Botond173
5hr ago
I'd argue the reason why many young Americans become rabid leftists also have a lot to do with the student loan bubble and the US healthcare system being the peculiar shitshow that it is.
Botond173
5hr ago
Judging by his past in general, the portrayal of the Bolsheviks and their mentality in his works, and the censorship of said works in Soviet times, Bulgakov was at least as likely to be disowned by Putin’s regime as well. I find this at least as surprising.
Botond173
10hr ago
Is this meant to be a reference to left-wing/anti-native British media bias?
Botond173
10hr ago
A Kyiv Statue No More: Ukrainians Debate Role Of Russian Author Mikhail Bulgakov
Residents of the Ukrainian capital have mixed reactions over the removal of a statue of Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, author of The Master And Margarita. Born in Kyiv when it was part of the Russian Empire, the novelist and playwright penned sharp satire and criticized Soviet society. But the statue has now been taken down after Ukraine's Institute of National Remembrance determined that Bulgakov also symbolized Russian imperial thinking -- under which Ukraine was seen as a Russian province.
A statue of Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov that stood on Andriivskyi Descent in Kyiv was removed and handed over to the sculptor’s heir for private storage, Kyiv’s Department of Cultural Heritage Protection said on June 4.
The transfer was carried out at the family’s request. The sculptor Mykhailo Rapai’s heir petitioned an interagency working group charged with removing objects tied to Russian and Soviet history and culture to release the work for personal safekeeping, the department said.
Kyiv’s City Council voted Dec. 18, 2025, to permanently remove the monument. The decision followed an expert opinion by the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, prepared under a Ukrainian law that condemns and bans propaganda of Russian imperial policy and requires the decolonization of place names. According to the institute’s finding, Bulgakov is among figures that contemporary Russian propaganda uses to glorify the Kremlin’s imperial policy, and monuments to such figures should be removed from Ukrainian streets. The institute earlier, in April 2024, officially designated Bulgakov as a symbol of Russian imperial policy subject to mandatory decolonization.
‘Propaganda literature’: calls to close Mikhail Bulgakov museum in Kyiv
According to the union, Bulgakov “hated” the idea of Ukrainian statehood and “glorified” the Russian tsar and monarchy. He also “smeared” Ukrainian nationalists including Symon Petliura, whose troops entered Kyiv in 1918, it says.
The museum’s director, Lyudmila Gubianuri, has also hit back against criticism, calling Bulgakov “a man of his time”. “He was born and lived in the Russian empire. Bulgakov had an inherent imperial mindset, but neither he nor his family were ever Ukrainophobes,” she stressed. “Bulgakov did not believe in the reality of an independent Ukraine, like quite a lot of people at that time.”
She continued: “That’s why we can’t consider him a Ukrainian writer, although he was born in Kyiv and lived here for most of his life. But Bulgakov’s work is definitely part of Ukrainian cultural space.” His sympathies – in The White Guard and in his novel The Master and Margarita – were “metaphysical” rather than “political”, she said.
According to one Redditor:
Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kіev (now Kyiv). His parents were both Russians, born in Russia. Bulgakov has never learned Ukrainian, and not a single his work includes a positive Ukrainian character unless that character never speaks Ukrainian, but sometimes his characters ridicule Ukrainian language and Ukrainians. He died in Russia, and I clearly don't understand why would anyone call him "a Ukrainian writer".
Botond173
11hr ago
Noted. Then again, the BBC does not even mention that these two are from Bulgaria at all.
Botond173
13hr ago
Needless to say, not one mention anywhere of the brother and sister being Bulgarian Gypsies.
Botond173
1d ago
Are you not expecting self-harm from the backlash due to the AI revolution?
Botond173
1d ago
Aren't there, like, more practical ways for America to right itself? Like, I dunno, kicking out criminal illegal immigrants and purging the commies?
Botond173
1d ago
Much as the hang em all crowd is obviously correct, polite European society cannot countenance irredeemability.
Unless the the 'irredeemability' of 'Nazis' is concerned.
Botond173
1d ago
But make no mistake, there are certain members of the community who have been waiting patiently for something like this as an excuse to 'call to arms'. And they are NOT the same people who go out to protests that are calling for an end to violence against women when its done by local fellas.
I'd argue that the commenter is right (except for the "excuse" part), and also that there's nothing wrong with that.
Botond173
1d ago
"In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.” - Theodore Dalrymple
Botond173
1d ago
Then you’ve got the actual politicians, who in theory have skin in the game. Elected officials are incentivized to call for calm, procedural responses no matter what. The killer is in custody, the facts are out there, but Belfast still has some unburned trash cans and they’d like to keep it that way. It is rational to make milquetoast calls for public order. It is their job.
Does that apply to Democrats during the manufactured George Floyd scandal?
Botond173
2d ago
extensive surveillance, well-funded domestic intelligence agencies, demoralized and diverse police, disarmed populations, low morale and now - thanks to AI - the ability to monitor, disrupt and analyze population-level movements and communications on social media
So is your argument that even these methods will prove to be insufficient to prevent a political takeover by either the far left or a right-wing caudillo, or that the powers that be will refrain from deploying these methods out of political considerations?
Botond173
3d ago
Anyway, all of this recent discourse combined is making me feel more and more like a retarded schmuck for working a 'real job,' as opposed to just leeching off the government, doing some sort of NGO/media grift, or even just getting a random remote job and going to live cheap in Thailand or some other extremely cheap country.
I remember that we've discussed the same issue before. I'd refer to my argument here, if you don't mind.
Two further points on my part: I doubt that Thailand counts as an 'extremely cheap country' anymore. Also, moving to an extremely cheap country as a lone Western man is very likely to make you the target of local scammers and other criminals, of which there will be plenty.
Botond173
3d ago
On a related note, I suggest that we categorize prostitutes as healthcare workers, basically.
Botond173
3d ago
My uneducated guess is that there is a crucial difference here.
Prostitutes usually harbor the fantasy of finding a man with a heart of gold who marries them and thus saves them from their lousy fate, because they know that otherwise they will age out of their profession quickly. Mistresses and high-end courtesans, on the other hand, have much better earning prospects in comparison, so the scenario they usually plan for is earning enough money until the age of 40 to basically last for a lifetime after proper investment. If they can get married, that’s even better, of course, but it isn’t necessary for thriving.
Botond173
3d ago
I wonder if it occurred to anyone to simply import unemployed or underemployed geishas into San Francisco.
Botond173
4d ago
I'd argue the reason why this is a taboo is that it necessarily entails external limitations on female sexual choice.
Botond173
4d ago
Eugenics as a whole necessarily entails external limits put upon female sexual choice by a state authority which is a notion that is extremely off-putting to modern women. I'm assuming this is the most likely explanation.
Botond173
7d ago
Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
Israel criticized Ukraine on Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II.
[...]
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
[...]
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
Not to go off on a tangent, but isn't that just how cultural policy usually works anywhere?
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