In this video posted today (https://www.youtube.com/live/0ggaIWliyuY) they discussed the situation in Iran. I’m only 35 minutes in, and so far they seem to think that major factors in Trump’s decision to attack Iran are pressure from Saudi Arabia and Israel, and because Trump wants the US to be actively at war so he can suspend the US midterm elections.
A couple of weeks ago they had another episode that also had some questionable takes (https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/guillotines-for-the-epstein-class). For example, they bought into the narrative that Venezuela was selling oil to Israel.
I get the impression that they are consuming mostly western media and believing it quite uncritically (Alyson specifically cited CNN as a source for some of what she mentioned). Their perspectives also seem overly focused on US domestic issues and the psychology of Trump, perhaps lacking an adequate understanding of the bigger picture of these international situations in terms of capitalism/imperialism.
I’ve listened to a lot of their content, especially the older theory-focused episodes with Alyson, which were very helpful back when I was first beginning my ML study. Not sure if something has changed with them recently, or if I’m just now noticing it, but some of their recent takes on geopolitical issues are troubling to me.
So basically my question is, what are your thoughts on these takes they’ve had? I’m especially wondering about the claim of Saudi Arabia pressuring the US to attack Iran, as this was the first I’ve heard of that.
My opinion is that RevLeft oftentimes is more of an spontaneous ramble than actually researched and scripted speech, and I’ll take a look at this episode later, but I don’t see the issue with the first part of their position as you present it. Trump and Dubio have been signalling for a strategic retreat almost a week after they deployed CENTCOM, and there were a lot of leaks that the diplomatic delegation was trying to negotiate ending it with limited symbolic strikes like they did after the assassination of Soleimani in 2020. It turned around specifically when Netanyahu made his visit, and Israel was even the first to attack.
I only have no idea about the midterms thing. I haven’t seen any attempt to cement that as a possibility from anybody in the US, and it seems like a horribly risky maneuvre for no gain whatsoever. So what if the Republicans lose the midterms if Congress basically does nothing anyway? The Dems are never going to fight on anything that actually matters so directly attacking the domestic legitimacy of his own government like that would be a level of self-sabotage that would make Nicholas II dissolving the State Duma look genius.
Yeah I feel like a lot of the times it’s very vibes based. Party due to the fact that they want to record and edit the episodes as soon as possible.
Trump’s decision to attack Iran are pressure from Saudi Arabia and Israel, and because Trump wants the US to be actively at war so he can suspend the US midterm elections.
Israeli pressure is a fact. Saudi attitudes have been “let’s not fuck with Iran” for a while now. Pretty sure even UAE and the other gulf states were in the same boat.
Midterm suspension is on the lesser end liberal fear mongering. That’s a sort of plan Heggeseth would think is clever, but theres no said that’d ever work. We had midterms during the Civil War. The Republicans would balk at that harder than the dems would.
For example, they bought into the narrative that Venezuela was selling oil to Israel.
As in before Maduro was arrested?
As in before Maduro was arrested?
The episode they are talking about was released on the 17th of February.
There were some, now debunked, news that venezuela was selling oil to israel and -according to OP- the podcast people ate that news up.
I recently subscribed to their podcast and it definitely seems to have a pretty strong liberal bias from the 2 - 3 episodes I’ve listened to. So much so that I haven’t bothered to keep listening to them.
The podcast is essentially verbal Twitter reposts. As soon as it was recommended to me in 2023 I looked up Ukraine on their site and found they had promoted a fake communist group which didn’t much seem to mind the other groups getting thrown into vans in sacks or the massacre in Donbas. Haven’t tried to listen to many more of them. You should always do this with people’s podcast recommendations. The bar is phenomenally low, for some reason.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
