Image Transcription:
An 8-panel Phoebe Teaching Joey meme.
The first panel is Phoebe from Friends saying “Russia”.
The second panel is Joey from the same show replying with “Russia”.
The third panel is Phoebe saying “has invaded”.
The fourth panel is Joey repeating back “has invaded”.
The fifth panel is Phoebe saying “Ukraine”.
The sixth panel is Joey repeating back “Ukraine”.
The seventh panel is Phoebe saying the completed phrase “Russia has invaded Ukraine”.
The final panel shows Joey proudly proclaiming “NATO just started a proxy war”.
Why not both? Russian invaded Ukraine and the US is using it as a proxy war.
This seems like a win/win/win. We have a huge stockpile of weapons we built up almost explicitly to fight Russia (if need be), and now it gets to be used against them. And it doesn’t cost any American lives, which would make it seem like we’re exploiting another country to fight for us. But we’re not, we’re actually helping them repel an invader, so we get to be the good guys while getting everything we want! If we stopped sending weapons, Ukraine would be screwed. So everybody wins except the Russian!
It’s rare in this world that a situation like this comes along, and we should be able to feel good about finally being the good guys.
I’d like to opt out and take my portion of this expense as a income tax rebate please.
Firstly, we’ll save a lot more money than that by auditing the DoD like Katie Porter and Jon Stewart keep advocating for. I would much rather take my portion of a DoD audit on my next tax return.
Secondly, would you like your next tax return to include shares in a Patriot missile system? Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t actually have any use for soon-to-be decommissioned weapons.
Were you planning on overthrowing the bourgeoisie with your share of those missile systems?
I was thinking if taking my family out to dinner. Maybe vacation, I’m not too sure what my cut would be.
Given that you’re worried about income taxes, your cut is very small.
In the name of equality, my family share would be total cost / 331.9million * 3.
That’s not how income taxes work (you already got paid a rebate for your dependents) and equality in taxation is not a thing you actually want.
Then I call your debt to me for my portion of the taxes I paid for the highways you drive on, the social security you’ll claim when your older, and the 12 years of public education we paid for you and your children…
What? Don’t want to pay that back? Then stfu and deal with it. Taxes are paid for the services rendered (education, medical expenses, highways, etc).
After you pay for the services that money isn’t yours, it’s the government’s. You don’t get to tell other people how to spend their money. You choose to live in society so you choose to accept the services and their costs. The government uses this income, which is their money, and spends it how they see fit.
Don’t like it? Too fucking bad. I didn’t think I would have to explain basic middle school economics to somebody who’s almost definitely a fully grown adult today.
My roads are paid for by my fuel tax, my social security (which I’m sure will never come back to me) is payed by myself now to get back negative returns later in life, and I pay for my children’s education. I’d love to opt out of social security actually, they can even keep what I’ve paid in to date. You’ve contributed nothing to me actually, and the government isn’t someone else or a corporation spending profit, it’s all of us.
You’re just proving more and more you don’t understand tax theory and American economics.
What part is wrong? my fuel isn’t taxed? I don’t pay SS tax? I don’t pay my kid’s tuition? I’d love to know what phantom taxes I can stop paying.
You do realise that regardless of whether you pay tuition, public education taxes were still collected on the assumption your children would possibly go to public schools. Your taxes alone do not fund your SS. Your taxes alone do not fund the things you would have benefited or do benefit from in America.
That’s why they’re paid for with taxes. So you don’t pay as much.
But I guess literal taxation theory 101, the fucking bare basics of tax theory, literally the simplest of the simplest concepts in economics was too difficult to conceptualise for you that you needed it stated plainly.
No. Go sit in the corner Tommy.
Cool Id like to opt out of all the help you have recieved or will recieve. Please dont accept medicare or medicade.
Also please stay off the of the portion of highways that I payed for.
Thanx.
I will only use the government services I pay for, I promise. And I pay for every inch of road i drive on with my fuel tax so don’t worry about that!
Actually you didn’t. I paid for some of those roads and I want that money back!
Take it up with the people who you wrote the check too!
Yeah, the US is absolutely capitalizing in it. Why wouldn’t you destabilize a geopolitical rival if they commit an unforced error?
It’s just tragic that Russian and Ukrainian civilians are caught up in this shit that Putin started
They destabilized themselves. Russian couldn’t win before all this aid showed up, now it’s just a cruel meat grinder. I would have preferred a income tax rebate for my portion of this aid being sent to bury people I’ve never met, in places I’ll never go.
that is insensitive.
Hopes and prayers! give me my $1000 back though.
