I hope so. It's about damn time, tbh.

And to preemptively respond to all the libs who might see this comment and proceed to shit a brick: Russia "winning" this was inevitable from the very beginning. The sooner it is finished, the sooner this particular meat grinder, which was started, exacerbated, and perpetuated by fascists and their NATO backers, can finally be ground to a halt.

Edit: I guess I should have put this in the lemmy.ml worldnews crosspost, since I don't think libs tend to stumble into the hexbear news comm much anymore.

Same vibes as supposed progressives who are sharing pro-Israel PragerU vids after criticizing PragerU on other topics.

Ideally every comrade is vegan, but if for whatever reason you cannot be or are working towards it then at the absolute least you can support those who are and accept that it is the morally correct position instead of all this hoop jumping

Sorry for the cliche response, but really. This.

"My leftism has nothing to do with empathy or recognizing the suffering of others, it has only to do with benefiting those that I deem enough "like me" to be worth my consideration! Leftism is all about making things better for me and my kind! No, that's not reactionary! I'm not a chud! I'm a leftist, really!"

Pigs could well be sapient too. It really depends on where you draw the line for "sapience." If you mean "able to think" or even "self aware" then pigs almost certainly are sapient. If by sapient you mean "of or relating to the human species" then obviously they aren't, but that latter definition has no bearing or point in this discussion. You bloodmouths (that's your wording!) keep trying to find some line you can draw in the sand that makes the torture of non-humans acceptable, but every time that line is examined it turns out it doesn't exist, or at best, it turns out to be such a fuzzy boundary that it consigns tonnes of humans to the same status that's used to justify the treatment of the beings tortured and killed as treats for carnists.

All you've done is admit that you think the suffering of others is fine and "worth it" for the tasty results, so long as those who are suffering are sufficiently different than you.

The question is if animals should be emoathized with in the same way historical slaves are.

That's a slimy phrasing the question in a way that immediately lets you off the hook for your choice to ignore and perpetuate suffering because it makes it seem like the question of non-human suffering hinges on non-humans being "the same as" human slaves. It's the old "well, obviously pigs and cows aren't quite as intellectually complex as humans therefore anything we do to them for the sake of humans enjoying treats is fine. What, do you think pigs and cows should be able to vote or learn to read?"

In other words, the answer to your question about whether we should empathize "in the same way" is no, not the "same way," but we absolutely should and must empathize with them as fellow sentient beings capable of emotions, joy, suffering, pleasure, pain just like humans, and recognize that the way we torture and murder billions of them every year for profit (and "taste") is one of the greatest crimes in the history of our species.

Your entire premise of who deserves your empathy is still based on how much someone is "like you" in whatever arbitrary ways that allow you to maintain the distinctions you've already made based on your comfort and convenience. And that part is the same as slave owners who would make similar arbitrary distinctions about how "different from themselves" their victims are.

Yes, sentient beings deserve your empathy. It's not at all a difficult conclusion to reach if you have any interest in being honest with yourself.

The "I'm happy about it" part might be mildly insensitive phrasing, but nothing more. Everything she said wouldn't be out of place as a comment here, not deserving of the dunk tank.

A word spoken of only in the past tense.

Ukraine is the country under attack

Yes, the Nazi-run Ukrainian government started attacking the Donbass region of Ukraine in an attempt to ethnically cleanse that region of the majority Russian-speaking population. Fortunately, Russia eventually entered into that civil war on the side of those people.

supporting the nation that is a direct victim of imperialism is preferable

Then you should be supporting Russia, since it is the country opposing the imperialist US/NATO (which I hope you have a better understanding of, given SeventyTwoTrillion's response to your other comment). Ukraine is being privatized and sold off for pennies to western the Bourgeoisie even when those same western interests have blocked all attempts at peace at every turn, perpetuating the war as long as they still have Ukrainians to sacrifice.

even if that involves the lesser evil of alignment with the US military.

lol. The US is the greatest evil here, the evil that couped Ukraine's government in 2014, who has funded neo-nazis there since even before, who has stymied peace over and over, and indeed is the main reason this war even started.

