Botond173
1yr ago
That's hardly something anyone besides themselves can do anything about. As far as I can tell, it's a completely normie-friendly subreddit.
Botond173
1yr ago
The occupation was obviously forcible, but the arrival of Russian immigrants was, as far as I know, not, and can only be viewed as the indirect consequence of the former. Other than that, yes, there are differences, but that's not the point. On one hand, treating ethnic diversity as a moral good unto itself, and mass immigration as the laudatory facilitator of it, and ethnic homogeneity as inherently dangerous when practiced by White Western Goyim, while at the same time upholding Baltic and Ukrainian Nationalist narratives about the Soviet crime of mass immigration in order to dissolve the inherently precious heritage that was local ethnic homogeneity, is completely dishonest and laughable.
Botond173
1yr ago
That'd just be a copout, for multiple reasons. One: the difference has existed before the founding of the Soviet state as well, and doesn't originate from Soviet politics. Two: the same argument suddenly becomes Nazi rubbish when applied to Africa and the consequences of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade (even on the the old subreddit, very few people dared to raise it), or to the Black population of South Africa during Apartheid.
Botond173
1yr ago
That's a bit too extreme. In this case, the only word in the official name that is legitimately objectionable from a Latvian point of view is "liberators". (I don't think anyone seriously raised the issue of Fascist vs. National Socialist distinction regarding all this.) But again, let's keep in mind that the name was not Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga. It was Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German Fascist Invaders. That's an important qualification, I think.
Botond173
1yr ago
From their point of view, the issue isn't that the Soviet were bad per se, but that they also invaded their land. I think it's fair to say that the real sentiment is "Soviets should have never invaded us!". In other words, "If only we had a different past".
Botond173
1yr ago
Because Israeli ethnonationalism isn't delegitimized in Western mainstream media.
Botond173
1yr ago
Nothing to do with the obelisk or even Latvia directly, obviously. But it has a lot to do with common attitudes towards Nationalist tendencies. Any narrative that delegitimizes, condemns and cancels ethnonationalism in some cases but justifies, explains away, trivializes, downplays and even celebrates it in others (Israel, Ukraine, the Baltic states) is inherently suspicious, for obvious reasons.
Botond173
1yr ago
You're right, but it's also true that there were periods when PC appeared to be dormant even to people politically savvier than average. Generally speaking, I think the Culture War is waged in relatively short waves, and then remains dormant/hibernated for years. I also think this generally benefits the Left, because it provides an ideal environment for slowly but surely capturing institutions. The usual mistake of Conservative normies is that they become complacent and clueless, because they mistakenly think that their enemies are ludicrous loons. They were prone to think that they are winning, especially after 9/11, and that PC is just a laughingstock to be ignored.
Botond173
1yr ago
My view is the SJWs should try creating their own cultural products and see what response they get instead of expropriating and ruining the works of others.
Botond173
1yr ago
Supposedly the same fate befell Sparta a couple of centuries before, because Spartan women were expected to perform various economic / quasi-managerial tasks at home, while at the same time also completing combat training, which altogether depressed the fertility rate.
Also, there were supposedly many eligible single men in the Late Western Roman Empire who joined monasteries or became hermits as Christianity gained a larger following, which also eroded the fertility rate.
Botond173
1yr ago
And I'm still not entirely sure where it came from.
Was it really the Satanic Panic, where Karen lost her mind because "muh D&D and pedos around every corner"?
State agencies adopting extreme aversion to risk allowing themselves to become weapons of the bored housewife concern troll?
Was it the cratering of the laber pool in the 1980s that solidified the segregation of the youth from the general public?
Was it the dramatic increase in crime because the CIA was selling crack on the streets?
The 24-hour news cycle and the Amber Alert (where 99.99% of its uses are custody disputes)?
Teenagers running amok killing their classmates because they correctly assessed that their life didn't matter to anyone and had no social buy-in (which is itself likely an emergent phenomenon; spree shooters in 1998 would have been born in 1980 and thus grew up post-enclosure)?
All of the above?
Suburbanization, I think, as accelerated by the violent crime epidemic. Car-based suburbs are basically human settlements bereft of any sense of community, unwalkable neighborhoods, and have harmful psychological effects on children.
Botond173
1yr ago
However, while most media coverage on this phenomena is playful and positive, my intuition has long been that this isn't just a harmless, fun phenomenon, but rather these 'parents' are really using these pets as a substitute for children.
Well, duh.
As others 've mentioned below, having a pet is basically the equivalent of all the fun parts of having a small child without any of the unfun parts.
