CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Sun May 22, 2022 1:01 pm
The sheer staggering apologia for Putin, a Far Right dictator and capitalist oligarch admired as well as supporting the Far Right in other nations, pretty much shows the level of "intellectual" discourse in a lot of academia where it doesn't actually matter about your PRINCIPLES if you are making a point against the United States.
If he's Anti-West, he's good.
Which is like some of the China apologia out there, acting like being pro-democracy and freedom must itself be hypocritical to the point there is no difference between a dictatorship and a democracy.
Weirdly it seems to be the opposite in some ways, they’re reacting to certain stimuli in accordance to their principles then completely failing to follow through on the implications and requirements of their conclusions.
The primary thing I see non-grifters cite in supporting Russia is how news of the invasion has been reported in western media. Which is to say, the western media spent weeks in full Manufacture of Consent mode, followed by following along rather unquestioningly with Ukraine’s own propaganda efforts. For example those I know who oppose US intervention were extremely eager to spread the admission that the Ghost of Kyiv was fictitious, a propaganda move.
So… cool, western media sucks and is publishing a lot of propaganda uncritically. I wouldn’t even dispute that.
The trouble is even when you account for that, Russia’s own accounts of their maneuvers are just hilariously self-serving obvious falsehoods.
Like, Russia verifiably had a line of advance towards Kyiv, Odesa, and Kharkiv, which are well outside the zones Russia was recognizing. They verifiably had faulty equipment and had to retreat from those advances. Whatever equipment the west has sent them, it’s still Ukrainians who’ve done the shooting so any claims that the whole of the country was eager to be a Russian suzerainty are extremely suspect.
Even if we buy into the notion that the ‘Yankee Empire’ is the prime evil of the world and the surest way to topple it is to create other legitimate polls of power, Russia’s clearly not
capable of being that pole, ideologically or materially. Like fuck, at least when people stan China there are actual things you can point to they’ve done better than the west that suggest they might be a suitable global hegemon. (I don’t particularly agree, but there exist actual sound arguments!) why you’d shoot yourself in the face going to bat for Russia is pure inability to think about the situation rationally.