Incidentally, Mehdi Hasan himself used to write Zionist Islamophobic hit pieces for British tabloids a decade ago, so there’s a reason he prefers people focus on the present.

Exhibit A: Mehdi Hasan: The sorry truth is that the virus of anti-Semitism has infected the British Muslim community

Nah, people conflate the Mandate of Heaven with European Divine Right of Kings.

While they both seem to be using the divine to justify the legitimacy of the ruler, they differ in how they relate to said ruler losing legitimacy.

The Divine Right of Kings precludes any thought about removing the monarch as taboo and expects unconditional obedience.

The Mandate of Heaven is used to explain why certain rulers get overthrown by peasant rebellions and others don’t (either the peasants don’t even try, or they’re unsuccessful). Basically getting overthrown means losing the Mandate of Heavens, resisting the rebellion proves holding it.

The Mandate of Heaven ultimately says the legitimacy of rule comes from the consent of the ruled.

The ancient Greeks were a bunch of bigoted slaving pirates. Of course they have differing conceptions of right and wrong

The current Americans are also a bunch of bigoted slaving pirates, though.

Liberalism is an inherently conservative ideology too.

true human cost

They really don’t consider the victims of the empire human.

Even CNN realizes they are the same thing.

Yeah because he died quickly.

Or speaking Arabic in Germany.

We need more Dzierżyński-posting!

The F is missing for a reason.

Very true, before the “end of history” there were definitely a lot more attempts at envisioning better future.

The WPK is not the only party in Korea, there’s also Chondoist Chongu Party and Korean Social Democratic Party, you can also be elected a representative without party association.

All elected positions are subject to recall and that right is regularly exercised, being a member of Kim family certainly does not give you immunity to that.

On the more philosophical questions, I can recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power, specifically Chapter 7 talks about Korea.

They’re always like “I don’t owe you my time!” and then proceed to fight for days in 20 replies deep threads.

It is not a monarchy. The Kims served all kinds of different positions. In fact the position of the president was abolished and split into 3 different posts to deconcentrate power when Kim Il Sung died (hence he’s called the eternal president).

The highest organ of state power in DPRK is the Supreme People’s Assembly (over 600 members) which is elected for five year terms in universal and secret ballot, and it is the body which in general appoints all other individial posts. So Kim Jong Un is for example appointed as the Chairman of the State Affairs Commission whereas the Chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly is Pak Thae Song.

Kim Jong Un is also the General Secretary of the Worker’s Party of Korea, but that’s not a State Organ.

The title of the “Leader” you might have heard so much is mostly a customary one and what it entails is a lot of inspecting of construction sites and workplaces and giving suggestions on how the design can be improved to serve the people better.

Most often he is referred to simply as Comrade Kim Jong Un by the state media.

futurism.com

I guess this is western futurism now.

“There might be a good thing happening but at the cost of authoritarianism so not worth the cost” is a frighteningly common response from liberals to developments like this.

And the numbers look even worse when you compare women prison populations.

So much for those people caring for women’s oppression.

In fact, tying security officers to poles, then torturing, and then burning them is exactly what the Chinese “peaceful protesters” did to the PLA soldiers in 1989.

Didn’t Maduro in 2025 was pushing to get Venezuela out of the ICC?

Yes, they repealed their adhesion to the Rome Statue in 2025.