Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best explanation. You cannot understand Vladimir Putin and his war against Ukraine unless you understand that he is a Marxist-Leninist.
Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best explanation. You cannot understand Vladimir Putin and his war against Ukraine unless you understand that he is a Marxist-Leninist.
Mao Zedong, whom Putin surely read, wrote: “Every communist must grasp that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. . . . In fact, we may say that the whole world can be remolded only with a gun.” This is the ideology that molded Putin.
Surely…
Here we have the usual conservative anti-intellectualism on full display. If you are a statesman, you should be well read, especially in political theory; and if you are at all serious, you will have read authors whom you disagree with. Having read Mao doesn't make Putin a Maoist, any more than Stalin having read John Locke makes him a liberal. Many of us here have read authors like Julius Evola and Mueller van den Bruck in order to better understand the fascist position -- does that mean we're about to emigrate, join a mercenary group, and Slava Ukraini ourselves into Kinzhal-induced oblivion? Of course not.
But this is how we Americans get politicians and public figures who, apparently out of some desire not to be tainted by Evil Commie Ideas, have read Democracy in America (final chapter only) and nothing else.
I've had people tell me they're afraid of reading Marxist theory because they say just a few pages could be so enticing it would brainwash them.
What they're saying is they're afraid that Marxism makes too much sense. They prefer to stay ignorant, that way there is no risk of having their views changed by an evidently more correct theory of how the world works.
😂
But seriously, a lot of liberals tend to believe exactly that whatever you read will automatically program you.
Basically admitting that they're passive consumers of propaganda, and that they apply this mindset to everything. Which is a massive self-own, given that liberals are usually the ones trying to lecture everyone else on "bias" and the importance of "critical thinking."
No shit, Sherlock... if you'd read another thing on Mao Zedong, in this context, you would realize he was a major military commander of the CPC in 1927, and with Jiang Jieshi and later the Japanese on his trail, of course, he would emphasize the importance of it...
Doesn't seem necessarily Communist to me... look at the United States of America and Tsarist Russia, do you think it got all its land by asking the Natives to politely leave and commit suicide... (guns had to be drawn, ye know)...
Edit: oh wait, you are a tovarisch, thought you were a Lemmy li b...