felipeforte

Also, smoking a pack a day had become part of my identity

Not many people realize this, but this is a part why many smokers have trouble quitting. Close friends of them smoke, or everyone associates them with smoking, so they also smoke to claim their own identity, or that of their group.

To stop smoking for your own sake, and for your own health is already a noble enough cause. You're more useful to the revolution if you're alive

Have any of you had luck with breaking down preconceived notions others may have?

I did, and I have many ideas for anyone wanting to better prepare themselves for these discussions.

I’d just like to be better prepared since apparently this is just something that happens to me.

Most people use [bourgeois] social media, ask them "out of curiosity", if they use any social media. This will give you two valuable insights:

• first, the main source of propaganda which instructs their worldview. We can easily identify propagandistic discourse by noticing how common it is, sometimes even word for word repeated by numerous people.
• second, the place where you will engage with content related to their grievances, and debate with people in the comments. The comment sections of Facebook and Instagram, for instance, are very lively and from there you can engage with multiple people with access to online research for you to back your own views

It was there that I was able to master my debate bro skills

I think what you're doing is fine. I guess the problem with searching for solutions is that they're either not used to doing that, or they want quick answers. Try to discuss with them about it, and tell them explicitly that you're guiding them to be independent. Show them how you personally would look for problems with an example. Like "How to declare an array in Java", etc. My professor used to pick an individual student's problem and discuss it collectively and show others how to solve it, and I personally enjoyed it, too.

I guess getting shitfaced beforehand is your better option, then, for whatever reason you want to be drunk during the play

Why can't you just watch it sober?

Thank you for Bypass paywalls clean, I didn't know it existed

Discussions with people like you, even if we may not have the same opinion, are the reason I am glad my instance is still federated with you guys because if I didn’t have you, I’d feel trapped in the echo chamber.

This is refreshing to read, thank you very much! And this is why people should struggle to preserve federation with us. I'm sure your instance admins may be bothered if an event catalyzes polemics. When the war in Ukraine started, a lot of instances broke contact with us because we presented different points of view. But most of us ground our opinions on facts. Unfortunately not everyone has the same temperament to deal with different points of view, and this "denouncing" may happen from some users, but that happens anywhere, a whole instance cannot be blamed because of a few users. In our case, it's not a systematic phenomenon, like some right-wing and fascist instances.

Also thanks for taking your time to read. A few people dismiss what I write because I'm very detailed in my answers, but imo complex topics demand complex answers, otherwise we are left with a distorted picture. I try my best to be concise and capture the essence of the things we're discussing. That said, allow me to make some comments on your response. To be clear, I don't want to "convince" you nor anyone else, for me we are just sharing our worldviews here, simply to pass time or something hehe.

But the way I see it every aggressive Russian action has further catalyzed it. From Crimea to Donbass up until the SMO and the various crimes against humanity that were committed.

I'm skeptical of the Russian claims that they are trying to protect the Russians living in Ukraine. Russia is a capitalist state, and the war obviously has bourgeois interests involved. The Ukrainian fascists have harassed Russian nationals inside Ukraine in the Donbass region for almost 8 years, why did it take Russia that long to intervene if that was the intention? However, as I see it, it was a matter of time a conflict would happen there, and the Russians attacked preemptively as a legitimate matter of national security.

Ukraine had a government which didn't treat Russia as the devil and had a comprehensive partnership with the country until 2014, when a coup with full support from US politicians, including John McCain, suddenly changed everything. For decades Ukraine had an economic, cultural, diplomatic and political relationship with Russia, and then after a coup sponsored by Western countries, a regime took an opposite direction of denouncing Russians as the Fourth Reich incarnate. But there were already Ukrainian citizens who profoundly hated Russia, so much so, that the regime received support from the citizens in the Western Ukraine regions.

