EDIT: I'm very proud of this community. All the posts are making me think and solidly criticizing from an anti-imperialist perspective. Thanks, hexbear
EDIT: I'm very proud of this community. All the posts are making me think and solidly criticizing from an anti-imperialist perspective. Thanks, hexbear
Nope the western imperialist hegemony promoting fascists worldwide are actually the bad guys.
Especially if you are a western socialist, it is your international duty to first and foremost expose and attack YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT and not the government of the enemy you are at war with. This is revolutionary defeatism, and if you are “both sidesing” then you are continuing the chauvinist betrayal of western socialism
Yeah, excuse me while I don't pick my favorite reactionary capitalist government. Best you're gonna get from me is a "Let them fight", no matter how many insults you toss at me.
Idealist purity moralizing fencesitting. Continuing the beautiful centuries long tradition of the failed western left that refuses to engage with geopolitics, the real world and context. Isn’t it embarrassing to be part of this trot tradition of both-sidesing everything to be above it all and gaining nothing in reality?
Lol. Lmao, even.
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It gives me heart comfort to realize it’s not all socialists that are like this. There are principled communists in China, DPRK, Cuba, Vietnam and throughout the colonized world who know which side of the line to get on and how to engage dialectically with the world. This site is probably the best place in the English speaking internet and yet 50% of the population here is still chauvinist.
I really have no hope whatsoever for the western left until the west collapses and suffers deeply and is humiliated out of their brainworms of superiority (even the belief that any other entity on Earth is somewhat comparable to the American empire hegemony and colonial domination and murder/enslavement of millions is a form of brainworms. If they are ever putting the US on a scale against any enemy and coming up with “they are both bad” the scale is miscalibrated, specifically because they are a westoid most likely and have their thumb on the scale subconsciously with their own biases)
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lol
I read an interesting series of tweets from a Vietnamese communist once. He articulated four general tiers:
Socialist countries where the workers control the levels of power.
Global south capitalist countries that suffer under superexploitation.
Global north capitalist countries that reap the benefits of superexploitation.
Fascist countries that have been completely infested with fascists
with the general rule that if countries from different tiers are at war, you should almost always support the higher tier. In the end, he saw the Russian invasion of Ukraine in almost exactly the same way as the Vietnamese invasion of the Khmer Rouge, a fascist regime that had existed for far too long that needed to be put out of its misery for the sake of humanity.
I would add another tier right in the middle. Capitalist nation that is begrudgingly anti-imperialist because it’s under imperialist attack, but nonetheless an anti-imperialist force and ally to the higher tiers.
That’s where I would put Iran, Russia, Syria, Libya under Gaddafi, Belarus, Kazakhstan, etc.
Then I would say only those living in the bottom 2 have an obligation to use revolutionary defeatism.
The outcomes of this war are:
A. Western-backed oligarchs in charge in Ukraine
B. Russian-backed oligarchs in charge in Ukraine
C. No side gets what they want and the whole carnage was worthless
The war is a symptom of the US-led unipolar world order crumbling, not a cause. It is the fact that bourgies are fighting that is good, who the victor is literally does not make a difference. Should the Russian communists not also seize this opportunity to fight against their own government?
Judging and weighting what the likely outcome is of either bloc coming out on top of this conflict shouldnt just be confined into what happens with Ukraine within Ukraine it has much greater geopolitical and material ramifications all over the world. Also Ukraine being within Russias sphere of "influence" and militarily neutral was the more stable post 90s status quo that was unilateraly breached by western coups ,expansion and aggression and that didnt translate to the huge fascist-ification of the Ukrainian state so it does make a difference both for Russian and Ukrainian masses if its a US protectorat or if its forced to return into being a military toothless buffer state
Set up dual power structures and an effective opposition to the government, yes. Actively trying to topple the government now? Eh...
I think experience from 2014 Ukraine has shown to leftist opposition movements all around the world that heightening political instability while the center of Global Capital has you in their crosshairs is not the move.
Those are all shit outcomes, but I'd say B is objectively the least bad outcome. And C is the same as A really, since Ukraine is already ruled by Western-backed oligarchs.
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