First of all, I just want this war to end. I don’t support Russia, or Ukraine. (this should not be that hot of a take but here we are) The whole sUpPoRt rUsSiA stuff is stupid, considering that Russia is yet another capitalist country that, while it is anti-USA, is just trying to be a competing bourgeois imperialist country. Russia is not “anti-imperialist”, Russia is just lesser imperialist. This is not “ultra-left”, this is the correct Marxist path. “Ultra-left” would be saying that China is capitalist. People who say that “Xi Jinping supports Russia because he talked with Putin” are also dumb because Xi Jinping talked with Zelenśkyj too, and he definitely does NOT support Ukraine. Also, there a bunch of Wagner supporters here, and do I even have to go into detail about why supporting LITERAL mercenaries is stupid? The only correct solution is to end the war immediately. Russia is not the 2nd coming of the USSR and is more akin to WW2 Britain than WW2 USSR. Putin is not another Stalin, Putin is Russian Churchill. This right-deviationist line here needs to end and Lemmygrad has to return to a principled Marxist line. Also, Pušilin is transphobic and has also given awards to literal Nazis, so supporting Pušilin over Zelenśkyj is just stupid. They both suck, and peace is the only way out.

  • Kaffe
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    2 years ago

    [Russia] is just trying to be a competing bourgeois imperialist country.

    Is it really now? What evidence shows this?

    Also, there a bunch of Wagner supporters here, and do I even have to go into detail about why supporting LITERAL mercenaries is stupid?

    Sure I agree, as mercs we should side-eye them. They have done well in defending Syria from ISIS though.

    “Xi Jinping supports Russia because he talked with Putin” are also dumb because Xi Jinping talked with Zelenśkyj too, and he definitely does NOT support Ukraine.

    They are in constant talks and have many joint commitments. China understands that Russia isn’t an Imperialist power. The leaders are quite warm towards each other.

    The only correct solution is to end the war immediately.

    On what terms though? Peace is agreement. This is idealism. If the processes that created this war are not dealt with the war won’t end. Which is why the Donbas War is going on 9 years now.

    Also, Pušilin is transphobic and has also given awards to literal Nazis, so supporting Pušilin over Zelenśkyj is just stupid.

    Transphobia is bad for sure. The evidence on the Nazi thing looks flimsy and comes at a time when Ukraine was under fire for too many Nazi patches. It seems like counter propaganda. Like 3 western outlets covered the story meanwhile they never talked about the patches on Uke soldiers until this moment. Zelensky wanted peace, he can’t have it though, he will likely be killed by the Banderites: https://banderalobby.substack.com/p/2019-20-zelensky-has-a-choice

    Russia is not the 2nd coming of the USSR and is more akin to WW2 Britain than WW2 USSR.

    Agreed on the first part, I don’t think the second analogy is any better.

    How many times are we gonna have a grandstanding post telling us critical support for Russia is bad? Let’s analyze how this thing started, eh? How it can end? What things did the participating parties ignore that lead to this point? If we don’t recognize that Ukraine was colonized by the US in 2014, because the elected government backed out of a Neo-colonial trade deal with the EU and IMF, then all analysis we have for events that come after this pivotal moment are going to be incorrect. The fact that the US bourgeoisie has been benefiting massively from the invasion is a massive tell that perhaps such claims of Russian Imperialism are unfounded, and actually misdirected. Frankly judging a country by the nature of its state is not enough, we need analyze them in the context of Colonialism. Russia is a target of Colonialism and the Ukraine colony is the arrow. Russia was attacked in desperation to isolate the power from China so that the US can soon create a crisis in the Taiwan Strait and Colonize China without worry of an “Axis of Evil” developing.

    • xenautika
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      2 years ago

      Ukraine has the agency and self determination to be it’s own fascist state. Banderites have existed well before 2014 (or even 2007 when first evidence of CIA meddling began). Germany is a colony of the USA and somehow they have de-nazified, likely due to their stronger economic power. Ukraine has been destabilized economically so bad since '95 that they gave in to economic pressures to the vying powers. They had every opportunity to align with Russia and China as was shown with economically equivalent Belarus. Was the choice to align with the US “forced” on them as a colony, or was the Ukrainian government always aligned with US-Neo-Nazi interests? How did events in Bosnia influence their decisions (if at all)?

