• JamesConeZone [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The last paragraph quotes fucking Ross Douthat, come on now

      Lots of terms need defining. “Illiberal” just means not capitalistic, which yeah that’s all leftists. What is authoritarian? Usually a definition that gets thrown around applies more to capitalist countries vs those listed.

      So it’s just a western communist that supports non Western communist projects? 🤔

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      It’s essentially cope for them not just supporting “nominally” socialist countries because their stance is one of anti-imperialism. Iran should have nukes.

      • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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        1 year ago

        Isn’t Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the Russo-Georgian war imperialism? I still don’t get them, except being blinded by their hate of USA’s war crimes, which I can understand, but it still seems like an irrational conclusion to become a tankie. They end up supporting or refusing to criticize regimes that generate similar war crimes.

        • Kieselguhr [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          the Russo-Georgian war imperialism

          Wait, are you saying Saakashvili has done an imperialism? Because even western/EU reports have confirmed that Georgia started that war, not Russia.

          They end up supporting or refusing to criticize regimes that generate similar war crimes.

          “From 24 February 2022, which marked the start of the large-scale armed attack by the Russian Federation, to 30 July 2023, OHCHR recorded 26,015 civilian casualties in the country: 9,369 killed and 16,646 injured”

          Almost 10 thousand civilians killed is horrible. But compare this to Iraq: it’s less than the first month of the war in Iraq, and no US politicians was tried for war crimes. Maybe you should ponder this factoid.

          If you live in a NATO country maybe you should demand Blair and Bush to be tried for their war crimes. If you live in the west you should spend more energy of criticizing the ruling class above you.

          “supporting or refusing to criticize” This is a made up leftist. Per definition there is no leftist that uncritically supports a right wing capitalist country.

        • captcha [any]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          There’s a concept called “critical support”, which most “tankies” are practicing. You have criticism of a side but its the lesser evil so you support it despite your criticism. You won’t hear much of that criticism publicly though because that’s counterproductive.

          Like if I want the US to recognize the DPRK as a sovereign state so we can at least begin discussing Korean reunification, why would I bother mentioning my criticism of Juche?

          • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            I would avoid saying “lesser evil” for critical support cases, because revolutionary defeatism exists for lesser evil situations where nothing is progressing against the primary contradiction. It’s more a recognition that a shitty thing can be progressive/forward moving relative to its opposition. Russia winning/getting a peace deal with Donbas and Crimea out of Ukraine gets us much closer to ending global imperialism than Ukraine getting it’s land back or worse.

            • captcha [any]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              We want the larger capitalist empire to loose to the smaller capitalist empire because that leads to better outcomes. Saying otherwise is telling half truths at best.

                • captcha [any]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Please elaborate because as far as I see you just dont like that framing because you think its counter productive messaging, not because its wrong.

                  • Because its not relevant. It HAPPENS to be the case now, but it’s in no way a defining feature. Sure, I’m absolutely fine with that detail being described so, because it’s true. But you minimized the analysis to that. “Framing” is ambiguous and I’m ignoring that, I guess you could call it framing, but your framing is irrelevant to my analysis

        • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          You’re in a thread with half a dozen comments like “wow libs and tankies are celebrating this?”, followed by a bunch of “tankies” explaining (again) that they do not actually like modern Russia.

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          The general “tankie” position is that the people of Donbas, who mostly do not want to remain part of Ukraine, will not stop suffering attacks without Russia fighting Ukraine off. Russia does not seem interested in siphoning resources from or subjugating the people of Donbas, as they did not the people of Crimea, who merely became Russian citizens. This is very different from US carpetbombing for oil.

          • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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            1 year ago

            US bombing is bad, but Russian bombing is ok? Why do you not apply the same critical spirit to both the USA war crimes and the Russian war crimes?

                • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  There is no such thing as a neutral analyst but yes, even neoliberals talked about the civil war at one point and the Nazi problem and the pogroms and so on. Given this, and given the popular support Russia has among the people of that same region, and that it tried for 8 years to negotiate peaceful secession while Ukraine participated in those talks in bad faith, it sure seems like something very different from, and I cannot stress this enough, flying to the opposite side of the world to carpet bomb in the name of freedom and in the service of oil companies.