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This is an interesting argument to rationalize one's moral failings. Probably rings even truer in the Baltic states. I happen to believe the exact opposite, and indeed his claim forces me to dehumanize Finns (the fraction he represents) in my head – a little bit. This, of course, validates his theory about the utility of such reactions in the context of group conflict, and we have more robust validations down to oxytocin secretion patterns in warring chimps – but the point is, the burden of civilization is suppressing such nifty natural adaptations. Civilization is about decreasing time preference, finding solutions better than the intuitive ones.
Ender Wiggin had it right. People who cannot into consistent morality, who feel the need to call the enemy bugs, pigs (case in point: Russian «patriots»), dogs, pigdogs, Orcs, roaches, rats and such to pull the trigger, who turn murder into a jovial matter – are poor warriors and strategists, deluded and infantile. More importantly they are superficial, morally subhuman. What he suggests is adorning subhumanity as a protective wear for the supposedly soft genuine nature of a civilized Finnish people; but it's not something you get to take off and put back into a closet. Like a beast's hide in a fable, it grows on you. Turks and Azeris, for example, will never take it off, neither will, I suspect, Palestinians and Jews – or Serbs or Kosovars or Croatians, or the current international roster of «Fellas». Nor will Balts. And if, like Germans, you end up receiving some forceful help in this matter, much of your original content and soul and culture will be ripped out as well.
One may hold that the material benefit of supposedly higher morale at wartime and ease of popular conscience after the victory outweighs this loss. What even is lost, tangibly? How are, say, Latvians worse off than Czechs? After all, vaticinating about sovls is just a crazy thing Orcs do. Maybe. It's pretty nice that Ukrainians who actually do the killing are for the most part better than those hysterical Twitter women, activists and Westerners. Even when they are boiling with hatred.
And this is another trivial mechanic of group conflict. People far from the front, especially women and cowards, want to feel useful, to «do their part», and also show they're not traitors sympathizing with the enemy. Thus, they will lie, they will demonize, and they will clap to 50 Stalins. A Ukrainian linguist and politician Irina Farion, an enthusiastic Communist in her Soviet youth, has said recently of refugees from the Eastern regions:
Back then, she received the following in response:
In closing, here's a recent note from Arestovych. It's mawkish, like much of his writing, but I like that the Adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, and one of the main talking heads on that side, finds it necessary to cajole the masses in such a manner.
I don't understand that. These people are really fighting to give their nation away to the EU/NATO?
'We must defeat the Russian invasion at all cost so that we may welcome a much bigger African invasion'
???
This seems a curious deficiency. Why are you unable to understand that people have different views on armed invasion versus voluntary association and the travails of dealing with migrants?
I just find it odd that 'nationalists' would run from the Russian Empire to immediately jump into the Western EU Empire.
Either way, the Ukrainian people is not going to be in charge of its destiny. If you abhor the Russian language, wait until you see what they speak.
Haha yes 'voluntary'. We just choose to go along the propaganda. How lucky we are to suddenly have a desire for transgenders and gay marriage and open borders!
It's inevitable. These Ukrainians are apparently attempting to become wealthier. With wealth comes migrants.
Unless by this statement, the brave Ukrainian soldier means that he wants to be like Poland and refuse to take in the refugees that the EU asked them to:
'everyone has the right to exist and live in our country.'
I realize @Dean is just having fun with his usual nitpicking here. But in any case – the odds are overwhelming that the Ukrainian guy isn't a lawyer, speaking with the precision of formal logic, and didn't mean to affirm some sort of generalized 'globohomo' ideal. He merely continued his logic of tolerance for ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers – provided they're loyal citizens of Ukraine (or his comrades-in-arms). His 'everyone' clearly isn't an unconditional, open-borders, refugees-welcome pitch, but a protest against the specific form of bigotry that Farion advocates, and perhaps its (less pressing in the current situation, but historically disastrous in Ukraine) sibling forms.
Ukraine's future, of course, is not defined by Sgt. Makhno's wishes, whether real or misconstrued. But that only makes your gotcha even less reasonable.
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This is indeed a curious limitation. Why are you unable to understand why people might want to run from an empire that has, is, and signals a clear intent to continue brutalizing a people, to an association that does not?
Between the two immigration policies, the one that doesn't have the migrants bringing in heavy artillery and conducting war crimes would indeed seem to be the preferable immigration policy.
If you have a desire for transgenders, gay marriage, and open borders, that's on you and your electorate, but that really has nothing to do with voluntary association of a nation to voluntarilly associate without a threat of war for not doing so.
Well, I suppose other than the 'will be invaded by Russian' context, but this isn't an ultimatum extended by Europe, and so any dismissal of the voluntary nature leaves the blame with Russia, not the Europeans.
Clearly not, or else migrants would be going to the wealth in Africa, which is the highest it's ever been in human history, and not to wealthier countries elsewhere. This distinction in grades of wealth is itself held within the European Union, where Ukraine would not be the wealthiest, and thus not in the area where migration flows would be intending to go.
