It's been bizarre some of my interactions with group A and B. I've been active in leftist circles for most of my time on the internet. I definitely get and agree with a lot of the criticisms with the US, NATO, and the EU, but I don't get how so many people think the Russian or Chinese government are any more righteous, especially considering the human rights violations and encroachments on sovereignty we've seen from both countries. Not just in their past either, but within the last decade!
The situation kinda feels like how Japan justified its imperialism to the outside world during the Invasion of China, South Asia, and the Pacific. Their official stance was they were aiming to rid Asia of Western imperialism and replace it with a sphere of co-prosperity, Despite this message however, they were absolutely brutal to the lands they occupied. The murdered and raped indiscriminately, and those they kept alive they enslaved and worked to death in brutal conditions. No sane person today who knows the extent of their harm would ever defend them as a power, even if their supposed message was "anti-imperialism."
You can oppose western imperialism, US hegemony, and capitalism without siding with other imperialists, fascists, and psuedo-communists. The actions of a country should speak for them, not the messages their propaganda tries to make you believe. Considering what I know from Russia's Soviet legacy with Eastern Europe, the actions they took against Chechnya and Georgia, their local treatment of dissidents, the brutal persecution of queer people that makes Florida look tame, the war crimes and human rights violations committed in Syria and Africa by Wagner, and the bombing, killing, raping, and kidnapping of civilians in Ukraine. I don't see how anyone could defend them or their actions. I know the US is guilty most of it through out its history too, but you shouldn't oppose a monster by supporting another monster.
This is a biased piece of pseudo intellectual misinformation. Communists don't defend Russia and "lefty" (couldn't you be more obvious in your bias if you tried) antifascists do not assume whole nations are fascist at all - clearly they attack fascists in their own countries without attacking everyone.
This is just dumb centrist shit masquerading as discourse.
Look i cringe and ROFL as much as the next guy when some dumbass tankie comes defending tyranical goverments and calling one racist just for critcising the ccp, but this meme is idiotic, since its deffinetly made targeting those dumbasses and made with the intend to roundup both us vs them just to generate fighting, and is kinda indulging in what it bashes, not that theres anything possitive to take away from tankies and its not like we are gonna change their mind if we repeatedly scream to them tianamen square massacre, but rounding up people just to shittalk those idiots is very suspisous and i cant stop but feeling that whe are being manipulated.
EDIT: for those downvoting me, I would be happy to engage in a civil discussion about why you think I’m wrong, and even change my mind if I’m mistaken.
This is extremely dumb for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it’s very clearly written with a certain bias.
A (the communist) is describing a tankie. But generally someone who identifies specifically as a communist is not authoritarian, they’re closer to anarchocommunism than the reverse.
B (the lefty antifascist) describes them as a subtype of A, but antifascists are diametrically opposed to tankies, ideologically. Also, “antifascist” is a word that has long been used to label a specific group of leftists… calling them “lefty antifascists” implies that there are also “right-wing antifascists,” trying to equivocate the sides by generalizing the word. Also, most importantly, the description is 100% bullshit.
C (the hard right) a single token addition of a very generic “hard” right person, to appear balanced. No making fun of this person like in the rest of the descriptions, just a list of facts… except “always an arsehole” which I would argue most of these people would enjoy reading about themselves because they would think it was funny and kind of true. Clearly the target audience.
D (the contrarian) this is the modern right wing lowest common denominator person, and an accurate description of the archetype, but no mention of left/right in this description. Wonder why?
E (the peacenik) what? Peacenik is just another historically left-wing-associated label. These people do not have a unified view of how to end the conflict, and certainly don’t frequently suggest ceding land to an invader. That’s a really stupid take on pacifism, and it’s just another dig at the left.
This is definitely dumb and probably just plain old propaganda.
The Venn diagram of people who own > 3 guns "for home defense" yet think Ukraine should just let the invaders keep their gains is probably highly overlapped.
NAFO is a Nazi propaganda op. Literally. The founder, Kamil Dyszewski (aka Kama Kamelia) is a Holocaust denier who adores Hitler. I call this the SS type genocide denier. That's actually the most common type.
In case anyone thinks the rest of NAFO distanced themselves from this guy: Lol no, he was just on stage at the NAFO summit in Vilnius.
"I'd say that's pretty smart. He's taking over a country -- really avast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in." "Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine -- of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful."
So Donald J. Trump i type C. ? Hard right?
I would say Trump is not "hard" right, he is the leader of the right wing in general of all conservatives. He represents their interest best. And all conservatives in Europe think the same way as Trump:
Afd in Germany:
Kotré describes Ukraine as a US staging ground to destabilize Russia, adding: "And when we talk about that, we also have to talk about the bioweapons laboratories that are aimed at Russia.
He seems to be Category E, but I say he is also C.
Le Pen in France: Of meeting the Russian president in 2017, she replied: “The Vladimir Putin of five years ago is not exactly that of today, ... okay war in Georgia in 2008 was not the same? She wants to find a european solution and does not want the US to help Ukraine, basically corruptly Pro Russia behind the scenes like Trump.
People do not seem to realize how hard the right wing is betting on the destruction of Ukraine. They can use the same to eradicate the "social democrats" in their own countries as Putin did with Navalny. Use it to justify Authoritarianism at home.
There are also many People that identify with the names of group a,b,c that oppose Russia. There are for example Antifa Groups fighting against Russia.
