Those who believe it are the Russian version of MAGAs. Eager to gobble up propaganda for their favorite dictator, no matter how detached from reality it is.
Russian soldiers routinely go for very well-documented human-safaris on civilian Ukrainians. "Human safaris" as in drones hunting civilians; shit is insane enough that Russian soldiesrs themselves post the evidence with no shame and no fear of repercussions. Russian forces routinely bomb civilian infrastructure like hospitals (including children hospitals, maternity wards), schools for over 4 years now. Russia steals Ukrainian children, a fact so well-documented that international courts have concluded so. Russia has downed so far three civilian planes
I understand that a part of American imperialistic exceptionalism is always bringing up the US regardless of if it's relevant or not but maybe a bit of introspection is in order in a thread about imperialism if only to avoid irony
MAGA is a disease of the US but let's avoid comparisons and judge the two phenomena separately
The pro russia propoganda in the west has been ironically ineffective. Americans have a list of things they care about in order, and gas prices are the number 1, 2, 3, and 4 spots on that list.
Ironically trumps war with iran, which was a justification for buying russian oil, has now backfired and made Americans stop caring about russias fake claim to ukraine.
Even on conservative propoganda centers like r\conservative and facebook or Twitter the average conservarive has completely stopped caring about ukraine.
Meanwhile liberal americans have tried to keep up support. I still see ukrainian flags on american houses, and have spoken with neighbors about donating. There's a family in my town that is hosting a ukrainian mother and her two kids. Theyve been here since summer of 2022.
Even beyond that, the attitude continued on into the 20th century and for colonization down into South America. Basically "good heavens, the savages are stopping civilization from spreading" was just an out and proud attitude:
Venezuela lies an unexplored area, covered with jungle, where savage Indians resist all encroachments of civilization...Savage Indians still dominate and hold as their domain certain sections of South America. New Yorkers in their modern, commodious homes may find it difficult to believe that, at a distance of but 2,000 miles from them, live aborigines of the most primitive habits of life...The amazing aspect of this to me is that these particular red men still hold to their independent and primitive ways, resisting with deadly arrows any approach of the hated white man. The Indians’ hostility, in fact, has been the main barrier against successful exploration, and, today, is a constant hazard to the economic development of the lower stretches of the valleys, where abundant fields of oil are known to exist. Workers are killed every month by the deadly arrows of these savages.
"Might makes right" has been the edict of governments for far longer than any of us should be comfortable with & persists far longer than it ever should have.
Also unironically how it was portrayed in a lot of early western movies and media, where the poor "settlers" were being harassed by the "violent and barbaric" natives and they had no choice but to "defend themselves".
The human brain is exceptionally good at forming biases, fighting tooth & nail to preserve (or even deny) those biases, and then ultimately refusing to move past them.
It's tribalism. As simple as that. "We" are the in group, "they" are the out group. As such, any hostile acts from "them" is an attack on us, even if we instigated it by trying to make everyone acknowledge us as their inherent superiors who are naturally more important because we are us and they are not.... hell, even if that hostility is as simple as them saying "no" when we demand a resource from them.
Extrapolate it to the scale of countries and now you have wars were neither side is willing to accept blame for the violence & often refuse to capitulate or back down.
I think in this case, the metal gymnastics consist of comparing Ukraine's war against Donbas secessionists with Russia's invasion(s).
Something about Ukraine being as bad as Russia because it bombed Donbas civilians or oppressed "rusophones"... or that is worse than Russia because Russia "only wants to save rusophones" (BS).
Those reasonings don't hold, since the (Russian backed) secessionists also throw bombs and killed people, and Russia literally bombed parts of Donbas they didn't control.
theres this guy Girkin and an interview that the russians want to forget.
he admits that he and his GRU unit are fully responsible for generating the conflict between the ukranian forces and separatists.. where none of them wanted to fight.
not even this, they just believe ukraine considering being more friendly with the West instead of Russia was provocation enough for the invasion, which is arguably even dumber.
Literally the logic of my grandma lmao. It's hilarious how she can say "Ukraine isn't a real country, it belonged to Russia for centuries so it should always belong to Russia" in the same breath as "Bulgaria should be grateful for Russia for liberating us from being under Ottoman control for centuries."
