And when you rebut their arguments using entirely western sources from their approved list of outlets, they call you a tankie and run away
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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The American state likes to attack small countries under the pretext "it's to liberate the people".
Any conflict of interest in the source needs to be considered, including the degree to which the source is permitted to criticize it's home nation's government or it's allies.
Being a white-collar liberal requires a lobotomy to not think about the inherent contradiction of the political stance.
You shouldn't believe anything the government tells you, no matter what direction you identify with. Especially these days.
Anybody upvoting this post should know what OP means when they post this. This is the post they made immediately afterwards: https://lemmy.ml/post/44920093
90% of their posts are pro-Putin
Decide for yourself whether or not they are reliable and/or propaganda
This putin guy lives rent-free in your head. No rent, means no middle-men leeching off you, which is unamerican, therefore you're actually pro-putin!
Here i thought “ml” was a Marxist-Leninist instance. Yet it seems people support the decidedly pro-capitalist anti-Bolshevik Putin just because he’s the leader of Russia
Wild times for Communism
MLs tend to critically support the Russian Federation not because it's a former socialist state, but because of the progressive role Russia plays in undermining the western empire. Russia has been an ally to Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, and is in general interested in a world where the US Empire isn't constantly boxxing it in and sanctioning it. This anti-imperialism isn't necessarily because Russians are more morally pure or anything, but out of definite relations to imperialism.
Besides what Cowbee said, the explicitly ML instance is Lemmygrad, and Hexbear is I believe broadly leftist, this instance is more generalist even if it does seem to be mostly commies here as well.
I'm not a fan of Putin but as long as the mainstream narrative frames everything around him as evil just because he goes against imperialism we'll have to put things in context and push back or else we miss the chance to remind people of the primary contradiction.
If it truly isn't about imperialism, then how come is everything bad about him okay to tolerate, ignore or even celebrate when the people doing it are compradors or imperialists?
If you have the awareness to understand where criticism of him comes from then participating in helping imperialism is dumb, and if you're itching to help imperialism leftist-y you're just the compatible left and you've been played.
We've seen empires tearing apart whole regions and butcher indigenous people and revolutionaries for so long at this point. Some of us know people who died in the last round of US backed regimes in the cold war. Some of us live in countries that were targeted even more recently than that by regime change operatives and the MIL. Let's stop ceding the ground to liberals with the memory of a goldfish and no political literacy.
Modern Russia may not fulfill all 5 of Lenin’s criteria for imperialism, but it’s moved closer to imperialism under his leadership, with the state actively working to create/consolidate capitalist monopolies and the expansionist military actions being the most blatant signifiers
When i say Russian state media is talking nonsense when they talk about “liberating” Ukraine, it’s not because I’m pro-imperialism, is because it’s absolute bullshit
You can hate the US and similar nations without mindlessly repeating the rhetoric of a ruthless expansionist capitalist dictator just because he’s opposed to the US
The West: My data and research is correct! All chinese sources are propaganda! China: My data and research is correct! All western sources are propaganda!
The US: drops 46 bombs a day! China: hasn't been in a war for 46 years!
Westerners: these two states are equally bad for humanity(or one is significantly more evil, can you guess which one they think that is?)
They just have PMC's in sub Saharan African countries to help ensure their investments in said countries and bring in their own labor as well not increasing local wealth except for the local warlords.
You're correct. America is more evil than China right now. Wasn't trying to say otherwise, but fortunately America isn't the entire west...yet
Western countries are vassals of the US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing_(Iraq_War)
Not even mentioning the Libyan war 15 years ago, where many western countries bombed libya and turned it into an open air slave market . Heckin wholesum socdem norway alone dropped 588 bombs on Libya
As always, the west will do its best to destroy any country that dares to be sovereign. Iran is bravely expelling the imperialists from West Asia and proving that the Empire has truly decayed in terms of hard power.
A year and two ago I thought west Asia wouldn't have a breakthrough in decades, I'm happy Iran proved me wrong. The fact in merely a matter of weeks the chance of the US indefinitly withdrawing from west Asia is now a very real possibility, and Israeli society is collapsing from within is something I thought I'd only ever get to see in at least 3 decades. A flash of hope in a sea of despair
We will both live to see imperialism die and that makes me very happy
Extremely happy! The death and devastation to innocents in Iran are of course extreme tragedies, but the upside is of course as you describe, a real chance for change. The US Empire has been declining for decades, and the sheer difference in how the war on Iran is going vs. the destruction of Iraq and Libya both serve to drive that point home. Iran is not Libya nor is it Iraq, and the US Empire of today is not the US Empire of 3 decades ago. Quantity turns to quality, weeks into decades, of course.
