Wasn’t the fact that “the nazi ukranians with a jewish president are trying to ethnic clean the russians” the same excuse used by Putin to start the invasion?
suggesting that their president is jewish means they don’t have a nazi problem in their military is just as ridiculous as suggesting that america doesn’t have a racist cop problem because Obama was black. Imagine if we had elected Bernie Sanders (who is Jewish) in America. Does that mean all the nazis in our military and police would simply disappear? of course not. Nor would have electing Hillary Clinton brought an end to sexism. Nor would electing Pete Buttigieg have brought an end to LGBTphobia. There’s a difference between the milestone of electing to high office a member of a marginalized group and the literal end of all discrimination against the marginalized group. The two should not be confused with each other under any circumstances.
the same excuse used by Putin to start the invasion?
Just because someone uses something as an excuse doesn’t mean it isn’t a real problem. America used terrorism, a real problem, as an excuse to invade 7 different countries. The irony being that many of those right wing jihadist terrorist groups the US was fighting were originally CIA-backed anti-soviet reactionaries.
Putin’s actual reason for the invasion was Ukraine threatening to join NATO. NATO membership means the US can stage nuclear weapons in your country, train your troops, etc. Putin didn’t want US power that close to Moscow (the Russo-Ukrainian border is the closest international border to Moscow). This makes sense. After all, the so-called Cuban missile crisis back in the day actually started when America put nukes in Turkey, about 1200 miles from Moscow, so Moscow put missiles in Cuba, about 1200 miles from Washington. It was a tit-for-tat. After 3 decades of NATO expanding eastward into former Warsaw pact countries (usually under the rhetoric of “increasing security cooperation”) Putin finally decided to invade Ukraine. However, yes, it was rhetorically convenient for him to point out the neo nazis in Ukraine.
NATO gave informal promises to Gorbachev to not expand eastward (Gorbachev was stupid to believe these promises and not get them in writing as formal, legally-binding promises)
The Soviet Union tried to join NATO in 1954 but wasn’t allowed
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YOU CAN’T JUST USE FACTS AND CITATIONS AND PRIMARY SOURCE EVIDENCE YOU TANKIES ALWAYS POST A WALL OF DOCUMENTED SOURCES THAT SUPPORT YOUR CLAIMS AND THEN WHEN WE REFUSE TO READ OR ENGAGE WITH THESE SOURCES IN ANY WAY AND INSTEAD SPEW IGNORANT REDUCTIVE BULLSHIT LIKE A PARROT LIVING IN THE LOBBY OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT YOU CALL US MEAN NAMES YOU TANKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIES
Lol Finland and the Baltics abstained from the “Nazis are bad, actually” vote because of course.
Also, could you throw a CW: on there for holocaust, corpses, and nazis please?
What I love about that article from The Independent is that, up until recently when they republished the Robert Frisk article, you could old find the piece in their archives and, conveniently, they redacted the image of Bin Laden to soften the blow as much as possible without outright censoring the article.
Jewish people can be nazi collaborators. Of which, Zelensky is all-but-explicitly one, given the kinds of people he materially supports and empowers. Source: I’m Jewish
Wasn’t the oligarch that backed Zelensky’s career also backing Nazi formations at the same time? I haven’t looked in to this stuff in years because why bother, but I recall that being a thing.
One of Ukraine’s most popular TV channels 1+1, owned by oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, has given Zelenskiy a powerful platform in recent months during his meteoric rise to the brink of the presidency.
On Saturday, a day before Zelenskiy won the first round of the presidential contest and set up a run-off with the incumbent Petro Poroshenko, 1+1 filled its schedule with back-to-back shows by the comedian and actor.
The fact that Zelenskiy is a major star on the channel has stoked worries among some investors and voters, and accusations from his political opponents, that he is in the pocket of Kolomoisky.
just reading a few paragraphs from this one, this kinda jumped out:
On 25 March 2014, Rabinovich registered with the Central Election Commission as a self-nominated candidate for the presidency of Ukraine. This was partly to counter the characterization of the new Ukrainian government as antisemitic. After registering, Rabinovich said: "I want to destroy the myth about an anti-semitic Ukraine which is spreading around the world. Probably I’m the most fortunate candidate. Today unification is needed, and I’m a unifying candidate. I have no maniacal thirst for power, I just want to help the country". In the election, he received 2.25% of the vote, with his best showing in Dnipropetrovsk and the Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Odesa oblasts. Rabinovich was elected to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) the same year, placing fourth on the pro-Russian Opposition Bloc’s electoral list.
On 14 February 2022, Rabinovich published a post on Facebook, stating that “the war has started” and blaming the West and Ukraine for it. Following the start of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, he left Ukraine and fled abroad.
Well, he ran on a platform that was much more conciliatory to Russia than his position in office, getting a lot of support from Donbas. Now he plays a Ukrainian nationalist that can hardly speak Ukrainian.
I think he was basically told in so many words that he could either get a lucrative deal playing wartime leader or he could get a bullet to the head courtesy of Azov, and he chose the former.
Now he’s kind of stuck in this situation forever. He can’t end the war with a treaty, because it would probably end in a negotiation to cede territory or for the Ukrainian military to leave Donbas and Luhansk alone. Zelenskyy would get shot in the head by some fanatical nationalist. He can’t keep the war going forever, because it’s such a mess that it’s somehow put a stress on the world’s supply of artillery shells.
He’s just stuck in this eternal present, he’s a human embodiment of the concept of a quagmire
lots of minority groups have members who join their oppressors, it’s sad and disgusting but not really uncommon. like have they never heard of a black or gay or trans conservative or fascist?
In Zelensky’s defense he ran on a peace platform promising to get some kind of peace negotiations going. It was very popular, though from what I understand the popularity was skewed somewhat towards the eastern half of the country with less support in the Banderite heartland of Galacia. When one he tried to put his promises in action and found out that the president doesn’t actually control the country, and that the Nazi formations and their allies had no intention of allowing the war to be stopped.
This is not really something to be proud of. It’s an admission of completely reactionary behaviour.
It’s OK to observe reality. Inventing a false one to suit your ideology is what the nazis do, and they’re much better at it than liberals are. They will win at it.
Part of the success of liberal propaganda is getting liberals to performatively tell each other how propagandised they are as if it is totally normal, and for them to praise each other for it.
