Decades of meddling, coup attemps, dirty money, foreign NGOs, relentless propaganda campaigns, building "occupation museums" to brainwash the young about their past... And when the country is finally beaten into submission all you armchair communists will start spewing "all Georgians are Nazis" within a week, while the profits your countries reap from their suffering are trickling down to you just enough to keep you docile. Can't fucking wait to see this again.
I don't know if this will make you feel better or worse, but I don't think the kind of mindset you're talking about in this thread is a thing specific to places that have been couped. For the US for example, I'm not sure if I've seen it on lemmygrad directly that I can recall, but I know on Twitter I've seen stuff along the lines of like "why is the left so useless" and it's like, um, well its revolutionaries keep getting imprisoned or murdered by the state, then the messages of those revolutionaries (if they are allowed to be seen in popular media at all) get watered down into liberalism after their death, and aesthetic takes the place of substance in support of the status quo and methods of resistance like the feckless "resistance liberal" who "posts really hard and angrily about voting for a candidate who is carrying out genocide so the other genocide candidate won't get in" are all that is allowed to be spoken about as a valid tactic in the media with the most reach.
People get frustrated and I think one way to approach it is to treat it less like a dismissal of an entire people and more like a strategy question. Underneath the dismissal is someone who probably wants a better world, but doesn't understand why it isn't happening or how to bring it about, from where they're standing.
Who exactly is saying "all Georgians are Nazis"? If you're referring to the comparison to Ukraine, I've yet to see anyone here call the majority of the participants Nazis
No one. No one is saying it. They are just stirring the pot with a bunch of baseless claims through all their comments. I've barely ever seen mention of Georgia in general on here.
It's not from a Lemmygrad user, but I don't agree with the phrasing of that comment and may have removed it if it had been reported. As it stands, I don't see the need to remove it because it would decontextualize your reply. Please use the report function if you see comments like these.
That's not even a lemmygrad user. Regardless, I think the point is that the people in power are Nazis. Not the general populace. Ukraine is tearing down victory monuments for Christ's sakes. When Georgia starts doing that, I'll definitely be sympathetic to calling their government Nazis.
The newly installed Tryzub on the shield of Mother Ukraine monument, will be likely to fall. The Soviet emblem was way more stable than a rushed replacement.
Yeah I don't think "Ukrainians will never forgive the Red Army for liberating them from Nazis" meant "Ukrainian government", sorry. More likely, this person thinks Ukraine was on the side of Nazis in WW2 which I'm seeing quite a lot too (not looking for examples though, sorry)
How is it any different from saying "Americans" do such and such when their representatives say awful things? We know that there are American comrades, and we know that there are likely a great number more comrades in Ukraine. I really don't think the post was meant to disparage all Ukrainians. Just the ones that support what their representatives are saying.
Americans and other imperial core nations directly benefit from imperialism, this is the real reason why no communist party can take off the ground there, not any ephemeral reppression. Ukrainians on the other hand are the victims of imperialism and it's their country that is right now ravaged by a war. You wouldn't go around blaming Bangladeshi people for politics that keep them in crumbling sweatshops, even though it's comprador Bangladeshi politicians who sign off those policies for the benefit of Western capitalists. The same way when comprador Nazi politicians of Ukraine sacrifice their people in a war for the benefit of Western capitalists, you shouldn't blame Ukrainian people for it.
Your question is no different from someone asking "if it's ok to say whites do such and such, why can't I say blacks do such and such"? The difference is between the oppressor and the oppressed, the perpetrator and the victim. White supremacy is not every single white persons fault and noone can singlehandedly end it, but whites are collectively benefitting from it and thus should take responsibility. Western people, working class included, have some responsibility for sustaining imperialism, because it does benefit them - all the sweat, blood and tears are outsourced to other nations so there's no reason for Western working class to rebel.
Those dynamics have to be understood if we're to achieve any change at all and it's actually sad I had to type this out.
Lemmy ate my reply. But the short version is that I actually do mostly agree with you. I try not do this myself, but it is linguistically difficult to speak more narrowly about the Nazis in Ukraine. I just think it's a wee bit of a stretch to assume that the comment you referenced actually refers to all Ukrainians.
