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Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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This comment is so real it hurts.
I just had someone trying to convince me that Russia can't be imperialist because they oppose the US, an imperialist nation.
... that's not the definition of "imperialist," my dear tankie.
Not sure if linking it so others can laugh/cry is "brigading" worthy of getting me banned off of various Lemmy communities/instances or not.
Fuck it, here's the thread:
https://lemmy.world/comment/25044062
What a mind-bogglingly stupid thing to say
I needed a good laugh.
Never heard the word "irredentism" before, looked it up. It's literally fascist logic. Do tankies seriously not realize that the logical endpoint of irredentism is a world made up exclusively of ethnostates?
If you actually read what the person was saying, they said:
Marxists tend to use a specific definition of imperialism, and that user's position is that while Russia does engage in irredentism (bad), like invading Ukraine, they do not fit the Marxist definition of imperialism (which is more concerned with resource extraction on a global scale). This Marxist definition goes back at least to Lenin, so it isn't something that they just made up (as they were accused of in the thread), but the common meaning today is different.
This is being misinterpreted or distorted here into, "Russia's invasion of Ukraine is fine because it's irredentism" which was very clearly not what they were saying. What they were saying is that irredentism is bad (including the war in Ukraine), but that it is a distinct thing from imperialism.
They're still doing apologia by playing with definitions to argue that not only is Russia not imperialist, but they're anti-imperialist. Stating that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is irredentist and not imperialist carries the assumption that Russia's officially stated reasons for invading Ukraine are truthful when they are clearly not. Russia wants Ukrainian territory not because it's populated by ethnic Russians, but because they want to exploit the natural resources contained therein. Irredentism is the justification for imperialism, they are not mutually exclusive.
It's inherently difficult and subjective to speculate about motivations, and doubly so when talking about a country with multiple groups with their own motivations. Of course, in any conflict, enemy countries will be assigned the worst motivations possible, which is why virtually every conflict draws comparisons to Nazis, and the idea that the enemy will just keep attacking forever if they are not defeated. This was said about Vietnam (Domino Theory) and Afghanistan ("if we don't fight them there, we'll be fighting them here"). Those examples show that motivations assigned to enemy countries are often inaccurate.
I don't think it should be considered "apologia" to express reasonable skepticism that the motivations of a rival country aren't what some people speculate. Especially when they're still assigning a negative motivation to said country, just a different negative motivation than the one you assign. That's kind of a ridiculous degree of purity testing, "It's not enough to condemn Russia, you have to agree with my exact assessment of their motivations, otherwise you're doing apologia by condemning them in the wrong way."
As they said, they condemn both Russia's invasion and irredentism in general, so my main point was to correct your misunderstanding, when you asked if "tankies" don't realize that irredentism leads to negative results.
If they're going with a niche definition rather than the common definitions everyone uses, they should have stated that to prevent the confusion and argument that it seeded, as I said further down in the argument.
I actually agree with you on that. However, "being too prone to using Marxist definitions and terminology" does not warrant labelling them as a "tankie" or "Russian propagandist."
It's this sort of thing that makes me see every accusation of "tankie" as a complete joke. If you can literally say, word for word, "I do not support the Russian invasion of Ukraine" and still get called a tankie and Russian propagandist, then those words have no meaning, aside from, "You disagreed with a liberal about literally anything."
Did their condemnation of Russia not give you a moment's pause before dismissing them as a Russian propagandist and misrepresenting their positions to others afterwards? It seems like you just recognized that they're not part of your political in-group so you ignore everything and jump straight to labelling them a fascist. Yes, they communicated in a way that's somewhat confusing, but you're much more at fault for jumping to those unwarranted accusations.
It's more or less exactly the content of this post here. Literal Russian propaganda, I'm sure. Couldn't confirm 100% because I don't waste my precious time checking what Russia has to say about their invasion, but I'm sure the term/topic of "irredentism" comes up and never "invasion" or "genocide."
Irredentism is a negative word, nobody would use it in their own propaganda to describe their own actions. Furthermore, the user you were talking to clearly and explicitly condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine:
You seem to have misunderstood what they were saying, and the idea that they're spouting "literal Russian propaganda" while explicitly condemning the invasion, and labelling it an invasion, is completely absurd.
I guess that's why you felt the need to pretend they didn't label it as an invasion. I do wish y'all would practice a slightly higher degree of intellectual honesty though.