• 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    11 months ago

    It’s as if leftists do not actually like Putin or any of the other ghouls on the Russian side, but are instead critical of NATO and willing to consider NATO opponents as rational actors instead of cartoon villains.

              • BigNote@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                0
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                11 months ago

                I think Iraq is a fair point. The rest are weak sauce as fuck for a variety of reasons that I’ll not trouble myself to enumerate.

                That said, I myself was never onboard with the US invasion of Iraq or our long time presence in Afghanistan. They were both bullshit and never would have happened had it been up to me.

                • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  11 months ago

                  The rest are weak sauce as fuck for a variety of reasons …

                  The invasions may have been half-hearted failures, but they still caused enormous suffering. And the Libyan invasion did not fail if I remember correctly.

                  That said, I myself was never onboard with the US invasion of Iraq or our long time presence in Afghanistan.

                  I was explaining why a lot of countries would see NATO as the biggest threat. For this, what matters is what NATO governments do. What the people of NATO countries think or do is, while important from a moral point of view, unlikely to be reflected in foreign policy.

    • arc@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      11 months ago

      I think most people of the left or right can see the situation for what it is. However Russia is obviously crafting messages to appeal to those on the extremes. When you see people on the hard left screeching about Ukrainian Nazis or advancing absurd peace deals then they’ve been gotten at. When you see people from the hard right screeching about Ukrainian immigrants or the cost of the war vs America / Europe first then you know they’ve been gotten at.

      As for Prigozhin, I think most people, even Russians are glad that he is dead but for different reasons. Seems clear that Putin murdered him for his disloyalty but nobody in Ukraine is going to mourn his loss for the spent force that is Wagner.

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        most people of the left or right can see the situation for what it is

        I couldn’t disagree more. In this thread I have someone telling me Ukraine is currently pushing Russia back despite the front not moving appreciably for nearly a year now. It’s also common to hear Putin described as a mustache-twirling villain who just woke up one day and said “I will conquer the whole of Ukraine in three days,” a take similarly detached from reality.

      • Kieselguhr [none/use name]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        11 months ago

        advancing absurd peace deals then they’ve been gotten at.

        You do realize that in order to minimize (working class) casualties some kind of peace deal needs to be signed? And in order to sign a peace deal first there needs to be a ceasefire? The sooner the ceasefire starts, the better.

        Are you saying that western politicians torpedoing any kind of truce and/or peace deal is “Russian misinfo”?

        spoiler

        Russia and Ukraine may have agreed on a tentative deal to end the war in April [2022], according to a recent piece in Foreign Affairs.

        “Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement,” wrote Fiona Hill and Angela Stent. “Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”

        The news highlights the impact of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s efforts to stop negotiations, as journalist Branko Marcetic noted on Twitter. The decision to scuttle the deal coincided with Johnson’s April visit to Kyiv, during which he reportedly urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to break off talks with Russia for two key reasons: Putin cannot be negotiated with, and the West isn’t ready for the war to end.

        The apparent revelation raises some key questions: Why did Western leaders want to stop Kyiv from signing a seemingly good deal with Moscow? Do they consider the conflict a proxy war with Russia? And, most importantly, what would it take to get back to a deal?

        JACQUES BAUD: * In fact, in my book I mention only Ukrainian sources, and Ukrainian sources said explicitly that Boris Johnson and the West basically prevented a peace agreement. So that’s not an invention from some Putin partisan here the West; that’s also what the Ukrainians felt. And you had a third occasion when that happened, that was in August, when you had this meeting between [Turkish president] Erdoğan and Zelenskyy in Lviv. And here again, Erdoğan offered his services to mediate some negotiation with the Russians, and just a few days after that Boris Johnson came unexpectedly in Kiev, and again, in a very famous press conference he said explicitly, ‘No negotiations with the Russians. We have to fight. There is no room for negotiation with the Russians.’

        the cost of the war

        Should we ignore the significant human and economic costs of the ongoing war and the support for the military-industrial complex? Why? Is this some kind of noble war against Sauron or what?