Zhukov was right when he said "We have liberated Europe from fascism, but they will never forgive us for it." The West immediately went on to put Nazi generals in charge of NATO, Canada nurtured Banderites who would never see a day of freedom in Ukraine, all this simply because Nazism is an organic outgrowth of European settler-colonial project (same as Zionism), it's the ugly side of Western liberalism.
Turning this around against Ukraine made my blood boil because Ukraine was one of the primary victims of Nazism along with Belarus, over two million Ukrainians enslaved and sent to German industries for forced labour, over five million slaughtered, entire villages razed to the ground, mass rapes organised by Nazi officers, mass shootings by SS death squads and Banderites, things Western education mostly glosses over. Even the 30s famine has nothing on the destruction Nazis wreaked on Ukraine.
I doubt you can imagine the generational trauma people raised in the USSR have. Watch "Come and See" and understand we were raised by people who lived through this (https://youtu.be/zjIiApN6cfg). Liberation from Nazis is not a laughing matter for us, which is why the Ukrainian grandma with the red flag resonated so deeply with so many post-Soviet people (https://youtu.be/DfeflkpcOi4).
Ukraine was a founding member of the USSR, Ukrainians were the largest ethnic group in the Red Army after Russians, with over 5 million serving (https://i.imgur.com/62j4OYo.jpeg). It's Ukrainians who did the liberation, and it's the West who never forgave them for it and is now destroying them in a proxy war against Russia, after putting Banderites in power.
I'm sorry but the comment I referenced comes out of a deep ignorance and arrogance typical to Westerners. No they didn't say "every single Ukrainian" but they generalised Ukrainians in an extremely ahistorical and offensive manner.
I've seen countless examples of this and won't waste time looking now, but if you want I can start tagging you and @GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml whenever I notice those?
If there really are a bunch of blatant, actual examples, they'd be easy to find. If they aren't easy to find maybe there aren't that many, or maybe they aren't saying what you're reading into them (like the one you linked).
all Ukraine had to do was be normal. There could have been peace earlier but we blocked it; I don’t even know how that works, why the hell did Ukraine go along with that?
of course as puppets they never would have been allowed to stop this war from starting. I just wish Zelensky would have the guts to cut the strings
Literally everything Eastern Europe has to do is to stop praising, supporting and building monuments for fucking nazis and be normal, really hard part for a lot of them.
And when I brought up how it's the West that did this to us, you had a similar response as now:
You know the person you’re talking to (1) opposed this and (2) had zero control over it, right?
This is your brain on liberalism, you have Western "leftists" running around asking "why can't those Slavs just be normal like us" but when a Slav mentions it's you people who keep spreading this poison around the world you will turn around and go "well he can't singlehandedly change the world can he?"
Do you really not notice the hypocrisy here? Can't understand how exasperating this is?
And when the country is finally beaten into submission all you armchair communists will start spewing “all Georgians are Nazis” within a week
I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that all is well with communists in the imperial core, but what are they expected to do? If Georgian communists, and Ukrainian communists got beaten down, imagine the situation for communists in Europe, or even worse, the US.
If Georgian communists, and Ukrainian communists got beaten down, imagine the situation for communists in Europe, or even worse, the US.
This is just Western exceptionalism talking.
In Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, etc communist parties and periodicals are banned, WW2 veterans are harassed and arrested for wearing their uniforms or putting flowers at WW2 monuments, wearing communist symbols can land you in jail, and an overwhelming foreign capital is making sure those rules are in place and no competing thought is allowed in press.
While in the EU, UK, USA, communist parties are allowed to operate mostly unmolested by the government, they publish their newspapers, organise protests and so on...
You're right that Georgian and Ukrainian communists got beaten down, nobody's "beating down" British or French communists though, are they? But I'm supposed to "imagine the situation for communists in Europe, or even worse, the US" like you have it worse somehow.
Yes, communist movements in Europe and the US are getting suppressed. The violent phase occured 60-70 years ago. Now whatever is left is getting infiltrated and chopped up immediately through psyops. They are allowed to operate "unmolested" because they've been suppressed to hell and are now just husks used to sheepdog and manipulate people.
