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Even lenin would probably agree that russia deserves to be labeled as imperialist
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Eugene V. Debs' Ghost lemmy.dbzer0.com eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Joined: 2024-10-10
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I should probably establish up front that I don’t personally assign Lenin much importance as the final authority on what does or doesn’t count as imperialism. His most regular role in my life is that I occasionally call one of my dogs “little Lenin” because of his bulbous forehead. This is the proper scale of Lenin’s authority in my home: historically relevant to a degree, politically unavoidable, and also useful for insulting a beloved pet with a dramatic skull

But if the authoritarian left wants to point at Lenin like he is the one true authority on the definition of anti-imperialism, then fine. We can do that, even though I find it incredibly silly. If Lenin’s framework is going to be invoked every time someone wants to argue that Russia somehow doesn’t qualify as imperialist, then it’s worth asking what Lenin actually meant, instead of treating his name like a little red rubber stamp that says “America bad, everyone else innocent.

Found this while reading some things online, thought it would be great.

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Eugene V. Debs' Ghost lemmy.dbzer0.com eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Joined: 2024-10-10
#2 · Quote Reply

Bonus fact: The Soviet Union successfully argued at the United Nations that it only counts as colonialism when there is an ocean between the colonizer and their victims. Otherwise it's just sparkling nation building.

The United States agreed, for similar reasons to the Soviets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_water_thesis

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CosmicDebris lemmy.dbzer0.com CosmicDebris@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Joined: 2026-10-23
#3 · Quote Reply

Bonus fact: The Soviet Union successfully argued at the United Nations that it only counts as colonialism when there is an ocean between the colonizer and their victims. Otherwise it's just sparkling nation building. The United States agreed, for similar reasons to the Soviets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_water_thesis

Zionists logged in

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Commiunism lemmy.dbzer0.com commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Joined: 2025-05-20
#4 · (edited) Quote Reply

Ain't reading all that but yes, any marxist who had read Bukharin, Lenin and other marxists who had done analysis on imperialism knows that. Unfortunately, marxism has been suffering from its fair share of modernizers and falsifiers, most notably stalinists (ML's) and it's ideological offshoots (maoists, national socialists, communizers, eurocommunists, etc) who more often than not take up campist stances and distort material reality or texts and end up supporting """anti-imperialist imperialism""" because it goes against the west. There's no use bringing up Lenin since they operate within an entirely different worldview.

Anarchism has pretty much the exact same problem though, there's a lot of 'anarchists' here who go through the exact same mental hoops to support Ukraine for exactly the same reasons for instance.

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LocalAreaMan lemmy.ml LocalAreaMan@lemmy.ml
Joined: 2026-10-13
#5 · Quote Reply

Zionists logged in

"Opposing imperialism is so Imperialist."

WTF? There is only one empire on this planet, and Russia is helping liberate the developing world from it.

This 👇 is all you need to know about the West's adversarial relationship with Russia.

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LocalAreaMan lemmy.ml LocalAreaMan@lemmy.ml
Joined: 2026-10-13
#6 · Quote Reply

Ain't reading all that but yes, any marxist who had read Bukharin, Lenin and other marxists who had done analysis on imperialism knows that. Unfortunately, marxism has been suffering from its fair share of modernizers and falsifiers, most notably stalinists (ML's) and it's ideological offshoots (maoists, national socialists, communizers, eurocommunists, etc) who more often than not take up camp...

"Arming Nazis and killing Nazis is the same thing."
-Anarchists

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SmokeInFog midwest.social SmokeInFog@midwest.social
Joined: 2023-06-02
#7 · (edited) Quote Reply

"Arming Nazis and killing Nazis is the same thing." -Anarchists

@LocalAreaMan@lemmy.ml appears to be the poster child parading just how idiotic campism can be. Bravo! Well done! We need a good example to point at so the kids know what to look out for.

Thank you for your service.

Fucking tankies.

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