Tankies aren’t leftists.
Tankiesb are authoritarians with anti-USA/anti-west coating.
I think the problem with tankies is that they let their perception of what is “pragmatic” and “realistic” poison and overpower their true ideals, which tends to steer them towards authoritarianism. So scared of losing, that they lose themselves in pursuit of victory.
I think the exact opposite is true: they use the excuse of pragmatism while arguing exactly in favor of what they idolize. It’d be more convincing if their concessions to anti-socialism advanced or preserved leftist causes, but largely that’s simply not the case. What you described is the exact problem some Anarchists have, where they idolize praxis to such a degree that they argue against making optimal moves in favor of keeping themselves ideologically pure. Anarchists sometimes argue against voting on principle whereas Tankies will argue that you should vote for the newest ML party. The ML party will decry not doing enough for workers, propose nothing of substance, and call Biden evil for helping Ukraine resist Russia.
Tankies have less hesitancy calling more libertarian leftists and liberals “fascists” than the various flavors of the modern far-right, because “Stalin’s definition of fascism”.
I’m not familiar with this one.
I’m moving around online leftist circles for more than a decade. First I wanted to have some unity with tankies, but I had to slowly learn that it’s a futile attempt, with the main issue being their idea of unity being total assimilation.
First of all, just like their authoritarian-right counterparts, don’t play by the rules, but expect other to do so, except it’s only for the libertarian-left (or anyone who’s not as authoritarian as Stalin). This leads to them forming online (and from what I’ve heard, real life) spaces to their liking, usually with the intent to turn what they call “moderates” into “full-fledged Marxist-Leninists”. If you don’t they will bait others to harass you, usually by finding something in your past. Often they also work in tandem with far-right groups by providing anonymous information to them, and register accounts to their forums (kiwifarms etc) to get help from them. They often managed to even manipulate the discourse around social causes, they singlehandedly managed to remind people that “spook” also used to be an anti-black slur (they got really angry at egoist leftist memes), and part of the reason why some online leftists are sometimes terminally online about loli/shota (around that time, they really wanted to cancel sex-positive leftists en masse, consensual-noncon also got a hit but that wasn’t really part of a fandom that needed a “safe space” for right wingers, hence the frequent cooperation with the right).
One of their greatest display of “manipulating the rules” is their constant redefinition of authoritarianism into “the will of the people” rather than “a hierarchial system of power formed around a select number of people, whom must be submitted to by the rest of the people”. On some level, authoritarianism is “will of the people”, but tankies (likely intentionally) forget that dictators having pet projects and banning things they don’t like isn’t the same as liberation of the people who often want to free themselves from those strongmen, and not replace them with someone who promises to be kind. This is not their only use of the “redefinition game”: they often like to redefine porn as something inherently exploitative, while promising general sexuality will be fine, then they proceed to act in ways people who define porn as “an ungodly act of perversion”, but pretend they’re doing it in favor of “progress” rather than saving the masses from the eternal burning fire. On paper, “authoritarian social justice” sounds good, but in practice it can be only be done with things that are “concrete”. You can stop people from denying the holocaust, you probably could also stop social media accounts calling all LGBTQ+ people pedophiles, but then there’s the issue of sexual objectification in media, which will be on very shaky grounds, and should not be put into law. China put a lot of effort into trying to regulate it, but other than tankie puriteens on Twitter, no one likes it, and often gets workarounds.
Sorry for my personal ramble here, even forgot why I was answering your comment, but the TLDR is that the auth-left and auth-right have way more in common than the auth-left and lib-left, which is especially sad since capitalism itself is a form of authority around wealth.
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.
I mistakingly thought tankies were kind of phoning it in, like they don’t really believe this nonsense they’re just bored right? Woof
When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
There’s no difference between fascism and communism and never was.
I’m in a small leftwing party in Portugal whose roots go back to the fight against dictatorship which was mostly done by Communists, and when Russia invaded Ukraine I had to come up with a framing to help some of the older members understand it since they were instinctively siding with Russia (I basically just compared it with the invasion of Iraq by the US and reminded them how they felt about it).
