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Notes -
Is this not a principled choice by Zelensky, though? There is a particular Western memeplex that is easily glossed as "weaponised end of history". In this narrative, it is the West that is always willing to look at the present, call out evil and fight for good; and its enemies consist of a freak show of backwards beta loser powers that always invoke historical grievances and cringey national myths, which no enlightened democratic Chad would give a rat's ass about, to rationalise their desire to do more evil. This way of thinking clearly appeals to a significant portion of the Western audience - general Western media reactions to Putin's occasional rambling history lessons seem to come from the same playbook as the Kamala campaign "weird" ad to much better reception, and a particularly common use of the "whataboutism" meme may be glossed as "don't derail our discussion about what you are doing now by talking about what I did in the past".
Zelensky doesn't obviously need the audience that is unwilling to subscribe to this worldview, because the alliance of devout history-enders and Machiavellians can easily remain at the levers in the West as long as the fence-sitters stay put. He has little to gain from bringing up historical context, because historical context on the balance would not be kind to him - between the mess that was 2014-2022, the now largely forgotten gas disputes in the decades before it (which one may summarise as Ukraine stealing gas and being like "what are you gonna do, stop using our territory for transit?" about it) and the awkwardness surrounding how inextricable the literal Nazis and collaborators are from Ukrainian national identity even while none of their modern backers are quite willing to take the plunge and officially rehabilitate them, legitimising the view that history matters at at all would only risk growing the elements of the Western public that are tired of the war and would rather see their tax money and attention tokens redirected to morally more black-and-white issues.
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