• BynarsAreOk [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Maybe this deserves its own post but I’ll just put it here, it is one of his replies in that thread

    Still thinking about how the people of Ukraine are simultaneously teenagers being sent to die (by me) and filthy Nazis who deserve it anyway. So much mental gymnastics to avoid the most basic moral questions, like “who is invading who”

    I mean, would it be better if the teenage soldiers commanded by the Nazis went on to continue to commit the same crimes? There is literaly nothing inconsistent about the Ukrainian population being victims of the Nazis part of the Ukrainian population because as it turns out the Ukrainian nazis literally got into power through a coup, what the fuck is a maidan anyway right?

    But anyway the most obvious and offending part of this shit post is imagine the date is April 1945 and you are suddenly worried and pearl clutching if the Nazi government, the SS and Hitler really deserve to be exterminated, I mean it is not like there was an SS Panzer division literally made of mostly teenagers anyway right?

    History began in 2022 has a different meaning here.

      • mathemachristian [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        Good lord that triggered an adrenaline surge just now because this statement actually pops up every now and then and you just know WHY its brought up but then a lot of liberals will go “what an interesting ethical quandary 🤔🤔🤔” .

        I have never seen it fail to derail a conversation.

    • VILenin [he/him]@hexbear.netM
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      9 months ago

      So much mental gymnastics to avoid the most basic moral questions, like “who is invading who”

      This is just bad faith. There has been so much ink spilled about NATO aggression and the material causes of the war that it could fill an entire library. We have spend over a year meticulously citing our sources and supporting our claims.

      All for this dipshit just to go “la-la-la I can’t hear you!” and have a meltdown about context being Russian propaganda. He refuses to listen. He refuses to learn. His brain just shuts down and he goes on and on smugly bloviating about the same tired thought-terminating cliches like a broken record.

      We’ve addressedd the “who is invading who” question a thousand times over. We’ve explained again and again why such an infantile framing of the war is incompatible with any serious discussion of it.

      Just because you ignore the answers doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      Ironically, there are literally many Hitler Youth style places where children are indoctrinated to be Nazis and also to be soldiers

      But also this is moronic because no one thinks Ukraine is even mostly Nazis, it’s just that the Nazis seem to have a lot of power

      • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        There does seem to be a large cultural consensus of Nazism with all the banderite monuments and street names and all that with minimal pushback internally. Unfortunately the Nazism has breached containment and has spread through indoctrination, education, media, popular Ukrainian culture - all this happened before the invasion so they can’t blame it on being victims of Russia

        I would say it’s seriously equivalent to Nazi Germany, where a plurality of the population did support Nazism

      • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        One side has criminalized nazis within their military ranks and the other side hasn’t

        Or did you miss all those Russian interrogation videos that shows russian troops strip searching POWs for sign of nazi tattoos

        What am I saying of course you missed it, cause actaully engaging with reality or the evidence is toxic to liberals these days

        Russia has a underground nazi problem, Ukraine is a nazi state, get the fuckin difference

          • CannotSleep420
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            9 months ago

            Recognizing that one side winning the war will benefit the cause of communism and the other won’t is not the same as uncritical support.

            • regul [any]@hexbear.net
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              9 months ago

              Explain how one capitalist country moving their de jure border a couple hundred miles at the cost of thousands of lives advances the cause of global communism, because I ain’t seeing it.

              • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                9 months ago

                so they should just allow the hegemonic capitalist empire to spread nazism and install puppet governments in all the nations around them and slowly balkanize and rip their country apart for a 2nd looting?

