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.
Found the anarchist.
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Lol
Ukraine started the war by defending itself. Classic warmongering tactic.
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.
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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.
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.
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It’s only a moral issue because it’s being billed as one. For the prime actually making the decisions it’s strictly strategic, you’re fooling yourself if you think it’s more than that. You think all of a sudden their making altruistic choices?
It’s greed. It’s all greed. Always has been. This greed is just convenient.
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?
“Genocide is good if ‘the lesser evil’ is doing it!”
You claim genocide is always evil yet you make excuses for it. What’s the difference between an authoritarian dictatorship carrying out genocide and a plutocracy giving you a Fisher-Price voting ballot that will result in genocide no matter which option you pick?
If we had STAR voting I could give these two guys a 1 and a 2 while progressives all get 8 to 10. Unfortunately, that isn’t a reality we exist in. In reality only one of these two guys will win.
There is no realistic scenario this year where a third party candidate receives enough EC votes to become president. Like both guys would have to die before the election and the third party would have to be a popular household name.
Given that these two are the only realistic candidates, my only option on this issue is throwing my vote in the trash (expressing that one doesn’t give a fuck how many Palestinians die, no preference either way) or voting for the person I think will kill fewer Palestinians.
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.
I’m western-european mate, I prefaced my long-ass comment with a condemnation of the russian government and the war, and said multiple times through it that russian propaganda has an influence if you cared to read it. But sure, block me because you’re too bothered to read a comment because the nickname sounds russian (it’s a reference to Lenin because I’m a commie, the current Russian government is as far from communism as the US)
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.
But you’re not a tankie
OP didn’t specify
You are just a libtard with brainrot and not a proper tankie leftist!
Where is my main man Youghurt and OmegaHaxor at?! Gish galop that western ass.
Aneurism posting in real time!
few places are exempt from that problem.
Please provide examples
No
Cuba, no billionaires there
Castro and its elite didn’t have billions, right?
Quite literally no, they didn’t. Care to provide any evidence otherwise?
Google it. “Fidel Castro wealth” search turns up with various claims ranging from a net worth of 100 million to “more than 900 million $”. And that’s just a small part of what he had access to.
When you are the sole and absolute ruler of a country, you have access to all the wealth of the state and its people (which are fucking poor) and have little to no accountability.
.Do you really think he was as poor as all the other people of Cuba?
Btw, source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/fidel-castros-amassed-massive-fortune-142104351.html
Oh yeah, the famous Forbes claims of Castro being rich because “he had control of the state in a communist country where the means of production belonged to the state”. No reference to his frugal lifestyle, no serious data backing up the claim other than “YOLO”. The fact that he could conceivably and potentially have access to certain goods or services that other people didn’t have access too, and an assumption from Forbes that he did access them and “died a multi-millionaire”, tells us more about Forbes and the writer than about Fidel.
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This is The Comment
Tankies aren’t leftists.
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.
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.
You should change it to tankies instead of leftists.
Unfortunately, as people in this thread show, even non-tankie leftists can be sucked in by Russian talking points.
Do you ever punch to your right? You claim to be so far left but only punch left.
I’m reading a different thread than you then.
Best separate them to help out.
Nah, the mask is off. It’s clear that a lot of people who are obsessed with tankies just hate the left in general and use tankies as a proxy.
The point is it’s tankies (and Trumpers) that defend Russia, not people on the left side of the spectrum.
OP should, but the entire reason he posted it was to pretend that anyone to his left is a Russian sympathizer, and to try to discredit anyone who opposes genocide elsewhere.
And for the record, fuck Putin and fuck Russia.
OP should,
Oh, so now you’re in favor of me calling people tankies? Curious, because you’ve repeatedly complained when the label is applied. Almost like this is agreeing with someone in bad faith.
But of course, you would never do that, right? :)
Why, it’s almost as though you call everyone to your left tankies regardless of their actual politics.
lmao, sorry for having respect for anarchists and my fellow demsocs but not red-painted fascist fucks.
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You have no respect for anyone but Netanyahu.
Fucking hilarious, considering the things I’ve said about Israel in general and the Israeli right in particular. But I suppose you’d have nothing to say if you didn’t have blatant lies at hand.
Fucking hilarious, considering the things I’ve said about Israel in general and the Israeli right in particular.
Considering the sheer hatred you have for anyone who says that Biden should stop supporting genocide, the things you say about Israel are in doubt.
I’ve also found ensign crab will speak in such round about ways that you have no idea what he’s saying, and then he can take either position depending how it goes.
