NOBODY on DU is pro-Putin...nobody here ever has been. [View all]

[Ken Burch]

All that some of us have said is that most of these things aren't as simple as saying "Putin is bad and that's all that matters".

Yes, Putin is vile.

Yes, what he's done to gays is unforgiveable.

Yes, it would be better if the Russian people overthrew him(and, let's face it, nobody BUT the Russian people can ever get Putin out of power).

And it goes without saying that all of us here stand with LGBTQ people in Russia and with all victims of violent militarism in Ukraine and everywhere else.

But it serves no purpose to have this be a global confrontation...and having it be a global confrontation makes it impossible for any humane or progressive or democratic results to be possible in these situations.

And it serves no purpose simply to paint Putin as the villain and not to look at any of the other factors involved OR the role of other countries in creating the conditions that put Putin in power in the first place. It achieves nothing to shout "down with Putin" and not think or say anything else. Especially since, if we just focus on demonizing Putin without analyzing what brought him into power and led him to the choices he made, we have no way of being sure that getting Putin's troops out of Sevastopol or Putin himself out of power would actually make anything better...especially since, when we spent forty years focusing on nothing BUT bringing down the Soviet Union and "communism&quot it actually wasn't communism or anything remotely like it)the end result of that focus was...the rise of Putin.

So it's not fair to call anyone here a "dupe for Putin", and it's not fair to demonize people simply for pointing out that the problem isn't just the actions of one man.