I’ll preface with saying that I’m only a random Communist. Please take what I say with a grain of salt, even if I come off as confident.

Regardless of your opinion on the war, it is not going to affect its course unless you go fight there, with a few exceptions.

Unless you live in Russia or Ukraine, your priorities should be:

  • pressuring your country’s government for non-interventionism, including sanctions. Capitalist States have only the interest of capital in mind, and their intervention will hurt the people further
  • fighting racism in your communities, especially the new wave of anti-Russian hate.

If you live in Poland or Romania, you should also be fighting the racism against non-Ukrainians (mostly foreign students) seeking refuge. Most of them just want to go home. The fact that the police are attacking them is extremely ridiculous.

  • @gun
    -1•2 years ago

    When Zyuganov says “let’s expel that Bandera pack that has settled in Kiev!” in reference to Russia’s military operation, that is support for the operation. It’s a direct quote. So how is that not truthful? How are you going to remove the government from Kiev without force? And I don’t think good faith means truthful anyways because when people debate in good faith, at least one of them is incorrect if there is a point of disagreement.

    And how am I insincere? Sincerity is stating genuinely held beliefs. These are my thoughts. I’m not pretending to believe something different.

      • @gun
        0•2 years ago

        Bad faith (Latin: mala fides) is a sustained form of deception which consists of entertaining or pretending to entertain one set of feelings while acting as if influenced by another.

        Here’s the thing though. You may disagree with my views. But you have to admit that these are legitimately my views. I am not “pretending to entertain one set of feelings.” I actually do believe everything I have said sincerely, and no one has given me a reason why they would question that.

        • @jackalope
          0•2 years ago

          Bad faith has a broader meaning than just pretending your views are other than they are. It also refers to sophist rhetorical tricks

          • @gun
            1•2 years ago

            You’re still going on about this?
            But bad faith means that according to whom? I’m just going off your provided definition from wikipedia which says nothing about sophist tricks. I’m not even using sophist tricks anyways.

              • @gun
                1•2 years ago

                You came in here out of nowhere in a discussion that didn’t concern you to call me a dumbass because bad faith means honest engagement. When I demonstrate that I have been honest, you keep changing your definition of what the term means. Now sophistry = bad faith, which is interesting, because many times people use sophistry without realizing it, otherwise wanting to have a good faith discussion. But you don’t even give an example of sophistry in anything I have said. Your entire criticism has been completely detached from the original discussion. Why do you waste our time like this?

                  • @gun
                    1•2 years ago

                    Not true. The word sophist comes from a greek class of intellectuals. We only remember them as deceitful because of Plato.
                    But sophism: “an argument apparently correct in form but actually invalid” can be deceitful but is not inherently so. It’s synonymous with “fallacy”. For example, it’s totally possible to accidentally strawman someone if you don’t understand their real viewpoint. But that’s not deception.

                    But you still haven’t given an example of sophistry in something I’ve said in this entire thread. You are just arguing in the abstract.