This sounds like an inversion of the classic “USSR/Russian meatwave” meme. It’s ridiculous when people talk about it when it comes to Russians, as if they have some mythical predisposition to throwing their soldiers lives away for no gain

It is not this inversion or repeating of propaganda. There has been a long stream of news about the press gangs and there seems to currently be an inflection point of Western Europe and US media needing to acknowledge the level of violent and desperate conscriptions over the last weeks (just to concretely cite a single source rather than keep being vague and handwavey, https://eventsinukraine.substack.com/ has tracked the use of conscription press gangs as a Ukrainian journalist that had been living in Ukraine). It is not just a “Human Meatwave” type of mentality, but an acknowledgement of the reality of the tragedy of Ukraine in this whole war. It was one of only a few former Soviet Republics to not have its per-capita GDP recover to its 1991 level after shock therapy and was considered the most corrupt nation on earth until the war motivated western sources to fake the numbers. The economic out-migration caused Ukraine to be in a deep demographic crisis before the war even started. The reason for the press gangs and very violent conscription is because of the population and manpower difference. Russia can throw away an equal amount of lives to Ukraine while only maintaining limited conscription, but Ukraine has to try to get as many able bodied men as it can.

The description came down to the ultra-nationalist/neo-nazi groups vs the conscripts. Because they are motivated by nationalism and views of racial supremacy, the neo-nazi groups have higher morale and are more dedicated than the conscripts pulled off the streets. This means that the conscripts are used in the high risk or earlier waves of any operation, since the neo-nazi groups are more valuable units due to their higher levels of training and esprit de corps.

I do generally agree with this in principle. The governmental structure of Iran, for example, makes a lot of sense if your explicit goal is to be as coup-proof as possible. This is very much a double-edged sword: a country built on legitimate paranoia often sees any protest as foreign interference, regardless of the reality.

Again, at the expense of being strawmanned, this is enough to invoke “anti-tankie” rules. Most of the anti-tankie action in blahaj.zone, .world, and all the other liberals is acknowledging this. And taking into context that articles and opinions of “look at how evil and bad and irredeemable country and its people is” is apologizing for authoritarianism. If you are not cheering for the overthrow of the Iranian government simply because the US would do everything to make something worse result from it, you are a “tankie” and what blahaj and .world mean by the word.

Maybe I’m just taking crazy pills here, but most of the opinions on the war over seen here can be boiled down to “Evil Ukrainian Nazis bad, Russia good”.

I may be a little optimistic in how few people took seriously the Russian government’s official story of the invasion being entirely because of the overt Nazism of the Ukrainian armed forces and the explicit anti-Russian ethnosupremacy of the Ukranian government in their civil war that started in 2014, but it is still a minority. But I will say that I am worried that I am taking crazy pills. A large part of the accusations of “tankie” is not agreeing with “Russia evil orcs, Ukrainians are perfect elven defenders of Western Civilization”. I still stand by my previous statements of any attempt of explaining the Russian paranoia of a hostile military alliance moving closer to its borders (NATO was supposedly only supposed to defend against the Warsaw Pact, though NATO pre-dated it) and the fact that the US was attempting Color Revolutions on its border (I know that for invoking color revolutions I need to justify against anti-CIA bias. But color revolutions do take advantage and empower actual discontent of the local population, the CIA can’t summon governmental changes with a wave of a wand. It is just what the US government and media supports and legitimizes.) But ever acknowledging that Russia would be upset by the CIA helping to install a hostile government on its border, with plans to join a hostile military alliance, is tankieism.

It can’t be “some sectors” and a “full embrace”

Just like the Republican party can fully embrace MAGA but only some sectors of the US are Trump acolytes. Euromaidan produced very organized and energized neo-nazi groups like Azov Battalion, C-14, Aidar, etc. And even though they didn’t have a majority in the elected government, the fact that they had a very large amount of angry, motivated, and armed men with military supplies mean that the government knew they could not cross or displease them. They have taken priority and given special consideration due to the war of the last 12 years. An ethno-nationalist military formation will be more motivated and more willing to fight hard than a random conscript. This has become significantly more apparent since 2022 where the actual conscripts that are grabbed off the streets are sent to their death as cannon fodder, so that Azov or Aidar can take advantage of the softened line and expended munitions to try to attack a possible weak point. The war has legitimized these neo-nazi groups and empowered them as they have greater recruitment since you are less likely to have your life thrown away as cannon fodder if you enlist with them rather than wait to be conscripted and thrown against Russian drones. And they are legitimized by being the forces capturing territory and fighting off Russian advances as the normal rank and file are sacrificed for it.

I am pointing out in the original context of Kittenrulz and your denunciation of how tankies can’t accept that someone can be “against Russian Imperialism and US imperialsim” is actually the straw man. Again, I am sure you can find one loser somewhere to cherry pick that actually thinks that Russia and China are perfect and US is only evil. But your portrait of both Lemmy “tankies” and the “tankies” referenced by OP’s meme is just that they would not maintain a double standard for the US and its adversaries and that you are “nuanced” for not agreeing with 100% of what the US does while accepting the worst propaganda about its adversaries.