People back 50 or 60 years ago were just indoctrinated into Communism as young people (understandably in a country which was under a Fascist dictatorship which included censorship) and still today in their mind space they have lots of “undeniable truths” which they accepted long ago without any critical thinking and which they never really examined, and specifically in my country were “Communism” was mainly the Soviet Union variant, a lot of those “truths” are about how great Russia is.
Mind you, this being a party other than the local Communist Party, and thus were even the older Communists were people who were not in the actual Communist Party because they disagreed with them (so a thinking kind of Communist rather than mindless tribalists), I did manage to turn around the few who had instinctively sided with Russia. The local Communist Party, even now (after that country turned into basically Fascism) are still pro-Russia.
I bet this kind of inflexibility of people is how the world could end.
Well, the funny bit is that those old guys were still flexible enough to change their minds when a suitable framing of the thing was presented to them, by which point they recognized it all as the more generic scenario of “aggressor attacking victim to take their shit” and made their opinions based on what their principles were on that kind of thing.
I would say the problem here was tribalism: they were predisposed to believe, support and excuse the aggressor because they felt, due to long ago experiences and indoctrination that “they’re our people”. Fortunatelly these specific people were open minded and intelligent enough to be able to step out of that and consider the whole thing from a detached point of view.
Plenty of tribalists are pretty much religious fanatics when it comes to all those “acquired truths” and the truthfulness, trustworthiness and wisdom of whatever the tribe’s leaders say.
IMHO, tribalist is by far the greatest problem, though I would agree that it and inflexibility are deeply connected.
They’re not communists. If you suggest a communist revolution to them (that is, a revolution resulting in a stateless, classless, moneyless society), they’ll call you an idiot.
No one in either of those instances have any place calling anyone an idiot.
Yeah, I mean, over the years, I’ve gone far left enough that I believe that capitalism must be dismantled as it’s incompatible with democracy. I’m not exactly conservative. But good god, some parts of Lemmy would make me out to be a Gilded Age Robber-Baron for calling out Russia as an imperialist fascist state. It’s insane. And exhausting. I hate dealing with it.
Luckily, it’s not nearly as bad as it was back when Grad and Hexbear were still federated.
But good god, some parts of Lemmy would make me out to be a Gilded Age Robber-Baron for calling out Russia as an imperialist fascist state
I’ve been on Lemmy some 8 months I think and I’ve never seen anyone do that. I have seen plenty of Ruski trolls spamming “don’t vote genocide Joe”, but I haven’t really seen anyone pretending to be for the Russian side in the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Maybe your instance defederated with them already.
Oh they’re still around. I have about a dozen tagged. But lately with calling them out they’ve crawled back to mainly posting in .ml instance posts.
Unfortunately Podemos has taken the position of opposing any policy that helps Ukraine in their defense effort, framing an attitude that only leads to maximizing Ukraine’s losses as “anti-war”. At least most people in Sumar haven’t fallen to this fallacy.
Eh, i dont know the point of your comment, but just to clarify, Podemos is not a communist party, altough it is supported by some communists / has some communist in the party. Sumar as a whole is even less to the left than they are, despite having also some parties inside the group that could be considered communists. Its not true that Podemos is against anything that helps Ukraine, they are all in for a cease fire and for an end to the war through dialogue which should be done from the EU mainly, the same way they are in for a cease fire/end of the war in Gaza, what they are against is spending billions of euros that are needed here to send weapons and war vehicles to Ukraine, the same way they do not support sending weapons and war vehicles to palestine nor no one expects that to be the position of any party here.
If Russia is willing to continue the war as long as they’re making gains (and Russia is making gains as long as they control foreign territory and intend to keep it), refusing to military support Ukraine means supporting a scenario where Russia will have effectively violated their sovereignity, which in turn further incentivizes imperialist countries to attack their neighbours as they’ve just seen they can get away with it.
You can keep gaslighting yourself into thinking that you only need words to convince Putin to leave Ukraine, or for Netanyahu to leave Palestine, or for Jeff Bezos to give up his privileged position in the capitalist hierarchy, but the vast majority of the world will keep their feet in reality and understand that some people are fundamentally selfish and must be forced into no longer committing evil.
