You wouldn’t think of a European community of being so insanely pro Russia, yet on every single post mentioning Russia, any negative comments about Russia or their government will get downvoted to hell, some people get banned. I would not be surprised if I am banned or downvoted for posting this. People who are not just blatantly spamming Kremlin propaganda, please say why you are so pro Russia, to someone confused.
You can explain why you think it’s baffling. I don’t think it’s pointless
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Please read Yogthos reply here: https://lemmy.ml/post/49690377/26558932
It basically encapsulates most of the important reasoning.
Why do we support Iran against the US? Objectively Iran is a theocracy that is socially backwards, it oppresses women, it oppresses LGBTQ people, it has a reactionary social character. Why then do we support it? Because it is the lesser evil. And importantly we would support it if it aggressed first against the zionist entity because it’s not about aggression or simplistic victim/aggressor dynamics but about liberation for the region and the world. And because Iran exists the way it does today because of western meddling and it cannot move beyond its present character as long as the west is there serving as a foil. Take away that, take away the zionist entity and the aggression and siege situation, allow development and these things have an opportunity to change.
Anyways you use the term “totalitarian” which was itself invented by a Nazi apologist zionist to equate communism to Nazism. But why do you suppose that Russia is this but the west with its vast surveillance nets, its ICE, its camera systems, its global communications intercept network run by the eyes groups with NSA, GCHQ, and its brutal wars with atrocities against civilians across the middle east is not? I mean you can be arrested in Britain for the most trivial of things. You can be sent to prison for saying “I support Palestine Action” while peacefully protesting. How is it that these countries are not also “totalitarian” but Russia is? It cannot be and people only think that way because of propaganda. You have been blinded to the police state and brutality of the west while the brutality of Russia is hyped up, they hide the atrocities and human rights violations of the west and play down the problems while playing up, highlighting every instance and pounding the drums in your ears that scream “this is totalitarianism” to convince you of this fact.
Kleptocracy is also a meaningless term to communists. It’s almost like a slur which is selectively applied to the designated “bad guys”. All capitalist nations are run under a dictatorship of capital and capitalists to serve their interests. This is true in Russia and it is true in the US. If some places are a little more brazen with their corruption and others a little better at hiding it behind “lobbying” that doesn’t change the essential character in our opinion. People starve and sleep on the streets in every major US city while the wealthy sit atop their 12th mansion and party with models and use private jets to private islands. The wealthy do things like rape children and get a slap on the wrist because prison would be bad for them. The wealthy run pedophile networks like Jeffery Epstein and the government buries the evidence and ensures no one is held to account while fabricating lies about what really happened. They crash the economy like in 2008 and the government bails them out while shafting the average person. Does that sound like “kleptocracy”? Because that’s the US. Russian capitalist elites are no different, they steal from the people, they live lavishly while others suffer, they commit crimes and use connections to get away with it. It’s no different.
Russia is no more a kleptocratic police state than any other. The reason your metaphor is “anime villain” is because your understanding is cartoonish. Russia is a real country with a long history and over 140 million people. It has a total all-in police budget of $47B. The USA has ~350M people and an all-in police budget of $237B.
Russia’s per capita incarceration rate is significantly lower than the US. Russia recidivism rate is significantly lower than the US.
Essentially on all metrics you could measure a police state, the US is worse than Russia.
But of course, people will argue, just because the US is worse doesn’t mean that we can ignore Russia’s problems. And we don’t. We just understand that in a contest between Russia, who primarily has conflicts at its borders, and the US who primarily has conflicts in the periphery of the world where it does immense harm, we support any and all back pressure against the US even if that means a corrupt and violent state like Russia wins that contest.
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I don’t think it’s you being salty. I’m sure you can find point by point differences for everything, because every country is individually quite different. It doesn’t do anything about the macro perspective. Domestic policy is nearly irrelevant to the larger geopolitical contest.
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Your condescension is noted.
I will note that Russia has not conquered any of the countries it has had border disputes with. And again, the number is pretty telling. From 1992 to today Russia has been involved in handful of conflicts over its borders and national security. In that same time the US has destroyed 14 countries around the world. It’s not even comparable.
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These things are true, but they lack context. This has nothing to do with deserving punishment. The US decided to threaten Russian national security through its activies inside Ukraine. Russia’s response was against Ukraine. Ukraine is suffering immensely. It could have ended a long time ago had the West pulled out all support and worked to negotiate a mutual security regime. Instead, the West decided to keep Ukraine fighting and forced it to abandon any attempts at negotiations. This is the result of Western proxy war.
The reason I brought up Marxism-Leninism earlier is because many of us are Marxist-Leninists or adjacent to Marxism-Leninism here. Russia factually is not conquering neighboring countries, and has no actual reason to do so. In the conflict between a nationalist country and an imperialist coalition, ie Russia vs. the West, harming the position of imperialism strengthens the position of the global south, and therefore the prospects of socialism move forward.
This isn’t really an “absolutist” position, nuance exists. Ideally, Russia and Ukraine both return to socialism. However, this does not appear to be an immediate prospect, we do not pick the conditions we live in, we must deal with the hands we are dealt the best we can.
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Millions die regularly due to the predation of the global south by the global north. Ideally Kiev surrenders, ending the war as soon as possible. At present, billions live under the oppression of the global north, the west owes reparations for centuries of colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism.