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  • It's been bizarre some of my interactions with group A and B. I've been active in leftist circles for most of my time on the internet. I definitely get and agree with a lot of the criticisms with the US, NATO, and the EU, but I don't get how so many people think the Russian or Chinese government are any more righteous, especially considering the human rights violations and encroachments on sovereignty we've seen from both countries. Not just in their past either, but within the last decade!

    The situation kinda feels like how Japan justified its imperialism to the outside world during the Invasion of China, South Asia, and the Pacific. Their official stance was they were aiming to rid Asia of Western imperialism and replace it with a sphere of co-prosperity, Despite this message however, they were absolutely brutal to the lands they occupied. The murdered and raped indiscriminately, and those they kept alive they enslaved and worked to death in brutal conditions. No sane person today who knows the extent of their harm would ever defend them as a power, even if their supposed message was "anti-imperialism."

    You can oppose western imperialism, US hegemony, and capitalism without siding with other imperialists, fascists, and psuedo-communists. The actions of a country should speak for them, not the messages their propaganda tries to make you believe. Considering what I know from Russia's Soviet legacy with Eastern Europe, the actions they took against Chechnya and Georgia, their local treatment of dissidents, the brutal persecution of queer people that makes Florida look tame, the war crimes and human rights violations committed in Syria and Africa by Wagner, and the bombing, killing, raping, and kidnapping of civilians in Ukraine. I don't see how anyone could defend them or their actions. I know the US is guilty most of it through out its history too, but you shouldn't oppose a monster by supporting another monster.

  • EDIT: for those downvoting me, I would be happy to engage in a civil discussion about why you think I’m wrong, and even change my mind if I’m mistaken.

    This is extremely dumb for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it’s very clearly written with a certain bias.

    A (the communist) is describing a tankie. But generally someone who identifies specifically as a communist is not authoritarian, they’re closer to anarchocommunism than the reverse.

    B (the lefty antifascist) describes them as a subtype of A, but antifascists are diametrically opposed to tankies, ideologically. Also, “antifascist” is a word that has long been used to label a specific group of leftists… calling them “lefty antifascists” implies that there are also “right-wing antifascists,” trying to equivocate the sides by generalizing the word. Also, most importantly, the description is 100% bullshit.

    C (the hard right) a single token addition of a very generic “hard” right person, to appear balanced. No making fun of this person like in the rest of the descriptions, just a list of facts… except “always an arsehole” which I would argue most of these people would enjoy reading about themselves because they would think it was funny and kind of true. Clearly the target audience.

    D (the contrarian) this is the modern right wing lowest common denominator person, and an accurate description of the archetype, but no mention of left/right in this description. Wonder why?

    E (the peacenik) what? Peacenik is just another historically left-wing-associated label. These people do not have a unified view of how to end the conflict, and certainly don’t frequently suggest ceding land to an invader. That’s a really stupid take on pacifism, and it’s just another dig at the left.

    This is definitely dumb and probably just plain old propaganda.

    • I assuming you mean the post was written from a right wing perspective correct?(that's what I got from your post at least)

      I think it's written more from a well meaning liberal perspective. Probably doesn't understand the labels they're using, or at the very least oversimplifying people so that they crunch into the parameters they have created.

      A They probably do mean tanky, and I myself have made this association in error. After all "Tanky" in the way it is used now is not as well known as the word communist, and many people who are tankies do describe themselves as communists.

      B I've met people like these myself. One of my friends was in this camp until recently. Many of these people still look at Ukraine as it was pre Maidan, and don't realize the majority of people within the country don't support the fascist elements within. Plus there is Russian prop specifically aimed at hitting antifascists. They sold the initial invasion as a "denazification". If you are just listening to the words spoken by the leaders, and not seeing the atrocities the Russians are committing in Ukraine, I can see how one could fall for it.

      C Describes a lot of the people in my part of the US actually, though, not all of them support Russia fighting in Ukraine. Rather they are more of a combination of this and E, where they want to get back to admiring Russia without dealing with the cognitive dissonance of Russia committing warcrimes in Ukraine, and also getting their ass handed to them.

      D This used to be me until maybe 2014, and God knows where I would be today if I still acted this way. Basically anything that was considered "bad" of "forbidden", I wanted in. The upside is this is what led me into reading the Communist Manifesto, the Quran, and other "forbidden" materials that led me out of my close minded conservatism, but on the otherhand, I also read Mein Kampf, gave the BotD to many fascist and conferderate leaning people, and followed a lot of Russian news uncritically, and even had a Soviet idolization phase of my own. A lot of my mindset at the time was this really weird form of libertarianism combined with unbridled contrarianism.

      E I feel this can include a lot of people from any perspective. Leftists who think appose NATO more than Russia's imperialism, Rightist who see the writing on the wall, and think the war should end while Russia is still ahead, to people who associate the increase in costs of living with the war, and simply want it to end no matter what ASAP for their own sake. I feel this could be expanded into several catagories, but then again, everything here is a severe oversimplification.

      So are there flaws with this post: absolutely, but I don't think it was written in bad faith.

    • calling them “lefty antifascists” implies that there are also “right-wing antifascists,”

      If an antifascist is anyone who opposes fascism, then why couldn't there be right-wing antifascists?

    • I downvoted you because I don't think you are being objective and instead are bringing your own prejudices and preconceptions to your analysis. Basically you are guilty of the same kinds of bias that you accuse OP of.

      • Of course I’m biased. Everyone is. But am I wrong? My accusation was not that OP is biased, but that the meme itself was trying to secretly promote a right-wing narrative. I understand if you don’t trust me as a biased observer, but you can still read my points and decide whether they are factually correct or not.