Just lol, go fight in the war yourself against Putin and Netanyahu then, also good mental gymnastics making a relation in fighting against nuclear powers that will ensure mutual destruction vs fighting against the capital and billionaries like Bezos lmao. You might want to reread the whole thread also just in case. See ya.
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.
Ukraine is already part of the UN, man. The issue is that Ukraine wants to join NATO, to avoid this very thing from happening (Russia invading), and Russia regards the prospect of Ukraine in NATO as a threat (to their ability to invade Ukraine and extract concessions). Russian peace negotiations have consistently had the destruction of Ukrainian sovereignty and ability to defend itself as core demands, from the very start of the war.
ayy ya tomato tomato, UN to NATO
Tankies aren’t leftists.
I haven’t seen leftists defending Russia at all, but have witnessed scores of right-wing Americans and Canadians garbling that Russian D.
Generally what you’ll see is right wing types directly supporting Russia (because they hate gay and trans people) and a certain stripe of leftists who will lean more into “NATO expansionism”, “Western proxy war” and all that other thoroughly debunked nonsense that, while not explicitly pro-Russia, is all directly lifted from Kremlin propaganda talking points.
You need two (or more) proxies to have a proxy war and looking at the belligerents and who supports them it’s clear who is who: Ukraine is South Korea’s proxy, Russia the one of North Korea.
TIL criticizing NATO is pro russian
The only way to get that from what I said would be;
A) a serious lack of reading comprehension.
Or
B) intentionally misconstruing in bad faith.
You’re more than welcome to tell us all which it was.
It is if you are doing it in a discussion about whether or not Russia should be allowed to enact wars of aggression…
I have. Not so much that they are all rah, rah, russia, but because the west is the one supporting Ukraine. They seem to believe russia was, in fact, there to “de-nazify” Ukraine, and other russian propaganda. You know, the country who had recently ousted a putin puppet, then elected a Jewish man in a landslide, was so in need of a russia to fight the nazis that have over run the country.
I’ve seen plenty of tankies “defend Russia” M8. Especially on lemmy fucking tons of erm. What rock are you living in. If anything it’s mainly tankies,neo libs,socialists (like alot of you lot). I see get involved in this harry kissenger pick-a-side war-hawk bull-shit I mean neo-libs,socialists,tankies aren’t exactly the brightest
Me personally fuck Putin and fuck zelensky. I don’t care who wins. I just wish for a end to the senseless war.Stop the war stop civilians getting harmed or worse. And stop people’s personal property and livelihoods getting destroyed. There are no winners in war only losers. And in the end of the day. You can mend broken infrastructure. But you can’t mend the dead or maimed
Stop the war
How?
There’s 8 billion people in the world. After this war and all the dead there will be 8.2 billion people in the world.
Society is what we have spent centuries crafting.
One side of this war wants to completely destroy society and push further into Europe, trying to reclaim their land holdings from hundred years ago.
The other side just wants to exist and be left alone.
I very much care about who wins
Me personally fuck Putin and fuck zelensky. I don’t care who wins.
Congratulations, you’re who OP is talking about.
I’ve seen plenty of tankies “defend Russia” M8. Especially on lemmy fucking tons of erm
I feel like it’s the same dozen howling assholes.
Me personally fuck Putin and fuck zelensky. I don’t care who wins
Yeah, you lost me there… Last time the world tried appeasing an asshole with conquest delusions in the hope they’d cut it out it didn’t work out to well
The west defending ukraine
“The west” ain’t defending shit. At best it only throws more timber into fire.
Eyy caught one.
So what’s the solution, hang Ukraine out to dry?
This is fucking accurate. I am concerned by the number of downvotes.
Ukraine and Israel are literally defending the civilized world against the savages and barbarians of the world. And the left has the audacity to criticize how they are being defended
/s?
I practice an obscure form of online performance art and satire. Some say it originated on the Gamefaqs gaming forums after a user got banned for sending nudes of his wife to mods in exchange for shitposting privileges
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.
Ah yes, tankie shitheads coming out of the woodwork so I can tag them. Thanks, OP!
Hey Russia and China both really care about human rights, it’s just the west’s propaganda that makes them look bad.
If you want a truly fascist corporate dictatorship look into the US or Canada.
God, I had to stop a moment and check your username.
