Hey, comrades. I am new to lemmygrad and find it odd that there are so many marxist-leninist defending a war of agression started by an oligarch, possibly the richest man in the world. I get that you want to say that NATO is a source of evil on the global stage, but in this particular case you are defending Putin, a warlord, who has invaded many of his neighbouring countries and has stated plans to continue his campaign for megalomanial reasons.
No war but class war. Enabling an autocrat fascist oligarch does not do anything to counter the bad stuff done by NATO and the community should take a firm stand against the use of war for the sake of satisfying the dreams of a tyrant.
This is not a troll post or anything to that extent. Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, but I think it needed to be said.
It’s a simple 1-2-3 process.
And Russia needs to stay alive and relevant, someone over there will eventually revive the Soviet Union.
Please don’t use those silly liberal nicknames for Putin. Comparing him to Hitler is tantamount to Nazi apologia. You can find ways of expressing your dislike of Putin without the use of language steeped in anti-Russian propaganda tropes. The same people who use that language to refer to Putin also call Russians “orcs” and other dehumanizing epithets.
Do you really think that the millions of displaced and I do not dare guess how many killed were all nazis? The reason socialists in general oppose war is that it is a tool for the bourgeoisie to continue and extend their oppression of the masses. How many innocents need be sacrificed for one nazi in your opininion? I think zero.
Russia is in decline and has been since the fall of the Soviet Union. The power of the US on the global stage is mainly checked by China, and if anything there are other developing countries in far better positions to challenge US hegemony than Russia. Root for someone else worth rooting for.
Countries fighting for global hegemony will always be at the expense of the working class and even more so for those in the smaller countries in their spheres of influence. If you think there is something to be gained from this I think you should reconsider.
I do not think the Soviet Union will be revived and surely not by Putin winning his wars. Creation is done through peace not conquest. Socialism is done by and for the many, not the few.
Friend, how do you think nazis are opposed if not in war? I realize in the US one can simply cross the street when fascists demonstrate in Florida, snap a pic and make a snarky comment on Insta and be done with it, but in Ukraine workers have been beaten to death and burned alive simply for being Russian. They do not have the luxury of saying no to a fight to the death, their choices are fight back or die.
You contradict yourself; You say Putin is the richest man in the world and paint him as a capable warlord, yet you say Russia has been in decline since 91’. Understanding a capitalist’s might comes from his capitalist empire, this makes no sense. It’s fascist propaganda/US doublespeak.
Believing socialism was created through peace but not war is a troubling sign you have not read much theory or history of socialist revolutions. The reality is, socialism was created through war in the pursuit of peace.
Nazis should be opposed all day, every day, everywhere. I am saying that there is a human cost to doing so through war, making it not the best (though sometimes necessary) way. Also, I think it is as much nazi apologist to buy into the Ukrainians are nazis propaganda as calling Putin for Putler, as stated above. Generally, nazism is a fringe ideology that has potential to gather a lot of common support if certain conditions are present. In a healthy environment nazis can be ridiculed, outed and opposed with ease due to their intolerant and inconsistent ideology being easy to take apart with words or fists if necessary. I think it is just as racist to call common Ukranians for nazists as it is to talk about “oriental despotism” as I was accused of above, both of which I for the record vehemently oppose.
Not all Ukrainians may subscribe to the most hardcore version of Nazi ideology but this is not a either-or thing. There are various degrees of Nazi indoctrination and many Ukrainians today are somewhere on this spectrum. They may not openly profess Nazi beliefs but they certainly use dehumanizing language to refer to Russians. They celebrate Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators as national heroes. They hold parades for these new national "heroes"in the streets unopposed. Like their counterparts in the Baltic states they celebrate and adopt the symbols of various SS units.
Their media and their government representatives regularly call for and glorify war crimes and make no secret of their aims to ethnically cleanse Russians from the territories they intend to seize back. They destroy Russian books, ban Russian media, attempt to forbid the use of Russian language, and they heavily suppress even other minority languages such as Hungarian. Moreover the entire conception of Ukrainian national identity as it exists today is built solely on hatred of Russia, Russians and everything Russian.
To all of this we see no opposition to speak of among the Ukrainian society. Of course we understand that many people in Ukraine are intimidated and terrorized into silence by the brutal police apparatus of the fascist state. The FSB regularly arrests, imprisons, tortures and murders political opponents, suspected “collaborators” (including anyone who gave or accepted any kind of help from the Russians), people who say the wrong thing either in public or on social media, etc. But this could not occur without a significant degree of support from at least a portion of the population.
There are plenty of Ukrainians who are true believers and who are more than willing to rat out their neighbors to the fascist police state, who themselves undertake vigilante violence against suspected “enemies of Ukraine” or just against ethnic minorities. This was no different in Nazi Germany where despite the protestations of Germans after the war that they too were just victims of the Nazi regime, the regime could not have done what it did without the help and support of a sufficient segment of the population.
And ultimately if you care about the fate of those Ukrainians who have been cowed into silence and who do not support all of this, there is unfortunately at the moment no other realistic way to help them than to militarily liberate them from the fascist regime, because it will not fall on its own especially as long as it is supported by the West.
