A great way to tell if they mean “anti-imperialist” as “against the conquering and subjugating of other groups” or instead just “in favor of anyone that declares themselves to be against the United States and Western Europe.”
Not all Authoritarians are Fascists.
That said, I would agree that whomever supports Putin, supports Fascism - there is nothing at all Leftwing in present day Russia, quite the contrary.
China is more complicated.
I mean you can point out that you’re not a fan of Putin but if you’re for diplomatic solutions instead of total war you’re a fascist. No matter if you try to explain that you’re a pacifist and that war is not acceptable and arming for war just makes war that more likely. As soon as you mention NATO eastward expansion as a problematic policy you’re a tankie. Or if you mention that people saw this war coming before 2022 and it could have been stopped. Or if you point out that calling Russians “orks” is racist. Just massive downvotes and the zerg moves on.
There is zero difference between the MAGAts and the leftists in regards to how brainwashed they are. And no I’m not a centrist either.
The issue with bitching about “NATO expansionism” is that at the end of the day it’s still an alliance that countries ask to be members of due to concerns about being invaded or attacked.
China is more complicated
That’s because they found a way to voor communist thought to the most capitalist industry in the world.
Well, they managed to pull about a billion people out of poverty over the last 4 decades or so, which means that mainly they were following leftwing ideals.
(I come from a country which had actual Fascism until the 70s and what the Fascists did was the exact opposite of that: the vast majority of people were dirt poor and kept dirt poor whilst a tiny elite tightly interwined with the Fascist Government gorged themselves on the wealth of the country).
However, it’s been some time since China did that lifting of the masses out of poverty, and they’ve been shifting to Capitalism whilst keeping the Authorianism from their implementation of leftwing policies (they called it Communism, but they never really reached such utopical state, so I’m wary of calling that Communism).
Are they even left of center nowadays? I don’t know enough in detail how modern China operates to pass judgement on that - outside of China we mostly hear of what’s done in domains that reflect the part of their ideology that falls on the Libertarian-Authoritarian axis, not the stuff that falls on the Left-Right one.
I don’t think they’ve yet moved all the way to Fascism, though, even if they’ve kept the Authoritarianism going.
Well, they managed to pull about a billion people out of poverty over the last 4 decades or so, which means that mainly they were following leftwing ideals.
well i mean, in defense of this statement, mao was literally psychopathic. As far as i’ve read they basically dropped everything including food production to make a nuclear bomb. Coming from that to industrialization is only inevitably going to vastly increase your standard of living. We saw the same thing across the world, even in the soviet union.
also i definitely wouldn’t call china center of left, unless we’re specifically talking about economic policy, as china is extremely noteworthy for being pretty tyrannical in certain cases around certain things. the great firewall being a good example. Unless we’re going with the modern american conservative definition of left, in which case, yeah that would be left.
“Biden is currently dropping bombs and Trump isn’t, therefore anyone desiring a Kamala victory is a fascist” --Linkerbaan unironically
Russia was communist once and China pretends to still be that means I’m a bad leftist if I don’t send death threats to people who support Ukraine and Taiwan.
Actual thought process some people have listed above
The funny thing about that is that Russia was never communist. Though many don’t understand the difference between communism and Communism. The irony being that Communism was basically cosplay of communism. But never actually communism.
I mean, there was a pretty solid chance of actual communism before the Bolshevik coup. I think that if the Soviets overthrew the provisional government we’d have a fully socialist government, which could have eventually became communist.
It was still not communist, but lets remember that it could have been before the party communists made their state capitalist government in the name of communism
well yeah, because it was the soviet union that was communist.
The Soviet Union was a state. Therefore not stateless, therefore not communist. The Soviet Union had a separate political class. One that scapegoated, imprisoned, and even slaughtered any proletariat that dared criticize the vanguard party and it’s leaders. Therefore not classes, not communist.
The Soviet Union nominally implemented Communism. But communism and Communism aren’t the same thing. I could name my dog Communism. And my dog would be Communism. But not communism. The soviets cosplayed communism. But never were or will be communist.
