I read “socialist case” in the title but there’s literally 0 class analysis there, it’s just pointless moralism over “wars of aggression”, “defending democracy in Europe” and cherry-picking Marx quotes about the Russian Empire from centuries ago instead of making the connection to the current situation themselves.

There’s also this gem:

After the Second World War, Poland was established as a Soviet puppet state in the Eastern bloc, and remained a de facto Soviet colony until 1989.

lol

The application to the Ukraine war is obvious. Ukraine’s government is of course not socialist, but it is meaningfully democratic. International observers agree that President Zelenskyy was elected fair and square, and while in socialist terms his domestic policy has been pretty bad, democratic institutions provide a framework where Ukrainian socialists can organize labor unions and political parties to pressure him to change his policy, or try to elect somebody else. That is more or less how Norway got to where it is today.

A second point is about civil liberties, which are a necessary part of democracy but still worth emphasizing. A future Ukrainian socialist movement may or may not get collective control of the national wealth in future, but freedom of speech, assembly, the press, and the rule of law are still worth defending in themselves.

This fucking guy.

EDIT: For the observers:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/17/ukraine-bans-communist-party-separatism

https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/here-are-stories-5-reporters-persecuted-ukraine-doing-their-job-past

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/world/europe/ukraine-bans-russian-music-books.html

14:30

By my definition Norway, where the democratic government owns 3/4s of the national wealth excluding owner-occupied homes, is the most socialist state that ever existed.

Brainrot

Every two hours some euro dipshit puts out a rancid thinkpiece about how parroting the US State Department line is socialist, actually

Blah blah blah nato good blah blah skip it

A big problem with a lot of American lefty foreign policy thinking is ignoring the agency of other countries, arguing that America is the root cause of everything that happens and it’s always bad, like some mirror image American exceptionalism.

Agency of other countries? Nationalist shit. What agency? Who runs those countries? The bourgeoisie do.

And now thanks to Putin’s war, NATO is stronger than it’s been since 1989.

First giveaway that this is written not by a leftist but by a liberal. They are using the language of the liberals, this is not the language of leftists.

Now, back in the 1940s, it’s understandable in security terms why Stalin colonized eastern Europe

This is anti-socialist and parrots some nazi narratives. Calling the soviet union a colonial empire is absolute fucking nonsense.

When that touched off the pro-EU Maidan revolution, Putin annexed Crimea and invaded the Donbas, backing a fake separatist movement there.

This is important, it's trying to play down the far-right aspect of the maidan revolution, revising it as a "pro-EU revolution". It completely refuses to deal with what it really was. It also claims Russia "invaded donbas" which is nonsense too at this time, even Ukraine wasn't claiming that in 2014. I'm surprised it gets Crimea correct and doesn't call Crimea and invasion.

In short, as Ukrainian academic Volodymyr Artiukh said in an interview with Jacobin, NATO expansion was a fig leaf for invasion.

Bollocks. If this were true then it would have done so 8 years earlier, in 2014, not in 2022 after trying every single bloody agreement possible first.

invaded the Donbas in 2014 and got away with it

This cites an FP article about a book by Anna Arutunyan, a liberal propagandist working for USA Today.

dictators tend to get more stupid and weird the longer they hold power, and Putin has been in power for more than 20 years now

Juncker was PM of luxembourg for 18 years but they never moan about him. This is also more liberal bollocks.

I think this question of motivation is important to establish because I don’t think the argument about NATO expansion is really about supporting Ukraine. One could believe that Russia felt threatened by NATO, but still support Ukrainian defense. After all, feeling threatened doesn’t give a country license to invade other countries in response. Suppose Canada joined some Chinese military alliance and cut off trade with the US. American elites would probably be extremely pissed about that. But that doesn’t mean it would be justified to invade Canada.

It doesn't justify it no. But it fucking would invade it, and the invasion itself would be the result of an absolutely insane policy by Canada that provoked it. You don't make policies that start wars unless you want wars, that's the basics of good statesmanship. Nato wanted this war. That's the point.

I think that instead a lot of leftists have been seriously wrongfooted by the situation, and are grasping around for any kind of argument which makes it sound like America is still the bad guy, as it has usually been. But it’s just not true. American presidents and diplomats have done many bad things, some of them horrible in the extreme, but Putin is ultimately responsible for this terrible crime.

Clown shit. Failing to understand the various forces that would want this war and the economic reasons america keeps itself in some sort of permanent war at all times is baby shit. The author is a propagandist intentionally avoiding this.

But as far as socialism, the first and most important part of the argument is about democracy. In my view socialism is all about collective control of economic production. Rather than a small minority of capitalists deciding what happens with the factories, retailers, farms, and so forth—namely, that they should get all the profits for themselves—the population as a whole should decide.

Supporting a state that has banned all socialist parties, all communist parties, and in fact all parties to the left of the ruling party, but kept all the fascist parties and itself somehow equals more democracy to this absolute clown.

By my definition, Norway, where the democratic government owns three-quarters of the national wealth excluding owner-occupied homes, is the most socialist state that has ever existed.

CLOWNCLOWNCLOWNCLOWNCLOWN

Ukraine’s government is of course not socialist, but it is meaningfully democratic.

Clown

democratic institutions provide a framework where Ukrainian socialists can organize labor unions and political parties to pressure him to change his policy

The banned socialists? And the banned labour unions that get burned alive in buildings sieged by hordes of literal actual nazis?

Fuck me I'm not reading this anymore this is a waste of my time and is genuinely painful, it's self harm. This person is not a socialist. This is not a socialist argument for supporting the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.

this shit is embarrassing. I hope this guy is getting paid because if this is for love of the game that's pretty sad

shut up ryan cooper

I was worried for a moment that this was written by someone whose name I knew.

Bookmarked! This looks like a good read/listen.