autismdragon [he/him, comrade/them]

Fair enough.

All the major social media companies I’m aware of are based in Silcon Valley, IE the United States. I’m not saying that foreign governments don’t try to astroturf them, but surely companies based IN america are more likely to be heavily influenced BY American influences (corporate and government)? And surely you should be more afraid of having your opinion influenced by propaganda from the people who actually hold the power over the platform, than from foreign governments trying to infiltrate the platform? Surely you should be more afraid of the powers that be that are actually close to home for you?

This is my thing with people that are afraid of Russia or CPC influence. I’m not a Christian, but I do think that Jesus had a really good damn point when he said “take the beam out of your own eye”. Focus on whats going on in your own neck of the woods.

Its like the “TikTok harvesting data for the Chinese government” controversy, why are we worried about that when American social media companies are harvesting our data right here at home. What rational reason do I have to be more afraid of a foreign government than the one I actually live under the power of?

ETA: Porkroll Posadist (the one with the arthur clenching fist PFP) made a really good post about this here: https://hexbear.net/comment/3714293

And where are those social media companies based?

I’m sure you think you found evidence of a Hexbear user’s “ties to Russia” but I promise that Hexbear is just a bunch of leftist shitposters. Your fear of Russian influence is not healthy nor tied to reality. I’m not even concern trolling here, I’m genuinely concerned for your mental health. This paranoia is not healthy.

The weirder thing is is that I checked their post history and they said they’re conservative, though based on their fear of Russian memes I’m guessing a Never Trumper? Weird.

I dont know for fact, but I treat any political meme like it might.

I don’t really think this is a rational or particularly healthy stance to take on political memes. I can maybe understand if your stance was just “keep the worldnews posts serious”, though I’d disagree with that too. But saying that you’re trying to avoid Russian influence by avoiding memes is… idk. Doesn’t really make sense to me. Political memes aren’t inherently Russian.

You also have to consider Russia’s like, motives here. I don’t really see a reason for them to want to make pudding jokes about DeSantis.

Honestly, you’re not wrong, and DeSantis, being a Disney adult himself, should have understood this.

I’m aware of the existence of Russian “meme warfare” though I think its effect on politics in America is severely overstated.

But uh, how is this meme that you’re complaining about a “Russian meme”. Or are you just under the delusion that all political memes are Russian or something? How is making fun of Desantis for the pudding thing something Russians would do?

I used to be very certain about the “Desantis is the effective fascist we warned you about” thing but more and more his buffoonery comes out, and I don’t think he’ll be president. That said, he’s being pretty effective in Florida despite his buffoonery.

Russian meme

I can actually understand all that very well. Sorry about your negative experience

I do want to mention one thing though

it’s this that made me consider your community dangerous, especially for minority groups.

Our “weaponized anger” is quiet frequently used in defense of minority groups, particularly trans people. She’s gone now but one of our original admins, TransComrade69, was militantly defensive of trans people and it really shaped how our community formed. We also do our best to do the same for other queer people, bipoc, the disabled and nuerodiverse, women, the poor, and (most relevant to the arguments we get into here) people from the global south.

But I actually do understand how our community’s stance can be offputting for some people and wouldnt recommend it to just anyone, even leftists.

Sounds like someone else has already explained the critical support thing to you, I didnt really understand the term at first either and English IS my first language, so I actually understand this one.

I hope you can see that my comrade’s defensive stance is because of past experiances and not anything personal.

I actually dont disagree that people here sometimes make unfair assumptions about the person they’re talking to. I remember the human and understand where they’re coming from and why that assume that though (past experiences with people who are like that). I wish my friends would try to remember the human more too, but I get why they can forget because of their experiences. I hope that makes sense.

No, they don’t want to go to Russia. And you knew that, you’re just being annoying and obstinate.

Your accuse us of obsession over Russia but you’re clearly obsessively paranoid about them if you think NATO disbandment would lead to Russia conquering the United States.

My goal is creating the material conditions for revolution, and for that to happen the global south needs to come out from under the imperialist heel of the United States and its allies. It is a completely necessary step towards communism. That does not mean I think that Russia is communist like you said before. It just means that I think the US and allies are the current greatest evil in the world and I support things that weaken its power. That is pretty much the ML view of geopolitics at its root. If the US and Russia were both equally or near-equally bad imperialist powers doing equally bad things around the world, I would feel differently, but they aren’t.

