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Comment by saberdancer | Hacker News Reader

This is not fascist.

Most countries are made in a way to not allow parts of their territory to secede, even if they "want to do it". Just look what happens in Spain with Catalonia, what would probably happen in Scotland, Texas or California. This is not fascist.

But, you are ignoring the fact that Crimea did not decide to secede but that Russian soldiers (without insignia) became little green men, they forced Ukrainian army to surrender their weapons and leave Crimea. After that Russia organized "a referendum" where Crimea voted to join.

How well these referendums work we can see in Kherson.

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>But, you are ignoring the fact that Crimea did not decide to secede

It absolutely did. The 90% vote matched our subsequent polling taken a year later - almost exactly and the western pollsters certainly didn't use little green men.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/03/20/one-year-a...

Much like in Kosovo the presence of the superpower's troops simply allowed the vote to happen.

Ukraine makes no secret of the fact that it doesn't want a free and fair vote to be run (it's "unconstitutional" to have a vote, they argue North Korearly) and neither do we.

That, along with the public bitchslap Elon Musk got for suggesting a vote, highlights the dim view the west takes on allowing democracy in the south and east of Ukraine.

> But, you are ignoring the fact that Crimea did not decide to secede but that Russian soldiers

I’m not so desperate to pick a side here. It’s absolutely right that Crimean secession wouldn’t be possible without Russian military intervention. And yes, it’s illegal from Ukraine’s point of view. At the same time, it’s legal from Russian point of view. Who’s in the right?

Now, NATO member states have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to explain why it’s all right for Kosovo or Taiwan, but not for Crimea. You have to agree that Taiwanese de-facto independence wouldn’t be possible without the US involvement.

So my point is, there has to be consistency.

> Just look what happens in Spain with Catalonia, what would probably happen in Scotland, Texas or California. This is not fascist.

If Scotland votes to leave the UK it will. The UK isn’t like Spain. It doesn’t believe in itself. The US looks like it does so it would likely be willing to wage a war of occupation. The US is far more nationalist than the UK.

If Scotland becomes independent, it won't be because the UK doesn't believe in itself, it's because the UK believes it's a democratic and consensual union. Believing in democracy the way the UK does can only happen if it has consequences. (Other countries have other ideas about what democracy means; I don't mean to say they don't believe in democracy because they draw different conclusions.)

Even the Scottish and Catalonian referenda were different: The Scottish referendum happened with the toleration of the central government, whereas the Catalonian referendum was ruled unlawful and widely boycotted. This was precisely because the UK believed in itself. Spain had a different understanding of itself - equally strong - and didn't want to go to the polls for it.

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