we’re ideologically much, much further away from Putin than they are. if he didn’t intervene in Crimea or Ukraine but kept all his policies otherwise intact, including the ones repressing minorities and pro-market ones, he wouldn’t be nearly as hated by these people.
libs fall over each other for the esteemed opportunity to lick the boots of the most depraved, most despotic, most comically evil politicians and oligarchs, with three exceptions: when they carry out those acts in a transparent way rather than hiding it behind veils of “we need to cut social security because of X”; when they use the state for economic interventions rather than free market “solutions”; and when they decide to snub America on a certain issue (but are otherwise perfectly willing lapdogs)
e.g.
unhinged rightwinger: “I will kill 100,000 poor people.”
libs: “nooooo! we need to register with our local police department to hold a 1 hour march through the city and then get teargassed anyway and then mutter “just a few bad apples” on the way home! but it’s important to remember that China does way worse things! stop using whataboutisms by bringing up America!”
unhinged rightwinger: “fine. I will reduce social security spending and cut funding to hospitals and homeless shelters (this will have the effect of killing 100,000 poor people)”
libs: “hm, yes, very wise, for I am also socially liberal but fiscally conservative and I think it’s important to reach across the aisle and engage civilly with our opposition so that they will give us policies in return (they won’t). the efficiencies in this sector will go up 4.7% according to this think tank’s analysis…”
leftwinger: “we should increase funding to hospitals and build more houses in this city to fix the homelessness problem (this will have the effect of saving 100,000 poor people)”
libs: “noooo! you’re using state funds which will increase the big magical national debt number! you’re not allowing the free market to build the best and most efficient housing! we can’t do this while there’s inflation! read economics 101! some of those building materials come from Russia and China, you’re a tankie!”
Liberals have no consistency and are totally operating on vibes. I remember liberals used to really like Israel.
They’ve even somehow rehabilitated George W. Bush even though he’s evil incarnate. They also admire literal monarchy? Like they were really into Elizabeth II back when she was around. They’ll all trip over themselves to say nice things about Churchill, about Alexander Hamilton (slave owner), and will say war crimes like the atom bombing of Japan are complicated. Other things their heroes did just aren’t in their worldview at all, like Clinton bombing Yugoslavia and Sudan, or Obama overthrowing Libya. Those events just vanished into nothingness for liberals. Or if you bring them up you’re accused of whataboutism and the conversation stops.
And yet they have the gumption to say we’re bootlickers?
And they criticize us for saying otherwise factual things about Russia? Not even bootlicking, just very neutral information like that NATO is openly hostile to Russia and that Crimea is currently administered by the Russian state. That’s enough to be called pro-Putin, but more than that, you’re not just expressing a political reality, your mind has been infected with Putin and you’re a bad person now.
the efficiencies in this sector will go up 4.7% according to this think tank’s analysis.
Of course that think tank is bought and paid for by a deranged right-winger, but being critical of your sources is a concept libs only understand insofar as to ask “who published it? Oh CNN, then it must be fine”. They don’t actually employ any skepticism or source critique, propaganda is something that happens to other people far away
Wasn’t the fact that “the nazi ukranians with a jewish president are trying to ethnic clean the russians” the same excuse used by Putin to start the invasion?
Jewish people can be nazi collaborators. Of which, Zelensky is all-but-explicitly one, given the kinds of people he materially supports and empowers. Source: I’m Jewish
Wasn’t the oligarch that backed Zelensky’s career also backing Nazi formations at the same time? I haven’t looked in to this stuff in years because why bother, but I recall that being a thing.
One of Ukraine’s most popular TV channels 1+1, owned by oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, has given Zelenskiy a powerful platform in recent months during his meteoric rise to the brink of the presidency.
On Saturday, a day before Zelenskiy won the first round of the presidential contest and set up a run-off with the incumbent Petro Poroshenko, 1+1 filled its schedule with back-to-back shows by the comedian and actor.
