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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

It's quite frustrating, but it's clear propaganda spread. There's a complete vacuum of media for leftists in the US, and a tiny amount of money goes a long ways to cementing desired propaganda. Seeing the entire left in the US turn on Ukraine calling them Nazis, when in fact they were occupied by Nazis, with all the terrors that entails, and were planned to have half their population killed and the other half enslaved to Nazis, well, it's red pilling. The left in the US is so weak and leaderless that it is easily co-opted to any sort of end.

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What leftists are you talking about? These comments seem incredibly out of touch. Are we going to pretend the left elected Trump and these policies?

DSA, Jacobin, Democracy Now, etc. etc. etc. have all been incredibly anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian invasion. This is in contrast to the left in much of the rest of the world, though not all places (e.g. the German left is filled with Vatniks, as is the UK, and nearly every communist party the world over).

Electing Trump has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. It's about being mouthpieces for Russian propaganda.

Why focus on fringe groups with very little following and no political power and completely ignore the party and president that is actually invoking the policy at hand? Which one is on the nightly news saying Ukraine started the war?

I'm a resident of a leftist enclave in the US, and that's what "the left" refers to, unless you have a better definition? I'm not sure what your complaint was, I've been very specific about the groups I'm talking about, but I still have not idea what you consider "the left" to be. If there isn't a distinction between liberal and "the leftl in your view then we have been talking past each other. Liberals haven't turned away from Ukraine, they have supported Ukraine, there's a clear distinction. But the left in the US is aligned with Trump on this matter, and there's also a lot of crossover from the left to Trump in the form of Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr, who both get a lot of yard signs in my town from houses that were "leftist" a mere year ago.

I think the issue is you're using terms like "the left" and "a lot" but you're talking about a very niche, fringe set of the population as if it represented any significant proportion. I would not say that the non-conservative kook vote is synonymous with "the left" but at least I can understand your point a bit better.

"DSA [...] has been incredibly anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian invasion"

wait, what?

Anti-war can easily be maligned as pro-aggressor.

Was gonna say, they're so pro-Russian invasion, they "condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and demand immediate diplomacy and de-escalation to resolve this crisis"

https://international.dsausa.org/ukraine/

> We recognize that the expansion of NATO and the aggressive approach of Western nations have helped cause the crisis and we demand an end to NATO expansion. We also oppose US and NATO military interventionism and the tens of billions in military aid and weapons shipments which only further exacerbates the war and undermine a negotiated settlement, as well as sanctions that will harm ordinary Russians.

In the very first paragraph, filled with Russian propaganda and ahistorical takes easily disproven by Putin's own words and exegesis in Russian.

Accepting the genocidaire's justifications uncritically, in addition to the IC's many other genocidal language about "denazification," is absolutely appalling. As they say, if you wonder what you would have been doing when the Nazis weee invading the world, look at what you are doing now.

so a hypothetical ("NATO expansion kinda not cool!") vs. reality (Russia invading a sovereign nation, causing an untold number of civilian and military deaths).

These two things are similar!

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