This is a NATO proxy war in that NATO, an organization created to provide European countries protection from Russia’s territorial ambitions, is providing assistance to a European country to help protect them from Russia’s territorial ambitions.
I can’t get over the circular logic of thinking Russia is justified in its invasion of another country by the fact that the other country wanted to be better prepared to defend against Russia invading it.
“I need to beat up my neighbor for trying to take a self defense class, because if he takes the class I won’t be able to beat him up.”
Dude, it only comes up if you’re trying to beat up your neighbor. just don’t do that.
Ukraine isn’t part of NATO. Also, NATO should’ve been disbanded after the cold war. Really shows the sincerity of working towards peace when you keep an antagonistic organization around looking for a purpose to justify their existence. The post-cold-war intentions of the US were made clear with the leak of the Wolfowitz Doctrine but apparently that’s lost to many.
This is the Russia is the victim propaganda that Putin has been spewing for a long time now. When there’s a mafia state next door with the world’s largest cache of nukes I think it’s completely justified to keep NATO around, especially given Russias predilection for invading their neighbors.
You squawk about propaganda while spewing it yourself. The US shits its pants to this day about Cuba, now imagine if a larger country next to the US was being enticed into the sphere of influence of another country. What do you think should be done about the US with its predilection for invading countries around the entire world?
Here we see a classic, the “No u” argument. “I’m not the propaganda, U R the propaganda!”. There’s also some whataboutism sprinkled in at the end. I don’t see where I was squawking, but I’d appreciate it if you could elaborate, please.
Let’s agree, in retrospect recent US wars were bad in a multitude of ways, but are you saying because the US can do it, Russia is justified in its invasion of Ukraine?
No, here we see the classic double standard where the US does a lot worse than many other countries but calling it out is “whataboutism” because the talking heads on the TV said we should all be mad at this thing and not think about what led up to this.
Russia is not justified in invading Ukraine, but let’s not ignore that Ukraine is yet another proxy war that the US uses to destroy other countries and retain sole superpower status. Do you not see the increased rhetoric against China as well? Any country that could ever potentially rise up or aid in the rising up of a country that isn’t the US gets smacked down. Just like how the US was screaming about Japan taking over the world in the 80s while engineering financial collapse through things like the Plaza Accord and that was their ally. This behavior isn’t some insane conspiracy theory, it’s all laid out in the Wolfowitz Doctrine.
It costs a lot to invade a country and nobody does it willy-nilly. The US has been fucking around in Ukraine for decades and has pushed to economically cut off Russia the entire time. Putin played into their hand by invading and he was absolutely wrong to do so, but he was losing Ukraine anyway so he probably figured “fuck it”.
If the discussion was about US imperialism sure, but it wasn’t. You used it as a way to shift the argument to something else. It’s fine though, I asked you a question back about the same thing, but don’t act like I’m some how making your double standard argument here which you shoehorned in. Then to assume you know where my information is coming. How about this, I can do the same thing. I can assume you get your information from crackpot conspiracy theorists that want to sell you vitamins for your brain…
It’s interesting you keep bringing up Paul Wolfowitz and his doctrine. It failed as a means of control, doing more harm than good. How many US administrations are we removed from Bush and that way of thinking? Whatever the US doctrine is at the moment isn’t that.
So we heard a lot about Ukraine before the invasion, and then surprise! They were invaded. Xi Jinping has been making aggressive moves as of late, not just rhetorically but literally. His move on Hong Kong for example. Taiwan seems to be up next. I’m sorry, why wouldn’t we be hearing about China? If anything US doctrine is to react not pre-empt.
I don’t understand your last paragraph. You start off by saying no one gets into a war Willy-nilly then go on to say Putin just said “fuck it” as his reasoning before going to war.
Virtually all global politics involve the US, so yes, the discussion has to include US imperialism. It wasn’t like the US was hands-off until Russia invaded out of nowhere and then that’s when the US decided to get involved.
You’re naive if you think the Wolfowitz doctrine and its ideologies have simply gone away with the Bush administration. This has been the blueprint for US foreign policy since the end of the cold war.
Yes, we did hear a lot about Ukraine getting invaded and then they got invaded, but the trouble didn’t start like a couple weeks before the invasion. Funny that you claim that I’m merely assuming I know where your information is coming from when you keep repeating US mainstream media talking points over and over. Following your logic, North Korea would have dropped multiple nukes on South Korea and Japan by now. You hear a lot about China conducting military drills or encroaching on air space, but you won’t hear the same about the US even though they do the same. Is it because you can trust the US? Is it because the US owns all airspace on Earth and thus can go where they please?
