So, in my circles of friends, I am the most terminally online person. I remember being a soc-demmy kinda person (who called themselves socialist) when I joined r/cth when it hit 69,420 members.
Now here I am with opinions like "Stalin and the USSR weren't so bad" and "The tanks rolling into Hungary in 1956 were correct, actually". I feel like the community here on hexbear has kinda shifted in the same way. That said, we've steered clear of the patsoc menace, who aesthetically venerate AES while following the most regressive social/nationalist opinions of what they think of as the working class.
This has somewhat put me at odds with a lot of my RL friends, who are anarchists or trots of varying degrees. I'm generally not down with getting into spats with said RL friends, so I keep a lot of my opinions to myself. This is especially onerous with opinions about the Ukraine war.
How did I end up here? How did we..? I remember back on r/cth the line "This is enough to turn me into a tankie", or some such thing, as though being a tankie was just socialism + willingness to use violence to achieve it.
I can remember online anarchists posting fairly high profile Ls that I think split actual anarchists and left-liberals who just liked to call themselves anarchists (and now online anarchists who really like NATO? idk). But those events had a lot of people shy away from the anarchist label and kinda mull about their own beliefs. The main ones off the top of my head were CHAZ, Vaush audience watchers, and the anti-work breakdown. Certainly, I remember r/cth being a lot more awash with anarchist rhetoric and population (claimed or otherwise) than hexbear currently is.
I don't want this to be a sectarian rant session, but more a reflection of political journeys from r/cth's medicare for all socdem position to the current vibes of hexbear, both personal and pontifications of why this shift occurred.
This isn't the be-all and end-all of my thoughts of my own political evolution. I'll comment some more as I think of them (in between cleaning for rent inspection)
Honestly, a lot has happened in the last two years and I think people are getting more accustomed to the idea that you might have to be more tankie in order to get shit done.
Yes, pretty much this. I'm totally willing to organize with people of any leftist tendency that isn't reactionary, but deep inside it just kinda feels like unless you plan to use the state to suppress fascism you're gonna be neck deep in the mud of reaction.
Even within self-described leftist circles there's often at least one or two nazbols that just want to LARP in Soviet uniforms but otherwise violently hate anyone who isn't almost exactly like themselves and have nothing ideologically in common with leftists except wearing the label like a skin-suit. :sus-soviet:
Our position hasn’t shifted that much from the pod’s position.
The pod has a semi-ironic veneration of China, per the Wolf Warrior episode. It hates the entire US establishment. It wants Iran to get a nuke. Much of its stance is based on opposing what the most awful people in Amerikkka support.
That’s not to say we follow the pod’s marching orders. Rather, we get to the same place for much the same reasons.
The Ukrainian issue is probably the best example of this. No one here’s super pro Putin or his brand of Russian nationalism. When the war started, we were deep into ‘lol there’s not gonna be a war’. We had to eat humble pie, hard.
You know what changed?
Ukrainian flag emojis.
The worst people in the world, with the absolute worst takes, went hard on the Ukraine side.
Was the war a bad idea? Quite possibly. It’ll likely settle into a frozen conflict again, much like it was before, with similar territory, at the cost of a lot of lives.
But seeing people go around, pretending there wasn’t Ukrainian shelling of the Donbas? Pretending Putin hadn’t been pushing for Minsk II to be implemented as agreed? Saying that Putin wants to wage a genocide against Ukraine? Seeing everyone bend over backwards to apologise for literal neo-Nazis?
Fuck that.
Ayatollah Khameini: "WMDs are against Islam and Iran will never get a nuke"
A bunch of terminally online anti-imperialist freaks: "GET A NUKE! GET A NUKE!"
Isnt their official position that having the technical skill to make a nuke is enough of a nuclear deterent?
They have said they are ready to build a nuke at a moments notice and hold that as a threat for leverage. You can’t take the religious decrees as seriously as the realist geopolitics
I don't remember the pod :citations-needed: having a "Wolf Warrior" episode.
They kind of avoid revealing their power levels most of the time. Like you could show them to libs without raising any eyebrows
I mean theyre anti imperialist socdems at worst. Thats usually the biggest hurdle
I was an anarchist r/cth user.
I am now a tankie hexbear user.
Most leftists in the west simply aren’t exposed to the absolute statistical triumphs of AES states in doing the things leftists want to see happen.
