D2. Socialism

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Since the beginning of the year, demonstrations and strikes have continued across Syria. Demands range from increased political participation and democratic rights1One example is the two sit-ins organized by the “April 17 Gathering” in Damascus in April and June, under the banner “Rights and Dignity.” Their demands included: a commitment from the transitional authorities to fulfill their duties and exercise their powers in conducting the transition process; working towards a genuine political transition based on an inclusive national dialogue leading to elections; activating the transitional justice process and bringing perpetrators of crimes to justice; rejecting the perpetuation of the Assad regime and the rehabilitation of its figures; broadening political participation through free elections to local councils and trade unions; strengthening the role of political parties and rejecting the monopolization of power by any one entity or faction; establishing good governance based on competence, integrity, and transparency; ending the chaos surrounding appointments and the distribution of power; combating corruption; criminalizing sectarian speech; and guaranteeing an independent, transparent, and fair judicial system.to condemnation of the actions and violations committed by Israeli occupation forces in the Quneitra region, and the right to education in Suwayda.2A campaign was launched in May 2026 in the Suwayda Governorate to guarantee the right of thousands of students to take their secondary school leaving exams in the governorate, in a safe and stable environment. The authorities in Damascus have so far opposed this, demanding that students travel to Damascus to take their exams.

Journalist Zeina Shahla documented nearly eighty demonstrations across the country between February and April, most of them motivated by social and economic grievances.3From Zeina Shahla’s article: “Over the past three months, we have documented nearly 80 vigils of protest, averaging one per day, in Damascus and its surrounding countryside, as well as in Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa, Idlib, Latakia, Hasakah, Quneitra, Daraa, Hama, and Homs. These vigils were organized by students, taxi drivers, organ transplant recipients, families of missing persons, street vendors, residents of devastated areas awaiting reconstruction, lawyers, teachers, and traders from certain markets. Furthermore, some vigils brought together different segments of society around common demands: the cancellation of the electricity price hike, improved living conditions, respect for the rule of law, the resolution of security issues, the fight against corruption, and the commemoration of key moments in the Syrian revolution and war.” Furthermore, the governorate of Suwayda, in particular, has been the scene of frequent vigils following the massacres of last July, with demands such as the right to self-determination, the return of displaced persons, and the revelation of the fate of the disappeared. The newspaper Kassioun subsequently recorded 34 rallies and demonstrations in 21 locations across several Syrian governorates, cities, towns, and universities between May 18 and 24, 2026. Protests are still ongoing at the time of writing.

Since the beginning of 2026, discontent with socio-economic problems has intensified. Polling in different areas of Syria has been showing growing dissatisfaction regarding socio-economic issues. According to the website Syria in Transition:

Yet by April the mood had changed (towards the ruling authorities). The most serious deterioration was in attitudes toward the economy and the state’s capacity to manage it. Only 13 percent of respondents now believed the government was doing enough to tackle soaring energy and food prices, while 66 percent said its efforts were insufficient.

This has been reflected as well with rising labor strikes and protests denouncing worsening working and living conditions.

Syrian ruling authorities have deepened a political-economic orientation favoring a commercial model focused on short-term profit, to the detriment of Syria’s productive sectors. This economic orientation was already at play during the former Assad’s regime. The majority of the investment projects offered by Damascus to foreign investors demonstrate this pattern, and so does the nature of the investment promises made to Syria since December 2024 into tourism, real estate, and financial services. Most of these promises, however, still await their implementation.

Meanwhile, no protection has been provided to national production, particularly manufacturing industry and agriculture, against foreign competitive products. Quite the opposite. Accelerated trade liberalization is threatening their existence even more. In late January 2025, Damascus reduced customs duties on more than 260 Turkish products. Syria’s trade deficit with Turkey reached an all-time high of $3.26 billion in 2025, according to data from the Turkish Statistical Institute. This represents an 86.5 percent rise in comparison to 2024, when the deficit stood at $1.74 billion.

No protection has been provided to national production, particularly manufacturing industry and agriculture, against foreign competitive products. Quite the opposite.

At the same time, Syrian officials announced on several occasions since their arrival to power their willingness to start the process of privatization of state assets, or at least to encourage a public-private partnership model to manage them. This includes essential services such as education and health. More recently, rumors of potential privatizations of state-owned banks have also emerged.

The Syrian ministry of finance has also drafted a new tax system that should come into force at the beginning of 2027, which will probably diminish the state’s financial capacities and revenues even further. Indeed, with a unified and non-categorical tax structure, and a similar corporate tax applied equally across all business entities, regardless of their size, this weakens the ability to expand the revenue base and is fundamentally unequal.4There will be no tax to pay for agriculture, bank deposit returns, and stock trading. A 2 percent rate will apply to supplies and services by non-residents. There will be a 10 percent rate in the health, technology, education, and industrial sectors, while other sectors—including trade and services—will pay 15 percent. Income tax will only kick in after the first Syrian pound (SYP) 60mn—around $5,310. Thereafter, there will be a 6 percent rate for the first SYP 5mn ($442.5) and 8 percent over SYP 5mn ($442.5). Exemptions are envisaged on transfers of company shares, revaluation of fixed assets, returns and interest on bank deposits, local exports of goods and services, the agricultural sector and its associations, children’s medical expenses, education, rent, and interest on housing loans. For corporate donations to good causes, there will be a special tax deduction. At the same time, a sales tax has been introduced, which could serve as a precursor to a VAT, at a 5 percent rate on essential goods. Similarly, the new investment law enacted by presidential decree in June 2026 provides large concessions to investors, such as permanent exemption from income taxes for agricultural and educational projects, reductions of up to 80 percent of income taxes in export-oriented and priority industrial sectors, and wide customs exemptions. In addition, full ownership rights are allowed for foreign investors, as well as renewable residence permits, and unrestricted profit repatriation.

Syria’s new tax system and investment law reflect the ruling authorities’ prioritization of investment from large foreign companies and high-net-worth individuals, as well as promoting dynamic consumption, rather than strengthening the country’s productive capacities.

This dynamic is also reflected in the reliance on foreign capital and assistance, as well as local businessmen, to promote Syrian reconstruction and economic recovery through foreign donations or donation campaigns, such as the Syrian Development Fund and other initiatives for specific regions and cities.

Accompanying these policies favoring economic liberalization and interests of big capital, the ruling authorities have promulgated a series of decisions and measures boosting dynamics of concentration of power in the Syrian economy.

Strikes and popular protests

The protests have mobilized various segments of society, including transport workers, laborers, farmers, teachers, students, lawyers, and bakers, reflecting growing discontent across the country with the continued erosion of purchasing power and the deterioration of public services. They also targeted corruption, nepotism, and a lack of transparency and participation in decision-making processes.

The protests erupted in mid-May, initially in Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, and Daraa, and then spread to other parts of the country, after the Syrian Ministry of Economy and Industry set the price of a ton of wheat for the 2026 harvest at 4,600,000 Syrian pounds (approximately $333.30 at the unofficial exchange rate of May 27). This decision sparked widespread discontent among farmers, as the cost of producing a ton of wheat currently fluctuates between $340 and over $530. Following these protests, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa issued Legislative Decree No. 120 of 2026, granting a subsidy of 900,000 Syrian pounds (SYP) per ton of wheat delivered by farmers to the Syrian Grain Company. Thanks to this increase, the price of a ton of wheat reached approximately (SYP) 5,500,000, a price still lower than the protesters’ demands.

Other demonstrations took place during the same period, notably in the Hasakah Governorate against the reduction of diesel fuel allowances for agricultural projects, and in the Tarhin region, a rural area near Aleppo, where owners and employees of oil refineries protested the decision to permanently close them. The demonstrators also demanded fair compensation to guarantee a minimum standard of living, emphasizing that thousands of families depend on this sector as their primary source of income.

In June, strikes broke out at the privately owned Zanobia Ceramics company5Zanobia is a private company specializing in the manufacture of ceramics, granite and construction materials. It owns two industrial complexes: one in Al-Kisweh, a southern suburb of Damascus which houses many factories, and the other in the industrial zone of Adra, on the outskirts of Damascus.and at the Madar Detergent Company’s facilities and factories in the Kisweh region, near Damascus, employing 4,000 and 4,500 people respectively. The demonstrators demanded higher wages and better working conditions. After a week-long strike, the workers of the Zanobia company obtained satisfaction on several of their main demands, including an increase in their wages (which includes a rise of SYP 500,000, in addition to SYP 200,000 of cost-of-living allowance, for a total of SYP 700,000 (equivalent to $51.20 at the end of June)) and guarantees in terms of health coverage, including health insurance, the presence of a doctor in the factory, the provision of an ambulance and safety equipment at work.

Workers at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing in northern Idlib protested in late June against the administration’s imposition of a 24-hour shift system and unfair working conditions. Despite the administration’s threats of mass layoffs and replacements to break the strike, the workers—some with 14 years of service—maintained their demands for a more flexible work schedule. According to the website Al-Hal Net, the administration has already hired new employees, but about 90 percent of them resigned immediately, unable to continue due to the grueling working conditions and endless hours.

The city of Qamishli also witnessed several days of protests in late June, denouncing rising prices and poor living conditions, as well as power outages caused by fuel shortages. For example, protesters staged a sit-in to demonstrate against the rising price of diesel, demanding the reversal of this decision and an improvement in their living conditions, as the region experiences soaring prices for goods and services, along with increased transportation and production costs. Dozens of retirees held a sit-in outside the city’s Social Security office, at the invitation of the Retirees’ Group, to demand the expedited payment of their monthly pensions and an end to the delays and postponements affecting their entitlements. Following these mobilizations by retirees, the Retirees’ Group was officially announced at the end of June, with the aim of defending retirees’ rights to a decent standard of living, particularly by resolving issues related to their salaries and payment delays.

These sit-ins and demonstrations are taking place against a backdrop of runaway inflation plaguing the Syrian Jazira region (northeast Syria), with rising transportation and agricultural production costs, alongside a rise in commodity prices—as well as persistent complaints about deteriorating services and frequent power outages. For example, in mid-June, social unrest erupted in the Raqqa Governorate due to wage delays and their continued status as “irregular” workers—lacking legal protections and job security. These protests led to further strikes that affected the sanitation sector in several areas of the governorate.

Unfair dismissals and persistent austerity measures

Meanwhile, dismissals continued in several ministries throughout 2026, sparking further protests. In mid-June, laid-off workers from the General Cotton Yard Company in Idlib staged a sit-in to demand justice and their reinstatement.

The Syrian government has still not established clear, legal, and precise standards and procedures for dismissals or suspensions, fueling accusations of arbitrary dismissals. The human rights organization “Syrians for Truth and Justice” has expressed that it is deeply concerned about the compliance of these procedures with the legal safeguards stipulated in the Unified Fundamental Law for Workers No. 50 of 2004 (Articles 132 to 139). Furthermore, in June 2026, the organization published a report describing cases of arbitrary dismissals and forced transfers based on “sectarian, political, or gender backgrounds, or to criteria related to the individual’s stance on the Syrian uprising (in 2011), or regional and social affiliation” raising serious concerns about the use of the state restructuring process as a tool for exclusion and the reshaping of the public sector on unprofessional grounds.

Damascus authorities have continued to reduce the number of subsidized loaves of bread they distribute.

More recently, the government also increased salaries for specific jobs, generally in the higher strata of the administration or in positions considered as more “prestigious,” while the overwhelming majority of employees did not benefit from similar measures. Furthermore, salary disparities persist within the same ministries for similar jobs, with employees, often previously affiliated with the group Hay’at Tahrir Sham6This is the new name of Jabhat al-Nusra, which was founded as an al-Qaeda affiliate in 2012. The group took its current name when it dis-affiliated from al-Qaeda in 2017. Its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, became Syria’s president after leading a coalition of rebel forces to bring down the Assad regime in late 2024. or allied with it, appointed by the new authorities receiving higher salaries (often in US dollars).

Damascus authorities have continued to reduce the number of subsidized loaves of bread they distribute, from ten to eight per household daily, while maintaining the price at SYP 4,000. The ministry set the weight of a loaf of bread at 1,000 grams, down from 1,050 grams previously. As a reminder, in December 2024, the price of subsidized bread was SYP 400 (for 1,100 grams). These measures have exacerbated food insecurity among the most vulnerable populations.

Opposition to luxury real estate projects and population displacement

At the same time, several protests have erupted against real estate projects that have led to the displacement of local populations and the loss or erosion of their property rights. In Homs, inhabitants of the Qarabis neighborhood successfully pressured the Kuwait-based al-Omran Real Estate Development Company to cancel the element of its “Boulevard of Victory” plan affecting the neighbourhood, which would have threatened their properties and displaced them from their homes. In the beginning of May 2026, a protest was held in Damascus by the residents affected by Decree 66 of 2012 from the Mezzeh, Kfar Souseh, and Basateen al-Razi neighborhoods. This reflects the ongoing social and legal tensions surrounding major urban development projects, most notably the Marota City project. At the same time, in the Aleppo countryside, the inhabitants of Jabal Aqil demonstrated against the seizure of their land by the Turkish military base.

That same month, a demonstration took place in northern Raqqa to protest the local authorities’ plan to demolish housing north of the railway line, under the pretext of “reconstruction and investment.” This situation is all the more concerning given the rumors circulating about Saudi investment and the construction of housing by a Chinese company on the land. Official statements claim that the land is “state property,” a claim disputed by residents, who assert they possess official deeds of transfer and other legal documentation. During the demonstration, protesters chanted slogans demanding the resignation of the governor, who has refused to cancel the reconstruction plan affecting approximately 3,000 families, most of whom are low-income and living in poverty. They reaffirmed their determination to find a just solution that guarantees their housing rights and puts an end to the evictions and demolitions.

The country continues to suffer a deep housing and infrastructure shortfall … which frustrate[s] … the prospects for both internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees to return.

Overall, these real estate projects often aim to serve an elite class able to afford new and expensive housing projects and accumulate capital, rather than building housing schemes and infrastructures seeking to fulfill the interests of large segments of the population—who now suffer worsening living conditions and low purchasing power in the face of very high rents and expensive property prices. For example, one of the most emblematic real estate projects is “Yaafour 963,” launched by Overseas Investment Group, owned by Syrian-Emirati businessman Muwaffaq al-Qaddah, where apartments are offered starting at $300,000. Similarly, the “Abyat Hills” project, launched by the Saudi Abyat Real Estate Investment and Development Company in the Damascus suburbs of Qudsi and al-Bajaa, is estimated at over $2 billion and plans to build 22,000 homes in secure residences with modern amenities.

Moreover, the country continues to suffer a deep housing and infrastructure shortfall that threatens the processes of stabilization and recovery—which frustrate the  expectations for safe and dignified living conditions and the prospects for both internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees to return. According to the 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP), “one-third of the country’s housing stock has been damaged or destroyed, while critical infrastructure, including roads, water networks, electricity, and sanitation systems, remains largely non-functional.”

The cost of living continues to rise

The growing anger of the population reflects the disastrous economic situation in the country.

The poverty rate in Syria fluctuates between 80 and 90 percent, and 16 million people are in need of emergency aid to survive. This is in a country of about 26 million. More than 7 million people face severe food insecurity. Furthermore, due to a significant funding shortfall, the United Nations World Food Program announced in mid-May 2026 that it would scale back its operations in Syria by halving its emergency food assistance, from 1.3 million to 650,000 people, and ending its national bread subsidy program, which supported millions of people daily.

This is a context of a labor market very much disrupted, and high unemployment, particularly among the youth in a context of a lack of economic opportunities. While there are no clear rates for the size of unemployment in Syria, estimates ranges from 14 percent at the World Bank in 2025 to 60 percent according to the Syrian Minister of Economy and Industry, Nidal al-Shaar. In addition, 83 percent of the Syrian labor market is reported to be informal, meaning a lack of social security and legal protection, leaving millions of workers vulnerable to exploitation or sudden income loss. The returns of Syrians, both refugees and IDPs to their original regions, have also further strained the labor market, which lacks the capacity to absorb them. The International Organisation of Migration in May 2025 also underlined that the “lack of economic opportunities and essential services pose the greatest challenge for Syrians returning to their communities.”

What the Syrian people lack is not just job opportunities, but jobs that allow them to live with dignity and meet their daily needs.

The rise in prices of key commodities and services has also contributed to increasing inflation, pushing the cost of living higher still for Syrians. While the authorities raised public-sector salaries and pensions by 200 percent in July 2025, and by a further 50 percent in March 2026—bringing the minimum wage to SYP 1,256,000 per month (approximately $96.6 at the end of June according to the black exchange rate of SYP 13,000)—this remains far from enough to guarantee dignified living conditions. According to the Syrian Center for Policy Research, “the abject poverty line for a household reached 3.34 million per month in April 2026 (approximately $252 according to the black exchange rate of SYP 13,250 at the end of April), while the lower poverty line reached SYP 5.26 million ($397), and the upper poverty line reached SYP 7.26 million (548$).” Large segments of society rely on remittances from relatives abroad amounting to around $4 billion annually, according to estimates from earlier this year.

From this perspective, what the Syrian people lack is not just job opportunities, but jobs that allow them to live with dignity and meet their daily needs. In this context, reducing subsidies and increasing the prices of basic necessities will only worsen the situation and negate the effect of wage increases.

Limitations of protest movements

The protest movements and attempts at worker self-organization are positive developments, especially after years of war and dictatorship. For example, workers at the Zanobia factory established a strike committee, composed of four members elected by the strikers to negotiate on their behalf.

Despite the positive aspects of these demonstrations, their impact remains limited. First, these protests remain geographically confined, lacking coordination between regions, with the partial exception of demonstrations related to wheat prices. There is no close cooperation between workers in the same sector—for example, between public school teachers demonstrating in different governorates. This allows the authorities in Damascus to manage each movement separately and limit its influence on the political landscape.