“Fuck it” in this context doesn’t mean “I got off the wrong side of the bed this morning, I think I’ll go invade a country today”, it means “I believe I’ve run out of options and I will do this out of desperation”.
Russia is not justified in invading Ukraine,
Well there ya go, what else is there to talk about?
but let’s not ignore that Ukraine is yet another proxy war that the US uses to destroy other countries and retain sole superpower status
Golly, how could Russia have possibly avoided this war? Hm, maybe by not invading.
This behavior isn’t some insane conspiracy theory, it’s all laid out in the Wolfowitz Doctrine
Ooh, sounds scary. I guess if the US wants to be the sole superpower, it makes anything Russia does in order to try and be a superpower totally ok, and we should let em do it.
Putin played into their hand by invading and he was absolutely wrong to do so, but he was losing Ukraine anyway so he probably figured “fuck it”.
“Fuck it, if these people want to voluntarily, democratically seek closer economic and political ties to Europe, what’s the difference? I should probably kill hundreds of thousands of my own troops and hundreds of thousands more civilians in a devastating military fiasco riddled with war crimes.”
You can see how that’s not better, right?
You obviously see the world in black and white. Someone can be not justified in doing something yet have reasons for doing them, just like how someone isn’t justified in physically beating someone up over words but you could see why it’d come to that, depending on the words and the situation. “I would simply not invade” is a braindead take for something as vast and complicated as geopolitics. Seriously, put some thought into your worldview. You have about as much nuance as a picture book for kindergartners.
Then again, your stance appears to be “I guess if the US wants to be the sole superpower we should let them” Then you follow it up with literal CIA propaganda about “the people” wanting this or that. Golly gee the people have spoken here https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV9J6sxCs5k
That would be like saying “the people” wanted Jan 6th to happen but the big bad government quashed the people’s movement.
What do you think should be done about the US with its predilection for invading countries around the entire world?
I dunno, let’s ask Ukraine about it. :P
Yeah, let’s ask Ukraine about Iraq or Yemen or Syria or Libya or…
I mean, I protested in the streets against the Iraq war voted against the administration that embarked on it, so I’m not too fussed about your nonsense.
I’m not sure how setting the expectation that every big country ought to be able to invade every little country is an improvement here. That’s what you’re saying, right? “The US did something bad, so Russia should be able to do something bad too, no fair!”
No, I’m saying we should take a look at what led up to this invasion so that it doesn’t happen again. I’m also calling out the hypocrisy I’ve seen.
Ukraine isn’t part of NATO
So?
Also, NATO should’ve been disbanded after the cold war
Why? The reason NATO still exists seems pretty self evident, a bunch of European countries seem like they want to be in a defense pact with the US, why could that possibly be.
Really shows the sincerity of working towards peace when you keep an antagonistic organization around looking for a purpose to justify their existence.
Russia could have avoided it by (and I know this sounds crazy) not invading their neighbors.
The reason that NATO still exists is self-evident more than two decades after the end of the cold war? It took a while but they got themselves some job security, eh? It is a nice little grift they’ve got going, having the US mess about in foreign countries with the CIA, upsetting local powers, and then running to the rescue when those local powers get upset enough to invade. Of course, Russia could’ve not invaded Ukraine and let the US lure Ukraine over to the west purely through “soft” powers.
Of course, Russia could’ve not invaded Ukraine and let the US lure Ukraine over to the west purely through “soft” powers.
Well, that would have involved hundreds of thousands fewer people dying and Ukrainians getting the thing they generally wanted, so… win win.
and a massive loss from Russia’s perspective. The US has invaded for much less.
See here’s the thing: whether the US has done something before has no bearing on whether Russia is justified in doing it.
See here’s the thing: I didn’t say Russia is justified in doing what it is doing.
This is a NATO proxy war in that NATO, an organization created to provide European countries protection from Russia’s territorial ambitions, is providing assistance to a European country to help protect them from Russia’s territorial ambitions.
Perfectly stated. Definitely sums up NATO’s involvement.
Excuse me. I was told there would be a deep state? Are we not doing deep state anymore?
Oh, we’d better be still doing a deep state. The only thing that helped me make it through inflation was the Soros Bucks from all the paid protesting I’ve been doing.
According to many the fact that NATO exists at all is a sign theyre up to bad shit.
And, that’s after they gave up their baseball bats for the explicit insurance that they wouldn’t be beat up or threatened to be beat up. Kinda makes it seem dumb in hindsight, but you know what they say.