The fact that Zelenskiy is a major star on the channel has stoked worries among some investors and voters, and accusations from his political opponents, that he is in the pocket of Kolomoisky.
just reading a few paragraphs from this one, this kinda jumped out:
On 25 March 2014, Rabinovich registered with the Central Election Commission as a self-nominated candidate for the presidency of Ukraine. This was partly to counter the characterization of the new Ukrainian government as antisemitic. After registering, Rabinovich said: "I want to destroy the myth about an anti-semitic Ukraine which is spreading around the world. Probably I’m the most fortunate candidate. Today unification is needed, and I’m a unifying candidate. I have no maniacal thirst for power, I just want to help the country". In the election, he received 2.25% of the vote, with his best showing in Dnipropetrovsk and the Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Odesa oblasts. Rabinovich was elected to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) the same year, placing fourth on the pro-Russian Opposition Bloc’s electoral list.
On 14 February 2022, Rabinovich published a post on Facebook, stating that “the war has started” and blaming the West and Ukraine for it. Following the start of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, he left Ukraine and fled abroad.
lots of minority groups have members who join their oppressors, it’s sad and disgusting but not really uncommon. like have they never heard of a black or gay or trans conservative or fascist?
Well, he ran on a platform that was much more conciliatory to Russia than his position in office, getting a lot of support from Donbas. Now he plays a Ukrainian nationalist that can hardly speak Ukrainian.
I think he was basically told in so many words that he could either get a lucrative deal playing wartime leader or he could get a bullet to the head courtesy of Azov, and he chose the former.
If Azov can’t be a nazi military force because Zelensky supports them, then Wagner can’t be a Nazi military force because Prigozhin is Jewish lol
It’s almost as if oligarchs in Eastern Europe are from all sorts of backgrounds and pretending Ukraine is somehow special and doesn’t have a Nazi problem is just wishful thinking at best, and downright disinformation at worst
suggesting that their president is jewish means they don’t have a nazi problem in their military is just as ridiculous as suggesting that america doesn’t have a racist cop problem because Obama was black. Imagine if we had elected Bernie Sanders (who is Jewish) in America. Does that mean all the nazis in our military and police would simply disappear? of course not. Nor would have electing Hillary Clinton brought an end to sexism. Nor would electing Pete Buttigieg have brought an end to LGBTphobia. There’s a difference between the milestone of electing to high office a member of a marginalized group and the literal end of all discrimination against the marginalized group. The two should not be confused with each other under any circumstances.
the same excuse used by Putin to start the invasion?
Just because someone uses something as an excuse doesn’t mean it isn’t a real problem. America used terrorism, a real problem, as an excuse to invade 7 different countries. The irony being that many of those right wing jihadist terrorist groups the US was fighting were originally CIA-backed anti-soviet reactionaries.
Putin’s actual reason for the invasion was Ukraine threatening to join NATO. NATO membership means the US can stage nuclear weapons in your country, train your troops, etc. Putin didn’t want US power that close to Moscow (the Russo-Ukrainian border is the closest international border to Moscow). This makes sense. After all, the so-called Cuban missile crisis back in the day actually started when America put nukes in Turkey, about 1200 miles from Moscow, so Moscow put missiles in Cuba, about 1200 miles from Washington. It was a tit-for-tat. After 3 decades of NATO expanding eastward into former Warsaw pact countries (usually under the rhetoric of “increasing security cooperation”) Putin finally decided to invade Ukraine. However, yes, it was rhetorically convenient for him to point out the neo nazis in Ukraine.
NATO gave informal promises to Gorbachev to not expand eastward (Gorbachev was stupid to believe these promises and not get them in writing as formal, legally-binding promises)
The Soviet Union tried to join NATO in 1954 but wasn’t allowed
What I love about that article from The Independent is that, up until recently when they republished the Robert Frisk article, you could old find the piece in their archives and, conveniently, they redacted the image of Bin Laden to soften the blow as much as possible without outright censoring the article.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YOU CAN’T JUST USE FACTS AND CITATIONS AND PRIMARY SOURCE EVIDENCE YOU TANKIES ALWAYS POST A WALL OF DOCUMENTED SOURCES THAT SUPPORT YOUR CLAIMS AND THEN WHEN WE REFUSE TO READ OR ENGAGE WITH THESE SOURCES IN ANY WAY AND INSTEAD SPEW IGNORANT REDUCTIVE BULLSHIT LIKE A PARROT LIVING IN THE LOBBY OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT YOU CALL US MEAN NAMES YOU TANKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIES
Lol Finland and the Baltics abstained from the “Nazis are bad, actually” vote because of course.
