4 ms·

> One of the two is worse and it isn't the policies written in Cyrillic. I can't tell if you're a tankie or a bot but Russia is right now conducting an unprovo

by Lio 2mo ago

> One of the two is worse and it isn't the policies written in Cyrillic. I can't tell if you're a tankie or a bot but Russia is right now conducting an unprovoked war against a democracy with no foreign policy goal other than to destroy Ukraine and seize its assets. Where Russia has been forced out of Ukraine it's left behind war crimes and mass civilian graves. So experience shows, there is no safe surrender for Ukraine, they have to fight until they win. There is no world where Putin's Russia is the good guys. Remember, Putin is the only person with the luxury of stopping the war any time he likes.

pjc50 2mo ago
roenxi is a moderately prolific poster who can post reasonably but is clearly also plugged into the rightwing political and news ecosystem resulting in this kind of "rightwing tankie" take. I believe they're actually from one of India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, which would correlate with the timezone of this argument (it's 7am in NY and I would expect most of America to be asleep)
- selimthegrim 2mo ago
  There are a couple others in here - thriftwy and another who posts often about China but is shadowbanned whose name escapes me atm
- dismalaf 2mo ago
  Horseshoe theory still undefeated. Both right-wingers who consume certain content as well as left-wingers in the pro-Palestine/Iran camp tend to be sympathetic to the Russian cause, as the Russians and Iranians fund specific influencers/political parties on both sides of the spectrum. Right-wingers in Eastern Europe (who aren't obviously paid by Russia) are way more anti-Russia than the ones in the US.
  - pjc50 2mo ago
    Negative polarization is incredibly powerful. You can see all over the place how "X is bad" leads to people defining themselves as "anti-X" and then supporting the most extreme position against X rather than a moderate one, often leading them into supporting atrocities in the other direction. This is how we get people in the English Green Party (who I would like to support if they could be 10% less nutty fruitcake) ended up posting pro-Iran propaganda. You also do have to keep track of internal factions. We're all, me included, using "country name" in this thread as a synechdoche as if all of a country had a unified political axis of action, when we know that's an oversimplification. This is how we get Israel/Likud and Iran/IGRC who are practically co-evolved to escalate against each other, to which the only reasonable response of third parties is to acknowledge that both are bad and attempt to de-escalate, as in e.g. the Camp David Accords era, before either of those factions came to power. > Right-wingers in Eastern Europe (who aren't obviously paid by Russia) I don't think enough was made of https://newrepublic.com/post/209035/hungary-prime-minister-victor-orban-paying-cpac https://newrepublic.com/post/209035/hungary-prime-minister-v... - the amount of money involved was a significant fraction of the Hungarian budget.
  - fc417fc802 2mo ago
    This is a bizarre take. Despite propaganda to the contrary most "pro-palestine" takes are actually just anti-genocide and pro-human-rights. Similarly at least in the US this "iranian camp" you refer to is by and large an anti-getting-involved camp. Is it really pro-iranian to ask why the government is burning billions of dollars to destabilize the global economy? Also I've yet to meet a single person who was "pro-palestine" and simultaneously sympathetic to russia. Quite the opposite.
    - pjc50 2mo ago
      Most, yes, but there is a noisy lunatic fringe on social media whose existence we must acknowledge. Recent example is Eleanora Folan, a minor politician in a minor UK party. Of course as you say there's also people trying to lump the many "we should stop mass murder of civilians" people into the same bucket as the negatively polarized "we hate Israel therefore we're going to support Iran" few. Discourse is exhaustingly stupid.
    - dismalaf 2mo ago
      You need to pay attention then. https://kyivindependent.com/pro-palestinian-activists-destroy-ukrainian-aid-worth-1-million-confusing-it-with-israeli-06-2025/ https://kyivindependent.com/pro-palestinian-activists-destro... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7x68jrdmlo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7x68jrdmlo https://time.com/6589923/nancy-pelosi-pro-palestinian-protests-foreign-influence-russia-china/ https://time.com/6589923/nancy-pelosi-pro-palestinian-protes... https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/russias-relationship-hamas-and-putins-global-calculations https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/russias-... And this isn't counting the countless TikTok influencers, trade unions, etc... that are all anti-"war" and have pro-IRGC and pro-China views. And while you're kind of right that few are outright carrying water for Russia, at least publicly, they all conveniently support what Russia supports.
      - fc417fc802 2mo ago
        This ranges from propaganda to entirely unsurprising. Propagandists work to hamper causes that are inconvenient for their side. Meanwhile of course our geopolitical adversaries will offer support to otherwise seemingly unrelated causes if it somehow indirectly serves their ends. The average joe in the US (and presumably the west more generally) does not care one whit about the causes of russia or iran.

