I get, and don't appreciate what they are trying to say, but the fact is that the 5 most democratic countries on Earth do support Russia. It's almost as if the line don't lie where FT suggest, but where there is the second-worst FT nighmare.
World News
The fact that vast majority of the world is now on Russian side is a really awkward situation for the west. Basically the only countries against Russia are the ones dominated by white people in the west. Which makes the whole narrative that Russians are the actual fascists kind of awkward.
"If Subianto and Trump win, the three largest democracies will be led by Putin-sympathizers"
But China's Xi Jinping already called Putin his best friend. Kim Jong Un has long been close to Russia, I don't know about Vietnam and I don't think as communist nations they admire him so much as see in him a fair-weather friend. Those and Cuba are the biggest populated democracies on earth so what are they talking about?
None of the countries mentioned are democracies. They are at best corrupt, reactionary, and fascistic oligopolies with a facade of representative democracy.
Trump- Everyone knows and loves this bumbling moron of a fascist.
Subianto - An ex-general and war criminal who kidnapped, tortured, raped, and killed activists, feminists, communists, indigenous leaders, etc. Strong CIA ties, and is a product of the horrifying CIA junta and genocides of the 20th century in Indonesia post independence. Was literally kicked out of the military that has committed million man genocides for being to evil, corrupt, and violent.
Modi- Utter scum, a hinduvata psychopath that is goosestepping India right into being a reactionary fascistic hellhole. The pro-Soviet leaders of India post-independence and throughout the Cold War would spit on him.
These are not people you want in your corner.
We can take this further and say that any meaningful democracy is fundamentally at odds with capitalism. True democracy is only possible when the means of production are publicly owned. Only then can resources and labour be directed in a way that benefits majority of the people. Western democracies are in effect dictatorships of the capital owning class, or as Lenin famously put it:
In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favorable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave owners.
Exactly, you hit the nail on the head.
Though I will say that capitalism isn’t necessarily at odds with democracy. It’s at odds with proletarian democracy. Oligopolies, Ancient Greek democracy, military-commissariats etc, are all still valid forms democracy, but they are transparent with who they allow to hold power and consider citizens. The slave owners. Capitalism is hardly at odds with a lot of these types of democracy.
However, most modern democracies pretend very well that they are for the people, but capitalism is diametrically opposed to that as you, and Lenin said.
Right, from Marxist perspective we have to consider class. Democracy is reserved for the class that holds power in society, and under capitalism it's the capital owning class.
Of course.
Anyway, back to the main topic, the article is bizarre, but also a bit of a bad omen. If someone told me that my biggest supporters were Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco, then I would really doubt what I’m doing. None of these are good people or from good places, so being in Putin’s corner does more harm then good.
If these were the people exclusively supporting Russia then I'd agree, but the reality is that Russia is supported by all of the Global South including China, Vietnam, and Cuba. What the article is freaking out about is that anti Russian narrative is collapsing in countries traditionally friendly to the west, as well as in US itself.
Russia is in a really bizzar spot at the moment, while not being a comrade, they are in a position adversarial to the global north, and are very active in the decline of the west and global north.
For sure, Russia is at the centre of the global contradiction between the west and the Global South, but we always have to remember that support for Russia should be strictly critical.
Been ootl on indonesia, i guess the newer leader is not an explicit US bootlicker because this guy hates him lmao.
Also i can't believe people pay for this crappy article lol
In other words, Trump, Subianto (Indonesia) et Modi (India)
Yet they still say the three rule 3 largest democracies (di totoo ganoon)
In my experience the Imperial Propaganda Machine seldom puts heroes of the working class on the kind of pedestal they put Navalny on.