Second, the protest movements lack political channels and means of expression, primarily due to the absence of political parties or mass political networks capable of relaying their demands and calls to action. Furthermore, with the exception of a few left-wing parties that observe these demonstrations without playing an influential role, political actors and civil society actors are not giving them the attention they deserve.

It is essential to build and rebuild grassroots organizations—from trade unions to feminist and women’s rights organizations, including local associations, progressive political parties, and national structures.

In this context, it is important to emphasize that worker self-organization and the struggle for democratic, independent, and mass unions—in order to foster coordination between workers and unions autonomous from the government—are essential for improving the living and working conditions of the population and, more broadly, for defending democratic rights.

Furthermore, it is essential to build and rebuild grassroots organizations—from trade unions to feminist and women’s rights organizations, including local associations, progressive political parties, and national structures—in order to unify them.

The collective and democratic organization of the working and popular classes is also the best way to confront and oppose the sectarian and ethnic tensions that continue to impact society. These tensions are often encouraged or fueled, or at least not radically addressed, by the central government and/or its political allies to divert attention from the social, economic, and political problems affecting the population. For example, recent demonstrations demanding justice for Assad-era crimes in Syria coincided with an escalation of attacks by civilian groups and incitement to sectarian hatred between June 13 and 17, 2026. Syrian authorities have so far failed to establish a mechanism to promote a comprehensive transitional justice process that would bring to justice all individuals and groups involved in war crimes. Such an approach could have played a crucial role in curbing reprisals and mitigating the escalation of sectarian and ethnic tensions.

Conclusion

Whatever political force came to power after Assad’s fall, it inherited a multitude of political, social, and economic challenges. However, the policies of the current Syrian authorities have exacerbated these difficulties instead of resolving them. Economically, the approach of the new ruling class has failed to improve the living conditions of a large segment of the population and has negatively impacted the recovery of the economy’s productive sectors.

The increasing number of demonstrations since the beginning of the year, fueled by deteriorating living and working conditions as well as socio-economic problems, demonstrates the shortcomings of current economic policies and could serve as a warning to Damascus.

Any successful economic recovery and reconstruction process must be based on a comprehensive and democratic political transition that empowers the various sectors of society—political parties, social actors such as trade unions, professional associations, the Farmers’ Union, human rights and feminist organizations, local associations, and so on. – the means to participate in decision-making processes, including in the economic sphere. This would create the necessary conditions for integrating their collective interests and establishing the political stability essential for the sustainability of these policies. Therefore, free and transparent elections must be organized within trade unions, professional associations, and agricultural federations so that these sectors can choose their representatives and defend the interests of their members.

Finally, the processes of capital accumulation and distribution, as well as economic policies, should be the subject of collective debate within society, and not the prerogative of a small elite in power.

The post Frustration and anger on Syria’s streets appeared first on Tempest.

The ICE murders of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, Texas, and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, have reignited public rage against the ongoing state violence against the most vulnerable in the U.S. and the global working class. Both Araujo and Guerrero were shot dead by ICE agents on the streets where they lived. Street protests against their killings have been the largest since the Minneapolis uprising against the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. These protests have renewed calls for “ICE OUT” of U.S. cities and communities.

The shootings and protests are a reflection of the deep unpopularity of the Trump regime and its policies — Trump continues to poll at under 40 percent. They are also a reminder about broader public outrage at MAGA administration attacks on U.S. workers: the spiraling war against Iran, which has driven up fuel prices and the cost of food and daily goods; the ongoing deportations of people in the U.S. and intimidation of immigrant communities; the assault on LGBTQI+ rights; and the repression of political dissidents, from the conviction and outrageous sentencing of the Prairieland protesters in Texas, to the trial of the “Minnesota 15” in Minneapolis, to federal charges brought against Palestinian activists at the University of Michigan.

State repression and its opposition are all signs of an ongoing crisis in U.S. politics and a shaky capitalist economy. The Trump administration seeks to stitch up its weakening legitimacy through brute force, the weaponization of the legal system, and ever-increasing efforts to undermine further democratic rights. These attacks, including on our fundamental rights to organize and protest, require urgent, broad, and coordinated defense.

Trump’s single-minded focus on weakening voting rights and his administration’s assailing of democratic process proceed apace with new efforts to intimidate and discredit election processes (as in Georgia). Rumors of ICE agents at polling places in November are well within the ideological and tactical bandwidth of the current administration. While no one can predict the outcome of the next round of U.S. elections, it is a certainty they will take place in an atmosphere of increased intimidation, especially for the most vulnerable in U.S. society. The efforts to weaken the already limited democracy in the U.S. should be of supreme concern for all working people, already embattled oppressed communities, and therefore the Left as a whole.

These conditions speak to the urgency of mass organizing. The Minneapolis rebellion last January, when more than 100,000 marched and thousands stayed home from work, showed us that mass resistance can serve as a brake on the worst tendencies of the capitalist system. They expressed the power of working-class organizing and the capacity of ordinary people to defend themselves against these forces of repression mobilized against them.

The United Left Platform, an alliance of six revolutionary socialist groups in the United States (International Marxist Humanist Organization, Socialist Horizon, Solidarity, Speak Out Socialists, Tempest Collective, and Workers Voice) calls on people of conscience everywhere to join the wide protests against the current regime. We also call on people to join a political organization committed to ending human immiseration. None of us can afford to stand on the sidelines as MAGA continues its deadly assault on the lives of workers, immigrants, the oppressed, and the most vulnerable. Our capacity to defeat Trump and to build an alternative to deeper crisis and further misery lies only in solidarity and collective struggle.

The United Left Platform will be holding public speakouts and meetings at the Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago September 4-7th. Learn more about our work at www.unitedleftplatform.net/.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Ronaldo Salgado, Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero; modified by Tempest.

The post Standing up to MAGA’s war against the people appeared first on Tempest.

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Kesimpulan

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The politics of struggles in which the people of Ukraine and Iran are engaged have been hotly debated by people who consider themselves to be socialists and/or anti-imperialists. This brief paper discusses the histories of imperialism and nationalism in terms of the diffusion of capitalism across the world and the struggles against it. In the process, it explains why socialists and anti-imperialists should support the struggles of the Iranian and Ukrainian peoples against imperial attacks by the United States and Russia and against attacks by their own governments and ruling classes.

As a preface: I have spent many years as an AIDS researcher and activist. In that connection, I have conducted research with Russian, Ukrainian and Iranian researchers and activists. I have very good friends in both Russia and Ukraine. All of the people I worked with in Iran have had to leave the country. Two of them were incarcerated for some years before they could leave.

Much of the discussion around the Ukrainian and Iranian struggles revolves around questions of national existence and the rights of nations to self-determination. So to begin with, I will present a VERY brief discussion of nationalism and nations.

Nations have been described as “imagined communities” to capture a key aspect of nationalism—that the people in a nation feel themselves to be “one people” in some sense and to share many values and histories with other members of their nation. Thus, many people without a nation-state of their own—such as many Kurds or Chechens today, or Jews before the creation of Israel, conceive of themselves as one people and often frame this as a form of nationalism.

Nation-states, on the other hand, are countries that have governments of some sort and have dominant belief systems that see some or all of their inhabitants as part of “one people,” their nation. In reality, as we will discuss, many nations now and in the past, have included oppressed groups of people (who may or may not feel themselves to be members of that or another nation). Clear examples include African Americans in pre-Civil War America, Ukrainians in Czarist Russia, Kurds in modern Turkey or Iran, and Palestinians in modern Israel.

Historically, I think it is accurate to claim that in 1200 A.D., there were no nations on Earth. There were kingdoms, empires, tribes, and other formations, but no nations. Many of the places we think of as nations were at most loose confederations of contending smaller entities with many different languages; in some cases, one of these smaller entities was nominally dominant. The United Kingdom (Britain) for example had Anglo Saxons, Normans, Welsh, Scots, and Irish, each with their own language or languages. France was similarly divided, as was Germany. Germany remained that way into the 1860s. Although Spain was ostensibly unified in the late 1400s, linguistic differences remained present for centuries, and indeed groups like the Basques and Catalonians continue to express non-Spanish national identities and seek to withdraw from Spain on various occasions. Similarly, India, China, and Iran were mixes of empires and smaller jurisdictions, and multi-lingual. Africa was a mix of empires and tribes, as were the Americas.

The development of capitalism sparked the creation of nationalisms, and of nations, when emerging capitalists began to see the advantages of unified territories with a single language and no tariffs between sub-units like dukedoms or counties. To some extent, these ideas emerged from the lawyers, religious schools, literary figures, and other intellectuals who were part of the development of mercantile trade and capitalism. The prior existence of printing presses and other modes of one-to-many communication over long distances facilitated this.

One typical aspect of this nationalism has been the formation of national myths that claim that the nation has a history that can be traced back centuries or millennia. Vladimir Putin and other Russian nationalists hark back to a mythical Russian people in Kyiv in the 900s; Zionists claim that Biblical Israel was the birthplace of a Jewish nation; the Nazis traced the roots of the German people back centuries to the age of mythical heroes.

Nationalism led to nation-states through a variety of pathways. Some nations came together as a relatively straightforward effect of capitalism and its culture leading to national feelings. This is what happened with England and France, for example, although in each case the process involved a lot of warfare and social struggle. Other areas, such as Italy and Germany, developed elite groupings within them who saw commonalities of language and culture, and wanted the advantages that being a unified nation-state would bring them and, they believed, other members of the nation. In these cases, a combination of conquest by one of the competing sub-units (such as Prussia) and insurgency led to the formation of a nation-state. A third pathway has been for oppressed people within an empire or other formation to rebel and win their freedom to establish their own nation-state. As we shall see, this is what happened with Ukraine, and it is also what happened with the anti-colonial formation of nations in Africa and Asia in the 20th Century. A related pathway has been nationalism created as the people of a geographical area fend off attempts by imperialism to conquer them. Examples include Chinese nationalism in the face of defeats and impositions by Britain in the Opium Wars and then by other European forces, and finally in the 1930s against a Japanese invasion; and Palestinian nationalism emerging in the early part of the 20th Century.

Colonialism and imperialism grew up with capitalism and the emergence of nations. This happened in Western Europe when several European states became kingdoms and organized navies and armies and private armed forces (e.g., the Dutch and English East India Companies) to conquer other lands and force their people into mining and agriculture on behalf of their national ruling class. First, Spain and Portugal conquered parts of Africa and Latin America. They used these as sources of forced labor by the people whom they had conquered, and gold, silver and farm products became the basis of royal fortunes and mercenary armies. Dutch, French, and British imperialism followed, and seized new lands and people in the southern cape of Africa, Indonesia, and elsewhere, as well as taking some territories away from each other and from the Spanish and Portuguese. The British and French profited enormously from the enslavement of kidnapped Africans. Sugar grown by slave labor was for many decades the mainstay of international trade, and the island of Haiti (under French rule) the most profitable place on Earth. The United States formed as a nation through rebellion against the British government. This meant they were free to continue to trade in slaves, to employ slave labor, and to conquer lands held by American Indians (often with genocidal intent and/or consequences). (British governments had been considering restricting slavery, and had enacted prohibitions against American colonists moving into the Northwest Territories of Ohio and west.)

Far less known in the United States and many other countries is the growth of the Russian empire. Starting in the 1600s, the areas around Moscow organized as Russia under the Czars and started a campaign of territorial expansion that mixed conquest and subjugation of some areas (such as much of what is now Poland, Ukraine and Belarus) with outright genocidal settler colonialism in other areas such as much of Northern and Central Asia in which Yakuts, Buryats, and many other groups of people suffered massive population declines. In areas like Ukraine and Belarus, it tried to suppress the local religions and languages and other elements of culture.

In the 1800s and ever since, both the Russian and British Empires established economic dominance and at times military take-overs of Iran. In World War II, they divided Iran between them before reluctantly withdrawing later in the 1940s and leaving the old Shah’s son in control of a constitutional monarchy. (Iran itself is somewhat imperial and dominates and exploits several subordinate peoples, including Kurds, Baloch, Azeris, Arabs, and Turkmens).

Beginning in the 1800s, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements and ideas began to develop and spread more widely. As mentioned earlier, this took the form of “re-unification” in Germany and Italy. In much of the rest of the world, it took the form of rebellion against colonial overlords.

Many social democrats in imperial countries opposed the anti-colonial nationalism in the Global South. It is notable that Marx shared some of these views when young, but by the 1850s was clearly becoming anti-imperialist. Books by Kevin Anderson provide wonderful analysis of this. 7Kevin B. Anderson, Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies (University of Chicago Press, 2015); Kevin B. Anderson, The Late Marx’s Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism (Verso, 2025).

Key figures of the next generation of socialists, including Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, James Connolly, and Trotsky, were fierce opponents of colonialism, although they disagreed about the political implications of this for European socialist movements.

World War II broke the power of all of the major imperial powers except the United States and Russia (USSR). Both the U.S. and Russia supported anti-colonial movements in the former colonies of Britain, France, the Netherlands and Belgium. Russia and the United States vied for influence in the newly-emerging countries, which is one reason these new nations became neocolonial corporate capitalist or state capitalist developmental regimes dependent upon the U.S. or Russia for investment and trade—and in many cases autocratic. Frantz Fanon wrote about this reality from within the movements for independence and freedom as the depressing reality of neocolonial independence was becoming visible. Neither Russia nor the United States tolerated anti-colonial movements within their empires. (They were extremely repressive against such movements in Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Hungary, and Poland, for example.)

So what does this mean for Ukraine and Iran?

Ukraine developed a powerful nationalist movement in the 1800s. Ukrainian socialists were often leading nationalists as well. In the Revolution in the Russian Empire of 1917, this led at times to cooperation and at other times fighting between revolutionary socialists who were allied with the Russian Soviets and revolutionary socialists (some of whom called themselves Bolsheviks) who wanted Ukraine to be a separate nation. Both fought Ukrainian and Russian pro-capitalist forces. Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, was torn between:

1. This general support of the right of nations—particularly including Ukraine—to self-determination (including his hatred of Great Russian Chauvinism, his term for that form of racism).
2. The specifics of the struggle in Ukraine, including the fact that many Bolsheviks in his party opposed Ukrainian nationalism.

In any case, the strength of the national movement in Ukraine and some other parts of the Russian Empire is why the end of the civil war led to the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR, as a union of independent nation-states (including Russia and Ukraine) with the right of secession from the Union (albeit only on paper). To begin with, this led to considerable Ukrainian cultural and other freedom, but as the Stalinist counter-revolution proceeded and Russia became an autocratic form of State Capitalism, Russia increasingly suppressed Ukrainian language, religion, and most of its culture. By the 1930s, when the USSR faced a severe economic crisis that it dealt with by exporting food that its inhabitants needed, Ukraine was singled out for the harshest police tactics and starvations. This took the form of the Holodomor genocide, in which 4 million or more Ukrainians starved to death or were murdered by the police or army. Ukrainian politics is still shaped by the memory of this.

In World War II, the German invasion inflected hardship and mass murders on millions of Ukrainians, including Jewish Ukrainians. Ukrainians suffered the worst (more than the Russians or Belarusians, for example) and made major contributions to defeating the Germans. Russia tries to portray the defeat of the Nazis as a Russian victory and to disregard the contributions of Ukrainians and its other oppressed nations.

When the USSR collapsed in 1991, Ukraine, Russia, and other countries seceded and formed separate countries. The next five or ten years were unbearable in all of them. The economy collapsed. Productive assets were sold off by the governments (run by their top bureaucrats) to coteries of allied top bureaucrats and top leaders of the criminal underground. Joblessness, alcoholism, and tuberculosis became epidemic. Use of opioids became relatively widespread among the young, as did trading sex for money or goods—and, as a result, HIV/AIDS, particularly among people who began injecting drugs. Oligarchs contended for wealth and power, at times violently, or by using government police power to attack their rivals.

Coming out of the 1990s, both the Russian and Ukrainian governments were dominated by viciously contending oligarchs who ran corrupt autocratic nominally-democratic regimes that held periodic elections to determine which group of oligarchs would rule and benefit most from the corruption. Starting with the Orange Revolution against a stolen election in 2004, their paths diverged, with Russia becoming more autocratic but Ukraine seeing the power of the oligarchs challenged by popular rebellions. The Maidan Revolution of 2013-2014 showed again that oligarchic regimes could be overthrown, and made inroads upon police corruption and, to some degree, corruption by other officials. This did NOT happen in Russia, but Putin and other Russian oligarchs feared it could spread. Thus, in 2014 Russia seized Crimea and tried to seize the Donbas (Donets Coal Basin) and Odessa as a way to make sure the Maidan Revolution did not turn left and, even more importantly, to delegitimize efforts to overthrow his own oligarchic regime. 2Hanna Perekhoda, “How to Understand Russia’s Imperialist Attitude Toward Ukraine,” New Politics, Winter 2024, ; Ilya Matveev, “Political imperialism, Putin’s Russia, and the need for a global left alternative,” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, September 28, 2024,; Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev, Russia’s New Imperialism: Capital and Ideology (Stanford University Press, 2026).

The Left was an important component of the Maidan Revolution, though far less visible than the extreme right. Most of the movement, and its dominant beliefs, was a pro-European vaguely social democratic yearning for clean government and European living standards. Nonetheless, there was a socialist and anarchist Left, it acquitted itself well during the Maidan struggles across Ukraine, and it continues as a (relatively weak, but respected) force in Ukraine today. 3Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev (Harvill Press, 2015); Marci Shore, The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2018); Emily Channell-Justice, Without the State: Self-Organization and Political Activism in Ukraine (University of Toronto Press, 2022); Sam Friedman, “What Happened in Ukraine in 2013– 2014? Maidan and After,” New Politics, May 13, 2023, ; Sophia Willson, Maidan: Ukraine’s Democratic Revolution (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2026).

