General Discussion Thread - Juche 113, Week 9
Cool, though communists on a euro banknote is kinda cursed.
I often hear that “tankies” are “so far left they circled back around to the right” or similar claims
This refers to the so called "horseshoe theory", a "political theory" with 0 explanatory power but that liberal accept and like because it conveniently lump all political positions opposing them in the same box as the literal NAZIs which allow the very convenient conclusion that liberalism is the only acceptable and morally correct political position and everything else is evil.
I’m wondering, /do/ you all have any views/positions/ideals that align with the right or far right?
I invite you to check out the instance and be the judge of that yourself.
But to cite a few things. We (with hexbear) are the biggest LGBTQ+ instance on lemmy, even surpassing blahaj despite it being advetized specificaly as an LGBTQ+ friendly instance, to the point where trans peoples easily make up about half of our entire userbase. We have no tolerance of bigotry of any kind, including the bigotry with plausible deniability of "progressive" liberals, if someone is racist, ableist, transphobic or anything else, that person will have their problematic comment removed and will be banned as soon as any mod finds out, there is no warning and no second chance. We want free healthcare, education and housing for all, we want guarantied employment for everyone, democracy in the workplace, we want production according to need not to the whim of a market.
We do have views that are controversial and clash with we are told all our lives in the west from the internet to the classroom, but the accusation is superficial at best and crumble as soon as you start looking at why we hold these opinions.
I am asking as an outsider to this group who does not identify as liberal and would consider myself absolutely left of whatever you consider liberals to be.
Here is what we mean by liberal, just for future reference:
Liberalism is one of the ideologies of capitalism (the other being fascism), it's core principles are, the enshrinement of private property as a fundamental right in liberal society, and capitalism as the mode of production.
Under this definition, Democrats, Republicans, right wing libertarians, social democrats and so on are all liberals, their disagreements are superficial and changing depending on what is politically convenient at the time for each particular brand of liberalism.
A good overview is this video.
The way it's used, the way it's displayed. If you take that all the way all emojis everywhere are pictures. It's a sociological difference I think.
Emojis on lemmy are just markdown links to images, you can use them by typing  copy-pasting an image in the text editor should automatically generate the link, you would just have to add what is between quotation marks.
Exemple:
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Y'all are... tiring... I'm just gonna copypaste my answer to an other comment of the same thread:
Y’all keep saying that but I have yet to see any of you point any actual material difference between Trump’s presidency vs during Biden’s presidency.
What changed after the transition from Trump to Biden except rhetoric? As far as I know, oppressed minorities kept having their rights taken away 1 by 1 the same as before, police kept being over funded the same as before, migrants from the southern border kept being detained in literal concentration camps at the border the same as before, things kept getting more financially difficult for the average American every day the same as before, big polluter corporations kept polluting without consequences the same as before, the military budget kept getting ramped up every year the same as before, what is different in the real world outside the clown-show that is your political system? Where the fuck does that “not good but definitely better” goes when you stop going by the words of these known serial liars for to seconds and take a peak at what as changed in the actual lives of the American people?
The only difference I see is that the Republicans is taking an active approach and pass laws directly whereas the Democrats is more passive and like to let the Republicans and other far right parties pass laws while standing there awkwardly and pretending they can do nothing about it.
lemmygrad users: use a standard lemmy features that literally every user has access to
deranged lib user: "this is clearly a conspiracy to take over the world site"
Y'all keep saying that but I have yet to see any of you point any actual material difference between Trump's presidency vs during Biden's presidency.
What changed after the transition from Trump to Biden except rhetoric? As far as I know, oppressed minorities kept having their rights taken away 1 by 1 the same as before, police kept being over funded the same as before, migrants from the southern border kept being detained in literal concentration camps at the border the same as before, things kept getting more financially difficult for the average American every day the same as before, big polluter corporations kept polluting without consequences the same as before, the military budget kept getting ramped up every year the same as before, what is different in the real world outside the clown-show that is your political system? Where the fuck does that "not good but definitely better" goes when you stop going by the words of these known serial liars for to seconds and take a peak at what as changed in the actual lives of the American people?
The only difference I see is that the Republicans is taking an active approach and pass laws directly whereas the Democrats is more passive and like to let the Republicans and other far right parties pass laws while standing there awkwardly and pretending they can do nothing about it.
Only after the Nazi's ally attacked the US first prompting Germany to declare war on the US.
If arming Ukraine does not substantially impact Ukraine’s ability to fight, how does it prolong the war?
This is not exactly what I said. I didn't say that it didn't impact Ukraine's ability to fight, I said it doesn't change the outcome of the war.
Of course, arming Ukraine adds difficulty for Russia, but it only at most delay Russia getting what they want since because of the way the war is going and the west's inability to outproduce Russia, Russia has time on their side. Russia can largely afford to just wait until western weapon supply to Ukraine can't keep up with theirs anymore, which is exactly what they have been doing since their retreat from the siege of Kiev in 2022, that's why the front line has barely moved since then, Russia know they are in a position where time will do most of the work for them.
A pretty fair point but I still think you are neglecting a few things.
Firstly, while according to this study by the Kiev international institute of sociology most Ukrainians do still support the war it also indicate that the portion that peace at the cost of losing territory is definitely growing since the start of 2023, if I were to try giving admittedly loose and uncertain bound based on those numbers and assuming the rate of change don't shrink, I would expect this portion to reach 50% of the population 2 months from now at the soonest, 11 months from now at the latest.
An other related thing to consider is how accurately is the state of the war depicted in Ukrainian media? A state at war that don't plan to surrender has incentives to make their war effort as good as possible and the enemy's war effort as bad as possible and Ukraine is obviously no exception.
