There is no such thing as toxic masculinity
I beg to differ. I’ve been self-repressed for many years from speaking about my problems with my close ones because of toxic aspects of the social understanding of masculinity that I absorbed.
Embargos, particularly those aimed at economically vulnerable nations like Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea, serve no useful purpose
That depends on your point of view. The point of view of US lawmakers is that, by forcing people into “hunger and desperation” (quoting them) through imposed economic violence, they’ll bring about a change of regime. Of course, that’s absolutely disgusting, but it does serve a purpose, which in many instances worked (deposition of Mosaddeq in Iran, sanctions to Chile’s Allende…). I just disagree with the methodology and the purpose because I’m not Satan, unlike US policymakers.
Socialists predicted that Ukraine would be betrayed by the US, there’s literally a 2+ year-old meme in the comment section of this post with the picture of Zelensky being welcomed by Gaddafi, Saddam and Bin Laden
Lol, if you want to try and move the goalposts from my “murdered Poles”
No, my claim is that you’re equating deported with murdered when you quote said book talking about “hundreds of thousands of murders”, not that murdered after deportation don’t count.
Yet again you fail to provide an alternative to the military occupation of Eastern Poland by the Soviet Union. The only possible alternative was Nazi occupation. I’m not trying to justify Katyn, I’m saying that the invasion itself was justified and that’s proven by the fact that you cannot even theoretically come up with a better alternative with 80 years of hindsight.
Imagine how we would look at the US if they had decided it was more profitable to just team up with the nazis instead
I don’t have to imagine, the US not only teamed up with but propped up fascism all over the globe. I’m Spanish myself, the Franco dictatorship was legitimised by the USA for its entire existence, but I could bring up Suharto in Indonesia, Pinochet in Chile, or an endless list of fascists supported by the USA. Invading eastern Poland and preventing it from being invaded by Nazis isn’t “teaming up with the Nazis”, I’m sorry that you can’t see beyond cold-war propaganda.
It most certainly includes direct casualty numbers as well
Good, then we both agree the source doesn’t support the “hundreds of thousands murdered in Poland” claim.
For the last time: I have asked at this point in 4 different occasions what was the desirable alternative to a Soviet military occupation of eastern Poland after the Polish, English and French rejection of a mutual defense agreement with the USSR.
The fact that you fail to provide an answer after being clearly prompted 4 different times to give one, is enough evidence to me that you simply don’t have one. I will then state the obvious: the Soviet military occupation of Eastern Poland likely prevented hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, Roma and other ethnicities from being genocided by the OTHERWISE INEVITABLE Nazi invasion.
You really, really cannot imagine not having to do
No, I really cannot pretend knowing more about defeating fascism in Europe that the nation which ultimately defeated fascism, at the IMMENSE cost of 25 million lives in the struggle against Nazism. It’s easy to go with our hindsight and categorise the oppression of bourgeois and nationalist elements of Poland as unnecessary and “barbaric”. But you known what, I’m not Polish, I’m Spanish. I’m from the country where the communists did not go far enough, and the result was losing a preventable civil war against fascists which murdered hundreds of thousands of innocents, and the 4 decades of fascism that followed. So, no, my claim is NOT that I know more about fighting fascism than those who actually defeated it.
There were several alternatives, actually
Great, please name one of them that doesn’t imply complete occupation of Poland by Nazis, I’ve asked you already several times to do so and you keep avoiding it. To me, a great alternative would have been the mutual defense agreement that the Soviet Union spent the entire 30s pursuing with England, France and Poland, which the latter countries repeatedly rejected. What’s your alternative?
Yeah sure, here’s one that estimates between 250k and 1.5m
That’s a book on migrations and deportations, not a book on casualties, it doesn’t seem to support a claim of “hundreds of thousands murdered” which you made in your previous comment, could you please elaborate?
already convinced themselves that all these murdered Poles
Again, you’re conflating murdered with deported.
“must have deserved it”
I explicitly mentioned in my previous comment that there were innocents caught in this process of class war and collectivisation of the economy in times of war, which I deeply lament. I just can’t envision an alternative reality where, after a decade of denying mutual defense agreements with the Soviets, there was a better alternative to Soviet occupation as opposed to Nazi occupation.
Stalin could have not promised the nazis to attack the Poles from the rear not attacked the Poles from the rear
Again, please tell me what was the alternative to Soviet occupation in Eastern Poland, once Poland rejected a mutual defense agreement against Nazis with the Soviets.
murdered hundreds of thousands of Poles
I don’t think those numbers are honest, can you provide a source for that? I know about the Katyn massacre and about other events in which Nazi collaborators/Bourgeois Polish nationalists were killed (as well as some innocent civilians), but AFAIK the numbers don’t go that high
I think all of these alternatives would have been more desirable
Again, how is tens of thousands of deaths in occupied Poland (many of which were Nazi collaborators and bourgeois Polish nationalists) preferable to Nazi occupation? Or can you think of an alternative to either of these two options?
In my humble opinion, this is nothing like the Molotov-Ribbentrop. Molotov-Ribbentrop gets a lot of bad advertising due to cold war propaganda, but even western leaders in the west at the time like Churchill admitted that the Soviets had no other option (if you want evidence I have plenty of reference, feel free to ask :)
The Soviets spent the entire 30s warning of fascism and trying to build mutual defense agreements with France, England and Poland and they refused systematically, even when in 1939 the Soviets offered to send 1 million troops together with artillery, tanks and planes, to the Polish and French borders on exchange for a mutual defense agreement, but the French and English ambassadors received orders not to engage in actual negotiations and just to postpone the agreement, since they wanted the Nazis to invade the Soviet Union.
Either way even if you fundamentally disagree with what I’m saying, what was the alternative? Poland was going to get steamrolled by the Nazis with or without the soviets controlling the eastern part of it (as proven by the fact that soviets started invading some weeks after the Nazis). What’s more desirable, half of Poland having concentration camps, or the entirety of Poland having concentration camps?
All of this could have been prevented in my opinion if western countries agreed to engage the Nazis together with the Soviet union, as the soviets suggested as an alternative to the Munich agreements. So the lesson in my view is: to fight fascism, listen to socialists (who are the ones who actually defeated most Nazis in the eastern front)
That would be a compelling argument (unpredictable policy shift) if it hadn’t been predicted by socialists all over the world when the war started
Maybe the problem is the existence of big companies then. IP didn’t exist as an idea until the 19th century, and humanity made plenty of progress between that and hunting-gathering.