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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   33129 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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I’m sorry, but the discourse about Russia I’ve seen both online and IRL since the very early days of the war (and even some before the invasion began) has gone far past “supporting Ukraine for utilitarian reasons.” I frequent several subreddits dedicated to architecture and classical music, and any time a Russian building is posted — even if it was built hundreds of years before this war — or any time there’s discussion of the great Russian composers, there’s a very loud contingent of people either saying that Russia has no great culture, or else expressing disgust that anyone would post anything that paints any aspect of Russia in a good light.

Speaking of classical music, a year and a half ago I attended the San Diego Symphony’s annual Tchaikovsky Spectacular, which always concludes with the 1812 Overture. When I arrived, I was handed a program with an insert informing me that the orchestra had decided — and not informed its patrons until we arrived at the venue — to omit the 1812 Overture and to perform a music lesser-known (and inferior, although still good) piece by Tchaikovsky because “we feel that it is inappropriate to perform a piece of music that glorifies a Russian military victory, while there are Ukrainians dying every day defending their country from this indefensible invasion.” What the fuck does Tchaikovsky have to do with Putin’s invasion? The overture in question was written to celebrate Russia’s army repelling an invading army! It honors a battle that took place two centuries ago!

What, other than a jingoistic, atavistic, propagandistic hatred of Russia would motivate a decision like this? It’s disconnected from reality and causality. It doesn’t even attempt to provide a consequentialist or utilitarian reason why we have to disfavor aspects of historical Russian culture which were nigh-universally beloved before the current war began? It’s very clear that places like Reddit have decided that since the current fifth-generation warfare paradigm involves psyops, propaganda, and control of social-media messaging, it’s imperative to impose a blanket policy of negativity toward anything Russian or Russia-adjacent in order to aid (in whatever way possible, even if it has no basis in reality) Ukrainian morale and international standing. This goes way beyond just wanting to punish and degrade Russia’s military.

About a year ago I had to take Boney M's excellent Moskau off my playlist after a guy started shouting about Russia and how disgusting it was to support them.

It's a two-way minute hate.

Wait… “Moskau” is by Dschinghis Khan. “Rasputin” is by Boney M. Fake fan!!!

No! My precious seventies music cred! Oh what a woe!

I frequent several subreddits dedicated to architecture and classical music, and any time a Russian building is posted — even if it was built hundreds of years before this war — or any time there’s discussion of the great Russian composers, there’s a very loud contingent of people either saying that Russia has no great culture, or else expressing disgust that anyone would post anything that paints any aspect of Russia in a good light.

Show me post within the last month that fits this description.

Here’s one from less than two weeks ago, although at less now there are people pushing back on it, in a way that they wouldn’t have a year ago.

Yeah, it's basically what I expected: astroturfed post in which every heavily upvoted comment is pushing back against it and the original poster downvoted in every one of their comments. Of course there are Russia haters in these ostensibly non-political subreddits, but they're a minority, which is the opposite of what your comment implied.

I said that there is a very loud contingent, not that they represent a majority. (And to be clear, they were much louder and more active a year ago than they are now.)

Your link is broken.

That's a nooreddit link. Remove the "old." part, which may have been automatically added by the site the same way it used to auto-convert Twitter to nitter.

/images/17415759880784261.webp

It works fine for me…

I cannot get the link to work. I'm expecting something formatted like

https://old.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/comments/1j7iko2/old_louisville_kentucky_a_leafy_1870s/

I'm seeing

https://old.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/s/2Ax2KXHCWr

which takes me to a submission page. Guessing that the "s" is for submission, I hand edit the "s" to "comments"

https://old.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/comments/2Ax2KXHCWr

but that just gets me "PAGE NOT FOUND"

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