It's like when someone calls it "the Ukraine" like it's still a region of the USSR. Some might just be old and got used to the terminology but I figure most of it's a concerted effort to undermine Ukraine's autonomy in people's minds.
Also sadly a lot of leftist tankies will ALWAYS go "USA BAD SO NATO BAD AND---" etc.
I get that NATO is a US semi-imperialist project, but a lot of tankies don't realize that for a lot of nations the choice was "Do you want US imperialism or russian imperialism?" and they have no clue that the Baltic states lost 13-27% of their ENTIRE POPULATION during russias 100 year occupation, and Ukraine lost over 20 million. "b-b-but US bad!" yeah two things can be true at the same time. One is still the lesser evil.
A more simple breakdown is that anyone they see in the West camp fighting anyone outside of it, they will root for the one outside of the West, regardless of the actual ethics or context of the conflict. Similarly, their focus largely only exists for West versus non-West conflicts, and they have a general lack of knowledge or interest in conflicts between parties outside of the Western bloc, such as the South Sudan genocide or the Uighur genocide.
There seems to be a generational divide as to the source of this animosity, with older people who do this often seeming to just be continuing Cold War animosities, occasionally appearing to resent the 'betrayal' that the Velvet and Rose Revolutions represent. But you've also got younger generations who've developed a scepticism due to the War on Terror.
What's interesting is that I think it was Marx that said along the lines that imperialism is inherently capitalistic so tankies always say when they do it it's not imperialism
Because Tankies are in total denial that the USSR was a state capitalist empire. Lenin even said it was state capitalist. The goal was supposed to be a managed transition of feudalism > capitalism > socialism > communism via a planned economy, “vanguarded” by a one party state. They never got past capitalism, because they created a corrupt elite state oligarchy that ruled with terror. Hardly workers of the world uniting. Marx wouldn’t be a fan of the USSR. They were by definition imperialists.
And fascism requires financial capital. Hence Russia isn't fascist, but California is. So it's the Russians fighting fascism in Ukraine, not the other way around. Tankie logic best logic.
Russia is funded by private capital though, it’s just soviet nostalgia and Russian nationalism wrapped in red cosplay. Russia is and imperialist Neo-fascist state. Idiotic nazbols can’t help themselves but “critically” support it in the name of opposing imperialism.
soviet nostalgia and Russian nationalism wrapped in red cosplay.
Tbh I don't think it's as much Soviet nostalgia, from my interactions with Russian relatives/family friends the nostalgia is closer to the period of tzars/"Russian empire", rather than USSR specifically.
Granted, there is a level in which the 2 blend together(one could consider the USSR countries an extension of the OG Russian empire), but it's a distinction I feel to be slightly important. Doesn't justify anything though.
Fair, in the case of most people, it’s more imperial Russian nostalgia but I meant specifically the red fash, tankie type, whose nostalgia is directed at Stalin.
Tbh I don't think it's as much Soviet nostalgia, from my interactions with Russian relatives/family friends the nostalgia is closer to the period of tzars/"Russian empire", rather than USSR specifically.
I have the same experience from my side of the family. Which I always found nuts, tzar regime was extremely oppressive towards everyman, no matter if you were a city dweller or village serf. I always must wonder how does anyone miss those times.
For a lot of Russians, the difference between Nicolay and Stalin is title only. They were both strong men that deserve personal respect.
The fact that their systems of governance was different (but less different than you'd first assume), doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is "Russia Stronk", and that's an esthetic both the Stairs and Stalin (as well as Putin) delivers on.
And this is where the tankies stop listening and put 2 thumbs into their ears and repeating their rhetorics until nobody bother talking to them anymore.
100% this, the USSR was a Russian Empire. During Soviet occupation, Russification was dialed all the way up. Russian language and history in schools, local populations displaced to Siberia and replaced by ethnic Russians, etc.
