I genuinely believe HN is being inflitrated by Russian bots left and right(or, alternatively, that people who live far far away from the conflict somehow feel compelled to voice their opinion).
My family is housing multiple Ukrainian families of refugees - the stories of their close ones, their towns and homes being blown to pieces by Russians, of having to search for your dead relatives on empty streets, of mourning your children killed in the strikes - that's the reality. It's not about ideals or agreeing with or disagreeing with Russia.
>>Those who say "this is not my war" (me and millions and millions and millions of other Germans) should get the good, clean, warm gas from Russia.
I literally can't explain how angry your statement makes me. I think in the last century you'd happily support a certain German regime as long it made sure your house was warm in winter, right? After all, all you need to do is say "it's not my war" and suddenly any moral questions don't apply any more, right?
For instance, the majority of Polish citizens have not shown a single bit of decency towards refugees from Syria and Iraq - for decades. Almost no refugee was allowed in, and other were treated like subhumans.
Now there is a sudden sympathy for refugees - and we ALL know the true reason for it: They are white Christians.
If you'd listen to Syrians, they'd tell you the same horrible stories about war. But a good portion of Europe, especially the portion of Europe that suddenly has discovered its morality, did not listen. The hypocrisy of it all makes me angry - and I am not particularly interested in treating this war as any more - or any less - horrible than the last one.
We care more about things that happen closer to us than far away, and more about people we can relate better with than people we relate worse with.
There’s no point in being mad at people housing Ukrainians for not having housed Syrians.
And I actually agree with you. I'm absolutely abhorred by how Poland has treated refugees in the years prior to this. Even just in weeks prior, at the Belarussian border - it was an absolute shitshow and I hated my country for it.
But at the same time, I don't think this is helpful right now in any way.
If I had to explain it right now, I wouldn't say it's because Ukrainians are white christians - I think(and this is my personal opinion) that it's because we look at what's happening in Ukraine and we recognize all the awful shit that Russia did to us in the past. Forcing Russian history and language on us? Check. Kidnapping and moving citizens deeper into Russia for "integration"? Check.
I have equal amount of stories from my own family about suffering from the hands of Nazis as I do about suffering done by the Russians.
And then on top of that - that conflict is really close to home, while the Syrian one just.....wasn't. The Russian advance to the West through Ukraine strikes fear in the Baltic states like not many other things.
And don't get me wrong. We can have discussion about how many migrants from the whole world we can host in Europe. As someone with strong libertarian leanings I'm personally quite divided on it myself. But it's not up to Belarus to decide.
Also worth noting that, unlike Ukrainian refugees, the Syrian and Iraq refugees are the direct result of the war that Poland and other nations waged against Iraq, destabilizing the entire area and leaving it a war zone.
On the other hand, Ukraine is protecting us from Russia. Most men are not allowed to leave and are expected to fight if necessary. The last we can do is to provide them with weapons and take care of their families.
BTW - Poland participating in US wars is also due to fear of Russia. We need powerful ally or we will become refugees once more. In quite naive way we also saw US as a moral leader.
No, they are neighbors that speak a close language that share history and that are facing a common enemy. Nobody gives a flying shit about religion in that matter, what do you think, atheist Ukrainians are sent back to die from Russian artillery?
Well, at least deserves praise for the intensions which were good. It completely bungled the implementation and deserves all the criticism in the world for that.
That explanation does not make sense. We are talking about Europe, after all, where xenophobia routinely targets white European Christians, because their language / culture / nationality / brand of Christianity is different.
Ukrainian refugees receive different treatment, because they are fleeing a mutual enemy. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, or something like that. It's not a matter of right and wrong or some abstract principles but that of self-interest. People in East Europe generally consider the current Russian regime a threat, and they are willing to help those facing the threat.
Or, to give a more recent example, consider the discrimination East Europeans faced after their countries joined the EU and many of them immigrated to the West.
Europe is not the US. People from other European countries (and from many traditional minorities in the same country) are obviously different as soon as they start speaking. Many Europeans live outside their home country and most visit other European countries once in a while. There is a huge number of encounters between Europeans from various cultural backgrounds every day, and sometimes your background marks you as a member of an outgroup. And nobody is really excluded from that.
So yes, I actually agree with that statement - in Europe white christians will be primary recipients of xenophobia, but it's neither because they are white nor because they are christian.
This is ruscism -- a revisionistic, psychopatic, hateful, denenerate, cleptocratic, idiotic, savage, uneducated fascist state.
