https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/talks-could-have-ended-war-ukraine | Archived
At the first meeting, the Russians presented a set of harsh conditions, effectively demanding Ukraine’s capitulation. This was a nonstarter. But as Moscow’s position on the battlefield continued to deteriorate, its positions at the negotiating table became less demanding. So on March 3 and March 7, the parties held a second and third round of talks […]
Regarding territorial issues, parts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Donbass would remain under Russian control
Moscow ostensibly wanted Kiev to slash the size of its army to 85,000 people, while Ukraine insisted on retaining a strength of 250,000.
Edit: Replaced “reporter” with “politician” in the post title
Edit2: Changed title from “microphone cut” to “segment cut short” in the title
There are a lot of national socialist apeing as “leftist” who are working with Russia to undermine European democracies.
Even if you believe Russias position as an antagonist towards NATO is overall good on a geopolitical scale in regards to multipolarism. It doesn’t mean they as a country arent extremely conservative in a cultural sense and nationalist in a political sense. Or that they aren’t supporting far right politicians all over the world as it benefits them in the long run.
This bullshit line only serves to displace blame from the inherent reactionary tendencies of all western countries. Russiagate bullshit needs to fucking die. Own your reactionary politicians and do something about them instead of blaming the “perfidious asiatics”. It’s exhausting with you fucking people. Clean your own house and fuck off.
I’m not saying they are the cause of it, just that it would be stupid to not exploit the natural cycle of democratic nations sliding into fascism.
There is no such thing as European democracy.
I’m sure that Russia maintains relationships with the relatively few political parties in Europe that don’t want to destroy them, some of which are far-right. However, I would be careful not to attribute the rise of such parties to Russian interference. Russia is not an all-powerful Machiavellian villain with the ability to control Europe, and Europeans have never needed the help of any outside influence to make themselves hitlerites.
Overall this comment seems to describe a good, “democratic” nature of Europe which is being torn down by Russian interference, which is simply not true. Moreover, I don’t see how Russians are significantly more conservative and nationalistic than many other Europeans (less, in some cases).
I mean, if we are engaging in semantics I could have put democracies in quotes or prefaced it with countries that describe themselves as democracies. However, I figured that was self evident to people in this sub.
I never said they were the attributing factor, just an entity who helps the natural decline of democracy sliding into fascism along for their own benefit.
Nah, just a comment about the inevitable downsides of multipolarism in action in Europe. Most of which is caused by “democracies” inherent flaw of being so susceptible to fascism.
Still holding on to this fantasy. It can’t “decline” if it doesn’t exist in the first place.
Choosing to focus on the pedantic again?
It’s not semantic. European countries are not democratic. Fascism is on the rise because it preserves bourgeois interests when liberalism decays. The preservation of bourgeois interests is the goal of all existing European states you call “democracies”.
You go on to talk about the “natural decline of democracy”. Even if this democracy did exist, what is your conclusion? It’s natural and we just have to accept cycles of fascism? Democracy is bad and should be replaced to avoid fascism? This idea of “democracy” and “natural decline” leads to incoherent analysis. The word you are looking for is “liberalism” or “bourgeois dictatorship”, and they need no assistance from Russia to produce fascism.
If Europeans being hitlerites is an inevitable consequence of “multipolarism” (aka making their neo-colonial empires harder to maintain), then Europe as a political project should be abolished and reorganized. This is a problem with European liberals, not the existence of “multipolarity”.
It’s semantic when I agree with your general opinion and then we continue to quibble about how to exactly utilize it in a sentence.
If we both agree democracies don’t really exist then it’s self evident and does not require a preface. Especially when my point isn’t dependent on the countries truly being democratic or not.
Liberalisms naturally leads to fascism and should be replaced by socialism… Nothing I said previously conflicts with this.
I never said it required Russia to produce fascism, just that it benefits Russia to speed it along.
Its liberals being reactionary… Meaning they are reacting to multipolarism.
I think these democracies do not exist (democracy is impossible in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which is necessarily a class made up of a minority of citizens). Democracy is real. These just aren’t democracies. That’s a big, important point, not a semantic difference.
Mostly I don’t have big problems with the rest of your reply. However, that’s not what “reactionary” means. It doesn’t refer to reacting to something in general, it refers to being antirevolutionary (working for the preservation of the current order - in fact usually for a return to a previous order, often made up - in reaction to revolutionary change). I agree that this can be applied to European liberals in this case, though.
My main issue is that I think the amount of assistance Russia provides the European far right is exaggerated. I think Russia could completely ignore them and it would probably not significantly impact their progression.
