this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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I've never seen tankies and libs ever so united in celebration.
It's as if leftists do not actually like Putin or any of the other ghouls on the Russian side, but are instead critical of NATO and willing to consider NATO opponents as rational actors instead of cartoon villains.
I think most people of the left or right can see the situation for what it is. However Russia is obviously crafting messages to appeal to those on the extremes. When you see people on the hard left screeching about Ukrainian Nazis or advancing absurd peace deals then they've been gotten at. When you see people from the hard right screeching about Ukrainian immigrants or the cost of the war vs America / Europe first then you know they've been gotten at.
As for Prigozhin, I think most people, even Russians are glad that he is dead but for different reasons. Seems clear that Putin murdered him for his disloyalty but nobody in Ukraine is going to mourn his loss for the spent force that is Wagner.
I couldn't disagree more. In this thread I have someone telling me Ukraine is currently pushing Russia back despite the front not moving appreciably for nearly a year now. It's also common to hear Putin described as a mustache-twirling villain who just woke up one day and said "I will conquer the whole of Ukraine in three days," a take similarly detached from reality.
People think Ukraine has a Nazi problem because western media was shouting about it from the rooftops for a decade before the invasion. Then they only whispered it if they mentioned it at all but they kept on posting pictures of Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi insignia plastered on their faces or their equipment. Or photos of politicians with a portrait of Bandera on the wall above their desk. The gullible liberal journalists didn't even know what they had to censor out at the start of the war.
Unlike libs, the 'hard' left didn't start looking at Ukraine on the date of the invasion and they didn't wipe their memories clean of the historical context. A conspiracy involving Russian propagandists isn't needed to explain this.
Neither are Russian propagandists needed to explain that racist westerners are going to be racist against immigrants and refugees, wherever they're from.
Ukraine has had a far right problem but lots of countries do. Doesn't mean it's more than the fringe as it is in other countries and it's CERTAINLY not a credible talking point or justification for war to invade a sovereign democracy. And the stupid part is that this shit still goes onto today, even to this comment where you attempt to justify it.
I don't know what you think I'm trying to justify. You said:
I explained that the 'hard left' has been concerned about Nazis in Ukraine for a long time. You can understand that communists are going to keep a close eye on countries that ban communist parties. Yes other places have a far right problem too. Communists keep an eye on reactionaries elsewhere as well but it's hardly germane to a conversation about the circumstances of a war in Ukraine, is it?
It's not the historical "concern", it's the constant parroting of Russian talking points by useful idiots on the far left. "Oh look at these Nazis [showing picture from 2014]", meanwhile Ukraine is actually a pluralist democracy and has a professional / conscript army fighting an invasion. They're not Nazis in aggregate or even substantially. It's sort of shit I'm obviously referring to.
Pluralist democracy is when you seize power through force and then ban opposition parties.
"Seize power by force and other things that only happened in my imagination"
Sometimes I forget just how little y'all know about the history of this conflict.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/17/ukraine-bans-communist-party-separatism
You do realize that in order to minimize (working class) casualties some kind of peace deal needs to be signed? And in order to sign a peace deal first there needs to be a ceasefire? The sooner the ceasefire starts, the better.
Are you saying that western politicians torpedoing any kind of truce and/or peace deal is "Russian misinfo"?
spoiler
Should we ignore the significant human and economic costs of the ongoing war and the support for the military-industrial complex? Why? Is this some kind of noble war against Sauron or what?
You do realise that a peace deal / ceasefire which involves Ukraine giving up land, sovereignty or anything else is horseshit being pushed around by useful idiots? And who is feeding the far left with this crap? Russia because of course they are. And you only have to look at prior deals by Russia to see how believable any peace would be do. Or ask Yevgeny Prigozhin how deals work.
The counteroffensive failed spectacularly, even western sources admit this.
How many more people you want to send in the meat grinder?
Here's an idea: call a ceasefire and let the diplomats negotiate, and let's see what happens. Let's see what actual ukrainians want after a few months of negotiation. Maybe Boris Johnson should fuck off. At least people are not dying until then. Outlandish, I know.
Now this is qanon level conspiracy theory. I am against war between capitalist nations in general. On one side you have an extremely corrupt oligarchic capitalist country, and on the other side you have an extremely corrupt oligarchic capitalist country.
Since I live in a NATO country I criticise NATO more, since they are the ruling class above me and there's enough criticism of Putin around here anyway.
As far as deals go, US/Ukraine isn't trustworthy either. The Minsk agreement was bullshit. What happened to nord stream btw?
I oppose NATO over other Ghoulish countries because it's a greater threat to the world right now.
How is it a threat to anyone outside of Russia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America
You can also find similar examples for Africa and Asia.
The Cold war ended more than 30 years ago.
Ah, so you want newer examples? Fine. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and now Pakistan in Asia, Libya in Africa, Brasil and Bolivia in South America. All in the last twenty years or so.
I think Iraq is a fair point. The rest are weak sauce as fuck for a variety of reasons that I'll not trouble myself to enumerate.