That country with an explicitly anti-Russian regime since then has been armed, trained, and sponsored by the greatest rivals of Russia, with increasing militarization. For scholars who study Russian foreign policy, such as the United Statesian John Mearsheimer, it was quite obvious Russia would intervene. As early as 2015, he said the actions of the United States would prompt a military intervention from the Russians. If an individual scholar who studies this issue was aware of this, you can be certain the Pentagon generals was aware of that, and this is probably what they wanted in the first place. So the war didn't start in 2022, but in 2014, with blood in the hands of the US.

And furthermore I see NATO’s guarantee to the sovereignty of Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia as a way to prevent Russia from executing further military operations in the future.

Only if you base on the (erroneous) premise that NATO is a "defensive" organization. The atrocious NATO interventions in Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Kosovo, and others, leads us to believe this is not the case. They are as aggressive as the Russians, perhaps even more so. And since NATO is led by Europe and the US, I'm pretty sure they couldn't care less about the sovereignty of these countries. So much so that in order to let these countries into the organization, and these countries are desperate to join since their governments fear Russian intervention, they demand many economic and political "reforms" which precisely undermine the sovereignty of these countries::

“We know that right now is not the time for a breakthrough in the open-door policy. And I know the Georgian authorities know that, but they still need to be prepared, to fulfill all the reforms that are needed -- in electoral reform, judicial reform, security, etc.,” [NATO’s special representative] Colomina told RFE/RL in an interview."

They demand the country to change its whole political system before they join NATO. That's not what you'd expect from an organization interested in preserving the sovereignty of any country.

state capitalism pretending to be socialism

I think your heart is in the right place, but I'm just curious... If the Soviet Union was "pretending to be socialism", what is or was actual socialism?

What exactly is the problem with 14. this is how it should be. After all, borders shouldn’t be recognised for nothing you know.

They specifically mention Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. They could've said they reiterate the territorial integrity and sovereignty of any country, or of any European country, whatever. But they specifically listed these countries which they have a massive influence on. So it's a sign there was something going on there.

But on the other hand, why would you so desperately hold on to something that apparently wasn’t even worth making a REAL treaty for.

A treaty is certainly more concrete, and I agree with you. What's important about this exchange is that the Russians made it clear they found NATO expansion threatening since the 90's and every time it expanded it was thoroughly and systematically condemned by Russian authorities. NATO continued expanding nonetheless, warning after warning. NATO was looking for war, and pushing Eastern European countries towards war with Russia.

And on the other Hand, Russia hasn’t been that innocent either with a habit of solving disagreements with especially Georgia & Ukraine by using deterrence and the sledgehammer.

But (at least for me) that still does not justify the means.

Certainly. The idea is not to justify the war, but to understand it in context. These were countries which were under Russian influence for at least a century and only recently weaponized to struggle against Russia. This does not exempt Russia, obviously, though context is always necessary.

Regarding your last claim: do you have any evidence to back that up?

Unfortunately, I don't have access to Ukrainian internal military documents, I can only attest it through indirect evidence. First, since the 2014 Euromaidan coup, Ukraine has been adopting an anti-Russian rhetoric and accepted neo-Nazi batallions (Azov, Pravy Sektor) into their army. This form of Nazism was against Russians specifically, treating them as subhumans. Also since 2014, these neo-Nazi militias has constantly harassed ethnically Russian people inside Ukraine on the Donbass region.

The Ukrainian government adopted textbooks in schools which taught children to hate Russia, see some evidence of this in this article by Sputnik (it's a Russian source, but there are exceptional journalists from dozens of countries there). Here is an anti-Russian Ukrainian propaganda video being shown in a classroom way before the war, to illustrate this point.

This article by the Tricontinental directly responds to your question, too. It mentions how Ukraine military increased its spending by 500% from 2014–2019 and received military equipment from the West, along with military trainining, exercises and drills with NATO troops.

