If you’re still trying to pull “both sides” to defend a country murdering and abducting children, you have no footing to stand on.
They don’t care. It’s meant to muddy the waters, confuse people who only pay attention to world affairs on the surface level. Repeat it, and people remember it. Doesn’t matter who responds to you. Doesn’t matter what they say to refute it. All that matters is getting the material out there, making it pop, making it catchy. Then all you have to do is rely on spotty human memory to do the rest.
It’s even better when you get third parties passing along your propaganda too, and all the implications it drags with it.
No one is saying that in good faith. I’ve only ever seen it as an idiotic straw man to attack people who don’t support escalation in Ukraine.
You can see that Russia’s actions are irreconcilably evil, and still not support Western military intervention in the area.
I am a centrist, when I say both sides are bad, it doesn’t mean both sides are bad in every single conflict but that both sides have their issues. For example, Ukraine has a problem with Nazism, but that doesn’t mean they should be invaded by Russia.
The reason why this strawman meme like OP posted, gains traction is because most centrists don’t really bother wasting time and effort arguing online.
Russia has only strengthened the position of the Nazis. A society fighting a desperate defensive war can’t afford to exclude any help. If Nazis want to go fight the Russians, go let them. Either way, regardless of who dies, you win. And if the Nazis survive until the end of the war, we can thank them for their service with slightly comfier pillows in their jail cells.
And if the Nazis survive until the end of the war, we can thank them for their service with slightly comfier pillows in their jail cells.
Except this thinking is literally how half of ethnic conflicts in early 20th century arose. The problem with this is that if Nazis survive, they are going to do so by holding positions of power.
And if the Nazis survive until the end of the war, we can thank them for their service with slightly comfier pillows in their jail cells.
I see no jail cells in these photos:
- (2019) Former WWII nationalist guerrillas granted veteran status in Ukraine: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/7148
For reference:
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Centrism isn’t a political position. It’s an attitude. It means you have a tendency to view dichotomies as false, and further that the truth, as you understand it, exists somewhere between two presented (false) dichotomies.
Centrism means different things depending on political context. It could mean you’re a socialist, a capitalist, a fascist, a bolshevik. It doesn’t present a political view in and of itself, and as such it’s usually an incredibly unprincipled stance.
Do you look at class through a socialist lens or a fascist one? As in, do you believe the classes are opposed in their interests or aligned?
Do you support the state’s monopoly on violence and subsequent declaration of private property rights?
Do you view allowing the interests of capital to steer the global economy via institutions like the IMF as a grave injustice or the invisible hand of the market doing what’s best for humanity?
The answer to these questions, if you look into things, will often align in a coherent way. It’s unlikely, for example, that you’ll take a socialist lens on classes in viewing them as conflicted while also supporting the declaration of property rights in direct opposition to the interests of the worker.
If you’re in the U.S and you’re a self-described centrist, you’re likely a capitalist who’s simply undecided on some social issues. If you were brought up religious but went to secular public school, that would cause some dissonance in analyzing social issues. However, this inability to form a coherent view shouldn’t be the main feature of your self-described political stance.
It’s better to just say you haven’t done enough research to come to any reasonable political position. It’s much better to accept that humans don’t know everything and know where your own knowledge falls short.
As someone who thought for a while they were centrist, this represents how I came to see it better than I could have put it into words.
Centrism is a desire to compromise between the two available options. There is no compromising with fascism. They might pretend to compromise, but they are really just solidifying their position for their next push. A compromise means they accomplish half of their goals and thus will have an easier time getting the rest of them than they would have before the compromise. Especially if their concessions all had nothing to do with real power, like allowing gay marriage. If they can offer the decriminalization of abortion to secure more political power, they can just consolidate that and use it to ban abortion again for everyone down the line. Their primary goal total power, everything else is secondary to that.
I see the Democrats as largely representing the status quo economically and politically with a healthy dose of social of progressivism thrown in. That social progressivism is important, but the economic and political stuff is what really needs to change to fix things. The Republicans, on the other hand, are regressive economically, politically, and socially, which was the case even before their recent descent into fascism. A compromise between those two won’t do anything good, so centrism is out.
it doesn’t mean both sides are bad in every single conflict
But you’re implying it. You’re implying far greater equivalence exists than there is.
If English isn’t your native language, then let me help you.
both sides are bad
Is wrong. That is a final judgement, and it is wrong
both sides have faults
Is correct, and what you mean. It still isn’t good, but is closer to what you mean.
Also, on the topic of left, right, centrist and moderates (etc), you should be aware of the concept of the Overton Window. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window) I am not going to support the entirety of the concept, but the basic relevance is that “if the general trend of the times is for people to be more right wing, then what you thought was central becomes what was right wing in the past”. This is a fault / problem with describing an idiology not on its own, but only in relation to others.