        If you think I’ve made an error, feel free to respond with a correction. I’m not here to flame anyone, just to point out that I see a vehicle for disinformation. I respect many philosophies on both the left and the right, even if I disagree with them, but regardless of “sides” everyone deserves to make informed decisions arrived at by their own reasoning. When you are manipulated without your knowledge, your ability to reason properly is taken away from you.

    • Communism of any kind is inherently authoritarian. There's no way around it.

      • If you have not studied communism, and your main contact with communism is tankies on Lemmy and “communist” dictatorships in history, then I understand why you would think that.

        But communists by and large are not tankies, and do not wish for states like the USSR, China, or North Korea. Those people typically identify as Marxist-Leninists (promoted mainly by Stalin after Lenin died), and yep they’re authoritarian, and they’re loud. And, despite the name, Marx himself would disapprove of this ideology for a number of reasons.

        Read even just the first paragraph of the Wikipedia articles on ”Communism” and “Communist society.”

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

        A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state (or nation state).

        Communists want no state; it is effectively a type of anarchist or radically democratic ideology, where the citizens all equally share power through common ownership of industry… the very opposite of authoritarianism.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communistsociety

        A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless, stateless, and moneyless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour.

        The term communist society should be distinguished from the Western concept of the communist state, the latter referring to a state ruled by a party which professes a variation of Marxism–Leninism.

        Communism is not an authoritarian philosophy. If you go talk to people in real life who identify as communists, you will tend to find communists as described in these articles. If you look on lemmy.ml, however, you’ll find lots of Marxist-Leninists (tankies) because that’s who the instance was made by… but that’s not really representative of communism as a whole, and many communists find that philosophy repulsive.

  • F - The Hungarian fascist:

    Subtype of the C type. Likes the fact, that Russia is genociding Ukrainians, and calling the Ukrainian people a "Leninist fabrication". The Hungarian far-right has a similar feeling toward Slovaks, often calling them "Hungarians forced to learn Slavic", their country "fake" and "illegitimate", and wish they could also do a special military operation on them.

  • Yes. And there are many people that fall into multiple categories. And some that switch between them.

    Seems there's people that just like genocide and then construct some rationalizations to justify it in their own minds.

  • Hrm uh... I would describe myself as a leftist antifascist.

    And I do not think that elements of fascism within Ukraine's society and government make it somehow deserving of being invaded, absorbed into Russia, having their culture erased, and worse.

    Getting more technical, maybe the term anarcho-communist is i think actually accurate, but then you end up with less politically informed people assuming I am the worst thing imaginable, a violent anarchist terrorist that wants to violently overthrow every government and replace it with nothing, while simultaneously /also/ being an authoritarian who believes in a vanguard party, no dissent allowed an oh money and property are not allowed to exist any more.

    Then on the other hand you could say maybe social libertarian, but you run into the same problem woth the other terms: Every American thinks Libertarian = AnCap, and 'social' as a prefix denotes basically 'communism lite' to most Americans.

    What I actually am is a person who believes in the right to privacy in personal matters, freedom of speech as in the ability to say unpopular things and be judged by people individually and by groups collectively, but not at the point of a goon squad with guns or the ability to imprison or impoverish you preventing you from criticizing an existing power structure, be it government, corporate, religious or otherwise.

    I believe in protecting the oppressed, providing a reasonable standard of living, education amd medical care for all, that people should genuinely, directly care and help their neighbors (not indirectly by donating to some incredibly inefficient charity, and especially not by hypocritically acting extremely concerned about whatever issue but not actually /doing/ anything /useful/ about it).

    I believe that American society is far too individualistic and selfish, that worker co ops with a democratic governance structure are a far superior way to organize economic production than the authoritarian private business model that defines social relations within especially large corporations, but even most medium and small business enterprises I have ever been a part of as well.

    And I also do my best to temper these beliefs with realism, knowing that these things are an idea of a better world to strive for, in a world that is brutally unfair, difficult to predict, and is full of many, many others who disagree.

    You might even say that even when societies are organized into nation states, even when employees are organized into corporations, or adherents organized into religions, at a bigger picture level they all compete with each other in a rather stereotypically anarchic way, often violating the 'rules' that are supposed to govern their interactions, and nearly always employing every method possible to bend those rules, break those rules and get away with it, and to be the ones making those rules.

    I can, and did, easily fit in to all the chapo themed sub-lemmies, it is very easy to joke about the hypocrisy of American domestic politics and economic practices.

    But they never talk about the Ukraine Russia conflict.

    Sure, they all agree that Israel is doing a genocide, which is my opinion as well.

    But you cannot be critical of China. I barely mentioned that /maybe/ if Taiwan wants to be independent, that a flawed democracy exerting its will to self determine should not just de facto be waived away by the geo strategic situation, and they all got extremely edgelord extremely quickly.

    Eventually the topic turned to surveillance and freedom of speech, and they basically all entirely believed that China has no problems with that at all.

    Delusional.

    Its actually very confusing to me that online Chapo fan communities are seemingly all Marxist-Leninists, or Maoists, or even more confusingly to me think that the Chinese government and societt even is communist, when they are so obviously state capitalists (red fascists, as many here seem to say).

    The Chapo podcast almost never touches on foreign policy beyond making fun of how absurd many American foreign policy decisions are and how poorly informes most Americans are about other societies.

    Anyway this is a long post but here is more kindling for this thread:

    I am a lefty antifascist, but I don't believe that Ukraine's right to self determine democratically should be overridden by the Russian state.

    And though I believe that war itself is a crime... I do not see how any reasonable person can think that Ukraine should just lie down and give up.

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