Our prophet

Not me collecting these like power-ups

👋

So if the Kremlin says something that makes it false by definition?

Have you considered that russia isn’t a hero saviour?

Yes definitely. As I implied in my previous comment, I was previously all-in on the Ukrainian side, checking ISW map every day, donating money etc. I don’t believe I changed my view until the last year or so.

You want me to question that residential schools are bad? You want me to question that the us’s actions in Iraq, and Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc are bad?

Uhhh…no, I didn’t say anything about any of those. I was being imprecise for rhetorical effect but if we need to get specific what I believe you should question are beliefs such as:

• Western countries are actually and effectively democracies controlled by the people’s will
• Western intelligence agencies are a trustworthy source of information and policy recommendations in the national interest
• The corporate broadcast media is free and independent and will pursue and report the truth OR that you can consume such media and not be swayed by its propaganda
• Ukrainian history started in 2022 and we need not consider anything before that
• If the Russians say it, therefore it is misinformation / false. If the Western Leaders say it, it is Truth in Defense of Freedom etc.

The invasion is not unprovoked. We have surely dispensed with that propaganda narrative by this point in the conversation right?

You have mentioned “atrocities” numerous times. If we don’t trust the media, then it’s a natural step to not trust their reporting on these atrocities as well correct? Most of this will have to wait for the inevitable tribunal but are you at least willing to put all the reporting about “Russian attacks against civilians” in the “suspect” bucket based on the source?

Sure, this isn’t my first war.

If you really believe what you’re saying, why won’t you address any of my questions head on? Why do you keep retreating to talking points and hyperbole? Have you honestly considered the possibility that the West and Ukraine actually are the villains the Russians have been saying they are all along?

I believe that you are smart enough to potentially break through the narratives and see the world anew - but you have to take the fearful plunge of being willing to fundamentally question everything everyone has ever told you.

Whose side do you think I was on in 2022? The answer might surprise you

PS:

Their actions

Please provide an example of “Russian Expansionism” that was not proceeded by a persecution of Russian speakers by a Western-backed radical right-wing government OR Western attempts to regime change a Russian ally. Ukraine has BOTH

Russia has ambitions to get the gang back together, regardless of what people want.

Says who? The same people who are hoping to profit from an endless war with Russia?

Are you literally advocating for russias colonial ambitions? Justifying their aggression towards neighboours who weren’t doing anything to russia?

No to both questions on so many levels.

This simply isn’t a colonial enterprise, that doesn’t even fit. The traditional argument is that Russia is acting imperialist/expansionist which I also reject. Russia has laid out their red lines very clearly. The West deliberately antagonizing and provoking Russia by loudly crossing their lines then acting surprised when the Russians enforce them is the height of stupidity and foolishness.

who weren’t doing anything to russia

The “nothing” in question:

• LITERALLY DEIFYING NOTORIOUS NAZI STEPAN BANDERA
• trying to join a hostile military alliance
• overthrowing the unity government in the Maidan coup
• complete Western takeover of Ukrainian military and intelligence aperatus
• Banderite military campaign in the Donbass against civilians
• sanctions and dirty war tactics against Russian energy

I don’t have a dog in that fight. Some people care a lot about ethnic makeup and assimilation but that’s not what I’m talking about at all.

I’m talking about the European institutions that they built up for themselves over decades literally self-destructing and taking down other parts of other institutions with them.

For instance, despite the evident failure of the 20 sanctions packages to cripple Russia’s economy, the people who were hurt the most were the Europeans themselves. They now pay some of the highest energy prices in the world, when previously they had some of the lowest when they had access to cheap pipeline oil and natural gas from Russia. This is destroying their industrial competitiveness. As a stark example, Volkswagen has stopped production at their main plant for the first time ever.

As another example: Despite how absolutely essential trust is when building and maintaining a reserve currency, the Europeans are mortgaging decades of credibility by trying to seize the Russian assets. If they ever do do this, we can predict with extreme confidence a nosedive in the forex value of the euro and a corresponding and consequent spike in the yields on all their sovereign debt. Even the willingness to consider and debate such a step has probably already damaged their credibility beyond repair with foreign investors

Many other examples available if you’re still unconvinced.

That’s what I mean by Continental Suicide. The much lauded European Project is eating its own tail, and because it is so awash and propaganda, almost everyone is blind to it

There is no absolutes. There is always something that can be done. There will likely be clandestine terrorist attacks against Russia if they continue to occupy Ukraine, they will be jailed, lose their language and culture.

Are you literally advocating for a continuation of the war at all costs, even the total failure of the Ukrainian state and the complete breakdown of the Ukrainian military? How do you think the Russians will feel about that outcome? Is that a better outcome in your view than a weakened and landlocked Ukraine that still has a government and has an uneasy peace with the Russians so they can start to rebuild?