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.
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.
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.
Oh they’re still around. I have about a dozen tagged. But lately with calling them out they’ve crawled back to mainly posting in .ml instance posts.
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.
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.
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.
Eh, i dont know the point of your comment, but just to clarify, Podemos is not a communist party, altough it is supported by some communists / has some communist in the party. Sumar as a whole is even less to the left than they are, despite having also some parties inside the group that could be considered communists. Its not true that Podemos is against anything that helps Ukraine, they are all in for a cease fire and for an end to the war through dialogue which should be done from the EU mainly, the same way they are in for a cease fire/end of the war in Gaza, what they are against is spending billions of euros that are needed here to send weapons and war vehicles to Ukraine, the same way they do not support sending weapons and war vehicles to palestine nor no one expects that to be the position of any party here.
If Russia is willing to continue the war as long as they’re making gains (and Russia is making gains as long as they control foreign territory and intend to keep it), refusing to military support Ukraine means supporting a scenario where Russia will have effectively violated their sovereignity, which in turn further incentivizes imperialist countries to attack their neighbours as they’ve just seen they can get away with it.
You can keep gaslighting yourself into thinking that you only need words to convince Putin to leave Ukraine, or for Netanyahu to leave Palestine, or for Jeff Bezos to give up his privileged position in the capitalist hierarchy, but the vast majority of the world will keep their feet in reality and understand that some people are fundamentally selfish and must be forced into no longer committing evil.
Just lol, go fight in the war yourself against Putin and Netanyahu then, also good mental gymnastics making a relation in fighting against nuclear powers that will ensure mutual destruction vs fighting against the capital and billionaries like Bezos lmao. You might want to reread the whole thread also just in case. See ya.
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.
Agreed
Especially Putain!
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.
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
It’s definitely a lie that you need conservatives in your political offices though
100% they don’t have the monopoly on brain power or good ideas… It’s absolutely about who you surround yourself with which is partially why I don’t care about Biden or his age, I know he isn’t like Trump where Trump is just going to surround himself with “yes men.”
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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.
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.
Comprehensive boot licking.
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.
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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.
My god I love this comment section. It’s the first non-pro-USSR interaction I’ve seen on Lemmy
Avoid lemmy.ml if you don’t like pro Russia shit lol.
my lemmy main has the longest blocklist of any of my fedi accounts. it’s great.
This is damned inspiring. Blocking all these tankie twits.
User block, activate! :-P
instance block, activated! :-p
Upvoting, but I do not admin my own instance, so can only block the instance as a personal user, which means e.g. that they can still mass-downvote me if they so choose. :-(
Also I can still view their comments everywhere, I just don’t receive a notification from them anymore if someone replies directly to me, and I could replace my individual per-community blocks with the one instance one for them all. It is nowhere close to “eliminating” them altogether, even though it does cut down on the aggravation a lot.
But I know what you mean, and yes I would like that! Do you know of any instances that blocks those big 3 Axis powers? I looked last week among all the most popular ones listed at that fediverse explorer site but could not find a single one that does. Even Kbin.social only blocks 2 of the 3 but not lemmy.ml…
Oh, lol. I thought you were talking in generalities on how to block tankies. I wasn’t being specific to you.
I find that blocking the instance does a good enough job for me.
Plus their alts on other instances, b/c knowing that they have been blocked, some users seem to have decided to evade our intentions. “No means no” is a weakness, according to those for whom consent means little (or nothing), so terribly sadly, that many of us would rather choose the bear than that…:-( (/s but you know what I mean:-P)
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Not at all.
For instance, I also don’t like petulant techbro libertarians with political views that are warped by their desperate, yearning need to try to compensate for their inferiority complexes.
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I know you are but what am I?
It’s even better - by invading Ukraine to steal their territory and mineral wealth Russia is quite literally behaving as an Imperialist nation, something confirmed by their own Propaganda which talks of Ukraine as something “which was always part of Russia” as well as by their interference in the internal affairs of other ex-Soviet Union nations such as Georgia.
Imperialism isn’t limited to only conquering far away lands, even if that has been the most common form of it in Europe and for the US, and the Soviet Union itself can be considered an Empire, having been formed by Russia conquering other countries whilst maintaining control over several vassal nations.
Communism is just as Imperialist as the rest - it’s only the style of Propaganda justifying the conquest of other countries that differs - which explains why it’s so easy for the “Communists” who are mere parrots of the Soviet or Maoist propaganda (rather than independent thinkers) to side with Russia’s Imperialism.