Aside from the word “started” both are obviously true. We certainly did not start the war in Ukraine, but we are for sure using it to fight a proxy war.
It is fascinating that Zelenskyy has become the sole major voice of Ukraine to the west. Clearly Ukrainians hate Russians and many will die fighting to avoid the kind of oppression and genocide that would happen if Russia took control, but the idea that there is zero dissent and nobody just wants to surrender to stop the casualties does not pass the sniff test. Feels very political like the propaganda wars of the first and second world wars.
83% of Ukrainians want to join NATO.
You know what makes a population really unlikely to want to surrender? An invading military that’s perpetrating war crimes all over their country and has a propensity for conscripting civilians from occupied regions.
Providing arms and aid to a small country that is fighting for its own sovereignty is not a “proxy war”. It’s providing aid to an ally.
Either that or it is a proxy war, but not the bad kind.
Ukraine
small
It’s the second largest country in Europe after Russia (even when only taking Russia’s European territory into account which is larger than India. Russia is humongous, colonial empires do tend to be. Roughly the size of China+USA combined).
Turkey is larger in case you’re counting them in, France larger when you’re counting overseas territories. About twice as big as Italy.
You’re talking about land, I meant population and GDP. They’re in 8th place in population and way down in 23rd place by GDP. Having a country with a lot of land means almost nothing as a factor for winning a war.
Land mass can factor into victory in a war. It can help to spread an attacker forces for example, imagone trying to occupy say California, Alaska, or Texas.
Who is saying nobody wants to surrender? I’m sure people wanted to surrender in WWII also. If the majority wanted to, though … they would.
That’s the point of propaganda. It became illegal in the US to work against the war effort and that included protesting the war. Those in power actively fought any majority consensus that would end the war.
I suppose that’s fine in WWII because we had such a clear bad guy, maybe it’s fine in Ukraine, but there are plenty of instances where the opposite was true and a long terrible war was carried on by a state against the wishes of its people. E.g. there were a bunch of reports early on saying a majority of Russians were in support of the war from their side. Clearly, there is a large chunk of Russian citizens who would rather not be involved in this war who get more coverage now, but their voice is still suppressed by Russian state media. .
Not saying it’s happening in Ukraine, but the way we are hearing about it basically eschews us hearing a perspective other than the pro NATO Majority.
Victim blaming at it’s finest! Ukraine gets invaded, it must be their fault!
Maybe Ukraine shouldn’t have been dressed so provocatively.
Westerners don’t get it. They didn’t see citizens in Crimea and Donbas walking around in their “fuck me, Putin” shorts and their “imperialism now” borscht stained t-shirts.
Thank you for the laugh, see you in hell. :)
It’s abusive behavior at its finest. “My wife MADE me punch her in the face 10 times! Poor me”
In my experience it’s more like “My wife’s been getting closer to the most powerful man in town, because I keep threatening to punch her in the face. This dude sometimes does bad things and he made us wear masks because of a so-called pandemic, so I had no choice other than repeatedly punching her in the face. So he’s obviously responsible for this whole mess, I’m a good guy really! Also my wife is a Nazi.”
They’re nazis because the NATO helped them not be colonized and drained of resources by Russia. Not wanting to have your hospitals and schools bombed, makes you a nazi obviously.
I think the Russian conception of Nazi is literally someone who threatens Russia. The rest of the world focuses on the totalitarian ideologies and anti semitism, Russia largely focuses on just that they were against Russia.
I think the Russian conception of Nazi is literally someone who threatens Russia.
Yep. Just like the US definition of socialist/communist/terrorist
Another BRICs war.
Another CSTO war.
NATO is not the aggressor. Ukraine is not the aggressor.
And Russia isn’t a victim.
Fuck Russia. Fuck the stooges that defend Russia.
BRICS is going to be hilarious as BRCS after India leaves to make sure they get western military help against China. They can’t even get rule number 1 of being a major alliance member down. (Don’t attack your “ally”)
Tankies really are the worst. At least right wing ideology has propaganda that fits their mission.
When you break down tanky ideology, they are just fascists who use leftist populism to garner support. They are just right wingers with extra steps.
Image Transcription:
An 8-panel Phoebe Teaching Joey meme.
The first panel is Phoebe from Friends saying “Russia”.
The second panel is Joey from the same show replying with “Russia”.
The third panel is Phoebe saying “has invaded”.
The fourth panel is Joey repeating back “has invaded”.
The fifth panel is Phoebe saying “Ukraine”.
The sixth panel is Joey repeating back “Ukraine”.
