“USA provoked Russia into invading Ukraine” is not a communist talking point. It’s just a straight up fact. And it’s a fact that the American mainstream thought denies. Some interest groups will use this fact to delegitimise the current ruling party which is what is happening here. In the end, funding the war ended up pretty badly for the US with Europe somehow ending up worse off than Russia and the Global South rejecting the American line of sanctioning Russia. Republicans who want to win the next election are going to use facts as a cudgel when it is convdnient for them.

Libs support ukkkraine. Conservatives love owning libs, so they stumble into a correct idea.

American fascists believe that the US should team up with Russia (which, for all its faults, is still a Christian and “anti-woke” nation) to take down China. American liberals believe that the USA is powerful enough to take on the entire world at the same time. Both are utterly deluded and are basically like the Eye of Sauron just after the ring has fallen into Mount Doom—looking around frantically, lashing out at everything. (Sorry for the Harry Potter-esque reference.)

Communists are against all imperialist wars. Fascists are only against the war in Ukraine—they’re completely in agreement with liberals when it comes to genociding Palestine. This is why, on the surface, communists and fascists coincidentally agree on Russia/Ukraine. Communists believe that Russia deserves critical support for fighting imperialism, even if it is far from a flawless country.

Conservatives: (incoherent false consciousness attempts to critique the contradictions of class society by talking about “globalism” or Soros or whatever)

Marxists: (less incoherent because they have Leninist critiques of finance imperialism which drives such actions such as CIA coups in east Europe to overthrow states)

As much as the “realist” faction (Mearscheimer, for example) sounded like the more rational ones, ultimately they’re wrong in their calculations.

Post-2009 global financial crisis saw Europe‘s rapid industrial recovery through bridging its economic ties with Russia/China to get away from the American sphere of influence, just as the US capital was hit hard by the financial crisis.

In other words, post-2009 America has been so thoroughly de-industrialized and its financial base weakened that it does not have the ability to take on China without taking out Europe first. If Europe throws its weight behind China during an ongoing US-China conflict, it very well could tilt the balance of power towards China, which is bad for America.

The war in Ukraine is America’s war against Europe, its imperialist rival. It really has less to do with Ukraine/Russia than Nord Stream and the expanding economic ties between Europe and Eurasia. The neocons, unfortunately, made the correct move: America’s only chance to take on China is to devour the European capital first.

There are several reasons that left and right opinion meet on this issue in particular:

• Right wing pundits see social conservatism (anti-LGBT etc.) in post-USSR Russia and see kindred spirits

• A specific faction of neocons in the administration and war machine see China as far more of a threat than Russia, and want peace or even an alliance with Russia to target China and break up the nascent Eurasian bloc - this includes rabid defense ghouls like John Bolton and cold-blooded analysts like (rest in piss) Henry Kissenger

• Pro-America realists who see that the US Empire is obviously taking a severe beating over this - and while the heartland can stay afloat by cannibalizing its European allies, the whole situation is badly weakening the NATO bloc as a whole - such as John Mearsheimer

• Pure and simple contrarianism: the Democrats support Ukraine, so the Republicans must oppose it

Inside the Empire there are always plenty of people who are evil, but do actually understand how the world works. When the stars align, they can make perfectly cogent, accurate arguments in favor of the same things we want, but as soon as the subject changes they switch straight back to lies, disinformation and controlled “misunderstanding”.

Because right wingers have very few actual principles, which means they’re free to pick up, parade around, and discard almost any talking point at any time. They don’t care about the truth of anything they say, only it’s effectiveness, so of course they would steal an effective critique from the left (again) to own the libs with, because libs have no answer to it and they themselves don’t have to grapple with any of it’s implications.

Of course, we want an end to the Ukranian war because it was a fascist imperial venture from the word go, while the right largely wants an end to the Ukranian war because they can’t stand to be fighting against their fellow whites when Big Bad China is right there.

liberals of all stripes (conservative or otherwise) do not really hold steadfast lines on these topics; their opinions shift with the breeze. So right now conservatives have a position which aligns with communists but as soon as it is convenient or materially beneficial to switch to the pro-ukraine side they will. As others have stated there are a few ideological things going on for supporting russia at least, but I really think that the calculus comes down to cynical political convenience.

Reactionary ideologies exist as a sorta defence mechanism against the overthrow of the dominant ideology (you can see this in monarchist ideologies during the rise of capitalism and again in fascist reaction to prevailing communist/anarchist currents).

These ideologies reinforce the system by preying on the people discontented with the current status quo to prevent them radicalising into a revolutionary ideology.

Consequently, the extremes of reaction take the aesthetics of common critiques in capitalism and direct them into a target that the capitalist class would be willing to sacrifice if it meant the system keeps chugging along. Y’know, when Ferdinand Kronawetter said: “antisemitism is the socialism of fools”, that sorta thing.

Antisemitism (or fascism) is the socialism of fools, and fascists capitalize off of it. Hence why Adolf Hitler called his party the “German worker’s party” as well as “national socialists”. Even the name Volkswagen translates to ‘people’s car’.

Especially in the US although you’ll see it everywhere, you’ll see CHUDs consistently go “nuh uh, we’re the REAL party of the working class, and the enemy isn’t necessarily the ruling class, it’s just that too many of the underclass rubes achieved power they were never supposed to, and that’s what’s lowering your standard of living!”. At least sometimes the UK Tory party’s sell is “you are elites like us too, let’s stick together and put those uppity lower-class poors in their place.”

different people can come to the same conclusions for different reasons.