It’s the same mindset as when workers boast about how hard they have to work, as if it’s a good thing. Pride in being over worked, and admonishing other workers for not having it as hard as they do. Literally a culture of shaming other workers for not exploiting themselves hard enough for the bourgeoisie owners. They say it to each other with pride, not realising how much they’re fucking themselves over.
the advantage that fascists have over liberals is that fascists can openly make shit up and don’t care if they have to change what they’re saying, whereas liberals have to occasionally jump through hoops to justify cognitive dissonance. Liberals believe everything they say and think there’s personal virtue in being naive. Fascists have a similar belief that feeling numb and misanthropic is a personal virtue, but that just helps them say more reactionary gibberish
I guess there are cynical liberals who just know how to parrot the language, but that seems more situational
I don’t know. As an anarchist, I do rather agree. However, it extends to all who pursue and attain power over others. That desire and the anti-social behavior typically necessary, historically, to succeed makes me inherently suspicious of their motives, which have also been shown historically to frequently not be aligned with the interests of the working class.
And secondly, if an emergency broadcast went out worldwide, from the UN chambers, featuring Putin, Trump, Xi, and, I don’t know, Guy Goma that was to the effect of:
“Citizens of the world. We are reaching you on this special emergency broadcast to inform you that the sky is blue. I repeat, the sky is blue. Goodnight.”
I’m pretty sure that all of us would be rather confused and suspicious of the statement and feel a need to validate it. Even if for no other reason but it being a very weird statement to make.
Maybe try understanding the currents of material conditions informing ideology instead of solely reacting to the world around you being subsumed by ideology.
Let’s pretend you’re right: I have no idea how propaganda works… but Putin does! He has a history of creating fake news, bombing his own population and backstapping his political allies to gain more power.
So you’ll understand I’m always a bit suspicious about anything he says.
So if Xi would ever mention that jumping into a bucket full of excrement is a bad idea, you’d consider covering yourself in piss and shit to own Mr. Pooh and the tankies? Sweet! I’d better make that phone call with Xi right now
Saying Zelensky can’t possibly be supporting neo-Nazis because he is ethnically Jewish is exactly the same as saying Clarence Thomas can’t possibly be supporting white supremacists because he is black. There is such a thing as a racial “pick me”.
Yes, it was. I’m honestly shocked. No one seems to know what Russia’s causus belli was.
Anyone of that video of the Banderites laughing about how Zelensky deflects all attention from the Nazi formations because Liberals can’t hold the idea of a Jewish President in a country dominated by Nazi politics in their heads?
“nazis with a Jewish president” seems to imply that by having a Jewish president, they can’t be nazis. By that logic Wagner group can’t be nazis, since Prigo is jewish
we’re ideologically much, much further away from Putin than they are. if he didn’t intervene in Crimea or Ukraine but kept all his policies otherwise intact, including the ones repressing minorities and pro-market ones, he wouldn’t be nearly as hated by these people.
libs fall over each other for the esteemed opportunity to lick the boots of the most depraved, most despotic, most comically evil politicians and oligarchs, with three exceptions: when they carry out those acts in a transparent way rather than hiding it behind veils of “we need to cut social security because of X”; when they use the state for economic interventions rather than free market “solutions”; and when they decide to snub America on a certain issue (but are otherwise perfectly willing lapdogs)
e.g.
unhinged rightwinger: “I will kill 100,000 poor people.”
libs: “nooooo! we need to register with our local police department to hold a 1 hour march through the city and then get teargassed anyway and then mutter “just a few bad apples” on the way home! but it’s important to remember that China does way worse things! stop using whataboutisms by bringing up America!”
unhinged rightwinger: “fine. I will reduce social security spending and cut funding to hospitals and homeless shelters (this will have the effect of killing 100,000 poor people)”
libs: “hm, yes, very wise, for I am also socially liberal but fiscally conservative and I think it’s important to reach across the aisle and engage civilly with our opposition so that they will give us policies in return (they won’t). the efficiencies in this sector will go up 4.7% according to this think tank’s analysis…”
leftwinger: “we should increase funding to hospitals and build more houses in this city to fix the homelessness problem (this will have the effect of saving 100,000 poor people)”
libs: “noooo! you’re using state funds which will increase the big magical national debt number! you’re not allowing the free market to build the best and most efficient housing! we can’t do this while there’s inflation! read economics 101! some of those building materials come from Russia and China, you’re a tankie!”
The concept of a national deficit is so hard for me to grasp.
So a deficit is when the government spends more money than they take in from taxes, cool. So government just raises taxes when they end up doing that, sort of like how I up my tax contribution if I end up owing at the end of the year. Wait, they only raise taxes on the working class? Because the capitalist class, through their money, is able to organize and consolidate power? That’s shit but surely it doesn’t get worse.
Okay, so where do they get the money to spend if they’re spending more than they take in? It’s gotta come from somewhere, I’m sure they just print more and that can’t be bad. Oh, so when they print more money that makes the existing money worth less… Well that goes for the capitalists too, so at least that’s even. Oh, you mean that they get to park their money in appreciating assets while mine gets spent day to day and my wage stagnates so my purchasing power and meager savings just fucking declines… It surely can’t get worse.
Yeah, I remember that appreciating assets thing. Get it over with, how does that fuck me over? So the government issues bonds, basically guaranteeing a set return on the money capitalists spend on them. How can the government guarantee that? Isn’t the market too volatile for that kind of guarantee? Ah, of course they would make up the difference with taxes, which I just learned are dis-proportionately paid by the working class.
Liberals have no consistency and are totally operating on vibes. I remember liberals used to really like Israel.
They’ve even somehow rehabilitated George W. Bush even though he’s evil incarnate. They also admire literal monarchy? Like they were really into Elizabeth II back when she was around. They’ll all trip over themselves to say nice things about Churchill, about Alexander Hamilton (slave owner), and will say war crimes like the atom bombing of Japan are complicated. Other things their heroes did just aren’t in their worldview at all, like Clinton bombing Yugoslavia and Sudan, or Obama overthrowing Libya. Those events just vanished into nothingness for liberals. Or if you bring them up you’re accused of whataboutism and the conversation stops.
And yet they have the gumption to say we’re bootlickers?
And they criticize us for saying otherwise factual things about Russia? Not even bootlicking, just very neutral information like that NATO is openly hostile to Russia and that Crimea is currently administered by the Russian state. That’s enough to be called pro-Putin, but more than that, you’re not just expressing a political reality, your mind has been infected with Putin and you’re a bad person now.
They’ve even somehow rehabilitated George W. Bush even though he’s evil incarnate.
