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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Dehumanization is a very old and popular practice among homo sapiens sapiens. It is closely connected with tribalism, with the division into ingroup and ougroup. These concepts can quite reasonably be considered part of human nature, or rather neurology(Dunbar number). To think about the number of people exceeding the Dunbar number by several orders of magnitude, stereotypes, generalizations and such abstract concepts as "nation" or "people" used, which is why many racists can have friends of another race, communists may not have problems with a businessman they know personally, and Hitler respected his Jewish doctor.

The current situation around the "special operation" is therefore not at all unique, but rather normal for any conflicts in history. Just as state propaganda in the participating countries in World War I presented their enemies as monsters on posters, today's propaganda shows opponent`s soldiers as orcs and pigs. Propaganda, like advertising, works for most people, and while avoiding its harmful effects can be easy for some, the problem is that few people try. Now a large part or maybe even most of Ukrainians and Russians hate each other, along with this, real Russophobia is widespread in many Western countries - this is an inevitable consequence of unleashing "special operations" and nothing can be done about it yet. I think it is wrong to dehumanize people in return for theirs dehumanization of ourselves. Of course, after reading hundreds of comments by Ukrainians about stupid orcs without culture, who need to be forced to pay tribute and decolonize their "Рашка"(disparaging nickname for Russia coincidentally having the same name as medieval Serbian principality), average Russian can be filled with desire to write about stupid grunting piggies and their Khokhlostan, but this desire is worth overcoming in oneself. He should think about how the "Khokhols" came to such a life: are they themselves do not consider that the "Rusnya" was the first to start? Almost everyone is sure that their hatred is just and reciprocal in its own way, this is perfectly cultivated by propaganda that specifically chooses what to show to its target audience. For this to stop working, people need to stop thinking that the answer to hatred should be the same blind hatred.

It should be clarified that here I am talking about specific xenophobia of a general nature, of course, strongly disliking army of the country that destroyed your house is completely different. But to transfer these emotions from the army, from politicians, from specific criminals to gigantic groups of people consisting of millions of individuals is stupidity. At the same time, one must understand that average commentators and couch experts who succumb to propaganda are not doomed to maintain their opinions for the rest of their lives. Germanophobia in Europe after the First and Second World War did not last so long, as well as Anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States. As in the past, propaganda will shift its focus to other things, and the majority of people will gradually lose their radical positions. Of course, some parts will not be forgotten for centuries but it will not be the full-fledged xenophobia of today. I think Orwell written about it brilliantly in relation to his own time`s big war here - https://orwell.ru/library/articles/revenge/english/e_revso

But to transfer these emotions from the army, from politicians, from specific criminals to gigantic groups of people consisting of millions of individuals is stupidity.

No it isn't, if the gigantic group of people is either willfully blind to the atrocities being committed by the army and the politicians, or are willingly supporting and encouraging them.

either willfully blind to the atrocities being committed by the army and the politicians, or are willingly supporting and encouraging them.

Which is an accusation you can make in any war.

Which is not claiming the point is false, or invalid.

There is a reason that pro-war people for the worst of wars are often mocked and derided. That it is not Russian-specific doesn't degrade the relevance to the current Russian context.

Mocked and derided by whom, exactly? Probably not by other pro-war people. With few exceptions (usually shortly preceding that side's failure to attain its objectives for the foreseeable future), most wars are supported by most people on each warring side. If I remember correctly, you are one of the pro-war people for your side in this war, too. Something like a "but this is morally different because the others started it" also is not so compelling when the others plausibly believe the same about you, as I figure each side also does in just about any war since the "we shall gloriously seize land because its current owners are weaker" narrative has gone out of fashion centuries ago. (Claiming that this is what the other side believes hasn't, but that's a different matter.)

Mocked and derided by whom, exactly? Probably not by other pro-war people.

Probably not, no, and there's no much I can say beyond that without coming off with an unintended tone.

With few exceptions (usually shortly preceding that side's failure to attain its objectives for the foreseeable future), most wars are supported by most people on each warring side.

And yet, only one side in a war of aggression by choice can be responsible for starting the war. Hence the need to resist deliberate or inadverdant efforts to smuggle in the connotations of equivalence via a generic 'support' to equivocate non-equivalent causes and forms of support.

It really does matter if one supports a war because 'that land and its people are ours, and we're going to take it from them whether they like it or not,' and 'this land and its people are ours, and we are going to defend it.' Supporting offense and supporting defense are two substantially different dynamics, in terms of ethics and agency and the principles of Just War which are relevant to discerning the worst of wars and the best of wars, which is what distinguished when pro-war types of the worst of wars are mocked..

If I remember correctly, you are one of the pro-war people for your side in this war, too.

You mis-remember, or at least mis-understood.

