Camarada Forte

state capitalism pretending to be socialism

I think your heart is in the right place, but I’m just curious… If the Soviet Union was “pretending to be socialism”, what is or was actual socialism?

What exactly is the problem with 14. this is how it should be. After all, borders shouldn’t be recognised for nothing you know.

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.

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 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.

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.

But (at least for me) that still does not justify the means.

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.

Regarding your last claim: do you have any evidence to back that up?

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:

Providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability. But any increase in U.S. military arms and advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to increase the costs to Russia of sustaining its existing commitment without provoking a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of proximity, would have significant advantages.

Increasing U.S. forces in Europe, increasing European NATO member ground capabilities, and deploying a large number of NATO forces on the Russian border would likely have only limited effects on extending Russia. All the options would enhance deterrence, but the risks vary. A general increase in NATO ground force capabilities in Europe—including closing European NATO member readiness gaps and increasing the number of U.S. forces stationed in traditional locations in Western Europe—would have limited risks. But large-scale deployments on Russia’s borders would increase the risk of conflict with Russia, particularly if perceived as challenging Russia’s position in eastern Ukraine, Belarus, or the Caucasus.

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.

The article was written by Timofei Sergeitsev, a Russian “philosopher” with no direct link to the government. The article in the website you linked was written in early April 2022, very early after the war, when no one knew what to expect. It was claimed it was “proof” the Russians was intending to genocide Ukrainians.

More than a year later, have we seen anything like it? Have we seen active actions from the Russians to consistently destroy civilian buildings and systematically cause civilian casualties on purpose? I at least haven’t, unless we are talking about a completely different war which I’m not aware. I don’t excuse the Russians of anything, I’m sticking with the facts. The Russians have been very careful not to cause non-military casualties, which is extremely odd for a genocidal regime.

So, in short, it’s your article written by a guy with no links to the government vs. what the actual war itself shows in practice. I prefer to see what practice shows us.

Yes, Marxism is based on a scientific methodology called historical materialism. It’s too complex to be explained in a single comment, but it has an internal logic and methodology which proposes to analyze social systems in general, but especially capitalist societies in particular.

You can’t use the scientific method used in the natural sciences because you can’t put a society in a lab to study it. Social sciences require a methodology apart from the natural sciences, and Marxism has proposed historical materialism, which is very consistent and coherent approach, based on the Hegelian dialectical logic with materialism as a principle.

How ironic! Let’s see if it fits for the “genocide” position:

• Closed Ideological Systems: Whether those who defend the idea of “genocide” in Xinjiang are aware or not, the sources used to claim there is a genocide in Xinjiang is usually Adrian Zenz, a German white supremacist and Christian fundamentalist who claimed in his book Worthy to Escape that “other belief systems are ultimately inspired by Satan” and justifies “eternal punishment” for those who refuse to believe in Jesus.

• Immunity to Facts: Every time one tries to argue that Xinjiang faced a policy of de-radicalization of terrorists who led many attacks against the province, those who claim there is a genocide there say they are “genocide deniers.” I’ve even seen people saying those who don’t agree with the “genocide” position are paid by the Chinese.

• Enemy Construction: I can’t even count the number of times people have called those who don’t promote the “genocide” propaganda “tankies” and dismissing them instead of engaging with arguments.

• Adaptability: The “genocide” propaganda claims there is a genocide there, and then when presented with the fact that even those who were put in the re-education facilities were allowed to express their culture with dances and art on video, the “genocide” conspiracy theorists say that it was a fake, an act, that it was a spectacle organized by the Chinese to hide the genocide. Just to give you an example.

It does match the “genocide” position very well. I’ve yet to see a genocide which preserves the language, the culture, the customs and the places of worship of a people. Another thing, notice the reaction of Muslim countries to the actual genocide being perpetrated by Israel. They are firmly condemning it through all channels. In contrast, the policies of de-radicalization by the Chinese were unanimously well-received by Muslim countries.

The West ≠ Western citizens

North Atlantic imperialist countries is what we refer as “the West”. They have shared interests and in terms of foreign policy act almost in unison, so much so that a single term to describe North American and Western European countries is not a generalization, it’s quite appropriate actually.

Israel has killed more civilians (mostly children and women) in a month of war than Russia has killed in almost two years. The Russians actually target almost exclusively military infrastructure, they have preserved electrical grids, water stations, communications infrastructure, etc… Not because they are “good guys”, obviously, but it’s a part of their strategy. But it shows genocide is not a part of this strategy.

Whilst I do admit that the US loves their devious little diplomatic plays I doubt Ukraine would have joined NATO

Here are mentions of Ukraine in the last NATO Summit before the war:

14. We reiterate our support for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, Georgia, and the Republic of Moldova within their internationally recognised borders. […]

69. We reiterate the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance with the Membership Action Plan (MAP) as an integral part of the process; we reaffirm all elements of that decision, as well as subsequent decisions, including that each partner will be judged on its own merits. […]

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.

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.

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.

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

Oops, my bad. Corrected it

tankies are not bastions of logical and rational thought

Apparently you aren’t either, since you mindlessly use the term “tankie” when it doesn’t mean anything. You’ve been conditioned to have an aversion to “tankies” when you aren’t even able to accurately represent what this group defends, I’m sure.

When you’re ready to think for yourself or if you feel like a “bastion of logical and rational thought”, try to engage with us on Lemmygrad and see if you can point out the flaws of our “irrational and illogical” views. I’m pretty sure you’d be easily crushed in any debate. 😉

We communists base our views on facts, on historical phenomena, not our feelings or wants.

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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.

In Lemmygrad? Please link us any comment made by a Lemmygrad user which corresponds to what you just described. This seems absurd.

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.

People who throw the word “tankie” around indiscriminately aren’t using it right

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.

it applies specifically to extreme communist fanboys who are apologists for communist militarism

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.

Tankies will say that the Tiananmen Square massacre was either justified or didn’t happen.

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.

I don’t think you even know what “totalitarianism” is. You know why? Because that term doesn’t mean anything. It was popularized by Hannah Arendt, an academic author indirectly associated with the CIA (as thoroughly discussed by Frances Stonor Saunders in her book The Cultural Cold War). The term was used in the context of the Cold War to promote the idea that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were the same thing or very similar. It served the interests of the US and Western European countries.

Now to call our userbase racist, I would expect at least further explanation. We have very strict moderation, and racist garbage is severely dealt with. So if you seen someone being racist in Lemmygrad, please let me know. I’m an admin there, and we could quickly resolve this. If you haven’t, then you should quietly think with yourself why you are lying to others here. You hate us based on a lie?

their users deny genocides

If you are referring to the Xinjiang issue, then it just reaffirms what @davel@lemmy.ml just said:

it’s largely because the Anglosphere has been indoctrinated against real, actual socialism their entire lives

Because the “Uyghur genocide” in Xinjiang is another example of propaganda. Or do you really think the West cares about Muslims and want to protect their “freedom”?

call everyone that has a less extreme left opinion of politics Nazis

I don’t see anyone in Lemmygrad calling other people “Nazis” because they disagree with someone in a discussion. I usually see them criticizing others as “liberals.” This is either a misrepresentation of leftists in general, very common among conservatives, or you are frequently being called a Nazi. I don’t know, maybe that’s on you? 🤔

end up being so “anti-racism” that they’re racists themselves and take all critics as personal attacks

That’s so specific you should give at least one example of this. We have very strict moderation against any bigotry, so I challenge you to link any “racist” attitude or comment you have seen in Lemmygrad. I will give you 24 hours, and if you don’t reply with an example, I will edit this comment saying you chickened out.

EDIT: They chickened out, as expected.