by Lio 2mo ago

pjc50 2mo ago

roenxi is a moderately prolific poster who can post reasonably but is clearly also plugged into the rightwing political and news ecosystem resulting in this kind of "rightwing tankie" take. I believe they're actually from one of India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, which would correlate with the timezone of this argument (it's 7am in NY and I would expect most of America to be asleep)

selimthegrim 2mo ago
There are a couple others in here - thriftwy and another who posts often about China but is shadowbanned whose name escapes me atm
dismalaf 2mo ago
Horseshoe theory still undefeated. Both right-wingers who consume certain content as well as left-wingers in the pro-Palestine/Iran camp tend to be sympathetic to the Russian cause, as the Russians and Iranians fund specific influencers/political parties on both sides of the spectrum. Right-wingers in Eastern Europe (who aren't obviously paid by Russia) are way more anti-Russia than the ones in the US.
- pjc50 2mo ago
  Negative polarization is incredibly powerful. You can see all over the place how "X is bad" leads to people defining themselves as "anti-X" and then supporting the most extreme position against X rather than a moderate one, often leading them into supporting atrocities in the other direction. This is how we get people in the English Green Party (who I would like to support if they could be 10% less nutty fruitcake) ended up posting pro-Iran propaganda. You also do have to keep track of internal factions. We're all, me included, using "country name" in this thread as a synechdoche as if all of a country had a unified political axis of action, when we know that's an oversimplification. This is how we get Israel/Likud and Iran/IGRC who are practically co-evolved to escalate against each other, to which the only reasonable response of third parties is to acknowledge that both are bad and attempt to de-escalate, as in e.g. the Camp David Accords era, before either of those factions came to power. > Right-wingers in Eastern Europe (who aren't obviously paid by Russia) I don't think enough was made of https://newrepublic.com/post/209035/hungary-prime-minister-victor-orban-paying-cpac https://newrepublic.com/post/209035/hungary-prime-minister-v... - the amount of money involved was a significant fraction of the Hungarian budget.
- fc417fc802 2mo ago
  This is a bizarre take. Despite propaganda to the contrary most "pro-palestine" takes are actually just anti-genocide and pro-human-rights. Similarly at least in the US this "iranian camp" you refer to is by and large an anti-getting-involved camp. Is it really pro-iranian to ask why the government is burning billions of dollars to destabilize the global economy? Also I've yet to meet a single person who was "pro-palestine" and simultaneously sympathetic to russia. Quite the opposite.
  - pjc50 2mo ago
    Most, yes, but there is a noisy lunatic fringe on social media whose existence we must acknowledge. Recent example is Eleanora Folan, a minor politician in a minor UK party. Of course as you say there's also people trying to lump the many "we should stop mass murder of civilians" people into the same bucket as the negatively polarized "we hate Israel therefore we're going to support Iran" few. Discourse is exhaustingly stupid.
  - dismalaf 2mo ago
    You need to pay attention then. https://kyivindependent.com/pro-palestinian-activists-destroy-ukrainian-aid-worth-1-million-confusing-it-with-israeli-06-2025/ https://kyivindependent.com/pro-palestinian-activists-destro... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7x68jrdmlo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7x68jrdmlo https://time.com/6589923/nancy-pelosi-pro-palestinian-protests-foreign-influence-russia-china/ https://time.com/6589923/nancy-pelosi-pro-palestinian-protes... https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/russias-relationship-hamas-and-putins-global-calculations https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/russias-... And this isn't counting the countless TikTok influencers, trade unions, etc... that are all anti-"war" and have pro-IRGC and pro-China views. And while you're kind of right that few are outright carrying water for Russia, at least publicly, they all conveniently support what Russia supports.
    - fc417fc802 2mo ago
      This ranges from propaganda to entirely unsurprising. Propagandists work to hamper causes that are inconvenient for their side. Meanwhile of course our geopolitical adversaries will offer support to otherwise seemingly unrelated causes if it somehow indirectly serves their ends. The average joe in the US (and presumably the west more generally) does not care one whit about the causes of russia or iran.