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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27721 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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How is it surprising? People in this kind of Eastern European state can look honestly at the situation and compare the extraordinary increase in prosperity that Poland, Hungary and they themselves have seen in the EU orbit with the continuing shitholes for ordinary people that Belarus, pre-war Ukraine and even Russia itself to some extent are. It’s unclear whether Russia is ever going to reach Western European income levels (seems unlikely), while it’s pretty much guaranteed that Poland will very soon. Obviously there are relevant additional factors, but average people don’t consider most of those. I wouldn’t want to join or stay in the Russian orbit.

Let's not get carried away.

  1. It was by no means extraordinary anywhere. It may seem extraordinary to many youngsters, I suppose, because they compare a world of fancy touchscreens of all sorts, social media, the laptop class lifestyle etc. to a world of stagnant socialism without any of those, and conclude that there must have been a huge improvement in the average quality of life, when in fact there was no such thing, and it's all just self-delusion driven mostly by Russophobia. I can very much assure you, for example, that there is no, and has never at any point been, consensus on this supposed extraordinary increase in Hungary.

  2. To the extent that there was tangible increase in prosperity in Poland, most of it is obviously explained by the severity of austerity measures introduced in the final years of socialism. It's a matter of relative difference, and people's emotional revulsion at a regime which permitted the evil Russkies to station their orcs on sacred Polish soil and whatnot.

  3. I find it somewhat odd that you added Belarus to this list. As far as I know, it was, in fact, the one post-Soviet country that largely survived the '90s without economic collapse, social disintegration and widespread anomie, at least compared to the other unfortunate post-USSR republics.

But anyway, let's not pretend that this is not even surprising. Slovakia has been an independent polity for a combined period of roughly 35 years (1939-45, 1993-). Was there even one political assassination such as the current one during those years? As far as I can tell, no.

It was by no means extraordinary anywhere. It may seem extraordinary to many youngsters, I suppose, because they compare a world of fancy touchscreens of all sorts, social media, the laptop class lifestyle etc. to a world of stagnant socialism without any of those, and conclude that there must have been a huge improvement in the average quality of life, when in fact there was no such thing, and it's all just self-delusion driven mostly by Russophobia.

There was a huge improvement in average quality of life. The number of Western countries that saw similarly rapid transformations is very small. Ireland is probably the only one that wasn’t communist before 1989.

B-but there might be a Pride parade there!

In any case, it seems the shooter was a pro-Russian far-righter:

Juraj Cintula, a 71-year-old man from Levice, was immediately detained by Fico's security detail.[20][21] According to the Minister of Interior, Cintula stated during police interrogation that his decision to conduct the assassination was made immediately after the 2024 Slovak presidential election.[22]

The suspect had frequented events organized by the pro-Russian paramilitary group Slovenskí Branci [sk] (Slovakian Recruits; SB). The group, which was connected to the Russian motorcycle club Night Wolves and which was receiving training from Russian Spetsnaz members, announced its disbandment in October 2022. On his social media, Cintula wrote multiple posts praising SB and its anti-immigration stance.[23] During the attack, the suspect used a pistol which he held legally in connection with his job of a private security personnel in a shopping centre.[24][25]

In 2016, the suspect had founded a "Movement Against Violence". The suspect had also been a leader of the Literárny klub Duha (Rainbow Literary Club) in Levice, which he co-founded in 2005. He had authored three poetry books, a novel, and a book about Romani people in Slovakia titled Efata. In this book, the suspect praised the programme of the far-right People's Party Our Slovakia and professed understanding of mass-murderers in cases of perceived governmental failures.[24][26][27]

This still doesn't necessarily indicate a particular conspiracy related to these movements or anything else, such movements tend to draw unstable personalities to them like flies to honey.

This is part of the spin I see a lot in conjunction with insane conspiracies even in supposedly rational progressive circles - one example being that there was no blood seen at the scene and that people around did not panic, so maybe it was just some stunt. Yes, these things are unironically shared among a lot of pro-opposition people, this is where we are now - in culture war filled disinformation age. When it comes to the assassin then yes, on one side he had photos with pro Russian aligned paramilitary organization Slovenský Branci (although supposedly to convince them to not support Russia as part of his movement against violence) and he also had some rant against Roma/gypsies - BTW not that rare even among progressives in Slovakia. However he also voted for progressive president Zuzana Čaputová, he strongly supported Ukraine in the current war and he participated in anti-government protests that were organized basically since Fico took power as every government action was painted as a huge problem, threat to democracy and all that.

His actions were politically motivated and he decided to assassinate Fico for reasons broadly in line with current opposition rhetoric. I think he really fits the description of "stochastic terrorism" - an unhinged person with fringe views who was sensitive to heightened emotions around the current issue™ and just decided to act extremely on a given day. This gives plausible deniability of any responsibility to any side - look, he is unhinged and we do not bear any responsibility for anything, we could even pin it on the other side due to cherrypicked issues like that he was racist toward gypsies, so he was no true progressive. By the way there was also an interview with his son who said that he was not medicated that he did not have any history of actual mental illness and that nothing suggested that he would do something like that - that is why I use the term unhinged.

And I am not even saying that as some judgement, I just think this is the world we live in. We may see more and more of these types of operations where political violence is used with cloud of plausible deniability, that can itself feed into the overall culture war further polarizing everybody into even more insanity. What a world to live in.

he strongly supported Ukraine in the current war and he participated in anti-government protests that were organized basically since Fico took power

There is supposedly even video evidence of this, courtesy of a local TV channel. I can't comment on this because I don't speak Slovak.

Form the video he shouted "nech žije Ukrajina" (long live Ukraine). The rest of the video was testimony of his friends, the first one was his coworker miner who mentioned that he he was a rebel and anti-beurocracy before, the second one was also in the "movement against the violence" that the assasin founded and expressed incredulity about how it could come to violent action. The rest is his brief CV about his sympathy toward now disbanded paramilitary organization Slovenskí Branci, his career as writer and member of the official club of Writers/Authors in Slovakia.

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