The bit where they had Bush giving candy to Michelle Obama six fucking years after the “end” of the Iraq War.
“He has the presence of mind and the sense of humor to bring me a mint,” Obama said of the former president, per ABC7. “And he made it a point to give me that mint right then and there, and that’s the beauty of George Bush.”
Actual quote from Michelle Obama.
In October of this year, Obama discussed her close relationship with the former president while making an appearance on TODAY to interview with Bush’s daughter, Jenna Bush Hager.
“I’d love if we as a country could get back to the place where we didn’t demonize people who disagreed with us. Because that’s essentially the difference between Republicans and Democrats,” she began. "That doesn’t make me evil. And that doesn’t make him, you know, stupid—it’s just a disagreement and that’s how I feel about your father. You know? He’s a beautiful, funny, kind, sweet man.”
HE MURDERED A MILLION PEOPLE OBAMA!
(I never know how to refer to the spouses of major political figures. First name, for women especially, seems demeaning but not in a useful way, while last name is confusing, and fuck me if I’m putting “Mrs”.)
If she held Dubya to a higher moral standard than this, she might have to consider doing the same to Barack, and she definitely doesn’t want to do that.
Hadn’t thought about Clinton bombing that pharma factory in Sudan for a while. : |
Try telling them that there was no political reality where Russia would allow Ukraine to sieze control of Crimea and had it to NATO. Watch them seethe at you for denying the holiness of national sovereignty. Watch their minds bounce off the idea of strategic interest like a duck bouncing off a jetski. Oh, and try telling them that pretty much everyone in Crimea in some way worked for or worked to support the Russian Black Sea Fleet, so Russia didn’t have to invade because they already had a huge military base there. They just took the old flags down and put new ones up.
You know that is one I haven’t seen any libs reckon with? Most of them are firmly convinced Russia invaded Ukraine because Putler is evil with no real analysis beyond that, but the fact that Ukraine has been yelling about joining NATO for years, while NATO has repeatedly said that will never happen, should have raised some kind of flag at some point.
if he didn’t intervene in Crimea or Ukraine but kept all his policies otherwise intact, including the ones repressing minorities and pro-market ones, he wouldn’t be nearly as hated by these people.
all the old putin tough-guy memes are plenty of proof of this - you couldn’t go anywhere on the internet without seeing that one picture of him on a horse
To defend Azov, I’ve had a lib send me a picture of Putin riding a horse where it’s reins had a metal swastika buckle and tried to imply that Putin is a nazi using the same logic but
That wasn’t Putin’s horse, he was borrowing it on a visit.
His visit was to Mongolia where Buddhism is the largest religion.
I expect swastikas in Buddhist countries. Swastikas in Europe only mean one thing.
the efficiencies in this sector will go up 4.7% according to this think tank’s analysis.
Of course that think tank is bought and paid for by a deranged right-winger, but being critical of your sources is a concept libs only understand insofar as to ask “who published it? Oh CNN, then it must be fine”. They don’t actually employ any skepticism or source critique, propaganda is something that happens to other people far away
I honestly cannot remember how they talked about him in the before times. It certainly wasn’t with this level of mindlessness, but I’m also pretty certain they hated him back them too.
it depends whether you define the “before times” as pre-2022 or pre-2014. I think before 2014 he was just another world leader to some extent. he was initially hated a lot post-2014 I remember but because the invasion of Crimea was so quick (relative to this invasion) it was hard for a ton of self-reinforcing narratives to be set up in the media, and this was before the rise of calling everybody a tankie or calling out China on every political post, so within a couple years it was back to “strong-man Putin”. Russiagate obviously made his reputation tumble but if you weren’t really into that, you could still have been neutral on him leading up to 2022.
I’ve spoken about this before, but they think that everything is a binary good/bad. Liberals = good and Conservatives = bad.
We clearly aren’t liberals, so we can’t fit in that “good” box, so we must go in the “bad/conservative” box instead.
That’s it. That’s their rationale behind this. “They aren’t liberals so they must be conservatives.” Words mean nothing to a liberal, it’s all about vibes.
It really is pretty much just this for a lot of them. Maybe the slightly more sophisticated among them will call us like “useful idiots in service of the right wing” or something along those lines. Not a lot of rigorous thought goes into this shit most of the time. It’s basically a disney understanding of politics.
It’s fiction brain. They need the real world to be full of simple good guys and bad guys, because they’ve always been a “good guy” their whole life, and if being good or bad was based on actions and nuance and not just a simplistic “We are the good guy team” they might need to consider if they aren’t actually as wonderful a person as they think they are.
Shit like this always reminds me of how a big watershed moment for my baby leftist journey was finally coming to the understanding that these words have meanings that get warped like a fun house mirror in the U.S.
I just casually referred to Stalin as a fascist once in front of a non Anglo and they called me out for it. They weren’t even an overly ideological person they had just grown up in a non Anglo education system and to their ear calling Stalin a fascist was factually incorrect and sounds kinda idiotic to most non western ears. The self awareness this created was the start of a lot of of layers peeling in retrospect.
They were absolutely correct! Obviously! Whatever criticism you may have of Stalin, and I think we all have them, he was not a fucking fascist! Stalin could easily be one of the most pivotal figures in the DEFEAT of fascism in Europe and yet liberalism and propaganda and the myopic political lens that Americans are given to interpret the world drains all texture and greyness from history and leaves you with this shambling nonsense narrative where everyone who was opposed to the U.S. global hegemony post WW2 in ANY capacity is either a “fascist” or a footnote in the history books because whatever shot they had at the wheel was usurped by the State department.
All this is to say never stop bullying and always remember to remind anglos that the western narrative of history is far from universally accepted and full of gaping holes.
Breaking people out of national chauvinism and into internationalism is in my opinion the key trigger moment between sympathising with some left ideas and becoming a true actual leftist. It is the key that inoculates a person against “the tankies are evil” bullshit and finally rips them out of the hands of liberal propaganda. Once people make that transition into wanting a truly international perspective, learning things at the international level, viewing things from the position of truly seeking international socialism and so on… It is where people finally rid themselves of brainworms that have sometimes been built up for many decades.
Somewhere along that transition from national to international people undergo a personal decision of “I have a huge amount to learn” and go on that learning journey. That personal decision to actually learn is where they discard many things they thought they already knew, built up from billionaire media and propaganda.
I will keep on saying this over and over again here. The biggest thing we should be doing is pushing people to stop being nationalists and to become internationalists. Once they do this they become so much easier for us to engage with.
