MyMindIsLikeAnOcean

Sometimes you seem like a reasonable person…but it all goes out the window when you present open Russian deception like calling those propaganda tools “elections”. Those referendums were clearly staged by the military…the Crimean one laughably so, with 99% support. You’re also telling on yourself when you use odd language like the annexations weren’t for resource extraction. Who said they were? Crimea is a port and the others are (were) industrial hubs and a land border to the former. No evidence? See…comments like that don’t make we want to continue with you…and it’s an insult that you expect me not to believe my lying ears. You know very well Putin, Medvedev and many others have repeatedly referred to Poland and the Baltics as occupied & openly bloviating about annexing them. They’ve literally massed forces on the border with them, and every other piece of “evidence” one could possible need…overt or implied. Trying to deny Russkiy Mir is just weird. I’m going to take a break from you. Pretty unreasonable stuff, here.

“Russia sucks at being imperialist” isn’t a great defence. They already took back half the eastern block, sometimes by proxy. They would have grabbed Ukraine and the Baltics, at least…and maybe Poland (also totally full of Nazis) if the west didn’t “step in”. It is what it is. Just because they’re shit at war doesn’t mean they wouldn’t do it in a vacuum. Listen…all I’m saying is that there no through lines to good and evil, here. It’s war…it’s a bunch of fascist imperialists fighting other fascist imperialists. At least the western fascist imperialists annex with capitalism instead of by governance. It’s like…I’m not choosing…I’m just talking about it. My ex girlfriend is the other extreme from you: she’s one of the liberal weirdos who emigrated to Ukraine because she needed a cause, I guess (she has no ties to Ukraine). Yes…she’s ended up at rallies that were Nazi rallies even though she thought they were pro Ukraine rallies…but the country isn’t some monolith of Nazism like you’re saying it it. The Nazis are a powerful minority.

Russia is an actual dictatorship…of one person. As terrible as the USA is…they at least switch between a terrible leader and a fascist one every 4-8 years, or so. I think you confusing “literally” a dictatorship with “figuratively” a dictatorship. They’re not the same. The USA has terribly gerrymandered elections is a broken system that favours small states…so it takes a lot more to overcome the fascists…but at least it possible. Meanwhile, Russia has entirely fake elections. The USA isn’t there…yet. Getting close. You guys are far-out. It’s like…what…anti-American horseshoe theory? You’re so anti-American..you come out the other end supporting evil dictators? If you want to shit on The States in isolation…I’ll do it all day long…I’m a Canadian socialist….but I haven’t lost my objectivity just because I hate Americans so much.

You heard it here…dictator Putin: better than “Kiev”. It’s completely insane be to be so communist that you stampede past the fact that Russia was corrupted by capitalist oligarchs…and end up in favour an imperialist dictator. What a trip.

I know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m more skeptical than all these zero sum pro Russians combined. If you read what I wrote instead of babbling what you wanted to react to…you’d not ice I’m not pro Ukraine…I’m just aware that Russia is a dictatorship that’s also full of Nazis.