No, critical support for Russia is anti-imperialist.

I didn't write the following, but it is a good summary as to why it should be the position of Marxists and leftists in general to critically support Russia especially with respect to the SMO. It was a response to someone else naively saying they just didn't like war in general and this war is just one capitalist state fighting a proxy war against another. While it's understandable to feel that way, given the amount of propaganda we're force-fed in the west, it is not materialist and it is completely failing to see the bigger picture. The person who wrote the response is @SimulatedLiberalism@hexbear.net.

and this struggle is between two capitalist empires which both want to do more capitalism, so there's no benefit to either side winning

I keep seeing this take cropping up in online Western leftist circle and to be very honest, I always consider this to be the laziest takes on war for people claiming to be on the left.

This is no different than saying that there is no difference for the left when it comes to whether the North or the South wins in the American Civil War because neither of them was socialist. Well, would it surprise you that Marx wrote an entire collection of essays just on analyzing the American Civil War?

To quote Lenin from his Lecture on “The Proletariat and the War”, October 1 (14), 1914:

For a Marxist clarifying the nature of the war is a necessary preliminary for deciding the question of his attitude to it. But for such a clarification it is essential, first and foremost, to establish the objective conditions and concrete circumstances of the war in question. It is necessary to consider the war in the historical environment in which it is taking place, only then can one determine one’s attitude to it. Otherwise, the resulting interpretation will be not materialist but eclectic.

Depending on the historical circumstances, the relationship of classes, etc., the attitude to war must be different at different times. It is absurd once and for all to renounce participation in war in principle. On the other hand, it is also absurd to divide wars into defensive and aggressive. In 1848, Marx hated Russia, because at that time democracy in Germany could not win out and develop, or unite the country into a single national whole, so long as the reactionary hand of backward Russia hung heavy over her.

In order to clarify one’s attitude to the present war, one must understand how it differs from previous wars, and what its peculiar features are.

We can write entire essays about the war in Ukraine, and it is anything but “a war between American and Russian capitalists”.

For one, if this is about Russia expanding its capital, why is the Russian Central Bank doing everything it can (including rate hikes and devaluing the ruble) to undermine Putin’s effort to achieve economic self-sufficiency in the face of unprecedented sanctions, and directly aiding the Western imperialist cause? If anything, it is stifling the expansion of Russian capital.

Such narrative crumbles at the slightest inspection of what is actually going on within the Russian political and economic structures, and points to a more fundamental division that Michael Hudson had pointed out regarding the conflict between finance vs industrial capitalism.

And we’re not even getting to the wider geopolitical implications of the war in Ukraine yet - what does it mean for Western imperialism? The anti-colonial struggles of the Global South? The effects on global financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO) and the efforts to decouple from such oppressive structures (which is what de-dollarization is all about).

We have to ask ourselves, what would a fascist victory in Ukraine mean for left wing movements in Eastern Europe? What could the total subjugation of Russia - a country that has large scale military equipments, raw resources and minerals, and agricultural products - to Western capital mean for the anti-colonial movements in the Global South?

Leftists who refuse to apply a materialist and historical method to understand the world’s events will inevitably fail to see the underlying currents of the global state of events, and as such they cannot predict where the world is heading and will not be able to position themselves to take advantage of the impending crisis.

After all, it was WWI that resulted in an explosion of socialist movements within the imperialist European states, why? Because the socialists back then actually combined theory and practice (what Gramsci referred to as praxis) to take advantage of the predicament.

Just so happens that your characterization of events is identical to Russia's.

A hexbear calling another hexbear a Putin Shill. Never thought I'd see the day. Unfortunately for you,@ProxyTheAwesome@hexbear.net's characterization happens to line up with what has been demonstrated to be actually true. Once again, it turns out that reality has a material bias.