Sankara’s constant reminder is great but I still don’t quite know what I should be focusing on to break through this. It’s like… What creates an internationalist? What stops someone from only caring about what’s within their own borders? If we figure it out we make this all much easier on ourselves.
Helping the person realising that the international approach makes a lot more sense and is much better at explaining their lives?
So many topics now, if not basically all of them, are international in nature. Their origin, explanation and development is international in nature. Understanding why the economy is shit, why inflation, why war, why your national politics are dependant on international pressures , why ecological topics all require international understanding, etc etc. To me, the realisation that the international point of view was just better and easier to explain and understand the world forced me to learn because I wanted explanations, and on important topics (less aesthetic or cultural ones) the lazy reactionary narratives aren’t enough because they break down, don’t fit or don’t provide good solutions.
Also, interacting with the rest of the world. Talking with non-westerners about politics has always been enlightening and better, in my case. Like, at work, all the colleagues I talk politics with all the time are immigrants in some way, they have an outside look on my country and once I start talking about geopolitics and how insane the westerners are they open up and the conversations are incredibly interesting. The western colleagues sitting next to us at the coffee break always learn a lot, they see people who know what they are talking about, confidently, they see colleagues who are usually superficially shy and not too talkative (gotta be careful what you talk about as an immigrant to westerners) open up and share things about their lives and they realize there is an entire world out there they know nothing about.
I think the majority of people can be reached in some way, the difficult ones are people such as the ones on reddit or Lemmy, they are not casually reactionary, they have been deeply propagandised and have internalised those things, they defend them, they identify culturally and personally with them so its much harder.
I saw one in here recently who hopefully had a bit of an epiphany moment. They were defending the US’s actions with a “doesn’t everyone just want their country to be strong?” kind of rhetoric. But they didn’t seem to be a conscious national chauvinist, they just seemed to assume that’s what everyone was and didn’t even know there were other options.
I hope they’ve been lurking and learning since then.
We should physically tell people to come lurk. Get people into a culture of visiting daily, learning. This was a successful tactic employed by the chan sites and it worked, “lurk more” turned into people learning site culture and adhering to it.
Obviously for them it worked in getting people to adhere to nonsense ideas and behave in awful ways. But the same principle can be put to use for good instead. Personally I’d like to see something like a “7day liberal challenge”, where we challenge liberals to visit the site 7 days in a row consistently to “test their views” and surely, if their views are solid they will not waiver. For most people I think they’ll shift significantly on a lot of things through this, and many might become active users.
You know… I don’t know if it was the tipping point. That’s hard to say. But this was a major tipping point for me: knowing that all those great welfare programs in any liberal democracy would have to be funded by hyper-exploiting the global south… that shook some of the last remnants of liberalism out of me.
It’s unacceptable. That conclusion only leaves revolution and the need for a coherent theory that has been shown to work. Marxism is the theory and, to put it simply, either we all get free or none of us do. Makes it a lot easier to empathise not only with other people but also with the socialist struggle in other places. It’s more of a bridge than a stepping stone to class consciousness.
There are likely a lot of people susceptible to this view as it’s common in the west to e.g. tell kids not to waste food because there are starving people in poorer countries. It doesn’t fully make sense even as a kid. It’s well-meaning but ultimately it’s a liberal performance. It means that many, many people are hardwired to think about the damage caused by their consumption (or lack of it, here). All they need is a radical analysis to see why liberalism can’t solve the problem that they already accept and want to fix.
Not an easy task, still. In pedagogical terms, revolutionaries need to identify this and other ‘threshold concepts’. Then make them visible and comprehensible for potential comrades.
I usually just dismiss these goofballs by replying with “Tell me you don’t have a functioning definition of fascism without telling me” and maybe I’ll challenge them to define fascism in their own words without looking it up.
If, by some miracle, they start invoking the trash-tier Umberto Eco definition of fascism then you have two clear routes:
You demonstrate how the US comfortably fits this definition, point by point
You draw upon a Marxist analysis of fascism which centres the importance of materialist analysis of fascism, such as from the works of Georgi Dimitrov
Because it only considers fascism from an aesthetic and cultural angle without any regards to the material basis of it and the conditions that fascism arises from.
It’s a hazy definition that describes the psychology of fascism more than it describes the phenomenon of fascism itself, and I think—like is the case a most pseudo-radical cultural critique—its analysis can be, and has been, misapplied because there’s no solid definition underpinning it.
It’s a bit like how if you ask a SocDem for a definition of socialism they’ll tell you that it’s welfare programs and democracy and restricting corporations and anti-authoritarianism etc.; they’ll give you a laundry list of characteristics which fails to form a cohesive analysis that strictly defines their concept, thus leading to them to miss the fact that Bernie was not campaigning on a socialist platform or that AOC/the Nordic countries etc. aren’t socialist, and if you challenge them on these matters they’ll deny your rebuttal outright because these things just feel socialist to them.
I guess in short, it’s a question of vibes vs material analysis.
It’s ultimately fairly vague and more of a “vibes check” of fascism than a concrete understanding of how it festers in a country. It doesn’t let us stop fascism, it just gives libs ammo to say “(insert enemy country here) ticks 7 of 10 boxes, so they’re 70% fascist!”
It is a good starting point to explain to people that fascism does have things you can look out for, but it really shouldn’t be someone’s only resource for understanding Fascism.
These people absolutely just make shit up relentlessly.
We are fascists for checks notes… not supporting ukrainian nazi militias in their struggle to purge ukraine of the ethnic russians.
Wasn’t the fact that “the nazi ukranians with a jewish president are trying to ethnic clean the russians” the same excuse used by Putin to start the invasion?
CW: holocaust, corpses, nazis
suggesting that their president is jewish means they don’t have a nazi problem in their military is just as ridiculous as suggesting that america doesn’t have a racist cop problem because Obama was black. Imagine if we had elected Bernie Sanders (who is Jewish) in America. Does that mean all the nazis in our military and police would simply disappear? of course not. Nor would have electing Hillary Clinton brought an end to sexism. Nor would electing Pete Buttigieg have brought an end to LGBTphobia. There’s a difference between the milestone of electing to high office a member of a marginalized group and the literal end of all discrimination against the marginalized group. The two should not be confused with each other under any circumstances.
