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Tankies ignoring the agency of other countries so they can blame anything and everything on the US is just a repackaged form of American exceptionalism. They don’t believe Russians or Ukrainians are actually people with agency beyond what the US “makes” them do.
I don’t recall many people blaming the US as far as I am aware; the common sentiment I hear is mostly blame towards NATO which I can’t claim to be particularly educated about. Also you will commonly hear the phrase “critical support” among us communists emphasis on the critical.
A statement so disingenuous it should run for Republican office.
I’m not sure what you mean? I didn’t make any claims?
The “So I hear” “as far as I’m aware” “lots of people are saying” shtick is old. The conservatives have beaten you to the abuse of that one. No one buys it anymore. Get new material.
Dawg I simply have no idea what I’m talking about, I was just saying what I’ve heard and expressing the actual popular sentiment that I’ve encountered among the very people being criticized? Are you dense? Not everyone is some political master mind out to get you
My guy, you frequent Hexbear. If you expect me to buy the “I’ve never heard any of this 🥺” routine, you’re out of luck.
Nono, I’ve heard of that tactic but it’s really as simple as “these people are saying this thing I dislike” and “no actually I hang out with those people and they usually say this actually”.
I’ll be entirely clear yes I do read Marxist leninists theory, yes I do think communism is a political ideology that not only can work but can excel. However none of that means I know shit about the Russian Ukraine conflict nor does that mean I particularly believe either side is morally superior; currently my judgement is suspended until I learn more about it.
It’s not that deep, I’m not boogie man, and don’t really care enough to be that subversive.
NATO has nothing to do with it. Even worse, NATO was created to prevent this kind of thing happening to countries, and Ukraine was “forbidden” to join NATO to make the Russians happy.
Look how that turned out to Ukrainians.
Woah hold on now, hold your horses. NATO has nothing to do with it?
Then why do they openly claim that they did?
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/nato-chief-openly-admits-russia-invaded
Decided I’d atleast look into it if you are going to make such a brazen claim
This is especially interesting https://archive.is/stMC4
Just the damnedest thing https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/us-officials-keep-boasting-about
The only way that reading Stoltenberg’s comments and then blaming the invasion on NATO makes sense is if you think that Russia has an actual right to decide how other countries choose to align themselves. Putin showed up at NATO’s door threatening to beat up a random non-NATO country if NATO didn’t kick out half of its members. Russia has no right to demand that countries that willingly signed up to NATO be kicked out. Most of them signed up specifically because of how Russia has frequently acted in the past.
If I come to you and say “do this or I’ll punch that guy” and you say “no, fuck off”, is it your fault when I then follow through and punch the guy?
Holy shit stop trying to justify what the russians did. Theyre not even communist you dumb tankie
Idk how much I gotta say I don’t like Russia, I can hate NATO and their involvement in the war while also hating the war crimes Russia is committing. How can you read that and not see the the war is more complex than a Russian land grab?
Dude all you’ve ever done in every single conversation is pretend dog whistles arent dog whistles and blame NATO for what Russia did. People can see you post a lot to hexbear. You aren’t sneaky.
Dude… I feel this sentiment so hard.
I don’t understand why criticising NATO for pressuring Russia to invade is pro Russia. Russia didn’t HAVE to invade. Both sides can be at fault here.
It’s like these people arguing against you have a vision of the world that’s as complex as a gi-joe cartoon. One groups perfectly good and the other is perfectly evil.
No one pressured Russia to invade Ukraine. Being an edgy contrarian does not make what you say nuanced. It makes you a useful tool.
You sound like the communist equivalent of neoconservatives and every bit as insufferable.
I never even made a single claim regarding support for Russia or Ukraine. I’m not educated enough on the topic to take a proper stance, though I’m working on that where I can.
Those people who deny Ukraine and Russia their agency, they also deny agency of all NATO members but US.
Also you will commonly hear the phrase “critical support” among us communists emphasis on the critical.
Critical support for genocide.
What exactly is being “supported”?
To put it into perspective, I can claim to be a “critical supporter” of the effort to repel Russia’s attack on Ukraine, except that unlike people who claim to “critically support” the other side, I’m not claiming to “support” the aggressive oppression of a sovereign country at all.
As such, ostensibly “critical support” for something must mean that you’d rather this shit happen than not. You can’t claim “emphasis on the critical” as though that absolves you of that burden. If you were really more critical than supporting then you’d be “critically supporting” the other side.
