The racist framing comes from a racist liberal publication, so we know when we read it that it is untrue. Therefore, the group of people being accused of being a "gang" look cool to us.
When most people who are actually leftists see "leftist bike gang hunts Trump supporters" coming from a racist liberal rag their first reaction is "lmao based, they must be cool" not "they are gangs doing the bidding of the 'evil dictator'".
Edit: sorry, the above was a bit mean. What I meant is that crossposting doesn't necessarily mean that the other posts where by the user who made the crosspost.
Also, people are allowed to post in communities where they don't agree with the other participants on 100% of issues. You're acting like anarchism is a religion from which Unruffled should be excommunicated for interacting with so-called "tankies".
also using gangs to do your bidding as a leader is inherently anti-communist.
The collectivos predate the Bolivarian Revolution and are often to the left of the government on various issues. Calling them "gangs" is literally just accepting the racist framing of the western media.
I agree with what you're saying, but I have a comment on the last paragraph.
I think it's necessary to confront Americans with this. If they're coddled and allowed to continue existing in a world where their exceptionalism is treated as the default, there's no chance they'll ever change. I think at least online they should be force to confront the idea that, to many people in the world, their country is a despicable force of evil and destruction.
Beyond that, I'm tired of spaces online revolving around Americans, their news, their political opinions, and their chauvinistic worldview. There are 8 billion people in the world, and I think Americans are the ones who should have to reckon with the fact that perspectives which conflict with theirs are just as, if not more, valid. When they're catered to in spaces like this, they keep coming back and spewing more chauvinism, which makes the spaces hostile to everyone else.
Of course, this depends on where and how and who I'm talking to, as well as the purpose of the conversation.
You are right IMO that it's very much like white fragility and also disproportionately a problem with white Americans.
People are people, and most Americans are people.
Haha, just caught that little bit of flair at the end of your comment. Good one.
It could be seen as a tankie post about muricans still having more freedom of speech vs russians. Thats how I saw it, because it was crossposted from tankie-land.
OK, so you read the comment completely, objectively wrong (the truncheon says "visa ban" on it, visa bans are imposed by other countries) because you turned off your ability to connect basic concepts when you saw the "tankie-land" word.
This comic was drawn before this happened, I think.
How is this related? The comic is about the international reaction towards Americans and Russians, not the domestic government reaction to protesters against these things.
I am genuinely baffled. This is completely unrelated to the point of the comic or to it being possible to cross-post from Hexbear.
I salute your effort to push back on this stuff. I think you hit the nail on the head in your previous comment for why people never seem to do any basic kind of "maybe Russia also has real geopolitical considerations and is not simply populated by evil orcs" analysis. I'll quote the part I think explains it below, emphasis added by me.
The critical thinking question
As you say, Europe had a brighter future when it had better relations with Russia. If the Europeans want to destroy their own industry and sink their economies by helping the US cut them off from Russian oil with this manufactured conflict, then I suppose no one else can stop them.
I want to point out here that this comment is also an expression of the type of western fragility I've discussed elsewhere in this thread. Americans are in no danger of having their civilian homes destroyed by anyone other than their own government (edit: more likely blackrock, the actual master of their government lol). Least of all for anything related to this meme or what it represents. Americans, as a group, are not the victims of imperialism. They are its perpetrators.
