ngl russia is not making it easy to give critical support lol
Not directed at you OP, but just a general observation: I still don’t understand why so many Western leftists see things in such a black and white manner. This is especially true from my interactions with Americans in general, it’s almost always “the good guys” vs “the bad guys”, nothing in between.
You can absolute support Russia’s anti-imperialist goals while rejecting all their other reactionary views. The same can be said for support for the anti-imperialist causes of the Palestinians, Iranians, Lebanese, Algerians etc. You don’t have to like them, you just need to acknowledge that this is a historical process that is inevitable.
In my opinion, this is where the strengths of Marxism-Leninism lie, which provides a scientific and materialist lens to understand the world. The question to ask is not: should we support reactionary Global South countries against Western imperialism? The questions we should ask are: why have progressive movements that had proliferated throughout the 20th century across the Global South been largely obliterated? What was the historical and the objective process that had led to the demise of progressive politics and left-wing movements, and the rise of conservatism in the Global South, especially after 1990? What are the root causes underlying these symptoms and what is the process required to cultivate the very material conditions necessary to enable the growth of left-wing political movements in the Global South?
Like medical sciences, scientific socialism allows us to separate the root causes of the disease from a collection of symptoms, thus enabling us to find ways to cure the disease instead of merely treating the symptoms.
This is especially true from my interactions with Americans in general, it’s almost always “the good guys” vs “the bad guys”, nothing in between.
Dualism, Christianity, and it's consequences
Maybe because if your lgbtq putting people in jail for wearing rainbow colors really isn't much more complicated than "bad guys"
It's the whole "The enemy of my enemy is my enemies enemy and nothing more"
Like if a nation would label you an extremist political organization and jail you for not being straight they're gonna have to do something other than happening to coincidently be opposed to NATO before you start singing their praises.
Doesn't mean you think nato should be running the country or expanding military bases but if you want to talk about being able to view it as more than "good guys" and "bad guys" being able to say "both these people are dogshit for different reasons" seems sufficiently nuanced
My friend, do I have some news for you.
I come from and have lived many years of my life in the so-called Global South countries. Progressive movements have always existed throughout the Global South. Incidentally, they were all crushed - directly or directly - by Western imperialist powers. Perhaps not as brutal as those were in Afghanistan or Chile, or Indonesia even a decade earlier, but they were crushed nonetheless and the situation allowed reactionary forces to take power, which again conveniently benefited the foreign imperialists. All these countries are now conservative shitholes that you’d claim to be the “bad guys” in your book.
All the left-wing leaders that ever came into power had to face economic threats that forced them to more or less commit to austerity simply to survive. The end result? Left wing governments achieved nothing and only stoked further economic despair, allowing right wing forces to exploit and come into power.
Do you think Argentinians are simply so stupid that they elected the crazy libertarian as their leader? Or do you think there is a much longer history underlying the failures of left wing reforms in the Global South?
Tell us, what are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to just “be better”? Every time we have a left wing movement growing that wants to assert sovereignty (which almost certainly means threatening the interests of the Western imperialists), they get crushed one way or the other.
At the end of the day, trust me, if you had lived in Russia, unless you are part of the wealthy elites, you’d much rather live under the stability of Putin’s rule, conservative as it is, than the absolute madness and poverty of 1990s Yeltsin era, when simply walking down the street for being a minority can get you murdered by literal neo-Nazis, when child prostitution literally re-emerged after many decades of prosperity. Ah yes, so progressive of Russia to let the Western liberals in. There is a reason why Gorbachev and Yeltsin are the two most hated leaders in Russia.
This is why there is such a stark contrast in opinion between leftists in the imperial core and the peripheral, developing world when it comes to the Ukraine War. There is a reason why all the AES countries almost immediately came to an understanding with Russia’s plight when the Ukraine War started. The people who have been victims of abuse know that if one day, another victim kills the abuser out of rage, everyone immediately understands that the abuser had it coming. Nearly every country in the Global South stood with Russia and refused to impose sanctions, despite the demands of their Western imperialist masters. Leftists who live in the imperial core and still don’t understand why this is the case simply reveal their complete ignorance of what it means to be a leftist in the Global South.
Again does literally nobody understand the concept of critical support?
That's an awful lot of words to justify discriminating against gay people.
My stance is that nato should fuck off and America doesn't have any room to criticize anybody for their treatment of any type of minority but I still think that countries shouldn't jail people for being gay.
And again, if I were a gay I would understand if gay people put any country that would jail them for that in the "bad" category.
We talk an awful lot about intersectionality but I think what really hurts intersectionality is minorities seeing that their comrades are willing to set aside basic human rights for them if it means advancing a alarmed agenda.
Like it's a pretty hard pitch to say "look I know they would throw you in jail for who you are but you still can't criticize anything this country does because they arent aligned with nato"
You should read my OP if you think this is in any way a “justification”. What I am doing here is indeed intersectionality, and it is that the progressive movement in the Global South can only grow when Western imperialism can no longer intervene in our domestic politics and economy.
You’re talking as if we in the Global South never tried to be progressive, and are stuck with conservative reactionaries that we should criticize. I am saying that there is no point in criticizing the conservatives when every time we had a chance to do something progressive, we get immediately crushed by the Western powers. We simply have no way out without defeating the imperialists first. This is what Mao called the principal contradiction. Everything else is secondary at this point and will never be untied without resolving the principal contradiction first.
There is a book I’d like to recommend, it’s called the Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins, and I think it will inform you a lot about the perspective of what it means to be a leftist in the Global South.
I do think the sort of “don’t talk about it” mentality does more harm than good. Why are we trying to pretend these reactionary elements don’t exist in these countries instead of just holding our whole, principled stance (Anti-Imperialism is needed to properly oust the reactionaries, so anti-imperialist action is needed first, and that can include support for Russia in E.G. the Ukraine/Russia conflict)?
