What is the positive outcome of defending an authoritarian regime like Putin’s? I don’t see how that advances socialist goals in any way. I am learning that Zelenskyy and Ukraine are not as good as Western media describes, but I do not see how Putin is better. I’m interested in being part of Lemmygrad.ml, but not if it defends authoritarian regimes especially if they are not working towards socialism/communism. I want to work towards socialist goals, but I do not want to be used as a tool in some authoritarian geopolitical mess. Russia also gives me the impression of being colonialist but I’m not sure if that’s accurate
Oh boy…
I know right 😬😬😬 Sorry. I am thankful for the people who put in the effort to answer my question, and I am feeling encouraged to be a member of this community
Nah, it is perfectly fine, comrade. Thanks for being open-minded.
I reacted like this because we’ve tackled this question many times and it’s sort of difficult to choose where to even start - so much to unpack (thankfully, others have done it before).
One piece of advice I usually give people is to try not to emotionally invest into the ideas we have in our heads - even Marxism-Leninism - as they are naught but tools to explain (and, hopefully, transform) reality. We’re not born with them, somehow they get into our heads. Sometimes they are deliberately shoved into us by capitalist propaganda press - because they have a material interest in us being misinformed. Liberals, for instance, have a strong tendency to cling to them so much it gets absurd - especially when sources they themselves read start to contradict their own narrative; this is how we end up with libs calling NYT “New Orc Times”.
It’s helpful that you said not to emotionally invest into ideas because that pushes back on the way I have been processing political ideas. Since I’ve very active in socialist circles, I’ve emotionally invested in it a lot more than I’ve actually done research. One concept that helped me feel better about this is praxis, which from my understanding is the concept of acting in conjunction with learning. I will work on taking out some of my emotional investment, mostly if it includes absolute ideas of good and evil rather than analysis