Later, after the near-revolution in Belarus that started in late 2020, Russia’s leaders decided to take over Ukraine and to erase Ukrainian culture and political freedoms. They were motivated both by the desire to eradicate the Russian peoples’ hope for freedom and by their own desires to restore what they see as the glories of the Russian empire. It tried this in early 2022 and has so far failed spectacularly due to a people’s movement in Ukraine. In my opinion, socialists in the U.S. should support this movement without reservations.

However, it should be clear—this current people’s movement in Ukraine is not socialist, though it has socialist threads within it. 4Commons: Journal of Social Criticism; Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement), democratic socialist organization; Solidarity Collectives, anti-authoritarian network supporting the resistance to the Russian invasion; Green Party of Ukraine; Social Democratic Platform; Pryama Diya (Direct Action), leftwing student trade union; Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine (FPU); Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine (KVPU); Razom We Stand, campaign for fossil fuel sanctions on Russia and rebuilding Ukraine around renewables, ; Rozviy, feminist youth campaign for fossil fuel sanctions on Russia and rebuilding Ukraine around renewables. Moreover, under the neoliberal demands of West European and US capital and their support by the Zelensky government, the Ukrainian government has adopted a lot of anti-working class and anti-union policies and has gone into massive debt to Western capital to pay the costs of the war. If the war ended tomorrow, the existing debt that capital has imposed on Ukraine means that both Ukrainian and Western capital (and governments) will wage war on Ukraine’s workers to pay it back. One job of US socialists is to oppose this and to support the Ukrainian working class in its current and future struggles to survive and, hopefully, to overthrow capital.

Iran

In an election in 1953 (after the new Shah took office when Britain and Russia occupation troops left Iran following the end of World War II), Mossadegh became Prime Minister and took steps to curb British control over Iran’s oil production. He was overthrown by a coup backed by US oil interests and the CIA, including those Iranians who benefited from the private oil industry.

The Shah then set up a dictatorship friendly to U.S. capital. This dictatorship was friendly to using its oil revenues to “modernize” Iranian society to resemble secular corporate America to a degree, including making jobs and other aspects of Western life available to women. He set up a vicious and powerful secret police to suppress all opposition brutally and often fatally.
By 1978, the Iranian people had had enough, and revolted. In 1979, the revolution succeeded in driving the Shah and his regime out. This revolution had important socialist and worker components, and it was the oil workers’ actions that were decisive in ousting the Shah. Hard-line Islamists, quite anti-American, also had massive support, and won out in the ensuing struggles over the direction of the revolution. They were backed in this by the pro-Russian Iranian Communist Party which saw the Revolution as an anti-imperialist one that should stop short at putting the bourgeoisie into power.

With U.S. backing, Iraq then started a war with Iran, which raged through the 1980s. This was a long and vicious war, with huge loss of life. One of my friends tells me it led to a lot of drug use by soldiers, and eventually to a lot of AIDS.

The Iranian people have mounted a number of mass movements in the years since the Millionaire Mullahs came to power. The 2009 Green Movement protested massive fraud in presidential elections; the 2019 uprising opposed rising gasoline prices and included a variety of efforts by workers to improve their lives; the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement of 2022-23, which was viciously repressed, involved Kurds and other oppressed minorities as well as Persians, and men as well as women; and the recent uprising of 2026 based around economic and environmental collapse that was suppressed after tens of thousands of people were killed.

U.S. and Israel decided to attack Iran at the end of February 2026. As of this writing, this attack seems to be an utter failure, and has left the Iranian government in a much stronger position against its own people as well as against Israel and the United States than it had before the war.

What about socialists and anti-imperialists in the United States and much of the world?

People in the United States and elsewhere who call themselves socialists and/or anti-imperialists are divided into two sharply divided groups. One group are called “campists” because they see the world geopolitically as divided into Western imperialism, as one camp, and nations that oppose Western imperialism, as the other camp—which they then support.

Campists support the Iranian government as anti-imperialist and usually see the peoples’ movements as “objectively pro-imperialist” or even as U.S.-Israeli instigated counter-revolutionaries. They support Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine because they see Ukraine as a part of the Western, imperialist, camp. Many of them believe Russian claims that it invaded Ukraine because the Maidan revolution was an imperialist coup and that it threatened to attack Russia. Many of them also support Russian claims that Ukraine is run by, and is a hotbed of, Nazis and other fascists. (As someone who has spent a lot of time in Ukraine both before and after the Maidans, and as someone who understands that there are serious fascist forces helping to direct both Russia and the United States, I will attest to the fact that these claims are utter rot.)

Historically, many campist leaders have had ties to the former state capitalist Russia or other state capitalist regimes, or accepted the worldviews of their leaders who saw the world as divided into an anti-imperialist camp (which they, but not the people of Eastern Europe, Taiwan, or Tibet, among others, considered themselves to be). Fundamental to campist views is a disbelief in the power of working class or other movements of “the people” to take power and build a new society that is better than the one we live in. As a result, they see States as the only important actors in the world, and they choose to side with one camp within those states.

The other group, who are sometimes called internationalists (and I am one), support the working class and other oppressed people in their struggles against both their country’s ruling class and State and also against imperialist countries who threaten their national independence. One of our slogans which forms part of the title of this essay, is “solidarity without exception.” When imperial invaders attack a people, we support that people to the best of our ability. When governments or employers attack workers’ lives and conditions and freedoms, we support the workers. And we urge the movements of oppressed peoples and of workers in every country to support each other in a solidarity without exception.

When the United States or its allies attack or oppress a nation such as Palestine or Venezuela, campists and internationalists can sometimes work together, although even then campists tend to offer uncritical support for their governments or other top-down leadership bodies like Hamas whereas internationalists support the people against both their attackers and governments like that of Maduro or leaders like Hamas. Another frequent area of tension-within-cooperation is that campists support top-down and often secretive leadership bodies within solidarity movements (as happened in many of the campus encampments that supported Palestine in 2024) whereas internationalists support open discussion and democratic control by the participants in the movement.

Finally, there are many other nations that are being attacked or oppressed. Campists decide on whether of not to support the Kurds, Rohingyas, Uyghurs and others based on whether they judge the attackers or oppressors as allies of U.S. imperialism or part of their imagined “axes of resistance,” whereas we internationalists offer solidarity without exception.

We see this as the only way to live and build a socialism from below in which workers and other have democratic power to build a sustainable world of peace, friendship, self-fulfillment and fun. And we view it as humanity’s best hope of surviving the environmental crisis, and specifically the climate crisis, and eventually thriving once this is done.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: ARTIST NAME; modified by Tempest.

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Lucky Neko menjadi salah satu permainan bertema keberuntungan yang paling sering diperbincangkan oleh para penggemar game digital. Bukan hanya karena tampilannya yang penuh warna, tetapi juga berkat konsep unik yang mengusung ikon kucing pembawa keberuntungan khas budaya Jepang. Popularitasnya terus meningkat di berbagai komunitas, mulai dari media sosial hingga forum diskusi, sehingga tidak mengherankan jika banyak orang penasaran dengan daya tarik yang dimilikinya.

Lalu, apa sebenarnya yang membuat Lucky Neko saat ini sedang naik daun? Mari kita bahas dengan santai.

Desain Menarik yang Mudah Disukai

Hal pertama yang langsung mencuri perhatian adalah desain visualnya. Lucky Neko menghadirkan nuansa cerah dengan dominasi warna emas, merah, dan putih. Ikon kucing yang mengangkat satu tangan atau dikenal sebagai Maneki Neko dipercaya dalam budaya Jepang sebagai simbol keberuntungan dan kemakmuran.

Bagi banyak pemain, tampilan seperti ini memberikan pengalaman yang terasa lebih menyenangkan dibandingkan desain permainan yang terlalu gelap atau rumit. Animasi yang halus serta efek suara yang ringan juga membuat suasana bermain terasa lebih hidup tanpa berlebihan.

Gameplay yang Mudah Dipahami

Tidak semua orang menyukai permainan dengan aturan yang rumit. Di sinilah Lucky Neko memiliki keunggulan. Mekanisme permainannya relatif sederhana sehingga pemain baru pun dapat memahami cara kerjanya dalam waktu singkat.

Kesederhanaan tersebut justru menjadi nilai tambah. Pemain tidak perlu menghabiskan waktu lama untuk mempelajari berbagai fitur sebelum mulai menikmati permainannya. Hal ini membuat Lucky Neko mampu menjangkau berbagai kalangan, baik pemain berpengalaman maupun pemula.

Ramai Dibahas oleh Komunitas

Popularitas sebuah permainan biasanya tidak lepas dari peran komunitas. Saat ini, Lucky Neko cukup sering menjadi topik pembahasan di berbagai platform digital. Banyak pengguna berbagi pengalaman, membahas fitur permainan, hingga memberikan tips berdasarkan pengalaman pribadi mereka.

Fenomena ini menunjukkan bahwa sebuah permainan tidak hanya dinilai dari tampilannya saja, tetapi juga dari seberapa aktif komunitas yang mendukungnya. Semakin banyak orang membicarakannya, rasa penasaran calon pemain pun ikut meningkat.

Namun, penting untuk diingat bahwa setiap pengalaman bermain dapat berbeda. Informasi dari komunitas sebaiknya dijadikan referensi, bukan sebagai jaminan hasil tertentu.

Tema Budaya yang Memberikan Nilai Tambah

Lucky Neko tidak sekadar mengandalkan visual menarik. Permainan ini juga mengangkat unsur budaya yang cukup dikenal secara internasional. Maneki Neko telah lama menjadi simbol keberuntungan dalam tradisi Jepang dan sering ditemukan di toko, restoran, maupun tempat usaha.

Penggunaan simbol tersebut memberikan identitas yang kuat sehingga Lucky Neko lebih mudah dikenali dibandingkan banyak permainan lain dengan tema umum. Kombinasi budaya tradisional dan teknologi modern menciptakan pengalaman yang terasa unik sekaligus familiar.

Mengapa Banyak Orang Mencobanya?

Ada beberapa alasan yang membuat Lucky Neko semakin populer saat ini. Pertama, tampilannya menarik sehingga mudah memikat perhatian sejak awal. Kedua, mekanisme permainannya sederhana sehingga tidak membuat pemain merasa kesulitan. Ketiga, banyaknya pembahasan di komunitas digital ikut mendorong rasa ingin tahu masyarakat.

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Dari sudut pandang pengalaman pengguna, permainan yang mudah dipahami dan memiliki identitas visual yang jelas memang cenderung lebih cepat mendapatkan perhatian. Hal ini juga sejalan dengan tren industri game yang mengutamakan aksesibilitas dan pengalaman bermain yang nyaman.

Kesimpulan

Lucky Neko saat ini memang sedang naik daun berkat perpaduan antara desain yang menarik, gameplay yang sederhana, tema budaya yang ikonik, serta dukungan komunitas yang aktif. Popularitasnya bukan muncul secara kebetulan, melainkan karena mampu menghadirkan pengalaman hiburan yang mudah dinikmati oleh berbagai kalangan.

Meski demikian, setiap orang tentu memiliki preferensi yang berbeda dalam memilih permainan. Karena itu, pendekatan terbaik adalah menikmati Lucky Neko sebagai bentuk hiburan digital secara bijak dan tetap memiliki ekspektasi yang realistis. Dengan cara tersebut, pengalaman bermain akan terasa lebih menyenangkan sekaligus bertanggung jawab.

situs yang menjamin member baru pasti jackpot besar. Kalimat tersebut terdengar menggiurkan, tetapi benarkah ada jaminan seperti itu? Dari sudut pandang analisis berita, penting untuk melihat fakta di balik promosi agar masyarakat dapat memahami informasi secara lebih objektif.

Fenomena Promosi Jackpot untuk Member Baru

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Dari berbagai pengamatan terhadap tren industri, pengguna kini semakin kritis dalam memilih platform. Mereka tidak lagi hanya melihat besarnya bonus, tetapi juga memperhatikan reputasi layanan, transparansi informasi, kualitas pelayanan pelanggan, serta keamanan transaksi.

Memahami Cara Kerja Sistem Permainan

Salah satu hal yang sering disalahpahami adalah anggapan bahwa akun baru memiliki peluang menang lebih tinggi dibandingkan akun lama. Hingga saat ini, tidak terdapat bukti yang dapat membenarkan anggapan tersebut pada platform yang beroperasi secara wajar.

Sebagian besar permainan digital modern menggunakan teknologi Random Number Generator (RNG), yaitu sistem yang menghasilkan hasil permainan secara acak. Dengan mekanisme tersebut, peluang setiap putaran tidak dipengaruhi oleh status pemain, baik pengguna baru maupun pengguna lama.

Karena itu, apabila sebuah situs mengklaim dapat memberikan jackpot secara pasti, pengguna sebaiknya meninjau kembali kredibilitas informasi tersebut. Pendekatan yang bijak adalah memilih platform yang menjelaskan mekanisme permainan secara terbuka tanpa memberikan janji kemenangan mutlak.

Ciri Platform yang Layak Dipertimbangkan

Daripada berfokus pada janji jackpot, ada beberapa indikator yang lebih relevan ketika memilih sebuah situs permainan digital.

• Memiliki informasi layanan yang jelas dan mudah diakses.
• Menyediakan sistem transaksi yang aman serta cepat.
• Memiliki layanan pelanggan yang responsif.
• Menampilkan ketentuan bonus secara transparan.
• Menggunakan sistem permainan yang memiliki reputasi baik.
• Mendapatkan ulasan positif dari komunitas pengguna dalam jangka waktu yang konsisten.

Indikator tersebut lebih mencerminkan kualitas layanan dibandingkan sekadar promosi yang bersifat sensasional.

Pentingnya Membaca Syarat dan Ketentuan Bonus

Dalam banyak kasus, bonus untuk member baru memang tersedia, tetapi hampir selalu disertai syarat tertentu. Misalnya, terdapat ketentuan turnover, batas waktu penggunaan bonus, atau nominal taruhan minimum sebelum bonus dapat dicairkan.

Kurangnya pemahaman terhadap aturan ini sering menimbulkan kesalahpahaman. Oleh sebab itu, membaca seluruh syarat dan ketentuan menjadi langkah penting sebelum memanfaatkan promosi apa pun. Platform yang profesional umumnya menjelaskan seluruh ketentuan tersebut secara rinci sehingga pengguna dapat mengambil keputusan dengan informasi yang lengkap.

Analisis Tren Kepercayaan Pengguna

Perubahan perilaku pengguna menunjukkan bahwa kepercayaan kini menjadi faktor utama dalam memilih sebuah platform. Reputasi dibangun melalui pelayanan yang konsisten, proses transaksi yang lancar, perlindungan data pribadi, serta komunikasi yang terbuka kepada pengguna.

Di sisi lain, promosi yang terlalu berlebihan justru sering menimbulkan keraguan. Pengguna modern cenderung mencari ulasan, membandingkan pengalaman pemain lain, dan mempelajari rekam jejak sebuah situs sebelum melakukan pendaftaran.

Pendekatan ini menunjukkan meningkatnya literasi digital masyarakat dalam menghadapi berbagai bentuk promosi di internet.

Kesimpulan

Judul “Situs Yang Menjamin Member Baru Pasti Jackpot Besar” merupakan contoh klaim promosi yang perlu disikapi secara kritis. Hingga saat ini, tidak ada platform yang dapat menjamin setiap pemain baru akan memperoleh jackpot secara pasti karena hasil permainan ditentukan oleh sistem permainan yang berlaku.

Pilihan yang lebih bijak adalah mengutamakan platform yang memiliki reputasi baik, memberikan informasi secara transparan, menyediakan layanan pelanggan yang profesional, serta menawarkan pengalaman bermain yang aman dan bertanggung jawab. Dengan memahami cara kerja industri permainan digital, pengguna dapat mengambil keputusan berdasarkan fakta, bukan semata-mata tergiur oleh janji kemenangan instan.

Parlay telah lama menjadi salah satu pilihan menarik bagi penggemar prediksi olahraga karena menawarkan sensasi berbeda dibandingkan taruhan tunggal. Dalam sistem ini, beberapa pilihan pertandingan digabungkan menjadi satu kombinasi, sehingga seluruh prediksi harus tepat agar hasil akhirnya berhasil. Karakteristik tersebut membuat kemenangan parlay sering dianggap sebagai pencapaian yang membutuhkan ketelitian, kesabaran, dan kemampuan membaca pertandingan secara menyeluruh.

Di balik kisah kemenangan besar, terdapat banyak cerita mengenai hasil yang tidak pernah diperkirakan sebelumnya. Tim unggulan dapat kehilangan poin di menit-menit akhir, sementara tim yang dipandang sebagai underdog justru tampil luar biasa. Situasi seperti inilah yang membuat kemenangan pasaran parlay terasa begitu istimewa. Bukan semata karena nilai kemenangan, tetapi karena perjalanan menuju hasil tersebut dipenuhi dinamika yang sulit ditebak.

Pendekatan yang berlandaskan analisis tetap menjadi fondasi utama. Memahami performa tim dalam beberapa pertandingan terakhir, kondisi pemain inti, strategi pelatih, hingga jadwal yang padat merupakan bagian dari proses pengambilan keputusan. Pengalaman menunjukkan bahwa keputusan terbaik biasanya lahir dari informasi yang lengkap, bukan sekadar mengikuti opini populer.

Strategi Cerdas di Balik Kemenangan yang Tak Terduga

Banyak orang mengira kemenangan parlay hanya bergantung pada keberuntungan. Faktanya, berbagai pengamat olahraga dan pemain berpengalaman memiliki pandangan berbeda. Mereka menempatkan riset sebagai langkah pertama sebelum menentukan kombinasi pertandingan. Data statistik, tren performa kandang dan tandang, serta rekor pertemuan menjadi referensi yang membantu mengurangi keputusan emosional.

