Ukraine
News and discussion related to Ukraine
*Sympathy for enemy combatants in any form is prohibited.
*No content depicting extreme violence or gore.
I have yet to meet a single pro-Russian leftist in my country. Or a tankie. Sure, shit like lemmygrad, r/communism, etc. exists, but you have to go digging pretty deep to find those people.
Most leftists I know, even those who identify as socialists are pretty much in the "yeah, fuck Russia" camp. To the point that they openly advocate financing Ukraine.
This video is blatant propaganda piece, and not even truthful at what it tries to be.
I don't know which country you live in but I know podcasters and other influencers in Germany and sadly also met their kind in person and passed by a protest. It is real.
Finland. Living next to Russian border might bring some reality checks here.
And yea, I can imagine you could dig some nutjob podcaster here too, but can't imagine finding those people walking around IRL.
But the thing I'm most against is "western left", which is the point where I call out the BS. Vice seat of our right-wing party literally went to a Putin propaganda camp in Russia in around 2015 (by his own admission, no less), yet it is somehow "western left" that gets the blame for few tankies who are nowhere to be found.
Finland might be a different story, but in Germany the Left Party is deeply devided between Russia supporters and others. It is not all the left (which is said in the video near the end) and of cause the right is much worse but it is a group too big to ignore.
And if the video didn't make sweeping generalisations this would be a fine point to tackle. But it's not saying "half of the german left", it is saying "the western left".
It's not OK to leave this kind of stuff as a side note in small print, that is one of the prime tactics propaganda in general uses.
You're right. "The Left" is a vague term and doesn't apply here. I know such people and applied the video to them and as such it's well done but the title and framing during the video is misleading.
Yeah, if the video was less conflictory and was framed in a way that didn't scream polarisation to me, I wouldn't be as quick to dismiss it as a propaganda piece.
As a side note, I'm actually surprised that Germany has such divide within the left.
About the side note: There are different factors at play: nostalgia about GDR, Anti-Americanism and the peace movement (not sending weapons anywhere). And I was especially talking about the party "Die Linke" (The Left). Other parties like the Social Democrates and The Green (both part of the government) disagree on that.
There are ML and tanky organistations outside of parliament. But I think the biggest organized left movement at the moment in Germany is the climate justice movement, which is very decentralized but I think most are against Russia. I might be biased though since I'm part of this movement.
biggest success of pro-russian tankies in my country is single fb page with 2k likes. socdem party that has actual MPs advocated for sending weapons to Ukraine on second day o war and it's only because they don't have single leader (there's collective leadership instead)
I have never met one in person either. I've met countless on the internet. It's as if it was a manufactured outrage instigated by a genocidal regime. It worth addressing talking points distributed among that group.
Have you watched any of the Hassans takes on Ukraine? I only watched clips, which I assume are out of context. In those he was advocating for Ukraine surrender and to stop sending aid. Is that true? Sorry for asking you about it, I just cant stand listening to the guy, so I hope someone who does can offer some insight.
Sorry. I'm not American and I don't know anything about that except what quick google search told me.
The video certainly paints with an overly-broad brush. The effects he describe do exist with people on the left who hate America more than they are willing to engage their brain and consider evidence. People who say they hate imperialism, but justify imperialism when it isn't coming from America (or The West in general). The guy is talking about tankies.
There is a big misconception, and a lot of hypocrisy.
Far right is pro-puttin because they love all dictators who fight in the Middle-East.
Left is against the US because they are imperialist and treat Europe as vassals through unfair trade agreements and nato blackmailing. This lead to a strategy to balance international relationships by cooperating more with Russia and China, among others.
There is a big hypocrisy, because liberals don't care about dealing with dictators or not. They would mercilessly destroy a democracy if it was not capitalist and open to their national companies, and they happily deal with all dictators of the middle east and africa as long as they can get oil and other resources.
Puttin is not worse than Erdoğan, the only difference is that erdogan is supposedly in nato. Many countries in middle east are not better than Russia or China. The biggest problem with Russia is that it thought it could be a major power and made a stupid attempt to stay relevant, which propelled it into third world category with nukes.
All in all, Russia is not worse than the US. And no one in the European left support Russia since the beginning of Thame war. No one in the left actually supported puttin, even before that. That's lies, propaganda and disinformation. Love for USA is still strong with the liberals though. An unconditional love that is very much not returned.
You know, I don't like Erdogan at all. That being said, Putin is really worse than him. Like 1000x. Also, Russia is worse than the US, like 10000x. You just have absolutely no idea how much worse it is until you actually experience it.
Ok, now I'm not talking about local politics. The difference is indeed immense. I'm talking about international politics. And on this matter, USA is as bad the other 2.
Especially, USA is very bad even with its allies. As a European, I cannot ignore this.
And then there are all the islamist shit in the middle east that we gladly cooperate with simply because they have money and oil. We don't talk about it in France because they are as bas as putin or erdogan but they have oil and money, and we want that.
From the france point of view it's even worse because USA blackmails its otan allies to take US weapons instead of anything else, which cripples French defense industry. Talk about an ally... That's why people would like to cooperate with USA enemies: to humble the USA, because in geopolitics, that's the only way you do that. It's a power game.
Fuck France, tbh