Fighting nazis I think, most I’ve heard atleast
Critical support for the fascist regime because there was a group of a couple nazis in Ukraine
Endless civilian bombings, rape and torture of Ukrainians by invading Russians?
“I heard they were just fighting nazis, bro. I’m just coincidentally ignorant about a horrifying war that’s been all over the news for years.”
“I’m just asking questions! Isn’t Germany just invading Poland to protect minorities? That’s what I heard! It’s not my claim, I’m just spreading it around!”
“Surelly we should hear both sides of the argument!”
I think it’s even more abhorrent to claim to “critically support” something while being ignorant, as you claim to be, of what you’re supporting. In what world does ignorance and being critical go hand in hand?
Saying you’re a critical supporter, then backpedaling to say you’re just asking questions, either suggests wilful ignorance, which is the worst kind of disingenuity, or plain laziness in endorsing things you don’t care enough to know about, which in the age of internet-fuelled extremism is arguably worse.
The old tankie dilemma - are they assholes or just incredibly stupid?
Trick question, it’s usually both.
I really didn’t claim any support, as I mentioned to someone else it was a “they say this”, “no, it is more accurate to say they say this” situation
You’re trying to characterise it as such now, but saying “emphasis on the critical” - that’s your input suggesting that this support had merit. Hardly just saying it’s a different terminology. You’re backpedalling again.
Regardless, a lot of people have chimed in explaining to you exactly why this is so damaging and how little merit your qualification has. If you’re as uneducated on the whole situation as you seem to be, why are you so unwilling to accept that it’s probably wrong?
The emphasis on critical was meant to suggest hesitatancy or the acknowledgment of nuance to their actions not necessarily my personal beliefs. I do however believe that NATO had a lot to do with the start of this was as I’ve quite recently discovered since the beginning of this thread.
As for my argumentative nature, I don’t like when my words are misinterpreted and used to claim things I did not say so it made me instinctually hostile. I also have trouble just letting things rest or ignoring situations. Anyway I’m working on educating myself I just think strawmans are dumb
Critical support of genocide, just sounds like support of genocide with extra steps to me.
NATO just means the US for most of them.
What’s hilarious about this is that the Tankies are kind of right, that Russia invading Ukraine is at least partially the US’ fault. Of course, this is more of a “A broken clock is right twice per day” kind of thing. The US promised Ukraine that it would defend them from Russian aggression in order to get them to sign the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in 1994, which got them to destroy their nuclear stockpile. Until that point, Ukraine actually had the world’s 3rd largest stockpile of nuclear weapons due to their Soviet heritage. Then, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, and the US did nothing. So Russia felt confident in invading once again in February of 2022. If the US had stuck to their word in the Budapest Memorandum, Russia would not have attempted to invade them again. But, alas, the US was too concerned with Russia’s nuclear stockpile to do anything other than send Ukraine MREs back in 2014. So, here we are.
Personally I feel the US supplying Ukraine weapons fulfills the Budapest Memorandum. I feel we had an obligation to supply F-16s and Abrams earlier to guarantee security of their land.
I mean, better late than never. Still, I would have loved to see us doing what we’re currently doing back in 2014. If we’d done that, Russia would probably not have invaded a second time.
Edit: Alternatively, we could have not induced Ukraine to destroy its nuclear stockpile, in which case Russia would never have invaded them in the first place. Of course, I’m torn on this one, as more nuclear weapons = more chance for the total annhiliation of all humanity. So, I’d prefer they remove their nukes, and we defend them as promised.
They couldn’t use them, they could leverage them against either side but spinning up a nuclear program in the years of the fall of the ussr was very very unlikely given the cost, material expense and rarity of some of the necessary items.
supplying Ukraine weapons
Disposing old stockpiles in Ukraine.
Reduce, reuse, recycle - defense for the green era
The United States consistently backed Putin, and then the US didn’t really anything when Russia invaded another former soviet republic as well in 2008.
Based and true
Show me where it is written about “defend in the case of aggression”. At least in the page you linked there is nothing about it.
What do you think “security assurances” means? The entire article is about this very thing and which countries agreed to provide these assurances.
It’s even more interesting to look at it from the other side: if “security assurances” does not include “defend in the case of aggression” what else is there that could possibly qualify as a “security assurance”?! A warning sternly delivered with a strong finger wagging???!
