• IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    Nationalities are just a convenient scape goat for everyone to point fingers at.

    The real problems stem from a billionaire and multi millionaire class that absolutely does not want any kind of democratic government system to develop and to destroy any signs of it everywhere else.

    All those billionaire and multi millionaire class owners have absolutely no care if their passports say America, UK, Russia or China … they couldn’t give a shit which nation they align with as long as their wealth is always protected.

    Just look at all the wars that are being fought right now … governments are more willing to sacrifice people and soldiers rather than in affecting the wealth of anyone on any side of the conflict.

    If they wanted to stop wars, they would shut down financial systems completely and starve one side of the conflict or the other until someone submitted. But they’d rather throw human bodies into the fray than in even considering touching the bottom line of a billionaire, regardless of which side of the war they are on.

  • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    Stop trying to blame Russia, blame capitalism. I hate putin as much as you (probably more because I can’t live in my own house, or visit my parents, all because of him), but it is your ruling class at fault and not some russian influence. Whatever putin could do is inconsequential compared to the wealth and influence the 20 richest people of your empire.

    Your billionaires have decided that trump and fascism is the most beneficial choice for them at present, it is truly that simple. What you are witnessing right now is a natural outcome of a capitalist system, as intended by your racist proto-nazi founding fathers.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Whatever putin could do is inconsequential compared to the wealth and influence the 20 richest people of your empire.

      Are you suggesting that $20k in Facebook ads didn’t decide the result of a $4B election season?

      Sounds like Russian propaganda to me

      • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 month ago

        It can be two things. Read this or anything else about Cambridge Analytica to get a sense of the difference between what they were doing and the same hack political radio ad hour after hour.

        Trump’s ties to russia are many and varied, going back forty-plus years. It’s all been documented in Proof of Conspiracy, Mueller found collusion; these are not hypotheticals. It’s a known part of the current befuckdedness.

        Is it the ONLY part? No. But it starts there and it stays there.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Trump’s ties to russia are many and varied

          Trump’s ties to the Italian Mafia are stronger. He’s a second generation fence and money launderer who made a fortune helping to move money out of Eastern Europe back in the 90s.

          But he’s an American creation who worked on behalf of American institutions. That’s why he’s tied up with Guliani, Bloomberg, Clinton, and Epstein.

          The tunnel vision liberals have with Russia ignores a rich vein of corruption for one of its more salacious and partisan tributaries.

          • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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            1 month ago

            Trump’s ties to the Italian Mafia are stronger.

            We’re probably splitting hairs, but - what? I haven’t heard that before but I’ve heard a LOT about the russian angle. (we seem to converge on Eastern Europe though)

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              what? I haven’t heard that before

              It was bigger news back in 2016

              The picture shows that Trump’s career has benefited from a decades-long and largely successful effort to limit and deflect law enforcement investigations into his dealings with top mobsters, organized crime associates, labor fixers, corrupt union leaders, con artists and even a one-time drug trafficker whom Trump retained as the head of his personal helicopter service.

              The Russia connection was minor by comparison, and largely a result of Trump’s status as a lynchpin in NY crime.

              • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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                1 month ago

                I think that DCJ piece is good, and clearly ‘mob’ connections are rife, but outside of that early-80’s wash of Roy Cohn and the ready-mix concrete guys, there’s not a lot more specific to Italian mafia.

                I read that Giuliani’s ‘cleanup’ of Italian mobsters allowed in the russians which was duly appreciated. Early 80s is the same time the Kremlin started to keep tabs on Trump, giving him a tour and business opportunities then.

                Felix Sater, Michael Cohen, Rybolovlev and others who consistently and repeatedly appear in any honest accounting of his blatantly illegal dealings.

                Unger’s account of infiltration also exposes how Trump’s financial entanglements laid the groundwork for this betrayal. In the 1980s, as Trump struggled with debt from failing casinos and overextended real estate ventures, Soviet-linked financiers appeared, flush with cash.

