this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2022
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It’s not an anti imperialist stance if you’re just trying to contest imperial hegemony on behalf of your own imperial ambitions. That’s still just imperialism
Putin is, at the very least, anti-hegemonic in the sense that he falls squarely in the bloc opposing the current hegemonic powers. Whether or not he's also anti-imperialistic is up for debate, but personally anti-hegemonic countries are relatively rare and any which fall into that camp deserve at least critical support.
Anyone on this site who genuinely believes Vladimir Putin does "anti-imperialism" out of any motive other than supremely cynical, convenient, competing imperialist interest seriously needs to re-evaluate their stances and sources. Or, otherwise, go join the fucking Maupinite/Hazite clowns who are basically doing the most cringe reactionary shit imaginable, because they are your people.
I say this as someone who has for a while tried to stay out of the dogmatic factionalist bullshit in favor of just shitposting when it comes to this site. If you've been suckered into believing a siloviki-dominated hyper-capitalist kleptocracy like Russia is a genuine force for "anti-imperialism", you've been fucking had in the worst way possible. Even the most mindless simping for modern Dengist China has a more rational basis.
I can't believe that I need to reiterate that we shit on Ukraine here because they're filled with nazoids, not because capitalist Russia is "good".
You do not, under almost any circumstances, gotta hand it to post-downfall Russia
Literally no one here is arguing that Ukraine is good, but the actual leftists (as opposed to national chauvinists) here are arguing that this is unmistakably an inter-imperialist war and not some convoluted "the invasion of Ukraine is anti-imperialist because Russia is on the imperial periphery of a super-imperialist bloc" bullshit argument.
I'm someone who can absolutely advance arguments that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was caused by outside imperialist circumstances. But now that it has happened, and is actual fact? There is zero "critical support" of Russian aggression here. The only legitimate communist position in this scenario is for Ukrainian and Russian soldiers alike to turn their guns on their own generals. Will that happen? No. But that's the fucking position the Bolsheviks themselves took from the start, not some ridiculous stance about how actually the Kaiser was right to resist all along and criticizing the German war effort is bad.
When Russia provided military aid to Venezuela at the request of Maduro to resist the coup attempt, the US media called it Russian imperialism, but that seems more like anti-imperialism to me.
I mean that’s siding with anti-imperialism for realpolitik reasons but it’s still for the sake of cracking up US hegemony to allow Russian ascendancy. The invasion of Ukraine has made it more than apparent that Putin sees Russia as having a sphere of influence where it can dictate terms for the nations around it and will enforce that understanding violently. That’s textbook imperialism akin to the early US dictating terms in Latin America.
And yea that’s all because Russia was rejected from the kool kids (k)table at nato but the response has not been to adopt a left wing anti-imperialist stance
The invasion of Ukraine has little to do with "dictating terms" or creating a sphere of influence, they're protecting their own country from imperial USA which has spent most of the last decade militarizing Ukraine after engineering a coup there to make the government rabidly anti-russia. I'm sorry but it's bananas to compare the Ukraine situation to the US/Latin America relationship and its equally ridiculous to call actions which are clearly anti-imperialist in their effects just the same as imperialism because of whatever you imagine the motivation for those actions to be. This is how we get things like claims of Cuban imperialism.
Caring about intent is idealism, caring about outcomes is materialism. You don’t have to like Putin to realize we have to work with him (we, as in the global left and AES) and that he has been a reliable ally
:yikes-1: :yikes-2: :yikes-3:
if putin wants to help us that's great, we'll take it, but if he ever comes around asking for anything, fuck him, he's got feet and he can kick rocks.
I mean if you're in a global south country that the US doesn't like or care about, you're kind of forced to work with Russia and Putin, as much as it sucks. See Venezuela, Cuba, etc. China is non interventionist so it's not an option.
Sometimes the outcomes are good, sometimes they are shit.
I'm sure that Vlad is devastated that he cant rely on the proven track record of the Western Left.
Not the opinion of Xi, Maduro, Kim, Diaz-Canal or any other socialist leader
Fighting against imperialism is actually just imperialism, if your intentions aren't pure.
Here come the westoids to divine the intent of nations outside the core and judge them for their lack of purity
Supporting my anti-imperialist comrades in ISIS as they undermine American hegemony
Undermining American hegemony by...destabilizing a region that America benefits from being unstable? Not really the same situation. Russia is actually doing real harm to our ability to maintain a global stranglehold. That is a good thing, even if Putin is otherwise a shitty reactionary capitalist.
ISIS is American-backed imperialist force, and Russia crushed it
Another point in our favor, not yours