Also, I chose my words carefully. By achieve their war aims, I mean the 1995 borders, NATO membership and/or security guarantees, and reparations from Russia. None of those are ever going to happen. There’s literally no possibility in any conceivable reality. The difference in military power at this point in the war is just that lopsided.

On the flip side. Should russia be allowed to annex whoever they want, whenever they want?

That’s just a silly absolute that no one believes or is advocating for. If you want to know what the Russians will do next, then you simply have to examine THEIR Great Power security interests. The Russians have said for almost 20 years that Western military involvement in Ukraine is absolutely unacceptable to them. It is plain to see now that the West should have listened.

I don’t think the arguments you are making would be considered Realist, but I don’t really want to split hairs about that.

Putting aside for a second the high-minded talk of sovereignty and aggression, if you believed that there is literally NOTHING the Ukrainians could do to achieve their war aims at this point would you still advocate a continuation of the war?

Both the Ukrainians and the Russians have plainly said for some time that the manpower differential between the belligerents only grows everyday. There are literally no more weapons for the West to send, and the factories to build their replacements were mothballed two decades ago. It is also plain to see on any map of the war that the Russians have sidestepped, undermined and/or captured every major Ukrainian defensive line on the front, often in multiple places at once.

Do you think Ukraine’s sovereignty will be best defended by a catastrophic collapse of the state and military? That’s where this is headed

So then I think we are agreeing that naturally there are at least two major disjoint information ecosystems (Western and Russian) surrounding this war.

The people who I have been most interested in for the past several months are those within the Western media ecosystem, but from the “realist” school of geopolitics.

All the realists in the West have a strong consensus about the decisive Russian victory that is building on the battlefield. I trust these realists so very much more than the corporate media because not only are their arguments much more sensible and better founded, but everyday they are risking severe consequences for speaking out against the “Good War”.

In fact, the EU has already started handing out extrajudicial sanctions against its own citizens for speaking out against the war. One sanctioned, you cannot fly, access your bank account, leave the country, work OR appeal your sanction in any way. Only the Realists are talking about this so I doubt anyone in the West who doesn’t listen to them has heard about it.

An interested party could watch this video of two European academic Realists (ostensibly both Liberals) discussing the sanctions and mourning the death of European democracy.

Well, in my experience many in the West believe it is essentially impossible for their native media to ever be propaganda, which blinds them to its deceptions.

If by contrast, you hold the view that ALL media slavishly serves SOME master we need not discuss it further.

What media is NOT propaganda in your view?

Is European space

Continental suicide from political capture, propaganda, and an inability to adapt

Bans anyone who speaks against it

Ok euros, be free to destroy yourselves 👍

P.S.: Feel free to point out the obvious factual errors in my comments that I am sure you have identified and are just itching to share with the class

Do you mean to tell me all these bitter complaints about “Russian Bots” were disingenuous and hypocritical all along? I am SHOCKED

How do you suppose it was that I went from being a Liberal to an ML?

When faced with a clash of worldviews like this do you ever stop and ask yourself if you are in fact the incorrect one?

Sure lots of things happened, none of them started a war. When putler invaded Crimea he started the war.

Ahh, I see, history actually starts after the Maidan coup but before the bloodless annexation of Crimea. Ever wonder why it was so easy for the Russians to take the peninsula?

3 day military operation

The Russians never said 3 days.

Ukraine being Tiny compared to the russia?

Indeed. Imagine if the Russians had conducted a full mobilization and all-out war instead of this SMO.

The money is there, the manufacturing is there.

When your own European leaders came out and said the Russians were outproducing all of the West in artillery shells three-to-one did you just simply not believe them? Did you think it was limited to artillery shells?

The Ukraine heros are there.

When every single person from the US puppetmasters down to the Ukrainian NCOs on the ground has been speaking for years about Ukraine’s crippling infantry shortage, did you simply not believe them either?

Does mean putler isn’t a fascist colonizer…

You know why don’t we get a few decades away from Europe being a neocolonial power (clock still hasn’t started) and then they can start pointing fingers.

thankfully no one thinks that.

Really is that so? It seems like that is the exact narrative you were reading from mentally as you wrote this comment.

Keep excusing putlers and the russias genocidal cleansing ambitions.

Projection. If the Ukrainians had simply agreed to protect Russian speakers and the Orthodox Church in 2014 they could have kept Donbass AND Crimea. But the Banderites and the West had to have it all so they gambled with the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and now they are LOSING.

Ukraine strikes the russian infrastructure, the russians strike schools and hospitals, much like another fascist genocider, bibi and Israel.

Projection again. The Banderites are the ones who have been continuously bombarding Russian-controlled civilian territory since the 2014 coup

Fair standard, message sent. Very excited about what could come out of this.

I’d support a network-wide retirement of the “misinformation” ban reason but I’ve never been on the other side of the modlog so perhaps I’m missing something important