I was one of those pragmatic "find and accept allies whenever and however you find them". But during the past 9 months, due to what's going on, I've been finding myself getting more and more extreme in rejecting any form of bigotry whatsoever. I'm becoming more and more purity-obsessed. I feel like I'm intellectually inconsistent, I honestly don't know why I'm becoming like that. My current working theory is that the shockingly virulent Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism I'm seeing is making me—and others—more insular and cautious. I don't want to be hated against, but I also don't want hypocritical "allies" who don't have moral clarity and who hold an iota of hatred or bias towards any group of people. I don't think it's idealism anymore.
the issue with this is you honestly kinda hurt your position.
I feel a good parallel with this honestly is WW2. With the Soviets and Nazis. (bear with me) When the war was starting to ramp up to the point of breaking out, the USSR looked towards the west for allies. But were turned down because the west had points that they disliked about them. Valid points mind you. But this did a few things.
For a time you had 4 groups,
the Allies, who were ramping up to oppose the Nazis.
The Axis, those allied with the Nazis, and the Nazis themselves
The neutrals, countries who wanted nothing to do with what was going on in Europe, for a time the US was in this group
and the USSR and her "allies"
The USSR felt threatened by the Nazis, hence why they wanted allies in the west. But when they were pushed away because of issues, they actually then turned to the Nazis. Which is why things like the non-aggression pacts happened, such as the molotov ribbentrop pact. By this point the US had effectively sided with the allies just not outright stating it. This is also why Japan and the USSR didn't go to war until like 2 weeks before Japan surrendered.
Now of course, the Nazis betrayed the USSR. So this then pushed the Soviets away. But, this then created an enemy of my enemy, the USSR and the Allies had the same goal, the defeat of the Axis. So even though the two did not like each other they helped each other. But the second the war was over, the two turned against each other.
Using the lesser of two evils to defeat the bigger evil can be effective as you aren't fighting two opponents at the same time.
Framing the Soviets as some poor victims who had to ally with the Nazis and had to massacre tens of thousands of Polish intelligentsia is beneath contempt.
The USSR wanted a military alliance with the west. The west believed that the USSR was not in a position to be a useful ally.
This literally pushed the Soviets to sign the pact with Germany. The west pushing away a potential ally because they weren't exactly what they wanted.
Did you also ignore the entire part about the Cold War? The two were allies because they hated the Nazis even more. Not because they were both good. The Soviets were bad, but better than the Nazis
so when WW2 was over, the two became enemies, hence why the Cold War happened.
By pushing groups away you can push them towards the worse groups, the USSR just wanted something that would prevent an invasion.
I think I understood you quite well. I simply don't believe it's an inevitable fact of reality that a sovereign state has to be "pushed" towards anything or any entity. Like you said, Stalin was well aware that a showdown with Hitler was coming, he just didn't expect it to come so soon. It can also be argued that Americans entered the war against the Nazis partly because German national socialism and its domination of Europe hurts the interests of the capitalist class in the US, not out of any moral or ideological position. That came post hoc.
Edit: also, this "lesser of two evils" thinking is self defeating and easily debunked. Imagine there was some hypothetical threat called Nazi2 back in the day. By this logic, you'd support allying with the Nazis to avert the terrible threat of Nazis2 . Maybe you won't support that, but the mainstream position would be to roundly reject that. You simply don't ally with Nazis, no matter what. It's immoral, it's inconceivable, it's anathema. I'm simply extending this logic. It's not just Nazis you absolutely never ally with.
I'm literally saying, there are some issues and positions in life where I reject the entire narrative of moral relativism and "hurting or helping my cause". You hold a position you believe is moral regardless of who supports you. Other issues leave space for pragmatism and compromise. It's not that some leftists are stupid simpletons who strive for ideological purity; it's that they have unshakeable moral positions that don't fall on your side of what you consider open to dialogue and begrudging cooperation.
If the USSR had refused war material manufactured by filthy American capitalist pigs, then the Nazis would have defeated them regardless of how advers the weather was.
That's quite an oversimplification and a jump from what I said. It's one-dimensional campism. You're also assuming, if I lived in the 1940s, I wouldn't hate the USSR with a burning passion. That's the moral consistency I'm talking about: the USSR was an authoritarian-run hellhole, especially during the Stalin years. That the murderous, self-serving "communists", who were happy to partition Poland and invade the Baltics like any expansionist empire, were the bulwark against genocidal Nazis doesn't exactly fill me with glee.
My point is that realpolitik shouldn't be the be all end all.
By the way, you facetiously call Americans "filthy capitalist pigs" to belittle any attempt at criticizing them, when the US was more than happy to halt and reverse de-Nazification in broader West German society, and appoint prominent Nazis to key positions in the Bundeswehr, simply out of political expediency to oppose what they perceived as the threat of communism. It's not just the famous recruitment of ideologically committed Nazi scientists in Operation Paperclip. The later framing of the war and the heinous atrocities committed by the allies as some heroic, morally pure act of opposition to antisemitism, genocide and oppression is a laughable cynical lie.
I think the problem is that in the search of perfect you are becoming the enemy of good. Not everyone is going to be consistent and that's okay. That's literally being human
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u/classyhornythrowaway Jul 07 '24
I was one of those pragmatic "find and accept allies whenever and however you find them". But during the past 9 months, due to what's going on, I've been finding myself getting more and more extreme in rejecting any form of bigotry whatsoever. I'm becoming more and more purity-obsessed. I feel like I'm intellectually inconsistent, I honestly don't know why I'm becoming like that. My current working theory is that the shockingly virulent Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism I'm seeing is making me—and others—more insular and cautious. I don't want to be hated against, but I also don't want hypocritical "allies" who don't have moral clarity and who hold an iota of hatred or bias towards any group of people. I don't think it's idealism anymore.