this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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Generally, they aren't marxists, they're "tankies". And even fairly extreme socialists tend to dislike that. That's lemmygrad.
Hexbear is just filled with trolls that federated specifically to troll and disrupt the rest of lemmy in the name of their beliefs.
On either, you can find individuals that are perfectly cool to talk to. But it's like rolling the dice where only snake eyes win. And, even when you win, you can't be certain that it isn't a long troll waiting to fuck with you because some of them do that too.
Sounds like Lemmy's version of r/atheism 10+ years ago. Atheism itself is fine, but the sub became an insufferable circle jerk.
“Tankie” is a term that’s applied to literally any communist. I’ve heard it used against Trotskyists and fucking social democrats.
So, what’s actually the problem with them? Are they Maoists? CPC apologists?
They like Stalin, Putin , Xi and Kim. And defend everything they do.
Like WTF? How can a communist defend putin!?
How can someone misrepresent so bad what we defend? Yes, we indeed like Stalin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. They are/were commendable leaders who suffer from delusional propaganda created by the West. I don't claim they are perfect, like Stalin personally committed mistakes (I say personally because he wasn't the only leader in the USSR, there was a collective leadership by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), but we don't like Putin.
We understand the Ukraine war as a result of NATO expansion and aggression. But Putin is a right-wing conservative leader. We understand Russia as a capitalist country, but also a nation with the right to self-determine its destiny, like all other nations. And the West, through NATO and the extreme right-wing (fascist) puppet regime in Ukraine, has been trying to undermine the sovereignty and self-determination of Russia.
Though we criticize Putin as a leader and the Russian government in general, we support Russia's right to defend itself from aggression. It's a more nuanced position than "defending Putin" like liberal "leftists" usually portray.
Regarding the 2nd point I just cannot see it.
Whilst I do admit that the US loves their devious little diplomatic plays I doubt Ukraine would have joined NATO. Take Sweden as an example to showcase how hard it actually is for a country to join the alliance if one country doesn't play the game. And pre-war Ukraine would likely have faced backlash by more than just one country.
Even during the war when public support in the west for Ukraine was at it's peak, when asked about if he could concretize what safety guarantees the G7 countries could give to a post-war Ukraine, German chancellor Olaf Scholz just replied: "Yes, I could..." and refused to elaborate further.
And French president Macron once considered NATO as a whole to be "brain dead" and wanted to shift it's focus away from it. (A view I shared back then)
And now, a few years later NATO is - even by a lot of people who once opposed it - regarded as a safety guarantee with Finland and Sweden joining. So if the plan was to prevent an aggressive NATO expansion towards Russia's borders that plan failed miserably and at the cost of thousands of civilians and soldiers, the world economics and the environment.
Only the arms industry profits now.
Here are mentions of Ukraine in the last NATO Summit before the war:
Whether, they intended to accept Ukraine as an actual member of NATO, it's an undeniable fact that NATO has been expanding to Eastern Europe and towards Russia. It's an undeniable fact that the Ukrainian governments at least since 2014 have been promoting anti-Russian rhetoric and attacking Russian civilians inside the country. It's an undeniable fact that NATO and Ukraine have been doing many exercises and drills for years, as well as other non-NATO countries close to Russia, such as Georgia and Moldova.
I don't think that was Russia's plan. NATO will continue expanding irrespective of what Russia does, because Russia has a huge territory which would be more useful to exploit by Western countries if it was fragmented and balkanized. This is a Western plan since Nazi Germany and has been in operation since then. What Russia has done was a preemptive attack against an aggressive regime spewing Nazi rhetoric against Russians with full military and logistic support by the US and Europe. What prompted the Russian leadership to being the invasion was the US sending military equipment such as intermediate and short-range ballistic and cruise missiles to Ukraine, already preparing for war.
If Russia did not invade Ukraine, it would have been the other way around in a matter of time. It was thoroughly planned by Western countries and leadership for years.
What exactly is the problem with 14. this is how it should be. After all, borders shouldn't be recognised for nothing you know.