Trying to literally bully people into not complaining about homophobia in those countries seems not only counterproductive but silly. Complaining about gun-obsessed chuds is technically within line of the mainstream narrative of gun control, but it’s also entirely justifiable because gun-obsessed chuds are deeply unhinged. It’s like we think every single person alive is such a completely politically illiterate person that writing “DEATH TO AMERICA AND CRITICAL SUPPORT TO RUSSIA (their current policies on queer people suck though)” will lead to that person going off and voting to murder Russians
This is why weirdos in the Fediverse are able to slander us so easily, people coming in and seeing us outright shut down gay people complaining about homophobia or whatever is a really fucking terrible look. If our concern is that the optics of being… checks notes not outright delusional about the amount of reactionaries in countries ravaged by imperialism… could lead to more imperialism… then first of all, we’re doing something horribly wrong, because we could just MAKE IT CLEAR that the presence of these reactionaries is the FAULT of imperialistic countries like the US, and second of all, why do we then not care about the optics of literally hushing queer people because they’re making our politics too difficult?
Russia isn’t a fucking MONOLITH, there isn’t a single fucking Russian Hivemind that controls every belief of someone there. When we reject criticisms like this because “oh but it’s an imperialized country!” you ignore the fact that 1. These reactionary elements, again, CAME FROM imperialism, so trying to be all hush-hush about it is far less effective than just acknowledging that, and 2. Progressive elements in the country probably share the exact same criticisms because these are criticisms of lobbying groups and conservative orgs, not Russian people as a whole (why would it be? There’s some weird noble-savage shit going on here where some people who call themselves “anti-imperialist” can’t help but act like every single person in an imperialized country is infallible, EVEN WHEN their existence and power came directly or indirectly from imperialism. Yeah, I’m just some white person, but this feels super racist and dehumanizing to me, like some kind of fetishizing)
You have fundamentally misunderstood my position. Go back and read all the comments I have made on this thread, under no circumstances have I ever said that “don’t criticize, don’t talk about it”.
I have laid out the historical cases on why progress will continue to be stifled as long as we remain oppressed under the threat of foreign imperialist intervention. From Indonesia to Chile to Afghanistan to Russia, millions of people striving for exactly what you are telling us to do, were brutally murdered in the name of anti-communism and enforcing the liberal free market order. These were merely the most prominent examples, but across the Global South, there are endless stories like this, perhaps not as brutal, but no less harrowing.
Let’s make it clear here:
For us in the Global South, the prescription has never been more clear: the defeat of capital and the emancipation of minorities (including LGBT minorities) go hand in hand with the total and complete defeat of Western imperialist intervention in our countries. This is the principal contradiction. We will continue to fight the reactionaries in our own countries, but we also fully understand that no progress is possible as long as Western imperialists can continue to oppress our political aspirations, economic sovereignty, national and cultural identities.
For the comrades in the imperial core, you will have to figure out the principal contradictions yourselves. You will have to figure out how to defeat capital and the reactionaries and to emancipate the oppressed minorities in your own country. The best you can do for us progressives in the Global South is to defeat your imperialism from within, so the progressive movements in the Global South will finally have a room to breathe.
Yeah, and I’m not disagreeing with any of this? It’s like you’re inventing beliefs I don’t even have
Yea that's why I said repeatedly and explicitly that America of all people had no room to criticize them on this but that doesn't mean it's not a bad thing.
Russia not criminalizing homosexuality would also lead to more lgbtq people worldwide having better conditions than now and that seems a lot easier to accomplish in the short term than defeating western hegemony
And it's not like being incredibly homophobic is helping them defeat the west, in fact as others pointed out if they'd stop going out of their way to persecute lgbtq people it would completely nullify one of the main criticisms of them and allow them to correctly point out its another of a long list of standards that America holds other countrtries to while completely refusing to hold itself to the same standard
Hmm, I don't understand the dualism aspect, do you think you could explain to help me understand?
I think she just means "dualism" in the sense of the metaphysical view that the world is composed of opposite forces in all things: good and evil, light and dark, mental and physical, chad and soy, etc.
I think they might mean a the belief some people have of an independent morality from any earthly actions a person performs. As in, there's a mind you have with intentions and you're morally just so long as your intentions are good, regardless of what you're actually acting on the behalf of. American liberals sometimes do this to assuage their cognitive dissonance
I took it to mean manichean type doctrine, but I might be wrong. For example, Augustine (possibly the preminent early theologian of Christianity) was originally a Manichean - it was very widespread and popular, influencing thought and understanding to this day, being a sythesis of 'western' and 'eastern' (and no doubt 'northern', i.e. turkic/siberian too) thought of various kinds.
I think Vijay Prashad wrote something about Russia like its viewed in the West as either the Vatican or hell... not hell, he uses a different word, its a much better phrase than I'm able to remember. But the point being that dichotomy between the source of moral authority, or the opposite (I guess alluding to Moscow as the fourth Rome).
On this particular topic, my own view is that Russia is restricting the rights/priviledges of what they term the 'international' LGBTQ movement, because I think the west uses wealthy urbanite associations of that kind in Russia (particularly St Petersberg/Moscow) for spying activities. At the same time, Putin has said (though ofc its necessary to examine what is done, not just what is said) that the LGBTQ community is part of Russian society, and shouldn't be attacked or victimised - this is probably because as a legalist ruler he wants to be in compliance with various legal obligations, and also doesn't want internal conflict. I think he isn't particularly opposed to the restrictions, because of the support it wins from the Orthodox church.
I wonder also with this particular topic, how much of the impetus for these kind of anti-progressive movements is to do with political kompromat. Certainly I don't think most of the elite, like aristos or capitalists for example, really care about sexual preferences, but rather its a useful political tool if the masses (are persuaded to) consider it immoral. Like with the 'Lavender Scare' in the US, but then I've also seen a CIA testimony saying that they (I paraphrase) 'like homosexuals because they're useful' referring I think to the usefulness of having something over someone. I suppose I mean, I wonder how much (alongside other factors) the passage of anti or pro LGBTQ laws is to do with wanting a political weapon, or alternatively as a kind of disarmemant treaty among the ruling classes.
because I think the west uses wealthy urbanite associations of that kind in Russia (particularly St Petersberg/Moscow) for spying activities.
