this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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Mr. Bezos felt free to oppose Mr. Trump in ways that nobody in Russia feels free to oppose Mr. Putin, because they will be poisoned or thrown out a window if they do.
I'm no fan of Mr. Bezos, but this is nonetheless true. Capitalists in the West get away with shit that oligarchs in Russia would get murdered for. That is a distinction worth thinking about, even if they are all buttheads.
Again... capitalists are oligarchs - western media just refers to Russian capitalists as "oligarchs" because they want to (falsely) distance themselves from those "bad" Russian capitalists.
And no... Bezos's (supposed) "opposition" to Trump doesn't mean squat. The US oligarchy doesn't rest on a single strongman - there is no need to push oligarchs out of windows if all the oligarchs will act in the interests of the oligarchy anyway. This is not the case in Russia.
I hope you understand that what you're saying looks like an unfalsifiable conspiracy-theory to someone who doesn't share your specific assumptions.
There is no such thing as a "non-oligarchic" capitalist society - it's a feature of the system and not a flaw.
But you don't have to believe me.
There are things that are true about "Russian oligarchs" as a group that are not true of "American capitalists".
For example, the former are much more likely to be murdered by their own government.
That's an interesting fact and deserves explanation!
If X is just the same as Y, then X and Y should have all the same attributes. But they don't. Ignoring that observation is frothy madness.
I'm not exactly sure what it is you're having such difficulty with here... are you trying to say Russian capitalists aren't capitalists simply because they have to toe the line under a weak and paranoid strongman regime? I really wish capitalism was that fragile... but I'm afraid it isn't.