NaibofTabr

3-2-1

3 copies, 2 onsite, 1 offsite.

Personally I think that every mistake is a teaching opportunity. In this context, rather than try to sweep the racism under the rug of history as quickly and quietly as possible, I think changes should be made but in a way that invites people (especially children) to ask questions about the background of the traditions and why those representations of persons of color are problematic and should be changed. Without this it just looks like an attempt to cover up and deny the existence of the past forms of discrimination, which especially does a disservice to people experiencing present forms of discrimination.

And also, maybe, dealing with these things should not be fast or easy.

Nothing about this is imaginary, because in some ways these problems haven't changed much. There is value in spending time on it in the present.

All of that said, I am a white guy from North America, not a POC from the Netherlands, so my input is just an opinion.

I suspect that they finalized the arrangement with Maxwell.

Yes, that's correct, crime should not pay.

the last twenty years or so there is a different battle going on between team "Dutch tradition" and team "kick out zwarte Piet". Both of these last two teams are obnoxious, and would choose confrontation over dialogue every day of the week. This has resulted in a conflict with no end,

Social conflicts like this are never about solutions but about performance, for the sake of getting attention. Ending the conflict would end the attention.

where it would have been easy to phase out the blackface character with no fuss in a short time.

Hmm, by removing Piet and thus hiding the ~~traditional~~ racist representation of black people, or by whitewashing him?

The other leg is AWS. If both go down, it's stone knives and bearskins.

*edit: somebody beat me to it

Hmm, I'm not sure I agree that tribalism necessarily begets autocracy. And I don't think what you're saying accounts for the personality cult that's been built very intentionally around Putin:

Putin took office in 2000 as a hypermasculine, decisive and fearless leader who took after and aspired to embody previous admired rulers, like Lenin and Stalin. Like his predecessors, Putin was an uncompromising patriot with a historically familiar iron grip on politics.

https://theconversation.com/putins-propaganda-is-rooted-in-russian-history-and-thats-why-it-works-184197

Internally they have things like this image from an FSB calendar:

Projecting the "tough guy" persona is a big part of how Putin stays in power. It's a carefully manufactured public image.

Russia spends a lot of government money on efforts to control online narratives, both in and out of Russia. They're certainly aware of Lemmy communities.

Maxwell must have agreed to all the details of the coverup.

There's a pretty good Behind the Bastards episode on Stalin. Basically he was an ultra-paranoid drunk that forced his cabinet members to get drunk with him on a regular basis, which pretty much ruined any potential for effective government in the USSR.

Russia has a strong-man fetish which even the Bolsheviks couldn't overcome. For all the post-revolution ideology and communist rhetoric, they still just want a Tsar.

Teflon Don, even semen won't stick to him.