Fine, I'll admit, I have a problem. I hear obvious bullshit and I sort of automatically filter it out because it's clearly bullshit and nobody will buy into it, and then sometimes it turns out it was actually a Really Big Deal that I probably should have paid some attention to. Made that mistake with Bitcoin, could have been rich but noooo, I ignored it because it was obviously dumb as hell. Another example: I distinctly remember going "What is this Gamergate shit? It'll probably blow over but let me try to see if there's a point to it" and then I got a booty-call from my then-girlfriend that her roommate was heading out to class so I went up to her dorm room, and that was the last I really paid attention to gamergate until years later when it turned out to have become a whole thing. My eyes would just glaze over anytime I saw the word because I basically went "oh yeah its that bullshit that dumbasses were losing their minds over and nobody cares about, I ain't got time to pay attention to that shit" and then it turns out it was actually this major flashpoint for the rise of the particularly bizarre new far right dweebs we get nowadays.
I did the same thing with "tankies". Never heard the term until maybe 2017? and largely ignored it. It just seemed to be a nothingburger, some new term for a few terminally online weirdos who hated Communists, and I assumed they were just fascists because you know who hated the Communists the most? Nazis. But then it spread and more people started using it, and then applying it more broadly (even Bernard Brethren are tankies, apparently?) which meant that it was such a varied term as to have no meaning. And I basically wrote off anyone hating on tankies as some dumbass who wasn't worth listening to because they were too ill informed to have anything of value to say.
It's probably not all of a sudden but it's really dawning on me that this is not some flash in the pan that'll just go away. I've been expecting it to just burn itself out because it's so obviously on its face bullshit. But, fast forward and the term seems to have taken on a whole life of its own. So many people hate on "tankies". Even anarchists I know irl hate on "tankies". Supposedly radical leftists hate on "tankies". I went on a date with an anarchist who started ragging on "tankies" and I just left because what even is that shit? It's become so prevalent I feel I can't ignore it anymore.
Don't support the NATO proxy war that's grinding up Ukrainian lives? Ebil tankie. Don't support genocide in Palestine? Ebil tankie. Wouldn't vote for Genocide Joe or Holocaust Harris? Ebil tankie. Not racist against Chinese people? Ebil tankie. Think Cuba and Venezuela are cool actually? Ebil tankie. Don't like NATO? Ebil tankie. Post on Hexbear? Ebil tankie.
I didn't grow up during the Cold War so idk how AmeriKKKan society was about Communists, but I don't remember any of this level of prevalent rabid anti-Communism from liberals and even people who fancy themselves as so-called radical leftists in like, 2000 - 2015. This is getting absurd and frankly baffling. Not too long ago a bunch of these same people were saying socialism is cool, war is bad, black and brown lives matter. But now all of a sudden it seems like you actually apply those slogans and you're an "ebil tankie".
What makes it seem extra insidious is that basically all of this seems to feed back into supporting USAdian warmongering and imperialism. Like, what is a "tankie"? When you ask people they'll say "Authoritarian Communists" but it really just seems that they call anyone who isn't deepthroating the boot of the AmeriKKKan Empire a "tankie".
How did this happen? What is going on?
your racism aside 2014 was a CIA coup, this is all downstream from USA fucking with Ukraine. They've been doing it since the 1950s starting with Project Aerodynamic. Here's a link to the CIA's own public documents about their project to relocate nazis and banderites back to Ukraine to try to create a fascist breakaway state: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/AERODYNAMIC%20%20%20VOL.%201_0118.pdf
There was no racism in that. If you think 'Russia can fuck off' = an issue with the Russian people, that's on you, I just have an issue with invading armies killing tons of innocent people and committing a ton of war crimes.
Took a look at the link, looks like the US did about what Russia did, which is significant interference in a foreign government. As a defence of Russia, it doesn't really work because Russia also does that. Only one of these countries openly invaded and killed a bunch of civilians and is continuing to do so.
I don't really know what you mean by trying to create a fascist breakaway state though. I thought you might mean when they split from the USSR as a whole but after some research that doesn't seem to fit. The cia doc doesn't clear it up a whole lot, and i presume over time the operation has changed a bit if it is indeed still going.
what exactly do you think you're talking about here
Sending fascists to Ukraine to cause Ukraine to try to split from the Soviet Union. It took a lot longer than they hoped, they got their fascist coup in 2014.
I think I'll have to do a lot more research on the fall of the USSR to properly reply to that and it's almost 1am
This statement is true of the vast majority of the western left. A good start I would recommend is Stalin a History and Critique of a Black Legend. I would also recommend Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds and the Overthrow of Communism.
While it's good that you acknowledge you need to do more research, I think you should sincerely examine why your immediate response to being proven incorrect about US involvement in Ukraine is to leap to an unfounded assumption that Russia must have always been doing the same thing. That's been programmed into you by western chauvinism.