Socialist Progressives
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The Magistrate
(95,244 posts)Why should a charter for discussion of progressive Socialism bar criticism, even expressions of distaste, for Putin?
He is hardly a man of the left, after all; not a Socialist, not a progressive. He presides over an oligarchic kleptocracy whose nearest approach to virtue is that it is reasonably open and honest about what it is, and as a matter of practical fact, he meets most defining characteristics of a fascist leader in his conduct and attitudes and policies. The fact that someone opposes, and is opposed by, the United States, is hardly warrant for support from the left; that is a lesson that ought to have been learnt long ago.
TBF
(32,041 posts)posts from folks who are obviously looking to beat the war drums.
I don't like Putin at all - he is just another ridiculous capitalist in my view. But I don't think he did this. There are plenty of posts out in GD where you can bang the drums and call for his head. I was hoping to get some higher level analysis in here.
The Magistrate
(95,244 posts)To claim accurate description of Putin, his government, and his policies and actions in Ukraine, is 'beating the war drums' is simply absurd.
I consider it a serious question why you feel a charter for discussing progressive Socialism should bar criticism, even expression of distaste, for Putin. He is hardly a progressive Socialist.
LooseWilly
(4,477 posts)To my eyes Putin is no more, and no less, a fascist than the US Government, taken in toto, as it were.
Sure, the US government can still theoretically be made to bend to suit the "people" rather than the financiers' & industrialists' interests... but the safeguards in place to prevent that occurring are many and varied and, on the whole of late, entirely effective.
Putin's Russia, meanwhile, is a newcomer to the imperialist stage... the interests that he represents have neither so elegantly crafted a stage-show of "democracy", nor so repetitively marketed a "mantra" of "freedom", as has the US and its orbit of Western Powers... nor have they so thoroughly developed their industrial and/or financial infrastructure, let alone their global military presence.
I can't argue that criticism of Putin isn't legitimate. I would, though, argue that the casual tone of your criticism suggests that you fail to see that- everything that you are criticizing Putin & his government for being, the US and EU are as well... the latter are just so much more practiced and PR-savvy about it that one often falls into the trap of believing their PR-glitz and failing to see that Russia, as it stands today, is merely another nascent imperial power... the same as the old ones.
What you are calling an "accurate description of Putin, his government, and his policies and actions in Ukraine" ... is really just a regurgitation of the PR-spin being used by the "Big Players" to besmirch the "Upstart New Player"... and that spin creates an intellectual climate among those who choose to ingest it in its entirety which legitimizes whatever "Power Play" economic &/or military actions the said "Big Players" may eventually choose to employ against said "Upstart".
Your matter-of-fact use of that particular set of talking points, with no sign of any questioning included in your choice of diction, suggests that you are, in fact, helping to "set the stage" for whatever "action" the US, EU, and their orbit of client states choose to try to spin as being "lawful", "just", or whatever ... but whose real intention will be, or rather continue to be, action intended to blunt any attempt by this new would-be-imperialist-power, Russia, from attaining any leverage that might allow it to, in any significant way, compete with the imperial powers that have already divided the resources of the globe amongst themselves.
All of that said, however, I would have to concur... "He is hardly a progressive Socialist."
His not being a socialist, however, doesn't mean that progressive socialists are required to digest and regurgitate on command the talking points of others, especially when they are neitherwise "progressive Socialist"s.
... but perhaps you have some new nugget of wisdom that will elucidate how much more horrific the figurehead of the new would-be-power is than the old, familiar figureheads of the old, familiar, and nigh-inescapable powers-that-be?
edgineered
(2,101 posts)Who would gain politically by this action? This includes thoughts ranging from what the loss of those on the plane would accomplish to whose agenda would be best served.
Who would gain monetarily by this action? As we know there are no bounds to the actions some may take for a nickel in their pocket.
Myself, I have no idea because all I can see is what someone else has decided I should see. Good luck finding the truth.
TBF
(32,041 posts)on DU willing to answer the question. Thoughtful, factual, provocative. The type of writing we need to see more of on DU.
Jack Riddler's complete post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025267434
Just a few of his points:
The clumsy “kill-terrorists” anti-Russian rhetoric and repression pursued by Kiev also opened the way for an alternate thuggishness in the Ukrainian east, an armed resistance among the large ethnic Russian population there. To see this as the result of a process driven by largely bad actors and the dynamics of fear and hatred on both sides is not to take either side. I am not “pro-Russian,” or in favor of the “Ukrainian” side, and to adopt these terms uncritically plays into the mechanics by which the citizens of a formerly multi-language secular republic are being turned into ethnically motivated antagonists. This has happened before, in Yugoslavia, where many of the young literally were forced to remember that they were supposed to be not Yugoslavians but Serbians or Croatians at each others’ throats, now fight or die. Our own country’s government, unfortunately, has been relentless in taking Kiev’s side, even dispatching CIA and FBI personnel and private mercenaries to assist Kiev in its pacification campaign.
