It’s so annoying that youtube is increasingly finding excuses to force you to log in. Now it claims I need to prove I’m not a bot.

Luckily I’m to bypass it by using yt-dl, I’ve been using it to download useful DIY videos and create a little offline video library for when the internet’s down, but it’s still annoying.

I strongly disagree with the characterization of everything else as false propaganda, however.

Because you’re a tankie and unlike actual communists, you people like to make excuses for horrible regimes.

I’m inclined to side with people like Jeremy Corbyn, Aaron Maté, and academics like Stephen F. Cohen and David S. G. Goodman who all expressed skepticism over the Skripal poisoning.

Stephen F. Cohen who is on the record as saying that Putin is not an autocrat, Russia’s invasion of a sovereign country was justified, and disputed evidence on MH17.

Aaron Maté who regularly appears at events hosted and paid for by the Russian government.

Corbyn is on record as saying the evidence points towards Russia, even if he urged caution at the time before the evidence became overwhelming.

I don’t believe RT has ever claimed that Putin is a communist

Bad faith argument. I didn’t say that. I said tankies make excuses for anti-communists, and authoritarian capitalists. People like Putin and his government, an argument you have just repeatedly proven to be true.

Actual communists don’t make excuses for anti-communists, the far right, and corrupt oligarchs.

Thus, opposition to Nazis and concern for the security threat they pose make sense from the perspective of both the left and right within Russia.

Russian propaganda. Ukraine didn’t pose a serious security threat to Russia prior to Russia’s invasion.

you’ve enumerated his ties to Russian nationalists to suggest that he and the Russian Federation could not possibly be genuinely opposed to Nazis. But even Russian nationalists …

Meanwhile in Russia:

I point out that Putin venerates an actual bonafide fascist, has and had ties with actual fascists, and you proceed to make excuses.

Once again, this is not what actual communists do. It’s what cosplay communist tankies and bad faith actors do.

Apologists for Ukraine and its endless proxy war on behalf of NATO

Ukraine didn’t start the war. Certainly not on behalf of NATO. Blatant Russian propaganda.

which is decimating Ukraine’s population and propelling the entire world towards WWIII and thermonuclear brinkmanship

The war started by Russia is decimating Ukraine’s population, correct.

Threats of nuclear war. Russian propaganda.

useful idiots for the far-right and their genocidal ambitions in the Donbass.

Russian propaganda from someone who has just repeatedly made excuses for far right nationalists and anti-communists, while claiming to be a communist.

Off the top of my head?

The Russian line about Skripal, Litvenenko, or similar.

The idea that Russia and China are playing anything but a highly duplicitious role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Occasional strongly worded letters, some great propaganda, while close strategic and economic ties continue unhindered or even increase.

The idea that Russia is denazifying Ukraine or that Ukraine has a particularly big nazi problem. In the 2019 Ukrainian elections the far right got 2% of the vote. Meanwhile Putin has historically cultivated close ties with Russian fascists, skinheads and hooligans. He is also a fervent admirer of people like Ivan Ilyin, quotes him regularly and helped have his body repatriated to Russia . Ivan Ilyin, who was a self-avowed fascist, openly admired Mussolini and Hitler, and a virulent anti-communist.

Anyway, being a communist/ML and being a tankie aren’t synonymous. Actual communists realise tankies are cosplay communists. Actual communists don’t make excuses for anti-communists. They don’t make excuses for some of the richest people on the planet. They don’t make excuses for oligarchs and robber barons. They don’t side with fascists, because they happen to be anti-western. They don’t make excuses for authoritarian capitalist states.

That’s something tankies do. It’s embarassing.

If anything tankies are useful idiots for the far-right, because their nonsense and lack of critical thought helps undermine serious leftists, socialists and communists.

Yep.

I’m perhaps older than some here, so I saw something similar after 9/11.

Western media, especially American media, were often blatantly biased in favour of the US government and the so called ‘war on terror’. Especially when stuff leaked out about torture, mass killings and abuses. People turned to alternatives and often found channels like Russia Today. And to be fair, at first glance Russia Today did (certainly at the time) appear to be far more nuanced than mainstream media. It was certainly and often justifiably critical of what the US and its allies was up to around that time. But people who spent a lot of time uncritically watching Russia Today, often ended up believing the Russian government propaganda mixed in with truths.

I think it’s also in large part due to the human tendency to simplify reality. Reality is often complex, but we prefer to thing in categories, like black and white. And so you often see people thinking in or blindly accepting false binaries. Side A bad, so side B bad good. (e: brain fart)

It’s surprisingly common. I mean, look how common it is to think of Germany as the bad guy in WWI, when the reality was far more nuanced. The British empire really wasn’t great.

And in WWII the nazis were obviously evil, but that doesn’t mean the allies were particularly good either. For example, Roosevelt didn’t do that much to stop the deportation of up to 2 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans, putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps wasn’t moral, America was still virulently racist, and contrary to what you may have been led to believe about the Soviets up to 1 in 4 rapes by allied troops were perpetrated by Americans. Churchill arguably helped kill up to 4 million Indians during the war. Etc. etc.