It’s a liberal cesspool full of people who refuse to listen when you speak. I explained how the SMO in Russia was justified going all the way back to fucking WWII and Stepan Bandera to Russia not wanting Ukraine in NATO and some dickhead told me to “tOuCH gRaSS”. Didn’t even address any of my points, just that “dEnAziFIcaTioN iSnT a gOoD rEasOn, iT’s aS bAd aS wMDs”.
Fucking moron. I hate that fucking place so fucking much.
Good on you. I left Reddit when they locked Genzedong and i never looked back. It is such a breath of fresh air to be free of that toxic cesspit. It’s not just the regular users who are awful, the mods are even worse, and the entire site is heavily controlled by three letter agency employes.
As to their “argument” against the SMO, it is totally moronic. Denazification is the best conceivable reason for starting a military operation. No sane country should tolerate a militarized Nazi regime on their border.
Also there’s the little detail that the “WMDs” were a lie while the Nazification of Ukraine was so obvious even the western media were writing about it, and they are still forced to address it because every time they take a photo of Kiev regime soldiers - surprise, suprise! - there is some swastika, iron cross or SS badge that the western media need to twist themselves into knots to handwave away or justify.
And it’s not just the Nazi problem and the NATO issue, far too many people omit what is probably THE main reason for why Russia HAD to intervene when they did, namely the eight year long war waged by the Kiev Nazis on the people of the Donbass.
However this, just like arguments about Nazis and NATO expansion, is pointless to bring up when talking to Redditors and will just fall on deaf ears because they do not view Russians and pro-Russian East Ukrainians as human, nor will they ever acknowledge that Russia has a right to have national security concerns and vital interests, let alone a right to act to address these when the West refuses to take them seriously.
Also there’s the little detail that the “WMDs” were a lie while the Nazification of Ukraine was so obvious even the western media were writing about it, and they are still forced to address it because every time they take a photo of Kiev regime soldiers - surprise, suprise! - there is some swastika, iron cross or SS badge that the western media need to twist themselves into knots to handwave away or justify.
The gaslighting never ends. I have had people badgering me over this war and yet they couldn’t even cite the official Russian reasons for the war, despite being incredibly “savvy” on all “secret” objectives.
Reddit has been only getting worse since 2015 when r/politics became the dominant force. I gave up after the admins literally did a coup on even slightly leftwing subs like r/presidentialracememes.
It’s seriously astounding how little needs to be done to propagate lies here. Like, people often fearmonger about government censorship and algorithmic suppression, and those things ARE problems don’t get me wrong, but people waaaaaaay overestimate how much it takes to dupe them.
I mean, you can just search “Ukraine” on any search engine and filter out results from 2022 onwards to get articles that blatantly contradict what’s being published today. It doesn’t take an elaborate scheme to spread disinformation… It doesn’t even take consistency…
Fighting for “freedom of the press” has been a liberal capitalist fight since the beginnings of the printing press. They believe that just because their ideas are banned that they’ll cease to exist, probably because they require enforcement from the law and state in the first place. And yet they think themselves to be “following human nature.”
Everyone knows very well why. Because the publication of a newspaper is a big and profitable capitalist undertaking in which the rich invest millions upon millions of rubles. “Freedom of the press” in bourgeois society means freedom for the rich systematically, unremittingly, daily, in millions of copies, to deceive, corrupt and fool the exploited and oppressed mass of the people, the poor.
This is the simple, generally known, obvious truth which everyone sees and realises but which “almost everyone” “bashfully” passes over in silence, timidly evades.
“Big country invade small country” is quite literally their only understanding of the conflict. They actively dismiss any sort of explanations, because they have to maintain the illusion.
It’s hard because on one hand I understand that no one is immune to propaganda, so I’m inclined to not blame them for it, but what am I supposed to do if they refuse to listen? It’s just too much for my mental health sometimes, I just get so frustrated.
Your mistake was trying to ask for a reasonable view of Russian government’s action. To the average redditoid, nothing Russia does is ever justified in any way. Fighting terrorists? “That’s just an excuse to persecute minorities and national liberation!” Fighting Nazis? “Akschually Russia is real Nazis!”
Russian government been doing lot of aping from the west, and these types universally condemn it, without a hint of self reflection. If tomorrow Putin completely withdraws from Ukraine, dissolves the federation and puts pentagon in charge of the Russian military (cough south Korea), they’ll still find something to blame.