:CommiePOGGERS:
For me, it was two big things in the last couple of years that shifted my politics from a kind of bourgeois-idealist form of Marxism to what I think of as a more properly communist kind. Firstly, seeing how the entire capitalist class mobilised against Corbyn made me realise that a left wing candidate would never be permitted to win an election in the imperial core. For me, it suggested that bourgeois democracy is essentially a scam. The press coverage of that and other things such as the coup in Bolivia brought about a fundamental loss of faith in the underlying 'truths' that structure western narratives about history, politics, society, etc. This led to the second thing: I started to read far more about history (and particularly the history of left wing movements and states) and this gave me a far more nuanced view of AES states. It made me recognise the positive aspects of these states as well as their flaws, and gave me a better understanding of the contexts that they operated in. It made me realise that they (largely - I mean, there's little to redeem, for example, the Khmer Rouge) were far from the monsterous regimes that the dominant histories taught in the liberal democratic 'west' made them out to be. And, in fact, that this monsterous image involved a large amount of projection on the part of the 'west'. This also got me reading the work of communist theorists that I'd not picked up before due to the prejudices of my cultural upbringing. In particular, I started reading Lenin for the first time, in whose work I found a description of liberal (i.e. bourgeois) democracy that felt instinctively true based upon my experiences of the bourgeois state - just as Marx's Capital had felt instinctively true with regards to my experiences of work.
In terms of the site, I'd speculate that the shift from r/cth to here is partly a result of the struggle sessions that took place in the early days of the site and who emerged as the dominant groups, as well as the result of the tendencies of the admins/mods at that time who played a big role in shaping what this site would become. It's probably also a result of the kinds of self-selection that happen when you get banned from a mass media site and start your own small forum. I imagine a lot of the more 'normie' users on r/cth didn't come over in the first place. At this point, I also think this site would be off-putting for a lot of more liberal left types, purely because of the degree to which a lot of people on here stan China. Honestly, I find it a bit much sometimes, even if I welcome China's challenge to US hegemony. In the end, I find those users much less annoying than I would the average liberal with their tacit (often explicit) apologia for imperialism, and I also know I agree with them on more fundamental issues (i.e. we are all on the far left here). However, I think that also has contributed to the radicalisation of the site (or whatever you want to call it), because most of my liberal left friends will immediately dissociate with any movement, group, etc. that doesn't fit within the boundaries of their existing belief system, and they believe that China is undertaking a genocide. Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc. are big enough that those people don't see those sites as monolithic, so even though those sites are filled with actual fascists, and in the case of (at least) Facebook have helped to facilitate actual genocides, they'll use them because they see them as just platforms, while a site like this is seen as tainted by apologia. I'm sure most of you know which of your friends you could show this place and which you couldn't without it being an issue
For me, it suggested that bourgeois democracy is essentially a scam.
The thing about bourgeois democracy is something that libs love pointing out to themselves but don't truly understand. "We're a republic, not a democracy", they say. You don't vote for a peer to represent you, you vote for a member of the bourgeois to represent you, hence "bourgeois democracy" describes it well, it is not democracy for you, it's democracy for them, the dictators over you.
Politicians are often not bourgeois, and act more as labor-aristocratic agents of the bourgeois much like corporate lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, financial analysts, police, etc.
It’s definitely a liberal axiom that the people actually making decisions are the same ones as the ones giving speeches on TV, but this is just false. They actually believe US politicians wield any power at all, and thus they can make reforms within the political apparatus using their “representatives” as a tool.
The cold hard fact of the matter is that individual US politicians only stay in their positions as long as they are serving the interests of the actual monied decision makers, otherwise they get the boot. Thus it is actually impossible to reform a Liberal bourgeois system from within short of a highly organized mass movement that entirely changes the composition of the political classes and wields labor power as a cudgel (such as we saw in Venezuela and Bolivia). The actual system of power does not have inputs from the political theater, it has inputs from capital.
I would argue the Venezuelan/Bolivian strategy is only viable for a nation that is on the receiving end of imperialist attacks, as it requires a coalition with national bourgeois. Within an imperialist nation the national bourgeois’s interests are aligned with the international bourgeoise so it won’t get very far at all.
My hypothesis: if you're in a western country, then the fact that there is no mass-movement aligned with the left means that your politics are the result of your personal reading, gut feelings and the crowd you fall in with. The place we're all at right now, with the tankies arguing with the radlibs arguing with the anarchists, is the result of everyone breaking off into atomized enclaves and looking for meaning and organization where there is none - it's almost like a holding pattern for leftists until we manage to coalesce something greater that will draw everyone in.
