Why would communist support capitalists like Putin and Xi-Jinping which aren’t better than Liberal-capitalists ?
I am all in for stopping liberal capitalism, but I am more interested in implementing a happinex index like Buthan than living in oligarch-capitalist-regime like Russia/China
Basically they’ve bought into the idea that the West, neoliberal capitalists to the core, is the root of all evils, so the leaders opposing the West must be good. Unfortunately, the enemy of my enemy isn’t my friend when it comes to geopolitics.
everyone is my enemy
Because they can’t go beyond “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” level of logic.
By the mental gymnastics they have applied to make Stalins brand of communism into their ideal they have actually learned to embrace authoritarianism.
They think that the only way that communism can be manifested is by first destroying the western capitalist society and they think Putin and Xi will help in this endeavor.
It’s quite delusional (as both are openly embracing capitalism) and quite the opposite of how Marx thought communism would take place, but that’s what they seem to think.
I don’t understand either, I want capitalism to stop but not by making life worse like that
Capitalism, just knock it off dude
Really, why he gotta be like that
Because for them hate for the west comes first and foremost, and after that comes their ideology. That’s why anyone who opposes the west is good in their eyes.
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They’re authoritarian and they hate the west. Of course they’re appealing to communists.
Western commies idolising brutal authoritarian regimes is nothing new.
Basically because there’s enough people on the planet that some are going fall into any camp that gets created. People seek their own identities, which sometimes involves moving away from things other people are believing in.
Possibly an adaptation to keep the species from getting too complacent, which we’re a little inclined towards otherwise, probably due to our social nature. It’s a vulnerable state though, can’t have the whole species going extinct every time an ice age comes.
It’s bizarre. Both countries have moved away from communism. Russia is ruled by oligarchs. Xi-Jinping’s stated goals are to move China to a modern socialist nation while staying in keeping with China’s culture. His actions are the opposite—China has become more and more capitalist while maintaining authoritarian leadership.
Comparing China to Russia is laughable. I know this doesn’t answer your question but I always find interesting when certain people make this this type of comparison.
One has a competent government the other doesn’t.
All the more perplexing that there’s Putin support.
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“I’m not a Putin apologist, I just coincidentally reach the same talking points as Russian propaganda through my totally unbiased research!”
Putin was forced to start a proxy war, shoot down a passenger plane, annex Crimea, invade the whole of Ukraine and commit multiple war crimes, because the people didn’t elect his friends, you see. /s
I’m not a Saddam, I just coincidentally reached the same talking points as Iraqi propaganda through my totally unbiased research.
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Russian propaganda is different for different audiences. There’s one propaganda line for Russian nationalists at home, a different line for right-leaning Westerners, and a different one for left-leaning Westerners, among many, many others. And the one you’re repeating is the propaganda line for left-leaning Westerners. It sounds more reasonable to us because we’re the target audience, but don’t be fooled, it’s pure BS-- same as the other propaganda lines.
The people of Ukraine didn’t want to be Russian, they wanted to be more like the West. Their leader at the time wanted Ukraine to get in bed with Russia and the rest of the East. They ousted him. Putin seized on their moment of weakness and instability by invading.
Could the US have played a role? Yeah but every country with the ability to project any power almost certainly did as well. That’s just geopolitics at work for better or worse.
Every single country on Earth exerts influence on the others to benefit themselves. Look at Ukraine cozying up with the West right now to get weapons and notice how the US, UK, and other Western nations are happily obliging. Ukraine wants to be Western and the West would love another long-term ally, especially one next to Russia. Anyone really think Eastern nations don’t do the same thing? China is exerting a ton of influence in Africa right now, and it’s not out of the goodness of their hearts - it’s quite predatory actually so they’re no different than the US in that regard.
This is an excellent lecture (though admittedly quite long) which provides some much needed context on these issues.
The University of Chicago: Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer
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“China doesn’t require austerity”
Please expand on exactly what you think this means.
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The west isn’t the good guy but you’re nuts if you think China isn’t sucking Africa dry.
I just watched a documentary recently (I will genuinely try to find it again and link here if I can) where Native African workers were being put out of business by China in their own country. China is mining for rare Earth metals using Chinese workers and trapping a lot of these countries in debts they won’t be able to pay back. Once I saw it coming from the mouths of Native Africans, I knew it wasn’t propaganda from either side. Straight to the source - people who live there and see it every day. They start out very grateful for China’s assistance and then later on realize the trap they are in.
Here is some other info: https://apnews.com/article/china-debt-banking-loans-financial-developing-countries-collapse-8df6f9fac3e1e758d0e6d8d5dfbd3ed6
There’s plenty of info of African leaders thanking China approach in Africa. African leaders are not dumb , if China offers a better credit card and infrastructure plans than some western countries they will choose that. Yes, it’s that simple.
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It wasn’t intended to be condescending, I was just curious if you were going to be able to voluntarily describe why it isn’t an act of benevolence, and you did.
