I think everyone who has been paying attention saw this coming. Now so-called “socialist” Hasan Piker is putting out CNN level liberal propaganda. Even western polling had to admit that Putin enjoyed an approval rating above 80% just prior to the election, but of course when you have demonized Russia to this degree you have to resort to reality denial to explain what you see.
We need to start using the term “red liberal” to describe these “leftist” political streamers and YouTubers who mimick the aesthetics and language of leftism while feeding into imperialist dogma and liberal assumptions about the world. Hasan also continues to deny the Donbass genocide that had been taking place since 2014 before Russia finally intervened, refuses to accept that Russia had legitimate reason to take action to stop NATO eastward expansion, and downplays the Nazi nature of the Kiev regime.
Now after he made fun of all the dumbass chuds who insisted in 2020 that the US election was stolen and made up all kinds of conspiracy theories to try and justify it, Hasan himself engages in the same kind of behavior when it comes to Russian elections. This is the kind of “socialist” who will act like they are not Democrat shills by superficially criticizing Genocide Joe yet continue to advocate that you vote for Democrats as the “lesser evil”.
It is good though that since 2022 all of these sheepdogs for liberal imperialism have been exposing themselves. Now we know where the lines are drawn. Once again Lenin’s words ring true:
“We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don’t clutch at us and don’t besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are “free” to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!”
I agree that both can be true, but i don’t see what the usefulness is of stretching the traditional definition of autocrat so far that it includes nominally elected leaders in a liberal bourgeois democracy with separation of powers and a parliament. We already have another term to describe that state of affairs and it’s dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. That is a more accurate description than autocracy for what Russia and that US are.
Russia has many but not all of the glaring faults that the US does. We should not fall back on false equivalencies just because two countries share similar traits in some aspects. It would be too much to get into here but in certain respects the way that Russia’s state and economy operate is quite different from how things are done in the West, and so is the role that they play in the geopolitical arena. They are not mirror images of each other.
Russia’s system may have been put into place and shaped by the Americans but it has since undergone changes and development that have diverged it from that path.
If the US system is a lie, is the Russian system less of a lie? Bourgeoisie “democracies” are hardly known for their fair and honest elections. They’re all shams and window dressing at best, or just fake outright. Do you think Russian capitalists wouldn’t play the same dirty games that’s western ones do?
The word autocrat doesn’t fit here still, but let’s not delude ourselves that this is some wonderful showing of a true proletarian democracy, and not a sham election for the front running capitalist candidate as always, same with Biden.
I think i made it pretty clear that i don’t disagree with any of this, all of what you said here is true. All i said was that we should not play into liberal propaganda by using the word “autocrat” unless we are prepared to use it for every bourgeois leader. But that muddles things imo more than clarifies them because these systems are not dictatorships of one person, they are dictatorships of a class.
The difference that i am pointing out between Russia and the US is not in which class rules them - that is the same - but in the degree to which the state intervenes in and controls the economy. This may seem like a small distinction but it results in some pretty big differences in how their respective states behave, and in particular their relationship to their financial systems.
They also have undeniably different approaches in how they behave toward the rest of the world and we should not downplay this.