Zuzak

I support separatism, but I also oppose war in most of its forms

Ok so what happens if a government says, "No you can't secede and I don't care how many of you want to?" Nations aren't generally keen on giving up territory, especially in cases where the relationship is exploitative. Renouncing force means renouncing the threat of force, which can often leave very little leverage for a seperatist movement to work with.

Personally though, I'm inclined to agree somewhat with your point that seperatism isn't always worth the conflict, and for that reason I wouldn't necessarily agree with the stance of being predisposed to support seperatist movements. Imo, it's better to take a pragmatic view, evaluating the specific conditions on a case by case basis.

I would argue that if Russia withdrew and the seperatist movements surrendered, there would still be a conflict between the Russian speaking population and the Ukrainian government. I suppose it'd be possible for Russia to offer citizenship and relocation assistance to everyone, but it would mean displacing a lot of people and I'm not sure it's realistic. Do you have examples of historical precedent in a comperable situation?

Within the context of Ukraine, the DNR and LPR didn't have the relationship with Russia that, going back to the French and American Revolution example, the American colonists had with the French. American separatists didn't become subordinate to French military leadership or to French foreign policy goals. The newly-independent Americans didn't then ask to join the French Empire.

I don't think it's unreasonable that the DNR and LPR would want to join Russia for legitimate security reasons at this point. If you want to label them as Russian proxies and Ukraine as a US proxy, I don't mind, but I think the reality is that while both are influenced by foreign governments, they also both represent some degree of genuine support.

As an aside, France's support for the Americans failed them in their ambitions and led to the collapse of the Ancien Regime, which if we're to take it as indicative of the outcome and legacy of foreign-backed separatist conflicts, means that this isn't gonna be good for Russia long term.

I don't think you can extrapolate like that from a single data point under pretty different conditions.

Like I said with France and the 13 colonies – no country is actually saying that or has ever said that. France didn't go "yeah, we love what you're trying to do 13 colonies and support your beliefs wholeheartedly", they went "oh cool, this will help us regain New France one day and really piss off our archrivals."

Saying "oh cool, this will help us regain New France one day and really piss off our archrivals" is still supporting them. That's my point, seperatists often rely on geopolitical rivals supporting them for ulterior motives. You can't really cleanly separate bottom-up political activism from opportunistic rivals with ulterior motives, because in practice the former will generally rely on the latter. Generally when you're fighting a civil war, you don't have the luxury of turning up your nose at offers of assistance for the sake of purity. So if your position is supporting seperatists movements except when they recieve foreign backing, you're not going to find yourself supporting many seperatists movements in practice, at least in cases where they have to fight.

On principle, I support pretty much any separatist movement

The idea that a country should intervene militarily in order to "save" a group of people isn't one based on honest, good-faith altruism on the part of the country that wants to intervene, if it were, then wouldn't we be in a constant state of war everywhere?

I don't see how you can hold these two positions simultaneously. If part of a country wants to leave, and the government of that country says, "No, and we'll use force to stop you," and another country says, "Hey, seperatists, we'll support you," then where do you stand on all that? You're pro-seperatist while being anti-supporting seperatists? That doesn't make any sense, you could look at just about any successful seperatist movement and see that they recieved foreign backing from someone and that it was likely a crucial factor in winning, for example, French support in the American revolution. This foreign support is generally less motivated by altruism and more by the assisting nation's geopolitical goals, but it's all the same to the seperatists who need it to survive.

To me your stance is coming across as, you support the seperatists, but also they should've backed down immediately when Ukraine used force to avoid a war, but in that case it seems like you don't actually support the seperatists in practice.

I'm gonna go touch grass now.

Please do, anything else you could do can't be less productive than this.

You're just complaining to complain at this point. Literally just scroll past if it's such a problem. All I did was lead you to water, I'm not forcing you to drink.

You choosing to die on this hill just makes me think of this lol

I will respectfully disagree that you can make that evaluation without knowing what the text actually says.

I don't think I've seen this position before and it sounds pretty wild ngl. Let me just lay out my understanding.

Mao disagreed with the party on the basis that he felt the peasants had more revolutionary potential than the small, new proletariat working in what few factories existed in China. Mao's arguments were rejected, and the party's commitment to rigid ideology over analysis of the specific material conditions of China led to them being crushed by the Nationalists and massacred. It's the whole reason that the Long March happened.

The few surviving members of the party regrouped, though they were hunted to the ends of the earth and had extremely little manpower or resources. Despite this, because they used Mao's approach of appealing to the peasants, who reflected the majority of the working poor, the communist revolution spread like wildfire, gaining more and more supporters everywhere it went.

I don't deny that the party before Mao had good intentions, but it seems to me that history has proven their approach wrong in an incredibly decisive way. They tried their approach when the party was in a better position and failed miserably, they tried Mao's approach after that miserable failure and it succeeded on an enormous scale. I'm pretty curious to know where you disagree with that.

Here

You don't have to click the spoiler. It's literally one line you can easily scroll past, but some people who have more time might find it interesting.

Anyway it's a response to a pretty low-effort, unoriginal meme, the whole "proportional time" thing cuts both ways. I've added more to making these comments a meaningful, intelligent dialogue than OP did.

Why stop there, how about demanding Russia provide every Ukrainian with a talking unicorn buddy?

I live in reality and when I say I want peace it means I believe in negotiating based on realistic expectations.

That's why I put it behind a spoiler to avoid clogging up the thread.

I put in the time of reading the book in the first place, then I remembered a relevant bit so I went back and looked through the book to try to find it, read through it again to make sure it was actually relevant, edited it because it was from a pdf and had wierd line breaks, and considered which parts were relevant to include and whether I should omit some of the examples. I cited that book not only because it expressed what I wanted to say, but also because it's written in a modern style that's easier to read than many socialist works.

I guess I'm just used to an environment on Hexbear where people are more receptive towards reading relevant theory and some of us actually read not just posts and excerpts, but whole entire books. Maybe I should've just posted Pig Poop Balls instead.

...I said "Excerpt from Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds," because it's, uhh, an excerpt from Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds.

I copied it from a pdf of the book I cited because I found it relevant. Really, if you want to fully understand how fascism and communism are different and not comparable, you should read the whole book. I know, I probably sound like a crazy person for suggesting that people read a whole entire book to better understand politics instead of going off vibes, but that's just how I roll I guess.