I’m addressing the military expenditure of the EU, how is showing historical evidence of military expenditure of the EU whataboutism? It’s literally the topic we’re talking about. You just don’t want to think about this topic because you’re obviously right in your point of view, so you’re using a thought-terminating line to shut down your brain
You could say the same thing about people getting hospitalised at prides about Poland
Yes, Poland is a reactionary hellhole too. Being compared to Poland in gay policy is fucking dire.
is moving in the right direction
I hope you’re right
You should also keep in mind that the EU is a supra-national federalist construct
It still supports the ongoing genocide in Gaza and supported the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Yugoslavia, the destruction of Libya, Afghanistan, colonialism in Africa… Seriously, tell me three military interventions done by European countries in the past century that were arguably moral.
The article doesn’t source literally any of these claims…
Pacifism, unfortunately, is dead in this new age of multilaterlism and worldwide resurging authoritarianism.
Great, let’s spend the budget in weapons right before the far right authoritarians reach all governments in Europe! Can’t see that going wrong! After all, Europe has never done anything bad militarily!
Everything you’ve said is true, but keep in mind that Ukraine isn’t exactly an LGBT paradise. Hate crime against gay people isn’t recognised by law, and for the past years most pride parades ended up with people hospitalised as a consequence of far right attackers.
They don’t need violence from the left to become fascists, they can do it by themselves.
They win no matter who wins any given election
Yes, because both parties in power in the US fundamentally stand for the same geopolitically. Geopolitics are mostly bipartisan in the US.
The only thing new is it’s the US doing it from across the world
Bahahahahahahhaa
Go ask a Vietnamese or a North Korean what they think of that statement, lmao
a prefect microcosm of how Stalin’s regime operated with the violently anti-communist Nazi’s
You’re saying this to a Spaniard. From 1936 to 1939, during the Spanish civil war (which the fascists ended up winning thanks to the inaction of western powers and the military intervention of fascist Italy and Germany), the Soviet Union was openly against fascism in Spain. They delivered weapons, troops, planes and tanks in the antifascist struggle on the opposite end of the continent, and were the only country to do so. Three pictures you’ve pulled out of CIA-sponsored anticommunist sources don’t change the material and historical reality that the Soviet Union was staunchly antifascist, both in rethoric and in action. This is 3 years before Molotov-Ribbentrop. Why did the Soviet Union support antifascist Spain on the opposite side of the continent?
that doesn’t change the fact that the USSR acted to project and protect its own influence.
Well… Obviously? If my country was communist and antifascist, and was threatened by a fascist country, I would think it morally correct to extend the influence and projection of my country. Do you disagree with this?
Stalin’s USSR was a hard turn from Lenin’s korenisatsiya
Almost as if the experiences from the Civil War and the historical and material conditions of 1939 were different from those of 1917… Granting independence to Poland and seeing it immediately invade Ukraine and Belarus must have been a kick in the balls to Marxists believing in idealistic approaches to the question of nationalities, and that’s just one example of many. If you again don’t see how unity was important (and actually achieved) in a country which managed to maintain social cohesion and a functioning economy during the loss of 27 million people in the struggle against Nazism, I tend to think I’m arguing against an idealist who doesn’t analyse the material and historical constraints of policy.
My whole point with this is: what makes you think yourself more intelligent, well-versed and moral than the Marxist revolutionaries who achieved the first successful collectivisation of the economy of a country, the lasting elimination of the bourgeoisie, and ultimately the defeat of Nazism in Europe which saved millions if not tens of millions of lives from extermination? And also importantly, why are you so intent in conflating Socialism with some sort of Russian Imperialism as if the Bolsheviks weren’t the greatest possible break with Russian Imperialism that could be achieved in Russia?