The closest thing we've had to a real social movement to draw everyone together was the Bernie campaign, and I would bet a very shiny nickel that a ton of people currently on this site who would condemn Bernie in an instant for voting to destroy Yugoslavia were saying a lot of extremely SocDem shit when that campaign was at its peak. That's because it felt like the moment we all want to happen, but of course it was defeated by capital and dissolved away instead of sticking around because it didn't have the staying power of a successful mass movement, ie one that can stick around through a nominal defeat and keep growing.
What will actually work? Fuck I don't fukken know. Maybe when the climate apocalypse starts and people are forced to work together for their own survival the kinds of social structures that I'm talking about will be formed, but I really hope something sticks before then. Or maybe all we need is a big injection of Chinese funding, like what the US did for the Taliban.
I would bet a very shiny nickel that a ton of people currently on this site who would condemn Bernie in an instant for voting to destroy Yugoslavia were saying a lot of extremely SocDem shit when that campaign was at its peak.
China is a big part of the reason the Sino-Soviet split happened, breaking the socialist camp and losing most of Asia. It outright sided with the USA. Then it invaded Vietnam to boot.
And yet we Stan China. Because, as the libs like to say, you’ve gotta be realistic.
If a Bernie-esque figure popped up again, I’d give support. I wouldn’t be as hopeful as last time, but shit, it’s not like there’s a whole lot of choice right now.
My hypothesis: if you’re in a western country, then the fact that there is no mass-movement aligned with the left means that your politics are the result of your personal reading, gut feelings and the crowd you fall in with
I would frankly be much more likely to identify as a Marxist Leninist if there was an ML(M) party in my country that was doing fucking of The Anything you hear about them doing in other countries. They literally just suck money and volunteer hours out of the working class and hand nothing back.
i was anti-bernie during the 2016 campaign because i thought he was a running dog for the democrats lol. if anything my views on him and other left-liberal establishment figures have become more pragmatic.
I still think a Bernie win would have been a real victory bc if any of his agenda passed it would give people more breathing room where they could organize, and if it didn't pass people would be radicalized by the obstruction. Also, I secretly write fanfic about Comrade Bernard calling a general strike from the Oval Office.
if any of his agenda passed it would give people more breathing room where they could organize
This is such a huge thing. Historically, small victories pave the way for big ones, every time. It takes a concerted effort or a big shift in conditions to stop the momentum of a progressive movement once that ball gets rolling.
yeah I've noticed the NATO-ification and V**sh-ification of online anarchist spaces. Most of the people I know who call themselves anarchists outside of hexbear are run of the mill succdems who just like anarchist aesthetics. They parrot every US State Department talking point on every other country, who haven't read any theory and claim to hate all states equally (thereby siding with the great satan by default) instead of developing more nuanced views of foreign policy here.
My guess is that there's a certain pernicious individualism that they haven't been challenged to shake off because most of the other people in their orbit are also succdems who like anarchist aesthetics.
It's much harder to find actual anarchists on the internet at large than it is to find MLs, cause basically all revolutionary leftists immediately get called tankies by these larping succdems
getting invested in electoral politics and repeatedly seeing
:back-to-me:
definitely did something to me
most people are unironic NPCs who literally don't fucking know anything
to people who know basic things, incredibly popular statements like "China is responsible for global warming" is like saying 2 + 2 = -89347
when you realize how utterly depraved, mindless, and reality-denying the average frothing-at-the-mouth english-speaker on the internet is, you naturally begin to question all the other assumptions that you absorbed just by being in their vicinity.
One of the most common traits among those people is an unexamined belief that they are the epic hero in their own story, that everyone else is the "NPC," and that they are too logical and rational to be susceptible to psychological manipulation.
they are too logical and rational to be susceptible to psychological manipulation.
It's much better to know that you're vulnerable to psychological manipulation and curate your intake of propaganda accordingly.
I consumed way too much GI Joe in my childhood and thought it'd be cool to "defend human freedom against Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world" (that had most of the cool characters, but I digress) to consider myself immune to unexamined ideology.
that everyone else is the “NPC,”
true, but IAP
anyone who claims that "aLL PLaStIC poLLuTioN cOMeS frOM aFRICa aND AsIA" is literally just an NPC
Honestly, looking into Soviet history with JoeySteel as abit of a guide (R.I.P. a sectarian legend) helped a lot. I don't agree with everything he said and believed but he really got me to rexamine where I was getting my historical information on AES states from and what their actual history, organizational methods and popularity comes from.
That and really coming around the the fact that people in the U.S. just don't remember anything about what happened 2 years ago (especially the professional class) so why would I expect them to know anything about a country they have been told was evil since they were born.
I think one of the big things for me was that a lot of anarchists were willing to believe every lie about the soviet union and propagate those lies, acting as though the US was somehow closer to anarchism or socialism than the USSR was. That turned me off at least identifying with any online anarchist label. Blackshirts and Reds was a part of debunking a lot of cultural beliefs about the USSR.
Looking down at places like Cuba because they didn't fit your ideal revolutionary model also didn't help (trots and anarchists).
For my part, I've just been turned off by too many scene 'anarchists' to really find any use in the label. I have my own quandaries about the ideology, and good organizing anarchists are worth their weight in gold, but I've met too many rich kids who revel in... Idk what to call it, "artistic poverty", without any ideas for a system to be self replicating. Basically, no different systemically than any non-political punk flop house, which are notoriously unstable.
As for the trots, the fact that they are so fractious and many of the early adopters transitioned so seamlessly into being neo-cons always has turned me off to the ideology. Again, a good organizing trot is worth their weight in gold, but if they ever got into power I firmly feel like their foreign policy would differ very little from the status quo, which essentially makes them esoteric soc-dems by my estimation.
I do not understand PatSoc's obsession with regressive idpol and find there to be no inherent systemic reasons for LGBTQ causes not to be a solid plinth on which a modern communist party can help support itself. Just because other Communist parties were or became reactionary about those ideas doesn't mean we need to, especially now that we have entire histories of sexuality to study from and understand this phenomena (much of which was pioneered by East Germany, R.I.P.).
That being said, I really hesitate to call myself a 'communist' because I do not have a party with mass line or dem-central organizing principles that I adhere to. I would like to find such an organization, but the ones I do find that have that such struggle maintaining presence outside of their enclaves (looking at you PSL and DSA). That and being openly communist around here is a good way to put a target on your back.
Idk, I would say that I'm basically a syndicalist with incredibly pro-ML and AES opinions these days. So, you know, a liberal.
For my part, I’ve just been turned off by too many scene ‘anarchists’ to really find any use in the label.
The biggest thing that's put me off of Anarchism has been trying to run meetings and finding out that most people have no idea how to do that, and no interest in learning. I'm sure that's largely just the group I was with, but trying to get people to even commit to discussing an issue was like pulling teeth and herding cats at the same time. I still think Anarchist modes of organizing can work but I now recognize that it requires a lot of education to get people ideologically committed to the idea of a flat democracy or consensus organizing structure. You can't just do it with randos, people need to read theory and make a commitment.
Yeah people really hate the meta conversation of organization. Having to talk about how to talk about stuff really bores people, but it's impossible to get stuff done without it. That said, Roberts Rules of Order or whatever the DSA uses is absolutely rife with student body nerds who just bog down the proceedings. Always hated dealing with those people in admin in college and they are no less insufferable outside of it.
Roberts Rules of Order
Word. Robert's Rules are more of a weapon for taking over and dominating an organization than a map for actually making meetings work. I've used it, but only in small groups where there was a lot of good faith.
Marxist-Leninist is the end of the pipeline and terminally online users from the CTH days have been around long enough they have mostly hit the end by now
Just waiting for enough of the western left to catch up
Brace on the CTH ep went on the rant about being "normal" which I support. Even if you're a hardcore ML your first priority is to just act normal. Probably includes subduing some stalin-was-right takes.
If I read I'd probably be more of a trotsky.
The difference is on this small niche website for 18 active users we don't have to be a big tent for anybody. Peer pressure crowding out other views.
hehe... the success of hexbear dot net is that there's only 50 of us and each of our thousand alts, we truly are our own best friend. :data-laughing:
Unfortunately, I was fucking weird way before I paid attention to politics. :(
i mean, if your friends also have weird made up politics, i think that gives license to go a little koo koo bananas on them. but in a fun and cute way ideally.
now that I'm basically middle aged I realize that there is a certain type of uncle who shoehorns political ranting anywhere it can barely fit.
It doesn't really matter that "but I'm actually right" because people don't know that and it looks exactly the same as a disgruntled uncle aka disgruncle.