Also, could you throw a CW: on there for holocaust, corpses, and nazis please?
So if Xi would ever mention that jumping into a bucket full of excrement is a bad idea, you’d consider covering yourself in piss and shit to own Mr. Pooh and the tankies? Sweet! I’d better make that phone call with Xi right now
This is not really something to be proud of. It’s an admission of completely reactionary behaviour.
It’s OK to observe reality. Inventing a false one to suit your ideology is what the nazis do, and they’re much better at it than liberals are. They will win at it.
Part of the success of liberal propaganda is getting liberals to performatively tell each other how propagandised they are as if it is totally normal, and for them to praise each other for it.
It’s the same mindset as when workers boast about how hard they have to work, as if it’s a good thing. Pride in being over worked, and admonishing other workers for not having it as hard as they do. Literally a culture of shaming other workers for not exploiting themselves hard enough for the bourgeoisie owners. They say it to each other with pride, not realising how much they’re fucking themselves over.
the advantage that fascists have over liberals is that fascists can openly make shit up and don’t care if they have to change what they’re saying, whereas liberals have to occasionally jump through hoops to justify cognitive dissonance. Liberals believe everything they say and think there’s personal virtue in being naive. Fascists have a similar belief that feeling numb and misanthropic is a personal virtue, but that just helps them say more reactionary gibberish
I guess there are cynical liberals who just know how to parrot the language, but that seems more situational
Shit like this always reminds me of how a big watershed moment for my baby leftist journey was finally coming to the understanding that these words have meanings that get warped like a fun house mirror in the U.S.
I just casually referred to Stalin as a fascist once in front of a non Anglo and they called me out for it. They weren’t even an overly ideological person they had just grown up in a non Anglo education system and to their ear calling Stalin a fascist was factually incorrect and sounds kinda idiotic to most non western ears. The self awareness this created was the start of a lot of of layers peeling in retrospect.
They were absolutely correct! Obviously! Whatever criticism you may have of Stalin, and I think we all have them, he was not a fucking fascist! Stalin could easily be one of the most pivotal figures in the DEFEAT of fascism in Europe and yet liberalism and propaganda and the myopic political lens that Americans are given to interpret the world drains all texture and greyness from history and leaves you with this shambling nonsense narrative where everyone who was opposed to the U.S. global hegemony post WW2 in ANY capacity is either a “fascist” or a footnote in the history books because whatever shot they had at the wheel was usurped by the State department.
All this is to say never stop bullying and always remember to remind anglos that the western narrative of history is far from universally accepted and full of gaping holes.
Breaking people out of national chauvinism and into internationalism is in my opinion the key trigger moment between sympathising with some left ideas and becoming a true actual leftist. It is the key that inoculates a person against “the tankies are evil” bullshit and finally rips them out of the hands of liberal propaganda. Once people make that transition into wanting a truly international perspective, learning things at the international level, viewing things from the position of truly seeking international socialism and so on… It is where people finally rid themselves of brainworms that have sometimes been built up for many decades.
Somewhere along that transition from national to international people undergo a personal decision of “I have a huge amount to learn” and go on that learning journey. That personal decision to actually learn is where they discard many things they thought they already knew, built up from billionaire media and propaganda.
I will keep on saying this over and over again here. The biggest thing we should be doing is pushing people to stop being nationalists and to become internationalists. Once they do this they become so much easier for us to engage with.
I usually just dismiss these goofballs by replying with “Tell me you don’t have a functioning definition of fascism without telling me” and maybe I’ll challenge them to define fascism in their own words without looking it up.
