They get around this by using a version of Lenin's definition of imperialism. Lenin characterised imperialism as, in very simple terms, the way that powerful capitalist countries exploit poorer countries (or straight up colonies, especially considering the time in which Lenin was writing). Of course they use a version of this that specifically defines it as just literally anything the countries they don't like do, leading to ProleWiki insisting that Russia is not imperialist but Liechtenstein is
Similarly to how 'reactionary' just means 'bad' to these people. For the record a 'reactionary' is somebody who wants to restore a previous status quo. It's not inherently good or bad.
Guys with moron labia stickers on their pavement princess trucks would love this until they had to wear roman clothing that they'd assume were dresses.
I'm pretty sure half the Middle East belongs to the Hittites and the other half belongs to Egypt.
How far back are we going? Babylon? Assyria? Who ran China in the 9th century BCE? We may need to resurrect Terror Birds and give the Americas back to them.
France was paid fair and square for their portion so that they could continue beating up the rest of Europe.
Oh, and Russia claims Alaska even though they were also paid for it. This has actually been brought up by members of the Duma. America does not have a monopoly on idiots in major legislative bodies.
All those countries gave up their claims on the US either because they were paid to do so or because other territories were surrendered to them in exchange.
The Netherlands for example were paid for New York. Which is why there's no history of conflict between the British empire and the Netherlands.
These countries that want to be free and independent should be owned by another country that wants to own them and if you disagree you support imperialism... mind-boggling
like how do you argue against that? where do you even start?
they hide meaning behind big words they dont understand and then invent their own meaning for the word until their argument sounds like word soup to anyone who knows what the words actually mean
"the house is on fire, it should ALWAYS be on fire, and if you disagree then youre a dangerous pyromaniac and a phlebotomist"
It's more that they are immune to irony, as long as the words they vomit out forward their hidden goals, they don't care what they say.
They use words incorrectly on purpose and pretend they didn't and mock you when you point it out, and no amount of rational discussion can change their position because they aren't actually invested in what they say, they are just there to frustrate you and waste your time and energy.
It's a game for them, and they revel in it. Easiest tactic is to just not engage. Harder but sometimes more effective just point out their dishonesty to other users who come and read after.
Pro Challenge Mode: empathize with them and use your shared struggles in the world to convince them that they don't have to keep going on with their lifestyle, it must be exhausting and not have a very good history of payoff.
There's no such thing as objective reality. Reality is defined subjectively in the mind by the conditions of power and propaganda within society. Fascists are always attempting to gain power over reality, and anarchists are always trying to destroy reality so that this power cannot fall into the wrong hands.
I've not had too much of a problem in the .ml communities. they have their opinions and discuss them.
it's that hexbear half joke half serious mix of Marxists and fascists that like reallllly get off on removing comments that don't suit their agenda. I understand not agreeing, but silencing dissenting opinions is the foundation of a lame internet community.
I've been subbed to a bunch of their comms and not seen anything that was explicitly or could be construed as fascist.
Most English language online spaces have the western media narrative rigidly enforced. Some people prefer to not have to have a /c/worldnews debate exchange in places they hang out.
FWIW, the full list of disputed territories is much longer than you think. Basically, every map in existence is also picking sides whether they know it or not; a realization I find chilling.
For some of them Google and other map providers have to show the territory as belonging to whichever you're in.
So if you're in India, it shows Kashmir as Indian, but if you're in Pakistan, it shows it the other way round. I've no idea what it shows if you're actually in Kashmir.
Within Russia, "imperialism" means "opposition of Russian imperialism", and "fascism" is just used as "opposition of not supporting the Russian government".
Imagine looking at millions of people living in the relatively prosperous democracy of South Korea and believing that all these people belong as chattel slaves of a monarch who starves his people and throws entire families into concentration camps to die if one member dares to speak out. Every regime supported here is a fascist dictator.
Biggest supporter of upstart socialist independence movements around the world.
We'll back just about anybody if we think they'll point a gun at someone we like even less. The US was a staunch supporter of Cuban Socialist Revolutionaries back when it was a Spanish colony. And we were ready to break bread with Joey fucking Stalin right up until FDR's brain imploded and Truman took the reins.
The United States will help anyone when it fucks over our enemies, we went from hating the charlies to being an ally of Vietnam real fucking quick once the Soviets were out of the picture and China took their place.
Also, I’ve never heard a Communist say that Ukraine belongs to Russia.
I’ve heard Communists say:
This conflict was provoked by Nato.
Ukraine has been shifting in a disturbingly fascist direction for the past decade since the “Maidan revolution”.