This has a factual basis, many LGBT communities in the global south are aware of it. Being LGBT in a country shit for LGBT people re: almost all of them makes it easier to blackmail you and spam you with propaganda that somehow America and the west are a significant leg up on LGBT rights, somehow. And of course they sweeten the deal by giving you money
yes, and i think the state response is predictable - round up as many as you can on spurious identifiers (sumptuary laws like these rainbow jewelry), interrogate them and get them on record, and try to judge who is or isn't a threat to state security, or who can be useful or 'turned'.
ok, but this does all sort of seriously put into question why these countries continue to even allow homophobia to exist as general consensus. That’s a huge security issue and it’s not one you can fix by just killing gay people, because the whole reason they’re being blackmailed is because nobody knows they’re gay yet. Why exactly do these countries go the more labor intensive and probably controversial route of interrogation and suppression when they could just start like, distributing queer theory?
but this does all sort of seriously put into question why these countries continue to even allow homophobia to exist as general consensus
Frankly it's because of brainworms and old propaganda. Cuba and East Germany explicitly mentioned this was a part of why they're championing LGBT rights
CW corpses and undead
Ah, so we’re basically trying to prevent the undead corpse of the USSR, impaired heavily by the systemic disease known as a capitalist-run economy, from fully disintegrating before it can take out fellow zombie-state US with it, and as a side effect of the aforementioned zombie-like state it is barely capable of self-regulation and legislation like this is basically a regulatory version of the various fluids leaking out of a zombie’s body (the wounds were inflicted by the US while they were both “alive”*.)?
And in the mean-time the actually functional states like Cuba or even China are slowly attempting to adjust to the zombie apocalypse currently playing out?
Edit: *: The USSR was actually alive, the US was granted a state of malevolent intelligence for it’s own self preservation by its head liches
Have you read this report titled Woke Imperium: The Coming Confluence Between Social Justice & Neoconservatism? You might find it interesting.
Excerpt:
Key Findings:
- The advocates of American primacy within the United States foreign policy establishment historically rely on prevailing ideological trends of the time to justify interventionism abroad. The new ‘woke’ face of American hegemony and projects of empire is designed to project the U.S. as an international moral police rather than a conventional great power—and the result is neo-imperialism with a moral face.
- This is an iterative and systemic process with an internal logic, not one controlled by a global cabal: when the older rationalizations for primacy, hegemony, and interventionism appear antiquated or are no longer persuasive, a new rationale that better reflects the ruling class norms of the era is adopted as a substitute. This is because the new schema is useful for the maintenance of the existing system of power.
- The rise of a ‘woke’ activist-driven, social justice-oriented politics—particularly among the members of academia, media, and the professional managerial class—has provided the latest ideological justification for interventionism, and it has become readily adopted by the U.S. foreign policy establishment. These groups now have an even greater level of symbiotic relationship with state actors.
- Professional selection and advancement under these conditions require elite signaling of loyalty to ‘progressive’ universalism as the trending state-sanctioned ideology, which further fuels the push towards interventionism. This combination of factors encourages a new institutional and elite consensus around trending shibboleths.
- The emerging hegemonic posture and its moral imperialism are at odds with a sober and realistic appraisal of U.S. interests on the world stage, as they create untenable, maximalist, and utopian goals that clash with the concrete realities on which U.S. grand strategy must be based.
- The liberal Atlanticist tendency to push moralism and social engineering globally has immense potential to create backlash in foreign, especially non-Western, societies that will come to identify the West as a whole with niche, late-modern progressive ideals—thus motivating new forms of anti-Westernism.
I haven't - although I think having read the intro that I've seen it quoted without attribution. I will read it!
Its reminiscent of a lecture I watched about the British Empire in India (I forget the name, but can probably find it again if you're interested), where the lecturer drew a parallel between the colonial concept of 'empty land' (like in Australia, ignoring the people who were living there, or indeed the US), and a similar concept used to justify conquest of obviously more populous and urbanised places like India, one example being with this kind of accusation about women - that the people there were 'savages and weren't treating their women properly' (betraying of course the accuser's view of women, as property without agency), and that a 'white coloniser' would have a better idea about how to 'treat women' (property, like land) than the native inhabitants. I suppose related to the liberal and religious concept of the civilising 'burden' of the coloniser. But we have seen this used very recently, with Afghanistan.
In any case, thanks for the link!
Yeah it’s written by one of those realist think tanks (personally I have some issues with the realist takes despite their seemingly rational argument but this paper is quite clinical and objective from a materialist standpoint and makes compelling argument for the case it is presenting).
Putin joining my extremist stance that Pride is gay Zionism and will ultimately result in factional warfare between us and the TERF gays and lesbians, the Greenwaldians who will purge bisexuals, the creation of gay Israel, and other abominations
Imma guess that pride is the capitalist foothold into the queer community like Israel is the US's imperial foothold in the region.
Capital will subsume everything it can to preserve itself, lgbtq included. Just like white can be expanded to maintain power, everything else can be absorbed too. What cannot be is revolutionaries, they will be killed.
@voight@hexbear.net is that right? I'm just guessing.
Pretty much but it's also the first completely even split of 33.3% joking/serious/secret third thing
Gaysrael 👎👎👎😡😾👎Gayist Autonomous Oblast
Oh I don't think it's a joke its plain as day.
Gaysrael 👎👎👎😡😾👎Gayist Autonomous Oblast 👍✅✅👍
Just DM whenever y'all get low
Honestly I do unironically hate society (societies?) for the whole recurring “being massive shitheads to anyone who falls out of their norms” thing so sometimes I like the idea of a gay separatist state so I can just plain not give a shit about their thoughts and not fear retaliation, but there’s no way to guarantee shit wouldn’t go wrong in exactly the same ways as Israel on a long term timetable. Can't even just fuck off like everyone else seems to want.
