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")
If so — China: gayest country in the world, becoming even gayer by fastest pace
Now ask the Chinese boomers how they feel about boy band shippers.
Quick, get a chud to do a political cartoon of a windmill with heavy makeup asking to be blown.
Of course Putin is just a reactionary, shouldn't be a surprise to anyone
: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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
All wars are actually the same. Imperialism is when countries do things.
Of course they're not the same. Theres a meaningful difference between a civil war where one side is
moderate liberalsfundamentalist 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.
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?
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.
Any secession attempt brings into conflict certain ideals like that of self determination against that of national sovereignty. Some are obviously more legitimate than others, it depends upon the reasons for seceeding and how the people living in the affected area feel about it, I don't see how that is even controversial, but I asked specifically how you feel about the DPR and LPR declaring indepence and holding territory over the last 8 years so I can better understand how you've come to the conclusion that Russia getting involved in that armed conflict constitutes imperialism and a "war of aggression".
Taiwan isn't a secession. They literally claim the mainland, Mongolia and other parts as theirs. China freed Tibet from feudalism. HK was colonized by the British.
Right I didn't get into each specific case he mentioned because he hasn't yet explained his thoughts on DPR/LPR which is what we were talking about but Hong Kong LOL nobody there even wants to break away from China, that's just completely misinterpreting the protests. Also Dixie "why is a bunch of slave owners trying to leave the country that looks headed to ban slavery less legitimate than people seceeding to not be murdered by Nazis hmm? Riddle me that ". This is the sort of thinking that idealism and refusing a principled anti-imperialist line leads to.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
Not the opinion of Xi, Maduro, Kim, Diaz-Canal or any other socialist leader
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.
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.
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.
Fighting against imperialism is actually just imperialism, if your intentions aren't pure.
Supporting my anti-imperialist comrades in ISIS as they undermine American hegemony
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.
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
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
"...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."
ISIS is American-backed imperialist force, and Russia crushed it
Another point in our favor, not yours
Weird way of saying that ISIS was primarily crushed by communalist Kurds and others aligned with them in Northern Syria while Russia dicked around and bombed the people actually fighting ISIS.
Ask Assad and Soleimani who handles the ISIS problem. US proxies looting oil?
And why, exactly, should Assad and Soleimani be considered authoritative sources on this subject? Because you say so?
So you have no answer and want us to just take the word of two reactionaries?
Two heroes of the people against colonial fascism, who have done more for those resisting imperialism than anyone on this website or in American politics
Just take the word of DPRK, or PRC, or Cuba. DPRK has never been wrong on foreign policy and issues of imperialism before, and they all hold this stance
Why is it so hard just to get westerners to agree with foreign AES on issues of imperialism?
Two heroes of the people
Oh, you're a fascist. Cool. Don't think we welcome fascists here.
lol go fight for American proxies in Balkanized Syria and help loot oil and call yourself a libsoc, continue the grand western left tradition of always being wrong
Call me an Assadist, you know you wanna
Keep supporting the Islamic Republic and the eternal presidency of the Assad family. Such a supporter of the people and their revolution.
I'm not a libsoc, but I'm certainly a socialist. You seem to either be the world's most credulous socialist or a fascist.
Call me an Assadist. You yearn to. Take me back to 2016 before 99% of you lot realized you were wrong
There's no such thing as an Assadist. That would imply that the Assad family has any ideology beyond self-promotion and paranoia.
Killing isn't an ideology, it's an action. If Assad has any ideology at all, it is Alawi supremacist nationalism, but even that suggests far more belief in something than the man has ever demonstrated.
Bashar Al Assad is a flailing failure of a dictator who has shattered what remained of the economy he accidentally inherited from his father when his loser brother was turned into soup-like homogenate in the Swiss Alps. His father betrayed everyone he ever worked with and regularly backed supporting reactionary regimes throughout the region. He kills people because it is the only way to retain power. Most of the people he kills are Syrians.
Soleimani, at least, had an ideology. He was a member of the IRGC, the organization primarily responsible for the preservation of the Islamic State. A regime that ascended into power with the help of Marxists, then turned around and murdered them in the streets. The command of the IRGC is a profiteering elite permitted special monopolies over industrial interests. In short, it supports hyperexploitative capitalism mixed with reactionary bigotry. A great ideology for a "people's hero", I'm sure.