Right Sektor antisemite Dmitro Korchynsky says he was disappointed in the Ukrainian people for electing a Jew as president, but points out that it is convenient that the president is Jewish, because it means that it is harder to accuse Ukraine of nazism
Look at this UN vote from 16th December 2021. Note that the ONLY TWO NATIONS IN THE WORLD that failed to denounce nazism, or at least abstain from voting, were US and Ukraine
C14 leader Yevhan Karas points out that right wing ultranationalists were the leading vanguard of the Euromaidan movement, even if they weren’t a majority of the members, and that they, unlike the leftists, were able to secure a lot of power after Euromaidan
Zelensky bans parties to his left, claiming they are Kremlin agents, while allowing groups like Svoboda, C14, Azov battalion, etc. to continue existing
Zelensky admits it is in US interests to use Ukraine
Part 1: A brief history of the OUN-B nazi-collaborationist faction from which current day neo nazis are descended (CW: images of pogroms and holocaust)
Part 2: A brief history of the OUN-B nazi-collaborationist faction from which current day neo nazis are descended (CW: images of pogroms and holocaust)
PDF of declassified CIA operation aerodynamic which leveraged ukrainian nazi collaborators against the soviet union after WW2
Biden before the war admitting the US would target nordstream 2 if Russia goes into Ukraine
EU official Borrell admitting that Europe is dependent on cheap Russian energy, America for security, and China for cheap goods, but that this balance of power is no longer possible, due to the new cold war between America on the one side and Russia/China on the other
Zelensky attempting to negotiate with Azov battalion, telling them to obey cease fire agreements (with the separatists in the Ukrainian civil war). They basically mock him and state their intention to disobey any cease fire agreement.
Just because someone uses something as an excuse doesn’t mean it isn’t a real problem. America used terrorism, a real problem, as an excuse to invade 7 different countries. The irony being that many of those right wing jihadist terrorist groups the US was fighting were originally CIA-backed anti-soviet reactionaries.
Putin’s actual reason for the invasion was Ukraine threatening to join NATO. NATO membership means the US can stage nuclear weapons in your country, train your troops, etc. Putin didn’t want US power that close to Moscow (the Russo-Ukrainian border is the closest international border to Moscow). This makes sense. After all, the so-called Cuban missile crisis back in the day actually started when America put nukes in Turkey, about 1200 miles from Moscow, so Moscow put missiles in Cuba, about 1200 miles from Washington. It was a tit-for-tat. After 3 decades of NATO expanding eastward into former Warsaw pact countries (usually under the rhetoric of “increasing security cooperation”) Putin finally decided to invade Ukraine. However, yes, it was rhetorically convenient for him to point out the neo nazis in Ukraine.
NATO gave informal promises to Gorbachev to not expand eastward (Gorbachev was stupid to believe these promises and not get them in writing as formal, legally-binding promises)
The Soviet Union tried to join NATO in 1954 but wasn’t allowed
Meanwhile NATO kept expanding
and including “former” nazis in its ranks
Saved. I am in awe Comrade. Thank you for this.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YOU CAN’T JUST USE FACTS AND CITATIONS AND PRIMARY SOURCE EVIDENCE YOU TANKIES ALWAYS POST A WALL OF DOCUMENTED SOURCES THAT SUPPORT YOUR CLAIMS AND THEN WHEN WE REFUSE TO READ OR ENGAGE WITH THESE SOURCES IN ANY WAY AND INSTEAD SPEW IGNORANT REDUCTIVE BULLSHIT LIKE A PARROT LIVING IN THE LOBBY OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT YOU CALL US MEAN NAMES YOU TANKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIES
Lol Finland and the Baltics abstained from the “Nazis are bad, actually” vote because of course.
Also, could you throw a CW: on there for holocaust, corpses, and nazis please?
yeah absolutely, my bad
Now I see the power of posting. Saved
What I love about that article from The Independent is that, up until recently when they republished the Robert Frisk article, you could old find the piece in their archives and, conveniently, they redacted the image of Bin Laden to soften the blow as much as possible without outright censoring the article.
too bad for them it’s all over web archive and everyone has scans of the newspaper
Have you thought about turning this comment into a post on c/effort?
ok, I’ll do it
I’m humbled by your well documented reply. I can’t argue with that. Yours is probably the only one comment I’ve learnt something of.
I’m happy you read it, and had something to say in response. Thanks!
Jewish people can be nazi collaborators. Of which, Zelensky is all-but-explicitly one, given the kinds of people he materially supports and empowers. Source: I’m Jewish
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Wasn’t the oligarch that backed Zelensky’s career also backing Nazi formations at the same time? I haven’t looked in to this stuff in years because why bother, but I recall that being a thing.
this guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihor_Kolomoyskyi
and this guy was also involved
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vadim_Rabinovich
just reading a few paragraphs from this one, this kinda jumped out:
Yes but… why?
Well, he ran on a platform that was much more conciliatory to Russia than his position in office, getting a lot of support from Donbas. Now he plays a Ukrainian nationalist that can hardly speak Ukrainian.
I think he was basically told in so many words that he could either get a lucrative deal playing wartime leader or he could get a bullet to the head courtesy of Azov, and he chose the former.
Now he’s kind of stuck in this situation forever. He can’t end the war with a treaty, because it would probably end in a negotiation to cede territory or for the Ukrainian military to leave Donbas and Luhansk alone. Zelenskyy would get shot in the head by some fanatical nationalist. He can’t keep the war going forever, because it’s such a mess that it’s somehow put a stress on the world’s supply of artillery shells.
He’s just stuck in this eternal present, he’s a human embodiment of the concept of a quagmire
Yeah if Zelensky signed peace giving up territory there’s roughly a 100% chance Nazis would spin that into a ‘stab in the back’ type story
Why what
I think they’re asking why a Jewish person would support Nazis
lots of minority groups have members who join their oppressors, it’s sad and disgusting but not really uncommon. like have they never heard of a black or gay or trans conservative or fascist?
In Zelensky’s defense he ran on a peace platform promising to get some kind of peace negotiations going. It was very popular, though from what I understand the popularity was skewed somewhat towards the eastern half of the country with less support in the Banderite heartland of Galacia. When one he tried to put his promises in action and found out that the president doesn’t actually control the country, and that the Nazi formations and their allies had no intention of allowing the war to be stopped.
If Putin said “the sky is blue” would the sky suddenly turn green?
If Putin (or Trump, or Xi) one day jumps on the news saying the sky is blue, I’d totally look up with prejudice.
This is not really something to be proud of. It’s an admission of completely reactionary behaviour.
It’s OK to observe reality. Inventing a false one to suit your ideology is what the nazis do, and they’re much better at it than liberals are. They will win at it.