Why are you using “national socialist” instead of nazi? Every single time I see someone doing this they have absurd brainworms that the nazis were socialists, or they’re a person who chooses to use it because they like to promote the myth or to associate socialism with nazism to smear actual socialists. Seeing you phrase yourself this way is an immediate red flag to me.
Which “leftists” are you referring to that are actually nazis just apeing as “leftists”? Give me something concrete, what party? What organisations are you referring to? Who? This vagueness is deeply suspicious to me. It’s the kind of thing someone does when they don’t want to be properly refuted.
Bourgeoise democracy only represents the bourgeoisie. It does not represent the wishes of the proletariat and is therefore not particularly democratic. Calling them democracies without this disclaimer makes me assume you are a neoliberal.
I mean, they’re the same thing. I just think the modern equivalent tend to present themselves as socialist who happen to be nationalist rather than the neo Nazi they really are.
The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance is a pretty good example… Or stačilo in in the Czech Republic.
Any time I mention a democracy I have to make a long preface? I never said if it was a good thing or a bad thing, just that supporting nationalist political parties was a way to disrupt the democratic countries.
And no I am not a neolib… Personally I think promoting multipolarism is a mixed bag. Over all it may bring some geopolitical stability but it does have its downsides, and that often going to be felt hardest by at risk groups.
No they’re not. You’re emphasising the socialist where everyone that recognises that they are not socialist absolutely does not use it, ever. You’re literally using the nazi’s own propaganda because you view it as useful to your anticommunist agenda.
No not really. This is a socialist that wants socialism but has traditional social beliefs. If you think this is nazism then literally every liberal party pre-1943 was also a nazi.
Are these views backwards social views? Yes absolutely. Are they advocating for fucking nazism? Or anything that would remotely look like a fascist organisational structure of government? Fucking no. They’re absolutely not.
You have confused fascism with identity politics. You’ve got it into your head that fascists all hold right wing social views and everyone else is not a fascist.
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara at the time of their revolution are both “national socialists” under this analysis. It’s just flat out wrong. These are real socialists who hold outdated social views on the family, it’s absolutely not the same thing.
National socialism is a dog whistle for fascist… Pretty much anyone claiming to want socialism for their nation independent from globalized socialism ends up being a Nazi.
Traditional beliefs being hate mongering immigrants? The Nazi professed to want socialism for “real” Germans… That’s just not how socialism works. You can’t sustain socialism independently from a greater world wide movement.
Guess what…? The Nazi didn’t run for office promising an. organizational structure of government.
Can you give me an example of a fascist nation that didn’t hold right winged social views?
Ahh yes, both of those people famously hated immigrants.
I don’t think you’ve really listened to me.
No but playing into working people’s concerns about migrant workers driving down salaries and taking jobs? Yes. Exactly the same shit happens among parts of the left in the UK. Galloway has done exactly that. Nazi? No. Bit of a dickhead? Yes.
I’m sorry but this is just wrong. The fascist organisation structure is quite specific and fascists absolutely did talk about it loudly during their rise. What the fuck do you think the fasces even represents? Fascists aren’t hiding their goal of restructuring the very structure of government.
Can you give me an example of a socialist nation that has not held these traditional social views? The only one that does not is Cuba, and that is only a recent development.
There are no socialist countries with open borders that simply welcome everyone with open arms. In fact, socialist countries all have pretty strict borders, significantly more strict than the liberal countries of the EU.
You are mis-analysing these socialists and it is a mistake to call them nazis. They have backwards views because they’re old fucks and out of touch, but they are absolutely left wing. If you dug up Mao or Deng they would probably explicitly agree with them, because they’d be old fucks today too, that wouldn’t make them less communist though and it certainly wouldn’t make them nazis. It would just make them old and out of touch with developing social issues.
Ditto…
And this is different from the Nazi with Jews how exactly?
I mean that’s just ahistorical… The center and right party did not cooperate with the Nazi party thinking they were going to be putting themselves out of power. The riechstag fire wouldn’t have been necessary if this was the case.
I think the Soviet union and especially West Germany were culturally progressive for the time.
So how about that fascist socially progressive fascist nation?
You are conflating open borders with legal immigration.
Lol, sure… The men who committed to war for their Korean neighbors, totally would be nationalistic isolationist who hates immigrants.
No I have. As has everyone else on hexbear that totally disagrees with you.