Modern Poland started after the last fucking Russian left Polish soil
Why the consistent conflating of the Soviet Union and “Russians”? Almost as if your argument here is coming purely from Russophobia, and not from the material and historical analysis of a country with 300 million people, approximately only half of which were Russian. Stalin himself was Georgian, and his successor Khruschyov was Ukrainian.
miserable low-life imperialistic Russians
Oh I see, so it’s just Russophobia. Should have guessed it. If you’re Polish, I’m sorry that you’ve been brainwashed by the nationalist far-right into hating the people who contributed most to the elimination of Nazism in your homeland, which if you remember correctly, exterminated millions of your kind. But hey, you can overcome it. I’m Spanish and I overcame the worst parts of the Islamophobia and Arabphobia that our institutions regurgitate onto us, so you can do it too!
Nobody with a sane mind in Europe
As someone from Spain (country where the fascists actually won the war and remained in government for 40-odd years), I actually wish we had had a neighboring communist country who helped us out of fascism, instead of capitalist countries whitewashing our ACTUALLY fascist authoritarian regime. Btw, the Soviet Union was the ONLY country in the world to sell weapons to antifascists in Spain during our civil war against fascism, and they sent troops to teach my people to use planes and tanks against fascists. I wonder why they did that?
“I’m not going to engage with most of what you wrote, here are two sensationalist pictures without context as a rebuttal of your well-sourced historical analysis” isn’t the own you think it is. I already graced you with more of my time than you deserve, people who come across the post will be free to judge the quality of my analysis vs yours and form their own opinions.
Btw, you accuse me of “Russian Imperialism”? I clearly and loudly condemned the horrors of the Russian Empire, what the heck are you talking about? If you’re reducing the USSR to a single nationality, I have bad news for you: you’re disregarding the struggle of millions of people from non-slavic-Russian ethnicities who participated in the Soviet project.
By the way, it is RICH that you call the USSR (which saved Europe from Nazism) an imperialist nation, while your comment history is full of support for meaningful pro-democrat anti-Trump protests and respect for “due process”. Showing a total lack of disrespect towards the tens of millions who actually gave their lives in the struggle against fascism while getting to feel good going to peaceful, non-disruptive, meaningless, oligarch-organized political protests that happen within the Overton Window of the most murderous empire to ever exist: the US empire. Wanna fight fascism? Join an actual socialist organization in your area, socialism is historically the only force that has been powerful enough to defeat fascism. Good luck otherwise operating within the framework of the same democrats that funded the turn-to-the-far-right of the GOP over the past decades.
Way to prove you haven’t read my whole comment. I already answered to why the soviets “carved Eastern Europe” including quotes from western politicians at the time who were very aware of the invasions of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (i.e. Churchill in 1944 or the US ambassador to the USSR in 1941). The Soviet politicians admitted as much:
“The Soviet Government, in concluding the Non-Aggression Treaty with Germany, first and foremost secured peace for our country for the foreseeable future. We have moved our defensive lines far to the west. …If the war in the West continues for a long time, we stand to remain apart from it and gain those extra months—or perhaps a year or more—to strengthen our defenses. The old frontier, which was indefensible, has been replaced by a new one, affording us far greater security in the event that war is forced upon us later” October 31, 1939 (Molotov and Stalin to the Supreme Soviet), Soviet Foreign Policy, 1939–1941: Documents and Materials (a Soviet-era collection).
Do you see any trace of “Russian nationalism and expansionism” in the words of Stalin (who btw was Georgian)? Any declarations of imperialist desire? Or exclusively a pragmatic push-to-the-west in the face of a Nazi invasion to, in the words of Stalin and Molotov, moving the defensive lines far to the west because the old frontier was indefensible?
the Polish military inflicted heavy losses on German armor units and the after action reports from the German field commanders showed their deficiencies, which later proved to be 100% correct.
That is wonderful, and I very much appreciate the Polish resistance against Nazism, both during and after the invasion. The Polish antifascist partisans were truly effective and an unquestionable help in the defeat of Nazism, my utmost respect to all of them. My point with my initial comment was not the denigration of Polish partisans, but simply to correct the history-erasure that supposes not talking about Soviets and the Red Army when it comes to the existence of a modern Polish state, instead of the colonial ashes of an entirely genocided Nazi colony.