                Deals involving Trump Tower properties drew in shadowy buyers connected to Russian organized crime and intelligence fronts. Even when Western banks deemed him too risky, new Russian-linked money never seemed to dry up. Each transaction pulled him closer into Moscow’s orbit.

                By the time the Soviet Union collapsed, Russian oligarchs kept the pipeline open, ensuring that Trump’s business empire would survive—and remain beholden to foreign backers whose first loyalty was to the Kremlin. (via)

                So while there certainly were ties to Italian mafia, his later business and almost all of his political life is awash in russian mob ties. Given that russia is run by mafias-within-mafias that’s not so surprising, is it.

                • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  outside of that early-80’s wash of Roy Cohn and the ready-mix concrete guys

                  The article goes significantly farther than ready-mix concrete. Trump was in tight with the Gambino family, among other mob affiliates and organizations.

                  I read that Giuliani’s ‘cleanup’ of Italian mobsters allowed in the russians which was duly appreciated. Early 80s is the same time the Kremlin started to keep tabs on Trump, giving him a tour and business opportunities then.

                  It ties out with a shift in policy from Cold Era Italy being a major bridge between NATO agencies in the West and their informants/operators in the East. Post-collapse, Sicily was old news since you could march your goons directly into St. Petersburg and Moscow to commence the looting.

                  But Trump’s roll as a money launderer and fixer remains consistent during the transition.

                  So while there certainly were ties to Italian mafia, his later business and almost all of his political life is awash in russian mob ties.

                  His primary ties were to US and German lenders, with black market business interests using his properties to clean their ill-gotten gains. The flood of money and refugees coming out of Eastern Europe following the post-Soviet crash changed the composition of his criminal clients. His roll in legitimizing the looting through financialization did not.

        • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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          1 month ago

          Cambridge Analytica

          UK group and Facebook profit maximization is not Russia. Blaming the pure establishment corruption of democracy on Russia is just partisan whining for more establishment warmongering.

        • davel@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Cambridge Analytica is a good place to start. Previously:

          • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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            1 month ago

            Those archive.today links didn’t work for me, but that could just be me. The “studies” are opinions otherwise and if you want to pick one, I’ll kick it apart but I’m not going to go through all of them.

    • BigDiction@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I was with you until last half of the last sentence.

      Racist, sure. “proto-nazi”? Who and why? One example would be great, I don’t understand the connection.

    • SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Capitalism is a form of authoritarianism. Its anti free market and anti personal freedoms. It uses power to gain more power and control.

    • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      Stop trying to blame Russia

      No.

      blame capitalism.

      We can do both, but one of them has a more defined paper trail.

      • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        We can do both, but one of them has a more defined paper trail.

        Capitalism’s trail of blood in your country goes back to its founding. It is incredibly well-defined and has been studied a lot (except they won’t tell you about it in school or many universities).

        And if you want a more concrete link between capitalism and trump, look at inauguration footage again, or look at campaign contributions.

        Russia’s entire state budget was less than revenue of just Apple in 2024. If your ruling class didn’t want trump, he wouldn’t be a president right now.

        • yucandu@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          If your ruling class didn’t want trump, he wouldn’t be a president right now.

          You’re projecting. Maybe YOU can’t be nudged towards an ideology by propaganda, but millions of people can. They can be tricked.

          Until you realize that, it’s not going to get any better.

          • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            The propaganda is coming from inside the imperialist house. Fox isn’t owned by some Russian billionaire.

          • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            Exhibit A: USian prompted to interrogate their internalized racism

            • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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              1 month ago

              So, y’all just say whatever comes to mind and pretend it’s a real thing, huh? Cool.

              • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                It’s because you called out russia. Now the tankies are here to defend them and blame capitalism for everything.

              • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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                1 month ago

                At this point, I can’t see any other reason you’d stick to blaming “the russians” for the state of your country. Even if putin has kompromat on trump, putin is not the reason republicans hold all three branches of your government.

                • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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                  1 month ago

                  Again, it’s not just “the russians” but so many of you are jumping out of your seats about it.

                  So many of you from .ml that is.

