Time is on the side of the Russians in Ukraine and the Chinese on pretty much anything else when it comes to confronting the US empire.
But ever since the ceasefire in Lebanon and the fall of Assad I can’t help but feel that the Palestinian cause is getting worse every day. No one is lifting a finger for them except the Yemenis and it only seems that the Zionist fucks are getting closer to their objectives.
Civil war in “Israel” when? True Promise 3 when (lol)?
It doesn’t help that some of the loudest voices cheering for Assad’s fall where Palestinians and that sectarism is strong against Shia’s…
If you are supporting Russia over Ukraine then we’re trying to point out that’s actually what you sound like.
It’s obvious to everyone who the invading force is and who the defending force is.
What was the invading force and the defending force in the 2014 coup?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
You might want a non-NATOpedia source if you want to understand why Russia would go to Crimea and hold a referendum asking them if they’d rather be under Russian protection or remain under the power of a Fascist government that was installed by the United States, a government that literally wants to eliminate Russian speaking minorities (as well as Roma, Jews, and the other groups that Nazis always want dead).
Just as a primer, here’s the Boy Boy video and a CNN report from 2016 showing what the fascist government installed by the US was doing in Donetsk, 6 years before the start of the Russian invasion.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
It was wikipedia but yes great point, wiki is just surface level overviews and shouldn’t be the primary source for info.
Always encourage people to read deeper.
I just don’t know what news sites people trust here, I can post CNN i guess since you posted that, but I personally don’t care for them
I’m also not into youtubers as a source for info but ill check out any legitimate stuff you wanna send
I think you mixed up your timeline. This was during the invasion. Fighting been going on since spring 2014.
From CNN in 2015
https://www.cnn.com/2015/01/30/europe/ukraine-crisis
By invasion I meant 2022’s SMO. I don’t think it’s fair to characterize the separatists as a Russian invasion, even if they are de facto Russian proxies. Ukraine had just been couped by fascists, isn’t it the correct thing to do to support ethnic minorities that are being massacred by fascists? You know, like how Iran supports Hezbollah and Ansarallah?
And yes, it is a bit silly to link a youtube video. The reason I like that one is that they have the phone call with Victoria Nuland and I think the way he frames it is very nice for illustrating the point, that the West was recklessly installing a fascist government with the goal of threatening Russia.
Can we slow down and go through this properly?
So first of all, when you say it’s a coup what do we mean? Do you agree that there appears to be evidence of mass protests and that the Ukrainian people were themselves protesting their own government in the streets (which violently resisted and unjustly put down many of these protests) before the so called coup occurred?
https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/30/world/europe/ukraine-eu-protests/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/30/yulia-tymoshenko-jailing-politically-motivated
https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/11/world/europe/ukraine-protests/index.html
Next, when you say the newly installed government are “fascists” what do you mean? Which ethnic minorities were being massacred and why? When did the massacring of minorities start and when did the Crimea invasion happen in relation to it?
These are being presented as though Crimea was a direct response to a documented genocide. Is that chronology and claim correct?
I can accept that.
I just felt it was unfair to characterize the direct response to these Russian proxies as “6 years before any conflict started”.
Fair enough, I’ll check out that clip specifically.
Ultimately though, I sort of know they’d laugh. When the two teams are neoliberals vs (the liberal definition of) imperialists whoever side you support is gonna be laughing at you because they’re playing a bigger game.
I mean that while all the unrest was going on, Victoria Nuland quite literally dictated which figures in Ukraine were to come to power. That doesn’t invalidate the pro-democracy protests, and I don’t believe that the US was manipulating everyone into showing up to get mad at their corrupt government. The thing is that the US opportunistically takes these movements and uses their soft power media outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe to amplify the movement and push it in the direction they wish. This is called a color revolution.
The same thing happened in Georgia, Hong Kong, and various countries in the Arab Spring. It happened all over Eastern Europe toward the end of the Cold War.
Here’s a fun one, the term “Revolution of Dignity” actually was coined by a far right Ukrainian Nationalist group!
https://www.researchgate.net/post/When-was-the-term-Revolution-of-Dignity-initially-used-in-reference-to-the-protests-in-Ukraine-in-November-2013-February2014
I mean that there were significant elements of the new administration that were Banderites. Ukrainian nationalists and right wing violence against ethnic minorities is pervasive throughout Ukraine, it’s not exactly like I can point to one specific time where the massacre machine got turned on again because the way these fascist groups work is not centralized like that.
