I hate how “anti-war” has been hijacked by these people to mean, let imperialist countries invade whoever they want with no consequences. (in the case of tankies, any imperialist country that isn’t in NATO).

  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
    92·
    7 days ago

    Wait, why are tankies siding with magas? I’ve been intentionally away for a minute, what did I miss?

    Did something major happen in the last three days? Or is this the usual redirection of hate after we’ve found something to rally around?

    • lurklurk@lemmy.world
      6·
      6 days ago

      I don’t think the average American has that level of planning. It’s more likely people just don’t like Russia invading other countries willy nilly

  • Pavel Chichikov@lemm.eeEnglish
    341·
    7 days ago

    Russia invading Ukraine is wrong. But the world is full of wrong things. And until America fixes its problems at home, it is deeply immoral to drain the economy and weapon reserves and put our citizenry at risk. Anyone who believes the politicians usual garbage about “protecting democracy” and “standing up to imperialism” is a moron.

    • trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world
      161·
      6 days ago

      Did you know that “own people first/eigen volk eerst” is the slogan of a Belgian far-right neo-nazi party?

      There is nothing immoral about helping a people in need.

      • highduc@lemmy.ml
        313·
        6 days ago

        You’re very naive to think the US war machine is “helping a people in need”. Even Boris Johnson admitted this is a proxy war. They’re sending ukrainians to die just to mess with Russia. They have no chance of winning anything.

        • bytheclouds@lemmy.world
          131·
          6 days ago

          Do you think we have no free will here in Ukraine or something? It’s so easy for you to dehumanize us as some puppets who have no agency and are “sent”, “made”, blah blah blah. Fuck off.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            7·
            6 days ago

            They don’t care about you, they care about the idea of you. Just like how so many idealists self-righteously “fighting” the genocide of Palestinians by being armchair warriors on the internet have never actually talked to any Palestinians. Or even tried to.

            Stay safe, my friend. I am sorry America will likely not have your back much longer.

            • highduc@lemmy.ml
              14·
              6 days ago

              Just to offer you a perspective on what other people think, not that you asked for it but idk, don’t read if you’re not interested :) I’ll be brief.

              America not having their back might bring about a truce treaty, which would stop the war, the bombs, the people getting killed. I think across the political spectrum from “tankies” to Trump supporters and everything in between, lots of people are hoping for a fast peaceful outcome.

                • highduc@lemmy.ml
                  13·
                  6 days ago

                  It’s not my land to give, it just seems to me that trying to take it back doesn’t work, and I question the motives of western states and if they genuinely believe in victory, or if they’re just fueling the war to weaken their enemy.

          • highduc@lemmy.ml
            16·
            6 days ago

            I think our free will is being manipulated by the media, manufacturing consent. This goes for people in Ukraine, Europe, the US, Russia, everywhere.

            There are some good Youtube videos on the subject if you’re interested.

            • bytheclouds@lemmy.world
              4·
              6 days ago

              I think you would find that bombs being dropped at night on your city, country, your friends and loved ones, schools, theatres ans hospitals, by a “brotherly nation”, whose leader speaks a lot about your country being fake, over the pretence of fighting some “nazis” apparently, would do much more to directly influence your free will than Youtube.

          • highduc@lemmy.ml
            15·
            6 days ago

            Isn’t this idea that the conflict was intended to last only 3 days something the media says to portray the russians as weak and incompetent?

            Afaik at this stage of the conflict they’re fighting so Ukraine can reclaim its lost territories. They’ve been at this stage for a long time and it doesn’t seem doable. This is why many lefties are against the war. Because if you know there’s no chance to win but you keep fueling the flames, you’re just sending those people to die just to weaken the enemy, which is a pretty shitty thing to do.

            Anyway this is just one point of view, might be a very stupid one, but I think it’s worth taking into consideration.

            • WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world
              4·
              6 days ago

              Russia clearly stated at the start it would only take them 3 days. Russian officers had pre-booked tables in Kyiv restaurants on the 4th day. They were that confident it was going to be over that quickly.

        • trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world
          1·
          6 days ago

          Boris Johnson is well known for being an idiot. Ukrainians are fighting for their land and their freedom, they’re not being sent by americans.

    • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
      6·
      7 days ago

      At this stage, since they have fought so well, I’d guess there would just be a much smaller, much weaker Ukraine.

      We will likely see this happen now Trump is president. He is too egotistical to not take revenge on them for not playing along with his quid pro quo back in 2019.

      The Ukrainian flags in republican yards never meant a thing… They sold Ukraine out at the polls.

