What's up with all the Pro-Russia Stuff in lemmygrad.ml and this Community

As someone else put better than I, you need to free yourself of the western propaganda framing that is "authoritarianism" as a snarl word and an insult as well as a set of blinders designed to shut down critical thought and inquiry.

Was the US "authoritarian" when it installed brutal military dictatorships in south Vietnam and Korea? How about when it supported Pinochet and helped him murder leftist catholic priests? When did it stop being authoritarian hmm? Like a serialremoved was it ever doing anything but putting on an act of being good? Because deep down that's what it is. It can pretend to be good, it can even on the surface seem to be on its best behavior but deep down it's structurally a monster and like the serialremoved is not going to be reformed. Let me remind you Biden fully supported Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people so don't go thinking Trump flipped a switch from good-mode to evil-mode or something. Trump just cranked the dial up a bit more on the brutality and oppression machine and got it extra revved up domestically (the red scare ring a bell? there were actually two of them, this isn't the first time, how about after 9/11 when anyone not with Bush was a traitor and they passed the Patriot act to punch holes in the constitution and rule of law?).

One should be wary of over-simplifying but I'd be remiss not to point out the old war-time adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Obviously this isn't always true but when fighting a unipolar hegemon that won the cold war, that has dominated the entire world ever since, that controls finance, wields dollar hegemony, sanctions as weapons against anyone who displeases it, who violates international law flagrantly without consequences, you can't get too picky. You can be critical, you can point out that hey I heard those guys we're temporarily allied with saying they want to knife us once we win the battle together and that's wise and you should be critical in your head of capitalist powers who are not friends out of choice but out of necessity. Yet as long as that necessity holds they are friends. We call this critical support. We support Russia against NATO and the US, we don't support Russia's reactionary moves at home, their homophobia, etc.

And no, Russia cannot replace the US if it falls as an equal or worse imperialist power. US world hegemony was built directly on the legacy of centuries of European colonialism, it was cemented in a unique historical moment in 1990 with the illegal dissolution of the USSR. It was not built in other words in a year or a decade but the work of centuries, cemented by various historical events which cannot re-occur. For one China has risen and is continuing to grow in strength. This is historical materialist analysis, this is analysis based on the material realities and the historical material realities.

So yes Russia may become an enemy but for now the greed and arrogance of the west is forcing them to be our ally. Russia wanted to be an equal capitalist partner with the US over Europe and eventually other parts of the world. That would cut into profits, it couldn't be allowed, like all large countries which cannot be easily subjugated the US slated Russia for being broken up by internal ethnic tensions, it stoked problems in Chechnya and various other regions, it started a fire in Georgia, then in Ukraine. It's the same thing in China and Xinjiang, divide and conquer. The British used this strategy to occupy and plunder India for a hundred years, pitting various minor powers against each other, keeping Indians divided, subterfuge and shifting alliances to maintain the upper hand. Again and again Russia reached out their hand attempting to be a partner with the US and again and again the US responded by turning a blow torch on it. With Ukraine Russia may have finally learned that it is not going to happen.

See also this post and the excellent replies explaining the history behind Russia's move in Ukraine if you haven't already: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7357678

You have used the word "authoritarian" three times in the one paragraph you wrote in your post. I want you to take some time to think about why this word so important to you. What exactly do you think it means?

Edit: Some additional food for thought: do you really think that it applies only to some countries and not others, and is it really a word that is helpful in understanding the world from a materialist socialist perspective, or is it just a thought terminating moralistic cliché?

Imperialism (led by the US and reinforced by other western allies) is the current and ongoing primary contradiction, not a lack of local communism. Russia is positioned in opposition to US/western imperialism, so we give them "critical support" in their efforts to combat the global capitalist empire, but do not give them credit for being a capitalist regime.

The western empire is the single biggest obstacle to communism and the most consistent in pushing violent anti-communist tendrils across the globe, on top of having a history of orchestrating violent coups and other means of control over nation-states that simply defy imperialist or colonial control, even if they are not really "communist" in practice. One of the most prevalent examples being the major part that the western empire played in destroying the USSR and thus, leading to the capitalist conditions of current day Russia.

It's not about whether Putin is better or worse than Zelensky in some individual-focused way, or whether Russia is a better or worse government than Ukraine. Ukraine at this stage is effectively a proxy for NATO expansion (NATO being a tool of the western empire) and Russia is defying NATO's advancement on its borders in fighting with it. But that is just touching on it on a vague level. This thread has lots of great resources on understanding the Ukraine-Russia conflict and how it started: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7357678

Russia is not imperialist, see an explanation on why here: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Imperialism#Russian_%22imperialism%22

In general, what you are probably facing up against is the tendency for western imperialist propaganda to oversimplify and claim equivalence of things that are not equivalent. Russia is difficult to even compare to another nation because of its unique history, being both a major part in a staggeringly influential and effective mass marxist socialist state project (the USSR) and also being part of the same project that fell and was reduced to a capitalist mess. It is made more complicated by how it has not been reduced to simply being another servant of the western empire after the loss of the USSR, but has ended up in opposition to it still in one form or another.

It is also one of the most consistently and prolifically vilified countries, due to decades of Cold War propaganda, both during the height of the Cold War and after the USSR's fall. It is not surprising then that some people would have a hard time wrapping their head around it as neither hero nor villain and as part of a complex dynamic on the world stage, with an even more complex history, grappling with challenging material conditions throughout. But embracing that complexity is an important exercise in getting used to viewing the world beyond the binary lens of good and evil that anti-communist propaganda loves to do.

