How Ukraine is winning the social media war
bbc.com
bbc.com
To me, the real answer is that the Western establishments have been fighting a proxy conflict against Russia for years, Western Media got their marching orders about what side to tell people to support, and a public that was bored with Season 2 of Covid seamlessly adopted The Next Current Thing they were told to support without skipping a beat.
Aggression is very much narrative based. There are very few conflicts in real life that didnt involve an extremely long chain of provocations and counter provocations with each side playing down their own provocations and playing up the other's. In this sense nobody is 'truly' an aggressor when they tell their own story.
In the case of America's unbridled aggression against Afghanistan there was 90% public support & 55% in iraq so apparently sometimes the look of unbridled aggression is good. I dont know why we'd expect the Russian public to be full of hippy peaceniks when our aggressive imperialism can enjoy such widespread support.
Western media might not be state controlled but it is all essentially controlled by a very limited number set of oligarchic power centers vying for power. The net effect is pretty similar. The example given here, is, in any case state controlled - the BBC is essentially little more than a western RT since david kelly.
To characterize the US invasion of Afghanistan as “unbridled aggression” is a gross misrepresentation to the point of being a sign of unreasonable partisanship at the very least. The reason it had 90% public support as well as participation from NATO and other US allies is because there was proof that Afghanistan was a state sponsor of the 9/11 attacks on US soil. A military response was warranted which precludes “unbridled aggression” as a description by any good faith commentary. Criticism of the strategy of occupation and regime change as containing aspects of aggression, that is definitely reasonable.
Americans are not typically aware of it (this is relevant to what I said about our provocations being downplayed), but the Taliban offered to hand UBL over if we supplied evidence of his guilt and put him on trial in a neutral country.
Meanwhile, if you take your righteous indignation about what I said about Afghanistan you will have a template of a rough idea of how the average Russian feels about Ukraine. Were you born in Russia your views would probably align.
Officially, you are right.
Sending me the definition of propaganda seems to indicate you think I don't know what propaganda is, I find this assumption very audacious on HN.
It is not.
It is a link to a Wikipedia article summarizing Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model. If you are genuinely curious why people argue that US mass media is state controlled, you would be hard pressed to find a better starting point than that page. You are not genuinely curious though, so feel free to move on.
You are right, I had already forgotten what the link was about. It's a Wikipedia article unrelated to my question. Unless you can demonstrate how this article demonstrate that media are state controlled in the "western world". Also please feel free to define "western world", this might actually be interesting as I might then be able to find a country not on your list and hence a media not state controlled, according to your theory.
They didn't deport them all. They didn't arrest them all. They didn't prohibit those outlets operating in the US. They restricted their access to official government sources (executive branch only, so far as I have seen).
Well, if you want the truth about what's going on, a presidential press conference might not be the most trustworthy source anyway...
The whole purpose of NATO is being anti Russia and we've been expanding it despite our initial promises toward Russia.
It's a basic tactic of "keep kicking the dog until it finally bites you, which is a perfect excuse to shoot it dead".
But a typical western msm watcher is too distracted and dumb to notice as it is being used over and over again in different situations.
I missed the point when Ukraine was inducted into NATO, making the Russian invasion completely valid and understandable. Ok, that’s sarcastic, but it makes my point that the Russian reasoning for this war was simply never going to fly, even if western media presents them exactly as Russian media does, they are still going to sound distasteful.
Have to disagree. Western media and big tech have been very willing to control information flow to suit the desires of politicians if they are from the right political party. Considering how effective internet companies are at blocking things, I suspect that low-effort information searches online are more censored for Americans than they are for Russians.
Who knew that when the Russians actually start attacking the west, some of the people who prided themselves in fighting communism are suddenly doing their best to undermine anyone who opposes Russia.
If you want to talk about stereotypical priorities, you have about 90% of HackerNews in a constant state of panic about the existential threat of the planet maybe getting a couple of degrees warmer over a century but seem to reject nothing but escalation into full nuclear war. How good is nuclear war for the environment?
Or, it's just pro-russia talk masqueraded as "peace talk".
This is one of the most pointless and unnecessary war, fully instigated by a dying imperial power. They are very good at propaganda and sowing dissension in western countries who are very vulnerable to it due to their openness. This particular war just exposed what a sand castle the whole thing is, looks like Putin just believed his own propaganda too much.