Russia has been an expansionist force for centuries - long before the October revolution. There’s various explanations for this such as Russia constantly feelings vulnerable due to the vast plains to their west without any natural Geographics barriers. But instead of forging literally any true alliances or building any soft power with the nations in that area they just constantly antagonize all of them. The one country they have on side is Belarus and that’s because they have to constantly prop up its leader against the will of their people. No good will, only force.
The current former Soviet countries in that area have the distinct memory of living under Russian control during the USSR and shockingly - want no part of it again. So they join NATO. Voluntarily. To the tankie if someone wants to join NATO, no matter how rational their reasoning for doing so, it must be because the CIA and “the West” tricked them into it. Smaller countries and the people who live there never have any agency.
After the USSR , western political discourse was full of talk about whether NATO is obsolete. Russia did everything possible to prove that wrong.
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Lol You’re using some creative coloring books
Next your going to say Russia isn’t trying to steal our precious bodily fluids.
Your knowledge of history appears to be…imaginary.
From the historians I’ve read, the thinking is that most preindustrial colonial projects including Russia were vanity projects by rulers with little strategic thinking. As for the USSR it seems the goal was twofold. Spreading Soviet ideology and giving the USSR the resources to be a global player. It seems with the Russian Federation it’s mostly about getting the resources to stay as a global player, but it the whole picture probably will only be clear in hindsight like any historical event.
by invading Ukraine to steal their territory and mineral wealth
ohoho. I advise you to take out of your head the porridge of the propaganda of the American government. It is the United States that is the bloodiest empire in the world, and its manual NATO military unit is the bloodiest military unit in history. And this bloc, among other things, is constantly expanding in order to seize new lands and take away part of their sovereignty from their governments in favor of the US dictatorship
I really hope that was sarcasm…
Poe’s Law is a real bitch, ain’t it?
Tankies aren’t leftists.
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.
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.
I don’t believe you.
Neat.
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.
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I haven’t seen leftists defending Russia at all, but have witnessed scores of right-wing Americans and Canadians garbling that Russian D.
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.
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.
You need two (or more) proxies to have a proxy war and looking at the belligerents and who supports them it’s clear who is who: Ukraine is South Korea’s proxy, Russia the one of North Korea.
TIL criticizing NATO is pro russian
It is if you are doing it in a discussion about whether or not Russia should be allowed to enact wars of aggression…
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.
Ah yes, tankie shitheads coming out of the woodwork so I can tag them. Thanks, OP!
Where are the lemmy.ml commenters?!
I was just here to upvote the meme before I saw your broad generalization.
It is what it is.
Putin is garbage and I will celebrate the day he dies.
I’ve yet to encounter anyone defending Putin, but I’ve sure seen plenty of people try to twist criticisms of Ukraine and NATO’s involvement with it into accusations of being a Putin-loving Russian disinformation bot. At least we get to squabble like idiots over foreign policy we have no influence over rather than find common ground over the remaining 90% of politics we probably have in common (and also have no influence over).
Here’s one:
I don’t doubt that Putin defenders exist, though, just that they’re prominent enough to warrant near daily memes about how stupid tankies are ruining everything. Surely the bigger threat to the shared objectives of left wing politics is infighting.
“Multipolarism” is just multiple countries doing imperialism, not the antidote for imperialism.
One time, I could in no way convince a tankie, that Chinese loans weren’t just “money given as present”, and called any news about them being paid back as “fake news”, because in their mind, China is a generous country that helps other out of their good heart, with no strings attached.
How they can’t see the belt and road initiative as an attempt at establishing hegemony blows my mind. They really think China is doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.
It’s Empowering the Global South to create a United Front against Western Neoliberal Imperialism™
I don’t know if it’s fortunate or unfortunate that China is in the process of learning the old lesson of “If you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem”.
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I’m in one of those countries receiving the Belt and Road initiative (Hungary), and we still have the austerity measures, but hey, there’s a percentage-based tax break system that gives more to people the richer they’re (they had to put a limit on the maximum amount of money after too many backlash), and no one in the Chinese government are complaining (not requesting to change it, complaining) about most of the media is in the hands of party henchmen.
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Israel, Russia, United States, United Kingdom and China need to stop being imperialists.
France looking outside a window, grinning
French Algeria has entered the chat
Belgium, sweating nervously
I know they aren’t anymore, but dear lord is it weird that we all kinda forgot about the Congo
Billy Joel didn’t forget about it when writing We Didn’t Start The Fire. Which, unfortunately, is basically the only reason I know about it…