You are entirely correct that the agreement itself did not obligate the US to take any action in the case of aggression against Ukraine unless it included the use of nuclear weapons. However, the main point of the agreement was that the US, the UK, and Russia all made a commitment to Ukraine to respect its independence, sovereignty, and territorial borders. A lot of diplomatic negotiations had to occur behind the scenes to make that happen. For Russia to sign this treaty, then 20 years later violate it without the other signatories even so much as lifting a finger in protest is pretty unconscionable.
But you are right. I worded my initial post poorly by implying that the US had obligations to defend Ukraine. In the legal sense, they did not. I will argue, however, that in a moral sense, they very much did.
Both are cases of blatant imperialism by the agressor states, USA in Iraq and Russia in Ukraine.
Go on Hexbear and tell them
How can I possibly compete with the intellectual powerhouse that is their shitty emojis?
Correcto.
In the very beginning of this war, I actually convinced an aged marxist acquaintance of mine to overcome is knee-jerk pro-Russia reaction exactly by pointing out that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was wrong for the same reasons as the US invasion of Iraq was wrong and thus if one was trully a person on Principles, one would judge the actions of Russia now just like the actions of the US were judged back then.
It helps that, as I don’t do mindless tribalism, I feel not compulsion whatsoever to judge some nation more leniently than other, and could just point out the question of principle (the strong attacking the weak to take their stuff using made up self-serving excuses) with no hypocrisy as I’ve been pretty consistent in judging actions by their own merits and demerits independently of who is doing the deed.
Anyways, the point being that IMHO the lefties who remainin tankies by now are the ones either in a thick closed bubble of ideas and who thus never get things presented to them like this by other lefties or the ones who are little more than ideological parrots with a below average intelligence.
Why would a true Marxist support Russia in the first place?
Because community matters to many people more than ideological consistency, and some far-left groups have made a community culture that involves knee-jerk opposition to ‘Western’ polities in all circumstances. “US bad, therefore, Russia good.” Or rather, “Critical support for Putin’s genocides.” See: Hexbear, Lemmygrad
I’m not the most politically savvy but after having spun thru a few leftist thought circles, this has been my experience as well.
The entirety of the Identity Politics Wars (especially as seen in the US and UK) is fed by such unthinking muppets both on the Left and the Right.
Community/in-group, but also having a clear out-group/enemy to pit themselves against.
The guy was a leftwinger during his young years when Portugal was under the yolk of a Fascist Dictatorship, so his relationship with Marxism and Communism was first of the heart and then of the mind.
Of course the Russia as he was taught to believe it was when he was a young revolutionary (the Beacon of Hope for leftwingers who were under the yolk of Fascism, not the Stalinist shithole), occupies a warm place in his hearth and when the bond is emotional it’s normal for it to not simply flip On and Off depending on who governs that country.
Mind you, this is a guy who didn’t join the Portuguese Communist Party (which was definitelly a tool of the Soviet Union) because he thought it was too top-down authoritarian and instead joined a different, smaller, party that wanted Communism but without the authoritarianism, so he definitelly was and is more than an unthinking tribalist parrot, which is probably why he could be convinced by simply reducing the subject to a question of principle.
I think it’s a solid D grade. They recognize the US has some responsibility given its foreign policy, but in doing so they fail to properly demonstrate Putin’s Russia is an aggressor state that invaded a sovereign nation, albeit former Soviet state(s). Like a 20% answer. Super fail.
So I blame that freebie starter example boosting up that averaged grade. Blatant US imperialism helps give Russian aggression a pass.
I am a humble European who never cared too much about politics too much, so I don’t really know what this is about. Could someone please explain it to me?
Long story short, there are groups that blame the US and the EU for ‘provoking’ Russia into invading Ukraine.
Thanks. Is it about the NATO base that NATO wanted to build in Ukraine? If that’s the case I can see why Russia would have felt threatened by it and decided to invade (I’m not justifying it), but I’m sure it’s more complicated than this…?
Edit: I’m not sure why I’m getting downvoted. I am uninformed, and since that is all I knew I asked in the first place…
Ukraine has been trying to get into NATO for years, earnestly ever since Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014. For some reason (/s) having a big chunk of their land literally conquered has made them quite eager to get security assurances from more powerful countries.