I had to do the same lmao. The sad part is that it’s actually believable given the usual chuckeheads on here.
You should change it to tankies instead of leftists.
OP should, but the entire reason he posted it was to pretend that anyone to his left is a Russian sympathizer, and to try to discredit anyone who opposes genocide elsewhere.
And for the record, fuck Putin and fuck Russia.
OP should,
Oh, so now you’re in favor of me calling people tankies? Curious, because you’ve repeatedly complained when the label is applied. Almost like this is agreeing with someone in bad faith.
But of course, you would never do that, right? :)
Why, it’s almost as though you call everyone to your left tankies regardless of their actual politics.
lmao, sorry for having respect for anarchists and my fellow demsocs but not red-painted fascist fucks.
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You have no respect for anyone but Netanyahu.
Fucking hilarious, considering the things I’ve said about Israel in general and the Israeli right in particular. But I suppose you’d have nothing to say if you didn’t have blatant lies at hand.
Fucking hilarious, considering the things I’ve said about Israel in general and the Israeli right in particular.
Considering the sheer hatred you have for anyone who says that Biden should stop supporting genocide, the things you say about Israel are in doubt.
I’ve also found ensign crab will speak in such round about ways that you have no idea what he’s saying, and then he can take either position depending how it goes.
Unfortunately, as people in this thread show, even non-tankie leftists can be sucked in by Russian talking points.
Ok so obviously this is anecdotal evidence but my personal experience with this is that the people who support Russia are pretty much all right wing. The farther to the right they are , the harder they’re buying into Russian propaganda.
I haven’t seen actual support from the left in real life, but more some sort of vague both-siding and “understanding” and stuff like that. And that’s come from both left and right (not center-left or center-right), but as a minority opinion. Old Stalinists, some left-wingers closer to the left side than center, then some right to far right. I think for the left it might also be the heritage of USSR alignment and peace mindedness. For the right, I’m not even really sure. Some sort of “anti-West” in the sort of “anti-globalism” sense which make you go hmmmm and then there’s been some pretty sus financial ties.
I strongly suggest seeking out professional help because you clearly live in an alternate reality.
The name people usually use is Finland but your name is good too
Ikr, I have yet to meet a single leftist that supports Russia in its current form.
Best separate them to help out.
I’m reading a different thread than you then.
Do you ever punch to your right? You claim to be so far left but only punch left.
Nah, the mask is off. It’s clear that a lot of people who are obsessed with tankies just hate the left in general and use tankies as a proxy.
I keep hearing this but I almost always see the word used correctly for communists supportive of authoritarianism
You’re literally looking at a post with the word “leftists” to talk about people who support Putin, do you really not think there hasn’t been a slide of what “tankie” means to the point that now some people like OP will use it indistinguishably?
The use has expanded but I haven’t seen it used as a general term for the left, if that’s what you mean.
The term is now extended to describe people who endorse, defend, or deny the crimes committed by communist leaders such as Vladimir Lenin,[9][10] Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. In recent times, the term has been used across the political spectrum and in a geopolitical context to describe those who have a bias in favour of anti-Western states, authoritarian states or states with a socialist legacy, such as Belarus, Cuba, China,[4] Syria,[11] North Korea, and Russia. Additionally, the term pejoratively describes political activists who are said to have a tendency to be favorable towards non-socialist states and political groupings with no affiliation to socialism if they are opposed to the United States, regardless of their ideology, such as Iran or Hezbollah.
Can be pretty vague but doesn’t really label all leftists as tankies, rather those that are authoritarian or apologists for authoritarians. Last part is pretty vague though, but I haven’t seen it used like that iirc.
I didn’t mean that they’re using it to describe the left, I meant that OP is using “the left” to talk about tankies.
Ironically, they’ll call you a “lib” for holding any position in between “we should revoke Obamacare” to “it’d be nice if we could organize more unions”.
The point is it’s tankies (and Trumpers) that defend Russia, not people on the left side of the spectrum.
But I thought tankie (and not just authoritarian or some other word) meant leftists (specifically communists) that are pro-authoritarianism. I’ve seen people often saying that tankies aren’t leftists but to me it just seems like they are, but just the shit kind. Would be a lot nicer not to share even the vague space of “leftism” with them but I think there’s not much to be done about that.