Agree with dying imperial power. But the war was not "pointless". Putin saw an opening. The way out of "dying imperial power" was to reconstitute the former Russian Empire (temporarily known under the name of Soviet Union). Bismark made Germany great by conquest. Germany fought 3 wars during his time (vs Austria, Denmark and France) and won all of them. All of them were instigated by Bismark, none was a defensive war. After these 3 wars, Germany was more than double in population.
If Putin could have conquered Ukraine in a matter of days/weeks, then all the other former Soviet republics would have folded in a matter of a few short years, and with this Russia would have doubled its population.
Putin's big blunder was to not know how inept (and corrupt) his own military was. All the talk about NATO aggression was just a pretext. He was simply hoping to quickly finish the job and present the West a new "fait accompli", just like what he did with Crimea.
We are actually very lucky that Putin let corruption fester inside his military.
- The first of the three wars was a reaction against Denmarkʼs attempt at annexing Schleswig. Prussia and Austria won the war on behalf of the so-called “Deutscher Bund” ‘German Federation’, a rather loose federation of states. It actually was a defensive war: against an on-going forced annexation.
- The second war was Prussia against Austria – not Germany against Austria; in fact, the majority of the German Federation was on Austriaʼs side, which lost the war.
- The third war was declared and started by the French emperor (after a public outcry in France over an alleged insult by the Prussian king, it was a ridiculous matter) with the objective to annex more of the German regions to the left of the Rhine. So it certainly was a defensive one.
This is often misunderstood because the wars were of use to Bismarckʼs policy. But he was not able to telepathically force the Danish king or the French emperor to their aggressive policies. He just had an uncanny ability to foresee peopleʼs actions, especially their stupid ones, and to align his policy with what he had foreseen. And of course it was necessary that the wars then were won, which was mainly Moltkeʼs work as far as the mere military matters were concerned. But the victories, especially in the first and third war, depended also on allies and benevolently neutral parties Bismarck won for his side.
So the lesson here would be: Donʼt start a war, you have to wait until you can credibly claim to be attacked; wage war from the position of the defender.
(Besides: “After these 3 wars, Germany was more than double in population” doesnʼt make sense: Before the war, the Germany that was after the war didnʼt exist in the first place; and the Germany after the war was rather “little–Germany”: the realization of the “kleindeutsche Lösung” ‘little-German solution’ because Austria was out.)
No, not really. The real lesson is: Win the wars that you start. Bismark did that, Putin is not able to. That's Putin's big mistake.
Before WW1 the calculus of war was quite simple:
- Austria was on the decline. It was threatened by both Germany and Russia. They chose to ally themselves with Germany which they perceived as the lesser of the two dangers
- Russia was growing. They were threatened by Germany. They allied themselves with France and later the UK in the Triple Entante.
- France was declining. Germany was their natural enemy, not amount of diplomacy could change that. On top of that, they still felt the sting of the 1872 defeat.
- Germany was growing. They were on the verge of becoming hegemon. They knew that France and Russia would like to attack it from both sides. They perceived that if they attack first, they stand a better chance to get a better deal in the end
- UK was slightly on the decline. They used to be the undisputed hegemon of the seas, but now the new German High Sea Fleet was becoming a real nuisance. If Germany were to win the continental wars (like Napoleon 100 years earlier), they were going to be in big trouble. It did not take them long to figure out on which side they should fight (despite all the royal family connections).
- the Ottoman empire. They were not a great power anymore. Still, if they perceived a threat, it was mostly from the Russian empire, which had had for about three hundred years the nasty habit to keep chomping at their territories
To be clear: I agree with your main point regarding the present war; I just think that specifically the “Einigungskriege” are not a good analogy, that they are quite unlike Putinʼs war, even before the question of defeat or victory comes into play.
You have shifted the focus to WW1, and I think your analysis of the power relations before WW1 is completely convincing (given the usual allowances due to brevity). (Nitpick: 1872 → 1871)
Not really because they care about urkriane, but are worried where Putin will invade next after this?
He has already mentioned Moldavia, Poland and parts of Sweden belong to him. What did you expect?