Saying that Muslims can only run theocracies is racist. The original commenter didn’t say “theocracy bad,” but instead “Muslims only capable of theocracy.” Further, they were wrong to claim the US Empire is more trustworthy than anyone else.

Commie reporting for duty ☭

Incredible racism, holy shit.

The Problem of Recognition in Transitional States, Or Sympathy for the Monster is an excellent essay on the importance of trans rights and communism.

Believe it or not, Crimeans supported being in the Russian Federation and not in a government run by Nazis post-coup. You yourself said Russia was being imperialist, annexation isn’t imperialism, imperialism is a specific form of international extractionism. Annexing territory can happen for a variety of reasons, only some of which is indicative of imperialism.

There is no evidence of Russia continuing beyond the 4 oblasts in Ukraine that isn’t NATO manufacturing consent for protracted war with Russia. Russia has no reason to continue beyond, but NATO has very good reason to want people to think they will.

Deny reality all you like.

Taking land isn’t necessarily imperialism. Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk all voted to join the Russian Federation, and Russia is annexing them not for resource extraction but to resolve the ethnic cleansing Kiev has levied against the Donbass region, and to create a buffer zone against NATO encirclement. Imperialism is a form of international extraction that functions by maintaining financial domination and monopoly, and using that to super-exploit the global south for super-profits.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Russia is trying to “grab Poland, the Baltics, and the rest of Ukraine.” This is entirely fabricated on your end, Russia has no reason to do so nor is there any information on that.

I’m not saying Ukraine is majority Nazi. I said the leadership is full of Nazis, because the Nazis took power during the Euromaidan coup. The people aren’t all Nazis, just like Statesians aren’t all MAGA, but just like pro-America rallies are almost all MAGA, nationalist rallies in Ukraine draw out the neo-Nazis. The difference between Nazis in Russia and Ukraine is that in Ukraine they actually control the government, in Russia there are just small pockets.

I don’t miss that Russia is ruled by nationalists, I quite openly said that they are. Kiev is run by neo-Nazis and is a puppet of western imperialists. Russia isn’t imperialist, it lacks the finance capital necessary to be so, it’s western countries that are imperialist and using Ukraine like they do Israel, to secure their interests in the region. It isn’t at all “insane” to have a grounded and consistent understanding.

You have this incredibly simplistic “good vs evil” thing going on here, and it’s clouding your judgement entirely.

The leadership in Kiev is neo-Nazi, it isn’t just a small group. Ukrainian citizens are suffering under the Banderite regime. Russia has neo-Nazis too, but they aren’t infesting the leadership, who are mostly nationalists supported by the majority of people for kicking out foreign imperialists that were plundering the country in the 90s. What radicalized me against western imperialism is living in a dying capitalist empire. I consume plenty of media from the west, there’s no tunnel vision nor blinders on. Being a communist and being anti-US Empire isn’t “insane.”

No, it’s reality that you’re denying. Ukraine is run by neo-Nazis, as was reported by the west, which you still disagree with as “Russian propaganda.” From @davel@lemmy.ml

• BBC, 2014: Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict
• Human Rights Watch, 2014: Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians
• The Hill, 2017: The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda
• The Guardian, 2017: ‘I want to bring up a warrior’: Ukraine’s far-right children’s camp – video
• WaPo, 2018: The war in Ukraine is more devastating than you know
• Reuters, 2018: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem
• The Nation, 2019: Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
• openDemocracy, 2019: Why Ukraine’s new language law will have long-term consequences
• Jacobin, 2022: A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
• Consortium News, 2022: Evidence of US-Backed Coup in Kiev
• Al Jazeera, 2022: Why did Ukraine suspend 11 ‘pro-Russia’ parties?
• History of Fascism in Ukraine: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

Russia isn’t ethnically cleansing people, Kiev is.

Depends mostly on who you are. Capitalists and celebrities are more restricted and censored, but for the working classes that doesn’t apply nearly as much. People in China do genuinely support their government, and this is proven by consistent polling by western orgs showing over 90% support.

Kiev is run by far-right neo-Nazis that uphold Stepan Bandera. The Russian Federation isn’t socialist by any means, but it isn’t run by literal neo-Nazis and it isn’t ethnically cleansing anyone.

Wow, that’s certainly a reaction.

They are taking historically Russian areas like Donetsk and Luhansk. The west is doing what it wants because it’s using Ukraine as a proxy war to damage Russia, and is carving Ukraine out for resources. Yanukovych escaping the far-right Banderites that the west supported doesn’t mean he was a puppet either. You’re deeply confused here.

Yanukovych was not a puppet. The IMF loan came with stipulations requiring austerity, the Russian loan did not. Secondly, Russia is intervening directly in the Donbass region. It isn’t dubious at all that Crimea and the Donbass are heavily Russian, they were added to Ukraine only a century ago.

Marxists tend to critically support Russia over Ukraine here. Russia doesn’t want to “take over Ukraine,” it wants the 4 oblasts and Ukraine to be demillitarized. Donetsk and Luhansk both have been at war with Kiev since 2014 and voted to join the Russian Federation, and the far-right Banderites that siezed power in the 2014 Euromaidan coup have been heavily millitarizing and oppressing ethnic Russians. Ukraine serves a similar geopolitical purpose for the US Empire as Israel, it’s a heavily millitarized anti-communist country surroundrd by geopolitical adversaries.

This is an excellent overview of modern Korean dynamics by tracing Korean history. In addition to destroying 80% of buildings in the north, allegedly using germ warfare, sabotaging crop yields, and more, the US Army also slaughtered Koreans in the south, such as the No Gun Ri massacre.

The Budapest Memorandum was explicitly stated to not be legally binding. It wasn’t guarantees, but assurances, and the US broke these assurances first:

“Although the Memorandum is not legally binding, we take these political commitments seriously and do not believe any U.S. sanctions, whether imposed because of human rights or non-proliferation concerns, are inconsistent with our commitments to Belarus under the Memorandum or undermine them. Rather, sanctions are aimed at securing the human rights of Belarusians and combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and other illicit activities, not at gaining any advantage for the United States”.

This was the reasoning given for sanctioning Belarus in 2013. The west backing the far-right Banderite coup in 2014 was an even greater violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. Ukraine also did not give up “its” nukes, but returned the soviet nukes Moscow had stationed there prior to the dissolution of the USSR that were a part of the multi-national nature of the soviet union.

The Budapest Memorandum was neither binding nor respected by the west to begin with.

You’re using queerness as a hammer to insult homophobes, which just throws gay people under the bus. Your smug condescension towards me being pan and telling you you’re being homophobic is yet another example of your very traditional, very unearned Euronationalist chauvanism. You’re like a colonial era race scientist, I wouldn’t be surprised if you pulled out calipers next.

Which treaty are you specifically referring to, here? Ukraine had been a hotbed of far-right Banderite influence before they committed the Maidan massacre and couped the state in 2014, and that wasn’t because of Russian influence.

Socialist states don’t oppress the working classes but the capitalists, fascists, landlords, and imperialists. That’s who the tanks and rifles are for. It’s capitalist states that wield them against the working classes, like the US Empire and its European vassals.