Is Russia becoming the scapegoat to the hard left?

[Yukaphile]

Wasn't sure whether or not to put this into "news" section. This is politics, but since I've been flagged before with, "This isn't news!", to hell with that. A mod can later move it if so.

Basically, yeah. Is Russia becoming the scapegoat to the hard left that does not want to admit it was as much infighting with the centrists they need to resolve rather than the Russian bogeyman? Everyone here knows I am NO fan of Russia, but even I'm not blind to how a rampantly incompetent media desperate for ratings contributed to the massive schism in the Democrats in 2016. Yes, Russia did play us, I can admit that, even if there's no evidence Trump was colluding. As well as the GOP. But in some ways, it feels like Russia is becoming the justification for why we lost rather than admitting the truth, which is that it was a complex series of events, nothing more. This is why I criticize Sanders so much, with his fanboy worship of the USSR, being blind to the realities of it, and that he was a lightning rod for a lot of the division in the Democratic Party he does not belong to, whether he will admit it or not. Very popular among third-party voters, young Communists and Anarchists and Socialists, the Green Party, and to serve Russia and the GOP's interests, little past that.

So don't make this about me, please. I'm talking what I see among dedicated left-leaning Democrats. And what I posited here.

[Admiral X]

It's the new Red Scare, complete with its own version of McCarthyism.

[Yukaphile]

I think you're underestimating how dangerous their country has become. Not that anything has changed, mind you. While we were in an economic golden age, they had Yeltsin's famines. And because of that long history of struggle, I'd daresay they are more inclined than most people to not want to deal with reality and use that and clinging to past glories to justify what they do. Now they are expanding out into other countries in a new campaign of world conquest. No, things are not at boiling point yet, like they were at the height of the Cold War. But if we had a brief "cool-down" period in the 1990s, it's been slowly heating up since then. My point was to wonder if the left blames them too much over prioritizing accepting their own role with infighting prompted by outside sources?

[Yukaphile]

Hell, my experience with leftists under a certain age set is they are tankies, not just Communists, but full blown Soviet apologists lying to themselves to think "it worked over there!" as an excuse to try and dismantle capitalism.

[Darth Wedgius]

Yes... but I don't know to what degree. I think the left has become less self-policing in recent years and moved more towards the attitude of "we're all in this together." That makes it hard to figure out who on the left buys into that kind of nonsense.

Conspiracy theories seem to run rampant on both the left and right. A lot of people on the right thought Obama was secretly not an American citizen from birth (Trump bought into that one, or at least wanted it investigated) or secretly Muslim.

Hillary Clinton's accusation that Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset seems to me to fall into that kind of conspiracy nonsense, and, IIRC, there were some who decided that if you didn't like The Last Jedi and were vocal about it, you might be have been a "Russian bot."

Leftists waving flags of the USSR is something other than scapegoating. It's akin to some on the right waving Nazi flags. It's stupid too, but not the same kind of stupid as scapegoating. People are complex and flexible and can indulge in wonderfully diverse flavors of stupid. It's part of what makes life interesting.

[Yukaphile]

That's certainly the attitude I see among proud and self-styled SJWs.

Well, let's not go crazy here. There is a firm basis in truth there. The left, like right, is easily open to infighting, and the GOP leadership if not the right or moderate Republicans themselves have ties to Russia. Tulsi Gabbard is very popular among the Sanders die-hard hold-out third-party voters who wanna start shit because they're accelerationists who hate the system and wanna burn it down to create a "better" one. Granted, not saying she will accept their help any more than the evidence says Trump did not, but at the same time, she has the same rhetoric and I saw how after 2016 that many radical Sanders voters were pushing her to the forefront.

Well, yeah. I think that only applies to the hard-line elements the further into the hardcore fringe you get. Most radical minority righties are Nazis (in a world where the crimes of their leadership are fully laid bare), and most radical minority lefties are Communists if not necessarily tankies (in a world where the crimes of the USSR leadership and on an individual level are well known). But that's not most people.

[ProfessorDetective]

Hell, my experience with leftists under a certain age set is they are tankies, not just Communists, but full blown Soviet apologists lying to themselves to think "it worked over there!" as an excuse to try and dismantle capitalism.

Whoever believes that is a moron. Now, if their examples were Canada or Scandinavia, I'd be more inclined to agree, but not SOVIET FREAKING RUSSIA!

[Yukaphile]

You can be Communist while opposing Russian imperialism. It's why I don't buy the claims McCarthy was justified by some revisionist historians because "there was lot more sympathy to Communism back then than we know today!" Well, of course, that's inevitable in a society where the rich dominate the poor, which still happened in the USSR, ironically.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Russia is not very much of a factor in leftist rebel against Trump. The left that you're talking about are more concerned with domestic issues perpetrated in their view by Americans in control in this way or that. Russia specifically to what you're getting at is largely a State level issue (as in nation-state type of state). AOC for instance is a House representative, and very much vibes with the left that reactionaries perceive it as on the internet. The House for that matter is distinctively concerned with domestic ridden internal issues more than the Senate. Of course Sanders as a senator doesn't quite gel with that rubrik, but I could probably work around that.

[CmdrKing]

If anything I would say the opposite: the “Hard” left, who I’d consider dedicated leftists who have not yet given up on electoral politics (as opposed to a “far” left) generally consider that politicians focus too much on Russia, regardless of their assessment of how much of a threat Putin is.

The hyper focus on Russia is much more a trait of centrist/moderate Democrats, who want to look at factors for current electoral woes besides voter suppression, tactical missteps, or the resonance tackling wealth inequity has.