And I don’t think there’s any evidence that Putin is an insane megalomaniac to that extent. With Hitler there was evidence, it was always part of his ideology. I definitely think its its wild to imply that he has ambitions conquering the US or anything like that. Thats just not based in reality. Based on the evidence I’ve seen, and the peace deals he has offered only to be vetoed by NATO, I dont even think he seeks to reconquer all of Ukraine. I think his invasion, as much as I disagree with it, was mostly motivated by Donbass and NATO encirclement.

American oligarchs are barely infighting. At the end of the day, the capitalist class has class solidarity, even if they quibble over abortion. There’s a communist term (you say you are fine with actual communism, so you shouldnt have a problem with it since its a term Marx invented) called “dictatorship of the bourgeoise”. Thats what Americans live under. The difference between that and a more overt autocracy is basically politeness about it. I won’t deny that the United States has better queer rights than Russia (for now… I’m not confident in how long that will continue to be the case, I am deathly afraid the United States is quickly sliding towards fascism) and I would rather live here than Russia as a bi man. On that we don’t disagree. We disagree on the geopolitical implications of the War in Ukraine. We do not disagree that Russia’s government is bad, or even that Putin did a bad thing by invading.

State level for now . And those states are like half of them. The GOP is gearing up for a genocide, whether they’ll be successful I don’t know. But all my trans friends in the US are scared, including those living in Blue states. All of them wish they could get the fuck out of this country.

Now in your precious Russia

Stop this. Its a ridiculous strawman and I have stated that it is not my opinion multiple times. Russia is a hellhole in many ways and its record on queer rights is one of them.

Russia is not even close to being more imperialist than the US. I’d describe its actions in Ukraine as revanchist, not imperialist, and to be clear thats still bad. But United States does like 1000% the amount of neoimperalist garbage throughout the global south and thats well documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

And that article is just the overt stuff, not the just regular old economic plundering of the global south they get up to usually.

More capitalist? Eh, I guess that can be argued. Both countries are run by oligarchs though. The USA is just more polite about it.

Russia? Is just as close to communism as the sun is to being cold.

We don’t disagree on this and I never stated otherwise. You have very clearly strawmanned me.

I mean, one has like 20 other partners and the other one has one other partner so its an open polycule I guess lol, though I dont know any of the first’s other partners. I do exchange Star Trek memes with the second girlfriend’s girlfriend though.

Putin has threatened nukes. Biden has not threatened nukes.

You dont need to say the words “I threaten nukes!” to threaten nukes. Thats the whole point of mutually assured destruction. Merely having nukes is nuclear terrorism.

America was fighting a fascist enemy, not against fascism itself. America practically invented fascism.

Well we agree on something lol.

There are no limit of ways to criticize the US, but it’s slowly, marginally getting better. The US is slowly progressing.

The US is demonstrably getting worse on trans rights, an issue I assume’d you’d care about.

And its definitely not gotten better about imperialist power projection overseas.

Unless you hate queer people, and hate being reminded they exist, and you want them to be removed from the world.

I am a bisexual man. I have two girlfriends and they are both trans. I have a trans cousin. And a litany of trans and otherwise queer friends, on and offline. The way you used queer in your post came off slurish whether you intended it or not. If you want to do liberalism solipism and not believe I could genuinely hold these positions as an american queer go ahead, but I do. I can both hate the Vladimir Putin and the Russian government for what they are doing to their queer population (I am actually very upset and offended by that, much more than your slightly slurish use of the word queer), and recognize that America and NATO do more evil in the world in general than Russia could ever dream of. And that if I want to advance the cause of Communism, the current imperialist world order lead by the United States needs to fall first.

No one from Hexbear has posted anything nuanced

People have posted about the history of the War in Donbass, Ukraine’s Nazi problems that the western media was admitting to right up until the invasion, and NATO encirclement plenty.

Y’all are literally more offended than anyone would criticize Russia than anything else.

I would like to remind you that this is a thread about the Ukraine war. In other threads, believe it or not, we talk about other subjects.

I don’t have to dig back very far to find US atrocities actually. The Afgan war ended two years ago and was one of the counterpoints brought up to you.

But the idea that the United States is acutally better today than when they dropped the bombs is rich. At least we were nominally fighting fascism then.

ETA: OK so if by “nuclear terrorism” you mean… the mere act of having nukes and the implicit threat of using them. America has nukes too. Today. In 2023. Or is it only nuclear terrorism when bad country has nukes?