And western leftists will also immediately believe something if it conforms to what they originally wanted to believe. If some western rag says something mean about China, they will rightly be suspicious of it, but "The Moscow Times" is suddenly a legit source? (Look it up it's pretty much a pro western newspaper that's not even based in Russia). I don't know much about this case, and yeah the LGBT situation in Russia isn't great, and it's quite possible that this lady was probably targeted because of rainbow earrings, but you're right, western leftists really need to understand what the "critical" in critical support means.
While The Moscow Times is indeed a pro-Western liberal news outlet, this particular incident did happen as it was reported in Russian media as well. What’s not reported in the article though is that she was detained for like 5 days so it’s not like she’s rotting in prison or anything (people in the US have gone to jail for weed possession with far worse sentence). Still this is something we should condemn while understanding that their progressives have their own fight in their own country, whereas the best the comrades from the imperial core can do is to bring down their own imperialism from within - that would really help the progressives across the Global South.
Nizhny Novgorod’s Sormovsky District Court found Yershova guilty of publicly displaying symbols of an “extremist” organization, a misdemeanor offense, and jailed her for five days
it does in fact report that it was only a five day sentence. Idk I guess Im just sad and pissed that innocent queer people are getting targeted. But I remind myself to look at the bigger picture, and not have a kneejerk response. Like Im not saying Russia needs to legalize same sex marriage or introduce anti discrimination laws, but if the situation could go back to how it was in the 90s or early 2000s where people were just left alone. Its just a part of this reactionary wave in Russia where they technically even banned gender markers: https://www.sostav.ru/publication/feminitivy-65608.html. Basically the headline says The Supreme Court has declared the use of gender markers a trait of the LGBT movement. Its a lot and it just makes me depressed for non-straight folk in the region. But I get it, I'm being a liberal by bringing attention to this. May things change one day.
The article also mentioned a Ukrainian flag pin. Now I don't know much about people that would wear that but lots of them have also been photographed with other interesting regalia.
The Supreme Court has declared the use of gender markers a trait of the LGBT movement
I mean they're not wrong
Im not sure if you understood exactly so just to clarify and as a Czech speaker Im sure you have the same thing of like you can transform автор (author, grammatical gender male) into авторка (authoress?,). Or like in english waiter-waitress, actor-actress. That is what the Russian Supreme Court has banned.
Idk if it's a ban per se, it's a trait of the LGBT movement that they're banning. The point is to bring it up I guess and see if they like queer people, and if you have enough traits you will be censored
Well yes, but you realize it's not a LGBTQ thing? These are regular suffixes that everybody uses in their speech. I suppose you could make an argument that they are used more extensively by socially liberal people, but its rly not something that's indicative of political beliefs or affiliation. It is flat out ridiculous.
Yeah obviously, but the point of displaying them next to our name or bio is obviously a pro LGBT thing, and a feminist visibility thing (another thing they scare monger over)
You can absolute support Russia’s anti-imperialist goals while rejecting all their other reactionary views. The same can be said for support for the anti-imperialist causes of the Palestinians, Iranians, Lebanese, Algerians etc. You don’t have to like them, you just need to acknowledge that this is a historical process that is inevitable.
Many left-wingers (most especially Trots, I find) think the question is: "Should we support a multipolar world? In fact, is the coming world going to be multipolar or just Russian/Chinese imperialism replacing American imperialism? Should we support Russia in Ukraine and/or China against Taiwan?"
But these are all pointless questions. What does it matter if you support Russia/China or oppose them? It's akin to spending your time debating "Is the hurricane coming inland good or bad?" instead of saying "Fuck, okay, there's a hurricane coming inland. What should our individual responses be? Should we start prepping? Get involved in local politics to better withstand it?" and even "How did this hurricane come about? How will existing infrastructure be affected? It's been looking pretty rickety even before the winds started up..."
I try to imagine that I'm looking back on the events of today from 100 years in the future. Doing so makes all questions of justification much less interesting than the question of "Where does this lead, and how is it fought?" It also explicitly imagines that there is a future, which is something that many people (quite reasonably) struggle with as climate change and massive wars continue to engulf us, which helps give perspective; just because things are a certain way now, doesn't mean that they'll be this way in 5, 10, 20, 50 years from now. It's almost impossible to have predicted the world of 2024 from the position of somebody in 1924 or even 1974, in the multitude of ways that it has changed.
Our government has invested a great deal of money into media designed to cultivate all or nothing, black and white, good vs evil thinking in us from a young age, and the media typically reports on foreign policy and designated enemies in ways that rely on this programming to build simplistic narratives of heroes and villains. We may be past the point where most Americans consider America the good guy, but most Americans still very much see other countries as the bad guys, which is easy because most of us don't have the money to travel to those places and meet the people there, so we just sort of subconsciously assume that they're not real people, not like us.
"the imperial powers use lgbt rights/feminism as a wedge fot justifying imperialism" ought to be met with these governments resolving the grievances of these movements so they can't be coopted into anti-government plots.
it's bad morally and it's bad strategy,Yea "they're pointing out a bad thing we do to make us look bad" is pretty fucking weak
Lmao people talking about lack of nuance and everything either being good or bad but yea saying that it's bad Russia jails lgbtq people obviously means everybody is saying they hope imperialism happens to them, even though all those comments are literally explicitly saying that's not what they're saying.
This is indistinguishable from when liberals say we should throw minorities under the bus by not being so concerned about racism or transphobia to appeal to the mythical moderate conservative.
Sure let's just throw out the entire context with how the phrase Critical Support is actually used and how everyone has behaved since February 2022
This really confirms my theory that nobody on this site knows what critical support means.
Critical support means you support somebody while also CRITICIZING the bad things they do.