• reactionaries sometimes come to the conclusion that capitalism is bad. Not because of bourgeoisie vs. proletariat or theft of surplus value, but because it’s “destroying the family” or “turning everyone woke” or it’s “run by the jews” or it’s “bringing too many immigrants to my country”
• communists come to the conclusion that capitalism is bad because it oppresses the proletariat and is closely linked with imperialism and colonialism, and various oppressions and phobias against vulnerable and marginalized groups.
• same conclusion, different reasons behind it.

different people can also come to different conclusions for the same reasons.

• pacifists come to the conclusion that it is wrong to use violence because they are against oppression.
• communists come to the conclusion that it is correct to use violence because they are against oppression.
• different conclusions, same reasons behind it.

so looking at Ukraine. You often see conservative foreign policy realists like John Mearsheimer for example, calling out America’s role in this conflict. Why does he disagree with it? Is it because he’s against American imperialism in Eastern Europe? No. Is it because he’s against NATO? No. Is it because he wants Russia to win? No. He loves American imperialism. He’s in favor of NATO. He wants America to win. He views America’s role in Ukraine as a strategic failure. The empire overextending itself and accelerating its own decline by biting off more than it can chew. His critique is entirely strategic. He thinks America has strategically failed to do imperialism competently. He wants the imperialism to be more competent. Compare that with a Communist critique which is against NATO expansion, which recognizes the NED’s role in funding right wing extremism in Ukraine for decades, which understands that the Neo-Nazi Banderites used Euromaidan as a Trojan horse to coup the Yanukovich government, which understands that America is trying to balkanize and isolate countries that have a history of socialism, even if that history is long over.

Some people childishly see Communists and Conservatives coming to similar conclusions, but for different reasons, and moving from opposite directions. They are unable to do vector calculus on our political positions. All they see is two people occupying the same point on the graph. They don’t see what direction they’re moving towards, where they came from, or any other nuance, and they conclude “these people are allied with each other because they agree on this one thing.”

Because both the left and right are not entirely invested in the American imperialist global project, so they don’t make up their own bubble reality to exist inside. Both the left and the right are outside the bubble and can see reality, while the imperialist center lives in delusion, their eyes shrouded by dollar signs.

Sometimes its the funny outcome of seeing groups use rhetorical arguments as cover for what they really believe.

So a right wing isolationist and an anti-imperialist antifascist can both state “hey, maybe the war in Ukraine is a bad thing”. But the reasons behind the statement will be wildly different.

Being able to mask an ideology behind rhetoric also allows a group to gain support or legitimacy from other groups that would otherwise be critical or hostile. Right wingers love to make rhetorical arguments based around “we must protect the children”. This sentiment is pretty simple and not controversial in any way. So people who can’t/don’t/won’t look too deep into what the right wingers are actually going to do to “protect the children” will wind up doing the work of defending their project from the people who are aware of the true goals of the right wing project.

Its one of those things that requires the extreme use of “consider the source” when trying to understand why similar arguments/rhetoric can be seen deployed by groups with wildly different ideological worldviews.

Liberals are happy with the status quo. The right says the status quo needs to change. We say it needs to change. So there is some similarity.

Also large institutions put small bits of class consciousness into right wing talking points to make sure liberals oppose it. Just to muddy the waters a little.

I assume by “right wing” you are actually trying to mean Republicans and their followers. But both Democrats and Republicans are right-wing. Republicans oppose Democrats’ wars, sometimes only rhetorically while they materially support them as soon as they get down off the podium, and sometimes (somewhat) materially because they, themselves, would rather be fighting different wars at the moment or making other (e.g. domestic) changes that require them to get the upper hand in the moment in their petty bickering with their donkey-branded co-fascists.

In politically opposing a war for any reasons, you are going to search for arguments that help convince large numbers of people to agree with you and back your political moves. The truth lends powerful such arguments. So Republicans wind up using (some) truth in their arguments against the war that has been the Democrats’ baby for the last 15 or so years. Biden was fighting this war back when he was vice president, and Obama let him and Hillary and the other neocons he put in the State Department pretty much have it, while he got off on personally overseeing drone murders in Syria and other places. It’s part of a larger NATO expansion and “new” (same as the old) Cold War that both Democrats and Republicans have been waging since the 1980s. But this facet of it has become the Democrats’ baby. So (some) Republicans oppose it. Often rhetorically, but some—and growing now, as it’s losing its new-car smell—oppose it more materially because they’d rather be focusing on China.

Leftists, on the other hand, oppose this war because being anti-war is necessary and inherent to leftism. So we’re going to use some of the same fact-based arguments that people who oppose it for other reasons also use. NATO provoked this war. It orchestrated a coup in Ukraine, and it backed Ukraine’s fascist government as it went about the goal of committing genocide against people in Donbass and eastern Ukraine in general (and Jews, and Roma, etc.). And it gleefully threw weapons and Ukrainian lives and Europe’s heating and much of Europe’s economy into the grinder in an effort to “bleed Russia”. There’s not really any disputing that if you simply look at the history, and don’t delude yourself about imperialism or how things extended back a long way past February 2022. If Republicans touch on some of that, just know that they’re not doing it for the right reasons, and they’ll gladly twist it into nationalism, antisemitism, anti-Slav bigotry, etc. in a heartbeat. Don’t be fooled. Aspects of the truth can be used as propaganda too (at its heart, propaganda isn’t just a synonym for “lies”, but manipulation based on emotion and other social influence rather than real argument). But because it’s not grounded in consistent philosophy or principle, it’s only a fleeting affair and will resist attempts to tie it into a broader analysis that would be consistent with the momentary, opportunistic stance. Do Republicans oppose imperialism? Of course not. Do they oppose war? Of course not. Do they oppose genocide? Of course not. Do they want working-class people to have a say in how we wield arms? Of course not.