Counter point: Current-day Russia is many things but socialist certainly isn’t one of them. Inequality is massive and health care is drinking yourself to death.
So, you know, fuckin’ #BASED
Precisely why the MAGA types love it! Traditional values!
I’m okay with the MAGA types drinking themselves to death. At least then most of them won’t vote.
Yep, ignoring the ‘shock therapy’ from the 90s entirely that allowed a bunch of criminals to gain control of former state assets is anything but socialism.
Has Muscovy been anything other than backwards; wearing a cape of ideology? I see the threaded simulacra from the con of khans to Putin as a consistent parade of the Terrible’.
There is no exercise which occupies the average tanky’s mind more than explaining why a literal oligarchy run by a guy who sees himself as the fascist messiah envisioned by the guy who invented christian fascism, is actually totally socialist and critical support and shut up liberal america bad!
It’s because these spaces have just been infested by Russian trolls and it’s super blatant. Lemmy.ml, at times, feels like it’s legitimately an intro course for shitty Russian trolls before they get moved on to Facebook and reddit.
Well now I feel so cultured.
I dont think most tankies would say Russia is today socialist. 30% of employees in Russia work for the state in 2016 compared to 70-90% in 1985. And the biggest predisessor parties of Putin´s party United Russia were hard supported by the CIA and the US(because the parties were right wing and for capitalism and free markets etc. .) to win the russian 1991 and 1996 election before they started to rig election results.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_sector_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Russian_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Russian_presidential_election https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/14o601y/oc_how_well_the_richest_top_1_have_been_doing_the/
They won’t say it’s socialist, but they still defend anything Russia does because it’s anti-western, which is more important for the current generation of tankies.
If thats the case i think thats stupid and i think many would call me a tankie.
The litmus test for me is whether you support/apologise for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I dont support it i think it was crazy by Putin. But i still praise many things about the former Soviet Union and Maoist china and yugoslavia and cuba etc. . For example that everybody was garanteed a minimum income through the federal job guarantees and the low income inequality etc. .
That’s cool, sounds lke you are a based leftist, not a tankie.
I’m under 30, but I remember when Russia was the big bad in western politics. Now our fascist parties are aligning themselves with Russia? It’s very odd to me.
Oligarchy isn’t odd, its a predictible outcome of “trickle down”
To be fair modern Russia is significantly closer to the fascism MAGA wants than the USSR.
Yeah this meme had me confused until I read the description under Russia.
I hate that “soviet MLs” is used as a label here, because the failure of the USSR is down to the undermining of the soviets.
The economy being centralised and then destroyed is why post-USSR states are disfunctional, and it’s the same vulnerability the EU faces.
Were the economies actually managed democratically, they might have been able to weather the storm instead of getting fucked over by the world bank and IMF.
Instead of cooperating to sort out their affairs post-empire, countries are expected to play monopoly and somehow magically not have the same end game as monopoly.
Thank you! Workers councils actually run societies quite well
I hate that “soviet MLs” is used as a label here, because the failure of the USSR is down to the undermining of the soviets.
I mean, yes, but when most people use ‘Soviet’, especially in context of Russia and its history, they mean ‘The Soviet Union’, not the people’s soviets it got its name from and then subsequently neutered. It’s an unfair quirk of etymology or language development or whatever, but ‘Soviet’ as in ‘Of the Soviet Union’ is in far wider use than ‘soviet’ as in ‘of workers’ councils’.
The excuse I get from more intellectual Republican friends is that socialism in countries like Sweden and Norway work because they are monocultural.
This is such a “tell me you’ve never been in the north” claim. XD
Ah.
“Ethno-national socialism” you might say, yes, I can see why they would support that.
This is a bizarre take, even by PugJesus standards.
It would be like saying, “Oh, you claim to hate Nazism, yet you like West (or East) Germany which is still recovering from the effects of Nazism. Curious.”
Russia isn’t socialist to anyone who has developed object permanence. There’s no hypocrisy in someone hating socialism and liking Russia, because Russia isn’t socialist.
The only reason I can think why anyone would call Russia socialist is if their worldview still revolves around Cold War anti-communism and they haven’t figured out how to adjust or adapt their mental frameworks or rhetorical points since then. Which seems to include a fair number of confused liberals, apparently.
Another great demonstration of missing the point.
Oh, well thanks for the explanation, now I understand.
Fine, I’ll repeat myself:
“MAGA hats have no real reason to mistake the Nordic countries as socialist, but do; and every reason to mistake Russia as the product of ‘socialism’, including a number of still-nationalized industries and high public sector employment, a former KGB member as leader who constantly praises the Soviet Union, and a still-active Communist Party, yet (correctly) identify it as the kind of non-socialist traditionalist shithole they’d love to live in. To them, ‘socialist’ just means ‘gives LGBT people basic rights’.”
