What do you mean "western leftists"? This is just two random people from r/HistoryMemes
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
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For posting all the anonymous reactionary bullshit that you can't post anywhere else.
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Anyone can larp online. What matters is if these people actually do anything IRL which I doubt.
I get what you're saying, but their comments online helps spread further misinformation and anti-communism, even if it doesn't seem like it does much, that still influences people that will come across it without prior knowledge, will see it's a heavily upvoted comment and will see it as truth.
This is especially weird because no one denies the famine or says the victims were all kulaks (and I think kulaks who died were often outright killed rather than starving), the famine is recognized as being a tragedy that caused great suffering among the peasantry. Like, the number gets exaggerated (and even what they give in the OOP is probably an exaggeration) but even if a tenth of that number died, that's still a massive tragedy and not at all a desirable outcome in the eyes of the so-called "tankies."
It's one of the most irritating things about liberals that they literally just don't understand socialists' assertions to the point that you need to question if they've ever even been directly exposed to one such person explaining their positions.
That's the whole point of straw men, they're really easy to beat up and they can't fight back. It's doubtful any of these assholes have ever met or interacted with a "tankie".
A tankie? Oh you mean like that Ro Kahnna guy?
They dont care about the dead either btw, they never mention any of the other countries effected by the famine, which were worse, its always Ukraine. Its always and only ukraine. (The answer is nazis)
I think Ukraine might have actually been hit the hardest if we're dividing it by nations, but you're right certainly that the narrative falls apart when you consider that Russia itself was quite effected, and the part of Ukraine that was effected was mainly eastern Ukraine, which even then was much more Russian than the west. The idea of it being a genocide by Russians against Ukrainians is just complete garbage and the answer is indeed Nazis doing "accusation in a mirror".
I thought Kazakhstan got it worse but it doesnt really matter, its all about the narrative for these people.
I could be wrong, there's a cottage industry of pumping the numbers for Ukraine specifically, so my view is probably distorted. Kazakhstan was minimally hit comparably hard, so your original point remains regardless, as you say.
If I remember correctly, Ukraine lost more in real numbers, but Kazakhstan lost more in proportion to their population size. I don't remember the percentages.
Yeah, they need to straw man otherwise they would have to concede that we are right. At this point it's easy to spot who is talking out of ignorance and who is talking out of malice to further their political beliefs.
You shouldn't. You should just continue to be upset about two dingdongs on Reddit forever.
Oh this is an easy one. You shouldn't. Solidarity relies on having a shared goal/purpose. We of the global south have diametrically opposed goals to the average western treatlerite "leftist". Obviously there are some genuine leftists in the west but they are far outnumbered unfortunately.
There's a deep unseriousness that permeates western leftist organizing, unfortunately, though I will say that younger generations are beginning to become more serious. Here in the belly of the beast, the US Empire, Gen Z is far more friendly to communism (not socdem "socialism") than any prior generation:
What we are witnessing is the gradual death of imperialism and a drying up of the superprofits used to bribe the labor aristocracy here. There are tons of growing pains, lots of Red Scare nonsense to sort through, but every party meeting I attend I see new faces. People are increasingly finding their own interests aligning with the global south. There is a quantitative buildup for qualitative shifts, and this inflexion point is fast approaching.
As a western communist, my comrades and I have the very difficult task of trying to instill discpline and a sense of seriousness in organizing to a population that has largely been bribed out of revolutionary fervor for generations. However, hope is not lost, and no matter how difficult our task, it's increasingly getting more feasible.
We will win, comrade.
However, hope is not lost, and no matter how difficult our task, it's increasingly getting more feasible.
Soooo much this. Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. Revolution is only possible if we believe that it is. Lenin believed it was possible but not in his lifetime. Lenin got one and only one thing wrong and that was it. We can never know when The Moment will come and all we can do right now is to try to grow these organizations but more importantly to discipline them. To employ or advocate for rigorous vetting standards (LOOKING AT YOU NYC DSA although your rejection of propaganda about china is cool and good) would be a good start. Of course it seems that on some level the DSA is highly compromised but from what I have heard from folks basically every party is compromised in the US. We have been simmering in the sauce for so long it's like the first Matrix movie how just random ass street food vendors suddenly turn into super powered agents of the state.
They hardly fuckin need COINTELPRO when mother fuckers like the person in that DSA leak just do it for them.
Yep, well said! It's hard. not easy nor impossible.
I actually had a conversation with a coworker yesterday. He used to be a pastor and grew up in a super evangelical family. Now he has a podcast that is borderline liberation theology and an interrogation of right wing christianity. We got to talking and we were on our work phones but conversation basically led from MLK to Lenin because it is real easy when talking about current events to bring up the riot is the language of the unheard line and then from there get to Lenin and the opening passage of state and revolution about the coopting of revolutionary figures while sanitizing them.
Excellent way to bring up Lenin! Lenin's observations are invaluable and can help us analyze our present conditions. It's important to carry on his legacy and re-analyze our existing world, just like Lenin did with Marx and re-analyzed for his era, the era after imperialism had solidified but before there was a single international dictatorship of the bourgeoisie helmed by one country, the US Empire.
DSA isn't compromised. It's just that as a "big tent" org with no vetting standards wrecker shit is going to happen.