I am one of the people who said that a war was a credible prospect given the Russian diplomatic plays of 2021, predicted that a war would be long, bloody, and costly for the Russians (though I did predict 'NATO-supported insurgency' rather than 'conventional match'), claimed that the Russians would offensively culminate around the summer and not overrun the Ukrainian army during the second (and third) phases when the conventional mis-match was still solidly in Russia's favor, and assessed that the dynamics involved with key actors, ranging from emotional electorates to domestic political dynamics, would see the Russian political strategy for Ukrainian/western capitulation fail. I regularly write on what I view various government perspectives to be beyond the level of claimed positions, and why I believe they are doing things they do at the time beyond government public-facing narratives. I have consistently held the position that the war is a tragedy, hoping the Russians cutting their losses and abandoning the sunk cost fallacy of a war they've engaged in, while also acknowledging my long-held belief that Putin is a strategic medicority driven more by ego than calculus who won't do that, thus driving key actors to continue opposing him as there are no viable political blocks in Ukraine or in Ukraine's key backers who could survive (or want to) make the argument in favor of concessions to Putin for reasons ranging from domestic politics to long-term strategic interest.

These were predictive, and descriptive, but not advocacy that merits the term 'pro-war' in any non-equivocation sense.

But, if you need a category, I am generally inclined to 'pro-Just-War' based on the principles of Just War Theory, both Jus ad Bellum (conditions in which using military force is justified) and Jus in Bello (conduct by warfighters in war), and generally find the Russians failing in both while the Ukrainians passing.

Something like a "but this is morally different because the others started it" also is not so compelling when the others plausibly believe the same about you, as I figure each side also does in just about any war since the "we shall gloriously seize land because its current owners are weaker" narrative has gone out of fashion centuries ago. (Claiming that this is what the other side believes hasn't, but that's a different matter.)

People believing stupid things is both plausible and still stupid, and the sincerity of someone's belief in their beliefs does not really affect the correctness of their arguments. As the fable goes, only one woman actually gave birth to the child, no matter how many claim, or sincerely believe in, their mothership.

Ultimately, I am not the sort of post-modernist who believes subjectivity trumps all, or that all things are subjective, or that even subjective things are beyond dispute.

You mis-remember, or at least mis-understood.

Sorry if that was the case. That being said, I don't think there's a point in relitigating the object-level justness of this war for either side yet again, since this has been done on this forum many times already and presumably hardly any opinions were shifted. (For the record, my position is still that all sides are morally in the wrong - the current Ukrainian government for seizing the country in a revolution in 2014 and prosecuting a war against the side that did not back the revolutionaries, the American government for providing material support to the winning side of the revolution since 2014, and the Russian government for entering the war on the side of the losing side in 2022; and yes, I grant that Russia's support is the greater immorality than the preceding ones by virtue of the greater degree and suffering it brought, but this is a difference of quantity, not quality).

I don't think that your predictions about how the war would go are of particular relevance to the question, though I'd be interested to hear why you thought that they are, because I've seen posts that suggest that "believing side X is in the right" and "believing side X will win" is strongly entangled in the view of many and it puzzles me. Despite my position above (and, orthogonally to questions of justice, preferring a future in which Russia has won the war to one in which it has lost, in purely geopolitical terms), I have also believed from the start that Russia's military and leadership is inadequate and their loss is overwhelmingly likely.

People believing stupid things is both plausible and still stupid, and the sincerity of someone's belief in their beliefs does not really affect the correctness of their arguments. As the fable goes, only one woman actually gave birth to the child, no matter how many claim, or sincerely believe in, their mothership.

I think the sincerity (and plausibility) of their beliefs is significant to their moral culpability, though. I know Americans dislike and have strong memetic antibodies to ("whataboutism") their own country being compared to the villain of the day that they are bringing charges against, but do you really feel that the common American has, for example, the same degree of culpability for the immeasurable amount of death and suffering brought about by the Iraq war (still much greater than what has happened in Ukraine so far, according to most estimations, and supported on the basis of arguably quite stupid beliefs about Saddam-Osama links) that you assign to the common Russian right now? When I ask whether you really feel, I do really mean the sense that they deserve to pay an appropriate price for it in suffering, which I do think the vocally pro-Ukraine posters here generally do feel towards the NPC Russians. I don't think I feel that way towards the common folk of the US, even though I have thought that maybe in the interest of cosmic justice I ought to.

the current Ukrainian government for seizing the country in a revolution in 2014

Zelensky ran and won as a blatant bothsidist who would've lost the reelection had the war not started due to his abysmal job approval rating. A more competent Russian MFA could've pulled off a "Reagan vs Iran" or even a "Nixon in China".

I'm aware, but was there actually any significant lull in combat activity on the Donbass frontline under him? Presumably, had he lost the reelection, he would have been replaced by someone more hawkish too, with the effect either way being that the pressure of war against the separatists would have continued.