If, by some miracle, they start invoking the trash-tier Umberto Eco definition of fascism then you have two clear routes:
You demonstrate how the US comfortably fits this definition, point by point
You draw upon a Marxist analysis of fascism which centres the importance of materialist analysis of fascism, such as from the works of Georgi Dimitrov
Because it only considers fascism from an aesthetic and cultural angle without any regards to the material basis of it and the conditions that fascism arises from.
It’s a hazy definition that describes the psychology of fascism more than it describes the phenomenon of fascism itself, and I think—like is the case a most pseudo-radical cultural critique—its analysis can be, and has been, misapplied because there’s no solid definition underpinning it.
It’s a bit like how if you ask a SocDem for a definition of socialism they’ll tell you that it’s welfare programs and democracy and restricting corporations and anti-authoritarianism etc.; they’ll give you a laundry list of characteristics which fails to form a cohesive analysis that strictly defines their concept, thus leading to them to miss the fact that Bernie was not campaigning on a socialist platform or that AOC/the Nordic countries etc. aren’t socialist, and if you challenge them on these matters they’ll deny your rebuttal outright because these things just feel socialist to them.
I guess in short, it’s a question of vibes vs material analysis.
These people absolutely just make shit up relentlessly.
we’re ideologically much, much further away from Putin than they are. if he didn’t intervene in Crimea or Ukraine but kept all his policies otherwise intact, including the ones repressing minorities and pro-market ones, he wouldn’t be nearly as hated by these people.
libs fall over each other for the esteemed opportunity to lick the boots of the most depraved, most despotic, most comically evil politicians and oligarchs, with three exceptions: when they carry out those acts in a transparent way rather than hiding it behind veils of “we need to cut social security because of X”; when they use the state for economic interventions rather than free market “solutions”; and when they decide to snub America on a certain issue (but are otherwise perfectly willing lapdogs)
e.g.
unhinged rightwinger: “I will kill 100,000 poor people.”
libs: “nooooo! we need to register with our local police department to hold a 1 hour march through the city and then get teargassed anyway and then mutter “just a few bad apples” on the way home! but it’s important to remember that China does way worse things! stop using whataboutisms by bringing up America!”
unhinged rightwinger: “fine. I will reduce social security spending and cut funding to hospitals and homeless shelters (this will have the effect of killing 100,000 poor people)”
libs: “hm, yes, very wise, for I am also socially liberal but fiscally conservative and I think it’s important to reach across the aisle and engage civilly with our opposition so that they will give us policies in return (they won’t). the efficiencies in this sector will go up 4.7% according to this think tank’s analysis…”
leftwinger: “we should increase funding to hospitals and build more houses in this city to fix the homelessness problem (this will have the effect of saving 100,000 poor people)”
libs: “noooo! you’re using state funds which will increase the big magical national debt number! you’re not allowing the free market to build the best and most efficient housing! we can’t do this while there’s inflation! read economics 101! some of those building materials come from Russia and China, you’re a tankie!”
Liberals have no consistency and are totally operating on vibes. I remember liberals used to really like Israel.
They’ve even somehow rehabilitated George W. Bush even though he’s evil incarnate. They also admire literal monarchy? Like they were really into Elizabeth II back when she was around. They’ll all trip over themselves to say nice things about Churchill, about Alexander Hamilton (slave owner), and will say war crimes like the atom bombing of Japan are complicated. Other things their heroes did just aren’t in their worldview at all, like Clinton bombing Yugoslavia and Sudan, or Obama overthrowing Libya. Those events just vanished into nothingness for liberals. Or if you bring them up you’re accused of whataboutism and the conversation stops.
And yet they have the gumption to say we’re bootlickers?
And they criticize us for saying otherwise factual things about Russia? Not even bootlicking, just very neutral information like that NATO is openly hostile to Russia and that Crimea is currently administered by the Russian state. That’s enough to be called pro-Putin, but more than that, you’re not just expressing a political reality, your mind has been infected with Putin and you’re a bad person now.