The damned beast is weak, and Iran is showing the world that it isn't some invincible force outside of the rest of society, but deeply enmeshed within it.
In a militaristic sense, yeah. We do spend a trillion dollars on the army as deplorable and unnecessary that is, so the threat of invasion if you don't comply is there.
However, why would Trump threaten to invade Canada and Greenland if the EU, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand has no autonomy of its own? They certainly wouldn't be turning to China in response to all the tariffs and invasion threats if that was the case.
However, why would Trump threaten to invade Canada and Greenland if the EU, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand has no autonomy of its own? They certainly wouldn't be turning to China in response to all the tariffs and invasion threats if that was the case.
Personal benefit. Greenland, Denmark and other vassals are not sovereign they are suzerainties. They are allowed limited domestic autonomy( in the case of Greenland specifically the US even got away with dropping a nuke on them with no repercussions)
Despite this Trump could still benefit personally, financially and otherwise from a more direct form of control and knowing his ego I wouldn't be surprised if he just wants to paint Greenland in US colours on the world map so that part of his 'legacy' is increasing the size of the US.
This can be applied to other vassal nations, which cannot be said to be truly 'turning to China' until they take concrete steps to move outside of the US's sphere of influence such as de-dollarizing their economies and switching to RMB as their reserve currency, kicking out US troops from their borders and leaving any military coalitions led by the US occupying foreign nations they are in. Its extremely reductive to separate 'militaristic' issues from wider political ones, especially in this context. Ultimately Trump is a figurehead for the ruling class who's individual control over the empire has limits, his motivations and that of the empire as a whole while usually aligning are not always one and the same
The difference is that the later is almost always confirmed by the state department 25 years later because of the Freedom of Information Act.
And even then westerners choose not to believe it; but they'll believe the Epstein files. 🤷♂️
And the Chinese not admitting to propaganda due to the lack of a FOIA-equivalent means they don't do propaganda?
"Propaganda" is essentially spreading information (true or false) with the intention of steering views for political ends. China does admit to doing so, but this does not mean they aren't more factual in their propaganda than the US Empire is.
More factual according to who?
How do you believe facts are verified? Through vetting, testing, and documenting evidence. Flimsy evidence like anecdotes or "eyewitness reports" are secondary to more hard evidence. An easy example is reporting on the Beijing Riots in 1989, where the west reported that 10,000 people were killed on the square itself, official Chinese sources reported that the square was evacuated peacefully but that clashes between the PLA and rioters around Beijing resulted in hundreds of deaths (largely the rioters but with dozens of PLA members lynched or firebombed), and now the official Chinese story is confirmed and is now largely reflected on Wikipedia.
So verified by the people who put out the propaganda in the first place. Your source "confirming" the story literally came from Beijing, and all the wikipedia page (Hardly an arbiter of objective truth in the first place) states is that the number is and has been in dispute. The source cited for that section of the Wikipedia article is also a Western source titled "Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement" published in 1998 by the Stanford University Press. Something tells me they weren't pushing the CCP line.
So basically your "Easy example" just proves my point: While you chuckle about westerners just believing what western governments said, you're just wholeheartedly endorsing the version of events published by the Chinese government. The west aren't the only ones lying to you, bud, they're just the only ones who will admit it years after the fact.
Your source “confirming” the story literally came from Beijing
PUBLIC LIBRARY OF US DIPLOMACY.
Edit:
The difference is that the later is almost always confirmed by the state department 25 years later because of the Freedom of Information Act.
And even then westerners choose not to believe it; but they’ll believe the Epstein files. 🤷♂️
Thank you for your service as an example for the audience. LMAO
No? The source confirming the official story was a leaked US cable, along with the incredible lack of any forensic evidence backing the western claims. Alan Donald, the originator of the "10,000 killed" claim, was confirmed to have left the square well before he claimed to have seen any killings. The west never admitted they were wrong outwardly, the truth came from a leaked cable.
The west lies constantly, because they need to do so in order to maintain justification for capitalism and imperialism. As a rising socialist country, the PRC isn't in a position where it needs to lie to prop itself up, nor is it constantly trying to make up excuses for war like the US Empire does. I'm under no illusion that the CPC has never lied, but the sheer scale of lies is vastly different.
On the constant lies:
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-lies-get-so-tedious
Im gonna start replacing "relevant XKCD" with "relevant Caitlin Johnstone"