I am a member of the terminally online left. And I can assure you my stance is that Russia can get fucked.
Yeah I’m a socialist and agree with a lot of what Marx wrote and no fucking way do I support anything Russia is doing in Ukraine. Tbh I’m disheartened that Russia hasn’t suffered more severe internal consequences for this illegal invasion. Ukraine has every right to fight and retake its sovereign land, including attacking assets inside Russia.
I do feel bad for the Russian people in general, but that’s not because of any politics, I feel the same way about Palestinians, Sudanese, Haitians, and the people of Myanmar. Anyone suffering under the tyranny of small dick leaders.
I’m now considering “terminally ill leftist” as something not to be recovered from, not something that will cause your termination.
I am not terminal, nor ill in my political outlook and desire to see all of my fellow countrymen, And all people on earth, survive and thrive.
The point here is that all sides have a majority that hate russia but each side chooses to think of all the other sides as being in support of them despite clear evidence to the contrary. Of course many of those reds really like russia.
Ah yes, tankie shitheads coming out of the woodwork so I can tag them. Thanks, OP!
I have never, ever heard of a leftists defending Russia. You made this up.
I’m pretty sure they mean “tankies”, who often claim to be leftists.
In Germany, we now have a party that is considered both extreme right and extreme left.
Edit: Now that I think about it, nationalistic socialists ring a bell
Nazis were not left ever. That’s a myth. They use the trappings of leftism, but never did anything leftist. They also attacked the real socialists. They were authoritarian-right.
That’s correct
National socialism is more nationalism than socialism.
Hitler joined the party and was kind of stuck with the name.
Sounds like nazis, not nationalists.
I have never seen someone claim to be leftist while defending Russia. OP made this up.
I don’t believe you.
Neat.
OP isn’t making it up, but they constantly make or repost memes about tankies and are seemingly blowing it out of proportion, as I mentioned in another thread (and was down voted) people are throwing it around way too much on lemmy.
See all the top level comments like “all the tankies coming out of the wood work! Must have struck a nerve!” when in reality there are legit arguments to be had around these things, but no, question Biden or the DNC and you’re clearly just a tankie on russia/china/whatever payroll. Doesn’t matter if it’s a valid point of concern or strategy, fall in line or you’re the enemy. Literally.
“Biden should be doing more to pressure Isreal to stop murdering innocents” TANKIE!! YOU’RE LITERALLY VOTING FOR TRUMP!!
DNC should just be able to dictate elections because they clearly didn’t learn their lesson with Hillary and led directly to a Trump presidency, but no it’s the left and “Bernie Bros” who were wrong.
Right? Here in the US it’s the alt right going down on Putin.
That’s because your home instance of lemmy.world isn’t federated with hexbear or lemmygrad.
Show me then. Give me lots of screenshot showing me that leftists defend Putin’s Russia.
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.
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
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
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 mean… tankies are to leftists what the Westboro Baptist Church are to Christians.
@PugJesus@kbin.social I do wish you’d put leftist in quotes, these type of ppl aren’t it. If anyone is ‘leftist’ but supports fascism, they aren’t leftist. Lol
I fucking hate tankies
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hey I’m a terminally online leftist.
Fuck Russia, fuck China, fuck the US too. I’m not going to gaslight myself in to thinking someone else is doing it right just because the West is also fucked.
Working class people all over the planet are getting fucked by billionaires who’ve purchased their governments, few places are exempt from that problem.
Fuck all countries and their imaginary lines.
And double fuck Russia for starting a war.
Ukraine started the war, and the Donbas had been fighting it alone for eight years before Russia joined it.
Ukraine started the war by defending itself. Classic warmongering tactic.
What’s your opinion of the West lending aid to Ukraine to help it defend itself?
I think the military industrial complex will be the end of us all. Generally, I think military spending is fucking atrocious and is a huge contributor to the myriad problems we as people face on a daily basis.
While I agree, Russia has no right to annex territory in Ukraine or Georgia or anywhere else, and I agree, like any rational person will, that Ukraine has every right to defend itself to the fullest extent, including matching on Moscow and fucking up the place, that’s decidedly not our problem.
Ukraine found a fucking massive oil ans natural gas deposit, large enough it threatens Russia’s market dominance. Ukraine kicked out it’s Russian puppet. Russia wants control back and will bleed itself dry to obtain it. In so doing, they’re bleeding us too.
I wish Ukraine the best, I really do. But at the top, this isn’t about defending the freedom of a downtrodden underdog. That’s a convenient story to sell to the American public. It’s about resources, and resource wars will only become more common.
that’s decidedly not our problem.
