they are not my friends, but i know some libs that cosplay as leftists and they completely bought into the nato-framing of the russo-ukrainian war from the jump, while they are generally opposed to what is happening in Gaza… but not enough to voting for Genocide Joe, ofc.
for russo-ukraine, it was a part of the world they have fuck all analysis about but the news footage really played up how sympathetically white ukranians are. like one admitted that the footage of ukranians being displaced bothered them more, on an emotional level, than the US invading and displacing iraqis. major
vibes. combine that casual racism with the fact that there was no geographical placeholder information for them about eastern europe. NATO aggression? what’s that? total clean slate for the media blitz to fill.with Gaza, the extermination and land grab has been a project for a long time. these libs have met muslims since 9/11 and heard voices contradicting state department messaging about the middle east, a place the US has been terrorizing and bombing and invading multiple times in our lifetimes. they have developed their own opinions in that time and there is even acknowledgement of Biden’s enthusiastic role in the 2003 invasion of iraq.
of course, they are libs so A Dang Cheeto In The White House is more of a threat to their comfortable brunching than Genocide Joe exterminating Gazans, so their aversion to genocide isn’t that motivating.
i will never, ever forget something i think Christman said about how genocidal war was not a problem for Europeans/The West until Hitler committed the unpardonable crime of doing it to Europeans. i have never heard a more succinct framing for perennially fickle western outrage about slaughter.
Who’s Christman ?
Matt Christman, our patron saint, I think. The best of the Chapo adult sons
Certainly the largest
Decades of stressed attempts by journalists to highlight plight in Palestine means people are inevitably aware that Palestinians might actually be people after all.
Absolutely zero coverage of the ethnic Russians/Russophones in Ukraine being discriminated against / outright murdered means nobody realises there was even a reason the Russo-Ukrainian war started and so are left to conclude Putin is INSANE.
Is there anyplace I can read more about what had been going in Donbas prior to the 2022 invasion? Ive heard accounts in both hexbear and lemmygrad of discrimination and possibly genocide against ethnic russians in the reigon but havent found any sources (although I havent looked too hard)
Here’s a quick little montage of war footage from pre-2022 in Donbas. These are civilian cities being bombed and having white phosphorous indiscriminately rained down upon them. 14,000 dead over 8 years.
A lot of what I know I learned here https://www.youtube.com/@PatrickLancasterNewsToday
On the ground english speaking independent news reporter, was on the ground in Donetsk in the years leading to the full hot war
Here’s a playlist from 9 years ago interviewing folks in the area that Ukraine would shell over 20,000 times in the years after their referendum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5MDYoOerA8&list=PL5iECS-08XTvJ0osnTRpD_gLJok8P_hl3
Because Russia (at least according to the propaganda) is a threat to US hegemony, even though this is disregarding the fact that Russia is economically on a far smaller scale than the US and its allies.
Everyone knows Palestine and Cuba cannot possibly fight back against the empire, so in the back of their minds, the ultimate defeat of the brave, noble underdogs is guaranteed so it’s easy to find pity with them
Give Palestine and Cuba the firepower of Russia who can actually fight back against their oppressors and see how quickly the Western public change their tune.
Yes it’s underdog fetishism and selective pacifism. That Chinese meme doesn’t miss.
Give Cuba nukes and point them directly at Miami
Media about Palestine in the West was infinitely more than Donbas (literally nothing)
Also big strong countries bad and scary (like China despite doing literally nothing), weak and underdog countries good (notice how nobody supports Yemen because they’re a real threat)
70 years of cold war propaganda.
Basic premise most agree with in 2024: wars of aggression are bad.
Who is the aggressor, what is their political history, what are the skin colors involved, what are the respective ideologies, who are ‘allies’… all of those things influence how the baseline premise is perceived.
Basic premise most agree with in 2024: wars of aggression are bad.
I mean, yes, but also no. In most wars, you could make some argument for either side being the aggressor. For some of them you’d really have to work hard for it, but it’s generally possible to at least conjure some flimsy rhetoric around it. The Iraq War, for instance, was very obviously a war of aggression by the US against Iraq. …or was it? I mean, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and they have WMDs!!! Iraq is actually declaring a war of aggression against the concept of freedom and democracy! We’ve gotta respond to this attack!
So what’s actually going on here is “If your government can successfully persuade you that they aren’t the aggressor, and in fact they’re actually the victim, then you’ll probably support the war a lot more than if your government isn’t able to do so.”
For the Russia-Ukraine situation, portraying Russia as the aggressor is quite easy, because… well… they invaded Ukraine, and almost nobody knew anything about the Donbass. I only very vaguely knew about it before 2022, and the extent of my knowledge was “Oh, there’s some territorital disputes and fighting going on between Ukraine and Russia over something or other,” and I was fairly geopolitically-minded. So if you’re just the average guy on the street, you might not even have known anything about Ukraine, let alone the Donbass. But if you did know about the general sequence of events since the fall of the USSR; the US-sponsored coup in Ukraine, Russia taking Crimea in response, the West arming neo-Nazi groups, the diplomatic efforts taken by Russia to try and not go to war while Europe was arming Ukraine for the sole purpose of trying to weaken Russia (as Merkel explicitly admitted in an interview), the mass murders of the Donbass people, etc - then suddenly, NATO looks a lot like the aggressor in this war. The Russian people certainly know this sequence of events, which is why most of them support the war. It’s not that Putin has weaved a magic brainwashing spell on the Russian people, or that they’re all secretly too scared to say their opinion - they legitimately, and quite rightfully, believe themselves and their fellow Russians in the Donbass to be the victims of NATO and Ukrainian aggression. NATO has been on the offensive against Russia since 2014 - I mean, really, since NATO first expanded after the USSR fell. February 24th 2022 was merely the start of the Russian counteroffensive.
For Israel-Palestine, efforts to portray Palestine as the aggressor did kinda work initially because the October 7th attack was so effective. But in the months that followed, and as Israel further bombed and invaded Gaza, it became increasingly difficult to say that Israel somehow isn’t the aggressor here, and because most people are at least generally aware that the Israel-Palestine conflict exists and that the Palestinians have been suffering for decades, Westerners were primed to be able to experience sympathy for the Palestinians. The legacy of the Holocaust complicates the matter sufficiently that for a big chunk of people, the whole conflict just becomes this big complicated blob of “Well, both sides here have reasons to hate the other and fight, idk what to think really, I’m gonna go back to watching Love Island or whatever,” but generally speaking people believe that it was a war of aggression by Israel. The footage that has come out of Gaza helps in that regard, compared to Israel’s unwillingness to show their own pain and suffering publically because they want to maintain their image as God’s chosen superior ubermensch to the inferior, weak, untermensch Arabs.
I disagree with the premise. The vast majority of the public in the West is on board for both wars, equally.
That’s definitely not the case. Where I live almost everyone supports Ukraine uncritically (less than a couple years ago, but still) while opinion on Israel is much more divided but generally in favor of Palestine. Even a majority of european, generally extremely pro-imperialist governments voted in the UN for a ceasefire. There have been protests going on pretty much everywhere, which wouldn’t have happened in a million years in response to the Ukraine war.
The response has been undeniably more lukewarm than the jingoistic fevor that happened when the Russia-Ukraine war begun.
Damn maybe its my own perception that is skewed
I don’t think it is, at the start there were pro Israel points pushed by the media, but all I’ve seen from mainstream news since about it has been highlighting the atrocities commited by the IDF. Among my workplace, a massive wealthy organization, I have seen numerous pro-Palestinian statements and art, and nothing explicitly supportive of Israel.
Compare this to the Ukraine war, supporting Russia or even being neutral on the topic is highly controversial among circles I’ve interacted with since the Russian offensive. It is really only among the most potent left spaces, like hexbear, that I see really any doubt about the holy righteousness of Ukraine.
Ukraine piggy backed off cold-war & neo-cold war propaganda decades in the making. theres been a basically unbroken stream of anri-russian media since 1917
Israel ooth doesn’t always enjoy such bias, when the proverbial ‘chips are down’ the imperialists back them but there’s plenty of liberal scolding and bones thrown to arab allies in intervening years. there’s also something abt all the cameras israel is just gleefully advertizing genocide on that makes it hard for anyone plugged into anything besides cable news to ignore
Ukraine piggy
spoiler
Cold war brain never really stopped even if it makes no sense to continue having cold war brain. As far as most are concerned russia is still the USSR even if its evidently not.
Edit: oh and post cold war the media created where russia is the bad guy kept going. Its hard to think of a movie or game where russia isn’t the bad guy
There’s a lot of places one could argue the Cold War started. I totally agree with you except many of the nations falling for this in large numbers belong to post Soviet states.