Critical support doesn't mean you support everything somebody does even if some of the things are bad.
Then enlighten us. Maybe you could try telling us all what it means instead of just telling anybody who says it's bad to jail people to fuck off and die.
Another highly compelling argument that doesn't at all confirm my suspicion.
Between this and telling everybody to fuck off and die I can't see how anybody would possibly have any disagreements with you.
Thanks for giving us all a masterclass in what being very not mad looks like.
Oh no don't win the room! Oh my god! Oh no I'm losing the room! No the Western left is through with me!
Lmao oh OK when you put it that way I see your point, it is good that Russia throws gay people in jail.
Wow it's way easier to win arguments when you just make up other people positions.
"Uh oh Russia, you're going on the list of Bad Countries where I don't care if imperialism happens to you :("
Being against the Uganda anti-homosexuality act doesn't mean you stop supporting anti-imperialist struggle and freeing Africa from the debt system.
That's what some socialist countries are doing, like Cuba and Vietnam. I don't expect a lot out of Russia though.
Yeah, but the thing is that I don’t want imperialism to happen, even to “bad” countries. It should be resolved internally but if it isn’t, letting the US use it as a propaganda is also bad.
But like, I dunno
well we're not on the steps of the US capitol demanding the US invade over this, are we? we're just analyzing or yelling in the void
Yeah, thinking about it… I guess the concern is that some liberal will see our posts and come away with ONLY the part where we say some conservatives in Russia exist and are bad and came from deep money originating in the West? But then why would they want to invade or kill people in Russia when that implies the US is at fault anyways?
Thus the immortal words: It's raining men, hallelujah.
The Moscow Times? Isn't that basically Radio Free (Insert Enemy State Here) in print format?
🤓According to media bias fact check, they have a high factual rating, an excellent press freedom rating, and a high credibility rating. Read it and weep, tankietarian!🤓
I say bring it on. I know everyone is ready to forget that they took Oryx seriously and said stuff like
"Nobody can deny Western weapons are very effective against Russian equipment."I look forward to the usual "look I want free healthcare as much as the next guy and want to have a real government instead of a CIA GANGSTER POLICE STATE that bombs civilians for no reason but the alternative is just as bad, and in addition, these savages are nothing like us,,," crap that's been used against Syria and Libya and almost Ethiopia recently! They were revving it up! People are sort of keeping China in this vague category of "they are alright, critical support, but not getting my hopes up in case the all powerful warlords of my country need to try to disintegrate them with bombs & I need to remain neutral"
So now we just have to pivot back to the normal "I don't understand why all these anti-war leftists support Saddam Hussein and want to hug and kiss him? It's just making things harder for us Real Activists." refrain that keeps people from even approaching the discussion of what a semi-peripheral country is
I failed to understand most of it, but I think this is a brilliant post. I've read it maybe four times now, and its beauty and mystery deepen with every pass.
What I mean in that screed is
1️⃣ people remained "neutral" but kept supporting the western narrative throughout the past 2 years
2️⃣ people don't have an actual geopolitical analysis, they have the libertarian "muh tax dollar spending" antiwar argument which is completely anemic. i would prefer ancient bandung maoist takes
3️⃣ the accusation of marcyism against people who do actual geopolitical analysis has been making a comeback, it's a great way to learn nothing from all this
what I recommend instead is everyone read abt that & also how western NGOs used things as innocuous as techno to lay the groundwork of the anti ethnic russian movement. look at how the far-right grows in poland etc
Thanks I think you're joking. Hopefully. I say bring it on bc they get to read these posts
Sincerity is hard to express on an anonymous web forum. This is the kind of posting that makes hexbear a special place. I like your post.
Yea they have the scoop here it is nice. People mostly don't tolerate imperialist takes here. I just think it's hard for everyone to both learn regional history + politics of Ukraine, and read a bunch of stuff about the development of the global south so they end up accepting a lot of premises which they shouldn't.
Modern Russia is an embarrassment to the USSR that once took them to the stars. It's incredibly sad to see them become just as chudified as the US. What capitalism does to a mother fucker.
This is why I don't understand leftists who oppose China and other AES based on specific social issues like LGBT rights. Look at the imperfect rights of LGBT people in the USSR and tell me that you'd rather be LGBT in the post-Soviet states instead.
Nothing got better as a result of the fall of the USSR unless you were a Patriarch in the Orthodox Church. Can't imagine why anyone would rationally advocate for that shit to happen again.
Did any of you actualy read the stupid article?
A video shared by ultra-conservative bloggers showed an unidentified man threatening to turn the pair into the police for wearing a Ukrainian flag pin and rainbow earrings.
Yeah, I'll just casually wear western values AND a flag pin of our current mortal enemies in time of war and expect nothing will happen?
Did nobody actually watch the video? Is it because its telegram or what lol? The person is actually literaly wearing a Ukrainian flag pin. Whether or not she had any LGBTQ symbol or not is not the only point, heck I'm pretty sure nothing would have happened without this galaxy brain decision to wear an Ukrainian flag.
But it gets worse
“Also, during the process, the earrings themselves were examined, and it was found that they have the shape of a frog with an image of a 7-color rainbow,” Egida quoted an unnamed defense attorney as saying.
And then you call Russia right wing? Going to 4chan and posting a rainbow flag doesn't make that place any less of a neonazi shithole. Why a frog specificaly? Is that not an obvious dog whistle or what?
Don't misunderstand me, it absolutely sucks that Russia is a socialy conservative shithole. I can give you the benefit of doubt and say you're just some random Ukrainian expats completely clueless that happen to be LGBTQ but you have to damn well pick your battles, you're in Russia not New York, you don't get to wear an Ukrainian flag in time of war, period. This would be true literaly anywhere else in the world too or do you think you get to wear a German flag in Moscow 1943 just because you're an expat?
I am confident this would not have happened without that incredibly bright decision and this is a stupid struggle session almost embarrassing, and you say Americans lack critical reading ability.
