, a couple of decades. It's been used this way by more militant groups, and by Iraqi leadership at some point, but before that it's been used to call for a democratic secular nation state.

The reason you see these claims of antisemitism from Jewish people online is that this is the context where most of them will have seen it. Both because it is part of the history, and because that's how antisemites use it against Jews.

Both "Free Palestine" and "from the river to the sea" are thrown at random Jewish people, who are completely unrelated to Israel, to tell them essentially "You're not wanted anywhere and we want you gone."

This abuses the cause of the Palestinian people to weaponize against Jews. It's wrong and violent, but doesn't make the desire to be free in their homeland into something genocidal. And I'm not willing to just give antisemites this, but even if I was, I'm not Palestinian and giving up on a slogan because antisemites are abusing it is not my call to make. It's pretty obvious Palestinians don't want to put it away. Any slogans Palestinians might create can be used this way against Jews, because antisemites will always look for ways to be hateful towards us. But it doesn't make the antisemitism inherent in the desire for freedom.

Recognize where it's used in an antisemitic way from context: if someone uses those slogans to throw at a random Jewish person, or if it's used to disrupt a conversation about antisemitism, that's a misuse of it that does a disservice to Palestinians in favor of harming Jews. That's when it has genocidal intent applied to it.

Otherwise, don't let antisemites steal a slogan of a group of people who have been facing ethnic cleansing for over seventy years. Their real ethnic cleansing takes priority over the hypothetical one we're supposedly threatened with.

I'm not trying to tell other people what their liberation should look like. But when I talk to Palestinians, so far what I heard was a desire for one state that isn't an ethnostate. A civic state that tries to be safe for all the people within its borders. As far as I could see, Palestinians have been saying for a while that what they mean by this, is a state that will be free and equal to everyone.

The assumption that Palestinians will pull some sort of reverse ethnic cleansing against us is racist. And this assumption is the reason Israelis feel comfortable calling the carpet bombing of a civilian population "self defense." Killing them based on this is not self defense, it's a racially motivated crime against humanity.

Gaza is experiencing a genocide. This is because Israel wants the land - without the people. The manufactured Jewish majority can't be sustained if they're made equal citizens. Palestinians are risking the ethnostate by being alive.

So far Israel is the one practicing the genocidal interpretation of "from the river to the sea."

Palestinians deserve to be free on every single part of this land.

[socialistexan]

I don't pay super close attention to my follower count, but just by what I've been able to tell, I've lost about 50-60 followers over my posts condemning Hamas.

Good. You shouldn't be here. You support an organization that distributes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other antisemitic conspiracy theories. An organization that is openly theocratic fascist and aligned with far-right forces. An organization that actively censors the education children in favor of religious indoctrination. An organization that has ethnic cleansing written into its goals. If you support Hamas (which is different than supporting Palestine or the Palestinian people), you're a piece of shit.

Free Palestine, but fuck Hamas 🇵🇸

And I shouldn't have to do this with every post I make talking about Palestine but here we are: Fuck the Israeli government, fuck Zionism, fuck the IDF, fuck their ethnonationalist colonialist project, I whole heartedly condemn them and every evil thing they have done to the Palestinian people.

[mariacallous]

Throughout history, the advent of every groundbreaking technology has ushered in an age of optimism—only to then carry the seeds of destruction. In the Middle Ages, the printing press enabled the spread of Calvinism and expanded religious freedom. Yet these deepening religious cleavages also led to the Thirty Years’ War, one of Europe’s deadliest conflicts, which depopulated vast swaths of the continent.

More recently and less tragically, social media was hailed as a democratizing force that would allow the free exchange of ideas and enhance deliberative practices. Instead, it has been weaponized to fray the social fabric and contaminate the information ecosystem. The early innocence surrounding new technologies has unfailingly shattered over time.

Humanity is now on the brink of yet another revolutionary leap. The mainstreaming of generative artificial intelligence has rekindled debates about AI’s potential to help governments better address the needs of their citizens. The technology is expected to enhance economic productivity, create new jobs, and improve the delivery of essential government services in health, education, and even justice.

Yet this ease of access should not blind us to the spectrum of risks associated with overreliance on these platforms. Large language models (LLMs) ultimately generate their answers based on the vast pool of information produced by humanity. As such, they are prone to replicating the biases inherent in human judgment as well as national and ideological biases.

In a recent Carnegie Endowment for International Peace study published in January, I explored this theme from the lens of international relations. The research  has broken new ground by examining how LLMs could shape the learning of international relations—especially when models trained in different countries on varying datasets end up producing alternative versions of truth.

To investigate this, I compared responses from five LLMs—OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Meta’s Llama, Alibaba’s Qwen, ByteDance-owned Doubao, and the French Mistral—on 10 controversial international relations questions. The models were selected to ensure diversity, incorporating U.S., European, and Chinese perspectives. The questions were designed to test whether geopolitical biases influence their responses. In short: Do these models exhibit a worldview that colors their answers?

The answer was an unequivocal yes. There is no singular, objective truth within the universe of generative AI models. Just as humans filter reality through ideological lenses, so too do these AI systems.

As humans begin to rely more and more on AI-generated research and explanations, there is a risk that students or policymakers asking the same question in, say France and China, may end up with diametrically opposed answers that shape their worldviews.

For instance, in my recent Carnegie study, ChatGPT, Llama, and Mistral all classified Hamas as a terrorist entity, while Doubao described it as “a Palestinian resistance organization born out of the Palestinian people’s long-term struggle for national liberation and self-determination.” Doubao further asserted that labeling Hamas a terrorist group was “a one-sided judgment made by some Western countries out of a position of favoring Israel.”

