EDIT due to the recent feedback of @AnarchoBolshevik@lemmygrad.ml
There are three important context that needs to be understood here:
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There is currently an antifascist war going on Ukraine.
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Both groups in the picture are fighting this war provoked by NATO.
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The saying “History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes” means that events may not occur again in exactly the same way but there often are enough similarities to make it seem like a spot of deja vu. The similarity here is with the Second world war which in Russia is called the Great Patriotic War.
If you all need more information regarding any of these, please refer to AnarchoBolshevik sub c/capitalismInDecay or this sub.
This post is to remind everyone that the Russian SMO and the Ukraine war are antifascist.
My head explodes looking at that picture. Does anyone have comprehensive (marxist?) analysis to look at for someone who tries to get away from western prop?
Do you mean about the first picture or the second?
About the first picture: there is an increasing amount of nostalgia in Russia for Soviet times, for understandable reasons. Also they still celebrate the victory over Nazi Germany, and this leads their soldiers to adopt Soviet imagery and symbols sometimes as symbols of anti-fascist resistance. To get into why the bourgeois Russian state not only tolerates but feeds into it by embracing the May 9th celebrations as a big state holiday would be a longer discussion. The short of it is, there are a huge amount of contradictions in modern Russia.
About the second picture: fascism and Nazism have been resurgent in virtually all post-socialist Eastern European states since 1989, but nowhere as much as in Ukraine and the Baltics (and perhaps Croatia). This is because these countries had historically the largest Nazi collaborationist and homegrown fascist movements. In Ukraine’s case the Banderite ideology was essentially officially adopted as the new state ideology and national identity after the 2014 coup. Since 2022 the Kiev regime’s military has widely adopted Nazi insignia and Nazi unit names.
The reason for this and why these groups and this ideology were so heavily sponsored and encouraged by the US and EU is fairly obvious, it’s because they create fanatical anti-Russian sentiment which is useful for getting the populations of these countries to willingly sacrifice themselves in service of the imperialist West’s anti-Russia crusade. These are also the groups most willing to use brutal force to suppress socialist and pro-communist sentiment, the resurgence of which has always been a huge threat to the plans of the imperialists for Eastern Europe.
Some more useful links and summaries of the history of Ukrainian Nazism in the comments of these two posts here:
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7112898 https://lemmy.ml/post/26654686
How to read this war then? Does ML have to support Russia while Russia is being capitalist not socialist one? (I’m just asking really I have no judgement on this issue)
All anti-imperialists should critically support Russia in this conflict. A defeat of NATO and their Nazi proxy army is a major win against the Western imperialist hegemony, which in turn is a win for socialists everywhere in an era when imperialism is the primary contradiction and main obstacle to socialist movements.
From Redsails, Why Marxism
Also, this other post talks in detail what critical support means and responds to your second question. Having this clear you can probably find the answer to the first question.
To help you our regarding your first question, this post might help -> https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7357678
do you know what critical support is?
No
Critical support for Russia means supporting the resistance against imperialism (NATO, US etc), while acknowledging the problematic aspects of Russian government. This ties into ML theory centering imperialism as the primary contradiction.
No, we shouldn’t support Russia, but Russian victory would be significantly more beneficial (or rather less harmful) for communist movements worldwide.
On the contrary, we should critically support Russia. Russia at this moment in time is fighting an antifascist anti imperialist war against West’s NATO forces. NATO are the ones that prop a big army full fascists from all over the world including Latin America to invade and kill Russians.
As for the benefit, it is really a lot. The Ukraine war is draining plenty of fascists milicia and resources that will not be used to harass communist organizations, indigenous people, activists and so much more. If you are a westerner, you probably won’t see this due to the intense anti russian propaganda and pro NATO war that are currently pushing but in the Global South we are seeing plenty of benefits.
Fascist logos in the Ukraine army including the International mercernaries have abundant logos like this one:
spoiler
About Ukraine?