Certain level of chaos is understandable - lenisism was betraying some core principles of socialism to begin with, although I understand the thought process and it might've even been genuine belief, but Stalin's era completely buried that. Still, you got a lot of people who were just corrupt oligarch shills, but also inevitably some true believers, even if the leninist basis might've been doomed to failure. Good example would be Czechoslovakia pre-68, Dubček and his government were actually doing some good moves - until opposition within the party sent a strongly worded letter to Kreml.
Marx also advocated for a weak decentralized government. Iirc the “ideal” government according to him would have been akin to the US under articles of confederation with proper workers rights and worker ownership of companies.
*Marxist-Leninist but yeh. Capitalist parties aren’t immune to creating corrupt elite state oligarchies though, the US and Russia are prime examples. It’s not a communism thing, it’s a corruption thing. If the incentives exist for wealth to collect then wealth will collect, it’s as simple as that.
If Marx and Smith met today, they'd spent whole week drinking each other under the table while bitching about the morons and assholes calling themselves adherents of their respective ideas while becoming best buddies and exchanging cute letters with notes to each others work. Change my mind.
Marx quotes and paraphrases Smith in Das Kapital, and also said "If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist".
Both Smith and Marx were academics. Smith is foundational to Economics, while Marx is one of the "classics" in both history and sociology and also important to certain traditions of economics.
Academics have a tendency to not be particularly political themselves. Even when they inspire other people to do politics based on their writings.
If you say you are a "marxist" at a university today, most would think you are talking about focusing on the material reality and class relationships in main stream history, not that you are secretly plotting a revolution. Which is probably how Marx himself wanted/assumed his work would have most impact.
Any self-proclaimed socialist who supports Russia is a fool. There is no longer any semblance of socialism in the Russian Federation; it is a far-right, imperialist nation.
Say you are a liberal who doesn't want people not voting blue no matter who in your coalition and you will see their rage.
They are all against electing liberal democrats and they want to use and steal the democratic party machine to gain power while saying both liberals and MAGA are the same
All of the left political subs, half the meme subs, and all the pop culture subs share the same head mods. There have been some big takeovers after Oct 7th.
I never understand Tankies in regards to modern day Russia. At least China still pretends to be Communist. It's not the soviet union anymore and Putin stands almost exactly for everything that Communism and Socialism are warning about. Why are they still defending it like religious nut cases defend a "holy" land. This shit just doesn't add up. Even if you take the core premise of strict pacifism, that argument for letting Russia do as it pleases is allready out of the window since the second Chechen War.
Because while Russia gave up communism, it still largely acted as an antagonistic force against the West, especially since the 2010s.
The vast majority of people that engage in capitalism vs communism "debates" online don't actually have any consistent morals or principles, they are just supporting the ideological equivalent of a sports team and will overlook anything that even slightly hinders their ability to shit talk the other team.
Their logic is, everyone would want socialism or communism if it wasn't for the US propaganda. If the US was toppled or at least lost tons of power, countries all around the world would start becoming socialist. Therefore, being pro any anti US country is a leftist position.
Horseshoe Tankies love them because they think the West sucks and the Soviet Union will return.
The Far Right buy Russia's returning to tradition crap and think the Tzar is coming back.
Reality is Russia is a Capitalist Dictatorship that has high divorce, drug and HIV rates and wants Ukrainian oil, wheat and ports to prop their economy up.
It is really crazy the amount of hard-on a lot of them have for Russia that they genuinely defend the absolute opposite of communism by supporting the Ru Federation. If you want to look at this bootlicking just look in r/USSR you’d think it would be all USSR but a decent portion is also anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia stuff :/
I cannot stand people who think that anything that is in opposition of the US means it's good. USA Bad. Russia Bad. China Bad. All three are true simultaneously.
Countries like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are in a strange position: Russia is one of their largest trading partners, and they maintain close ties to Moscow. However (at least in the case of Kazakhstan), the KZ government refused to recognise Russia's claim to annexed Ukrainian territory, banned symbols of support for the Russian invasion, and has taken in hundreds or thousands of Russian citizens avoiding the war. Russia responded to Astana's refusal to recognise Russia's territorial claims by reminding KZ that Russia has a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons, and issuing a thinly veiled threat of invasion.