The seventh panel is Phoebe saying the completed phrase “Russia has invaded Ukraine”.
The final panel shows Joey proudly proclaiming “NATO just started a proxy war”.
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]
Good bot.Thanks[EDIT: my bad! I read “I am a human” as “I am NOT a human” for some reason.]
Bad bot.
Oh, did it give a bad transcription?
The transcription is fine, just… !Transcription wrote that they’re human. Are they a lying bot? If so, bad bot. Are they human? If so, then the bad bot is the bot detector!
Good God bot.
Beep boop.
Oh, my bad! I read, “I am a human” and my brain inserted the word “not.”
You are a human. Good work. And thank you for the reminder. I will try to include image transcriptions in the future.
All good, fellow human.
We should’ve gone to war with Russia when they interfered in our elections https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa
And how are you going to do that without guaranteed nuclear armageddon for all?
Proxy wars, of course.
Of course.
Just put it on the pile with the rest of them.
Apart from the brief respite of peacetime known as World War II, I’m not sure there’s been a point in the last 100 years where they haven’t been in some sort of proxy war with each other.
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Explain how.
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This sounds exactly like an anti-vax reply. Just replace a few key words and it is talking about alternative medicine. It also exemplifies the unbeatable arguments of the anti-vaxers: “explain yourself”
“No”
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Money can be exchanged for goods and services.
The political spectrum isn’t really a line. Please don’t imply leftists and tankies are on the same team
You can ignore everything I’m about to write. I’m just thinking through this in written form.
Here goes: it’s a bit confusing for me. Tankies call themselves leftists. In fact, they call us “pro-capitalists” because we don’t believe in authoritarianism.
And it feels weird to me to be in one of two groups both saying, “you’re not REAL anti-capitalists” at each other.
So here goes:
- the Nazis weren’t nationalist socialists
- the USSR wasn’t a republic controlled by worker Soviets
- In fact, the use of tanks on Hungarian worker Soviets was what gave tankies their name. They were actually anti Soviet.
- the Democratic Republic of North Korea isn’t democratic
- the People’s Republic of China does not belong to its people
- Moms for Liberty doesn’t want liberty (and is filled with numerous people who aren’t even moms)
- a majority membership of the National Black Republican Organization is white
So yes, I must acknowledge that a group of pro-authoritarians can call themselves leftists without being leftists.
… it still feels weird though. Because if you view it from their perspective, they are leftists. And we are capitalists’ enablers.
Wait! I think I see it. Their embrace of violent regimes and violent tactics destroys working class unity and alienates non-violent, compassionate anti-capitalists. They actively choose Stalin over Trotsky and Trotsky over Kerensky, and (like they did with Marguerit Duras) drive anyone out of the movement who won’t support that choice.
They are anti-solidarity. And you cannot be a leftist and be anti-solidarity.
Yeah, I think tankies and anarcho socialist types want wildly different things only that there’s a not insignificant amount of overlap in how they’re both looking to achieve it.
For the record, I think capitalism is a failed system (well, for anyone other than the billionaire class) but while I and a tankie might agree on certain things it is for different reasons. Cue the Gustavo Fring meme
Capitalism is, at it’s core, any system where d(Power) / dt = k (Power) - a + b (random(t)) where power is your ability to impact or influence the world or not be influenced by it unduely.
Any one who has a/k or less power has it systematically taken from them and assigned to those with the most.
Power can be money or political favour with the party. Window dressing and semantic games don’t reallly matter. Fascism is the exercise of trying to set b to 0.
Tankies are capitalists.
The left is the exercise of trying to make k negative.
Tankies are capitalists
Fucking lol man I love this site sometimes.
The only good thing about leftists is that they’re this ridiculous about everything.
In what way are the states they worship remotely socialist, communist, or anarchist? The means of production are controlled by a small elite who increase their share of control over the means of prodiction by leveraging this control. The only thing that distinguishes the economic stratification of the CCP or the late soviet union from capitalist states is semantic word games.
It’s the same thing as a market based oligopoly.
There have been left wing states, and left wing projects within right wing states, but worshipping putin or winnie the pooh ain’t it.
I’m here to laugh at ridiculous leftists dunking on ridiculous leftists, not to debate the finer points of tankie theory.
I don’t take anyone who self-identifies as a leftist seriously.
You’re really just making right wing reactionaries look even stupider. So I guess you fit in.
I do also enjoy making right wing reactionaries look dumb
You know, i think that’s your only flaw. You’re an intelligent, reasoned individual with a blind spot, in this self identifying dumbasses opinion. I wonder how your came to dismiss that school of thought specifically? Surely there are as many neoliberal frothers as tankies? Would you mind explaining why?
