I love when people claiming to be communists defend the hyper capitalist modern Russia. I have my criticisms of the ussr, but it’s dead and buried and Russia is as much the Russian Soviet as the Russian Soviet was Czarist Russia.
Tankies don’t have anyone they can root for that’s coherently communist or socialist anyways. China isn’t really, Russia is just an oligopoly with one guy on top for life (if you substitute land ownership with ownership of sectors of the economy then Russia looks a lot like a feudal monarchy).
Their one immutable belief is the “US bad”. That’s it. That’s their speed of light. Everything else must twist to maintain that position. If Ukraine elected a pro-western leader, it MUST be a CIA coup. They couldn’t have possibly chosen that for themselves because “US bad”. If Russia starts an offensive war of conquest it can’t just be their fault, they must have been provoked.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine they could pretend like only evil capitalist countries invade others. The invasion broke them since they have to someone maintain that position while also justifying the invasion , again, because US bad. This is really all they have now.
So, here’s how US bad: the US for several years has been provoking Russia by inviting Ukraine into NATO with no actual intent on letting them in. We’ve used them to offload massive stockpiles of old military equipment and secured all rebuilding of Ukraine to US companies. As soon as the Ukrainians start advancing, the US begins to fail on its commitments.
It’s possible to center ones ideals around the US being bad while also believing that Russia is bad.
Akshually, Ukrainians want to join the EU, not NATO. If you don’t believe me, look up the survey prior to 2014/2015 on how many want to join NATO and EU. You will find that majority of Ukrainians do not want to join the alliance but it’s completely opposite for the latter. The yearning by Ukrainians to join NATO changed overnight after the Russian annexation of Crimea. Gee, I wonder why?
NATO=/= EU. They are two completely different things! That’s like Ireland being attacked by Russia for being in the EU even though majority of Irish abhor NATO! Equating the two organisations is part of Russian propaganda. Because for the Russians, a sovereign country not aligning to them economically is the same as opposing them militarily.
It’s a blindspot among Westerners to refuse seeing the Russian mindset. They have their own worldview that is alien to the West and vice versa. The Russians have Eurasianist worldview where the center of the world and power is Asia; and their country carving a huge piece of that pie. Even oppositions of ruling government-- from communist to Putin era-- are hard-core nationalists as well from Alexander Solzhenytsin to Alexey Navalny. They are poster boy of Russian opposition from their respective time and yet believe Russia should also go its own way. They might be more liberal minded Russians, but they are nationalist first and foremost, and Eurasianists at that.
So, with that in mind, for the Russians, Ukraine and Georgia joining the EU-- a socio-economic bloc-- is unacceptable and tantamount to joining NATO; even though the fucking majority of Ukrainians and Georgians do not want to join NATO until further Russian provocations, brought by Russian siege mentality, pushed those countries to crave to join NATO. If Putin does not want NATO expansion, he certainly pushed two more countries to join, namely Finland and Sweden. Even Alexey Navalny-- Putin’s main presidential opponent-- said of the current president as the worst in geopolitics for having just provoked more countries to join NATO if the intention is to prevent its expansion. Those who says otherwise and keep harping about West provoking Ukraine to join NATO is Russian propaganda, because from the latter’s pov, either Ukraine signs a deal with them economically, or it means opposing them existentially too. Because Russia wants to carve their own sphere of influence.
That shit kills me. I was reading something on hexbear about some recent anti-gay stuff in Russia. It was all about critical support, and not just Russia. They also talked about critical support for Nigeria, despite them having the death penalty for gay people, because they’re “anti-imperialist.”
Why doesn’t it go the other way? Why can’t you give “critical support” to countries making strides in human rights while criticizing their economic policy?
To me, their priorities seem pretty fucked up. Between exploitative economic policy and killing or imprisoning people for existing as themselves, I know which one I’m going to be “critical” of and which one will cause me to refuse support for a country in any way.
Being anti-imperialist is usually the determining factor of tankie (“critical”) support. Being against the US is apparently how you are anti-imperialist, so if you decide to conquer an American ally to grow an empire, you are apparently anti-imperialist. I guess that’s where you “critically” support them by cheering.
I don’t get it.
In Germany the Left has been divided into Antiimps (Antiimperialists) and Antideutsche (Antigermans) since the 90s. Antiimps being pro Palestine, Anti-USA, western Imperialism, NATO etc… and Antideutsche being pro Israel, pro USA and against a united (or any kind of) Germany.
Of course those positions developed over the years, but they still explain where and how those ‘new’ perspectives came to be. Worth to read into it.