If I would guess the percentage of People that identify with the names of group a,b,c that oppose Russia could be roughly as follows:
A 75%
B 95%
C 35%
Just numbers I made up.
Subtype of the C type. Likes the fact, that Russia is genociding Ukrainians, and calling the Ukrainian people a "Leninist fabrication". The Hungarian far-right has a similar feeling toward Slovaks, often calling them "Hungarians forced to learn Slavic", their country "fake" and "illegitimate", and wish they could also do a special military operation on them.
Hrm uh... I would describe myself as a leftist antifascist.
And I do not think that elements of fascism within Ukraine's society and government make it somehow deserving of being invaded, absorbed into Russia, having their culture erased, and worse.
Getting more technical, maybe the term anarcho-communist is i think actually accurate, but then you end up with less politically informed people assuming I am the worst thing imaginable, a violent anarchist terrorist that wants to violently overthrow every government and replace it with nothing, while simultaneously /also/ being an authoritarian who believes in a vanguard party, no dissent allowed an oh money and property are not allowed to exist any more.
Then on the other hand you could say maybe social libertarian, but you run into the same problem woth the other terms: Every American thinks Libertarian = AnCap, and 'social' as a prefix denotes basically 'communism lite' to most Americans.
What I actually am is a person who believes in the right to privacy in personal matters, freedom of speech as in the ability to say unpopular things and be judged by people individually and by groups collectively, but not at the point of a goon squad with guns or the ability to imprison or impoverish you preventing you from criticizing an existing power structure, be it government, corporate, religious or otherwise.
I believe in protecting the oppressed, providing a reasonable standard of living, education amd medical care for all, that people should genuinely, directly care and help their neighbors (not indirectly by donating to some incredibly inefficient charity, and especially not by hypocritically acting extremely concerned about whatever issue but not actually /doing/ anything /useful/ about it).
I believe that American society is far too individualistic and selfish, that worker co ops with a democratic governance structure are a far superior way to organize economic production than the authoritarian private business model that defines social relations within especially large corporations, but even most medium and small business enterprises I have ever been a part of as well.
And I also do my best to temper these beliefs with realism, knowing that these things are an idea of a better world to strive for, in a world that is brutally unfair, difficult to predict, and is full of many, many others who disagree.
You might even say that even when societies are organized into nation states, even when employees are organized into corporations, or adherents organized into religions, at a bigger picture level they all compete with each other in a rather stereotypically anarchic way, often violating the 'rules' that are supposed to govern their interactions, and nearly always employing every method possible to bend those rules, break those rules and get away with it, and to be the ones making those rules.
I can, and did, easily fit in to all the chapo themed sub-lemmies, it is very easy to joke about the hypocrisy of American domestic politics and economic practices.
But they never talk about the Ukraine Russia conflict.
Sure, they all agree that Israel is doing a genocide, which is my opinion as well.
But you cannot be critical of China. I barely mentioned that /maybe/ if Taiwan wants to be independent, that a flawed democracy exerting its will to self determine should not just de facto be waived away by the geo strategic situation, and they all got extremely edgelord extremely quickly.
Eventually the topic turned to surveillance and freedom of speech, and they basically all entirely believed that China has no problems with that at all.
Delusional.
Its actually very confusing to me that online Chapo fan communities are seemingly all Marxist-Leninists, or Maoists, or even more confusingly to me think that the Chinese government and societt even is communist, when they are so obviously state capitalists (red fascists, as many here seem to say).
The Chapo podcast almost never touches on foreign policy beyond making fun of how absurd many American foreign policy decisions are and how poorly informes most Americans are about other societies.
Anyway this is a long post but here is more kindling for this thread:
I am a lefty antifascist, but I don't believe that Ukraine's right to self determine democratically should be overridden by the Russian state.
And though I believe that war itself is a crime... I do not see how any reasonable person can think that Ukraine should just lie down and give up.
A felt like it was an invasion by imperial interests and was based on wanting to steal minerals (Afghanistan has nothing of value except heroin)
B felt like it was morally wrong because NATO didn't prevent the Afghan government from torturing captured Taliban so wanted "troops out now"
C felt like we should get out of Afghanistan because we should be supporting our own people and not a "bunch of brown guys"
D felt like we should allow Afghanistan to explore its own self-deterministic ideals, even if that meant enduring an Islamo-fascist state retaking the country and subjugating women as cattle again
E felt like war is wrong in any and all contexts and NATO should leave immediately. This is the dumbest letter because even A-D knows sometimes you need to cut a head off to kill a snake.
Every news source has its biases, and for some it is more than biases. I've read Fox News and Russia Today (English and Russian versions, because they are very different sites, of course. Not that I can easily read it nowadays) because even if they might post only selective facts, it also gives you an idea of what the propaganda campaign, if any, is trying to concentrate on, at the very least from their point of view. The real problem with "contrarians" is saturation by actual paid propagandists and that they don't have a problem encasing themselves inside a very small bubble while calling everything else a bubble. But it's hard to be a critical thinker if your don't "contrarian" yourself.
F. The CIA operative that posts all day about how the west are the glorious saviors of the world and that everyone who disagrees with them is a "tankie" or "genocide apologist" or some other label. There is no room for nuance for these clowns, all geopolitical issues are cartoonish good vs evil narratives.