• adroit balloon@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    you don’t have to look far (even around here) to find people calling themselves communists while rabidly defending Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, for example, making some pretty ridiculous claims and praising Putin with a litany of logical fallacies. call them out, and suffer mass reporting, dogpiling, cross-community harassment, and bans. I believe they’re called “tankies”— self-proclaimed communists who are anything but.

    the lemmygrad instance is almost nothing but this.

    edit: I suspect that, in theory, they may like the idea of communism (they certainly like to espouse communist rhetoric), but they rush to defend authoritarian ideologues which doesn’t make sense-- especially when they pick sides with capitalist autocrats and dictators who are also war criminals.

    • boredtortoise@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, they’re the antithesis of communism or leftism but some definitely are fooled by them

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I know someone like that. He’s an outspoken communist and sees anything anti west as inherently good. It’s a very black and white world view.

        He also thinks winning an argument just means outlasting the other person and shouting. I once observed him argue tabletop game mechanics or a half an hour before we realized he doesn’t think removing cards from a deck changes the probability of getting one of the remaining cards. He can’t hold down a job and ironically, he’s in digital marketing.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Pointing out the role of the West in provoking Russia is not the same as saying Russia’s aggressive reaction is good or justified.

          • adroit balloon@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            oh, so now it’s The West™®©’s fault that Russia illegally invaded another country?

            lmao

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Cause and effect have nothing to do with “fault” - the Wests support for Euromaidan lead to the annexation of Crimea which lead to the conflict in the Donbas which lead to the invasion. Things happen for reasons, Russia didn’t just randomly go crazy.

              Stop moralizing and start looking at events materially.

              • adroit balloon@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Cause and effect have nothing to do with “fault”

                dude, you JUST said THIS in a previous comment, lmao:

                Pointing out the role of the West in provoking Russia…

                so which is it?

                Stop moralizing and start looking at events materially.

                oh, so when you can’t answer to your own hypocrisy, you move the goalposts? you’re doing exactly what I said above:

                rabidly defending Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, for example, making some pretty ridiculous claims and praising Putin with a litany of logical fallacies

                confused? looks like I was precisely correct.

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  Okay, the fact that Russia was provoked doesn’t mean they aren’t also at fault and it doesn’t mean the invasion was justified. All I’m saying is the West shares responsibility for using Ukraine as a proxy for its conflict with Russia. That’s why fault is irrelevant - both sides share responsibility and the war will only end if both sides negotiate.

                  You refuse to accept that the West played any role at all! As far as you’re concerned, Russians are orcs and we should fight this war to the last Ukrainian.

                  • adroit balloon@lemmy.ml
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                    1 year ago

                    Okay, the fact that Russia was provoked doesn’t mean they aren’t also at fault and it doesn’t mean the invasion was justified. All I’m saying is the West shares responsibility for using Ukraine as a proxy for its conflict with Russia.

                    bullshit. first of all, you can’t keep throwing around “The West” as a blame-all for everything you don’t like when specific actors do specific things and expect to have a rational discussion bout geopolitics— also, cite some evidence for these claims, please. second, you also can’t “both-sides” this and expect me to take this seriously— whomever may have had a role in Crimean unrest in 2014 sure as hell isn’t tantamount to an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation, nor do I concede that there’s shared blame in that act. it’s on a whole other level of magnitude, and Putin clearly used it as a flimsy pretext for an action he’d been planning since he took power a years before.

                    That’s why fault is irrelevant - both sides share responsibility and the war will only end if both sides negotiate.

                    and third: your attempts to deflect blame away from Russia/Putin for the illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine is transparent, and, despite your repeated claims that it’s not justified, you obviously think it is or your wouldn’t be so vociferously defending it and Russia for doing so.

                    You refuse to accept that the West played any role at all!

                    I never said that, but by making such false claims, you make yourself and you false position appear sympathetic to the reader. it’s an old propaganda tactic.

                    As far as you’re concerned, Russians are orcs and we should fight this war to the last Ukrainian.

                    more playing the victim by making up things I never said. for someone who keeps saying that Russia wasn’t justified, you keep taking their side and painting them as victims despite their illegal invasion, history of brutality and long list of war crimes.

                    so, which is it?