So...it seems like the biggest American support bloc for Russia seems to be the far left of the spectrum. It's weird. And i've been noticing it over the past year, but the far left ends up becoming so far left they end up wrapping back around to being extreme on the bad end of the spectrum again. it's literally horseshoe theory at work. Like in 2016, I criticized a lot of aspects of American capitalism and pushed for ideas to fix it. Now, many people I previously aligned with have gone so far left they're simping for literal socialism and communism, authoritarianism, and a lot of the same nonsense the Trumpers support. It's unreal. Like, it's like their entire perspective is being defined as being opposed to whatever institutions they hate, in this sense, the democratic party. But in this case, it leads to them becoming unironically pro trump and pro fascism while also being pro communism and leftism. It's weird. And in the case of Russia and China, they end up simping for them, while condemning our imperialism. There are entire subreddits full of people like this like genzedong, which seems to be a lot of western asian kids who like china for some reason and defend the PRC. It's ridiculous. And in the case of Russia, they're unironically defending Putin and his actions. It's levels of stupidity that make me cringe, and it's a huge reason I've since abandoned "the left" and became more toward the "center" than I appeared. I want to emphasize it's more a rhetocial change due to the nature of the times. The fact is just a few years ago, we didn't have literal socialist sympathizers be common online. These guys arose out of being anti democratic party, which led to them being anti capitalism and anti american imperialism, which led to them defending literal communist countries like china and authoritarian regimes like russia. It's just unreal.
Look, ultimately, it's good to stand FOR something. If you stand AGAINST something, you're just gonna find yourself becoming more extreme and irrational just to "own" whatever you're fighting against. Being an anti ideology of a mainstream ideology isnt bad, because rather than having a nuanced worldview where you can see shades of grey and think "this is good, this isn't good", you're either this is 100% good, or 100% bad. In other words, these anti-mainstream people end up becoming the very thing they hate in another way. They start out with good intentions, criticizing aspects of the system that deserve to be criticized, but then they end up criticizing aspects of the system that exist for good reason, and think anyone who isn't as extreme for them is shilling for the mainstream. It's nonsense.
That's why, as someone who generally falls into the same ideological camp as andrew yang, I feel completely homeless outside of my little forward party clique. The far left is...at this point too far left, and committing ideological suicide every day as they become more in line with literal authoritarian communism. But then you got the other side, in the democrats, who is basically like, conservatism lite. It's baffling. I mean being more in line with say, social democracy, or human centered capitalism just gets you hated by everyone. Because everyone either views you as too extreme, or too moderate. It's baffling. But that's how I view the post 2020 environment. You got the dems who are way too conservative and uncritical of our institutions, and you got the leftists who are becoming increasingly unhinged as time goes on. It's scary. I don't like it. We need to be critical of our foreign policy at times, but without becoming so critical we wrap back around to defending the likes of Putin or Xi or advancing their interests.
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