I hate how “anti-war” has been hijacked by these people to mean, let imperialist countries invade whoever they want with no consequences. (in the case of tankies, any imperialist country that isn’t in NATO).
/me sees title. “Oh, these comments are gonna be fun…”
As a Mexican, it’s always “fun” to read this American comic strips.
It’s funny that if you change Russia for Israel and Ukraine for Palestine suddenly the “pro-war” group become “anti-war”.
Only funny if you think it’s “a pro war” stance and not “Anti-civillians-getting-slaughtered-by-an-oppressive-outsized-imperialist-neighbor”.
Isn’t it the same Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine?
You forgot the person standing to the other side saying, “But what about that time when America…!?”
I know it’s not relevant but it’s funny (and sad) how you can replace the two flags with Israel and Palestine and it still works.
Only switch the Ukraine guy with a palastinian child.
And its not MAGAts and tankies backing it but, neolibs and centrist conservatives (with the MAGAts as well).
I’m really curious how or why it works. Do they hate US so much that anyone against the US seems a hero to them, despite being off the same kind but pretending to be a communist/socialist?
There is rarely, if ever, support for Putin. What is more typical is a recognition the USSR was a better entity than both what it replaced and what replaced it. So there is usually the connection that the US is the reason Russia is the way it is, which is usually lauded as ‘USA bad’.
So even though America was the global superpower after the fall of the USSR: Putin, (or at least someone like him), was wanted in power. ‘Keep rootin for Putin’ wasn’t just a pundit book 20 years ago.
All in all when the goal is eradicating communism at all costs, you wind up with war mongering right wingers in their stead: and that’s the perspective every communist I have interacted with has come from.
A surprising portion of people in the northern hemisphere think that a person having lots of money is literally exactly the same thing as a person having lots of blessings from [deity]. They see that Russia is run by oligarchs, and that since those oligarchs command lots of currency, they are inherently chosen by [diety] to always be correct.
Who thinks that? Are we talking about the old Pharaoh’s of Egypt?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
I notice this to be most prevalent amongst the Russian Orthodox people I know as well as Evangelical Christians, but it’s not limited to those.
I’d say these two probably think something along those lines…
Okay… so this makes me wonder where the artwork came from before they put words over it. That donkey is jacked and has a very bright smile for a farm animal. Do you think the person who did the artwork had no idea what they were going to write over it, or just that they’ve got some closeted desires they haven’t figured out how to discuss openly yet?
Maybe it’s a Divine Donkey lol
I’m guessing it’s clip art.
I am curious about this as well. At least in some cases, it seems to be due to “alternate facts”, e.g., https://lemmy.ca/comment/13198294
That was an… interesting read 😅
Are they saying that the U.S. was preparing Ukraine for war in 2014… Which Russia had started moving their forces in 2013 and started the invasion in February of 2014. It’s like how people try to say “well Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if Trump had still been president”… When Russia mobilized their troops and equipment and marched them there for the invasion while Trump was still President.
Damn, that’s alternate as fuck 🤢
That’s exactly the reason (even if they don’t 100% admit it) for the communist parties in my country.
Can someone show me where all the tankies are? All I ever see is anti-tankie propaganda like this and its seems like a straw man to me. Where are the Leftists who defend Russian aggression?
Did you ask that before or after scrolling down and reading the comments doing exactly that?
In this fucking post, for starters.
/c/endlesswar
Im not sure about other anti-war people but I can speak for myself. Like how Assad was clearly evil so is Russia, their actions are absolutely inexcusable. However, I think it is a valid question to ask how much good does foreign intervention do? It didnt do much good in Syria or Iraq and I dont think its doing much good in Ukraine. At this point Ukraine is another US proxy, who exactly does that help?
Syria and Iraq didn’t ask for our help, Ukraine does. I think that’s also one of the reasons.
Seems to me like foreign intervention just did a whole lot in Syria. Just not on Russia’s part.
Well, except Ukraine is a unified and largely homogeneous nation with no threat of extremism and factionalism if they either win or at least keep their sovereignty intact after the war. The Middle East and Afghanistan have completely different culture, history, dynamics and variables unlike Ukraine, which is why supporting rebels there proved more troublesome and complicated.
The Ukrainian government has banned political opposition, enaged in censorship, and even banned a religion. In addition they’re an extremely corrupt government, they’re so corrupt that under any normal circumstances they wouldn’t be allowed in the EU or NATO.
And just like that, they come out of the woodwork!
Pointing out Ukrainian censorship makes me a tankie? Or the fact that they’re an objectively corrupt government? Do you even know who you’re supporting or are you just supporting the popular thing™?
Usual Kremlin drivel. Somehow being a corrupt country makes it excusable to be invaded.
