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
Anecdotally, the people I know IRL or online that have Ukrainian flag stickers and the like had very little concept of what was going on in Ukraine before February 2022, much less the last century. They don't know about Euromaidan and US politicians going to Ukraine while the coup is happening to stand on stage next to a bunch of Ukrainian fash figures and promising that the US was with them. They don't know that from 2014-2022 some 16,000 people in the Donbass we're killed by right-wing Ukrainian forces. They even somehow missed the litany of articles in western media outlets during that time repeatedly emphasizing how Ukraine has a lot of neo-n*zis and is extremely corrupt.
:shrug-outta-hecks:
I know 3 people who have gotten really into Ukraine since February and all 3 admit they had never heard of the country before this year. One even jokes she thought Kiev was a way to make chicken, not a place. One person has a flag on their bumper sticker, one is talking about getting tattoos with various Ukrainian symbols.
I don't get it. They're Americans.
I used to wonder how WW1 happened without people just rebelling. I no longer wonder about that
you're absolutely right. I had a hard time picturing what Lenin meant by the "social-chauvinists" for a long time. How could self-identifying socialists spin on a dime like that and become vocal imperialists? Then I watched as Biden got elected and half the leftist I knew became libs again.
I used to be pretty skeptical of people in the runup to 2020 cheering hard against Biden since he would severely temper the energy that had been built up by Bernie and general anti-Trump-ness. Many reasons to cheer against Biden ofc (although I still am not cool with the "Trump would actually be better" game cause it doesn't matter anyway), and I knew it would have an effect, but they weren't just half right they were pretty much 90+% right.
Empty causes
A bluster for the soul, a fix for the mind
Empty causes
Cling to everything you find
They even somehow missed the litany of articles in western media outlets during that time repeatedly emphasizing how Ukraine has a lot of neo-n*zis and is extremely corrupt.
Zelensky becoming the liberal media darling after the invasion has firmed up the whole “he ran on fighting corruption!” narrative that I haven’t been able to really form an analysis of.
Listen, YES there are nazis in Ukraine, and they need accountability, but only after we've armed them to the teeth and executed their agenda IN FULL.
Reminds me of a convo i had with my socdem (lib) (bless his heart) father at the beginning of this whole thing:
"There is an overwhelming nazi/right wing presence in the Ukrainian military"
"Well ok yeah but there's going to be right wingers in every military, just look at ours. We have a shit ton of nazis, does that mean Russia should just come in and invade us??"
"Fuck I mean, sure??"
"Well..."
there are Nazis
You are GROSSLY GENERALIZING a diverse and heterogeneous group of people! This is why our civility discourse needs more nuance! We need more documentaries humanizing these people!
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
Liberals call this whataboutism
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.
I was watching an episode of Useful Idiots and they had a clip of Jake Tapper showing a segment of Putin's speech where he's like "we will protect our people", and Tapper was literally just putting words in his mouth. "Let me translate Putin-to-English, by 'our people' he's talking about the Ukrainians he's just conquered". They don't want to know anything about what's going on on the ground. There aren't two sides with their own perspectives and motivations, there's just Good and Evil.
Agreed, it's equally astonishing that a couple of years ago loads of Western media outlets were talking about how Ukraine was incredibly corrupt and had a problem with right wing political extremism and now you're a deep cover FSB agent if you point it out.
Well, some libs will acknowledge it. Only immediately after they make excuses for them, like "they're just appropriating Nazi symbols because Russians don't like Nazis. So that sun thing is more like a sports logo than a sign they are actual Nazis".
whenever someone says that there's nazis in ukraine liberals say it's russian propaganda
congress trying to prevent arms sales to ukranian nazis a few years ago was russian propaganda to these last-thursdayists :liberalism:
"Whoa, how'd all this Russian propaganda get into all these dozens of mainstream western news articles from the last several years?"
Being concerned that your country is spending billions to arm neo-nazis is doing a whataboutism actually
Libs will try and either deny or downplay this. Nazis, otoh, will openly stan Azovites and claim they're crucial to winning this war (typical line of thought presented by them is "nationalists are the first to defend their country", which is kinda rich when we're talking about a place were nazis were the most cowardly collaborators last time it was invaded).
What worries me is that the libs do not dare to push back against the nazis.
i was in a csgo casual lobby earlier this week and two guys in voice chat were riffing about how there are "totally just nazis in ukraine"