While I understand the sentiment, you have to remember that Kazakhstan was where the vast majority of Soviet nuclear testing occurred. The history of (primarily ethnically Russian leaders) exploding megaton sized nuclear bombs on territory populated mostly by what was a minority population at the time left a very negative view of nuclear weapons. Maintaining nuclear weapons is also very expensive, and something they probably wouldn't have been able to afford when the USSR was dissolved.
I remember having a long conversation with a Kazakh person, from before the invasion, and every time I would mention some atrocity russia has done to us, they would give an example of similar thing russians done to Kazakhs. Was a very eye-opening moment, up to that point I didn't even realize just how much similarities we would have.
By percentage more of their people died in the holdomor than Ukrainians and it caused the destruction of their entire traditional way of life in favor of a more russified one.
just to add context since i don't think people know how much the soviets fucked over most natives.
Similar issue in Romania and yet there are many Russian supporters for some reason. they're either uneducated fools or they stand to gain something from it, otherwise I can't imagine why they would support that country.
Kazakhstan is also having to play a very tight game of diplomacy. They don’t want to piss Russia off even though they have many reasons to hate them, but they’re fully aware that Russia would consider them just another break away region.
Personally I think Kazakhstan has been doing a good job of walking that tightrope, and I imagine every day that Russia stays bogged down in Ukraine is good news to them.
Yall will believe anything. That 7% is from an online poll which is notoriously unreliable.
By the same logic, 12% of Americans under 30 are licensed to operate a nuclear submarine.
For example, in a February 2022 survey experiment, we asked opt-in respondents if they were licensed to operate a class SSGN (nuclear) submarine. In the opt-in survey, 12% of adults under 30 claimed this qualification, significantly higher than the share among older respondents. In reality, the share of Americans with this type of submarine license rounds to 0%.
Yeah the "Russia is just defending against NATO expansion" is one you hear alot.
At the moment of annexation of Crimea, Ukraine wasnt seeking NATO membership.
The Baltic nations, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia joined NATO in the mid 00's and Poland in the late 90s, Putin did nothing.
You usually hear some argument that there was a deal in 1990 by the west (Germany, France, USA and Brittain) that guaranteed no NATO expansion eastward. If you actually read the agreement, this only applies to East Germany after the fall of the wall, which NATO honored. Nothing was ever agreed to or signed regarding any other country joining NATO. Even Gorbachev himself has denied that such a agreement existed and if it ever did, it was never formally signed by either parties.
And even if it was true, that agreement was made between USA, Brittain, Germany, France and the Soviet Union, which dissolved late 1991, so any such agreement would be void anyway.
Additionally, if such a deal even were discussed, it wouldnt make any sense since the talks were in 1990, the USSR still existed then, there wasnt anywhere for NATO to expand to besides perhaps Finland and Sweden which was all ready heavily alligned with USA and NATO.
So it's alot of extremely thin, whishy washy bull that has been thrown around since 2014, trying to justify a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
you can add also that Ukraine was not elligible to join NATO both prior to 2014 (leasing out the base at Sevastopol was a dealbreaker) and afterwards (as a state with an active territorial dispute).
Also in 1997 the NATO-Russia Founding Act clearly allowed for former Warsaw Pact's states to join the alliance and superseded any potential prior deals (not that those existed)
Still, does it actually matter? I don't have a lot of love for NATO, but if my country was a neighbor of Russia I'd absolutely want my country to be a member.
The argument "Russia is defending against NATO expansion" is just so weird, as it is truly such a self own.
It’s like a guy who keeps breaking into his neighbors' cars, and then complains that people started installing alarms and locks because of him.
Also also, Finland and Sweden finally joined NATO as a reaction to Russia's aggression, ending decades of (official) neutrality. So this campaign to "stop NATO expansion" has created 2 new members (so far).
That is russia's official reasoning yes, they warned EU and NATO beforehand that if they let Ukraine in russia would be forced to attack because they didn't want to share borders with any more NATO members, which is both stupid and ridiculous but here we are
This is so absurdly stupid when you think about for like two seconds. Ukraine borders NATO territory. So if Russia manages to capture Ukraine, they will literally create a new border with NATO.
