Ben Norton Profile picture
Aug 23, 2019 5 tweets 5 min read Read on X
New @Moderate_Rebels episode on Hong Kong:

With @CarlZha, we discuss the real colonial history of Hong Kong, the bigoted anti-China right-wing nativism fueling the protests, the economic conditions, and the local oligarchs' leading role in the chaos
soundcloud.com/moderaterebels…
@Moderate_Rebels @CarlZha In our interview @CarlZha talks about the extreme bigotry against mainland Chinese in the Hong Kong protests, especially among its US-backed nativist leaders and from Trump-allied oligarchs who publish ads comparing them to locusts:

soundcloud.com/moderaterebels…
@Moderate_Rebels @CarlZha Here is Hong Kong media oligarch Jimmy Lai (known as "the Rupert Murdoch of Asia") — who funds and strongly supports the anti-China protests in Hong Kong — meeting with neocons John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Mike Pence in DC this July
@Moderate_Rebels @CarlZha CNN did a blatant propaganda puff piece for Hong Kong's anti-Chinese right-wing oligarch Jimmy Lai ("the Rupert Murdoch of Asia")

Lai admits there is a new "cold war" and boasts: "We in Hong Kong are fighting for the shared values of the US against China"
edition.cnn.com/2019/08/27/med…
@Moderate_Rebels @CarlZha CNN: That right-wing media oligarch Jimmy Lai "has ties with the US is undeniable.

"Last month, he flew to Washington to discuss with US VP Mike Pence, Sec of State Mike Pompeo and Nat Sec Adviser John Bolton how fundamental Hong Kong's freedom is to the US' standoff with China"

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More from @BenjaminNorton

Oct 14
To understand the genocide in Gaza, it's important to recognize Zionism's roots in European colonialism.

Israel was not created due to the Nazi Holocaust. The British empire endorsed creating Israel in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, when Europe was colonizing the Middle East🧵Image
It's not a coincidence that the Balfour Declaration came immediately after the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement, in which the British and French empires carved up the Ottoman empire's territory and established their own colonies in the Middle East (West Asia). Image
Zionism was directly modeled after 19th-century European colonialist movements.

Zionist "founding father" Theodor Herzl wrote a letter to Cecil Rhodes, the genocidal colonizer of Africa, asking for help to colonize Palestine.

Herzl boasted that Zionism was "something colonial". Image
Read 8 tweets
Aug 17
The neo-feudal corporate landlords at Apple are charging creators on Patreon a 30% fee for all new memberships registered using the iOS app.

It's the perfect symbol of the future of the economy -- neo-feudal rent extraction by corporate monopolies.

🧵This is how the scam works: Image
It all started with Big Tech corporations first offering supposedly "free" services (which were paid for by selling users' information).

Those "free" platforms soon became monopolies, and were so deeply embedded into the economy that they are now (privatized) digital utilities.
A 20th-century economy needed utilities like an electrical grid, water plants, sewage system, highways, etc.

These natural monopolies should be publicly owned, provided as public goods to prevent rent-seeking by corporate landlords (although neoliberals want them privatized too)
Read 8 tweets
Aug 8
🚨The US allows its athletes to cheat, including at the Olympics.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) says US agency USADA let athletes use steroids in exchange for spying on other violators.

This is the Rules-Based Order™ -- the US violates the rules whenever it's convenient.
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Russia was banned from the Olympics in 2019 due to doping. Now we know that the US has allowed athletes to use steroids (ie cheat) since at least 2011, with no punishment

Also, Russia was banned this year due to the war in Ukraine, but the US invaded Iraq and faced no punishment
What the US government calls the "Rules-Based International Order" is a global imperialist dictatorship, in which the US makes up "rules", and violates them whenever it's in its interests.

But then the US invades or sanctions foreign countries it accuses of breaking the "rules".
Read 4 tweets
Jul 31
The US State Department supported Nazism in the 1930s, saying genocidal fascism "must succeed", or communism would win.

The US charge d'affaires in Germany praised the so-called "more moderate section of the [Nazi] party, headed by Hitler".

These are objective historical facts.
Image
Before WWII even ended, the US government recruited genocidal Nazi monsters to launch its cold war on the Soviet Union.

Later, the CIA recruited Nazi spies like infamous criminal Reinhard Gehlen, Third Reich's spy chief on the Eastern Front, to continue Hitler's war on the USSR.

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Many US corporations profited from investments in Nazi Germany, such as Chase Bank, Standard Oil, IBM, Ford, GM, Coca-Cola, and Kodak.

Hitler also got help from US Senator Prescott Bush, father of President George H W Bush, grandfather of George W Bush.
theguardian.com/world/2004/sep…
Read 4 tweets
Jul 23
Crucial point by prominent Palestinian scholar Joseph Massad:
"The claim that the Israel lobby controls US policy in the Middle East amounts to absolving the US of responsibility for its imperialist policies".

Israel is an extension of US imperialism.
middleeasteye.net/big-story/why-…
The US empire has always violently opposed anti-colonial struggles.

The US gov't has been an "implacable enemy of all national liberation groups".

"Why the US would then support Palestinian national liberation absent the Israel lobby is something this argument fails to address" Image
Blaming the Israel lobby for the Iraq War is absurd

The invasion of Iraq follows a consistent US imperial policy since WWII of overthrowing Third World states that control their national resources, land, oil, minerals

See: Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Venezuela & Iran today

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Read 4 tweets
Jul 16
Trump's VP pick JD Vance was created in a political petri dish by billionaire oligarch Peter Thiel.

"PayPal Mafia Don" Thiel founded CIA/Pentagon-backed mass surveillance corporation Palantir.

He was an FBI informant and got his start at CIA-linked law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.
Image
Far-right billionaire oligarch Peter Thiel, a CIA-linked FBI informant who has funded Donald Trump and his "MAGA" allies, also funded a spy company that hacked WhatsApp.
forbes.com/sites/thomasbr…
Libertarianism nearly always turns into fascism, because libertarians and fascists value private property and capital above human life.

Libertarians eventually realize that, to save capitalism, democracy must be destroyed. Pinochet is the textbook example
Read 4 tweets

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