This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Well, (a) this isn't very charitable, given that Russia's stated aim is denazification and prevention of crimes against humanity against Russo-Ukrainians, and (b) even if all Ukrainian-US propaganda is true and Russia really is capping any Ukrainian who ever looked fondly at an EU / NATO flag... there is always more brutality to be had. Daring Russia to sink even lower by engaging in anti-Russian dehumanisation will not, I think, have the long-term salutary effect Halla thinks it will: any Ukrainian lives saved from acceleration in victory are likely to be more than counterbalanced by Ukrainian lives lost from the incrementally more brutal Russian counterreaction.
Russia's stated aim is irrelevant to charity. Russia's revealed aim and policies have included multiple crimes against humanity that do amount to international standards of genocide, and in line with Russian narratives justifying such on the rejection of the legitimacy of Ukrainian nationhood.
The Russians will be brutal regardless, and will continue to be brutal over any Ukrainian territory they control both now and potentially in the future.
That's an interesting claim, considering Russia retains maximalist war goals that are not limited to 'just' the 4 claimed sub-regions, let alone the occupied areas.
Well, this post kinda exemplifies my point: @Dean is living in some sort of fantastical propagandistic counterreality where Russia is engaging in Warhammer 40k levels of no-prisoners, collateral-damage, occult-civilian-torture Khorne worship tier warfare. Which they're not, as the very existance of POWs attests. Having norms of war that you're not supposed to violate ever, is therefore a good idea, because you may, as in the case of @Dean, find yourself deranged with bloodlust and disconnected from reality, and without those (hopefully) inviolable norms you may thereby be led to doing something stupid, like playing dehumanisation chicken with an enemy who holds hundreds of thousands of your people under occupation.
Sure, maybe Ukrainians under occupation, and POWs in Russian hands, are not quite as sprightly as one would like, but they're not all literally dead, and therefore ipso facto we have proof that Russians are showing (some level of) restraint / respect for the humanity of Ukrainians under their boots. So I reiterate that Finland's dehumanisation race to the bottom has ample space to make things worse via retaliation.
Citation where I said this, please.
Please identify the argument I made which the very existence of POWs attests. (Or contests.)
My position is that the Russians already engage in dehumanization of the Ukrainians in their occupation zones, entered into the war with an intent of cultural genocide, planned for filtration camps to target non-combattants, and that there is no game of 'chicken' going on because the Russians intended to do this from the start.
Please identify what policies the Russians will inact as retaliation as opposed to what they have already been doing before and were already going to do regardless of Finnish politician positions.
Is your position that the Russians will move from limited torture and murder of civilians on the basis of imperialistic ethnochauvenism to significantly less limited torture and murder on the basis of Finnish politicians, as opposed to increasing war-stress of conscript troops in need of catharsis amidst a grinding war they are poorly equipped or trained to handle professionally?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think it's intellectually fair to use the word "genocide" (which most people associate with the physical extermination of people) in relation to a situation where children from an orphanage in Mariupol are sent to an orphanage in Russia.
Do you consider restrictions on the study of the Russian language in eastern Ukraine a genocide?
Probably the exact opposite is true. Russians will not be cruel to the local population no matter what, because they consider the local population to be Russian.
Evidence suggests otherwise.
More options
Context Copy link
If you don't think it's fair to apply the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, a convention of over 70 years of establishment international law, which even Russia is a a party to, for international standards of genocide, I question your standards of intellectual fairness.
No, nor do they meet the international standard of it. Per Article II of the convention-
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Black Comedy can be found in thinking the Russian state wouldn't be cruel to Russians. Evidence of Russian cruelty to Ukrainians under Russian occupation can be found from Bucha to Kherson.
Get rid of bureaucratic nonsense. I think that this word in everyday use has a completely different meaning.
Both Russians and Ukrainians constantly claim that they find torture chambers in the occupied territories, this is probably just information garbage.
If we talk about Bucha, then we are talking about the alleged incident with the execution of men mistaken for artillery spotters, a guy on a bicycle who unsuccessfully rode onto a convoy preparing for battle and many civilians killed by Ukrainian artillery.
No, I decline to defer to your appeal for definition gerrymandering.
Many people use words wrong, but this is one whose context was specified, and whose definition for the scope of genocide has been an established part of international law longer than you've been alive.
And, you know, was refered to via the reference of international standards, to prevent confusion.
Well, that's one way to describe inconvenient UN investigations.
https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N22/637/72/PDF/N2263772.pdf?OpenElement
No, we're talking about the one involving torture and summary executions of civilians, as well as bodies being left in the streets for over a week as identified by commercial imagery despite Russian claims that the bodies were staged by Ukrainian forces as part of false allegations.
Soldiers who shoot at any moving target during battle - yes. The massacre of combatants, whom the soldiers consider to be combatants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_massacre) - yes.
But when a party that clearly has a conflict of interest and uses the statements of the Ukrainian government, which is quite often lying, starts telling stories that are clearly designed for an emotional reaction and are implausible from the point of view of hypothetical actors - I show a lot of skepticism.
And in the Bucha case, the shooting of people bound in basements and in other places and forms of captivity.
Fortunately, the UN is not a party of the conflict, and used the statements of people they themselves interviewed along with sites they were granted access to, including sites and personnel that incriminated Ukrainians.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Unfortunately for the Russians, the Ukrainians get a say as well and it is very clear that they do not consider themselves Russians, in fact they are willing to kill and die over this very point.
The Russians will be cruel because reality conflicts with what they have imagined it to be.
But in all honesty this explanation is not needed either way, the Russians will be callously brutal institutionally and commit random acts of cruelty individually, because that is an intrinsic component of the Russian way of war. My source for this claim is the past hundred years of Russian military history and the enduring hatred towards Russia from the various peoples who have come into conflict with them.
Well, this is definitely not true for Donbass or Melitopol.
Where we see both people who are ready to kill in order to NOT be Ukrainians and people who are generally loyal to the Russian government.
I would be interested to know which countries improved their opinion of each other after the war.
Did you read it on Grey Zone?
EDIT: you can argue about Donbass (never been there), especially LDNR. But I lived for a long period of time in a small town on the coast of Azov Sea, an hour-long drive from Melitopol, I generally know attitude of people there.
I left Lugansk in 2014. It is strange how someone does not understand that all the people there sincerely hate Ukrainians. And yes, the East of Ukraine has always been pro-Russian. Lviv raguli - of course not.
Do you think that this really can be said to apply now?
Don't know. For the last 6 years, I have interacted with Ukrainians only on 2ch, and even then rarely.
But I think that having the opportunity to choose and not being afraid of reprisals from the SBU, the majority in the east would prefer Russia. Russia is corny richer, less crime, better infrastructure and government, and no one would have to change either their culture or their language.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link