Yes, and there were plenty of high level Nazi who rose to power in East Germany… Just because Vincenz Müller was chief of staff for the east German army doesn’t mean the Soviets were an evolution of the Nazi state.

It just means that both sides utilized Germans to deter or lead a conflict that was likely going to take place in Germany, and that pretty much all Germans with military or political experience post WW2 were at some point Nazi.

Or simply to act to with moral coherence and avoid unnecessary cognitive dissonance.

Which is a way to make ourselves feel better… I don’t eat meat because of my morals, but I don’t think for a second that its meaningful on a societal scale, or makes me somehow morally superior to those who do.

That would IMO be a negative impact. Ecoterrorism does not work. Wrong ethically, and counterprodutive. So that’s a second difference.

But if we reach a critical mass of people who do think eco-terrorism is good then we would stop climate change… If you’re not willing to lift a finger for the environment how do you expect anyone else to?

Eco-terrorism can only be a negative impact because of the social mores it clashes with, which will never change if voters don’t really care about the environment. As far as ethics goes, that’s really a matter of perspective. Is it really morally troubling to destroy property than it it is to let that property destroy entire ecologies?

Btw, im not actually advocating for eco-terrorism, I’m just utilizing your logic to make a point. We all could be devoting our entire lives to push society to be more green, but we are human. And part of being human is wanting to be comfortable and live within our social norms. No amount of personal responsibility is really going to make a difference at a scale that really matters unless we are already in a position in that society to do so.

The very fact that we can express disagreements like this and not be arrested is proof of something.

Two unimportant people discussing mundane topics without being arrested has been fairly standard in just about every society in human history.

The fact that our politicians are useless or malevolent is because we are those things.

Eh… I tend to believe that power corrupts and that the corrupt seek power over people. I would hope that you or I are both more morally upstanding people than the people in charge of our society.

No societies in human history have been as free and democratic as the modern West. Things were (much) worse before, and soon they’re going to get much worse again.

Lol, that’s just incredibly naive. There is a higher percentage of people in prison today than ever before. I’m not arguing that there haven’t been times and places where it’s worse to be alive…but it’s simply impossible to accurately claim that the modern west most “free” society that’s ever been created. Freedom means different things to different people at different times, as does modernity.

Anyway. An unbridgeable gulf. Others can decide which of us, if either, is “right”.

Lol, it’s only unbridgeable because you refuse to participate in discourse. This isn’t a right or wrong type of conversation, the whole point of communicating in an open forum is to learn. Nobody cares about the opinions of two schmucks talking about ethical consumption on the Internet.

remains that people are using the systems argument as an excuse not to change their own lives

I mean everyone including you does that to some level, otherwise we’d all be eco-terrorists. The small sacrifices you or I make are virtually meaningless, and are really just ways to make ourselves feel better. If you or I really put all our eggs in the basket of individual impact then we’d be blowing up oil wells. But we don’t, because we want to be comfortable just like the people “not lifting a finger”.

No democratic system is going to change when citizens are not lifting a finger individually.

I would say that we don’t really live in a democratic society… More systemic change in America is driven by the will of a few powerful individuals than the voting majority.

There’s a legitimate argument to be had about the hypothesis where voters continue not to lift a finger

How do you quantify lifting a finger? To reach a “critical mass” we’d still have to enact systemic change for items like education and economic safety nets. People aren’t going to “lift a finger” for something like meat consumption when they are living paycheck to paycheck in a food desert where most of their calories are coming from premade food from convenient stores.

Personally I see the argument “I can’t do anything, it’s about the system!” as a extremely convenient cop-out. Any system is made up of individuals.

I think it’s a bit more nuanced than that. If you look at the history of regulating substances or practices deemed harmful to the public, it’s almost always led by governmental oversight. We knew asbestos was harmful way before it was regulated, but that didn’t stop corporations from utilizing it in everything.

The whole point of federal governments is to moderate corporations at the systemic level. Corporations know they can win the fight against individual responsibility, but they’re terrified of regulation.

We’ve already done this with the environment once before. The creation of the EPA popularized the push for clean air and water at a national level. Prior to the regulatory action there were of course people worried about pollution, but nothing really came of it until there was a regulatory body put in place.

Welcome to government brought to you by fascism, chaos is how they consolidate power. You create enough chaos to exhaust and scare people, blaming the chaos on a scapegoat. You then say, well I could totally get rid of all this chaos if you give me the power to do so. The courts, and the legislators are obviously not equipped to stop this mess, we just need one person with supreme power to cut through the bureaucracy…

Lol, yes it is. Greenland only has a pop a little over 55k people. Meaning that trump is offering a little over 500m dollars for an island who’s gdp is well over 3 billion dollars a year.

Not only is he being incredibly stupid, he’s being super cheap about it at the same time.

Nah, it’s just a rumor started most likely by Musk himself. Pretty sure it was a ploy to halt the Tesla stock sell offs. It started around the same time another rumor that the Tesla board was going to ask him to step down.

It’s the same trick trump was doing his last term, lie to publishers and then accuse them of not being trustworthy for printing unsubstantiated rumors.

that Russia doesn’t need minerals, nor land, nor resources, but an assurance that nuclear capabilities aren’t being deployed along its border.

I mean if that was the entire point of the war wouldn’t it still be a strategic failure considering the invasion prompted Finland to join NATO?

true, Putin tried to join NATO once, to join the imperialism club, but the US rejected Russia

They never made an official application, Putin wanted to be invited.

because the US wanted (and still wants) Russia Balkanized and re-plundered instead.

