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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   33233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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What strikes me about most of the people in the "surrender for their own good" camp is that they would never in a million years apply the same logic to themselves.

You don't need to worry. Ukrainians will not surrender. I give greater chances that they will die out as a nation due to bad demographics than they would be living under Russian government.

Eastern regions are more Russian populated, the language is dialect continuum between Ukrainian and Russian and their loyalties might be more towards Moscow than Kyiv but the rest of Ukraine is strongly nationalistic.

Think about Palestine and Israel, unsolvable problem because Palestinians are imbued with hate towards Jews. They don't care about their own country, only how to harm Israel. That's how bad nationalism works but it is a reality that no one knows how to solve.

Ukraine is similarly 100% imbued with idea that Russians are their oppressors. Except that in this case they really are. Russification worked better during the Soviet times because technically it was an independent republic. I think it even had its own seat at the UN then. The Soviet government was more like a local tragedy (like Trump in America) and not occupation.

Anyone harbouring hopes that if we let Russia win and occupy whole Ukraine thus creating peace and stop people from dying does not know anything about Ukraine. They read dry analysis that doesn't tell what real people in Ukraine feel.

I learned about Ukrainians during my time with Hare Krishnas. When the movement sizzled in the US, it became very popular in Russia and other Soviet countries. Hare Krishnas are very apolitical, their only interest in politics is if the governments will let them do what they want to do – preach, sell books, distribute food, dance on streets etc. For many hinduism is not a religion you can convert to, it is something you are born into. With Hare Krishnas it is that they go deeper and consider that your material body, your family origin is temporary and irrelevant, you are eternal soul and your natural tendency is to be a Hare Krishna. Apparently putting on robes, dancing on streets, changing diet to strictly vegetarian, even leaving the family and practically becoming a monk requires strong determination to throw away previous conceptions and in practice I didn't observe any discrimination due to nationality, race or previous status in this movement. You could criticise them for many things but not for racism.

I was living among many Hare Krishna devotees for several years and the cooperation and trust between them was phenomenal. I have never seen a better community since then. But sometimes we talked about our origins which country we are coming and what traditions we used to practice before. Devotees from Central Asia told me about their islamic practices like ramadan etc. Georgians made hachapuris, their national dish. Ukrainians however mostly told stories about Russians, how they were suffering under their rule (Holodomor), different jokes that put Russians into bad light etc. It didn't create any enmity though. The understanding was that it is all past and nationalistic designations no longer apply to devotees and it seemed they had all overcome this.

But these Hare Krishnas are practically monks. They are not like regular people who still hold these grudges. I could better judge how deep this resentment against Russians goes into Ukrainian psyche because as devotees they became more open, more willing to share these stories, to analyse and discard them as material contamination on their path to spiritual uplifting. But when I had to travel to Lviv, they warned me not to speak Russian on the street because I might get beaten by locals. I speak Russian but not Ukrainian, so it would be better for me to pretend not speaking Russian and use English instead. I spoke Russian anyway and didn't get beaten and they were nice, probably they sensed that I have an accent in Russian.

In short: anybody who thinks that you can ask Ukrainians (Zelensky is irrelevant, any other leader will be required to do the same or will be removed by another maidan) to make peace with Russia, should first show that he can make Palestinians to make peace with Israel. I mean why this is even a problem? Invite them to come to the White House, sign the peace treaty and they live in peace forever, right? Build a high wall between both countries to avoid unintended incursions and everybody is happy. Where is the problem?

You do know that the Holodomor wasn't something the Russians did to the Ukrainians in particular, don't you?

And it wasn't something that specifically Russians did. Collectivization which caused the famine was a communist project mostly supported by local communists. Documents related to Holodomor were in part written in Ukrainian by Ukrainians.

Also, all of this affected every grain producing region of the USSR, not just Soviet Ukraine, with not the Ukrainians but the Kazakhs suffering the highest per capita losses (technically within the borders of Soviet Russia at that time, as Kazakhstan wasn't a Soviet republic yet).

I think you are trying to troll the discussion.

  • no deeper insights
  • not even relevant to what I was trying to say

I ask you to avoid remarks like this.

Someone, somewhere convinced the Ukrainians with outside help that the Holodomor was an intentional Russian genocidal policy. It's 100% relevant to your argument.

First, Ukrainians, at least, the ones I spoke with mostly don't think it was intentional. Just a bad policy for which they blame Russians.

Second, it is not relevant. My argument is to show what Ukrainians feel and not if their feelings are morally justified.

Third, you are trying to be inflammatory. I refuse to discuss like that. I like motte. I can find really good information here, good gems. But please, avoid biting like that with lazy remarks.

I think it would apply if Americans were in the same situation— under the guns of a power that we could not hope to win against, and slowly grinding away at the population while destroying infrastructure and the economy. If aliens land, the smart move is to surrender simply because the other choice is the destruction of everything you care about.

Historically this did happen to Americans (in the Civil War) and they surrendered rather than be ground down or begin systematic partisan warfare.

And they came to regret it. As did the indians.

Sometimes, dying with dignity really is the best option.

The Hungarian leftist opposition, for one thing, agrees with you completely. On the other hand, they also parrot with absolute certainty the talking points that

  1. Hungary should never have entered WW2 in the first place as she had no good reason to get involved in a war between great powers who never cared about her, and should have surrendered for her own good at the first chance

  2. following a foreign policy after WW1 aimed at regaining the two thirds of her territory which she was forced by the Entente Powers to surrender was a grave mistake

For this reason, this argument rings utterly hollow to me.

They must make peace with their Russian brothers, we must never surrender to woke degenerates or something.

I guess 'or something' would include 'not see the woke in the same light as an invading military force literally shooting people in the street, obviously, why would we?'

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