mozz

Yeah they're good 'uns

What do you think started, and kept WWI going

• An entanglement of defensive allegiances
• Increased industrialization meaning that nations could field an army undergoing massive attrition for years and years without suffering a crippling lack of production at home, and
• Lack of understanding on the part of political leaders of how the face of war had changed

narrative. Every party believed or was sold that they could win this thing if they just kept climbing the escalation ladder.

I mean… not really. Surely, at the time, the “dangerous” narrative was anything against the war. To me, allowing a freer flow of ideas would have helped to resolve the war sooner, and deciding that certain narratives were dangerous and should be stayed away from (leading to difficulty in understanding what was happening) was a factor that made things worse, not better. No?

For a start I would not do X, Y and Z, this is the whole idea of realism, accept the world as is. Threats work, I'm sorry.

I am glad that you are not involved in the foreign policy of either Ukraine or any country I care about. There is realism, sure; the world is not always a comic book where being righteous is enough. Then, also, there is cowardice, and then beyond that there is saying that someone else who is rejecting cowardice is to be blamed (along with anyone who gives them assistance in standing up) for danger they find themselves in as a result.

Ukraine seems likely to be able to hold on to a significant chunk of their territory and self determination, after deciding to pay a heavy heavy price for it, in homes and cities and money and lives and anything else. You can take your condescending stuff about realism and whose decision that was, and what kind of lives under Russian rule they should be resigning themselves to instead, and shove it up your ass.

I think I saw a version of that. Also featured a celebration of Tank Man, because it was a sign that the Chinese forces were being very humane about it because he felt empowered to show his resistance and the tank stopped and didn't want to run him over, see, they didn't mean any harm!

Can we mobilize some of the disinformation factories against other organizations I also hate? This seems like maybe a positive development.

Like now that they've made a fake documentary about how shit the Olympic committee is, can they maybe get to work on the American coal industry or factory farming or like that?

the current narrative is dangerous and risks leading to escalation beyond Ukraine and has already caused a lot of suffering

I would say it's all the shelling and rocket attacks and bombings, not so much the narrative.

In general I think trying to talk and understand the world is not a hostile act. If you're trying to deliberately distort honest conversation to justify something, then that's a bad thing, but just saying that some sincere narrative right or wrong can be a dangerous thing all on its own, I don't agree with.

To me it’s hard to imagine that after Russia put their army on the border and explicitly said, Ukraine stays neutral or war, that the US wasn’t aware of the consequences.

Bro

What if I put a couple of my friends on the border of your house, and explicitly said, hey if you try to do X Y or Z then I might have to kill you. What's your reaction? What's fair in that scenario? If you ask for some allies to come over because you plan on doing X Y and Z anyway and fuck the border-standers, does it all of a sudden become the allies' fault that any of that happened? What you're saying is just a very weird allocation of blame to me.

Like I say, what Mearsheimer says on this issue actually makes a good deal of sense to me, but what you're saying here is very different from what he says about it, as far as I know. I think one of the critical issues is whether the whole thing was a "ploy" by the West -- he definitely doesn't think that, that I'm aware of. Where did you get that idea? It definitely doesn't seem to me that fighting between Russia and various former-USSR states needed any additional help in order to develop, although I'm sure the US is happy it's happening and happy to help it go badly for Russia.

Clearly Ukrainian lives were not on the forefront of their decision making process at that point.

I think it's relevant what the Ukrainians think. Are you saying that rejecting Russia's orders for what they were and were not allowed to do, knowing that Russia might attack them as a result, was not their decision but someone else's? What do you think they think about it?

Here's a little excerpt, somewhat related, from "Sky Above Kharkiv" by Serhiy Zhadan:

"And I'd like to make another point. I was rather skeptical of the current government. I was struck by one particular thing. The elections of 2019 brought a lot of young people to power -- not my peers (I'm a far cry from being young) but a bunch of political youngsters who didn't belong to dozens of parties or hadn't worked for all kinds of shady cabinets of ministers. 'But why do these young people,' I thought, 'act like old functionaries from the Kuchma era? Where did their childish urge to make a quick buck and flaunt it come from? Why aren't they trying to be different?' Thing is, I personally had the chance to do what I still consider rather constructive, useful things with a lot of them -- everyone from ministers to mayors and governors. Nonetheless, I'd look toward the Parliament building and ask myself, 'Why aren't you trying to be different?'

"Now [in wartime] with the naked eye you can see them trying to be different. Advisers, speakers, ministers, negotiators, officers, mayors, and commanders -- these forty-year-old boys and girls whose generation has been dealt the cruel lot of having to stand up for their country. And this applies no less (and possibly even more) to the millions of soliders, volunteer fighters, and just regular people pitching in, people shedding the swampy legacy of the twentieth century, like mud falling off new, yet well-chosen combat boots. Young Ukrainian men and women -- that's who this war of annihilation is being waged against. And then, in contrast, are the heads of Russia, Belarus, America, and Germany. The first two are old delusional geezers from the past century who look a lot like old Russian armored vehicles, but they're old. And they're Russian, which, in itself, does little to recommend a vehicle. Then there are the latter two -- they're cautious office clerks, retired capitulators who aren't brave enough to admit that they, too, are involved in what's going on."

