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
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
“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”
Because right wingers have very few actual principles, which means they’re free to pick up, parade around, and discard almost any talking point at any time. They don’t care about the truth of anything they say, only it’s effectiveness, so of course they would steal an effective critique from the left (again) to own the libs with, because libs have no answer to it and they themselves don’t have to grapple with any of it’s implications.
Of course, we want an end to the Ukranian war because it was a fascist imperial venture from the word go, while the right largely wants an end to the Ukranian war because they can’t stand to be fighting against their fellow whites when Big Bad China is right there.
Sometimes its the funny outcome of seeing groups use rhetorical arguments as cover for what they really believe.
So a right wing isolationist and an anti-imperialist antifascist can both state “hey, maybe the war in Ukraine is a bad thing”. But the reasons behind the statement will be wildly different.
Being able to mask an ideology behind rhetoric also allows a group to gain support or legitimacy from other groups that would otherwise be critical or hostile. Right wingers love to make rhetorical arguments based around “we must protect the children”. This sentiment is pretty simple and not controversial in any way. So people who can’t/don’t/won’t look too deep into what the right wingers are actually going to do to “protect the children” will wind up doing the work of defending their project from the people who are aware of the true goals of the right wing project.
Its one of those things that requires the extreme use of “consider the source” when trying to understand why similar arguments/rhetoric can be seen deployed by groups with wildly different ideological worldviews.
So in this instance, a lot of people have pointed towards China being the reason for this position. So then would the “source” be that they are more concerned with propping up Russia to thwart China’s economic growth?
yeah… there’s a strain of right wing argumentation that says “Get Russia engaged in some boondoggle of epic military proportions” with a goal of 1) destabalizing a nation with a large land border with China (the Anti-China groups) or 2) just straight up believing that Russia, itself, is some existential threat to the USA (old Cold War-riers )
Though it may have less to do with China’s economic growth ( at least from some groups) as it would be with trying to do some “accellerationism” and try to push China into a position where they’d openly have to retaliate militarily which would give the USA/West an excuse to be even more openly hostile towards China (and definitely WAY more hostile towards any nations who are allied with or in the orbit of China). These do-do birds still think that the US military is actually as competent, resilient and strong as their own propaganda constantly states… which isn’t true and would just lead to a large chunk of the planet burning through conventional or nuclear warfare.
I assume by “right wing” you are actually trying to mean Republicans and their followers. But both Democrats and Republicans are right-wing. Republicans oppose Democrats’ wars, sometimes only rhetorically while they materially support them as soon as they get down off the podium, and sometimes (somewhat) materially because they, themselves, would rather be fighting different wars at the moment or making other (e.g. domestic) changes that require them to get the upper hand in the moment in their petty bickering with their donkey-branded co-fascists.
In politically opposing a war for any reasons, you are going to search for arguments that help convince large numbers of people to agree with you and back your political moves. The truth lends powerful such arguments. So Republicans wind up using (some) truth in their arguments against the war that has been the Democrats’ baby for the last 15 or so years. Biden was fighting this war back when he was vice president, and Obama let him and Hillary and the other neocons he put in the State Department pretty much have it, while he got off on personally overseeing drone murders in Syria and other places. It’s part of a larger NATO expansion and “new” (same as the old) Cold War that both Democrats and Republicans have been waging since the 1980s. But this facet of it has become the Democrats’ baby. So (some) Republicans oppose it. Often rhetorically, but some—and growing now, as it’s losing its new-car smell—oppose it more materially because they’d rather be focusing on China.
Leftists, on the other hand, oppose this war because being anti-war is necessary and inherent to leftism. So we’re going to use some of the same fact-based arguments that people who oppose it for other reasons also use. NATO provoked this war. It orchestrated a coup in Ukraine, and it backed Ukraine’s fascist government as it went about the goal of committing genocide against people in Donbass and eastern Ukraine in general (and Jews, and Roma, etc.). And it gleefully threw weapons and Ukrainian lives and Europe’s heating and much of Europe’s economy into the grinder in an effort to “bleed Russia”. There’s not really any disputing that if you simply look at the history, and don’t delude yourself about imperialism or how things extended back a long way past February 2022. If Republicans touch on some of that, just know that they’re not doing it for the right reasons, and they’ll gladly twist it into nationalism, antisemitism, anti-Slav bigotry, etc. in a heartbeat. Don’t be fooled. Aspects of the truth can be used as propaganda too (at its heart, propaganda isn’t just a synonym for “lies”, but manipulation based on emotion and other social influence rather than real argument). But because it’s not grounded in consistent philosophy or principle, it’s only a fleeting affair and will resist attempts to tie it into a broader analysis that would be consistent with the momentary, opportunistic stance. Do Republicans oppose imperialism? Of course not. Do they oppose war? Of course not. Do they oppose genocide? Of course not. Do they want working-class people to have a say in how we wield arms? Of course not.
Yes I was referring to Republicans, I do not consider Democrats to be leftists in the least lol. I appreciate your detailed response; I suppose it’s just always bizarre to me when Republican talking points converge. I imagine that if you ever were to say to a Republican that their stance on the war is a communist stance they would lose their fucking minds. I just started trying to research the conflict the night that I posted this and found out about the Euromaidan coup and all of that so I’m starting to get some context; but I also don’t know a lot about China either. Having a broader understanding of the relationships between the 3 (US, Russia, China) and NATO would probably help answer a lot of these questions for me, so I guess I better get to researching
Liberals are happy with the status quo. The right says the status quo needs to change. We say it needs to change. So there is some similarity.
Also large institutions put small bits of class consciousness into right wing talking points to make sure liberals oppose it. Just to muddy the waters a little.
leftists want the status quo to change in order to preserve ecology, climate, and human rights
rightists want the status quo to change bc they think it’s not efficient enough in murdering gay people and POC
this is also why the white right are always morons, any sentient person on that side would realize the status quo supports their collective interests