More indirect evidence includes this article from RAND Corporation, which is a very influential think-tank which serves as an advisor to the Pentagon. The article discusses strategies to "stress" the Russian economy, through exploiting its vulnerabilities and prompting a "costly Russian response." Among the geopolitical measures suggested, there is:

Providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability. But any increase in U.S. military arms and advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to increase the costs to Russia of sustaining its existing commitment without provoking a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of proximity, would have significant advantages.

Increasing U.S. forces in Europe, increasing European NATO member ground capabilities, and deploying a large number of NATO forces on the Russian border would likely have only limited effects on extending Russia. All the options would enhance deterrence, but the risks vary. A general increase in NATO ground force capabilities in Europe—including closing European NATO member readiness gaps and increasing the number of U.S. forces stationed in traditional locations in Western Europe—would have limited risks. But large-scale deployments on Russia’s borders would increase the risk of conflict with Russia, particularly if perceived as challenging Russia’s position in eastern Ukraine, Belarus, or the Caucasus.

At least for me, it shows the US military leadership was researching ways to actively provoke and cause a response from Russia so it hurts their economy. And since the US also had a finger in the Euromaidan coup of 2014, it's very clear that the US was using Ukraine as an agent of a proxy war to affect the Russian economy for years before the Russian invasion.

The article was written by Timofei Sergeitsev, a Russian "philosopher" with no direct link to the government. The article in the website you linked was written in early April 2022, very early after the war, when no one knew what to expect. It was claimed it was "proof" the Russians was intending to genocide Ukrainians.

More than a year later, have we seen anything like it? Have we seen active actions from the Russians to consistently destroy civilian buildings and systematically cause civilian casualties on purpose? I at least haven't, unless we are talking about a completely different war which I'm not aware. I don't excuse the Russians of anything, I'm sticking with the facts. The Russians have been very careful not to cause non-military casualties, which is extremely odd for a genocidal regime.

So, in short, it's your article written by a guy with no links to the government vs. what the actual war itself shows in practice. I prefer to see what practice shows us.

Yes, Marxism is based on a scientific methodology called historical materialism. It's too complex to be explained in a single comment, but it has an internal logic and methodology which proposes to analyze social systems in general, but especially capitalist societies in particular.

You can't use the scientific method used in the natural sciences because you can't put a society in a lab to study it. Social sciences require a methodology apart from the natural sciences, and Marxism has proposed historical materialism, which is very consistent and coherent approach, based on the Hegelian dialectical logic with materialism as a principle.

How ironic! Let's see if it fits for the "genocide" position:

• Closed Ideological Systems: Whether those who defend the idea of "genocide" in Xinjiang are aware or not, the sources used to claim there is a genocide in Xinjiang is usually Adrian Zenz, a German white supremacist and Christian fundamentalist who claimed in his book Worthy to Escape that "other belief systems are ultimately inspired by Satan” and justifies “eternal punishment" for those who refuse to believe in Jesus.

• Immunity to Facts: Every time one tries to argue that Xinjiang faced a policy of de-radicalization of terrorists who led many attacks against the province, those who claim there is a genocide there say they are "genocide deniers." I've even seen people saying those who don't agree with the "genocide" position are paid by the Chinese.

• Enemy Construction: I can't even count the number of times people have called those who don't promote the "genocide" propaganda "tankies" and dismissing them instead of engaging with arguments.

• Adaptability: The "genocide" propaganda claims there is a genocide there, and then when presented with the fact that even those who were put in the re-education facilities were allowed to express their culture with dances and art on video, the "genocide" conspiracy theorists say that it was a fake, an act, that it was a spectacle organized by the Chinese to hide the genocide. Just to give you an example.

It does match the "genocide" position very well. I've yet to see a genocide which preserves the language, the culture, the customs and the places of worship of a people. Another thing, notice the reaction of Muslim countries to the actual genocide being perpetrated by Israel. They are firmly condemning it through all channels. In contrast, the policies of de-radicalization by the Chinese was unanimously well-received by Muslim countries.