I wouldn't trust the narrative provided by a capitalist state if they told me it was raining in the middle of a hurricane but I'm just built different I guess.

That's exactly what you're doing, though. You're trusting the narrative provided by the world hegemon, the very worst of capitalist states. And you're regurgitating that narrative for them. It's pretty gross.

You aren't seeing it because you haven't been paying attention.

I didn't write the following, but it is a good summary as to why it should be the position of Marxists and leftists in general to critically support Russia especially with respect to the SMO. It was a response to someone else naively saying they just didn't like war in general and this war is just one capitalist state fighting a proxy war against another, similar to what you're saying. While it's understandable to feel that way, given the amount of propaganda you're force-fed, it is not materialist and it is completely failing to see the bigger picture. The person who wrote the response is @SimulatedLiberalism@hexbear.net.

and this struggle is between two capitalist empires which both want to do more capitalism, so there's no benefit to either side winning

I keep seeing this take cropping up in online Western leftist circle and to be very honest, I always consider this to be the laziest takes on war for people claiming to be on the left.

This is no different than saying that there is no difference for the left when it comes to whether the North or the South wins in the American Civil War because neither of them was socialist. Well, would it surprise you that Marx wrote an entire collection of essays just on analyzing the American Civil War?

To quote Lenin from his Lecture on “The Proletariat and the War”, October 1 (14), 1914:

For a Marxist clarifying the nature of the war is a necessary preliminary for deciding the question of his attitude to it. But for such a clarification it is essential, first and foremost, to establish the objective conditions and concrete circumstances of the war in question. It is necessary to consider the war in the historical environment in which it is taking place, only then can one determine one’s attitude to it. Otherwise, the resulting interpretation will be not materialist but eclectic.

Depending on the historical circumstances, the relationship of classes, etc., the attitude to war must be different at different times. It is absurd once and for all to renounce participation in war in principle. On the other hand, it is also absurd to divide wars into defensive and aggressive. In 1848, Marx hated Russia, because at that time democracy in Germany could not win out and develop, or unite the country into a single national whole, so long as the reactionary hand of backward Russia hung heavy over her.

In order to clarify one’s attitude to the present war, one must understand how it differs from previous wars, and what its peculiar features are.

We can write entire essays about the war in Ukraine, and it is anything but “a war between American and Russian capitalists”.

For one, if this is about Russia expanding its capital, why is the Russian Central Bank doing everything it can (including rate hikes and devaluing the ruble) to undermine Putin’s effort to achieve economic self-sufficiency in the face of unprecedented sanctions, and directly aiding the Western imperialist cause? If anything, it is stifling the expansion of Russian capital.

Such narrative crumbles at the slightest inspection of what is actually going on within the Russian political and economic structures, and points to a more fundamental division that Michael Hudson had pointed out regarding the conflict between finance vs industrial capitalism.

And we’re not even getting to the wider geopolitical implications of the war in Ukraine yet - what does it mean for Western imperialism? The anti-colonial struggles of the Global South? The effects on global financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO) and the efforts to decouple from such oppressive structures (which is what de-dollarization is all about).

We have to ask ourselves, what would a fascist victory in Ukraine mean for left wing movements in Eastern Europe? What could the total subjugation of Russia - a country that has large scale military equipments, raw resources and minerals, and agricultural products - to Western capital mean for the anti-colonial movements in the Global South?

Leftists who refuse to apply a materialist and historical method to understand the world’s events will inevitably fail to see the underlying currents of the global state of events, and as such they cannot predict where the world is heading and will not be able to position themselves to take advantage of the impending crisis.

After all, it was WWI that resulted in an explosion of socialist movements within the imperialist European states, why? Because the socialists back then actually combined theory and practice (what Gramsci referred to as praxis) to take advantage of the predicament.