this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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NonCredibleDefense
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It's been bizarre some of my interactions with group A and B. I've been active in leftist circles for most of my time on the internet. I definitely get and agree with a lot of the criticisms with the US, NATO, and the EU, but I don't get how so many people think the Russian or Chinese government are any more righteous, especially considering the human rights violations and encroachments on sovereignty we've seen from both countries. Not just in their past either, but within the last decade!
The situation kinda feels like how Japan justified its imperialism to the outside world during the Invasion of China, South Asia, and the Pacific. Their official stance was they were aiming to rid Asia of Western imperialism and replace it with a sphere of co-prosperity, Despite this message however, they were absolutely brutal to the lands they occupied. The murdered and raped indiscriminately, and those they kept alive they enslaved and worked to death in brutal conditions. No sane person today who knows the extent of their harm would ever defend them as a power, even if their supposed message was "anti-imperialism."
You can oppose western imperialism, US hegemony, and capitalism without siding with other imperialists, fascists, and psuedo-communists. The actions of a country should speak for them, not the messages their propaganda tries to make you believe. Considering what I know from Russia's Soviet legacy with Eastern Europe, the actions they took against Chechnya and Georgia, their local treatment of dissidents, the brutal persecution of queer people that makes Florida look tame, the war crimes and human rights violations committed in Syria and Africa by Wagner, and the bombing, killing, raping, and kidnapping of civilians in Ukraine. I don't see how anyone could defend them or their actions. I know the US is guilty most of it through out its history too, but you shouldn't oppose a monster by supporting another monster.
I think that at least some of it is a knee-jerk reaction to the narrative that is pushed. There is no analysis, no debate, at the moment NATO is sold like some kind of NGO, countries that until yesterday were bombing others with zero concerns today are standing in (justified) horrors for the Russian war crimes, like if we discovered war in 2022. For some, this narrative is simply unacceptable, even if it ends up in the right place (i.e., supporting Ukraine in defending itself from an imperialist nation). The problem comes with the NAFO-fellows and the likes, where immediately as soon as you say anything to bring up these very contradictions, you are a genocide denier/enabler/supporter.
I am sure that for others is a matter of countering the US, or the mainstream media or whatever, though.