Dalam praktiknya, kejutan tetap menjadi bagian dari olahraga. Sebuah pertandingan dapat berubah hanya karena satu kartu merah, pergantian pemain yang efektif, atau gol pada masa tambahan waktu. Faktor-faktor tersebut membuat hasil akhir sulit diprediksi secara mutlak. Namun, justru di sinilah daya tarik parlay muncul. Kombinasi analisis yang matang dengan dinamika pertandingan menciptakan pengalaman yang penuh tantangan.

Dari sudut pandang pengalaman, banyak pemain berpengalaman memilih jumlah kombinasi yang masih realistis dibanding mengejar peluang kemenangan besar dengan terlalu banyak pilihan. Pendekatan tersebut membantu menjaga kualitas analisis pada setiap pertandingan. Mereka juga cenderung menghindari keputusan tergesa-gesa hanya karena mengikuti tren sesaat di media sosial.

Aspek kredibilitas informasi juga memiliki peran penting. Mengandalkan statistik resmi, berita terbaru mengenai kondisi pemain, serta perkembangan tim dari sumber tepercaya akan menghasilkan keputusan yang lebih rasional.

Kemenangan pasaran parlay yang tidak terduga sering kali lahir dari kombinasi disiplin, kesabaran, dan kemampuan membaca peluang secara objektif. Hasil besar memang dapat terjadi dalam satu malam, tetapi proses di baliknya biasanya dibangun melalui kebiasaan menganalisis setiap pertandingan dengan cermat. Mereka yang konsisten mengevaluasi hasil sebelumnya juga memiliki peluang lebih baik untuk meningkatkan kualitas prediksi pada kesempatan berikutnya.

Pada akhirnya, parlay bukan sekadar mengejar kemenangan, melainkan menikmati proses memahami pertandingan dari berbagai sudut pandang. Setiap laga menghadirkan cerita, statistik, dan strategi yang berbeda. Ketika seluruh analisis berpadu dengan momen-momen tak terduga di lapangan, lahirlah kemenangan yang memberikan kepuasan tersendiri. Inilah alasan mengapa pasaran parlay tetap menjadi salah satu bentuk hiburan olahraga yang terus menarik perhatian banyak penggemar, sekaligus mengajarkan bahwa persiapan yang matang selalu memiliki nilai, meskipun hasil akhir tetap ditentukan oleh jalannya pertandingan.

daya tarik utama tembak ikan adalah peluang mendapatkan kemenangan besar melalui kombinasi kemampuan dan pengambilan keputusan yang tepat. Berbeda dengan anggapan bahwa kemenangan hanya bergantung pada keberuntungan, permainan ini juga membutuhkan pemahaman mengenai karakter setiap jenis ikan, nilai hadiah, hingga waktu terbaik untuk menembak target tertentu.

Pemain yang telah memiliki pengalaman biasanya akan lebih fokus mengincar ikan dengan peluang terbaik dibandingkan menghabiskan peluru secara sembarangan. Pendekatan seperti ini menunjukkan bahwa strategi menjadi bagian penting dalam meningkatkan efektivitas permainan.

Mengapa Banyak Pemain Menyukai Permainan Tembak Ikan?

Popularitas tembak ikan terus meningkat karena menawarkan pengalaman bermain yang santai namun tetap menegangkan. Efek visual yang menarik, animasi bawah laut yang hidup, hingga suara permainan yang dinamis mampu menciptakan suasana bermain yang menghibur.

Selain itu, terdapat berbagai jenis senjata dan fitur pendukung yang membuat permainan semakin variatif. Pemain dapat menyesuaikan kekuatan tembakan sesuai target sehingga setiap keputusan memiliki pengaruh terhadap hasil permainan.

Pengalaman para pemain juga menunjukkan bahwa memahami pola pergerakan ikan menjadi salah satu langkah yang cukup membantu dalam meningkatkan peluang memperoleh skor lebih tinggi. Hal tersebut membuktikan bahwa latihan dan pengalaman bermain memiliki peranan penting dalam membangun kemampuan pemain dari waktu ke waktu.

banyak komunitas pemain membagikan pengalaman mereka mengenai cara mengatur penggunaan peluru agar lebih efisien. Pendekatan tersebut sering menjadi referensi bagi pemain baru untuk memahami dasar-dasar permainan tanpa harus menghabiskan banyak percobaan.

strategi seperti memilih target bernilai tinggi, menghindari penggunaan peluru berlebihan, serta memanfaatkan fitur khusus merupakan teknik yang umum diterapkan oleh pemain berpengalaman.

dapat dilihat dari pentingnya memilih platform permainan yang memiliki reputasi baik, menyediakan sistem permainan yang transparan, serta menghadirkan layanan pelanggan yang responsif.

menjadi faktor penting karena keamanan data pengguna, proses transaksi yang jelas, serta informasi permainan yang terbuka akan memberikan rasa nyaman selama bermain.

Pada akhirnya, keempat prinsip tersebut membantu pemain menikmati permainan secara lebih bertanggung jawab dan percaya diri.

Strategi untuk Merasakan Kemenangan Besar

Apabila ingin memperoleh hasil yang lebih maksimal, ada beberapa strategi sederhana yang dapat diterapkan.

Pertama, hindari langsung menggunakan peluru dengan kekuatan maksimal sejak awal permainan. Amati terlebih dahulu pola pergerakan ikan dan sesuaikan kekuatan tembakan dengan target yang sedang dibidik.

Kedua, prioritaskan ikan yang bergerak lambat atau sedang berkumpul dalam jumlah banyak. Cara ini sering kali lebih efisien dibandingkan mengejar ikan besar yang bergerak sangat cepat.

Ketiga, manfaatkan fitur senjata khusus ketika peluang mendapatkan beberapa target sekaligus sedang terbuka. Penggunaan fitur pada waktu yang tepat dapat meningkatkan efektivitas permainan.

Selain strategi, disiplin dalam mengatur batas permainan juga menjadi kebiasaan yang baik. Dengan memiliki target yang jelas dan bermain secara terkontrol, pengalaman bermain akan terasa lebih menyenangkan tanpa mengurangi nilai hiburan yang ditawarkan.

Sebagai penutup, Rasakan Kemenangan Besar Dari Tembak Ikan bukan hanya tentang mengejar hadiah, melainkan menikmati setiap tantangan yang hadir selama permainan berlangsung. Dengan memahami mekanisme permainan, menerapkan strategi yang tepat, serta memilih platform yang terpercaya, peluang untuk memperoleh pengalaman bermain yang memuaskan akan semakin terbuka. Jadikan setiap sesi permainan sebagai hiburan yang seru, bermainlah secara bijak, dan nikmati sensasi berburu ikan dengan penuh percaya diri.

sejumlah komunitas online ramai membahas platform yang disebut-sebut sebagai salah satu yang paling gacor di Indonesia. Percakapan tersebut tidak hanya muncul di media sosial, tetapi juga di berbagai forum komunitas yang secara rutin membagikan pengalaman, ulasan, hingga pembaruan mengenai tren permainan digital. Tingginya intensitas diskusi ini menunjukkan bahwa rekomendasi dari sesama pengguna masih menjadi salah satu sumber informasi yang paling berpengaruh.

Pengamat industri digital menilai bahwa popularitas sebuah platform tidak muncul secara instan. Reputasi biasanya dibangun melalui konsistensi layanan, kemudahan akses, performa sistem yang stabil, serta pengalaman pengguna yang positif dalam jangka waktu tertentu. Faktor-faktor tersebut sering kali menjadi alasan mengapa suatu platform memperoleh perhatian lebih besar dibandingkan kompetitornya.

Selain itu, perkembangan teknologi juga memberikan kontribusi signifikan terhadap meningkatnya kualitas layanan digital. Infrastruktur server yang lebih baik, optimalisasi antarmuka pengguna, serta kecepatan pemrosesan data menjadi aspek penting yang secara langsung memengaruhi kenyamanan pengguna. Ketika seluruh elemen tersebut berjalan selaras, tingkat kepuasan pengguna cenderung meningkat dan mendorong munculnya ulasan positif secara organik.

Dari sudut pandang pengalaman pengguna, banyak anggota komunitas menyampaikan bahwa mereka lebih mengutamakan stabilitas layanan dibandingkan sekadar mengikuti tren yang sedang viral. Mereka cenderung memilih platform yang mampu memberikan performa konsisten dalam berbagai kondisi. Pengalaman tersebut kemudian dibagikan kepada pengguna lain melalui ulasan, diskusi, maupun rekomendasi, sehingga membentuk persepsi kolektif mengenai kualitas sebuah platform.

Meski demikian, para pemerhati industri mengingatkan bahwa setiap pengalaman bersifat subjektif. Hasil yang diperoleh oleh satu pengguna belum tentu sama dengan pengguna lainnya karena dipengaruhi oleh banyak faktor, termasuk kondisi perangkat, kualitas jaringan internet, serta pola penggunaan masing-masing individu. Oleh karena itu, masyarakat disarankan untuk tidak hanya mengandalkan satu sumber informasi sebelum menarik kesimpulan.

Kepercayaan publik terhadap sebuah platform juga dipengaruhi oleh transparansi informasi dan kredibilitas layanan yang diberikan. Platform yang mampu menghadirkan informasi secara jelas, menyediakan dukungan pelanggan yang responsif, serta menjaga kualitas operasional secara konsisten umumnya lebih mudah memperoleh loyalitas pengguna. Dalam ekosistem digital yang semakin kompetitif, kepercayaan menjadi aset yang memiliki nilai sangat tinggi.

Fenomena munculnya predikat “Terbukti Paling Gacor SE-Indonesia” pada akhirnya mencerminkan bagaimana opini komunitas dapat berkembang menjadi sebuah reputasi yang dikenal luas. Namun, di balik berbagai klaim yang beredar, masyarakat tetap perlu bersikap kritis, mengutamakan informasi yang dapat dipertanggungjawabkan, serta memahami bahwa pengalaman setiap pengguna dapat berbeda. Dengan pendekatan tersebut, keputusan yang diambil akan lebih rasional dan didasarkan pada informasi yang seimbang, bukan semata-mata mengikuti tren yang sedang populer.

Bayangkan seorang pemain baru yang memasuki sebuah platform permainan. Ia datang bukan karena mengejar hadiah besar semata, melainkan ingin merasakan bagaimana sistem permainan bekerja. Ketika menemukan promosi berupa bonus hingga 200% untuk seluruh kategori game, rasa penasaran muncul. Bonus tersebut memberi kesempatan lebih luas untuk mencoba berbagai permainan tanpa harus terburu-buru menghabiskan saldo utama.

Dalam dunia hiburan online modern, program seperti ini bukan hanya strategi pemasaran. Berdasarkan praktik yang umum diterapkan oleh berbagai platform terpercaya, bonus bertujuan memberikan nilai tambah kepada pengguna sekaligus memperkenalkan beragam jenis permainan. Dengan modal yang lebih besar berkat bonus, pemain memiliki kesempatan mengenal mekanisme permainan secara bertahap sebelum menentukan favorit mereka. Pendekatan seperti ini mencerminkan pengalaman pengguna yang lebih nyaman dan terukur.

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Sementara itu, platform yang menghadirkan promosi semacam ini umumnya juga menyediakan informasi syarat dan ketentuan secara transparan. Transparansi menjadi bagian penting dalam membangun otoritas serta kepercayaan, karena pengguna dapat mengetahui mekanisme bonus sebelum memutuskan bergabung.

Pada akhirnya, nilai sebuah bonus tidak hanya diukur dari besar persentasenya. Lebih penting lagi adalah bagaimana bonus tersebut memberi pengalaman bermain yang lebih menyenangkan, menghadirkan kesempatan mencoba berbagai permainan, sekaligus membantu pemain memahami fitur-fitur yang tersedia secara lebih mendalam.

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Nearly half a century after the Iranian Revolution, its outcome is still widely treated as inevitable. The Shah fell, the story goes, and a deeply religious society naturally produced an Islamic state. Clerical rule appears, in hindsight, as history fulfilling cultural destiny. This interpretation is politically convenient and historically wrong.

The Islamic Republic did not emerge because Iranian society was inherently predisposed toward theocracy. Nor was the victory of the clerical leadership preordained. The Revolution was a profoundly social upheaval shaped by competing class forces, organisational strengths, political miscalculations, and strategic struggles within the revolutionary camp itself.

The Revolution did not have to end with clerical rule. Its outcome was fought over and decided.

The Revolution contained democratic and egalitarian possibilities that were defeated through political struggle rather than cultural destiny.

Understanding why matters urgently today, not only for interpreting Iran’s past, but also for understanding why opposition to imperial aggression against Iran cannot be confused with political support for the regime that ultimately consolidated power.

A social revolution, not a religious eruption

The overthrow of Mohammad Reza Shah was the culmination of decades of uneven capitalist transformation imposed from above. Oil revenues financed industrialisation, urban expansion and state-led modernisation, yet political participation remained tightly controlled. Rural displacement accelerated, inequality widened, and millions were pushed into precarious urban existence.

By 1978, dissent had escaped elite circles and become mass rebellion. Demonstrations paralysed major cities, but it was the strike movement,

particularly among oil workers, that fatally undermined the monarchy. Production halted, state income collapsed, and the regime’s coercive apparatus began to fracture.

Across factories and workplaces, workers established councils known as shoras. These bodies supervised hiring, challenged management authority and, in some cases, exercised direct control over production. They emerged organically from struggle rather than religious mobilisation. For a brief historical moment, power was fragmented between a collapsing state and newly created popular institutions.

The Revolution opened a vacuum. What followed was not the automatic triumph of Islamism but a struggle over who would fill that space.

Genuine emancipation, in Iran as elsewhere, can only be the work of those struggling within society itself.

Islamist networks entered this struggle with decisive advantages. Decades of repression had shattered secular parties, socialist organisations, and independent unions. Mosques, religious charities, and clerical networks, however, survived as nationwide infrastructures embedded in everyday social life.

Religious discourse also translated diverse grievances into a shared moral language. Economic injustice, political repression and national humiliation could all be framed as symptoms of moral corruption. This allowed bazaar merchants, students, professionals and the recently urbanised poor to imagine themselves united within a single revolutionary community. Yet this unity concealed deep contradictions.

Islamist leadership mobilised popular anger against dictatorship and foreign domination while defending private property and social hierarchy. It invoked justice for the oppressed while opposing independent working-class organisations and women’s emancipation. Its strength lay precisely in bridging incompatible social interests under a common ideological umbrella.

The decisive question was not whether alliances with such forces should exist. Revolutions make alliances unavoidable. The question was how those alliances were conducted.

The alliance dilemma

Opposition to the Shah necessarily brought together secular radicals, nationalists, liberals, and religious activists. Cooperation during the struggle against dictatorship was both inevitable and legitimate. No single force could defeat the regime alone. The catastrophe emerged after victory.

For a brief historical moment, power was fragmented between a collapsing state and newly created popular institutions.

Large sections of the Iranian Left interpreted the clerical leadership primarily through its anti-imperialist rhetoric. Because it opposed U.S. influence and denounced the monarchy’s Western alignment, it was treated as a progressive partner whose authority should not be challenged during a supposedly transitional stage. Alliance gradually became political subordination.

Instead of maintaining organisational independence while cooperating in struggle, major left currents endorsed referendums legitimising clerical authority, muted criticism of repression and accepted restrictions imposed in the name of revolutionary unity. Independent criticism was postponed precisely when power was being consolidated.

The problem was not cooperation itself. Refusing a united struggle would have isolated the Left from the revolutionary masses. The disaster lay in abandoning political autonomy.

Revolutionary alliances require clarity about divergent social projects. In Iran, shared opposition to the Shah was mistaken for shared visions of the future.

The weakness of the workers’ movement deepened this imbalance. Although factory councils proliferated rapidly, they remained locally rooted and politically fragmented. No national structure emerged capable of transforming workplace militancy into an alternative centre of authority.

As analysed in studies of Iranian labour movements, workers possessed immense disruptive power but lacked durable institutions linking factories across sectors and regions. Without coordination, economic control could not become political power.

Clerical leaders moved swiftly to contain this threat. Strikes were denounced as harmful to national recovery. Appeals to Islamic unity reframed labour demands as selfish disruptions of the Revolution. Workers who had paralysed the monarchy were encouraged, and increasingly pressured, to restore production. Gradually, leverage evaporated.

Counterrevolution from within

The consolidation of clerical rule unfolded not simply through repression but through political struggle inside revolutionary institutions themselves.

Professional and managerial layers anxious about workplace democracy aligned with efforts to restore discipline. Islamic activists reshaped councils into structures loyal to the emerging state. Revolutionary committees increasingly functioned as mechanisms of central authority rather than grassroots power.

Counterrevolution did not restore the Shah’s order. It emerged from within the victorious coalition itself.

By the early 1980s, independent organisations were marginalised or destroyed. Repression followed political isolation rather than preceding it. The revolutionary opening narrowed step by step until clerical monopoly became reality.

Subsequent interpretations often fall into opposing simplifications. One portrays Islamist movements as inherently fascistic enemies, justifying alliances with authoritarian states or liberal elites. The other romanticises them as authentic anti-imperialist forces. Iran demonstrates the inadequacy of both views.

Movements rooted in social dislocation can simultaneously challenge domination and impose new forms of hierarchy. Cooperation in struggle may be necessary, but political independence is indispensable. Without it, the most organised force captures revolutionary energy and reshapes it to its own ends. The Iranian Left’s tragedy was an uncritical alliance.

Iran under attack

These historical lessons acquire renewed urgency amid ongoing military threats and attacks against Iran today.

The Islamic Republic is an authoritarian state that has repressed workers, jailed dissidents and crushed democratic movements. None of this should be minimised. Yet opposition to that regime cannot translate into support for external aggression.

Imperial intervention has never delivered emancipation in the Middle East. From Iraq to Libya, military assaults carried out in the language of liberation have destroyed societies while strengthening reactionary forces. Foreign bombardment does not empower democratic movements. It devastates the very social actors capable of producing internal change. Deliverance cannot come from imperialism.