These people have been brought so low, that the only thing left for them is to destroy everything that is not "rusian" as a last ditch cogntive action before complete implosion. The only thing keeping the russian society from imploding is the ability of Russia to brutalize others. When Russia loses this ability, all hell will break loose in Russia because all those destructive forces will turn inwards.
It is like a completely canibalistic society -- when they'll run out of outsiders to tear apart, they will tear themsevels apart.
At least in the USSR times, there were straight thinking elites, because the Party made the "mistake" of more or less letting those people be, because those did not have the ability to spread their ideas and organize.
The amount of well educated people that mostly support ruscism in Russia is staggering. This has never been the case in Russia, not during the czars, not communism.
“According to some more hostile foreign commentators, Russia is near enough an earthly Mordor, North Korea with balalaikas. However, walk the streets of Moscow, and you’d find yourself in a modern, dynamic and frankly fun European city. Even out in the provinces, where money is tighter and the new middle class are rather thinner on the ground, there is ample evidence of change. By this I don’t just mean coffee houses, Wi-Fi and branches of Marks & Spencer (thirty-six in Russia so far), but also real debate, investigative journalism and even civil society.”
They’re normal people, just like you.
I know a russian woman, very well off, well travelled, well educated.
She hates Putin but is 100% supporting the invasion of Ukraine.
With the invasion of Ukraine, Putin went to the core of ruscism that unfortunately is so prevalent in Russia.
The propaganda in the last two-some decades is just the latest stage of russian propaganda against Ukraine. It started centuries ago. The czars peddled it, the soviets peddled it, now the 'federation' peddles it. Le plus ca change.
Mostly because she thinks the jewish nazis were killing russians in Donbas, but that's the only thing she can articulate to someone from outside.
If I was to speculate, I'd think it's a lot more to do with a general attitude of russians that they are invincible in war and how much they've been brainwashed about WW2 about how heroic it was, how the other side was so evil and how they prevailed, that they now have a pavlovian/PTSD reaction to war -- they're in WW2 again, thus the war is just, thus Russia will prevail, thus those that kill the glorious russian soldiers are subhuman-nazi-scum-devils.
I'm sure she doesn't even realize how deeply she's affected by the propaganda.
So, state propaganda.
> If I was to speculate, I'd think it's a lot more to do with a general attitude of russians that they are invincible in war and how much they've been brainwashed about WW2 about how heroic it was, how the other side was so evil and how they prevailed, that they now have a pavlovian/PTSD reaction to war -- they're in WW2 again, thus the war is just, thus Russia will prevail, thus those that kill the glorious russian soldiers are subhuman-nazi-scum-devils.
My question before was somewhat rhetorical actually, but you managed to basically hit the nail on the head here. This is the exact attitude I encounter in many Russians of the previous generation. This is exactly how the older members of my family see it. Most of them have never had a chance to live anywhere outside of the sphere of influence of that propaganda. They have been marinading in it since the womb.
Honestly that's the better and reassuring option. The alternative is that HN has many soulless humans that can't be bothered to care about a genocide next door if that means they might be inconvenienced.
And the inevitable conclusion’s that HN was infiltrated by the Russians.
In the rush to identify and expose enemy propaganda you don’t even stop to think that the most dangerous propoaganda is the one from our own governments, which are steering us to an economic catastrophe after declaring economic war on their main energy supplier without first securing an alternative.
This framing by EU/US media and politicians is so shockingly efficient that most people on the internet at least can’t even concieve of anything else than full support, more money and more weapons for Ukraine and more sanctiona against Russia.
Winter will be very interesting indeed. We may get to see what happens when the EU moral superpower collides with the amoral reality.
I think that’s called a “free market”. Also one of the ideals that parent poster mentions.
I don’t think Gasprom, to my knowledge, is breaking any legal contractual obligations.
It is us (the "rule based" loving West) who did not open Nord Stream 2 although it was finished. The pipeline is filled with 200bar right now and it is us who are ignoring all contracts. We are going that far that we expropriate Russian companies and seizing their assets. Sorry, I see populism there, not the rule based bs that the propaganda is telling me.
No, my friend. I do not support the Western war against Russia. Perhaps Russia has started the war against Ukraine, but it was us who entered the war against Russia.
And we should be thankful that they still deliver!
This shit move "pUtIn HiTlEr.. we get your gas, but we pay only in Euros, but you cannot use the Euros xDDDDDDDD demoncrency wins" was so much trash.. we should be thankful that we can any cubic meter right now.