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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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Why would any Ukrainian who cares about his ethnicity care about that, when Russia promises to actively cancel the entire concept of Ukraine and paint it as wrongheaded Malorossian nazi sympathizers as soon as it's done?

It's clearly been too long since you've had an actual existential war if your concept of being replaced is limited to "London is less than 50% British". Try zero percent. Ethnicity null can't take up any percentage of the former country, after all.

actively cancel the entire concept of Ukraine and paint it as wrongheaded Malorossian nazi sympathizers

I think this almost never works, it just induces resentment. Spanish culture stayed strong despite centuries of Islamic occupation (the staying-power of bullfighting has a lot to do with the Muslims repeatedly trying to ban it), the Irish are still Irish, and Ukraine went straight back to being Ukraine once the USSR was over. If anything foreign occupation seems to solidify native culture, below a certain level. (That is not to say that being occupied is fun or easy, especially by Russians).

What does seem to cause long-term culture change is demographic change. On an obvious level, America and South America changed almost completely once the Europeans moved in, as did the English when the Normans moved in. I don't really have great examples because mass migration is still quite new, but it seems relevant to me that the statues of Robert E. Lee in the South didn't disappear after Civil Rights but only disappeared when the locals became outnumbered by incomers with no connection to the history. There's just something about 50%+ of your capital city and even increasingly your politicians having no connection with your history at all (or negative ones) that's hard to describe. I look out of the window and nobody looks like me. I can't understand what they're saying. If the Nazis had succeeded and tried to wipe out our culture I think we'd still consider ourselves English, but this is different.

Ukraine was Russia for centuries, it was still Ukrainian. Ukraine now has collapsing demographics and will end up being completely replaced.Their culture will be some washed out American culture and their population will be Pakistani workers extracting resources for black rock. There is no force that is more culturally corrosive than western liberalism.

Ukraine wasn't even a part of Russia. There are parts of Russia with strong cultures. Ukraine would easily have remained Ukrainian.

The parts of Russia with strong cultures have not been painted as literal inheritors of the German Nazi cause who must be annihilated as a state and entity. Also, the parts of Russia with the strongest non-Russian cultures are, you have guessed it, Muslim. Not "Slav convert" Muslim, but Central Asian Muslim.

I am telling you once again since you do not even address it - Russia is not some sort of based trad anti-White Replacement haven. All the trends that make people crow about "replacement" are there at only slightly weaker, combined with the kind of government ideology that is really not promising for newly-subjugated Enemies of the Glorious Fatherland.

Ukraine now has collapsing demographics and will end up being completely replaced

This is of course also true of Russia, the two nations have similar TFRs.

Ukraine has a tfr of 0.98, Russia at 1.41, Russia's is 44% higher. Also Russia has immigration of ethnic Russians from former soviet countries. Ukraine is experiencing an exodus combined with south korean birth rates...

the invasion caused a 25% drop in fertility, yes if another country invades you it'll be bad for the long term success of your people but this was never in question. The poit remain 1.41 is not a sustainable TFR either.

Ukraine's demographics are way worse than Russias. Of course there's a strong regional aspect- eastern Ukraine is starving old people currently getting bombed, western Ukraine was doing better than average for Europe before the war.

As far as I can tell both Russia and Ukraine had a TFR of 1.4-1.5 before the war, of course the war is bad for both of them but both there was no actual "don't have demographic collapse" option available. It was always demographic collapse where your young men die for Putin's delusion of empire or Demographic collapse under their own power.

It was a part of a premodern Russian empire withotu anywhere close to the amount of state capacity (or general ideological development related to modernity) to attempt assimilation, or basically any form of governance beyond letting local atamans and village chiefs continue to do as they've always done. Things are obviously quite different on that front now.