        • arc@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          11 months ago

          You do realise that a peace deal / ceasefire which involves Ukraine giving up land, sovereignty or anything else is horseshit being pushed around by useful idiots? And who is feeding the far left with this crap? Russia because of course they are. And you only have to look at prior deals by Russia to see how believable any peace would be do. Or ask Yevgeny Prigozhin how deals work.

          • Kieselguhr [none/use name]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            11 months ago

            You do realise that a peace deal / ceasefire which involves Ukraine giving up land, sovereignty or anything else is horseshit being pushed around by useful idiots?

            The counteroffensive failed spectacularly, even western sources admit this.

            How many more people you want to send in the meat grinder?

            Here’s an idea: call a ceasefire and let the diplomats negotiate, and let’s see what happens. Let’s see what actual ukrainians want after a few months of negotiation. Maybe Boris Johnson should fuck off. At least people are not dying until then. Outlandish, I know.

            And who is feeding the far left with this crap?

            Now this is qanon level conspiracy theory. I am against war between capitalist nations in general. On one side you have an extremely corrupt oligarchic capitalist country, and on the other side you have an extremely corrupt oligarchic capitalist country.

            Since I live in a NATO country I criticise NATO more, since they are the ruling class above me and there’s enough criticism of Putin around here anyway.

            As far as deals go, US/Ukraine isn’t trustworthy either. The Minsk agreement was bullshit. What happened to nord stream btw?

      • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        11 months ago

        People think Ukraine has a Nazi problem because western media was shouting about it from the rooftops for a decade before the invasion. Then they only whispered it if they mentioned it at all but they kept on posting pictures of Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi insignia plastered on their faces or their equipment. Or photos of politicians with a portrait of Bandera on the wall above their desk. The gullible liberal journalists didn’t even know what they had to censor out at the start of the war.

        Unlike libs, the ‘hard’ left didn’t start looking at Ukraine on the date of the invasion and they didn’t wipe their memories clean of the historical context. A conspiracy involving Russian propagandists isn’t needed to explain this.

        Neither are Russian propagandists needed to explain that racist westerners are going to be racist against immigrants and refugees, wherever they’re from.

        • arc@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          11 months ago

          Ukraine has had a far right problem but lots of countries do. Doesn’t mean it’s more than the fringe as it is in other countries and it’s CERTAINLY not a credible talking point or justification for war to invade a sovereign democracy. And the stupid part is that this shit still goes onto today, even to this comment where you attempt to justify it.

          • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            11 months ago

            The collective west does have a Nazi problem, it’s acute in Ukraine.

            Ukraine has been getting shelled for over 8 years now, it’s been the Ukrainian government doing it, and that specifically has been what provoked the invasion.

            It’s just observable reality, idk what’s so hard about remembering events from a few years ago for liberals

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              edit-2
              11 months ago

              Svoboda having one seat in the Rada kind of acute?

              As far as general patriotism is concerned sure that’s on an all-time high in Ukraine but guess what, that kind of stuff happens if you get invaded. Which started in 2014, don’t forget that, and Ukraine has been under hybrid attack from Russia since at least 2000, the 90s being only a brief respite from centuries of colonialism and that only because Russia didn’t know WTF it was doing.

              The important part is the type of nationalism you see. And that’s much closer to the likes of the SNP than to Nazis.

              • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                11 months ago

                “general patriotism” I see swastikas, things that sub in for swastikas, iron crosses, and totenkopfs.

                You can fuck right off with the “centuries of colonialism” that’s literlly the west repackaging its own history to accuse others of.

                I thought you guys were the ones who said that portions of a country can unilaterally vote to leave and its okay. That was what you lot pulled with Serbia, why does it suddenly no longer apply here?

                • barsoap@lemm.ee
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  11 months ago

                  So the Bundeswehr is a Nazi org because it’s using the iron cross as emblem?