Ohhh here we go again with the Motherboard-Ribbedcock revisionism and Polish nationalist propaganda! I’ll answer point by point:
Poland existed for a long ass time, even when it wasn’t on the map. It had no less than 6 armed conflicts and rebellions against the Russian Empire
Exactly. The Polish people have been mostly oppressed for centuries under the rule of the Russian Empire and whatever German-dominated empires that have controlled the region. That’s an unfortunate truth that I completely agree with. That’s why I see the Bolsheviks ending the Tsarist Empire as a good thing, and allowing Poland to exert its right to self-determination as based.
Poland lost 6 million people in WW2, 17% of their population
That is a horrific example of why I’m a fervient antifascist and I happily defend those who actually eliminated fascism, Poland was absolutely decimated by Nazi genocide. Poles were considered “slaviv untermenschen” and Polish Jews doubly so. The Red Army liberating Poland saved millions of people from a fate like that eventually
17% of their population; by far the largest of any country
Well, that is unless you count modern Belarus which lost 25-30%. Anyway, my actual argument is that 80% of Nazi casualties were sustained in the Eastern Front against the Soviets. The battle of Stalingrad was the first allied victory that proved the world that Nazis aren’t invincible.
Polish independence was gained through the collapse of the Russian Empire; Moscow was in no position to claim control over anything anyway
You may make that argument, but this is a bad reading of the Bolshevik policy in my humble opinion. If you want to know further about the Bolshevik position on Poland and on national identities and self-determination, the letters between Rosa Luxembourg and Lenin (in which Lenin argues for example for the right of Ukrainians to have their own republic, and for the first time pushing for an autonomous Ukrainian government and a recognition of Ukrainian culture, against Rosa Luxembourg’s position that nationalism is generally bad) are quite enlightening about the real, moral position of Bolsheviks towards the national question. You may of course disagree, this is just a vibes-based topic.
Lenin renegged on that “self determination” just a few years later in 1919 when they marched the Red Army into Poland
Why conveniently leave out the fact that this was a response to Poland invading modern Ukraine and [Belarus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish–Soviet_War], and then the RSFSR? The Bolshevik response against Poland in 1919 wasn’t unwarranted, Poland quite literally started that war to gain some more territory of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to “restore historical borders” nationalist bullshit, don’t you think?
Maybe they would have lost less had the Soviets not joined the Germans in slicing up their country
I have quite a few things to argue against this, hence why I left it for the end. I hope we can argue in good faith about it:
1) Most of the invaded “Polish” territories actually belong to modern Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus. In 1919, Poland started the Polish-Ukrainian war and invaded Ukraine, Belarus and part of the RSFSR as we saw. This “carving of Poland by the Soviet Union” liberated many formerly oppressed non-Polish national ethnicities such as Lithuanians in Polish-controlled Vilnius arguably being genocided, or ceding the city of Lviv to the Ukraine SSR.
2) The Soviet Union had been trying for the entire 1930s to establish a mutual-defense agreement with Poland, France and Britain against the Nazis, under the doctrine of the then-People’s Commisar of Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov. This decade-long proposal for mutual-defence went completely ignored by France and England, which hoped to see a Nazi-Soviet conflict that would destroy both countries, and Poland didn’t agree to negotiations by itself either. The Soviet government went as far as to offer to send one million troops together with artillery, tanking and aviation, to Poland and France. The response was ignoring these pleas and offerings.
Furthermore, this armistice between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany happened only one year after the Munich Betrayal. The Soviet Union and France had a Mutual Defense Agreement with Czechoslovakia, which France (together with the UK) unilaterally violated in agreement with the Nazis when ceding Czechoslovak territories to Nazi Germany. Stalin offered France, as an alternative to the Munich Betrayals, a coordinated and two-front attack to Nazi Germany, which France rejected in favour of the Munich Agreements.
