Yeah, the support of a blatantly fascist/imperialist state like Putin’s Russia by self-described leftists is absolutely wild to me. I’m not convinced they’re serious people. Like, yeah, there’s some silly infighting between leftists online, but from my experience, it’s usually tankies saying some smug bullshit blanket statements and defending authoritarian douchecanoes.
That’s it exactly. I’m so sick of these dickheads jumping online and talking all the way out of their ass ‘just refuse unlawful orders, bro’. Like their COC isn’t gonna fuck them every kind of sideways for refusing orders via the UCMJ. Like, this isn’t spending a weekend in jail and then it’s over kinda shit, this will absolutely ruin your life. You could be spending years in the brig, reduced rank, reduced pay, possible dishonorable discharge while trying to fight the charges if you manage to win the case. On top of that, you want these soldiers/airmen to directly bring a legal fight to a federal administration that is likely to fuck them despite any legitimate grounds to refuse unlawful orders/conscientiously object? Get fucking real. Military personnel have the regular law AND the UCMJ to fucking deal with. These bros are fucking trapped.
To call America a fascist state is just dishonest. To call the EU fascist is unhinged. Where America is certainly struggling internally with a legitimate attempt at a fascist takeover, too many fundamental principles of the republic remain intact to honestly define the country as a fascist state. There are plenty of things to criticize about the US government, it being fascist isn’t one of them.
Russia, however, is literally doing an old school imperialist invasion right now. Like, shaky casus belli and everything. They’re even throwing in a whole host of red flags indicating a genocide. Their “elections” are consistently used as textbook examples of rigged elections using statistical analysis. Political enemies of Putin are assassinated, jailed, and suppressed. The state sponsors a narrative campaign of a fictitious idealized Russian ethno-state. Public dissent is actively and harshly suppressed by the state. There are re-education camps to indoctrinate certain demographics with Russian supremacist propaganda. Russia is a fascist state. The tankies that rush to defend Russia online are defending a fascist state. That is directly contradictory to leftist principles and is, quite frankly, fucking stupid.
So to reply to someone pointing out how ridiculous it is for tankies to support a fascist state like Russia with “hurrdurr libs support fascist usa/eu” is yet another dishonest strawman wrapped in a red herring. And, certainly no surprise to anyone paying attention, just serves as another example of a tankie talking point that refuses to engage the actual argument.