External attack strengthens authoritarian rule by allowing regimes to present themselves as defenders of national sovereignty. It sidelines internal dissent, militarises politics and fractures civil society. Those who suffer first are workers, students and ordinary civilians, not ruling elites.

Defending Iran against imperial aggression, therefore, does not mean endorsing its rulers. It means recognising that social transformation can only emerge from struggles within society itself.

The same principle applies today as in 1979. Liberation cannot be imposed from above, whether by clerics or by foreign powers.

The endurance of the Islamic Republic should not obscure the contingency of its origins. The Revolution contained democratic and egalitarian possibilities that were defeated through political struggle rather than cultural destiny.

Recurring protest waves in Iran, labour strikes, women-led uprisings and youth mobilisation reveal tensions rooted in that unfinished revolutionary moment. The demands remain familiar: dignity, economic justice and political freedom.

Remembering that the Revolution did not have to end in clerical rule restores historical agency. Outcomes are shaped by organisation, leadership and strategy.

Iran’s experience shows that alliances are unavoidable in revolutionary moments. But whether they liberate or suffocate depends on maintaining independence, clarity, and the capacity to challenge allies once victory reshapes the terrain.

And it reminds us of something equally essential today. Authoritarian rule cannot be overthrown by bombs, sanctions or foreign intervention. Genuine emancipation, in Iran as elsewhere, can only be the work of those struggling within society itself.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Amir Hesaminejad; modified by Tempest.

The post Iran’s Revolution was not destined to end in clerical rule appeared first on Tempest.

Hadirnya koleksi game yang semakin lengkap membuka kesempatan bagi pemain untuk mengenal berbagai konsep permainan dalam satu platform. Mulai dari tema petualangan, mitologi, budaya Asia, hingga dunia fantasi modern, setiap permainan memiliki karakteristik dan mekanisme yang berbeda. Variasi ini menjadi salah satu alasan mengapa banyak pengguna tertarik menjelajahi berbagai pilihan yang tersedia.

Pengamat industri hiburan menilai bahwa keberagaman permainan merupakan faktor penting dalam meningkatkan pengalaman pengguna. Tidak hanya mengandalkan tampilan visual, para pengembang juga menghadirkan fitur-fitur inovatif seperti putaran bonus, animasi interaktif, serta mekanisme permainan yang dirancang agar lebih menarik. Dengan demikian, setiap permainan mampu memberikan sensasi yang berbeda tanpa kehilangan ciri khasnya.

Istilah “slot gacor” sendiri kerap digunakan oleh komunitas pemain sebagai sebutan populer untuk permainan yang dianggap memberikan pengalaman bermain yang menyenangkan berdasarkan persepsi maupun pengalaman masing-masing pengguna. Perlu dipahami bahwa hasil dalam permainan berbasis sistem acak tetap bersifat acak, sehingga tidak ada jaminan hasil tertentu pada setiap putaran. Karena itu, istilah tersebut lebih mencerminkan tren pembicaraan di kalangan komunitas daripada sebuah kepastian.

Di sisi lain, perkembangan teknologi turut mendorong kualitas permainan menjadi semakin baik. Grafis beresolusi tinggi, efek suara yang imersif, serta kompatibilitas dengan berbagai perangkat membuat pengguna dapat menikmati permainan dengan lebih nyaman. Baik melalui komputer maupun perangkat seluler, akses terhadap berbagai pilihan game kini semakin mudah dilakukan kapan saja.

Tidak hanya dari sisi teknologi, para penyedia permainan juga terus memperluas koleksi judul game dengan menghadirkan pembaruan secara berkala. Kehadiran tema-tema baru memberikan warna tersendiri bagi pemain yang ingin mencoba pengalaman berbeda. Langkah ini sekaligus mencerminkan tingginya persaingan industri dalam menghadirkan hiburan digital yang lebih inovatif dan relevan dengan minat pengguna.

Berbagai komunitas daring juga turut berperan dalam memperkenalkan permainan-permainan yang sedang menjadi perbincangan. Melalui forum diskusi maupun media sosial, para pemain saling berbagi pengalaman mengenai fitur permainan, tampilan grafis, hingga mekanisme bonus yang mereka anggap menarik. Aktivitas tersebut menciptakan ekosistem informasi yang membantu pemain mengenal lebih banyak pilihan game.

Meski demikian, para pengguna tetap disarankan untuk mengedepankan sikap bijak dalam menikmati hiburan digital. Menentukan batas waktu bermain, memahami aturan permainan, serta tidak menjadikan permainan sebagai sarana mencari keuntungan yang pasti merupakan langkah penting dalam menjaga pengalaman bermain tetap positif dan seimbang.

Secara keseluruhan, hadirnya game yang semakin beragam telah membuka cakrawala baru bagi pencinta permainan slot digital. Variasi tema, teknologi yang terus berkembang, serta inovasi fitur menjadi daya tarik utama yang membuat kategori permainan ini terus diperbincangkan. Dengan memilih permainan sesuai preferensi pribadi dan menikmati hiburan secara bertanggung jawab, pengguna dapat merasakan pengalaman bermain yang lebih nyaman, informatif, dan menyenangkan.

Dalam tradisi pemberitaan klasik, sebuah informasi dinilai layak dipercaya apabila didukung oleh sumber yang dapat dipertanggungjawabkan. Prinsip tersebut tetap relevan hingga saat ini. Berbagai ahli di bidang teknologi menjelaskan bahwa permainan modern umumnya memanfaatkan sistem yang telah dirancang dengan mekanisme tertentu. Hasil yang muncul selama permainan tidak dapat dipastikan hanya karena seseorang baru pertama kali bergabung atau membuat akun baru.

Pengalaman banyak pengguna juga menunjukkan bahwa setiap individu dapat memperoleh hasil yang berbeda. Ada yang merasa beruntung pada awal permainan, sementara pengguna lain tidak mengalami hal serupa. Perbedaan pengalaman tersebut menjadi bukti bahwa klaim “member baru pasti turun scatter” tidak dapat dijadikan patokan umum. Oleh sebab itu, masyarakat perlu membedakan antara pengalaman pribadi dengan fakta yang dapat diverifikasi.

Dari sisi keahlian, pemahaman mengenai sistem permainan online perlu didasarkan pada informasi yang bersumber dari penyedia resmi maupun penjelasan teknis yang kredibel. Banyak platform menerapkan teknologi yang dirancang agar setiap putaran berjalan sesuai mekanisme sistem, bukan berdasarkan status pemain sebagai anggota baru ataupun lama. Dengan demikian, peluang yang diperoleh pengguna tetap bergantung pada mekanisme permainan yang berlaku.

Aspek otoritas juga menjadi bagian penting dalam menilai suatu informasi. Media yang bertanggung jawab tidak hanya menyampaikan kabar yang sedang populer, tetapi juga memberikan penjelasan yang seimbang agar pembaca memperoleh pemahaman yang benar. Sikap kritis terhadap judul-judul sensasional merupakan bagian dari literasi online yang perlu terus dikembangkan, terutama di era ketika informasi dapat menyebar dengan sangat cepat melalui berbagai platform media sosial.

Kepercayaan publik dibangun melalui penyampaian informasi yang jujur dan transparan. Oleh karena itu, masyarakat dianjurkan untuk tidak mudah mempercayai klaim yang menjanjikan hasil tertentu tanpa adanya bukti yang dapat diuji. Membandingkan informasi dari beberapa sumber terpercaya merupakan langkah yang bijaksana sebelum mengambil kesimpulan.

Sebagai penutup, istilah “Member Baru Pasti Turun Scatter” lebih tepat dipahami sebagai ungkapan yang berkembang di kalangan komunitas pengguna daripada sebagai fakta yang telah terbukti. Pendekatan yang mengutamakan literasi, pengetahuan, dan verifikasi informasi akan membantu masyarakat mengambil keputusan secara lebih rasional. Dengan mengedepankan prinsip pengalaman, keahlian, otoritas, pembaca dapat menyaring setiap informasi secara objektif sehingga tidak mudah terpengaruh oleh klaim yang belum memiliki dasar yang kuat.

Mahjong Ways menjadi salah satu permainan bertema oriental yang paling sering diperbincangkan oleh komunitas pecinta game onlien dalam beberapa tahun terakhir. Di berbagai forum maupun media sosial, tidak sedikit pemain yang membagikan pengalaman mereka dengan klaim “main 5 menit langsung WD”. Fenomena tersebut kemudian memunculkan rasa penasaran, terutama bagi pemain baru yang ingin memahami faktor di balik cerita-cerita tersebut.

Mahjong Ways dikenal memiliki tampilan visual yang sederhana dengan sentuhan budaya Tiongkok klasik. Selain desain yang menarik, permainan ini juga menghadirkan sejumlah fitur yang membuat pengalaman bermain terasa lebih dinamis. Kombinasi simbol, efek animasi, hingga fitur pengganda kemenangan menjadi daya tarik yang membuat banyak pemain kembali mencoba berbagai strategi permainan.

Sejumlah pemain berpengalaman menyarankan agar pengguna memahami karakteristik permainan sebelum memulai sesi bermain. Salah satu langkah yang sering diterapkan adalah menentukan batas modal serta target permainan sejak awal. Pendekatan seperti ini dinilai lebih bijak dibandingkan mengejar hasil secara berlebihan tanpa perencanaan yang jelas.

Di sisi lain, komunitas pemain juga menekankan pentingnya memilih platform yang memiliki reputasi baik. Faktor keamanan transaksi, transparansi informasi, layanan pelanggan yang responsif, hingga kemudahan proses penarikan dana menjadi aspek yang tidak boleh diabaikan. Dengan memilih platform yang terpercaya, pemain dapat memperoleh pengalaman bermain yang lebih nyaman sekaligus meminimalkan potensi kendala teknis.

Istilah “langsung WD” sendiri sering kali dikaitkan dengan proses penarikan saldo setelah pemain mencapai target kemenangan. Dalam praktiknya, kecepatan proses penarikan dana bergantung pada kebijakan masing-masing penyedia layanan, metode pembayaran yang digunakan, serta proses verifikasi akun. Oleh karena itu, pemain disarankan untuk membaca seluruh syarat dan ketentuan sebelum melakukan transaksi.

Dari sudut pandang jurnalistik, berbagai klaim mengenai kemenangan besar dalam waktu singkat perlu dipahami secara proporsional. Pengalaman yang dibagikan oleh satu pemain belum tentu akan memberikan hasil yang sama kepada pemain lainnya. Setiap permainan dirancang dengan sistem yang menghasilkan variasi hasil pada setiap putaran sehingga tidak ada pola yang dapat menjamin kemenangan secara pasti.

Prinsip bermain secara bertanggung jawab tetap menjadi hal yang paling penting. Mengatur waktu bermain, mengelola anggaran, serta tidak mengambil keputusan secara emosional merupakan langkah yang dapat membantu menciptakan pengalaman bermain yang lebih sehat dan terkendali.

Pada akhirnya, popularitas Mahjong Ways tidak hanya didorong oleh cerita mengenai “main 5 menit langsung WD”, tetapi juga oleh kualitas desain permainan, fitur interaktif, serta komunitas yang aktif berbagi pengalaman. Bagi pemain, memahami mekanisme permainan dan memilih platform yang kredibel merupakan bagian penting dalam membangun pengalaman bermain yang aman, nyaman, dan sesuai dengan ekspektasi. Pendekatan yang mengutamakan informasi yang akurat serta pengelolaan risiko menjadi landasan utama agar aktivitas bermain tetap berjalan secara bijaksana.

Slot online Treasures of Aztec dari PG Soft telah membayarkan kemenangan jackpot bernilai ratusan juta rupiah kepada puluhan pemain di Indonesia sepanjang semester pertama. Game bertema peradaban kuno Amerika Selatan ini menawarkan mekanisme cascading reels dengan pengganda kemenangan (multiplier) yang terus meningkat tanpa batas, membuka peluang keuntungan maksimal hingga 100.000 kali nilai taruhan dalam satu sesi permainan.

Mechanisme utama yang membedakan Treasures of Aztec dari slot konvensional adalah sistem simbol liar (wild) yang muncul pada gulungan kedua hingga kelima dan tidak lenyap saat terjadi kombinasi menang. Simbol-simbol ini bertahan di posisinya selama seri cascading berlangsung, menciptakan rantai kemenangan berkelanjutan. Pengganda dimulai dari 1x dan naik secara progresif setiap kali simbol jatuh menggantikan yang meledak, tanpa ada batas atasan yang ditetapkan pengembang. Kombinasi ini memungkinkan pengganda mencapai angka 50x, 100x, bahkan lebih tinggi dalam putaran yang sama.

Berdasarkan data dari operator platform yang beroperasi di Indonesia, tingkat pengembalian ke pemain (RTP) Treasures of Aztec berada di angka 96,71 persen, sedikit di atas rata-rata industri yang berkisar 96 persen. Volatilitas game ini tergolong tinggi, yang berarti kemenangan besar memang terjadi lebih jarang, namun nominal yang keluar jauh melampaui slot ber-volatilitas rendah atau menengah. Pola ini cocok bagi pemain yang menyusun strategi bankroll dengan dana cadangan lebih besar dan target profit jangka panjang.

Pemain yang berhasil meraih jackpot besar umumnya memanfaatkan fitur putaran gratis (free spins) yang dipicu oleh tiga atau lebih simbol pencar (scatter). Selama putaran bonus, pengganda tidak ter-reset antar-putaran, melainkan terus bertambah sepanjang sesi free spins. Artinya, jika pengganda sudah mencapai 30x pada putaran keempat, angka tersebut akan dibawa ke putaran kelima dan seterusnya. Fitur inilah yang menjadi pendorong utama jackpot bernilai fantastis yang kerap muncul dalam komunitas pemain.

Dari sisi teknis, Treasures of Aztec berjalan optimal pada perangkat seluler dengan layar vertikal. PG Soft merancang tata letak gulungan 6×5 dengan mekanisme ways to win yang menghasilkan 15.625 kemungkinan kombinasi kemenangan, jauh melampaui slot garis pembayaran tradisional. Ukuran taruhan bisa disesuaikan mulai dari 200 rupiah per putaran, membuat game ini tetap terjangkau bagi pemain dengan modal terbatas yang ingin menguji peluang sebelum meningkatkan investasi.

Bagi yang ingin mencoba, saran dari pemain berpengalaman adalah menetapkan target profit dan batas kerugian sebelum mulai bermain. Karena volatilitas tinggi, sering kali terjadi periode kering (tidak ada kemenangan signifikan) dalam puluhan putaran sebelum datangnya satu kemenangan besar yang menutup semua kerugian dan memberi keuntungan berlipat. Manajemen bankroll yang ketat menjadi faktor penentu antara pemain yang pulang dengan tangan hampa dan mereka yang berhasil menarik uang hasil jackpot dalam jumlah besar.

The fall of 2025 marked an escalation in political repression in the United States, targeting labor organizers, Palestine solidarity activists, and immigrant rights advocates. Two cases—Tom Alter in Texas and John Caravello in California—illustrate how this repression operates and how it can be fought.

This article argues that defense campaigns must treat the courtroom not as a site of justice, but as one terrain within a broader strategy of class struggle. This approach—what we can call revolutionary legalism—rejects both liberal faith in the courts and abstentionist refusal to engage them. Legal tactics must be subordinated to a different goal: building independent working-class power.

Two cases, one moment

Tom Alter, a tenured associate professor of history at Texas State University, labor historian, union member, and socialist activist, was fired in September 2025 after speaking at an online Revolutionary Socialism conference on his own time from his home as a private citizen. A self-described “fascist” YouTuber secretly recorded the event, edited the footage, and launched a smear campaign. Within days, Texas State President Kelly Damphousse announced on social media that Alter was fired for “inciting violence” and “jeopardizing the health and safety of the university community.” There was no hearing, no due process, just a Facebook post.

The response arrived promptly. Students protested for five days. The Texas State Employees Union (CWA Local 6186) mobilized, AAUP provided legal counsel, and major academic organizations issued statements of support. On 26 September, a district judge ordered Alter’s temporary reinstatement with back pay. The university complied formally but kept him out of the classroom and upheld the firing after a pro forma hearing. His lawsuit continues.

But the central story is what followed. Alter did not retreat; he helped launch a broad, public defense campaign.

Defense campaigns must treat the courtroom not as a site of justice, but as one terrain within a broader strategy of class struggle.

John Caravello, a philosophy lecturer at California State University Channel Islands and member of the California Faculty Association, faced a different form of repression. During an ICE raid in July 2025, he removed a tear gas canister from beneath a protester’s wheelchair. Initially charged with a misdemeanor, he was later indicted on a federal felony charge under 18 U.S.C. § 111—assaulting a federal officer with a “deadly weapon”—the very canister agents had deployed. He faced up to twenty years in prison.

The California Faculty Association responded with a public campaign, organizing rallies and condemning the charges. On April 9, 2026, a federal jury acquitted Caravello after two hours of deliberation, finding him not guilty of assault with a deadly or dangerous weapon on a federal officer. His case, however, became a rallying point. When Alter’s speaking tour reached Los Angeles, Caravello joined him on stage linking academic repression to the criminalization of immigrant solidarity.

Two different cases, two legal forms—but a common dynamic: Repression met not with silence, but with organized public resistance.

Defense campaigns as class strategy

The Committee to Defend Tom Alter (CDTA) illustrates a strategic orientation largely absent from the current U.S. Left: turning an individual grievance into a collective struggle. Instead of treating Alter’s firing as a narrow dispute over academic freedom, the campaign framed it as part of a wider pattern of repression—linking labor rights, political speech and state power.

What distinguishes the CDTA is not its legal strategy but its political one: refusing to withdraw from private litigation and insisting on building a public campaign for free speech and academic freedom. From the outset, the case was treated not as a personal matter but as a collective fight. This orientation is reflected in the committee’s deliberately open and non-sectarian structure. As Alter told Inside Higher Ed, the CDTA “includes whoever chooses to be a part of it for however long they want to be involved.” Organized around a small core of five people who work on the case weekly, participation extends outward to union members, graduate students, faculty, and community activists, with local committees formed across multiple cities—including New York, Chicago, the Bay Area, and Connecticut. This breadth is strategic. By refusing narrow political gatekeeping, the campaign expands its base and situates the case within a wider class context.

