Comment on US | Alaskans greet Putin with Ukrainian flags, protest ‘war criminal hanging out here’

• ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  That’s absolutely fascinating

  In what way? What do you find fascinating about it? Say what you mean instead of hiding behind redditor cliches.

  a tirade

  My comment was all of two sentences long. If that’s what you consider a tirade, you’re gonna hate what comes next. Of course, we both know the actual reason you chose that word is because you want to paint any disagreement with your self-evidently correct ideas as coming from a place of mental instability. Call me hysterical or delusional next.

  ridding the world of obvious evil

  This is purely subjective and doesn’t actually mean anything. Good and evil are stories for explaining the world to children, adults understand that history operates on cause and effect. And even on your own terms, you haven’t defined evil, so how can it have any meaning that can be shared between us. Nazi Germany and Israel were/are also “ridding the world of obvious evil” from their perspective, am I supposed to just take that nonsense justification at face value because you presume that to be sane and rational, a person must share your prejudices?

  You don’t have a serious position to take

  This is the black hole at the center of the galaxy calling the sun black. Here’s a quick summary of the serious position we don’t have, courtesy of one of the lengthy essays we don’t write:

  A Marxist understanding of capitalism leads to anti-imperialism. Anti-imperialism is understood by detractors as a simple rhetorical dressing over simplistic heuristics like “reflexive anti-americanism,” “history repeats itself,” and “the military-industrial complex needs contracts,” but all of these are reductive. Marxists understand that human political leadership in the imperial periphery, whether enlightened or tyrannical, will only be antagonized by empire for one single possible reason: it is getting in the way of market penetration. This is phrased succinctly by Kevin Dooley when criticizing Noam Chomsky’s support for a military alliance between the Kurds and the USA in Syria: “The difference between [Chomsky’s] position and a hard-line anti-imperialist position isn’t tactical. What he’s arguing is simply a violation of anti-imperialist principles based on a fundamentally different understanding of what can drive the empire to act in the world.” [16]

  The accusation that anti-imperialists are unconcerned with human rights deserves a sharp rebuke. The USA was born of slavery and genocide, dropped atomic bombs as a matter of political brinkmanship, imported Nazi scientists and installed war criminals like Klaus Barbie and Nobusuke Kishi around the world to defend and advance anti-communist positions [17], and enthusiastically supports gruesome butcherers today. Simply put, Capital has destroyed innumerable countries and murdered hundreds of millions directly and indirectly. It is precisely a concern for the rights of humans that should make one immediately skeptical of any humanitarian posturing by Capital. Anti-imperialism not only means support for the important pro-social projects of states like Cuba, Vietnam, and China; it also means critical support for non-socialist states such as Iran and Russia. Critical support acknowledges that, though instituting various indefensible policies, enemies of empire are not being antagonized because of said policies. The only thing that can drive empire to act in the world is capital accumulation.

  You are coping by telling yourself that one of the most widespread ideologies on the planet, with a century and a half of theory behind it and revolutions up on the scoreboard, has no serious positions. It’s peak solipsism: you can’t understand it or won’t bother to, so it must be gibberish.

  Authoritarian

  What, in your own words, does this term mean? I’ve had this conversation a thousand times, and nobody has been able to provide an answer that doesn’t just boil down to “any use of authority that I personally dislike”. Maybe you’ll be the first.

  Look man, my problem with liberals, aside from the support for nazis and genocide, is that you have a static, shoebox diorama view of the world. Things simply are, good guys are good guys and bad guys are bad guys, and that’s that. It’s very similar to the more right wing liberals who think that “criminals” are just a group of people that spawn in dark alleys like a video game.

  A Marxist view on the other hand, a materialist view, conceives of the world and all it’s parts as a machine in motion, each component affecting others and being affected. Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation did not crawl out of a molten crack in the ground: the US empire created the government and installed him at its head to facilitate the shock doctrine that allowed corporate entities to strip the very profitable flesh from the bones of the former USSR. Western communists did not fall out of a coconut tree: we were liberals who believed sincerely in the stated values of liberalism and could not look past its rank hypocrisy and racism. I’m not a hostile NPC the game put here to challenge you dawg, I’m you from the future.

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  • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    You seem to be upset. And you might be a hostile NPC. I might be a hostile NPC, and you might be the only player in the fediverse.

    It seems my hollow quip had more bite to it that anticipated?

    And that was much more fun to write out wasn’t it?

    But, if you want a response I’ll humor the bit I’m interested in: Authoritarian.

    Obviously we could use the dictionary definition of the world (I’m not going to bother looking it up right now, it’s something similar to: ‘favoring absolute obedience to authority’). Russia, Iran, China. Textbook definitions of Authoritarian government.

    Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Trump, Putin, Netenyahu (however the fuck you spell his name), the Ayatollah of Iran, Winnie the Pooh of China, these are all authoritarians. Support of these regimes is therefore favoring absolute obedience to authority. Pretty simple IMO

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    • ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      u mad bro?

      Now who’s unserious

      Russia, Iran, China. Textbook definitions of Authoritarian government.

      So authoritarianism is when designated state enemy that the US wants to bomb. Refreshingly honest for someone who probably wouldn’t admit to being an American jingoist otherwise. No but for real, tell me a definition, not examples. You do know what words mean, right?

      Winnie the Pooh

      Cool racism bro

      Netanyahu

      Who did you vote for this past election?

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      • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Thank you for confirming you are, in fact, a Chinese nationalist.

        I don’t even need to highlight exactly how I know, you are well aware. You don’t have a choice, and I understand that. I also understand that you literally cannot let this go, as you have been trained not to. To let it go would bring harm to the Party.

        And I literally did give you the definition, but your cognitive dissonance seems to have ignored it entirely. After giving you the definition, I gave you present day examples.

        If you need more definitions, I can gladly oblige. I don’t need to look up the definition of Authority: "The power to enforce laws, exact obedience, command, determine, or judge. "

        So therefore, an authoritarian is one who favors absolute obedience to those who have power to enforce laws, exact obedience, command, determine, or judge.

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