Of course that think tank is bought and paid for by a deranged right-winger, but being critical of your sources is a concept libs only understand insofar as to ask “who published it? Oh CNN, then it must be fine”. They don’t actually employ any skepticism or source critique, propaganda is something that happens to other people far away
We are fascists for checks notes… not supporting ukrainian nazi militias in their struggle to purge ukraine of the ethnic russians.
Wasn’t the fact that “the nazi ukranians with a jewish president are trying to ethnic clean the russians” the same excuse used by Putin to start the invasion?
Jewish people can be nazi collaborators. Of which, Zelensky is all-but-explicitly one, given the kinds of people he materially supports and empowers. Source: I’m Jewish
Wasn’t the oligarch that backed Zelensky’s career also backing Nazi formations at the same time? I haven’t looked in to this stuff in years because why bother, but I recall that being a thing.
this guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihor_Kolomoyskyi
and this guy was also involved
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vadim_Rabinovich
just reading a few paragraphs from this one, this kinda jumped out:
Yes but… why?
Why what
I think they’re asking why a Jewish person would support Nazis
lots of minority groups have members who join their oppressors, it’s sad and disgusting but not really uncommon. like have they never heard of a black or gay or trans conservative or fascist?
Well, he ran on a platform that was much more conciliatory to Russia than his position in office, getting a lot of support from Donbas. Now he plays a Ukrainian nationalist that can hardly speak Ukrainian.
I think he was basically told in so many words that he could either get a lucrative deal playing wartime leader or he could get a bullet to the head courtesy of Azov, and he chose the former.
If Azov can’t be a nazi military force because Zelensky supports them, then Wagner can’t be a Nazi military force because Prigozhin is Jewish lol
It’s almost as if oligarchs in Eastern Europe are from all sorts of backgrounds and pretending Ukraine is somehow special and doesn’t have a Nazi problem is just wishful thinking at best, and downright disinformation at worst
CW: holocaust, corpses, nazis
suggesting that their president is jewish means they don’t have a nazi problem in their military is just as ridiculous as suggesting that america doesn’t have a racist cop problem because Obama was black. Imagine if we had elected Bernie Sanders (who is Jewish) in America. Does that mean all the nazis in our military and police would simply disappear? of course not. Nor would have electing Hillary Clinton brought an end to sexism. Nor would electing Pete Buttigieg have brought an end to LGBTphobia. There’s a difference between the milestone of electing to high office a member of a marginalized group and the literal end of all discrimination against the marginalized group. The two should not be confused with each other under any circumstances.
Right Sektor antisemite Dmitro Korchynsky says he was disappointed in the Ukrainian people for electing a Jew as president, but points out that it is convenient that the president is Jewish, because it means that it is harder to accuse Ukraine of nazism
Look at this UN vote from 16th December 2021. Note that the ONLY TWO NATIONS IN THE WORLD that failed to denounce nazism, or at least abstain from voting, were US and Ukraine
C14 leader Yevhan Karas points out that right wing ultranationalists were the leading vanguard of the Euromaidan movement, even if they weren’t a majority of the members, and that they, unlike the leftists, were able to secure a lot of power after Euromaidan
Zelensky bans parties to his left, claiming they are Kremlin agents, while allowing groups like Svoboda, C14, Azov battalion, etc. to continue existing
Zelensky admits it is in US interests to use Ukraine
Part 1: A brief history of the OUN-B nazi-collaborationist faction from which current day neo nazis are descended (CW: images of pogroms and holocaust)
Part 2: A brief history of the OUN-B nazi-collaborationist faction from which current day neo nazis are descended (CW: images of pogroms and holocaust)
PDF of declassified CIA operation aerodynamic which leveraged ukrainian nazi collaborators against the soviet union after WW2
Biden before the war admitting the US would target nordstream 2 if Russia goes into Ukraine
EU official Borrell admitting that Europe is dependent on cheap Russian energy, America for security, and China for cheap goods, but that this balance of power is no longer possible, due to the new cold war between America on the one side and Russia/China on the other
Zelensky attempting to negotiate with Azov battalion, telling them to obey cease fire agreements (with the separatists in the Ukrainian civil war). They basically mock him and state their intention to disobey any cease fire agreement.