      • Kaffe
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        Banderite network support from the US and Canadian governments has existed since WW2. Ukraine’s government was couped in 2014 and replaced with a US puppet. Ukraine’s shock doctrine policies were stopped in the early 2000s, most importantly the state stopped privatizing its own land which stayed in effect until the coup as a condition of an IMF loan, Zelensky went further and tried to privatize public lands for foreign buyers.

        Yeah I’d say aiding in a neo-Nazi takeover against a government that wasn’t selling itself out to US interests is “forced”. Yanukovych was deposed because he sought a deal with Russia lol.

        Germany is a colony of the USA and somehow they have de-nazified, likely due to their stronger economic power.

        Few things. Germany didn’t de-Nazify, their Nazis were smart enough to shut up and kickstart NATO continuing their anti-Communist war alongside the US. German Nazism was too high profile for the West to rehabilitate, and the GDR on the other side forced German anti-Communism to drop the Nazi aesthetics so they wouldn’t lose the narrative. Blaming the Holocaust on solely Nazi Germany neatly allows Nazism to exist almost overtly in the Eastern bloc countries, especially Poland, the Baltics, and Ukraine where the Double Genocide variety of Holocaust denialism is prolific and state sponsored (and US/EU supported!).

        “Agency” and “Self determination” slogans are silly. When the protests started getting violent (started by the Banderites) the US sanctioned the government and every powerful Ukrainian who wasn’t pro-US. Do you think economic warfare at the whims of the US bourgeoisie constitutes agency? This is the main vehicle of neo-Colonialism isn’t it?

  • Average PFLP Enjoyer
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    2 years ago

    I’m anti-imperialist and anti-West before anything else. I support Russia, Iran and Belarus all on that same principle - anything that damages NATO improves the world

    • The Free PenguinOP
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      “I support Iran”
      You support a reactionary, super conservative Shi’a theocracy just because they’re “anti-NATO”?

      • Average PFLP Enjoyer
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        Yes lol. regime change in Iran dooms Palestine and cuts off all funding from one of the only 2 useful anti Zionist groups (Hezbollah). It’s not a worker’s state but Khomeinism is a hell of a lot better than whatever the fuck the West has in store for them with this shitty colour revolution they’re pushing

        • The Free PenguinOP
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          Supporting Iran is a reactionary stance. The Iranian government is forcibly veiling women. While, yes, the protests eventually got co-opted by the We$t, supporting Iran is an extremely cringe and reactionary line.

          • Kaffe
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            Not lending critical support to Iran in their fight against US colonization is the actual reactionary position. First off the US exports religious fundamentalism and second if we apply a social issue litmus test why should we turn a blind eye to Iran’s enemies? Do women in the US live any better? Before you answer research missing native women and the border town violence issue.

          • Average PFLP Enjoyer
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            “forcibly veiling women” is a very reductive way to look at the very nuanced complicated issue of hijab but sure

            edit: you can’t be ambivalent on a country, a country is either in the anti-imperialist camp or it isn’t, it either supports a multipolar world or it doesn’t. To write Iran off because it’s not Socialist is to deny the material impacts of it’s existence have on the creation of multipolarity and the downfall of the West

              • Average PFLP Enjoyer
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                2 years ago

                I literally agree w you, as a Muslim I think every woman should wear hijab but they shouldn’t do it out of fear of the law they should do it because Allah SWT tells them to : Iran is superimposing their own legal guidance over personal relationship to the Qu’ran.

                that being said I still support them lol I’m not so petty to let little things like that cloud my judgement on whether or not Iran is a net positive on world politics

  • ᜐ᜔ᜉᜍ᜔ᜆᜈ᜔ ᜇ᜔ᜌᜓ︀-193
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    >[Russia] is just trying to be a competing bourgeois imperialist country.

    Let’s start

    Lenin’s criteria.

    1. highly developed capital concentration enough to create monopolies decisive to economic life;
    2. bank capital and industrial capital become so entwined they end up making an oligarchy;
    3. exporting capital is becomes extremely important;
    4. associations specifically to preserve monopolist capitalism’s fiefdoms of the world;
    5. the world is now split between the biggest capitalist powers

    Russia doesn’t meet 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 iirc.

    Rest is ok though

    • The Free PenguinOP
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      2 years ago

      even though russia at the moment isn’t acting imperialist to the 3rd world, capital in that country has developed to a point where Russia is becoming one of the capitalist superpowers in the multipolar world.

