People who love and defend a government are creating parental figures out of the state instead of growing up and taking their stand as mature individuals.
People who love and defend a government are creating parental figures out of the state instead of growing up and taking their stand as mature individuals.
I think your brain is returning a false tankie positive. This is an article against supporting imperial states as part of your identity.
There is authoritarian apologia elsewhere on the blog so I think it’s accurate.At minimum hypocritical.Apologia for any state is idiotic.Edit: I thought I saw something along these lines from the author but I can’t find it anymore so I’m going to retract this to be safe.
I skimmed through the ~50 articles published this year and they were all anti imperialist pieces focused on the US & Israel. Not defending authoritarianism.
Hmm I clicked some link and I thought I saw some apologia about China but now I can’t find it. It does seem to be mainly criticism of the US and Israel which is always fair game considering current circumstances.
As an American its a strange and uncomfortable to ponder that maybe China was/is not as bad as I always categorized it as since Tienanmin. More research definitely needed.
That’s an oversimplification of the truth, not defending authoritarianism. It’s not denying or minimizing China’s actions in Xinjiang or '89. It’s not praising the censorship or arbitrary detention.
Finally the end of the matryoshka doll.
Yeah I think that was the one, it’s not love but I’d call it apologia.
To me it’s so much weirder to spend energy defending a distant authoritarian government that you have no connection to whatsoever than your own. Both are stupid, but people are indoctrinated to be sycophants for their own authoritarian government so I kinda get it even though I wish it was otherwise.
On the one hand she argues that it’s not true that she loves Russia, in fact one can’t even have emotions like love towards a country:
On the other hand, her entire blog is aimed at provoking emotional reactions against the US, which she admits she hates:
Are countries simply mental representations or are they valid objects of repulsion and hatred? It depends on the country, comrade! Russia exists only in your mind, so your feelings about Russia are invalid. But the US is an actual twisted abomination!
There’s no contradiction or double standard here.
Love and hate are usually understood to include support/oppose in their meaning. It’s cringey to say you “love” any nation, because they will never care for your wellbeing. It’s especially unacceptable to support violent imperial states.
That doesn’t preclude opposing or hating certain states, or having indifference to states that you don’t feel strongly impacted by.
That’s not really her argument, which is that you cannot have any emotional relationship with a country.
But even your version is flawed. She lives in Australia and hates what happens to Gazans but is not impacted by what happens to Ukrainians and Uyghurs?
I think the title, opening sentence and paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 & 8 all show that she’s talking mostly about love in the sense of support and identify with.
Only paragraph 4 talks about the impossiblity of a personal connection with a nation and the next paragraph makes it clear that it’s a side point.
It’s an imprecise and out-of-place side point that I don’t agree with, but it’s not proof of her secret support of authoritarianism.