Voters should vote for those who represent their interests. If any candidate is endorsing (let alone committing) genocide, and that is a violation of a given voter’s interests (and it damn well better be), then that voter should not vote for that candidate, period. If there are only 2 options and both are genocidal, then neither should be rewarded with a vote. You want “harm reduction”? Then vote for PSL - if your liberal obsession with voting has convinced you that voting has any power whatsoever, then don’t use it to reward genocide, use that power to say no to it entirely. If your position is that “we live under a system where we are getting genocide no matter what” then rather than going “well, there’s a chance this one might be one iota less genocide” maybe start coming to the correct conclusion that the system is indeed irredeemably rotten and rigged FOR genocide, that it is designed to be this way which makes all of that system your enemy, not just the orange team that says the quiet part out loud too much, but also the one that smiles politely and gives the right lip service while literally, not figuratively, but very much actually mass murdering children. Yep, that blue team is your enemy too. So now it’s time to get down to the hard work of building alternative power structures through organization in direct defiance of the genocidal machine, having done away with your petty red(orange)/blue team false dichotomy. Join us in actually working for a better world rather than tossing up your hands and voting for the genocidaires that cry crocodile tears and pretend it’s such a sad state of affairs as they massacre little kids for power and profit. You aren’t actually beholden to support them. They aren’t the “lesser” evil, they’re just another piece of the entire evil machine!

You seem to lack the reasoning capacity of most toddlers. The US war machine is committing genocide. Both the democrats and the republicans fully and unreservedly support and represent that US war machine. The genocide was started under one genocidal maniac (Biden) and continues under another (Trump). You weren’t getting “genocide-lite” when Biden, the one who ensured the genocide began and commenced without impedance, was in office and you aren’t getting “genocide-plus” now that the other genocidal maniac is in power. You are being played for a fool by a good-cop/bad-cop routine that is so plainly obvious it makes me literally wince to see fools be taken in by it. But of course they are, because it’s easier to pretend you made some difference by voting rather than actually doing anything to help the people literally being genocided right now. (Those of us who would never vote for fascists as the commit genocide are the ones sending aid directly to Palestinians while you whine about your team of blue fascists not being the ones in the big boy chair while the genocide commences and wagging your finger pathetically at the people who actually fight for justice. You aren’t fucking helping “lessen” the genocide by voting for the people who started it and ensured it continued on into the next term. People like you disgust me.

It’s a shame you’re unable to see which flags are swastikas while you go on supporting them.

I love unraveling the bullshit the powerful use to trick us into thinking it’s in our best interest.

You would likely very much appreciate Marx then, as it is his work that plainly showed the most fundamental way in which the capitalists (the ruling class then and now) exploit the masses and how that exploitation is the basis for the existence of the capitalist class. It’s very much the foundation for why it is even a necessity for, as you said, the powerful to trick us about what our interests actually are. But you don’t have to read his work directly to get a basic and general understanding of what he said. The same way you don’t have to read Darwin in order to develop a basic and general grasp of evolution. However, in both cases you do have to engage with some of the actual material on the topic so as not to come away with a false understanding of it, e.g. a creationist’s cartoonish understanding of natural selection (“my grandpa wasn’t a gotdamned monkey!”) or a right-winger’s ridiculous notions of communism (“the tankies want to steal my toothbrush!”)

Spoken like a true commie

Indeed it is, hence it being absolutely correct.

should apply to China, seeing how most of their bad shit happend internally with the notable exceptions of Taiwan and Hong Kong

Those are still internal to China. I can understand that people are ignorant of the fact that Taiwan is part of China given the rhetoric around it and the fact that it is still provisionally ruled by the ousted rump-state nationalist government that still thinks it’s the legitimate ruler of Mongolia too. Taiwan IS part of China, but there IS something being actually being contested there. But Hong Kong? Hong Kong unambiguously is in China, it’s just one of the Special Autonomous Regions, but even they themselves consider themselves part of China, not “external” to it.

Also, it’s not “bad shit,” it’s treating reactionaries with relatively kid gloves.

There is a distinctive difference between Russia and China, despite both belonging to same political alliance and both have a dictatorial leaderships.