That Russiagate op really got people believing Russia is the USSR again. Like literally for years it has continuously been demonized just for existing. I’m aware that it’s not a worker’s state and deserves criticism for its reactionary tendencies, but nuance isn’t something that seems to exist when talking about things like geopolitics, which isn’t a fucking Marvel movie.
You’re not allowed to separate the analytical process from picking a side. If your analysis doesn’t confirm that you should unequivocally support the ‘good guys’, you must’ve erred in your reasoning.
Unfortunately this logic permeates every Western institution. Analysis is subjugated to liberalism. Coming to conclusions that do not support the status quo is dangerous shit. It puts your livelihood at serious risk.
That, and the lack of any critical self reflection, never raising the question, ‘If my analysis keeps leading to conclusions that do not coincide with reality, is reality wrong or my thought process?’
This.
I’m not a citizen of the settler empire, I’m a subject. So to me the illusion was never strong enough for me to vehemently defend it. I never understood the Amerikan worship of itself because they claimed to be #1 and the best…but at what?
I eventually came to realize I had no loyalty for this country that enslaved my people and took our land, and eventually arrived at being an ML when I realized my heroes, the BPP, were also MLs.
I honestly feel like understanding historical materialism is what helped me understand geopolitics the most, but that requires a critical understanding of how things have gone in the past, without the filter of the West to dilute the information.
I mean it depends which community/subreddit you engage in. If you try to have deep political discussions on r/worldnews (or any mainstream subreddit for that matter), you should be prepared for the most populist, hive-minded, karmaremoved reactions you can imagine. Nobody would expect a truly balanced, facts-based discussion in the comments section of foxnews.com either. There’s dedicated communities for that kind of thing for a reason.
17 libs are mad that I’m right 🤷🏿♂️
17 redditors
You’re just repeating what he said?
The death of 3rd party clients was the final nail in the coffin for me
Reddit sucks, but we also have to resist the impulse to write the masses off and retreat into our own groups. While material conditions are a huge driver of peoples’ politics, propaganda works, conversations can change minds, and ultimately we have to bring a lot more people around to socialism before we realize any of the changes we hope to see.
Your pipeline left needs to start where people are, and where people are is shitty corporate social media.
Reddit is not a very good place to start trying to radicalize people. Go outside, talk to real people, they are more receptive than online dibshits most of the time.
I’ll let more capable people do that then. I don’t have the mental capacity for it anymore, I’ve been doing this shit since leftbook back in 2016 and just being on social media gives me anxiety.
Don’t let them get you angry. That’s what they want, for you to give up. Take a beat. Breathe. Respond with cogent theory and don’t take their bait. You’re not doing it for the radlibs. You’re doing it for people like me, who lurked on Reddit for years.
I gave a succinct explanation of the conflict in Ukraine and someone just said “touch grass” without even reading it. Maybe someone else got something out of it but with Reddit hiding anything that gets downvoted the value of what I said was lost.
Similar story to me. Reddit was part of my political education. I had already got to the point where I thought Marx had something useful to say and that liberalism was a dead end. But then I had so many questions that I couldn’t answer or couldn’t quite figure out for myself.
I searched for every question on Reddit and read through all the Marxist answers, glossing over and ignoring the trolls and liberals who were clearly misinformed.
It’s all right Marx being right but if he didn’t have a method for replicating more right answers, he would be no better than liberalism. It was Marxist Redditors who helped me realise that historical and dialectical materialism underpins the conclusions that Marx comes to and allows other Marxists to consistently come to the right answers and, somewhat, predict the future. Non-Marxists occasionally do the same but it’s random.
Can’t forget the wider audience! (Also, I fully accept the need to rant about the contrarians, though.)
You can radicalize people IRL too.
The lemmy fediverse seems to be paying attention to us so, i don’t think we are completely walling ourselves off.
As soon as the writing and worldbuilding scene matures on Lemmy I’m out of that corporate hellhole. It’s literally the only subreddit I still regularly participate in.
I kept thinking about reasons to stay but after realizing that I have none I just deleted the app. I’m so tired. The only thing I might miss are the saved posts but I’ll live, I can always get the information here.
You gotta do what’s best for you and your mental health.
I really didn’t mean for this to blow up like it did, I was just venting 😔
I think it’s a sentiment a lot of us have dealt with. Which is why it blew up, it’s relatable.