Language is used for communicating ideas and thoughts, and if you don’t use it “correctly”, in the manner that other people use it, then you will be misunderstood.
Ukraine has a problem with Nazism, but that doesn’t mean they should be invaded by Russia.
This tells me that you both think that Putin invaded Ukraine because of the nazism (he didn’t) and that you shouldn’t invade a country for being full of nazis (you absolutely should) Congratulations, the average liberal once again managed to support the worst of both sides.
What in the fuck makes this person a “liberal”? sounds like a Fox News viewing trump supporter to me
There is a “peace organization” here in Sweden, Svenska Freds, that are hard core pacifists. No matter what - pacifists. Their reasoning is like children. War is bad, everybody should be friends, the end. Reality should conform to this simple principle.
In the early days of the invasion, their loud public stance was that Sweden should not support Ukraine with military equipment. Ukraine was just as bad as Russia for defending themselves with weapons when they should use reason and diplomacy.
Then they got all weepy in the media when people called them useful idiots for Russia.
Pacifism. Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. Mr Savage remarks that ‘according to this type of reasoning, a German or Japanese pacifist would be “objectively pro-British”.’ But of course he would be! That is why pacifist activities are not permitted in those countries (in both of them the penalty is, or can be, beheading) while both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of pacifism in British and American territories. The Germans even run a spurious ‘freedom’ station which serves out pacifist propaganda indistinguishable from that of the P.P.U. They would stimulate pacifism in Russia as well if they could, but in that case they have tougher babies to deal with. In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.
exert from Orwell on Pacifism and the war
There’s this codepink in u.s. thats like this organization too, except only think remarkable about them is when their website was flooded with signatures from trolls that said things like hating african americans, praising zelensky or putin AND hitler in same sentence and using putin’s credentials as if it were a regular signature.
So if your country was being invaded you’d just lie down and take it? Perhaps even say thank you? You’re naive to think that talking will magically solve things when you’re against an enemy who clearly doesn’t have the same moral standards as you. They’re attempting to take what they want with force, they’ve already demonstrated that they don’t care for niceties like negotiation.
Imagine trying to talk it out with a mugger. They don’t care what you want to talk about. They want your money.
Every downvote is a vote for death, hatred, and suffering of innocents
This makes you sound like those moronic Facebook posts that say things like “1 like = 1 prayer, ignore = you hate puppies”. It’s not a good look.
Oh most enlightened one, ye who stands upon the highest of moral ground, please share with us your illuminated opinion of how the Ukraine should have responded? Or for that matter, any enemy who wishes to take your land and kill your people.
Clearly you are the most learned among us, and have solved the puzzle of how to overcome a violent enemy without resorting to violence, so please I beg of you oh sage one to teach us your great wisdom so that we may be as ethically correct as you.
EDIT
Aww I missed their rage response, I am guessing they had no better response than “let the violent party take whatever they want”? Yeah cause that’s a super great plan, and definitely doesn’t incentivize more violence.
So the solution is that the one side that already has a bunch of guns, gets to kill as many people on the other side, and we must not help the other side defend themselves?
Always give the aggressor everything they want and let them kill as many civilians as they need to.
Sure.
temporarily get some of what they want while things are worked out
Some of what they want = to own all of Ukraine, and for Ukrainians to not exist as a culture, let alone a nation.
There’s no temporary about it. There’s no “some of what they want” about it. Negotiations have been tried time and time again. Ceasefires have been tried, but guess what, Russia just bombarded the civilian evacuation corridors when they were negotiated because the goal is to kill as many Ukrainians as possible.
Putin is not rational, this is an ego war. I take it you were never bullied in school. You might not know what it’s like when someone’s main goal in life is to make yours hell. You can just lay on the ground and play dead, that won’t stop them from kicking you. There’s no talking your way out of it unless you yourself are at least as strong as the bully. This is what Russia is. A schoolyard bully. Any type of negotiated peace short of total capitulation is going to be nothing more than a way to catch Ukraine with its’ pants down and kill more Ukrainians and grab more territory. The only way Russia will stop killing innocent people is if they either run out of resources, or Putin himself gets deposed.
I seem to remember a certain Jew that was a pacifist and advocated “turning the other cheek.” What a chump. /s
That same jew also violently threw merchants out of a temple. People are complicated.
If you believe the Bible, then he was literally God. Zelensky isn’t that.
*raped, tortured, and shot
The children were ravenous demons! Foaming at the mouth!
Our hands were forced. We had to kidnap them from their families we killed and send them to residential schools.
Communists can’t be fascist, they have a thin veil of very conditional worker solidarity! They’re inherently good! Stalin was just misunderstood.
I think NATO is a tool for capitalist imperialism and therefore fascist. Should we use violence against NATO?