Disagree. The putin propaganda parties are fucking up every democracy possible - most importantly, or perhaps most relevantly to this topic, the US. And the invasion and destruction of Ukraine is the proof that it’s working. We’ve got to help Ukraine win, rebuild, and be a peaceful and prosperous democracy because russia will stop at nothing to bend everything to them.
trump and the Qult will stop at nothing to help putin destroy the US ideals and become a malleable Christofascist oligopoly like they are. If you think Ukraine is not our problem you’re not addressing our problem. Ukraine is the leading edge of the problem.
fucking up every democracy possible - most importantly, or perhaps most relevantly to this topic, the US
I’m sorry but that’s peak lib. “We’re a democracy, they’re the bad guys, they’re affecting us, the US is the center of the world”.
To start off: fuck the imperialist illegal invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s government is on a spiral towards fascism and anyone who actively supports the current Russian government is a ghoul.
Now let’s examine closer the far right propaganda and where it’s coming from. Ben Shapiro, Russian asset? The Daily Wire, Russian asset? Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, Russian assets? Sure, they may align in some of their goals, but these people have their own agenda and a funding of their own: western capitalist sources. The same applies in Europe for most far right influencers, propagandists, politicians and mouthpieces. Like, come on, who owns private media in Europe, leftist progressive movements or capitalist companies interested in their own profit? Our social media is mostly American, with the most popular platforms being Xitter, IG, Facebook… and of course TikTok, which everyone talks about being Chinese, and fair enough, but nobody says anything about the rest of social media in Europe being US-based. There’s PLENTY of far right in the west without the need for Russian intervention in that process, and while it’s true that there are links, it doesn’t mean that Russia is to blame, just rather collaterally profiting from it. You have a ton of interested parties such as tobacco, fossil fuels, multinational companies and such, profiting from harming the left in Europe and the US, and fascism is a really good tool historically to get rid of those pesky leftists. Let’s not even comment on western governments directly supporting fascism all over the world, such as in the case of Pinochet in Chile or Franco in Spain. Let’s not pretend that the west is the enemy of fascism and the upholder of democracy, we’re more than capable of creating fascism by ourselves. It’s important to understand the degree to which Russian interference is helping the far right and fight against it, but remember, all of this is done with a vast majority of western support and funding, and would likely happen anyway.
Regarding the peace negotiations. I don’t know why in this platform, which is supposedly progressive, every time peace negotiations are brought up, people are labeled Putin bots or tankies. Like, how the fuck do people think most wars end, with unconditional surrender of one side or total conquest? (There were in fact peace talks towards the beginning of the war)[https://archive.ph/Y2Ok8], and they almost managed to get to a peace deal, which sadly never ended up happening, for disputed reasons that I won’t get into. The only “progress” of this war so far are some territorial gains from one side or the other going back and forth, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and millions of refugees, on both sides of the conflict mind you. “But saying peace negotiations amounts to saying Putin’s invasion was right!” No, it amounts to wanting the least amount of deaths and suffering possible and reaching an AGREEMENT between the countries, not an unconditional surrender of Ukraine. Given the history of usage of weapons by the EU for the past half a century, it’s no wonder that many people on the left are skeptical of increased military budgets, especially when linked to NATO. Sure, the EU should have a military alliance, but why does the US have to be in there? Do you really think that a non-US-intervened cooperative military in the EU wouldn’t be a more stabilizing, less threatening force in the region? Why push NATO towards the East, which Russia (understandably) perceives as a threat, when instead NATO could be dismantled and Europe could have its own military alliance?
Fuck, even if we go to the modern state of Russia, how did it even appear? The current Russian oligarchs and kleptocrats that control the country are a consequence of the 90s neoliberal shock therapy upon the dismantling of the USSR, when the country was illegally and corruptly auctioned not even to the highest bidder, but to the most corrupt one. This was all done under the watchful direction of MIT economist “experts” and our beloved IMF. The west has a huge part to play in this, and we’re reaping the benefits of enabling an imperialist capitalist oligarchy in the rule of one of the world’s biggest powers.
So all in all, we have a ton of problems with the far right to looks inwards, more than we look outwards. We must keep sight of the Kremlin propaganda for sure, and fight against it, but we must keep an even closer look at the propaganda coming from ourselves, and fight it even harder since we’re actually responsible for it.
I’m sorry but that’s peak lib.
“volodya_ilich”, you’re not convinced russian disinfo is in the conservative politics? Well, I certainly won’t convince you. I will block you though.
While I agree, Russia has no right to annex territory in Ukraine or Georgia or anywhere else, and I agree, like any rational person will, that Ukraine has every right to defend itself to the fullest extent, including matching on Moscow and fucking up the place, that’s decidedly not our problem.
