because it doesnt exist, nobody on the left likes putin, the “tankie who loves putin” is just a guy that the reddit brained lemmy.worlders made up to be angry at.
That’s a disingenuous take to be sure. And to be fair there are a lot of those surrounding capitalism and Leninism both.
I literally had a lemmy.ml user yesterday try to justify Putin’s invasion of Crimea. Claiming that Putin (a fascist) was concerned about the fascist Azov brigade because they were fascist. (Hilarious Russian propaganda) And that this was all because of America and things only got bad because of America. If America had never been involved, Ukraine would have happily joined back with Russia, etc etc etc.
So it definitely does exist. Whether or not it makes up a significant amount. We can debate that. Or at least we can try. Because unfortunately more often than not. So many on ml domains are incapable of having a good faith discussion. Often responding with walls of text, macro images and other things completely unrelated to the discussion at hand. In an effort to deflect criticism, muddy the conversation and gish gallop the whole talk. They don’t have a Monopoly on it though to be sure. It’s something other authoritarians like fascists do as well.
Saying that Putin was justified (its debatable) is not the same as saying they like him. the vast majority see him as a necessary evil (some as a lesser evil) to counter the western imperialist hegemony.
You say ml people are incapable of good faith discussions but here you go immediately shutting down arguments going against your worldview as “hilarious propaganda” and those macro images only come out in response to such bad faith takes.
No, it is not debatable. He literally invaded. If he was justified in invading Crimea then the west and the United States in particular has basically been kinda justified in every action they’ve taken against every ml country/revolution ever. Either it’s bullshit for both or it’s okay for both.
And yeah it was literal propaganda. Much like the red scare BS perpetuated in the US since the late 40s. It’s not BS propaganda because it disagreed with my world views. You only prove my point by making that accusation. You have no idea what my world views are. You’re simply getting emotional and defensive because yours are fairly obvious and I impuned them. But if you want to know know I’m pragmatically libertarian Marxist/ anarcho communist. So even though I agree with ml on a number of economic issues, I generally find them as distasteful as fascist because of their social policy.
my guy have you been to hexbear or lemmygrad? every other post on those forums are just people whining about westerners treating china and russia like they’re totalitarian/dictatorships and genocidal (because they are) and then saying that the US is even worse with less freedom of speech and more authoritarian. and obviously the constant uyghur genocide denial saying they’re just being “(re)educated” and they’re “integrating” with the mainland communities/culture more, then deflecting and rationalizing that even if it is genocide then it’s good because US wage slavery & prison labour is bad.
plus calling ukraine nazis and in general being anti-ukraine, saying that ukrainians want to be part of russia and that ukraine was better off as part of the soviet empire, claiming that putin was justified in invading “because NATO” even though there was no way in hell of ukraine joining NATO (they don’t accept unstable countries or countries with foreign non-NATO military/rebel presence) and even after NATO started backing away from ukraine in order to please russia (tankie claims which are silly and a sick joke)…
it’s not nearly as bad on lemmy.ml, it’s mostly limited to the minority here, but the other two are definitely filled to the brim with imperialists/red nazis in denial…
Just to establish some ethos in your mind here: I am banned from Lemmygrad for “trying to lib up the grad” after discussions about Russia. Even so, I would say it is both disingenuous and wrong to claim that they are all drooling over Putin. Most of them, at least those worth listening to, are critically supportive of Russia due to them being in opposition to Western hegemony. That said, many of them are also unfortunately very much under the impression that all Ukrainians are nazis, which is obviously not true.
To properly evaluate them for what they are, and not as an infantile “they are genocide loving, totalitarian, red-fash tankies”, one needs to understand how dystopical their view on the current world order is. If anything, this should be the take away from their dissonant voices, because their dystopic view of the Western world unfortunately bears a lot of merit (which does not equivocate to many of the alternatives being much better).
You are forgetting the actual Russian trolls who infest leftist spaces, and who get protection because they make good campists noises. You are simply lying if you claim there aren’t people all over hexbear, .ml and lemmygrad who openly root for Russia against Ukraine.
I have literally caught bans just for saying that Ukraine resembles genocide. You know, because communism is when mass deportation of children, or something.