  • IStealXiBucks
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    I wouldn’t call Wagner group literal mercenaries. Basically Wagner has been recruiting prisoners with the condition that their service will pay for their crimes. A mercenary would fight for the money but I find Wagners method of operation is different. “Fight for your motherland and your name will be cleared.” There is also a strong ‘patriotism’ among the group. Is there a much difference in other ‘patriotic’ Russian soldiers? I’ve been listening Scott Ritter for invormation and if I’m wrong please correct me. In his words “if you would call a Wagner soldier mercenary, they would punch you in the face.”

    • Kaffe
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      Wagner is not a mercenary group in the same way as Blackwater. It is illegal for a private company to obtain weapons and accept contracts for hire in Russia, what we traditionally think of as mercenaries. Wagner is supplied weapons by the state and the soldiers are contracted, but are not part of the army itself. The “volunteer battalions” like Azov (pre incorporation) in Ukraine are supplied weapons by NATO and oligarchs directly and are much more similar to what we would traditionally consider mercenaries.

    • IStealXiBucks
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      To clarify I don’t support Wagner, I just find ‘mercenaries’ to not quite describe them.

    • The Free PenguinOP
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      Z-posters when they find out what “PMC” in PMC Wagner means: 🤯

  • אייג'אן איברהימוב🇵🇸☭
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    Yeah I too have noticed this too sadly . 😔

    “This right-deviationist line here needs to end and Lemmygrad has to return to a principled Marxist line."

    100% Agree with this . 👍🏼

        • CountryBreakfast
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          Thats fine seeing as they have no line at all but I’m confused why asking for the line they don’t have is seen as disrespectful but wildly bad faith, unsubstantiated, claims that we as a community ''support" imperialism, mercenaries and transphobes is unworthy of attention.

      • The Free PenguinOP
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        2 years ago

        one that supports the working class rather than lesser imperialism

        • cfgaussian
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          Except there is no evidence that Russia represents a “lesser imperialism”, rather it’s a semi-peripheral state which has been forced by geopolitical circumstance into becoming one of the foremost anti-imperialist actors in the world. Russia is not only resisting imperialism and fascism in Ukraine, it is helping others in doing so in many parts of the world, including Syria, Africa and Latin America.

          It is true that the Russian state is, for the time being, a bourgeois state, and that it has significant reactionary tendencies as well. These are contradictions but they are secondary ones in the context of the primary global contradiction that is imperialism. Your position is the anti-Marxist one. Even socialist states have contradictions, some of them also have reactionary tendencies when it comes to certain cultural issues, is that a reason to completely denounce them like the ultra-leftists like to do?

          The presence of contradictions only means that there must be critical support. We need to look at the broader picture here. As stated in The Foundations of Leninism, even bourgeois or monarchist forces can, in certain circumstances, fulfill a progressive or even revolutionary function insofar as they serve to weaken and undermine the global system of imperialism and colonialism.

          It is also unclear what it means to just “support the working class” in the context of this conflict. What does that mean in practice? How would allowing the ultra-neoliberal Western puppet regime in Ukraine with its clear Nazi characteristics to continue to exist benefit the working class? How do you stop them from continuing to brutally murder and repress not just communists but any who are deemed an enemy of the Ukrainian nationalist project. How do you stop them from continuing their anti-Russian crusade if not with force of arms?

          Peace yes, we all want there to be peace, but on what terms? There cannot truly be peace unless the underlying issues that made this conflict inevitable are resolved, these being the presence of NATO in Eastern Europe in former Soviet Republics and former members of the Warsaw Pact (something which poses an unacceptable and existential threat to an independent Russia regardless what kind of government it has), the genocidal, Nazi worshipping Ukrainian nationalism that has taken Ukraine hostage, their fanatical hostility to anything Russian and their determination to regain their lost territories (something which is unacceptable to Russia and that if it ever becomes a serious possibility will leave Russia no other choice but to use all means at its disposal to prevent).

          The only way there can be some kind of stability and peace in the region for the time being (though of course we understand as communists that capitalism will always tend to cause wars in the longer term) - barring the complete collapse of NATO which is still a possibility if they are defeated sufficiently soundly - is for NATO to be pushed back to its 1997 borders in the course of a restructuring of the broader European security architecture, the Nazi junta in Kiev to be removed from power, and the peaceful existence and right of the people in eastern Ukraine who identify culturally more with Russia to live without being forcefully Ukrainized (according to the Banderite conception of Ukrainian national identity) to be secured, whether as a part of Russia, as independent states protected by Russia, or as part of a disarmed, federal Ukrainian state that is friendly to Russia and is no longer a Nazified and militarized puppet of the western imperialists.