Migrating to a country is a choice mate. If you don’t understand how migration is a choice and being a fucking jew is not a choice we’ve got a fundamental problem with your ability to understand what immutable characteristics are.
Migrants are not an ethnicity or religion. Racism does get tangled up in anti-migrant bullshit, absolutely. But the two are quite different things. Economic anxieties over migration are not the same thing as believing in the fucking master race, what is so hard for you to fucking understand about this?
To understand one from another you need to look more closely at primary motivations for a person’s position. Sometimes the 10% racist bullshit someone spews about migrants can mislead you into saying “this person is a fascist” when 90% of their motivation is not racism at all and the racist crap is just an offshoot of the other crap that has nothing to do with nazism.
No it isn’t.
Why the fuck are you demanding I give you the name of something I never claimed to exist. Stop hitting me with your strawman dipshittery.
Both had closed borders though, why are you not calling them fascists for their policy towards migrant work? Also you mean EAST Germany, and furthermore East Germany’s socially progressive elements were driven by the goal of undermining western intelligence agencies that were for example blackmailing gay people into counter-revolution and spying. You can’t blackmail people if you simply change the social view of gay people and thus the country undertook a huge campaign to remove the stigma and make it acceptable. Not out of the goodness of their hearts but driven by material conditions.
What the fuck do you think legal immigration is if not a person passing through a border that is open? Illegal immigration = passing into a country that has closed its borders to you. Legal migration = passing into a country that has opened its borders to you.
China did not have an open border policy for migrant workers with the DPRK before or after the war. China’s policy both then and now is forcible repatriation back to their home country. Your understanding of socialists both historic and current is idealistic and utopian. They don’t have these policies, and did not back then, because they would be very bad policies that would be harmful to their own workers.
I actually hate you for forcing me to defend this position. Because I don’t agree with these people at all and I’ve come to blows with Galloway here in the UK more than once. But your labelling of these people as nazis is just completely absurd and unless you wrap your head around their position properly you will never understand the european left correctly, because you’ve incorrectly decided more than half of the european left are nazis.
lol. Should’ve known the dastardly Russians were behind everything all along.
I mean they would be stupid not to support radical parties in their oppositional democracies. It just speed runs democracies natural tendencies to decay into fascism.
So you’ve now moved the goal post from supporting far right parties to “radical” parties. Interesting.
The far right isnt a radical party?
No because western Europe and Amerikkka are fascist as fuck. Radical would be outside the norm. But please accuse me of pedantry again.
Are you claiming that all “democratic” nations are inherently fascist nations at any point of their economic/political development?
Did I say all? No I was pretty specific.
And what differentiates a fascist western “democracy” from a non fascist democracy.
So you too also enjoy fatalistic idealist framings of issues to skirt away from criticism. I thought I was the only one!
I hear far more about how ”we need to spend all our money on weapons and fuck the poor, because of Russia!” all over European media, and find it much more worrying than any supposed Russian influence. Europeans are capable of being reactionary without scary Russia telling them to it: some of the most Russophobic countries in Europe like Poland, the Baltics and Finland have popular far-right parties.
I’m not arguing they don’t? I’m just saying that it behooves them to support far right parties in these countries just as it benefits the US to support radical parties in places like Cuba or Venezuela.
The “European democracies” already undermined themselves by allowing capital to exert as much control as they want, and just allowing themselves to be vassalized by the USA. They join the USA in funding and supporting fascists and engage in regime change all over the world in order to continue to extract super profits from the global south so that they can stay rich and placate their own citizens by sharing some of that stolen wealth.
And this whole war was a result of a plan to exploit Ukraine’s human and material resources in a similar way, with the ultimate goal of doing the same to Russia. This is why the west has been supporting Banderite neo nazis in Ukraine for many decades.
The fascists lost WWII but won the Cold war. The DDR had far better gender equality, gay rights, and trans rights than the BRD.
Parties like BSW accept and attempt to work within the divisions among the working class along ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and disability status that were created by the ruling class in order to prevent the development of class consciousness. But into doing so they reinforce these divisions and allow themselves and class consciousness to be weakened. All while promoting bigotry. That is why I oppose them. Not because of their positions on Russia.
This does not conflict with my statement?
I would say it’s just two democratic nations who’ve decayed into the natural cycle of nationalistic authoritarianism that awaits all capitalistic nations, who just so happen to be beefing over the same turf. I don’t really know why people assume Russia is immune to the same dissolution as any other democratic nation.
Right… But the DDR has far better gender equality, gay rights, and trans rights than modern Russia. Which is now a democratic and capitalist state.