"If I read I’d probably be more of a Trotsky[ist]"
Opposite for me lol
And also I unironically disagree, that was lame. Be wierd who gives a fuck, have an outburst here and there . Constantly"being normal" is what pushes a lot of people to keep their politics away from their daily lives, and just in general talking about"being normal" being the guiding center of your life is so binal. And yes you can "be wierd" and organize .
I completely agree as well! Also what you wrote about not getting into vicious spouts with everyone one disagrees on things with (let's just say with people who excuse western imperialism and particularly American crimes) is something I had to work on when I was younger . I think all this is more about "growing up" rather then an obsession with conforming and "being normal" honestly . At the same time don't be afraid to get mad when appropriate. It's all a chaotic balancing act I suppose lol .
There used to be a lot more anarchists here, there's just no real reason to post about Anarchism specifically because most either left or are not looking for that content here because it started as an 80+% Marxist space and has only tilted further in that direction. I don't think that people are "scared off" of anarchism, and I certainly don't think CHAZ or Vaush is having that noticeable of an impact on the Actual Anarchist Movement.
With the whole NATO/vaush thing, I very much see this as astroturfing. We're only 2 years out from 2020. There's not way the intelligence apparatus isn't trying to infiltrate and deradicalize anarchists after that whole Black Scare thing during the Trump presidency
Hmm, I remember r/cth having a much higher proportion of anarchisty type people (and libs). May be misremembering though
on /r/cth, yes, that's a consequence of still being on reddit. this site however has always been majority Marxist. This probably had a non-zero amount to do with all the secretarianism in the discord server, before this site was up.
Sure, that's what I'm asking. I personally moved here from the discord because I find discord intolerable to read (especially being awake during off hours to read things, then having anything I said ignored, or chat just moving too fast to interact).
Right, well, I can't remember exactly what happened, but one mod of the anarchism channel got accused of being a pedo for drawing furry art, and there was also constant accusations that an "anarchist cabal" was infiltrating Chapo to????? they were never very clear about that. There was also quite literally earnest-posting about how it was unfair that some of the anarchists knew each other previously and linking to the "Tyranny of the Structure-less" article.
By the time the site was actually coded and running, probably more than 50% of the anarchists in the discord had either muted and forgot or left the server
I apparently missed out on some discord drama and now I'm a tankie :/
i think generally in terms of Personal Journeys, its hard to not live through the last 5 years (or really lifetimes for most of us) and not get more radical. Scodem as an ideology is inherently full of contradictions so they can really radicalize in any direction, but given all the attributes that make up the character of Chapo/Hexbear, it makes sense that most wound up turning towards Actual Marxism.
It's interesting to think about. Maybe if, after the r/cth was banned, I'd hung out on Vaush streams and felt accepted/validated there, I'd have different political beliefs and be a different person. That said, I think the same thing about a career in software engineering panning out or whatever. Lots of forks in the road. I do find it interesting (if somber) to discuss. Would you say you've changed over the last four years much?
2020 was a wake up call for me, revitalizing. I first got involved in leftism in 2014 in the original BLM uprising. After about a half a decade of street politics it was taking its toll on me, I was just trying to survive, not doing much activism.
I'm much more militant and driven. I don't really care about having an org behind my back if none of the orgs in the area are doing the Actual Work. I'm educating and feeding people with a crew of homies. I don't really care about holding down a job or going to jail anymore.
It was really just anarchist ~> more extreme anarchist. 10 years might be a more interesting/narrative story
I was "apolitical", but a lot of people cared about Hillary v Trump in 2016 and I got caught up in that. After that, I rode the Bernie train; being in a country with welfare and healthcare meant that those seemed like an obvious good, and it was wild to me how obstinate Americans were against either. Like, did anyone enjoy American healthcare? What even is a "deductible"? I think at some point or another watching youtube video essayists, I got recommended a chapo podcast (I think it was the conservative comics one), and I was kinda sucked in to the irreverence. I think I'd been hanging around a lot of hippies and well-meaning civility libs, always taking the high road and admonishing everyone who doesn't. Being able to let loose, sneer, and be sarcastic was extremely refreshing. After that, it was a bunch of listening and eventually joining the subreddit.
I was a libertarian (by default) when I started university back in 2006. Incel adjacent around 2012. So, you know, progress.
Kinda similar. I was basically just a succdem who voted for Bernie in the 2016 primary, Hillary in the 2020 general. I was on some lib forums, and started getting annoyed by the vitriol that Hillary supporters were giving towards Bernie and his supporters, for ridiculous reasons (like he "poisoned the well" for Hillary, or he basically did anything other than say "you should vote for her, not me".) I found r/cth, never looked back.