Botond173
1yr ago
So, out of curiosity, I looked at the r / hungary subreddit, which is yet another very obvious example of leftist platform capture through the actions of biased admins, meaning that it can be counted on to provide a good summary of the generated oppositional outrage. I was a bit surprised by the narrative that there's apparently an ongoing local epidemic of helpless women getting brutally raped and impregnated by, I don't know, hairy alt-right incel gamer programmers or something (we're supposed to assume they are all White, of course), therefore this new law will mean that hordes of women already deeply and tragically scarred by the psychological trauma of incel rape will, if they elect to undergo abortion, be forced by Nazi shitheads to undergo the additional trauma of having to listen to heartbeat of the rapist's "baby" (clump of cells, or something), which is, like, super terrible.
...huh? What? What % of female rape victims even get pregnant?
Is this theory also imported from US culture warriors? I really want to know.
Botond173
1yr ago
When you denounce Soviets in the hindsight, you explicitly deal with counterfactuals, assuming that Soviets could have avoided their excesses (presumably like other European states or US), but had chosen not to. And that this choice – of pursuing aggressive political agendas, by brutal means – might be attributed to the barbaric attitudes of their leaders (and probably people).
Isn’t this a purely causal interpretation? If instead you could have attributed Soviet policies to other factors, partially beyond their control – like geopolitical prisoner-dilemma-like situations, or mere incompetence of the leaders – you wouldn’t denounce them.
I think you're right, but it's not exactly what I had in mind. I was thinking more along the lines of "You do know that you were only ever going to escape Soviet occupation if Nazi Germany prevails, don't you?"
Botond173
1yr ago
I think a minimal level of nuance is warranted here. Let's look at the following statements:
A. Ukrainian national identity and culture are real, distinct and legitimate i.e. those who belong to it have the right to maintain and defend it.
B. Ukraine is a real nation, and has a right to its own state.
C. Ukraine is a real nation, and has a right to exist as an ethnostate within the post-1954 borders of the former Ukrainian SSR.
D. This ethnostate should be a NATO member, permit American bases and weapon systems on its soil if it sees fit, and take Sevastopol away from the Russian Navy if it sees fit.
Based on past Ukrainian events and their timeline, it seems clear to me that Russian government, and the majority or Russians, object to C and D, not A and B, and even C would not have warranted military action in their eyes.
Russia is objectively a multicultural state, and ethnonationalism was never practiced there by the state. To accuse them of "embracing full-fledged cultural genocide of neighboring nations, intending to wipe any non-Russian identities that might exist there" is laughable.
Botond173
1yr ago
I don't, but I also don't think the two situations are comparable. The American Civil War was fought between two states only, and there were no other small nations caught between them and turned into battlegrounds, like Latvia was.
The one contra/counterfactual in that case is the idea that "Reconstruction should have been implemented ruthlessly", I guess, which is not to say that it ever was even a bit more realistic than, say a German final victory, or a separate peace, in WW2.
Botond173
1yr ago
Would you erect a memorial to victims of Red army, that intentionally stopped?
No. Who'd do that? On the other hand, the allegation assumes that the Red Army was capable of entering Warsaw in time to (theoretically) support the uprising. Due to a successful German counterattack, it actually wasn't:
Botond173
1yr ago
Most of the "undeclared" are Romani, and their proportion is even higher among the younger cohort. Statistics can be misleading.
Botond173
1yr ago
Suspicion of people who apply standards selectively needs to be explained?
Botond173
1yr ago
Red Army was waiting on other side of river Wisła.
From the Wikipedia article linked above:
Already on 1 August, the leading elements of the 19th and 5th SS Panzer Divisions, closing from the west and east respectively, met at Okuniew, cutting the 3rd Tank Corps off from the other units of the Second Tank Army. Pressed into the area of Wołomin, the 3rd Tank Corps was pocketed and destroyed on 3 August 1944. Attempts to reach the doomed tank corps by the 8th Guards Tank Corps and the 16th Tank Corps failed, with the 8th Guards Tank Corps taking serious losses in the attempt.
Wołomin is roughly 20 kms to the east of Warsaw.
Botond173
1yr ago
If I owned Twitter, I wouldn’t let feminists, trans activists, or socialists post. Why should I? They’re wrong about everything and bad for society.
Huh? Them being wrong about everything is precisely the reason you shouldn't try silencing them. The only way to give them the rope to hang themselves with is to let them talk in from of common people, and reveal what they truly believe and want.
That's an entirely fair point. I considered to also add the scenario of "WW2 is avoided entirely through some miracle", but decided against it as it'd make the post too long and I'd probably just end up rambling.
Anyway, I'm sure Latvian nationalists share the view that Soviet foreign policy was, due to ideological considerations, inherently aggressive, especially towards certain neighboring states. From that it logically follows that the Soviet annexation of the Baltics was only ever going to be prevented through deterrence, at minimum. But wasn't Germany the only nation that ever had the potential to do that? And not necessarily under Nazi rule, to be clear, but necessarily under a government that implements remilitarization on an enormous scale. Which, in turn, is not something the Western democratic powers were ever going to tolerate. So, from there, where?
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