The Maidan revolution was a US-sponsored coup.
Citizens of the Donbas are being oppressed by this increasingly fascist Ukraine, and it’s understandable that some of them would shift their loyalties to Russia.
But I’ve never heard them claim Ukraine belongs to Russia.
"If you don't support the rights of these imperialistic fascist regimes to do imperialistic and fascist things then you are an imperialist and a fascist."
Uh...Russia, China and North Korea are all fascist dictatorships. Tankies wouldn't be nearly as annoying if they had a fucking clue what they were taking about.
If you're going to complain about people knowing what they're talking about, you should at least use the right words to describe things.
You can call Russia, China and North Korea dictatorships, but each of those three are just literally not fascist. Fascism arises from different circumstances and acts differently, even if there are surface similarities to notice, and those differences are important to understand if we want to analyze them and prevent them happening here. Russia, in particular, is important to understand when looking at the USA's current neoliberal nightmare.
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
far-right
Russia - Check, China - Check, North Korea - Check
authoritarian
Russia - Check, China - Check, North Korea - Check
utranationalist
Russia - Check, China - Check, North Korea - Check
dictatorial leader
Russia - Check, China - Check, North Korea - Check
central autocracy
Russia - Check, China - Check, North Korea - Check
militarism
Russia - Check, China - Check, North Korea - Check
forcible suppression of opposition
Russia - Check, China - Check, North Korea - Check
belief in a natural social hierarchy
Russia - Check, China - Check, North Korea - Check
subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race,
Russia - Check, China - Check, North Korea - Check
strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Russia - Check, China - Check, North Korea - Check
Sorry...what is it about these fascist dictatorships that you think isn't fascist dictatorship?
Meanwhile, most of the people speaking publicly who are protestors have demands that are very much within the left of political spectrum. They are just done with this corrupt asshole. Yeah, some are not that way, but for everyone right wing sentiment I find, I see like 3 that have all progressive demands.
But would you surrender your country to Russia or China just because your current leader is a corrupt asshole? Would you have voted for Biden instead of Trump?
The US could have run a social democrat in Venezuela and they'd have won. Instead they picked some ultra-right wing reactionary assholes to support. They picked people who supported the 2002 coup and are in favour of the crushing economic warfare against Venezuela.
Of course there is legitimate protest against Maduro. But he's the only choice if you don't want your country to be forever owned and irrevocably fucked by the US imperialist boot. They have oil. That's all a regime propped up by the US would need to support, oil extraction. No schools, no universities, no roads, no hospitals, just oil extraction. It's a fucking grim future if you understand the rules.
Humans play pretend we own the Earth, then get angry at each other while carving it up a little finer and finer, usually with blood or threats of blood.
The reality is, Earth owns us. Always has. We are subject to it.
We've been very, very naughty subjects.
Earth is in the process of handling us for that.
If you disagree with any of this, knock yourself out, the Earth doesn't care. All the corporate and governmental attempts at ignoring/bribing/negotiating with physics for decades as they forcefeed a willfully ignorant populace microplastics has been gallows hilarious though. Should have been a better species. 🤷♂️
(On the bright side, the capitalists, fascists, and greed apologists will all get what's coming to them, and the cultures that did live in homeostasis with the Earth, who were largely killed in the name of profit and conquest, may have been exterminated, but they will not have to experience the shame of watching the world end by their own greedy hands.)
The thing is it’s not about being stupid. People with lower IQ can be quite knowledgeable, especially when they realise their limits.
It’s often people with mid level intelligence who do not realise their deficits, and somehow think that academic consensus is worthless, that turn into tankies like this.
When it comes to Taiwan, it's my understanding that the indigenous Taiwanese would like both the mainlanders who established Taiwan and the PRC to fuck off and let them have their island back.
But I do support the Taiwanese government's annexation of West China. Then they can move the capital to Beijing.
I see you post a lot, and it's normally fine, never an apocalyptically bad take like this before. So I hope you'll take this well.
The "West Taiwan" meme and the oft repeated thing about the constitution of the RoC still claiming the mainland is dumb. It's only because the CCP threatens immediate war - if Taipei changes their constitution to reflect post-1949 reality, that would be considered "a declaration of independence" and trigger a missile barrage.
Only about 2% of people in Taiwan identify as Chinese, and I can guarantee they're almost all old as rocks, maybe a lot of them went to school when schooling was still in Japanese. The vast majority of citizens identify as Taiwanese, the country has NO intent to "reconquer the mainland".
You can actually still find moss-covered old fortifications in the hills above Taipei with slogans like that, but they were built no later than the 50s, in the White Terror era.