Fascist <= Liberal => Communist
In this current world, as the situation has become, every body is born almost fascist then some education turns them into liberals that are always susceptible to fascism again whenever the state want. When liberals start educating themselves more they start seeing the truth and lies and perils of current system. And when they are exposed to left they accept it as the only alternative.
Those people (if they are not bots) that you are facing on reddit or any other plateform bashing communism are either paid trolls or fascists that must be laughing when called a liberal.
I may be wrong but this take is from my experiences these days. You’re more then welcome to correct.
“Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds.”
You have it a little backwards. Liberals are kind of the “default” in capitalist society. Fascism could almost be considered an extension of liberalism. It has the same economic values, and often the same political values, just more “mask off” about them. You’re right that a liberal who educates themselves ceases to be a liberal, but most people online are not secret fascists, or at least, not consciously so. Liberals just have a lot of overlap with fascists, that’s all.
And while we joke about the paid trolls and three letter agents a lot, the truth is that there are plenty of people willing to do their dirty work for them for free. They don’t need to be paid, they do it of their own volition, because they see it as “saving democracy from the evil tankies.”
Liberals are drawn to fascism easily because at some point State want them to and they oppose Communism, also because the State want them to.
So the libs are just like some toolset of State to oppose Communism and support fascism when need arises.
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I agree that Reddit has more unknowing “Hwell Acktually” types than is good for anyone’s mental health. It doesn’t make discussion any better. But if you proclaim your hate and call people morons you might be part of the problem. If someone is wrong on the internet you could just be doing them a favour by acting like that.
Ah yes it’s certainly my fault that when I tried to answer a question I was met with ignorant hostility because people wanna feel good about their positions as if it’s a fucking Harry Potter book.
It wasn’t even an “Hwell acktually” moment, they just ignored everything I said.
Nothing more disheartening than when you outline your position and why you believe the things you do only for some lib to just accuse you of things you never said and just ignore everything you wrote. “Smug ignorance” might as well be the motto of reddit.
What’s worse is that it was in a supposed “leftist” sub. What else am I to do when I lay out my positions in a succinct way, and it’s met with that kind of hostility?
Any actually leftist sub gets purged there, Americans think that “liberal” is a left wing perspective. Too many subs are just built around accommodating that instead of actually challenging that kind of toxic behaviour. Though the ones that don’t do just end up getting banned or quarantined, so it is probably a bit of selection bias.
Of course someone else’s response isn’t your fault. I’m not saying that you are wrong for disliking it, either. The unfortunate truth is that in every community, you will find people who just don’t know how to argue. That group gets bigger if the community grows. Being angry about it doesn’t help anyone though.
What I meant with the “hwell acktually” comment is maybe the same as you just said but in different words: people who like to be right all the time and feel good bout it.
Yeah…you’re right. Honestly I’m just venting. I’m usually fine at arguing these things but I guess I just reached a breaking point with someone who didn’t even bother arguing, addressing any points, and just wanted to get a “gotcha” moment with no substance.
I agree with you about the state of reddit, but your particular take you pull up as an example doesn’t make you look more reasonable than the average redditor. Just my personal opinion.
I mean your arguments we’re probably weak AF
Russia didn’t want Ukraine in NATO but invades Ukraine and effectively kicks the door open to basically force NATO to let Ukraine into NATO.
Law of unintended consequences?
so we’re just gonna ignore that NATO has said 4 times now that Ukraine will not join them. Geopolitics is easy when you just deny reality and substitute your own 🤓
to basically force NATO to let Ukraine into NATO
If NATO is being forced to let in Ukraine, then why is Ukraine still not a part of NATO after all this time?
If you said this about Sweden I could understand. But everything about Ukraine joining NATO has been speculative saber rattling. As I see it they will never allow Ukraine to join.
The vote will happen once the war is over that has already been publicly stated. The only reason it won’t happen while the war is happening is it would create a situation that put NATO in direct conflict with Russia. Right now it’s just handing the arms to Ukraine.
Had Russia not invaded this most likely wouldn’t have happened.
NATO has said 4 times Ukraine won’t get to join, and has been dismissive of any timeline, and you still believe them when they say “yeah it will totally happen after the war trust us guys just hold on and eventually it’ll happen pinky promise”
Nato is already in direct conflict with russia
So, by attacking Ukraine to prevent it joining NATO, Ukraine joining NATO can only happen after the war is over (probably, maybe, perhaps)? That’s the opposite of your “unintended consequences” claim, even ignoring how Ukraine’s entrance in NATO is still not even guaranteed after this war ends.