You might consider me a neoliberal “frother”, though I don’t understand the term.
I believe in evidence-based best practice, in both policy and in life.
If you’d like to get into the weeds on this, I’d be happy to, as you seem quite pleasant. Note that I specifically used the term “ridiculous leftists” because I do in fact have friends I think are just wrong, but not ridiculous.
Wtf is this equation
Buddy I enjoyed differential equations as much as the next guy, but differential formulae are not a great way to communicate any concepts in a text forum, not even concepts that are modeled by differential equations.
They are anti-solidarity. And you cannot be a leftist and be anti-solidarity.
Im a radical leftist. Specifically an anarchist.
I was arguing with tankies the other day, because I defined Tankie as an authoritarian Communists. In an effort to differentiate between communists I would work with as an anarchist.
Many people (mostly hailing from hexbear )really didn’t like it. Cue endless whataboutism and people calling me a lib. Btw according to some hexbear folx. Its not imperialism when the USSR invaded Afghanistan, but it is when the US did it later. Lol.
I too want to exclude tankies from leftism. For many reasons. But the truth is that communism even authoritarian communism is leftist.
We dont need to “no true scotmen” leftism. There are problematic elements that we need to recognize and deal with in a way that is not simply saying “we are not them.” Its much healthier and factually correct simply to say that state communism Trends towards a police state aka towards authoritarianism. And I dont support that.
Just my 2 cents.
Like I said, I don’t think the political spectrum is just 1 line. I think there’s an X and a Y axis at the very least
We dont need to “no true scotmen” leftism.
Fair enough.
Btw according to some hexbear folx. Its not imperialism when the USSR invaded Afghanistan, but it is when the US did it later.
🤣
All tankies should kiss themselves. Fuck them.
Except that the problem I have with tankies is their tendency to wish death upon people, (or, at least, accept casualties as some kind of ideological necessity.)
I don’t even wish death on Neo Nazis. I wish Life After Hate upon them. The organization, after all, has ripped people right from the bowels of Neo Nazi organizations. I’d like to see more of that.
I sure as hell don’t wish death upon misguided idealists who think killing political rivals is somehow going to build a world free from authoritarianism. They don’t need to die: they need to examine their beliefs.
Yeah, imagine to my surprise when after being a leftist for years finally take a look at the communist communities on Reddit and then here and they literally say THE EXACT SAME SHIT as the conservative groups about the war in Ukraine, all the way down to Zelensky and his cabinet being Nazis. Noped the fuck out of those communities real fast.
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That’s up to Putin, as he could always end his war and abandon his imperialistic goals.
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Because Biden didn’t invade Ukraine, Putin did.
Some people say
Which people? Russians? Tankies? Fascists?
Why shouldn’t i take this option?
Because that would reveal you to be a disingenous moron.
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War wont stop even if Biden stops sending military aid to Ukraine.
“Some people say” is not a source. Minsk agreements weren’t even about it and the agreements were broken by rus*ia.
Get fucked tankie
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Said the tankie, unaware of the irony
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I think that breaks the minsk agreement
You’re serious? The Minsk agreements that were to try and end Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine? Again you say the victim of aggression should not defend themselves or prepare for further attacks?
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Right, Ukraine is the aggressor when fighting Russian invaders on their soil, you’ve made that clear. And no, nobody admitted to cheating those agreements so that’s a stupid thing to say.
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I’m aware of what she said but you’re deliberately misrepresenting it. The agreement was for a cease fire, and if Ukraine prepares to be attacked again following the cease fire, what’s wrong with that. That’s literally all she said.
And we all know Russia sent troops to donbass but you can pretend otherwise. Or perhaps you’re just uninformed?
I exclude Tankies from the far left. Because at its heart, the left is anti-authoritarian. Tankies lost the plot somewhere and decided that full authoritarianism was the way to go, regardless of the human suffering that lead to.
An authoritarian regime that claims to be communist is no closer to the communist ideal of a stateless utopia than a fully capitalistic state. If the capitalistic state is democratic with popular socialist programs, then it’s actually closer to the communist ideal than an authoritarian state that merely claims communism. I’m using European democracies as my gold standard.
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The problem with tankies is that they have latched on to the Stalinist notion of the necessity for dictatorship to achieve the unification of the proletariat and the dismantling of the Plutarchy. The other problem is most of them are Soviboos obsessed with Russia and the USSR in general.
It would be fine if they were consistent. Wrong, but fine.