          Unless those underlying issues are addressed all that a ceasefire or peace will achieve is a pause in the conflict which will inevitably break out again, meanwhile giving time for NATO to further arm and prepare its proxies for war with Russia, next time using more of Eastern Europe as their battering ram in order to achieve this since they saw that Ukraine by itself is not enough. The Baltic states and Poland are all but itching to be used by Washington in that way, and Finland and Romania are not out of the question either.

          The ultimate goal of the imperialists, by their own repeated admission - they fantasize about this all the time in public discourse, writing policy papers, drawing maps, holding conferences about it - is the dismantling or total subjugation of the Russian Federation itself. So long as they still think this goal is achievable they will not stop. How does it benefit the working class anywhere for Russia to give up the fight now? How does a victorious and strengthened US imperialism with complete domination of all of Europe benefit the working class?

          It is not the Russian bourgeois state that is the main obstacle to workers’ liberation in the world, it is US imperialism. The Russian bourgeoisie is only an obstacle to revolution in Russia itself and their position relative to the communists is not that strong, in many ways they have had to make significant concessions to the communists, including the launching of the intervention in Ukraine to defend the Donbass Republics, something which the Russian communists had been demanding since 2015.

          Of course the Russian communists will have to eventually seize power because the bourgeois state can only be pushed so far, but in the meantime any blow to the West’s financial and military hegemony, and any weakening of their neo-colonial control over any part of the world brings us one step closer to a new wave of revolutions in the global south. It also allows the existing socialist states to breathe without being constantly strangled by the imperialists. What China is doing with the BRI works in tandem with what Russia is doing with its military interventions in Syria and Ukraine and their military support to countries like Nicaragua, Venezuela, Mali, etc. to achieve precisely that, whether they know/intend it or not. They needn’t be ideologically motivated for their actions to have that effect.

          • xenautika
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            I really appreciate this context comrade, and you’re correct absolutely.

            I think the reaction that we and I have here on lemmygrad is just seeing so many posts that revel in Ukronazis dying, glorifying the violence not having context or nuance like what you say, “based putin” and just making a sick joke out of it and punching down like liberals. It feels very western Marxist and it feels like it comes from the privilege of not ever having intense violence in one’s life, not ever losing a home and becoming un-housed. War is really fucked, like really fucked. It’s almost like people find it amusing or get joy from war here sometimes.

            I think it’s disingenuous to come at folks who are concerned, and may not understand the context as much as you and others, as denying critical support or being contrarian, or whatever is being said (my words not theirs), but then ignore the obvious jingoist tendencies that are being exhibited here.

            it’s right to criticize inaccurate statements like Russia is lesser imperialist, but for some reason the criticisms of the Putin fervor never come up, and are shamed if they do.

  • xenautika
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    2 years ago

    agreed. people are literally siding with Russian capitalists over Ukranian workers. taking simplistic, unprincipled stances on this… why? is it because liberals hate Putin so people have to be contrarian to spite them? Do they really believe every Ukranian in Ukraine is a Nazi and isn’t suffering in the crossfire?

    it’s so dogmatic, and un-marxist.

      • xenautika
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        how do you support any workers in this conflict, not being involved? foreign money is siphoned to the oligarchs. unless you have some expert connections directly to Ukranian workers, the best way may be to be openly critical of jingoist narratives such as parroted about Russia, differentiate from the Ukranian state and Ukranian workers and conscious leftists any time someone simplistically generalizes Ukraine as “Ukronazi” or “Banderites” or “NATO puppets” etc, and to directly support Russian, Balrusian, Polish and Baltic communists, who all are impacted strongly in this conflict.

      • The Free PenguinOP
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        2 years ago

        and not every Ukrainian is a fascist, but communists (even less principled pro-Z ones) are heavily persecuted in (the) Ukraine.

        • xenautika
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          not sure why my comments are not posting/getting deleted but i do outdoor labor and am too tired to repost my more detailed reply so just gonna say I agree. and the threat of both ukraine and iran’s ruling classes being annihilated positioned themselves as national heroes who could freely promote reactionary thought and frame it as national identity