Hey I'm a terminally online leftist.
Fuck Russia, fuck China, fuck the US too. I'm not going to gaslight myself in to thinking someone else is doing it right just because the West is also fucked.
Working class people all over the planet are getting fucked by billionaires who've purchased their governments, few places are exempt from that problem.
I really hated the word tankie when i joined lemmy, it felt like it was thrown around too much, but then i really started seeing "communists" "critically supporting" Russia, despite being a far right shithole, like you only need to see who where the allies of Russia in Europe, weeks before the war started they were meeting with Meloni from Italy, Vox (fascist far right) from Spain and similar parties from other sides of Europe. Some communists are so in love with the idea of the USSR that cant really see that Putin is just your average far right dictator.
Thankfully in Spain you dont see this happening as much as in some lemmy communities.
Some people's minds just seem to reject the idea that you don't have to lick any boots at all. They've come all the way from the western boots and at the far end of their journey just went "ooh, new boots!" and just got down on their hands and knees and got to work.
If history has taught us anything, it's that fascists sure have some shiny shoes.
Huh.
It took me a while to sort out that meme, then it suddenly hit me - I've not only succeeded in eliminating the tankies from my Lemmy experience, but have done so so effectively that I started to forget that they even exist.
At this point, the only people I see trying to defend Russia are a handful of angry right-wing morons who have bought in to the propaganda spread by Russia's assets in the GOP, and they're few and far between.
It's even better - by invading Ukraine to steal their territory and mineral wealth Russia is quite literally behaving as an Imperialist nation, something confirmed by their own Propaganda which talks of Ukraine as something "which was always part of Russia" as well as by their interference in the internal affairs of other ex-Soviet Union nations such as Georgia.
Imperialism isn't limited to only conquering far away lands, even if that has been the most common form of it in Europe and for the US, and the Soviet Union itself can be considered an Empire, having been formed by Russia conquering other countries whilst maintaining control over several vassal nations.
Communism is just as Imperialist as the rest - it's only the style of Propaganda justifying the conquest of other countries that differs - which explains why it's so easy for the "Communists" who are mere parrots of the Soviet or Maoist propaganda (rather than independent thinkers) to side with Russia's Imperialism.
Tankies aren't leftists.
Ah yes, tankie shitheads coming out of the woodwork so I can tag them. Thanks, OP!
"Multipolarism" is just multiple countries doing imperialism, not the antidote for imperialism.
One time, I could in no way convince a tankie, that Chinese loans weren't just "money given as present", and called any news about them being paid back as "fake news", because in their mind, China is a generous country that helps other out of their good heart, with no strings attached.
Where are the lemmy.ml commenters?!
I mean... tankies are to leftists what the Westboro Baptist Church are to Christians.
I fucking hate tankies
*tankies
@PugJesus@kbin.social I do wish you'd put leftist in quotes, these type of ppl aren't it. If anyone is 'leftist' but supports fascism, they aren't leftist. Lol
Russia has messaging for useful idiots on the right and messaging for useful idiots on the left. To the right they'll say stuff like "America should stay out of foreign wars", "we should make Ukraine pay for the assistance", "the price of oil will go up" blah blah. To the left it's shit like "Ukraine are Nazis", "America is perpetuating this war", "NATO are the aggressors" blah blah
The goal either way is to sow division, doubt, demoralise, create instability, create distrust and sap European & US power's resolve to support Ukraine. And also to devalue information with false, misleading and contradictory information. It's not hard on social media to see how this shit spreads around with insincere actors pumping false news and misinfo into the feeds that gets picked up by the useful idiots.
Werd, yo.
The best possible peace scenario for our beloved world is to deploy Nato missiles on every russian border country ✌️ That worked well in Cuba.
This is fucking accurate. I am concerned by the number of downvotes.
Anarcho-NATOism is a hell of a drug.
https://imgur.com/anarchism-flowchart-5IaMhHO (too large to paste here, you may even have to gasp download it)
Extremist opinions and people on all ends of the spectrum are dumb and never right. The earlier a person realizes that, the better.