And even if Ukraine became a member state it wouldn't be that easy to just attack Russia and expect NATO to help. They're not allowed to trigger Article 5 if they are the aggressor and triggering Article 4 would likely not succeed as the risks of (nuclear) backlash are too high. I am aware that I am making assumptions here, and that this part might vary depending on the picture you have of NATO and their member states but I am certain, that they would not be so stupid to trigger a war that would likely be very unpopular within the populations of the various member states. But that point is overall highly debatable.
Regarding the point about Nato expansion: yes, the fact that it has expanded regardless of that oral treaty is a pity. But on the other hand, why would you so desperately hold on to something that apparently wasn't even worth making a REAL treaty for. A signed one on paper. You cannot tell me anybody would be naive enough to take something that was orally agreed on without a signed treaty on paper for granted when the last decades have made it clear that sometimes even signed treaties aren't worth their paper. Of course it's a move of betrayal for Russia but as I mentioned, the US is good at provoking and oral assurances aren't exactly something I would trust.
And on the other Hand, Russia hasn't been that innocent either with a habit of solving disagreements with especially Georgia & Ukraine by using deterrence and the sledgehammer. And fair enough, that Ukraine hasn't been innocent either. That's for example why I was pretty neutral / hostile towards both sides before the war began. I especially dislike(d) how badly Ukraine tried and still tries to erase it's Soviet history.
But (at least for me) that still does not justify the means.
Regarding your last claim: do you have any evidence to back that up? I heard numerous claims that both Russia & Nato got invasion plans for plenty of countries. I read articles (or in that case just their headlines because I thought of them to be absurd) that Russia had concrete plans for attacking Japan and Kazakhstan and what not, and likewise I read these kinda claims from the other side.
But as far as I am concerned these sorts of articles only exist to lure you towards a side and or make quick cash by spreading havoc and hate.
In any case I might call it a day. I need to get some stuff done. Was a nice debate tho. Might reply tomorrow if there's anything else. Stay safe & healthy my lemmygrader comrades haha.
They specifically mention Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. They could've said they reiterate the territorial integrity and sovereignty of any country, or of any European country, whatever. But they specifically listed these countries which they have a massive influence on. So it's a sign there was something going on there.
A treaty is certainly more concrete, and I agree with you. What's important about this exchange is that the Russians made it clear they found NATO expansion threatening since the 90's and every time it expanded it was thoroughly and systematically condemned by Russian authorities. NATO continued expanding nonetheless, warning after warning. NATO was looking for war, and pushing Eastern European countries towards war with Russia.
Certainly. The idea is not to justify the war, but to understand it in context. These were countries which were under Russian influence for at least a century and only recently weaponized to struggle against Russia. This does not exempt Russia, obviously, though context is always necessary.
Unfortunately, I don't have access to Ukrainian internal military documents, I can only attest it through indirect evidence. First, since the 2014 Euromaidan coup, Ukraine has been adopting an anti-Russian rhetoric and accepted neo-Nazi batallions (Azov, Pravy Sektor) into their army. This form of Nazism was against Russians specifically, treating them as subhumans. Also since 2014, these neo-Nazi militias has constantly harassed ethnically Russian people inside Ukraine on the Donbass region.
The Ukrainian government adopted textbooks in schools which taught children to hate Russia, see some evidence of this in this article by Sputnik (it's a Russian source, but there are exceptional journalists from dozens of countries there). Here is an anti-Russian Ukrainian propaganda video being shown in a classroom way before the war, to illustrate this point.
This article by the Tricontinental directly responds to your question, too. It mentions how Ukraine military increased its spending by 500% from 2014–2019 and received military equipment from the West, along with military trainining, exercises and drills with NATO troops.
More indirect evidence includes this article from RAND Corporation, which is a very influential think-tank which serves as an advisor to the Pentagon. The article discusses strategies to "stress" the Russian economy, through exploiting its vulnerabilities and prompting a "costly Russian response." Among the geopolitical measures suggested, there is:
At least for me, it shows the US military leadership was researching ways to actively provoke and cause a response from Russia so it hurts their economy. And since the US also had a finger in the Euromaidan coup of 2014, it's very clear that the US was using Ukraine as an agent of a proxy war to affect the Russian economy for years before the Russian invasion.