By refusing narrow political gatekeeping, the campaign expands its base and situates the [Tom Alter] case within a wider class context.

The resulting coalition is unusually broad: labor unions such as the Texas State Employees Union (TSEU) (CWA), the California Faculty Association, and the AFT; academic bodies including AAUP and major history associations; and civil liberties and Palestine solidarity organizations. This is not a single-issue campaign or a sectarian front. It is a consciously constructed alliance that insists that Alter’s right to speak, organize, and teach is a working-class issue.

Public mobilization is integral to this approach. Rallies accompanied key legal moments—from campus protests in San Marcos to demonstrations at the headquarters of Texas State University System—and unions helped organize a national speaking tour that turned the case into a vehicle for wider organizing. The goal is not just reinstatement, but the construction of networks and capacities that outlast the case itself.

Caravello’s defense followed a similar trajectory, with unions organizing public pressure and now moving toward a cross-union defense council. Together, these efforts point toward the reemergence—still embryonic—of a coordinated, labor-centered approach to political defense. In this respect, they echo the tradition of the International Labor Defense (an initiative of the early Communist International): non-partisan, expansive, and oriented not only toward legal resolution, but toward building the collective power necessary to confront repression.

The speaking tour as organizing tactic

By February 2026, Alter had turned his firing into a three-month national speaking tour (February–April 2026) that quickly expanded beyond its initial scope. What began as a “patchwork” of invitations became a coordinated, coast-to-coast campaign spanning more than nine states with stops at campuses, bookstores, bars, and community venues. He spoke at more than forty venues, including campuses such as Rutgers, Loyola, the University of Ohio, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State, San Diego State, Cal State LA, UT Austin, University of Pittsburgh, and the CUNY Graduate Center, as well as independent bookstores like Midnight Books in Los Angeles and informal venues like Sean Patrick’s in San Marcos. He shared stages with Sang Hea Kil, John Caravello, members of the CUNY Fired 4, a Prairieland defendant, union activists, and student organizers, linking his case to a wider field of struggle.

The tour had two strategic aims, neither of which was reducible to “raising awareness.” First, CDTA used the case as a lever for organizing. At each stop, attendees were encouraged to join unions, sign petitions, and participate in local defense activities. The tour did not simply draw crowds; it built connections. As Alter told Inside Higher Ed, the events consistently brought together students, faculty, and community members, strengthening campus organizing.

Crucially, the tour fed back into the union strategy. The Texas State Employees Union (TSEU) began bringing Alter to campus not only to speak about his case but also to recruit members, demonstrating in practice that a union is not a transactional service provider but a vehicle for collective struggle. In this sense, the tour served both as political education and organizational development, using a concrete case to reshape workers’ understanding of the role of unions.

The tour deliberately linked academic repression to broader attacks on immigrant communities.

That dynamic points to a broader strategic insight that liberal legalism cannot grasp. The public orientation of the CDTA—the rallies, the tour stops, the joint appearances with local activists—is not window dressing around the “real” work of litigation. It is work. When Alter speaks in a union hall in Connecticut or a bar in San Marcos, he is not just telling his story. He is modelling what resistance looks like. He is showing faculty and staff that a firing need not be tolerated in and that a defense campaign can be a platform for organizing, not just for damage control.

The results bear this out. As Labor Notes reported in November 2025: “Membership in the Texas State chapters of AAUP and the Texas State Employees Union has doubled since Alter’s firing as workers unite to defend academic freedom and democratic rights across the state.” That doubling did not come from a clever legal brief or a favorable ruling. It came because the unions—TSEU and AAUP Texas—moved quickly to help form and support the CDTA and go public, because Alter got on a plane, stood on stages, and asked people to join their unions. The courtroom did not build that membership. The speaking tour did.

Second, the tour deliberately linked academic repression to broader attacks on immigrant communities, Palestine solidarity activists, and labor militancy. When UT Austin canceled his April 22 event, citing “security concerns” just days after hosting Clarence Thomas, the TSEU relocated the event to a nearby bar, turning administrative repression into an organizing opportunity.

This is defense work as class struggle. The objective is not simply to win a legal case, but to build infrastructure—to leave behind stronger unions, more militant organizations, and a network capable of responding collectively when repression strikes again.

A century of revolutionary legalism

The CDTA’s approach is not without precedent. For nearly a century, the U.S. Left has grappled with how to turn legal defense into political power—with varying degrees of success.

Lessons from the ILD

The International Labor Defense, founded in 1925 as a political solidarity and legal arm of the Comintern, remains the most developed model we have for this kind of work. It was not a spontaneous outpouring of outrage. It was an institution—a permanent defense organization with a national office, full-time staff, a monthly magazine (Labor Defender), and a budget. Within a year of its founding, the ILD had 156 branches and 20,000 individual members, with 75,000 more affiliated through union and community endorsements1For ILD membership and structure, see Marxists.org ILD entry and Bryan D. Palmer, James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1929 (2007), Chapter 9..

The ILD’s principles are worth restating.

Non-partisanship. The ILD did not demand political loyalty. At its founding, James Cannon and Bill Haywood identified 106 “class war prisoners” in U.S. jails—striking miners, Wobblies, anarchists, and anti-fascist immigrants. None were members of the Communist Party, yet the ILD defended them all. This was not ecumenical sentimentality. It was strategic clarity: the enemy is the capitalist class. A historical caveat is necessary: The ILD’s non-partisanship was strongest in its early years, from 1925 to 1927. As Stalinization intensified, the organization became more sectarian—a reminder that all defense work must guard against bureaucratic capture.2On the ILD’s early non-partisanship and later Stalinization, see Palmer (2007) and the Labor Defender archives.

Mass Mobilization. In the Sacco and Vanzetti campaign, Cannon rejected liberal faith in legal appeals. After the Massachusetts Supreme Court denied a new trial in 1927, he wrote in the Labor Defender: “The power of the workers is the court of last resort to which our appeal must be made.”3James P. Cannon, “From the Supreme Court of the capitalists to the Supreme Court of the laboring masses,” Labor Defender, May 1927. He was explicit about what this meant organizationally: not legal briefs, but strikes. “We must confidently proceed at all costs to still further arouse and organize the anger of the working men and women against the slaughter of the two labor fighters and assist it to take the form of huge mass demonstrations and effective strikes.”4James P. Cannon, “A campaign of the mass movement,” Labor Defender, September 1927.

Against the liberal “soft pedal,” Cannon drew a sharp line between class-struggle defense and liberal reformism. He identified two competing policies within the Sacco-Vanzetti movement. The first—his own—puts the center of gravity in the protest movement… puts all faith in the power of the masses and no faith whatever in the justice of the courts. The second, which he called “the policy of ‘respectability,’ of the ‘soft pedal’ and of ridiculous illusions about ‘justice’ from the courts of the enemy,” relied primarily on legal proceedings and sought to obscure the issue of class struggle.5James P. Cannon, “Who can save Sacco and Vanzetti?” Labor Defender, January 1927.

Political Education. In his 1949 speech on the trial of the Stalinist leaders—a case he opposed even as he condemned Stalinism—Cannon articulated a revolutionary approach to political trials. The Stalinists, he argued, were indeed criminals, but “they are being tried in the wrong court” for the wrong crime. “The very provision of the Constitution… was designed specifically to prevent Congress from passing laws which would proscribe the ‘advocacy’ of any doctrine. But this indictment under the Smith Act… is an indictment against speaking and writing.”

For Cannon, the purpose of a political trial was never to prove innocence within the framework of the enemy. It was to turn the courtroom into a platform: “We will go in that courtroom not as defendants at all, but as accusers of the prosecutors and the system they represent.” His testimony in the Smith Act trial of 1941, published as Socialism on Trial, is a classic example of this approach.

Material Aid. The ILD sent $5 per month ($95 adjusted to today) to each of more than 100 prisoners and $20 ($380) to dependent families; at Christmas, it sent $50 to families and $25 to prisoners. “It must be recorded to the shame of the labor movement that poverty, hardship, and neglect have too often been the fate of dependent families,” the ILD declared. This was not charity. It was a statement: the working class takes care of its own.6On ILD material aid and financial transparency, see Palmer (2007) and the Labor Defender archives.

The 1960s–70s resurgence of political defense

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a wave of political trials tested the idea that mass defense could transform legal proceedings. The Chicago Conspiracy Trial (1969–70) saw eight antiwar activists—including Bobby Seale, Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman—use the courtroom as a platform to indict the Vietnam War rather than to prove their innocence. The defense attorney William Kunstler turned the proceedings into political theater. Although five were initially convicted, the Seventh Circuit reversed all convictions in 1972, citing judicial bias.

The campaign to free Angela Davis (1970–72) went further, systematically integrating legal defense with mass mobilization. Facing capital charges tied to the Marin County courthouse shootout, Davis was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list before her arrest. The defense campaign refused to treat the case as a narrow legal matter. The “Free Angela” movement mobilized worldwide, organizing rallies, fundraisers, and educational events that turned her prosecution into a global referendum on racism and political repression. As Charlene Mitchell, who led the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis, concluded: “The major lesson we learned was that the legal and mass defense of political prisoners is an inseparable entity; that you cannot free a political prisoner in the courtroom alone, and you cannot, without a good, political legal defense in the courtroom, make a mass defense.”

Davis herself understood this double orientation. As she later recalled, “the lawyers would have to understand from the outset that what happened in the courtroom would, of necessity, be related and coordinated with the campaign in the streets.” The legal defense was inseparable from mass pressure, which helped frame the trial not as an isolated criminal case, but as a political indictment of the carceral state. Her acquittal in 1972 was widely understood as a victory both inside and outside the courtroom.

The liberal settlement trap

But not every defense campaign maintained this orientation. The most instructive warning story dates back to the mid-1970s. In the wake of Watergate, the FBI and CIA underwent unprecedented public scrutiny. The Carter administration responded not by dismantling the surveillance apparatus, but by restoring its legitimacy. New “guidelines” were introduced, and a secret federal wiretap court was established—one that has never denied a government request in practice. The goal was to convince the public that abuses were over and that the “new FBI” could be trusted.

In this context, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) filed a lawsuit against the FBI alleging a decades-long campaign of infiltration, disruption and frame-ups. The government sought to settle, offering standard terms: modest compensation, a promise to “abide by the law” and an implicit agreement to ratify the legitimacy of the reformed security apparatus. Many accepted similar agreements. Jane Fonda settled her case in 1979.7See Larry Seigle, “Workers’ Rights versus the Secret Police,” in Jayko, ed., FBI on Trial, Pathfinder, 1988, pp. 214-248. The ACLU negotiated settlements that effectively gave political cover to the very institutions it exposed. The price was political, not just financial. As one participant on the SWP’s legal team observed, such agreements helped convince the public that the “new FBI” deserved confidence.

The SWP refused any settlement that would legitimize the state’s narrative. What it sought in court was not mainly financial compensation but a political and constitutional affirmation that advocating socialism and the revolutionary replacement of capitalism was protected under the Bill of Rights. Attorney Leonard Boudin and SWP leaders stressed the fundamental issue: whether individuals and organizations could legally organize for socialism without state surveillance, harassment, or prosecution.

Judge Griesa’s 1986 ruling was a political victory for the entire socialist movement. It declared the FBI’s infiltration and surveillance of the SWP unconstitutional and a violation of First Amendment rights. For the first time, it was established that government informants inside a political organization could themselves constitute a constitutional violation. The court awarded $264,000 in damages to the party and issued an injunction barring the government from using illegally obtained files. The case took fifteen years. Victory required patience, persistence, and a clear political perspective.

Revolutionary legalism as a programmatic alternative

The concept of revolutionary legalism is not new. It was first systematically theorized by Piotr Stutchka, the first Soviet People’s Commissar for Justice, and debated by his younger colleague Evgeny Pashukanis. Drawing on Lenin’s tactical use of tsarist courts and the Duma, Pashukanis argued that a revolutionary party must avoid two errors: fetishizing legal forms (treating courts as neutral arbiters of justice) and the “fetishist denial of legality” (refusing to use legal weapons at all). Pashukanis wrote that Lenin “knew not only how mercilessly to expose tsarist, bourgeois etc. legality, but also how to use it, where it was necessary and when it was necessary.” This is revolutionary legalism: using bourgeois legal forms tactically, without mistaking them for instruments of justice or sources of legitimacy. This dialectical approach has seen a revival in recent years as neoliberal capitalism and the rise of authoritarian populism have drastically eroded democratic rights, forcing socialists to rediscover the Leninist art of fighting on every terrain.8Igor Shoikhedbrod, “Revolution or legality? Confronting the spectre of Marx in Habermas’s legal philosophy,” Contemporary Political Theory 20, no. 1 (2021): 72-95.

The courtroom is a battlefield, not a sanctuary. This distinction defines revolutionary legalism. It does not reject the use of courts, but refuses to treat them as neutral arbitrators or sources of legitimacy. Against liberal legalism, which seeks vindication through procedure, and against forms of movement lawyering, which can drift toward settlement as an endpoint, revolutionary legalism subordinates legal methods to the construction of political power. The question is not simply whether to win, but how and at what political cost.

Private negotiations create settlements. Public fights produce power.

This orientation has concrete consequences. First, discovery is a weapon. Subpoenas, depositions, and document requests should be used to expose how repression is organized, not just to build a case. Second, hearings are organizing opportunities. Every court date should be paired with public mobilization, turning legal proceedings into moments of political confrontation. Third, settlements must be judged politically. A good settlement contains no gag order, admits no legitimacy to the state’s original repressive action, and leaves a public record.

Agreements that restore institutional legitimacy without shifting the balance of power are defeats, regardless of compensation. Transparency, accountability, and structural concessions must be non-negotiable terms.

The Alter case poses these questions in real time. The lesson is to use the state’s own procedures to expose its operations while building power outside the courtroom.

When Texas State offered a post hoc “hearing,” it was an attempt to launder an illegal firing through procedural form. When administrators upheld the decision, they bet that the process itself would exhaust resistance. The response has moved in the opposite direction. Rather than retreat into litigation, the campaign has expanded outward, using the case not only to fight for reinstatement but also to expose the political forces behind the firing and to build the capacity to resist the next attack.

The lesson is obvious. Private negotiations create settlements. Public fights produce power.

The limits of the courtroom

The most persistent illusion social activists face is that “the law” stands above class struggle. It does not. The law codifies existing property relations and is enforced by courts and police, who answer to the same state.

First, the courts are not neutral. They protect property and class privilege. They do not dispense justice; they manage a crisis. A judge may rule for Alter—and that would matter—but it does not mean the courts are on our side. It means that, in this instance, the contradictions of bourgeois democracy worked in our favor.

When Cannon wrote that “the power of the workers is the court of last resort,” he was not dismissing legal tactics.9James P. Cannon, “The power of the workers is the court of last resort,” Labor Defender, September 1927. He insisted that no procedural victory matters unless it is backed by organized capacity outside the courtroom. The rule of law protects the ruled only when the ruled are organized enough to make violations costly. This does not mean refusing to use the courts. It means entering them with clarity: as a tactic, not a strategy; as one front in a struggle that will be decided in unions, workplaces, and the streets.

The rule of law protects the ruled only when the ruled are organized enough to make violations costly.

Second, legal victories do not translate to class power. Even if Alter is reinstated, Texas State remains a capitalist institution. Even if the AAUP secures reforms, administrators will still face donors and political pressure. The point of a defense campaign is not simply to win a better deal, but to build the capacity to fight—and ultimately to challenge the class structure itself.

Third, the state learns and adapts. After the SWP lawsuits of the 1970s, the FBI did not stop spying; it refined its methods. The same will happen here. No defense campaign can permanently restrain repression. At best, it can buy time, create space, and help organize the forces capable of confronting repression and its core roots.

This is why the CDTA’s focus on building infrastructure matters more than the lawsuit’s outcome. If Alter loses his case but leaves behind a functioning cross-union defense council and a network of organizers prepared to respond to repression, the campaign will have succeeded. If he wins but the organization dissolves, the state will return stronger, and the Left will start from zero.

Conclusion: Building the capacity to fight

The ILD slogan—”An injury to one is an injury to all”—is an organizing principle. The fight for immigrant rights, academic freedom, Palestinian solidarity, and union organizing is one and the same.

The significance of the Alter and Caravello cases lies in the strategies they have generated. They show how defense campaigns can become sites of political recomposition—bringing together unions, activists, and communities in common struggle. The question is not whether repression will continue—it will. The question is whether the Left will be prepared to respond.

Revolutionary legalism rests on a simple premise: the courtroom is only one battlefield. The decisive terrain lies elsewhere—in the working class’s capacity to organize, mobilize, and act collectively. Defense campaigns that grasp this can turn moments of repression into opportunities for growth.

What would it take to build a permanent defense infrastructure today? Not a single centralized organization, but a network: regional defense committees linked through unions, civil liberties groups, and community organizations, with a shared playbook for rapid response. The CDTA’s “patchwork” model—local committees across multiple cities—is a starting point. The next step is to formalize coordination so that when one sector is targeted, others mobilize immediately.

The trial will come. The state will escalate. The university will try to wait out the campaign. But if the networks being built now endure—if unions, academic associations, and community organizations remain active—the outcome of the case will not be the sole measure of success.

The real victory will be the infrastructure that endures when the case is closed. The real victory will be a Left that knows how to defend itself.

The Committee to Defend Tom Alter continues to organize. To sign the statement of support, to request an endorsement from your organization, or to get involved in local organizing, visit defendtomalter.org.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Karolus_BR; modified by Tempest.

