trot

joined 2 years ago
[–] trot@hexbear.net 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What point is there to make?

This applies equally little to "modern Trotskyists", and claiming anything to the contrary betrays a distinct lack of investigation with an overabundance of speaking.

Verification is trivial: pick your favourite trot website and look up "red fascism".

[–] trot@hexbear.net 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Cherrypicking the most obscure text by Trotsky imaginable, even then proceeding to ignore all context of and exaggerate what was said, and then claiming modern Trotskyists say the Soviet Union was "red fascist" because they took their ideas from the above obscure text (neither is true). Magnificient.

The full paragraph, without anything omitted "for the convenience of the reader" (machine translated from French, because there seems to be no full English translation after a brief search - does that tell you anything about the text's importance?):

Fedor Butenko took the plunge to fascism. Did he have to deny himself a lot? To fight against himself? We do not think so. A considerable – and increasingly important – part of the Soviet apparatus is made up of fascists who have not yet recognized themselves as such. The identification between the Soviet regime as a whole and fascism is a historical error to which ultra-leftist dilettantes are inclined, who ignore what fundamentally differentiates the social bases of these two regimes. But the symmetry of political superstructures, the similarity of totalitarian methods and psychological types is striking. Butenko is a symptom of great importance: he shows us what the careerists of the Stalinist school are in their natural state.

The context is that Butenko, the Soviet envoy to Romania about whom this paragraph speaks about, had actually renounced communism and defected from the USSR to fascist Italy earlier in 1938. To remark on the bureaucracy producing such people is completely different from shouting "red fascism" because a CIA-funded radio station told you to.

[–] trot@hexbear.net 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (9 children)

casually making up a "trotskyist" to get mad at

they always cry about "red fascism"

No, in fact Trotsky condemned the abuse of the term "fascism" (see: "social fascism")

and are staunchly anti authoritarianism

Trotskyists have read Engels.

[–] trot@hexbear.net 11 points 2 years ago

This is an interesting case because it seems it will be sold 100% to the city of St. Petersburg, I guess the local government?

Which begs the question of why the formality was necessary. I predict the local government-owned shares are eventually going to be quietly sold off.

[–] trot@hexbear.net 21 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Meanwhile, the largest thermal power provider in St Petersburg (currently valued at 60 billion rubles) has been set to be privatized in 2024: https://www.dp.ru/a/2023/09/20/zaks-peterburga-prinjal-zakon

[–] trot@hexbear.net 21 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

They did quite well in WW1.

Speaking of that, was the Entente was completely justified in sending millions to die in the war? After all, previously you said:

I'm sorry, but when it involves one imperialist bloc invading a smaller country, then it does matter.

Not even one, but two smaller countries! Think of little Belgium and Serbia!

[–] trot@hexbear.net 22 points 2 years ago (7 children)

No, just as it would be unable to resist NATO in being turned into a far-right paramilitary-led banana republic if Russia were to suddenly withdraw without any decrease in NATO involvement.

But the beauty of the neat little trick above is that if the working classes of both sides correctly oppose their respective ruling classes' interests, we can end up with a scenario where both sides lose - objectively the best outcome for the Ukrainian people, as well as everyone else.

The Russian anti-war activists are clearly holding up their end of the bargain. Why are you not holding up yours?

[–] trot@hexbear.net 25 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (18 children)

I literally said that

Russian anti-war activists have a correct position.

Are you aware that it's possible to want neither NATO tanks nor Russian tanks in Ukraine?

You can even make sure you are consistent with both things in action 100% of the time - it's a neat little trick called "opposing the position of your own government".

[–] trot@hexbear.net 38 points 2 years ago (60 children)

Russian pacifists want Russia to stop invading Ukraine.

Western "pacifists" want to send NATO tanks to Ukraine.

They are not the same.

Russian anti-war activists have a correct position.

But an important consideration should be whether one's actions actually contribute to Russia withdrawing sooner, or if they instead help justify further, equally self-interested NATO involvement in the war.

Unless you are Russian, it's most likely the latter.

There are two imperialist blocs involved in the conflict, and it doesn't matter which one of them technically started it.

[–] trot@hexbear.net 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] trot@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

I should have probably made it more clear that all the excerpts come from unrelated parts of the text. The one on abortion is from a section on health problems "resulting" from Soviet occupation, not from the section of the above excerpt. Nevertheless, considering the content of the rest of the report, it's most likely implying that the act of abortion is itself a problem.

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