Also The Moscow Times despite claiming to be Russian is online published from the Netherlands. Yeah that is about as legitimate as Putin launching a Russian version of NYT lol.
Calling the rainbow flag "Western Values"
Thinking all frogs are dog whistles
I'm diagnosing you with a terminal case of online, the cure is to step outside and touch grass for 10 hours (not consecutively)
Yeah the person is cringe asf but how are rainbow earrings western values
Edit: Also do you really think it was a Pepe frog? Frogs have been a thing with gay people for… fuck knows how long
Rainbows are ultimately a Western symbol of queerness. There wasn't an international queer conference where queer people from all over the world voted on rainbows as an international symbol of queerness. The rainbow flag originated in San Francisco during the late 70s where it then spread to the rest of the US and later the rest of the Western world. It only penetrated the non-Western world through Western-back NGOs.
This is the problem with pinkwashing. Non-Western queer people are essentially set up to fail by Western-back NGOs, making them entirely dependent on those NGOs. You can see this in the way some Chinese enbies use TA pronouns instead of using or inventing a Chinese character as their pronoun. If you're a queerphobic asshole who thinks queerness is just Western d-word, then a bunch of enbies going around using the Western Latin alphabet instead of Chinese characters to describe themselves would pretty much confirms queerness as Western d-word. This is not the fault of the Chinese enbies, but the Western-backed NGOs who purposefully push the idea of using TA as a pronoun knowing that the more reactionary elements of Chinese society would weaponize this to push queerphobia, further pushing those enbies into the arms of the NGOs. The NGOs want the enbies to be estranged from mainstream Chinese society and are taking advantage of queerphobia to essentially groom those enbies to become potential Western agents of color revolution.
Queer people have existed throughout history and throughout every single human society, which means people don't have to use a foreign symbol with pinkwashing baggage but just need to uncover the queer history of their particular society and use those symbols instead.
Queer people have existed throughout history and throughout every single human society, which means people don't have to use a foreign symbol with pinkwashing baggage but just need to uncover the queer history of their particular society and use those symbols instead
Or… just use the symbols? They’re not reactionary. I refuse to say random western sociopaths can just appropriate a symbol of my own liberation and make it bad forever
It's more politically expedient to use symbols that are homegrown rather than symbols from a foreign place that's hostile to your home country. Symbols mean different things to different people. From the perspective of the US and the West in general, the rainbow flag is a symbol of queer liberation, but from the perspective of people not from the West, the rainbow flag is just some pinkwashing bullshit. You can't just ignore the non-Western reading of the symbol especially when we're talking about what the rainbow means in non-Western countries. It makes a lot more political sense to just find different symbols that actually come from the local culture. By embracing the Western symbol, you're already subtly insinuating that queerness is some Western invention, which is a queerphobic talking point.
There's nothing inherently queer about rainbows. Gay people don't piss out rainbows, and trans people don't shit out rainbows. Rainbows are just symbols, which means they ought to be judged based on political expediency on whether to adopt them and where and who to display them to like any other symbol.
By embracing the Western symbol, you're already subtly insinuating that queerness is some Western invention, which is a queerphobic talking point.
Ok, but like… I’m not
People can use whatever symbols they want, the argument isn’t over whether or not they come from the West, but if they’re inherently some sort of imperialism by their mere existence that implies the need for violence
People can use whatever symbols they want,
And people will interpret those symbols whatever they want as well. Political symbols serve a political purpose, and if they are detrimental to whatever political project they are trying to accomplish, then they ought to be discarded.
But if it doesn’t make sense why I’m arguing so hard, it’s because the phrase “western values” sort of implies this weird connotation that, beyond simply being a symbol people associate with direct US influence, it is associated with some sort of evil, insidious gay worldview. This might seem like splitting hairs but it tread so close to Nazbol territory to defend that specific terminology that it freaks me out. If it was just “western symbols” or “probability of being a western spy” it would make perfect sense, but “western values” conjures images of hordes of scheming Untermench soft-men carving away the fabric of strong insert country here society.
As if the issue is the things these organizations claim to support and not the fact they are blatant lies. Gay liberation being a “western value” is about as true as democracy, as in, not at all (we just pretend it is so we can have Cassus Belli on random countries). If we try to compensate for every possible concept the US tries to appropriate then we’re going to end up having insane positions like “war crimes are actually good because the US said they weren’t” (probably with the context of the US lying about them happening in the first place)
Like, imagine if we responded to claims of the “Uyghur genocide” by claiming that being against genocide is a Western value being pushed on unwilling countries, instead of just pointing out the very obvious fakery of the whole thing. People would rightfully call us sociopaths and monsters.
I refuse to say random western sociopaths can just appropriate a symbol of my own liberation and make it bad forever
I think Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains probably have some bad news for you on that front.
If one of the people the swastika was appropriated from used it, it would be far less suspicious than most contemporary modern uses
It’s used in decoration frequently, it’s extremely easy to tell the different contexts
People are sharing the video of a Ukrainian song about Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera being sung at the "Pride" thing in Munich and remarking that it's somehow funny, schizophrenic or paradoxical. It is not. Being pro-Ukrainian is an expression of political loyalty toward the American empire, and so is supporting politically organized homosexuality (I don't want to get into discussions about identity vs behavior vs politics, etc, let's just keep it at that term). Politically organized homosexuals all over the world view the USA as a homeland they owe political loyalty to; the USA views them as their citizens or clients whom they have to protect to uphold their reputation as a world power, up to the point of intervening in the politics of sovereign countries, deploying sanctions, etc. In geopolitical terms there is no functional difference between the Ukraine, Taiwan, politically organized homosexuals, Kurds, feminist organizations, Uyghurs, etc. They all act as American client groups and publicly pledging allegiance to their causes is just another way of showing deference to the USA.
RWA is incredibly cringe btw, I don't endorse them, but this point is undeniable.
Or perhaps this video where the Nazis are literaly telling us they stand against liberal values.