Please let this "West Taiwan / Best China" stuff die.
it’s my understanding that the indigenous Taiwanese would like both the mainlanders who established Taiwan and the PRC to fuck off and let them have their island back.
Sure. And Hawaiians want Hawaii back. But I don't think anyone is holding their breath.
I do support the Taiwanese government’s annexation of West China.
Real "Chiang Kai-shek did nothing wrong!" energy on this post.
I'll admit that having an account on the .ml instance was a little jarring at first. I had another account on a youtubers instance he graciously opened, but I was getting connectivity issues constantly so chose .ml because of it's size and before knowing all the controversy.
My first negative experience was like [email protected], I commented in a post making a winnie/xi joke which was removed and it was the first and only mod action against me (that I know of) so I was a little miffed. For like a day I contemplated deleting this account to move to another instance, then I actually read my comment and looked at the post and realized I was the one being childish.
Since then, I've had actual conversations with people regardless if they align with my political views or not. I now focus on making sure my comments have substantive meaning (when it's about domestic/foreign politics) that actually engages the conversation or adds to the discussion. Regardless of it's content, it's been quite nice for all the hateful and joke comments to be less. A lot of cringelords on here don't want that though, it's like Reddit all over again in that aspect. If any of them actually had a substantive critique or could openly debate then they would quickly realize what comments are inappropriate and a mod might second guess banning someone who looks like they're breaking instance rules.
I live in the U.S. South so it's extremely relevant for me at this time. I'm surrounded by the right wing, bathed into it everytime I go outside or flip on the radio. It's such a weird disconnect that people can recognize the GOP as a cult, indoctrination at birth, supported by a horrible education system and a defunct family dynamic that excludes anyone stepping out of line. Yet, there's non-stop calls for violence against them in general and a constant tightening of the RED VS BLUE in the form of quips and rhetoric making it harder to have any actual conversations with the individuals. Regardless, I'm just grateful for the conversations I see with actual information on policies and discussions of the merits without the need to name call or belittle each other.
Oh wow, a wannabe Buddhist edgelord tech-bro has appeared! I would be surprised but this is the facepalm community. Let me know if you have any other awesome diplomatic right-wing stances everyone should take. Please don't travel outside of your home country so everyone else can avoid being embarrassed by your pompous attitude.
So, you're either pro dictator or pro fascism? It's funny it's the national socialists (what 'nazi' stand for) who are shouting that anyone opposing them are fascists. But who needs education when you can get all your information from Facebook and tiktok right? 🤦
Incorrect. Because both "Ukraine" and "Russia" are illegitimate breakaways from the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics, and are currently under bourgeoisie occupation
It's not a direct criticism, it's an inferrential exploration, meaning that there are many communities on lemmy.ml that are filled with similar comments, which it is.
Terrible, shithole instance that needs to be forgotten from the internet.
POV: you need to make up concern trolling posts conflating a random twitter account that might very well be ironic, with an entire community of users with differing views (see the recent scandal with the .ml mod and transphobia), because you're just so scared of a segment of the population without even political representation in your country.
Bro, I'm not a tankie, I explicitly said the twitter post is a troll because there's basically nobody defending all those things. Tankie is just a word that used to be used to refer to hardcore Stalinists, but now it's degenerated and people use it to refer to Russian nationalists or, worse, anything left of being a lib.
What country do you live in, if I may ask, where communists have decent representation?
Whether you believe Ukraine belongs to Russia or not is immaterial. Russia the imperialist capitalist state, which is what replaced the Soviet Union that America worked to destabilize until it collapsed, has nukes, Ukraine does not. The ending was decided before the conflict started.
Taiwan is what remains of the old Republic of China that was mostly overtaken by the PRC. It also does not have nukes, but it does have sensitive chip manufacturing equipment. The politics of the island are divided.
Ethnic conflict in former Yugoslavia began when the Soviet Union collapsed. Do with that what you will.
South Korea was upheld by a series of brutal capitalist militarist dictatorships installed by the USA after its formation. It is part of a nuclear armed military alliance. Democracy is still relatively new there.
The ending was decided before the conflict started.
What are you on about? If the Ukranians didn't put up such a fierce resistance and without NATO aid the capitol would have been overrun, Ukranian government replaced with a Russian puppet regime and pro-western Ukrainians suppressed and persecuted. Through Ukrainians incalculable sacrifice they have saved at least part of their country and will get to be a part of western world.
For the sake of argument I'll steelman your argument and assume it's 100% true. Do you think this is sustainable long term as a bunch of nations' markets are crashing and the US faces a new recession?