A perfectly fair stance Russia's current government aint good, yes its better than the western backed looters that preceded them but that bar is so low its underground. Like let us not forget Putin tried to have Russia join nato, Russia under its current leadership only opposes nato imperialism because they couldn't partake.
I think that's a very fair point, but I do think it is slightly unfair to blame Russia for asking to join NATO. Of course it's not that simple, but even the USSR was interested in NATO, for the same reasons Russia is today, most likely: To have a seat at the table and steer things
I wouldn't call it a bad take on Russia and certainly nowhere near SRS or dunk tank worthy. Russia today is no USSR; accusing us of stanning Russia is something the libs do.
The word critical in critical support is there for a reason. We support the opposing US imperialism, but they'd be next on the chopping block if the US were to fall tomorrow, which is exactly the point he seems to be articulating (although he seems to have used a lot more words to say critical support than necessary)
Arguably, the more interesting part is his views on other AES countries like the DPRK here. The PRC absolutely has a great strategy, but I don't think the roles of the others should be downplayed.
accusing us of stanning Russia is something the libs do
The most annoying is when they accuse us of stanning for Putler (or Xi), projecting their bourgeois great man theory onto us.
i do stan xi tho, i can think of few leaders who have overseen so much positive change in a time of peace.
Arguably, the more interesting part is his views on other AES countries like the DPRK here.
Hakim did a response to his old anti-DPRK video. I’m guessing that’s what JT wanted given ST’s more of a gateway and Hakim’s further on in the pipeline.
Is he wrong? Russia is a good tool for anti imperialism at times but it is still a capitalist hellhole
The problem I have with the phrasing on this, particularly the line "much like the US", is that it implies it's a symmetrical thing with much the same goals. Last I checked, Russia is not a global capitalist empire with over a thousand military bases across the world and a continuous effort to destabilize/coup/bomb/sanction any country who opposes its will, but maybe I missed the memo.
Same, not all capitalist countries are imperialist, in fact the majority are victims of imperialism, and to equate them with the imperialist capitalist countries like the US strikes of first world ultra-leftism.
If some random capitalist country without the political baggage of Russia (say, Benin for instance), was fighting NATO encroachment and killing NATO footsoldiers only to get called "deranged oligarchies" by first world leftists, we would rightly call this a chauvinist criticism.
Well said!
Now I'm thinking on it more, I would say it's also worth noting some pretty substantial differences like that:
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There are still people alive in Russia who are old enough to remember the Soviet Union and the rights and quality of life it gave people. In contrast, there are still people alive in the US who are old enough to remember before Civil Rights; a problem that was by no means resolved through it and you can easily find incidents of systemic racism ongoing. Along with the US's treatment of indigenous peoples. Which even on what it does at home (not even taking into account global stuff) already sets it apart from countries that don't have such racialized systems developed alongside capital.
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The US directly and heavily contributed to the dismantling of the Soviet Union and waged cold war against it, which is a large part of why Russia is an "oligarchy" in the first place.
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Russia, as part of the Soviet Union, had a decades long period of being a socialist project. Something the US has never been once in all of its history.
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Russia, as part of the Soviet Union, was instrumental as opposition to Nazi Germany and it (the Soviet Union) took great losses to defeat it. The US stepped in late and then later integrated nazis with Operation Paperclip, as well as in NATO. Furthermore, the US was so bad, Nazi Germany took inspiration from Jim Crow laws.
The history of these two countries, the US and Russia, is remarkably different in a number of ways and those differences contribute to the contrasts that linger today.
I could provide more details to your claim.
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The federal reserves and the Indian Residential fake schools that secretly continued after 1997 in the British diaspora are the first concentration camps and death camps respectively. The war crimes in the Nazi Holocaust were mere imitation of the war crimes that the British diaspora committed against Indigenous people, and those war crimes still continued after the cold war contrary to the Pax Americana slogan on the opposition to Nazi Holocaust.
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Despite the need for post-war recovery from the Russian civil war that the USA prolonged and the lack of industrialized economy compared to Britain and French, Stalin is the first national leader to ask for opposition to Hitler. Britain and French decided to sign alliance packs with Hitler, praise Hitler as the greatest leader of Liberalism, and force Stalin to wage all the war against Hitler. Stalin is aware that the Soviet Union cannot afford a war with Nazi German by itself, signed a non-aggression pack with Hitler to buy time for military preparation, and take half of Poland under the protection of Soviet alliance. When Britain and French realized that they cannot free ride on Stalin, they then framed Stalin for free riding and direct all their slanderous propaganda to transform Stalin into the worst fictional villain mastermind in history.
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Although the British diaspora boost that they ideology provided them with economic properity and human rights, their human rights applies mostly to Capitalists and European immigrants while their economic prosperity depends on stolen fertile land that Indigenous people cultivated, rich natural resources from stolen land, good weather of stolen land, stolen strategic trading centers, free child slaves in fake schools, free stolen inheritance from abducted Indigenous children from fake cultural assimilation projects, and favoritism from global empires. The European immigrants justify their savagery and hypocrisy with their disproven claims that their Indigenous population has equal level of savagery which negates the free humanitarian aids that saves Christopher Columbus in his first voyage to America, sharing of high-quality land with everyone that includes the European immigrants, and pacifist war practice of Native Americans in the great plain that replace killing and property destruction with harassment and disarmament as resolution of war. The dependency to Indigenous population and colonial free riding are the reason why the Western European diaspora now need to replace their rural white population with large numbers of new immigrants of color to sustain their civilization.