That’s still complete nonsense. The Nordic countries also have publically owned industries, most notably, the oil industries responsible for much of their wealth. There’s as much of a case for them being socialist as there is for Russia, which is to say, not much of one at all.
But to cite Russia’s past socialism as a reason to call it socialist now is by far the most absurd thing about this meme and your argument. The reason that socialist government doesn’t exist anymore is because it was destroyed and replaced by the current government. You might as well call the US monarchist because it used to be a British colony. It’s completely insane.
But to cite Russia’s past socialism as a reason to call it socialist now is by far the most absurd thing about this meme and your argument.
Since reading comprehension is apparently in short supply on your end of things, let me help you out one last time:
every reason to mistake Russia as the product of ‘socialism’
yet (correctly) identify it as the kind of non-socialist traditionalist shithole they’d love to live in.
To them, ‘socialist’ just means ‘gives LGBT people basic rights’.
So… you’re owning the right by pointing out that they don’t misinterpret something you think they should?
This take was a miss, sorry.
So… you’re owning the right by pointing out that they don’t misinterpret something you think they should?
To them, ‘socialist’ just means ‘gives LGBT people basic rights’.
Sorry, buddy, if you want any more help figuring this out, you’re gonna have to go ask a teacher; I don’t have the patience for it.
russia isn’t socialist at all, cmon
Great job at missing the point.
Chuds typically say the Nordic Social Democracies are nice, but can only exist because they are small, and nearly ethno-states, because “they care strongly about helping their like-minded neighbors.” Hardly anyone thinks the Nordics are Socialist. Chuds are usually nationalists, so this fits neatly into their worldview, for why others can have it nicer while they currently cannot.
As for the Russian Federation, I think anyone can agree that it’s far from Socialist, and Shock Therapy absolutely destroyed Russia as Capitalists brutally plundered the remains of the USSR. Chuds like the Russian Federation because it is socially reactionary and highly Capitalist.
Modern Russia and the Soviet Union are very far from each other
In us units it’s like Thanos and Ultron
“Russia used to have a different political system, therefore current-day Russia can’t be traditional.”
Or what exactly is the point here?
“MAGA hats have no real reason to mistake the Nordic countries as socialist, but do; and every reason to mistake Russia as the product of ‘socialism’, including a number of still-nationalized industries and high public sector employment, a former KGB member as leader who constantly praises the Soviet Union, and a still-active Communist Party, yet (correctly) identify it as the kind of non-socialist traditionalist shithole they’d love to live in. To them, ‘socialist’ just means ‘gives LGBT people basic rights’.”
Norway isn’t in EU. Crazy right?
They’ll join the very second they run out of oil
Yet they like the Viking ancestors of those socialist hellholes.
Worse actually. They like the Romantic-era aethetic of Vikings used for nationalist propaganda, not the actual ancient Norse peoples. Their characterizations of the Norse peoples are little more than ahistorical racist stereotypes.
Literall—
DOWNVOTE (learn new adverbs, kids!)
former soviet union
Ah, yes, classic american anti-communist propaganda.
It is pretty weird to call them “recovering from M-L” when M-L is how they industrialized and their current leaders economically looted the country into a state that can only be described as a kleptocracy with designs on restoring the Tsardom.
Especially when it’s been over thirty years since the collapse.
But, on the other hand, if it makes conservatives mad…
You are correct in that ‘recovering’ is a strong word. ‘Enduring’ the lasting effects would be more accurate.
Enduring the lasting effects of brown fascists taking over from red fascists? Like, sure, that’s inevitable when you create an immensely heirarchal state where absolute power lies in the government, but M-Ls didn’t irreparably damage the Russian economy.
They’re why it has one. The human rights abuses weren’t necessary to make it, but their current problems simply aren’t the fault of the Soviet industrialization programs, they’re despite it.
Unless you blame the Soviets for making so many tanks and artillery shells that it gave Putin false confidence in his ability to conquer a nation with a quarter of Russia’s population thirty years later even after they sold half of the stockpiles.
but M-Ls didn’t irreparably damage the Russian economy.
They’re why it has one. The human rights abuses weren’t necessary to make it, but their current problems simply aren’t the fault of the Soviet industrialization programs, they’re despite it.
I feel like we could have a long argument about this, but at the same time, I’m not in the mood and it’s not the main point of the meme anyway.
I disagree that the centralized, extractive system of the Soviet planned economy and its hyperfocus on heavy industry and neglect of basic civilian infrastructure in the Stalin and Brezhnev years were anything except absolutely ruinous to the long-term economic and physical health of what is now the Russian federation, with or without the collapse and ‘shock therapy’ of the 90s and the continued oligarchy of the 2000s and 2010s. You can refute that if you feel that’s objectionable, but I’m gonna leave it here.
