MarxMadness @ MarxMadness @lemmygrad.ml

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*The atomic unit of propaganda isn't lies, but emphasis.

Any reading you can recommend on this?

Who cares if the arguments resemble one another? The underlying situations are what determine if the argument makes any sense.

"I was afraid for my life" is a fine argument for firing back if someone pulls a gun and starts shooting at you. It's ridiculous when it comes from a cop who opens fire on a kid with something in his hands.

if ukranians want to stay independent russia should respect that

The parts of Ukraine Russia controls right now were trying to break away from Ukraine before the war. And again, Russia is not trying to conquer Ukraine -- the goal is to keep Ukraine out of NATO.

nobody can strip their right to resistance and the over 60k dead Palestinians responsibility lay exclusively on Israel

Palestinians and Ukranians both have a right to resist attackers. I'm saying it's sensible for Palestinians to do so (because their attacker has stated their intent to exterminate them, so it's either fight or die), but not sensible for Ukrainians to do so (because their attacker just wants them not to join NATO, and because there is no realistic hope of the war turning around).

As for who's responsible for the deaths: Ukraine's government almost immediately sold out their people when they (on the advice of Boris Johnson) backed out of ceasefire agreement they had tentatively agreed to in the opening weeks of the war. By choosing to use their people to fight a proxy war for NATO when there was an easy out on the table, they are partly responsible for the deaths of their people.

Israel say that there is no Palestinians and all the land is our , Russia say that Ukrainians are just Russians that Ukraine was simply part of Russia .

It cannot be overstated how completely different these situations are. Israel is trying to exterminate Palestinians. Russia does not want Ukraine to be part of a hostile, nuclear-armed military pact. Palestinians are fighting because otherwise Israel will kill them. Ukrainians are fighting because their coup government is having its strings pulled by NATO.

I think Russia could have with economic pressure alone stop Ukraine from joining NATO

They tried since 2014, and Ukraine still wouldn't give it up (or keep their domestic fascist groups from attacking Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine). It turns out Ukraine and NATO weren't even negotiating in good faith, as Angela Merkel admitted about the Minsk II agreement.

There is the type who say palestinians should resist... They say if hamas never attacked

If anyone says this, they don't mean it, because it's completely contradictory. They're lying to you.

I would like ukranians to stop dying but not by giving up part of their land

There's no future resolution to this war that leaves Ukraine with more land than they have today. Continuing the war just means it will end with less Ukranian land and less Ukranians.

It's unlike Palestine because Russia is not fighting a war of extermination and is not trying to drive residents from their homes. The people in the parts of pre-war Ukraine that Russia now controls aren't being massacred or evicted; they are predominantly Russian speakers who had (to be charitable to Ukraine) legitimate grievances with the Ukranian government after the U.S.-backed coup in 2014.

From the Ukrainian perspective, there is actually a benefit to a peace on Russia's terms: Ukraine keeps more of its land and its people stop dying. There's nothing to be gained by continuing the war because it isn't going to turn around. This is again unlike Palestine, where peace on Israeli terms would involve at minimum the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and where western public support for Israel has collapsed.

They think Palestinians should be driven from their homes or exterminated. They don't care how many Palestinians die, so why would they make that argument? I've never heard a zionist say that.

If you care how many Ukranians die, you'd want the war to end sooner rather than later. The peace terms aren't getting any better, so all their government is doing is getting more of their people killed.

[Resources are] finite, as is our capacity to replenish them.

You think this is propaganda?

Arming Ukraine just prolongs a war that's clearly lost. That costs more lives than it saves.

US, Israeli militaries jointly drilled Iran strike during Biden administration

Trump deported fewer people last month than Biden a year ago

What's more important than the nuances of appropriations is the fact that Biden could have stopped giving weapons to a state committing genocide, but didn't.

Everything else he did or didn't do with respect to the situation is comparatively minor.

Why wouldn't they be low after supplying Ukraine and now Israel for so long? They're finite, as is our capacity to replenish them. There's been plenty of reporting on the limits of our ability to do so.

Skepticism is warranted, but it could easily be true.

"Purposefully" is debatable, but whether intentional or by happenstance, damn it really is odd that so many descendants of Nazis are all over my imperial core countries that backed tons of fascist coups over the past 75 years.

There are three types of conspiracy theories:

1. Lizard people live in the hollow earth and mind control world leaders
2. The CIA admitted it on the Congressional record 40 years ago
3. The Enemy of the State zone, where it's plausible but unconfirmed

Take, for example, his near-mantra that the Nazi war of extermination against the USSR was actually a colonial war. He repeats this throughout the book, giving the impression that fascism was created not to defend capital against socialism, but rather as a way of rescuing and perpetuating colonialism in a time where it was under threat. This is not the analysis of the communist movement historically.

I'm not sure there's a meaningful difference in these two views, and I think you could argue each position convincingly without dramatically changing what you take away from the discussion.

Fascism is often defined as turning the super-exploitative mechanisms of imperialism inwards on the metropole. Nazi Germany famously incorporated practices of both British imperialism (concentration camps) and American imperialism (the concept of manifest destiny/lebenstraum, the exterminationist treatment of natives). Imperialism, being the "highest stage of capitalism," can be reasonably compared to fascism, sometimes described as capitalism in (late-stage) decay. The Nazi party may have gained a lot of power early by latching on to anticommunism, but antisemitism was also one of their early policies, and they of course did not limit their violence to only communists. Similarly, the resistance to fascism (while driven primarily by communists) incorporated many other political groups in various popular fronts.

"It's the voters who are wrong, not my genocidal policies"

"Hey why aren't people voting for me, wait, come back"

I have extreme anxiety talking to people I find attractive and have a very hard time reading people’s body language as to when they’re sexually interested, the only time I’ve ever managed to pick up a random person has been basically when I acted like a pick up artist.

Just ask them, word for word, "do you want to go on a date sometime?" It's no more anxiety-inducing than anything else, and you don't have to do any weird pick up artist stuff.

If they are actually interested in you, they'll say yes.

I'm certainly not getting my hopes up, but this being in LA instead of Kabul might have a significant effect on how willingly the rank-and-file will just open up on a crowd.

There's a big Navy base in San Diego; some of the Marines are probably coming from there. Some probably grew up in California, more probably visited LA at some point. Going a few hours to a place where people speak your language and there is an In-and-Out Burger down the street is very different from going halfway across the world to a place where you recognize little and understand far less.

It's simultaneously:

1. The broader U.S. imperial apparatus (e.g., the State Department) understands Israel's importance for the U.S. and backs it for that reason
2. All sorts of minor U.S. politicians who don't really influence foreign policy face a major hurdle from AIPAC if they don't sufficiently support Israel

The U.S. is predominantly running the show, but Israel has agency too, and its state policy involves filtering out U.S. politicians who might oppose its interests as early as possible. This includes a massive amount of pro-Israel propaganda intended for mainstream consumption, harassing professors at colleges, etc.

What about this: give homeless people homes

Yes, some of those "national liberation fighters" were absolute shitbag nazi scum, but not all

If you are fighting against the Allies alongside "shitbag Nazi scum," you are a Nazi sympathizer.

The vast majority of the world sees this clearly.