Take a look at Greece. KKE is vehemently anti-government but nobody cares to listen to it or takes it seriously, because there's constant infighting for nonsensical reasons. That's the controlled parts of the leadership constantly creating issues to prevent unified action. Any efforts by other communist movements are quickly destroyed by planting provocateurs in their marches and actions. Any spontaneous protest is immediately and violently suppressed by police forces. Similar things are happening in France, Spain and Germany.
Don't get me started on the state of communist movements in the US and the UK.
I'd suggest you take a look at the history of communism in all these places and understand that what is happening to all the former Soviet countries now, has already happened after 1945 all over the West.
This is just Western exceptionalism talking.
I said I'm not going to pretend Western communist movements are perfect. But you are quick to blame the strawman Western communist for imperialism. That's nothing more than sectarianism.
Yeah, Western communists ought to take up arms. But what arms? We are talking about extremely diminished movements in a fairly demotivated population, fighting against tanks, jets and drones. In countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, the communists tried to fight in the last century and failed. They are still carrying the stigma to this day. And yeah, a bunch of movements are bought for or otherwise institutionalized. How is that the fault of an everyday communist?
Lastly, you blame Western communists of decrying "all Ukrainians" as Nazis. Yet, you do the same exact thing by lumping all Western communists in the same basket.
While in the EU, UK, USA, communist parties are allowed to operate mostly unmolested by the government
The only reason you can legally have a communist party in the U.S., for example, is because this already happened decades ago:
Decades of meddling, coup attemps, dirty money, foreign NGOs, relentless propaganda campaigns, building “occupation museums” to brainwash the young about their past… And when the country is finally beaten into submission
Seems like you haven't read what happened with the Black Panther's leadership.
In case you are interested in reading the context behind MarxMadness comment, you can search for the COINTELPRO program, which aimed to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" groups like the Black Panthers.
The FBI did plenty of "meddling," to put it lightly, with American leftist groups. Leaders of these groups were targeted in various ways, including assassination (see Fred Hampton).
The repression coming from inside the house didn't make it any less repressive.
How am I describing Ukrainian Nazis? What foreign country did they coup? What NGOs did they insert into other countries to meddle with their politics? What conflict abroad do they materially benefit from?
God almighty Western leftists are so fragile, critisize them and you all descend with "no u" not even bothering to make any sense.
Decades of meddling, coup attemps, dirty money, foreign NGOs, relentless propaganda campaigns, building "occupation museums" to brainwash the young about their past... And when the country is finally beaten into submission all you armchair communists will start spewing "all Georgians are Nazis" within a week, while the profits your countries reap from their suffering are trickling down to you just enough to keep you docile. Can't fucking wait to see this again.
I don't know if this will make you feel better or worse, but I don't think the kind of mindset you're talking about in this thread is a thing specific to places that have been couped. For the US for example, I'm not sure if I've seen it on lemmygrad directly that I can recall, but I know on Twitter I've seen stuff along the lines of like "why is the left so useless" and it's like, um, well its revolutionaries keep getting imprisoned or murdered by the state, then the messages of those revolutionaries (if they are allowed to be seen in popular media at all) get watered down into liberalism after their death, and aesthetic takes the place of substance in support of the status quo and methods of resistance like the feckless "resistance liberal" who "posts really hard and angrily about voting for a candidate who is carrying out genocide so the other genocide candidate won't get in" are all that is allowed to be spoken about as a valid tactic in the media with the most reach.
People get frustrated and I think one way to approach it is to treat it less like a dismissal of an entire people and more like a strategy question. Underneath the dismissal is someone who probably wants a better world, but doesn't understand why it isn't happening or how to bring it about, from where they're standing.
Who exactly is saying "all Georgians are Nazis"? If you're referring to the comparison to Ukraine, I've yet to see anyone here call the majority of the participants Nazis
No one. No one is saying it. They are just stirring the pot with a bunch of baseless claims through all their comments. I've barely ever seen mention of Georgia in general on here.
I don't know how to help you if you've never noticed this behaviour around here.
An example is the obvious way to support your point.
ok https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6083127/5387445
It's not from a Lemmygrad user, but I don't agree with the phrasing of that comment and may have removed it if it had been reported. As it stands, I don't see the need to remove it because it would decontextualize your reply. Please use the report function if you see comments like these.
Will do, and thank you.
