Image Transcription:
An 8-panel Phoebe Teaching Joey meme.
The first panel is Phoebe from Friends saying “Russia”.
The second panel is Joey from the same show replying with “Russia”.
The third panel is Phoebe saying “has invaded”.
The fourth panel is Joey repeating back “has invaded”.
The fifth panel is Phoebe saying “Ukraine”.
The sixth panel is Joey repeating back “Ukraine”.
The seventh panel is Phoebe saying the completed phrase “Russia has invaded Ukraine”.
The final panel shows Joey proudly proclaiming “NATO just started a proxy war”.
Victim blaming at it’s finest! Ukraine gets invaded, it must be their fault!
Maybe Ukraine shouldn’t have been dressed so provocatively.
Westerners don’t get it. They didn’t see citizens in Crimea and Donbas walking around in their “fuck me, Putin” shorts and their “imperialism now” borscht stained t-shirts.
Thank you for the laugh, see you in hell. :)
They’re nazis because the NATO helped them not be colonized and drained of resources by Russia. Not wanting to have your hospitals and schools bombed, makes you a nazi obviously.
I think the Russian conception of Nazi is literally someone who threatens Russia. The rest of the world focuses on the totalitarian ideologies and anti semitism, Russia largely focuses on just that they were against Russia.
I think the Russian conception of Nazi is literally someone who threatens Russia.
Yep. Just like the US definition of socialist/communist/terrorist
Hmmm. I’m amazed that Lemmygrad and Hexbear users haven’t descended en masse to “dunk” on this.
Yeah, the US has done awful shit. I get it. It’s not the greatest country. We’ve invaded other countries and killed innocent people - Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam (which was really just an extension of the French-Indochina war), and many others. We’re still fighting–and possibly losing–battles against racism, religious extremism, and homophobia in our own borders. We have blood on our hands for sure. But our guilt in other matters does not make Russia innocent in this matter. Nor, for that matter, does the existence of neo-Nazis in Ukraine–including the Ukrainian parliament–mean that the country deserved to be invaded, and innocent civilians killed.
I thought Lemmy World preemptively defederated Hexbear…
Another BRICs war.
Another CSTO war.
NATO is not the aggressor. Ukraine is not the aggressor.
And Russia isn’t a victim.
Fuck Russia. Fuck the stooges that defend Russia.
“Russia has invaded Ukraine” is a true statement. “Russia has invaded Ukraine therefore I should do/say/support …” is false in general, a deceivingly simple deduction that is hiding a lot of complexity under the rug. For example, what do I want to achieve by doing that? Is it beneficial for the working class? Does anyone want me to do it at all costs to support imperialism? Am I using an appropriate framework for extending ethics reasoning to large organizations and groups of people? What actions are lawful? If no one has the power to enforce that a country will not take unlawful action against another, how is it reasonable of me to expect that the other will not defend itself by unlawful force, if that is de facto its only defense? Am I having a positive impact on the world by simply acting against every country that does something I consider unlawful? If I do so more to some countries than others, am I not acting in favor of some countries? Shouldn’t I choose what countries I act in favor of? If I don’t do it, who is choosing that for me?
I don’t know, I wouldn’t like my country invaded by a nuclear power, my house bombed, my family kidnapped and murdered, my workplace destroyed, does anybody in the working class think that helps anyone?
There are many hypothetical ways. For example, that might prevent further war in the future, or might be the continuation of an existing conflict. It might alter the balance of power in the world in a way that is eventually beneficial to working class struggle. Hell I can think of thousands of ways in which not starting a war would have been worse than starting it. The fact that you can simply stamp a meme, appeal to emotion and make a huge logic jump without a single word is perplexing.
Hope you stretched before those fuckin gymnastics
It’s funny how tankies come up with walls of texts but they always exclude the will of the people. Like wtf, is this just a piece of land for you bigger powers argue about?