Not clear why you're unable to understand why people might have different levels of care about the importance of migraiton policy over threat of invasion, though. That still seems weird.
Seems like you've solved your racial objection.
If your objection with association with a less brutal neighbor is refugee policy, and have identified a European model that does not entail having to take in refugees, you have just resolved your own objection.
It would have remained a mostly peaceful special operation if the US and EU had not meddled like they did in so many other countries in the last few decades.
Yet the EU intended to distribute them to Hungary and Poland.
Plus at some point being overrun by migrants will have an impact on the Western economies.
The migrants are not leaving Africa to settle in a colder Africa.
There is not.
Hungary is getting punished for its immigration policies, by getting cut off from EU gibs.
Similarly, Poland will get punished, or its American and EU 'allies' will see that they elect a government worthy of investing so much NATO money in, ie a government that celebrates gays and Africans.
And if people like Sgt. Makhno are in charge of future Ukraine, it seems that they will welcome everyone.
Ukraine will be very gay and very African or it will not be.
Even setting aside the factual inaccuracies, this doesn't explain your own inability to understand other people's viewpoint or priorities.
Ah! So you're not arguing the immigrants are going to Hungary and Poland because they're wealthy places now, I see. Will you update your prior argument accordingly?
This does not explain your inability to understand why other people may not care about this as much as a quite violent invasion.
Then why did you raise Poland as an example?
Migrants are going to the EU because there is wealth there, and it's probably easy for migrants to take some of that wealth compared to other wealthy African countries where they have actual border and law enforcement and little welfare.
The EU has laws to force member countries to welcome these migrants even if the member countries don't want them.
I call it a mostly peaceful special operation. There would be way less violence if Ukraine had implemented gun control, disbanded their law enforcement and just let the Russians burn down their neighborhoods, like NATO likes to do at home.
Poland is an example of a country that is ardently anti-Russia and seeks support from NATO and EU, like Ukraine.
However, they do not follow Sgt. Makhno's idea that 'everyone has the right to exist and live in our country.'
And they are getting punished for it by the EU.
Poland would love to have authoritarian immigration controls but they have chosen to bind themselves to globohomo EU/NATO.
Apparently, Sgt. Makhno loves the idea of a globohomo Ukraine where everybody is welcome, but then, why does he even care about Ukraine as a country?
The heads of EU and NATO hate traditional Ukrainian culture and want it erased with the rest of Western historical culture, so what is he fighting for?
Why not just flee to Poland or Germany, UK or USA?
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No, more probable that it would have been an even bloodier affair, possibly even bloodier, and the fight would be in the urban areas of Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv. With the same consequences as the siege of Mariupol.
What's your obsession with Africans? It's fine to tell, I won't kink-shame.
Lithuania, Estonia and Denmark are probably getting punished as well?
Africa is a big continent with the youngest, biggest, poorest population, and it's right across from Europe.
That's why most of the migrants to Europe are Africans.
That's correct. They are bound by EU laws to welcome migrants.
EU/Lithuania: In milestone judgement, EU Court slams automatic detention and denial of asylum
Danish refugee law draws criticism from UN, EU
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May I ask why Arestovych stutters, if it isn't a translation artifact? F-Foolishness and W-Weakness? Is it like 'sharing the mood of the mob is capital W Weakness'?
@DaseindustriesLtd explained it well, but Arestovich actually misuses the trope. The use of the capital letter is supposed to invert the meaning of the word, e.g., "Russia has African levels of HIV infection. P - prevention" or "Old women started a brawl for the food thrown out by the local supermarket. D - dignity"
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Something like that. It's a common lexical trope in Russian to refer to a certain kind of toy cube set, with a big letter and the corresponding word+picture on them. Since some of those sets were bad Chinese bootlegs, the words don't always match. Sometimes a joke is made by saying one word but implying another with the letter.
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Most likely. Г-глупость. С-слабость. There's a genre of demotivators inspired by children's ABC books – A-Apple, B-Bee, J-Jello, R-Rope etc., – providing a supposedly archetypal pictorial association for a certain word. (Unrelated, but a meme series of schizophrenic Chinese blocks come to mind, e.g. the marvelous "Ae - 'Pig' - duck.jpg"). Or maybe he was going somewhere with capitalization, maybe to a clever abbreviation, but forgot where.
I knew it was a good idea to ask about this, that link is fantastic. Also the involvement of letter blocks adds a good dash of condescension, which I wouldn't have picked up on.
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I read it as "Capital-F Foolishness"
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A nitpick of sorts, but
Did you DeepL this? I couldn't figure out what this phrase meant (and in fact the whole translation was a bumpy read), so I had to go to the original, and I think it would be better rendered as something like
Back on topic proper, I find it curious how the russophone Ukrainians are probably the one side in this war from whose well-platformed people I'm still seeing some measure of common sense and humanity. The Russian patriots and exile oppositionaries seem to have had their brains melted in equal measure (with the few unmelted chunks gradually integrating with the stew over the past months), and everyone else seems to be resolutely refusing to stick their head out; meanwhile, the Ukrainian-speaking portion of Ukraine only ever seems to go viral with things in the general class of calling for Uncle Sam's nukes, though I should say that discoverability there is much lower to me and I can't rule out that there are still voices of reason.