Here’s an NBC article about Ukraine’s Nazi problem
We’ll have to disagree on that one. Ibrahim Traore just got a medal in Moscow for being an ally against imperialism, and as complicated as my feelings toward Putin are, I would count Traore as an unequivocal ally against imperialism. I don’t think Russia laughs at us socialists, I think they are just as capable of doing materialist analysis as we are and understand the fundamental reasons why we’ve ended up on the same “side”. I recognize that the more we think about this aspect the sillier the whole thing is, seeing as the western left is not a fighting force with any weight on any stage, much less the internationalist struggle.
Edit: issuing a correction, Traore has not received a medal, lol. I don’t know where I got that idea from. But he is invited to the 80th Victory Day celebration in Moscow this Friday. Putin, if you want my support, give the man a medal!
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Since you expressed a desire to dig deep, this documentary may cause you to reconsider who the aggressor is. Most of it (after the 15 min. introduction) is direct testimony from Ukrainians on the ground, i.e. primary source material.
Thank you, I will make sure to give that a watch!
The invading force in any conflict that involves usa is always usa
One day it won’t be
Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt have entered the chat, and they are laughing at you
that’s pretty much the calculation that non-nazis in the post-coup Kiev regime made in 2014, yes
You are swallowing a narrative that was crafted to get you to support the West’s actually existing imperialist project. Yes, you actually should understand the context of this war, even if that means that Russian atrocities are also going to be put in context and complicate your feelings about it. If your position is to sit by the sidelines and condemn any state actor because states are oppressive/expansionist/monstrous then you’ve maintained a moral high ground that you’ve eliminated any chance to turn into a project for actually advancing a political goal.
The Western imperialist bloc must be stopped. That requires the cooperation of everyone in the world that understands the true nature of imperialism to contribute in the struggle against imperialism. When Mao fought against the Japanese imperialists alongside Chiang Kai Shek, he had to make a moral compromise that was necessary to actually achieve the goal, to liberate China. Modern day anti-imperialists are no different.
With respect, I am not. My stances on the imperialist project in basically every other sphere (especially the Middle East and Sputh America) are incredibly skeptical and critical.
But what appears to be confusing everyone is I choose to apply those same standards and lenses to everyone
Exactly, thank you. I think the “if the USA is involved its always the invading force” bothers me so much because it wipes away that cognitive dissonance with delusional dogma.
I assume this is a hypothetical “if your position is” and not an accusation, because I totally agree.
I do not sit on the sidelines, Ukraine has a full and complete right to defend itself. (As does Palestine, as does (did) Hong Kong, as does any sovereign nation who is not the aggressors and who’s boldest demand is a return to previously agreed upon boundaries from before the invasion.
We remarkably agree on the premises here. It’s surprising to me we go so opposite to each other.
When I look at the Russian Ologarchs and all the people falling out of windows and that they all have bank accounts in the same offshore places that Western bourgeois were showing up.
If you are open heartedly telling me that Putins Russia is an ally on eliminating inequality and distributing capital back to the producers then I don’t get where that is coming from.
China and Russia are highly different beasts.
Is it your genuinely held belief that Putin is making the right compromises in the right places to liberate Russia?
Setting aside Russia’s moral right to the invasion, let’s look at their economy since. It’s tanked! Are you really suggesting that the Ukraine war was a strategically sound idea?
The reason I agreed with that comment is because, even though it’s not absolutely true and as you correctly point out, it leads to a dogmatic and oversimplified view of history, it actually is correct in the current conjuncture. The US is the sole world hegemon. It is the culmination of imperialism, a monopoly power that holds complete financial dominance on the world stage. 80% of international financial transactions are in dollars. In the broad arc of history, US financial and military hegemony (which are in direct contact and dependence with each other) is currently the motive force of world history. Not an atom moves in the international stage without the US having somehow put it into motion because the US is world hegemon, that’s what world hegemony means.
Read back to the Leninist definition of imperialism.