                  Curious.

      • Ferrous@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        The notion that your “Trump and the GOP are Russian assets” conspiracy theory has a “more defined paper trail” than the countless volumes of work done by thousands of historians, philosophers, economists, and scientists, going back hundreds of years regarding the depravity of American capitalism is just downright laughable.

        What are you even trying to say here? Are you seriously saying the Russia/Trump connection is more well understood than the pitfalls of American Capitalism?

        If Trump is a Russian asset, why didnt the US pull out of NATO months ago? Why was Trump shipping Jevlins by the truckload to Ukraine at the beginning of the war? Why is Trump’s entire schtick that NATO (Russia’s primary adversary) needs to increase spending (which it has, in record amounts)?

        If Russia is blamed for Trump’s election, we avoid the unpleasant reality of our failed democratic institutions and decaying empire. We avoid facing the inevitable rise of a Christianised fascism borne out of widespread impoverishment, rage, despair and abandonment. We avoid acknowledging the complicity of the Democratic Party in the orchestration of the largest social inequality in our nation’s history, the evisceration of our basic civil liberties, endless wars and an electoral system bankrolled by the billionaire class, which is legalised bribery. The myth allows us to believe that Democratic politicians, like the establishment Republicans who have joined them, are the guarantors of a democracy they destroyed.

        All the investigations into Trump’s ties with Russia are unequivocal. There was no collusion. The Steele dossier, financed at first by Republican opponents of Trump and later by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and compiled by former MI6 British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, was a fake. The charges in the dossier — which included reports of Trump receiving a ‘golden shower’ from prostituted women in a Moscow hotel room and claims that Trump and the Kremlin had ties going back five years — were discredited by the FBI. Sources, including the one that claimed Trump had long-held ties to the Kremlin, turned out to be fabricated. Special Counsel Robert S Mueller concluded that his investigation ‘did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.’ Mueller did not indict or accuse anyone of criminally conspiring with Russia.

        • Chris Hedges
  • Formfiller@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    They’re literally turning America into Russia and the bootlicks are cheering it on calling it “manly” when cucking for a makeup wearing pedofile is the least “manly” thing one can do….pathetic

  • drath@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Now that’s a way to offend a Russian. Look, you’ve even made Yulia cry

    Honestly, I’d rather be called kacap, moskal and ruzky all day than be in any way associated with the maga crowd.

      • drath@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Yup. First two are Ukrainian and latter I think is more popular in the Baltics. But honestly neither really feels as offensive as the n-word or the “khokhol”, and I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing.

        • JargonWagon@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Yeah, kinda like “honkey” or “cracker” for white people then? Like yeah they’re slurs, but they won’t ruin my day if someone called me one.

          • drath@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Yeah, pretty much. Moskal in Russian means a resident of Moscow, with a slight derogatory undertone where -al ending which is common with a few words meaning a bunch of bad/insignificant things, like паль, шваль, падаль. To get the proper meaning of it one has to dive like 500 years into history of ancient Rus with Moscow and Kiyv dutchies, so it doesn’t work that well. Kacap I’m not sure, wiki says it comes from either Ukrainian for goat or asshole, or Arabic for butcher, which, tbh, sounds kinda badass. Ruzki is like mincing of “ruski”, which is literally how we call ourself, and “ruzzian” instead of “russian”, but it sounds like a clumsy attempt to be offensive tbh. If you want to offend a slav just call him a “pidor”, which is what both Ukrainian and Russian soldiers actually use on frontline use to call enemies. It’s means “gay”, but, like, not all gays are pidors, but all pidors are definitely gay as well as being complete motherfuckers, that kind of vibe.

  • Nomorereddit@lemmy.today
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    1 month ago

    When You call the other side crazy so you don’t n have to debate them…and just keep loosing elections and supporters 🥱

    • Optional@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      Have you seen anyone “debate” them?

      They don’t “debate”. And since you don’t know that I assume you’re from one of the old countries where that’s still a thing?