Just because someone uses something as an excuse doesn’t mean it isn’t a real problem. America used terrorism, a real problem, as an excuse to invade 7 different countries. The irony being that many of those right wing jihadist terrorist groups the US was fighting were originally CIA-backed anti-soviet reactionaries.
Putin’s actual reason for the invasion was Ukraine threatening to join NATO. NATO membership means the US can stage nuclear weapons in your country, train your troops, etc. Putin didn’t want US power that close to Moscow (the Russo-Ukrainian border is the closest international border to Moscow). This makes sense. After all, the so-called Cuban missile crisis back in the day actually started when America put nukes in Turkey, about 1200 miles from Moscow, so Moscow put missiles in Cuba, about 1200 miles from Washington. It was a tit-for-tat. After 3 decades of NATO expanding eastward into former Warsaw pact countries (usually under the rhetoric of “increasing security cooperation”) Putin finally decided to invade Ukraine. However, yes, it was rhetorically convenient for him to point out the neo nazis in Ukraine.
NATO gave informal promises to Gorbachev to not expand eastward (Gorbachev was stupid to believe these promises and not get them in writing as formal, legally-binding promises)
The Soviet Union tried to join NATO in 1954 but wasn’t allowed
Meanwhile NATO kept expanding
and including “former” nazis in its ranks
What I love about that article from The Independent is that, up until recently when they republished the Robert Frisk article, you could old find the piece in their archives and, conveniently, they redacted the image of Bin Laden to soften the blow as much as possible without outright censoring the article.
too bad for them it’s all over web archive and everyone has scans of the newspaper
Saved. I am in awe Comrade. Thank you for this.
Have you thought about turning this comment into a post on c/effort?
I’m humbled by your well documented reply. I can’t argue with that. Yours is probably the only one comment I’ve learnt something of.
I’m happy you read it, and had something to say in response. Thanks!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YOU CAN’T JUST USE FACTS AND CITATIONS AND PRIMARY SOURCE EVIDENCE YOU TANKIES ALWAYS POST A WALL OF DOCUMENTED SOURCES THAT SUPPORT YOUR CLAIMS AND THEN WHEN WE REFUSE TO READ OR ENGAGE WITH THESE SOURCES IN ANY WAY AND INSTEAD SPEW IGNORANT REDUCTIVE BULLSHIT LIKE A PARROT LIVING IN THE LOBBY OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT YOU CALL US MEAN NAMES YOU TANKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIES
Lol Finland and the Baltics abstained from the “Nazis are bad, actually” vote because of course.
Also, could you throw a CW: on there for holocaust, corpses, and nazis please?
yeah absolutely, my bad
If Putin said “the sky is blue” would the sky suddenly turn green?
If Putin (or Trump, or Xi) one day jumps on the news saying the sky is blue, I’d totally look up with prejudice.
So if Xi would ever mention that jumping into a bucket full of excrement is a bad idea, you’d consider covering yourself in piss and shit to own Mr. Pooh and the tankies? Sweet! I’d better make that phone call with Xi right now
You have no idea how propaganda actually works
This is not really something to be proud of. It’s an admission of completely reactionary behaviour.
It’s OK to observe reality. Inventing a false one to suit your ideology is what the nazis do, and they’re much better at it than liberals are. They will win at it.
Why did that idiot even admit to that
Part of the success of liberal propaganda is getting liberals to performatively tell each other how propagandised they are as if it is totally normal, and for them to praise each other for it.
It’s the same mindset as when workers boast about how hard they have to work, as if it’s a good thing. Pride in being over worked, and admonishing other workers for not having it as hard as they do. Literally a culture of shaming other workers for not exploiting themselves hard enough for the bourgeoisie owners. They say it to each other with pride, not realising how much they’re fucking themselves over.