                The US has attempted to throw coups in almost every nation bordering Russia in the last decade. Russia stopped them in Syria, Kazakhstan and Belarus but failed to stop them in Ukraine. The current Ukrainian government are Maidanite fascist putschists and puppets of America. They are being used as proxies to destroy russia, doing ethnic cleansing on the borders to provoke russia. Their state is illegitimate. Their borders don’t matter and aren’t sacred. Those regions want to leave after being oppressed by the Galician fash for 8 years while the western world looked on and did nothing except perfidiously buy time to give more tanks to nazis

                • regul [any]@hexbear.net
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                  9 months ago

                  I don’t exactly want Russia’s current particular brand of ideology to be spread either. I just don’t see how you can look at this conflict and think either side are the “good” guys. Or how either result will be better than the other.

              • SixSidedUrsine [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                9 months ago

                You aren’t seeing it because you haven’t been paying attention.

                I didn’t write the following, but it is a good summary as to why it should be the position of Marxists and leftists in general to critically support Russia especially with respect to the SMO. It was a response to someone else naively saying they just didn’t like war in general and this war is just one capitalist state fighting a proxy war against another, similar to what you’re saying. While it’s understandable to feel that way, given the amount of propaganda you’re force-fed, it is not materialist and it is completely failing to see the bigger picture. The person who wrote the response is @SimulatedLiberalism@hexbear.net.

                and this struggle is between two capitalist empires which both want to do more capitalism, so there’s no benefit to either side winning

                I keep seeing this take cropping up in online Western leftist circle and to be very honest, I always consider this to be the laziest takes on war for people claiming to be on the left.

                This is no different than saying that there is no difference for the left when it comes to whether the North or the South wins in the American Civil War because neither of them was socialist. Well, would it surprise you that Marx wrote an entire collection of essays just on analyzing the American Civil War?

                To quote Lenin from his Lecture on “The Proletariat and the War”, October 1 (14), 1914:

                For a Marxist clarifying the nature of the war is a necessary preliminary for deciding the question of his attitude to it. But for such a clarification it is essential, first and foremost, to establish the objective conditions and concrete circumstances of the war in question. It is necessary to consider the war in the historical environment in which it is taking place, only then can one determine one’s attitude to it. Otherwise, the resulting interpretation will be not materialist but eclectic.

                Depending on the historical circumstances, the relationship of classes, etc., the attitude to war must be different at different times. It is absurd once and for all to renounce participation in war in principle. On the other hand, it is also absurd to divide wars into defensive and aggressive. In 1848, Marx hated Russia, because at that time democracy in Germany could not win out and develop, or unite the country into a single national whole, so long as the reactionary hand of backward Russia hung heavy over her.

                In order to clarify one’s attitude to the present war, one must understand how it differs from previous wars, and what its peculiar features are.

                We can write entire essays about the war in Ukraine, and it is anything but “a war between American and Russian capitalists”.

                For one, if this is about Russia expanding its capital, why is the Russian Central Bank doing everything it can (including rate hikes and devaluing the ruble) to undermine Putin’s effort to achieve economic self-sufficiency in the face of unprecedented sanctions, and directly aiding the Western imperialist cause? If anything, it is stifling the expansion of Russian capital.

                Such narrative crumbles at the slightest inspection of what is actually going on within the Russian political and economic structures, and points to a more fundamental division that Michael Hudson had pointed out regarding the conflict between finance vs industrial capitalism.

                And we’re not even getting to the wider geopolitical implications of the war in Ukraine yet - what does it mean for Western imperialism? The anti-colonial struggles of the Global South? The effects on global financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO) and the efforts to decouple from such oppressive structures (which is what de-dollarization is all about).

                We have to ask ourselves, what would a fascist victory in Ukraine mean for left wing movements in Eastern Europe? What could the total subjugation of Russia - a country that has large scale military equipments, raw resources and minerals, and agricultural products - to Western capital mean for the anti-colonial movements in the Global South?

                Leftists who refuse to apply a materialist and historical method to understand the world’s events will inevitably fail to see the underlying currents of the global state of events, and as such they cannot predict where the world is heading and will not be able to position themselves to take advantage of the impending crisis.

