I am genuinely confused by hexbear too
Is it a site for queer people or for beanis lovers?
To anybody reading this who is confused about Hexbear’s opinion on the Ukraine war, I will simplify it as much as possible in terms of increasing badness:
War is bad.
Ethnonationalist war is worse.
Imperialist war is even worse than that.
Imperial expansion is the worst, as it forces the previous three into existence.
And so:
Ethnonationalist war is worse.
⬆️ Russia is doing this and we don’t like that.
Imperial expansion is the worst, as it forces the previous three into existence.
⬆️ America is doing this and we don’t like that even more.
Ethnonationalist war is worse.⬆️ Russia is doing this and we don’t like that.
With respect, I don’t think it’s necessarily accurate to classify this conflict as an ethno nationalist war, at least not completely. The Russian motivation for this war can be pretty neatly explained by objectively observable factors like NATO enlargement and encirclement of Russia.
Of course, you could say that one is set dressing for the other, but I personally think that the main goal of the war is to keep NATO out and “saving oppressed Russians” is at best a secondary objective.
Agreed. I think it would be fair to call it revanchist but I don’t think it really checks the boxes for an ethno-nationalist war
To be fair I said I’d simplify it as much as possible so obviously some nuance is lost along the way, but just to flesh it out a bit I’ll clarify my thought process in using the terms I chose, because I don’t necessarily disagree with you:
The imperialist expansion of the US via influence in Ukraine forced an imperialist conflict onto Ukraine, which forced a ethnonationalist conflict onto the people of the DPR/LPR, which is where the conflict started. Simultaneously, the expansion of US influence into Ukraine forced Russia’s hand in 2014 in and then again in the SMO. Both of these actions by Russia have been a combination of anti-imperial resistance to the US and revanchism under nationalist leadership. Russia can be engaging in both anti-imperial resistance and ethnonationalist conflict simultaneously.
So to explain the reasoning behind my initial choice of words: they are to demonstrate that each rung on the levels of badness I used, so to speak, can be the result of the next worse level of badness. So in the example I gave, I am essentially trying to say that the US’s imperial expansion after the collapse of the USSR forced imperial conflict on the people of Ukraine, which forced ethnonationalist conflict on the people of the LPR/DPR. Likewise, the same act of imperial expansion has only opened one major route for nationalist Russia to resist US imperial expansion, which is ethnonationalist/revanchist conflict. Russia is engaging in ethnonationalist/revanchist conflict because, geopolitically speaking, it has been railroaded into it as a means to resisting US imperialism.
Sorry but Putin was happy to let Donetsk and Lugansk fend for themsleves if they got the guarantees they wanted in February 2022. There’s no ethnonationalist interest from the side of Russia here.
I personally don’t believe that to be true, but that’s neither here nor there so I’ll respond to the actual substance of your comment. While you may be nominally correct, the reality is that these are majority Russian areas that would have wanted to unify with Russia should they have achieved independence from Ukraine with or without Russia’s help.
Even ignoring all of that, there was no possible future where Ukraine allows the DPR/LPR to exist independently BECAUSE Ukraine had already become a place of attempted US imperial expansion, which was my point. The imperialist expansion of the US via influence in Ukraine forced an ethnonationalist conflict on the people of the DPR/LPR, which Russia then gets to co-opt as a means of anti-imperialist resistance to the US. It is for that reason that I say imperialist expansion can cause ethnonationalist war, and that Russia is engaging in an ethnonationalist war. That does not mean Russia’s war is not anti-imperialist in nature at the same time.
Stoking these kinds of ethnonationalist conflicts is one of the signature tactics of US foreign policy over the last century. Russia and Ukraine is just one example of how imperialism intensifies ethnonationalism. If you don’t like national chauvinists then kill it at the root.
Exactly my point and why I made the flowchart. Russia engaging in ethnonationalist conflict does not mean it is not resisting US imperialism OR that Russia started the ethnonationalist conflict. What I mean is that the ethnonationalist conflict was forced on Russia by the US as one of its only means available to resist US imperialism.
The other method is that Russia relies far more heavily on its close ties with China, but it isn’t relevant for this post
This actually helps a lot, thanks lol. I generally get where you all are coming from on most topics, although I sometimes think you all are too enthusiastic for weird stuff, like the historically antisemitic Hamas and their war crimes. But at least I get the general idea. But the Russia thing, that one has always confused me the most. But this has helped me understand it at least a little more than anything else so far lol.
If you read my other comments on this post you’ll get a more nuanced understanding of the issue and the reason I worded that way, as some people still disagreed with me so I explained the reasoning.
In regards to your statement on why Hexbear supports Hamas resistance in Palestine despite the fact that Hexbear does not share many of Hamas’ beliefs, we can easily find the reason by following the same flowchart in reverse:
⬇️ The UK did imperialist expansion in the Middle East and created a settler colonial state in Palestine.
Imperial expansion is the worst, as it forces the previous three into existence.
⬇️ Imperialist action is taken via war by the settler colony to seize land from the native population.
Imperialist war is even worse than that.
⬇️ Settler-Colonial state must maintain ethnonationalist conflict to maintain tenable demographics within its borders
Ethnonationalist war is worse.
⬇️ Hamas is resisting an ethnonationalist conflict against the Palestinian people.
War is bad.
Therefore: There is no Hamas in the first place if there was no war. There would be no war if there was no ethnonationalist conflict in Palestine. There would be no ethnonationalist conflict in Palestine if there was no imperialist war to expand Israel. There would be no imperialist war to expand Israel if there was never any imperial expansion via the creation of Israel.
So if you want to get rid of Hamas or any organization that would be similar to it, you must first find the root of that problem and undo it. This does not mean there can’t be any Jewish people in Palestine, but it does mean there can be no remnant of imperialist expansion, AKA no Israel.