It wasn’t Cold War propaganda, it’s been anti-Soviet propaganda all along driving the Russophobia which is now in an unfettered and free floating state, like a free radical just shouting out. The anti Soviet sentiment in Soviet Baltic states predated the American propaganda and focus that defines the post-war understanding of when the Cold War started.
America sent troops to support the whites, that’s pre war even, but it lacked the propaganda drive. Can we understand this as the start of the Cold War or as an extension of the capitalist unity I. Which regardless of messaging has always been anti-Soviet due to inherent anticommunism? That perhaps the first proper attempt originating in Russia created a link that allowed for Russophobia as a whole to become so normalized in the west that they no longer saw a difference between anticommunism and opposing the interests of Russia?
The concept I am grasping at could possibly be called propagandic inertia?
With imperial propaganda over Ukraine, it’s easy to metabolize it without seeming like an open racist
But with Palestine it’s impossible, a lot of the western public still value the masks they wear when it comes to race and many liberals aren’t comfortable tearing them off just yet to support Israel, even if they’re generally supportive and enthusiastic about Israel’s warcrimes
So that translates roughly into a general apathy in the west concerning the genocide, which some leftists have confused for widespread discontent over western support for Zionism, which is an illusion generated by social media and bad poll reading
Because a free Palestine is not seen by libs as a threat to Western hegemony and the perpetuation of the treat train.
“Putin is coming for you next” makes sense on some level, whereas “Hamas is coming for you next” doesn’t.
President Putin is coming to see you
Yes absolutely. Half the Democratic Party believes Israel is committing a genocide. Whereas even half of hexbears still refuse to critically support Russia. It’s night and day, the Ukraine brainwashing went down very smooth
half of Russian communists do too, guess the Western propaganda got them as well
Have you considered that the putler doesn’t torpedo his ability to wield power by opposing the christofreaks created by being soft on religion the first time + the fall?
Fine, in regular language:
People are ignoring the fact that the hell created by the early fall drove a mass of people experiencing the most the drastic degradation on conditions felt outside of instant mass death situations like the bubonic plague existed in a Society where the Orthodox Church was allowed to exist?
That perhaps post-Soviet Russia was born into the original sin of Stalin not eradicating it? If the time Lenin backed down and respected religion instead of being a wimp and not enforcing equality (on the first go around things were equal, it was religious people who used the federalism to reinstitite the bigotry inherent to their texts).
If he went full 1984 on religion like anyone with humanities best interests at heart should, that reactionary base would not exist.
If Lenin killed every priest, Russia wouldn’t be homophobic, because Lenin’s original intent would have been enforced at gunpoint long enough for a new generation to grow up under it.
Ends rant
If Lenin killed every priest, Russia wouldn’t be homophobic, because Lenin’s original intent would have been enforced at gunpoint long enough for a new generation to grow up under it.
You don’t get rid of religion by killing priests, or religious prejudice by outlawing religion. Religious prejudice is a product of oppression by nature and by exploitation. Marx called state repression of religion nonsense because it’s really no different than killing all criminals and expecting crime to go away. When state power is seized, the religious establishment should lose its hold on the state, anything else will be eradicated through development.
How much development? The USSR developed more and more rapidly than anyone else and as soon the opportunity arose all the old vices came back (if they can be said to have truly gone away).
More than was made. It’s not realistic to expect religion to be eliminated in less than a century; even with speedy development, the USSR was backward for most of its lifetime.
The “old vices” grew again heavily because exploitation, inequality, and class divisions reappeared, as well as the government allowing religion to gain institutional footholds as it lost its character as a dotp. As for why it ceased to be a dotp, unequal development across various areas as a result of leaps in modes of production/premature centralization caused different classes to assert themselves in the party.
That’s a fair interpretation. The thing that didn’t work was simply incomplete cannot be disproved as as an argument.
I don’t think it’s that simple at all, and eradicating a faith is not possible without massive amounts of tyrannical overreach and oppression against the believers (mostly poor people). This is a lesson the Soviets learned that you have not. It must be overcome gradually through education and improved conditions for several generations, which the Soviets were trending towards but never achieved due to their eventual stagnation and collapse.