Also as funny thing as soon as was gonns upbear your comment the second paragraf showen up.
the advantage that fascists have over liberals is that fascists can openly make shit up and don’t care if they have to change what they’re saying, whereas liberals have to occasionally jump through hoops to justify cognitive dissonance. Liberals believe everything they say and think there’s personal virtue in being naive. Fascists have a similar belief that feeling numb and misanthropic is a personal virtue, but that just helps them say more reactionary gibberish
I guess there are cynical liberals who just know how to parrot the language, but that seems more situational
lol you do realize you’re not supposed to say that unironically, usually people say that as a joke
Am I not allowed to reply to a joke with another joke?
lmao “bro I was just pretending to be a dumbass bro, I swear to god bro”
Uh huh sure bud
Shit like this always reminds me of how a big watershed moment for my baby leftist journey was finally coming to the understanding that these words have meanings that get warped like a fun house mirror in the U.S.
I just casually referred to Stalin as a fascist once in front of a non Anglo and they called me out for it. They weren’t even an overly ideological person they had just grown up in a non Anglo education system and to their ear calling Stalin a fascist was factually incorrect and sounds kinda idiotic to most non western ears. The self awareness this created was the start of a lot of of layers peeling in retrospect.
They were absolutely correct! Obviously! Whatever criticism you may have of Stalin, and I think we all have them, he was not a fucking fascist! Stalin could easily be one of the most pivotal figures in the DEFEAT of fascism in Europe and yet liberalism and propaganda and the myopic political lens that Americans are given to interpret the world drains all texture and greyness from history and leaves you with this shambling nonsense narrative where everyone who was opposed to the U.S. global hegemony post WW2 in ANY capacity is either a “fascist” or a footnote in the history books because whatever shot they had at the wheel was usurped by the State department.
All this is to say never stop bullying and always remember to remind anglos that the western narrative of history is far from universally accepted and full of gaping holes.
Breaking people out of national chauvinism and into internationalism is in my opinion the key trigger moment between sympathising with some left ideas and becoming a true actual leftist. It is the key that inoculates a person against “the tankies are evil” bullshit and finally rips them out of the hands of liberal propaganda. Once people make that transition into wanting a truly international perspective, learning things at the international level, viewing things from the position of truly seeking international socialism and so on… It is where people finally rid themselves of brainworms that have sometimes been built up for many decades.
Somewhere along that transition from national to international people undergo a personal decision of “I have a huge amount to learn” and go on that learning journey. That personal decision to actually learn is where they discard many things they thought they already knew, built up from billionaire media and propaganda.
I will keep on saying this over and over again here. The biggest thing we should be doing is pushing people to stop being nationalists and to become internationalists. Once they do this they become so much easier for us to engage with.
I usually just dismiss these goofballs by replying with “Tell me you don’t have a functioning definition of fascism without telling me” and maybe I’ll challenge them to define fascism in their own words without looking it up.
If, by some miracle, they start invoking the trash-tier Umberto Eco definition of fascism then you have two clear routes:
You demonstrate how the US comfortably fits this definition, point by point
You draw upon a Marxist analysis of fascism which centres the importance of materialist analysis of fascism, such as from the works of Georgi Dimitrov
What makes you think Eco’s definition is trash tier? Ur-fascism is a decent essay that gets frequently misinterpreted.
Because it only considers fascism from an aesthetic and cultural angle without any regards to the material basis of it and the conditions that fascism arises from.
It’s a hazy definition that describes the psychology of fascism more than it describes the phenomenon of fascism itself, and I think—like is the case a most pseudo-radical cultural critique—its analysis can be, and has been, misapplied because there’s no solid definition underpinning it.
It’s a bit like how if you ask a SocDem for a definition of socialism they’ll tell you that it’s welfare programs and democracy and restricting corporations and anti-authoritarianism etc.; they’ll give you a laundry list of characteristics which fails to form a cohesive analysis that strictly defines their concept, thus leading to them to miss the fact that Bernie was not campaigning on a socialist platform or that AOC/the Nordic countries etc. aren’t socialist, and if you challenge them on these matters they’ll deny your rebuttal outright because these things just feel socialist to them.
I guess in short, it’s a question of vibes vs material analysis.