Link

Pretty gross. Comments every bit as awful as you're thinking. Just a reminder of the abysmal state of non-cishet rights and acceptance in Russia.

Edit: can't get my screenshot to load properly so text:

T1: Putin on accusations against Russia in the energy crisis: "European countries are big specialists in non-traditional relationships and themselves abandoned traditional energy sources in favor of non-traditional ones"

T2: ("non-traditional relationships" is the legal term in Russia for all things "LGBT")

  • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    :putin-wink::solidarity::trump-anguish:

    Renewable energy is gay

    Also Putin really sucks. He's only forced into anti imperialist stances because the US "rules based order" rejected Russia joining them.

    • jabrd [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It’s not an anti imperialist stance if you’re just trying to contest imperial hegemony on behalf of your own imperial ambitions. That’s still just imperialism

      • LeninsRage [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Anyone on this site who genuinely believes Vladimir Putin does "anti-imperialism" out of any motive other than supremely cynical, convenient, competing imperialist interest seriously needs to re-evaluate their stances and sources. Or, otherwise, go join the fucking Maupinite/Hazite clowns who are basically doing the most cringe reactionary shit imaginable, because they are your people.

        I say this as someone who has for a while tried to stay out of the dogmatic factionalist bullshit in favor of just shitposting when it comes to this site. If you've been suckered into believing a siloviki-dominated hyper-capitalist kleptocracy like Russia is a genuine force for "anti-imperialism", you've been fucking had in the worst way possible. Even the most mindless simping for modern Dengist China has a more rational basis.

        • Mindfury [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I can't believe that I need to reiterate that we shit on Ukraine here because they're filled with nazoids, not because capitalist Russia is "good".

          You do not, under almost any circumstances, gotta hand it to post-downfall Russia

          • LeninsRage [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Literally no one here is arguing that Ukraine is good, but the actual leftists (as opposed to national chauvinists) here are arguing that this is unmistakably an inter-imperialist war and not some convoluted "the invasion of Ukraine is anti-imperialist because Russia is on the imperial periphery of a super-imperialist bloc" bullshit argument.

            I'm someone who can absolutely advance arguments that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was caused by outside imperialist circumstances. But now that it has happened, and is actual fact? There is zero "critical support" of Russian aggression here. The only legitimate communist position in this scenario is for Ukrainian and Russian soldiers alike to turn their guns on their own generals. Will that happen? No. But that's the fucking position the Bolsheviks themselves took from the start, not some ridiculous stance about how actually the Kaiser was right to resist all along and criticizing the German war effort is bad.

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

              but the actual leftists (as opposed to national chauvinists) here are arguing that this is unmistakably an inter-imperialist war and not some convoluted “the invasion of Ukraine is anti-imperialist because Russia is on the imperial periphery of a super-imperialist bloc” bullshit argument.

              exactamundo

              got some nerds in this thread saying that Putin is doing a heckin anti-imperialism and we have to work with him. The only thing i'd work with is a fucking icepick into his skull

              the only people deserving support in the fash on fash conflict are the workers and leftists having their unions and organisations outlawed by both cappie shitholes, and can only hope that they are able to organise and undermine both standing armies and execute all fash with prejudice

        • RedDawn [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Putin tricked us into thinking he was doing an anti-imperialism by checks notes doing an anti-imperialism. Damn, we've been had, we're such gullible fools.

            • RedDawn [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              All wars are actually the same. Imperialism is when countries do things.

              • LeninsRage [he/him]
                ·
                2 years ago

                Of course they're not the same. Theres a meaningful difference between a civil war where one side is moderate liberals fundamentalist jihadist militias who will execute you for wearing the wrong color hijab in their neighborhood and a brutal minoritarian dictatorship who will shock your testicles until you admit to crimes against the regime for opposing them but are otherwise secular; and a war of aggression launched because the aggressive party feels threatened and wants to keep their sphere of influence (and capitalist plunder) secure from a superior competing camp.

                Yeah, there's context in between both of those, but at the end of the day that's what this is.

                • RedDawn [he/him]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  and a war of aggression launched because the aggressive party feels threatened and wants to keep their sphere of influence (and capitalist plunder) secure from a superior competing camp

                  Not even remotely reasonable analysis tbh. How do you feel about the DPR and LPR declaring indepence from the Ukraine after the US backed coup led to Nazis persecuting the Russian minority in the country? Since that's how this conflict started...

                  And

                  feels threatened

                  How do you analyze the credibility of the threat? Were they actually trying to protect a "sphere of influence" or protect their own security from an existential threat like, say, a rapidly militarizing state on their border run by Nazis and literally artillery shelling along their own borders?

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

                    Square me the circle of why the DNR and LNR secessions are legitimate while those in Dixie, Chechnya, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong are not.

      • TankieTanuki [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        When Russia provided military aid to Venezuela at the request of Maduro to resist the coup attempt, the US media called it Russian imperialism, but that seems more like anti-imperialism to me.