You don’t need to flood the zone…everybody is aware there’s Neo-Nazis in Ukraine, like there’s Neo-Nazis in Russia, and everywhere else. It’s absolutely Russian propaganda to present them as the entirely of Ukraine, and ignore that Russia is also  full of Nazis. Russia is also a repressive fascistic dictatorship. Don’t know what cooked your brain that you need to hyper focus on Ukraine’s problems and ignore Russia’s: https://www.sova-center.ru/en/xenophobia/reports-analyses/2025/02/d47102/ Independent Russian monitoring group SOVA documents trends in ideologically motivated violence, victim counts, and state responses, highlighting a resurgence of street attacks and online glorification of violence. https://jacobin.com/2024/12/neo-nazis-russia-ukraine-violence/ Long-form analysis linking wartime propaganda and online clout culture to renewed visibility of violent neo‑Nazi groups and their recruitment tactics. https://russianlife.com/the-russia-file/neo-nazis-return-to-russian-streets](https://russianlife.com/the-russia-file/neo-nazis-return-to-russian-streets/)/ Magazine piece synthesizing reporting on street violence, Telegram channels, and SOVA statistics showing rising incidents in 2024. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3450-1.html Policy research on how Kremlin narratives about “denazification” are used strategically; useful for understanding state propaganda and external messaging. https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/2/4/503446.pdf Official OSCE materials and delegations’ statements addressing neo‑Nazi glorification and related regional concerns. https://carnegie-mec.org/russia-eurasia/research Scholarly analyses on Russian nationalism, state‑far‑right interactions, and implications. https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/11/how-the-traumas-of-2004-blinded-putin?lang=en Contextual piece linking historical trauma narratives to contemporary securitized rhetoric that can empower extremist frames. https://www.brookings.edu/regions/europe-eurasia/russia/ Policy briefs and expert commentary on Russian domestic politics, including far‑right trends and security implications. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/12/06/neo-nazi-street-attacks-are-making-a-comeback-in-russia-experts-link-it-to-2000s-nostalgia-internet-clout-culture-and-the-war Investigative reporting on viral attack videos, Telegram ecosystems, and cultural drivers behind renewed violence. https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-in-the-news/isds-steven-rai-on-the-resurgence-of-the-neo-nazi-accelerationist-group-the-base/ Expert commentary on transnational neo‑Nazi networks, recruitment, and links to conflict zones. https://www.dagens.com/war/neo-nazi-terror-group-with-ties-to-russia-recruits-for-attacks-in-ukraine News coverage of recruitment and alleged operational ties between extremist cells and Russian interests. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jarees2001/2002/31/2002_31_57/\_article Academic study tracing ideological roots, party actors, and social drivers of neo‑Nazi movements in Russia. https://academic.oup.com/book/45836/chapter/400752581 Scholarly chapter on neo‑Nazi networks in Russian prisons and their social dynamics. https://www.academia.edu/41133663/From_Red_to_Black_The_rise_of_Neo_Nazism_in_Russia_in_the_90 Historical overview useful for tracing evolution from 1990s skinhead subculture to modern groups. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/30/putin-says-ukraine-goals-will-be-achieved-as-he-repeats-neo-nazi-claims Reporting on official rhetoric that invokes “neo‑Nazi” narratives as justification for policy and war. No idea what radicalized you…for some people it’s because they’re tankies…for others it’s because they’re insane anti Americans. At the end of the day you’ve got tunnel vision and blinders.

This is just Russian propaganda. Here in reality, no, Ukraine isn’t run by neo Nazis. Are some people in the army Nazis? Yes, of course…people who like to kill other people are generally terrible people. It’s amazing that, for whatever reason, people give such a pass to Russia. Russia is a fascist dictatorship that absolutely ethnically cleanses groups all over the country and it’s satellites.

It sounds a lot like you agree the conflict isn’t about good vs evil.

Your position is Russian isn’t imperial or fascist? …or is it that because the USA or your so-called “imperial core” is more fascist and/or imperial that we should ignore Russia’s?

For the world. Giant repressive capitalist dictatorships that are full of fascists and invade other countries aren’t good for anybody…even if some of the people they’re killing are also fascists.

Oh?  I’m anti America and anti Russia. I’m not pretending I’m some expert on geopolitics…but I do know that Russia is a fascist capitalist state and they’re not the good guys, even if many of the Ukrainians and their supporters are bad.

Can’t tell if you’re talking about the Russians or the Ukrainians. My argument isn’t so much that Ukraine is good…it’s that Russia is worse.

Imagine being so communist and/or anti-American that you can’t criticize a fascist capitalist state over a liberal capitalist state. You’re too smart to make the argument that Russia’s actions are restricted to the areas they allege are majority Russian.

I thought “tech crunch” was something silly that Silicon Valley (the TV show) made up!

Not a puppet? Spare me. Where is he right now? What a coincidence! Did you intentionally misunderstand what I said? They could have just taken the territories they wanted that were supposedly majority Russian and left it at that…the west wouldn’t have done shit about it. But they didn’t, did they?