And here we may disagree about what has followed. You may see a strategy of infiltration and material backing of the “Donetsk Republic” by a Russian state aiming at conquest of eastern Ukraine. You may even think that was Moscow’s master plan since the beginning of the Maidan uprising, or even years ago. Whereas, unlike with Crimea, I see no credible gain for Moscow or Putin in an attempt to absorb a territory with a mixed population and a civil war underway – a territory from which the best economic exploitation for Russia would actually follow simply from stabilizing the situation and making Ukraine pay its Russian gas bills with money borrowed from the EU-IMF (said money then to be owed back to EU-IMF for all eternity, but hey, that’s what a working class is for). By the way, to oppose EU policy and the current dominance of neoliberalism and authoritarian governance within the EU during this period of internal economic crisis and class warfare is not to be “anti-European,” and no more valid than the other false dichotomies I’ve mentioned. I consider my stance to be pro-European, and I also see realpolitik for Moscow in continuing to strengthen its economic dealings with the EU and especially Germany.
The alternative for Moscow, i.e., the aggressive strategy attributed to it by the neocons and others in the West, would be to receive hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Ukraine and to generate an endless new Yugoslavian-type war on its borders, in the process physically separating itself from Europe: a war that can have no winners on the ground, only graveyards in different colors, but one that may, indeed, serve some sick geopolitical aim hatched by schemers in more than one far-away capital. Say what you will of Putin, and he may be even worse than you think, but since his bloody rise he has acted not as a chaos agent – this is not a realpolitik interest of Russia’s, and it certainly wasn’t working under Yeltsin – but as a stabilizer of Moscow’s power and rule. At the same time, his own power though great is hardly without any condition. He depends on the nationalist and conservative currents and tropes he rode to greater power (and that he appears largely to believe in), and he can hardly have his base see him as selling out ethnic Russians being massacred by the upstart Kiev “fascists,” or be too vigorous in preventing help to the Ukrainian Russians from Russian citizens; not to mention Russia’s own bloody mercenary-militarist elements. The best chance for reining the latter in, actually, may be coming right now in the wake of the MH17 shootdown and resultant death of hundreds of completely uninvolved and innocent foreigners, mainly Dutch and Malaysian. This is a time when a Western realpolitik that favors peace and not more war should not be scoring cheap points in demonizing Putin, but encouraging him to seize the opportunity of stopping Russian support for Donetsk, ending the conflict, establishing peaceful conditions. Who doesn’t want that?
With regard to the airliner, a rational person should rule out nothing as the events unfold and the seemingly tainted investigations proceed, and there are legitimate questions to ask (such as why passenger flights were still going over a warzone that had seen multiple downings of aircraft, but I figure the answer lies in corporate fuel costs and not a conspiracy). The fact is that until that moment Kiev militarily controlled the airspace, and the Donetsk militias were the ones trying to shoot down planes. Thus it is near-certain they used one a BuK array captured from the Ukrainian military to mistakenly target MH17. Since then, the Kiev government has broken out into a rabid display of rhetoric about “terrorists” run directly by Putin (sadly echoed here on DU) with the implication of an intentional strike on foreign civilians, as insanely counter-productive as that would have been for Moscow and the rebels. In this behavior, as with earlier moves, Kiev seems to want to stoke hostility between the West and Moscow. Yet it’s the Donetsk side who have shown the actions of a guilty party in the question of who shot down the plane, and it’s been a truly ugly and inhumane display.
LooseWilly
(4,477 posts)" ... to adopt these terms uncritically plays into the mechanics by which the citizens of a formerly multi-language secular republic are being turned into ethnically motivated antagonists."
I have recently also heard that lament from Iraqis, who seem to feel they had a government and society that concerned itself with issues, but which has now been re-ordered along ethnic and sectarian lines... as a result of the government foisted on them by the US occupation.
The irony, considering the efforts that seem to always be made inside the US to increase sectarian and ethnic tensions, is a little spooky, in fact.
TBF
(32,041 posts)I'd really like to know how the people of Ukraine are handling this. Two capitalist powerhouses are after their resources and where does it leave the ordinary worker in Ukraine?
2banon
(7,321 posts)
2banon
(7,321 posts)I hadn't seen it before. It's been really difficult to wade through the volumes of reactionary threads that passes for "discussion". Jack's analysis makes sense to me generally speaking. I don't think we're going to find out the truth with regard to the downed commercial plane, at the moment I'm inclined to think it was a tragically stupid incident caused by one side or the other. As Jack Riddler points out very well, there is no advantage for Putin to have ordered this action.
By the way on a personal note, my daughters family flew back from Amsterdam (to SFO) the same morning of this event last week. The first report I heard, was that it was a flight headed to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam on KLM. Later i heard the correction in terms of the airline. I mention this because I can't understand why there were any commercial flights over the area, and wondered if all flights headed to the Pacific from Amsterdam take that same flight path? I haven't been able to find the answer to this question.
Thanks again..
