Today local and provincial elections were held in Belgium and the results are currently being made public. The communist party (PVDA-PTB) while staying relatively small has already managed to accomplish a few seats they didn't have before. I'm eagerly waiting until more results of Wallonia come through, where the PTB is much more popular than the PVDA in Flanders.
Zijn er nog Belgische anons hier? Wat vinden jullie ervan? // Y a-t-il encore des anons belges ici et qu'est-ce que vous en pensent?
Belgian elections thread
Angel Stewart
Juan Barnes
Belgje present. I think Belgian politics are a joke, I want to vote communist soooo badly but the PVDA or SPA or even GROEN (the green party) are so retarded… Belgain politics is just a 'who knows who'-game while throwing buzz words like "you're extreme right" "ow you're left" at each other. For god sake even the most right wing party in flanders (Vlaams belang) is more left economically than the workers party (SPA).
Brandon Thompson
Needs more Mertens is what I think
Samuel Lopez
Agreed comrade.
This is now a Mertens thread
Generally it's a massive circus obviously. I don't know if it's better in a lot of countries on the European mainland though, with the exception of Spain, Portugal and Greece where the left seems to be fairly strong.
Why would you say so? I've been involved with the party for a bit less than a year and I think they're definitely decent. They often get behind social democratic measures, but this is IMO the best praxis given the circumstances, in which it would be absurd to call for revolution. The Russian communists once wrote a ☭TANKIE☭ article calling Mertens out for being a "revisionist", basically because he doesn't walk around cosplaying as Kim Jong-un, but in debates it's frequently very clear PVDA politicians (including Mertens and Raoul Hedebouw) still adhere to Marxism: they heavily criticize capitalism, defend the works of Marx against strawmanning, always defend workers' interests, etc. Moreover they are tactically quite good which is what makes them so popular. I like Ludo Martens but under his leadership, the PVDA would arguably never have managed to grow this large.
Socially too, it seems, considering how people like Johan Vande Lanotte embrace rhetoric about a "schoonmaak" (if i remember the terminology correctly) to get rid of migrants, yet completely ignore the rising poverty in the country.
It's also pretty funny how VB takes over PVDA rhetoric about combatting the project developers. Horseshoe theory confirmed i guess
Robert Campbell
Adding to this, the fact that the PVDA programme was put together based on the results of a large-scale enquiry among working class people makes it more democratic than any other programme in Belgium.
Cooper Peterson
Being nationalistic doesn't tie you to any sort of economic policy.
Ethan Fisher
You can follow the election results here:
vlaanderenkiest.be
elections2018.wallonie.be
bru2018.brussels
Which is why I said "socially".
Noah Perry
Somewhat off-topic yet directed at the Belgian anons here: Do you agree with the analysis PVDA/Comac makes of Schild & Vrienden? It seems clear to me this movement can be positioned in the international alt-right, but do you think it is correct (apart from the tactical side of things) to stress the links between S&v and N-VA? Or do you agree more with the argument many rightists make, that this movement just consists of "edgy teens" and shouldn't be taken all too seriously?
Jace Anderson
...
Anthony Young
Really user, you work with the PVDA? I would like to speak with you some time. My problem with the PVDA and the main reason I don't vote for is the fact that their main selling point is their opinion on social issues and their economic policie seem to ne a secondary thing. I know that every party in Belgium does this but for an communist one economics should be priority. Atleast I do think so
Tyler Torres
nederlander hier, misschien tijd voor een nieuwe beneluxdraad binnenkort? weet niet met hoeveel we nog zijn
ok boomer
John Brooks
I've been mostly active in Comac because I still study, but I took part in a few PVDA actions. I can see what you are getting at, however I do think economic issues are also very high among the party's priorities? Their campaign is aimed for a very large part at limiting investments in prestige projects, taxing companies/millionnaires and investing in healthcare, education, public transport and housing instead. I'm not sure which issues you would call social and which economic though - surely those two are for a large part connected.
Personally I wish the Marxist viewpoint was more explicitly present in the PVDA's analyses, but tactically speaking the current moves of the party are much wiser than publishing edgy books about Stalin and handing them out in the trade unions like Ludo Martens apparently did. Hedebouw's interventions in parliament are very good imo, would be good if more PVDA politicians were there to represent the working class voice.
Ik heb een tijdje geleden geprobeerd en toen reageerde er amper iemand, maar kennelijk zijn we nog wel met een paar dus ga ervoor. /nederdraad/ was de beste thread op leftypol toen hij nog populair was
Wyatt Butler
what's a mertens?
Andrew Davis
youtube.com
Hedebouw vernietigt rechtse sociale-taksenstrijder op absolute wijze met FEITEN en LOGICA
Sebastian Ramirez
The N-VA is likely the most attractive Belgian political party for the international alt-right. Vlaams-Belang has a stuffy image, and is stuck in a position of irrelevance because of the cordon sanitaire. If they want to make progress they have to co-opt the N-VA, which the N-VA seems somewhat receptive to. Their rhetoric seems to be shifting in the alt-right's direction. Franken has been engaging in some heavy populist-style dog whistling on Twitter. If N-VA cannot acknowledge this development, we have to do it for them.