Sorry…I know exactly what you mean, but I’m going to nitpick over the use of the term “proxy war”. It’s not a proxy war, first because Russia is directly involved and second because the USA isn’t the only proxy. Good examples of Proxy Wars are The Spanish and Syrian Civil Wars…as well as many minor conflicts during The Cold War that were revealed to be indirectly USSR v USA I don’t know how you feel about the war at large…but calling it a proxy war could be considered a Russia friendly narrative because it removes Ukraines agency and purpose. In a proxy war the support is generally obfuscated, and the conflict is usually internal. In Ukraine the support is open and the conflict is an invasion.

This “meme” pretends to be nuanced…but it’s simple: it attempts to boil the crisis down to “America bad”. Russia has agency. If you’re a leftist who supports Russia…and I know it’s common…you’ve completely lost the plot. You’re basically so anti American that you’ve overshot the mark and are supporting other fascists. At risk of also oversimplifying things: Russia/Ukraine isn’t good v bad…it’s fascist capitalist v “liberal” capitalist.

There’s a lot of problems with your reply. You can’t say Russia doesn’t want to control Ukraine and reconcile that with the fact that Russia previously had puppets controlling Ukraine. You can’t seriously believe that Russia holds fair elections.

This is key.  If there weren’t bots…Reddit would make its own bots. Reddit dances a fine line of allowing the population to be a certain proportion of bots because they increase real engagement by picking fights with its real users, as well as creating never-ending “content” for people to read and vote on. They only ban bots when real users notice they are bots - which is less and less frequently - even though Reddit has the tools and information to ban them long before that point. Reddit could easy eliminate almost all of them, but that would be expensive and they’d lose real users as a result.

We can absolutely blame AI for everything. The reason AI took over Reddit is because Reddit fired their human moderators in favour of AI moderation. It’s basically a vicious circle of bots learning how to avoid being banned, and auto moderation learning how they’re avoiding being banned…repeat. …the obvious problem being that bots are valuable to Reddit because they increase real engagement…if there weren’t bots, Reddit would make its own bots to do basically the same thing. Reddit only wants to restrict bots to a certain proportion of the population, rather than eliminate them.

Let’s be real…Reddit itself is moderated by AI. People who moderate subs should be called “hall monitors” or something. It’s rare to find moderators who are actually moderating with impartiality, rather that being petty and taking sides. They also have tools to exploit the Reddit auto-mod system. It was enshitified ages ago.

I don’t think he really ever had them. He was making what…250 grand a month from the Russians (some ridiculous number)? When he lost that cash he immediately changed his format from Russian propaganda to toxic centrism to try and steal viewers from people like Candace Owens…and it’s didn’t work.

“Calling out Trump” is clearly a rhetorical tactic to distract from your incorrect assessment of Maduro. It should be noted that you’re aligned with Trump when you say that, and it should give you pause. You don’t seem to remember your own comment. You used the most extreme straw man, adorned with sarcasm, to asses Maduro…there was no reality in your reply. Meh, the fact that you think you’re talking to liberals is pretty amusing. Why defend an argument when you can attack the messenger, right?

Tim Pool is struggling for relevance after he got his spigot of Russian money cut off. I don’t know if somebody fired a gun or made some sort of noise near his home…but I certainly know that Tim is disingenuous and a liar and I don’t doubt he would sensationalize, exaggerate or completely invent an event to improve his ratings now that he has to rely on listeners to make money.

Your position is there has never been a benevolent leader? Power corrupts universally and equally? That’s nuts, quite frankly. It’s absurd to suggest that Trump and Maduro are equivalent. They’re not equal in a single way, even if you believe they’re both bad.

Yes I have listened to his speeches and read his lefislation…that’s why I’m saying what I’m saying. You’re citisizing things I didn’t say…I know Maduro is popular there.

Agree wholeheartedly.  It should be obvious to far more people that this country should get to decide it’s own destiny. We have no idea what a Chavismo…or even Castro Cuba would have looked like unmolested. It should also be obvious that what’s feared most in the west is the success of those systems. The thing that absolutely floors me is that Trump had a Bay of Pigs…and nobody (in the mainstream) talks about it.

