As Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine continues, we look at the failures of the Western left to grasp what is going on. WATCH NEXT:THIS explains why Russia s...
I have yet to meet a single pro-Russian leftist in my country. Or a tankie. Sure, shit like lemmygrad, r/communism, etc. exists, but you have to go digging pretty deep to find those people.
Most leftists I know, even those who identify as socialists are pretty much in the “yeah, fuck Russia” camp. To the point that they openly advocate financing Ukraine.
This video is blatant propaganda piece, and not even truthful at what it tries to be.
I have never met one in person either. I’ve met countless on the internet. It’s as if it was a manufactured outrage instigated by a genocidal regime. It worth addressing talking points distributed among that group.
I don’t know which country you live in but I know podcasters and other influencers in Germany and sadly also met their kind in person and passed by a protest. It is real.
Finland. Living next to Russian border might bring some reality checks here.
And yea, I can imagine you could dig some nutjob podcaster here too, but can’t imagine finding those people walking around IRL.
But the thing I’m most against is “western left”, which is the point where I call out the BS. Vice seat of our right-wing party literally went to a Putin propaganda camp in Russia in around 2015 (by his own admission, no less), yet it is somehow “western left” that gets the blame for few tankies who are nowhere to be found.
Finland might be a different story, but in Germany the Left Party is deeply devided between Russia supporters and others. It is not all the left (which is said in the video near the end) and of cause the right is much worse but it is a group too big to ignore.
And if the video didn’t make sweeping generalisations this would be a fine point to tackle. But it’s not saying “half of the german left”, it is saying “the western left”.
It’s not OK to leave this kind of stuff as a side note in small print, that is one of the prime tactics propaganda in general uses.
You’re right. “The Left” is a vague term and doesn’t apply here. I know such people and applied the video to them and as such it’s well done but the title and framing during the video is misleading.
Yeah, if the video was less conflictory and was framed in a way that didn’t scream polarisation to me, I wouldn’t be as quick to dismiss it as a propaganda piece.
As a side note, I’m actually surprised that Germany has such divide within the left.
About the side note: There are different factors at play: nostalgia about GDR, Anti-Americanism and the peace movement (not sending weapons anywhere). And I was especially talking about the party “Die Linke” (The Left). Other parties like the Social Democrates and The Green (both part of the government) disagree on that.
There are ML and tanky organistations outside of parliament. But I think the biggest organized left movement at the moment in Germany is the climate justice movement, which is very decentralized but I think most are against Russia. I might be biased though since I’m part of this movement.
The point isn’t that they exist, but that they are an extreme minority. Pretending that the left wing parties are somehow tricked because of this is propaganda.
Well, Germany has one left wing party (most others self-identify as center) and it is not long untill it seperates into two about this and other questions. Sure, it’s not “The Left” as a whole, but at the end of the video, he says that not everybody on the left supports Putin. It still is a seizable group within the (radical) left.
biggest success of pro-russian tankies in my country is single fb page with 2k likes. socdem party that has actual MPs advocated for sending weapons to Ukraine on second day o war and it’s only because they don’t have single leader (there’s collective leadership instead)
There’s a certain kind of reactionary-left personality that I think is more common in parts of the west that used to be colonial powers, where if you’re far enough along the political spectrum that the mainstream parties all look like different variations on corporatist-fascists, you’re particularly vulnerable to messaging from geopolitical enemies of your own country for the simple reason that they’re opposed to the political structure you’re also opposed to. Here in the US I’ve run into a few such people, and it’s also clear that Russia’s soft-power operations have made efforts to cultivate relationships with the American left wing (people like Jill Stein and others in the Green Party). It’s pretty obvious, though, that they’ve had less success than they have on the right. It takes a particular kind of useful idiot to think, as a anti-colonial socialist or communist, that an oligarchic and socially-repressive right-wing autocracy is actually in your political corner.
There’s a certain kind of reactionary-left personality that I think is more common in parts of the west that used to be colonial powers, where if you’re far enough along the political spectrum that the mainstream parties all look like different variations on corporatist-fascists, you’re particularly vulnerable to messaging from geopolitical enemies of your own country for the simple reason that they’re opposed to the political structure you’re also opposed to.