What grinds my gears is the full on simp-itry of Putin and Xi in particular. None are communist in any way. Both full on capitalists. I would argue USSR was never communist but even so the cut off date was 1991 everything after has absolutely no left wing whatsoever.
Tankies are just atheist MAGAs with a different God Emperor they worship.
If Xi is a full on capitalist, how do I make the capitalists in my country charge billionaires with crimes and actually convict them?
Here in the US, our capitalists are so brazen they steal billions a year in wage theft, they spend the majority of their companies profits on stock buybacks and lay off employees while making the remaining workers pick up the extra load with no extra compensation, they buy politicians and literally write the majority of all of our regulation. They bury studies that show their contribution to the climate crisis, they spend billions on misinformation campaigns to take the targets off their back… they sabotage renewable energy and prevent meaningful investment in public transportation. They lobby to further increase our military budget, which serves primarily as a welfare pot for military industrial corporations, who can charge exorbitant prices for garbage products, and who’s lobbying efforts have sufficiently restricted the market as to prevent new players from entering.
I mean, fuck dude, there is literally more inequality than prior to the French Revolution. We’ve walked straight into neo-feudalism, and people are more concerned with utopian visions of the future than actually creating change in the present.
I think the difference is Hierarchy.
Xi and Putin put themselves at the tippy top while in the US due to how “democracy” works, who’s in charge can shift around. Billionaires here are the higher ups while the government acts as contractors/employees to them. You can’t fire your boss.
So what you’re saying is, in China, the capitalists aren’t the boss, but they are here?
Well said!
I’m with you on this one. I kinda always thought Marx’s and Engel’s point was:
Capitalism is the stepping stone from feudalism to something far better.
I don’t think they had in mind that the next step after capitalism would be going back to despotism. Like you said, these people lost the plot.
Capitalism is the stepping stone from feudalism to something far better.
And if you let capitalism keep on going while doing nothing to stop, curb or circumvent it, you’ll end up back at feudalism, except with CEO’s & middle managers instead of kings & lords.
George Orwell’s Animal Farm captures it perfectly. Everything is going (mostly) great until the Pigs take over and become despots.
“All Animals Are Equal but Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others”
My problem with the far left is they seem entirely unable (in history) to contain the leftist authoritarians. They’re like, “surely this time my associate who daily says we need to move faster and more violently won’t do violent things to me to get their way!” Then they’re surprised to be the next “moderate” reformer to end up in front a firing squad.
At least learn from history!
I would love if the US adopted a Euro style social democracy. Shit would be so much better.
Take it from a European - no it wont, we’re like 2 steps behind you in the race to the bottom.
Don’t aspire to have the polite facade over the dumpster fire like we do, aspire to abolish the system entirely.Well, at least we have some variety and an actual political spectrum, that’s still better than red-blue monoculture.
at least we have some variety and an actual political spectrum
lol, no, no we don’t…
E: not in the mainstream “ever likely to be elected” category anyway, they all serve capitalism here tooHave you ever looked at the European parliament? Have you looked at the communists and Trotskyists in some European countries’ parliaments? They’re there, you can look it up.
Can you even call yourself real multiparty system until you have viable Bonapartists, though?
We have anything people will vote for, for better or for worse. The same can’t be said for the US or the UK, because of “first past the post”.
Which country? Europe has a pretty large spectrum of policies depending where you live. On average though I’d say your standards of living are still better than what the average American would enjoy.
Because at its heart, the left is anti-authoritarian.
Well, no. It’s not. The left/right spectrum is mostly understood as an economic spectrum, with the right believing in individual ownership of capital, the means of production, and land (and, of course, personal property), with the left believing in collective ownership of capital, the means of production, real estate (and in fringe cases, no personal property). Collectivism doesn’t necessarily mean anti-authoritarian; anarchists are just one flavor of collectivists.
Marxist theory states that authoritarian control is a necessary precondition to absolute communism, until everyone is enlightened enough (more or less; I’m greatly simplifying this, since his treatise is 500+ pages and dense as hell) to be able to fully self-govern in a communist utopia.
I tend to agree that a democratic society that has strong collectivist tendencies while preserving strong individual autonomy is more desirable than an authoritarian gov’t. Personally, I tend towards anarchism, but my view of humanity has dimmed enough in the last decade that I no longer believe that it’s a viable form or governance.
Marxist theory states that authoritarian control is a necessary precondition to absolute communism
That’s actually Leninist theory, Marx never went that direction. And Lenin was the one who betrayed the revolution to seize power, followed by a true despot in Stalin.