We also get it from Maduro and the rest of the Chavanistas: his party rules by supreme power and decree. The way his party allocates power as a matter of internal affairs, may be another story. Please, let’s not talk in absolutes. This notion that any and all narratives that you deem negative are part of a grand conspiracy just isn’t true. I implied in my original reply that I believe Maduro may be benevolent, along the lines of Castro. I don’t really have a problem with dictators…the problem with dictators is they’re usually fascists. That isn’t the case in Venezuela.

It’s interesting that I agree with you, here. A major difference I see between Venezuela and the USSR is that the USSR generally tried to assimilate, arrest or murder the resistant capitalist classes (ie dekulakization), while Venezuela seems to be generally exiling or marginalizing them. It’s my understanding that Venezuela has kept its political assassinations and imprisonments low and targeted, which was not the case in the USSR.

Yes he’s certainly an authoritarian. Authoritarian doesn’t automatically mean bad…there’s such a thing as the concept of a benevolent dictator. What evidence do you have that “the country went to shit” or “Venezuela is not a nice place to live in” or that he’s a “corrupt dictator”? This original post, presumably, attempts to scratch slightly beneath the surface of what we hear on the news and suggest that your above statements only apply to a certain “deserving” class. I don’t actually know a lot about Venezuela, and I’m asking these questions in earnest. I started to ask questions a lot earlier, but certainly looking into Maria Machado (this years Nobel Peace Prize winner) made some alarm bells go off. Could it be that the narrative is controlled by Machado and her neoliberal/right wing ilk, and she actually represents a large minority class of people that was purged/displaced in Venezuela?  I’m still investigating.

Seem like he’s a typical academic. I get it…you prefer to muddy the waters and shoot the messenger then engage with the content. Alternate view to…something you didn’t read? I assure you it doesn’t “demonize socialism”…it just chronicles events according to disclosure/a “data dump” of declassified files. It’s not ideological…it’s for eggheads who don’t want to read thousands of documents. When I read it it just helped me understand the playing field better. The problems with the USSR weren’t with socialism, you’re missing my message. They were with capitalists corrupting it from within. There’s certainly an argument to be made that too much control was allocated to regional bureaucrats - when targeted positive/idealistic authoritarianism was more appropriate while socialism was in its infancy. But this in the context of just Russia, because I don’t agree with the expansion that created the USSR: my opinion is it created an unmanageably large state with too many “distracting” regional issues that were ripe for capitalists to exploit. Those faithful to the cause were simply stretched too thin and they couldn’t deliver a meaningful improvement to enough people, largely because the guilty regional bureaucrats weren’t loyal to the cause and they created systematic exploitation of the people they were tasked to help. Obviously I’m being unrealistic…just trying to get closer to 20/20 hindsight.

That’s a ridiculous way to frame a public university employee…but I’m just going to declare an impasse and drop it if we can’t agree on facts. Talk about virtue signalling and purity testing, yikes. Still, thank you for the conversation, I will admit I’m a little amused at you trying to “out socialist” me, but I don’t feel I need to list my credentials in return…I’m comfortable with how militantly virulent I am on the subject of socialism ;) Like I said: put two leftists together, and they’ll find a way to argue. I’ve been guilty of it too…it is what it is.

I gave you evidence…and you ignored it. I can provide additional evidence beyond ‘54, if you acknowledge those archives. You believe Marxism allows for the billionaire and political classes in China that control the means of production? Bold. You don’t “own” Marxism, btw. Most Marxists I know at least acknowledge and criticize the very large problems in the USSR and China. I mean…I also could be considered a Marxist…but I consider myself a post-Marxist because he’s been improved on. I also think we can do better than Marx the man as a foundation - don’t get me started on Lenin, lol. The weird thing is I like Stalin (but Che all the way). This isn’t zero sum: I’m not saying either is all bad because they have kleptocrats and billionaires. We haven’t even broached the topic of what I think about the USSR and China as a whole (because you’re so hung up on denying their systematic problems in favour of focusing on the positives?) in contrast to what we see in the western democracies (for example) you’re typing as if i condemn them and I prefer the USA, or something…not a thing.