Anti-imperialism isn’t an ideology, it’s an action. That’s my point. The ones doing the actions are the ones you are attacking
In the case of Syria, the phrase you're looking for is: "The ones bombing the people who actually fought ISIS are doing so for totally anti-imperialist reasons, because anti-imperialism is when you bomb the people who are doing real, beneficial things for people, because America and dogs or something."
Hell, the fucking SDF is better at killing Turks than Assad is!
:PIGPOOPBALLS:
Everything you wrote is wrong. It was wrong 6 years ago, but then at least ignorance was understandable. Imagine being like this in 2022
Sorry to bring actual facts into things. I know you prefer it when reactionary leaders make up stories about how heroic they are while being bumbling fuckwits and anti-socialist monsters.
You are wrong on every count, you have no facts, and the Kurds are American imperialist proxies looting oil and food from starving Syrians. The CIA convinced you to support them lol you are that gullible. Next you will be supporting Hong Kongers
The "Kurds" are a diverse group of people who aren't just Kurds in Northern Syria who have fought ISIS and Turkey while Bashar Al-Assad pisses himself and declares it genius.
I don't give a fuck about Hong Kong one way or another. The advocates for independence are racist hypercapitalists. The CPC has absolutely shat the bed in managing the social problems created by Hong Kong's predatory capitalism, and that resulted in what it always results in: reactionary revolts.
Use context clues, we are obviously discussing the Syrian Kurds and their imperialistic opportunistic allegiance with the American military
Well, I was pushing back on "the Kurds" as a description of the SDF, since it isn't particularly accurate.
And imperialism is when people surrounded by stronger enemies take whatever help they can get, huh? You'd fucking hate most revolutionary-period communist parties if you held them to that standard.
Sounds like something a comprador would say
Why were fellow Syrians "enemies" while American fascist pig invader genociders were "whatever help they could get".
Why was this not inverted?
Yeah, it's totally being a comprador if someone is supporting actual socialists over your insane delusions.
Aiding imperialist invaders for your own personal advancement is the definition of being a comprador
Ah, yes, the "personal advancement" of revolutionary socialism. That's something a sane, consistent person would totally say.
I don't see any socialism happening, just redistribution of looted imperial plunder among a small ethnic clique
what part of "dont be a proxy of the imperialist hegemon, ever, or don't whine about consequences if you do" is hard to understand?
That's because you know absolutely nothing about Rojava and you're still talking out of your ass while pretending that the coalition of people there, including a number of different ethnicities, is doing what the state you actually support does: loot the natural resources of Syria to advance a small ethnic clique to the detriment of all other Syrians. That's the Assad government you're describing.
YPG/YPJ work with SDF to safeguard American convoys of YPG/YPJ controlled oil (that was not theirs at the start of the conflict) out into Iraq.
Do you agree or disagree that this is happening?
Unclear whether it is still happening, given the current conditions, but it certainly has happened in the past.
Revolutionary socialists selling oil to fund their resistance to two reactionary regimes? Oh no! That's only good when Venezuela does it!
Now who had the oil before, huh? What were they doing with it? Funding an insane hyper-salafist theocratic hell you say? Obviously it is worse that socialists have that oil!
Perhaps you mean before ISIS? Exactly what you accused the YPG/YPJ of doing! Looting that oil to enrich a small ethnic minority!
It sucks that the US are involved, but I support actual existing socialism, not incoherent "anti-imperialism" that has done nothing to harm the hegemon.
Were other "revolutionary socialists" propped up militarily by US army and airforce? Supplying them bases while they are invading a nation, balkanizing it?
I can think of one revolutionary socialist regime that was dependent on US military support to prop it up against a reactionary regime determined to crush it in order to advance the interests of a racial elite, yes. I imagine you could, too, if you thought about it for a moment.
For all your accusations that the western left is too purist, you are the one being a purist when actual existing socialism exists and depends on whatever help it can get to protect itself from reactionary regimes that wish to smash it. Obviously, the US can't be trusted in that role, as it has already basically sold the YPG and SDF out to Turkey in order to get Finland and Sweden into NATO. You can certainly criticize the YPG for being foolish, but you are doing everything in your power to project the reality of the Assad regime onto the YPG, not criticizing it for foolishness.
