The Hard Reality: Ukraine’s Last-Gasp Offensive Has Failed : worldnews

[-] Nakoichi@hexbear.net 19 points 1 year ago

What a long strange trip it's been. I remember back in the weeks leading up to the invasion I was posting about it and asking a Russian comrade and some other folks in the Marx Madness discord about the plausibility of all the fear mongering being drummed up by the west and we were all so sure that it was just bullshit noise like most other scare pieces written by western journalists, and then watching it happen in real time while knowing full well that this would be the inevitable outcome, and in spite of that all, this massive campaign of manufacturing consent to support Ukraine and stifle any attempts at peace talks has been pretty surreal.

It's almost an even more blatant example of drumming up nationalist fervor in the imperial core than even what I witnessed during the aftermath of 9/11. Like at least back then there was an actual attack on the US to point to as flimsy justification for war.

[-] reddwarf@feddit.nl 19 points 1 year ago

Do you acknowledge that russia invaded and started a war against Ukraine?

[-] Nakoichi@hexbear.net 21 points 1 year ago

Allow me to answer your question with a question: Do you believe in the right to self determination of people in the Donbas?

[-] Lmaydev@programming.dev 14 points 1 year ago

Through properly monitored and implemented referendums, yeah.

By a random dictatorship well known for destabilising and invading its neighbors, absolutely not.

[-] AntiOutsideAktion@hexbear.net 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Through properly monitored and implemented referendums

You say this shit like it isn't a euphemism.

By a random dictatorship

Democracy

us-foreign-policy

Dictatorship

[-] Nakoichi@hexbear.net 17 points 1 year ago

Come now I am trying to ask questions in an attempt to get them to question the shit they have been immersed in from birth. As excellent a use of that emoji as that is I think we have a miniscule chance to maybe reach this person if we can get the gears turning.

[-] Nakoichi@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

And what gives you the right to determine what "properly monitored and implemented referendums" are?

Also Russia is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie just the same as the US so that argument holds zero water here.

I am genuinely curious what your metrics for what constitutes a legitimate referendum are.

[-] Lmaydev@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago

Nothing to do with me. I'm a programmer lol

Nothing to do with the US. I wouldn't support them invading a neighbor after a bogus vote they arranged. Whataboutism.

Independent monitors to make sure the vote is fair.

[-] Nakoichi@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago

Independent monitors to make sure the vote is fair

And who are these independent monitors?

[-] 420blazeit69@hexbear.net 11 points 1 year ago

The pure (libertarian) socialists' ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

--Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds

This is more of a comment on radlibs and baby anarchists, but it strikes me as appropriate here. It's very easy to idealistically criticize everything that isn't the way it should be. At some point, though, you have to address reality.

[-] Nakoichi@hexbear.net 9 points 1 year ago

Oh yeah I quote from that book all the time at the cash register lol

[-] 420blazeit69@hexbear.net 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"When I pay for this Snickers I'm a glutton, but when I steal it I'm a thief! What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy saying that you judge me for eating a Snickers, so assiduously marketed by 7/11 that it affects cashiers across their entire national footprint."

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[-] brain_in_a_box@hexbear.net 6 points 1 year ago

No answer to that one.

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[-] duderium@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

By a random dictatorship well known for destabilising and invading its neighbors, absolutely not.

Definitely not talking about the USA. You are also not aware of the fact that the USA is sending troops to Peru to back a government that is currently supported by 6% of its people. But I’m sure this has no relevance at all to the situation in Ukraine. Despite its many honest mistakes (centuries of ongoing slavery and genocide), the USA has been overall a force for good in the world!

[-] Washburn@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago

In an ideal world where there was a good-faith international actor or organization who could take the role of moderating a referendum, and the outcome be respected by all parties, that would be ideal. However, no such organization exists. The institutions of the so-called "rules based international order" serve the interests of western hegemony. That is why, for example, Catalonia is not able to have an effective referendum for independence from Spain, and that is a perfectly fine state of affairs; just the way things are. Maybe a diplomatic complaint gets filed somewhere, maybe someone calls out how awful it is that police were interfering with the referendum in 2017, and they're not wrong. But ultimately, nothing fundamentally changes, and that is the point.

Should people just accept the way things are until an ideal situation allows them to improve their lives in a way everyone finds acceptable? What should people do if things are only getting worse, and there are no effective, good-faith actors to mediate the best possible solution?

[-] Nakoichi@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago

until an ideal situation allows them to improve their lives in a way everyone finds acceptable?

Craziest part is that a lot of people that follow that line of thinking have also at least recognized the immediacy of police and prison abolition in the context of places like the US but can't seem to take the next step in applying the same logic to places outside the imperial core.

[-] Skua@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

Large countries invading and annexing stuff is not a solution to any of those problems. It is a regression to an even worse system.

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[-] FaceDeer@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

And zoom, wow those goalposts can move!

Russia invaded the Donbas in 2014. If they had simply sat there and kept just that, I suspect things would have stabilized in the long run. But Russia doesn't actually care about the "self-determination" of the people in the land it attempts to conquer, that's just a convenient excuse it used.

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[-] AntiOutsideAktion@hexbear.net 15 points 1 year ago

Liberals always try to force leftists to 'pledge allegiance' to hyperfocused truisms that they take in isolation and try to make determinative of the entire subject. parenti

I'll bite. Yes. Russia invaded. No. Russia did not start a war with Ukraine. They joined an existing war with Ukraine in progress.

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[-] sharedburdens@hexbear.net 11 points 1 year ago

The jingoism has definitely been beyond anything I'd seen so far, post 9/11 included.

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[-] btbt@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago

Lmao everyone get ready for another thread that’s at the top of active for 3 days

[-] 420blazeit69@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago

I'm doing my part!

spoiler

[-] AnonTwo@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago

I feel very skeptical of this article coming completely out of left field compared to...literally everything else.

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[-] somename@hexbear.net 9 points 1 year ago

I don't think this should really be controversial. Whatever your thought on US aid is, or the war in general, it's incredibly obvious that the counteroffensive was a complete failure. Ukraine gained basically nothing, lost massive amounts of materiel, and countless soldiers were killed. Russia's defensive lines were not breached.

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[-] townfox@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

This comments thread is nuts. I haven’t read anything so obviously propaganda in a while. I wonder whether these comments get quickly buried on Reddit and I’m only seeing them now because Lemmy is so empty

[-] Ram_The_Manparts@hexbear.net 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Have you considered the possibility that reddit is utter fucking dogshit and does in no way provide you a picture of what actually goes on in the world?

You came to lemmy for a reason, right?

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[-] ToxicDivinity@hexbear.net 15 points 1 year ago

If you prefer reddit it's always there for you

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[-] Nakoichi@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago

They get buried on reddit because it is full of liberals, reactionaries, bots, and literal Nazi admins.

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[+] Tosti@feddit.nl 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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[-] DarkGamer@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Pro-Russia propaganda then. Funny how America's right has embraced the west's greatest enemy. When I was a kid I was told the reason communism was bad was because it was tyrannical to those living under it, Russia is still tyrannical but capitalist and now they're totally on board. In hindsight, it was never about the tyranny. It was about profit.

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