I pointed out your inclusion of Iran and Russia because again, opposing Lemmy “tankies” on Iran is them calling out support of the CIA and Mossad to expand the anti-government protests and providing material support like arms and Starlink terminals to aid the protests. It forces the unfortunate position of having to be wary due to consequences and not principle. I think the original Kittenrulz post brought this up but as terrible and flawed as Ghaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and Assad were, letting the US and their proxies overthrow and destroy their governments still made the lives of people in those countries much worse. For Russia, that was pointing out that there is much more vilification of Russians and willingness to sanction and undermine their economy and citizens than Americans even though just the Iraq war alone was an even worse and less justified war of aggression. Again, I am pointing out that all accusations of “tankie” boil down to just not maintaining this double standard. And I was working off of the original banning of Kittenrulz and you invoking the Russian Invasion. The accusations of “tankie” around the Russian-Ukraine war do boil down to having any explanations or understanding of the causes of the war beyond “Putin is evil, so he does evil things like invading countries”. Kittenrulz and most “tankies” do not say that it is good and just, though I will admit there are a minority that take Russia’s side due to the full embrace of overt Nazism within sectors of the Ukraine government and armed forces since 2014 and exacerbated by 2022. Though that was a convenient talking point for Russian officials rather than a real motivation, and the war empowering and legitimizing these Neo-nazi formations.

Sometimes it can devolve into campism, but no, mostly it is not being pro-west through double standards and false dichotomies. Combining your fist point and last point, the disagreement is the falseness of your last statement. “US and Russia can be bad at once” but Russia is inherently evil that can not not be considered an extreme, existential evil until a total collapse and replacement of its government and any Russian that isn’t actively rebelling against their government is an evil orc. But the US is bad because Trump is crass and rude and I would like more polite politicians leading wars of aggression against other nations, and if a Democrat were in power, they would do 4% less imperialism which would make it an acceptable amount. Radical politics in the US is obviously too far and “tankie”, the furthest left without being “tankie” that could be allowed is Mamdami increasing local taxes by 3%.

Iranian government brutalizing its own people? … China threatening it’s neighbours?

again, extreme double standards. People are protesting their government, that justifies foreign intervention and invasion? Should the Russian and Chinese governments have invaded and aiding armed agitators in the US in 2020 because the BLM protests were larger scale protests against the government? The most credible accusation of “genocide” in China against the Uighurs was a cultural genocide from making them learn Mandarin and basic Han Chinese etiquette, not any form of mass scale violence (again, even though all the anti-tankie positions are based on ignoring reality, but it is the opposite of Gaza where nearly all human rights organizations say that there is a genocide in Gaza but not in China). But cultural genocide is defined so that forcing people to learn and use another language counts. The problem for “non-tankies” is that that means that Ukraine has engaged in an equivalent cultural genocide since 2014 when notably only Ukrainian language would be officially used in schools, government bureaucracy, signs, etc. because of the fascist far-right’s power after Euromaidan which caused the Russian separatist movement. Though Russia was definitely more interested in realpolitik considerations, other than true concerns of ethnic Russians in the Donbass. But you are a tankie if you don’t think Putin spontaneously decided to invade in February 2022 for no reason except being evil.

For China threatening their neighbors, that is hard to parse, since it is hard to find anything that that might be real. They are famously willing to work and trade with anyone, even including Israel, and attempt to de-escalate and isolate from geopolitics. I am guessing you mean Taiwan, which mostly isn’t them actively threatening them with military force, but the US politicians using that potential to legitimate military presence in SE Asia. And again, invasion of Taiwan wouldn’t be justified, but there is mostly nothing other than Taiwan being close to China means having any planes and ships near the Chinese coast is a “threatening position”. And, because it is a frozen civil war, both sides agree that both territories are Chinese territory. Again, to explain to the USian, imagine if the UK intervened to protect part of the Confederacy to continue surviving in Florida, and both USians and Floridians agreed that Florida was part of the USA.

Again, if you are justifying a “both-sidesism” by foreign intervention and invasions/wars of aggression, then there is a quantitative argument to be made. You are a tankie if you don’t think China and Russia are objectively and extremely more evil than the US and West, even if the US “can be bad” too. But just in the 21st century the US has invaded/attacked Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Venezuela, and Somalia (non-exhaustive) and backed genocides in Israel and Yemen. Russia has invaded Ukraine, and a separatist part of Georgia, and not as actively armed, but tolerated Israels genocide. And China tolerates Israel, and supposedly might think of some time possibly invading Taiwan. The “anti-tankie” sees this and says that Russia and China are irredeemably evil and must be opposed and their citizens hated at all costs, but I also dislike some things Trump said or vaguely denounced the invasion of Iraq so “both sides bad” and “I am the real nuance understander”.

All definitions of “AutHoRItaRiaNisM” that .world, piefed, or other right-wing lemmy instances subscribe to is anything that modern centrist liberals don’t like or involve “political violence”. Lincoln and John Brown would be “Violent Authoritarians” according to modern liberals if they existed today.

It goes back to the definition of a liberal: A liberal is anyone that is anti-war, except for all the current wars and is in favor of liberation struggles, except for any that are still ongoing.

I thought you were anti-tankie? He should have just kept voting for moderate Republicans.

The difference between communism and anarchism isn’t the aims, but whether the state could immediately be abolished or that there must be a transitional period.

Communism by any other name would smell as sweet