“a small but growing lobby in Europe and the United States making the case for the break-up of the Russian Federation. Their main argument is that Putin’s denial of Ukraine’s right to exist proves that the Russian state is irredeemable imperialist”

Kinda an underwhelming theory considering your article is talking about a small group reacting to very modern imperialism, not a scheme from the early 00s to deny Russia NATO membership, especially when they were made a permanent joint council.

Russia has figured out that it’s better off allying with Global South countries than attempting imperialist adventures upon them

Ahh yes, famous liberators like…bashar al-assad.

The Intercept, 2021: Meet NATO, the Dangerous “Defensive” Alliance Trying to Run the World

• CounterPunch, 2022: NATO is Not a Defensive Alliance
• Noam Chomsky, 2023: NATO “most violent, aggressive alliance in the world”
• Thomas Fazi, 2024: NATO: 75 years of war, unprovoked aggressions and state-sponsored terrorism
• Gabriel Rockhill, 2020: The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It

And notice how none of those “sources” are before 2014, and especially not before 2008. It’s almost like there’s a modern push to reinterpret the dangers of NATO.

NATO is imperialist and I’m not a fan of it, however post Soviet dissolution it wasn’t ever enough of an actual threat to validate invading Ukraine, Georgia, or sponsoring the other break away factions in their neighbors back yard.

I’ll leave it at that, because I don’t think you’re arguing in good faith, and you’ve already said you aren’t a socialist, so I’m guessing by our just a Russian nationalist and I’m wasting my time.

And a lot of that expansion is done while Russia wanted to join NATO , or while they were on a permanent joint council with NATO. Up until recently NATO was just an organization used to give hand outs to the American military industrial complex.

It wasn’t until their invasion of Georgia and the resulting capital pull out from Moscow that Russia even complained about NATO.

Neither the US, Ukraine, nor Russia is even approaching socialism, so I don’t see how campism is relevant. What is relevant is imperialism vs. anti-imperialism.

I would say a socialist defending a violent imperialist nation invading a nation simply because they are at times geopolitically opposed to another violent imperialist nation is a form of campism.

in the context of imperialist liberation. Russia is still a capitalist state, though, so it’s a two stage strategy: first liberate colonized bourgeois states from colonizer states, and second revolution within those liberated bourgeois states.

And what evidence supports the idea that it will be easier to liberate one colonizer state from a second colonizer state located right next door? Seems you are perpetuating a lot of violence based on nothing.

Russia is an interesting case: it has already liberated itself from the post-Soviet “shock therapy” neocolonizers. This occurred during Putin’s administration, which is why he is especially hated by the US.

In what way have they liberated themselves from shock therapy? Their government is the result of shock therapy, where the vast majority of wealth is tied to an oligarchic control that’s even more hierarchal than just about any other nation in the world.

It’s trying to resolve the genocidal attacks on the people of the Donbas, and it’s trying to resolve the imperialist military expansion at its border.

Therea no actual evidence to support thwre was a “genocide” happening in donbos. They were just doing the same form of imperialism they didn’t in 08’ in Georgia, where they participated in ethnic cleansing.

The idea that Russia was provoked into invading their neighbors is ridiculous if you actually look at the history Russias relations with their neighbors in the late 00’s. It’s just imperialism…

Well yeah hes not a commie. He did not invent shock therapy, he considers this naming actually an insult.

Many people respond to criticism with negativity…

his advice was largely ignored both by soviets and amies.

Says who?

From your paste is also Ukraine missing.

The whole thing about quoting something is you don’t control what is left in or out, but yes Ukraine is a former Soviet state.

Why exactly is this supposed socialist sub defending the honor of a capitalist economist who participated in the parting out of the Soviet economy?

Is campism so strong that we are now cheerleading capitalists economists just because they support Russian nationalist?

I find it interesting that people here are falling over themselves to defend a capitalist economist. Is supporting Russian nationalism so important that we now defend a participant in the destruction of the Soviet system?

In 1989, Sachs advised Poland’s anticommunist Solidarity movement and the government of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki. He wrote a comprehensive plan for the transition from central planning to a market economy which became incorporated into Poland’s reform program led by Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz. Sachs was the main architect of Poland’s debt reduction operation. Sachs and IMF economist David Lipton advised on the rapid conversion of all property and assets from public to private ownership. Closure of many uncompetitive factories ensued.[33] In Poland, Sachs was firmly on the side of rapid transition to capitalism. At first, he proposed American-style corporate structures, with professional managers answering to many shareholders and a large economic role for stock markets. That did not bode well with the Polish authorities, but he then proposed that large blocks of the shares of privatized companies be placed in the hands of private banks.[34] As a result, there were some economic shortages and inflation, but prices in Poland eventually stabilized.[35][independent source needed] The government of Poland awarded Sachs one of its highest honors in 1999, the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit.[36] He also received an honorary doctorate from the Kraków University of Economics.[21] Based on Poland’s success, his advice was sought first by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and by his successor, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, on the transition of the USSR/Russia to a market economy.[37]

Sachs’ methods for stabilizing economies became known as shock therapy and were similar to successful approaches used in Germany after the two world wars.[31] He faced criticism for his role after the Russian economy faced significant struggles after adopting the market-based shock therapy in the early 1990s.[38][39][40]

I would really take anything he says with a grain of salt…the dude is literally the person who invented shock therapy for post Soviet States. He’s not a reliable narrator and his only real goal is to spread Keynesian economics and convince authoritarian governments to privatize state assets.

Feel like this is really belittling to the VC and PAVN, the Ho Chi Minh trail is rightfully known as one of the greatest achievements of military engineering in the 20th century.

The North Vietnamese military didn’t win because America was just that incompetent, they had arguably a couple of the best generals in modern history. I mean they defended against the armies of France, America, cambodia and China within a couple decades.