That’s why they are so popular in the global south.
All loans come with a fee. The fee is either a classic “interest”… Or “goodwill” and “political capital”.
Right now, China doesn’t need money. They have it. They want to spend it. And the thing they want to buy with it is geopolitical influence. They want people to look the other way in Hong Kong, in Taiwan, in Tibet. They don’t want nation states to talk about their concentration camps. You can buy those things at a pretty steep discount in the form of loans with exceedingly ~~~~favourable terms.
So, I dunno. Is it a win win? Sort of. It’s a win win lose. It’s a lose for groups that are under threat (or actual ongoing) genocide by the CCP. It’s a lose for everyone else along the South China Sea.
I’m glad developing nations are getting access to capital at terms that the west isn’t willing to provide, but I’m not so naive to believe this to be an act of pure benevolence. Trying to boil global acts into simple “good” or “bad” is…
“I’m not a tankie, I just parrot all of their talking points and their weird, myopic rhetorical style.”
The Maidan revolution happened because the Ukrainian parliament had been working on a trade agreement with the EU. Then Russian puppet Yanukovych gets elected and through Russian pressure discards this agreement completely. The Ukrainian people tired of living under Putins boot, much like Belarusian people still do, had a revolution which lead to the police killing many people. Once the revolution was over Russia immediately invaded Crimea. Painting Ukrainian independence not as an act of self determination but as American meddling is Russian propaganda. Painting Russian military invasion not as a military invasion but requirement from western aggression is also Russian propaganda. Stop supporting authoritarian regimes, they’re not your friend. Something the Ukrainian people have had to learn with their blood.
I did not know that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was a Russian propaganda outlet.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-embassy-used-as-safe-haven-during-ukraine-uprising-investigation-finds-1.3148719deleted by creator
We might have figured out why you get called a tankie, friend.
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Right about what? Using whataboutism to spread russian propaganda?
Could you elaborate on the „coup“? Are you talking about the democratic elections that took place?
They probably mean Ukrainian citizens ditching a ‘democratically elected’ president who they didn’t like, because he tried to make Ukraine more Russian than European.
But that is still a democracy in work, when this is what most of citizens want. Especially when later democratic elections prove that (as it happened in Ukraine). Russia should not intervene, but they did and this destabilized the situation.
Democracy isn’t a violent street putsch forcing the elected president to flee the country.
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There was no US destabilising Ukraine, there was no coup, those are taken right from the Kremlin book of propaganda.
There were civil society protests in Ukraine in 2014 to oppose government’s withdrawal from EU talks. Ukrainian government, then backed by Russia, used brutal force against civilians while Russia “secretly” and illegally annexed Crimea (as always with them, firstly not acknowledging anything, using so called little green men, russian soldiers without proper markings, who later got medals for it).
At he same time, Russia invaded Donbas, again “secretly”, talking about “civil war”, but it was no civil war. The so called separatists were controlled by Moscow, supplied heavy weapons and even commanders by Moscow.
Eight years later, they invaded massively and openly, bz make no mistake, Russia’s attempt to destroy and landgrab Ukraine lasts way longer than that.
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OP is referring to the fact that the Ukrainian parliament was cozying up to the West, as the West was trying to get it as a close trade partner, which would have circumvented Ukraine’s reliance on Russia, effectively pulling it from Russia’s shrinking sphere of influence over to the West. Also, the revolution that started the open conflict has allegedly had a lot of clandestine support from the US.
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I’ll try to summarize, then. WARNING: Long post incoming, scroll to bottom for tl:dr!
In 2004, this pro-Russian politician called Viktor Yanukovych was accused of rigging that year’s presidential elections. There were massive street demonstrations calling for new elections, which got named the “Orange Revolution” because the protestors wore orange, the color of the opposition. Eventually, Yanukovych relented and elections were re-run with international observers to make sure they were fair, and sure enough, the opposition won.
Jump forward five years. The opposition’s had five years to blow through all their goodwill and make plenty of mistakes on their own. Yanukovych comes back onto the scene. But instead of rigging the election, this time he gets help from an American Republican operative called Paul Manafort, who helps him pull all the same culture-war ratfucking bullshit we’re used to in the States on Ukraine. It depressingly works, Yanukovych wins the election fair and square.
Jump forward four more years (it’s November 2013 now). During that time, Yanukovych has robbed Ukraine blind, systematically hacked away at what few democratic protections it had, and stoked culture war resentment to keep people at each other’s throats and away from his. People are getting increasingly sick of his BS.
The final straw comes when Yanukovych is supposed to sign a major trade agreement with the EU, one which would let Ukrainians live and work freely there. Ukraine is desperately poor, the EU is rich and has good paying jobs, this is a deal which could dramatically change people’s lives for the better. And then at the last second, Yanukovych refuses to sign the deal, and instead signs one with Russia.