Thanks for your detailed reply and sorry for my belated one.
I definitely do back almost all of the points you made. As I said the USA loves to play devious little diplomatic plays but on the other hand, the way I see it is NATO offering those countries help to stop Russia from using military force to force through their will in what are still independent countries. I certainly do not like how Ukraine is developing in the sense of Nationalism. But the way I see it every aggressive Russian action has further catalyzed it. From Crimea to Donbass up until the SMO and the various crimes against humanity that were committed.
And furthermore I see NATO's guarantee to the sovereignty of Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia as a way to prevent Russia from executing further military operations in the future.
So for me the blame lies on both sides. With the only reason for not supporting Russia being, that Russia started the war and that Russia's president can de facto rule for as long as he pleases as long as he gets voted for in a country where the media is heavily cracked upon and where the opposition has the sudden urge to "commit suicide". And I fear that Russia taking the land they currently hold control of would spark enormous hatred towards Russia just like the partition of Germany, Austria & the Ottoman Empire did after WW1. Actually increasing the tensions further until the conflict reignites.
But I do want to say, that the way you see it is a way it can be seen. I want to thank you for all the effort you put into this instead of just denouncing me. You had some very good points that were likely more convincing than mine, idk I don't really keep track of that.
I'm not good at this and I don't really love it that much either which has got nothing to do with you but with me just being the one giving in as soon as someone makes a point that I do not feel the need to counteract.
Discussions with people like you, even if we may not have the same opinion, are the reason I am glad my instance is still federated with you guys because if I didn't have you, I'd feel trapped in the echo chamber.
Thank you!
This is refreshing to read, thank you very much! And this is why people should struggle to preserve federation with us. I'm sure your instance admins may be bothered if an event catalyzes polemics. When the war in Ukraine started, a lot of instances broke contact with us because we presented different points of view. But most of us ground our opinions on facts. Unfortunately not everyone has the same temperament to deal with different points of view, and this "denouncing" may happen from some users, but that happens anywhere, a whole instance cannot be blamed because of a few users. In our case, it's not a systematic phenomenon, like some right-wing and fascist instances.
Also thanks for taking your time to read. A few people dismiss what I write because I'm very detailed in my answers, but imo complex topics demand complex answers, otherwise we are left with a distorted picture. I try my best to be concise and capture the essence of the things we're discussing. That said, allow me to make some comments on your response. To be clear, I don't want to "convince" you nor anyone else, for me we are just sharing our worldviews here, simply to pass time or something hehe.
I'm skeptical of the Russian claims that they are trying to protect the Russians living in Ukraine. Russia is a capitalist state, and the war obviously has bourgeois interests involved. The Ukrainian fascists have harassed Russian nationals inside Ukraine in the Donbass region for almost 8 years, why did it take Russia that long to intervene if that was the intention? However, as I see it, it was a matter of time a conflict would happen there, and the Russians attacked preemptively as a legitimate matter of national security.
Ukraine had a government which didn't treat Russia as the devil and had a comprehensive partnership with the country until 2014, when a coup with full support from US politicians, including John McCain, suddenly changed everything. For decades Ukraine had an economic, cultural, diplomatic and political relationship with Russia, and then after a coup sponsored by Western countries, a regime took an opposite direction of denouncing Russians as the Fourth Reich incarnate. But there were already Ukrainian citizens who profoundly hated Russia, so much so, that the regime received support from the citizens in the Western Ukraine regions.
That country with an explicitly anti-Russian regime since then has been armed, trained, and sponsored by the greatest rivals of Russia, with increasing militarization. For scholars who study Russian foreign policy, such as the United Statesian John Mearsheimer, it was quite obvious Russia would intervene. As early as 2015, he said the actions of the United States would prompt a military intervention from the Russians. If an individual scholar who studies this issue was aware of this, you can be certain the Pentagon generals was aware of that, and this is probably what they wanted in the first place. So the war didn't start in 2022, but in 2014, with blood in the hands of the US.
