purpleworm

Even the adults cannot resist its siren song for even a day, it turns out

I don't get how you can have this pretense of political seriousness after immediately using the term "masses of NPCs."

I feel like it could be a joke about Klan robes (which is also meant to look like a ghost, so I guess it's what you said).

I don't even understand what you're insinuating. The DPRK's goal is to be sanctioned? They wouldn't be doing things differently if they weren't sanctioned? You know they violate the sanctions constantly, and often it's just to do some small amount of normal trade, right?

I don't like Juche, but the point of it in this context isn't to avoid trading with countries, and indeed to considers it better to be able to trade with countries. The goal is to be able to survive not being able to trade in the case where that's the unfortunate reality, something that was only solidified by the experience of the Arduous March. Strategically, it is obviously something they should be maintaining and one of the main reasons they survived.

A) If Le Monde is RT, NYT is Hamas

B) Yeah, the US military is full of disgusting fascists. Do you think that the leftist response to that fact is "Oh, well if the US military does it, that must mean it's cool for other people to do it too, because we believe the US military is a legitimate thing that should continue to exists and not be ripped to atoms"?

Of course, your equivalence isn't that strong when you consider that groups like Azov, which were full of open pogromists (see the origin of the "orc" meme) went from being an openly and doctrinally fash paramilitary to formally folded into the military, where their influence was allowed to spread and members were even tasked with doing things like representing Ukraine to the Greek parliament for some reason.

When some barrack-room boys' club has a picture leaked of them brandishing Swastikas in the US, there's a scandal and sometimes people are fired or there is at least some formal apology as a garbage cover-story is offered. In Ukraine, it's not a leak, it's every other picture that is high enough resolution to make out what that funny patch is (spoiler, it's a totenkopf or lightning bolts or something), or at least that had been true for some time into the war. Even their original logo that they partially rebranded from well into the war was more fascist iconography. But, like, what do you expect? Banderism is popular and has faced almost no challenge, down to that slogan, "slava ukra'ini!" which was another chestnut for OUN-B enjoyers passed right down from their father.

But let's say that it was just like the US military socially. Any leftist should conclude that it should also be like the US military in terms of the prescription: disassembled with prejudice. Bringing the US up here serves no purpose, unless you want to say that their destruction is more urgent because it would do more good for the world, where I would agree with you, but the Nazi symbology has very, very little to do with it.

He's a sick mafioso who wields reaction at his convenience, but what would you guess to be Contra's stance on Navalny was to anyone who didn't bring up Navalny's actual politics? My guess is that she'd to like the other libs and call him a hero who was too brave for this world.

You joke but it seriously might take longer

I am not familiar with this part of the lore. Who does she support and what does she say about them? I assume you're not just talking about the usual people like that transmasc porn actor.

I once went through my stance on this issue and got a very sincere response that what I said "sounds like Kremlin talking points." I asked the person if they've ever actually listened to or read a translation of what the Kremlin says beyond the extremely clipped paraphrasings on NPR and such, and they said no. It's impressive that they could recognize the sound of something they had never heard.

Fortunately for me, I have actually read and listened to speeches by Putin, and could explain to them some of what Russia says regarding Ukraine and the US and the degree to which I think they are correct or incorrect (e.g. Putin does like using revanchist rhetoric and I deeply despise that, and we don't need to talk about his social views).

Anyway, I think the place to start with such people if you're going to talk to them again is to say that reactionaries can and do opportunistically tell the truth. If you're speaking to an American, ou can use any number of things they'd probably be familiar with from Presidential campaigns in the US, where Republican called Biden a senile old fool and they were completely right (but were not speaking from any sort of principled objection). Reactionaries have platforms based on lies that require them to lie a lot, but that doesn't mean that they are devils who are forced to speak only in lies.

So like when Putin says he wants to get rid of Ukro-Nazis, he is almost certainly telling the truth. He doesn't have any problem with fascists, but in Ukraine overwhelmingly the most dedicated enemies of Russia are going to be the hardline nationalists, including the Banderites. That doesn't mean he has any interest in stopping Russo-Nazis, though clearly he also can find them to be a problem for political reasons, from Navalny to Wagner (eventually, after far too long).

You are right. In her most recent video she calls herself a liberal and this time she seems to mean it, even if she can't fully remove the smirk from her face as she says it. And she keeps punching left for no reason and in ways that shouldn't even make sense to a liberal who has, like, actually talked to a Marxist before, even for one tweet.

She supports the only opposition that matters: democrats and socdem video essayists

Trotsky, the inventor of the term "campist", thought that the trial in the process of decapitating the CPUSA would be a great platform to offer testimony to warn the world of the evils of Stalinism and tried to work with the US government to testify. It only fell through because they decided they had no use for him.