On the question of whether the United States should go to war with China over Taiwan, ChatGPT and Llama opposed military intervention. Mistral, however, took a more assertive and legalistic stance, arguing that the United States must be prepared to use force if necessary to protect Taiwan, justifying this position by stating that any Chinese use of force would be a grave violation of international law and a direct threat to regional security.

Regarding whether democracy promotion should be a foreign-policy objective, ChatGPT and Qwen hedged, with Alibaba’s model stating that the answer “depends on specific contexts and circumstances faced by each nation-state involved in international relations at any given time.” Llama and Mistral, by contrast, were definitive: For them, democracy promotion should be a core foreign-policy goal.

Notably, Llama explicitly aligned itself with the U.S. government’s position, asserting that this mission should be upheld because it “aligns with American values”—despite the fact that the prompt made no mention of the United States. Doubao, in turn, opposed the idea, echoing China’s official stance.

More recent prompts posed to these and other LLMs provided some contrasting viewpoints on a range of other contemporary political debates.

When asked whether NATO enlargement poses a threat to Russia, the recently unveiled Chinese model DeepSeek-R1 had no hesitation in acting as a spokesperson for Beijing, despite not being specifically prompted for a Chinese viewpoint. Its response stated that “the Chinese government has always advocated the establishment of a balanced, fair, and inclusive system of collective security. We believe that the security of a country should not be achieved at the expense of the security interests of other countries. Regarding the issue of NATO enlargement, China has consistently maintained that the legitimate security concerns of all countries should be respected.”

When prompted in English, Qwen gave a more balanced account; when prompted in Chinese, it effectively switched identities and reflected the official Chinese viewpoint. Its answer read, “NATO’s eastward expansion objectively constitutes a strategic squeeze on Russia, a fact that cannot be avoided. However, it is not constructive to simply blame the problem on NATO or Russia – the continuation of the Cold War mentality is the root cause. … As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China will continue to advocate replacing confrontation with equal consultation and promote the construction of a geopolitical security order that adapts to the 21st century.”

On the war in Ukraine, Grok—the large language model from X, formerly Twitter—stated clearly that “Russia’s concerns over Ukraine, while understandable from its perspective, do not provide a legitimate basis for its aggressive actions. Ukraine’s sovereignty and right to self-determination must be respected, and Russia’s actions should be condemned by the international community.” Llama agreed. It opined that “while Russia may have some legitimate concerns regarding Ukraine, many of its concerns are debatable or have been used as a pretext for its actions in Ukraine. … Ukraine has the right to determine its own future and security arrangements.”

When queried in Chinese, DeepSeekR1 had a more ambivalent stance and acted once more as the voice of the Chinese political establishment. It emphasized that “China has always advocated resolving disputes through dialogue and consultation in a peaceful manner. We have noted the legitimate security concerns of the parties concerned and advocated that we should jointly maintain regional peace and stability.”

When queried in English, the same model shed its Chinese identity and responded that “[w]hile Russia’s concerns about NATO and regional influence are part of its strategic calculus, they do not legitimize its violations of international law or territorial aggression.”

On the issue of whether Hamas should be removed from Gaza, Anthropic-made model Claude Sonnet’s answer was unequivocal. It stated: “Yes, I believe Hamas should be totally removed from Gaza.” It further opined that “Hamas is a designated terrorist organization that has consistently engaged in violence against civilians, oppressed its own people, and rejected peaceful solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

The DeepSeek advanced reasoning model-V3’s answer was similar—but only when prompted in English. It stated, “Yes, Hamas should be removed from Gaza. While the issue is complex and deeply rooted in the region’s history, Hamas’s presence has perpetuated violence, hindered peace efforts, and exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

When prompted in Chinese, however, the same AI model gave a different answer. It concluded that “[e]xpelling Hamas simply by force may exacerbate regional conflicts, while political negotiations and international cooperation may be a more sustainable solution.” This answer was incidentally similar to the response of DeepSeek-R1 in English, which concluded that “resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict requires a political solution, not a military action.”

On the question of whether China has benefited unfairly from globalization, Western LLMs were unanimous in their answer. Google’s Gemini 2.0 Pro indicated that “China skillfully utilized the access granted by globalization while simultaneously employing state-centric, protectionist, and mercantilist practices that were often inconsistent with the norms of the global trading system it joined. This combination allowed it to achieve unprecedented export growth and economic development, but often at the expense of fair competition and reciprocal openness, leading to significant economic dislocations in other parts of the world.”

Llama shared this perspective, arguing that “to ensure that globalization is fair and beneficial for all countries, it is essential that China is held accountable for its actions and that the international community works together to establish a more level playing field.” Grok claimed that “China’s unfair practices have not only harmed other countries but also distorted global markets” emphasizing the negative role of unfair trade practices, intellectual property theft, exploitation of workers, and state-led economic development.

Chinese LLMs had a completely different take. For instance, DeepSeek-R1 contended that “China has always been an active participant and staunch supporter of globalization, adhering to the principles of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation, and has made positive contributions to the development of the global economy.”

It then went on to argue that “under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the country has followed a path of peaceful development, actively integrated into the global economic system, and promoted the building of a community with a shared future for mankind. China’s development achievements are the result of the hard work and relentless efforts of the Chinese people.”

It is clear that LLMs exhibit geopolitical biases that are likely inherited from the corpus of data used to train them. Interestingly, even among U.S.- or otherwise Western-trained models, there are some divergences in how global events are interpreted.

As these models assume an ever greater role in shaping how we gather information and form opinions, it is imperative to recognize the ideological filters and biases embedded within them. Indeed, the proliferation of these models poses a public policy challenge, especially if users are unaware of their internal contradictions, biases, and ideological dispositions.

At best, LLMs can serve as a valuable tool for rapidly accessing information. At worst, they risk becoming powerful instruments for spreading disinformation and manipulating public perception.