Skiluros

I appreciate the time you’ve taken to reply and your good faith approach even though we greatly disagree.

Everything I’ve referenced concerns russia, in my OP I mentioned that I have minimal first hand life experience with Israel/Palestine (never lived there, don’t speak local languages) and that makes me a bit more cautious beyond condemning Israel’s immense attrocities against the Palestinians and the low-life, stupid behaviour of Hamas.

You mention labels and human psychology. But what you see as mere labels has enormous real world impact. Would it be wrong to say UK’s society outlook on colonialism has evolved between 1890 and the present day; that in 1890 it was a hardcore imperialist society and this is not true today. Using your manners of thinking, UK was never an imperialist/colonialist society - which is clearly actually false.

For people to make choices, they have to have incentives. If we allow them to identify with only the “good” things in a given culture (hypothetically russian literature) and state that the bad things (genocidal imperialism) are someone else’s fault, you are only incentivizing their worse possible instincts.

The existence of russians opposed to the current regime in of itself is not a silver bullet. Much of the opposition actually supported the annexation of Crimea. Near universal support for imperialism (and very strong support for genocidal imeprilaisn) is a cultural problem with russia, one that individuals need to change.

They are not going to change if you always (in any and all cases) view such issues as “a mere box”. Try speaking Ukrainian in the occupied territories, you won’t think this is a mere box or label.

And you definitely won’t think it is just some individuals who are abusing you and they have nothing to do with prevailing attitudes in russian society.

Imagine if your friend felt a connection to the Austro-Hungarian empire. Are you saying you wouldn’t see an issue with that considering the nature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (dominance of independent nations by an emiperial family)? “It’s no big deal! He just has good associations with a monarchic empire.”

Now people reflexively refuse to take a critical look at the nature of russia. Some of it is fear of admitting to be on the wrong side of history (no one wants to be seen as an enabler of brutal imperialism). Some of it is ignorance (Have you ever heard of the Komi republic within russia? Do you know how their language is treated and what the dynamics are for Komi language knowledge ? What do you think the result will be of asking a local court to hold proceedings in the Komi language). Some of it is greed, not only among politicians, regular people too (see the lack of real reactions to the occupation of Moldova, genocide in Chechnya, invasion of Georgia, annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas).

The 15% are very much responsible for supporting, enabling and legitimising russian genocidal imperialism. Note that the survey results refer to Ukraine. The situation with Chechnya is far worse with many “good russians” openly saying that Ukraine and Chechnya are not comparable and they are in the right for genociding the Chechens (for “opposition minded russians” it is strange that they believe russian gov data that denied that 5% or the civilian population was killed in Chechnya).

Of course I take offense with your approach. On a practical level (outcomes, not necessarily your intentions), you are giving them go ahead for more russian attrocities.

But the real irony is that your approach is actually harming the russians. They are not going to change if you keep white-washing their support imperialism and treating them like children who are incapable of taking responsibility for their actions.

What exactly didn’t I think through? You came up with a pretty convoluted example about 85 murderers that was honestly didn’t communicate your point very well.

The baby example is better, it’s much clearer and more impactful than the analogy with 85 murderers and some other people in a room.

But my question to you is; beyond the emotional component of bringing a toddler into the discussion, what is your argument here?

Are you saying that because I believe that russian society as whole (due to decades of research and well, historical facts in the last ~30 years) is responsible for the genocidal imperialism of their country I also think that we should be running polls to prove that a strong majority of russian toddlers support the invasion of Ukraine? The toddler discussion is a red herring and you know it.

The end result of your toddler polemic is that the existence of toddlers in russia means that russians society should never reflect on the choices they make, they should not (and cannot) take responsibility for their actions and in all cases they are absolved of any support for their genocidal actions, all because russian toddlers exist.

You are not doing the russians (including russian toddlers) any favours by playing along with their victimhood narratives and giving cover for their worst instincts. They invade a region of the country, start mass summary execution of civilians in occupied territories, using castration as a routine form of torture of POWs, siege multiple cities to dust, keep 10 of thousands of civilians in concentration camps, steal hundreds of thousands of children - and then comes and CarbonIceDragon and says:

“No, this is all just a coincidence or bad luck. This has nothing to do with russian society. 85% of the population (even with adjustments for preference falsification) supporting the annexation of Crimea (across half a decade of polling) is irrelevant and should be ignored.”

Do you think this sort of attitude is beneficial for the future well being of your russian toddler? Be honest.

You bring up “dehumanization”. Are you sure I am the one who is engaging dehumanization?

The reason I ask is that to me you are engaging in infantilization of russian society. I am showing them a measure of respect by recognizing that they hold responsibility for their actions and they are not a nation of 150 million toddlers. I am saying they have agency and choice and they can handle people evaluating their behaviour.

It goes both ways. Having no connection/knowledge to a region is the slam dunk of impartiality that you think it is.

No, I disagree. You may think you are approaching this from a humanistic point of view, but your analogy clearly shows that you haven’t thought this through.

A more correct form of your analogy would be to recognize that while 15 people in the room may not publicly condone murder, all their actions (such as paying taxes to support the other 85 murderers, promoting the legitimacy of the 85 murderers and their ideology) results in enabling the actions of the murderers.

This sort of sophomoric, faux-“humanistic” thinking is extremely common among those who are lucky enough to not have been on the recieving end of a genocidal society.

I had to listen to such (polite) arguments for 8 years (between 2014 and 2022) from close foreign friends (not randoms, they’ve lived in russia/Ukraine and speak local languages, so they have real world experience beyond abstract 100 murderers in a room thought experiments).

Of course after the full scale invasion, they gained a new appreciation for my arguements and worldview.

This is not true.

When a sufficiently large part of a society goes along with mass high crimes such as genocide it is reasonable to collectively blame the whole of society.

I can’t speak for Israel, but if you look at say russia, a strong majority (at the very least) are openly committed to genocidal imperialism and an overwhelming majority (~84%) are openly supportive of imperialism.

People come up with lazy arguments such as “they are all afraid!!!”, when preference falsification can be measured and it’s not a good result for the russians. A small minority falsify their preferences with respect to open support for genocide, but when it comes to imperialism (e.g. annexation if Crimea) preference falsification is literally at 1% or so for a totally adjustment from 85% to 84%.

I honestly don’t know much about Israeli public opinion research, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find damning results.

I am not going make any predictions, but with the expansion of anti-regime protests, it seems that the situation is entering a new phase.

As the old saying goes, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

While I agree that American security forces tend to have what I call “wannabe cowboy syndrome” (I have firsthand experiences when I was living and travelling to the US), I would also consider more base human reactions with respect to the attitude of the security services.

No one wants to be the one forced to do the dirty work and take the bulk of the risk. This is human nature. And at some point US security forces might question whether they want to take the heat for some oligarchs and other senior criminals.

I would also question the willingness of the US pro-oligarch plebs to actually engage in “war”. There is a lot of crazies (especially with the militia LARP that’s popular in the US), but the average pro-corruption American arguably has a very low tolerance for challenges. It’s one thing to talk big and another thing to well actually put your life on the line (engaging in “war” also means there is a solid chance you get hit).

Just some thoughts from someone who has loved in both the US and Ukraine (this were I currently live too).

For me, as a Ukrainian, it’s surreal to read about this sort of news in the US.

I will note that Maidan protest against Yanukovich, the traitor and russian agent, accelerated in February 2014 (they had been going on since 2013) when Yanukovich tried to criminalise protest including specifically targeting covering your face.

At any rate, I have a feeling the situation in the US is entering a make or break phase. Good luck and courage to all sane Americans.