Someone walking around with a Ukrainian flag and LGBTQ symbolism is at best a very priveledged liberal completely buying into the idea that western values will come and save them, not realizing the absurdity of this irony. In any case everyone in Russia knows Ukraine is just as socialy conservative as they are.
and so is supporting politically organized homosexuality (I don't want to get into discussions about identity vs behavior vs politics, etc, let's just keep it at that term). Politically organized homosexuals all over the world view the USA as a homeland they owe political loyalty to;
I wonder why they don't want to get into that.
I never said I supported Ukraine, the fuck
Also I refuse to believe in the age of the Internet, mail, and phone lines, that queer western symbolism ONLY spread through NGO’s or western influence. That sounds like total reactionary bullshit to me. This is some insane Nazi homophobe shit. How the fuck would that even happen? NGO’s hunting down anyone who orders a pride flag without joining them?
Edit: Sorry, my reactionary sensor is overtuned and I’m way too hostile here. I’m willing to buy that this is a thing, it just seems super weird.
Bit idea: wear a Russian flag pin and bear-shaped rainbow earrings around Lviv.
Did any of you actualy read the stupid article?
This isn't the news mega. Of course no one read the fucking article.
Also The Moscow Times despite claiming to be Russian is online published from the Netherlands. Yeah that is about as legitimate as Putin launching a Russian version of NYT lol.
Here is a Russian source if that is a problem, saying more or less the same thing: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6480674
Bad take.
No government should be able to stop people from expressing themselves in whatever way they see fit, as long as that expression isn't hurting other people.
I know Russia used to be the seat of the USSR, but that doesn't mean I have to give the modern, chuddified nation it's become benefit of the doubt.
I keep being berated as "chauvinist" to stand in solidarity with [not
] country's queer liberation movement to 
So I don't know how I'm supposed to feel without offending someone somewhere with my "paternal" concerns.
I find people in general tiresome. They all do this shit to us for some reason or another. Makes it hard not to have hard feelings about the whole thing.
Being against the Uganda anti-homosexuality act doesn't mean you stop supporting anti-imperialist struggle and freeing Africa from the debt system.
I don't know what it is about Russia being a bit more developed and having a capitalist government which has shifted a bit towards nationalization of resources since the collapse of the USSR that makes people think "imperialist predation on this country demands neutrality" whereas the same issue is obvious to them in Africa. Except when it's Ethiopia... man all it takes is Radio War Nerd to be like "fuck these guys" 😩😫😩😩😫 and they have an army of these chumps out of nowhere
Most propagandized people in history fr fr
Fuck you genuinely, I’m so tired of people having to constantly reaffirm how that they still have support for Russia or whatever just so they can avoid getting shamed for being pissed about homophobia wrong.
None of the people you @‘d give a single flying fuck about Biden’s state, they want it gone probably more than you. They’re not the ones trying to claim critical support isn’t enough for a capitalist shithole run by one of the fuckers who dissolved the USSR, a shithole that like all capitalist shitholes literally has only “better than the US” as it’s one redeeming quality. You’re the only one here limited by pragmatism, chasing a dream of solidarity from capitalists that will never come.
I DO support Russia because it’s better than the fucked up, genocidal United States, but my support doesn’t have to extend any further than that. My enemy of my enemy is my friend, but that doesn’t mean I have to accept the fact that they hate entire swathes of people like me and make them outright illegal. They [Edit: meaning, whichever legislators have made homosexuality there illegal] have reactionary beliefs and that is an objective truth.
No one here is more angry at Russia than Africa or whatever, my critical support extends identically to all of those countries, and will stop being critical once they fix those issues. As they probably will once colonialist influence and material pressure from the US fades!
Go fuck yourself. And stop assuming people are idiots just so it conforms to your worldview.
They told me to fuck off and die repeatedly after one comment saying we shouldnt throw lgbtq people under the bus to support russia lol
For instance, fake news is fine if it's obvious enough that people can complain about it being unfunny. None of the rules make any sense. That's why this place is going to continue growing at a pace slower than it loses people while transphobia.coding or whatever gets 30,000 users
That's why this place is going to continue growing at a pace slower than it loses people while transphobia.coding or whatever gets 30,000 users
I'm pretty sure that's actually because we represent a super fringe ideology within the Anglo-sphere that's not likely to have a resurgence anytime soon, not cuz our mod policies aren't airtight
It's a corollary to the issue with trying to ratio a congressperson. Even if you succeed it doesn't do anything.
I don't think we should be making overtures to techbros who are clearly unempathetic in addition to not being materially interested in anti imperialist revolution. like people on the other lemmies. hyper redditors
Okay sorry but this one is a bit hard to parse. Can you like, reiterate with less very online leftist guy posting energy?
basically everything that makes a guy a redditor, right? like what makes a guy go on the Chicago sub Reddit and become a power poster. It shouldn't surprise anyone when you find out that these people are like Raytheon weirdos or their landlord do you know
go to the people who have the fakest ass job, work at salesforce, any of that shit, or they make their money off of investments are off of finance. Those are not the people we need to propagandize for any reason
So what I'm saying is Lenny is a fucking shit hole I don't care what anyone there thinks. I kind of care what you guys think because like your analysis is interesting to me not just because I like take it as gospel but because like it's understand me where you're coming from.
So what I'm saying is Lenny is a fucking shit hole I don't care what anyone there thinks. I kind of care what you guys think because like your analysis is interesting to me not just because I like take it as gospel but because like it's understand me where you're coming from.
Okay, but like this seems in conflict with your earlier complaint about the sub stagnating in growth. The reason were this way is cuz we basically keep this community as a sound proofed bunker from the rest of bazinga brained society (threw that one in there to try and make you feel included)
Oh yea I'm saying like any attempt to take on aspects of the other communities for growth would be stupid as fuck. But this site should still be attracting crazed ideology soup brained twitteroids like me, ya dig.