                After all, it was WWI that resulted in an explosion of socialist movements within the imperialist European states, why? Because the socialists back then actually combined theory and practice (what Gramsci referred to as praxis) to take advantage of the predicament.

                • regul [any]@hexbear.net
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                  9 months ago

                  How do rate hikes signal that Putin is being undermined by the central bank? Don’t most countries attempt to raise capital in the short term during wars? “Buy War Bonds!” and all that. If anything, isn’t that a signal that capital is being consolidated in the state in order to devote to war effort?

                  But I want to ask you the other side of a question you raised: what happens to left wing movements in Eastern Europe if Russia completely annexes Ukraine? It creates a migration crisis and a new “threat” on the eastern border. That’s not a clear-cut W for the communists like you’re making it out to be. We already know how Europeans react to these sorts of things, and it hasn’t been good for the communists.

              • CannotSleep420
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                9 months ago

                ProxyTheAwesome and Frank already covered all the points I have and I can’t think of anything to add.

          • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            sO yOu’D sAy tHAt yOu uNcRitIcAlY sUPPOrt a cApITaLIst sTaTe

            Seriously? That’s the best you got dipshit, you can only speak in accusations and thought-terminating cliches? Get a grip motherfucker, liberals like you are reason neo-nazism has been so normalized

              • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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                9 months ago

                Is that supposed to be a own? Yes I prefer Russian capitalists defeating Ukrainian nazis, so Russian communists don’t have to face both western backed Russian and Ukrainian nazis

                Again get a grip you nazi supporting motherfucker

                • regul [any]@hexbear.net
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                  I don’t understand your position. So, in the event of an imminent second Russian revolution, your supposition is that Ukrainians would be a significant counterrevolutionary force and that the US wouldn’t intervene militarily, and so if there are fewer Ukrainians, there’s more likely to be a successful second communist revolution in Russia in the near future?

                  And you think this is a reasonable take to have. And that it’s the land border with NATO that would be the big issue in a military conflict with the US?

                  This is such a bonkers take to have in light of the absurd probabilities involved. You’re like a chud who buys a gun because you think you’re going to take on the Marines.

          • geikei [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            Even if you assume this is just an interimperialist war, its basic Leninism for western communists to support and propagandize for the defeat of your own imperialist bloc in that war.

            • regul [any]@hexbear.net
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              9 months ago

              America’s been losing wars for a long time and no socialist project has ever erupted from it.

              Revolutionary defeatism doesn’t seem to work very well.

                • regul [any]@hexbear.net
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                  9 months ago

                  Was that worth the lives of all the Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians who were killed, or the generations afterwards who died from unexploded ordinance or birth defects? I don’t think that’s such a clear cut “yes”.

                  Point being that non-interventionism would have been preferable, which is the position I’ve been taking all along.

                • regul [any]@hexbear.net
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                  9 months ago

                  And how will this war be any different in that respect? Russia’s not aiming to annex all of Ukraine. The remaining rump state will be even more vassalized than before, win or lose.

          • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            The fact that you’re the only person who brought the term “uncritically” into it goes to show how much work you have to do to make up a position to be smug towards.

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        Aren’t Russia attempting to dissolve Wagner and killed all the main leaders (including neo Nazi Dimitry Utkin) in the Wagner plane crash on August 23rd this year, after the attempted Wagner coup? Tell me when Ukraine will do anything similar to Azov. And no, their half arsed integration of them into the Ukrainian armed forces does not count. Last time Zelenskyy tried to get the fash to stand down, before the war started in earnest, he got embarrassed on camera. Russia has a problem with Nazis and fascists, but it’s not nearly as big as Ukraine’s Nazi problem. There is no way someone like Bandera would be viewed as a national hero in Russia.

        • regul [any]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          The mercenary group named after Hitler’s favorite composer aren’t Nazis?

          Some of y’all actually uncritically support Russia, huh?

          Wild.