Thanks. I was just hurrying and screwed up copypasting. There was a proper paragraph.
The issue is that this is not about real corpses but literally about a corpse font, fabricated images where text is arranged out of Russian bodies (very lowtech: they could at least fine-tune stable diffusion, smh). Characteristically, the kind of shit civvies are eager to fantasize about doing.
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Of course, "we are too soft and nice smol beans and beating our enemies means we need to become hard and cruel (like the enemy!)" has been a part of the nationalist repertoire even before this war, expect moreso connected to narratives like "Us Finns (or Westerners in general) are too trusting and naive, we get exploited by lying fake asylum seekers and criminals and terrorists and foreign-aid-dependent dictators", precisely by politicians like Halla-aho. And there's a historical connection too, the Finnish far-right 30s explicitly repeated over and over again that Finns need to learn to hate Russians, writing books with titles like "The Only Way To Speak About A Russki Is While Grinding Your Teeth" and so-on - such tendencies were effectively then pushed deep to the recess by the war and the assorted beatings, but since this idea of deliberately hardening your own supposedly soft constituency seems to be culturally inbuilt in various nations, it perhaps only waited for an opportunity to get out again.
So in a way it's only too natural a narrative for him, especially now that it's harder than usual for other politicians to condemn him (not impossible, since they have done so). Indeed, he might find unexpected sympathy for harsh rhetoric even among liberals who would usually condemn him, "I do not usually share things by Halla-aho but this..." not being an unusual occurrence in Finnish liberal social media sphere. As such, one might say that it goes beyond just Russian/Ukrainian war question and is a part of a greater effort to make harsh, "realistic" us/them rhetoric acceptable - strike while the iron is hot, and all that.
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But didn't you fall for the same dynamics? "Subhuman" is not much better than an "orc". And the reasoning of many people who call Z-Russians "orcs" is the same as yours — they [Z-Russians] lack empathy and dehumanize Ukrainians. Of course, there are unironic Nazis who consider Russians "subhumans" quite literally — but they are clearly in minority.
It's difficult not to feel rage at people who cry about a monument to Catherine II being removed (we even had several people like that here) or Tchaikovsky being "cancelled" while being completely silent on dozens of civilians dying every day due to Russian artillery or missile strikes.
What should be the attitude of Ukrainians faced with the prospect of "svinorez"?
Since this was very obviously directed at me and pretty much only me, I assume, I feel compelled to mention that I, indeed, never commented on Russian missile and artillery strikes. But if your point is to insinuate that I somehow rejoice in the slaughter khokhols, then I need to point out that, technically speaking, I also stayed "completely silent" on the civilian victims of the Azov/Kraken/Tornado/etc. units and the SBU, of the shelling of the Donbass, of the starvation blockade of Yemen and Tigray, of the drone strikes in Pakistan, and the list could go on.
Is that supposed to imply political positions?
That's another example of the phenomenon I mentioned. You can easily substitute
with
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The reasoning behind calling Russian soldiers orcs is actually pretty apt as far as analogies go, since the orcs of the Lord of the Rings were based (in individual character and personality) on some of the enlisted he interacted with during his service in WW1 and (on a larger, more general scale) the armies of eastern despots. Admittedly the eastern despots he was being inspired by were far more likely to be called Darius than Vladimir, but it's still a surprisingly apt comparison.
I think "orcs" is better. While orcs are depicted as corrupt subhumans, the main characteristic of orcs is that they are a hostile military led by a conqueror and you have to defeat them to end the war, something that's pretty much true here.
This isn't true: for defeating Mordor and ending the war it was apparently sufficient to throw a certain ring into a certain volcano, and no normal military triumph would have been as effective.
Essentially an assassination attempt on their leader. Hmmm...
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Not completely. I address this irony specifically in the first paragraph, and claim advantage on the account of you missing it. Subhumanity is a moral choice; it is proper to acknowledge this ancestral impulse and suppress it. Sadly, civilians think themselves above this burden just as they are free from burdens of the frontline. This is one of the worst parts of the war, personally. It really makes me despise civilians of all sides.
War, prosecuted as effectively as possible. To the point of terrorism, disinformation, and recognizing philosophers as valid targets. If it works.
Regarding truly civilian matters, I concur with Sgt. Makhno.
As do I. But I think people like Farion are closer to "Nazis" whom I've mentioned — they consider Russians "orcs" not because of what they do, but for who they are. The same as people who call Russians "moksha", "mongols" or whatever. And that's ironic — someone like Alexei Milchakov is quite attractive, probably has IQ above average — not an ugly "mongol" like some propaganda depicts Russians, or an alcoholic from paintings by Lozhkin. Yet it's for people like him, I think, the title "orc" is the most deserving.
Interesting tidbit about Farion — she is being "cancelled" for hitting her cat during one of her streams. I believe the same as some twitch streamer :-)
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