The actual origin of the terms Left and Right go back a bit further than Marx, they go back to the French Revolution. There was a vote, the question was, “Should the king have an absolute veto over new laws passed by the assembly” Those who said yes sat on the right of the podium, those who said no sat on the left.
Those on the left wanted no king at all, they wanted the people to have the power.
Communism was only deemed a left-wing ideology because the people held the power, not the wealthy few.
As a note, conservatism was also created out of the French Revolution, as a sort of blowback against it. It uses wealth to create and enforce social hierarchies.
Anyway, once you’ve betrayed the revolution and installed a dictator, communism is not considered left-wing, it’s a tool of authoritarianism, where the king owns all and merely allows the peasants to live in his kingdom.
Once you’re talking about a “dictatorship of the proletariat” you’re not anti authoritarian… let’s not “no true scotsman” communism, being anti authoritarian is something that can be true of communists and capitalists but isn’t intrinsically true of either.
There is no such thing as a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. That’s just a democracy.
No, a dictatorship is when there’s one person in charge, and their word is law. You know, like a king, just one not born into power. A dictator seizes power. Like a king’s ancestors did.
A dictator can be “enlightened” or some bullshit, but they’re still one person calling all the shots, and dictatorships are still the single most corruptible form of government every created.
It isn’t a democracy if you pick a class of people (e.g., property owners) to disenfranchise, and make the argument that an open democracy favors the wealthy and therefore you won’t have one.
You gotta use the actual examples of the folks applying the term to evaluate what it means.
By your weird logic, taxes on the wealthy aren’t democratic, even when the majority votes for them.
True communism is merely that, extreme taxes on the wealthy until there are no individual factory owners, just communal owners. As for land, nothing in communist ideology says that you cannot own your own home, just the opposite. What you cannot do, is own all the homes in a neighborhood and charge ruinous rents.
Communism is about ridding society of the parasite class, those rich bastards who abuse their wealth to exploit others, often causing real harm.
Society creates laws to prevent one person from harming another. We just need to acknowledge the very real harms that the rich inflict on people every day.
Hell, wage theft is the number one type of theft in the US, with dollar amounts greater than all other types of theft combined.
By your weird logic, taxes on the wealthy aren’t democratic, even when the majority votes for them
Of course they are; abolishing the vote because the majority doesn’t vote the way you want, however, isn’t democracy.
True communism is merely that, extreme taxes on the wealthy until there are no individual factory owners, just communal owners
So all the communist governments of the 20th century weren’t “true” communists; it’s a bit no true scotsman, don’t you think?
Going back to my original comment, no they weren’t. They were dictatorships, and dictatorships can’t be communist, no matter what the propaganda they put out. A dictatorship is closer to feudalism than communism. The King owning everything, even your house is no different from “the State” owning everything, even your house, because at the heart of it, the dictator is the state.
True communism might have a government, but it will be made up of the people, and it will serve the people. People would own their own homes, and collectively own their workplaces. It would be like putting the union in charge of the work site.
That’s the dream, but the dream is often betrayed. A dream betrayed is a nightmare.
Also, the rich assholes are actively trying to abolish the vote because the majority support taxing their asses. Because in a capitalist society, the rich hate the poor, and work to prevent the poor from having a voice.
My point (and I can’t stress this enough) is that a political philosophy that relies on dismantling democratic processes and disenfranchising a large portion of the electorate to function is not democratic, even in theory.
Marx’s conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat may not have been authoritarian, but Lenin’s was; I understand what you are saying (essentially that communism must be democratic, and that therefore anything that calls itself communism that is not democratic must in fact not be democratic).
At the same time, communist theorists have made up marvelously positive-sounding terms that boil down to “dictatorship is good if it’s the right dictator”, and that’s what tankies (the people OP was referring to) use to justify supporting authoritarianism.
If you’d like to define “true communism” as excluding all actual communist regimes, do you – I’m not trying to argue over whether communism is good or bad in theory.
It’s not “fringe left” or “fringe right” (not that that means anything consistent in the first place), it’s just anyone dumb enough to incorporate “Russia are unequivocally good and the US going against them are unequivocally bad” into their thinking.
not that that means anything consistent in the first place
Yeaaaaaaah… I wasn’t sure what to use as the title. By the time I had captioned the meme, I realized it didn’t exclusively describe tankies. It also describes Tucker Carlson’s whole audience.
In hindsight, I probably could have said, “Tankies and far right.” There did not need to be symmetry in my statement.
No worries, everyone does it. Also didn’t realize this was “/c/Tankiejerk”.
