Fringe right and fringe left both make this conversation difficult
Fringe right and fringe left both make this conversation difficult
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!
6Maybe Ukraine shouldn't have been dressed so provocatively.
3Westerners 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.
2Thank you for the laugh, see you in hell. :)
1
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.
2
This is a NATO proxy war in that NATO, an organization created to provide European countries protection from Russia's territorial ambitions, is providing assistance to a European country to help protect them from Russia's territorial ambitions.
I can't get over the circular logic of thinking Russia is justified in its invasion of another country by the fact that the other country wanted to be better prepared to defend against Russia invading it.
"I need to beat up my neighbor for trying to take a self defense class, because if he takes the class I won't be able to beat him up."
Dude, it only comes up if you're trying to beat up your neighbor. just don't do that.
1"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?
0I 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?
0There 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.
0
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.
0I would love if the US adopted a Euro style social democracy. Shit would be so much better.
0