How convenient that every time a moral issue comes up that we’re on the right side of, it’s not our problem.
How convenient that every time a moral issue comes up that we’re on the right side of, it’s not our problem.
I think the last time this happened was World War 2.
and even then internment camps happened
I think the last time this happened was World War 2
No, don’t worry, MLs advocated us staying out of the ‘Capitalist Imperialist War’ there too, until their favorite Nazi-allied country got betrayed.
Unsurprising that you find preventing the genocide of Ukrainians to be the ‘wrong side’ of this war.
You’re thinking of World War 1, which the communists were 100% vindicated for not supporting.
MLs in World War 2 wanted us to support the USSR. Curious how supporting the communists put us on the right side of history, while all the times we fought against communists we were very clearly on the wrong side of it - must be a coincidence.
How is this bleeding the US? I thought we were giving them cast-offs the military had no interest in using anyway.
It’s whatever rhetoric needs to be used in order to discourage US support for Ukraine. But they’re definitely not pro-genocide, honest.
What’s funny is how frequently I get downvoted to oblivion for daring to suggest that genocide isn’t acceptable in any circumstances, including when voting for US presidents.
It’s you guys that seem to be ok with it when your guy is the one supporting it.
Genocide is always evil.
When confronted with two evils, one must choose the lesser evil if there is no realistic alternative; as letting the greater evil in helps literally no one.
Is that too complex? Do I need to simplify it further?
Military industrial complex is relatively tiny.
If you want to see who will be the end of us, follow the bigger fish.
Oil companies will destroy the environment.
Agrochemical companies will destroy biodiversity.
Food companies will make us obese.
Social media companies will misinform and divide us.
This is seeing the wood for the trees.
Nation states largely exist to protect the power of their respective elites. No country is immune, but there are shining examples in the world, like the nordic model, that other nations choose to ignore because, unlike those nations, most nation’s decision maker’s goal isn’t to maximize the well being of their people, but to maximize their own individual power, which capital is a form of.
The problem with your analysis is that it views each country as an island and imagines that they have no effect on the world around them. The Nordic countries are indeed very good places to live for the people who live there, but they are also participants in the international system of unequal exchange that sees trillions of dollars in wealth siphoned away from the global south every year, contributing massively to unhappiness in those countries which are victims to it.
Is it worth keeping ten Africans in perpetual poverty for each European who gets to live a comfy life? I would say “no”, but…
Huh.
It took me a while to sort out that meme, then it suddenly hit me - I’ve not only succeeded in eliminating the tankies from my Lemmy experience, but have done so so effectively that I started to forget that they even exist.
At this point, the only people I see trying to defend Russia are a handful of angry right-wing morons who have bought in to the propaganda spread by Russia’s assets in the GOP, and they’re few and far between.
This is damned inspiring. Blocking all these tankie twits.
my lemmy main has the longest blocklist of any of my fedi accounts. it’s great.
This is fucking accurate. I am concerned by the number of downvotes.
Some people’s minds just seem to reject the idea that you don’t have to lick any boots at all. They’ve come all the way from the western boots and at the far end of their journey just went “ooh, new boots!” and just got down on their hands and knees and got to work.
If history has taught us anything, it’s that fascists sure have some shiny shoes.
Have you considered that they have a comprehensive worldview that leads them to different conclusions than yours does? No, they just must be big dummies because they haven’t figured out this one super simple universal truth!
Comprehensive boot licking.
If that comprehensive worldview leads people to defending russian imperialism, they really seem to be big dummies or just inhumane scum. It’s actually pretty simple.
Marx reference in username? Check.
Marx reference in server name? Check
Claims to have a “comprehensive worldview”? Check
Made comments in favor of recent russian actions? Check
Fucking lol.
Dude I think we should be supplying warships to the fucken Somalian pirates to fuck with the Chinese and even I can tell you are incapable of having a comprehensive worldview.
bring back privateers and letters of marque!
kay bud
Actually that’s how you can tell the difference between a progressive and a tankie
I mean… I wouldn’t put it past some of us to lick Bernie’s boots. At least he deserves to have spit shine boots lol
He would at least insist on paying you a fair wage for shining his boots.
That’s always the issue though, you shouldn’t expect any politician to always have the right solutions, and why cabinets are needed. That’s also kinda why small government is an inadequate recipe for the complexity of human life.
It’s definitely a lie that you need conservatives in your political offices though
The invention of campism and its consequences have been a disaster for sane leftist discourse (in western europe. somehow it’s not a problem in countries like poland and baltics)
Because Poles know to kick tankies in the teeth if they ever show up.
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.