We should want a space for angry libs to go and learn what the left is truly about. What we shouldn't do is allow them into spaces where they can do dumb shit without some form of vetting. But I will stand by the DSA being open to help people grow into comrades as a necessary part of the movement. It just needs to fill this role better.
with no vetting standards
That is literally what I meant by compromised.
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Oh I got a cowbee response I'm honored. Always like reading your posts/comments I always come away thinking how well thought out and well read they are. (As a longtime lemmygrad/hexbear/.ml lurker only recent poster)
I largely agree that the western left appears to be shifting as material conditions for the labor aristocracy worsen and the fangs of imperialism turn inwards.
At the same time I'm sure you can understand that at this moment in history calls from the western left for solidarity from the global south are slightly ridiculous and clearly from a place of privilege.
You flatter me too much, comrade. I'm a humble student of the generations of revolutionaries that precede us, trying to deepen my understanding through dialogue, and figure out better ways of persuading people to our shared cause.
I do agree, calls for solidarity from the global south as the Empire itself is finally truly feeling its own fangs (at least, the white population is finally beginning to feel it, people of color, queer folk, disabled folk, etc have felt it since the outset of this genocidal settler-colony-turned-empire began) is a bit absurd. Insulting, even. My hope was more to turn it into a point about revolutionary optimism, in that hopefully soon there won't be a US Empire to speak of outside of history books.
The water droplets may not bore through the stone today, tomorrow, or even in the next decade, but we will win, and that victory is closer than I think many of us realize if this pace of radical change continues.
Thanks for your thoughts!
Oh I got a cowbee response I'm honored. Always like reading your posts/comments I always come away thinking how well thought out and well read they are. (As a longtime lemmygrad/hexbear/.ml lurker only recent poster)
Same! Cowbee is like the ML Mr. Miyagi out here. Always so implacably calm and collected with a seemingly supernatural level of patience and generosity when it comes to dealing with all the libs on lemmy.
His comments were very helpful for me translating my political thoughts to English.
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Obviously there are some genuine leftists in the west but they are far outnumbered unfortunately.
It is very hard to organise. People will discuss Marx or Lenin and then 5 seconds later they're frothing at the mouth saying things that sound like they came out of the mouth of the most diehard anti-communist. And then they have the gall to accuse you of having fallen for "propaganda."
What I think leads to the exact scenario you describe is a widespread, persistent and self-defeating tendency among many western leftists (白左), the failure to fully deprogram themselves from the liberal frameworks they ostensibly reject. While they may adopt the language of anti-imperialism, Marxism, or decolonization, their analysis remains tethered to idealist assumptions inherited from bourgeois liberalism: an overemphasis on individual identity over material conditions, a moralistic rather than dialectical understanding of power, and a faith in discourse, representation, or symbolic gestures as sufficient engines of change. This results in a house of cards, an ostensibly radical posture built not on historical materialism or class struggle, but on the shifting sands of liberal morality. Consequently, their “anti-imperialism” often collapses into performative outrage or selective solidarity, unable to grapple with the concrete contradictions of global capitalism, state power, or revolutionary praxis. True internationalism demands more than repackaged liberal guilt; it requires breaking cleanly with the epistemological foundations of liberalism and grounding one’s politics in the real movements of oppressed peoples, not in abstract ideals filtered through a Western gaze.
The western left would be so much better if they read Mao.
Unfortunately Mao was an authoritarian tankie and reading his work will infect you with the tankie mind virus. 
Some of the real leftists need to set up an org to do a war time style propoganda leaflet dropping but its just annotated copies of the 红宝书 being dropped from drones across major cities and rural communities.
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Let's assume it's true that the farm laborers of Ukraine didn't know how to farm and that knowledge was only held by the farm owner kulaks. That's a really weird thing to say, but we'll go with it. I'm still glad that dekulakization put an end to this class of owners that were ruling through antisemitic violence.
I think the reason I find liberal whining about the fate of the kulaks so alienating is mostly personal and particular. They're completely denying the stories of my ancestors, jews driven out of Ukraine and Moldova by pogroms. It's really annoying on a personal level. But on a broader level, not about me, it seems that these libs don't know that these kulaks also perpetrated the holocaust in Ukraine as soon as they had the chance. I would think that would be inexcusable. I'm guessing most liberals just don't know that this happened?
Most liberals don't know shit about what they're talking about and simply parrot redditisms that pass the vibe check
I almost never see slava ukraini libs talk about the OUN-B or anything like that. The few times I've seen it discussed with them, it usually got dismissed as "Russian talking points".
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"leftists"
You can find people like this all around the planet. I don't think Western is even really the right epithet, the more useful distinction is imperial core vs periphery. Imperial core chauvinists who blather on about things they don't understand because others' oppression doesn't matter to them vs. periphery chauvinists who do the same thing but directed towards themselves or their neighbors. You can go to Venezuela and find these exact same people but they're going off on local indigenous people as well and clapping for sanctions and bombing campaigns.
But you will find greater political development in the periphery, and we should look to them as valuable sources of information and people with whom to have solidarity. And we should look to imperial core formations trying to build the same types of projects and have solidarity with them as well.
As a Western Leftist, you absolutely should not give a fuck about us.
All I can say is there is a reason no one feels need to dunk on non-AES nations that no longer exist.
It is because they have to actively suppress the future.
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