This “meme” pretends to be nuanced…but it’s simple: it attempts to boil the crisis down to “America bad”.
Russia has agency. If you’re a leftist who supports Russia…and I know it’s common…you’ve completely lost the plot. You’re basically so anti American that you’ve overshot the mark and are supporting other fascists.
At risk of also oversimplifying things: Russia/Ukraine isn’t good v bad…it’s fascist capitalist v “liberal” capitalist.
it’s fascist capitalist v “liberal” capitalist
This is correct but probably opposite of how you think it is.
Oh?
I’m anti America and anti Russia. I’m not pretending I’m some expert on geopolitics…but I do know that Russia is a fascist capitalist state and they’re not the good guys, even if many of the Ukrainians and their supporters are bad.
There is a historical materialist thread from Project Aerodynamic and Banderite Mykola Lebed to Victoria Nuland determining the leadership after the 2014 coup.
Your mind is like a puddle
Yes it’s a proxy war. Doesn’t mean you should go around “liberating” your neighbors by folding them into your own territory.
Sorry…I know exactly what you mean, but I’m going to nitpick over the use of the term “proxy war”. It’s not a proxy war, first because Russia is directly involved and second because the USA isn’t the only proxy. Good examples of Proxy Wars are The Spanish and Syrian Civil Wars…as well as many minor conflicts during The Cold War that were revealed to be indirectly USSR v USA
I don’t know how you feel about the war at large…but calling it a proxy war could be considered a Russia friendly narrative because it removes Ukraines agency and purpose.
In a proxy war the support is generally obfuscated, and the conflict is usually internal. In Ukraine the support is open and the conflict is an invasion.
As you can see from the comments, libs are way more delusional than in your meme, they aren’t even admitting the three first lines.
it’s heart warming to see that the reality to this narrative still has defenders and it makes me wonder what people will believe when reality wins out.
If only there where some way for Russia to prevent this…
With very few exceptions this reads like bot farms fighting with themself
Are people here pro Russia taking over Ukraine here?
Marxists tend to critically support Russia over Ukraine here. Russia doesn’t want to “take over Ukraine,” it wants the 4 oblasts and Ukraine to be demillitarized. Donetsk and Luhansk both have been at war with Kiev since 2014 and voted to join the Russian Federation, and the far-right Banderites that siezed power in the 2014 Euromaidan coup have been heavily millitarizing and oppressing ethnic Russians. Ukraine serves a similar geopolitical purpose for the US Empire as Israel, it’s a heavily millitarized anti-communist country surroundrd by geopolitical adversaries.
There’s a lot of problems with your reply.
You can’t say Russia doesn’t want to control Ukraine and reconcile that with the fact that Russia previously had puppets controlling Ukraine.
You can’t seriously believe that Russia holds fair elections.
ETA: if the conflict was just about protecting supposedly majority Russian areas on the Russian border, I would expect Russia to have intervened directly in those areas to “liberate” them, like we saw in Crimea (which is also dubiously majority Russian). But what we’re actually seeing is an imperialist cassis belli that’s contradicted by the fact that it’s mostly Ukrainians themselves fighting, even if armed by allies.
Yanukovych was not a puppet. The IMF loan came with stipulations requiring austerity, the Russian loan did not. Secondly, Russia is intervening directly in the Donbass region. It isn’t dubious at all that Crimea and the Donbass are heavily Russian, they were added to Ukraine only a century ago.
Not a puppet? Spare me. Where is he right now? What a coincidence!
Did you intentionally misunderstand what I said? They could have just taken the territories they wanted that were supposedly majority Russian and left it at that…the west wouldn’t have done shit about it. But they didn’t, did they?
They are taking historically Russian areas like Donetsk and Luhansk. The west is doing what it wants because it’s using Ukraine as a proxy war to damage Russia, and is carving Ukraine out for resources. Yanukovych escaping the far-right Banderites that the west supported doesn’t mean he was a puppet either. You’re deeply confused here.
Imagine being so communist and/or anti-American that you can’t criticize a fascist capitalist state over a liberal capitalist state.
You’re too smart to make the argument that Russia’s actions are restricted to the areas they allege are majority Russian.
Imagine being so communist and/or anti-American that you can’t criticize a fascist capitalist state over a liberal capitalist state.
Kiev is run by far-right neo-Nazis that uphold Stepan Bandera. The Russian Federation isn’t socialist by any means, but it isn’t run by literal neo-Nazis and it isn’t ethnically cleansing anyone.