The USSR absolutely had oligarchs, don’t be absurd. I’m not strictly talking about the Politburo…who stole plenty and took the fall, I’m talking about the oligarchs - who didn’t blink into existence out of the ashes of the USSR - but rather came to be because of what they amassed at the expense of the people during the USRR. The savvy middle managers, the smugglers, the entire KGB. The Art of the Bribe is an excellent book that methodically outlinines how these proto-oligarchs came to be and how they destroyed and corrupted socialism. Telling me about the idealistic version of the USSR isn’t interesting…I’m more interested in reality. Meh…save the “Marx wasn’t an egalitarian” stuff for the people who aren’t socialists. There absolutely was a very large wealth and power class in the USSR as there is in China now…both would be abhorrent to Marx. There’s a difference between being somewhat better off because you work harder and/or are responsible for administering a novel concept…and literally never working because you have so much power and influence you don’t need to: those people were lousy in the USSR, and exist to a lesser extent in China. It’s an apples and oranges conversation because it can be argued that the Chinese billionaires hurt their people less than the oligarchs/kleptocrats did in the USSR…but you first must acknowledge they exist - if you want to move past the mass intentions of their systems and have the conversation about how the classes in communist were/are bad and why. The reason I prefer Cuba isn’t because their system is a superior application of socialism…but rather because Cuba is so small and their rich people tend to be more enmeshed in the population and steal less. I’m not saying all this because I don’t like socialism and dismiss The USSR and China as failures out of hand - quite the contrary - I’m saying it because socialism is a project that we need to achieve and we have to learn from what’s been done/being tried to achieve it.

Yeah…I just don’t see either state like you do. Both states feature(d) too many wealthy/powerful people for me to consider them entirely socialist. They’re both hybrids…like every state. The USSR heavily featured oligarchs who stole from the people, and who worked against the peoples’ interest on a mass scale. China features a party system that does the same, to a lesser degree.  I think Cuba is a pretty good example of what I’d like to see in a socialist state, minus the ongoing American “meddling”. I wish they didn’t have to rely on tourism to survive, tho…don’t like the classes it creates. Would be much better if they could trade efficiently.

I think you’re an idealist :) Contrary to Marxism? I think you misread what I’ve said. I think Marx was a visionary, and I’d like to live in his world…I think I’m just more practical than you are.

I think maybe we can agree that we’re talking about different thing re libertarianism. But I will say…show me one of these supposed small business owners, and I’ll show you an employee or a liar. Yes, I predicted we’d have a different view of the world…like I said…two leftists can always be trusted to radically disagree about everything. I look at early reunification Germany as a “victory” for the moderation of capitalism…but I will agree that the fascists put what they needed to in place to destroy the socialists that the “liberals” accepted, at first. I’ll never agree that Russia was socialist…nor will I agree that China is. They had/have very heavy socialist elements…but Russia was ultimately an oligarchical kleptocracy and China is a weird hybrid that celebrates capitlmalism at the party level…and uses socialism to control the masses. If I were to view a state as a socialist success…I’d need to see the party/power apparatus less entrenched, and the leaders of the day living like the people. I believe that Latin American socialism could have been great…had it not been perpetually obfuscated and corrupted by the US.

Yeah…we’re just characterizing them differently. It’s all mud…because they’re all dishonest. Whether they’re MAGA or fascist or libertarian depends on the lens/forum etc. I’d imagine half of the people who call themselves libertarians just like the word because they want to own the word liberty and own the definition of “freedom”. It’s like that bullshit “we’re not a Democracy we’re a Republic” stuff - they don’t know what any of these words mean, they just want to sound like they’re smart and principled when they’re really just bigoted, selfish and hypocritical. I mean…I’m never going to agree that “small business owners” are the core of the libertarian movement…because small business functionally doesn’t even exist. Most of these idiots calling themselves small business owners or entrepreneurs are just glorified employees or franchise managers. We know the entire movement has big big money behind it…and the small business fantasy is what they’re using as window dressing. As for Marx…you well know that if you put any two leftists in a room they’re going to disagree on what’s important from all of Marx’s and his associated philosophers and economists’ writings. Marx was a visionary…and I almost liken him more to Gene Roddenberry, than I do a practical economist. Like…he gets into the nitty gritty about transitional social credits and all that, but it’s a type of fiction. I, like I said before, view Marxism and it’s offshoots as a necessary lens to view capitalism through. I think it was really cool what came out of Germany after reunification, and it’s sad to see the capitalists chip away at what they achieved. I’d love to see the day where we reach a critical mass and socialism is attempted in earnest…we just haven’t really seen that and I know I won’t (I’m 53).