Ukraine is at war, any country at war would have censorship. The Allies in World War 2 also enforced censorship but are you going to say they deserve to fight the Nazis? Russia also has censorship even before the war, and now arrests anti-war Russians.
Why is it that those who bring up Ukraine’s “corruption and censorship”, never mentions Russia’s own corruption and censorship? As if being corrupt warrants being invaded. You are doing exactly what this meme pokes fun at: victim blaming. Accuse the enemy of which you are guilty of, am I right?
Ukraine did not “ban” a religion, they banned the Moscow-affiliated Russian Eastern Orthodox church for being openly pro-Putin. Ukrainians and Russians share the same religion: Eastern Orthodox. But the religion is more decentralised and many groups have their own country jurisdictions. Ever since the fall of Byzantine, the Eastern Orthodox set up shop in Russia and in surrounding areas. And ever since then the Russian Eastern Orthodox had been kissing ass of whoever is in charge in Kremlin. As someone mentioned, a priest on the Russian side even blessed nuclear weapons.
If you are not a tankie, you are certainly being manipulated to become a useful idiot. Always view things with a critical eye.
Every country does this. It is up to you to prove that this censorship is wrong. From what I have read banning a religious cult and pseudo Russian political parties is what any sane country would do.
Accusations of corruption can be leveled at every country. A lot of Ukraine’s corruption can be traced to Russian gangsters. Russia, just like Ukraine is incredibly corrupt only they have not tried to reform like Ukraine has.
The corruption is also woven into economics. For instance doctors are paid bribes because they don’t make very much money. Citizens of the Ukraine often feel it is their duty to engage in this because they want to pay doctors what they are worth.
This was a good read about Ukraine’s corruption and paints a very different picture about the corruption. It is really a cultural thing left over from the Soviet Union.
They banned a religion?
They banned the Russian Orthodox sect of Christianity.
The same one that blesses Russia’s nuclear weapons.
I’d ban such a dangerous cult too.
Yeah, I am inclined not to call that a ban on
a religionif it’s just a specific part of a religionI’d say it’s debatable if it’s the same religion as Christianity when they’re blessing nukes, but regardless, I was just explaining what they were probably talking about when they were saying that Ukraine banned a religion.
Yeah, I understand that, and regarding blessing nukes, they really went full Warhammer on it
Oh, you mean they banned these guys?
I can’t imagine why!
For the same reason these guys now ban anyone in their ranks who talks about Christians being peaceful 😅
You can add Libya to the list. Slave trade has been booming there since Gaddafi was forcibly ousted.
For the fucking tankies and MAGAts, if the French and King Louis XVI would have turned their backs on the US colonials from 1775 to 1783, the Red Coats would have crushed your rebellion and you would have been another Dominion like Canada. Hang on, someone press reset.
You mean I would have had universal healthcare?!
Mother fucking French…
😂 …indeed.
So I understand that MAGA is U.S. based, but how many of the “tankies” do you really think are from the U.S.
Even this place is full or russian propaganda? Referring to some comments.
It’s generally pretty easy to spot. Just look for a short inflammatory sentence without any substance or relevance. They try to fan the flames of conservative meme culture to try and rile up angry and useless debate.
short inflammatory sentence without any substance or relevance you say? Does this count as an example?
MAGAts are either too stupid to realize or too fragile to acknowledge that they’re getting ass-fucked by putin
Yes, that’s a great example of how propaganda influences the culture of discussion. Russia has been a key source of pushing this kind of rhetoric for a long time, with the specific goal of shifting the culture away from meaningful debate and toward juvenile, reactionary responses. Even though the comment you highlighted comes from the opposite point of view, it’s a perfect example of how effective Russian propaganda campaigns have been at shaping and distorting cultural discourse, muddying the waters and preventing genuine conversations from taking place. Your example is a result of their efforts as I highlighted in my original statement.
Definitely.
perfectly agree with the meme, that said I’ve tried to make the same argument to people IRL and their response usually is “well Ukraine provoked them by trying to join NATO” and being the absolute dumbass that I am, I can never come up with a decent answer on the spot.
does anyone have a cool one liner to use or am I stuck with having to explain the various geopolitical issuesIt basically comes down to this: being a sovereign nation means being allowed to choose your own alliances.
Calling it a “provocation” is denying Ukraine sovereignty over their own country.
Which is fundamental misunderstanding of international politics according to Political Realism. Hegemonic powers never care about these de jure arguments anyway and will practicality always act in accordance to int’s own intressets, leaving weaker nations to navigate it.
Hegemonic powers
You can just say Russia you know. And yes, we know Russia doesn’t care about de jure arguments, they only understand power and violence. De-jure arguments are just a tool to them to give talking points to useful idiots in the West, in order to sow division and weaken us.
