UPDATE: Monday, Jan 23, 2023 · 2:46:32 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
North of Svatove, fighting continues at the neighboring towns of Novoselivs'ke and Kuzemivka which kos highlighted yesterday. Russian forces have been pressed to the eastern edge of Kuzemivka, and additional Russian forces have been brought in from the east in an effort to hold this location. In a bizarre bit of script flipping, Russian military sources are claiming that Russian troops are “waging a superhuman defense against Zerg waves” of Ukrainian soldiers.
To the south, Ukrainian troops moving north from Bilohorivka have reportedly secured gains along the Siverskyi Donets River.
Ah yes, time for another check in on our favorite fools, the tankies. Previous editions here, here, here, and here. As a reminder, or for the uninitiated, a Tankie is someone who believes that imperialism is bad, and only the United States can be imperialist. Everything else, and I mean everything, is the fault of American imperialism. It looks like this:
Thus, the tankies (named after leftists who continued to defend the Soviet Union even after its violent suppression of pro-democracy movements in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968) absolves Russia of all blame for its overtly imperialistic invasion of Ukraine, claiming Russia was “forced” to do it and “had no choice” because something-something American imperialism.
It’s a bizarre worldview. Daily Kos rose to prominence on an anti-war platform, as we are clearly anti-imperialists. It just never dawned on me that there would be people who’d think that some imperialism is okay, so long as it’s not the American variety. Those sorts of mental gymnastics lead to some serious mental contortions, hence the entertaining nature of this irregular feature. So let’s dig in and see how the Tankies handled this past week!
Let’s start with one of the dumbest American tankies, Michel Tracey (last seen arguing that the Holocaust was America’s fault, because remember, everything is).
Sheesh, this isn’t hard. Russia has invaded Ukraine, murdered tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians, including children. They are engaging in systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure to maximize suffering. Yet Russia doesn’t have the juice to actually win the war, so there is an effective stalemate, with the contact lines barely budging. So either this continues indefinitely, with hundreds of soldiers and dozens of civilians dying daily, or Ukraine is given the tools to push Russia out and liberate the territory, hence, peace.
I was going to say, “it’s like claiming that engaging in WWII against the Axis powers didn’t lead to peace,” and then I remember that well, this is the guy that claims that Hitler only murdered millions of Jews because of the United States entering the war. How about one more?
It sounds fucking awesome, it’s what it sounds like. Also, it sounds like the U.S. could do more, like send ATACMS long-range rockets, M1 Abrams main battle tanks, and F16 fighter jets. There’s still hope!
Can you imagine thinking that this was actually true?
If only Ukraine would submit to Russia’s genocidal rampage, then something something.
This student, the one far left in the picture above, actually chimed in. Of course, Hinkle’a lame story was bullshit, “They were barely doing introductions. The most obnoxious things he said were he watches Andrew Tate videos and reads the communist manifesto as his hobby. He was also hitting on the TA.”
The irony, oh the irony! Such lack of self-awareness…
Let’s check in on the King Daddy of the Tankies.
If anyone can decipher that shit, please let me know. Leave it to conservatives to take a perfectly real scandal (Biden’s classified documents mess) and turn it into some weird bizarre Qanon conspiracy theory that turns everyone off.
So “socialist” is now synonymous with “oligarchy”?
That’s a weird definition of “socialism.”
You know what’s fun? When Tankies and Nazis can’t settle on a Russia narrative:
They're both wrong. Washington would be happy to ignore Russia and focus on China, if only it got the heck out of Ukraine. And the other guy is wrong about all the Nazi stuff. The BRICS stuff is hilarious—it’s the Tankie dream alliance for the so-called “multi-polar world.” It consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, hence BRICS. Yet … neither India nor China are providing any tangible assistance to Russia. To the contrary, they’re fleecing it with significantly below-market gas and petroleum, as the rest of the world refuses to touch Russia’s blood product. None of these countries have voted with Russia in the United Nations, and India and Brazil have actually lodged direct votes against it.
China is suddenly sending conciliatory signals to the United States as it continues trying to 1) distance itself from Russia’s war crime’ing, and 2) arrest the economic danger of an economically divesting West. India and the United States are enjoying their best relations since forever.
In other words, BRICS is utterly useless to Russia. No one is supporting them outside a handful of pariah regimes, like Syria, Eritrea, and North Korea.
This is a handy guide:
Okay, the first one is true. The others … not so much.
Oh, here we go again with the nuclear threats:
Can you imagine if the U.S. threatened nuclear war during every faltered military intervention and war? Would the Tankies suddenly consider might-is-right? Oh noes, every non-nuclear state should submit, lest the nuclear power press the button!
Tankies are mostly jokes, but this is the most dangerous of their lines. If the only way a country can protect itself in the modern world order is by owning nukes, what’s stopping mass proliferation? Why wouldn’t Taiwan, South Korea, all of Eastern Europe, everyone in Central Asia, and pretty much everyone else own nukes?
If we want a world that limits nuclear proliferation, we need to make sure that the nuclear powers can’t bully their way to colonial gains with nuclear blackmail.
Less than two dozen jokers pining for Russian genocide isn’t a “rising” anti-war left. Not even the several hundred they got in NYC shows any real support for their fringe, murderous ideology:
Note, the American Tankies organizing this claimed thousands attended. Russia’s own propaganda arm claimed only “between 300 and 500.” Reality was likely a fraction of that. The crowd shots are very tightly cropped, to prevent any sense of scale or an accurate estimate.
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