Why did that idiot even admit to that
Part of the success of liberal propaganda is getting liberals to performatively tell each other how propagandised they are as if it is totally normal, and for them to praise each other for it.
It’s the same mindset as when workers boast about how hard they have to work, as if it’s a good thing. Pride in being over worked, and admonishing other workers for not having it as hard as they do. Literally a culture of shaming other workers for not exploiting themselves hard enough for the bourgeoisie owners. They say it to each other with pride, not realising how much they’re fucking themselves over.
Also as funny thing as soon as was gonns upbear your comment the second paragraf showen up.
the advantage that fascists have over liberals is that fascists can openly make shit up and don’t care if they have to change what they’re saying, whereas liberals have to occasionally jump through hoops to justify cognitive dissonance. Liberals believe everything they say and think there’s personal virtue in being naive. Fascists have a similar belief that feeling numb and misanthropic is a personal virtue, but that just helps them say more reactionary gibberish
I guess there are cynical liberals who just know how to parrot the language, but that seems more situational
I don’t know. As an anarchist, I do rather agree. However, it extends to all who pursue and attain power over others. That desire and the anti-social behavior typically necessary, historically, to succeed makes me inherently suspicious of their motives, which have also been shown historically to frequently not be aligned with the interests of the working class.
And secondly, if an emergency broadcast went out worldwide, from the UN chambers, featuring Putin, Trump, Xi, and, I don’t know, Guy Goma that was to the effect of:
“Citizens of the world. We are reaching you on this special emergency broadcast to inform you that the sky is blue. I repeat, the sky is blue. Goodnight.”
I’m pretty sure that all of us would be rather confused and suspicious of the statement and feel a need to validate it. Even if for no other reason but it being a very weird statement to make.
Least deranged liberal
Excising large parts of your frontal lobe to own the tankies
wtf lol
lol you do realize you’re not supposed to say that unironically, usually people say that as a joke
Am I not allowed to reply to a joke with another joke?
lmao “bro I was just pretending to be a dumbass bro, I swear to god bro”
Uh huh sure bud
Maybe try understanding the currents of material conditions informing ideology instead of solely reacting to the world around you being subsumed by ideology.
You have no idea how propaganda actually works
Let’s pretend you’re right: I have no idea how propaganda works… but Putin does! He has a history of creating fake news, bombing his own population and backstapping his political allies to gain more power.
So you’ll understand I’m always a bit suspicious about anything he says.
So if Xi would ever mention that jumping into a bucket full of excrement is a bad idea, you’d consider covering yourself in piss and shit to own Mr. Pooh and the tankies? Sweet! I’d better make that phone call with Xi right now
Fucking beautiful
This is a bit account right?
I don’t know what does that mean.
Saying Zelensky can’t possibly be supporting neo-Nazis because he is ethnically Jewish is exactly the same as saying Clarence Thomas can’t possibly be supporting white supremacists because he is black. There is such a thing as a racial “pick me”.
Yes, it was. I’m honestly shocked. No one seems to know what Russia’s causus belli was.
Anyone of that video of the Banderites laughing about how Zelensky deflects all attention from the Nazi formations because Liberals can’t hold the idea of a Jewish President in a country dominated by Nazi politics in their heads?
Oh yeah I remember that vid. They were so fucking proud of themselves.
“nazis with a Jewish president” seems to imply that by having a Jewish president, they can’t be nazis. By that logic Wagner group can’t be nazis, since Prigo is jewish
we’re ideologically much, much further away from Putin than they are. if he didn’t intervene in Crimea or Ukraine but kept all his policies otherwise intact, including the ones repressing minorities and pro-market ones, he wouldn’t be nearly as hated by these people.
libs fall over each other for the esteemed opportunity to lick the boots of the most depraved, most despotic, most comically evil politicians and oligarchs, with three exceptions: when they carry out those acts in a transparent way rather than hiding it behind veils of “we need to cut social security because of X”; when they use the state for economic interventions rather than free market “solutions”; and when they decide to snub America on a certain issue (but are otherwise perfectly willing lapdogs)
e.g.
unhinged rightwinger: “I will kill 100,000 poor people.”
libs: “nooooo! we need to register with our local police department to hold a 1 hour march through the city and then get teargassed anyway and then mutter “just a few bad apples” on the way home! but it’s important to remember that China does way worse things! stop using whataboutisms by bringing up America!”
unhinged rightwinger: “fine. I will reduce social security spending and cut funding to hospitals and homeless shelters (this will have the effect of killing 100,000 poor people)”
libs: “hm, yes, very wise, for I am also socially liberal but fiscally conservative and I think it’s important to reach across the aisle and engage civilly with our opposition so that they will give us policies in return (they won’t). the efficiencies in this sector will go up 4.7% according to this think tank’s analysis…”
leftwinger: “we should increase funding to hospitals and build more houses in this city to fix the homelessness problem (this will have the effect of saving 100,000 poor people)”
libs: “noooo! you’re using state funds which will increase the big magical national debt number! you’re not allowing the free market to build the best and most efficient housing! we can’t do this while there’s inflation! read economics 101! some of those building materials come from Russia and China, you’re a tankie!”
The concept of a national deficit is so hard for me to grasp.
So a deficit is when the government spends more money than they take in from taxes, cool. So government just raises taxes when they end up doing that, sort of like how I up my tax contribution if I end up owing at the end of the year. Wait, they only raise taxes on the working class? Because the capitalist class, through their money, is able to organize and consolidate power? That’s shit but surely it doesn’t get worse.
Okay, so where do they get the money to spend if they’re spending more than they take in? It’s gotta come from somewhere, I’m sure they just print more and that can’t be bad. Oh, so when they print more money that makes the existing money worth less… Well that goes for the capitalists too, so at least that’s even. Oh, you mean that they get to park their money in appreciating assets while mine gets spent day to day and my wage stagnates so my purchasing power and meager savings just fucking declines… It surely can’t get worse.
Yeah, I remember that appreciating assets thing. Get it over with, how does that fuck me over? So the government issues bonds, basically guaranteeing a set return on the money capitalists spend on them. How can the government guarantee that? Isn’t the market too volatile for that kind of guarantee? Ah, of course they would make up the difference with taxes, which I just learned are dis-proportionately paid by the working class.
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Liberals have no consistency and are totally operating on vibes. I remember liberals used to really like Israel.
