Blimey
1yr ago
So clearly the Poles weren't the angels we were taught
Those facts you list are pretty well known (to historians). Along with Poland being an asshat towards Lithuania:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Polish_ultimatum_to_Lithuania
or that they used Germans annexing parts of Czechia to expand their own territory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Olza#Part_of_Poland_(1938%E2%80%931939)
or that Poland repressed their other minorities, not just Jews:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonization#Ukrainians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_of_Ukrainians_in_Eastern_Galicia
So there is no some grand conspiracy to whitewash Interwar Poland, just as there is no conspiracy to hide the existence of Ukrainian radical nationalists. It's about emphasis and rhetoric: when all you talk about is how the 2nd Republic was oppressive, or how some Ukrainian soldiers openly sport Nazi insignias — most likely you are a biased hack, like Unz. Unfortunately, a lot of nuance is lost along the way, because Ukraine should drop radical nationalists as their values are antithetical to EU which Ukraine wants to join.
Blimey
1yr ago
You are right, that outgroup would usually say something about "glownigger psy-ops" or "pro-nafo trannies" instead of LLM ;-)
Blimey
1yr ago
Probably very little to begin with if you’re conflating millions of people with a discursive propaganda technique of a few Twitter accounts
Come on. You have people like Tucker Carlson, saying things like Ukraine blew up their own dam in just a day after the thing happened without waiting for any evidence. Admittedly, he got only a million likes, not "millions". And, I guess, most liked his statements about aliens, not about Zelensky having rat-like features.
Their point is really that Americans should focus on the Hunter texts
I usually focus on what people say, and not try to guess what they were trying to say or what they were implying. And a lot of them said that all of it is psy-ops. Another object-level statement. If they mislead or lie about object-level stuff — they are much worse than MSM. Not that it's a secret to anyone.
Blimey
1yr ago
As for “evil”… what are you suggesting the US do about it? Go invade Russia? Spread “democracy”… how’s the track record of doing that turn out?
How about not saying evil or delusional shit? They don't have to do tiktok dances in support of Ukraine or Myanmar. Just keeping silence about things they have no idea would be enough.
Blimey
1yr ago
what use is a Russia of 400 million if 300 million read the New York Times, or at least watch Marvel movies?
That's kind of solipsistic as well. Russia doesn't have anything even closely resembling New York Times (I guess, Meduza which is an independent media opposed to the current regime; or Vedomosti, Wall Street Journal-like magazine, whose journalist was arrested, and which was bought by an oligarch close to Putin). The worst American rag is better than whatever Russia has. So why exactly Russian memes should propagate aside from them being anti-American?
Blimey
1yr ago
Putting Belarus above Ukraine in 2020 in terms of human rights just due to Ukraine being influenced by Western COVID-policies, and implementing lockdowns, while Belarus' leader doing absolutely nothing and advising his people to drink vodka in order to protect themselves from COVID leads to some interesting paradoxes. You'll get African dictatorships above Denmark.
The social contract to not act in maximally selfish ways is broken, and the dissident right have a good claim that they aren't responsible for breaking it.
God created all people in his image, and your belief in God and your obligation before other human beings is not dependent on whatever left-wingers or establishment in your country do or say. I'm not religious, but I'm a moral universalist, and death of Russians, Ukrainians, and Americans is equally tragic. American right-wingers, who often emphasize their religiosity, do not consider suffering of people in Haiti, Russia, Ukraine, China, or wherever — explicitly. While I can understand the ignorance (often willful) of human suffering across the world, or in-group preference (after all, even the most altruistic people don't give their homes to refuges and homeless), or healthy egoism, that's different from saying "NOT. OUR. PROBLEM". Catturd2 is a piece of shit, but I still will have moral obligation to save him if I'll see him drowning. Radical in-group ethics is evil, but I understand that some people might disagree.
And yes, I donate much of my salary to charity, so I put my money where my mouth is.
It was noted by someone else downthread that the American right is not a monolith — and indeed, you have a lot of right-wing charities supporting people around the world. Even proselytizing in third-world countries, like Mormons do, is pro-social and universalist. I am speaking specifically about dissident-right America-first chronically online twitterati (some of them even recognize that. I remember how in early reporting on the Ukraine War Tucker, when he was still on Fox News, constantly said at the end of his segments about Ukraine something like: "Poor, poor Ukrainians! Those poor people!". Saying "Fuck Ukraine" can fly on Twitter, but not on television, I guess)
Blimey
1yr ago
I know it's beating a dead horse at this point, but this whole Prigozhin situation made one fact crystal clear: American dissident right (and "anti-nato left" by extension) is extremely solipsistic, much more than other factions in American culture war. Just take a look at some of those takes which are prevalent among this crowd
/images/16875993326015117.webp
/images/16875993329050043.webp
/images/16875993330050533.webp
Essentially, their model of the world looks like: here we are, honest god-abiding Americans, and then there are "elites" — Biden, Hillary, DNC, Podesta, Bill Gates, World Economic Forum. How then do you view something that lies outside your usual experience and ideology? If you are dumb, you deny it altogether:
"Ukraine War is fake, all of it is CGI, Zelensky and Hunter Biden siphon gajillions dollars from American taxpayers to buy mansions in Bahamas"
For those people Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Finns, Prigozhin, Zaluzhny, Macron, Scholz, ... do not exist.
If you are smarter, you align yourself with perceived enemies of the elites: Putin, Xi, Orban, .... You say things like:
even as someone that is entirely anti-nato to the point I would turncoat in a second if i had a chance to damage the alliance
totally oblivious of cases like this
https://zona.media/online/2023/06/22/sko
being a regular occurrence in Russia, when a girl is sent to prison for putting anti-war slogans on price tags in a shopping mall. Of course they'll have prepared a long list of grievances with "elites" that are intended to persuade you that whatever happens in the US is much worse than repressions in Russia or China. And, sure enough, all of it "glownigger propaganda" anyway.
You might say: "Well, I don't care about anti-Putin Russians, unfortunate pro-Putin Russians who became victims of the regime, neutral Russians, Ukrainians, Uighurs, Tibetans, Taiwanese, ... all I care is that my children don't get castrated and turned into trannies". Fair enough. But then please don't take a high moral ground. You are just as evil as "elites".
Whatever patience I had with American "anti-establishment" right-wingers, it ended. I guess Hanania is the only one I keep reading/listening at this point.
I'll answer to "it's not representative; it's just some dumb tweets" in this post, as it was point of @anti-dan, @Gaashk and some others' replies.
Are people like Tucker Carlson, Max Blumenthal, Trump Junior, 'America First' caucus, Jordan 'Do you even know about Holomodor' Peterson et al — are they all nobodies? They use the same talking points when talking about events abroad, displaying the same solipsism demonstrated in those screenshots I took when checking replies to some tweets and top level 4chan pol posts. They ARE representative.
Well... shit. I had better opinion of "normal conservatives". I still prefer to think of him as a fringe pushed by Elon's algorithm and frequent endorsements.
More options
Context Copy link