I think everyone who has been paying attention saw this coming. Now so-called “socialist” Hasan Piker is putting out CNN level liberal propaganda. Even western polling had to admit that Putin enjoyed an approval rating above 80% just prior to the election, but of course when you have demonized Russia to this degree you have to resort to reality denial to explain what you see.
We need to start using the term “red liberal” to describe these “leftist” political streamers and YouTubers who mimick the aesthetics and language of leftism while feeding into imperialist dogma and liberal assumptions about the world. Hasan also continues to deny the Donbass genocide that had been taking place since 2014 before Russia finally intervened, refuses to accept that Russia had legitimate reason to take action to stop NATO eastward expansion, and downplays the Nazi nature of the Kiev regime.
Now after he made fun of all the dumbass chuds who insisted in 2020 that the US election was stolen and made up all kinds of conspiracy theories to try and justify it, Hasan himself engages in the same kind of behavior when it comes to Russian elections. This is the kind of “socialist” who will act like they are not Democrat shills by superficially criticizing Genocide Joe yet continue to advocate that you vote for Democrats as the “lesser evil”.
It is good though that since 2022 all of these sheepdogs for liberal imperialism have been exposing themselves. Now we know where the lines are drawn. Once again Lenin’s words ring true:
“We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don’t clutch at us and don’t besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are “free” to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!”
Most educated Genzedong post.
United Russia is a party that outright rigged elections and shelled the parliament to win against Communism. They have crippled the opposition since then and enjoy far more funding and power than other parties. The elections are not fair in the first place and considering their past, I’d say election rigging is highly possible.
The US rigged Yeltsin’s election in the 1990s. They most certainly did not rig Putin’s election in 2024. Yeltsin needed to rig the election because he was massively unpopular while communists were still popular. People hated what neoliberal shock therapy was doing to them.
According to polls conducted by NGOs funded by the NED (which is a CIA front) Putin’s approval rating prior to this election was 86%. This is not a Kremlin poll saying it, it’s basically a western poll that has no interest in lying on behalf of Putin. This is not surprising as under Putin material conditions have massively improved in Russia compared to the 1990s, and people feel this. In that sense it is not reasonable to claim that Putin could never have gotten 87% of the votes in this election and that that number is outright fake.
They have crippled the opposition since then and enjoy far more funding and power than other parties. The elections are not fair in the first place
Yes they have and yes they do. This is what happens in all bourgeois “liberal democracies”. In the US the Democrats and Republicans have crippled any potential third party opposition and have so much more funding than them that no third party could ever win. The Democrat party outright cheats to make sure even mildly leftist candidates like Bernie cannot get their nomination. Is that a free and fair election? All i’m saying is that elections in Russia are just as illegitimate as in any other “liberal democracy”.
Under a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie it’s not really the people who decide who is in charge, it’s the ruling bourgeois class. What irks me is when liberals pretend that their countries’ elections are so much more legitimate than Russia’s. Why have i never heard Hasan say that the 2020 US election was rigged and that Biden’s result is fake? MAGA chuds say that all the time and he makes fun of them.
If he was consistent he should either join the chuds and call the 2020 election rigged, or better yet, stop treating Russia differently than he does the US and admit that Putin did get 87% in an election no less “free and fair” than the US one, in the sense that the votes were counted reasonably accurately and no one forced anyone at gunpoint to vote a certain way.
The people being massively manipulated by the media and by money spent on the election campaign and then only getting to vote for a few candidates pre-approved by the bourgeoisie, that is a given in “liberal democracies”.
Oh ffs…
The elections don’t need to be rigged. There is no one competing with Putin. People know what to expect with him, don’t believe in shuffling shit around expecting another outcome, he laid out a fuckload of plans, including social programs in his address to the Federal Assembly, all with “Budget already allocated” clause (and, you know…some of it at least will find it’s way to people) and there is a saying in Russian about changing horses in midstream too.
Also, turnout this year was probably pretty big without VCIOM having to bump it up in their reports. People weren’t voting to say they love Putin. They were sending a signal to libruls and the like (there are some pretty hilarious videos of them showing up to the polling stations thinking the line outside is for their little boycott and finding multiple people in “Putin’s team” t-shirts, shit like that). And in places like Belgorod people also went “fuck your terror bombings, Imma vote anyway”, because of course they did.
Let’s not pretend Russia has any semblance of true democracy, is just as bad or worse than any other capitalist regime
All I’m saying is that i don’t see people like Hasan talk in the same condescending way about US or other western elections. He is implying that the Russian elections are more rigged or unfair than those in the US which i personally see no reason to believe. He is also implying that the 87% number is fake, which again, i see no reason to believe given that Putin is a wartime president and even NED funded NGO polls (not Kremlin polls) showed prior to the election that his approval rating is around 86%.
Of course i don’t think that the results of elections under a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie are legitimately democratic in the way that a proletarian democracy is. Media, money, the pool of candidates being pre-approved by the bourgeoisie, etc. play a huge role in manipulating how the people vote.
But i never see Hasan say that the 2020 US election was rigged. I never hear him imply that Biden did not actually get the percentage of votes that is officially claimed. When MAGA chuds call the result fake, rigged, or say things like “no way did Biden get that many votes” he makes fun of them, and rightly so because that is not how bourgeois elections are rigged. Yet when it comes to Russia he behaves like those same chuds that he makes fun of in the US.
When MAGA chuds call the result fake, rigged, or say things like “no way did Biden get that many votes” he makes fun of them, and rightly so because that is not how bourgeois elections are rigged. Yet when it comes to Russia he behaves like those same chuds that he makes fun of in the US.
This is a highlighter-worthy contradiction to illuminate. I don’t watch him; so I don’t really have a dog in the race to illustrate a pattern of liberalism; but given how much money streaming is making him, I’m not betting on him performing any kind of meaningful self-crit over it in the near future.
Yes, Putin is popular because he is a crucial part of the state. After the shitshow that was the 90s, his name is synonymous with stability. You quite literally have to be an extremist to want to put that stability on the line. Even if you’re not fond of him, you have to recognise there’s no safe, viable alternative. There’s no way that the people most invested in the Russian state would let anyone else take the presidency without Putin’s consent.
In that sense the elections are fake: they’re not letting anyone else near the Kremlin no matter what. As opposed to the US where you’ll have two fake options.
Personally I think it’s weird to reject electoralism in the US/West and then to start defending Russian election results as ‘real’ because Putin is popular. You’re still playing the liberal game of electoralism.
In that sense the elections are fake
I don’t see how that makes elections fake, having only one realistically viable option. You can’t say an election isn’t real just because one candidate is massively more popular than everyone else.
What makes bourgeois elections illegitimate is that they are actually really decided by the bourgeois class through their control over the media apparatus which indoctrinates and manipulates the people into voting how the bourgeois class wants.
Also, conditions for electoralism are not the same in Russia as they are in the US. The US for instance has no politically viable communist party that could ever win any significant elections. Russia does.
At the end of the day I’m not saying that Russia’s bourgeois elections are legitimate, but that they are really not that different from those in the West, apart from the results. Also it’s not hard to understand why Putin is so popular:
Mind you this is essentially propaganda, it lies by omission of the more inconvenient social and economic indicators while focusing too much on averages instead of the median. But otherwise it is pretty accurate as far as the numbers that it cites.
People in Russia can feel the improvement in their material conditions. With the exception of those already ideologically predisposed to dislike Putin (either communists like us, or on the other side, pro-Western liberals) i think most people cannot help but admire him for what he has seemingly (“seemingly” because he or course didn’t do it alone) achieved these past 20 years in Russia.