Makes a lot of sense to me.
Here in the US I’ve run into a few such people, and it’s also clear that Russia’s soft-power operations have made efforts to cultivate relationships with the American left wing (people like Jill Stein and others in the Green Party). It’s pretty obvious, though, that they’ve had less success than they have on the right. It takes a particular kind of useful idiot to think, as a anti-colonial socialist or communist, that an oligarchic and socially-repressive right-wing autocracy is actually in your political corner.
I have to admit I know very little about the US politics. I’m fairly certain Russia tries that here in Finland as well, but well, our communist party is pretty much dead (and good riddance). Aside from the usual far-right wackos, their best bet here is probably to try to affect the peace movement people. Though even most of those I’ve talked with, with some exceptions, know that aggressors in wars should not be rewarded in order to keep the peace.
I have to say that Russian soft-power ops are scary. A lot of people here think that they are just the few wackos who everybody laughs at, and then think that when a certain popular right-wing party repeats Russian talking points they are completely unaffected by all that.
Yeah, you guys have the Winter War and Continuation War relatively fresh in cultural memory, which probably limits the reach of Russian propaganda. Over here, we remember the Soviet Union primarily as our Cold War rival, and neither side of that conflict came out of it with clean hands. For a certain kind of person, the sins of the American CIA and State Department during the Cold War don’t just reflect badly on our government; they somehow also make the Soviet Union, and therefore Russia as its successor state, the Good Guys of the last century of global geopolitics.
Yeah, my mother is an evacuaee from Karelia (though she was a small kid back then), so definitely relatively fresh - at least for my generation.
I’ve seen some of that America bad so Russia good - line of thinking in Finnish Internet forums too. But from what I’ve gathered, in our left wing it’s usually more “both suck”, which was certainly visible in our NATO discussion, but even then most of the Left Alliance (our most leftist party that isn’t a complete joke, we have communist party too, but they’ve never held seats in parliament) supported joining NATO. When it comes to financing Ukraine I’d say it’s way more unanimous “yeah, fuck Russia with this one”.
Of course, the commie party is pretty much “yea, surely Russia not that bad, we need peace” from what I’ve seen, but well, they hardly have enough people to be able to keep the party an official party (requires 5000 signatures every 2 elections with no seats).
The video certainly paints with an overly-broad brush. The effects he describe do exist with people on the left who hate America more than they are willing to engage their brain and consider evidence. People who say they hate imperialism, but justify imperialism when it isn’t coming from America (or The West in general). The guy is talking about tankies.
I have yet to meet a single pro-Russian leftist in my country. Or a tankie. Sure, shit like lemmygrad, r/communism, etc. exists, but you have to go digging pretty deep to find those people.
Most leftists I know, even those who identify as socialists are pretty much in the “yeah, fuck Russia” camp. To the point that they openly advocate financing Ukraine.
This video is blatant propaganda piece, and not even truthful at what it tries to be.
I have never met one in person either. I’ve met countless on the internet. It’s as if it was a manufactured outrage instigated by a genocidal regime. It worth addressing talking points distributed among that group.
I don’t know which country you live in but I know podcasters and other influencers in Germany and sadly also met their kind in person and passed by a protest. It is real.
Finland. Living next to Russian border might bring some reality checks here.
And yea, I can imagine you could dig some nutjob podcaster here too, but can’t imagine finding those people walking around IRL.
But the thing I’m most against is “western left”, which is the point where I call out the BS. Vice seat of our right-wing party literally went to a Putin propaganda camp in Russia in around 2015 (by his own admission, no less), yet it is somehow “western left” that gets the blame for few tankies who are nowhere to be found.
Finland might be a different story, but in Germany the Left Party is deeply devided between Russia supporters and others. It is not all the left (which is said in the video near the end) and of cause the right is much worse but it is a group too big to ignore.
And if the video didn’t make sweeping generalisations this would be a fine point to tackle. But it’s not saying “half of the german left”, it is saying “the western left”.
It’s not OK to leave this kind of stuff as a side note in small print, that is one of the prime tactics propaganda in general uses.
You’re right. “The Left” is a vague term and doesn’t apply here. I know such people and applied the video to them and as such it’s well done but the title and framing during the video is misleading.