Political Realism
The question really is: do we accept a world where a third-rate regional power gets to trample all over its neighbors, using unimaginable violence and cruelty if those neighbors refuse to act as submissive client states?
From a moral and legal point of view, it’s a no-brainer to argue that we should not accept this, but even from your a-moral “real politik” point of view we should not accept it either because it goes squarely against our own interests to let a rogue state Russia regain its former superpower status by conquering major client states. Europe and the US are much stronger than Russia, so even your Political Realism dictates that we should help Ukraine defeat Russian aggression.
So yeah, there is no world in which “bUt UkRaInE pRoVoKeD RuSsIa” is a valid argument. If you think there is, you can burn in hell with Kissinger for all I care.
You can just say Russia you know.
Alright. Consider it done and now your response is some sort of recognition that that what i said is the case but this well established, hundreds of years old field of political theory is devilish trick by our enemies to devise us. Which does nothing to strengthen your shallow view on national sovereignty.
As already hinted at: Political Realism is a fucking theory of international relations. It’s used to explain things in reality. So you have to understand that it’s true for every hegemonic power. It’s not unique to Russia. Do you think that the US lead invasion of Afghanistan was respecting their sovereignty? They had no obligation to extradite Bin Laden and we got to see what it meant to not dance to their pipe. The list can go on ad nauseam, we have a couple of thousand years of ‘whatabouts’ here. There is no need to pretend that this is some weird trick of our enemies to divide and fool you, it’s an observable fact about international politics. And it absolutely does you no favors to have this self-sealing mind in the face of it. Weaker nations have always, and will continue, to curtail their own sovereign choices in favor of navigating the interests of greater powers and kept as much sovereignty as they can. Sure they have the radical free will to do anything, but in reality things happens as a result… even if you don’t like it. And hence a field of science to understand this process, that looks a-moral due to a lack of having it observed.
Heck, I see that you sort of get the principles of the political theory. As you said, it’s in the west interest to not have Russia attack her neighbors. So it manages to describe both Russias actions and the West response to it. It will even describe the limits of our support.
So a better counter to “bUt UkRaInE pRoVoKeD RuSsIa” is to say yes, but I want a want a weak Russia.
The idea of Ukraine joining NATO was literally unimaginable before Russian aggression. After the fall of the soviet union there were multiple agreements like the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine and Budapest Memorandum that basically established Ukraine as a sovereign and neutral nation under the protection of the west and east. Even after Russian interventions in Ukraine and finally the taking of Crimea, NATO members like Germany were still vocal about never letting Ukraine in.
Also if Russia truly cared about NATO expansion, how come we barely hear anything about Finland and Sweeden? I occasionally even forget they’re a part of it now.
NATO members like Germany were still vocal about never letting Ukraine in.
I sometimes think that it was exactly because they expected things to go as they did. If they let Ukraine in, they would need to
weasel out of helpinghelp, after allIn the case of Finland, it’s because they kicked Russia’s ass last time and they would do it again.
We lost, both times.
They just have to announce that they’ve cloned Simo Häyhä and Russia won’t even look at them sideways.
Shows how little u know. Ukraine literally put NATO into the constitution prior to 2022.
Then zelensky tried to get nuclear weapons.Again - don’t follow msm, they have an agenda.
Citation needed.
The Ukranian constitution has no amendments even mentioning NATO.
And Zelenky demanding nuclear weapons is a recent development. So not “tried” but “trying right now”. Not even the Russians claimed such prior.
And I don’t watch MSNBC or whatever else “msm” is supposed to be. Bold of you to assume I not only watch American news, but also a specific broadcaster. That’s got to be like a less than 50% chance.
MSM is mainstream media rather than a broadcaster. I actually hear it a lot from conservatives who are somehow convinced that Fox News isn’t mainstream media despite being the USA’s most watched network.
Ukraine literally put NATO into the constitution prior to 2022.
Everyone knows that’s how becoming a NATO member works!
The EU works that way too! You tell them you want to join, make it super official that you pretty please want to join, and then you’re in!
And you surely don’t have an agenda.
That’s why you come here with lies lmao
I don’t care about Ukraine. I don’t want my money going into military to support a country that has universal health care while I still do t have universal health care.
Fund universal healthcare, not Ukraine or Israel.
Okay so DO something about YOUR healthcare then.
I think you need to learn how the Military-Industrial Complex works, because if weapons aren’t going to Ukraine, and it sounds like they won’t, you still won’t get your socialized medicine. Especially not in an oligarchical fascist dictatorship.
We the people should get stubborn and refuse to support the goals of military industrial complex as long as they keep refusing us our goals.