    • bigFab@lemmy.world
      23·
      7 days ago

      That includes only battlefield context. Truth is Russia will at the very best economically and politically fall into a 3rd world country level the moment it loses the war. More probably dissolve into smaller states = there would be no Russia as we know it today anymore.

  • justOnePersistentKbinPlease@fedia.io
    841·
    8 days ago

    Remember that the original Canadian intent of the UN Peacekeepers was that they would forcibly create and enforce peace.

    It was the USSR and the USA that objected to the concept.

    • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
      372·
      8 days ago

      Similarly if most countries have a mutual defence pact, no one country will be able to invade another without being at war with literally the whole world.

      • yesman@lemmy.world
        342·
        8 days ago

        I’m afraid that mutual defense isn’t as iron clad as you think. If Article 5 of NATO ever gets triggered you’ll get a masterclass on weaseling out of obligations. It’s ironic because Ukraine may already be receiving the kind of support a full NATO member is entitled to.

        • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
          211·
          8 days ago

          Unfortunately with Trump the US will try to weasel their way out. Europe knows too well what happens.

          • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
            10·
            8 days ago

            This does seem likely with Trump… but he’s also in bed with the military-industrial complex, which never misses a chance to get contracts.

        • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
          92·
          8 days ago

          It only works if you actually commit to it.

          But imagine the implications if a country did not commit to it (bar an obvious one like Hungary or Turkey). They’ll likely get sanctioned, probably will have trouble entering any useful alliances for the next decade or so because no one trusts them anymore.

          • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
            72·
            8 days ago

            If one didn’t, sure. But what happens when NATO as a whole doesn’t defend Poland? What’s Poland going to do? Or even just Trump’s US?

            • Eatspancakes84@lemmy.world
              3·
              6 days ago

              The trick is that (Eastern) Europe is filled with NATO troops and material from all countries. You would need an extremely nasty retreat of these troops if you do not support (say) Poland. Also at the moment (officially) the US has stationed nuclear weapons in 6 European countries, and there are very likely more also in the form of submarines that are not known to the public. Retreating means leaving those weapons in Russian hands. Then again, maybe Trump does not care about that.

            • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
              1·
              7 days ago

              Well ideally if you don’t want to be a part of an agreement, you just tell the people you made the agreement with that you are no longer a part of it.

              If you do so amicably, parties may be fine with it it may not have bad effects. If you wait till one of those counties is being invaded and back out, it likely would not end amicably, and with them having to switch over to a wartime economy, they may cut all trade moving forward with the member who screwed them over. Could cost the U.S. trillions in trade annually.

              Aka it would be more profitable to support your allies, or get out of the agreement early, but that doesn’t guarantee counties don’t say… Why should we trade with someone who would hang us out to dry? And it hurts our economy anyway.

    • The Octonaut@mander.xyz
      8·
      7 days ago

      Ireland has peacekeepers between Israel and Lebanon right now. They wouldn’t be there if “create peace” was one of the missions.

      Peace must exist, however briefly, and then the peacekeepers place themselves in harm’s way to keep the peace.

      Extend the mission to militarily “create peace” and suddenly you are just NATO/USA. How can either side trust a peace that was enforced upon them and not call it a defeat, whose borders are disputed for eternity? Every nationalist who wants to stir sentiment can just say “look what the British/Americans/UN imposed on us”. Outside forces drawing borders is pretty much the cause of 90% of warfare, civil and otherwise, for the last 80 years.

    • cygnus@lemmy.ca
      4·
      8 days ago

      A Canadian was also the principal author of the UN declaration on human rights, and another was the reason NATO is a political as well as military alliance. We just keep winning!

  • Cruxifux@feddit.nl
    734·
    7 days ago

    I don’t understand how other communists can defend Russia at this point. It feels to me like most of them forget that Russia is no longer a communist country.

    They’re capitalists. Putin is often using christo-fascist tactics. He’s also pushing for Russian imperialism in very capitalistic ways. Also, Russia was 100 percent the agitators here.

    Just because it challenges US worldwide hegemony doesn’t automatically make it good, boys.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
      41·
      7 days ago

      Tankies might as well be called CINOs — communists in name only. Their defining feature is reverence towards authoritarian leaders. They revere Putin and Xi as “strong” leaders and completely ignore how little their regimes have in common with the socialist workers paradise Marx envisioned.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        23·
        7 days ago

        My favorite is when they argue that China has billionaires and private property and a stock market because Marx said you have to go through capitalism to get to communism. Which… doesn’t somehow also apply to the West?

        • RandomGen1@lemm.ee
          37·
          7 days ago

          What makes you say they don’t think it applies to the West? I don’t follow your logic there.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
            141·
            7 days ago

            Because if you tell them China is just as capitalist as the West, they tell you it absolutely isn’t and is a communist country.