3) The Soviet Union had been through WW1 up to 1917, the Russian Civil War up to 1922 (including a famine that killed millions) in which western powers like France, England or the USA invaded the Bolsheviks and helped the tsarist Whites to reestablish tsarism, which ultimately ended with a costly Bolshevik victory; the many deaths of famine during the land-collectivization of 1929-1933, and up to 1929 was a mostly feudal empire with little to no industry to speak of. Only after the 1929 and 1934 5-year plans did the USSR manage to slightly industrialize, but these 10 years of industrialization were barely anything in comparison with the 100 years of industrialization Nazi Germany enjoyed. The Soviet Union in 1939 was utterly underdeveloped to face Nazi Germany alone, as proven further by the 27 million casualties in the war that ended Nazism. The fact that the Soviet Union “carved Eastern Europe” was mostly in self-defense. The geography of the Great European Plain made it extremely difficult to have any meaningful defenses against Nazis with weaponry and technological superiority, again proven by the fact that the first meaningful victory against Nazis was not in open field but in the battle of Stalingrad, which consisted more of a siege of a city. The Soviet Union, out of self-preservation, wanted to simply add more Soviet-controlled distance between themselves and the Nazis. You don’t have to take my word for all of this, you can hear it from western diplomats and officials from the period itself. I hope you won’t find my choice of personalities to reflect a pro-Soviet bias:
“In those days the Soviet Government had grave reason to fear that they would be left one-on-one to face the Nazi fury. Stalin took measures which no free democracy could regard otherwise than with distaste. Yet I never doubted myself that his cardinal aim had been to hold the German armies off from Russia for as long as might be” (Paraphrased from Churchill’s December 1944 remarks in the House of Commons.)
“It would be unwise to assume Stalin approves of Hitler’s aggression. Probably the Soviet Government has merely sought a delaying tactic, not wanting to be the next victim. They will have a rude awakening, but they think, at least for now, they can keep the wolf from the door” Franklin D. Roosevelt (President of the United States, 1933–1945), from Harold L. Ickes’s diary entries, early September 1939. Ickes’s diaries are published as The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes.
"One must suppose that the Soviet Government, seeing no immediate prospect of real support from outside, decided to make its own arrangements for self‑defence, however unpalatable such an agreement might appear. We in this House cannot be astonished that a government acting solely on grounds of power politics should take that course” Neville Chamberlain House of Commons Statement, August 24, 1939 (one day after pact’s signing)
"It seemed to me that the Soviet leaders believed conflict with Nazi Germany was inescapable. But, lacking clear assurances of military partnership from England and France, they resolved that a ‘breathing spell’ was urgently needed. In that sense, the pact with Germany was a temporary expedient to keep the wolf from the door” Joseph E. Davies (U.S. Ambassador to the USSR, 1937–1938) Mission to Moscow (1941)
I could go on with quotes but you get my point.
4) The Soviet Union invaded Poland 2 weeks after the Nazis, at a time when there was no functioning Polish government anymore. Given the total crushing of the Polish forces by the Nazis and the rejection of a mutual-defense agreement from England and France with the Soviets, there is only one alternative to Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland: Nazi occupation of Eastern Poland. Seriously, what was the alternative, letting Nazis genocide even further east, killing arguably millions more in the process over these two years between Molotov-Ribbentrop and Operation Barbarossa? France and England, which did have a mutual-defense agreement with Poland, initiated war against Germany as a consequence of the Nazi invasion, but famously did not start war against the Soviets, the main reason in my opinion being the completely different character of the Soviet invasion. Regardless of this, please tell me. After the rejection of mutual-defense agreements with the Soviet Union: what was the alternative other than Nazi occupation of Eastern Poland?
Poland exists because its people fought back against authoritarian bastards
Poland kinda exists because it was saved from genocide by the red army. After that, it existed as an independent country in which its language and culture were maintained and supported by the government. You may argue it exists in a different form after the 1980s Solidarity movement, but Poland very much existed before that and that’s a consequence of Soviet (not just Russian, but also Ukrainian, Kazakh and other nationalities) soldiers who gave their life in the fight against Nazism. 27 million soviets died in total in WW2.