Depending on how distorted the narrative about the war is, these figures could be drastically different from what they would be if the Ukrainian public got a more neutral account of the war.
So do the Ukrainian want to continue fighting? For now yes, but I don't believe it will last.
Your leverage point is moot in my opinion.
As I said, it is a fact that Russia is winning the war and that Ukraine has decisively failed to push them back before the Russian entrenchment in their position and the dwindling military supply to Ukraine made doing so impossible going forward.
I'm not saying that Russia could just roll over to Kiev any day if they wanted, that would obviously be absurd, but the military situation in Ukraine, the state of western weapon manufacturing compared to Russia's and the sheer difference in manpower reserve and moral make it such that even if the west threw every last weapon in their stockpile at Ukraine, it would not change significantly what a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev could look like. I repeat therefor once again that the ONLY thing continuing to supply Ukraine with weapons is increasing the death toll on both side and prolonging the was for nothing, it's literally not doing anything more, let alone helping Ukraine in any tangible way.
You are right, though, that most of the aid to Ukraine is humanitarian and not military, and those absolutely should continue, but that's one reason more to not prolong the war uselessly, the end of the war would make helping the Ukrainian people way easier and would allow Ukraine to start rebuilding.
Literally the same thought terminating logic fucking flatearthers use.
"I have literally have no counter argument so instead considering what you said I will gaslight myself and others into thinking I don't have to by declaring out loud, without any evidence, that you are paid by NASA/Russia and imply that therefore everything you say can be dismissed without paying any mind because it is ontologically dishonest."
This take is both idealistic and ignorant of the situation on the ground.
It's clear to anyone paying attention that Ukraine has lost any shot they had at driving Russia out in 2023, assuming they even had any shot at it in the first place. As shown by the evolution of the front line in 2023, Russia is now deeply entrenched in it's current position and Ukraine, even back when Western military support was at it's maximum, is unable to make them move from them in any significant way. Meanwhile Russia has had the time to adapt to western sanctions and the economy not only stabilized but is even growing quite a lot, especially the arms industry.
You need to come to terms with the fact that Ukraine won't be getting back the occupied territory. With Russia now largely outproducing the west on military equipment and the west having pretty much depleted their stockpile, Ukraine, who is largely dependent to western military aid as their own military industrial base is far from solid, will unravel sooner rather than later. The ONLY thing sending them weapons is doing right now is prolonging the war and getting more Ukrainian killed for literally nothing.
Getting more thousands of Ukrainian killed because of the delusion that they can somehow still drive Russia out at this point is not worth whatever territory they want to get back.
Continuing to send billions of dollars of weapons to them won't do any good to the Ukrainian peoples, and you aren't the saviour of Ukraine you think you are by cheering for this.
What would do good for the Ukrainian people is suing for peace and starting to rebuild whatever territory they have left.
He just fired him outright without any kind of precautions? Do Zelensky not realize the situation he's in? Unless Syrsky can quickly win a large enough support in the military that decision has the potential to badly backfire for Zelensky. With more support than Zelensky among both the civilians and the soldiers, Zaluzhny is in an ideal position to pull a coup or at least some kind of mutiny.
Well if you think like that it sure will never come.
While the worsening of living condition under capitalism do push toward revolution that doesn't mean that it's automatic, revolution is an active process, you have to make it happen. Your role, as someone who see the fundamental problems with capitalist society and want to change it, is to lay the ground work to make sure that revolution do happen when the time is right.
One of the most important things that you must do is education, of yourself and of others. Study economic and political theory to understand how and why capitalism necessarily causes all of the issues we are constantly seeing and inform others of what you learned. Refute liberal, social democrats and other radlibs' narrative and show that the things they propose are nuttered band aid "solutions" that will result at best in temporary concessions that can and will be stripped away once popular turmoil calm down and the capitalists feel their power secure again. Promote socialism as an alternative to capitalism to limit the number of peoples who will tend toward fascism once they see the cracks in liberal rhetoric and start looking for an alternative.
An other important thing you can do is crating or joining an organization able to stand up to corporations and to the armed forces of the bourgeois state. Popular movements, whether they are a simple protest or an all out revolution need leadership otherwise the well organized, generally better equipped capitalist state's armed forces will wake quick game of them; that's what a vanguard communist party is for. Of course, the organization should help peoples on the ground, help those oppressed by the capitalist system however you can, monitor the police to document and disincentivize police brutality and discrimination, help the homeless by giving them food and homes if you are able to, help the workers unionize and support them when they strike, etc... There are a lot of thing you can do and lots of ways you can help with whatever skills you have, the important thing is that you do something, don't be a liberal who enter political hibernation and wake up every 5 years to vote for lesser evils and maybe go to 2~3 protests in their lives.
In a move that surprise no one, Ukraine blamed Russia for the downing of a Russian plane shot by the Ukrainian military.
Not exactly.
The French equivalent to the Democrats, as in the status quo party that serves to prepare the country for further right-wingery, is Macron's La République en marche/Renaissance (The marching republic/Rebirth) (with the equivalent to the Republicans would be Marine LePen's Rassemblement National/Front national (The National gathering/National front)). What the "communists" is referring to is mainly the so called Partie communiste Français (French communist party), a now minority party, which used to be an actual Marxist-Leninist party until the fall of the commintern, since then the PCF has abandoned it's revolutionary character to become an unremarkable "left" reformist third party that still calls itself communist by pure opportunism, this debacle has caused many splits that gave birth to smaller nominally communist parties ranging from Trotskyists to Marxist-Leninists (Lutte ouvrière, Révolution permanente, Partie communiste révolutionnaire de France, Pôle de renaissance communiste en France, etc...).
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