      • Nomorereddit@lemmy.today
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        1 month ago

        I know it shouldn’t respond to you, but… its more like should you consider some of the other sides points vs saying they bad we good. H More than half the country is right wing now because the left is so unpalatable and exhausting.

        We gotta stop loosing elections and calling everyone nazis. More and more the left is loosing needlessly because of echo chamber bs.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    What to me will never stop being funny is that the group that was the most anti-red, the group that would happily end someone’s carreer over some faint implied relationship to Russians, that always was the self proclaimed redski hunter, the group that always talked about bombing some freedom into dictators…

    That group

    That group is the same group that now went fully behind a fascist dictator wannabe who is controlled by a Russian actual dictator

    It goes to show, this group, the Republicans, the conservatives, they have no ethics or morals, the leaders will say or do anything to stay in power, lie, steal, cheat, and their supporters are mostly either dumb or racist, mostly both

    And they’ll never stop making sure you know what they’re thinking, they are the prototype loud mouthed arrogant “we’re number one babey, yeeaaaahhh!!!” Americans

    Fucking pathetic

    • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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      1 month ago

      They want the Confederacy back. As in an oligarchy with slaves based on race. Modern day Russia is pretty close to that, as were a lot of the Latin American dictatorships, which they also supported.

      The main issue with the Soviets in their eyes, was that the Soviets at least pretended to have some decent values. Something, which they despise in other groups as well. Take for example the Democrats.

    • davel@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Your first point makes no sense when everyone knows Russia hasn’t been red for nearly a generation.

      Not to imply that he’s a swell guy, but Putin is neither fascist nor a dictator. Regardless of whatever election irregularities, he really has been popular throughout his tenure. And for good reason: he kicked the Western capitalist neoliberal shock therapy plunderers out of the country, whom Yeltsin let in. It’s still a capitalist shithole, but at least it’s their shithole and not a neocolonized state anymore.

  • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Tankies hit this thread hard, you said something bad about ruzzia. Tankies to the defense!

    • Chloé 🥕@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 month ago

      be fucking serious right now. this is not “saying something bad about russia”, it’s squarely putting all the blame of america being shit on a foreign country.

      like no, i think the reason the us is fascist now has more to do with the economic interests of billionaires as well as the racial interests of white colonizers than it has with foreign interference.

      stop acting like your country was a perfect haven of progress and was perverted by external forces. the usa has always been awful, it’s just that its ideological rot has just been made more obvious to you now.

      • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        The EU which is often shown as the most progressive countries on the planet, has right wing bullshit coming in hard core. You gonna suggest that’s just internal and not foreign actors pushing the division?

        Never said the usa was a perfect haven of anything. I’m pointing out that russia has had a big role in creating division in countries for a while now, not just in the USA. Then you have a bunch of tankies coming out with “but usa” deflection.

        • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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          You gonna suggest that’s just internal and not foreign actors pushing the division?

          Yes! Because all of these countries are experiencing similar economic conditions, and ideologies are driven by material conditions!

              • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                ROFL

                You tankies only exist on the net because anyone who hears the shit that you spew out of your mouths in the real world just take you for insane people.

        • Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com
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          1 month ago

          The EU which is often shown as the most progressive countries on the planet

          Are you fucking kidding me? Have you completely erased the Palestinian genocide from your mind? Europe is ACTIVELY FUNDING A GENOCIDE. What in the fuck are you talking about

            • Lileath@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 month ago

              Ever heard about what France is doing in Africa right now? Or who bought up most of the corporations and rights to mine precious resources in Ukraine? Or how the entire global order is organised?

        • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          The EU which is often shown as the most progressive countries on the planet, has right wing bullshit coming in hard core. You gonna suggest that’s just internal and not foreign actors pushing the division?

          That is the inevitable decline of capitalism into its natural end stage.

  • Zoabrown@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Labeling everyone as ‘traitors’ might feel satisfying, but it kills any chance of persuasion. Better to stick to specific actions/evidence and hold those accountable.

  • Randelung@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    None of this is simple, and anyone blaming a single source or calling it simple is trying to mislead.