Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

kano moderator wrote (edited )

I'm very tempted to delete this, as to me it reads like any other russian state propaganda. Might respond to some of the points in there later.

The myth of NATO expansion in Eastern Europe and its role triggering the Ukraine war is one of the favourite arguments of the Western left. It is also flimsy.

The relationship between NATO and Russia is complicated. All leaders of Russia have, at some point, expressed concerns about eastward expansion of the powerful Western military alliance as a security threat. However, Russia’s attitude toward such expansion varied, depending on the country’s strategic goals at any given time. Even Vladimir Putin himself, during a 2000 visit to London, when asked about the possibility of Russia joining NATO said: “Why not? (…) Russia is a part of European culture, and I do not consider my own country in isolation from Europe. (…) Therefore, it is with difficulty that I imagine NATO as an enemy.”

Yet the Western left insists that Russia was promised no expansion eastwards following the fall of the Iron Curtain. The problem is there was never such a promise, and both former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian president Boris Yeltsin have admitted this. It’s easily google-able: just type in “unification of Germany” or “Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation 1997.” And for the adventurous who wish to educate themselves on what Russia (and the US) did promise to Ukraine (and Belarus, and Kazakhstan) in exchange for the post-Soviet nukes present on its territory: try “the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances 1994.”

From the left’s perspective, the biggest problem with this claim, however, isn’t that it is factually incorrect. It is the apparent image of Eastern Europe in the eyes of the Western left as naturally subordinate to Russia, incapable of independence. Instead the two great colonial powers, the West and Russia, should settle this dispute, because who would bother asking nearly 45 million Ukrainians what they think, or let them sit at the same table as equals. This kind of attitude is, pretty obviously, left over from the West’s own colonial past and post-colonial present, and the requirement for its left to self-improve around this issue isn’t unreasonable – it is anti-colonial.

https://freedomnews.org.uk/2022/07/24/an-eastern-europe-mythbuster/

https://countervortex.org/why-did-russia-invade-ukraine/

https://europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article63097

Check out the pinned post in this forum innit.

8

Rat wrote

Jeffrey Sachs 🤮

6

kano wrote

What's the deal with Jeffrey Sachs?

4

Rat wrote (edited )

Conspiracy theorist, snake oil salesman, Left-wing propagandist, high priest of economics, and a public collaborationist with Russia and China.

7

TwentyFiveCharsOrLess wrote (edited )

Leftists be like: us imperialism bad, Chinese/Russian imperialism based

5

Archaplain wrote

dont use the "oid" suffix it has ableist connotations.

3

kano wrote

I didn't know that actually, do you have some information about it?

7

ziq wrote (edited )

me neither

From Ancient Greek -ειδής (-eidḗs), -οειδής (-oeidḗs) (the ο being the last vowel of the stem to which the suffix is attached); from εἶδος (eîdos, “form, likeness”).

it's not ableist to any greek speaker and searching 'oid ableist' brings up nothing. I think what probably happened is some leftist got offended at being called it and declared it was ableist in order to shame and shut down their opponent and other people just believed them

https://raddle.me/f/Ability/55653/languagebot-list-of-ableist-words

5

kano wrote (edited )

Well I could find this about it when I was trying to learn something about it

I also came across this this nasty ass Reddit thread where people are arguing about it.

5

ziq wrote

When people stop saying 'android' and 'sphereoid' and 'humanoid' and 'asteroid' and the hundreds of other words that end in oid, I'll stop saying leftoid (left droid).

4

Antarchtic wrote (edited )

I assume it's by association with the word "mongoloid", a slur for people with down syndrome.

4

ziq wrote

That's like banning the word anarchism because of anarcho-capitalism tho.

5

TwentyFiveCharsOrLess wrote

I’ve heard people here using it, and I thought that it was just plain OK to do and I never knew that had ablist connotations. I’m sorry. I strive to be better than that.

4