China does not have a “dictorial” leadership. As for Russia, well it’s leadership is no more “dictorial” than that of any western “democracy” leadership. Their “political alliance” is still relatively loose, and the only way in which they could be considered part of the same “axis” (not a word you used, but still kind of implied) is because the US’s belligerence against them both has driven them closer together.

Hating west/USA and loving either of them would make one a campist,

Hating the west/USA is just a matter of simultaneously knowing history and being a compassionate, empathetic human being. And I would bet that most of the people you would say “love” either Russia or China rather just support their actions and goals, probably very critically in the case of Russia, and do so for rational reasons based on the true behavior of those countries. That is not campism. Campism is when you support (or “love”) a country not because its actions genuinely align with your own ideals or ideology but purely because you identify with it. Interestingly, it largely stems from a failure of self-awareness. There absolutely are campists for Russia and for China, I am not denying that at all. But despite what the libs here say, you won’t find very many of them on lemmy. Most of the people on lemmy support these countries for very rational reasons regarding ideology and their geopolitical conduct.

but I’m not sure about that qualifyng as tankie.

I always understood it to be a derogatory term for the general authoritarian communist/pseudo-communist block more so than applying to all national supermacists.

This is more or less correct. Most campists on lemmy support the US/NATO and they certainly aren’t tankies by anyone’s standards. You’re right about it always having been solely a derogatory term for certain radical leftists, nowadays usually those who support countries whose governments are fighting western imperialism. But like many others have said in this thread, it is becoming so diluted that merely not supporting the fascist DNC has been enough to get a person labeled a tankie. The silly “authoritarian” part mostly came into play once liberals started using the term and (as usual) completely not understanding its origins (origins that have to do with a specific uprising in Hungary in the 1950s).

Honestly, I would rather live in North Korea or Russia than in this slowly crumbling empire shithole founded on genocide, slavery, eugenics, and the perfecting of exploitation, surrounded by the most pasty, pathetic, and propagandized motherfuckers the world has ever known, which you are testament to seeing as you thought Ukraine was winning this, lol. Of course I would have to give up a lot of treats to live in NK, but the treats here are mostly garbage anyway, and at least I’d have an actual sense of community and not have to exist as an atomized drone in a rotting wasteland of billboards, fast"food" franchises and traffic-jammed SUVs from horizon to horizon. Moving to Russia would probably feel like a mostly lateral shift in QoL, but it must be nice to live in a country with a rich history of killing nazis instead of saving, funding, idolizing, and actually you know, being nazis.

Whatever though. It sure was fun watching @Z_Poster365@hexbear.net completely fucking school you on basic shit your coping ass kept pathetically trying to deny.

Eastern Ukrain was genocide, then what is happening to the Uygurs is definitely also genocide.

Except in Ukraine people did die and their heritage and language were being actively suppressed, etc. We know this because it is documented all over, even in pictures on the net. These specific things are readily confirmable. It was even a large impetus for a broader war, as hopefully you’re aware. There is zero question that Ukrainian nazis were shelling Russian-speaking civilians in the Donbas and that Ukraine as a state was passing laws detrimental to Russian speakers.

In Xinjiang, no such evidence exists because nothing of the sort happened. It’s based on a lie dreamed up by one Christian fundamentalist Adrian Zenz. Every source on this “genocide” traces back to him, and none of the claims are confirmable. Even to the UN! In fact you, yes, even you if you have the means to travel, can go there today and see for yourself that the Uyghur population is thriving and they will laugh if you tell them they’re being genocided. I’ll leave the academic discussion for exactly where to draw the line for the definition of the term genocide to others for now. But based on how you were defining it, Ukraine was committing genocide, but no, China was doing quite the opposite by encouraging ethnic diversity. Again, go see for yourself like this person did: Oh yeah, just look at all that genociding going on!

Behold, fellow lemmy browsers: here^ we see the scratched liberal as their mask starts to slip. Not unlike the “UHMUHRICA! Love it er LEAVE it!” style of chud. They have a similar simplistic and deeply uncurious faulty view of the world, a view desperately clung to even when they are shown it is undeniably false, for self reflection is too frightening a concept for them even to consider.