Of course this is very sad. It is always regrettable when a fascists manage to take an entire population hostage and effectively use them as human shields. But the fact is that as things currently stand the population of Ukraine is either not able or not willing to liberate itself.
Russia is not in decline, at the moment it is on a trajectory toward regaining its former status as a superpower. The economic war launched by the West against it has backfired and has only made Russia stronger, as a result of sanctions Russia has reoriented its economy and strengthened its domestic capacities.
The kinetic war which was launched by NATO against Russia through the use of the Ukraine proxy has led to a reboot of much of Russia’s dormant military industrial capacities, an expansion of the Russian military, and is giving Russia invaluable experience in what it means to fight a war with modern technology.
This is a fight against the unchecked global hegemony of the US empire. It is no coincidence that the global south has overwhelmingly aligned with Russia. Russia and China are the leaders of a global anti-hegemonic coalition that is growing by the day. Neither of the two for the time being shows any intentions of replacing the US. Both are heavily pushing multipolarity.
And if any one fact more than anything else should tell you that you should support Russia in this conflict it is that the DPRK does so. Throughout its entire history the DPRK’s track record on global conflicts has been spotless. Do you really thing you know better than the world’s most successful communist parties, the CPC and the WPK, not to mention Russia’s own KPRF?
Russia is in decline though, economically and demographically speaking. Their economy is for the most part based on export of resources, largely gas and oil. Although they are making great profits due to OPEC and the war inflating the oil prices, they have not many options to transition their economy when oil and gas becomes obsolete, which will happen at some point in the future. As for right now, their population pyramid is not suggesting some major economic boom incoming, rather a multitude of problems which we always observe in capitalist societies with declining populations.
EDIT: Also, I do not align my views blindly after DPRK nor anyone else. Having read, and agreed with, so many socialists stating the need to educate and think for ourselves, I find this point odd. It is just a tautological statement to say that DPRK is always right.
The Russian economy has proven to be far more robust and resilient than the West assumed, who thought that the all out sanctions assault would be enough to collapse it. It has withstood this assault better than almost anyone expected, including many Russians and the Russian government itself. This points to the Russian economy having been severely misunderstood and underestimated. It is clear that the simplistic caricature of the Russian economy being a hollow one based primarily on raw material export has proven to be false.
Russia has a significant and growing industrial base and this is what has enabled them to prosecute the current conflict on both the economic and military fronts so effectively. Russia’s real industrial economy by some estimates actually surpasses that of any European country and rivals that of the US despite a nominally far lower GDP. This is because most of the West has lost its manufacturing base and turned into hyper financialized economies.
There is good indication that in conjunction with its BRICS partners the Russian economy is only going to accelerate its growth in coming years now that it has freed itself (thanks to the ill advised sanctions imposed by West) from the albatross around its neck which was its dependence on the West preventing Russia from developing its own domestic alternatives. The growth of multipolarity which this conflict has accelerated has enabled the entire global south to be able to start doing the same.
As for demographic issues, this is not unique to Russia, the West’s demographics are no different, and in fact this is a phenomenon observed in all sufficiently advanced economies. We hear the same fearmongering about demographic doom when it comes to China as well. For sure this is something that needs to be taken into account but it is not as catastrophic as it is often made out to be.
Of course China and Russia are different in that one is a socialist state and the other is not, so we can expect that China will be better able to respond to the challenges that this presents, but i don’t see any predictions of demographic collapse of Europe (except from fascists who fearmonger about white replacement) so why should we apply a double standard when it comes to Russia?
When one nazi sits at a table with nine others, and they don’t either get up or stomp that motherfucker out, then the table has ten nazis. Simple as.
I’m no Ukraine/NATO supporter by any means, but I wouldn’t completely fault random civilians for the rise of Nazis in Ukraine. Even actual Nazi Germany had a bunch of non-nazi people in it (who either fled or were promptly imprisoned/killed, but you get my point). To use your analogy, it’s more like the Nazis are in the city, own the government and are a big part of the military and are pervasive in society, rather than physically at every table and not every person will have the opportunity or capability to stomp them out. I sure wouldn’t enjoy getting killed by enemies of my government over here, even though I would fully support it ending. Of course, I don’t think we should hold this same leniency towards the actual military personnel.
I think a characteristic property of nazism is that it is intolerant and does not allow for opposition, hence the silent opposition has to be careful and smart in how to actually voice or act their opposition given that the nazists are empowered. That does not mean they are supporting them or in any way guilty themselves. They are victims like everyone else. By extension of this logic, everyone living in a capitalist society too impoverished to fight it are capitalists themselves, which is blatantly false.
I said Nazi, not capitalist. That thing you tried to do in your last line is blatantly fallacious, because we’re all born and forced into capitalism, and have been for decades. No one, not a single motherfucker, is born or forced into Naziism. Amerika brought it to them, they chose it, they don’t fight it, ergo I hold the same contempt for them that I hold for the Amerikans who allow klansmen to walk around unmolested.
If any hill to die on was worthy, I think I will fight till the death that the Ukranian proletariat are not all nazis choosing to be nazis.