They obviously aren’t allies in the strategic goal of the left, to defeat capitalism and institute socialism. But they are tactical allies in demolishing the hegemonic power of Western finance capital, yes. The individual capitalists behave as individual capitalists always do, protecting their financial interests in the short term. But the actual motive forces of the Russian national interest lies, momentarily, in the same direction as the interests of the global working class: in the fight against imperialism.
Ultimately the reason I’m completely opposite to you, despite having a lot of the same principles (which I respect you for, you’re miles ahead of the vast majority of liberals) is because to me, imperialism is a historical phenomenon that exists within the context of the material relations between the ruling classes and the working classes. I’m thinking the USD, US treasuries, international debt owed to the US, the IMF, World Bank, etc. Meanwhile it appears that your definition of imperialism is something a lot more metaphysical and general, that I would argue is actually fruitless to fight against without identifying that expansionist tendencies are inherent to the nation-state.
Absolutely. The alternative was to allow Ukraine to join NATO and continue being encircled by hostile fascist governments (see Georgia coup, baltic states, etc). When the threat is existential, sacrificing economic stability in exchange for continuing to exist is a sound decision.
Also, and I don’t think Putin had this in mind, it turned out to be a good idea to decouple from the world economy which was about to be completely trashed by Trump in 3 years after the invasion. Funny how that worked out.
Did Russia have a right to defend itself against being completely surrounded by an adversarial military alliance? They had warned the West for years that they would never allow that to happen, but the West kept pushing it despite earlier “promises” not to do so. The West didn’t care because they’re willing to fight to the last Ukrainian for their own gain. Had Ukraine chosen to be neutral and said “no, thanks” to NATO, they wouldn’t have been invaded.
You’re not distinguishing between a truly imperialist country that invades other countries completely unprovoked (see US invasion of Iraq for just one recent example) versus a country that invades another purely as a defensive, strategic move (Russia -> Ukraine/Georgia).
Aside from that, saying that Ukraine has a full and complete right to defend itself makes sense only in an ideal world, but not in a real world where it is placed right next door to an 800 pound gorilla. Would Canada or Mexico be completely within their rights to join a full military alliance with Russia and/or China? Absolutely. Would there be a positive outcome for their country and its citizens if they tried? Absolutely not. In a situation like that, neutrality or even outright support for the gorilla next door is the completely rational approach to take.
Edit: minor changes to one sentence in the last paragraph.
I’m confused what “completely surrounded” means here? Have you looked at a map of Russia in comparison to NATO countries?
It’s barely touched by NATO countries, they’re only to the west and completely untouched with Mongolia/Khazakstan to the south and Asia to the east.
But absolutely it did! Assuming hypothetically it was being surrounded it had as much right to join or leave defensive alliances as they do.
Bring back the Warsaw Pact if they want. You just don’t invade another country.
And if one of those countries had dared to cross over the Russian border in invasion, it had a right to defend itself from that invasion.
Interesting justification.
How many times do I have to warn my neighbor I don’t like their new security system before its okay to just take their house?
You’re right. Invasion is not a defensive move.
Agreed.
As a Canadian, I completely disagree. I’d really like some help with the 800 pound gorilla next door.
I support closer ties with China, but not Russia personally.
I admit that was a thoughtless word to throw in there, so let’s instead say that very roughly speaking the land border of their population center was about half composed of NATO countries, and Ukraine and Georgia joining would essentially double that in terms of border length.
That’s not a good analogy. NATO membership brings with it US military bases and/or missile launchers, possibly nuclear ones. A better analogy would be “how many times do I have to warn my neighbor that I will not allow them to stockpile [edit: even more] weapons in their house and point even more of them at my house before I bust in there and take away their weapons?”
I completely understand the sentiment, but how large a percentage of the population of your country would you be willing to sacrifice to (most likely unsuccessfully) assert that right?
Edit: overall, it seems to me that you seriously underestimate the existential threat that NATO represents for Russia.
That’s fair, you are of course right it’s a very important border.
Sure. The answer is still “you don’t get to take your neighbors house”.
What I really don’t like about this is everyone is justified to invade everybody.
If Russia can invade Ukraine, the Ukraine must equally be able to now “defensively invade” also.