          • ilyenkov [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            Richard Wagner died before the Nazi party existed, he wasn’t a nazi. I have no idea why Wagner group was named that - tbh a ton about Wagner is very mysterious. But no, I’ve never seen any evidence that Wagner group were Nazis.

            I despise a whole lot about the post-Soviet government of Russia. But yeah, I completely support Russia in their noble war of self-defense against the fascist “west.” And that’s is, afaik, basically the majority opinion on this website. What the fuck are you doing here lib?

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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              9 months ago

              I haven’t looked up Wagner in a while. I don’t think I ever ran in to why it’s called that.

              afaik, basically the majority opinion on this website.

              Afaik most people treat this as an “Enemy of my Enemy” thing. NATO is much, much worse than Russia. This war can weaken NATO. NATO winning is very, very bad because it reinforces NATO/US hegemony and would give NATO access to vast new natural resources as they carve up Russia, to say nothing of the massively increased risk of nuclear war as Russia disintegrates. A victory for Russia, especially a decisive victory, could greatly weaken NATOs position in the world. That would open up the possibility of multipolarity, which could create space for left movements to grow without being hunted down and destroyed by the US/NATO. It would give China more room to maneuver, as well as less powerful communist states. It might increase the chance of the US balkanizing, which would be horrific for those of us who live here but has a chance of benefiting the world.

              Afaik very few people support Russia, but we recognize that a Russian victory is the most desirable outcome of this farce. Preferably sooner than later given the horrific amount of death and destruction.

              Things are already badly fucked - Ukraine is firmly in the grip of fascism and the war has greatly advanced the cause of international fascism. It’s strengthened the fascist position across Eastern Europe. The EU and US are both supporting the Double Holocaust narrative openly now. It is likely that weapons from Ukraine will flood Europe over the coming years facilitating terror and violence.

              In terms of geopolitics, Russia is the least-bad guys. Nothing more, nothing less.

              • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                Things are already badly fucked - Ukraine is firmly in the grip of fascism and the war has greatly advanced the cause of international fascism. It’s strengthened the fascist position across Eastern Europe. The EU and US are both supporting the Double Holocaust narrative openly now. It is likely that weapons from Ukraine will flood Europe over the coming years facilitating terror and violence.

                I don’t think you can blame this on the war. This is just something becoming more of itself under pressure/heat. If you put sea water on boil it’s going to become saltier. You can’t blame Russia for the already existing contradictions and fascism of the west coming to a head

                • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  9 months ago

                  I don’t blame Russia. NATO has been working towards this war since it was founded. The war was used to purge dissident elements in Ukraine and has been used as a cause celebre for fascism. That’s all to the advantage of NATO, and NATO instigated the war by constantly pushing strategic encirclement of Russia.

            • Doubledee [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              9 months ago

              I’m pretty sure the dominant position is critical support. It’s just that criticism of Russia is not that frequent because discussion of the war with libs is almost always in a context that assumes NATO framing. At least in the news mega people are dunking on the Russians regularly.

              • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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                9 months ago

                This. Libs don’t care that the Communist Party of Russia is a nationalist joke, or that smaller communist groups are largely suppressed, or that the left in Ukraine has been suppressed if not actually liquidated, or that Leftists across eastern Europe are being suppressed by new laws and increasingly brazen fascist regimes. All they care about is the bogus good guys bad guys narratives. They’re openly hostile to the concept of geopolitics or really any complexity at all.

            • trot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              9 months ago

              But no, I’ve never seen any evidence that Wagner group were Nazis.

              The Wagner Group itself is just a PMC with all that implies, but its subgroup DShRG Rusich are quite openly neo-Nazis.

            • regul [any]@hexbear.net
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              I completely support Russia in their noble war of self-defense against the fascist “west.”

              What is it about Russian capitalism that you like so much? Which of their anti-LGBTQ laws do you find more appealing than the west’s?

