Maybe the user in question deleted their post themselves.

One of his better posts imo.

I highly recommend the book “This Soviet World” by Anna Louise Strong from 1936

Seconded. That is an excellent book.

Western protest culture elevates these managed spectacles into moral absolutes while systematically marginalizing forms of struggle that actually threaten power. That’s not neutral; it actively disarms movements by teaching people that symbolic display and sanctioned outrage are the peak of political action. Naming that isn’t disrespectful to those who suffer within these protests, it’s a necessary critique of a model that reproduces defeat while insisting it represents resistance.

Well said!

For those unfamiliar with early communist writings: whenever Lenin uses the term “Social-Democracy” he basically means communism. “Social Democracy” only came to have the meaning we understand it to have today with the split in the Second International and WWI when the European Social Democrats betrayed the working class.

I agree. They would have gotten more out of making a deal with Maduro. The problem with that is that they would have lost face. They were too invested and couldn’t back down.

Everyone is trying to find some sort of grand strategic plan behind this whole episode, but maybe the reason why this looks like such a short sighted, poorly thought out strategic blunder, is because it was more about domestic politics.

Trump’s approval rating has been in rapid decline, and he needed to do something that would re-energize the base, give them a “win” and make himself look tough.

I mean, Clinton bombed Serbia right after the Monica Lewinsky scandal…

Luckily there are still some countries in Europe where hustle culture will have a really hard time catching on. I can’t imagine Spain, Greece or southern Italy going for it. Even in most of the Balkans it’s a tough sell, we’re just not built that way, lol.

Smoked is good too.

Let’s not jump straight to blaming Europe’s warmongering tendencies on climate. The Romans were pretty warmongering too and they came from a very mild climate where they have generally quite good food these days.

Though the demand for spices was an important part of the initial driving motivation of European colonialism it’s not the full picture.

Food is one thing - it can be quite logically connected to climate and what you can grow where - but i think that applying this same geographic determinism to macro-historic trends is a bit too simplistic.

Taste is totally subjective so you are absolutely entitled to that opinion. I will concede however that an aged Gouda can be decent.

Why does lemmy deny russian imperialism

We don’t. We just think it ended in October 1917.

do we think they are socialists too

No we do not.

or do we ignore middle east africa and ukraine

Why would we ignore instances in which Russia has acted in an anti-imperialist capacity?

And now those laws and social safety nets are slowly being stripped away.

Yup. And the most interesting British food is curry. Funny how that goes. But i suppose you can’t really fault them for it. On the whole, the further north a country is the more bland and boring their food is. Scandinavian food is also terrible. German food is passable but mainly because of southern Germany. Russia kind of straddles the line between Nordic style blandness and some more interesting and complex flavors, mostly thanks to the wonderful Slavic pickling culture and some southern influences from the Caucasus.

save for their weather being shit, their food being shit and for them being literally the most boring people to be around

Unfortunately true. The most interesting Dutch food is Indonesian. So-called “Hollandaise” sauce isn’t even from Holland, it’s from France. And even the cheese, which they are mildly famous for, is still better in Belgium. I mean Limburger is ok but Leerdammer, Edammer and Gouda are all incredibly bland and boring, quite possibly the most “standard” cheeses i can think of other than maybe Cheddar. Belgium also has better beer and cooler architecture, it’s overall just a better version of the Netherlands (minus the fact that it includes the den of demons that is Brussels).

However, i will say this for the Dutch, on all three counts, weather, food and people, they still rank higher than the British.

Anyways sadly its the norm in euroleft circles.

Sadly true. Probably exacerbated by the fact that it’s Finland… Even the communists in Finland can’t fully escape the liberal brainworms.

Even in Siberia, the most wintery of winter hellscapes, you can still ride your motorcycle at least four to five months out of the year. I’m sure wherever you move you will still have that opportunity in the summer.

First of all framing it as “when” Russia invades implies it is some inevitability when it is one of the least likely scenarios imaginable.

Secondly, it would not have anything to do with anti-imperialism to fight on behalf of reactionary, imperialist Europe. Even if you saw Russia as being equally as bad as Europe, the correct position in that case would be to adopt Lenin’s revolutionary defeatism.

But Russia isn’t equally bad. They are on the side of virtually all anti-imperialist states in the world right now. Europe is all-in on imperialism and Nazism. An “invasion” of Europe by Russia would be a liberation from the fascist EU and imperialist NATO. I would rather sabotage my own country from the inside and try to join the Russian forces first chance i get.

As for the US attacking Europe, anyone who thinks that Europe would do anything other than roll over and lick the master’s boots is deluding themselves. They would not even put up any resistance. European militaries are practically non-existent and non-functional without NATO systems, and the US controls it all.

Not to mention the total economic and energy dependence of Europe on the US. The US imposes a blockade on Europe and everything in Europe freezes. Europe has zero strategic autonomy, we gave the last final drop of it up when we let the US bomb Nordstream.

If the US decided to march into Greenland tomorrow and annex it, the EU would put out a strongly worded letter and a week later be back to unequivocally supporting whatever the US does around the world.

“We don’t like what they did, but let’s let bygones be bygones. We cannot afford to alienate our US allies. Us democracies have to stick together. After all, Russia is waging a hybrid war against Europe and plans to invade any day now.”

The capitalist system’s promotion of a culture of obsession with constant productivity, overwork and shaming relaxation or idleness as “laziness” is a big part of why attention spans have deteriorated. We are constantly being told that if we are not always doing something valuable that we are wasting our time. Even leisure time is being judged by how many experiences you make and it becomes a sort of competition to show off for others on social media. This makes people very restless and anxious and unable to just sit calmly and quietly for extended periods of time without constantly worrying about how they could or should be doing something “productive”. The fact that there is also a constant financial pressure put on people to constantly have to hustle and make money in some way in order to just survive only compounds on this.

Russia: “European troops in Ukraine would be legitimate targets”

Translation: If anti-Russia states put “peacekeepers” in Ukraine, Russia will use them for target practice.

The questions are also purposely formulated in such a way as to basically amount to just asking: “do you want good, nice things?”.

They are far too general and don’t even define what “individual rights and freedoms” even mean. Rights and freedoms to do what, exactly? What makes these rights “individual” as opposed to, what, collective rights, presumably? And who is to say that the respondents don’t already assume that they have those things?

Let’s say for instance for the first question they instead asked something like: “Would you prefer to have the US political system instead of your current one?”. Does anyone really believe that the result would reflect the same high approval score? I say no way. Everyone can see how dysfunctional the US is.

How about instead of the second question you reformulate it to ask: “Do you want to give rich people the freedom to buy politicians and the right to exert disproportionate influence on elections?” That’s an “individual freedom”, right? Or how about “Should everyone be free to carry a gun?”

Or for the third question, you can instead ask: “Should leaders be selected based solely on popularity and media coverage instead of proven skill in leadership and governance?” or maybe: “Should someone with no qualifications have as much say on policy in a specific field as a trained and educated expert?”

This is the problem with all polling of this sort. It all depends on how you formulate the questions. You can make something sound good by using words with generally positive associations, or you can take advantage of the fact that people don’t understand the hidden implications of what is being asked.