Nah, people who support authoritarianism can’t be leftists or communists by definition. Marx defined communism as stateless. There’s no such thing as a communist who supports the state.
What a ridiculous and reductionist thing to say. Marx and Engles strongly and frequently criticized anarchists, instead taking the position that after the revolution, the state would need to be maintained under a “dictatorship of the proletariat” at least until the social conditions that created it had been changed, at which point it would gradually “wither away.” Of course the end goal is a stateless society, but it’s plain as day in his writings and his opposition to anarchists that he believed it was necessary to use the state to achieve the necessary conditions for that end goal. Regardless of what you think of it, that’s just a historical fact.
Yeah, Marx was a fool sometimes.
Fool or not, he was, pretty indisputably, a communist who believed in using a state to achieve his goals.
The stateless communism is the end state and I think many authoritarian communists still (at least claim to) believe and want that, but they are fine with authoritarianism of one sort or another while building towards that end goal. Marxism-Leninism is like that I believe.
There’s a lot of currents of communism and leftism that are fine with authoritarianism as a “temporary necessity” or some other justification like that. I think both Marx and Engels wrote about that.
I feel like left-wing is similar sort of vague grouping as right-wing that it incorporates both authoritarian and anti-authoritarian views and ideologies.
Marxism-Leninism isn’t about authoritarianism, the idea of a vanguard party composed of intellectual revolutionaries that guides the broader people to revolution, isn’t authoritarian in and out of itself, as much as anticommunist leftists try to smear it. It’s about understanding the usefulness of centralization and coalition in a wide front that shows unity in action. That doesn’t go against democracy.
But their actual plan for the socialist state “withering way” amounts to pixie tears and fairy dust. People who theoretically want leftism but have no plan of action to achieve it are just liberals.
But their actual plan for the socialist state “withering way” amounts to pixie tears and fairy dust.
A lot of people say that about communism in general. There’s quite a few prominent leftist ideologies that are utopian and I wouldn’t use that to claim they’re not actually leftist.
People who theoretically want leftism but have no plan of action to achieve it are just liberals.
I don’t understand how that would make it liberalism. That’d just make them impractical or utopian or maybe even half-baked but I see no reason to claim they’re not leftist. “Leftist” isn’t a guarantee of quality in itself, after all. It’s just a vague grouping of very distinct ideologies.
I’m not entirely sure about this one but wasn’t Marx’s ideas also at least somewhat without a proper plan of action since it was rather a vision of things to come than a guide?
What can be done is to start calling them tankies instead of leftists.
I think that’s already being done, it’s just they don’t call themselves tankies that often so people who don’t know as well get confused
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Go back to your cave, orc.
damn Russia really should have thought of the children before they started unprovoked invasion of a soverign nation with intent to conquest #3
the hell kind of abusive victim blaming mindset is this? “Clearly ukraine is in the wrong for defending themselves against an invading force”
Russia did think of the children!
Well, they did think of the Ukrainian children they kidnapped and are selling off to Russian families. Not the ones they killed.
I don’t read that as saying Ukraine shouldn’t defend themselves, but rather it is saying Ukraine is defending the west, putting their lives at risk and doing the dying while the west otherwise sits comfortably at home.
I’m not sure that’s entirely fair, but it sure isn’t us putting our lives on the line for democracy like the Ukrainians are.
Yes, in some ways Ukraine is defending the West… proxy wars are nothing new, and this is definitely a proxy war by any definition of the term.
HOWEVER, if Ukraine didn’t want to defend themselves and wished to preserve life, they would have rolled over, gotten rid of their president, and handed the country over to Putin by now. They’ve proven they are not above driving out their president and upper leadership by public demonstration, they have done it before specifically to get rid of a pro-Russian president and parliament prior to Putin’s invasion of Crimea. They chose this path for themselves in 2014, they do not want to be involved in Putin’s authoritarian state. It is up to us in the west to support that path and right to self determination.
It is also in the best interest of both to not get the west directly involved (yet, anyway), because Russia can and will take NATO troops being deployed as an invitation to start a broader hot war, and then everyone loses.