I get absolutely nothing from Israel achieving it’s goals of killing brown neighboring people and clearing space for themselves. Nothing.
Ukraine - u know what! I don’t care about it. Just cut a deal for mutual management of Ukraine and equal economic access. I don’t care about Ukraine winning or Ukraine being a strong country in eastern Europe. I do not care. It’s outside of my interests as a private citizen, only military industrial complex wants that war.
What are you doing to get “we the people” to do that other than arguing on the internet?
UHC is cheaper than the current US healthcare system. You can literally have both.
Funding for Ukraine isn’t holding up UHC. Bad politicians are.
Someone needs to force their hand, if you just give them what they want anyways, there is no reason for them to do anything for u
Not sure punishing Ukrainians who are being raped and murdered in their own homes forces their hand in any way whatsoever. Seems like the least efficient way to do it.
Fair, but it misses the trees for the forest. The US already pays WAY more for healthcare than any other country. The money is literally there, just mismanaged. While I feel your frustration, simply cutting aid to allied countries won’t change anything domestically.
They are not allied countries for me.
Israel is a genocidal regime and Ukraine is just a shithole in eastern Europe.I don’t need these as allies.
I get absolutely nothing, 0 from funding them. Cut themReally? You’re going to complain about one country’s genocide and justify another in the same sentence? At least be consistent
The husband who beats his wife analogy might work. “She deserved it, she thought about going to the police” Another thing, even if it was predictable doesn’t make it wrong to help Ukraine no matter what.
The husband who beats his wife analogy might work.
These are the same people who support Trump and putin soooo
“So a nation is not allowed to make its own decision about defense or else Russia just gets to have it?”
“Nations beg to join NATO which is very reluctant and has a long drawn out entry process”
And the annexation of crimea was not provoking and pressuring them to search for defense from NATO?
It was never about land, it’s about not letting Ukraine become more westernly oriented. https://youtube.com/watch?v=MhpoNL1gZbw
When we keep talking about it just being about land we let Russia get closer to their actual goals.
“become more westernly oriented” is a strange way to say “stop being a Russian vassal state”
I don’t understand how other communists can defend Russia at this point. It feels to me like most of them forget that Russia is no longer a communist country.
They’re capitalists. Putin is often using christo-fascist tactics. He’s also pushing for Russian imperialism in very capitalistic ways. Also, Russia was 100 percent the agitators here.
Just because it challenges US worldwide hegemony doesn’t automatically make it good, boys.
Tankies might as well be called CINOs — communists in name only. Their defining feature is reverence towards authoritarian leaders. They revere Putin and Xi as “strong” leaders and completely ignore how little their regimes have in common with the socialist workers paradise Marx envisioned.
I especially despise how Putin and Xi were seen as ‘strong’ leaders, but when shit hit the fan in the last 5 years, they just hid away from repercussions
Do you know what you’ve done!? You’ve summoned him! He’s like Beetlejuice, say three Marxist terms and he appears. Combie will be here soon.
My favorite is when they argue that China has billionaires and private property and a stock market because Marx said you have to go through capitalism to get to communism. Which… doesn’t somehow also apply to the West?
What makes you say they don’t think it applies to the West? I don’t follow your logic there.
Because if you tell them China is just as capitalist as the West, they tell you it absolutely isn’t and is a communist country.
I’d buy that line if China wasn’t integrating those large businesses (albeit slowly) into the public sector, something the west is not doing, but rather moving to deregulate more and more (Thanks Trump! /s)
And yet it’s still not a communist country. I get that you want it to be a communist country, but it isn’t.
You won’t see me argue that China is communist, it’s socialist as it stands now with the stated goal of becoming communist
Ok but China is absolutely not as capitalist as the west, and that’s an insane thing to say.
Gee I wonder who you could be referring to mmmmhhh gee I really wonder.
Tankies?
Sorry I dropped the /s somewhere
I’ll stick with “Cosplay Commies”.
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All the shitstain MAGAts should serve in the Russian infantry.
All the shitstain MAGAts should serve in the Russian infantry.
you’ve been played by the same media machine that keeps denying you a right for health care.
No american should support arming Ukraine or Israel for as long as they keep denying us the essentials - right to health care or working rights like mandatory vacations.we should deny military industrial complex their wars for as long as they denying us what we want.
The European countries, like Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, etc…that have superb healthcare and mandatory vacations are supporting Ukraine with military weapons. You should move to fucking Russia or any country occupied or heavily influenced by the shithole and and then tell me about your rights. I understand your comment and yes the US healthcare system is a massive dumpster fire and the defense budget is out of control.
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This is your usual real conversation?
It’s the American way.