They’ve even somehow rehabilitated George W. Bush even though he’s evil incarnate. They also admire literal monarchy? Like they were really into Elizabeth II back when she was around. They’ll all trip over themselves to say nice things about Churchill, about Alexander Hamilton (slave owner), and will say war crimes like the atom bombing of Japan are complicated. Other things their heroes did just aren’t in their worldview at all, like Clinton bombing Yugoslavia and Sudan, or Obama overthrowing Libya. Those events just vanished into nothingness for liberals. Or if you bring them up you’re accused of whataboutism and the conversation stops.
And yet they have the gumption to say we’re bootlickers?
And they criticize us for saying otherwise factual things about Russia? Not even bootlicking, just very neutral information like that NATO is openly hostile to Russia and that Crimea is currently administered by the Russian state. That’s enough to be called pro-Putin, but more than that, you’re not just expressing a political reality, your mind has been infected with Putin and you’re a bad person now.
The bit where they had Bush giving candy to Michelle Obama six fucking years after the “end” of the Iraq War.
Actual quote from Michelle Obama.
HE MURDERED A MILLION PEOPLE OBAMA!
(I never know how to refer to the spouses of major political figures. First name, for women especially, seems demeaning but not in a useful way, while last name is confusing, and fuck me if I’m putting “Mrs”.)
He’s just a kind old feller who spends time painting nowadays. Wholesome harmless grandpa with a guilt free conscience.
Yes it does
I politely and respectfully disagree with killing one million Iraqi people, Mr. Bush.
If she held Dubya to a higher moral standard than this, she might have to consider doing the same to Barack, and she definitely doesn’t want to do that.
Hadn’t thought about Clinton bombing that pharma factory in Sudan for a while. : |
Try telling them that there was no political reality where Russia would allow Ukraine to sieze control of Crimea and had it to NATO. Watch them seethe at you for denying the holiness of national sovereignty. Watch their minds bounce off the idea of strategic interest like a duck bouncing off a jetski. Oh, and try telling them that pretty much everyone in Crimea in some way worked for or worked to support the Russian Black Sea Fleet, so Russia didn’t have to invade because they already had a huge military base there. They just took the old flags down and put new ones up.
There’s also no political reality where NATO would actually let Ukraine become a member.
This whole thing stinks to high heaven.
You know that is one I haven’t seen any libs reckon with? Most of them are firmly convinced Russia invaded Ukraine because Putler is evil with no real analysis beyond that, but the fact that Ukraine has been yelling about joining NATO for years, while NATO has repeatedly said that will never happen, should have raised some kind of flag at some point.
Obama did Honduras too in 2009
all the old putin tough-guy memes are plenty of proof of this - you couldn’t go anywhere on the internet without seeing that one picture of him on a horse
Oh god I forgot all about those! They were everywhere! And videos of him doing systema with his body guards, fly fishing, all kinds of shit.
To defend Azov, I’ve had a lib send me a picture of Putin riding a horse where it’s reins had a metal swastika buckle and tried to imply that Putin is a nazi using the same logic but
That wasn’t Putin’s horse, he was borrowing it on a visit.
His visit was to Mongolia where Buddhism is the largest religion.
I expect swastikas in Buddhist countries. Swastikas in Europe only mean one thing.
I wonder what that lib thought of Shinzo Abe’s warcrime jet
“Wow what a weird coinkydink”
Of course that think tank is bought and paid for by a deranged right-winger, but being critical of your sources is a concept libs only understand insofar as to ask “who published it? Oh CNN, then it must be fine”. They don’t actually employ any skepticism or source critique, propaganda is something that happens to other people far away
Their idea of source critique is typing “media fact check” into google and clicking on the first result that pops up
I honestly cannot remember how they talked about him in the before times. It certainly wasn’t with this level of mindlessness, but I’m also pretty certain they hated him back them too.
it depends whether you define the “before times” as pre-2022 or pre-2014. I think before 2014 he was just another world leader to some extent. he was initially hated a lot post-2014 I remember but because the invasion of Crimea was so quick (relative to this invasion) it was hard for a ton of self-reinforcing narratives to be set up in the media, and this was before the rise of calling everybody a tankie or calling out China on every political post, so within a couple years it was back to “strong-man Putin”. Russiagate obviously made his reputation tumble but if you weren’t really into that, you could still have been neutral on him leading up to 2022.
If we were fascists, why don’t we support amerikkka
I’ve spoken about this before, but they think that everything is a binary good/bad. Liberals = good and Conservatives = bad.
We clearly aren’t liberals, so we can’t fit in that “good” box, so we must go in the “bad/conservative” box instead.
That’s it. That’s their rationale behind this. “They aren’t liberals so they must be conservatives.” Words mean nothing to a liberal, it’s all about vibes.
It really is pretty much just this for a lot of them. Maybe the slightly more sophisticated among them will call us like “useful idiots in service of the right wing” or something along those lines. Not a lot of rigorous thought goes into this shit most of the time. It’s basically a disney understanding of politics.
It’s fiction brain. They need the real world to be full of simple good guys and bad guys, because they’ve always been a “good guy” their whole life, and if being good or bad was based on actions and nuance and not just a simplistic “We are the good guy team” they might need to consider if they aren’t actually as wonderful a person as they think they are.
Shit like this always reminds me of how a big watershed moment for my baby leftist journey was finally coming to the understanding that these words have meanings that get warped like a fun house mirror in the U.S.
I just casually referred to Stalin as a fascist once in front of a non Anglo and they called me out for it. They weren’t even an overly ideological person they had just grown up in a non Anglo education system and to their ear calling Stalin a fascist was factually incorrect and sounds kinda idiotic to most non western ears. The self awareness this created was the start of a lot of of layers peeling in retrospect.
They were absolutely correct! Obviously! Whatever criticism you may have of Stalin, and I think we all have them, he was not a fucking fascist! Stalin could easily be one of the most pivotal figures in the DEFEAT of fascism in Europe and yet liberalism and propaganda and the myopic political lens that Americans are given to interpret the world drains all texture and greyness from history and leaves you with this shambling nonsense narrative where everyone who was opposed to the U.S. global hegemony post WW2 in ANY capacity is either a “fascist” or a footnote in the history books because whatever shot they had at the wheel was usurped by the State department.
All this is to say never stop bullying and always remember to remind anglos that the western narrative of history is far from universally accepted and full of gaping holes.