Over 90% of the people in the country that is at war want to be a part of NATO.Edit: I was certain that I read about an over 90% agreement about joining NATO but checking for sources the most recent I found said 83%.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/record-83-ukrainians-want-nato-membership-poll-2022-10-03/Yeah, and people in Crimea never ever wanted to be part of Ukraine, and yet Zelensky has promised to take them back. Same for most (although in this case not all) people in the Donbass, which was invaded by Ukraine in 1917. Putin stated he would invade (or “take back”, who cares at this point) just those territories, so doesn’t that make him the good guy here? Of course I don’t believe he is, or Zelensky is, there are no good guys anywhere in this story.
You’re still arguing for an invasion of a sovereign democratic (although, like most countries not without problems but they’re definitely taking some massive steps for a more open society and a more transparent government… DURING A WAR) country. And the need for Russia to push through those documented fake elections for separation while they occupied the territory says everything you need to know about how legitimate this whole invasion is.
Yeah, but then it’s not “the will of the people” that matters here, but maybe international law or whatever other principles.
Dude you’re not making sense at this point. Like not even to yourself I mean to say.
Firstly, I’d like to warn you: you’re on !tankiejerk@lemmy.world . You’re not going to find many friends here.
Secondly, I gotta say: I can’t help but notice some questions very conspicuously absent from your list. Very important questions, too.
- How many civilians have died in Russian airstrikes?
- How many Russian weapons have been destroyed or intercepted by lend-leased military equipment?
- How many people would those weapons have killed?
- How many Ukrainian civilians’ lives would have to be saved for their salvation to be worth 10% of America’s military budget?
If a capitalist wanted me to hand a sandwich to a homeless man, and was rolling the cameras and spewing propaganda about how this couldn’t happen in a communist country… I would still hand the sandwich to the homeless man.
Because a man’s gotta eat, you know? His needs don’t change because some monster has an agenda that gets fulfilled when his needs are met.
Thank you, your answer was very valuable to me. It’s helped me get a better perspective on the problem. I have a tendency to cold-bloodedly redirect the trolley, you know? I feel that’s the right thing, but I respect your humanity here.
Thanks for hearing me out.
I’m extremely confused how people who are “I’m so leftist bro!” say you see, this fascist dictatorship HAD to invade a sovereign nation and abuse and murder tens of thousands of people, shoot missiles at apartment buildings and kidnap thousands of children because you see, our own countries and NATO are mean to them, due to the fact that we exist.
I honestly think most of the people that simultaneously take both of these positions are working for the Kremlin. There are probably a lot more bad actors who are being paid to muddy the waters than any of us would guess.
the amazing and disturbing thing is all of the republicans in the US who say everything the kremlin does and exhibit the exact same types of behavior.
All tankies should kiss themselves. Fuck them.
Except that the problem I have with tankies is their tendency to wish death upon people, (or, at least, accept casualties as some kind of ideological necessity.)
I don’t even wish death on Neo Nazis. I wish Life After Hate upon them. The organization, after all, has ripped people right from the bowels of Neo Nazi organizations. I’d like to see more of that.
I sure as hell don’t wish death upon misguided idealists who think killing political rivals is somehow going to build a world free from authoritarianism. They don’t need to die: they need to examine their beliefs.
I exclude Tankies from the far left. Because at its heart, the left is anti-authoritarian. Tankies lost the plot somewhere and decided that full authoritarianism was the way to go, regardless of the human suffering that lead to.
An authoritarian regime that claims to be communist is no closer to the communist ideal of a stateless utopia than a fully capitalistic state. If the capitalistic state is democratic with popular socialist programs, then it’s actually closer to the communist ideal than an authoritarian state that merely claims communism. I’m using European democracies as my gold standard.
Because at its heart, the left is anti-authoritarian.
Well, no. It’s not. The left/right spectrum is mostly understood as an economic spectrum, with the right believing in individual ownership of capital, the means of production, and land (and, of course, personal property), with the left believing in collective ownership of capital, the means of production, real estate (and in fringe cases, no personal property). Collectivism doesn’t necessarily mean anti-authoritarian; anarchists are just one flavor of collectivists.