Both Ukraine and the west understand Russia doesn’t stop there. Appeasement has never, ever worked with egotistical empire building dictators in the past before, and it will not work now. Just letting Russia have Ukraine would save lives, but inevitably cost more in the long run.
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As long as Ukraine wants to defend themselves against Russia I support their choice to do so and wish my government would provide even more support for them to do so.
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In 2020, when corporations that had just received three years of outrageously large tax cuts and stock buybacks were frightened of losing revenue, the Repub government fabricated trillions of dollars in handouts to pass around with little to no oversight.
It is not the spending on Raytheon that is preventing spending on citizens at home. It is that half the country has oppositional defiant disorder about any service or policy that would help poor people.
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And this is why we never have any money for investing in domestic programs to improve anything. If it’s not Korea, it’s Vietnam, if not Vietnam, it’s Kosovo, if not Kosovo, it’s Iraq, if not Iraq it’s Afghanistan, if not Afghanistan, it’s Ukraine. Have you ever questioned why there’s always a new crisis that makes Raytheon execs rich, but mysteriously leaves nothing to spend on civilians here at home?
It’s absolutely not the reason lol. The reason you can’t invest in domestic programs like universal healthcare or post-secondary education financing reform is because half of your fellow Americans oppose it, and vote accordingly. Convincing others matters.
Have you ever questioned why there’s always a new crisis that makes Raytheon execs rich, but mysteriously leaves nothing to spend on civilians here at home?
Imagine thinking that’s why we don’t have well-funded social services.
And this right here is an example of someone not knowing how their own government works.
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Never said there wasn’t.
I’m just pointing out that you don’t even know how your own government works, that is, if you’re even American.
Win eventually? Lol. Russia already lost. Their 2 week battle plan to take over Ukraine and dissuade other countries from joining NATO has turned into a two year conflict that has caused multiple neighboring countries to submit NATO applications. The absolute best Russia can do at this point is get a bit of dirt.
Their military has already been downgraded from a near peer to a peer at this point. It used to be The US, China and Russia. Now it’s just The US and China. Their economy is in shambles and they’ve resorted to cooking the books to pretend it’s not. Russia already lost.
Think about this in the future when this war is over and you start claiming that it was a great victory for Daddy Putin because they end up being able to annex a few kilometers of unusable land.
You know, every time this topic comes up I just sit back and remember how well appeasement worked last time. You remember, with that toothbrush mustache guy? Boy, I’m sure glad capitulating led to nothing happening after that!
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Yeah I’m sure the West is planning a massive land invasion of Russia in the middle of winter, you figured it out.
Good thing Ukraine isn’t Russia, then, and that the war is happening in Ukraine. Afghanistan, ahoy!
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Ukraine isn’t mountainous terrain that’s hard to navigate both on foot and with even modern aircraft. It isn’t a subsistence economy that has been at war for a thousand years. It isn’t home to people who made a life raiding into India for women and livestock, fierce mountain vikings, even before becoming the graveyard of empire as they cut their teeth on three world powers in a row, getting stronger with each they drove out, generation by generation. These are farmers and programmers and project managers, who are dying in trenches on a flat field as surely as the Flemmish before Germans in WWI, and yes, the line can hold forever, but it takes X lives every day to make that happen, and there’s no endgame where Russia gives in, because it needs the fresh water from the non-Crimea shit to hold Crimea, which has no rivers, and their whole Black Sea naval operation is out of there, and they’re not going to cede the whole Black Sea.
What absolutely bizarre hagiography.
Lol you’re so dumb
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Good thing Ukraine isn’t their home turf
Russia might think they will win, but it will rather be NATO against Russia than Ukraine losing.
Thank you for demonstrating what simping for a fascist state looks like.
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cause a loss for the west is a win for the third world. its not russia that has been couping, invading and generally fucking with most of planet earth.
you can’t fuck us for a couple of centuries then expect us to be on your side, we will take a status quo thats less bad.
Congratulations, you have the most brain-dead take on this entire thread.
likewise. look up your own atrocities before accusing others.
You can’t “likewise”, they only called you out, it isn’t even a take.
what else can i say about such an ignorant take?
Ironic.
agreed.