Can a state at war join NATO?
Yes, but it brings the whole NATO to war by default. Since that is an escalation no one wants to play, so the Ukraine continues to suffer alone.
So if the war means Ukraine cannot practically join NATO, and if Russia is unlikely to leave Ukraine in a state where it could join NATO after the war, is it likely that invading Ukraine will lead to Ukraine joining NATO?
Once the war is over they will be. The invasion of Ukraine basically created a situation where NATO said enough is enough and has agreed that Ukraine can join. Had Russia not invaded this would most likely not have happened.
Lol this isn’t a marvel movie kiddo and this war isn’t going to be “over” where the “good guys” win and the credits roll. It’s going to end the same way the Iraq war ended. 20 years of bloodshed, every Ukrainian killed, irreparably traumatized, or radicalized, with Azov insurgencies armed to the gills with NATO and US assets with a deep hatred of all three parties involved.
It’s natural landscape raped for it’s resources, it’s “reconstruction” privatized by Global Financial Capital, it’s people’s “identity” will be nothing but a shallow husk of its former self.
Don’t forget what Iraq looked like prior to the deathgrip of imperialism:
In 20 years, the then 20 year olds born around the time of the war won’t even know why we were aiding them, or why we would bother to help a “dirty” “under developed” nation like Ukraine. Just be ready to show them photos of what it looked like before NATO and the US wrapped their filthy, oily hands around their throats and choked them blind.
Ukraine will never join, Ukraine is just cannon fodder that the US bourgeoisie is using to make money, if you think they give 2 fucks about slavs you are past the point of recuperable brain damage.
Were they not on the cusp of joining before Russia invaded? I thought that was one of the reasons for the invasion, to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO?
There has been talk for years. But it never went anywhere and was never going to. I don’t remember right off hand why ( I just woke up and my brain is still foggy) but I do know it was never going to happen. Putin just wanted more land and believed that since NATO was never going to vote to have Ukraine join, it was going to be a quick conflict and the thing would be over. He took Crimea and the world did nothing. If it worked once why wouldn’t it work again?
Man was he wrong.
How does the civil war factor in?
Because if Ukraine is part of NATO and Ukraine is being invaded then NATO basically has to directly join in the fight. Which means direct conflict between NATO and Russia. That is never a good idea.
And there is no civil war. Well no more then there is in the US. There are certain groups in the US that want to break away. Obviously that won’t happen. They never gain any real traction.
In Ukraine they wouldn’t have gained traction either , but Russia decided to back and also arm the separatists. That was done for the sole purpose of giving Russia an excuse to invade and annex Crimea.
In Ukraine they wouldn’t have gained traction either , but Russia decided to back and also arm the separatists
So it’s okay for NATO to arm Ukraine, but it’s not okay for Russia to arm people who are being killed by their own government?
You’re missing some facts here. There was a civil war. 14,000 people killed. 30,000 injured. 1.3+million displaced. All reported by the UN.
Except that there was and still is a civil war. A large part of those fighting on the Russian side are Ukrainians, and not just from the Donbass either. The civil war started in 2014 after the Maidan coup, and the first rebels had virtually zero support from Russia, they had to fight with whatever they could get their hands on. Most of their equipment was actually acquired from units of the Ukrainian military and police who deserted to the side of the rebels, and from the units they went on to defeat. Russia was heavily criticized by many of the people living and fighting in the new Donbass republics and by more hardline Russians for not doing more to support the rebels at that time, and even intervening to stop their advance when they had just inflicted a massive defeat on the Kiev regime forces. It was because of Russia’s insistence on stopping the fighting and trying to get a diplomatic resolution that the rebels had to leave the liberated Mariupol - one of the first cities that rose up against the Maidan - which then was re-occupied by Azov Nazis who went on to torture and brutalize the local population for years until Russia finally recaptured it last year.
And why shouldn’t Russia arm the side of the civil war which chose to reject the undemocratic, western engineered fascist coup that overthrew the legitimate government of Ukraine if the West was backing the other side, giving them money, weapons, training and more? Why the double standard? By the same logic you could say that without western interference the coup would not have succeeded in the first place or that the regime would not have survived after the coup.