            • Cruxifux@feddit.nl
              54·
              7 days ago

              Ok but China is absolutely not as capitalist as the west, and that’s an insane thing to say.

            • RandomGen1@lemm.ee
              46·
              7 days ago

              I’d buy that line if China wasn’t integrating those large businesses (albeit slowly) into the public sector, something the west is not doing, but rather moving to deregulate more and more (Thanks Trump! /s)

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
                102·
                7 days ago

                And yet it’s still not a communist country. I get that you want it to be a communist country, but it isn’t.

                • RandomGen1@lemm.ee
                  37·
                  7 days ago

                  You won’t see me argue that China is communist, it’s socialist as it stands now with the stated goal of becoming communist

      • lad@programming.devEnglish
        8·
        7 days ago

        I especially despise how Putin and Xi were seen as ‘strong’ leaders, but when shit hit the fan in the last 5 years, they just hid away from repercussions

      • InputZero@lemmy.world
        6·
        7 days ago

        Do you know what you’ve done!? You’ve summoned him! He’s like Beetlejuice, say three Marxist terms and he appears. Combie will be here soon.

  • pfm@scribe.disroot.org
    32·
    7 days ago

    I’m really curious how or why it works. Do they hate US so much that anyone against the US seems a hero to them, despite being off the same kind but pretending to be a communist/socialist?

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
        6·
        7 days ago

        Are they saying that the U.S. was preparing Ukraine for war in 2014… Which Russia had started moving their forces in 2013 and started the invasion in February of 2014. It’s like how people try to say “well Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if Trump had still been president”… When Russia mobilized their troops and equipment and marched them there for the invasion while Trump was still President.

    • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
      32·
      7 days ago

      There is rarely, if ever, support for Putin. What is more typical is a recognition the USSR was a better entity than both what it replaced and what replaced it. So there is usually the connection that the US is the reason Russia is the way it is, which is usually lauded as ‘USA bad’.

      So even though America was the global superpower after the fall of the USSR: Putin, (or at least someone like him), was wanted in power. ‘Keep rootin for Putin’ wasn’t just a pundit book 20 years ago.

      All in all when the goal is eradicating communism at all costs, you wind up with war mongering right wingers in their stead: and that’s the perspective every communist I have interacted with has come from.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
      98·
      7 days ago

      A surprising portion of people in the northern hemisphere think that a person having lots of money is literally exactly the same thing as a person having lots of blessings from [deity]. They see that Russia is run by oligarchs, and that since those oligarchs command lots of currency, they are inherently chosen by [diety] to always be correct.

    • MoistMogwai@lemmy.world
      22·
      7 days ago

      My Mom said Russia had to attack Ukraine, because they were trying to join NATO. I asked why she thinks Ukraine was trying to join NATO. I’m still digging for a bedrock of logic.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
        319·
        7 days ago

        Part of the problem with game theory and finding a “bedrock of logic” is that game theoretical analysis is often recursive. It’s not a stack of prepositions and conclusions; it’s often a loop. Sort of like a resonance structure. I’ve got my gun aimed at you because your gun is aimed at me because my gun is aimed at you … recursively forever.

        My understanding is that the US/NATO and the USSR/Russia, ie the two sides of the Cold War, have maintained a sense of peace and security by maintaining a buffer between the two sides. A buffer of distance, which is relevant because it relates to the time it takes nuclear weapons to travel from one adversarial territory to the other.

        The Cuban Missile Crisis was basically caused because Cuba was too close to the USA for nuclear missiles to be stored in a way that the balance of MAD could be maintained.

        The public declaration (by Kamala Harris, incidentally) that Ukraine would join NATO is a violation of a promise made by Reagan that NATO would not extend to the border of Russia.

        It’s similar to the USSR’s attempt to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, in the sense that it’s simply too close.

        That’s my understanding of the motivation behind Russia’s invasion. I’m quite new to all this though.

        So it’s less like “Stop resisting!” and more like “Drop the gun!”

        My suspicion is that MAD overall is diminishing in its power to stabilize the world militarily, as a result of new military technologies coming into play (space-based weapons, drones, AI, hypersonic missiles, iron dome scenarios) as well as more and more nuclear powers coming online, and the increasing probability of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of non-state actors.

        And finally there’s China’s overall rise toward the role of hegemonic power.

        The Cold War basically organized itself (and hence organized the influences that minimized military action) around two major powers. Now there’s a third major power that’s rapidly accelerating toward becoming the major power. It’s changing all the equations that balanced out in the 1970s, 80s, etc.

        • trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world
          13·
          6 days ago

          The reason Ukraine wanted to join NATO is that Russia already had occupied Crimea and part of Georgia before. All that after Ukraine gave up all the nukes they still had from USSR times. Ukraine was not a threat to Russia before the occupation of Crimea.

        • BenLeMan@lemmy.world
          124·
          6 days ago

          Distance is really not much of a factor any more, and hasn’t been for a long time. Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg can already be reached by submarine launched cruise missiles in less than 15 minutes (conservative estimate). And let’s face it, with MAD being a thing, any kind of nuclear strike is likely to escalate into all-out nuclear annihilation, anyway. This makes any attempt at overwhelming the opponent a losing proposition. So in that sense nothing has changed since, oh, the mid-1970s?

          Then there is the argument that Russia doesn’t want a long shared border with NATO. Guess what, their aggression has caused Finland and Sweden to join NATO, which has only added to their shared border with NATO. That they already had with Poland and the Baltic states (there is no treaty nor official document prohibiting NATO expansion).

          And finally, how hard is it to understand that NATO is a defensive alliance? It is neither politically geared to nor militarily capable of mounting a conquest of Russia. The fact that so many of Russia’s neighbors are eager to join the alliance should be a pretty strong hint as to why it needs to exist in the first place. It is Russia that cannot be trusted, not NATO. And you can’t make your neighbor “drop the gun” in their own house. The Ukrainians were stupid enough already to return their nuclear arsenal to Russia in return for explicit security guarantees. What a mistake that was.

          Don’t even get me started on how China is criminally underrated as a manifest threat to world peace…

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
          7·
          6 days ago

          The Cuban Missile Crisis was basically caused because Cuba was too close to the USA for nuclear missiles to be stored in a way that the balance of MAD could be maintained.

          The so-called Cuban Missile Crisis was caused by Kennedy moving nuclear missiles into Turkey, within striking range of the USSR. It never would have happened if Kennedy hadn’t decided to start swinging his dick around.

  • EvilHaitianEatingYourCat@lemmy.world
    343·
    7 days ago

    I don’t even know what they (western tankies) get from this. Average dumbass Russian only cares about his ass, and the pretended “glory”. There is no “Conservative brotherhood which spans across the ocean”. They don’t speak your language, they don’t have the same problem, and they hate YOU with passion, because on average, they are racist and dumb.

    So my only hypothesis is that tankies think (??) that by going “contrarian” they show how smart they are, and that “did the research” lol.

    • glassware@lemmy.world
      26·
      6 days ago

      I’m not a tankie, but I probably am what everyone in this thread is calling a “tankie”, so here’s my answer:

      Yes, it is extremely bad that Russia invaded Ukraine. The ideal scenario would have been Ukraine quickly repelling the invasion when it happened. But we don’t live in magic fantasy world where everyone gets what they deserve. We live in the real world, where Ukraine cannot possibly defeat Russia in a war. The option which saves the most Ukrainian lives is a negotiated peace, with Russia getting much more of what they want than we would like.

      All that is achieved by pouring more weapons into Ukraine is prolonging the meatgrinder for years, wiping out an entire generation of Ukrainians and risking a global nuclear war.

      • lurklurk@lemmy.world
        7·
        6 days ago

        Ukraine had a negotiated peace before the 2022 invasion, after the 2014 invasion. Why would a 2025 negotiated peace be any more reliable?

    • caboose2006@lemmy.ca
      32·
      7 days ago

      No, it’s because “America bad”. There’s a lot of reasons to hate America, and the drip feeding of munitions to Ukraine is one of them. I think we should have been sending everything from the start with the only restriction being no hitting civilian targets. A million 155 shells a week. Tomahawks. Predator drones. Hell, even F-15s. I agree, end the war, but end it in a Ukrainian victory with their borders restored.

    • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
      254·
      7 days ago

      Tankies entire world view is formed around hating the US.

      They will glorify terrible regimes that literally commit genocides and straight up murder thousands of innocents just because that regime is in opposition to US influence.

      They use left wing language, but they do not care about leftist issues. They do not care about disabled people getting focibly euthanised, about anyone who dares critique the regime being forcibly silenced, about minorities being genocided (unless the US or NATO does it), that their “socialist states” literally have billionaires while others starve. They think it’s all US propaganda. (Alternatively, they’ll admit part of it and say it’s for the greater good).

  • lemmylommy@lemmy.world
    282·
    8 days ago

    Just „take your land“?

    Looks to me also like „destroy your culture“ and „torture, maim, rape and kill your friends and family“.

    • doomcanoe@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      15·
      8 days ago

      Well, they did say “Destroy you and take your land”.

      Though I agree that “destroy” is doing some heavy lifting in this sentence.