I know we all hate uhhh, nuanced takes, and I'm especially too much of a brainlet to really have a good take on global politics, but I think I can give a crack at it, going by the rest of the shit in this thread.
Generally, war is bad, because it kills the poor of a nation, the racial minorities which can get sent to the front lines, and the political radicals which can do outreach (leftist, or, also, leftist), who would attempt mutual aid in those circumstances. It's a circumstance in which you can more easily justify any number of pretty horrible actions.
I think if I'm looking at the war with an ultra-cynical lens, as I think would befit global politics broadly, the united states isn't taking an interest in ukraine so much because they're some sacred ally, but because they see it as a way to drain russia of a bunch of money, keep the military industrial complex running, and do it while not sparking international incident and also while not expending any of their own troops.
I also don't really know at what point this war is thought to end. If we give russia's horrible oligarchic power structure more leeway, if we give them some sort of concession, then they're just gonna keep that and leave ukraine to get fucked or worse. Probably it would result in less loss of life, which is good, but, generally not a desirable outcome, even if I'm not really sure ukraine is a tipping point in terms of resource gain for russia, and making russia an international player. I think the economy has been pretty much in the shitter since like, russia was formed, and probably in the immediate post revolutionary period, from what I understand, like, after industrialization, they were just kinda fucked like, around stalin times, maybe.
At the same time, though, the most I can really think of is that this war might end when internal support from russians, mostly from the russian oligarchy outside of putin, puts enough pressure on it that it either stops entirely or results in some sort of internal power struggle. I don't know if that's really going to happen, they all seem pretty much insanely corrupt, and I dunno what america might do other than kind of, attempt to spark internal dissent, which also seems like a bad idea based on how much success we've had with that historically. The russian people seem to be maybe the most propagandized people on earth, even considering the americans and chinese, which is saying something, so I dunno if internal dissent from the populous would ever mount enough to overthrow anything, as much as we might hope.
If we pull out, that doesn't solve the problem long term, but it would give maybe some amount of time to kind of pursue other avenues with which the russian government might be dealt with more thoroughly. I also don't know, right, because right now we're sort of in a position where, since we've entered the war, everyone on either side is going to be very recalcitrant to end it. The costs, they are too sunk. It would've been much better had this war ended before it began, but unfortunately that wasn't really in anyone's geopolitical interest, and ukraine, once again, is fucked over. Realistically we should've sped up them becoming part of the UN, before a full-blown war came up, but then maybe that was the big L in the first place, and I dunno if there's a circumstance in which they get out without russia getting some pie, just because of where they kind of ended up historically. Probably if I had to guess, the war is going to end either when russia concedes (which, as said, doesn't seem likely unless russia's internal bureaucracy collapses or undergoes some sort of change), or when russia gains some amount of territory in negotiations, gains something as a concession, and then hopefully the rest of ukraine can actually become part of the UN, in which case I will feel really dumb, because we could've just got there from the beginning without an ultramassive loss of life.
I think probably ending the war sooner is better rather than later, because at the very least that maybe gives us more time for putin to slowly age out of his position, but it would still be a decade before he's even biden's age, so, kind of dubious, and given where they're at right now, probably some other jerkoff would just get appointed, so there would have to be some amount of change in the intervening time.
I dunno, war seems uhh, bad, maybe. If you want the tankie take, it's going to basically be that this is a war which kills people (not based), that geopolitically benefits america (not based, as america sucks), and also that they more broadly align with BRICS as a kind of, more forward thinking, and perhaps better alternative to america, mostly as it exists through china. The problem as I see it is that every other country in that initiative outside of china and maybe south africa, is pretty much a diet-fascist shithole, and china is also very tenuously better than the US, it seems to me, to be very much an open question, as to whether or not the chinese shadow government will come out once america collapses and go full sicko commie mode, or if they'll just turn like, extreme golden age neofascist company town garbage mode. I would like to believe one, but in my heart of hearts, I know that nothing good ever happens, so, I think probably we're just fucked and BRICS will also suck once they probably take over in wake of a probably graceless collapse of american empire, if that's even allowed to really happen.