So thanks libs, if you didn't misdirect your anger, I might still be on your side.
I’d hung out on Vaush streams and felt accepted/validated there
This always scares the shit out of me. I'm pretty confidant about my conclusions regarding politics, but what if I'd taken a different path? What if the Vaush losers got me, or I was somehow brain programmed by the K-hive?
its hard to not live through the last 5 years (or really lifetimes for most of us) and not get more radical.
Watching the entire US political, financial, and cultural establishment reach out and crush a succdem candidate who wanted to make some mild social reforms that would ultimately have helped Capital far more than it hurt left only three possibilities; Denial, doomerism, or radicalization.
that sounds really funny, but i'm glad i wasn't on the discord before coming here
yea v-word is an online microcelebrity who doesn't get play within the real milieu which largely exists outside of twitch.org
Witnessing china’s covid response vs basically the rest of the world did it for me
This was the thing that comforted me in this quite a bit as well. The usual liberal response - or even sometimes the one from people I consider leftists - is "they must hide their numbers". Thing is, even if China's deaths were like 20 times worse than the official numbers (which I highly doubt at this point), in terms of death per population it would still be an incredible win comparatively with the west.
And if the numbers were even higher, you just couldn't hide them. Chinese people are on fucking reddit, twitter, and the like (admittedly as a minority, but they're there). You just know every mainstream news source in the West would've jumped at any evidence of China hiding million-strong casualties from the pandemic (for that would be the number, if their handling of this crisis had been even half as bad as the West's - we're at 1+M dead in the US with like 20% the population of China).
There still are a lot of problems with China (like the death penalty for one), but mostly the existence of such a state brings hope - hope that's swiftly crushed by the ongoing mass extinction and climate apocalypse, but still. And yeah, Cuba is also a blatant example IMO.
Yep. I was a "socialism from below" Trot until I saw how China handled Covid.
Maybe a quick summary of the last 2 1/2 years?
1- I'd highlight the US mishandling COVID specialy when compared to China zero COVID policy. A lot of western sucdems may want healthcare and college but a significant number of them just don't understand that this isn't enough. How many people complained about masks and vaccines, even among those that accepted using them at some point? "Authoritarianism" means just having a functional government with the actual power to force people, but specialy corporations to do shit for the sake of the greater good. Also don't forget the incredibly Chinese initial response, they built a hospital in 7 days.
With the media and reddit trying to blame and shame China for actualy trying to save lives this was a turning point for the anti-China narrative. Being a tankie started to become just being someone that likes to see the government actualy care about saving people and building hospitals etc.
2- The realization that Biden and the harm reduction narrative was bullshit. Between COVID and the supreme court. If you were here from the beginning you'll remember the struggle sessions over this back then.
3- The obvious Ukraine war kind of forced a lot of people here to have more commited views. The initial reaction of "war is bad" was very popular here, but eventualy(with some persuasion) people had to realize that this is not a viable position in the long term.
Certainly any revolution would be incredibly bloody and if you can't stand war then that already limits any type of revolutionary action.
Over the months many important things happened, I think the most important fact that shaped the narrative was that the AES were all positioning either in favor of Russia or at least focusing in strong anti-US/NATO messaging. This was during the initial media blitz remember the Putler shit, genocide claims, the embarrassing Ukrainians becoming white Europeans overnight while other immigrants got fucked, the libs all jumping over themselves to sound like this "war in Europe" was such a bad thing even though Israel exists, even though Syria/Iraq etc etc. The moment you tell these people "hey can you take 5 minutes to learn about what was happening in Ukraine since 2014" they either change their mind or go into super aggressive NPC mode.
And realy with all the evidence so readily available thanks to simple google searches, anyone trying to deny Ukraine wasn't literaly filled with Nazis ended up being ridiculed.
Again this was another moment where you have to decide if you are going to follow what other socialists or third world leftists are saying or are you going to still support meaningless anti-war/violence statments or worse support imperialist sucdem positions.
The end result is you have the entire Bernie camp against Russia and the war vs the entire AES/third worldists in favor of Russia and the war.
I feel like we were already primed not to blame covid on China before it became a thing.
This all compounds in an interesting way- based on the V***sh user responses after the CDC rolling back quarantine guidance you'd think they were entirely libs ready to get back to brunch. :thinking-about-it: Being plugged into mainstream news sources and accepting them uncritically really molds what you consider 'acceptable'