That's not even a lemmygrad user. Regardless, I think the point is that the people in power are Nazis. Not the general populace. Ukraine is tearing down victory monuments for Christ's sakes. When Georgia starts doing that, I'll definitely be sympathetic to calling their government Nazis.
The newly installed Tryzub on the shield of Mother Ukraine monument, will be likely to fall. The Soviet emblem was way more stable than a rushed replacement.
Yeah I don't think "Ukrainians will never forgive the Red Army for liberating them from Nazis" meant "Ukrainian government", sorry. More likely, this person thinks Ukraine was on the side of Nazis in WW2 which I'm seeing quite a lot too (not looking for examples though, sorry)
How is it any different from saying "Americans" do such and such when their representatives say awful things? We know that there are American comrades, and we know that there are likely a great number more comrades in Ukraine. I really don't think the post was meant to disparage all Ukrainians. Just the ones that support what their representatives are saying.
Americans and other imperial core nations directly benefit from imperialism, this is the real reason why no communist party can take off the ground there, not any ephemeral reppression. Ukrainians on the other hand are the victims of imperialism and it's their country that is right now ravaged by a war. You wouldn't go around blaming Bangladeshi people for politics that keep them in crumbling sweatshops, even though it's comprador Bangladeshi politicians who sign off those policies for the benefit of Western capitalists. The same way when comprador Nazi politicians of Ukraine sacrifice their people in a war for the benefit of Western capitalists, you shouldn't blame Ukrainian people for it.
Your question is no different from someone asking "if it's ok to say whites do such and such, why can't I say blacks do such and such"? The difference is between the oppressor and the oppressed, the perpetrator and the victim. White supremacy is not every single white persons fault and noone can singlehandedly end it, but whites are collectively benefitting from it and thus should take responsibility. Western people, working class included, have some responsibility for sustaining imperialism, because it does benefit them - all the sweat, blood and tears are outsourced to other nations so there's no reason for Western working class to rebel.
Those dynamics have to be understood if we're to achieve any change at all and it's actually sad I had to type this out.
Lemmy ate my reply. But the short version is that I actually do mostly agree with you. I try not do this myself, but it is linguistically difficult to speak more narrowly about the Nazis in Ukraine. I just think it's a wee bit of a stretch to assume that the comment you referenced actually refers to all Ukrainians.
It's not difficult to call Nazis Nazis.
Zhukov was right when he said "We have liberated Europe from fascism, but they will never forgive us for it." The West immediately went on to put Nazi generals in charge of NATO, Canada nurtured Banderites who would never see a day of freedom in Ukraine, all this simply because Nazism is an organic outgrowth of European settler-colonial project (same as Zionism), it's the ugly side of Western liberalism.
Turning this around against Ukraine made my blood boil because Ukraine was one of the primary victims of Nazism along with Belarus, over two million Ukrainians enslaved and sent to German industries for forced labour, over five million slaughtered, entire villages razed to the ground, mass rapes organised by Nazi officers, mass shootings by SS death squads and Banderites, things Western education mostly glosses over. Even the 30s famine has nothing on the destruction Nazis wreaked on Ukraine.
I doubt you can imagine the generational trauma people raised in the USSR have. Watch "Come and See" and understand we were raised by people who lived through this (https://youtu.be/zjIiApN6cfg). Liberation from Nazis is not a laughing matter for us, which is why the Ukrainian grandma with the red flag resonated so deeply with so many post-Soviet people (https://youtu.be/DfeflkpcOi4).
Ukraine was a founding member of the USSR, Ukrainians were the largest ethnic group in the Red Army after Russians, with over 5 million serving (https://i.imgur.com/62j4OYo.jpeg). It's Ukrainians who did the liberation, and it's the West who never forgave them for it and is now destroying them in a proxy war against Russia, after putting Banderites in power.
I'm sorry but the comment I referenced comes out of a deep ignorance and arrogance typical to Westerners. No they didn't say "every single Ukrainian" but they generalised Ukrainians in an extremely ahistorical and offensive manner.
An Imgur link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
You're reading that in the worst possible light and it's still not "all Ukranians are Nazis."
I've seen countless examples of this and won't waste time looking now, but if you want I can start tagging you and @GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml whenever I notice those?