Just out of curiosity, is this not something you saw before making an account? 😅

I know some people are dunking on you here but there are also a lot of good comments on this subject if you wanted to read them.

Try your best to enter the conversation with an open mind, it took me years of deprogramming the imperial propaganda, and the final push was when the imperial core started genociding my own country.

There are still pro-western/imperial arabs and muslims! I talked to them the other day and it was an extremely frustrating conversation but some people do not want to have their minds changed, they just want to argue.

I asked plenty of questions I thought were elementary here and I've gotten amazing responses every time, nobody will criticize you as long as you are actually open to learning.

Russia isn't Socialist but they aren't "authoritarian" because that word is literally meaningless. All governments are authoritarian. All governments by definition enforce law (the rules of society) and curtail the rights of the individual. (You'd probably be better off just removing the word from your lexicon)

Russia supports anti-imperialism in Africa and in some cases is directly supporting socialists like in Burkina Faso. Russia does have reactionary tendencies but systemic racism is not nearly as pronounced as in euro-american nations and it is mostly imported from the west. Anti-racism is one of the defining features that separates socialism from nazism.

Russia is far more likely to become socialist than any other developed countries. The war has shown them the advantages of a planned economy, state ownership of industry, and the detrimental cost of a privately owned national bank and their strong ties to China also act as a socialist influence. A loss in Ukraine would not help Russia back to socialism it would just get them broken up and turned into neo-colonies. (who would all be manipulated to fight amongst themselves by the CIA or redirected against China)

Russia also gives me the impression of being colonialist but I’m not sure if that’s accurate

no it isn't accurate. Name one Russian colony. At the very worst you can call Russia expansionist because the people in areas they annex are granted full citizenship and all the privileges and rights that entails. Since the start of the SMO Russia has been paying pensions of elderly people in Donbas, people who never contributed to their economy. That is not the action of a colonialist.

Russia, or to say Iran, or Assad get (critical) support for their anti-imperialist position in global politics. They themselves are not pro-socialism, but it is wrong to say that their anti-imperialism doesn't help the global socialist cause.

Let me try to answer you directly.

What is the positive outcome of defending an authoritarian regime like Putin's?

Caveat before I answer, you have asked a leading question that makes a few assumptions, mostly phrases in accordance with imperialist rhetoric.

Having said that, the only positive outcome of such actions on social media is the raising of the awareness of others of the task at hand - dismantling imperialism. The more people become aware of the need to dismantle imperialism AND the details of that struggle, the better.

I don't see how that advances socialist goals in any way.

It advances socialist goals by changing the conditions of under which socialism can develop. A world where the US and European powers are in decline, shown to be in decline, and lose the support of their own citizens is a world that has much greater potential for socialist projects to survive than a world where the US bombs any even vaguely socialist projects without any consequences.

I am learning that Zelenskyy and Ukraine are not as good as Western media describes, but I do not see how Putin is better.

Is this a moral framing or a practical one? If moral, then you have a problem with your analysis because assigning morality to a person or a state is a category error and leads to incorrect analysis. If a practical one, it should be pretty clear. Zelenskyy cooperates with the US militarily to extend the USA's lethal forces including nuclear first strike capabilities, and Putin opposed the USA militarily. It can be as simple as that.

I am interested in being part of lemmygrad.ml, but not if it depends authoritarian regimes, especially if they are not working towards socialism/communism.

Why do you want to be part of the community? What draws you to us? Why do you hold an unexamined standard and use it to judge the community you want to belong to? What does that keep you safe from?

In my experience, I started off with your position years ago. I eventually learned that I was repeating unexamined propaganda from my home country of the USA and that my entire framing was arrogant, self-righteous, holier-than-thou, moralistic, and ultimately founded in abject ignorance. Come here to learn when you're ready. It'll change your entire understanding of history and, thereby, the present.

I want to work towards socialist goals, but I don't want to be used as a tool in some authoritarian geopolitical mess.

You already are being used as that tool, based on your rhetoric. You already repeat unexamined propaganda from the West. You are on social media engaging in discourse while remaining deeply ignorant and completely immersed in imperialist propaganda, and you don't realize it.

What I have found is that spending time with communists, even when they hold positions that feel morally uncomfortable, ultimately develops within you the ability to spot propaganda from all sides and engage with it safely, because propaganda relies deeply on ignorance, faulty hueristics, and contradictory language. The project to counter all three is a huge part of communist discourse, and you'll be much safer sitting in discomfort and learning than using your comfort as a guide right now because your comfort is based on how you were raised within the imperialist project, not because you built it yourself through deep historical analysis.

Russia also gives me the impression of being colonialist but I'm not sure if that's accurate.

We don't operate on impressions here, we operate on analysis. The short answer is that Russia has no colonies so it's not colonialist. The long answer is incredibly long. AFAIK no one has written a definitive analysis on the topic yet. There are many books and essays on the topic, but none of them are comprehensive, and that means you and me are gonna have to read a bunch of things, both what other people have written as well as their sources and not just on Russian colonialism but on colonialism, neocolonialism, post-colonial theory, etc.

Don't get me wrong, we operate on vibes a lot here, but we don't go throwing around statements like "This nation-state is X" without serious digging.

Stick around and you'll learn more than you ever thought you could. If you're not ready, don't sweat it. We're not going anywhere. You can always come back and begin the learning process with us some other time.