So we just never sow for peace when theres tension, the strategy is to invade back and forth forever, with everyone justified by all the previous invasions?
I don’t have the authority to sacrifice anyone.
I am one voice in a democracy and if my fellow Canadians choose to sacrifice themselves for our country I hope I’m not too much of a coward to not be with them through whatever that means.
The only sacrifice I’m in charge of making is my own, and to that I just don’t know. I’ve never been tested like that.
There are plenty of “threats” out there. If suggest we start invading each other over each one then I think you overestimate the effectiveness of starting wars.
in this instance your neighbor’s security system is a 40mm cannon aimed at your front door
And your security system is a nuclear fission bomb pointed at the entire planet
Look at history. Usa hasn’t been invaded yet. Usa has been in thousands of conflicts. Either they stoked the conflict, or they were directly the aggressors. They are ALWAYS at fault. And if it wasn’t them, it was their lackeys. And where do lackeys get their orders from? From usa of course.
Look at history. It has. British Canada literally burned down the white house lmao.
Or like in WWII they tried their best to stay out and still got dragged in.
Can’t they just mostly be at fault?
Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuala, Brazil, Chile, Syria, Libya, Kuwait, etc, etc.
You have so many examples of the US fucking up why are you so threatened by the suggestion they accidentally did the right thing like twice?
The US still fucking sucks.
What is imperialism?
Man, you should probably already know if you wanna be having these conversations lmao.
To dumb it all the way down, when a soveriegn nation marches over an internationally recognized border to try to take their land/resources, that’s imperialism.
When Israel occupies Palestinian lands and lobs bombs at their hospitals and food supply and settlers seize territory, that’s imperialism.
When the US meddles in the Middle East or South America to fund right wing death squads to topple governments that’s imperialism
When the Soviet Union did the exact same thing in the exact same places, that was still imperialism
When China took over Hong Kong and tries to take islands in the Phillipines, that’s imperialism
When Trump threatens to takeover Canada and Greenland, that’s imperialism
When Russia invaded Ukraine, that was imperialism
It’s pretty easy to spot the imperialist, they’re the ones crossing the internationally recognized border with tanks and armies
So imperialism is just a synonym for invasion?
Was the Soviet Union imperialist when they marched into Berlin?
yeah the nazis had a right to self-determination, just like the Chinese nationalists of the ROC
No, the first thing I said was that I was dumbing it all the way down
I’m not sure i understand your thought process here. They were the ones who got invaded.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa
I personally choose to distinguish between the country invading another and the country getting invaded itself but then going on to not lose the war.
Does this distinction seem reasonable?
Your distinction isn’t really reasonable because you’re still just saying all invasions are imperialist (now with the qualifier that this is only the case if you didn’t get invaded first).
Was Abe Lincoln being imperialist when invading the Confederate states? China liberating Tibet? What about if China invaded Taiwan right now? I mean, that one actually wouldn’t even count as imperialist under your own very broad definition given that there’s an international consensus that Taiwan is part of China.
Which invasions do you want to praise as “non imperialist”?
Read up on the Battle of Fort Sumter.
…yes. China annexing Tibet was absolutely imperialist.
Would China be upsetting the understood international “status quo” by doing so?
I genuinely feel my above answer should’ve been super obvious but alright.
Once again, I don’t have an overly broad definition. I broke it down to simple terms. I think the problem here might not be with the specific definition but any definition.
I’m sorry if this is a misread but it really feels like you’re trying to just nitpick the definition endlessly as some sort of exhausting rhetorical tactic to keep me constantly backtracking so that we can’t actually talk about this blatantly obvious invasion in front of us.
Like, Russia marched soldiers and parachuted into Kyiv trying to assassinate the president to overthrow it.
How honestly do you rationalize that as okay behavior for a state power while arguing against imperialism?
Not really? You haven’t addressed the Leninist definition. The reason I’ve been nitpicking yours is that it makes anti-imperialism non-actionable. It’s like if I decide to be a communist and I don’t like social classes because class conflict creates violence and oppression, it means I must condemn when socialist states use state organs to oppress capitalists. It’s ahistorical and fails to inform a productive course of action.
