this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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It's hard to avoid a "no true scottsman" with the current state of bots and propaganda accounts.
But as far as I can tell, there are hardly any lefties, or even tankies, who unironically support Russia or even a middle ground position. Despite their hate of the west, Russia is clearly the greatest evil here.
Most of the middle ground positions I see come from fox news.
That's because your instance has blocked hexbear and lemmygrad.
Maybe. But previously when I engaged with people making this same claim, when they provided their evidence (a link to a hexbear post) and I actually spent the effort to verify it, it was trivially clear that their evidence was wrong, and when I showed that to them, they blew up and blocked me from the entire community (they were a mod).
Since then I've been pretty skeptical of people making this claim.
Don't take my word for it. Even though your instance is defederated from them you can still go to hexbear.net and search locally for posts about Ukraine.
If you want context: Hexbear is largely a fanbase of Chapo Trap House. Most people who report on Hexbear usually are unaware of this.
Sorry, what's the context that this provides? I'm honestly not that familiar with the podcast other than it being far left
I often see hexbear users referred to as far-right by those that tend to antagonize.
I've seen many an essayist talk about hexbear and never mention it, so I thought I'd bring it up.
Ah, thank you.
Cool, thank you
The context is that, like the alt-right, they retreat into "H-ha ha, I w-was just trolling" whenever too many eyes are on them.
Try engaging with the tankie communities more, though I suspect your instance has them defederated if you get an impression this distorted.
I see you misspelled Putin twice.
Here you go
Unfortunately, I can attest to a great many tankies who unironically support Russia or a 'middle ground' position. I could post examples all day long and not run out. At least, not run out of examples. I'd run out of will to live pretty quickly.
The last time someone said that to me, they sent me a post from hexbear that was clearly a joke, and when I showed them where it said it was a joke, they blocked me.
... okay?
In my admittedly limited experience, 100% of the people I've talked to who have made the accusation you're making have lied about it.
And in my admittedly limited experience, 100% of the lefties accused of saying what you're accusing them of saying, were explicitly not saying it.
And in my slighy more experience, 100% of the people I've seen saying the things that you're accusing lefties of saying have been right wingers.
So... 🤷
How many genuine examples would it take for you to cede the point?
Let's start with, let's say 5 posts from prominent communist communities that: a) are clearly mainly about this, b) are clearly not a joke, and c) clearly have broad support from within the community.
Those examples will give me a starting place to look around myself.
Fuck it, I'll bite. I don't usually indulge this kind of sealion stuff but I'm bored and waiting for my hair to dry before going to sleep.
All of these posts were gathered from the "top all time" posts in communities about Ukraine in hexbear and lemmygrad.
As a counterexample, here is a post "How Russia became far right?" where everyone agrees that Russia has a far right government, even though some communist sympathy remains in the population. I'd think that shows that they do not support Putin as communists, or even at all.
There is some good faith discussion in those subs, but when confronted with an enemy they close ranks and default to "US bad, anything the US hates we love"
Yeah, but that can be a valid tactic. The "enemy of my enemy is my friend" and all that.
I'm not a state socialist but the US is a terrorist regime that absolutely needs to be checked. So even though I don't like many things about the governments of Russia or China or Iran, I am rooting for them to... well to survive without being completely co-opted. Can you imagine if the US completely dominated those countries? How incredibly bad it would get?
I've party saw it when the USSR fell, there was a counter balance missing which I believe directly led to the social democratic parties in the US and EU embracing "the third way" (neoliberalism).
Welp, you're a fucking idiot then
Thanks! I'll take a look around and dig in a bit.
I think you scared him off.
It's rare for someone to admit they were wrong, but sudden silence is usually the same thing.
I mean, give me a chance. I have a life outside Lemmy, and it's a lot to look into.
Fair enough. Without a "I'm looking into it" type response I assume rage quit.
To be fair, I backed myself into a corner here. I've been procrastinating because I really don't want to immerse myself in tankie forums. But as I said, I'm not willing to accept the claims at face value. So I just keep putting it off 😭
I should have just kept my thoughts to myself lol.
Yeah, gonna have to go with a 'no' for a mealy-mouthed dodge like this.
What? I thought that the evidence was trivial to find, didn't you say?
What did you expect me to say? "Oh you sent me a link, let me fully believe you without checking out the thing you linked"?
Sounds a lot like you're making a bad faith argument to me
I also said that reading through them sapped my will to live. Why would I trudge through them just so some twat online can say, "LOL but those are just a few examples!"
I told you to set the criteria to your liking. I asked you how many you wanted as evidence. I don't think "IF you find these as evidence, I'll concede the point" is such a ridiculous thing to ask.
lmao
You used a lot of words to say absolutely nothing.
Don't worry though, someone else has already provided the 5 examples. I'm gonna take a look when I get a chance.
I think any argument for peace and negotiations and compromise with Russia is met with overwhelming downvotes. Worse on reddit, pacifism is seen only in controversial now. The above meme is clearly pro-war propaganda too, as to prevent any rational discussion. It's total victory or death.
If you're a pacifist, you're treated as a communist-nazi.
If you're advocating that Ukraine should lay down its arms before clear security guarantees are in place, or at the loss of its territory you may as well be a "communist-nazi".
This was Russias final offer - which I'm not advocating for but it does contain some perfectly reasonable demands to protect themselves from US aggression. Of course Russia wants to keep using Sevastopol and doesn't want offensive weapons on their boarders.
Of course, if you're denying that the US is a terrorist regime that has killed millions of innocent civilians and ruined many countries in the last decades then you may well be a fascist.
I'm certainly not denying that Russia is an authoritarian far-right regime that suppressed Ukraine and that Ukraine absolutely has a right to be free. But if you're bordering on Russia, you'll have to make accommodations and be smart. Total war is not smart.
You perfectly distilled this entire thread.