Bunch of idiots out there trying to pick their favorite capitalist state.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GOOD STATE.

At best, you have transitionary ones run by MLs, which I get from a Marxist perspective, but those can go south real fucking fast too.

We’re the ones who suffer and die in war. Not the rich, not the capitalists, not the land lords. The workers are the ones fed into the macerator.

  • Cummunism [they/them, he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Obama made Ukraine even further right, also making it an enemy of Russia. The only correct take is this is all the fault of incompetent US imperialism. Everything else is a result of that.

    • Anarchist [they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Exactly, this didn’t happen out of nowhere. The United States supported a fascist coup, funded + armed neo-nazi groups, and then tried to put bring Ukraine into NATO. What the fuck did people think was going to happen? Putin got into power by murdering his way up the fucking ladder lmao

      • Nakoichi [they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Putin got into power by murdering his way up the fucking ladder lmao

        Not just that but also with the help of NATO.

        The real reason they weren't allowed to join the club was because we needed an enemy still but at the time we were exporting all of our manufacturing to China. But we definitely couldn't invite China because they're still explicitly socialist.

      • SaniFlush [any, any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I was told NATO was created entirely so the USA could have a secret club Russia wasn't invited to.

      • The_Jewish_Cuban [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Which is ironic because having a NATO Ally with a land border with China would be useful for the US

        • TeethOrCoat [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Which is why I think a lot of RWers say that antagonizing Russia over the past 30 years was a geopolitical mistake. They're not anti-war, they just want it to be done on the right enemy.

          • The_Jewish_Cuban [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Yeah, I guess it would have been difficult to foresee China's rise 30 years ago. Maybe, It's something that only seems obvious in hindsight. Or maybe they were just high on their new world order shit and thought they were invincible. Either way watching libs cope is hilarious. I just wish it didn't come at the expense of people's lives.

            • TeethOrCoat [none/use name]
              ·
              2 years ago

              If I were the US 30 years ago, I'd probably invite Russia, even if I didn't foresee PRC rising. It's not like you're gonna lose anything anyway. If PRC liberalizes, good. If they don't, you can contain them with the help of a NATO ally.

    • mafiaprefect [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Ukraine was pretty much neutral and trying to develop itself before Obama's far right coup. Then the nazi shit really got rolling in earnest.

  • Nakoichi [they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Someone needs to tear those red and black flags out their damn hands those are our colors.

  • The_Walkening [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    If someone hits you with the "Their president is Jewish!" just hit them with the old "We've had a black president and the USA is still a deeply racist country"

    • Quimby [any, any]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I mean, there president is literally a Holocaust survivor, if I'm remembering correctly. That does legitimately count for something in the "is he a Nazi enabler" debate.

      I think the reality is something closer to "nazi elements are a problem in Ukraine, but there are not, in fact sanctioned or deliberately fomented by the state. they may, however, be indirectly cultivated by the state with the state's nationalist rhetoric, for example."

      • Akz1918 [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        No, the government not only arms/funds/trains azov, but also the neonazi militia c14 who is currently engaged in a progom against the Roma people, the current Prime Minster attended a fascist concert put on by c14.

    • Akz1918 [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Their Prime Minster attended a concert put on by c14.

    • Anarchist [they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Everyone in Ferguson and Flint:

      :side-eye-1::side-eye-2:

    • NomadicWarMachine [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      You can point out he was also an actor who ran on a boring centrist platform of trying to deescalate this whole conflict and then proceeded to do Jack to that end once in office. The fash probably are a minority but their a minority that the current administration has allowed to run rampant.

      • Anarchist [they/them]
        hexagon
        ·
        2 years ago

        Yup. Love that they elected the actor who played the president in the Ukrainian West Wing as their actual president. Powerfully stupid energy.

        • sea_urchin [they/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          In an alternate universe, us elects kxvin spxcxy as president. The amount of “daddy vibes” thirst posting about frank underwood was gross, istg. 🤢🤮

  • Weedian [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    today someone told me azov are a actually russian backed false-flag operation and that the russians are bringing "mobile incinerators" to cover up any evidence of killing civilians.

    • Anarchist [they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Here’s an archived link from when the Ukrainian military announced they were funding them and had incorporated them into the Ukrainian national guard:

      https://web.archive.org/web/20150709162323/http://ngu.gov.ua/ua/news/rozyasnennya-shchodo-statusu-specpidrozdilu-azov

      If someone tells you that in the future, you can go all out calling them anti-semitic.

