Yeah, the support of a blatantly fascist/imperialist state like Putin’s Russia by self-described leftists is absolutely wild to me. I’m not convinced they’re serious people. Like, yeah, there’s some silly infighting between leftists online, but from my experience, it’s usually tankies saying some smug bullshit blanket statements and defending authoritarian douchecanoes.
That’s it exactly. I’m so sick of these dickheads jumping online and talking all the way out of their ass ‘just refuse unlawful orders, bro’. Like their COC isn’t gonna fuck them every kind of sideways for refusing orders via the UCMJ. Like, this isn’t spending a weekend in jail and then it’s over kinda shit, this will absolutely ruin your life. You could be spending years in the brig, reduced rank, reduced pay, possible dishonorable discharge while trying to fight the charges if you manage to win the case. On top of that, you want these soldiers/airmen to directly bring a legal fight to a federal administration that is likely to fuck them despite any legitimate grounds to refuse unlawful orders/conscientiously object? Get fucking real. Military personnel have the regular law AND the UCMJ to fucking deal with. These bros are fucking trapped.
All these years later and I’m still so pissed about how fox handled the show. Truly one of the great injustices of the century.
I still can’t get over how hilarious the scene of Mal fucking with Simon about Kaylee being dead was. The cut to them laughing was so perfect. The editing was so masterful in the show.
Speaking in a more meta-context, this is exactly it in the political world. In playing politics, you gotta play the political game. There are plenty of things to criticize the dems for, but man do most people in semi-recent history tend to oversimplify things. It’s just not as simple as throwing a filibuster at ‘the other side’ every now and then, you’ve gotta consider political capital, optics, legal maneuvers, precedence, etc. If you run up on the congressional floor and decide to filibuster all on your own with no support, you’re just a jackass wasting everyone’s time, likely harming your own cause in the process. Politics isn’t speeches back and forth with some money thrown around, it’s about building and wisely wielding social power. That includes knowing how to build solidarity with others in other constituencies.
To call America a fascist state is just dishonest. To call the EU fascist is unhinged. Where America is certainly struggling internally with a legitimate attempt at a fascist takeover, too many fundamental principles of the republic remain intact to honestly define the country as a fascist state. There are plenty of things to criticize about the US government, it being fascist isn’t one of them.
Russia, however, is literally doing an old school imperialist invasion right now. Like, shaky casus belli and everything. They’re even throwing in a whole host of red flags indicating a genocide. Their “elections” are consistently used as textbook examples of rigged elections using statistical analysis. Political enemies of Putin are assassinated, jailed, and suppressed. The state sponsors a narrative campaign of a fictitious idealized Russian ethno-state. Public dissent is actively and harshly suppressed by the state. There are re-education camps to indoctrinate certain demographics with Russian supremacist propaganda. Russia is a fascist state. The tankies that rush to defend Russia online are defending a fascist state. That is directly contradictory to leftist principles and is, quite frankly, fucking stupid.
So to reply to someone pointing out how ridiculous it is for tankies to support a fascist state like Russia with “hurrdurr libs support fascist usa/eu” is yet another dishonest strawman wrapped in a red herring. And, certainly no surprise to anyone paying attention, just serves as another example of a tankie talking point that refuses to engage the actual argument.