The way you readily call the Chinese invasion of Tibet imperialist shows my point. By what means should the serfs have been liberated? Was it incorrect for the new socialist state to liberate them, because there was a “legitimate” Tibetan state that had a justified claim to the land? Are the class relations, the material conditions, all irrelevant to our assessment of the situation because Mao had no “right” to do that?
I understand that I’m being annoying, and it probably just feels like I’m going out of my way to contradict you when the intuitive definition of imperialism would show that the invasions I’m talking about were indeed imperialist. The point is to get you to see why we like the way Lenin put it, because it is a lot more actionable and gives us a plan to strategize around. The vibes based approach doesn’t give us a way to defeat imperialism, only to condemn away.
No one offered me a Leninist definition. You asked me what imperialism was and then I guess tried to Socrates method me into it.
Feel free to link anything and I’ll give it a read.
I dont understand why you say this definition is non-actionable when it is the reason i say we must act to stop Putin from invading Ukraine.
There’s a lot in here. How are they being oppressed?
Is the socialist state oppressing them by arresting them without trial and sending them to death camps? Because without due process how do we know these are actually the capitalists they’re accused of being?
If they sent you to a death camp as a “capitalist” without evidence is it okay if I reserve the right to speak out on your behalf?
I think there are some types of brutality and human rights abuses that are so awful it transcends “team sports” and should just be off limits for everyone. That’s sort of where the genocide in Ukraine crosses the mine.
Honestly? I don’t know.
Was life better for the serfs because of Mao? I regrettably know as much about that part of history so I don’t want to talk out of my ass just to win a point.
What I do know is that when the US liberated France, they gave France back to the French. That sort of sets the ideal for what liberation should look like.
If Tibet isn’t it’s own country they didn’t really “liberate” Tibet. They just took it. They annexed it.
When you put it that way i now feel like the annoying one. I appreciate the explanation here cause it does clarify.
I joined the .ml community completely arbitrarily because I read the devs were on it and as a programmer I like open source software stuff. Bet I’ve been dropping some painfully lib comments for ya guys.
I will better inform myself on these perspectives.
check her pronouns please
Still a useless definition. Essentially all wars are imperialist under this definition, unless it’s the most insignificant little border skirmish.
When the hell did the Soviet Union fund RWDS? I live in latam and the only influence of the Soviet Union I know is supporting national liberation movements. The US has only done the same when the movements were corrupt and put landowners’ interests on top of the peasantry’s (i.e. those who wanted to keep colonial relations but under a new flag).
Because Hong Kong being a satellite state of the West used to destabilize the only remaining major communist power would be so much better? Like it wasn’t just blatantly stolen Terra Nulius style by the British to traffic opium into China?
England takes Hong Kong, that’s imperialism.
China takes it back, also imperialism i guess.
Exactly! A country should belong to the people who live in in and not to neighboring empires who call dibs on someone else’s home.
This view is typically called anti-imperialism.
Then you should be supporting the people of Donbas in their anti-imperialist struggle against the neo-nazi Ukrainian regime that had been trying to ethnically cleanse them and seize control of all their resources to sell off to western private interests. Just as you should be cheering on the Russians who came to their aid and prevented them from being wiped out by said nazis. But instead you’ve confused anti-imperialists for imperialists and mixed up the nazis with the victims because you have swallowed the western narrative.
If everything you said was factually true, then you’re right I should be.
Well then you should educate yourself as to what is factually true because everything I said was just that. You seem aware enough that you should know that one can not trust western sources if they want to have any idea what is really going on. Yet your responses here seem to indicate that that’s exactly what you’ve done: trusted the propaganda put out by the imperialist world hegemon.
Is America’s hold over my state imperialist? Is Germany occupying Berlin imperialist?
I’m going to move 2 steps ahead here and just say that the position that’s being argued for here is some platonic ideal Hong Kong that would be independent of both American and Chinese influence.
Are movements in your state to democratically organize a secession movement violently suppressed?
Same question. Germany could only start to be considered as “occupying” Berlin if Berlin doesn’t want to be part of Germany.
So if there is a secession movement, it should always be supported? What of the people of Hong Kong who supported further integration into the mainland? Do they not matter?
How about the neonazis trying to turn the Pacific Northwest of America into their “Northwest Territorial Imperative”. Should we support those secessionists?