Even in the 1910s, when Poland obtained its independence from the Russian Empire, it did so thanks to the Bolsheviks creating a constitution granting all peoples of the former Russian empire the right to self-determination and unilateral secession, not because an autoctonous Polish movement forced any government to give it independence.
What historical events are you talking about when you refer to Poland existing because they fought against authoritarianism?
Edit: some people have brought up comments about the role of Polish resistance in WW2. My point was not at all to diminish the valiant efforts of the Polish antifascist partisans, most of whom I consider heroes of the struggle against Nazism. I just think it’s unfair to erase the role of the Red Army of the Soviet Union in the existence of modern Poland. Without it, probably Poland (as many other eastern-European countries) would be the ashes of Nazi genocide and colonization.
Are you aware that Wikipedia is predominantly edited by western males below 50 years of age using western media as sources for information?
If there was an online encyclopedia predominantly edited by Chinese users using Chinese news sources, would you take it at face value when discussing geopolitically-charged topics about the USA? May I remind you that the US has military bases in Philippines, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea?
Regardless of your opinion on this, if you read my previous comment again, you’ll notice I’m talking about economic violence.
It’s not like China can be trusted either
What exactly are you talking about? China has at no point in my lifetime exerted economic violence or taken violent policy turns towards harming other economies. They’ve been a reliable trading partner since they opened up to trade in the Deng Xiaoping/Nixon years, and done absolutely nothing remotely comparable to the US tariffs of recent (or economic embargoes to “enemy” countries like Venezuela).
“My understanding, as an American/European, of the Tiananmen events, is not at all influenced by western anticommunist and anti-chinese propaganda. Anyone who defends something different than the official US State Department version is literally 1984.”
So when does the CCP plan on apologizing for killing those student protesters with those tanks?
Thats… Not what happened in Tiananmen square protests. People protested in the square for weeks, the army didn’t intervene until the protestors literally armed themselves and murdered some policemen. The clashes happened as a consequence of radical pro-liberalism students (many in organisations funded by the USA) starting to murder people.
When did the US government apologise for bombing black neighbourhoods in the MOVE bombings btw?
Straight from the state department propaganda, with the “threat of disappearing” and the “social score”. My man, you open your bank app and it will tell you how worthy of a citizen you are with your credit score, the “social credit” is just anti-china propaganda that dumbasses like you will uncritically swallow whole.
I’m not USian BTW, I’m European. Good luck in your current democracy, the one with concentration camps for immigrants, the one beating university students for protesting, and the one murdering black innocents en-masse for daring to talk to a cop.
And how exactly do you think those other wars were presented in the past? Do you think Nazi politicians weren’t telling their population that Lebensraum was exclusively for the defense of German culture and rights against the barbaric Russians? Do you not think that the imperialist powers in WW1 fighting each other framed these wars as defensive to their own populations? Essentially: “trust me bro, this next war will be the defensive war bro, I promise bro”
Didn’t I just tell you about the ongoing genocide in Gaza that European states support? How can you claim that things have changed when Europe keeps engaging in genocide?
“Maybe Europe has a history of barbaric colonialism and imperialism leaving tens (if not hundreds) of millions of deaths in its colonies in Africa, Asia and South America. Maybe European states have fought endless wars among each other in the name of self defence. Maybe Europe continues to engage in the support of genocidal apartheid states such as Israel, and recently itself participated in the bombing of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. Maybe Europe is getting overrun by far-right politicians as we see in Poland, Italy and soon Germany and France. But Europe is the best and most free the world has to offer! Yes, I’m European, but I swear that opinion is completely reasoned, unlike the opinions of people from other countries outside Europe who hold the exact same beliefs towards their own countries! No, I’m not a nationalist/chauvinist”