I’m trying to learn more about the Russia/Ukraine conflict. In the articles that I find that seem to be critical of Ukraine, there are a few that are right wing that seem to have similar viewpoints as what I’ve read on here or in the more leftist articles.
For example this piece from National Interest, or this from the CATO institute.
There are others that aren’t flagged as right wing that are critical, but it’s just got me wondering, why would right wing politicians/publications perceive these things similarly to how some communists would when the ideologies of both are so extremely opposite?
Disclaimer: I’m not pro-ukraine at all, but in my search for info that’s not super pro-Ukraine propaganda, this is the stuff that comes up for me
It helps if you look at it from the angle of democracy vs authority, rather than left vs right. Both communists and fascists lean heavily into authoritarianism, making them quite similar in many regards.
It’s a tough category out there for “Most meaningless buzzword”, but I’d still wager good money on “authoritarianism” taking home first prize
"Our side: cool, democratic, sexy, morally-justified
Their side: dorky, authoritarian, ugly, morally-reprehensible"
You can’t define authoritarianism and we all know it. It’s just a thought-terminating cliche that you drop in political discussions to make yourself feel comfortable with supporting the status quo.
In the context of my comment, the opposite of democracy. So basically a person or a group of people holding (significantly) more power than another.
What does a democracy do if some people want to, and possibly have the means to, overthrow it and establish a dictatorship? Debate them? Send them a strongly worded letter?
Or do they exert their authority over them by arresting or killing them?
That is the weakest definition I’ve ever seen. Are you capable of defining it on its own terms, rather than by negation?
Democracy is a political system that vests its authority in subgroups, usually in representatives, and always privileges the powerful over the powerless. Even in an idealized democracy, if a group of people can sway a plurality or majority of votes, they have massive power over everyone else.
Looking at empirical implementation of democracy, rather than just projecting the lens of a shallow 6th-grade understanding of politics onto the corporate media narrative, would help you understand that.
When the fascist media corp says that a country is “authoritarian” it means that that country would have authority over them. In fascist countries the ghouls who own the media can pay off the corrupt state officials, in the countries they have called authoritarian, they can not. Anti-authoritarianism by media corpos just means they want to be above the law.
Ofcourse for normal humans this is different, every state would have authority over us.
I guess I’d call that action authoritarian.
In the end there are no perfect democracies, so far there have been no societies where every individual held the same amount of power. At the same time there have never been perfect autocracies either, as there have so far been no societies where one person held absolute power while everyone else held none. They are extremes in between which societies can move, no society is ever either one or the other.
“Fascists and communists are the same, excuse me now while I support dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the military and police, make excuses for decades of US-backed anti-democratic coups and genocidal imperialist wars around the world, and support Biden as he continues or intensifies all of Trump’s policies (including caging children).” — liberals
Um, yikes Sweaty!
Don’t you know that they’re talking about how it’s democratic at home?
Sure it might be fascism writ large across every example of our overthrows, invasions, occupations, puppet governments, and the training and funding of death squads (because I’m going to completely ignore the fascism inflicted upon the internal colonies since I’m a middle-class liberal and it isn’t relevant to me personally) but that’s, like, whataboutism or no true Scotsman or ad hominem or something.
Don’t you know that they’re talking about how it’s democratic at home?
Yes, a democracy where like 5-7 states decide who the POTUS is, and where someone in California’s voted counts 1/3 as much as someone in Wyoming.
“You can only attribute to me specific string of words I typed in a specific order, not things that immediately follow from the ideas I expressed”
But wait, if communists and fascists are the same, then how come the US always supports fascists against communists?🤔
I said they are similar, not the same. The foreign policy of the US is mainly to protect it’s elites business interests. Communists like to put assets under state control, which is bad business for the US elites.
What is democratic about the current situation:
- The current global stage is dominated by the attempt of historical centers of imperialism (the U.S., Western and Central Europe, Japan—hereafter called “the Triad”) to maintain their exclusive control over the planet through a combination of:
- so-called neo-liberal economic globalization policies allowing financial transnational capital of the Triad to decide alone on all issues in their exclusive interests;
- the military control of the planet by the U.S. and its subordinate allies (NATO and Japan) in order to annihilate any attempt by any country not of the Triad to move out from under their yoke.
In that respect all countries of the world not of the Triad are enemies or potential enemies, except those who accept complete submission to the economic and political strategy of the Triad … In that frame Russia is “an enemy.”
After the breakdown of the Soviet system, some people (in Russia in particular) thought that the “West” would not antagonize a “capitalist Russia”—just as Germany and Japan had “lost the war but won the peace.” They forgot that the Western powers supported the reconstruction of the former fascist countries precisely to face the challenge of the independent policies of the Soviet Union. Now, this challenge having disappeared, the target of the Triad is complete submission, to destroy the capacity of Russia to resist.
The current development of the Ukraine tragedy illustrates the reality of the strategic target of the Triad.
The Triad organized in Kiev what ought to be called a “Euro/Nazi putsch.” To achieve their target (separating the historical twin sister nations—the Russian and the Ukrainian), they needed the support of local Nazis.
The rhetoric of the Western medias, claiming that the policies of the Triad aim at promoting democracy, is simply a lie. Nowhere has the Triad promoted democracy. On the contrary these policies have systematically been supporting the most anti-democratic (in some cases “fascist”) local forces. Quasi-fascist in the former Yugoslavia—in Croatia and Kosovo—as well as in the Baltic states and Eastern Europe, Hungary for instance. Eastern Europe has been “integrated” in the European Union not as equal partners, but as “semi-colonies” of major Western and Central European capitalist/imperialist powers. The relation between West and East in the European system is in some degree similar to that which rules the relations between the U.S. and Latin America! In the countries of the South the Triad supported the extreme anti-democratic forces such as, for instance, ultra-reactionary political Islam and, with their complicity, has destroyed societies; the cases of Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya illustrate these targets of the Triad imperialist project.
