Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies"
Cricket@lemmy.zip 4 days agoSorry for the delay. I needed to take a break from online drama, and hope to continue avoiding getting sucked into it if possible. :)
I mean, Russia’s trying to make far-right takeovers happen pretty hard.
If they are, it doesn’t seem like they’re trying as hard as the US has in the past. Social media manipulation is in no way equivalent to supporting or initiating coups. Even if they have done some similar things, it’s been on a much smaller scale, at least an order of magnitude less.
The thing in question at this point, I think, is if it’s a reason why we should support anybody (or almost anybody) who opposes the US. Just saying that the US should chill wouldn’t be out there enough to argue with.
I’m not sure I understand your second point here, but I think that the first question could be turned right around: why should anyone support the US or any of its closest partners? I think the answer lies in the fact that most countries in the world (the so-called “Global South”) have not supported the US/West position in either Ukraine or Palestine.
Hmm. That would include the end of the actual colonial era. There was a lot of what you could describe as “high-pressure tactics” used by Europe against the various independence movements.
I would still have to see any evidence that what I said (essentially that the US has been the biggest bully in the world for the last 80 years) is way off the mark.
During the Cold War the reason given was usually “to stop communism”, since then it’s more like “for democracy” or “to stop atrocities”.
The claim that it was to “stop communism” seemed to have been sincere.
The more recent claims that it’s to “stop atrocities” has some weight, but not a ton. How many times has the US used heavy foreign policy tactics purely for that purpose?
The claims that it’s “for democracy” is very weak when there are examples in the recent past of the US either supporting or not opposing coups against democratically-elected foreign leaders. The first example that comes to mind is the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after the Arab Spring. From what I recall, there was hardly a squeak from the US when that happened, because it benefited the US.
That may or may not be drinking the kool-aid. If you are yourself a non-communist democracy, those can overlap with national interest, which is definitely a slippery slope. That’s not the same as it being purely propaganda, though (which looking back through the thread is where this tangent started).
I don’t know if I said “purely propaganda”, but if I did, I probably meant “mostly propaganda”.
Thanks.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 days ago
No problem. The internet should be fun, not stressful.
If we’re including post-WWII decolonisation, pretty much point to any former colony - which is a rather large map area. The British or French didn’t just let them leave, but did atrocities to stop them until they couldn’t anymore. I went looking for casualty figures, but it turns out there’s not much information known. Maybe we’ll have to wait until the guilty parties are all dead.
I think you’d arrive at the same conclusion that it was a two-sided competition if you were to read up in detail on a few times and places during the Cold War, as opposed to just the US coup greatest hits. Mao did not fight alone. The thing is, it’s hard to capture that all in one number. The USSR spent maybe 20% of it’s GDP on it’s military, while being a third the economic size of the US, to give a sense of scale of the kind of resources that were piling in from the communist direction.
Over a period that long and the area of the whole world that’s about as good as I can do in a Lemmy comment.
Ukraine comes to mind (did we talk about that already?), as does Georgia. It’s in no way just social media, either. In places like the Baltics there’s your classic people with suitcases full of money going around and paying for sabotage, access or votes. That’s not just hearsay - some have been caught.
In the West they’re more limited because it’s harder to get away with, so yeah, they mostly mess with social media. I’m pretty sure there was somebody that went to jail in the US during Biden’s time, though.
It wasn’t a point, I just won’t/can’t argue with the basic idea that they’ve been too aggressive.
I mean, the most conservative stance would be just to support nobody and say every country is awful. Why isn’t that in consideration?
Ukraine has lots of third world support. Palestine has some Western support; Canada just went against the US to recognise it in what is a very sensitive period in our relations.
Support for an anti-democratic coup hasn’t happened since the “stop communism” era. If you include not getting involved, neutral Switzerland is a massive bully, and I actually can show it in a Lemmy comment.
I would guess Obama was concerned and disappointed, but also wanted some kind of stability, and to not alienate someone he was going to have to deal with one way or another. Starting another ground war in the Middle East was obviously out of the question at that point - even closing Libyan airspace was very controversial.