      “mobile incinerators” to cover up any evidence of killing civilians.

      like flamethrowers or pop-up crematoriums or? That literally doesn’t make sense.

      • Weedian [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I set them straight on azov. for the “mobile incinerators” I replied with something like, "without any proof this is just preemptively dismissing any calls for evidence of this claim"

    • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
      ·
      2 years ago

      This is probably the new "mobile WMD depots" from the Iraq invasion days.

    • Nakoichi [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Remembering when we were just starting out and c/anarchism was created before c/marxism because we organized it first.

      This is not sectarian just ammusing bit of irony.

  • CheGueBeara [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    It is good to acknowledge that workers pay the price in capitalist wars and to not downplay the lopsidedness of the conflict by leaving it at an analysis that both sides - and "picking a side" - is simply bad.

    It is also important to frame criticism in terms of the audience and what they might be able to actually do about it. This site is full of Westerners that inhabit NATO countries - the countries that have been stoking this war for literal decades and killing even more Ukrainians (in Donbass). In that context, Hexbears generally interact with imperialist-propagandized people and their labor supports NATO. The thing they can do is to consistently oppose NATO and avoid feeding into hate directed at its targets.

    Obviously this doesn't mean uncritical support for another capitalist state or simply picking a side. But it does mean that "both sides bad" won't actually land how you intend it to. The folks that already think Russia is bad will hear that and think, "yeah, fuck them! Nuke the barbarians!" because they're literally genocidal and their consent is used to justify the horrors your country does to others. This is roughly the Trot-to-neocon pipeline where they end up supporting the destruction of other countei e by the hegemonic imperial power because hey, those other countries suck, right?

    I know that your point is subtler than that and that some of the things I'm criticizing aren't in your post. I want to be super clear that I'm not writing a takedown or anything like that. I just want to emphasize that an empathetic and socialist understanding of this conflict between two capitalist states (capitalism and states both being bad) can and should lead to a seemingly one-sided approach for propaganda purposes. Libs will take the olive branch of "sure, Putin sucks" and run with it waaaay too far, defeating the purpose. And we all have a liberal we need to kill inside of us...

    • Anarchist [they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 years ago

      This is too many paragraphs for me to read on a Friday night (too stoned now), but assuming you didn’t bury the lead, we agree that a reductive “both sides bad” is bullshit.

      I’m not going to cheer on either of them. I get why it happened, that it’s based on NATO aggression, and the Ukraine is swarming with nazis. I also get that Putin is a far right capitalist that has murdered tons of Russian communists and anarchists who have gotten in his way.

      I will continue bullying any lib who tries to put words in my mouth about supporting putin or, alternatively, US military invasion. Death to imperialism. Death to the state. Power to the people.

    • penguin_von_doom [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      But in the case Russia is bad. And Russia is not doing anti-imperialism. It's doing imperialism. Let's remember that it has been an empire long before the USA was even a country and tha the Soviet era is a very brief episode in that history.

      And what Putin is doing is no different from what the us did in say Chile, or Guatemala. They simply cannot allow a viable alternative to their type of regime in their background and the current regimes they like running are objectively worse than even the western neoliberalism. Sovereignty doesn't matter to Russia anymore than it does to the US.

  • Metalorg [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    The Ukrainian government have built over a hundred statues commemorating fascists since 2013. It's not justification for invasion but there are a lot of fucking neo-nazis

    • pppp1000 [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Banned communist parties and took down various communist statues including 1k+ Lenin statues but no sir there is no rampant Nazism

    • Anarchist [they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 years ago

      I’m not losing sleep over nazis getting killed. I’m fine with a bunch of Putin’s fashy bois and Ukrainian neo-nazis wasting bullets on each other.

    • penguin_von_doom [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Their culture is extremely similar to the Russian one. Far right sentiment in Russia is just as strong.

    • Nakoichi [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      :geordi-no: Using your platform to do :funny-clown-hammer: shit

      :geordi-yes: Using your platform to bully lib nobodies with nuclear takes

  • penguin_von_doom [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    This is the correct take. Western leftists who don't speak a word of russian beyond сука have been having very dogshit takes. Both defending Ukrainian Nazis and russian imperialism