If Marxism insists on eradicating faith and antitheism as a major tenet it will never find victory in the Arab world or in Latin America. It will be rejected by the masses. This doesn’t mean we should be tailist or incorporate religious dogma into Marxist theory, but it does mean we shouldn’t be overtly antagonist and hostile except against organized institutions that make reactionary moves, and even then the solution is not to eradicate the popular institution but to coopt and “tame” it, to slowly secularize society.
If religion is the opiate of the masses, the worst thing to do is to suddenly cut them off cold turkey without fixing the underlying issues and pains fully, or without providing an adequate replacement. Opiates are pain killers and they have their place and their use.
Opiate addiction can’t kill. Many types can’t , actually.
Edit your comment to be withdrawal from something actually permanently damaging then yeah, it would be a worst idea.
The people were just liberated, that is the best time to make sweeping changes.
Oppression against bigots is always justified. I’ll shed no tears for any believer killed for being a bigot because “the holy tradition”.
It’s not a stability risk if you go about the right way. By any rights America should not exist, but guess what? With enough application of force you can get people to go along with anything.
Doing so to enforce human rights in order to secure them as a part of society that people grow up assuming to be good is a way to solve bigotry.
It hasn’t been tried yet, what you’re advocating for has been tried and it failed.
Oppression against bigots is always justified. I’ll shed no tears for any believer killed for being a bigot because “the holy tradition”.
“Bigots” here meaning everyone who believes in Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or other religions in the USSR? So the vast majority of the population including the peasantry? I’m not sure why you think it’s a practical or good idea to go stomping on the majority of people instead of uplifting them through generations of education and material improvements. This type of punitive mindset against the majority of the people is anti-materialist and idealist dogma, and it’s why the Soviets ended such policies and learned a fundamental lesson. You sound little different than the New Atheist arguments used to destroy Afghanistan, and general islamophobic arguments.
It means anyone who truly believes in homophobia which is indeed within the texts every pre reformation christian holds dear. Unless we include the gnostics, but everyone persecuted them so I’m not in the way I am phrasing things.
to the best of knowledge none of the new atheists advocated for socialist perspectives on equality. To further my point: misogyny (which is also very much the bible) should have been treated the same way. Progress was made, but not nearly enough of it stuck. A greater change to culture would have made more if it stick.
My overall point is: it is better a generation of (as you call it) “tyranny” so the next generation is raised believing in our values than allowing multiple generations to be raised with socially normalized bigotry.
Perhaps you are right and social engineering instead of a crackdown would have worked. I am arguing that everything tried was nowhere near enough and that bigoted beliefs cannot spread without people spreading them. Address the root problem, the people spreading the bigoted beliefs. If Tate had died in the crib how many young western men would not have fallen victim to the message he spreads? remove every Tate-like figure and they would not have been corrupted.
Look at the evil inherent to the Amerikkkan world-view (MSE used to distinguish between the USA and the rest of the peoples who live in the Americas). It is pushed from the top-down. Yes, there is a willingness born of the fact it benefits many in some cases, and all in some, but most of al it benefits the people who wield power. It proves that those who control the levers of power can actually dictate the worldview of most. Why does my coworker who stocks shelves with me think the CEO earned his place in the family company? Because society forces that view on him via a combination of suppressing dissent and strongly emphasizing arguements in favor of this. If a strong state can successfully suppress class interest, it can suppress bigoted worldviews.
Imo it’s at least partly because of the immense amount of grassroots leftist advocacy theres been for Palestine for decades in the west that means soft leftists can’t really get away with open support for Israel, a lot of them tried though in the first week or two after October 7th before realising they had to shift to being less bloodthirsty after facing backlash from it. It’s the same deal with why the western soft left has a much more positive view of Cuba than it does of North Korea.
Though with Cuba there’s a whole thing of “anti tankie” leftists specifically trying to do hitpieces on Cuba because it’s committed the mortal sin of being a successful revolution with an ML government and so they feel the need to push back on sympathy for other AES countries and ML thought being spread through pro Cuba statements that point out the obvious improvement in the quality of living that came about with the Cuban revolution.
Everyone knows what russia is and ‘know’ about it being bad and evil and violent, very few actually knew much about israel and palestine other than that it was ‘complicated’, and basically no one knew what a “Hamas” was, that makes it a harder narrative sell on its own, but then you have just the sheer absurdity of the disproportionate violence and blatant lies, fucking “Voldemort knows evil” shit lmfao
Zelensky looking much better than Netanyahu might’ve helped