They’re right, cry about it
Not a puppet? Spare me.
Faith based politics
that’s contradicted by the fact that it’s mostly Ukrainians themselves fighting, even if armed by allies.
Which Ukrainians?
- The oligarchs running the state?
- The Banderite fascists?
- The eastern & southern Ukrainians, who, after the Maidan coup, declared independence from an unelected government, and were subsequently terrorized by the Banderites for nearly a decade, with tacit and overt support from the Ukrainian and US governments?
- The western Ukrainians who want the war to end?
- The men being kidnapped off the streets and pushed to the front lines against their will?
Previously: If not for the US/NATO, this war wouldn’t have happened in the first place.Can’t tell if you’re talking about the Russians or the Ukrainians.
My argument isn’t so much that Ukraine is good…it’s that Russia is worse.
Worse for whom?
For the world. Giant repressive capitalist dictatorships that are full of fascists and invade other countries aren’t good for anybody…even if some of the people they’re killing are also fascists.
For the world.
If by the world you mean the imperial core, then yes.
Giant repressive capitalist dictatorship
You mean the United States?
full of fascists
I don’t think you understand fascism. Previously:
No
Honest question from a non-communist, based on your reply here. Does one need to support Putin to be a Marxist?
In a word, no. In a few more words, support for Russia (not Putin, as historical materialists don’t subscribe to great man theory) is only a partial, temporary, tactical one, in the context of imperialist liberation. Russia is still a capitalist state, though, so it’s a two stage strategy: first liberate colonized bourgeois states from colonizer states, and second revolution within those liberated bourgeois states.
Russia is an interesting case: it has already liberated itself from the post-Soviet “shock therapy” neocolonizers. This occurred during Putin’s administration, which is why he is especially hated by the US. So now the support for Russia is in the context of keeping the colonizers from recolonizing it, and supporting Russia to the extent that it helps other states liberate themselves. But Russia isn’t trying to “liberate” Ukraine, at least not all of Ukraine. It’s trying to resolve the genocidal attacks on the people of the Donbas, and it’s trying to resolve the imperialist military expansion at its border.
- Reuters, 2014: Leaked audio reveals embarrassing U.S. exchange on Ukraine, EU
- Leaked recording between Nuland and Pyatt: audio | transcript
- Counterpunch, 2014: US Imperialism and the Ukraine Coup
- BBC, 2014: Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict
- Human Rights Watch, 2014: Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians
- Consortium News, 2015: The Mess That Nuland Made Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s regime change without weighing the likely consequences.
- The Hill, 2017: The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda
- The Guardian, 2017: ‘I want to bring up a warrior’: Ukraine’s far-right children’s camp – video
- WaPo, 2018: The war in Ukraine is more devastating than you know
- Reuters, 2018: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem
- The Nation, 2019: Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
- openDemocracy, 2019: Why Ukraine’s new language law will have long-term consequences
- Al Jazeera, 2022: Why did Ukraine suspend 11 ‘pro-Russia’ parties?
- Jacobin, 2022: A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
- Consortium News, 2023: The West’s Sabotage of Peace in Ukraine Former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett’s recent comments about getting his mediation efforts squashed in the early days of the war adds more to the growing pile of evidence that Western powers are intent on regime change in Russia.
- Internationalist 360°, 2022–2024: History of Fascism in Ukraine: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV
- NYT, 2024: U.N. Court to Rule on Whether Ukraine Committed Genocide
NATO expansion:
- George Washington Univ., 2017: NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner
- Orinoco Tribune, 2022: Former German Chancellor Merkel Admits that Minsk Peace Agreements Were Part of Scheme for Ukraine to Buy Time to Prepare for War With Russia
- Al Mayadeen, 2023: Zelensky admits he never intended to implement Minsk agreements
- Jeffrey Sachs, 2023: The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace
- Jeffrey Sachs, 2023: NATO Chief Admits NATO Expansion Was Key to Russian Invasion of Ukraine
NATO in general:- The Intercept, 2021: Meet NATO, the Dangerous “Defensive” Alliance Trying to Run the World
- CounterPunch, 2022: NATO is Not a Defensive Alliance
- Noam Chomsky, 2023: NATO “most violent, aggressive alliance in the world”
- Thomas Fazi, 2024: NATO: 75 years of war, unprovoked aggressions and state-sponsored terrorism
- Gabriel Rockhill, 2020: The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It
And people say there is never white on white crime LOL