                  You can fuck right off with the “centuries of colonialism” that’s literlly the west repackaging its own history to accuse others of.

                  So Russia suddenly isn’t European? That would come as news to Europe.

                  That was what you lot pulled with Serbia, why does it suddenly no longer apply here?

                  I was a bit too young to have much of an opinion or impact there. In any case very much unlike Ukraine, Serbia actually was genociding people. “Get genocided by your central state, get independence” is more than fair if you ask me.

                  • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    0
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    11 months ago

                    I was a bit too young to have much of an opinion or impact there. In any case very much unlike Ukraine, Serbia actually was genociding people. “Get genocided by your central state, get independence” is more than fair if you ask me.

                    The Ukrainian state has been killing civilians indiscriminately in its two breakaway regions, they were just doing it for much longer than it took for any kind of intervention in Serbia.

                    When the west starts to pretend to care about muslims, you know they’re full of shit about any purported genocides. They went from pretending to care about Kosovar Albanians to murdering millions of muslims over the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

                    So the Bundeswehr is a Nazi org because it’s using the iron cross as emblem?

                    It’s pretty funny having iron crosses constantly showing up on all the UA vehicles- I think we all know what they’re going for, they just left off a few lines.

                    So Russia suddenly isn’t European? That would come as news to Europe.

                    Russia has not been a part of ‘the west’, certainly not as far as most of the EU is concerned unless you’re trying to be intentionally obtuse

            • You mean they’ve been fighting Russian backed separatists that were trying to join their regions with Russia

              If they want to live under a totalitarian regime they were always free to move to Russia themselves

          • Kieselguhr [none/use name]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            edit-2
            11 months ago

            Doesn’t mean it’s more than the fringe

            I guess you didn’t pay attention. Whenever they post pictures of Ukrainian soldiers there’s a good chance that you will see a Totenkopf or a Black Sun badge. When western news interviews lesser known Ukrainian politicians, there’s a good chance that you will see a Bandera portrait in the background.

            The rise of the ukrainian far right has been well documented in western media before the invasion. Hell, google “Western media before February of 2022”

            a sovereign democracy[Citation needed]

            In fact it’s neither sovereign, since the US couped Ukraine in 2014, nor it is a democracy, but an extremely corrupt oligarchic capitalist country. The contrast with Russia lies in the absence of a single pivotal leader like Putin, and they fully adhere to Western interests.

            This doesn’t make the invasion “good” as in “Aragorn is a good guy”. The NATO encroaching makes it understandable. Which is completely different from “good”. Understandable means that there is some kind of rationality at play. Which means it was probably preventable. Which means that some kind of solution is to be had. Hopefully…

            spoiler

            "Then came Russia’s invasion. Within months, many of these same institutions had plunged into an Orwellian stampede to persuade the West that Ukraine’s neo-Nazi regiment was suddenly not a problem.

            It wasn’t pretty. In 2018, The Guardian had published an article titled “Neo-Nazi Groups Recruit Britons to Fight in Ukraine,” in which the Azov Regiment was called “a notorious Ukrainian fascist militia.” Indeed, as late as November 2020, The Guardian was calling Azov a “neo-Nazi extremist movement.”

            But by February 2023, The Guardian was assuring readers that Azov’s fighters “are now leading the defence of Mariupol, insisting they have shed their previous dubious politics and rapidly becoming Ukrainian heroes.” The campaign believed to have recruited British far-right activists was now a thing of the past.

            The BBC had been among the first to warn of Azov, criticizing Kyiv in 2014 for ignoring a group that “sports three Nazi symbols on its insignia.” A 2018 report noted Azov’s “well-established links to the far right.”

            Shortly after Putin’s invasion, though, the BBC began to assert that although “to Russia, they are neo-Nazis and their origins lie in a neo-Nazi group,” the Azov Regiment was being “falsely portrayed as Nazi” by Moscow." link

              • Kieselguhr [none/use name]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                11 months ago

                bollocks

                I see the cognitive dissonance is kicking in for you. Hopefully you will recover, and you’ll read western mainstream narratives more critically.

