I should be more clear, because I do not believe in great man theory, that when I say “someone like Gadaffi is a progressive force” what I mean to say is the cumulative regime of power behind him. The current arrangement of the national state and its interests.
It really doesn’t matter if Putin thinks himself good, or evil, or anti-imperialist, or building an empire. It only matters what the cumulative regime of power actually does and its composition in terms of class relations. It doesn’t matter if he chose to be anti-imperialist or was forced into it by being backed into a corner by imperialists. Intentions. Do. Not. Matter.
The geopolitical, world-historical actions that these nations (Syria, Libya pre-collapse, Russian federation) do are objectively anti-imperialist, regardless of the ideology of their supporters or even the ones carrying out the actions. As soon as Russia starts acting as an imperialist, I will be the first to turn on them. But they simply aren’t. They don’t have an imperialist economy, and all of their military actions have been to defend against belligerent western imperialists and stabilize the regions around them.
I also disagree with calling Putin a fascist, the Russian government is not fascist. They are closer to something like Assad or Gadaffi. The actual fascist is Navalny and western-backed neoliberals who want to loot and balkanize Russia further.
It doesn’t really matter or not if Hexbear users are “critical” or “uncritical”. We are not in control of any significant amount of power or influence to even matter. It’s just different posting flavors. “Critical support” is for communist states and organizations, and as you can see DPRK, Cuba, Venezuela and PRC all support Russia. DPRK supports them uncritically in this conflict. China, Venezuela and PRC publicly support them critically, but I think it’s clear from their actions that they support them uncritically in a military sense, just wish they would hurry it up or do it more discretely for PR purposes.
I agree it is shitty of Putin and Russian reactionaries to use LGBT issues as a culture war bludgeon in their propaganda. It undermines their true critique of the Ukrainian state being Nazis and genocidal freaks far more reactionary than Russians. Putin speeches are a wild rollercoaster between him making cold, objective material analysis and talking about colonialism and imperialism and fascism in Ukraine & weird unrelated tangents about traditional values, Christianity & reactionary bigotry. He does this because he’s trying to hold together a bourgeois capitalist state filled with contradictions to maintain his regime of power, but also Russia’s national interests as a whole because Russia and its neighbors are constantly destroyed, colonized, pillaged and destabilized by the imperialist West. So he has to appeal to old Soviet pensioners who care about imperialism and had a nephew killed in Donbas and all their uncles killed in the Patriotic War & also traditional orthodox reactionaries and nationalists. All the things Russian society is now filled with, all the contradicting positions of their citizenry under capitalism. International audiences in the global south will like one narrative or the other, places like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Africa will like the right-wing angle while China, DPRK, Cuba, Latin America, parts of Europe will like the anti-imperialist Marxist angle.
It is shitty but it makes sense why Russia would use both narrative appeals to different audiences they pragmatically want to appeal to - it’s just very stupid of them to do it together in the same speech when they contradict each other. It’s the dialectical reaction to the woke-imperialist phenomena of the West, which is its own contradictory narrative synthesis.
I should be more clear, because I do not believe in great man theory, that when I say “someone like Gadaffi is a progressive force” what I mean to say is the cumulative regime of power behind him. The current arrangement of the national state and its interests.
It really doesn’t matter if Putin thinks himself good, or evil, or anti-imperialist, or building an empire. It only matters what the cumulative regime of power actually does and its composition in terms of class relations. It doesn’t matter if he chose to be anti-imperialist or was forced into it by being backed into a corner by imperialists. Intentions. Do. Not. Matter.
The geopolitical, world-historical actions that these nations (Syria, Libya pre-collapse, Russian federation) do are objectively anti-imperialist, regardless of the ideology of their supporters or even the ones carrying out the actions. As soon as Russia starts acting as an imperialist, I will be the first to turn on them. But they simply aren’t. They don’t have an imperialist economy, and all of their military actions have been to defend against belligerent western imperialists and stabilize the regions around them.
I also disagree with calling Putin a fascist, the Russian government is not fascist. They are closer to something like Assad or Gadaffi. The actual fascist is Navalny and western-backed neoliberals who want to loot and balkanize Russia further.
It doesn’t really matter or not if Hexbear users are “critical” or “uncritical”. We are not in control of any significant amount of power or influence to even matter. It’s just different posting flavors. “Critical support” is for communist states and organizations, and as you can see DPRK, Cuba, Venezuela and PRC all support Russia. DPRK supports them uncritically in this conflict. China, Venezuela and PRC publicly support them critically, but I think it’s clear from their actions that they support them uncritically in a military sense, just wish they would hurry it up or do it more discretely for PR purposes.
I agree it is shitty of Putin and Russian reactionaries to use LGBT issues as a culture war bludgeon in their propaganda. It undermines their true critique of the Ukrainian state being Nazis and genocidal freaks far more reactionary than Russians. Putin speeches are a wild rollercoaster between him making cold, objective material analysis and talking about colonialism and imperialism and fascism in Ukraine & weird unrelated tangents about traditional values, Christianity & reactionary bigotry. He does this because he’s trying to hold together a bourgeois capitalist state filled with contradictions to maintain his regime of power, but also Russia’s national interests as a whole because Russia and its neighbors are constantly destroyed, colonized, pillaged and destabilized by the imperialist West. So he has to appeal to old Soviet pensioners who care about imperialism and had a nephew killed in Donbas and all their uncles killed in the Patriotic War & also traditional orthodox reactionaries and nationalists. All the things Russian society is now filled with, all the contradicting positions of their citizenry under capitalism. International audiences in the global south will like one narrative or the other, places like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Africa will like the right-wing angle while China, DPRK, Cuba, Latin America, parts of Europe will like the anti-imperialist Marxist angle.
It is shitty but it makes sense why Russia would use both narrative appeals to different audiences they pragmatically want to appeal to - it’s just very stupid of them to do it together in the same speech when they contradict each other. It’s the dialectical reaction to the woke-imperialist phenomena of the West, which is its own contradictory narrative synthesis.