Love the “you made me do this to you” energy here, very progressive stance of believing that sometimes abusers just have to hit people, and there’s truly nothing that can be done about it.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml -5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The geopolitics of nuclear powers as an interpersonal relationship. Peak Marvel brain.

[–] cone_zombie@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 month ago

I've also seen this analogy: "Russia had no business in Ukraine, just as US had no business in Afghanistan". Apparently coming from someone who couldn't find Ukraine on the map and had no idea how much history and culture these two countries share

[–] Ciderpunk@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Yeah, analogies are hard when you take them as literally as possible.

[+] Grapho@lemmy.ml -10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Gringos and their fucking victim complex I swear. Y'all just got done toppling Syria and their people are already being stoned to death in the street when they're not being bombed. A few years ago you did it to Haiti, and they're starving to death, like you did it to Peru, and you did it to Libya, where there are slave markets now thanks to y'all.

So this is less an abusive partner insisting it's your fault and more a motherfucker who's killed hundreds waving a knife inches from your face insisting you're a menace for clocking him. The fact that the US launders its provocations through their client states doesn't mean the rest of the world is as stupid as westerners to buy it. We're not invested in empire, so we don't have to close our eyes and pretend we're the good guys in this.

[–] Ciderpunk@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Wow, I had no idea I personally intervened in Syria, Myanmar, Haiti, and Libya, I must have a ton of airline rewards and severe memory issues!

Don’t sins-of-the-father me if you don’t even know where I am, thanks in advance.

[–] OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago

And the Olympic gold for comically missing the point by getting strangely defensive goes to...

[–] Grapho@lemmy.ml -5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I know libs don't do it personally, they limit themselves to cheering on genocides from their armchair and stamping down on people who want to stop their imperialist governments

[–] Ciderpunk@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Have you considered that doing an imperialism under a non-western flag is still doing an imperialism?

[–] davel@lemmy.ml -4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Russia, if given its druthers, would be imperialist, but since it presently doesn’t, it presently isn’t. Putin tried to join NATO once, to join the imperialist club, but that was rejected, because the US wanted Russia Balkanized & plundered instead. Russia has figured out it’s better off allying with Global South countries than attempting imperialist adventures upon them. And this war has accelerated that allyship.

[–] Ciderpunk@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It’s only imperialism if it comes from the West, otherwise it’s just sparkling being an asshole to your neighbors isn’t a winning argument.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It’s not exclusive to the West. Japan did it for sixty years, until it was made a vassal of the US, which it still is today[1][2].

[–] Ciderpunk@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I’m not sure what the point of this considering that I am specifically calling you out for refusing to admit Russia is doing an imperialism and your deflection is to say that Japan did an imperialism. Is that supposed to make Russia all clear to do an imperialism?

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It seems you didn’t read what I linked to, so I’ll copypasta:

<octopus_ink> Honest question from a non-communist, based on your reply here. Does one need to support Putin to be a Marxist?

<davel> In a word, no. In a few more words, support for Russia (not Putin, as historical materialists don’t subscribe to great man theory) is only a partial, temporary, tactical one, in the context of imperialist liberation. Russia is still a capitalist state, though, so it’s a two stage strategy: first liberate colonized bourgeois states from colonizer states, and second revolution within those liberated bourgeois states.

Russia is an interesting case: it has already liberated itself from the post-Soviet “shock therapy” neocolonizers. This occurred during Putin’s administration, which is why he is especially hated by the US. So now the support for Russia is in the context of keeping the colonizers from recolonizing it, and supporting Russia to the extent that it helps other states liberate themselves. But Russia isn’t trying to “liberate” Ukraine, at least not all of Ukraine. It’s trying to resolve the genocidal attacks on the people of the Donbas, and it’s trying to resolve the imperialist military expansion at its border.

Robert Parry, 2015: The Mess that Nuland Made

Jeffery Sachs, 2023: The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace

[–] Ciderpunk@lemmy.world -3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Still hinging literally everything on Donbas not being externally caused I see. As long as you cover up interference in other countries, it’s fine to use that as pretext to invade and do whatever you want.

[–] Grapho@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

So Donbas was externally caused because... we should trust you that it was?

But Ukraine's 2014 coup wasn't externally caused because... it was different from all the other times the US deposed a government, since this time they put congresspeople like John McCain on the ground? Even US, anti-Russian sources recognize it as fact.

At this point you have to be deliberately dodging the evidence to not recognize what's going on.

[–] Grapho@lemmy.ml -4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's imperialism if it has the characteristics of imperialism, wishing it really hard because that's a word that would be an amazing gotcha isn't enough. Imperialism is, to really overly simplify it: the extraction of surplus value, often in the form of labor through financial instruments from one country to another. Russia's position in the world is not that of imperialist extraction (except in the participation prior to the sanctions in the western financial sector) since capital was still consolidating its power over the working class in Russia, given that its capitalist system (another western imposition) wasn't developed enough to do so, and it was still mostly an export economy.

Now, I eagerly await for the flat-earth level analysis of "but I see it and I think it is imperialist".

[–] Ciderpunk@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

I mean, we agree, Russia intends to exploit Ukraine’s natural gas reserves in the regions they are occupying, which definitely meets the definition you set out so…

Unless you’re insisting that Russia is going to just give that territory up after all this, despite them claiming they have a hereditary right to it all, because they just really wouldn’t want to accidentally profit off taking over their neighbors territory in which case, it sounds like the “flat earth level analysis” is coming from inside the house.