Enough has been said about these idiots, but still. It’s wild to see it in the wild and just see how little they care about nazism unless they do a whataboutism :maybe-later-kiddo: about Russia. Could it possible - that an Eastern Europe devastated by the collapse of the USSR be filled with manipulative and “rebellious” fascists? No of course not. It’s Russia who were secretly Nazi the whole time
Either "Nazis are everywhere" or "Putin is worse" are their responses, at which point I hit them with the fact that although reactionaries may exist in socialist countries like China or Vietnam or Cuba or the DPRK, they have no institutional power—unlike in places like Ukraine or the USA. As for Putin, his opportunistic crimes, whatever they may be, pale in comparison to the millions who lost their lives due to Biden's Iraq and Afghanistan votes as well as his total lack of interest in ending the coronavirus pandemic. (Liberals call this whataboutism, I call it context.) I also talk about how Yeltsin, a Western stooge, appointed Putin to power, a fact liberals desperately do not want to remember.
Nonetheless, critical support for Russia is warranted. As Lenin has said, we must focus on defeating our own bourgeoisie first.
nazis are everywhere, but did anyone besides NATO. Ukraine, and US puppet governments formally incorporate nazis into their military after wwii? And at least NATO had the decency to (as far as i know) not officially have "and this is our nazi battalion" like ukraine has
the funny thing to me is both of their responses ("Nazis are everywhere" and "Putin is worse") are vastly closer to their idea of wHaTaBoUtIsm than what you did. (the first is implicitly "what about nazis everywhere else" and the other is "what about Putin's crimes"). the entire idea of wHaTaBoUtIsm as fallacy bingo is flawed in the first place, but they do an ignorant baby version of the same thing and then act like you lost the argument by providing context
Almost like 'whataboutism' is a powerful tool for understanding the world and they just don't like it when it used against them.