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Comment by scared333 | Hacker News Reader

I guess russian leadership failed to consider this when they started their illegal imperial war to annex Ukraine. People of russia are almost irreversibly becoming the new 'nazis' of whose attrocities the kids will learn at school and of whom they will learn to despise for the rest of of their lives (while the earlier ones will be just another chapter in the history books that is read with the same enthusiasm that most study geopolitics behind WW1 currently).

This is not to suggest that the attrocities (at this point anyway) would be comparable, but that history is moving ahead.

Sorry about political angle, but due to my circumstances, I am very angry of what is happening, and I think these things cannot be repeated too many times.

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What Russia is doing is horrible. War crimes and all. However I wouldn’t go so far as call them nazis, think it dampens that metaphor when it’s over used.

Russia feels NATO expansion is too close to their doorstep, he warned many times and this is the outcome.

Obviously not condoning it, and it’s many millions of lives displaced and tens of thousands lost. Generations will be effected.

Russia using the excuse of nazis in Ukraine, and the need to free the Ukrainian people is a tall tail. Though there is a small amount of truth, of actual nazis existing in some of the armed forces of Ukraine [0]. But by no means justifies what’s been done.

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ukraine-has-nazi-probl...

Oh, I see, the ones you call actual nazis, that would be the far-right hooligans with some tattoos or whatever that every single country in the world has? And the ones you wouldn't go as far as calling them nazis, that would be the completely innocent and harmless Russian dudes, invariably sent into Ukraine unawares, thinking it was just some military drills, or liberating people from evil banderites, or both at the same times apparently, the same completely harmless Russian dudes whose only teeny tiny little fault is that they for some reason can't help but commit genocide and other war crimes on a scale unseen in almost 80 years? Did I get that right?

> People of russia are almost irreversibly becoming the new 'nazis'

Is this really "new"? It's like you never heard about Stalinism, or even earlier: Leninism. Starting from 1920 war Bolsheviks tried to invade Poland; they starved millions in Ukraine in holodomor ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor ), they backstabbed Poland in 1939 only to "free" it, just like they "freed" rest of Eastern Europe. Later they crushed the Czech uprising in 1956 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring )...

Not to mention millions who died in gulags.

It's like history 101. High school level stuff. You really never heard about it earlier?

The cycle is described in the old cartoon: https://twitter.com/theeconomist/status/447387748748759040

I haven't been completely unaware of those and other things. But vast majority of my history classes and bringing up focused on nazi germany being the sole responsible for everything WW2 and how we beat them. And then soviets being the commies and the enemy of the free world. And then the wall came down and everything was swell again.

So yes, I have been ignorant. Of which I am sorry. I may be late in the game, but let's put it out a loud: where are the russians living outside of russia that are protesting against russias war on Ukraine?

> where are the russians living outside of russia that are protesting against russias war on Ukraine?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Russia_Legion

1956 is Hungarian Uprising, Prague Spring is 1968. They also did tons of vile stuff in the Baltics.

Russian imperialism goes much further back too, e.g. Partitions of Poland, colonization of Caucasus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitions_of_Poland

Sadly, the way high school curricula are set up in many countries doesn't leave much time for 20th century history, so only a rough outline of post-war events is taught. As for more recent history, there has been almost no research (or even awareness) of Russian imperialism in Western academia until now (gee, wonder why)...

No, that's when you thought you were making a reversible decision but events played out in a way that made it irreversible.

Everything with US is reversible, just wait until next election... I really hope not too many people will die until then. Iran, Afghanistan, Lybia, Syria, Jemen... another pointless war. World needs something better!

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