No, don't start spamming me.
If there really are a bunch of blatant, actual examples, they'd be easy to find. If they aren't easy to find maybe there aren't that many, or maybe they aren't saying what you're reading into them (like the one you linked).
Found in my history the last time I had an argument over this and I see you commented there as well lol: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5287344/4812302
And when I brought up how it's the West that did this to us, you had a similar response as now:
This is your brain on liberalism, you have Western "leftists" running around asking "why can't those Slavs just be normal like us" but when a Slav mentions it's you people who keep spreading this poison around the world you will turn around and go "well he can't singlehandedly change the world can he?"
Do you really not notice the hypocrisy here? Can't understand how exasperating this is?
(edit: deleted some oversharing)
I'll say what I said then: you're screaming at people who agree with you because you're putting words in their mouths.
I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that all is well with communists in the imperial core, but what are they expected to do? If Georgian communists, and Ukrainian communists got beaten down, imagine the situation for communists in Europe, or even worse, the US.
This is just Western exceptionalism talking.
In Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, etc communist parties and periodicals are banned, WW2 veterans are harassed and arrested for wearing their uniforms or putting flowers at WW2 monuments, wearing communist symbols can land you in jail, and an overwhelming foreign capital is making sure those rules are in place and no competing thought is allowed in press.
While in the EU, UK, USA, communist parties are allowed to operate mostly unmolested by the government, they publish their newspapers, organise protests and so on...
You're right that Georgian and Ukrainian communists got beaten down, nobody's "beating down" British or French communists though, are they? But I'm supposed to "imagine the situation for communists in Europe, or even worse, the US" like you have it worse somehow.
Yes, communist movements in Europe and the US are getting suppressed. The violent phase occured 60-70 years ago. Now whatever is left is getting infiltrated and chopped up immediately through psyops. They are allowed to operate "unmolested" because they've been suppressed to hell and are now just husks used to sheepdog and manipulate people.
Take a look at Greece. KKE is vehemently anti-government but nobody cares to listen to it or takes it seriously, because there's constant infighting for nonsensical reasons. That's the controlled parts of the leadership constantly creating issues to prevent unified action. Any efforts by other communist movements are quickly destroyed by planting provocateurs in their marches and actions. Any spontaneous protest is immediately and violently suppressed by police forces. Similar things are happening in France, Spain and Germany.
Don't get me started on the state of communist movements in the US and the UK.
I'd suggest you take a look at the history of communism in all these places and understand that what is happening to all the former Soviet countries now, has already happened after 1945 all over the West.
I said I'm not going to pretend Western communist movements are perfect. But you are quick to blame the strawman Western communist for imperialism. That's nothing more than sectarianism.
Yeah, Western communists ought to take up arms. But what arms? We are talking about extremely diminished movements in a fairly demotivated population, fighting against tanks, jets and drones. In countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, the communists tried to fight in the last century and failed. They are still carrying the stigma to this day. And yeah, a bunch of movements are bought for or otherwise institutionalized. How is that the fault of an everyday communist?
Lastly, you blame Western communists of decrying "all Ukrainians" as Nazis. Yet, you do the same exact thing by lumping all Western communists in the same basket.
The only reason you can legally have a communist party in the U.S., for example, is because this already happened decades ago:
Meddling and coup attempts by who? Ukrainians? Poles? Who the fuck couped the US? Are you high?
Seems like you haven't read what happened with the Black Panther's leadership.
In case you are interested in reading the context behind MarxMadness comment, you can search for the COINTELPRO program, which aimed to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" groups like the Black Panthers.
OMG of course I know what happened to Black Panthers, this doesn't explain why you can't organise two generations later. Read Sakai or Zak Cope.
The FBI did plenty of "meddling," to put it lightly, with American leftist groups. Leaders of these groups were targeted in various ways, including assassination (see Fred Hampton).
The repression coming from inside the house didn't make it any less repressive.
You're describing the UkraNazis
How am I describing Ukrainian Nazis? What foreign country did they coup? What NGOs did they insert into other countries to meddle with their politics? What conflict abroad do they materially benefit from?
God almighty Western leftists are so fragile, critisize them and you all descend with "no u" not even bothering to make any sense.
Cry more, projecting westoid.