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This is not a good Marxist take.
It plays into liberal equivocation of the US with Russia which is absolutely, categorically false and a lie that must lead to a false overall understanding of imperialism, the role of NATO, even perhaps China's positions in the face of such things.
Let's start with him calling it "deranged". Russia is not deranged in most senses. No more than the US and on foreign policy it's much more reasonable, one might even say being so reasonable has hurt them in their assessments of the west. Time and again they're proposed moderate, reasonable, compromise solutions, they want moderate concessions to a small zone of security around their country not full of nuclear NATO pointed their way. They avoid going fully nuclear, fully anti-American and to this day seek compromise and off-ramps. They are not muddled in some white supremacist derangement and need to be an all controlling hegemonic empire like the US. Yes they have contradictions, reactionary scapegoating of sexual minorities, other issues. They're not progressive but they're not deranged. That's the take of a US hawk who looks at Russia's minor asks and actions in Ukraine and Syria and cannot comprehend why they won't just lie down and be butchered into pieces so US hegemony can be assure for another century. To those vile people they are deranged. To a Marxist mind, to even a reasonable centrist liberal realist mind they are rational and willing to compromise.
Second up is "oligarchy", again this is playing into liberal falsehoods. Let's not use liberal words like oligarchy. If they're an oligarchy then so is the US, so is western Europe, so is the entire capitalist world, a few AES countries aside at which point it ceases to be a useful descriptor. Oligarchy in this sense is better seen as an anti-slavic, Russophobic snarl-word hurled at the "jungle" of the asiatic Russians and their mysterious, inscrutable corrupt ways that are somehow different from the west. It is a leading word used by western propagandists against Russia, quite loaded and should not be used for those reasons.
He continues on describing it much like the US. But that too is materially false. Russia is bound, forced by circumstances of emerging as a capitalist country in the 1990s from being like the US. It does not have a choice, an ability to exercise colonialism or neo-colonialism or imperialism. It does not control global finance. It does not have western Europe in its pockets. It did not inherit the position of controller of the old western colonial empires by invading Europe to stop the soviets from liberating all of it. It does not control the amount of capital the US does and its capital does not exercise control over that of other nations and is very much at constant risk of being subordinated to US capital as western European capital, as all NATO and WW2/cold war vassal nations like Japan, occupied Korea, etc already are. It is dishonest and misleading in the extreme to say this.
If he wants to play coy for liberals he can do this I suppose but he could use less loaded language, could emphasize its capitalist nature and how it doesn't serve its people as well as it should, etc, etc.
They avoid going fully nuclear, fully anti-American and to this day seek compromise and off-ramps.
Another way of looking at this is that what Russia wants is not what "we want", not what is good for the Proletariat of the world, but what Russia is being "forced" to do by the US not giving them a chance at peace and reconiciliation is...
your response is very much on point. (the takes on r/thedeprogram are shockingly not as critical of this take, but that’s reddit i suppose )
Allow me the self indulgence of quoting my own post responding to this topic elsewhere. The responses are also useful even though we don't agree fully. Actual respectful discussion on a topic that (understandably) fires many people up. Remaining respectful but also not just parroting liberal talking point brain mush. Rare sight to see out in the wild.
https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/4607221
Russia is not as bad as the US when you're talking about these countries on a global scale, but other than that it's not the worst take
If it is about the Ukrainian war, then there are evidence that Russian military intervention are actually legitimate humanitarian aid to defend marginalized ethnic group.
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Pax Americana media avoids mention of the eight years of genocide against unarmed innocent civilians in the rebelling states in Ukraine in the 8 years after the Euromaiden coup and before Putin's military intervention. Putin had actually tried to negotiate the stop of genocide for the eight years.
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In the beginning of Putin's military intervention, the Pax Americana claimed that many Russians had defected to fight Putin. Now, Pax Americana deny defection from Russians and claimed that Russians are supporting Putin.
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Pax Americana claimed that Putin is exhausting Russian's economy with the war in Ukraine, and that the continuation of the proxy war will destroy Russia. Now, Pax Americana claimed that Putin is prolonging the war to exhaust the economy of Ukraine, NATO, and the USA. The confession that Putin is not in a rush to takeover Ukraine seem to indicate that Putin is following his promise to only intervene to protect ethnic minority in Ukraine.
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The Pax Americana allegation that most of the terrorist attacks occur in the rebelling states in Donetsk region is suspicious since the rebelling states sided with Putin, and Putin has no reason to attack civilians in a territory where his allies controlled.
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The peaceful annexation of Crimea seem to indicated that the Russians face no resistance from the locals.
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The pod gets it wrong often like the Russia/ Ukraine conflict and inviting brace beldon on their pod but overall they are good.
Edit: he isn't wrong here, but NATO wasn't getting closer to Russia for peaceful purposes. You can be sure of this. Western sympathy won't save your country when it's too late.
