I don’t think many people have good understanding of what living standard even actually means, which in turn causes fear and anxiety when they are told it would drop. And I think it is much overexaggerated how much this drop would actually affect daily life for majorty of the people around the world.

"But the Finnish position is clear: We are not right now sending any troops and not willing to discuss that.”

This is why you read the articles, folks.

According to nearly each and every climate scientist: No.

According to every IPCC report so far: No.

According to fossil fuel lobby: You bet!

Yeah, if the video was less conflictory and was framed in a way that didn’t scream polarisation to me, I wouldn’t be as quick to dismiss it as a propaganda piece.

As a side note, I’m actually surprised that Germany has such divide within the left.

Yeah, my mother is an evacuaee from Karelia (though she was a small kid back then), so definitely relatively fresh - at least for my generation.

I’ve seen some of that America bad so Russia good - line of thinking in Finnish Internet forums too. But from what I’ve gathered, in our left wing it’s usually more “both suck”, which was certainly visible in our NATO discussion, but even then most of the Left Alliance (our most leftist party that isn’t a complete joke, we have communist party too, but they’ve never held seats in parliament) supported joining NATO. When it comes to financing Ukraine I’d say it’s way more unanimous “yeah, fuck Russia with this one”.

Of course, the commie party is pretty much “yea, surely Russia not that bad, we need peace” from what I’ve seen, but well, they hardly have enough people to be able to keep the party an official party (requires 5000 signatures every 2 elections with no seats).

And if the video didn’t make sweeping generalisations this would be a fine point to tackle. But it’s not saying “half of the german left”, it is saying “the western left”.

It’s not OK to leave this kind of stuff as a side note in small print, that is one of the prime tactics propaganda in general uses.

Sorry. I’m not American and I don’t know anything about that except what quick google search told me.

There’s a certain kind of reactionary-left personality that I think is more common in parts of the west that used to be colonial powers, where if you’re far enough along the political spectrum that the mainstream parties all look like different variations on corporatist-fascists, you’re particularly vulnerable to messaging from geopolitical enemies of your own country for the simple reason that they’re opposed to the political structure you’re also opposed to.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

Here in the US I’ve run into a few such people, and it’s also clear that Russia’s soft-power operations have made efforts to cultivate relationships with the American left wing (people like Jill Stein and others in the Green Party). It’s pretty obvious, though, that they’ve had less success than they have on the right. It takes a particular kind of useful idiot to think, as a anti-colonial socialist or communist, that an oligarchic and socially-repressive right-wing autocracy is actually in your political corner.

I have to admit I know very little about the US politics. I’m fairly certain Russia tries that here in Finland as well, but well, our communist party is pretty much dead (and good riddance). Aside from the usual far-right wackos, their best bet here is probably to try to affect the peace movement people. Though even most of those I’ve talked with, with some exceptions, know that aggressors in wars should not be rewarded in order to keep the peace.

I have to say that Russian soft-power ops are scary. A lot of people here think that they are just the few wackos who everybody laughs at, and then think that when a certain popular right-wing party repeats Russian talking points they are completely unaffected by all that.

Finland. Living next to Russian border might bring some reality checks here.

And yea, I can imagine you could dig some nutjob podcaster here too, but can’t imagine finding those people walking around IRL.

But the thing I’m most against is “western left”, which is the point where I call out the BS. Vice seat of our right-wing party literally went to a Putin propaganda camp in Russia in around 2015 (by his own admission, no less), yet it is somehow “western left” that gets the blame for few tankies who are nowhere to be found.

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I have yet to meet a single pro-Russian leftist in my country. Or a tankie. Sure, shit like lemmygrad, r/communism, etc. exists, but you have to go digging pretty deep to find those people.

Most leftists I know, even those who identify as socialists are pretty much in the “yeah, fuck Russia” camp. To the point that they openly advocate financing Ukraine.

This video is blatant propaganda piece, and not even truthful at what it tries to be.