do people really think Russia is still a communist country? [View all]

and is that because of some kind of organized effort to maintain that belief?

From what I see in my own little information bubble from "leftbook" or whatever, a lot of purportedly communist/socialist pages tend to amplify (or at least align with) what looks to me to be obvious Russian propaganda (for instance about the justification to invade Ukraine to "de-nazify" it in the interest of protecting the Russian people etc.), and/or the imo reasonable comparison to "internationally illegal" acts of aggression that the U.S. has engaged in.

As far as focusing on the actual needs of regular people just trying to live their lives, and looking objectively at the world and trying to get to a point of peace and sustainable relative prosperity for everyone, I tend to agree with that kind of take, and it does seem like the media are pounding the drums for war, which I deeply distrust.

But that doesn't negate the fact that Russia's actions here are barbaric and basically unacceptable from the perspective of any reasonable point of view that favors peace and non-violence, respect for a population's self-determination, and human rights in general. I can't abide any defense of this invasion, or the tactics the Russians are using that intentionally target civilians.

But what really gets to me is that it seems like at least some of these supposedly leftist people seem to think that Putin is trying to restore communism or something...how the fuck could anyone think that?

Unless they are just far-out accelerationists or something, like people who were excited about the orange nightmare being installed as POTUS here, b/c they thought it might finally push the population into open rebellion and bring on the People's Revolution and so on.

I expect a certain subset of these type of information broadcasters to be actual Russian assets, just spreading whatever state propaganda with a communistic sound to it they can get out there in the world. And probably a bunch of others are their progeny--well-intentioned leftists who have somehow got the idea that Putin intends to restore the USSR in the sense of bringing back communism, rather than simply expanding his control over the planet in terms of geographical boundaries (as opposed to information war tactics, where he's got control of something like 40% of at least the white populations in the U.S. and Europe--pretty impressive really). so they are just spreading around whatever they've been duped into by Russian assets.

So I guess to give people the benefit of the doubt, maybe some of these people mean well...but seriously, how the fuck does anyone think current Russia is a communist country?