Nope. From that weird zone in between moomers and zoomers. I'm just describing what the picture communicates. I like Mertens.
Austin Gomez
Als iemand iets te bespreken heeft natuurlijk :^)
Is onanist dood trouwens, of is hij gestopt met naamflikkeren?
Gabriel Campbell
which uni and what course? I would really like to have some real leftist frens.
Logan Gomez
Ik doe wijsbegeerte (meme-studie maar wel relatief linkse mensen) op de kul. Sws ook bij comac komen! Ik was eerst bang dat het allemaal vagelijk "progressieve" mensen zouden zijn die niks van communisme moeten weten (en misschien zullen sommige acties idd te "progressief" gekleurd zijn naar je smaak), maar zowat iedereen is echt anti-kapitalistisch, met ook flink wat ☭TANKIE☭-types en mensen die een hoop Marx en Lenin hebben gelezen. Of werk je al?
Chase Sanders
That's not even getting into the immigrant populations which I frankly don't mind that much because at least their shops allow me to buy actually edible food, because fuck Belgian "foods" like the "tortured underground salad with boiled bacon covered in suspicious white sauce" they call chicons.
Where the fuck does this meme that West Europe is "better" come from, our unis might not be as highly rated, but holy shit I miss my ancestral Slavlands and it's barely been a few months, save me from this pedohilic rotten swamp, please!
Leo Perez
Ooooh nu ben ik jaloers… 'k ben echt nog aan het denken om na mijn bachelor of master een verkorte bach wijsbegeerte te doen. Is het de moeite?
Doe nu burgie, ook aan de kul.
En ja wat je zegt, wat ik al van comac heb gezien was iets te 'progressief'. Zoals vorig jaar die actie toen THEOOOO kwam spreken. Dat schrikt wat af voor de twijfelaars en mensen die gewoon zoveel mogelijk verschillende meningen willen horen. Als je begrijpt wat ik wil zeggen. Heb wel al vaak gedacht om naar een evenement te komen.
Owen Scott
Wow which one sounds based
Dood aan de fransozen, also brussels needs to be nuked and is rightfully flemish territory.
Go back if you dont like it lol
Christopher Rivera
late wut hopen
Adrian Gomez
Ameriburger edgelords that think their country's black population is the cause of literally all societal ills. The kind of people that jerk it to pictures of Roman statues.
Anthony Ward
Hey gozerts wanneer weer een lagelandedraad?
Cooper Flores
you should have chosen Leuven, better uni, better people, better "city"
Leo Williams
BEHEAD THOSE WHO INSULT PAPIEZ
Besides I'm used to pic related, not some boorish grey horizon
I had no idea that Brussels was such a shithole or that the 19th century catholic/liberal kulturkampf was still a thing in this country.
Ayden Adams
Ja kan ik geloven, burgie is wel "N'VA-ers: de richting" van wat ik ervan weet.
Ik vind het de moeite al zijn sommige vakken er wat teveel aan. Het is alleszins heel eclectisch, lijkt me sterk dat er niets in de richting is dat je zou aanspreken. We hadden ook twee vakken door een marxistische professor (Matthias Lievens) nl Kritische Maatschappijtheorie en Socialistische/marxistische stromingen, maar jammer genoeg schrapt de KUL uitgerekend die vakken wegens besparingen, nota bene vakken waarvan het auditorium helemaal volzat terwijl irrelevante keuzevakken die door 5 man worden gevolgd blijven bestaan.
Ik vind vooral dat het anti-kapitalistische aspect nog meer naar buiten toe benadrukt zou moeten worden. De "progressiviteit" maakt het misschien toegankelijker voor een breed publiek maar kan zeker ook sommige mensen afstoten die we juist goed kunnen gebruiken. Nochtans zijn er binnen comac zelf heel wat uiteenlopende meningen, in comac leuven zit er bv. een kerel die wel antikapitalistisch is maar voor de rest een complete NVA'er. En we doen normaal elk jaar een leesgroep rond een of twee teksten van Marx/Engels, plus een "vorming politieke economie" wat wel goeie evenementen zijn. Alles bijeen zul je sommige mensen en evenementen te hippie-achtig vinden maar zul je andere vastwel kunnen waarderen
Deze dinsdag om 20u doen we een "conferentie" waar oa Marc van Ranst (prof virologie) komt spreken over schild & vrienden mocht dat je interesseren! facebook.com
is that you slavoj?
Joshua Nguyen
NIEUWE NEDERDRAAD
Josiah Johnson
NIEUWE NEDERDRAAD
Cooper James
So what ended up happening?
Did /ourguys/ get any (more) seats?
Brayden Wood
The Flemish went right, the Walloons left, Maoists won some seats in Brussels, green wave all around, classical liberals btfo.
That's the tl;dr
Camden Nguyen
Except they didn't? PVDA grew way bigger than it's ever been, whereas there's at least not MORE success for the right than normally (with some local exceptions like Ninove where the fascists got 40%).
Carson Cox
sounds good
Blake Cruz
who?