But NATO had little interest in any immediate expansion of the organization to include Ukraine before the invasion, despite the pleas of the Ukrainian government. We considered that it would have increased tensions between us and Russia, that the Ukrainian military needed too much work in the short-term, and that Russia couldn’t possibly be insane enough to try to invade Ukraine a second time.
How wrong we were.
Yeah, that’s the gist of it except I didn’t know we didn’t really care too much about expanding there militarily.
In any case, what exactly is NATO supposed to do if a country with a bad neighbor wants to join? After said neighbor already attacked it? Bruh.
Well, a country can only join NATO if ALL members of NATO agree to let the country in. So there’s not much chance of a country already at war being accepted.
Funny enough, NATO was kind of lethargic before the war. A lot of NATO countries didn’t take it seriously. It was hard to see it as anything but a relic of the Cold War. After all, it wasn’t like Russia was going to start invading its neighbors again!
God. What a weird time we live in.
Honestly I was deeply convinced that the tactic of economically binding Russia to the EU via trade of resources (for example natural gas) and investments would absolutely make a war or even sanctions between the european NATO-members and Russia too costly for Russia to do anything stupid. There was way to much money in the balance for any outbreak of a war in Europe, neither the EU nor the Russians could afford it… or so I thought.
Turns our Russia will gladly shoot itself in the foot if they believe that they can absorb the breadbasket of Europe in the process. The geostrategic importance of Ukrainian Wheat was absolutely underestimated and the geostrategic importance of western markets to Russia was clearly overestimated.
I feel like shit for being this wrong, Russias neighbours warned us about this shit and the bigger western and central european countries did not listen.
Nah, man, it’s absolutely a rational position to have taken. Don’t feel too bad. The issue is, as we’ve all forcibly learned, is the Iron Law of Institutions - Russia doesn’t do what it’s in Russia’s best interests. Russia does what is in Russian decisionmakers’ best interests. And Putin’s best interests include imperial revivalism and war fervor to prop up his corrupt regime.
Hey man, did I sound like a Russian shill or something in my initial comments?
No, but I do understand why people were quick to jump on you. Not your fault, mind you, it’s just that this is a pretty high-tension period, and often, understandably, people jump to the worst conclusion due to Russian trolls poisoning the well, so to speak.
I’m not sure why I’m getting downvoted. I am uninformed, and since that is all I knew I asked in the first place…
You play the “I’m just an ignorant person” character whilst spouting pro-Russia propaganda as if everybody else is an idiot.
This is indicated by how in your words “Ukraine joining NATO” is “an understandable reason for Russia to invade” and yet Russia invading Ukraine in 2014 is not an understandable reason for Ukraine to merelly join NATO - not only is the threat level of “having NATO next door” completelly different from “having a bigger nation next door that already invaded us” not even in the same universe as justifications for action with regards to your next door neightbour go, but actions themselves are hugelly different in terms of impact and even principle:
- Joining NATO is doing what you want with your own territory and doesn’t kill people or even cause them to flee.
- Invading your next door neighbour is doing what you want in somebody else’s territory, killing people (hundreds of thousand already) and causing even more people to flee (millions).
Or to put things in perpective, you’ve been spouting all about how you “understand” the reason a murderer gave for murdering his neighbour, which is that “the other guy wanted to invite some friends over to his home”.
Dude, what the fuck are you talking about? I never said “Ukraine joining NATO”, I said “NATO base that NATO wanted to build in Ukraine”. I never said “an understandable reason for Russia to invade”, I said “I can see why” (i.e., if what I heard was true, I could see why it would be a perfect excuse for invasion).
“not even in the same universe as justifications for action with regards to your next door neightbour go” yeah? No shit did you miss me saying “(I’m not justifying it)”?
I don’t even disagree, you can see it from my answer to PugJesus message in this same thread.
I’m not “spouting propaganda” you tool, what I wrote is what I heard from people around me at the beginning of the conflict, and I admit I took it for true. Turns out, as PugJesus said below, I was not informed correctly. I even added “but I’m sure it’s more complicated than this” to make it clear I was not informed sufficiently.
Hell this whole thread started with me saying I’m not informed, what else do you want? Asshole.
Calm your tits and don’t “quote” people when you’re not actually quoting them. You’re doing your cause a disservice, and you just sound crazy.
You are getting downvoted for actually thinking. Don’t do that. Just follow the company line.
