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.
Just because they refuse to vote to support Russia at the UN, does not mean they do not support Russia materially. International relations is 3D chess, it doesn’t represent the real alignments of nations. So far the only countries that have materially opposed Russia are those in NATO, Japan, South Korea, Isreal, Australia, and New Zealand. And even some like Poland, Hungary, Turkey are refusing to send military aid to Ukraine.
You would not have lasted 5 minutes with the Bolsheviks. They were renown for the intensity and furiosity of their debates. Lenin’s work “Left-Wing” Communism an Infantile Disorder for example. He called ultra left communists infants. Marx was also a very inflammatory rhetorician. Just look at his letters about Bakunin, saying he has become a mass of flesh and fat. If you have a problem with the tone of my speech over its content, you have to be consistent and condemn Marx and Lenin as well. I am not even 1/10 as inflammatory as they were. I’m not arguing in bad faith.
That’s silly. If that was true, why have a military at all? Why put nuclear weapons in Cuba? Do you disagree with Mao’s protracted people’s war? What about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact? Or what about the Hungarian intervention in 1956? You are upholding peace as an ideal, which is idealism. The real world is full of bad actors, violence, and fascism. Because of this, there are times where it is necessary to use war. Pacifism and warmongering are two sides of the same coin with the same outcome.
How KPRF enforces democratic centralism is their own business. The party itself has not officially condemned the operation, so you can’t take what its members say as the stance of the party. There is also not always an explicit party line on everything.
But this is what Zyuganov said: “So, a very difficult decision on a special operation of Russian troops in Ukraine has been made. I want to appeal directly to the people of Ukraine, including my countrymen and colleagues: let’s expel that Bandera pack that has settled in Kyiv!”
How is that not an example of support for the operation? Do I have to play hermeneutics with you? It’s pretty obvious what their position is.
By the way, it was Zyuganov who called for the recognition of LPR and DPR days before Putin did this. I think it’s kind of interesting. In a way, the KPRF opposition is powerful enough to gain concessions and guide policy.
Their critique of you is not that your tone is mean. It’s that you’re arguing in bad faith. Arguing in bad faith is about honest engagement, not politeness. Dumbass.
But I’m not arguing in bad faith. I said that I’m not arguing in bad faith.
Oh so some guy arguing in bad faith says they aren’t so they must not be?! Glad that solves it.
That wasn’t the point. You called me dumb because “Their critique of you is not that your tone is mean. It’s that you’re arguing in bad faith.”
I understood that they were calling me bad faith. I’m not dumb. I brought up the fact that I literally addressed their accusation of me being bad faith in the first place as proof.
your reply to their statement about you speaking in bad faith was:
“You would not have lasted 5 minutes with the Bolsheviks. They were renown for the intensity and furiosity of their debates. Lenin’s work “Left-Wing” Communism an Infantile Disorder for example. He called ultra left communists infants. Marx was also a very inflammatory rhetorician. Just look at his letters about Bakunin, saying he has become a mass of flesh and fat. If you have a problem with the tone of my speech over its content, you have to be consistent and condemn Marx and Lenin as well. I am not even 1/10 as inflammatory as they were. I’m not arguing in bad faith.”
Your tone being shitty wasn’t why they said you were talking in bad faith. It was not because you were “inflammatory”. It was because you were not arguing sincerely.
I’m as sincere as can be. You can have an aggressive tone and still be sincere. Tone does not affect the content of the message, and what is bad faith is overlooking the content of what is said just because you don’t like how it is said. And the point still stands that they should also condemn Marx and Lenin if they want to criticize me for the same thing.
No one is criticizing you for your tone. (how many times do I need to repeat that?) I don’t care about your tone. Good faith doesn’t mean “polite”. It means truthful. With integrity. Sincere. Your argument above devolved into some very fallacious sophistry which is why you were called out. Not because you were a “big meanie head” or some bullshit like that.
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.