Only if you base on the (erroneous) premise that NATO is a "defensive" organization. The atrocious NATO interventions in Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Kosovo, and others, leads us to believe this is not the case. They are as aggressive as the Russians, perhaps even more so. And since NATO is led by Europe and the US, I'm pretty sure they couldn't care less about the sovereignty of these countries. So much so that in order to let these countries into the organization, and these countries are desperate to join since their governments fear Russian intervention, they demand many economic and political "reforms" which precisely undermine the sovereignty of these countries::
They demand the country to change its whole political system before they join NATO. That's not what you'd expect from an organization interested in preserving the sovereignty of any country.
I can totally see your point there. I wished for Nato to be gone and even tho my view has slightly shifted, I definitely see the criticism. As for political reforms, I mainly back them because they suit my views, but of course that doesn't necessarily mean they are objectively good. It's a hard one. I mean, of course: if it was that easy, we probably wouldn't have heated discussions about it.
And in conflict, truth is what dies first, so my main hope for the future is that the past becomes clearer.
Idk if you will find it ironic, but what I hate most about the war besides people dying is, that I cannot even wear my grandpa's NVA uniform at Halloween without getting those weird (is he really backing THOSE GUYS) looks. This pigeonhole black-and-white-thinking makes me sick because it splits instead of unifying us in a time where the Far-Right is on the rise.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
anti-Russian Ukrainian propaganda video
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
II hear this constantly, I have yet to see it one time ever by ANY communists on ANY website.
Visit a few Ukraine threads, it's one of the topics the fanatics pile on.
My point was that tankies are a "special" subset of communists.
I have. I’ve still never seen it. What I do constantly see in those threads is dehumanization of Russian people and calls for mass genocide of them, though. Calling them orcs and talking about how they all deserve to die.
I don’t believe you, to be honest. One can acknowledge Russian security concerns (like multiple U.S. military officials and many high members of the UN have) without praising Putin. And I’ve still never seen a single communist say anything good about Putin. On any website.
In Lemmygrad? Please link us any comment made by a Lemmygrad user which corresponds to what you just described. This seems absurd.
No, I see those in Ukraine threads, not specifically on Lemmygrad. Actually, I see it most on lemmy world, overall. Sorry, I should’ve articulated that more clearly.
I figured. Never would I see a liberal having a nuanced position on Russia like you did, but just wanted to make sure anyways we were on the same page hehe
I've never seen what you're describing. Not about Russians anyway. I've seen far too many zionists saying that shit about Palestinians tho.
I’m glad for your sake. It’s pretty gross.
People who throw the word “tankie” around indiscriminately aren’t using it right. From what I’ve seen, it applies specifically to extreme communist fanboys who are apologists for communist militarism. For example, Tankies will say that the Tiananmen Square massacre was either justified or didn’t happen.
Just being a fan of communism doesn’t make someone a tankie.
Edit: see below for an excellent example
There's no right way to use it, because it's a completely meaningless term which only serves to discriminate and isolate those who support more radical views, such as a defense of revolution against capitalist dictatorship.
There are "military apologists" among the conservative population which admires the Soviet Union because of its army. Are they tankies as well?
I see this as an aversion against violence in general, common among liberal "leftists". Someone who is deserving of the label "communist" simply don't reject violence as a way to fight against the capitalist system, which is already a very violent system. Communists do not support unjustified violence, but they simply don't condemn it in a revolutionary process. All successful revolutions were a violent, brutal process, to defend an abstract non-violent revolution is simply falling into idealism and losing sight of reality and history.
As what liberal leftists would call a "Tankie", the Tiananmen Square protests did in fact happen. What didn't happen is the army gunning down on students and civilians. There is not a single footage of that happening. And even eyewitnesses of what happened there, like a Chilean diplomat whose cable has leaked in WikiLeaks for public view, they all say they didn't see any army member shooting people. They saw hurt people, bleeding people, and even army soldiers being killed and burned down. A lot of people were hurt in the midst of the confusion of protests. But not a single army soldier shot a single student on that day.
What you don't know about Tiananmen Square protests is that while some policies of the Communist Party of China generated a dissatisfaction among the younger population, the protests were largely financed and fueled by the UK and US, especially by the "National Endowment for Democracy", an organization specialized in recruiting and training leaderships of mass protests, used for regime change operations through color revolutions.
Thank you!