Nice what aboutism. Not like russia did just as many atrocious things, but keep pretending. Just makes you look like a russian troll, not like a “third worlder”
Isn’t that what you’re exactly doing, but now flipping it on me?
nope. i’m happy to announce my country has commited no atrocities outside its own border.
we haven’t imposed our shit on anyone else, and we are slowly healing from it as far as yours will allow it.
nope. i’m happy to announce my country has commited no atrocities outside its own border.
Ha, damn you must be so far up your own ass you believe your countries propaganda.
There isn’t a single country in the world that didn’t commit atrocities at some point in history.
Please tell me I am wrong by stating your country.
did you even read what i wrote? thanks for teaching me the history of my own country.
maybe do this less and we wouldnt have this problem.
Op’s a tankie and I’m not defending him, but I’m pretty sure there’s some countries/cultures that haven’t done anything outside of their own borders. One example that I know of, unless I’m forgetting something, is Romania. Always been on the defense, never the aggressor, afaik. Pretty sure some island nations are the same. Maybe some African ones as well. Some native american and australian as well, I think.
Russia is currently extorting and corrupting African countries. Enjoy it.
not close to the extent europe still is. i will take an improvement, tyvm.
Well, it isn’t an improvement.
Unless you believe Imperialist Russia, which are known all over the world for their propaganda.
hahahahah look up the west’s influence all over the globe. look inside first.
its not russia that has been couping, invading and generally fucking with most of planet earth.
lol
lol indeed
Laughs in Georgia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Moldova
No, no, that’s just Defending Their Historical Interests, or whatever the fuck fascist simps wearing red say nowadays.
laughs in every other country in the planet including mine. the entirety of africa and south america sends its regards.
what russia does pales in comparison. they don’t have that reach.
So that makes it okay
The fuck planet are you on?
this one. study your own history, you have been continuously killing brown people nonstop for what? at least 50years now?
I haven’t killed any people.
And Russia literally teamed up with the Nazis and only fought back because they were stupid enough to get betrayed. Russia has a pretty colorful history if you wanna get down to the nitty gritty of things.
you need to study some history then.
they literally defeated the nazis at great cost to themselves. buy they were socialist back them, different times than today.
Seems it is you that should study history. Russia fought the Nazis only once Hitler turned on them.
The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939. It was publicly a non-aggression treaty, but it included a secret protocol in which eastern European countries were divided into spheres of interest.
From here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War
you do realize this treaty failed, because nazis invaded them anyway and the soviet union defeated nazi germany?
understand the context in which you are saying this before equating the soviet union to modern russia.
understand the context in which you are saying this before equating the soviet union to modern russia.
Awfully similar if you ask me. ✔️Dictator then and now. ✔️Russia choosing to invade their neighbors instead of allying with Europe for the common good ✔️ Russia working secretly with their allies to carve up Eastern Europe
If it looks like an orc, and walks like an orc…
Every time you people equate the Russian Federation with the USSR, you’re telling on yourselves. The government completely changed, the current one destroyed the old one, and the only continuity is the location and the people. So if you equate the two, then it sounds to me what you’re really saying is that Russian skull shape or whatever makes them inherently inclined towards violence regardless what form of government they adopt. Which begs the question, what is your ultimate, you know, final solution for this apparently genetically inferior race?
Wtf are you even fucking on about? Who the fuck even hinted anything related to what you just posted.
How are the USSR’s actions relevant to the Russian Federation?
Wow, reading is hard.
you have been continuously killing brown people nonstop for what? at least 50years now?
Would be more like 200 something, no? Since the inception of the nation, basically, right? Edit: actually, scratch that, it would be before the nation was even formed, as soon as the colonies were first beginning to be settled. I think before that they were generally too low on the totem pole and too weird as far as strange religious sects to go around and kill people, but I could be wrong.
Israel, Russia, United States, United Kingdom and China need to stop being imperialists.
France looking outside a window, grinning
French Algeria has entered the chat
Belgium, sweating nervously
I know they aren’t anymore, but dear lord is it weird that we all kinda forgot about the Congo
Billy Joel didn’t forget about it when writing We Didn’t Start The Fire. Which, unfortunately, is basically the only reason I know about it…