              Not supporting Ukraine is one thing (which I think is the actual majority opinion on this website), but rooting for Russia is an entirely different thing.

              My position is that I do not give a shit who wins because they’re both fascist.

              • ilyenkov [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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                9 months ago

                What is it about Russian capitalism that you like so much? Which of their anti-LGBTQ laws do you find more appealing than the west’s?

                Nothing, I already established that.

                My position is that I do not give a shit who wins because they’re both fascist.

                Liberal nonsense. They aren’t. Further, Russia isn’t the global hegemon, they aren’t the power holding up the capitalist-imperialist world system. The US is. In this war, the Ukrainians are US proxies. The victory of Russia over NATO is a good thing for all the oppressed and marginalized people of the Earth. NATO victory would be catastrophic. Honestly, I despise liberals like you so fucking much. Normally I expect shit takes like this from federated shitheads. What are you doing here?

  • VILenin [he/him]@hexbear.netM
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    9 months ago

    History started in February 2022. Context is Russian propaganda.

    Red Brownwald is a loser himself but the only cowards I see here are Breadtube celebs who mindlessly go along with the official narrative while eagerly joining in on the propaganda hysteria and regurgitating thought-terminating cliches they heard from CNN.

    Anyway I’ll wait for the Hbomberguy video where he explains why being in the SS isn’t all that bad actually.

    • RedCat
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      9 months ago

      “Being in the SS isn’t all that bad, here is why” Video length: [12:08:43]

      • VILenin [he/him]@hexbear.netM
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        9 months ago

        Not smug enough.

        Title: “Was everyone in the SS evil?”

        Thumbnail: (with a shit eating grin) “NO”

        First sentence: “In Fritz Lang’s Metropolis…”

        Last sentence: “I know that, a few years ago, I said that Dresden deserved it. I just wanted to apologize to the German people for spreading such Russian propaganda. Adolf Hitler was a brave anti-Russian hero and I am so incredibly sorry for tarnishing his good name.”

    • RedCat
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      9 months ago

      I am always wondering why someone would assume something different. Every breadtuber is a lib until they prove they are actually based. Not the other way around.

      • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        No matter how ill considered it may be, it is the duty of every socialist to support a Socialist polity, no matter how flawed or provisional, attacking a non Socialist one. That’s a key part of critical support. It was when Lenin supported the disastrous anarchist revolt, and it was when Rosa supported the Left-KPD revolting 6 months early.

        This can sometimes backfire on us if the US supports the socialists, like with the DFNS. But such situations are so rare that I cannot regret supporting the Kurds.

  • ImOnADiet
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    9 months ago

    How did this spread not one but two thread ? Lmao

  • ItsPequod [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Insulated libs who won’t ever actually have to fight in the war and supporting the war, name a better combo. Hbomb has always been disappointingly milktoast in his leftism, basically just a treat reviewer with better politics.

    Like, Greenwald sucks and is definitely making big asshole equivocations here when he should just be openly pro Russia by now but I suppose he’s got the facade of professionalism to maintain, foolish as it may be

  • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    breadtube really had about a 0.5% success rate didn’t it?

    same with the chapo-adjacent and copy cat pods, all much more disappointing than the chapos. more radlib, more chauvinist, more succ.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      Breadtube was successful in its initial purpose to make meandering videos on the internet to make fun of the most easily rebuked right wingers. It was always just a spectacle. Sorry to sound pessimistic, but it was always like that.

      Unless the videos or podcasts are one aspect of a broader movement, they’re just spectacle. I have slightly higher hopes for the Deprogram guys though. They do stuff.

      I’m told there’s a huge amount of genuine and hopeful leftist stuff on the Chinese internet. So we should probably all practice our hanzi.

  • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    HAHAHAHAHA NATO leftists keep doing NATO leftist things. They should stick to dunking on easy targets like Ben Shapiro or JustPearlyThings. Makes them look morally superior while being able to hide their horrendous foreign policy takes.