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Popularitas Spaceman tidak hanya didukung oleh tampilannya yang menarik, tetapi juga karena permainan ini memberikan pengalaman interaktif yang berbeda dibandingkan permainan digital lainnya. Hal tersebut menjadikan Spaceman sebagai salah satu pilihan hiburan yang banyak dibicarakan oleh berbagai kalangan.

Terbang Tinggi Bersama Spaceman Raih Kemenangan Melalui Strategi

Keberhasilan dalam bermain Spaceman bukan hanya dipengaruhi oleh keberuntungan semata. Pemahaman terhadap mekanisme permainan menjadi faktor penting yang dapat membantu pemain mengambil keputusan secara lebih rasional.

Salah satu pendekatan yang banyak diterapkan adalah menentukan target sejak awal sebelum permainan dimulai. Dengan memiliki batas kemenangan maupun batas risiko, pemain dapat menjaga konsistensi tanpa mudah terbawa emosi ketika permainan berlangsung.

Selain itu, pengelolaan modal juga memiliki peran yang sangat penting. Mengatur nominal permainan sesuai kemampuan akan membantu menjaga keseimbangan sehingga pengalaman bermain tetap terasa nyaman. Pendekatan ini sering menjadi rekomendasi dari pemain berpengalaman karena mampu mengurangi keputusan impulsif yang berpotensi meningkatkan risiko.

Pentingnya Memahami Pola Permainan

Setiap permainan digital memiliki karakteristik tersendiri, termasuk Spaceman. Oleh sebab itu, memahami pola permainan menjadi langkah yang bijak sebelum mulai bermain secara aktif.

Banyak pemain meluangkan waktu untuk mengamati ritme permainan terlebih dahulu. Walaupun hasil setiap putaran bersifat independen dan tidak dapat dipastikan, proses observasi dapat membantu pemain lebih memahami dinamika permainan sehingga keputusan yang diambil terasa lebih terukur.

Pendekatan analitis seperti ini menunjukkan bahwa pengalaman dan pemahaman terhadap mekanisme permainan memiliki nilai yang tidak kalah penting dibandingkan sekadar mengejar hasil instan.

Pengalaman Bermain yang Bertanggung Jawab

pengalaman bermain yang positif selalu didukung oleh pengambilan keputusan yang bertanggung jawab. Menentukan batas waktu bermain, mengelola anggaran, serta memahami aturan permainan merupakan bagian dari praktik yang lebih bijaksana.

Pemain yang memiliki disiplin umumnya lebih mampu menikmati setiap sesi permainan tanpa tekanan berlebihan. Dengan demikian, aktivitas bermain tetap menjadi bentuk hiburan digital yang menyenangkan sekaligus terkendali.

Selain itu, memilih platform yang memiliki sistem keamanan yang baik, layanan pelanggan responsif, serta informasi permainan yang transparan juga menjadi aspek penting dalam menciptakan pengalaman pengguna yang lebih terpercaya.

Kesimpulan

Tema “Terbang Tinggi Bersama Spaceman Raih Kemenangan” menggambarkan semangat untuk mencapai hasil terbaik melalui persiapan, strategi, dan pengambilan keputusan yang tepat. Memahami mekanisme permainan, menerapkan pengelolaan modal yang disiplin, serta bermain secara bertanggung jawab merupakan fondasi penting dalam memperoleh pengalaman bermain yang lebih optimal.

Boots Riley’s new film, I Love Boosters, is a Robin Hood story about a crew of “boosters”—people who steal high-end clothing and resell it at affordable prices to working-class people who otherwise couldn’t afford it. The result is a beautiful, playful, funny, didactic, Afro-surrealist film with an earworm score by Tune-Yards. It’s a satirical comedy packed with practical special effects. It is also an unapologetically socialist film from an openly Marxist director.

The movie takes on the cost-of-living crisis, alienation, sweatshop labor, corporate control of the media, labor exploitation at home and abroad, and the predatory self-help industry. More importantly, it is crystal clear about its proposed solution: collective action by class-conscious workers.

Set in the San Francisco Bay Area, the film follows Corvette (Keke Taylor), an aspiring fashion designer struggling to survive while living in an abandoned fried chicken restaurant. Along with her friends Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), they make up the Velvet Gang. Their primary target for boosting is Metro Designers, a fast-fashion chain specializing in monochromatic clothing. The chain is owned by Christie Smith (Demi Moore), a workaholic designer who seems to live in an especially angry TED talk.

Once Christie becomes aware that Metro Designers is being targeted, the feud turns increasingly personal. To gather intelligence, members of the gang take jobs at Metro Designers, where they witness firsthand the unfair and often illegal tactics used to exploit workers. They also meet Violeta (Eiza González), who is attempting to organize a union at the company. Soon the Velvet Gang joins forces with Jianhu (Poppy Liu), a worker at one of Christie’s Chinese garment factories with her own reasons to bring down the fashion mogul. Armed with a convenient teleportation device, the group launches an escalating campaign to empty every Metro Designers store in the Bay Area.

This is a long-overdue movie. You may have heard of Nana Duffour’s excellent 2025 short film Rainbow Girls, which also follows a group of young femme shoplifters in the Bay Area. These two films were conceived and produced entirely independently. As Duffour wrote, “What I’ve come to understand is that when two filmmakers independently look at the hyper-gentrification of the Bay Area, the crushing weight of late-stage capitalism, and the rebellious art of boosting luxury goods, and decide to make a movie about it—that’s not a case of copycats. That is a cultural distress signal. It means a story is begging to be told.”

One of I Love Boosters‘s most striking qualities is its overwhelmingly woman-led cast. While several men play memorable supporting roles—LaKeith Stanfield is particularly entertaining as Pinky Ring Guy, a literal sex demon—they are all in supporting roles. In fact, I Love Boosters joins a very small club that passes the reverse Bechdel Test: in the handful of scenes in which two men speak to each other, they only talk about women—or the women’s revenge scheme. This represents a notable and welcome shift from Riley’s previous film, Sorry to Bother You, which only has two named female characters, who do not speak to each other at all.

Spoiler alert

I Love Boosters is a surreal film with a flamboyant visual style and an abundance of wild ideas, though it is not unique in that regard. Films such as Everything Everywhere All at Once similarly combine absurdity with a flamboyant fashion sense (they both share the same costume designer, Shirley Kurata).

What makes I Love Boosters distinctive is the clarity of its class politics.Throughout the film, Christie Smith is revealed to be the real thief. She steals design ideas from aspiring artists, as well as  wages and dignity from her retail employees through exploitative labor practices, and profits from starvation wages paid to workers in her overseas factories. When she is informed that the chemicals used to sandblast her designer jeans are causing lung cancer among factory workers—including Jianhu’s family—her response is indignant rage at being bothered.

The film’s final act offers a direct answer to these injustices: unionization, mass strikes, and the overthrow of capitalism. It turns out that the teleportation device that allows Jianhu to travel between China and Oakland has two additional settings. One, “Deconstruction,” can reduce concrete walls to piles of stone. The other, “Situation Acceleration,” intensifies contradictions in a distinctly dialectical manner. When amplified and combined with the teleportation function, the device triggers a worldwide surge in class consciousness. As the film ends we learn that revolutionary movements are spreading around the world.

This film is not perfect. There is a lot going on in this movie, which can make the plot feel overstuffed and rushed, especially the second act. Most of the practical effects feel fresh and vibrant in a way that CGI cannot replicate (see Mad Max: Fury Road for other examples of this). But the extended claymation sequence is a bit jarring and does not match the visual style of the rest of the movie, much as I enjoyed it.

Make sure to watch through the end credits for an explanation of dialectics from a stoner union organizer set in a hair salon. And if you haven’t seen Sorry to Bother You or Riley’s Hulu series I’m a Virgo, then add them to your list. They should be required watching for any political activist.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Señor Codo; modified by Tempest.

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The stakes of a state theoretical category

Over the past decade, the American Left has often used the term “fascism” to describe the emerging regime in the United States, and this has been quite understandable. All around us there has been visible disdain for legal procedures, cultivation of a leadership cult, the use of paramilitary symbols in security forces, the escalation of the machinery of deportation, and a culture-war mentality. Still, equating these developments with fascism can do more harm than good by muddying understanding. In the Marxist-historical tradition—from Trotsky to Poulantzas to Paxton—fascism refers to a specific type of movement: a mass-mobilizing force of the petty bourgeoisie, organized outside of parliamentary politics, fused with parts of capital to suppress a working class facing a revolutionary or near-revolutionary crisis (Trotsky 1934; Poulantzas 1970; Paxton 2004).

The current American situation doesn’t meet those conditions. The working class isn’t organized for revolution; the petty bourgeoisie doesn’t have the necessary extra-parliamentary units; and capital is not suffering the profitability crisis that led German and Italian industries toward fascism in the interwar period.

Calling the current regime as fascist might be a misstep, and labeling it as populist authoritarianism might miss some important nuances. What we’re really looking at is a more specific category—one that reflects how the executive power has become more independent from different class factions within an exhausted hegemonic bloc while also becoming more personal and patrimonial in its approach to state administration. I refer to this as “patrimonial Bonapartism,” which combines insights from two major theories: the Marxist view of Bonapartism as a unique form of capitalist state rule and Weber’s analysis of patrimonialism as a special mode of governance. I believe that bringing these two ideas together helps us better understand what’s happening in the United States, compare it with other cases, and start thinking strategically about what the future might hold.

The origins of Bonapartism as a Marxist category

The category of Bonapartism comes into Marxist analysis through Marx’s influential pamphlets covering France from 1848 to 1851: “The Class Struggles in France,” “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” and later, “The Civil War in France” (Marx 1850; Marx 1852; Marx 1871). These writings primarily explore the idea of state autonomy. By the time Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte orchestrated his coup in December 1851 and was proclaimed emperor just a year later, the French bourgeoisie had largely overcome the proletarian uprising of June 1848. Instead of governing directly, the bourgeoisie ceded political power to a regime that suspended parliament, weakened the party system, and concentrated administrative control in an executive supported by a “society of December 10”—a group of displaced adventurers, financial speculators, and noble remnants that Marx vividly describes (Marx 1852, Ch. 5).

Marx’s analysis turns on a paradox. The Bonapartist state is, in its political form, autonomous from the bourgeoisie: it disciplines them, taxes them, and deals with them through the prefectural apparatus. However, in its social content, it is a state that serves the general interest of capital. Bonaparte protects property; he crushes the workers’ movement; he opens the way for the second industrial revolution under Haussmann and the Crédit Mobilier. The autonomy is real but conditional. It rests on a peculiar conjuncture: a working class strong enough to threaten the bourgeoisie but not strong enough to take power, and a bourgeoisie too divided to rule directly. Into that vacuum steps the executive, claiming to stand above class to represent the nation—most especially the parcelized peasantry, which Marx famously likens to a “sack of potatoes,” incapable of self-representation and therefore requiring a representative who lords over them (Marx 1852, Ch. 7).

This is the original sense of Bonapartism: a particular form of capitalist state in which the executive, surrounded by a personal apparatus, achieves real autonomy from the dominant class while serving its general interest. Hal Draper’s reconstruction of Marx’s state theory establishes that Marx and Engels treated this phenomenon not as an anomaly but as a recurring form of the bourgeois state under conditions of class equilibrium (Draper 1977). Engels generalized the category in his analysis of Bismarck’s Germany, where he saw a similar structural logic at work in a different historical setting (Engels 1884). The category was thus, from its first elaboration, intended as a portable analytical tool rather than a description of a single regime.

Leon Trotsky decisively extended the category in the 1930s. Confronting the rise of fascism, Trotsky was concerned to distinguish Bonapartism, a form of normal bourgeois rule under crisis, from fascism proper, which involved the destruction of working-class organization by an extra-parliamentary mass movement (Trotsky 1934). For Trotsky, the regimes of Brüning, Papen, and Schleicher in late Weimar were Bonapartist preludes; Hitler’s regime, once consolidated, was something qualitatively different. The Bonapartist regime, Trotsky argued, was an emergency form of rule, inherently transitional, pointing either back toward parliamentary normality or forward into fascism. Trotsky also, controversially, stretched the category to characterize Stalin’s bureaucratic regime in The Revolution Betrayed, arguing that Stalinism represented a Bonapartism sui generis, the autonomization of a bureaucratic stratum from both classes in a workers’ state (Trotsky 1937). Whatever one makes of the Soviet application, the methodological move is important: Bonapartism became, for Trotsky and his successors, a tool for contemplating state autonomy in moments of class equilibrium and crisis.

The next major theoretical extension comes from Nicos Poulantzas. Across Political power and Social Classes, Fascism and Dictatorship, and State Power and Socialism, Poulantzas systematized Marxist state theory and gave Bonapartism a structural rather than purely conjunctural meaning (Poulantzas 1968; Poulantzas 1970; Poulantzas 1978). For Poulantzas, the bourgeois state always exhibits a relative autonomy from the dominant class, because it must organize the class as a whole against the centrifugal tendencies of its competing fractions. Bonapartism, then, refers to a period in which the relative autonomy of the state becomes intensified. During this time, the executive concentrates power, parliamentary mediation breaks down, and the state apparatus becomes the primary site of conflict among class fractions. In his late work, Poulantzas proposed that this had become the normal form of the developed capitalist state under late capitalism, a regime he called “authoritarian statism,” characterized by the decline of parliamentary institutions, the concentration of power in the executive, the fusion of party and state, and the decline of formal legal procedure (Poulantzas 1978). In this account, authoritarian statism is described as Bonapartism that has become permanent and pervasive, serving as the underlying tone of advanced capitalist rule rather than merely as an expression of a crisis episode.

Bob Jessop’s strategic-relational reconstruction of Poulantzas’s framework has advanced this analysis, insisting that the state must be understood not as a thing but as a social relation, more precisely, as the institutional materialization of a balance of class forces (Jessop 1990; Jessop 2016). On this account, Bonapartism, whether episodic or structural, is the institutional crystallization of a particular conjuncture of forces, and it has its contradictions, its conditions of reproduction, and its forms of crisis. This is the Marxist inheritance on which the present analysis builds.

The Weberian Inheritance and the Patrimonial Moment

To this Marxist tradition, I want to graft a category drawn from Max Weber, one that the Marxist literature has been slow to integrate: patrimonialism. In Economy and Society, Weber distinguishes three pure types of legitimate domination: legal-rational, traditional, and charismatic, and within traditional domination, he develops patrimonialism as the dominant form of pre-modern rule (Weber 1922). Patrimonial domination rests on the personal loyalty of officials to the ruler; the apparatus of administration is treated as the ruler’s personal household; offices are dispensed as favors and held at the ruler’s pleasure; there is no clear distinction between the private wealth of the ruler and the public revenue of the polity; and rule-bound, predictable, legal-rational procedure is subordinated to the personal will of the patron.

Weber developed the category to analyze pre-modern empires, sultanates, and feudal kingships. However, Weberian scholarship in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly that of Shmuel Eisenstadt, extended the concept to analyze post-colonial regimes in which a formally modern, legal-rational state apparatus operated alongside or beneath a system of personal rule, clientelism, and rent extraction (Eisenstadt 1973). Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle (1997) specifically developed the category of neopatrimonialism in the comparative politics literature on Africa. It was refined methodologically by Gero Erdmann and Ulf Engel (2007). This literature establishes that patrimonialism is not confined to pre-modern formations: It can be the dominant administrative principle within ostensibly modern states, hollowing out the formal apparatus from within while preserving its outer forms.

It is worth distinguishing patrimonialism in this sense from Weber’s other category of personal rule, charismatic domination, since contemporary analyses of Trumpism frequently conflate the two. Charismatic domination, in Weber’s account, rests on the personal devotion of followers to a leader whose authority derives from his perceived extraordinary qualities; it is inherently unstable, episodic, and prone to be “routinized” into one of the other forms over time (Weber 1922). The American regime exhibits charismatic elements in its legitimation: the cult of personality, the rally form, and the perceived extraordinary qualities of the leader. But its administrative substance is patrimonial. The two layers must be kept analytically distinct: Charisma is the legitimating idiom by which a patrimonial-Bonapartist regime addresses its mass base, while patrimonialism is the actual principle on which the administrative apparatus is being remade. The conflation matters strategically. If one mistakes the regime for a purely charismatic phenomenon, one expects its collapse to follow the personal political fortunes of the leader. If one understands the patrimonial substance, one recognizes that an architecture of personal-loyalty administration is being built that may survive, in altered form, even through significant changes in personnel at the top.

To say that the United States today is undergoing a patrimonial-Bonapartist transformation is to say two things simultaneously: that the executive has acquired real autonomy from the established class-fractional coalitions of the neoliberal order and that the administrative apparatus is being remade on patrimonial principles, with personal loyalty replacing rule-bound office-holding as the central administrative criterion.

Patrimonialism, in this synthesis, names a mode of administration: the principle on which the personnel, budgets, rule-following, and loyalty relations of the state apparatus are organized. Bonapartism, by contrast, names a political form: the relationship between the executive and the contending class fractions of the dominant bloc. The two operate at different levels of abstraction, and that is precisely why they can be fused. To say that the United States today is undergoing a patrimonial-Bonapartist transformation is to say two things simultaneously: that the executive has acquired real autonomy from the established class-fractional coalitions of the neoliberal order and that the administrative apparatus is being remade on patrimonial principles, with personal loyalty replacing rule-bound office-holding as the central administrative criterion.

Historical examples and the comparative register

Before turning to the American case, it is worth running through several historical and contemporary examples that fall within the synthetic category, since the comparative register is what makes the framework analytically productive.

The original case, Louis Bonaparte’s France from 1851 to 1870, already exhibits both moments. Marx’s society of December 10, Bonaparte’s personal retinue, is patrimonial in its essence: a household of personal clients, financiers, military adventurers, and political opportunists who depend on the ruler for their position and whose function is to staff the state apparatus on principles of personal loyalty rather than meritocratic competence (Marx 1852). The Second Empire’s economic policy, concessions to favored financiers, contracts dispensed through personal channels, and the rebuilding of Paris organized through Bonapartist patronage are patrimonial in their concrete operation, even as the political form is Bonapartist in Marx’s strict sense. The Second Empire, then, is not merely Bonapartism; it is already patrimonial Bonapartism, though the Marxist tradition has tended to read only the Bonapartist moment.

