Comment by jwtadvice | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jwtadvice | Hacker News Reader

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It's a knee-jerk reaction to totalitarian domestic propaganda.

Has a tendency to breed confused, alarmist, emotional and untechnical conversation.

Here's the truth: Russia isn't evil. Neither is the United States. But they are enemies. The people are getting caught in a propaganda war, which has shifted conversation from the venue of technical to ideological. (Propaganda, in practice, breeds ideological self-affirming thinking.)

The breakdown of conversation isn't the fault of the "traitors who support the evil Russians" or the fault of the "domestic saboteurs who support the US mass propaganda apparatus" but the fact that the two countries can't get their shit straight and work toward a post-Cold War without throwing acid at each other.

(I'm rewriting the last sentence of this over and over because I realize its going to attract ever-yet more comments of the form "but Russia's evil and they started it and you can't really compare the US and Russia - can you?". Screw it.)

I'm surprised how often people are starting to carelessly refer to Russia as "enemy". I think "adversary" is a more accurate term, on the same level as China.

The governments of both sides say they want cooperation but are are annoyed at each other's behavior and actions. However I don't think the people of either country treat the other as "enemy", like they did during the cold war. Back then each side was afraid that the other one may attack them preemptively out of ideological reasons.

Russia by itself is merely a western rival which could normally be worked with by sane western governments.

But Putin is a hostile who's popularity, having ruined the economy, depends on endless conflict and so will never be appeased. Even the extremely pro Putin White House is repeatedly embarrassed by the one sided-ness of the relationship.

But that's a side issue here. If one wanted to save a free discussion site from de-facto censorship and vandalism by totalitarian shills, one would need to apply the ban-hammer with ruthless zeal. Possibly viewing threads like this one as a honeypot to locate them.

One would not, for example, cater to that censorship by penalizing news of cyber attacks off the front page. Which, among other things, eliminates discussion of mitigation strategies.

You are completely right. Adversary is the correct term.

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