Like ngl I have invited many people here and they almost all got instantly banned and were like these people suck, but I also don't disagree with why they were banned. I just told them to subscribe to the bulletins and news rss
Like that was how I found out one of them was an egoist
The most annoying time of online argument person possible! We just swapped Covid bews
But this site should still be attracting crazed ideology soup brained twitteroids like me, ya dig.
I'd rather it cuz that gaggle includes a lot of weirdos, like actual NatBols, dudes who think the cancer causing affects of cigarettes are Western propaganda, trans neo Nazis who support the DPRK (real person fyi), and like ML furry porn artists who think all other furries are d*generate, including them but they kinda get a pass cuz they made a cartoon of Bear Stalin fucking Horse Mao (that one I made up but it's probably real).
Granted Elon taking over has chased a lot of those types away.
I think that at some point you all need to consider that your main reference point (Hinkkkle) for "nazbols" is a literal actual US intelligence and Mossad asset in broad daylight.
Idk what else I'm supposed to call a dude with a tattoo of both Stalin and Czar Nicholas III than "NazBol"
It's just a leftist version of horseshoe theory at this point with the way it's been brought up past 2 years on social media lol
Dennis King - Lyndon LaRouche and the new American fascism (1989, Doubleday) - libgen.li.pdf 13.2 MB https://files.catbox.moe/j9bbdk.pdf
Do you want a book about them? Because the original LaRouche wanted intelligence collaboration so desperately they still of course got burned despite being just the cheapest assets ever
I mean yeah, that's what NazBols, PatSocs and LaRoushites are, fascists who like public ownership a bit more than the OG Nazis did.
I know I am way late to this little party, but this site absolutely should not cater to the brain-dead dopamine addled posting of completely vacuous morons who mistake ideological masturbation for philosophy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having base-line agreement of certain theoretical stances and then arguing on extrapolations, rather than circle-jerking on whether or not reality is really real for the umpteenth time like a fourteen year old who just discovered Descartes.
all right, that one's indecipherable give me a second to fix that I'm walking. I don't know what the fuck is Sansui is
I don't know what the fuck is Sansui is
Okay this prompts me to ask, what is the writing process that "guys like you" have for comments like these? Cuz you pull out weird ass lingo even seasoned Marxists consider obscure and odd turns of phrases that reference weirdly niche shit, so niche apparently YOU don't even fully understand them. Like are you just googling random shit every 10 seconds that's only vaguely connected to the topic at hand and then just try and shoe horn it into the comment or is this crap all just stuff you half remember via osmosis and you're typing steam of consciousness style?
You actually seem to respond to people unlike the various interactions of BMF so I'm hoping for some insight here.
I mentioned in another random comment this is mostly automatic writing or dictation that I scream while walking around
Regardless of anything else, I don't think this is the most healthy or productive way to post and, genuinely, perhaps log off for a bit a touch grass.
gay shitposting and the ANSWER coalition Brian Becker motherfuckers. You are all just waiting until you realize kids here have nothing protecting them from Uvalde 2
Back to square one then I guess
gay shitposting and the ANSWER coalition Brian Becker motherfuckers
literally this and UNIONIZE UNIONIZE LOCAL ELECTIONS LOCAL ELECTIONS LOCAL ELECTIONS loll
buddy that's all I've got, there is nothing but square one here
well, I mean I could go into my rant where I try and describe what I think represents the labor aristocracy in core countries or in India, like there's a labor aristocracy there that benefits from the sub imperialism very distinctly also, sorry if I don't take any dictation errors and this is hot
That's the point, it's fine when people dish it out at me as long as there's a general perception of righteous nonsense around it. Keep deflecting then hovering whenever you can't refute a point if you want.
Keep deflecting then hovering whenever you can't refute a point if you want.
I actually mostly agree with you, was just pointing out you haven't been exactly sweet as peach cobbler in this thread so, yah know, don't be surprised if someone tells you to fuck off.
Oh yeah as far as hostility related to pointing out international pressure against the Russian govt from you all has clearly backfired. Meanwhile our own govts offer nothing other than meaningless aesthetic victories. I didn't mean just related to me also incredibly funny idiom.
Idk you just pop up to say "new site tagline" which I find funny bc it's part of the whole culture here of flip flopping between demanding people take this highly interchangeable medium of communication seriously as a Cool Hangout Space and telling people they are too online
whole culture here of flip flopping between demanding people take this highly interchangeable medium of communication seriously as a Cool Hangout Space and telling people they are too online
Well fyi I lean pretty hard in the "cool hangout space" direction so don't single me out here. The more serious discussions we have can be informative but let's be honest, none of this shit we don't on this niche forum is likely to ever affect anything in the real world. That includes criticizing Russia for its regressive LGBT policies AND supporting it in its fight against NATO.
Edit: also did you pull a Ulysses's and edit your comment without making it clear which part is an edit? Cuz this is reading differently then when I first saw it.
arguments they used to scold people for "supporting the Russian govt"
Who's getting scolded for that here? I see people saying they think the Russian governments treatment of queer people is bad (which it is) and then you scolding them for brining it up.
Your original point about this being a garbage propaganda outlet that OP shouldn't have posted here stands, but seems the story they reported on did actually happen. So... what just not acknowledge it? Or only acknowledge it while also acknowledging that Russia is a force against US hegemony? Cuz if it's the latter that seems like what most people are already doing here.
Seattle it's not a regular deli it's just one of the good intl district ones
It is both of those things, since they are not contradictory. It is a cool hangout space for way too online leftists who need to touch grass. Posting here is fun, but it is not praxis and we should never ever forget that, even if we never ever log off.
Same... people just generally suck.
Sometimes I wish I was a turtle, or a bird. Not worried about some mayo-chugging animal attacking me because penises taste good.
Just vibing in my tree 🌳🐦
Well that's one way of cleaning up. Time to sort through the mess.
Tell me you want me to smite you without saying you want me to smite you
You wouldn't get it...
. Please wake up.