                How funny is this bit though?

                "The BBC had been among the first to warn of Azov, criticizing Kyiv in 2014 for ignoring a group that “sports three Nazi symbols on its insignia.” A 2018 report noted Azov’s “well-established links to the far right.”

                Shortly after Putin’s invasion, though, the BBC began to assert that although “to Russia, they are neo-Nazis and their origins lie in a neo-Nazi group,” the Azov Regiment was being “falsely portrayed as Nazi” by Moscow."

                They suddenly became not-nazis in February 2022? But they kept the wolfsangel? Was BBC spouting Russian misinfo in 2014? Or was it a Russian time travelling double agent who wrote all those articles for prominent western papers about the concerning rise of neonazis in Ukraine? If they are so fringe, why are they giving them so much airtime?

                • barsoap@lemm.ee
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  11 months ago

                  Azov has been getting denazified ever since it became an official battalion. A huge number of Nazis left, regular people joined, are there still Nazis left? Probably, yes, but they’re not running around with SS runes on their helmets that shit doesn’t fly.

                  As far as the Wolfangel is concerned: It’s not a clear Nazi symbol. Tons of German tows have it on their coat of arms.

                  • xXthrowawayXx [none/use name]@hexbear.net
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    0
                    ·
                    11 months ago

                    Stop trying to rehabilitate the wolfsangel. If your town had it for three centuries then maybe that’s not nazi symbolism. If you join a nationalist right wing regiment and get it tattooed on yourself, that’s Nazi symbolism.

                    Think about it like the swastika. If someone is choosing it now, in Europe, in a right wing military organization, they’re nazis, not fans of Indian symbols and culture. Do you know how I can tell?

          • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            11 months ago

            I don’t know what you think I’m trying to justify. You said:

            When you see people on the hard left screeching about Ukrainian Nazis or advancing absurd peace deals then they’ve been gotten at.

            I explained that the ‘hard left’ has been concerned about Nazis in Ukraine for a long time. You can understand that communists are going to keep a close eye on countries that ban communist parties. Yes other places have a far right problem too. Communists keep an eye on reactionaries elsewhere as well but it’s hardly germane to a conversation about the circumstances of a war in Ukraine, is it?

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      It seems they also have a tendency to consider NATO as cartoons villains. Also, tankies are not the average lefties, they are at the extreme of the left.

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        “Cartoon villain” here means “a villain who is just intrinsically evil and does evil things as a result.” Contrast this with real people, who generally have material or ideological motivational for the actions they take.

        The left views NATO as evil not because it’s full of cartoon villains, but because it is an organization that consciously, due to material and ideological motivations, chooses to immiserate the global south for the benefit of its constituent countries’ ruling classes.

          • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            11 months 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
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              11 months 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
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                11 months 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.

              • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                edit-2
                11 months 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
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  11 months 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?

          • JamesConeZone [they/them]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            11 months 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? 🤔

    • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      Ghouls can be rational actors without not being ghouls.

      If a ghoul’s fundamental values involve control, domination and power, doing everything they can in a bid to control a strip of land recently found to have plenty of energy natural resources would be a rational action from their point of view, even if it involves provoking immense suffering upon millions of people. You don’t get to say that US presidents’ actions can only be explained by the hubris of people and systems that want endless growth and control, but Putin’s actions cannot.

      If NATO has historically sucked, but countries surrounding the country led by that ghoul rationally feel the need to protect themselves, it’s logical they’ll want to join NATO.

      The question here is why you’re far more willing to accept the rationality of Putin than the rationality of his victims when they legitimately ask for NATO’s support to defend themselves, and instead attribute them the category of sheep easily manipulated by NATO rather than accepting their autonomy and sovereignity to make their own decisions.