Yeah…I don’t really know what I’m talking about…it’s not like I make much of an effort for privacy. I’m guess it’s just my particular ISP. It’s like…the random advertising is in French…but if they know who I am it’s targeted…it’s mixed.

Interesting…all of it? I’m in Ontario but my hub/ISP is in Quebec so all my random advertising is in French. Somehow it knows to target advertising to you in English…maybe you need to work on your privacy?

Heh. I’m in Ontario, but I guess my DNS is outta Quebec…so most of my banner advertising is in French. It’s fucking awesome because I have no idea what they’re saying or advertising to me most of the time. Highly recommend.

Welp, now I’m off to XHamster. Thank a ton >B|

I mean…I’m sure Che said that tho…

You’re just not accurately describing American libertarianism…it does, indeed, have wealthy people behind it, because American libertarians also loves a strong state that can fix regulations in their favour. Peter Thiel and some of the Koch’s are “libertarians”, ffs. I think what’s happening here is you’re describing the Dave Smith party/partisan type libertarians, and not the movement at large. The niche that runs a presidential candidate and puts small business owners on stage at the convention is a “boutique” brand of libertarianism, and doesn’t represent the much larger group of people who, for example, Donald Trump shows up and tries to woo: yeah, he got bood in the building…but he was talking to all the libertarians who were threatening to abandon his coalition. I mean…I stand by what I said…your definitions weren’t accurate…but knowing that you’re a Marxist now means this is likely just an “academic” issue. Your leftist definition was confusing without that context. I don’t care for anarchists, really…even tho I occasionally caucus with them. I used to hate them as much as right libertarians - horse shoe theory and all - but I’ve softened because it’s time to coalesce…strategy almost doesn’t matter any more…we need action. I’m am super thankful they haven’t been polluting “our” protests to the degree they used to.

“…minimum state intervention…” isn’t part of the definition. That’s a value judgement and a concept that gets thrown around by the idealists. The concept of libertarianism was invented to moderate a necessary and ubiquitous state, and can’t exist without one. You defined classical libertarianism or right libertarianism, which grew up to be what we see as The Libertarian Party in the USA today, for example. It was “rebranded” specifically to add the notion of “minimal state intervention” - to make themselves distinct from libertarians (who functionally existed, at that time). Much like classical liberals, classical libertarians are antithetical to the definition of their namesake.

I mean…that says it all. Sure, the seemingly benevolent small business owners feature highly at the conventions…but behind the curtains it’s really a coalition of rich guys, gun nuts, NAMBLAs, zoophiles, etc. in a stuffed cheap suit.

…also acting. but he likely just took the photo…looks early.

I have to push back a bit that the core of the proper definition of libertarianism is freedom from the state. It’s isn’t/wasn’t. The state plays an essential role in functional libertarianism, for what should be obvious reasons.

The first “definition” doesn’t fit the group you’re trying to define. If you’re talking about American (using the Us as shorthand)…they are by no means restricted to small business owners, that’s but a small (albeit with outsized power) enclave in the “coalition”. Their policy ideologically empirically opposes the working class. There’s no lefti wing version of the word, or rather, the proper definition is leftist. What you’re describing seems to be an ideological axe you have to grind with Marxism, or socialism something. Actual libertarianism is simply a school of thought - a collection of philosophies - that prioritize individual liberty (freedom). Generally these philosophies aren’t related to American libertarianism/freedom…it’s more of a freedom *from rather than a freedom to* thing…to oversimplify: leftist (real) libertarians believe power structures shouldn’t impede the (not obstructive and lawful) activists of the people - it’s very conscious of power differentials, while American libertarians believe in an absolute right to individual freedom that may or may not conflict with other peoples’ freedoms - after that point of tension it comes down to functional power (thus it’s antithetical to the proper definition).

It’s depends on what you mean…it’s a fraught term, to say the least. Actual definition of the word…or the Ron Paul (etc) nuts?