Marxist theory states that authoritarian control is a necessary precondition to absolute communism, until everyone is enlightened enough (more or less; I’m greatly simplifying this, since his treatise is 500+ pages and dense as hell) to be able to fully self-govern in a communist utopia.
I tend to agree that a democratic society that has strong collectivist tendencies while preserving strong individual autonomy is more desirable than an authoritarian gov’t. Personally, I tend towards anarchism, but my view of humanity has dimmed enough in the last decade that I no longer believe that it’s a viable form or governance.
Marxist theory states that authoritarian control is a necessary precondition to absolute communism
That’s actually Leninist theory, Marx never went that direction. And Lenin was the one who betrayed the revolution to seize power, followed by a true despot in Stalin.
The actual origin of the terms Left and Right go back a bit further than Marx, they go back to the French Revolution. There was a vote, the question was, “Should the king have an absolute veto over new laws passed by the assembly” Those who said yes sat on the right of the podium, those who said no sat on the left.
Those on the left wanted no king at all, they wanted the people to have the power.
Communism was only deemed a left-wing ideology because the people held the power, not the wealthy few.
As a note, conservatism was also created out of the French Revolution, as a sort of blowback against it. It uses wealth to create and enforce social hierarchies.
Anyway, once you’ve betrayed the revolution and installed a dictator, communism is not considered left-wing, it’s a tool of authoritarianism, where the king owns all and merely allows the peasants to live in his kingdom.
The problem with tankies is that they have latched on to the Stalinist notion of the necessity for dictatorship to achieve the unification of the proletariat and the dismantling of the Plutarchy. The other problem is most of them are Soviboos obsessed with Russia and the USSR in general.
It would be fine if they were consistent. Wrong, but fine.
What grinds my gears is the full on simp-itry of Putin and Xi in particular. None are communist in any way. Both full on capitalists. I would argue USSR was never communist but even so the cut off date was 1991 everything after has absolutely no left wing whatsoever.
Tankies are just atheist MAGAs with a different God Emperor they worship.
If Xi is a full on capitalist, how do I make the capitalists in my country charge billionaires with crimes and actually convict them?
Here in the US, our capitalists are so brazen they steal billions a year in wage theft, they spend the majority of their companies profits on stock buybacks and lay off employees while making the remaining workers pick up the extra load with no extra compensation, they buy politicians and literally write the majority of all of our regulation. They bury studies that show their contribution to the climate crisis, they spend billions on misinformation campaigns to take the targets off their back… they sabotage renewable energy and prevent meaningful investment in public transportation. They lobby to further increase our military budget, which serves primarily as a welfare pot for military industrial corporations, who can charge exorbitant prices for garbage products, and who’s lobbying efforts have sufficiently restricted the market as to prevent new players from entering.
I mean, fuck dude, there is literally more inequality than prior to the French Revolution. We’ve walked straight into neo-feudalism, and people are more concerned with utopian visions of the future than actually creating change in the present.
I think the difference is Hierarchy.
Xi and Putin put themselves at the tippy top while in the US due to how “democracy” works, who’s in charge can shift around. Billionaires here are the higher ups while the government acts as contractors/employees to them. You can’t fire your boss.
I’m with you on this one. I kinda always thought Marx’s and Engel’s point was:
Capitalism is the stepping stone from feudalism to something far better.
I don’t think they had in mind that the next step after capitalism would be going back to despotism. Like you said, these people lost the plot.
I would love if the US adopted a Euro style social democracy. Shit would be so much better.
Take it from a European - no it wont, we’re like 2 steps behind you in the race to the bottom.
Don’t aspire to have the polite facade over the dumpster fire like we do, aspire to abolish the system entirely.Which country? Europe has a pretty large spectrum of policies depending where you live. On average though I’d say your standards of living are still better than what the average American would enjoy.
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Well said!