I notice he's not real eager to answer either question 🙂

Basically just look up EthanIsOnline on youtube or twitter

No no no I don't want to

I have known people like ml and hex tankies in real life. The ones I knew were extremely erratic and manipulative, explosive personalities.

My experience is, honestly, pretty limited, but that makes sense to me. Some of the super-left people I have known IRL have been illogical in this very particular "and of course I am right about everything, that goes without saying" way that largely tracks with what you're describing.

It's a fucking shame, because I am feeling right now that I should be getting involved with some kind of left organization for progress, because without that the US and the world are in mortal danger of some very bad things. IDK. Maybe the way to go is to get involved with unions and electoral politics and leave the harder core of communists to their own devices for the time being.

slrpnk.net seems to have some genuine socialist / communist ideology without the tankie flavor. They have a couple of users who I think are pretty effective "and that's why Emma Goldman would be okay with letting Trump come to power!" shills, but for the most part it's just the good stuff. IMO.

OP, the link is to lemmygrad.ml but you keep citing lemmy.ml in this thread; are you mixing up the 2 without realizing it or do you intend to mean both?

I have interacted with lemmy.ml people a decent amount, so most of what I'm saying in the comments is referencing them. I have some level of difficulty in even interacting with lemmygrad or hexbear people, either a block or some kind of federation issue, IDK, so they form sort of a unified maybe-unfair stereotype view in my mind. But certainly to me the linked thread makes them seem wildly misinformed and super-confident and condescending about the truthfulness of their misinformed view.

In my experience even hexbear users are surprisingly (for the internet) good and decent to others, as long as you can avoid provoking their "the capitalist US empire is the current hegemony that's killing the planet and ourselves, and we don't punch down, therefore our vitriol is a uni-directional torrent" mode of operation that others in this thread have mentioned.

Usually my experience is that if you have to edit your viewpoints to conform to what someone wants to hear, or else they will attack you, that person's worth avoiding interacting with.

Not trying to be unkind about it (esp since specifically where hexbear is concerned I have basically no firsthand experience at all interacting with them) but that's my feeling.

(legitimate) despair of the current state of the world has leeched all desire for compromise

The part that I don't get about that is the support for some of the actors that are primary engines of death and destruction in the current state of the world.

I had this really disorienting experience when I first started interacting on Lemmy, like "the world is fucked" "I know!" "the American system is pure poison" "yeah preach" "it's authoritarian and violent and police state and unjust wars and no real freedom" "you're so right brother" "and that's why we have to support Russia!" and that was the point where I had to sort of gingerly prod at what were their views and why, and everything I found from that point on was hostile counterfactual condescending insanity.

That's not lack of compromise, that's just being wrong and proud of it.

I don't have a less patronizing way of saying it, but they remind me of someone who, after years of abuse by their partner, finally snaps and gravely injures said partner. In some sense, it's on the rest of us to not have intervened beforehand, and at the same time their lashing out really doesn't help things.

IDK man. Maybe. Like I say I'm not trying to be unkind. They read more to me though like a person fleeing abuse from one partner, and then self-destructively choosing a partner that's 10 times worse (or maybe more accurately starting a pen-pal relationship with a convict who if they got out and interacted with them would literally do 10 times worse or kill them.)

Who are the others?

I think John Mearshimer’s analysis of the situation is extremely accurate on the whole, but what he says is very different from what you’re saying.

1. He describes the origin of the conflict as a misunderstanding between Russia and the West - where the West isn’t actually trying to provoke Russia, but their actions are interpreted as hostile. Actually Mearshimer’s analysis in this respect is a lot of where I got my own view on it.
2. He says that Russia’s goal at this point is to simply smash Ukraine completely, to teach the world a lesson about what will happen to anyone who tries to make them feel unsafe. You might agree with that (it sounds like maybe you do), but certainly that’s not the consensus view on Hexbear from what I’ve seen - it would make you an outlier compared to them I think.

From which respected academic did you get the idea that the West was provoking Russia on purpose by expanding to include countries Russia was attacking or threatening (which presumably then weren’t themselves the driving force wanting NATO or EU membership)?

Two quick questions: How many combatants and how many non-combatant civilians were killed in this shelling campaign over the course of the whole 8 years?

And also, if Chechnya wanted to vote on their own autonomy from the Russian Federation, what do you think would be Russia’s reaction? Just purely as a hypothetical.

Russia seems to be trying to manage the west to prevent escalation

My sides