• Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    The original comment that started that thread was implying it by calling Russian media propaganda that was just as bad as western propaganda.

    It’s not “just as bad” and if you think that you are a chauvinist. It’s that simple

    • space_comrade [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      What makes you think it's not just as bad? Every time I've touched pro-Russian news sourced they always presented info that makes Russia seem like the good guy and as the clearly winning side.

      How am I, with limited knowledge of how warfare works, supposed to ascertain what is propaganda and what isn't?

      • D61 [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Its all going to be propaganda. That's not the problem, we're all smart enough to realize this.

        But which propaganda is more truthful and which is less truthful is where the money is. Western sources are doing a bang up job of making shit up whole cloth right now and Russian sources have less reason to.

        • anoncpc [comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Russian source exaggerated event, while western source put up ghost of Kiev, snake island, glorifying Nazi and put them on the front page, give Ukraine hope that they going to take back crimea. I know which is worst out of the two

          • D61 [any]
            ·
            3 years ago

            I just don't think trying to figure out which is "worse" is useful. I think we can get more utility out of trying to figure out "what the propaganda is for" from our sources.

        • space_comrade [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I asked a legitimate question. It seems you're just biased and don't really have the answer.

          • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
            ·
            3 years ago

            My bias is pro-colonized of the world and anti-imperialist, you got me. I should be more neutral and consider the empire the same as it’s colonies, you are right! Why didn’t I think of that?

            Next time I’ll make sure I don’t prioritize the interests of the workers over that of the bourgeois either

            • Hmm [none/use name]
              ·
              edit-2
              3 years ago

              It's interesting how you didn't respond to the second half of my first comment in this chain.

              Allow me to pose a different question: How can you distinguish between anti-imperialism and countries trying to make plays for being an empire? For example, after the end of Japanese isolationism in the 19th century, by way of US Gunboat Diplomacy, a common position among those with political power in Japan became that the country needed to become an empire in order to avoid becoming a colony.

              If we can't make the distinction between the two then we're just going to fall into conflating being against a specific empire with anti-imperialism more broadly. Iirc one of the lines of thinking of German Social Democrats in supporting the war effort during World War I was that a German victory was preferable to the triumph of the at-the-time dominant British Empire, which was the center of global finance capital. I think we want to avoid a mistake like that being repeated.

              • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
                ·
                edit-2
                3 years ago

                The world is unipolar and the empire is hegemonic. We are not in a multipolar, multi-empire world of competing imperialists. We are in the late stage of monopoly imperialism. Capital has globalized and become a single imperialist bloc, the anglo-American empire is the only empire in existence.

                Therefore your example about imperialist Japan is irrelevant and no longer applicable to our world.

                I can understand being skeptical of the anti-imperialist bonafides of capitalist Russia at first but they have proven themselves in Syria, Belarus and Kazakhstan. They have aligned themselves with the anti-imperialist bloc and forged alliances with AES.

                • Hmm [none/use name]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  A world being uni-polar doesn't mean it remains that way. Uni-polarity and hegemony can be broken by forming smaller imperial poles. That's the issue of conflating anti-imperialism with opposition to a specific empire, and why I think the example of Japan is relevant.

                  • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    It can be, but it hasn’t been. I don’t exist in a hypothetical world I exist in the real one. We face the current contradiction of global monopoly imperialism. Face reality

                • Hmm [none/use name]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  Russia has also undermined their "anti-imperialist bonafides" with how they've let Wagner Group mercenaries operate in Mali, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

                  • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    3 years ago

                    You mean the ones invited by the African nations to assist them in ridding themselves of European colonizer paramilitaries?

                    Was it also imperialism when Syria invited Russia in to assist them in destroying NATO backed jihadists? How is this any different?

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

              I literally just asked how do you personally distinguish fact from propaganda and you immediately started acting like a little bitch about it.

              • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Using a historical materialist lens to understand the motivations at play, checking dubious claims for further sources, following up on claims later once the fog has cleared to see a pattern of reliable sources & applying the claims that check out towards constructing a coherent idea of what is happening.

                Ukrainian sources always lie and then change their story to the Russian one quietly weeks or months later. Russian sources don’t tend to lie, and don’t quietly alter their claims. Russians don’t make incoherent claims about the enemy being too strong and too weak, only the Ukrainians do that.

                • Hmm [none/use name]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  It's hard to take this comment seriously when you sidestepped the criticism I made in the second half of my initial comment.

          • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Ok so if Iran and Hezbollah invaded and liberated Palestine you would call them “imperialist capitalists” and condemn their “aggressive invasion”?

            Or is that different somehow? Because you have internalized Russophobia

              • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
                ·
                edit-2
                3 years ago

                Ukrainians are being liberated from the fascist NATO installed junta and the banderite gangs that terrorize them

                Russia cannot stop until the junta is destroyed and denazified and demilitarized, or else it will amass forces and do the same thing again.

                You end a war by winning it, not by “sitting back and saying come at me”. That’s how you get eternal war.

                • D61 [any]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  You end a war by winning it, not by “sitting back and saying come at me”. That’s how you get eternal war.

                  Well.. from my "westoid" perspective of being a US citizen... Afghanistan and Iraq come to mind as a bit of a refutation to this statement.

                  • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    3 years ago

                    These were not wars with any strategic goal that be could achieved. “War on terror” cannot be won when you are funding and spreading terror, as the US does.

                    The US was in Iraq and Afghanistan for geopolitical strategic bases, CIA slush funds (opium) & MIC profits. Based on these actual goals of the empire, there is no end state. They would prefer these wars drag on indefinitely or as long as possible.

                    Russia has clearly stated end goals. Annexation of Crimea & Donbass. This can be achieved. De-militarization of the Ukrainian armed forces can be achieved. Unblocking of water to Crimea, this has been achieved. Liberating Russian speaking populations from foreign backed Nazi occupation, this can be achieved.

                  • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    Only in the west. Zelenskyy had a 20% approval rating before the invasion. He was elected on a platform of neutrality and peace and he broke that agreement. His government is illegitimate and a foreign puppet

                  • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    The majority of South Koreans would support their government over DPRK. The majority of Taiwanese would support their government over PRC. The majority of Israel would support their government over Hamas or Hezbollah.

                    When you willfully become a comprador state of empire to get crumbs, it’s on you when you reap what you sow and the de-colonization eventually occurs.

      • anoncpc [comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I touched pro Russian propaganda and most of them is just exaggerating event, not fabricated ghost of Kiev, snake island , put up illusion that Ukraine going to take back crimea and Donbass, put video games footage as war footage. At that point, western propaganda just putting up fake news

    • Hmm [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I'm not saying anything about one being more bad than the other or them being equally bad.

      You're allowed to say that your claim that I linked is too strong in retrospect but that we nonetheless should consider Russian media coverage to be better than Western coverage. (Whether or not I agree with that is a different question.)