Pro-Western Ukrainians took to the streets to protest. Initially, these protests were pretty small, and seemed likely to fizzle out by the end of the weekend. And then, Yanukovych makes the incredibly smart decision to sic his personal riot police on the protestors in Kyiv’s Maidan square.
This is the last straw for a ton of people, who are sick of the corruption, the chaos, the government that runs roughshod over their rights and lives while leaving them to rot in poverty. The protests swell in size. The riot police step up the violence against them, but that only makes people madder, and more determined to take to the streets.
(This is also at least partly because opposition also sees this as their big political chance and publicizes the hell out of the protests, encouraging more people to join in. The US Embassy also makes no secret about being on the protestor’s side, too, with the then-US Ambassador even going out to the Maidan to give cookies to the protestors one day. This is where a lot of the conspiracy theories about “US backed coup!!!11!111!11111!!!” come from, but like, my brother in Christ, you cannot psy-op hundreds of thousands of people into massive street demonstrations for months on end unless they’re willing and fucking eager to play along.)
Then, on February 20th, 2014, after two months of escalating protests, the riot police open fire with live ammunition. 100 people are killed. And the protestors still refuse to give in! In fact, they begin threatening civil war if Yanukovych doesn’t resign, immediately.
February 23, 2014. Yanukovych vanishes, without a trace. (A few days later, he’ll pop up in Russia, where he’s been living ever since.) The protestors won! Sure, Ukraine is left leaderless-- there’s no Constitutional provision handling what to do if the president just up and vanishes without resigning-- but it’s not like anything’s likely to go wrong in the next few days while they sort things out. Right?
February 24, 2014. The residents of Crimea wake up to find soldiers all over their peninsula. They wear no insignia, refuse to answer any questions about who they are or what they want. But they speak with Russian accents. The Ukrainian military, leaderless, stripped to the bone by Yanukovych’s corruption, can’t do anything but watch.
Within a few weeks, “referendums” are held under the watchful eye of these mysterious men with machine guns. Crimea “votes” to join the Russian federation with 98%+ of the vote.
Four months after that, as Ukraine is gearing up to hold presidential elections to replace Yanukovych, pro-Russian “separatists” suddenly pop up in most Eastern and Southern Ukrainian oblasts, seizing control of government buildings and demanding their regions be annexed by Russia. And I’m sure the fact that these “Ukrainian separatists” all had Russian accents, and many just happened to look exactly like known FSB officers who’d “mysteriously” quit just a few days before was a total coincidence, too!
Fortunately, they’re prevented from seizing power in most oblasts. Unfortunately, that’s when Russian “volunteers” “on vacation” roll over the border in the Donbass with tanks they “bought at military surplus stores”. (Seriously, the Russian government actually tried to claim that in its propaganda!) Again, the Ukrainian army is such a disorganized mess there’s nothing it can do.
Fortunately, this time people know what’s going on, so volunteer militias form to push back the invaders. (As you might expect, there was precisely zero oversight or vetting of these militias for the first few years, so some did have some pretty extremist beliefs-- this was the Azov Battalion’s origin story, for example. Ukraine’s since integrated most into the real army and forced them to at least make a show of abandoning their extremist beliefs; how effective this has been, someone with more knowledge of the situation than me will have to say.)
After months of fighting, the conflict settles into relatively frozen lines. At this point, the EU tries to mediate a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, called the Minsk Agreement. The deal is never actually fully implemented, mainly because Russia refused to hold up its side of the bargain. But it does cool the war down to a frozen conflict. Between 2015 and 2021, only a few dozen troops die per year, standing guard on unchanging frontlines.
Ukrainian society obviously doesn’t forget or forgive any of this. But gradually, the war drops in importance in people’s minds. People’s minds turn towards more immediate concerns, like combating corruption, fighting poverty, and joining the EU (which is seen by most Ukrainians as necessary to accomplish the first two goals).
However, in the background, the country is rebuilding its gutted armed forces. In hopes of being good enough to join NATO, sure. But also, you know. Just in case.
And then in February 2022, “just in case” became reality.
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tl:dr; corrupt Russian-backed politican tries to steal presidency, fails, gets US Republican politician’s help to win presidency “legally” with culture war BS, succeeds. Proceeds to do corrupt-Russian-backed politician things. Ukrainians get sick of it and give him the boot. Russia gets pissy and annexes Crimea. Also tries to annex south and east of country, fails, instead ends up with a bite of the Donbas. Things calm down for eight years, then full-scale invastion.
I’m quite prepared to believe the US is involved here. There are lots of weapon sales and talk of investing in the rebuild.
Follow the money
Removing under rule #2 - this is political and the question is already slanted.
Are political questions out of scope for this community? There is no rule like that in the sidebar.
In “Community Info” rule 2 says they don’t have the bandwidth to moderate political discussion.
*Not taking a side, just supplying information.
Yeah, maybe I should try to read more carefully.