Breaking people out of national chauvinism and into internationalism is in my opinion the key trigger moment between sympathising with some left ideas and becoming a true actual leftist. It is the key that inoculates a person against “the tankies are evil” bullshit and finally rips them out of the hands of liberal propaganda. Once people make that transition into wanting a truly international perspective, learning things at the international level, viewing things from the position of truly seeking international socialism and so on… It is where people finally rid themselves of brainworms that have sometimes been built up for many decades.
Somewhere along that transition from national to international people undergo a personal decision of “I have a huge amount to learn” and go on that learning journey. That personal decision to actually learn is where they discard many things they thought they already knew, built up from billionaire media and propaganda.
I will keep on saying this over and over again here. The biggest thing we should be doing is pushing people to stop being nationalists and to become internationalists. Once they do this they become so much easier for us to engage with.
Sankara’s constant reminder is great but I still don’t quite know what I should be focusing on to break through this. It’s like… What creates an internationalist? What stops someone from only caring about what’s within their own borders? If we figure it out we make this all much easier on ourselves.
Helping the person realising that the international approach makes a lot more sense and is much better at explaining their lives?
So many topics now, if not basically all of them, are international in nature. Their origin, explanation and development is international in nature. Understanding why the economy is shit, why inflation, why war, why your national politics are dependant on international pressures , why ecological topics all require international understanding, etc etc. To me, the realisation that the international point of view was just better and easier to explain and understand the world forced me to learn because I wanted explanations, and on important topics (less aesthetic or cultural ones) the lazy reactionary narratives aren’t enough because they break down, don’t fit or don’t provide good solutions.
Also, interacting with the rest of the world. Talking with non-westerners about politics has always been enlightening and better, in my case. Like, at work, all the colleagues I talk politics with all the time are immigrants in some way, they have an outside look on my country and once I start talking about geopolitics and how insane the westerners are they open up and the conversations are incredibly interesting. The western colleagues sitting next to us at the coffee break always learn a lot, they see people who know what they are talking about, confidently, they see colleagues who are usually superficially shy and not too talkative (gotta be careful what you talk about as an immigrant to westerners) open up and share things about their lives and they realize there is an entire world out there they know nothing about.
I think the majority of people can be reached in some way, the difficult ones are people such as the ones on reddit or Lemmy, they are not casually reactionary, they have been deeply propagandised and have internalised those things, they defend them, they identify culturally and personally with them so its much harder.
I saw one in here recently who hopefully had a bit of an epiphany moment. They were defending the US’s actions with a “doesn’t everyone just want their country to be strong?” kind of rhetoric. But they didn’t seem to be a conscious national chauvinist, they just seemed to assume that’s what everyone was and didn’t even know there were other options.
I hope they’ve been lurking and learning since then.
We should physically tell people to come lurk. Get people into a culture of visiting daily, learning. This was a successful tactic employed by the chan sites and it worked, “lurk more” turned into people learning site culture and adhering to it.
Obviously for them it worked in getting people to adhere to nonsense ideas and behave in awful ways. But the same principle can be put to use for good instead. Personally I’d like to see something like a “7day liberal challenge”, where we challenge liberals to visit the site 7 days in a row consistently to “test their views” and surely, if their views are solid they will not waiver. For most people I think they’ll shift significantly on a lot of things through this, and many might become active users.
Channer culture has become a staple of the internet because they use such successful tactics for getting people to adopt the behaviour.
I think you’re absolutely onto something here.
Great idea. I’ve taken to telling a few people to come over and see what we’re like, that we’re willing to answer questions, etc.
You know… I don’t know if it was the tipping point. That’s hard to say. But this was a major tipping point for me: knowing that all those great welfare programs in any liberal democracy would have to be funded by hyper-exploiting the global south… that shook some of the last remnants of liberalism out of me.
It’s unacceptable. That conclusion only leaves revolution and the need for a coherent theory that has been shown to work. Marxism is the theory and, to put it simply, either we all get free or none of us do. Makes it a lot easier to empathise not only with other people but also with the socialist struggle in other places. It’s more of a bridge than a stepping stone to class consciousness.
There are likely a lot of people susceptible to this view as it’s common in the west to e.g. tell kids not to waste food because there are starving people in poorer countries. It doesn’t fully make sense even as a kid. It’s well-meaning but ultimately it’s a liberal performance. It means that many, many people are hardwired to think about the damage caused by their consumption (or lack of it, here). All they need is a radical analysis to see why liberalism can’t solve the problem that they already accept and want to fix.
Not an easy task, still. In pedagogical terms, revolutionaries need to identify this and other ‘threshold concepts’. Then make them visible and comprehensible for potential comrades.
American high school books usually have a segment about “authoritarianism” which is basically just there to say Hitler and Stalin were the same.
I usually just dismiss these goofballs by replying with “Tell me you don’t have a functioning definition of fascism without telling me” and maybe I’ll challenge them to define fascism in their own words without looking it up.
If, by some miracle, they start invoking the trash-tier Umberto Eco definition of fascism then you have two clear routes:
You demonstrate how the US comfortably fits this definition, point by point
You draw upon a Marxist analysis of fascism which centres the importance of materialist analysis of fascism, such as from the works of Georgi Dimitrov
What makes you think Eco’s definition is trash tier? Ur-fascism is a decent essay that gets frequently misinterpreted.
Because it only considers fascism from an aesthetic and cultural angle without any regards to the material basis of it and the conditions that fascism arises from.
It’s a hazy definition that describes the psychology of fascism more than it describes the phenomenon of fascism itself, and I think—like is the case a most pseudo-radical cultural critique—its analysis can be, and has been, misapplied because there’s no solid definition underpinning it.
It’s a bit like how if you ask a SocDem for a definition of socialism they’ll tell you that it’s welfare programs and democracy and restricting corporations and anti-authoritarianism etc.; they’ll give you a laundry list of characteristics which fails to form a cohesive analysis that strictly defines their concept, thus leading to them to miss the fact that Bernie was not campaigning on a socialist platform or that AOC/the Nordic countries etc. aren’t socialist, and if you challenge them on these matters they’ll deny your rebuttal outright because these things just feel socialist to them.
I guess in short, it’s a question of vibes vs material analysis.
It’s ultimately fairly vague and more of a “vibes check” of fascism than a concrete understanding of how it festers in a country. It doesn’t let us stop fascism, it just gives libs ammo to say “(insert enemy country here) ticks 7 of 10 boxes, so they’re 70% fascist!”
It is a good starting point to explain to people that fascism does have things you can look out for, but it really shouldn’t be someone’s only resource for understanding Fascism.
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