The Latin American caudillo tradition supplies a register but a distinct one. From Rosas in Argentina to Vargas in Brazil to Perón again in his second turn, Latin American politics has known many regimes in which executive concentration, personal rule, and patrimonial administration coexisted with formally republican institutions. These cases differ from European Bonapartism in their relation to the world economy. They were, for the most part, semi-peripheral or peripheral states, often dependent on commodity exports, and the autonomy of their executives was conditioned by that dependency in ways with no direct American analog.

Vladimir Putin’s Russia exemplifies the cleanest contemporary case of developed-capitalist patrimonial Bonapartism, but we must handle the comparison with care. Putin’s regime exhibits, with textbook clarity, the autonomization of the executive from the contending oligarchic fractions of the 1990s; the personalization of administration around a network of siloviki and personal clients; the fusion of family wealth with state office; the use of state resources as personal levers; and the relative subordination of capital to political access. The Russian case differs from any prospective American case in its semi-peripheral position in the world system and in its specific path of regime formation out of the Soviet collapse, but the structural logic is recognizably similar.

Silvio Berlusconi’s three turns as Italian prime minister between 1994 and 2011 constitute a more telling rehearsal of the form within a Western liberal democracy. Berlusconi entered politics from the private media-industrial complex he had built; his governments used state office to defend his personal business interests; he packed the administration with personal clients; and his legal-political combat against the magistracy prefigured many of the conflicts that have since recurred in the United States. The Italian case is instructive because it shows the form arising not from regime breakdown but from the exhaustion of an established party system: the collapse of the Christian Democrats and Socialists in the Mani Pulite crisis created the vacuum into which Berlusconi stepped, just as the exhaustion of the post-1980 American party-political order has created the vacuum into which Trumpism has expanded.

Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey supplies an intermediate case between the personalistic but episodically institutional Italian variant and the more deeply institutionalized Hungarian variant. Since his initial accession through the AKP in 2003, through the constitutional referendum of 2017, through the consolidation of presidential rule, and through the wholesale remaking of the judicial and educational apparatus, Erdoğan has built a patrimonial-Bonapartist regime in a NATO member state that retains formal elections and a residual opposition (Esen and Gumuscu 2016). The Turkish case is instructive because it exemplifies a state that, like the United States, is an important regional power with significant military assets, is entangled in international institutional architectures, and has a politically active capital fraction (the so-called Anatolian tigers) that has developed as a political-economically of the ruling party, serving as a clear analogue to certain American capital fractions whose growth has been politically mediated.

Narendra Modi’s India, similarly, has entailed the patrimonial reorganization of a major capitalist democracy whose institutional architecture is far more complex than that of the small post-communist states most often studied in the comparative literature. Modi’s regime has bound itself to specific capital fractions, the Adani and Ambani groups of family-dynastic conglomerates, in a way that recalls Bonaparte’s society of December 10 in its essentials: the use of state office to favor a personal-political coalition of capital, with the public revenue and regulatory apparatus serving as instruments of personal-political accumulation (Crabtree 2018). The Indian case, similar to the Turkish case, is enlightening for Americans because it demonstrates how the form arises not from regime breakdown but from the patrimonial transformation of a large, complex capitalist democracy during an organic crisis.

Viktor Orbán’s Hungary represented the most institutionalized variant. Orbán’s regime did not merely concentrate executive power; it rebuilt the administrative state, the judiciary, the universities, and the media on principles of personal and partisan loyalty (Scheppele 2018). Where Berlusconi remained primarily a personal-dynastic political entrepreneur whose regime did not survive his political eclipse, Orbán built an institutional architecture intended to outlast him. The Hungarian case is the model toward which American patrimonial Bonapartism may evolve if its early phase consolidates, and it is the case most closely studied by the American right intelligentsia associated with the current administration.

The American conjuncture

What conjunctural conditions have produced the American variant of this form?

The first is the exhaustion of the neoliberal order that has organized American politics since roughly 1980. The bipartisan coalition that produced NAFTA, financial deregulation, the welfare reforms of the 1990s, and the long wars of the post-2001 period began coming apart in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and has not been reconstituted. Neither party has been able to assemble a stable governing program responsive to the conditions of low growth, declining real wages for the working majority, capital’s drift toward rentierism and political access, and the secular decline of American hegemony abroad. This is what Gramsci called an “organic crisis,” a crisis of the relationship between rulers and ruled in which the inherited political forms can no longer organize consent. However, no new form has yet stabilized (Gramsci 1971, 275–6). Trumpism is best understood as the political form that has arisen within this organic crisis: not its resolution but its prolongation under new auspices.

The second is the long-run hollowing of American state capacity. Wolfgang Streeck’s work on the consolidation state describes the secular transformation of advanced-capitalist states under the discipline of bond markets. However, the underlying logic has also been at work in the American case, converting states from “tax states” that respond to citizen-democratic demands into “debt states” that respond to creditor demands (Streeck 2014; Streeck 2016). The American administrative state in 2026 is the product of forty years of cumulative privatization, contracting out, hiring freezes, the politicization of senior career positions, and the substitution of consultancy networks for permanent civil service capacity. This environment is the soil into which patrimonial principles have penetrated. The civil-service density that could resist personal-loyalty administration is significantly lower than it was even in the 1970s, not to mention the New Deal apparatus established by Roosevelt and the long Cold War security state that consolidated around it.

The third condition is the transformation of the Republican Party from an organized party of capital, with its own internal discipline and class-fractional coalitions, into something closer to a personal vehicle for the leader. The conservative legal movement, the corporate donor network, the evangelical organizational infrastructure, and the talk-radio and cable-news complex have not disappeared. However, the party’s relationship with these constituencies has been reversed. Where the party’s leadership once disciplined these constituencies into a coalition, the leader now disciplines the party against them, retaining their support by delivering on selected priorities while subordinating their organizational autonomy to his personal political vehicle. This is the patrimonialization of a major bourgeois party, a development with no real precedent in modern American political history.

The fourth condition is the specific accumulation regime within which all of this is occurring. I have argued elsewhere that this is best called “political capitalism”: an accumulation regime in which appropriation through political access, tariffs, sanctions, regulatory favor, subsidized contracts, and public-private deals becomes a primary route for the rentier fractions of capital, displacing competitive accumulation as the dominant mode. (Riley and Brenner 2022 develop a closely related argument under a slightly different label.) Patrimonial rule is functional for this regime in a way it could not be for a competitive-industrial accumulation regime. When access to the executive becomes a prime means of appropriation, the executive’s autonomy and personalization become valuable to the fractions of capital that benefit. This is the class content of the American form.

The fifth condition is strategic-imperial. The American imperial state is undergoing a transition from rules-based multilateral hegemony—the form constructed after 1945 and renovated after 1991—to a hub-and-spoke bilateralism in which the United States maintains its power through personal deals with subordinate strongmen—transactional rather than rules-based, with the leader himself as the central interlocutor. This shift is consistent with the domestic state form: patrimonial rule at home and patrimonial empire abroad are the same political logic operating at different scales. Whether this is the political form of a hegemon managing its own decline—a cheaper, more transactional imperial economy of force—or a contingent political form that happens to fit a moment is, in my view, the central question of Marxist analysis of American empire. Arrighi’s framework of hegemonic transition supplies the materialist version of the first reading (Arrighi 1994; Arrighi 2007). In this interpretation, the patrimonial-Bonapartist form serves as the political-administrative framework for the United States’ transition from a hegemonic to a multipolar world economy.

The patrimonial-Bonapartist form serves as the political-administrative framework for the United States’ transition from a hegemonic to a multipolar world economy.

What does the American case look like in its concrete operation? It is worth being specific. We see the appointment of senior administrators based on personal loyalty rather than expertise; the use of pardons as commodities for personal allies; the dissolution of the conventional boundary between family business and state office; the assault on the civil service via the elimination of career protections and the reclassification of senior positions as political appointments; the use of tariffs not as instruments of industrial strategy but as personal levers for extracting concessions from foreign governments and domestic firms; the cultivation of personal loyalty within the security apparatus and the displacement of professional military and intelligence leadership; and the open use of the Department of Justice as an instrument of personal vendetta. These are not isolated abuses, but the systematic features of a regime being remade on patrimonial principles.

The assault on the federal civil service is the most consequential institutional dimension of this transformation. The Schedule F executive order, originally promulgated in 2020 and revived in 2025, reclassifies tens of thousands of senior career positions as political appointments removable at the president’s discretion. This is an administrative measure that converts an ostensibly merit-based bureaucracy into a patrimonial household in a single stroke. Combined with the reorganization of agencies along loyalty-political lines, the systematic dismissal of inspectors general, the politicization of military and intelligence commands, and the use of executive orders to bypass legislative authorization on questions of staffing and policy, the cumulative effect has been the most rapid transformation of the federal administrative apparatus since the New Deal, but in the opposite direction. Where the New Deal built a permanent administrative state on legal-rational principles, the present transformation dissolves that state into a network of personal-political appointments responsive to executive will. This represents the literal patrimonialization of the administrative apparatus.

The class beneficiaries are not the bourgeoisie as a whole but a determinate fraction: the politically connected rentiers; the family-capitalist and dynastic-firm fractions; and the new-tech and crypto fractions whose accumulation has been most dependent on political-regulatory favor; and the energy and military-industrial fractions whose interests align with the imperial reorientation. By contrast, the regime’s principal capitalist opponents have been the fractions of capital most disciplined by the bond markets and most exposed to global supply chains. However, their opposition has been sporadic and limited, as they lack a political vehicle to defect to.

The tensions of the form

Patrimonial Bonapartism is not a stable equilibrium. It carries within it real tensions that bear on its future.

The first is theoretical and points to a possible misreading. Classical Bonapartism presupposes a modernizing, rationalizing state apparatus—the prefectoral system in France and the imperial bureaucracy in Germany. The autonomy of the executive was, in classical Bonapartism, made possible by the existence of a developed legal-rational administration. Patrimonialism is, by contrast, the dissolution of that administration into personal-loyalty networks. So, when we describe a single regime as both Bonapartist and patrimonial, we are either describing a stable hybrid in which the autonomous executive captures and patrimonializes a still-functioning apparatus or a transitional form in which the political moment of Bonapartist concentration is the prelude to a deeper hollowing of the rational-legal state. The second reading is, I believe, closer to the truth of the American case, and it implies that we are not yet at the equilibrium point of the form but in its phase of active state destruction.

The second is the class-content tension. Bonapartism is supposed to be relatively autonomous yet ultimately functional for capital in general. Patrimonial rule, by contrast, is functional for a specific fraction. There are moments at which significant fractions of capital have opposed the regime’s policies, with the bond market’s intermittent disciplining of tariff policy as the clearest example. The repeated testing of limits and the regime’s retreat from its most extreme positions during bond market revolts indicate that capital generally retains a structural veto power. However, the fact that the limits keep being tested indicates that the regime is willing to push the relationship further than any postwar American regime has. Whether this represents capital reorganizing itself, building a state form adequate to the new political-capitalist accumulation regime, or a fractional capture of the state at the longer-term expense of total social capital is the central question of class analysis.

The third is the succession problem. Patrimonial regimes are notoriously brittle at the death or political eclipse of the patrimon. The personal-loyalty structure of the apparatus, the absence of institutionalized rules for succession, the family-dynastic ambitions of the ruler’s circle, and the rivalry of subordinate lieutenants all conspire to produce succession crises. The literature on neopatrimonialism in Africa documents this with grim clarity (Bratton and van de Walle 1997). The American case will face this problem within a determinate political horizon: the constitutional limit on presidential terms, however contested; the leader’s age and health; and the absence of an obvious successor who commands the same personal authority. How the regime will manage this transition, whether through a designated dynastic successor, a partial restoration of party-political mediation, or a deeper authoritarian institutionalization on the Hungarian model, is among the most important open questions of American politics.

The fourth is the comparative-conjunctural question. The Hungarian model of institutionalization through judicial and constitutional reconstruction has been studied by American conservative intellectuals associated with the regime, and elements of it have been imported into the United States. However, the American context is different in important respects: the federal structure, the relative independence of state-level political systems, the continuing institutional weight of capital fractions opposed to the regime, the residual organizational density of the labor movement and the social movements, and the simple fact that the United States is a hegemonic state with imperial responsibilities and not a small open economy. These factors may make full Hungarian-style consolidation more difficult, or they may produce a distinctively American variant of the form whose features are not yet fully visible.

The fifth is legitimation. Postwar American politics has rested on a specific form of legal-rational legitimation: the claim that authority is exercised through rule-bound, constitutionally constrained, professionally administered procedures. Patrimonial Bonapartism cannot continue to claim that form of legitimation, since its administrative substance contradicts it. The regime has been visibly groping for alternative legitimizing idioms: the charismatic-populist register addressed to its mass base, the civilizational-nationalist register addressed to elements of the right intelligentsia, the transactional-deal-making register addressed to the business class, and the providential-religious register addressed to evangelical constituencies. None of these has the unifying capacity of the legal-rational legitimacy it is displacing. This deficiency is a structural weakness of the form, and it is one of the conditions on which a counter-hegemonic project might be built.

Futures

What, then, are the plausible trajectories?

The first is intensification toward institutionalized authoritarianism on the Hungarian model: a consolidated patrimonial Bonapartism. This requires that the regime succeed in remaking the federal judiciary, universities, civil service, and federal apparatus to a degree that endures political transition. The regime must successfully delegitimate the opposition party or politically constrain it from full alternation. Moreover, it requires that the major factions of capital that have not endorsed the regime nevertheless accommodate themselves to it. This trajectory is possible but not guaranteed; the federal structure and the residual political density of the opposition both work against it.

The second is a succession crisis and regime instability: patrimonial Bonapartism in collapse. This trajectory follows if the regime fails to manage its succession, if the personal-loyalty networks fragment in factional conflict, or if the leader’s eclipse produces a vacuum that no designated successor can fill. The historical record of this trajectory is well documented in the neopatrimonialism literature: Eegimes built on personal rule tend to undergo turbulent transitions (Bratton and van de Walle 1997). The American outcome of such a transition is impossible to predict in detail. However, it is likely to involve a partial restoration of party-political mediation under conditions of significantly weakened administrative capacity and democratic legitimacy.

The third, and to my mind, the most probable, medium-term scenario is a prolonged organic crisis without resolution. Neither the consolidation of the regime into a stable authoritarian institutional architecture nor the restoration of the antecedent neoliberal-democratic order is fully achievable in the medium term, given the underlying conditions of secular American decline, capital’s fractured strategic orientation, and the weakness of organized political alternatives to the regime’s right. We will likely see, in this scenario, a continuing oscillation between phases of intensified patrimonial rule and phases of partial institutional restoration, with the underlying state apparatus becoming progressively less capacitated and the political form becoming progressively less recognizable as the postwar American republic.

The strategic terrain on which the socialist Left must operate is the possibility of an organized political alternative built out of the working class, the social movements, and the residual democratic-republican forces.

The fourth, which is the strategic terrain on which the socialist left must operate, is the possibility of an organized political alternative built out of the working class, the social movements, and the residual democratic-republican forces. This alternative takes the regime’s patrimonial-Bonapartist character seriously. It frames its political project as a defense and renovation of democratic-republican institutions in the service of a working-class program. This is not the same as a popular front of “democracy against authoritarianism,” which dissolves class content into a constitutional defense. It is also different from a third-camp abstentionism that treats the conflict between patrimonial Bonapartism and the residual democratic order as a quarrel of bourgeois fractions in which the workers’ movement has no stake. It is, rather, a political project that recognizes the regime as a determinate enemy of the working class, since its assault on the civil service, on labor enforcement, and on the public goods that working-class life depends on is not collateral but central, while refusing to subordinate the workers’ movement to the political vehicles of the displaced neoliberal order.

A serious socialist political project in this conjuncture must operate on several fronts simultaneously. It must defend the legal-rational institutions of the residual American republic—the civil service, the courts, the universities, and the regulatory state—not because these institutions, in their existing form, fully serve working-class interests, but because their destruction strengthens patrimonial rule and weakens the working class’s capacity to compel reform. The destruction of the National Labor Relations Board’s enforcement capacity, the gutting of OSHA, and the politicization of immigration enforcement against workers and their families: these are not collateral consequences of a regime focused elsewhere. They are central elements of a regime whose class character, in its everyday operation, is anti-working class.

It must, at the same time, refuse the political subordination that the “defense of democracy” framing demands. The neoliberal-democratic order that the regime has displaced was itself in deep crisis, and its restoration on its old terms is neither possible nor desirable. The political project of subordinating the workers’ movement to the Democratic Party’s restorationist agenda, one that has organized much of the institutional Left over the past decade, is a strategic dead end. It can neither defeat the regime decisively nor offer the working class a political instrument adequate to the conditions of organic crisis.

The third front is the slow, difficult work of building, within and against the existing parties, an independent political vehicle of the working class, a vehicle that takes seriously the patrimonial-Bonapartist character of the regime, that organizes for the defense and renovation of democratic-republican institutions in the service of a working-class program, and that begins, gradually, to compete for political authority based on a different resolution of the organic crisis. The conditions for such a project are unfavorable; they were unfavorable for most of the great party-building efforts of the past two centuries. The category of patrimonial Bonapartism does not, by itself, deliver such a project. However, it specifies the regime we are confronting, and a clear specification of the enemy is the first condition of strategic clarity. The category is, in the end, a Marxist contribution to that clarity, and the use we put it to will determine whether the next phase of American politics is one in which the working class is a strategic subject or merely a spectator at its own defeat.

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