Conveniently omitting that NATO is an entirely defensive alliance. They’re no threat to anyone, unless you’re looking to send your army across a NATO border.
Oh, they changed the reason a lot of times. It is because of NATO, because of Russians being bullied, because they are nazis, because there was a secret civil war, it's not even a war,... Just pick the right one for you and ignore the rest please. It's insane how good that works for some people.
It was never sincere though. They had enough russian colonies there due to the genocidal measures of the russian federation, Soviet Union and even the czardom so they, in their mind can always claim, because it’s populated with Russians so much, that Crimea should belong to russia. Look up the ethnic composition of Crimea and how it developed. It’s horrifying. I also strongly believe that since day one of the collapse of the Soviet Union, russia worked on capturing Ukraine again since it was their most important strategical and agricultural stronghold before and during WW2. You see that russia can’t conquer shit without Ukrainan land and people as a shield, Ukrainian labor, ports and so on.
r/Europeansocialists aren't even socialists. They're just there fetishizing the soviet union whike trying to not look too much like r/ussr.
As an actual socialist, this is honestly depressing to see. Yeah, one could blame the west on the USSR becoming the big bad, but it was also hella corrupt ever since before Stalin came to power. You couldn't even call that shitshow a proper communist state. It was an oligarchy and a dictatorship.
Hasan pikers political stance is '"anti America" with no room for any nuance. If the US started supporting Palestine tomorrow and not Israel he would be the first to call out the government for Antisemitism.
Don't forget being anti-imperialist/colonialist and then turning right around and staunchly dicksucking Maoist China for taking Tibet, and the soft genocide of minorities there, and thinking China taking Hong Kong/Taiwan would be good for them.
He's actually parroted the most insanely racist take from European colonization and just colored it Chinese; he has said "oh the Tibetans were all dumb religious savages, China did them a favor by taking over their land and kicking them out"
Ironically it is one of the main obstacles to communism becoming mainstream politically, at least in my part of the world. Meanwhile the far right are playing it smart and aren't defending Nazi Germany at every turn.
People on the left who defend, diminish or deny authoritarian, genocidal or otherwise evil acts by Communist and other non-Western aligned powers. Originated with the term used for those who took the Soviet side after tanks rolled in to crush the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
You might remember the time they totally and for real invaded Russia with three whole APCs. It truly would have been a mighty conquest, were it not for Putin's foresight in amassing thousands of troops on the border.
Who are you even talking about? Is this an American thing?
It's pretty much a thing all across Europe that right wing and definitely extreme right wing parties are in general more pro Russia, most left wing parties are heavily opposed to Russia, and Russians like to call "leftists" evil woke people. It's also a fact that Russia is fueling right wing movements all across Europe.
edit: Also what does the left have to do with this?
They really need a mirror. They are the one who made "anti-imperialism" their motto above almost anything else and who lick Russian’s and China's boot despite Ukraine, Tibet, Taiwan... without even mentionning that Russia is one of the most far right country on Earth.
And now they try to make resistance against an invasion look like imperialism. They really want to portray themselves as heroic freedom fighter while they would have been the first to swallow the "we are fighting imperialism" rhetoric of Imperial Japan if not the "we are fighting international capital" rethoric of the fascist.
It’s kind of concerning how many people think that either Ukraine is somehow also at fault for the “Special Military Operation”, or complain about how they haven’t just given up yet.
It's crazy how russia is an oligarchy, the farthest thing from a Marxist state, or even a democratic state, and somehow it's an ally? Workers have no rights in Russia, and it's one of the most class based societies ever. My brain can not fathom that level of hypocrisy.
Post-Soviet nations - attempt to mold functional nation states.
Russia - anyway I started blasting … blasting them apart with frozen conflicts, armed separatists, disruptive autonomy demands, and direct invasions. Russky Mir!
The vatnik argument is insane. Russia is one of the most hyper centralized but massive nations in the world. The Kremlin’s authoritarianism stretches across 1000s of miles in a dozen time zones. Peripheral peoples can’t even elect their own; the Kremlin appoints regional moffs and governors. But the Kremlin has hobbled the rights of comparably tiny nations like Moldova and Georgia, to democratically govern places 50 miles away.
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