MLRL_Commie [comrade/them, he/him]

Hell yeah my request was taken seriously. I really like this sad cookie. It's crooked frown is so relatable

I wasn't going to read this article, but reading that this idea is your "satirical version [of this article presumably]" makes me very interested in what this article says

I can't even imagine what I'd think if an adult communist told me their hero is Lenoid Brezhnev. Or even if they spelled it right. But a middle-schooler saying it would make me just think "how the fuck did they learn who Brezhnev is?"

I don't get the joke.

Does the 英 in this have something to do with heroism? Or is that etymologically independent? Would be cool if dandelions are like heroic plants

Who makes our reaction memes? This will be niche but I will use it from now on

Yeah seems much more relevant that the Nazi genocide plan included the USSR and not the US. Who wouldn't choose to avoid the genocide altogether instead of only halfway escape

Well, when you put it that way....

This seems uncontroversially true. It's just the same strategy used time and time again and has led to China leading the world. They know better than us when to import capital and knowledge and when to cut it off.

How many betrayals does it take? Was Chechnya not obvious enough for him? Was the pillaging of Russia in the 90's not enough? Was the sanctions and antagonism despite participating in Iraq not enough? Georgia how many times before the current conflict?

Ansarallah and Hezbollah are parties designed with this fight in mind, with support specifically because of this position. Putin came to power for national interests and is in power for his defense of those national interests. If the US offers a tempting (and seeming concrete) concession and support in line with those national interests which are greater than this path offers, Putin will shift alliances or lose his support structure. You assume that this shift is impossible: that (your words, I say Ruling Class interests) "self interests" are "self destructive" without any sense that this can change

This is just a repeat of the danger of supporting a national bourgeoisie in a struggle of national liberation. It's why successful national liberation struggles were led by a Communist party with the support of their national bourgeoisie, not the other way around. Otherwise the buying-off by the imperialists is more mutually beneficial than the imperialists seeing communists win.

I support Russia in this effort, but I'm constantly aware that their interests aren't communist or even Anti-West fundamentally, just aligned with communists and anti-imperialism in this case.

I named 2 material interests and left the economic one, too obvious to need naming, of profitable (for the ruling class) trade unnamed but clearly implied. I then shifted to speaking, generally, about the phenomenon without reference to any specific interests, because the analysis can work in any case replacing the interests with any other set that still fits the dynamics (what if Russia cared about the land question instead of national security? Same analysis, new basic material interest). I'm not proving something will happen here, I'm arguing that no discontinuity is needed to understand what happened. I'm limiting the conversation to only 'interests' to make a specific point. I don't think you understand this difference.

I also have the same prediction as you, with the stated caveat that the US absolutely has the possibility to change it (likely won't because of its own ineptitude despite it likely being a good scenario for US interests). You clearly cannot see past your hero-worship of Putin to see the current shift of alliances as malleable at all. It's naive idealism, with the result that you won't see the blindsiding of a betrayal coming, even if that one isn't happening now

And when we do it it's good. When they do it it's to protect the sad Americans forced to confront their bullshit.

I absolutely do, though I don't think he "started the war against the west" in those terms. I resent being accused of such for a claim I'm not convinced you even understand.

Putin and Russia have interests in security on their borders and national security in general, because that stability is in the ruling class interests. For a long while, the assumed greater stability in these interests was to be found in going along with the west instead of confronting them. Due to the west's continued antagonism, due to Ukraine's position geographically, politically, and economically relative to Russia, and due to a growing possibility to find stability outside of the unipolar Western Empire (e.g. with China), the greater stability was clearly to be found in negotiating a more advantageous position for Russia through war against the party being used against those interests. The fact that the interests eventually pointed in direct opposition to the Western Empire is not due to any discontinuity in these material interests, but in a slow shift in the effects and future effects of the policies of the west on those material interests.

This is clearly no fundamental shift, and it doesn't make him some ideological hero (or hero in any real sense), just the representative of a set of interests which became aligned against the west. The US could today guarantee, with material backing (I can't imagine how at the moment, but I need no example for something that has happened so often in the past) that the interests of the ruling class will be brought in line by a policy shift of the west. And with that guarantee, I'm entirely unconvinced that Putin and the Russian ruling class will maintain your "war against the west".

I'm no pessimist about this, I think that the US is unlikely to do this and that the interests of the two ruling classes are too fundamentally, in the bases, opposed. The West would have to do some Cold-War level concession-giving, which is too forward thinking than the West is used to at the moment. But that is very different than thinking Putin himself had some fundamental shift.

Seems idealistic to think this. His interests haven't changed, but how he can/if he can materially gain benefits in those interests has changed. And I shouldn't even focus on him, this is about the ruling class of Russia. Just because the relationship between the current situation and their material interests has shifted doesn't mean that those interests have. His "snapping" was due to a realization that those interests were no longer in line with actions in line with Western Empire. That can still shift quickly and easily if the US really chooses to change those conditions. Using the word 'snapping' and making this claim insinuates some discontinuity which I just see no evidence for.

Lol the Imperialism reading group coming in handy today

Well Putin has fallen for/went along with such shit before. We must keep his interests in mind, and it's likely still his dream to be accepted as an equal on peaceful and profitable terms. I hope he's not going to do it again, but I see no reason to believe he's fundamentally shifted in the past 10 years. His interests have shifted his alliances but those can be shifted again

It's at least 6, if you count Austrians as people

Oh fuck... some things are better left unposted so no grifter gets ideas. Probably fine on here but don't post this on Reddit or Twitter or something. The lathe will immediately turn on

What are the chances that HTS really honors the allyship and helps SDF? Seems more likely to me that they just won't respond, and they will treat Turkey like Israel (ignore and let them do what they want).