That said, I myself was never onboard with the US invasion of Iraq or our long time presence in Afghanistan. They were both bullshit and never would have happened had it been up to me.
The invasions may have been half-hearted failures, but they still caused enormous suffering. And the Libyan invasion did not fail if I remember correctly.
I was explaining why a lot of countries would see NATO as the biggest threat. For this, what matters is what NATO governments do. What the people of NATO countries think or do is, while important from a moral point of view, unlikely to be reflected in foreign policy.
It seems they also have a tendency to consider NATO as cartoons villains. Also, tankies are not the average lefties, they are at the extreme of the left.
If NATO did not want to be considered cartoon villains, they shouldn't be so cartoonishly evil.
Thank you for confirming.
You seem to be under some kind of belief that people should be ashamed of an accurate assessment of NATO, and that it is some sort of mistake to stand by it. This is weird
NATO does more good than ruZZia for the world
What good does it do? When was the last time they did good? The current Russian state and NATO can both burn as far as I'm concerned.
Wait so are tankies anti-NATO? All leftists are anti-NATO lmao
Tankies are more specifically pro-dictatorship and pro-oligarchy so long as the countries claim to be Communist.
gaddafi was sodomized to death with a knife. i can hardly think of a more cartoonishly evil organization.
Was that decided by NATO?
Yes. Gaddafi was also certainly killed based on French intelligence, and there is substantial evidence that the men who assassinated him were French assets. Part of the reason, apart from the broader geopolitical aim of annihilating a country which wanted to engage in the construction of international monetary and commerical systems outside of the orbit and control of the American petro-dollar, Gaddafi had essentially bribed Sarkozy at a certain point and was holding this over the latter's head (Sarkozy is infamously corrupt). See:
Hegemon's have to rule by fear. Read any bloodsoaked page from the history of the Roman Empire. Fear is best instilled through unimaginable atrocity. What do you think the rulers of the rest of Africa and the Middle East thought after they saw how Gaddafi, head of the most prosperous (per-capita, quality of life, standard of living, etc.) state in Africa, ended up?
By his people, yes. Not sure what that has to do with NATO or even why that was a bad thing.
Funny and horrific ends for genocidal dictators is overall a good thing.
"Cartoon villain" here means "a villain who is just intrinsically evil and does evil things as a result." Contrast this with real people, who generally have material or ideological motivational for the actions they take.
The left views NATO as evil not because it's full of cartoon villains, but because it is an organization that consciously, due to material and ideological motivations, chooses to immiserate the global south for the benefit of its constituent countries' ruling classes.
Define tankie
I use it similarly to what is described in this Wikipedia article, in particular the last paragraph of the introduction is what disturbs me the most with some Lemmy users. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
It's essentially cope for them not just supporting "nominally" socialist countries because their stance is one of anti-imperialism. Iran should have nukes.
Isn't Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the Russo-Georgian war imperialism? I still don't get them, except being blinded by their hate of USA's war crimes, which I can understand, but it still seems like an irrational conclusion to become a tankie. They end up supporting or refusing to criticize regimes that generate similar war crimes.
Wait, are you saying Saakashvili has done an imperialism? Because even western/EU reports have confirmed that Georgia started that war, not Russia.
"From 24 February 2022, which marked the start of the large-scale armed attack by the Russian Federation, to 30 July 2023, OHCHR recorded 26,015 civilian casualties in the country: 9,369 killed and 16,646 injured"
Almost 10 thousand civilians killed is horrible. But compare this to Iraq: it's less than the first month of the war in Iraq, and no US politicians was tried for war crimes. Maybe you should ponder this factoid.
If you live in a NATO country maybe you should demand Blair and Bush to be tried for their war crimes. If you live in the west you should spend more energy of criticizing the ruling class above you.
"supporting or refusing to criticize" This is a made up leftist. Per definition there is no leftist that uncritically supports a right wing capitalist country.
The last paragraph quotes fucking Ross Douthat, come on now
Lots of terms need defining. "Illiberal" just means not capitalistic, which yeah that's all leftists. What is authoritarian? Usually a definition that gets thrown around applies more to capitalist countries vs those listed.
So it's just a western communist that supports non Western communist projects? 🤔
Ghouls can be rational actors without not being ghouls.
If a ghoul's fundamental values involve control, domination and power, doing everything they can in a bid to control a strip of land recently found to have plenty of energy natural resources would be a rational action from their point of view, even if it involves provoking immense suffering upon millions of people. You don't get to say that US presidents' actions can only be explained by the hubris of people and systems that want endless growth and control, but Putin's actions cannot.
If NATO has historically sucked, but countries surrounding the country led by that ghoul rationally feel the need to protect themselves, it's logical they'll want to join NATO.
The question here is why you're far more willing to accept the rationality of Putin than the rationality of his victims when they legitimately ask for NATO's support to defend themselves, and instead attribute them the category of sheep easily manipulated by NATO rather than accepting their autonomy and sovereignity to make their own decisions.