You're a very skilled liar. You pivot away from anything inconvenient to you and constantly stay on the attack without ever actually saying anything of worth. Everything you accuse the YPG/SDF/Rojava of is the essence of how Assad's government operates. You will continue not to address this reality, because you know it is true.
One of the hosts of one of the podcasts people like on here did actually go to Syria to fight for the Kurds.
Though that was before US involvement I think
Here come the westoids to divine the intent of nations outside the core and judge them for their lack of purity
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".
Definitely, I'm 100% on board with that, obviously. Fuck Putin and the Russian government for being awful to our LGBT comrades.
Tell me, how imperialist was the stabilization of Syria, and the destruction of color revolutions in Belarus and Kazakhstan?
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.
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
Yeah. I think I need to read Samir Amin's "Beyond US Hegemony: Assessing the Prospects for a Multipolar World" again
Something to fall back on if he gets tired of the president thing
:shocked-pikachu: The anti-communist post soviet leader that the US created is a piece of shit?!
Something something :stalin-pipe:'s word on the matter. I have no doubt media outlets are going to use this to further promote rainbow imperialism.
That said, I'd be very hesitant to give too much leeway, let alone put actual support/backing behind Putin, given the nature of Russia seeming contrary to those conditions as originally described. Russia is only "anti-imperialist" in that they aren't let into the big boy club at the risk of America losing its hegemony over it. Russia has its own imperial ambitions as far as Africa despite being cornered, and I'd compare them more to a rival power in an imperialist war a la the Kaiserreich (albeit much weaker) than a nation resisting global imperialism like the Emirate of Afghanistan or the Irish Republicans. As you've said, the leftist movements within Russia should be the ones we look to. The emerging multipolarity that benefits actual non-imperialistic or even socialist nations is simply an accidental byproduct of the Russian invasion.
we're gonna get a whole load of :reddit-logo: posts with Putin in drag again, aren't we?
Still better foreign policy than every American politician, including AOC, Ilhan Omar and Bernie Sanders
and to think there are Putin Stans right here amongst us here on hexbear dot net
Does anyone here actually like Putin? I always thought it was critical support, with very heavy emphasis on the "critical"
Same deal as :assad-must-stay: basically. Just because we support him in the context of a particular conflict doesn't mean he's a good person.
I'mma be real with you: the only reason I'm not regularly hypercritical of Assad is the same reason I never announce that I have information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton.
there definitely was a handful of posters more on the uncritical side, but a lot of them got banned this/last month, and I assume are some of these new wreckers :shrug-outta-hecks:
There are at least a couple of people posting in this very thread whose stance on World War I would have been "critical support for the fucking Kaiserreich against perfidious Anglo-Franco-Russian imperialism"
There are at least a handful of people you've accused of such in this thread including me, but you're also just wrong and there's nobody actually like that in this thread, and the war in Ukraine is nothing close to resembling WW1 lol.
Is it bad to want your own empire to fail? Regardless of Russia's intentions, they are weakening America's ability to project force across the globe, and that's pretty cool.
Revolutionary defeatism means opposing your own nation. If you are a westerner that means supporting the downfall of the western imperialist bloc. It does NOT mean sitting on the fence or both sidesing the situation, it means taking material actions to hinder NATO war effort and support its enemies
WW1 was a world of competing imperialist powers. That world is gone. The current reality is a single monopoly hegemony, there are no competing imperialist powers of note. So not only is it the revolutionary duty of every Western socialist to try to throw a wrench in their own war machines, it is also the duty of every anti-imperialist on Earth to oppose the Anglo-American Atlantic empire.
An impure ally who raises a gun against colonizers is more of an anti-imperialist than the pure transcendent Western leftist unstained by conflict or blood. So yes, that does mean the correct stance is critical support for Russia and the destruction of the Ukrainian junta - and any communist party that does not have this line is sus
Mostly is just America bad, so trying to avoid siding with fascist Americans and Ukraine
It was hard to come out to my parents as LGBT. T, to be specific: tidal powered.