Russia entered a conflict that was already in progress, a civil war where the Ukrainian coup government was attempting to ethnically cleanse the Russian speaking population in the east. This coup was orchestrated by the US (this was obvious, admitted to in recorded phone calls, and was rife with high US politicians (John McCaine for example) going there to celebrate. The US/NATO also funded the training and arming of openly neo-nazi militias like Azov Battalion, (and others) many of whom were the ones shelling the people in the East long before Russia intervened. All of this was done by the US to exert pressure on Russia. And this is just scratching the surface. So no, Russia did not “do this to itself” and your framing of it is naive and simplistic and just plain false.

I am genuinely glad to see you reognize the villainization of China, but please also apply those same critical thinking skills to what you have been told about Russia in the Ukraine conflict and do some digging into the history that doesn’t rely on western propaganda.

I cannot take you seriously if you willfully swallow the firehose of US propaganda about how cHiNa BAD ebil aUthOrItArIaN when it’s a country whose government has the enthusiastic approval of over 90% of the population, the country that lifted 850 million people out of abject poverty, the only large country doing anything significant about the mass extinction event that is climate change, the country that… well, I could go on. But no, keep believing those lies like a good lil western capitalism enjoyer.

This one isn’t just staying ignorant, they’re loudly proclaiming their ignorance as if they’re proud of it. Yikes.

Not believing in blatant right-wing propaganda is a leftist position. Parroting right-wing propaganda is a right-wing position. You are parroting right-wing propaganda. Please stop doing that, especially if you consider yourself on the left.

Oh, you mean like what the Ukrainian coup government was doing to the people in the east (Donbas) for years before Russia even entered the conflict? Yes, there is a strong argument to be made that genocide is the term we should use with regard to what Ukraine was attempting to do to the Russian-speaking population in their country.

Summary of this comment: “Do you recognize reality and not believe the ocean of NATO propaganda we’re all awash in? Then you’re a tankie. Do you reject a bunch of bullshit I made up using fascist-invented terms like “red fash” and “totalitarian”? Then you’re a tankie.”

Ok, I’m a definitely tankie then. It must suck not to be one and be stuck in these pitiful, childish delusions, and labeling people “orks” and ascribing people who value truth with what you think is an epithet. Some grade A fuckin’ cringe right here.

Holy fucking shit what a coward you are. This person @TheOubliette@lemmy.ml has done more in good faith to actually educate you about things no leftist should be ignorant about than you deserve. You have this tremendous opportunity to genuinely learn from someone with a wealth of knowledge and actually deepen your understanding of the world and even the ideology you claim to subscribe to, but instead you plug your ears and pretend there’s nothing to be gleaned from this generous education you’re being offered all because it conflicts with your preconceptions, your misconceptions which is cognitively uncomfortable. But that really does just come down to cowardice. I hope one day you can recognize this, recognize the importance of and necessity for self crit. If not, you’ll forever be stuck as you are, the proverbial useful idiot for the same empire you claim to wish to see an end to.

Many of them lived through the entire Nuclear age.

That’s just it though, considering that they are the leaders of a giant death cult, many of them probably feel like they got shortchanged when the USSR fell without any nuclear armageddon, not even a little bit. This could be Biden’s last chance for the Christmas he always really wanted.

Do you really not understand that titling any fucking post ever is doing the same thing? Fucking clown.

If the title was a NYT headline with two words changed: “Kamala Harris makes an official statement in condemnation of political terrorism” you wouldn’t be clutching your pearls, now would you? OP’s title is far more factual though, and that’s what you actually don’t like. You people are so transparent it’s laughable.

Posting news in a news comm of a presidential speech that is literally a link to the official government website of that president is “intentionally inflammatory and trolling”? This is a joke, right? You’re doing a bit and playing a caricature of a typical lib clown?

it was more a way to test out their new toys.

And as a demonstration for any would-be challengers (one in particular, and we all know who) to the emerging US hegemonic dominance, a demonstration not just of the destructive capacity of nukes but of their willingness to use it.