I don't like spending this much time arguing against campism but they just keep talking at me.

A picture of Gus Friv captioned "I'm cool with communism because I don't believe it has to be authoritarian; you're cool with communism because you don't mind if its authoritarian; we are not the same."
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[–] 7 points 2 days ago (11 children)

Not all leftists blindly support Russia or China just because they're anti-western. Tankies seem to ignore all the evil shit Russia does just because they're not the U.S./E.U/Israel.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 days ago (7 children)

    Ok but we all agree that the US/Israel is the greatest evil on Earth right? Like sure Russia does bad stuff, but like the US is worse.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    The point is it's not a contest, and we should be opposed to it no matter which country is doing it.

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  • [–] -2 points 2 days ago (4 children)

    Yeah but if your goal is to bring the most good to the world, you'll get closer to your goal by fighting against the US than you will fighting against Russia.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    That's only true if a stronger Russia somehow would be a better country than a strong USA. There's absolutely FUCK ALL to suggest that's remotely true.

    It also a false dichotomy. You can hate Russias imperialism AND USAs imperialism.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

    Imperialism isn't a policy that states have, it's a global system of extraction from poorer countries into the countries that control most of the finance capital on Earth, it's not "big country goes to war with smaller country." Russia does not control global finance, global finance will pretty much always be their enemy. A stronger Russia (if it was still a semi-periphery country) probably would be better than a strong US, you're underestimating just how terrible the US is, and you're comparing apples to oranges, because the US is a country in the imperial core and its bourgeoisie control capital on an international scale, the bourgeoisie of Russia have almost no power outside of their country.

    The concept of imperialism that you're using was first used popularly by Lenin, and it was an economic definition that described a global system. You should learn what unequal exchange is and what super-exploitation is, I think they're good concepts. Also read Neocolonialism by Kwame Nkrumah.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago

    Again, you're making this into a two-sided contest between two huge turds. I don't choose either of them. I choose to fight the bad ideas and behaviors they're known for, at all scales and in all walks of life, regardless of comparisons between them.

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  • [–] -2 points 2 days ago

    They're both guilty of imperialism on a world wide scale and all the evils that includes, but aside from it's early days the US has generally been a better neighbour by pointing their evil overseas, Russia has largely been a menace to it's neighbours in every era of history. I would say that's the biggest difference.

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  • [–] -5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    Meanwhile, non-tankies blindly ignore the evil shit the west does on a much larger global scale and blindly accept the western narratives about Russia and China just because they’re too propagandized to realize they’re being lied to and misinformed. Not sure who the “blind” ones in this scenario are.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

    I'll keep saying this:

    One side is a hyper-financialized economy of almost only consumers, which sits at the endpoint of the most global supply chains, devouring on a scale that is devastating the planet, pushing the environmental and human cost of that production on the global south, and who basically only export loans, monopoly priced essential goods, and IPs back to the rest of the world, that feeds their surplus production into an enormous military industrial complex that they use to force this global extraction system on the rest of the world.

    While the other "side", we'll start with Russia, is an impoverished hellhole place to live in that has been economically gutted, and now has been fighting a war against Ukraine that has been going on for over 12 years, a war that is being used to throw the entire military might of NATO member states against, not to liberate Ukraine, but to try to use the opportunity to fight a proxy war directly against Russia, and the real goal is to bleed out Russia so it submits again to other side and they can put in a new dictator in charge that they can actually control this time. (I, for one, remember the time when Putin was their neoliberal darling.) Supporting Russia is a bit like supporting Saddam, you shouldn't support Saddam, the Ba'athists were morally corrosive (maybe too unfairly bad for this analogy, actually), but you definitely shouldn't support the US military and their allied countries in the Iraq war. (Like if you want to support the people of Ukraine, do it in a way that doesn't feed into the war, like hunger relief, or humanitarian aid.)

    And China hasn't been at war with any other country since the Korean war. I guess China just kinda sits there, menacingly, as they build their productive capacity. And they're against Taiwan (which literally calls itself the "Republic of China" btw), but I don't think they do anything at all other than negotiate and respond in kind when the US moves more ships and drones there. Then there's the Uyghur stuff and the Tibet stuff, which I know there is probably a kernel of truth to, but I think that's up to people in China to deal with, and definitely won't be solved by like the US sending aid there, because again, when the imperial core does these things it isn't actually about the people, it's about exploiting the problems countries those countries have in order to tear them apart.

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