You’ve seen tankies round. They’re those who imagine {that a}ll the world’s evils are the product of imperialism and the one nation able to imperialism is the US. It appears to be like like this:
The pejorative time period “tankie” comes from American leftists who defended the violent Soviet crackdown of the 1956 Hungarian rebellion, an rebellion crushed by tanks. They had been our allies throughout the Iraq Warfare, so it could come as a shock seeing them change into pathetic apologists for Vladimir Putin’s ambitions to reconstitute the Soviet empire.
Of their telling, the Ukraine invasion is the United State’s fault as a result of it “expanded” NATO too aggressively, threatening poor Russia. How would we prefer it if Mexico joined a army alliance with Russia? We didn’t prefer it when the Soviet Union tried to put nuclear bombs on Cuba!
Within the tankie worldview, nobody has company besides the US. Poland and Slovakia and Romania and Bulgaria didn’t have the power or proper to select to be a part of NATO. Neither do Finland and Sweden. These are all imperialist provocations and machinations by the American empire. What different choice did Russia have however to defend its borders by, uh, explicitly advocating for its personal empire?
Their favourite time period for the Ukraine invasion is “American proxy struggle,” they usually suppose it’s notably good how the US has gotten Ukraine to do all of the dying for America’s imperial glory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a sadist, permitting his folks to die as a substitute of giving Russia every part it desires: full hegemony over a Ukrainian folks Vladimir Putin claims would not have a proper to exist.
There’s Max Blumenthal, busy attempting to excuse away clear examples of Russian massacres and struggle crimes.
Glenn Greenwald, in fact.
[Tucker] Carlson pursued the [Ukraine-United States biolabs] story on three completely different episodes of his present over the previous week. On 10 March he introduced on author Glenn Greenwald. “When the federal government comes out and emphatically denies that they’ve organic weapons,” Greenwald stated. “We all know they’re not telling the reality.”
Michael Tracey, who spent a while harassing Ukrainian refugees as they fled the dying and destruction of their homelands:
Now, these refugees weren’t calling for WWIII. He writes, “And what I can report to date is that aside from only one particular person, each recently-arrived Ukrainian I’ve spoken to in Poland has expressed robust help for “Closing the Sky” when queried.”
That’s it. Refugees coming from a struggle zone, of their desperation, needed a no-fly zone for defense from Russian dying. Tracey, the unbearable asshole tankie that he’s, turned that into “they need WWIII” as a result of, in his estimation, a no-fly zone would escalate the battle into nuclear struggle.
There’s Noam Chomsky.
Jill Stein is a tankie. So is Tulsi Gabbard. British-Lebanese battle reporter Oz Katerji, at present reporting from the bottom in Ukraine, offers the tankies all of the scorn they deserve.
The tankies wish to faux that President Joe Biden and practically all European heads of state begged Russia to carry off any invasion, or perhaps suppose it was some dastardly efficient reverse psychology ploy. They level to elevated protection spending and new riches loved by the army industrial complicated and say “aha! It’s all going based on their plan!” as if this unlucky new spherical of protection spending hasn’t been foisted by Putin’s actions.
However nothing galls greater than their utter disregard for the alternatives of free nations to resolve their very own future. They’ve been so impacted by America’s actual international coverage sins that they’ve misplaced the power to grasp that the world is a fancy place, and typically, different folks get a say in their very own affairs. And typically, America is on the correct facet.