The fact that you see the Maidan regime as legitimate, and the rebels (who by the way did not start out as separatists, merely as people who rejected the violent overthrow of a government they had elected and whose initial demands were merely for autonomy; portraying them as “Russian backed separatists” to delegitimize them is a characteristic of pro-Maidan propaganda) as illegitimate just shows which side you stand on.
Have you taken a look at Russia on a map lately? Why would Russia need or want more land? More than anything else newly liberated regions are a massive financial burden on Russia. They would have required huge reconstruction efforts even without a war as they have been neglected for 30 years by the succession of kleptocratic, neoliberal, post-Soviet governments of Ukraine since 1991. Russia didn’t “take” Crimea, Crimeans voted to re-join Russia in a referendum after a fascist coup overthrew the legitimate government of Ukraine and replaced it with an ultra-nationalist russophobic regime. Crimea being majority ethnically Russian feared having the same shit happen to them as happened in Odessa when the Nazis burned dozens of people alive for protesting the coup.
The notion that Putin simply decided to attack Ukraine one day because he wanted more land or just felt like conquering someone is incredibly childish, not to mention it requires that you purposely close your eyes to all of the actual real factors, all the events, all of the history that led up to the intervention, and all of the vital national interests and concerns that Russia had and which any government would have been compelled to act on.
If Putin just wanted land why wouldn’t he take it from say, Kazakhstan, which is far less supported by the West, has a much weaker military than Ukraine - which at the start of the conflict was the second strongest military in Europe - and whose mostly empty land is nowhere near as defensible as the highly urbanized and industrialized regions of eastern Ukraine and yet far more rich in natural resources?
And why did he spend eight years refusing to allow the Donbass republics to join Russia - something that the people living there were practically begging for since it became clear that they could no longer live in peace under the post-Maidan government of Ukraine - and instead insisting on trying to maintain the territorial integrity of Ukraine by entering into agreements like Minsk I and II?
“Putin just wanted more land” has to be the most ignorant thing I’ve ever heard about this conflict. How do you even imagine this happened? He was just sitting there bored one day and decided “you know what, more land sounds great!”
Do yourself a favor and look up the Euromaidan coup.
“When the war ends, Ukraine will join NATO.” + “Russia can not allow NATO on its borders.” = “Russia has zero incentive to ever end the war and has every incentive to fight the war indefinitely.”
By promising to admit they have actually made Ukraine into a permanent warzone, turning what was a regional dispute into an existential threat to Russia’s national security. And that was the point. Maybe they actually would let Ukraine join after the war, but that’s why they don’t want the war to end. Ukraine has now become a pit where they can throw in money in exchange for Russian blood and treasure.
Ukraine was already becoming a de facto member of NATO before Russia intervened. NATO infrastructure was being built on its territory, interoperability was being established, it was being armed and trained by NATO and NATO operatives were already embedded in their military and intelligence apparatus. The same is true for Sweden and Finland too hence why their formal joining makes little to no difference. Russia intervened to prevent a genocide in the Donbass and to reverse the NATOization - aka Nazification and militarization - of Ukraine.
Ukraine is being treated as a de facto member of NATO as the entirety of NATO is bending over backwards to send them every scrap of military equipment they can scrounge up, to send them intelligence, to train them and help them plan military operations, and inject thousands of “trainers”, “mercenaries” and “volunteers” aka NATO soldiers in disguise into the battlefield. This is not much different than what NATO would do for an official member. They also would have tried to impose a no-fly zone if they thought they could do so without their air force being absolutely wrecked by Russia.
At this point Russia has no incentive to end the conflict before Ukraine is either completely annexed so it can no longer be weaponized by NATO against Russia, or until it capitulates to all of Russia’s demands, which will include the removal of the Nazi regime in Kiev and the installation of a pro-Russian government that will enshrine Ukraine’s neutral and demilitarized status into permanent law/treaties. The notion that Russia should have just let the situation in Ukraine continue to fester and worsen because their intervention has pissed off NATO is infantile and naive to the highest possible degree.
Russia already tried the diplomatic route from 2014 onwards with the Minsk agreements and that turned out to be a complete sham on the part of the West and Ukraine. If anything Russia should have intervened much earlier, ideally gone in right after the Maidan to restore order and the legitimate government of Ukraine, but hindsight is 20/20.
clown ass