        • jabrd [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I mean that’s siding with anti-imperialism for realpolitik reasons but it’s still for the sake of cracking up US hegemony to allow Russian ascendancy. The invasion of Ukraine has made it more than apparent that Putin sees Russia as having a sphere of influence where it can dictate terms for the nations around it and will enforce that understanding violently. That’s textbook imperialism akin to the early US dictating terms in Latin America.

          And yea that’s all because Russia was rejected from the kool kids (k)table at nato but the response has not been to adopt a left wing anti-imperialist stance

          • RedDawn [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            The invasion of Ukraine has little to do with "dictating terms" or creating a sphere of influence, they're protecting their own country from imperial USA which has spent most of the last decade militarizing Ukraine after engineering a coup there to make the government rabidly anti-russia. I'm sorry but it's bananas to compare the Ukraine situation to the US/Latin America relationship and its equally ridiculous to call actions which are clearly anti-imperialist in their effects just the same as imperialism because of whatever you imagine the motivation for those actions to be. This is how we get things like claims of Cuban imperialism.

          • A_Serbian_Milf [they/them]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Caring about intent is idealism, caring about outcomes is materialism. You don’t have to like Putin to realize we have to work with him (we, as in the global left and AES) and that he has been a reliable ally

            • Ligma_Male [comrade/them]
              ·
              2 years ago

              work with

              :yikes-1: :yikes-2: :yikes-3:

              if putin wants to help us that's great, we'll take it, but if he ever comes around asking for anything, fuck him, he's got feet and he can kick rocks.

              • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                2 years ago

                I mean if you're in a global south country that the US doesn't like or care about, you're kind of forced to work with Russia and Putin, as much as it sucks. See Venezuela, Cuba, etc. China is non interventionist so it's not an option.

                Sometimes the outcomes are good, sometimes they are shit.

              • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
                ·
                2 years ago

                but if he ever comes around asking for anything, fuck him, he’s got feet and he can kick rocks.

                I'm sure that Vlad is devastated that he cant rely on the proven track record of the Western Left.

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Putin is, at the very least, anti-hegemonic in the sense that he falls squarely in the bloc opposing the current hegemonic powers. Whether or not he's also anti-imperialistic is up for debate, but personally anti-hegemonic countries are relatively rare and any which fall into that camp deserve at least critical support.

      • spring_rabbit [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Fighting against imperialism is actually just imperialism, if your intentions aren't pure.

        • jabrd [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Supporting my anti-imperialist comrades in ISIS as they undermine American hegemony

          • spring_rabbit [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Undermining American hegemony by...destabilizing a region that America benefits from being unstable? Not really the same situation. Russia is actually doing real harm to our ability to maintain a global stranglehold. That is a good thing, even if Putin is otherwise a shitty reactionary capitalist.

            • jabrd [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              But that’s my point, he is a reactionary. A meteor isn’t anti-imperialist if it lands in the north atlantic. Anti-imperialism is a coherent political project that Putin isn’t taking part in. There might be overlapping goals/methods, but Putin’s political project is a just a competing imperial power. There’s no victory for the left in Russia’s victory as much as there absolutely is one in America’s defeat

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

                You are forcing your conclusion with your chosen analogy. That meteor would be anti-imperialist IF it was forced into hitting the North Atlantic because the North Atlantic cornered it and was antagonizing it. Russia against the US isn’t random

                Anti-imperialism means you fight against the hegemonic empire. Period, that is it. Intention is not relevant

                • jabrd [he/him]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  Marx failed to consider that the meteor is, in fact, anti-imperialist

                  • crime [she/her, any]
                    ·
                    2 years ago

                    "...feudal system in which even the homeless vagabonds, the comets, have been apportioned their station in life and in which, for example, the shattered asteroids bear witness to occasional unpleasant scenes, while the meteors, those fallen angels, creep shamefaced through the “Infinite space”, until they find somewhere or other a modest lodging."

                    from Vol II of The German Ideology

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

            ISIS is American-backed imperialist force, and Russia crushed it

            Another point in our favor, not yours

        • A_Serbian_Milf [they/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Here come the westoids to divine the intent of nations outside the core and judge them for their lack of purity

            • RedDawn [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Yeah, it's a shitty capitalist oligarchy and Putin is awful and homophobic. That doesn't mean that when they do a thing which is anti-imperialist, you look at the action itself and say "oh actually this action is bad and imperialist because the country or person doing it is bad".

                • RedDawn [he/him]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  Definitely, I'm 100% on board with that, obviously. Fuck Putin and the Russian government for being awful to our LGBT comrades.

      • A_Serbian_Milf [they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Tell me, how imperialist was the stabilization of Syria, and the destruction of color revolutions in Belarus and Kazakhstan?

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Yeah. Just look at how badly Russia faired in Mozambique with the Wagner group fools. They seem to be doing better in central and west Africa though

        I'd still like a multipolar world though. Even if It's still a capitalist hellscape, at least it's better than what we have now.

        • jabrd [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          A multipolar world would be nice because it would actually allow opportunity for the left as things crack up but yea there will be plenty of other actors also interested in that opportunity