Yeah, if the video was less conflictory and was framed in a way that didn’t scream polarisation to me, I wouldn’t be as quick to dismiss it as a propaganda piece.
As a side note, I’m actually surprised that Germany has such divide within the left.
About the side note: There are different factors at play: nostalgia about GDR, Anti-Americanism and the peace movement (not sending weapons anywhere). And I was especially talking about the party “Die Linke” (The Left). Other parties like the Social Democrates and The Green (both part of the government) disagree on that.
There are ML and tanky organistations outside of parliament. But I think the biggest organized left movement at the moment in Germany is the climate justice movement, which is very decentralized but I think most are against Russia. I might be biased though since I’m part of this movement.
The point isn’t that they exist, but that they are an extreme minority. Pretending that the left wing parties are somehow tricked because of this is propaganda.
Well, Germany has one left wing party (most others self-identify as center) and it is not long untill it seperates into two about this and other questions. Sure, it’s not “The Left” as a whole, but at the end of the video, he says that not everybody on the left supports Putin. It still is a seizable group within the (radical) left.
biggest success of pro-russian tankies in my country is single fb page with 2k likes. socdem party that has actual MPs advocated for sending weapons to Ukraine on second day o war and it’s only because they don’t have single leader (there’s collective leadership instead)
There’s a certain kind of reactionary-left personality that I think is more common in parts of the west that used to be colonial powers, where if you’re far enough along the political spectrum that the mainstream parties all look like different variations on corporatist-fascists, you’re particularly vulnerable to messaging from geopolitical enemies of your own country for the simple reason that they’re opposed to the political structure you’re also opposed to. Here in the US I’ve run into a few such people, and it’s also clear that Russia’s soft-power operations have made efforts to cultivate relationships with the American left wing (people like Jill Stein and others in the Green Party). It’s pretty obvious, though, that they’ve had less success than they have on the right. It takes a particular kind of useful idiot to think, as a anti-colonial socialist or communist, that an oligarchic and socially-repressive right-wing autocracy is actually in your political corner.
Makes a lot of sense to me.
I have to admit I know very little about the US politics. I’m fairly certain Russia tries that here in Finland as well, but well, our communist party is pretty much dead (and good riddance). Aside from the usual far-right wackos, their best bet here is probably to try to affect the peace movement people. Though even most of those I’ve talked with, with some exceptions, know that aggressors in wars should not be rewarded in order to keep the peace.
I have to say that Russian soft-power ops are scary. A lot of people here think that they are just the few wackos who everybody laughs at, and then think that when a certain popular right-wing party repeats Russian talking points they are completely unaffected by all that.
Yeah, you guys have the Winter War and Continuation War relatively fresh in cultural memory, which probably limits the reach of Russian propaganda. Over here, we remember the Soviet Union primarily as our Cold War rival, and neither side of that conflict came out of it with clean hands. For a certain kind of person, the sins of the American CIA and State Department during the Cold War don’t just reflect badly on our government; they somehow also make the Soviet Union, and therefore Russia as its successor state, the Good Guys of the last century of global geopolitics.
Yeah, my mother is an evacuaee from Karelia (though she was a small kid back then), so definitely relatively fresh - at least for my generation.
I’ve seen some of that America bad so Russia good - line of thinking in Finnish Internet forums too. But from what I’ve gathered, in our left wing it’s usually more “both suck”, which was certainly visible in our NATO discussion, but even then most of the Left Alliance (our most leftist party that isn’t a complete joke, we have communist party too, but they’ve never held seats in parliament) supported joining NATO. When it comes to financing Ukraine I’d say it’s way more unanimous “yeah, fuck Russia with this one”.
Of course, the commie party is pretty much “yea, surely Russia not that bad, we need peace” from what I’ve seen, but well, they hardly have enough people to be able to keep the party an official party (requires 5000 signatures every 2 elections with no seats).
The video certainly paints with an overly-broad brush. The effects he describe do exist with people on the left who hate America more than they are willing to engage their brain and consider evidence. People who say they hate imperialism, but justify imperialism when it isn’t coming from America (or The West in general). The guy is talking about tankies.