[-] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 1 month ago

I'm surprised there haven't been posts about it. My guess is that people are hesitant to call it out in case the story turns out to be true, but I have no such qualms.

Not at all. The reason i haven't posted about this is simply because for me it was just too dumb and too obviously bullshit to even bother addressing.

I appreciate you making this post though in case anyone was actually considering taking this low effort psyop seriously.

[-] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I think this response is a bit harsh. I can understand where they are coming from, and once upon a time i myself may have had a similar kneejerk reaction. I think that as i matured (politically, though age also helps to put things into perspective) i came to understand that such an emotional reaction was not productive. Criticize what needs to be criticized and learn as much as you can from any source that you can. As Lenin said the most important thing a young revolutionary can do is учиться, учиться и учиться.

I think what the OP of this comment chain needs to ask themselves is this: there are already enough imperialist shills trying to discredit and smear anti-imperialist voices, regardless whether these voices come from the left or the right (and frequently conflating the two anyway); do i really want to help them do that and what does my revolutionary cause gain by doing so?

The problem with saying "X is right wing therefore anything they have to say is automatically suspect and we should not listen to them" is not just that it's superficial moralism, it's that by doing so you also discredit any correct analysis they may have. Then later when communists make the same correct arguments and point out the same factually true things, our own analysis will have already been discredited by association with the objectionable source. According to the "guilt by association" precedent that we ourselves would have already set.

This is obviously a self-defeating strategy for communists which allows the liberal imperialists to successfully smear the anti-imperialist position as a whole as a right wing one. The correct approach is to critically analyze the content of an argument and judge it based on its merits rather than who it came from.

[-] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Putin didn't start the war, NATO did in 2014 when they toppled an elected government and put their Nazi puppets in charge who went on to start a war against their own people.

If by "Putin could end the war" you mean he could surrender, sure. So can Zelensky. Why doesn't he? Russia has placed a peace offer on the table. Repeatedly in fact. In 2014 and 2015. In 2021 and 2022. And again just a week or so ago. Zelensky and his western handlers could end the war they started at any moment.

Sure, Putin could surrender, just like i could jump off of a balcony, but why would or should he? He's winning. He has huge popular support. This conflict is viewed in Russia as vital to Russia's national interests. Nothing has changed about the reasons why Russia made the decision to intervene in 2022. If anything they have only become more convinced of the correctness and the necessity of their decision.

If Putin tried to unilaterally make a decision that would so clearly compromise Russia's vital interests nearly the entire Russian state apparatus and much of society would view him as a traitor, and rightfully so. He would most likely be ousted and replaced by a hardliner who was more willing to finish the job.

Same reason in fact why Zelensky can't surrender, by the way, only in his case he won't just get ousted, the Nazis will probably kill him. Like they did to their own negotiator who was trying to work out a deal with the Russians in Istanbul.

And why is it that you never stop to think about what would happen next if Russia suddenly pulled out of territories that are now constitutionally a part of Russia and where millions of people live who consider themselves Russian and have taken Russian citizenship? Do you know what Ukrainian Nazis do to those people who they see as traitors? Do you know what their plan is for the ethnic Russian population of Donbass which dared to rebel and fight back against the Maidan regime for eight years?

Have you seen what happened last year when Armenia stopped being willing or able to defend Nagorno Karabakh? Why would any leader (at least one who isn't on the payroll of the West) allow that to happen to their people?

And do you think Nazi Ukraine would stop at 2022 borders? Or do you think they would be emboldened and press further to take Crimea as well and whatever other Russian territory their deranged revisionist "history" tells them ought to be theirs?

Why should Russia roll over and allow itself to be dismantled? Why should they let NATO take over Crimea and zone them out of the Black Sea? You'd have to be monumentally stupid or a traitor to allow that, and any country in the same position would go to whatever lengths necessary to ensure that didn't happen.

[-] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Because the "rules based order" is the opposite of international law. International law applies equally to all whereas the "rules" of the "rules based order" are made up and applied selectively as benefits the imperialist West. It is also never clear what these "rules" and "norms" are which the West loves to tout as opposed to clearly written down laws, and this allows them to suddenly "discover" new ones and do away with or ignore others that are inconvenient for them.

[-] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 10 months ago

But the West taught us that imposing unilateral sanctions is ok if it's for a good cause. Well, Yemen is just imposing sanctions on an aggressor. Don't violate sanctions if you don't want your ships shot at or seized.

[-] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Tailor your propaganda to your audience. When speaking to small business owners emphasise how the state is giving tax breaks to big corporations while putting a disproportionate burden on the middle class. If they have a strong aversion to the word socialism either avoid it using it altogether or try using that to your advantage: point out how the big "socialist" corporations like Amazon, Tesla, big pharma, big oil, etc. get subsidies and how the "socialist" banks are getting bailed out by the state at the expense of small business owners. Point out how these corporate monopolies are "socialist" because they are anti-competition and how they need to be broken up "for the sake of the free market". Use their frustration and redirect it against monopoly capital and the bourgeois state that props it up. Bonus points if you can get them to get angry at how much of their tax money the state spends on wars abroad for the profits of Raytheon and Lockheed and kickbacks for corrupt politicians instead of helping out small business owners.

At this stage of capitalist development it is impossible to turn back to free competition small proprietor capitalism. Attempting to do so would crash the whole system but those from the petty bourgeois strata who advocate for this often don't understand that. If they push for policies which undermine monopoly capital or the bourgeois state structures propping it up they will be inadvertently helping to usher in socialism faster. The petty bourgeois are not class allies but they might be useful if we can exploit the contradictions of capitalism such that they are persuaded for the sake of their own selfish, short sighted interests to turn against the pillars of the system: finance, insurance, big real estate, etc., and especially imperialism.

[-] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 11 months ago

The US has always eventually abandoned its proxies once they ceased to be useful. Why the Nazi clowns in Kiev thought they were the exception i will never understand.

[-] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"Israel" cannot exist without said oppression. For all intents and purposes defending their existence is defending their system of apartheid and genocide, and vice versa. And the western supporters of "Israel" know this, which is why they fully support its brutality.

[-] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There are a ton of genuine and principled communist parties around the world especially in the global south which hold on to at least some social conservative lines. We need to accept that contradictions like this are a fact of life, it is to be expected that many communist parties, at least those that are not astroturfed from the outside, will in some way reflect the dominant social mores and attitudes of their country. After all, their members come from the general population, they are not above them but part of the people and will share some of the same prejudices inculcated in them by their upbringing.

Of course we would like to see their attitude change in a more progressive direction but this is not something that we have the power to enforce on them, and to attempt to do so would be viewed as cultural imperialism. They need to come to the right conclusions on their own. In the meantime we must not allow such secondary contradictions to be exploited to break our international solidarity with them, or indeed with most other forces that share our principled opposition to imperialism. Imperialism and not social conservatism is the primary contradiction of our time and the main obstacle to socialism.

[-] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 1 year ago

There hasn't been a legitimate election in Ukraine since the one that Yanukovich won back before the Maidan coup. All elections since then have been a fraudulent joke, not least of all because they excluded the millions of citizens living in the Donbass which Ukraine claims are their citizens yet on whom the Kiev Nazi regime has waged war for almost a decade now.

The Kiev regime's genocide of ethnic Russians and their planned ethnic cleansing of the Donbass (and in their absurd fantasies also of Crimea which they still are delusional as to believe they will ever get their hands on again), are well documented fact.

The aggressors are NATO and their Nazi proxies. Russia is engaged in a legitimate act of self-defense of its own people and of the Russian speaking population of former eastern Ukraine.

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cfgaussian

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